    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [June 26, 1995]
    [Pages 947-951]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations Charter
    in San Francisco, California
    June 26, 1995

        Thank you very much. Secretary Christopher, Mr. Secretary-General,
    Ambassador Albright, Bishop Tutu. My good friend Maya Angelou, thank you
    for your magnificent poem. Delegates to the Charter Conference,
    distinguished members of the diplomatic corps, the President of Poland,
    Members of Congress, honored guests, Mayor Jordan, Mr. Shorenstein,
    people of San Francisco, and friends of the United Nations: The 800
    delegates from 50 nations who came here 50 years ago to lift the world
    from the ashes of war and bring life to the dreams of peacemakers
    included both giants of diplomacy and untested leaders of infant
    nations. They were separated by tradition, race, and language, sharing
    only a vision of a better, safer future. On this day 50 years ago, the
    dream President Roosevelt did not live to see of a democratic
    organization of the world was launched.
        The charter the delegates signed reflected the harsh lessons of
    their experience, the experience of the thirties in which the world
    watched and reacted too slowly to fascist aggression, bringing millions
    sacrificed on the battlefields and millions more murdered in the death
    chambers. Those who had gone through this and the Second World War knew
    that celebrating victory was not enough, that merely punishing the enemy
    was self-defeating, that instead the world needed an effective and
    permanent system to promote peace and freedom for everyone.
        Some of those who worked at that historic conference are still here
    today, including our own Senator Claiborne Pell, who to this very day,
    every day, carries a copy of the U.N. Charter in his pocket. I would
    last like to ask all of the delegates to the original conference who are
    here today to rise and be recognized. Would you please stand? [Applause]
        San Francisco gave the world renewed confidence and hope for the
    future. On that day President Truman said, ``This is proof that nations,
    like men, can state their differences, can face them, and then can find
    common ground on which to stand.'' Five decades later, we see how very
    much the world has changed. The cold war has given way to freedom and
    cooperation. On this very day, a Russian spacecraft and an American
    spacecraft are preparing to link in orbit some 240 miles above the
    Earth. From Jericho to Belfast, ancient enemies are searching together
    for peace. On every continent, nations are struggling to embrace
    democracy, freedom, and prosperity. New technologies move people and
    ideas around the world, creating vast new reservoirs of opportunity.
        Yet we know that these new forces of integration also carry within
    them the seeds of disintegration and destruction. New technologies and
    greater openness make all our borders more vulnerable to terrorists, to
    dangerous weapons, to drug traffickers. Newly independent nations offer
    ripe targets for international criminals and

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    nuclear smugglers. Fluid capital markets make it easier for nations to
    build up their economies but also make it much easier for one nation's
    troubles first to be exaggerated, then to spread to other nations.
        Today, to be sure, we face no Hitler, no Stalin, but we do have
    enemies, enemies who share their contempt for human life and human
    dignity and the rule of law, enemies who put lethal technology to lethal
    use, who seek personal gains in age-old conflicts and new divisions.
        Our generation's enemies are the terrorists and their outlaw nation
    sponsors, people who kill children or turn them into orphans, people who
    target innocent people in order to prevent peace, people who attack
    peacemakers, as our friend President Mubarak was attacked just a few
    hours ago, people who in the name of nationalism slaughter those of
    different faiths or tribes and drive their survivors from their own
    homelands. Their reach is increased by technology. Their communication
    is abetted by global media. Their actions reveal the age-old lack of
    conscience, scruples, and morality which have characterized the forces
    of destruction throughout history.
        Today, the threat to our security is not in an enemy silo but in the
    briefcase or the car bomb of a terrorist. Our enemies are also
    international criminals and drug traffickers who threaten the stability
    of new democracies and the future of our children. Our enemies are the
    forces of natural destruction, encroaching deserts that threaten the
    Earth's balance, famines that test the human spirit, deadly new diseases
    that endanger whole societies.
