06 May 1997
("The U.S., the EU and Our Common Challenges") (4330)
Washington -- When the United States encourages the integration of
Europe, says Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, "we encourage
our friends and Allies in Europe to embrace the broadest, most
expansive, most outward-looking, most inclusive possible version of
integration."
Addressing the "Bridging the Atlantic" conference at the State
Department May 6, Talbott discussed a range of topics, including
U.S.-Europe relations, the Economic and Monetary Union, Western
Europe's relationship with Eastern and Central Europe, the enlargement
of NATO, and the expansion of the European Union (EU), including
Turkey's aspirations to join.
He praised the EU "for the farsighted decisions it has already made,
such as its assistance programs in Central and Eastern Europe, its
commitment to expand, its part in the New Transatlantic Agenda."
On NATO enlargement, Talbott said the United States believes "it is
the best way to ensure stability and consolidate democracy in Central
Europe."
He added, "Many of Europe's new democracies are well on their way to
meeting the economic conditions for EU membership. But EU governments
and Western investors must also be confident about the long-term,
deep-seated security of the region, and that's what NATO is all
about."
From America's vantage point, the deputy secretary said, "NATO
enlargement and EU expansion are separate but parallel processes in
support of the same overall cause, which is a broader, deeper
transatlantic community."
He noted Turkey's aspiration to join the EU, saying that nation is
undergoing the strains of modernization, including in the crucial
areas of democracy and human rights.
"We have as much an interest as ever in Turkey's development as a
strong, prosperous, secular and democratic state, fully integrated
with our community," Talbott added. "Only with that kind of Turkey can
we prevail together in the struggle that has replaced the Cold War --
the struggle between security and insecurity, between prosperity and
poverty; in short: between the forces of integration and
disintegration."
In concluding, Talbott said the United States encourages the EU to
continue "building bridges, deepening and broadening the network of
connections and associations within and among the local, national and
regional communities that make up the global community of which we are
all a part."
Following is the text of Talbott's remarks:
(Begin text)
THE U.S., THE EU AND OUR COMMON CHALLENGES
Remarks to the U.S.-EU Conference
By Strobe Talbott
Deputy Secretary of State
May 6, 1997
Thank you, Ambassador Ruperez, for that kind introduction. As
President of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Spanish Parliament,
as Spain's first Ambassador to NATO, as a negotiator who helped to
craft the Helsinki Final Act, you are the personification of the
European side of the transatlantic relationship that is the subject of
my remarks to this distinguished audience.
The theme of this conference is building bridges across the Atlantic.
I work for a president who's building one to the 21st century, so I
applaud the metaphor. But it really is the right one. Many of you here
are dealing with the nuts-and-bolts issues of strengthening the
structures of transatlantic cooperation: student and employee exchange
programs, sister-city relationships, economic partnerships, Internet
link-ups, and the constant back-and-forth, give-and-take transactions
across the Atlantic.
I would like to give special mention to one exchange program in
particular because it has served as a model for several others
represented here.
Five decades ago, a statesman from Arkansas named William Fulbright
had an inspired idea: a scholarship that would give Americans and
others the opportunity to live and to study in a different country.
Since then, thousands have used their Fulbright experience to tie
tighter the bonds between the United States and Europe.
I am particularly pleased to see Harriet Fulbright here today. I want
to tell you, Harriet, that your late husband's friend, admirer and
one-time Senate aide, President Clinton, will do everything he can to
strengthen and extend this remarkable program, and others like it,
such as the Ron Brown and Edmund Muskie Fellowships, which give
students from Europe's young democracies a chance to study in America.
The U.S.-EU Agreement on Higher Education and Vocational Training has
already helped launch dozens of educational consortiums. The
Fellowship of Hope, proposed by former Secretary Christopher last
September, is up and running, giving officials from the U.S., the EU
and its member states a chance to work in the foreign affairs agencies
of our governments. I'm also pleased to see that a Transatlantic Labor
Dialogue has joined the Transatlantic Business Dialogue, and I know
you are already working on a flurry of creative proposals -- from a
transatlantic AIDSNET, to a "telecity" and a digital library projects,
from new sister-city arrangements with communities in Central and
Eastern Europe to corporate and workplace exchange programs.
