    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book I)]
    [May 31, 1997]
    [Pages 688-692]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Commencement Address at the United States Military Academy in West
    Point, New York
    May 31, 1997

        Thank you very much. Please be seated; relax. Thank you, General
    Christman, for those kind introductory remarks and for your truly
    extraordinary service to your Nation throughout your military career.
    Here at West Point and before, when we had more opportunities to work
    together on a daily basis, I have constantly admired your dedication and
    your ability.
        General Reimer, Secretary West, Senator Reed, Chairman Gilman,
    Congressman Shimkus, Congresswoman Kelly, Congressman Sessions, former
    Congressman Bilbray, parents and families and friends of the cadets, and
    especially to the class of 1997, I extend my heartfelt congratulations.
        This has been a truly remarkable class. As General Christman said,
    you wrote an unparalleled record of academic achievement in the
    classroom. I congratulate you all and particularly your number one honor
    graduate and valedictorian, David Ake. Congratulations to all of you on
    your accomplishments.
        Now, General Christman also outlined the extraordinary
    accomplishments of your athletic teams, and he mentioned that I had the
    privilege of seeing Army win its first 10-win season in football and
    reclaim the Commander in Chief's Trophy in Philadelphia. And he thanked
    me for that. But actually, as a lifelong football fan, I deserve no
    thanks. It was a terrific game, and I'm quite sure it was the first time
    in the field of any endeavor of conflict where the Army defeated the
    Navy not on land but on water. [Laughter]
        I know that in spite of all of your achievements as a class and in
    teams, a few of you also upheld West Point's enduring tradition of
    independence. It began in 1796 when President Adams' War Department
    ordered the first classes in fortification. And the troops here thought
    they already knew all about that, so they burned the classroom to the
    ground, postponing the start of instruction by 5 years. [Laughter]
        Today I am reliably informed that though your spirits are equally
    high, your infractions are more modest. Therefore, I hereby exercise my
    prerogative to grant amnesty for minor offenses to the Corps of Cadets.
    [Applause] The cheering was a little disconcerting--now, the operative
    word there was ``minor.'' [Laughter]
        Men and women of the class of '97, today you join the Long Gray
    Line, the Long Gray Line that stretches across two centuries of
    unstinting devotion to America and the freedom that is our greatest
    treasure. From the defense of Fort Erie in the War of 1812 to the fury
    of Antietam, from the trenches of Argonne to the Anzio and Okinawa, to
    Heartbreak Ridge, the Mekong Delta, the fiery desert of the Gulf war,
    the officers of West Point have served and sacrificed for our Nation.
        In just the 4 years since I last spoke here, your graduates have
    helped to restore democracy to Haiti, to save hundreds of thousands of
    lives from genocide and famine in Rwanda, to end the bloodshed in
    Bosnia. Throughout our history, whenever duty called, the men and women
    of West Point have never failed us. And I speak for all Americans when I
    say, I know you never will.
        I'd like to say a special word of appreciation to West Point and a
    special word of congratulations to the students in this class from other
    countries. We welcome you here, we are proud to have you as a part of
    our military service tradition, and we wish you well as you go back
    home. We hope you, too, can advance freedom's cause, for in the 21st
    century, that is something we must do together.
        Two days ago, I returned from Europe on a mission to look back to
    one of the proudest chapters in America's history and to look forward to
    the history we all will seek to shape for our children and
    grandchildren. This week is the 50th anniversary of the Marshall plan,
    what Winston Churchill described as the most unsordid act in all
    history.
        In 1947, Americans, exhausted by war and anxious to get on with
    their lives at home, were summoned to embrace another leadership role by
    a generation of remarkable leaders, General George Marshall, Senator
    Arthur Vandenberg, President Harry Truman, leaders who knew there could
    be no lasting peace and security for an America that withdrew behind its
    borders

