[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 8 (Monday, March 1, 1999)]
[Pages 317-326]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on United States Foreign Policy in San Francisco

February 26, 1999

    Thank you, and good morning. Mr. Mayor, we're delighted to be here 
in San Francisco. We thank you for coming out to welcome us. Senator 
Boxer, Representative Pelosi, Representative Lofgren, members of the 
California Legislature who are here. I'd like to especially thank two 
people who had a lot to do with the good things that have happened in 
the last 6 years in our administration, our former Secretary of Defense 
Bill Perry, and Mrs. Perry, who are here; and General John 
Shalikashvili, thank you for coming. We're delighted to see you.
    I very much appreciate this opportunity to speak with all of you, to 
be joined with Secretary Albright and Mr. Berger, to talk about 
America's role in the century to come; to talk about what we must do to 
realize the promise of this extraordinary moment in the history of the 
world. For the first time since before the rise of fascism early in this 
century, there is no overriding threat to our survival or our freedom. 
Perhaps for the first time in history, the world's leading nations are 
not engaged in a struggle with each other for security or territory. The 
world clearly is coming together.
    Since 1945, global trade has grown 15-fold, raising living standards 
on every continent. Freedom is expanding: For the first time in history, 
more than half the world's people elect their own leaders. Access to 
information by ordinary people the world over is literally exploding.
    Because of these developments, and the dramatic increase in our own 
prosperity and confidence in this, the longest peacetime economic 
expansion in our history, the United States has the opportunity and, I 
would argue, the solemn responsibility to shape a more peaceful, 
prosperous, democratic world in the 21st century.
    We must, however, begin this discussion with a little history and a 
little humility. Listen to this quote by another American leader, at the 
dawn of a new century: ``The world's products are exchanged as never 
before and

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with increasing transportation comes increasing knowledge and larger 
trade. We travel greater distances in a shorter space of time and with 
more ease than was ever dreamed of. The same important news is read, 
though in different languages, the same day, in all the world. Isolation 
is no longer possible. No nation can longer be indifferent to any 
other.''
    That was said by President William McKinley a hundred years ago. 
What we now call globalization was well underway even then. We, in fact, 
had more diplomatic posts in the world than we have today, and foreign 
investment actually played a larger role in our own economy then than it 
does today.
    The optimism being expressed about the 20th century by President 
McKinley and others at that time was not all that much different from 
the hopes commonly expressed today about the 21st. The rising global 
trade and communications did lift countless lives then, just as it does 
today. But it did not stop the world's wealthiest nations from waging 
World War I and World War II. It did not stop the Depression, or the 
Holocaust, or communism. Had leading nations acted decisively then, 
perhaps these disasters might have been prevented. But the League of 
Nations failed, and America--well, our principal involvement in the 
world was commercial and cultural, unless and until we were attacked.
    After World War II, our leaders took a different course. Harry 
Truman came to this city and said that to change the world away from a 
world in which might makes right, quote, ``words are not enough. We must 
once and for all prove by our acts conclusively that right has might.'' 
He and his allies and their successors built a network of security 
alliances to preserve the peace and a global financial system to 
preserve prosperity.
    Over the last 6 years, we have been striving to renew those 
arrangements and to create new ones for the challenges of the next 50 
years. We have made progress, but there is so very much more to do. We 
cannot assume today that globalization alone will wash away the forces 
of destruction at the dawn of the 21st century, any more than it did at 
the dawn of the 20th century. We cannot assume it will bring freedom and 
prosperity to ordinary citizens around the world who long for them. We 
cannot assume it will avoid environmental and public health disasters. 
We cannot assume that because we are now secure, we Americans do not 
need military strength or alliances or that because we are prosperous, 
we are not vulnerable to financial turmoil half a world away.
    The world we want to leave our children and grandchildren requires 
us to make the right choices, and some of them will be difficult. 
