[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
[November 20, 1996]
[Pages 2134-2138]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the Australian Parliament in Canberra
November 20, 1996

    Mr. Prime Minister, Mr. Speaker, Madam President of the Senate, to 
the leader of the opposition and all the Members of the Senate and House 
and ladies and gentlemen here assembled. Let me begin, Prime Minister, 
by thanking you, the people of Canberra, and all of Australia for the 
absolutely tremendous welcome that Hillary and I and the entire American 
delegation have received. I know this is called the Land Down Under, but 
after only a day we all feel like we're on top of the world, and I thank 
you for that. [Laughter]
    I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you in this great hall of 
democracy. Your Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, was one of the very 
few world leaders to address our United States Congress twice. Now, I 
give you that fact as a point of interest, not a pitch for a return 
engagement here. [Laughter] Forty-one years ago today--not today, 41 
years ago this year--here is what he said to our people: ``We have, with 
your great country, as a result of war as well as of peace, a tie which 
I believe to be unbreakable and a degree of affectionate, simple 
understanding which I do not believe can be surpassed between any two 
countries of the world.''
    Today, 41 years later, the Prime Minister's insight still holds. The 
ties between us span more than 200 years. In 1792, an American ship 
named for brotherhood, the Philadelphia, arrived at Port Jackson with 
supplies that helped to save the colonists from starvation. Former Prime 
Minister Fraser noted that the beef that the Philadelphia carried had 
been on board for 9 months; ``well-cured,'' he called it. [Laughter]
    Well, my friends, two centuries later, our friendship, tested in war 
and seasoned in peace, has also become well-cured. Our people have built 
bridges of commerce and culture, friendship and trust, reaching over the 
greatest expanse of ocean on Earth. The United States is proud to be 
Australia's largest foreign investor and largest trading partner. We are 
also proud of the wars we have fought together and the peace we have 
fought to sustain together.
    The great diversity of our ties was born of shared experience and 
common values. Our pioneers both settled vast frontiers and built free 
nations across entire continents. In one another, I really believe we 
see a distant mirror of our better selves, reflections of liberty and 
decency, of openness and vitality. In this century, our bonds have truly 
been forged in the fires of wars, war after war after war. Together we 
carried liberty's torch in the darkest nights of the 20th century.

[[Page 2135]]

    My message to you today is that together we must embrace the dawn of 
this new century together, and we must make the most of it together. We 
carried a torch through the night; now we can create the dawn our 
children deserve.
    For Australia's strength and sacrifice through these many struggles, 
for your fierce love of liberty and your unfailing friendship to the 
United States, the American people thank you. And the American people 
look forward with you to this new era of freedom and possibilities. 
After all, our nations are at peace; our economies are strong. The ideas 
we have struggled for--freedom of religion, speech, and assembly, open 
markets, tolerance--they're more and more the habits of all humanity. 
For the first time in all history, two-thirds of all the nations on this 
Earth and more than half the people alive today are ruled by governments 
picked by their own people. The rigid blocs and barriers that too long 
defined the world are giving way to an era of breathtaking expansion of 
information technology and information.
    And because of these things, we now have a chance, greater than any 
generation of people who ever lived before us, to give more and more 
people the opportunity to realize their God-given potential, to live 
their own dreams, not someone else's plan.
    But this chance we have is nothing more than that. It is a chance, 
not a guarantee. For all its promise, we know this new century will not 
be free of peril, and therefore, we know that our freedom still requires 
our responsibility. Nations and people still will be tempted to fight 
wars for territory or out of ethnic, religious, or racial hatred. As I 
told the American people over and over again during the recent election 
campaign, it was literally heartbreaking to me to think of how much of 
their time I had to spend dealing with people who still believe it's all 
right to murder each other and each other's children because of their 
racial, their religious, their ethnic, their tribal differences. We must 
stand against that, and the example of how we live together must be a 
rebuke to that in the 21st century.
    And make no mistake about it, there is a nexus of new threats: 
terrorists, rogue states, international criminals, drug traffickers. 
They, too, menace our security, and they will do more of it in the new 
century. They will be all the more lethal if they gain access to weapons 
of mass destruction, whether nuclear, chemical, or biological.
    Because of our size, our strength, our prosperity, and the power of 
our example, Australia and the United States have a special 
responsibility, not only to seize the opportunities but to move against 
the new threats of the 21st century. Together we can reduce even more 
the danger of weapons of mass destruction. We can take the fight to the 
terrorists and the drug traffickers. We can extend the reach of free and 
fair trade. We can advance democracy around the world. And yes, we can 
prove that free societies can embrace the economic and social changes, 
and the ethnic, racial, and religious diversity this new era brings and 
come out stronger and freer than ever.
    The threat of nuclear weapons born a half century ago finally is 
diminishing as a new century begins. The United States and Russia are 
reducing our arsenals, pointing our weapons away from one another, 
working to safeguard nuclear materials and facilities. Every single 
Australian should be very proud of the role your country has played in 
guiding the world toward a more secure future. You helped lead the fight 
to extend the nonproliferation treaty. Your determined diplomacy brought 
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to reality and the world to the verge 
of banning all nuclear testing for all time. Every nation is in your 
debt for that achievement. And on behalf, again, of the people of the 
United States, I say thank you.
    Now we must pursue together our remaining arms control agenda: 
further reductions in Russia's and America's arsenals once Russia 
ratifies START II; a chemical weapons convention, so that our troops 
never face poison gas in the battlefield and our people never fall 
victim to it in a terrorist attack; a stronger biological weapons 
convention, so that disease is never used as a weapon of war; a 
worldwide ban on landmines, so that all our children can walk with 
confidence on the earth beneath them.
    As we deal with these challenges to our security, we must recognize 
the new ones which are emerging and the new approaches they require. 
Terrorism, international crime, and drug trafficking are forces of 
destruction that have no tolerance for national borders. Together we 
must show zero tolerance for them. That means putting pressure on rogue 
states, not doing business with them. It's very difficult to do business 
by day with people who kill innocent civilians