All of us -- governments, the private sector, universities and NGOs --
are working together in joint enterprise. Its purpose is not just to
strengthen existing structures across the body of water that separates
us, but also to build new structures embracing the values that bring
us together in a single, transatlantic community.
I'd like to speak to you this morning about several ways in which our
community is changing. It is changing basically for the better, but
nonetheless in ways that present challenges to all of us.
Both here, on this side of the pond, in the Western Hemisphere, and on
the far side, in Europe, the watchword of our era is integration.
Secretary of State Albright -- who sends her greetings to all of you
-- is in Mexico. She is with President Clinton and several other
members of his Cabinet, working to advance our administration's vision
of hemispheric integration.
But the quest for integration is a transatlantic phenomenon as well,
and it has been since the birth of our country. In 1785, before Thomas
Jefferson became secretary of state, he was our minister in France.
That was a time of intense, often literally cut-throat competition in
Europe. From his post in Paris, Mr. Jefferson drafted a proposal for
freedom of trade between the Old and the New Worlds, and for a
covenant on the universal rights for the citizens of all nations.
That same year, when Barbary pirates were menacing the sea lanes of
the Mediterranean and Atlantic, Mr. Jefferson proposed that the United
States organize a multinational naval force to combat the threat. If
you'll grant me a little license of creative hindsight, you could say
one of our Founding Fathers was proposing a proto-NATO. However, he
was shot down by his home office on the grounds, among other things,
that we couldn't afford such a thing -- a reminder that persuading
Congress to provide the resources for America's engagement abroad is
nothing new.
A hundred and thirty years later, Americans went "over there" -- to
Europe -- to fight the war that Woodrow Wilson said would end all wars
and make the world safe for democracy. But of course all that carnage
did nothing of the kind, in some measure because its aftermath
included a sustained episode of American isolationism.
It took another World War before America and Europe would finally
build a lasting structure across the Atlantic.
This year, we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Marshall
Plan, which, appropriately, came into being at about the same time as
the Fulbright Exchange Program -- and in furtherance of the same
commitment to transatlantic bridge-building.
The enduring legacy of the Marshall Plan is visible today not only in
the steel mills and railways and farmlands of Western Europe -- it is
visible in the institutions that have brought the two continents
politically and economically closer together. The OECD and the Bretton
Woods institutions -- the World Bank and IMF -- were catalysts not
just for reconstruction of shattered economies but for reconciliation
and integration among former European adversaries. They helped
ultimately to solidify the foundation of the European Union itself.
Together, 50 years ago, we embarked on a period of unprecedented peace
and prosperity; and together, we built the most dynamic trade and
investment relationship in the world.
But there is another point that is crucial, both as an aspect of
history and as a guide for the future: we, the U.S. and Europe, did
not confine our cooperative efforts, or the benefits of those efforts,
to ourselves alone. Rather, we reached out -- we opened up -- to other
regions, to other markets. We saw the pattern in the tiles we were
assembling as part of a larger mosaic. This was not an abstraction --
it could have not been more practical, which is to say, it could not
have been more economical and commercial. The U.S. and the EU worked
together to liberalize world trade. The Uruguay Round of the GATT was
the culmination of that effort.
In a word, to our credit, while acting regionally, we grew used to
thinking, acting, trading globally.
But being limited in our prophetic powers, we also grew used to the
Cold War; we came to think of it as a permanent part of the human
condition, and the Iron Curtain as a permanent fixture on the
continent of Europe. Our shortsightedness in this respect calls to
mind a remark by an American baseball player, Dan Quisenberry, who
used to be a relief pitcher for the Kansas City Royals. "I have seen
the future," he once said, "and it is very much like the present --
only longer."
Then, suddenly, eight years ago, in 1989, the future arrived, and it
looked very different. The walls came down, revealing a new landscape
in which old thinking and old borders were no longer relevant. Today
the fastest growing economies in Europe lie east of the Elbe. Soldiers
from Russia and Ukraine, Estonia and Poland, Britain and France,
America and Canada, and many other countries that were, only a decade
ago, members of opposing blocs are today serving together in Bosnia. I
spent last week in Moscow with Secretary Albright negotiating a
cooperative relationship between Russia and NATO.