America has always risen to great causes, yet we have a tendency, still, 
to believe that we can go back to minding our own business when we're 
done. Today we must embrace the inexorable logic of globalization, that 
everything, from the strength of our economy to the safety of our cities 
to the health of our people, depends on events not only within our 
borders but half a world away. We must see the opportunities and the 
dangers of the interdependent world in which we are clearly fated to 
live.
    There is still the potential for major regional wars that would 
threaten our security. The arms race between India and Pakistan reminds 
us that the next big war could still be nuclear. There is a risk that 
our former adversaries will not succeed in their transitions to freedom 
and free markets. There is a danger that deadly weapons will fall into 
the hands of a terrorist group or an outlaw nation and that those 
weapons could be chemical or biological. There is a danger of deadly 
alliances among terrorists, narcotraffickers, and organized criminal 
groups. There is a danger of global environmental crises and the spread 
of deadly diseases. There is a danger that global financial turmoil will 
undermine open markets, overwhelm open societies, and undercut our own 
prosperity.
    We must avoid both the temptation to minimize these dangers and the 
illusion that the proper response to them is to batten down the hatches 
and protect America against the world. The promise of our future lies in 
the world. Therefore, we must work hard with the world to defeat the 
dangers we face together and to build this hopeful moment together, into 
a generation of peace, prosperity, and freedom. Because of our

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unique position, America must lead with confidence in our strengths and 
with a clear vision of what we seek to avoid and what we seek to 
advance.
    Our first challenge is to build a more peaceful 21st century world. 
To that end, we're renewing alliances that extend the area where wars do 
not happen and working to stop the conflicts that are claiming lives and 
threatening our interests right now.
    The century's bloodiest wars began in Europe. That's why I've worked 
hard to build a Europe that finally is undivided, democratic, and at 
peace. We want all of Europe to have what America helped build in 
Western Europe, a community that upholds common standards of human 
rights, where people have the confidence and security to invest in the 
future, where nations cooperate to make war unthinkable.
    That is why I have pushed hard for NATO's enlargement and why we 
must keep NATO's doors open to new democratic members, so that other 
nations will have an incentive to deepen their democracies. That is why 
we must forge a partnership between NATO and Russia, between NATO and 
Ukraine; why we are building a NATO capable not only of deterring 
aggression against its own territory but of meeting challenges to our 
security beyond its territory, the kind of NATO we must advance at the 
50th anniversary summit in Washington this April.
    We are building a stronger alliance with Japan, and renewing our 
commitment to deter aggression in Korea and intensifying our efforts for 
a genuine peace there. I thank Secretary Perry for his efforts in that 
regard. We also create a more peaceful world by building new 
partnerships in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
    Ten years ago we were shouting at each other across a North-South 
chasm defined by our differences. Today, we are engaged in a new dialog 
that speaks the language of common interests, of trade and investment, 
of education and health, of democracies that deliver not corruption and 
despair but progress and hope, of a common desire that children in all 
our countries will be free of the scrouge of drugs. Through these 
efforts to strengthen old alliances and build new partnerships, we 
advance the prospects for peace. However, the work of actually making 
peace is harder and often far more contentious.
    It's easy, for example, to say that we really have no interests in 
who lives in this or that valley in Bosnia or who owns a strip of 
brushland in the Horn of Africa or some piece of parched earth by the 
Jordan River. But the true measure of our interests lies not in how 
small or distant these places are or in whether we have trouble 
pronouncing their names. The question we must ask is, what are the 
consequences to our security of letting conflicts fester and spread? We 
cannot, indeed, we should not, do everything or be everywhere. But where 
our values and our interests are at stake and where we can make a 
difference, we must be prepared to do so. And we must remember that the 
real challenge of foreign policy is to deal with problems before they 
harm our national interests.
    It's also easy to say that peacemaking is simply doomed where people 
are embittered by generations of hate, where the old animosities of race 
and religion and ethnic difference raise their hoary heads. But I will 
never forget the day that the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian 
Authority came to the White House, in September of 1993, to sign their 
peace accord. At that moment, the question arose, and indeed, based on 
the pictures afterward, it seemed to be the main question, whether, if 
in front of the entire world, Prime Minister Rabin and Chairman Arafat 
would actually shake hands for the first time.