        So, my friends, in this increasingly interdependent world, we have
    more common opportunities and more common enemies than ever before. It
    is, therefore, in our interest to face them together as partners,
    sharing the burdens and costs and increasing our chances of success.
        Just months before his death, President Roosevelt said, ``We have
    learned that we cannot live alone at peace, that our own well-being is
    dependent on the well-being of other nations far away.'' Today, more
    than ever, those words ring true. Yet some here in our own country,
    where the United Nations was founded, dismissed Roosevelt's wisdom. Some
    of them acknowledge that the United States must play a strong role
    overseas but refuse to supply the nonmilitary resources our Nation needs
    to carry on its responsibilities. Others believe that outside our border
    America should only act alone.
        Well, of course the United States must be prepared to act alone when
    necessary, but we dare not ignore the benefits that coalitions bring to
    this Nation. We dare not reject decades of bipartisan wisdom. We dare
    not reject decades of bipartisan support for international cooperation.
    Those who would do so, these new isolationists, dismiss 50 years of hard
    evidence.
        In those years we've seen the United Nations compile a remarkable
    record of progress that advances our Nation's interest and, indeed, the
    interest of people everywhere. From President Truman in Korea to
    President Bush in the Persian Gulf, America has built United Nations
    military coalitions to contain aggressors. U.N. forces also often pick
    up where United States troops have taken the lead.
        As the Secretary of State said, we saw it just yesterday, when Haiti
    held parliamentary and local elections with the help of U.N. personnel.
    We saw the U.N. work in partnership with the United States and the
    people of Haiti, as they labor to create a democracy. And they have now
    been given a second chance to renew that promise.
        On every continent, the United Nations has played a vital role in
    making people more free and more secure. For decades, the U.N. fought to
    isolate South Africa, as that regime perpetuated apartheid. Last year,
    under the watchful eyes of U.N. observers, millions of South Africans
    who had been disenfranchised for life cast their first votes for
    freedom.
        In Namibia, Mozambique, and soon we hope in Angola, the United
    Nations is helping people to bury decades of civil strife and turn their
    energies into building new democratic nations. In Cambodia, where a
    brutal regime left more than one million dead in the killing fields, the
    U.N. helped hundreds of thousands of refugees return to their native
    land and stood watch over democratic elections that brought 90 percent
    of the people to the polls. In El Salvador, the U.N. brokered an end to
    12 years of bloody civil war and stayed on to help reform the army,
    bring justice to the citizens, and open the doors of democracy.
        From the Persian Gulf to the Caribbean, U.N. economic and political
    sanctions have proved to be a valuable means short of military action to
    isolate regimes and to make aggressors and terrorists pay at least a
    price for their actions:

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    in Iraq, to help stop that nation from developing weapons of mass
    destruction or threatening its neighbors again; in the Balkans, to
    isolate aggressors; in North Africa, to pressure Libya to turn over for
    trial those indicted in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103.
        The record of the United Nations includes a proud battle for child
    survival and against human suffering and disease of all kinds. Every
    year, UNICEF oral vaccines save the lives of 3 million children. Last
    year alone the World Food Program, using the contributions of many
    governments including our own, fed 57 million hungry people. The World
    Health Organization has eliminated smallpox from the face of the Earth
    and is making great strides in its campaign to eliminate polio by the
    year 2000. It has helped to contain fatal diseases like the Ebola virus
    that could have threatened an entire continent.
        To millions around the world, the United Nations is not what we see
    on our news programs at night. Instead it's the meal that keeps a child
    from going to bed hungry, the knowledge that helps a farmer coax strong
    crops from hard land, the shelter that keeps a family together when
    they're displaced by war or natural disasters.
        In the last 50 years, these remarkable stories have been too
    obscured and the capacity of the United Nations to act too limited by
    the cold war. As colonial rule broke down, differences between
    developing and industrialized nations and regional rivalries added new
    tensions to the United Nations so that too often there was too much
    invective and too little debate in the General Assembly.
        But now the end of the cold war, the strong trend toward democratic
    ideals among all nations, the emergence of so many problems that can
    best be met by collective action, all these things enable the United
    Nations at this 50-year point finally to fulfill the promise of its
    founders.
