    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [October 6, 1995]
    [Pages 1544-1551]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Freedom House Breakfast
    October 6, 1995

        Thank you very much. I'm honored to be introduced by someone who
    writes so powerfully about the past and is working so effectively to
    shape the future. The Secretary of State and I have tried to encourage
    both those activities by keeping Win Lord busy at the State Department.
        I'm honored to be here with all of you and to be here at Freedom
    House. For more than 50 years, Freedom House has been a voice for
    tolerance for human dignity. People all over the world are better off
    because of your work. And I'm very grateful that Freedom House has
    rallied this diverse and dynamic group. It's not every day that the
    Carnegie Endowment, the Progressive Policy Institute, the Heritage
    Foundation, and the American Foreign Policy Council share the same
    masthead. I feel that I should try out a whole list of issues and try to
    get check-off here--[laughter]--before the meeting goes any further.
        It does prove that there is a strong, dynamic center in our country
    that supports America's continued leadership in the world. We have all
    worked for that. And I want to publicly thank the Secretary of State and
    Tony Lake, the others in our foreign policy team, my Counselor, Mr.
    McLarty, up here who's been especially active on our behalf in Latin
    America. And I want to thank all of you who have supported that
    continued endeavor.
        You know, in 1991 I sought the Presidency because I believed it was
    essential to restore the American dream for all Americans and to
    reassert America's leadership in the post-cold-war world. As we move
    from the industrial to the information age, from the cold war world to
    the global village, we have an extraordinary opportunity to advance our
    values at home and around the world. But we face some stiff challenges
    in doing so as well.
        We know that at home we have the responsibility to create
    opportunity for all of our citi-

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    zens to make the most of their own lives, to strengthen their families
    and their communities. We know that abroad we have the responsibility to
    advance freedom and democracy, to advance prosperity and the
    preservation of our planet. We know that the forces of integration and
    economic progress also contain the seeds of disruption and of greater
    inequality. We know that families, communities, and nations are
    vulnerable to the organized forces of disintegration and the winner-
    take-all mentality in politics and economics. We know all this, and
    therefore, we have an even heavier responsibility to advance our values
    and our interests.
        Freedom House, in my view, deserves extraordinary praise for your
    sense of timing of this meeting. I wonder if Adrian Karatnycky and his
    colleagues knew that in the days prior to this discussion the United
    States would have the opportunity to demonstrate so vividly once again
    the proposition this conference seeks to advance, that American
    leadership and bipartisan support for that leadership is absolutely
    essential as a source of our strength at home and our success abroad. We
    must stand for democracy and freedom. We must stand for opportunity and
    responsibility in a world where the dividing line between domestic and
    foreign policy is increasingly blurred.
        Our personal, family, and national security is affected by our
    policy on terrorism at home and abroad. Our personal, family, and
    national prosperity is affected by our policy on market economics at
    home and abroad. Our personal, family, and national future is affected
    by our policies on the environment at home and abroad. The common good
    at home is simply not separate from our efforts to advance the common
    good around the world. They must be one and the same if we are to be
    truly secure in the world of the 21st century.
        We see the benefits of American leadership in the progress now being
    made in Bosnia. In recent weeks, our military muscle through NATO, our
    determined diplomacy throughout the region, have brought the parties
    closer to a settlement than at any time since this terrible war began 4
    years ago. Yesterday, we helped to produce an agreement on a Bosnia-wide
    cease-fire. Now, the parties will come to the United States to pursue
    their peace talks mediated by our negotiating team and our European and
    Russian counterparts.
        We have a long way to go, and there's no guarantee of success. But
    we will use every ounce of our influence to help the parties make a
    peace that preserves Bosnia as a single democratic state and protects
    the rights of all citizens, regardless of their ethnic group.