    It was an interesting and occasionally humorous discussion. But it 
ended when Yitzhak Rabin, a soldier for a lifetime, said to me, ``Mr. 
President, I have been fighting this man for a lifetime, 30 years. I 
have buried a lot of my own people in the process, but you do not make 
peace with your friends.''
    It is in our interest to be a peacemaker, not because we think we 
can make all these differences go away, but because in over 200 years of 
hard effort here at home and with bitter and good experiences around the 
world, we have learned that the world works better when differences are 
resolved by the

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force of argument rather than the force of arms.
    That is why I am proud of the work we have done to support peace in 
Northern Ireland and why we will keep pressing the leaders there to 
observe not just the letter but the spirit of the Good Friday accords.
    It is also why I intend to use the time I have remaining in this 
office to push for a comprehensive peace in the Middle East, to 
encourage Israelis and Palestinians to reach a just and final 
settlement, and to stand by our friends for peace, such as Jordan. The 
people of the Middle East can do it, but time is precious, and they 
can't afford to waste any more of it. In their hearts, they know there 
can be no security or justice for any who live in that small and sacred 
land until there is security and justice for all who live there. If they 
do their part, we must do ours.
    We will also keep working with our allies to build peace in the 
Balkans. Three years ago, we helped to end the war in Bosnia. A lot of 
doubters then thought it would soon start again. But Bosnia is on a 
steady path toward renewal and democracy. We've been able to reduce our 
troops there by 75 percent as peace has taken hold, and we will continue 
to bring them home.
    The biggest remaining danger to this progress has been the fighting 
and the repression in Kosovo. Kosovo is, after all, where the violence 
in the former Yugoslavia began, over a decade ago, when they lost the 
autonomy guaranteed under Yugoslav law. We have a clear national 
interest in ensuring that Kosovo is where this trouble ends. If it 
continues, it almost certainly will draw in Albania and Macedonia, which 
share borders with Kosovo, and on which clashes have already occurred.
    Potentially, it could affect our allies, Greece and Turkey. It could 
spark tensions in Bosnia itself, jeopardizing the gains made there. If 
the conflict continues, there will certainly be more atrocities, more 
refugees, more victims crying out for justice and seeking out revenge.
    Last fall, a quarter of a million displaced people in Bosnia were 
facing cold and hunger in the hills. Using diplomacy backed by force, we 
brought them home and slowed the fighting.
    For 17 days this month, outside Paris, we sought with our European 
partners an agreement that would end the fighting for good. Progress was 
made toward a common understanding of Kosovo's autonomy, progress that 
would not have happened, I want to say, but for the unity of our allies 
and the tireless leadership of our Secretary of State Madeleine 
Albright.
    Here's where we are. The Kosovar Albanian leaders have agreed in 
principle to a plan that would protect the rights of their people and 
give them substantial self-government. Serbia has agreed to much, but 
not all, of the conditions of autonomy and has so far not agreed to the 
necessity of a NATO-led international force to maintain the peace there.
    Serbia's leaders must now accept that only by allowing people in 
Kosovo control over their day-to-day lives--as, after all, they had been 
promised under Yugoslav law--it is only by doing that can they keep 
their country intact. Both sides must return to the negotiations on 
March 15, with clear mandate for peace. In the meantime, President 
Milosevic should understand that this is a time for restraint, not 
repression, and if he does not, NATO is prepared to act.
    Now, if there is a peace agreement that is effective, NATO must also 
be ready to deploy to Kosovo to give both sides the confidence to lay 
down their arms. Europeans would provide the great bulk of such a force, 
roughly 85 percent, but if there is a real peace, America must do its 
part as well.
    Kosovo is not an easy problem. But if we don't stop the conflict 
now, it clearly will spread. And then we will not be able to stop it, 
except at far greater cost and risk.
    A second challenge we face is to bring our former adversaries, 
Russia and China, into the international system as open, prosperous, 
stable nations. The way both countries develop in the coming century 
will have a lot to do with the future of our planet.