        But if we want the U.N. to do so, we must face the fact that for all
    its successes and all its possibilities, it does not work as well as it
    should. The United Nations must be reformed. In this age of relentless
    change, successful governments and corporations are constantly reducing
    their bureaucracies, setting clearer priorities, focusing on targeted
    results. In the United States we have eliminated hundreds of programs,
    thousands of regulations. We're reducing our Government to its smallest
    size since President Kennedy served here, while increasing our efforts
    in areas most critical to our future. The U.N. must take similar steps.
        Over the years it has grown too bloated, too often encouraging
    duplication, and spending resources on meetings rather than results. As
    its board of directors, all of us, we, the member states, must create a
    U.N. that is more flexible, that operates more rapidly, that wastes less
    and produces more, and most importantly, that inspires confidence among
    our governments and our people. In the last few years we have seen some
    good reforms: a new oversight office to hold down costs, a new system to
    review personnel, a start toward modernization and privatization. But we
    must do more.
        The United Nations supports the proposal of the President of the
    General Assembly, Mr. Essy, who spoke so eloquently here earlier this
    morning, to prepare a blueprint for renewing the U.N. and to approve it
    before the 50th General Assembly finishes its work next fall.
        We must consider major structural changes. The United Nations simply
    does not need a separate agency with its own acronym, stationery, and
    bureaucracy for every problem. The new U.N. must peel off what doesn't
    work and get behind what will.
        We must also realize, in particular, the limits to peacekeeping and
    not ask the Blue Helmets to undertake missions they cannot be expected
    to handle. Peacekeeping can only succeed when the parties to a conflict
    understand they cannot profit from war. We have too often asked our
    peacekeepers to work miracles while denying them the military and
    political support required and the modern command-and-control systems
    they need to do their job as safely and effectively as possible. Today's
    U.N. must be ready to handle tomorrow's challenges. Those of us who most
    respect the U.N. must lead the charge of reform.
        Not all the critics of today's United Nations are isolationists.
    Many are supporters who gladly would pay for the U.N.'s essential work
    if they were convinced their money was being well-spent. But I pledge to
    all of you, as we work together to improve the United Nations, I will
    continue to work to see that the United States takes the lead in paying
    its fair share of our common load.
        Meanwhile, we must all remember that the United Nations is a
    reflection of the world it represents. Therefore, it will remain far
    from

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    perfect. It will not be able to solve all problems. But even those it
    cannot solve, it may well be able to limit in terms of the scope and
    reach of the problem, and it may well be able to limit the loss of human
    life until the time for solution comes.
        So just as withdrawing from the world is impossible, turning our
    backs on the U.N. is no solution. It would be shortsighted and self-
    destructive. It would strengthen the forces of global disintegration. It
    would threaten the security, the interest, and the values of the
    American people. So I say especially to the opponents of the United
    Nations here in the United States, turning our back on the U.N. and
    going it alone will lead to far more economic, political, and military
    burdens on our people in the future and would ignore the lessons of our
    own history.
        Instead, on this 50th anniversary of the charter signing, let us
    renew our vow to live together as good neighbors. And let us agree on a
    new United Nations agenda to increase confidence and ensure support for
    the United Nations, and to advance peace and prosperity for the next 50
    years.
        First and foremost, the U.N. must strengthen its efforts to isolate
    states and people who traffic in terror and support those who continue
    to take risks for peace in the face of violence. The bombing in Oklahoma
    City, the deadly gas attack in Tokyo, the struggles to establish peace
    in the Middle East and in Northern Ireland, all of these things remind
    us that we must stand against terror and support those who move away
    from it. Recent discoveries of laboratories working to produce
    biological weapons for terrorists demonstrate the dangerous link between
    terrorism and the weapons of mass destruction.
