    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 3 (Monday, January 24, 1994)]
    [Pages 86-87]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    The President's Radio Address

    January 15, 1994

        Good morning. Today I'm speaking to you from Moscow where I'm
    completing a series of meetings with President Boris Yeltsin and other
    Russian reformers. My visit here comes near the end of a week of
    European meetings designed to increase American security and American
    prosperity by working to make Europe more united through shared
    democratic values and institutions, free trading market economies, and
    defense cooperation.
        Despite the challenges we face at home, from health care reform to
    fighting crime to retraining our work force and creating more jobs, we
    still must remain engaged in world affairs. That's the only way we can
    spur worldwide economic growth and open foreign markets so that we can
    boost our exports and create new American jobs. We also have to exert
    leadership in world affairs to protect our Nation and keep small
    problems today from growing into dangerous crises tomorrow.
        No part of the world is more important to us than Europe. Our people
    fought two world wars in this century to protect Europe's democracies.
    Today, Europe remains at the heart of our security and is also our most
    valuable partner in trade and investment.
        Now Europe stands at a key moment. The cold war is over. Western
    Europe no longer fears invasion, and we no longer live in the shadow of
    nuclear annihilation. The Soviet Union has given way to a dozen new
    independent and largely democratic states from Central Asia to the
    Baltic countries.
        Yet despite these advances for freedom, we still need to work with
    our transatlantic partners to build a new security. Many nations of the
    former Soviet bloc are fighting economic hardship that could threaten
    their new democracies. In many of these countries, militant nationalists
    are fanning the flames of ancient ethnic and religious hatreds. And we
    still have to finish the work of reducing the cold war nuclear
    stockpiles. We can't afford to ignore these challenges.
        Our country tried turning our back on Europe after World War I. The
    result was a global depression, the rise of fascism, and another world
    war. After World War II, we acted more wisely. We stood firm against
    Communist expansion. We founded NATO. We created new institutions to
    help expand global trade. We helped turn Western Europe's warring
    neighbors into solid allies. The result has been one of the most
    peaceful and prosperous times in all history.
        One key to our new security is helping Europe's former Communist
    states succeed themselves in building democratic governments, market
    economies, and peaceful militaries. Our best security investment today
    is to support these practices of freedom in Europe's Eastern half in
    places such as Poland, Ukraine, and Russia. That was my top goal on this
    trip.

    [[Page 87]]

        In Brussels, I met with European leaders about ways to strengthen
    all our nations by expanding trade and economic growth. I also attended
    a summit to adapt NATO, history's greatest military alliance, to this
    new era. Our NATO partners approved my proposal for a Partnership For
    Peace, a Partnership which invites Europe's Eastern nations to
    participate in military cooperation with NATO's forces.
        In Prague I met with the leaders of the Czech Republic, Poland,
    Hungary, and Slovakia. These countries have been at the forefront of
    communism's collapse and democracy's rebirth. As I met with such famous
    democratic heroes as President Lech Walesa of Poland and President
    Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic, I assured them that the security of
    their countries is important to our security, and I outlined new ways to
    help their economic reform succeed.
        Then I flew to Kiev in the Ukraine. I met with Ukraine's President
    Kravchuk to nail down an agreement to eliminate over 1,800 nuclear
    warheads that were left in Ukraine when the Soviet Union broke apart.
    Most of those warheads have been targeted at the United States, and
    their elimination will make all of us safer, not only from nuclear
    accidents but from nuclear terrorism.
        And now I'm in Moscow. The weather's cold, but our work has brought
    us to a new season of partnership, warm partnership, with Russia's
    reformers. President Yeltsin and I reached a series of agreements to
    expand our trade ties, protect human rights, and reduce the threat of
    nuclear accidents of proliferation.
        One of the experiences I enjoyed most here in Moscow was speaking to
    an audience of Russians, many of them young people. In many ways their
    concerns reminded me of those voiced by our own young people, especially
    as they spoke about their educations and their careers, their hopes and
    their fears about the future. But their comments also suggested that
    their hopes for a new Russia, despite all the problems that they have
    today, a new Russia, proud and free, outweigh their fears. I tried to
    convince them that their peaceful transition to a more open society is
    important not only to them but to all the rest of us in the world as
    well. And I urged them to stay the course of economic and political
    reform.
        In the end, the next generation is what this entire trip is about,
    the young people in America, the young people in Europe and throughout
    the rest of the world. The kind of efforts we're pursuing this week, the
    kind of efforts that will increase democracy, provide for military
    cooperation instead of conflict, and provide for more open markets, for
    more jobs for our people and other people, these are the things which
    will make our young people's future more promising, more prosperous, and
    more secure.
        Thanks for listening.

    Note: The address was recorded at 11:01 p.m. on January 14 at the
    Kremlin in Moscow for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on January 15. A tape was
    not available for verification of the content of this address.