    For 50 years, we confronted the challenge of Russia's strength. 
Today, we must confront the risk of a Russia weakened by the legacy of 
communism and also by its inability at the moment to maintain prosperity 
at home or control the flow of its money, weapons, and technology across 
its borders.

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    The dimensions of this problem are truly enormous. Eight years after 
the Soviet collapse, the Russian people are hurting. The economy is 
shrinking, making the future uncertain. Yet, we have as much of a stake 
today in Russia overcoming these challenges as we did in checking its 
expansion during the cold war. This is not a time for complacency or 
self-fulfilling pessimism. Let's not forget that Russia's people have 
overcome enormous obstacles before. In just this decade, with no living 
memory of democracy or freedom to guide them, they have built a country 
more open to the world than ever, a country with a free press and a 
robust, even raucous debate, a country that should see in the first year 
of the new millennium the first peaceful democratic transfer of power in 
its 1,000-year history.
    The Russian people will decide their own future. But we must work 
with them for the best possible outcome with realism and with patience. 
If Russia does what it must to make its economy work, I am ready to do 
everything I can to mobilize adequate international support for them. 
With the right framework, we will also encourage foreign investment in 
its factories, its energy fields, its people. We will increase our 
support for small business and for the independent media. We will work 
to continue cutting our two nations' nuclear arsenals and help Russia 
prevent both its weapons and its expertise from falling into the wrong 
hands. The budget I have presented to Congress will increase funding for 
this critical threat reduction by 70 percent over the next 5 years.
    The question China faces is how best to assure its stability and 
progress. Will it choose openness and engagement? Or will it choose to 
limit the aspirations of its people without fully embracing the global 
rules of the road? In my judgment, only the first path can really answer 
the challenges China faces.
    We cannot minimize them. China has made incredible progress in 
lifting people out of poverty and building a new economy. But now its 
rate of economic growth is declining, just as it is needed to create 
jobs for a growing and increasingly more mobile population. Most of 
China's economy is still stifled by state control. We can see in China 
the kinds of problems a society faces when it is moving away from the 
rule of fear but is not yet rooted in the rule of law.
    China's leaders know more economic reform is needed, and they know 
reform will cause more unemployment, and they know that can cause 
unrest. At the same time, and perhaps for those reasons, they remain 
unwilling to open up their political system, to give people a peaceful 
outlet for dissent.
    Now, we Americans know that dissent is not always comfortable, not 
always easy, and often raucous. But I believe that the fact that we have 
peaceful, orderly outlets for dissent is one of the principal reasons 
we're still around here as the longest lasting freely elected Government 
in the world. And I believe, sooner or later, China will have to come to 
understand that a society, in the world we're living in, particularly a 
country as great and old and rich and full of potential as China, simply 
cannot purchase stability at the expense of freedom.
    On the other hand, we have to ask ourselves, what is the best thing 
to do to try to maximize the chance that China will take the right 
course, and that, because of that, the world will be freer, more 
peaceful, more prosperous in the 21st century? I do not believe we can 
hope to bring change to China if we isolate China from the forces of 
change. Of course, we have our differences, and we must press them. But 
we can do that and expand our cooperation through principled and 
purposeful engagement with China, its government, and its people.
    Our third great challenge is to build a future in which our people 
are safe from the dangers that arise, perhaps halfway around the world, 
dangers from proliferation, from terrorism, from drugs, from the 
multiple catastrophes that could arise from climate change.
    Each generation faces the challenges of not trying to fight the last 
war. In our case, that means recognizing that the more likely future 
threat to our existence is not a strategic nuclear strike from Russia or 
China but the use of weapons of mass destruction by an outlaw nation or 
a terrorist group.
    In the last 6 years, fighting that threat has become a central 
priority of American foreign policy. Here, too, there is much more to be 
done. We are working to stop weapons

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from spreading at the source, as with Russia. We are working to keep 
Iraq in check so that it does not threaten the rest of the world or its 
region with weapons of mass destruction. We are using all the means at 
our disposal to deny terrorists safe havens, weapons, and funds. Even if 
it takes years, terrorists must know there is no place to hide.