        If and when peace comes, the international community's
    responsibility will not end. After all the bloodshed, the hatred, the
    loss of the last years, peace will surely be fragile. The international
    community must help to secure it. The only organization that can meet
    that responsibility strongly and effectively is NATO. And as NATO's
    leader, the United States must do its part and send in troops to join
    those of our allies under NATO command with clear rules of engagement.
    If we fail, the consequences for Bosnia and for the future of NATO would
    be severe. We must not fail.
        The United States will not be sending our forces into combat in
    Bosnia. We will not send them into a peace that cannot be maintained,
    but we must use our power to secure that peace. I have pledged to
    consult with Congress before authorizing our participation in such an
    action. These consultations have already begun.
        I believe Congress understands the importance of this moment and of
    American leadership. I'm glad to see Chairman Livingston here at the
    head table today. As I have said consistently for 2 years, we want and
    welcome congressional support. But in Bosnia as elsewhere, if the United
    States does not lead, the job will not be done.
        We also saw the benefits of America's leadership last week at the
    White House where leaders from all over the Middle East gathered to
    support the agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. For
    nearly a half-century now, Democratic and Republican administrations
    have worked to facilitate the cause of peace in the Middle East. The
    credit here belongs to the peacemakers. But we should all be proud that
    at critical moments along the way, our efforts helped to make the
    difference between failure and success.
        It was almost exactly a year ago that the United States led the
    international effort to remove Haiti's military regime and give the
    people of Haiti a real chance at democracy. We've succeeded because
    we've backed diplomacy with sanctions and ultimately with force. We've
    succeeded because we understood that standing up

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    for democracy in our own hemisphere was right for the Haitian people and
    right for America.
        American efforts in Bosnia, the Middle East, and Haiti and elsewhere
    have required investments of time and energy and resources. They've
    required persistent diplomacy and the measured use of the world's
    strongest military. They have required both determination and
    flexibility in our efforts to work as leaders and to work with other
    nations. And sometimes they've called on us to make decisions that were,
    of necessity, unpopular in the short run, knowing that the payoff would
    not come in days or weeks but in months or years. Sometimes they have
    been difficult for many Americans to understand because they have to be
    made, as many decisions did right after World War II, without the
    benefit of some overarching framework, the kind of framework the bipolar
    cold war world provided for so many years.
        To use the popular analogy of the present day, there seems to be no
    mainframe explanation for the PC world in which we're living. We have to
    drop the abstractions and dogma and pursue, based on trial and error and
    persistent experimentation, a policy that advances our values of freedom
    and democracy, peace, and security.
        We must continue to bear the responsibility of the world's
    leadership. That is what you came here to do, and that's what I want to
    discuss today. It is more than a happy coincidence that the birth of
    bipartisan support for America's leadership in the world coincides with
    the founding of this organization by Eleanor Roosevelt and Wendell
    Willkie in 1941 when for the first time Americans, both Democrats and
    Republicans, liberals and conservatives and moderates, understood our
    special obligation to lead in the world.
        The results of that responsible leadership were truly stunning:
    victory in the war and the construction of a post-cold-war world. Not
    with abstract dogma but again, over a 5-year period, basing experience
    on new realities, through trial and error with a relentless pursuit of
    our own values, we created NATO, the Marshall plan, Bretton Woods, the
    institutions that kept the peace in Europe, avoided nuclear conflict,
    helped to spread democracy, brought us unparalleled prosperity, and
    ultimately ensured the triumph of freedom in the cold war.
        In that struggle, Freedom House and organizations like it reminded
    Americans that our leadership is essential and that to advance our
    interests, that leadership must remain rooted in our values, must
    continue to advance democracy and freedom to promote peace and security,
    to enhance prosperity and preserve our planet.
        When it comes to the pursuit of these goals, it is important that we
    never forget that our values and our interests are one in the same.
    Promoting democracies that participate in this new global marketplace is
    the right thing to do. For all their imperfections, they advance what
    all people want and often fight and die for: human dignity, security,
    and prosperity. We know these democracies are less likely to go to war,
    less likely to traffic in terrorism, more likely to stand against the
    forces of hatred and intolerance and organized destruction.
