[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 23 (Monday, June 13, 1994)]
[Pages 1247-1251]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the French National Assembly in Paris

June 7, 1994

    Mr. President, distinguished Deputies, representatives of the people 
of France, it is a high honor for me to be invited here, along with my 
wife and our distinguished Ambassador, Pamela Harriman, to share with 
you this occasion. There is between our two peoples a special kinship. 
After all, our two republics were born within a few years of each other. 
Overthrowing the rule of kings, we enthroned in their places common 
ideals: equality, liberty, community, the rights of man.
    For two centuries, our nations have given generously to each other. 
France gave to our Founders the ideas of Montesquieu and Rousseau. And 
then Lafayette and Rochambeau helped to forge those ideas into the 
reality of our own independence. For just as we helped to liberate your 
country in 1944, you helped to liberate our country two full centuries 
ago.
    Your art and your culture have inspired countless Americans for that 
entire time, from Benjamin Franklin to John and Jacqueline Kennedy. In 
turn, we lent to you the revolutionary genius of Thomas Jefferson, the 
fiery spirit of Thomas Paine, and the lives of so many of our young men 
when Europe's liberty was most endangered.
    This week you have given us yet another great gift in the wonderful 
commemorations of the Allied landings at Normandy. I compliment 
President Mitterrand and all the French people for your very generous 
hospitality. I thank especially the thousands of French families who 
have opened their homes to our veterans.
    Yesterday's sights will stay with me for the rest of my life, the 
imposing cliffs of Pointe du Hoc, the parade of our Allied forces on 
Utah Beach, the deadly bluffs at bloody Omaha, the rows upon rows of 
gravestones at our cemetery at Colleville.
    D-Day was the pivot point of the 20th century. It began Europe's 
liberation. In ways great and small, the Allied victory proved how 
democracy's faith in the individual saved democracy itself. From the 
daring of the French Resistance to the inventiveness of the soldiers on 
Omaha Beach, it proved what free nations can accomplish when they unite 
behind a great and noble cause.
    The remarkable unity among the Allies during World War II, let us 
face it, reflected the life-or-death threat facing freedom. Democracies 
of free and often unruly people are more likely to rally in the face of 
that kind of danger. But our challenge now is to unite our people around 
the opportunities of peace, as those who went before us united against 
the dangers of war.
    Once in this century, as your President so eloquently expressed, 
following World War I, we failed to meet that imperative. After the 
Armistice, many Americans believed our foreign threats were gone. 
America increasingly withdrew from the world, opening the way for high 
tariffs, for trade wars, for the rise to fascism and the return of 
global war in less than 20 years.
    After World War II, America, France, and the other democracies did 
better. Led by visionary statesmen like Truman and Marshall, de Gaulle, 
Monnet, and others, we reached out to rebuild our allies and our former 
enemies, Germany, Italy, and Japan, and to confront the threat of Soviet 
expansion and nuclear power. Together, we founded NATO, we launched the 
Marshall plan, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and other 
engines of economic development. And in one of history's great acts of 
reconciliation, France reached out to forge the Franco-German 
partnership, the foundation of unity and stability in modern Western 
Europe. Indeed, the members of the European Union have performed an act 
of political alchemy, a magical act that turned rubble into renewal, 
suspicion into security, enemies into allies.
    Now we have arrived at this century's third moment of decision. The 
cold war is over. Prague, Warsaw, Kiev, Riga, Moscow, and many others 
stand as democratic capitals, with leaders elected by the people. We are 
reducing nuclear stockpiles, and America and

[[Page 1248]]