    Recently, we tracked down the gunman who killed two of our people 
outside the CIA 6 years ago. We are training and equipping our local 
fire, police, and medical personnel to deal with chemical, biological, 
and nuclear emergencies, and improving our public health surveillance 
system, so that if a biological weapon is released, we can detect it and 
save lives. We are working to protect our critical computer systems from 
sabotage.
    Many of these subjects are new and unfamiliar and may be 
frightening. As I said when I gave an address in Washington not very 
long ago about what we were doing on biological and computer security 
and criminal threats, it is important that we have the right attitude 
about this. It is important that we understand that the risks are real, 
and they require, therefore, neither denial nor panic. As long as people 
organize themselves in human societies, there will be organized forces 
of destruction who seek to take advantage of new means of destroying 
other people.
    And the whole history of conflict can be seen in part as the race of 
defensive measures to catch up with offensive capabilities. That is what 
we're doing in dealing with the computer challenges today; that is what 
we are doing in dealing with the biological challenges today. It is very 
important that the American people, without panic, be serious and 
deliberate about them, because it is the kind of challenge that we have 
faced repeatedly. And as long as our country and the world is around, 
unless there is some completely unforeseen change in human nature, our 
successors will have to do the same.
    We are working to develop a national missile defense system which 
could, if we decide to deploy it, be deployed against emerging ballistic 
missile threats from rogue nations. We are bolstering the global 
agreements that curb proliferation. That's the most important thing we 
can be doing right now. This year, we hope to achieve an accord to 
strengthen compliance with the convention against biological weapons. 
It's a perfectly good convention, but frankly, it has no teeth. We have 
to give it some. And we will ask our Senate to ratify the Comprehensive 
Test Ban Treaty to stop nations from testing nuclear weapons so they're 
constrained from developing new ones. Again, I say: I implore the United 
States Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty this year. It 
is very important for the United States and the world.
    Our security and our safety also depends upon doing more to protect 
our people from the scourge of drugs. To win this fight, we must work 
with others, including and especially Mexico. Mexico has a serious drug 
problem, increasingly affecting more of its own young people. No one 
understands this better than President Zedillo. He described it as the 
number one threat to his country's security, its people, its democracy. 
He is working hard to establish clean government, true democracy, and 
the rule of law. He is working hard to tackle the corruption traffickers 
have wrought.
    He cannot win this battle alone, and neither can we. In any given 
year, the narco-traffickers may spend hundreds of millions of dollars to 
try to suborn Mexican law enforcement officials, most of whom work for 
under $10,000 a year.
    As I certified to Congress today, Mexico is cooperating with us in 
the battle for our lives. And I believe the American people will be 
safer in this, as in so many other ways, if we fight drugs with Mexico, 
rather than walk away.
    Another global danger we face is climate change. As far as we can 
tell, with all the scientific evidence available, the hottest years our 
planet has ever experienced were 1997 and 1998. The two hottest years 
recorded in the last several--excuse me--9 of the 10 hottest years 
recorded in the last several centuries occurred in the last decade.
    Now, we can wait and hope and do nothing and try to ignore what the 
vast majority of scientists tell us is a pattern that is fixed and 
continuing. We could ignore the record-breaking temperatures, the 
floods, the storms, the droughts that have caused such misery. Or we can 
accept that preventing the

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disease and destruction climate change can bring will be infinitely 
cheaper than letting future generations try to clean up the mess, 
especially when you consider that greenhouse gases, once emitted into 
the atmosphere, last and have a destructive environmental effect for at 
least a hundred years.
    We took a giant step forward in 1997, when we helped to forge the 
Kyoto agreement. Now we're working to persuade developing countries that 
they, too, can and must participate meaningfully in this effort without 
forgoing growth. We are also trying to persuade a majority in the United 
States Congress that we can do the same thing.