        Throughout what we now call the American century, Republicans and
    Democrats disagreed on specific policies, often heatedly from time to
    time, but we have always agreed on the need for American leadership in
    the cause of democracy, freedom, security, and prosperity. Now that
    consensus is truly in danger, and interestingly enough, it is in danger
    in both parties. Voices from the left and the right are calling on us to
    step back from, instead of stepping up to, the challenges of the present
    day. They threaten to reverse the bipartisan support for our leadership
    that has been essential to our strength for 50 years. Some really
    believe that after the cold war the United States can play a secondary
    role in the world, just as some thought we could after World War II, and
    some made sure we did after World War I.
        But if you look at the results from Bosnia to Haiti, from the Middle
    East to Northern Ireland, it proves once again that American leadership
    is indispensable and that without it our values, our interests, and
    peace itself would be at risk.
        It has now become a truism to blame the current isolationism on the
    end of the cold war because there is no longer a mainframe threat in
    this PC world. But when I took office, I made it clear that we had a lot
    of work to do to get our own house in order.
        I agree that America has challenges at home that have to be
    addressed. We have to revive our economy and create opportunity for all
    of our citizens. We have to put responsibility back into our social
    programs and strengthen our families and our communities. We have to
    reform our own Government to make it leaner

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    and more effective. But we cannot do any of these things in isolation
    from the world which we have done so much to make and which we must
    continue to lead.
        Look at what is going on. Many of the new democracies in this world,
    they're working so hard. I see their leaders all the time. They believe
    in the cause of freedom, and they are laboring out there in these
    countries against almost unbelievable obstacles. But their progress is
    fragile. And we must never forget that. We have to see them as growing,
    growing things that have to be nurtured in a process that could still be
    reversed.
        And we also have to recognize that we confront a host of threats
    that have assumed new and quite dangerous dimensions, the proliferation
    of weapons of mass destruction. In the technology age, that can mean
    simply breaking open a vial of sarin gas in a Tokyo subway. It can mean
    hooking into the Internet and learning how to build a bomb that will
    blow up a Federal building in the heart of America. These forces, just
    as surely as fascism and communism, would spread darkness over light,
    disintegration over integration, chaos over community. And these forces
    still demand the leadership of the United States.
        Let me say again, the once bright line between domestic and foreign
    policy is blurring. If I could do anything to change the speech patterns
    of those of us in public life, I would almost like to stop hearing
    people talk about foreign policy and domestic policy and instead start
    discussing economic policy, security policy, environmental policy, you
    name it.
        When you think about the world and the way that you live in it, you
    readily see that the foreign-domestic distinction begins to evaporate in
    so many profound ways. And if we could learn to speak differently about
    it, the very act of speaking and thinking in the way we live, I believe,
    would make isolationism seem absolutely impossible as an alternative to
    public policy.
        When the President of Mexico comes here in a few days and we talk
    about drug problems, are we talking about domestic problems or foreign
    problems? If we talk about immigration, are we discussing a domestic
    issue or a foreign issue? If we talk about NAFTA and trade, is it their
    foreign politics or our domestic economics? We have to understand this
    in a totally different way. And we must learn to speak about it in
    different ways.
        The isolationists are simply wrong. The environment we face may be
    new and different, but to meet it with the challenges and opportunities
    it presents and to advance our enduring values, we have to be more
    engaged in the world, not less engaged in the world. That's why we have
    done everything we could in our administration to lead the fight to
    reduce the nuclear threat, to spread democracy in human rights, to
    support peace, to open markets, to enlarge and defend the community of
    nations around the world, to share our aspirations and our values, not
    in abstract but in ways that are quite practical and immediately of
    benefit to the American people.
