[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 23 (Monday, June 9, 1997)]
[Pages 819-823]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at the United States Military Academy Commencement Ceremony 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 and withdrew from the world and its responsibilities. They pro

[[Page 820]]

vided 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 shown 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 dif

[[Page 821]]

ferences 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.
    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.

[[Page 822]]

    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. 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 chil

[[Page 823]]

dren 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.