    The approach I have taken in America is not to rely on a whole raft 
of new regulations, and not to propose big energy taxes, but instead to 
offer tax incentives and dramatic increases in investment in new 
technologies, because we know--we know now--that we have the 
technological capacity to break the iron link between industrial age 
energy use patterns and economic growth. You're proving it in California 
every day, with stiffer environmental standards than other States have.
    We know that the technology is just beginning to emerge to allow us 
to have clean cars and other clean forms of transportation; to 
dramatically increase the capacity of all of our buildings to keep out 
heat and cold, and to let in more light. We know that the conservation 
potential of what we have right now available has only just been 
scratched. And we must convince the world and critical decisionmakers in 
the United States to change their minds about a big idea, namely that 
the only way a country can grow is to consume more energy resources in a 
way that does more to increase global warning.
    One of the most interesting conversations I had when I was in China 
was with the environmental minister there, who thanked me for going 
there to do an environmental event, because he was having trouble 
convincing the Government that they could continue to lift the Chinese 
people out of poverty and still improve the environment. This is a 
central, big idea that people all over the world will have to change 
their minds about before we will be open and free to embrace the 
technological advances that are lying evident all around us. And all of 
you that can have any impact on that, I implore you to do it.
    Our fourth challenge is to create a world trading and financial 
system that will lift the lives of ordinary people on every continent 
around the world or, as it has been stated in other places, to put a 
human face on the global economy. Over the last 6 years, we've taken 
giant steps in opening the global trading system. The United States 
alone has concluded over 270 different trade agreements. Once again, we 
are the world's largest exporting nation. There is a lot more to be 
done.
    In the first 5 years of my Presidency, about 30 percent of our 
growth came from expanding trade. Last year, we had a good year, but we 
didn't have much growth from expanding trade because of the terrible 
difficulties of the people in Asia, in Russia, and because of the 
slowdown in growth in Latin America, and because we did not reach out to 
seize new possibilities in Africa. Those people are suffering more, and 
our future prospects are being constrained.
    The question is what to do about it. Some of the folks outside who 
were protesting when I drove up were saying by their signs that they 
believe globalization is inherently bad, and there's no way in the wide 
world to put a human face on the global economy. But if you look at the 
facts of the last 30 years, hundreds of millions of people have had 
their economic prospects advanced on every continent because they have 
finally been able to find a way to express their creativity in positive 
terms and produce goods and services that could be purchased beyond the 
borders of their nation.
    Now, the question is, how do we deal with the evident challenges and 
problems that we face in high relief today and seize the benefit that we 
know comes from expanding trade. I've asked for a new round of global 
trade negotiations to expand exports of services, farm products, and 
manufacturers. I am still determined to reach agreement on a free trade 
area of the Americas. If it hadn't been for our expansion in Latin 
America, from Mexico all the way to the southern tip of South America, 
we would have been in much worse shape this last year.
    I have urged Congress to give the trade authority the President has 
traditionally had

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to advance our prosperity, and I've asked them to approve the Caribbean 
Basin Initiative and the ``Africa Growth and Opportunity Act'' because 
we have special responsibilities and special opportunities in the 
Caribbean and in Africa that have gone too long unseized.
    But trade is not an end in itself. It has to work for ordinary 
people. It has to contribute to the wealth and fairness of societies. It 
has to reinforce the values that give meaning to life, not simply in the 
United States but in the poorest countries, struggling to lift their 
people to their dreams. That's why we're working to build a trading 
system that upholds the rights of workers and consumers, and helps us 
and them in other countries to protect the environment, so that 
competition among nations is a race to the top, not the bottom. This 
year we will lead the international community to conclude a treaty to 
ban abusive child labor everywhere in the world.
    The gains of global economic exchange have been real and dramatic. 
But when the tides of capital first flood emerging markets, and then 
abruptly recede, when bank failures and bankruptcies grip entire 
economies, when millions who have worked their way into the middle class 
are plunged suddenly into poverty, the need for reform of the 
international financial system is clear.