        Consider just a few examples. Every American today is safer because
    we're stepping back from the nuclear precipice. Russian missiles are no
    longer pointed at our citizens, and there are no longer American
    missiles pointed at their citizens. Thanks to agreements reached by
    President Reagan, President Bush, and our administration, both our
    countries are cutting back their nuclear arsenal.
        Over the past 3 years, we've been able to persuade Ukraine,
    Kazakhstan, and Belarus to give up nuclear weapons left on their land
    when the Soviet Union collapsed. We've convinced North Korea to freeze
    its nuclear program. We've secured the indefinite extension of the
    Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. We're working hard to make sure
    nuclear materials don't wind up in the hands of terrorists or
    international criminals. And I hope and pray that next year we'll
    succeed in getting a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty.
        Americans are safer because of the tough counterterrorism campaign
    we have been waging, including closer cooperation with foreign
    governments, sanctions against states that sponsor terrorism, and
    increasing the funding, the manpower, the training for our own law
    enforcement. These have helped us to get results, big, visible results,
    like the conviction just this week of those who conspired to wage a
    campaign of terror in New York, and things that aren't so visible but
    are very important, the planned terrorist attacks that have been
    thwarted in the United States and on American citizens, the arrests that
    have been secured in other countries through our cooperation.

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        We have an obligation to work more and more and more on this. And if
    there is any area in the world where there is no difference between
    domestic and foreign policy, surely it is in our common obligation to
    work together to combat terrorism.
        That is why, even before Oklahoma City, I had sent legislation to
    the Hill asking for additional resources and help to deal with the
    threat of terrorism. And after Oklahoma City, I modified and
    strengthened that legislation. The Senate passed the bill quickly, but I
    am very disappointed that the bill is now stalled in the House. We need
    this legislation.
        I believe Federal law enforcement authorities must be held
    accountable. I believe we must be open about whatever has happened in
    the past. But that has nothing to do with our obligation to make sure
    that the American people have the tools that they need to combat the
    threat of terrorism. So, once again, I say I hope the antiterrorism
    legislation will pass. We need it. The threat is growing, not receding.
        When we gave democracy another chance in Haiti, a lot of people said
    this has nothing to do with the United States. Well, it did. It did. It
    mattered that, when somebody came to our country and gave their word
    that they would leave and bring back democracy, that we enforce that
    commitment. And in a more immediate sense, in the month before our
    intervention, 16,000 Haitians fled tyranny for sanctuary in Florida and
    elsewhere in our region, but 3 months after the intervention, the
    refugee flow was practically zero.
        When Mexico ran into a cash flow crisis, we put together an
    emergency support package to help put our neighbor back on the course of
    stability and economic progress. And to their credit, the Republican
    leaders of the Congress supported that effort. But it was impossible to
    pass a bill through the Congress endorsing it because of all the surveys
    which showed that the American people were opposed to the Mexican
    bailout by about 80-15, as I remember the poll on the day that I took
    executive action to do it. This is another case, however, when what may
    be unpopular in the short run is plainly in the interest of the United
    States in the long run.
        When your neighbors are in trouble and they're trying to do the
    right thing, you normally try to help them, because it's good for the
    neighborhood. Look what's happened since the United States stepped in to
    try to be a good neighbor to Mexico. Economic growth has returned, even
    though in a fragile state, more quickly than it was anticipated; exports
    have returned to levels that exceed what they were pre-NAFTA; and just
    yesterday, President Zedillo called me to say that Mexico will repay
    $700 million of its debt to the United States well ahead of schedule.
        Consider what would have happened if we would have taken the
    isolationist position. What would have happened to their economy? What
    would have happened to the international financial market's reaction to
    that in Argentina, in Brazil, throughout Latin America and other
    fragile, emerging democracies? What would have happened to our
    relationships and our cooperation on a host of issues between us? It was
    the right thing to do. Was it a domestic issue or a foreign issue? You
    tell me. All I know is we have a better neighborly relationship and the
    future is brighter for the American people and for the people of Mexico
    because we are pursuing a strategy of engagement, not isolation.