[[Page 2136]]

by night. It means giving no aid and quarter to terrorists who slaughter 
the innocent and drug traffickers who poison our children. It means, in 
short, pursuing a concerted strategy: intelligence and police 
cooperation worldwide; coordinated legal action in every country to stop 
money laundering, shut down gray markets for guns and false documents; 
and increase of extraditions. It means security coordination in our 
airports and airplanes, in giving each in our own nations our law 
enforcement officials the tools they need to cooperate and to succeed.
    The measure of our people's security includes not only their 
physical safety, however, but as we all know, their economic well-being. 
Our two countries have led in opening markets around the world, and we 
can be pleased with our progress. Through GATT, the WTO, APEC, and 
literally hundreds of smaller accords, we are moving to extend the reach 
of free and fair trade. But we can do more, issue by issue, agreement by 
agreement.
    I am determined to work with Congress in my second term to move 
ahead boldly on market-opening initiatives around the world. Decades 
from now I want people to say that our generation rose to the challenge 
of creating a new, open trading system for the 21st century. If we do, 
more people will have good jobs and better lives as they share in 
humanity's genius for progress.
    Over the long term, we can best advance the security and prosperity 
we seek by expanding and strengthening not only trade but the community 
of free nations. The tide of democracy is now running strong and deep. 
Consider this: In just the past few weeks the people of Lithuania, 
Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Nicaragua, and Thailand have freely elected 
their leaders, a prospect literally unimaginable not very long ago. In 
my own hemisphere, every nation but one has raised freedom's flag. In 
Central Europe and in Russia, Ukraine, and the other New Independent 
States, the forces of reform have earned our respect and deserve our 
continued support.
    For the first time since the rise of nation-states on the continent 
of Europe, it is literally conceivable that we have an opportunity, a 
real and tangible opportunity, to build a continent that is democratic, 
undivided, and at peace. It has never been possible before, and together 
we can achieve it now.
    Now, I know that some people on both sides of the Pacific are 
concerned that America's continuing involvement with Europe and our 
intense renewed involvement with our neighbors in Latin America will 
lead to disengagement from the Asia-Pacific region. They are wrong. Mr. 
Prime Minister, if I could borrow your eloquent phrase--at least I'm 
giving you credit, as we politicians don't often do--[laughter]--the 
United States does not need to choose between our history and our 
geography. We need not choose between Europe and Asia. In a global 
economy with global security challenges, America must look to the East 
no less than to the West. Our security demands it. After all, we fought 
three wars here in living memory. The cold war's last frontier lies now 
on the Korean Peninsula. The region as a whole is in the midst of 
profound change, so our security demands it. Our prosperity requires it. 
One-third of our exports and more than 2 million American jobs depend 
upon our trade with Asia. Over the next decade, Asia's remarkable growth 
will mean ever-expanding markets for those who can compete in them. Our 
future cannot be secure if Asia's future is in doubt.
    As we enter the 21st century, therefore, I say to you that America 
not only has been, she is and will remain a Pacific power. We want 
America's involvement and influence to provide the stability among 
nations which is necessary for the people of the Asia-Pacific region to 
make the routines of normal life a reality and to spur the economic 
progress that will benefit all of us. To meet those challenges of 
stability, we are now pursuing three objectives: stronger alliances, 
deeper engagement with China, and a larger community of democracies.
    First, we share the view of almost every nation in Asia that a 
strong American security presence remains the bedrock for regional 
stability. We will maintain about 100,000 troops across the Pacific, 
just as we maintain about 100,000 troops in Europe. We will keep them 
well-trained, well-equipped, and well-prepared. We will continue to 
revitalize our core alliances, both bilaterally and regionally. These 
efforts, let me say clearly, are not directed against any nation. They 
are intended to advance security and stability for everyone so that we 
can grow together and work together, all of us, in the new century.
    Our alliance with a democratic, prosperous Japan has been one of the 
great achievements

