Bill Clinton: “Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Johnson, Mr. Turner, and ladies and gentlemen, good evening. I want to welcome those…”

“Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Johnson, Mr. Turner, and ladies and gentlemen, good evening. I want to welcome those of you who are here at the CNN conference and the millions more who are watching all across the world tonight. I also want to thank the Carter Center for hosting us for this pathbreaking discussion of world events. Throughout the history of the United States and particularly after major conflicts, America has had to reexamine how we define our security and what kind of world we hope to live in and to leave our children and what our responsibilities for that world are. With the cold war over we have clearly come to another such moment, a time of great change and possibility. The specter of nuclear annihilation is clearly receding. A score of new democracies has replaced the former Soviet empire. A global economy has collapsed distances and expanded opportunity, because of a communications revolution symbolized most clearly by CNN and what all of us are doing this evening all around the world. We are front-row history witnesses. We see things as they occur. I remember when I was a young man watching the news on television at night. There was only a small amount of coverage allotted to the world scene, and very often the footage I would see as a boy would be a whole day old. Now we're impatient if we learn about things an hour after they occur instead of seeing them in the moment. The Berlin Wall has been toppled. A handshake of hope has started the series of peace news that will be necessary at long last to bring peace to the troubled Middle East. And this week we saw these glorious and unforgettable scenes of millions of South Africans of all races lining up with joy and courage to give birth to their new multiracial democracy. But all of us know that this era poses dangers as well. Russia and the other former Communist states are going through wrenching transitions. The end of the superpower standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union lifted the lid off a cauldron of smoldering ethnic hatreds. And there is now so much aggression within the national borders of countries all around the world. Indeed, all of us feel our humanity threatened as much by fights going on within the borders of nations as by the dangers of fighting across national borders. There are regimes, such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, who persist in working to develop weapons of mass destruction. We see brutal human rights abuses from Haiti to Rwanda and dire humanitarian and environmental problems from the sweeping AIDS epidemic and desertification in Africa to deforestation in Latin America and Asia. In the face of so much promise and trouble, we have a chance, a chance to create conditions of greater peace and prosperity and hopefully more lasting peace and prosperity, but only if the world's leading nations stay actively engaged in the effort. With the cold war over, there are pressures here in America and in other nations around the world to turn inward, to focus on needs at home. Here at home for us that means things like job creation and reducing crime and providing health care to all our citizens. It is right, and indeed imperative, for us to address these needs. But the United States cannot turn our back on the world, nor can other nations. I know our engagement costs money, and sometimes it costs lives. I know well that we cannot solve every problem, nor should we try. But in an era of change and opportunity and peril, America must be willing to assume the obligations and the risks of leadership. And I am determined to see that we do that. It is important that we have a clear road map in a new era based on our national interests and our clearly stated values, a road map that charts where we're trying to go. Tonight let me briefly sketch it out before taking questions. Our highest priority and my highest priority as President must continue to be simply and clearly to protect our land, our people, and our way of life. That is the core of our national interest. We also must seize opportunities that will enhance our safety and our prosperity, acting alone when necessary, acting with others whenever possible. We have an interest in continuing to serve as a beacon of strength and freedom and hope. For we are, after all, a unique nation. We are the world's most powerful arsenal, its oldest democracy, its most daring experiment in forging different races, religions, and cultures into a single people. Since taking office, my strategy to advance those interests has been based on three priorities: first, developing policies to meet the security challenges of this new era and then shaping our defense forces necessary to carry out those policies; second, making our Nation's global economic interests an integral and essential part of our foreign policies; and third, promoting the spread of democracy abroad. Let me discuss each of these briefly. First, ensuring that we have strong policies and ready defenses for a new security environment. Thankfully, we no longer face the prospect of Soviet troops marching into Western Europe. But the world is still a dangerous place, and the skill and the power and the readiness of our men and women in uniform remains a bulwark of our freedom and freedom in many places abroad. Last year, we completed a sweeping assessment of what military forces we now need in order to meet this era's threats. We concluded that we must have forces that can fight and win two major regional conflicts nearly simultaneously. These forces will cost less than what was needed during the cold war, but we must not cut too far. And I have fought against deeper cuts in our defenses that would weaken our ability to be ready to defend our interests. We're taking other steps to meet the threats of this new era. At the NATO summit convened in January, we and our NATO allies adopted the concept of the Partnership For Peace to help draw former Communist states and other states in Europe not presently aligned with NATO into closer security cooperation with Western Europe. We're working to increase regional security in areas like the Middle East, where we hope tomorrow Israel and the PLO will sign an important accord