All of which vindicates the wisdom of another famous
philosopher-baseball player -- the incomparable Yogi Berra. "The
future," he said, "ain't what it used to be."
With the end of the Cold War, the energies that used to go into common
defense have increasingly been able to go instead into the
strengthening of our core institutions. One of those is the EU itself,
about which I would like to say a few words.
But first let me put forward a general principle -- Let me establish a
context for American support of, and occasional concern about, the EU:
We believe that regional integration in Europe and everywhere else
should help those countries directly involved transcend traditional
boundaries of habit and history, geography and culture. As a
corollary, integration should look outward, rather than inward.
That is our best insurance policy against the possibility that the
wrong kind of regional cohesion will spawn the worst kind of
inter-regional conflict. That worry has been on the minds of some of
our best, most farsighted thinkers for a long time. In the immediate
aftermath of World War Two, George Orwell wrote his futuristic
nightmare "1984." In the story that the novel tells, the globe is
divided into three, warring super-regions -- Eurasia, Eastasia, and
Oceania. Well, we are now 13 years past 1984 and, let's hope, safely
past the danger of which Orwell warned.
But we can't be complacent. We must continue to make sure that
cooperation within regions reinforces cooperation among regions. That
principle guides our own government in its approach to NAFTA, as
President Clinton, Secretaries Albright, Rubin, and Daley are telling
their hosts in Mexico today. It guides us in our approach to South
America and the Far East -- and the opportunities for bridge-building
between the two. Who would have thought a decade ago that Chile would
be one of the most vibrant members of an organization called APEC --
the A and the P stand for Asia-Pacific?
And this same emphasis on openness, on outwardness -- on
bridge-building -- will guide us in our reaction to, and interaction
with, the EU.
Let me borrow the terminology especially familiar to the Europeans
here today: when our administration says we support European
integration, we mean both deepening and broadening; we mean both the
consolidation of international institutions and the expansion, or
enlargement, of those institutions. That means we encourage our
friends and Allies in Europe to embrace the broadest, most expansive,
most outward-looking, most inclusive possible version of integration.
This is not a criticism of past or current EU policy. Quite the
contrary, we credit the EU for the farsighted decisions it has already
made, such as its assistance programs in Central and Eastern Europe,
its commitment to expand, its part in the New Transatlantic Agenda.
That said, we also understand that Europe today is embroiled in a
debate over an issue that seems, at least to its participants, to be
largely internal to Europe. I'm referring to the issue of EMU. A few
words -- carefully chosen, I might add -- about our view on this
important and sensitive subject. The record shows that over the past
50 years, the United States has supported every previous initiative to
achieve greater political and economic unity among European nations.
We've done so for reasons of our own self-interest. A politically
united Europe will be a stronger partner to advance common goals. An
economically united Europe creates a much more attractive environment
for American investment.
As for the EMU, we've been careful not to plunge into the middle of a
debate that already has plenty of just the right participants. It is
not for us to say how this initiative should evolve or who should
join. But we have no doubt -- and no hesitancy in saying -- that an
EMU that cements an open single market and that sparks economic growth
in Europe will be good for the American economy. If the EU emerges
from this bold initiative able to play an even more active and
constructive role on the world stage, that will be good for America,
too.
Let me now turn to another subject that has also generated vigorous
debate: the relationship between the EU and the lands to its East.
Central and Eastern Europe is the region where our century's two hot
wars as well as the Cold War began. New dangers still lurk there, as
is apparent from a sobering fact: From Bosnia, Croatia and Albania in
the Balkans to Chechnya and Nagorno-Karabakh in the Caucasus, more
Europeans have died violently in the last five years than in the
previous 45. Instability there threatens the peace of Europe as a
whole.
Vaclav Havel has reminded us that -- and I quote -- "Just as it is
impossible for one half of a room to be forever warm and the other
half cold, it is equally unthinkable that two different Europe's could
forever exist next to each other without detriment to both -- and it
is the stabler and more prosperous one that would pay the higher
price."