        You can see that in what's happening in Europe, where we're trying
    to bring the nations of Europe closer together, working for democracy
    and economic reform in the Soviet Union and Central Europe and
    modernizing NATO, strengthening the Partnership For Peace. And again I
    will say, these things also further our interests.
        I was told just last week that by all the trade initiatives which
    have been taken, from NAFTA and GATT to over 80 separate individual
    trade agreements that Ambassador Kantor has conducted, 15 of them with
    Japan alone, the expanded volume of exports for the United States has
    created more than 2 million jobs in the last 2\1/2\ years, paying well
    above the national average. With the Summit of the Americas, with the
    APEC process that we have agreed on, there are more to come.
        The Commerce Department and the State Department have worked
    together more and have worked harder than ever before to try to help
    Americans take advantage of these new opportunities. They are a part and
    parcel of our foreign policy and our domestic policy.
        And let me say one other thing. We have tried to make it a constant
    refrain that while we seek to engage all countries on terms of goodwill,
    we must continue to stand up for the values that we believe make life
    worth living.

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    We must continue to stand up for the proposition that all people,
    without regard to their nationality, their race, their ethnic group,
    their religion, or their gender, should have a chance to make the most
    of their own lives, to taste both freedom and opportunity.
        The most powerful statement of that by anyone in our administration
    recently was a statement made by the First Lady at the women's
    conference in Beijing, where she condemned abuses of women and their
    little children, and especially their little girl children, throughout
    the world, not sparing the problems of domestic violence and street
    crime here in the United States.
        These are the kinds of things that America must continue to do. From
    Belfast to Jerusalem, American leadership has helped Catholics and
    Protestants, Jews and Arabs to walk the streets of their cities with
    less fear of bombs and violence. From Prague to Port-au-Prince, we're
    working to consolidate the benefits of democracy and market economics.
    From Kuwait to Sarajevo, the brave men and women of our Armed Forces are
    working to stand down aggression and stand up for freedom.
        In our own hemisphere, only one country, Cuba, continues to resist
    the trend toward democracy. Today we are announcing new steps to
    encourage its peaceful transition to a free and open society. We will
    tighten the enforcement of our embargo to keep the pressure for reform
    on, but we will promote democracy and the free flow of ideas more
    actively. I have authorized our news media to open bureaus in Cuba. We
    will allow more people to travel to and from Cuba for educational,
    religious, and human rights purposes. We will now permit American
    nongovernmental organizations to engage in a fuller range of activities
    in Cuba. And today, it gives me great pleasure to announce that our
    first grant to fund NGO work in Cuba will be awarded to Freedom House to
    promote peaceful change and protect human rights.
        Just mentioning this range of activities and the possibilities for
    positive American leadership demonstrates once again how vital it is to
    our security and to our prosperity, demonstrates once again that
    advancing our values and promoting our self-interests are one in the
    same.
        I suppose, given the purpose of this conference and the unique
    sponsorship of it, that everybody here shares that belief and that, in a
    way, I'm just preaching to the choir. But this isolationist backlash,
    which is present in both parties, is very real. And if you look at it
    from the point of view of people who feel threatened by the changes in
    the world, it is even completely understandable. So it is important that
    we not simply condemn it. It is even more important that we explain the
    way the world is working. And as the world works its way through this
    period of transition toward a new order of things in which we can garner
    all of the benefits of change and technology and opportunity and still
    reinforce the importance of giving everybody a chance, giving all
    families the chances to be strong, solidifying communities, as we work
    our way through this period, it is more and more important that we not
    simply condemn the isolationists but that we seek to explain how the
    world works and why we must be engaged and lead.