[[Page 2137]]

of the postwar period. Last spring, after more than a year's hard study 
and work, Prime Minister Hashimoto and I signed a new security charter. 
Japan's continued support for our military presence and even closer 
links between our armed forces will enable us to deepen our cooperation 
on behalf of peace and stability in this region and beyond.
    With our close ally in South Korea, we're working to reduce tensions 
on the Korean Peninsula that threaten all of northeast Asia. We must 
give new momentum now to the four-party peace talks President Kim and I 
proposed last spring. And we must continue our work to dismantle North 
Korea's frozen nuclear program.
    We are reinforcing our security ties with the Philippines and 
Thailand, while multiplying the power of our troops through greater 
access to regional military facilities.
    And finally and simply put, the defense links between the United 
States and Australia have never been stronger in peacetime. Mr. Prime 
Minister and Members of Parliament, the agreements our foreign and 
defense ministers signed this summer in Sydney authorized the largest 
exercises involving our troops since World War II. American marines will 
soon begin training in northern Australia. And we are deepening our 
already strong security cooperation. Today I say, again, with utter 
confidence, our alliance is not just for this time, it is for all time.
    As we work nation to nation, let us continue to build a new 
architecture for regional security as well, an architecture through 
ASEAN that will strengthen our ability to confront common challenges. 
Already this effort is helping to defuse tensions in the South China Sea 
and to dispel distrust across the region. We must pursue it to its full 
potential.
    Our second stabilizing objective is deeper engagement with China. 
The direction China takes in the years to come, the way it defines its 
greatness in the future, will help to decide whether the next century is 
one of conflict or cooperation. The emergence of a stable, an open, a 
prosperous China, a strong China confident of its place in the world and 
willing to assume its responsibilities as a great nation is in our 
deepest interest.
    True cooperation is both possible and plainly productive. We worked 
closely with China to extend the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to 
secure the passage of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. We joined to 
shore up peace in Cambodia and increase stability on the Korean 
Peninsula. We're making progress together on some tough issues, from 
nuclear technology to intellectual property rights.
    The United States and China will continue to have important 
differences, especially in the area of human rights, and we will 
continue to discuss them candidly. But by working together where 
possible and dealing with our differences openly and respectfully where 
necessary, we can deepen our dialog and add to Asia's stability. I look 
forward to doing just that when I meet for the fourth time with 
President Jiang in the Philippines next week.
    The third part of our work for stability is support for the advance 
of democracy. Our two nations know that democracy comes in many forms. 
Neither of us seeks to impose our own vision on others, but we also 
share the conviction that some basic rights are universal. We have to 
decide whether we believe that. I believe everywhere people aspire to be 
treated with dignity, to give voice to their opinions, to choose their 
own leaders. We have seen these dreams realized in the democratic 
odyssey of the Asia-Pacific, from Japan to South Korea to Thailand and 
Mongolia.
    In this century we have sacrificed many of our sons and daughters, 
your nation and ours, for the cause of freedom. And so we must continue 
to speak for the cause of freedom in this new age of commerce and trade 
and technology. We must push repressive regimes in places like Burma to 
pursue reconciliation and genuine political dialog. We must assist new 
democracies like Cambodia by encouraging the development of political 
parties and institutions.
    We know that the freer and better educated people are, the more 
creative they become, the better able they are to compete, the more able 
they are to satisfy each other's deepest wants and needs. We can look at 
the economic vitality of the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, and South 
Korea to see the proof of this assertion.
    As stability extends its reach and strengthens its grip, the Pacific 
may finally be able to live up to its name. In Cambodia, farmers once 
again till the land that had become horrific killing fields. In Vietnam, 
schoolchildren can worry more about their exams than about the war. From 
Bangkok to Manila, power is no longer used against the people, it is in 
the hands of the people.