Havel is one of a number of brave leaders of brave peoples, who have,
since 1989, broken the locks, thrown open the gates, torn down the
walls. States that were, only a decade ago, captive nations, fortress
societies and command economies are now holding elections, instituting
the rule of law, opening their economies, nurturing a free press and
knocking at the doors of the various international associations and
institutions that make up our community.
We must respond by opening those doors. In debating whether -- and how
quickly, and on what terms -- to do so, we should remember that when
George Marshall unveiled the plan that came to bear his name, Germany
and France were ruined lands, worse off in many ways than the
countries of Central and Eastern Europe today. Today they and the rest
of the EU represent the triumph of integration over what Marshall
depicted in 1947 as the "hunger, poverty, despotism and chaos" of
Western Europe.
That's why the enlargement of the structures that undergird the
transatlantic community is not some risky new venture, but a logical
extension of the strategy of Marshall, Adenauer, and Monnet.
It was with that idea in mind that the leaders of NATO three years ago
decided to expand to Central and Eastern Europe. NATO had another
choice. It could have confined itself to its Cold War membership. But
that would have implied that Checkpoint Charlie marks the spot where
our interests and aspirations end -- or, as was once suggested not too
long ago, where history itself ends. That would have been a strategic
mistake of the most profound proportions and the most lasting
consequences.
Let me speak for my own government's motives here. We, the United
States, have a variety of mutually reinforcing reasons for enlarging
NATO. We believe it is the best way to ensure stability and
consolidate democracy in Central Europe.
But I'll be quite frank: We have an ulterior motive as well: We hope
that the enlargement of NATO, of which we are a member, will
contribute to the conditions for the enlargement of the EU, of which
we are not a member but in which we have such a profound -- I'd even
say vital -- interest.
This is not just a matter of NATO's setting an example. Rather, it's a
matter of NATO's creating an environment which, because it is more
stable and peaceful, will be conducive to the EU's expansion eastward.
Many of Europe's new democracies are well on their way to meeting the
economic conditions for EU membership. But EU governments and Western
investors must also be confident about the long-term, deep-seated
security of the region, and that's what NATO is all about.
Some have suggested that the opposite is true -- that NATO enlargement
gives the EU an excuse not to embrace new members. The facts argue
otherwise. The clearer we have been about NATO's determination to take
in new members, the clearer the EU has been about its own plans to
expand. What is more, in all fairness to the EU, it is hard to imagine
its process of expansion moving much faster. The EU rightly asks
potential members to make many complex changes in their economic and
regulatory policies. But as Secretary Albright has said, the security
NATO provides should not have to wait until "tomato farmers in Central
Europe start using the right kinds of pesticides."
From our vantage point, NATO enlargement and EU expansion are separate
but parallel processes in support of the same overall cause, which is
a broader, deeper transatlantic community.
Let me turn now to a third tough, important issue that the EU faces as
it looks East -- and South. This is one that the EU faces as it looks
East -- and South. It is the challenge to Europe's sense of itself and
its future posed by Turkey's aspiration to join the EU. Here, too, the
U.S. doesn't have a vote, but it certainly has interests.
Turkey is undergoing the strains of modernization, including in the
crucial area of democracy and human rights. These areas, along with
Turkey's relationship with Greece, are all legitimate issues of
concern to the EU. But these difficulties do not make Turkey any less
European. In fact, many current EU members have overcome far greater
traumas in this century -- and that's putting it mildly. And let us
not forget that at the beginning of this century, in the wake of World
War One and the collapse of the Ottoman empire, Turkey, under the
leadership of Kemal Ataturk made a strategic choice about its nature
and its orientation -- the right choice, from our point of view and,
we believe, from Turkey's own.
Then, in the wake of World War II, Turkey joined NATO. That was, of
course, largely because Turkey shared a border with the Soviet Union
and was thus literally on the front line of the Cold War. But it is
today just as much on the front line of the multiple challenges that
face us in the post-Cold War era. Turkey's continuing strategic
importance derives from its frontiers with Iraq, Syria and Iran, and
from its proximity (as well as its linguistic affinity) to the
Caucasus and Central Asia.