Russia no longer aim their nuclear missiles at each other. Yet once 
again, our work is far from finished. To secure this peace, we must set 
our sights on a strategic star. Here, where America and our allies 
fought so hard to save the world, let that star for both of us, for 
Americans and for Europeans alike, be the integration and strengthening 
of a broader Europe.
    It is a mighty challenge. It will require resources. It will take 
years, even decades. It will require us to do what is very difficult for 
democracies, to unite our people when they do not feel themselves in 
imminent peril to confront more distant threats and to seize challenging 
and exciting opportunities. Yet, the hallowed gravestones we honored 
yesterday speak to us clearly. They define the price of failure in 
peacetime. They affirm the need for action now.
    We can already see the grim alternative. Militant nationalism is on 
the rise, transforming the healthy pride of nations, tribes, religious 
and ethnic groups into cancerous prejudice, eating away at states and 
leaving their people addicted to the political painkillers of violence 
and demagoguery, and blaming their problems on others when they should 
be dedicated to the hard work of finding real answers to those problems 
in reconciliation, in power-sharing, in sustainable development. We see 
the signs of this disease from the purposeful slaughter in Bosnia to the 
random violence of skinheads in all our nations. We see it in the 
incendiary misuses of history and in the anti-Semitism and irredentism 
of some former Communist states. And beyond Europe, we see the dark 
future of these trends in mass slaughter, unbridled terrorism, 
devastating poverty, and total environmental and social disintegration.
    Our transatlantic alliance clearly stands at a critical point. We 
must build the bonds among nations necessary for this time, just as we 
did after World War II. But we must do so at a time when our safety is 
not directly threatened, just as after World War I. The question for 
this generation of leaders is whether we have the will, the vision, and 
yes, the patience to do it.
    Let me state clearly where the United States stands. America will 
remain engaged in Europe. The entire transatlantic alliance benefits 
when we, Europe and America, are both strong and engaged. America wishes 
a strong Europe, and Europe should wish a strong America, working 
together.
    To ensure that our own country remains a strong partner, we are 
working hard at home to create a new spirit of American renewal, to 
reduce our budget deficits, to revive our economy, to expand trade, to 
make our streets safer from crime, to restore the pillars of our 
American strength, work and family and community, and to maintain our 
defense presence in Europe.
    We also want Europe to be strong. That is why America supports 
Europe's own steps so far toward greater unity, the European Union, the 
Western European Union, and the development of a European defense 
identity. We now must pursue a shared strategy, to secure the peace of a 
broader Europe and its prosperity. That strategy depends upon 
integrating the entire continent through three sets of bonds: first, 
security cooperation; second, market economics; and third, democracy.
    To start, we must remain strong and safe in an era that still has 
many dangers. To do so we must adapt our security institutions to meet 
new imperatives. America has reduced the size of its military presence 
in Europe, but we will maintain a strong force here. The EU, the WEU, 
the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, and other 
organizations must all play a larger role. I was pleased that NATO 
recently approved an American proposal to allow its assets to be used by 
the WEU. To foster greater security cooperation all across Europe, we 
also need to adapt NATO to this new era.
    At the NATO summit in January, we agreed to create the Partnership 
For Peace in order to foster security cooperation among NATO allies and 
the other states of Europe, both former Warsaw Pact countries, states of 
the former Soviet Union, and states not involved in NATO for other 
reasons. And just 6 months later, this Partnership For Peace is a 
reality. No less than 19 nations have joined, and more are on the way. 
Russia has expressed an interest in joining.
    The Partnership will conduct its first military exercises this fall. 
Imagine the transformation: Troops that once faced each other

[[Page 1249]]

across the Iron Curtain will now work with each other across the plains 
of Europe.
    We understand the historical anxieties of Central and Eastern 
Europe. The security of those states is important to our own security. 
And we are committed to NATO's expansion. At the same time, as long as 
we have the chance, the chance to create security cooperation everywhere 
in Europe, we should not abandon that possibility anywhere.
    There are signs that such an outcome may be possible. Ukraine, 
Kazakhstan, and Belarus have now committed to eliminate all the nuclear 
weapons on their soil. And by this August we may well see all Russian 
troops withdrawn from Eastern Europe and the Baltics for the first time 
since the end of World War II.
    Do these developments guarantee that we can draw all the former 
Communist states into the bonds of peaceful cooperation? No. But we 
would fail our own generation and those to come if we did not try.
    Do these arrangements mean we can solve all the problems? No, at 
least not right away. The most challenging European security problem and 
the most heartbreaking humanitarian problem is, of course, Bosnia. We 
have not solved that problem, but it is important to recognize what has 
been done, because France, the United States, Great Britain, and others 
have worked together through the United Nations and through NATO. Look 
what has been done. First, a determined and so far successful effort has 
been made to limit that conflict to Bosnia, rather than having it spread 
into a wider Balkan war. Second, the most massive humanitarian airlift 
in history has saved thousands of lives, as has the UNPROFOR mission, in 
which France has been the leading contributor of troops. We have 
prevented the war from moving into the air. We have seen an agreement 
between the Bosnian Muslims and the Croats. Progress has been made.
    What remains to be done? Today the United Nations has put forward 
the proposal by Mr. Akashi for a cessation of hostilities for a period 
of several months. The United States supports this program; France 
supports this proposal. We must do all we can to get both sides to 
embrace it.
    Then, the contact group is working on a map which can be the basis 
of a full and final cessation of hostilities there. We must do all we 
can, once all parties have been heard from, to secure that agreement.
    And finally, let us not forget what has happened to make that more 
likely, and that is that Russia has been brought into the process of 
attempting to resolve this terrible crisis in what so far has been a 
very positive way, pointing the way toward a future in which we may all 
be able to work together to solve problems like this over a period of 
time. We must be patient. We must understand that we do not have total 
control of events within every nation. But we have made progress in 
Bosnia, and we must keep at it, working together, firmly together, with 
patience and firmness, until the job is done. We can do this if we stay 
together and work together.
    The best way to sustain this sort of cooperation is to support the 
evolution of Europe across the board. We must also have an economic 
dimension to this. We must support Europe's East in their work to 
integrate into the thriving market democracies. That brings me to the 
second element of our strategy of integration. Integration requires the 
successful transition to strong market economies all across broader 
Europe.
    Today, the former Communist states face daunting transitions. Our 
goal must be to help them succeed, supporting macroeconomic reforms, 
providing targeted assistance to privatization, increasing our bonds of 
trade and investment. That process invariably will proceed slowly and, 
of course, unevenly. It will depend in part on what happens within those 
countries. We have seen voters in former Communist states cast ballots 
in a protest against reform and its pain. Yet as long as these states 
respect democratic processes, we should not react with too much alarm. 
The work of reform will take years and decades.
    Despite many problems the economic reforms in Europe's East have 
still been impressive. Russia's private sector now employs 40 percent of 
the work force, and 50 million Russians have become shareholders in 
privatizing companies. In Prague last January, I said the West needed to 
support such reforms by opening our markets as much as