[[Page 2138]]

    A generation ago, it was hard to imagine how rapidly freedom could 
come to these nations, how rapidly their economies could grow. But freed 
from the threat of war, unleashed by their newfound freedoms, the people 
of this region have built among the greatest success stories the world 
has ever seen. They have transformed economic wastelands into powerful 
engines for growth, enriched the lives of millions by harnessing the 
technology of change. Today, the economies of the Asia-Pacific are 
clearly the most dynamic on Earth.
    More than 7 million Americans trace their roots to Asia. Five of our 
States touch the Pacific. We are inexorably linked to the promise of the 
Asia-Pacific region. That's why in the first year of my term I sought to 
elevate the APEC forum, that began right here in Canberra, into the 
first-ever meeting of Asian-Pacific leaders. At our inaugural summit in 
Seattle, working closely with your former Prime Minister Paul Keating, 
we agreed to give this extraordinarily diverse region a common goal, to 
work as a community of nations committed to economic integration.
    A year later in Jakarta, we made a historic commitment: free trade 
and investment in the region by 2020. Some said that was an illusory 
vision. But already that vision is becoming a blueprint, a blueprint 
taking shape as concrete commitments. At next week's leaders' meeting, 
Prime Minister Howard and I hope and expect that APEC will give a boost 
to specific market-opening initiatives. For me, I hope that means 
unshackling trade in computers, semiconductors, and telecommunications, 
the high-tech sectors of the future. We have an opportunity to set an 
example for the rest of the world, and we ought to seize it. If we do, 
the nations of the region will benefit, those who provide the services 
and those who receive them.
    Progress, after all, is not yet everyone's partner, and we have a 
responsibility to open the doors of opportunity to those who remain 
outside the global economy. For example, some two-thirds of the people 
on our planet have no access to a telephone. I found that hard to 
believe when I saw so many of your fellow citizens with their cell 
phones in their hands as I drove up and down your streets. [Laughter]
    More than half the people of the world are 2 days' walk from a 
telephone. They are totally disconnected from the communications and 
information revolution that is the present vehicle for human progress 
and possibility. If we add their creative energies to the mix which now 
exists, of course, they will gain skills and jobs and greater wealth, 
but we also will benefit from the higher growth rates, from the expanded 
markets, and from the increasing likelihood that those people will find 
peaceful rather than warlike ways to release their energies. We can do 
this if we have the courage not to retreat but, instead, to compete.
    At this year's meeting at APEC and everywhere I go, I will also 
deliver again a simple, loud, and clear message: The United States is 
more determined than ever to create an Asian-Pacific community of shared 
efforts, shared benefits, and shared destiny. The interests that compel 
our engagement have grown, not shrunk, and so has our commitment to a 
Pacific future.
    We know from our past that we can succeed, that we are equal to the 
difficulties ahead. I began today by quoting Prime Minister Menzies, so 
let me conclude by returning to his words. He said, ``The world needs 
every scrap of democratic strength that can be found in it because 
nobody, however optimistic, need underestimate the measure or the 
character of danger that always confronts us. It is not merely our 
privilege to be strong, it is our duty to be strong.''
    The world needs Australia. The world needs the United States. It 
needs us together as partners and friends and allies. We have stood 
together in the hard times as partners and friends. Let us stand 
together and work together now for a new future of peace and possibility 
that extends to our children and our grandchildren and to all the 
children of the world.
    May God bless Australia, the United States, and the great friendship 
between our nations. Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 4:10 p.m. at Parliament House. In his 
remarks, he referred to Prime Minister John Howard, Speaker of the House 
Bob Halverson, President of the Senate Margaret Reid, Opposition Leader 
Kim Beazley, and former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser of Australia; 
Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto of Japan; President Kim Yong-sam of 
South Korea; and President Jiang Zemin of China.