Therefore we have as much an interest as ever in Turkey's development
as a strong, prosperous, secular and democratic state, fully
integrated with our community. Only with that kind of Turkey can we
prevail together in the struggle that has replaced the Cold War -- the
struggle between security and insecurity, between prosperity and
poverty; in short: between the forces of integration and
disintegration.
We recognize how difficult and multi-dimensional the issue of Turkey
is, not least for Turkey itself, but also for others. We realize that
Turkey's relationship to the EU is not just a foreign-policy issue for
several major EU states, but one of domestic politics as well, given
the connection between EU membership and freedom of movement.
We in the U.S. have some familiarity with such connections, as anyone
knows who has followed the debate over NAFTA. I'd even say that, among
the many things that the U.S. and the EU have in common is a dilemma:
how to reconcile, on the one hand, the imperatives and benefits of
regional integration and open borders with our neighbors and, on the
other, the imperatives of a sound and humane policy on migration. In
their current visit to Mexico, President Clinton and his Cabinet are
stressing that we want to encourage legal migration, which has
enriched our culture and our economy and made the United States the
fifth largest Hispanic nation on Earth. We want to encourage legal
immigrants to become citizens, while at the same time, we want to
discourage illegal migration, which only erodes the consensus for
deeper ties.
We recognize that the EU and Turkey are working hard to strike their
own balances on these complex issues, and to stake out as much common
ground as possible. The EU has had a Customs Union Agreement with
Turkey for over a year and last week, the EU stated that its door is
open to Turkish membership according the same criteria applied to any
other applicant. We also applaud the establishment last week of a
group of "Wise Men" to look at the issues that have generated so much
tension between Greece and Turkey.
Still, there are those who resist vehemently the idea that any nations
to the east of what might be called "traditional Europe" can ever
truly be part of a larger, twenty-first century Europe. We believe
that view is quite wrong -- and potentially quite dangerous. Over the
centuries, Europe at its best -- and its most peaceful and most
prosperous -- has defined itself not in terms of artificial barriers
-- a river here, a mountain range there, a concrete-and-barbed-wire
wall somewhere else. Rather, Europe has become Europe by reaching over
such boundaries, by assembling itself into a community of nations that
share values, aspirations and ways of life
Turkey has been a part of the European system since the sixteenth
century. Of course, it has cultural ties to Central Asia and Middle
East. But so does Russia, which must also be part of the building of
an integrated post-Cold War Europe if there is to be such a thing.
True, most of Turkey is separated from the rest of Europe by a bit of
water. But then so is all of the United Kingdom.
Let me also say a word more about Islam. The current debate over
Turkey resonates with references to "culture," or sometimes as
"civilization." These words are often euphemisms for religion. There
is a theory currently in vogue that the Cold War rivalry between
communism and capitalism has been replaced by a global "clash of
civilizations," including one between Western and Muslim countries.
That idea gives short shrift both to the great diversity within these
supposed civilizations and to what they have in common. It
underestimates the ethnic and religious diversity of the United States
and, increasingly, of Western Europe as well. And it underestimates
the dangers we may face in the future if we raise today artificial
barriers against the aspirations of any European nation that is
willing to accept the standards and responsibilities of our democratic
community, or if we define the "European-ness" of a village on the
basis of whether its landmarks are church spires or minarets.
As Warren Christopher put it early last year, our strategy of
integration must, and I quote, "not recognize any fundamental divide
among the Catholic, Orthodox, and Islamic parts of Europe. That kind
of thinking fueled the war in the former Yugoslavia, and it must have
no place in the Europe we are building."
Secretary Albright strongly agrees, and she will use her own tenure
here to urge that Europe define itself as inclusively, expansively,
comprehensively as possible.
So, to conclude, with respect to all three issues I have touched on
this morning -- the EMU, the former communist lands to its East, and
its relationship with Turkey -- the United States will continue to
recommend as guiding principles for statesmanship and public policy
precisely those goals and values that motivate all of you in the work
that has brought you together for this conference. We will encourage
the EU to do in the future what the individuals gathered, and the
organizations represented here are doing right now -- and that is
building bridges, deepening and broadening the network of connections
and associations within and among the local, national and regional
communities that make up the global community of which we are all a
part.
Thank you very much.
(End text)