    I don't want to minimize the complexity of this challenge. As 
nations began to trade more and as investment rules began to permit 
people to invest in countries other than their own more, it became more 
and more necessary to facilitate the conversion of currencies. Whenever 
you do that, you will create a market against risk, just in the transfer 
of currencies. Whenever you do that, you will have people that are 
moving money around because they think the value of the money itself 
will change and profit might be gained in an independent market of 
currency exchange.
    It is now true that on any given day, there is $1\1/2\ trillion of 
currency exchange in the world. Many, many, many times more than the 
actual value of the exchange of goods and services. And we have got to 
find a way to facilitate the movement of money, without which trade and 
investment cannot occur, in a way that avoids these dramatic cycles of 
boom and then bust, which have led to the collapse of economic activity 
in so many countries around the world.
    We found a way to do it in the United States after the Great 
Depression. And thank goodness we have never again had a Great 
Depression, even though we've had good times and bad times. That is the 
challenge facing the world financial system today.
    The leading economies have got a lot of work to do. We have to do 
everything we can, not just the United States, but Europe and Japan, to 
spur economic growth. Unless there is a restoration of growth, all the 
changes in the financial rules we make will not get Asia, Latin America, 
countries--Russia--out of their difficulties.
    We have to be ready to provide quick and decisive help to nations 
committed to sound policies. We have to help nations build social safety 
nets so that, when they have inevitable changes in their economic 
conditions, people at least have the basic security they need to 
continue to embrace change and advance the overall welfare of society.
    We have to encourage nations to maintain open, properly financed--
excuse me--properly regulated financial systems so that decisions are 
shaped by informed market decisions and not distorted by corruption. We 
also have to take responsible steps to reform the global financial 
architecture for the 21st century. And we'll do some more of that at the 
G-7 summit in Germany in June.
    In the meanwhile, we have to recognize that the United States has 
made a great contribution to keeping this crisis from being worse than 
it would have been by helping to get money to Brazil, to Russia, to 
other countries, and by keeping our own markets open. If you compare, 
for example, our import patterns with those of Europe or those of Japan, 
you will see that we have far, far more open markets. It has worked to 
make us competitive and productive. We also have the lowest unemployment 
rate in the entire world among all advanced countries now, something 
that many people thought would never happen again.

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    On the other hand, we cannot let other countries' difficulties in 
our open markets become an excuse for them to violate international 
trade rules and dump products illegally on our markets. We've had enough 
problems in America this year and last year--in agriculture and 
aerospace, especially--from countries that could no longer afford to buy 
products, many of which they had already offered. Then, in the last 
several months, we've seen an enormous problem in this country in our 
steel industry because of evident dumping of products in the American 
market that violated the law.
    So I want you to know what while I will do everything to keep our 
markets open, I intend, while this crisis persists, to do everything I 
can to enforce our trade laws.
    Yesterday we received some evidence that our aggressive policy is 
producing some results and, I think, proof that it wasn't market forces 
that led to what we saw in steel over the last year. The new figures 
from the Commerce Department show this: Imports of hot-rolled steel from 
countries most responsible for the surge--Japan, Russia, and Brazil--
have fallen by 96 percent from the record levels we saw last November.
    That is not bad news for them; that's good news. If they won't--if 
American markets are going to stay open, we have to play by the rules. 
We have to follow lawful economic trends, not political and economic 
decisions made to dump on the American markets in ways which hurt our 
economy and undermine our ability to buy the exports of other countries.
    Our fifth challenge has to keep freedom as a top goal for the world 
of the 21st century. Countries like South Korea and Thailand have proven 
in this financial crisis that open societies are more resilient, that 
elected governments have a legitimacy to make hard choices in hard 
times. But if democracies over the long run aren't able to deliver for 
their people, to take them out of economic turmoil, the pendulum that 
swung so decisively toward freedom over the last few years could swing 
back, and the next century could begin as badly as this one began in 
that regard.
    Therefore, beyond economics, beyond the transformation of the great 
countries to economic security--Russia and China--beyond even many of 
our security concerns, we also have to recognize that we can have no 
greater purpose than to support the right of other people to live in 
freedom and shape their own destiny. If that right could be universally 
exercised, virtually every goal I have outlined today would be advanced.