[[Page 1250]]

possible to the exports of those nations. For if our new friends are not 
able to export their goods, they may instead export instability, even 
against their own will.
    We can also support other reforms by stimulating global economic 
growth. One of the most important advances toward that goal in recent 
years has been the new GATT agreement. It will create millions of jobs. 
France played an absolutely pivotal role in bringing those talks to 
fruition. I know it was a difficult issue in this country. I know it 
required statesmanship. I assure you it was not an easy issue in the 
United States. We have issues left to resolve. But now that we have 
opened the door to history's most sweeping trade agreement, let us keep 
going until it is done. My goal is for the United States Congress to 
ratify the GATT agreement this year and to pursue policies through the 
G-7 that can energize all our economies.
    We have historically agreed among the G-7 nations that we will ask 
each other the hard questions: What can we do to promote economic growth 
and job creation? What kind of trade policies are fair to the working 
people of our countries? How can we promote economic growth in a way 
that advances sustainable development in the poorer countries of the 
world so that they do not squander their resources and, in the end, 
assure that all these endeavors fail? These are profoundly significant 
questions. They are being asked in a multilateral forum for the first 
time in a serious way. And this is of great significance.
    In the end, no matter what we do with security concerns or what we 
do with economic concerns, the heart of our mission must be the same as 
it was on Normandy's beaches a half a century ago, that is, democracy. 
For after all, democracy is the glue that can cement economic reforms 
and security cooperation. That is why our third goal must be to 
consolidate Europe's recent democratic gains.
    This goal resonates with the fundamental ideals of both of our 
republics. It is, after all, how we got started. It also serves our most 
fundamental security interests, for democracy is a powerful deterrent; 
it checks the dark ambitions of would-be tyrants and aggressors as it 
respects the bright hopes of free citizens.
    Together, our two nations and others have launched a major effort to 
support democracy in the former Communist states. Progress will not come 
overnight. There will be uneven developments, but already we see 
encouraging and sometimes breathtaking results. We have seen independent 
television stations established where once only the state's version of 
the truth was broadcast. We've seen thousands of people from the former 
Communist world, students, bankers, political leaders, come to our 
nations to learn the ways and the uses of freedom. We've seen new 
constitutions written and new states founded around the principles that 
inspired our own republics at their birth. Ultimately, we need to foster 
democratic bonds not only within these former Communist states but also 
among our states and theirs.
    There is a language of democracy spoken among nations. It is 
expressed in the way we work out our differences, in the way we treat 
each other's citizens, in the way we honor each other's heritages. It is 
the language our two republics have spoken with each other for over 200 
years. It is the language that the Western Allies spoke during the 
Second World War.
    Now we have the opportunity to hear the language of democracy spoken 
across this entire continent. And if we can achieve that goal, we will 
have paid a great and lasting tribute to those from both our countries 
who fought and died for freedom 50 years ago.
    Nearly 25 years after D-Day, an American veteran who had served as a 
medic in that invasion returned to Normandy. He strolled down Omaha 
Beach, where he had landed in June of 1944, and then walked inland a 
ways to a nearby village. There, he knocked on a door that seemed 
familiar. A Frenchwoman answered the door and then turned suddenly and 
called to her husband. ``He's back. The American doctor is back,'' she 
called. After a moment, the husband arrived, carrying a wine bottle 
covered with dust and cobwebs. ``Welcome, Doctor,'' he cried. ``In 1944, 
we hid this bottle away for the time when you would return. Now let us 
celebrate.''

[[Page 1251]]

    Well, this week, that process of joyous rediscovery and solemn 
remembrance happened all over again. It unfolded in countless reunions, 
planned and unplanned. As our people renewed old bonds, let us also join 
to resume the timeless work that brought us here in the first place and 
that brought our forebears together 200 years ago, the work of 
fortifying freedom's foundation and building a lasting peace for 
generations to come. I believe we can do it. It is the only ultimate 
tribute we can give for the ultimate lesson of World War II and 
Normandy.
    Thank you. Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 5:13 p.m. at the Palais Bourbon.