        Condemnation is not enough. Characterization is not enough. We must
    work through these issues. The American people are good people. They
    have common sense. They care when people are being murdered around the
    world. They understand that a war somewhere else could one day involve
    our sons and daughters. They know that we cannot simply pretend that the
    rest of the world is not there. But many of them have their own
    difficulties. We must work and work and work on the basic values and
    interests and arguments until we beat back the forces of isolation, with
    both intense passion and reason.
        You can do that. That is what you must help us to do. Every one of
    you, each in your own way, with your own centers of influence, you can
    do that, with assertion and with argument.
        Let me just give you one specific example: I am determined to do
    everything I can to preserve our international affairs budget. It
    represents, after all, less than 2 percent of our overall budget.
    Foreign aid is unpopular in the abstract because Americans believe we
    spend a lot more of their money on foreign aid than we do. But when you
    ask the American people how much we should spend, they will tell you 3
    percent, 4 percent, 5 percent, more than we in fact spend.
        No agency in this era when we're trying to balance the budget can be
    exempt from conscious cost-cutting. Vice President Gore and I have
    worked very hard to give the American people the smallest Government, in
    terms of Federal employees, we've had since President

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    Kennedy was in office, to eliminate hundreds of programs. But we must
    have the tools of diplomacy.
        American leadership is more than words and the military budget.
    Although the military budget is important, we must have a diplomacy
    budget. Some in Congress literally want to gut foreign assistance, to
    hack the State Department's budget, to slash the Arms Control and
    Disarmament Agency, the USIA, AID. They would shirk our responsibilities
    to the United Nations. I want to go give this speech to the United
    Nations. Wouldn't you like it if I did? Wouldn't you like it if I did?
    [Applause] I appreciate the applause, but you tell me what I'm supposed
    to say. I will go give this speech, and they will say, ``Thank you very
    much, Mr. President, where's your $1 billion?'' [Laughter] Why is the
    United States the biggest piker in the U.N.?
        Now, let me say, does the United Nations need to be reformed? Has a
    lot of our money and everybody else's money been wasted? Does there need
    to be greater oversight? Of course there does. Is that an argument for
    taking a dive on the United Nations? No.
        We need your support for this. We must do this. It is the right
    thing to do. It is the responsible thing to do. Those who really would
    have us walk away from the U.N., not to mention the international
    financial institutions, they would really threaten our ability to lead.
        As you know, in instances from Bosnia to Haiti, working out how we
    can lead and still maintain our alliances and cooperate through the
    United Nations and through NATO is sometimes frustrating and almost
    always difficult. But it is very important. We don't want to run off
    into the future all by ourselves, and that means we have to work
    responsibly through these international organizations and we have to pay
    our fair share. Every dollar we spend on foreign assistance comes back
    to us many times over.
        By reducing the threat of nuclear war in the Newly Independent
    States, we've been able to cut our own spending on strategic weapons. By
    supporting democratic reforms and the transition to free markets in the
    Soviet Union and in Central Europe, we promote stability and prosperity
    in an area that will in the future become a vast market for the United
    States. By assisting developing nations who are fighting against
    overpopulation, AIDS, drug smuggling, environmental degradation, the
    whole range of problems they face, we're making sure the problems they
    face today don't become our problems tomorrow. The money we devote to
    development or peacekeeping or disaster relief, it helps to avert future
    crises whose cost will be far greater. And it is the right thing to do.
    It is the right thing to do.
        I am very worried that all these budgets are at risk--some of them
    in an almost deliberate attempt to cut the United States off from
    partnership. I'll just give you one other example so I can go home and
    tell the Vice President I did it. [Laughter]
        We have a little bit of money devoted to a comprehensive, worldwide
    effort to deal with the threat of global warming. It is simply a matter
    of science and evidence. Just in the last several days, there have been
    a whole new rush of scientific evidence that 1995 is the warmest year on
    our entire planet in 20,000 years, that the hole in the ozone layer is
    bigger than we had imagined it to be, and that global warming is a real
    threat. We spend a pittance on it. That is one of the items targeted for
    elimination. This is not budget-cutting; this is ideology. This is
    another example of what the teenagers say about ``denial'' being more
    than a river in Egypt. [Laughter] This is wrong. It is not necessary to
    balance the budget, and it is necessary to reverse it to stand up for
    America's values and America's interests.