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    and withdrew from the world and its responsibilities. They provided the
    indispensable leadership to create the Marshall plan, NATO, the first
    global financial institutions. They, in effect, organized America and
    our allies to meet the challenges of their time, to build unparalleled
    prosperity, to stand firm against Soviet expansionism until the light of
    freedom shone all across Europe.
        The second purpose of my journey was inextricably tied to the first.
    It was to look to the future, to the possibility of achieving what
    Marshall's generation could only dream of, a democratic, peaceful, and
    undivided Europe for the first time in all of history, and to the
    necessity of America and its allies once again organizing ourselves to
    meet the challenges of our time, to secure peace and prosperity for the
    next 50 years and beyond.
        To build and secure a new Europe, peaceful, democratic, and
    undivided at last, there must be a new NATO, with new missions, new
    members, and new partners. We have been building that kind of NATO for
    the last 3 years with new partners in the Partnership For Peace and
    NATO's first out-of-area mission in Bosnia. In Paris last week, we took
    another giant stride forward when Russia entered a new partnership with
    NATO, choosing cooperation over confrontation, as both sides affirmed
    that the world is different now. European security is no longer a zero-
    sum contest between Russia and NATO but a cherished common goal.
        In a little more than a month, I will join with other NATO leaders
    in Madrid to invite the first of Europe's new democracies in Central
    Europe to join our alliance, with the consent of the Senate, by 1999,
    the 50th anniversary of NATO's founding.
        I firmly believe NATO enlargement is in our national interests. But
    because it is not without cost and risk, it is appropriate to have an
    open, full, national discussion before proceeding. I want to further
    that discussion here today in no small measure because it is especially
    important to those of you in this class. For after all, as the sentinels
    of our security in the years ahead, your work will be easier and safer
    if we do the right thing, and riskier and much more difficult if we do
    not.
        Europe's fate and America's future are joined. Twice in half a
    century, Americans have given their lives to defend liberty and peace in
    World Wars that began in Europe. And we have stayed in Europe in very
    large numbers for a long time throughout the cold war. Taking wise steps
    now to strengthen our common security when we have the opportunity to do
    so will help to build a future without the mistakes and the divisions of
    the past and will enable us to organize ourselves to meet the new
    security challenges of the new century. In this task, NATO should be our
    sharpest sword and strongest shield.
        Some say we no longer need NATO because there is no powerful threat
    to our security now. I say there is no powerful threat in part because
    NATO is there. And enlargement will help make it stronger. I believe we
    should take in new members to NATO for four reasons.
        First, it will strengthen our alliance in meeting the security
    challenges of the 21st century, addressing conflicts that threaten the
    common peace of all. Consider Bosnia. Already the Czech Republic,
    Poland, Romania, the Baltic nations, and other Central European
    countries are contributing troops and bases to NATO's peacekeeping
    mission in Bosnia. We in the United States could not have deployed our
    troops to Bosnia as safely, smoothly, and swiftly as we did without the
    help of Hungary and our staging ground at Taszar, which I personally
    visited. The new democracies we invite to join NATO are ready and able
    to share the burdens of defending freedom in no small measure because
    they know the cost of losing freedom.
        Second, NATO enlargement will help to secure the historic gains of
    democracy in Europe. NATO can do for Europe's East what it did for
    Europe's West at the end of World War II: provide a secure climate where
    freedom, democracy, and prosperity can flourish. Joining NATO once
    helped Italy, Germany, and Spain to consolidate their democracies. Now
    the opening of NATO's doors has led the Central European nations
    already--already--to deepen democratic reform, to strengthen civilian
    control of their military, to open their economies. Membership and its
    future prospect will give them the confidence to stay the course.
        Third, enlarging NATO will encourage prospective members to resolve
    their differences peacefully. We see all over the world the terrible
    curse of people who are imprisoned by their own ethnic, regional, and
    nationalist hatreds, who rob themselves and their children of the lives
    they might have because of their primitive, destructive impulses that
    they cannot control.

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        When he signed the NATO treaty in 1949, President Truman said that
    if NATO had simply existed in 1914 or 1939, it would have prevented the
    World Wars that tore the world apart. The experience of the last 50
    years supports that view. NATO helped to reconcile age-old adversaries
    like France and Germany, now fast friends and allies, and clearly has
    reduced tensions between Greece and Turkey over all these decades.
    Already the very prospect of NATO membership has helped to convince
    countries in Central Europe to settle more than half a dozen border and
    ethnic disputes, any one of which could have led to future conflicts.
    That, in turn, makes it less likely that you will ever be called to
    fight in another war across the Atlantic.
        Fourth, enlarging NATO, along with its Partnership For Peace with
    many other nations and its special agreement with Russia and its soon-
    to-be-signed partnership with Ukraine, will erase the artificial line in
    Europe that Stalin drew and bring Europe together in security, not keep
    it apart in instability.
        NATO expansion does not mean a differently divided Europe; it is
    part of unifying Europe. NATO's first members should not be its last.
    NATO's doors will remain open to all those willing and able to shoulder
    the responsibilities of membership, and we must continue to strengthen
    our partnerships with nonmembers.
        Now, let me be clear to all of you: These benefits are not cost- or
    risk-free. Enlargement will require the United States to pay an
    estimated $200 million a year for the next decade. Our allies in Canada
    and Western Europe are prepared to do their part; so are NATO's new
    members; so must we.
        More important, enlargement requires that we extend to new members
    our alliance's most solemn security pledge, to treat an attack against
    one as an attack against all. We have always made the pledge credible
    through the deployment of our troops and the deterrence of our nuclear
    weapons. In the years ahead, it means that you could be asked to put
    your lives on the line for a new NATO member, just as today you can be
    called upon to defend the freedom of our allies in Western Europe.
        In leading NATO over the past 3 years to open its doors to Europe's
    new democracies, I weighed these costs very carefully. I concluded that
    the benefits of enlargement--strengthening NATO for the future, locking
    in democracy's gains in Central Europe, building stability across the
    Atlantic, uniting Europe, not dividing it--these gains decisively
    outweigh the burdens. The bottom line to me is clear: Expanding NATO
    will enhance our security. It is the right thing to do. We must not fail
    history's challenge at this moment to build a Europe peaceful,
    democratic, and undivided, allied with us to face the new security
    threats of the new century, a Europe that will avoid repeating the
    darkest moments of the 20th century and fulfill the brilliant
    possibilities of the 21st.
        This vision for a new Europe is central to our larger security
    strategy, which you will be called upon to implement and enforce. But
    our agenda must go beyond it because, with all of our power and wealth,
    we are living in a world in which increasingly our influence depends
    upon our recognizing that our future is interdependent with other
    nations and we must work with them all across the globe, because we see
    the threats we face tomorrow will cross national boundaries. They are
    amplified by modern technology, communication, and travel. They must be
    faced by like-minded nations working together, whether we're talking
    about terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, drug
    trafficking, or environmental degradation. Therefore, we must pursue
    five other objectives.
        First, we must build a community of Asia-Pacific nations bound by a
    common commitment to stability and prosperity. We fought three wars in
    Asia in half a century. Asia's stability affects our peace, and Asia's
    explosive growth affects our prosperity. That's why we've strengthened
    our security ties to Japan and Korea, why we now meet every year with
    the Asia-Pacific leaders, why we must work with and not isolate
    ourselves from China.
        One of the great questions that will define the future for your
    generation of Americans is how China will define its own greatness as a
    nation. We have worked with China because we believe it is important to
    cooperate in ways that will shape the definition of that great nation in
    positive, not negative, ways. We need not agree with China on all issues
    to maintain normal trade relations, but we do need normal trade
    relations to have a chance of eventually reaching agreement with China
    on matters of vital importance to America and the world.
        Second, we are building coalitions across the world to confront
    these new security threats that know no borders: weapons proliferation,
    terrorism, drug trafficking, environmental degradation.

