Transatlantic Security Challenges

Thank you very much. I’m delighted to be here. I have not been in Sweden for a long time and I feel very welcome here, and I feel I’m among friends. I first came to Sweden in 1981 to 1982. I was an exchange student and lived in Uppsala. I learned Swedish and have wonderful memories of my time in Sweden: skiing, blueberry soup, glögg, and so forth.

But the world has changed a great deal since then. Back then, there were only two Swedish TV channels in Sweden, TV1 and TV2. And that was it. There were Soviet submarines suspected of operating in the archipelago. Ronald Reagan had just started his first term as the U.S. President.

But now the world in vastly different. The Soviet Union is gone. Central Europe and the Baltic countries are members of NATO. Sweden, Finland and 11 other countries have joined the EU. 10 have joined NATO. So Europe now is different.

Most important, in my view, is that the principal challenges we have to face are what they were back then.

I will now switch over to English – sorry.

There are three principal challenges that I would highlight that are different in the world today, which we need to face together as a democratic community.

First is facing global challenges. These are challenges which I would argue, unlike in 1981, are principally beyond Europe, rather than within Europe.

Second, we have made so much progress in Europe -- in terms of EU enlargement, NATO enlargement, strengthening democracy, market economy, the rule of law, and advancing the membership of many states in these institutions -- that we sometimes forget that we have a lot of unfinished business. We have more yet to do. That is the second major challenge that I think we have: finishing the job of a Europe whole, free and at peace.

And third, our institutions do not work as well as they should. On that I’m thinking of NATO. I am thinking of the EU. I am thinking of the OSCE. And I think that one of the things we should do is make sure that we have a very good strategic discussion and understanding of our objectives; that we develop common goals and strategies; and that the institutions then work to implement and execute those strategies so that rather than crashing into each other, we are all working toward a common purpose wherever we are able to work.

So those would be the three things I would highlight. And I think that Sweden, the United States, NATO and the EU, are largely in agreement on these things. But we have to work a lot harder at the execution.

The question that I was asked to address today is "Security in the East:" "How do you build good security in the East?" And seeing this question, I immediately had two questions of my own.

First, what is security in the world we are talking about? And second, what is the East? Let me take each of them in turn.

First, in terms of security we are not only thinking about, and probably not principally thinking about, security from aggressive states. That was true in the past. That is not the principal thing we worry about now. Today, we think of terrorism. We think of weapons of mass destruction. We think about narcotics trafficking. We think about the movement of people and how that affects us. And at the bottom of all this, what we think about is the building of free, democratic, market economic, law-abiding societies that are good for their people and good for the international community: because that is the foundation that real security will rest on, and that is something we have to build.

This was, I have to say, the foundation of President Bush’s second inaugural address. He talked about freedom and he had a phrase along the line that security and freedom in our country depends on the advance of freedom in all the world. That is a short, tight little phrase, but it means what I was talking about. We need a long-term effort to build stronger societies, to help people build democratic societies, and to help protect those people with whatever means that are available and necessary in terms of security so they have a chance to build a better environment in which we all must live.

This means that military force has a role. We see that in Afghanistan. We see that in Iraq. We see that in Operation Active Endeavor, which is conducting counter-terrorism operations in the Mediterranean. We see that in Darfur.

This also means that police and law enforcement and other forms of cooperation have a role.

But fundamentally, it is how we put our ideas together that really counts. It a bad phrase to say, "the war of ideas," but that is in essence what I am talking about: The idea that people have a right to choose their form of government; that they have the right to live in freedom;, that they have the right to pursue their own economic well-being; that they have the right to build strong families and strong societies.

That is the idea that I think unites Europe and United States. And it is an idea that is not limited to the people who live here, but an idea that, I think, applies universally. But it is an idea that faces many many challenges in the world, violent challenges.

I was struck by one thing in some of the earlier presentations, when people were talking about development and talking about security. It is almost as if sometimes people speak as if the rest of the world is neutral, and we add this element of promoting democracy and security to it, and that is a plus.

The reality is that there are very aggressive adversaries out in the world who do not support democracy, and open societies, and the opportunity for people to pursue productive lives. And they are trying to attack our country. They are trying to attack European citizens. They target innocent civilians. And the front line of this is in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. And that is why United States is making such an effort to try to help the people of these countries build democratic societies and do so with some security so they can build those kinds of societies for themselves.

This is an important point: The popular notion is that the U.S. is a reckless practitioner of "hard power" in the world. Well, I would say that there is a role for "hard power." But I am also saying that the United States is the largest and most ambitious practitioner of "soft power" in the world and, indeed, the two serve the same purpose.

And the second question. "What is the East?" I am sure that traditionally, at this conference and at other conferences that I have attended, when we talked about the East, we were thinking about Central and Eastern Europe, Ukraine, the Caucasus and, in our wildest imagination, Central Asia.

But I think when we talk about the type of security that I was just talking about, in the world we live in today, that is only a part of the East. There is a much bigger East out there.

Now, we heard from our friend the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, and I want to be clear: we stand for freedom, democratic society, market-based economic opportunity, anti-corruption, the rule of law, and human rights – in Europe, in Eastern Europe, in the Caucasus, Central Asia.

We support a strong, independent, democratic, market economic Ukraine. We hope that Ukraine’s own process of reforms will make it eligible to be considered as a candidate for NATO membership. There is a ways to go, but we are with the Ukrainian people in those aspirations. We think that such a Ukraine will be a good neighbor for Europe and a good neighbor for Russia. But that is not all.

The principal challenges we face are rooted in Broader Middle East: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Lebanon, the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, violent extremism. For too long we have had a double standard in the way we talk about this. We can talk about democracy in Latin America. We can talk about democracy in Europe or Asia. But when it comes to the Middle East, often times we are not frank. Often times we hear about a "dialogue of civilizations," and we say we have to be "culturally sensitive." I think we do need a little frankness some times, and we do need to see democratic and market economic progress in the Broader Middle East as well. And we, as the United States, and we, as members of a Transatlantic democratic community, have a responsibility to support the people in that region who want to build that kind of society.

In November of 2005, Bahrain hosted a meeting called the Forum for the Future. This is an outgrowth of the G-8 Summit of 2004, where the G-8 countries and countries from the Broader Middle East region launched an initiative to bring together governments, civil society and business to talk about the future of democracy, market economy in the that region.

Morocco hosted the first meeting in the Fall of 2004. Bahrain hosted the meeting this year, and it was striking in the space of a year and a half the degree to which the dialogue has changed among the people of the region themselves. They are very forthright and candid, especially among the NGOs, in talking about democracy, talking about market economy, talking about their governments.

And it was very interesting to see the reaction of some of the governments that were represented. It was also very interesting to see the reaction of some of the Western participants who were there, where many times you would see in their speeches that they were not as forthright and direct as people from the region were themselves in talking about their hopes for the future.

So to come to closure. What I would come back to is that in dealing with security, and in thinking in a broad sense about what that means and the types of threats we face, and in thinking about the Broader Middle East region, the biggest challenge we face as a democratic community is to have our ideas together and to work together on a democratic ideal that can benefit people throughout the world.

We need to work together to support the idea that people should be free, and at peace, and that they have the right to chose their leaders, to pursue health and prosperity, to value life and family, to develop culture. And we need to support people who are doing that with security means as necessary, to protect them from those who would stop them from doing so. That, I believe, is our common goal as we talk about security in the East.

I am going to stop here but I’ll be happy to address any questions.