        Let me just cite one more example. Radio Free Europe and Radio
    Liberty were key weapons in the war of ideas waged against communism.
    Many of you stood up for it and fought for them. To meet the challenges
    of the new era, they have been dramatically downsized and moved from
    Munich to Prague. But some want to squeeze their already vastly reduced
    budget on the eve of major Russian elections, at the very time the
    Russian reformers most need objective information and the free exchange
    of ideas. They would do the same for the Voice of America, which serves
    on the frontlines of democracy all around the world from Burma to the
    Balkans.
        Reckless budget cutters would shut down our Embassies first and
    consider the consequences later. Last year alone, our Embassies
    responded to nearly 2 million requests for assistance from Americans
    overseas. They helped American companies win billions of dollars in
    contracts. And every international business leader will tell you that
    the State Department and its Embassies are working harder to advance our
    economic

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    interests than at any time in the history of the global economy.
        If we didn't have diplomats in Asia and Latin America to help stem
    the flow of drugs to our shores, imagine how much harder that task would
    be. In Northern Ireland and the Middle East, if we didn't have people
    representing us, it would be a lot harder to move the peace process
    forward. In Burundi or Rwanda, if we didn't have brave people there,
    like Ambassador Bob Krueger, it would be even harder to avoid human
    tragedy. We don't need half-strength and part-time diplomacy in a world
    of fast-moving opportunities and 24-hour-a-day crises.
        The last point I want to make is this. There are people who say,
    ``Oh, Mr. President, I am for a strong America. I just don't understand
    why you fool with the U.N. What we need is for America to stand up
    alone. We'll decide what the right thing to do is and do it. Let the
    rest of the world like it or lump it. That's what it means to be the
    world's only superpower.'' That also is a disguised form of
    isolationism.
        Unilateralism in the world that we live in is not a viable option.
    When our vital interests are at stake, of course, we might have to act
    alone. But we need the wisdom to work with the United Nations and to pay
    our bills. We need the flexibility to build coalitions that spread the
    risk and responsibility and the cost of leadership, as President Bush
    did in Desert Storm and we did in Haiti.
        If the past 50 years have taught us anything, it is that the United
    States has a unique responsibility and a unique ability to be a force
    for peace and progress around the world, while building coalitions of
    people that can work together in genuine partnership.
        But we can only succeed if we continue to lead. Our purpose has to
    be the same in this new era as it has ever been. Whatever our political
    persuasions, I believe we all share the same goals. I think we want a
    future where people all over the world know the benefits of democracy;
    in which our own people can live their lives free from fear; in which
    our sons and daughters won't be called to fight in wars that could have
    been prevented; in which people no longer flee tyranny in their own
    countries to come to our shores; in which markets are open to our
    products and services, where they give our own people good, high-wage
    jobs; a country in which we know an unparalleled amount of peace and
    prosperity because we have fulfilled a traditional American mandate of
    the 20th century well into the 21st, because we, we, have led the world
    toward democracy and freedom, toward peace and prosperity.
        If we want the kind of future I described, we have to assume the
    burden of leadership. There is simply not another alternative. So I ask
    you, bring your passion to this task, bring your argument to this task,
    and bring the sense of urgency that has animated this country in its
    times of greatest challenge for the last 50 years to this task.
        The future, I believe, will be even brighter for the American people
    than the last 50 years if, if, we can preserve our leadership in pursuit
    of our values.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:37 a.m. at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. In
    his remarks, he referred to Adrian Karatnycky, president, Freedom House,
    and Representative Robert Livingston.