        In 1937, President Roosevelt called for a quarantine against
    aggressions, to keep the infection of fascism from seeping into the
    bloodstream of humanity. Today, we should quarantine the terrorists, the
    terrorist groups, and the nations that support terrorism. Where nations
    and groups honestly seek to reform, to change, to move away from the
    killing of innocents, we should support them. But when they are
    unrepentant in the delivery of death, we should stand tall against them.
    My friends, there is no easy way around the hard question: If nations
    and groups are not willing to move away from the delivery of death, we
    should put aside short-term profits for the people in our countries to
    stop, stop, stop their conduct.
        Second, the U.N. must continue our efforts to stem the proliferation
    of weapons of mass destruction. There are some things nations can do on
    their own. The U.S. and Russia today are destroying our nuclear arsenals
    rapidly, but the U.N. must also play a role. We were honored to help
    secure an indefinite extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
    under U.N. auspices. We rely on U.N. agencies to monitor nations bent on
    acquiring nuclear capabilities. We must work together on the Chemical
    Weapons Convention. We must strengthen our common efforts to fight
    biological weapons. We must do everything we can to limit the spread of
    fissile materials. We must work on conventional weapons like the land
    mines that are the curse of children the world over. And we must
    complete a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty.
        Third, we must support through the United Nations the fight against
    manmade and natural forces of disintegration, from crime syndicates and
    drug cartels to new diseases and disappearing forests. These enemies are
    elusive; they cross borders at will. Nations can and must oppose them
    alone. But we know, and the Cairo conference reaffirmed, that the most
    effective opposition requires strong international cooperation and
    mutual support.
        Fourth, we must reaffirm our commitment to strengthen U.N.
    peacekeeping as an important tool for deterring, containing, and ending
    violent conflict. The U.N. can never be an absolute guarantor of peace,
    but it can reduce human suffering and advance the odds of peace.
        Fifth--you may clap for that. [Applause] Fifth, we must continue
    what is too often the least noticed of the U.N.'s missions, its
    unmatched efforts on the frontlines of the battle for child survival and
    against disease and human suffering.
        And finally, let us vow to make the United Nations an increasing
    strong voice for the protection of fundamental human dignity and human
    rights. After all, they were at the core of the founding of this great
    organization.
        Today we honor the men and women who gave shape to the United
    Nations. We celebrate 50 years of achievement. We commit ourselves to
    real reforms. We reject the siren song of the new isolationists. We set
    a clear agenda worthy of the vision of our founders. The measure of our
    generation will be whether we give up

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    because we cannot achieve a perfect world or strive on to build a better
    world.
        Fifty years ago today, President Truman reminded the delegates that
    history had not ended with Hitler's defeat. He said, it is easier to
    remove tyrants and destroy concentration camps than it is to kill the
    ideas which give them birth. Victory on the battlefield was essential,
    but it is not good enough for a lasting, good peace.
        Today we know that history has not ended with the cold war. We know,
    and we have learned from painful evidence, that as long as there are
    people on the face of the Earth, imperfection and evil will be a part of
    human nature; there will be killing, cruelty, self-destructive abuse of
    our natural environment, denial of the problems that face us all. But we
    also know that here today, in this historic chamber, the challenge of
    building a good and lasting peace is in our hands and success is within
    our reach.
        Let us not forget that each child saved, each refugee housed, each
    disease prevented, each barrier to justice brought down, each sword
    turned into a plowshare, brings us closer to the vision of our founders,
    closer to peace, closer to freedom, closer to dignity.
        So my fellow citizens of the world, let us not lose heart. Let us
    gain renewed strength and energy and vigor from the progress which has
    been made and the opportunities which are plainly before us. Let us say
    no to isolation; yes to reform; yes to a brave, ambitious new agenda;
    most of all, yes to the dream of the United Nations.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:17 a.m. in the War Memorial Opera House.
    In his remarks, he referred to United Nations Secretary-General Boutros
    Boutros-Ghali; Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa; poet Maya Angelou;
    President Lech Walesa of Poland; Mayor Frank Jordan of San Francisco;
    Walter H. Shorenstein, chairman, U.N. 50 National Committee; and
    President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.