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    We have to lead in constructing global arrangements that provide us the
    tools to deal with these common threats: the Chemical Weapons
    Convention, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban
    Treaty, and our efforts to further reduce nuclear weapons with Russia.
    Now our great task is also to build these kinds of arrangements fighting
    terrorism, drug traffickers, and organized crime. Three weeks from now
    in Denver, I will use the summit of the eight leading nations to press
    this agenda.
        The third thing we have to do is to build an open trading system.
    Our security is tied to the stake other nations have in the prosperity
    of staying free and open and working with others, not working against
    them. In no small measure because of the trade agreements we have
    negotiated, we have not only regained our position as the world's number
    one exporter, we have increased our influence in ways that are good for
    our security. To continue that progress, it is important that I have the
    authority to conclude smart new market-opening agreements that every
    President in 20 years has had.
        Some of our fellow Americans do not believe that the President
    should have this authority anymore. They believe that somehow the global
    economy presents a threat to us, but I believe it's here to stay. And I
    think the evidence is that Americans--just as we can have the world's
    strongest and best military, we have the strongest and best economy in
    the world. The American people can out-work and out-compete anyone,
    given a free and fair chance.
        Not only that but this is about more than money and jobs; this is
    about security. The world, especially our democratic neighbors to the
    south of us, are looking to us. If we don't build economic bridges to
    them, someone else will. We must make it clear that America supports
    free people and fair, open trade.
        Fourth, we have to embrace our role as the decisive force for peace.
    You cannot and you should not go everywhere. But when our values and
    interests are at stake, our mission is crystal clear and achievable,
    America should stand with our allies around the world who seek to bring
    peace and prevent slaughter. From the Middle East to Bosnia, from Haiti
    to Northern Ireland, we have worked to contain conflict, to support
    peace, to give children a brighter future, and it has enhanced our
    security.
        Finally, we have to have the tools to do these jobs. Those are the
    most powerful and best trained military in the world and a fully funded
    diplomacy to minimize the chances that military force will be necessary.
        The long-term defense plan we have just completed will increase your
    readiness, capabilities, and technological edge. In a world of
    persistent dangers, you must and you will be able to dominate the
    conflicts of the future as you did the battlefields of the past.
        Fifty-five years ago, in the early days of World War II, General
    George Marshall, the man we honored this week, spoke here at your
    commencement about the need to organize our Nation for the ordeal of
    war. He said, ``We are determined that before the Sun sets on this
    terrible struggle, our flag will be recognized as a symbol of freedom on
    the one hand and of overwhelming power on the other.''
        Today, our flag of freedom and power flies higher than ever, but
    because our Nation stands at the pinnacle of its power, it also stands
    at the pinnacle of its responsibility. Therefore, as you carry our flag
    into this new era, we must organize ourselves to meet the challenges of
    the next 50 years. We must shape the peace for a new and better century
    about to dawn so that you can give your children and your grandchildren
    the America and the world they deserve.
        God bless you, and God bless America.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:20 a.m. in Michie Stadium. In his
    remarks, he referred to Lt. Gen. Daniel W. Christman, USA,
    Superintendent, and Adam K. Ake, valedictorian, U.S. Military Academy;
    and Gen. Dennis J. Reimer, USA, Chief of Staff, U.S. Army.

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