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Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott Address at Bucharest University, Bucharest, Romania, March 19, 1998

(As delivered)

The United States and Romania: A Strategic Partnership

Thank you, Rector [Ion] Mihailescu, for that kind introduction and for the warm welcome you have given Ambassador Rosapepe, my other State Department colleagues, and me. It's a pleasure and an honor to be with you.

It's also a pleasure to be back in Bucharest. If you'll permit me to begin my remarks on a personal note, I'd like to recall the first time I was in your city -- and then recall the last.

The first time I came here was more than a quarter of a century ago, in 1971. I lived in nearby in Yugoslavia, where I was a journalist for Time magazine, covering what in those days we called Eastern Europe. I remember taking the overnight train from Belgrade to Bucharest to conduct an interview with a man who bore many titles: General Secretary of the Communist Party, President of the Socialist Republic, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, Chairman of the Defense Council and, of course, "Genius of the Carpathians."

It was with this vivid recollection of the bad old days of your country that I returned to Bucharest last July. I was accompanying my President. It was a beautiful day, warmer than today and just as sunny. But the weather was nothing compared to the human atmosphere. I stood about a kilometer from here, on University Square. At least 150,000 of your fellow citizens -- including, I suspect, quite a few of you here today -- gave Bill Clinton one of the most exuberant welcomes he has ever received. He is a professional politician who has twice been elected President of the United States, so he has seen some enthusiastic crowds in his day. But his encounter with the people of Romania will, I assure you, always be for him an especially vivid and gratifying memory.

Relaxing a few hours later aboard the Presidential aircraft, Air Force One -- you might know it from the movie -- he commented how appropriate it was to have addressed the Romanian people next to a university, since this is an institution dedicated to truth, to independence of thought, and to the common heritage and shared aspirations of humanity.

In bad times for a country -- and Romania has had more than its share of those -- universities can be the intellectual conscience of the nation. Like cathedrals and monasteries in the middle ages, universities can serve as sanctuaries. Within their walls, brave students and teachers keep the flame of freedom alive. They shield it with their minds and sometimes with their bodies, so that it cannot be extinguished by the winds of war or by the suffocation of tyranny.

In good times, cathedrals of learning can help govern a country. It has even been known to happen that an especially fine university might donate its rector to serve as the President of the Republic -- a democratically elected President, that is.

Less than a decade ago -- in 1990 -- Professor Constantinescu was a visiting member of the faculty at Duke University, in North Carolina. He was one of more than 2,000 Romanian scholars and students who have participated in educational exchange programs between our countries since yours won its freedom.

Another beneficiary of those exchanges is my new friend, Foreign Minister Plesu. He taught at the University of California in 1994. In fact, he came very close to being my neighbor in Washington, DC. He was invited to teach at Georgetown University, but he turned down that offer so that he could accept his current position.

Earlier today, Foreign Minister Plesu and I had our first bilateral discussion, and I can already tell that academia's loss is diplomacy's gain. I am going to profit immensely from our acquaintance -- intellectually as well as diplomatically.

Part of my purpose in coming to Bucharest is to work with your Foreign Minister in developing what we call our Strategic Partnership.

This is much more than just a grandiose phrase, and it is not merely an abstraction. Rather, the Strategic Partnership refers to a systematic pattern of joint effort on behalf of shared goals -- goals that we pursue together not just here in central Europe but around the world. The United States and Romania have joined in peacekeeping missions in Bosnia, Angola, and Somalia. Earlier this month, we were united in our insistence that Iraq comply immediately and unconditionally with all resolutions of the United Nations Security Council. The United States is particularly appreciative of the support Romania has given to our ongoing efforts to resolve that crisis.

Starting yesterday, in a meeting with President Constantinescu immediately upon our arrival, my colleagues and I are conducting a forward-looking dialogue with our Romanian hosts.

Our goal is to find additional ways to help Romania prepare to take its rightful place in the various institutions that make up the Euro-Atlantic community, notably including the one whose name President Clinton heard chanted so insistently on the square eight months ago -- the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

That subject is today, as it was last July, very much on your minds. It's on mine, too. Let me put into context the issue of NATO, its role, and Romania's aspiration for membership. I will speak first about American policy toward Europe as a whole and then about American policy toward your neighborhood in particular.