    We have to keep standing by those who risk their own freedom to win 
it for others. Today we're releasing our annual Human Rights Report: The 
message of the Human Rights Report is often resented but always 
respected for its candor, its consistency, for what it says about our 
country and our values. We need to deepen democracy where it's already 
taking root by helping our partners narrow their income gaps, strengthen 
their legal institutions, and build well-educated, healthy societies.
    This will be an important part of the trip I take to Central America 
next week, which has prevailed against decades of civil war only to be 
crushed in the last several months by the devastating force of nature.
    This year, we will see profoundly important developments in the 
potential transition to democracy in two critical countries, Indonesia 
and Nigeria. Both have the capacity to lift their entire regions if they 
succeed and to swamp them in a sea of disorder if they fail. In the 
coming year and beyond, we must make a concentrated effort to help them 
achieve what will be the world's biggest victories for freedom since 
1989.
    Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa. Tomorrow, it holds 
its first free Presidential election, after a dictatorship that made it 
the poorest oil-rich country in the world. We are providing support for 
the transition, and if it succeeds, we have to be prepared to do more. 
Because we count on further progress, today we are also waiving the 
sanctions we imposed when its Government did not cooperate in the fight 
against drugs.
    Indonesia is the fourth largest nation and the largest Islamic 
country in the entire world. In June, it will hold what we hope will be 
its first truly democratic election in more than 40 years. Indonesia 
desperately needs a government that can help it overcome its economic 
crisis while maintaining the support of its people. We are helping to

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strengthen the social safety net for its people in providing the largest 
contribution of any nation to support the coming elections.
    Whether these struggles are far or near, their outcome will 
profoundly affect us. Whether a child in Africa or Southeast Asia or 
Russia or China can grow up educated, healthy, safe, free from violence, 
free of hate, full of hope, and free to decide his or her own destiny, 
this will have a lot to do with the life our children have as they grow 
up. It will help to determine if our children go to war, have jobs, have 
clean air, have safe streets.
    For our Nation to be strong, we must maintain a consensus that 
seemingly distant problems can come home if they are not addressed and 
addressed promptly. We must recognize we cannot lift ourselves to the 
heights to which we aspire if the world is not rising with us. I say 
again, the inexorable logic of globalization is the genuine recognition 
of interdependence. We cannot wish into being the world we seek. Talk is 
cheap. Decisions are not.
    That is why I have asked Congress to reverse the decline in defense 
spending that began in 1985, and I am hopeful and confident that we can 
get bipartisan majorities in both Houses to agree. I hope it will also 
agree to give more support to our diplomats and to programs that keep 
our soldiers out of war, to fund assistance programs to keep nations on 
a stable path to democracy and growth, and to finally pay both our dues 
and our debts to the United Nations.
    In an interdependent world, we cannot lead if we expect to lead only 
on our own terms and never on our own nickel. We can't be a first-class 
power if we're only prepared to pay for steerage.
    I hope all of you, as citizens, believe that we have to seize the 
responsibilities that we have today with confidence, to keep taking 
risks for peace, to keep forging opportunities for our people and 
seeking them for others as well, to seek to put a genuinely human face 
on the global economy, to keep faith with all those around the world who 
struggle for human rights, the rule of law, a better life, to look on 
our leadership not as a burden but as a welcome opportunity, to build 
the future we dream for our children in these, the final days of the 
20th century and the coming dawn of the next.
    The story of the 21st century can be quite a wonderful story. But we 
have to write the first chapter.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 11:20 a.m. in the Plaza Ballroom at the 
Grand Hyatt Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Mayor Willie L. Brown, 
Jr., of San Francisco; Lee Perry, wife of former Defense Secretary 
William Perry; former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel; Chairman 
Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Authority; President Slobodan Milosevic 
of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro); and 
President Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico. The President also referred to the 
Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change. A portion of these remarks could not 
be verified because the tape was incomplete.