that builds on the promise of their breakthrough last September. We're continuing to reduce the world's nuclear dangers, working to end North Korea's dangerous nuclear program. We started negotiations on a comprehensive test ban. When I took office, four former Soviet republics had nuclear weapons. We succeeded with three of them in nailing down commitments to eliminate their entire nuclear arsenals. And we are proceeding in that important work. And now, for the very first time, our nuclear missiles are no longer targeted at Russia, nor theirs at us. The second part of our strategy is to place economic progress at the center of our policies abroad. For too many years there was a dangerous dislocation here in America between our international policies and our economic policies. We were strong militarily when we became economically weak because of our dangerously high deficits and low productivity, things which contributed to the weakening of nations all around the world and dried up much of the capital needed in less developed countries for development and growth. We advocated free trade, but often we practiced just the reverse when under the pressure of poor economic performance. And even when we pushed free trade, we often here in our own country lacked the policies we needed to make sure that it benefited ordinary American citizens. My goal has been to reduce our deficit, increase our investment, increase our competitiveness, improve the education and training of our people, and keep pushing for agreements to open world markets for no special treatment for the United States but more open markets so that all of us may grow and compete together. This past year, there was important progress. We enacted the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico and secured the biggest market opening agreement in history with the GATT world trade talks, agreements that will create American jobs for us here in the United States while spurring significant global economic growth. We hosted a summit of leaders from the Asian-Pacific region, the fastest growing region on Earth. This year we will seek enactment of the GATT round in the Congress and convene the first summit in a generation of our hemispheric neighbors. We work to promote environmentally sound forms of economic development both here and abroad. We have to remember that many of the civil wars we have seen and are seeing today, tearing apart societies across Africa and elsewhere, are caused not only by historic conflicts but also by the abject and utterly terrifying deterioration of not only the economy but the environment in which those people live. The third key to our policy is fostering democracy. The new progress of democracy all around the world resonates with our values and our interests. It makes us safer here in the United States. We know democracies are less likely to wage war, to violate human rights, to break treaties. That's why we fought two world wars, to protect Europe's democracies, and why we stood firm for a half a century to contain communism. Now the greatest opportunity for our security is to help enlarge the world's communities of market democracies and to move toward a world in which all the great powers govern by a democratic plan. If we do, we'll have more valuable partners in trade and better partners in diplomacy and security. That's why I have given a lot of attention to promoting democratic and market reformers in Russia, in Ukraine, the Baltics, and other former Communist states. We saw that strategy pay off again just last week as Russia and Latvia reached an historic accord to withdraw Russia's military from Latvian territory by the end of August. Our goal is to foster the success of new democracies like those in Latin America and now in South Africa and to apply pressure to restore democracy where it has been overthrown, as in Haiti. Security, prosperity, democracy: These are the pillars of our strategy in the new world. These building blocks do not answer every question we confront. In particular, this era has seen an epidemic of humanitarian catastrophes, many caused by ethnic conflicts or the collapse of governments. Some, such as Bosnia, clearly affect our interests. Others, such as Rwanda, less directly affect our own security interests but still warrant our concern and our assistance. America cannot solve every problem and must not become the world's policeman. But we do have an obligation to join with others to do what we can to relieve suffering and to restore peace. The means we use will and must vary from circumstance to circumstance. When our most important interests are at stake, we will not hesitate to act alone if necessary. Where we share an interest in action with the international community, we work perhaps through the United Nations. This week we will unveil a set of policies to reform U.N. peacekeeping to help make those operations both less expensive and more effective. In other cases we will work in partnership with other nations. In Bosnia, for example, we have stepped up our diplomatic involvement, along with Russia and others. We supported NATO enforcement measures and committed to provide United States forces as a part of a NATO enforcement mission if and when the parties can reach a workable peace agreement. Although that conflict continues, we should never forget that there are tonight people in Sarajevo, Tuzla, and Mostar who are alive because of the actions taken with NATO working with the United Nations. The safe areas, the no-fly zone, the longest humanitarian airlift in history, all these efforts and others are contributing to a resolution of a very difficult problem. This is a pivotal moment in the affairs of our world, a moment when we can expand the frontiers of freedom, create a more prosperous global economy, give millions in war-torn lands a chance to enjoy a normal life, when we can make the people in each of our lands safer from the world's deadliest weapons. On each of these, I believe the leadership of the United States is indispensable. My commitment is to exercise that leadership so that we can pass onto our children a world that is safer, freer, and more livable for their future. Thank you very much. Haiti [At this point, Judy Woodruff described the format for the forum and introduced a participant from Trinidad, who asked about U.S. policy toward the Caribbean and Latin America.]”