The underlying premise of our policy could not be simpler or more straightforward. It is this: The well-being of the American people depends in no small measure on the security and welfare of this Continent. We have learned that basic truth the hard way. Twice in the lifetime of our more senior citizens, Europe exploded into world wars that cost the lives of more than half a million Americans. The Cold War also began on this continent, and it cost the United States the equivalent of more than $13 trillion. Moreover, in the crises over Berlin and Cuba, the Cold War brought the entire planet near the brink of the hottest war imaginable -- global thermonuclear holocaust.

A little over 5 years ago, Bill Clinton came into office acutely aware that he was the first American President elected after the end of the Cold War. Hence he sees it as not just his opportunity but as his obligation to make sure that the United States does everything in its power to heal the divisions of the past and to help build a Europe that is, for the first time in its history, both undivided and at peace.

That is the goal. The means, as we see it, are largely institutional -- or, as is often said, architectural. We are building a complex but coherent structure of organizations and associations in which our children and grandchildren will make their homes and in which they will be able to live safely, freely, and prosperously. This construction job requires us to adapt existing institutions where possible and to establish new ones where necessary. Today there are dozens of such institutions. Romania belongs to many of them -- including the OSCE, the Partnership for Peace, the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, the Council of Europe, the Southeastern European Cooperation Initiative, and the Central European Free Trade Area. Together, all those bodies -- whatever their size, their auspices, their membership, their self-assigned task -- make up the superstructure of the new Europe.

The foundation of that superstructure is a shared commitment to certain ideals: democratic governance, civil society, sustainable development through the dynamism of the free market, the rule of law, pluralism in politics and tolerance in society, full rights for citizens belonging to ethnic and religious minorities, civilian control of the military, and, in international relations, respect for the territorial integrity of states and the pursuit of the peaceful settlement of disputes.

President Clinton journeyed here on July 11 because he knew that the Romanian people and government are working to cement precisely these goals and principles into place as the foundation of your own nation.

I should also say that President Clinton came here knowing how difficult this great task has been -- and at what sacrifice the people of Romania have made their heroic choice to join the community of democracies. In December 1989, your nation shed blood and tears -- in Timisoara, in Sibiu, at the state television station just 5 kilometers from here, and in University Square. Yours was not a velvet revolution but a violent one.

Nor is yours the only country to have suffered during the transition from Communism and the Cold War to the era now upon us. We can all say good riddance to Marxist-Leninist dictatorship, to the Iron Curtain and to the self-styled geniuses who ruled by brute force and primal fear. But the collapse of these modern evils has, in many parts of the post-Communist world, been accompanied by the eruption of medieval struggles over blood and culture. From Bosnia, Croatia, Albania, and Kosovo in the Balkans to Chechnya, Abkhazia, South Osetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh in the Caucasus, more Europeans have died violently in the last 5 years than in the previous 45.

That is the bad news. The good news is that the institutions that make up the superstructure of the new Europe are slowly but surely, imperfectly but promisingly trying to prove themselves up to the challenge of dealing with those conflicts. They are doing so by deterring war where it has not yet started, restoring peace where it has broken down, promoting civil society, and fostering reconciliation and cooperation within and among states.

The worst of our collective post-Cold War nightmares was the fratricidal, suicidal, and often genocidal war in Bosnia. It raged for 4 years and cost 200,000 lives. It was -- to an extent perhaps not everyone understands -- a near-death experience for Europe as a whole. That is, if unchecked, it could have killed the dream of pan-European integration and peace.

Now the guns in Bosnia are silent. The people of that shattered land are rebuilding their lives and their state. Romania has made a significant contribution to this vital and promising enterprise. It did so through its strong support of the Dayton accords that ended the war, and it has continued to do so through its participation in the implementation and stabilization forces that have kept the peace. A Romanian engineering battalion is in Bosnia today building roads and bridges that will be there long after foreign troops are gone.

As we look to the future, we are counting on Romania along with the other nations of southeastern Europe to create a zone of stability around all the nations of the former Yugoslavia -- an environment within which democracy and economic development will have a fair chance to succeed.

We -- the United States -- will do our own part in this effort. As I told your neighbors in Skopje when I was there day before yesterday, our government is determined to make sure that there is a continuing international security presence in Macedonia after the expiration of the current United Nations mandate there. There cannot be a security vacuum. As we all know, nature abhors a vacuum -- especially in the Balkans and especially, I might add, at the present moment.

That brings me to the subject of Kosovo. The dangerous situation there constitutes a dire threat to regional stability and therefore, for the reason I stressed at the outset of these remarks, it poses a threat to the vital national interests of the United States as well. The United Nations, the OSCE, the European Union, and the Contact Group on the Former Yugoslavia are all working in concert to prevent the brutal policies of Belgrade from triggering a fourth Balkan war in this century.

Just before setting off on my current trip, I was at an EU conference in Washington at which the single-most forceful and sensible statement on the Kosovo emergency came from my friend and your ambassador to the United States, Mircea Geoana. Last evening, I heard from President Constantinescu himself an eloquent explanation of the problem and a vow of Romania's determination to be part of the solution. That was deeply gratifying, because if ever there was a chance to prove that the U.S.-Romanian Strategic Partnership is real, relevant and effective, it is in our joint response to the challenge of Kosovo.

President Constantinescu and I also discussed the need for new, proactive measures that will help us avert crises such as Kosovo before they happen in the future. To that end, President Clinton recently launched what we call our Southeastern Europe Action Plan. Its objectives are to help consolidate reform within individual states, to promote cooperation within the region, and to advance the region's integration into Europe as a whole. Those are goals to which President Constantinescu is clearly dedicated, and they are goals that the U.S.-Romanian Strategic Partnership will help advance.

That brings me to the subject of NATO. When President Clinton and the other leaders of the Alliance decided in 1993 that NATO should take in new members from among Europe's new democracies, they did so for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, they believed that enlarging NATO would strengthen the Alliance's ability to defend its member states. That has been and will remain NATO's core mission and primary reason for being.

But NATO is not just a military organization -- it is also a political one. NATO has always had that function, including in its old, Cold War incarnation. In the 1950s, the alliance provided the security umbrella under which France and Germany could achieve a historic reconciliation, which in turn laid the ground for the European Union. In the early 1980s, NATO promoted the consolidation of civilian-led democracy in Spain. On numerous occasions, NATO has helped keep the peace between your neighbors Greece and Turkey.

President Clinton and his fellow Allied leaders believe that today, while retaining its military capacity and its core identity as a defense treaty, NATO can foster integration and cooperation between what we used to think of as East and West. Moreover, the very prospect of NATO membership has encouraged positive, peaceful trends in central Europe. Partly in pursuit of their goal to join NATO, a number of central European states, notably including Romania, have intensified their internal reforms and improved their relations with each other.

The recent accords between Romania and Hungary are a prime example. They have helped pave the way for a number of other positive developments. Your presidents and prime ministers have exchanged visits. Romania and Hungary have opened consulates in Cluj and Szeged. You have initiated plans to build a new highway between Bucharest and Budapest, and you have doubled the number of border crossings.

Meanwhile, you've undertaken similar projects with other countries in the region. I just came from Sofia, and I know that you and your Bulgarian neighbors have upgraded the crossing between Guirgiu and Ruse. Turning northeast, Presidents Constantinescu and Luchinsky agreed last December to set up a Romanian-Moldovan fiber-optic cable between Iasi and Chisinau. Meanwhile, Romanian and Ukrainian diplomats have begun negotiating the complex issue of exploitation rights on the sea shelf. So, at every point of the compass, Romania is proving itself a good neighbor -- and inducing its neighbors to reciprocate.

Agreements such as the ones you've been willing to reach with states along your borders can serve as a potent vaccine against the plague that has so devastated the former Yugoslavia. In short, Romanian foreign policy is a model for others.

It was against that backdrop that last July in Madrid the leaders of NATO affirmed that the first three nations invited to join the alliance will not be the last. Specifically, they agreed to review the process of enlargement again at the next summit in 1999; and they singled out for special mention the progress that Romania, Slovenia, and the Baltic states have made toward meeting the criteria for admission.

It was, of course, immediately after the Madrid Summit that President Clinton came here to Bucharest. He brought a message of support, encouragement, and commitment. He promised that if Romania stays the course of reform, the United States will continue to help Romania meet the criteria for membership. In short, the door of NATO enlargement remains open in general and open to Romania in particular. The reaffirmation of this promise was my principal message from President Clinton to President Constantinescu yesterday. Our two presidents agree on many things -- including that the open door is an essential feature of European and Trans-Atlantic architecture.

NATO has looked due east in the first round of expansion, but it has also committed itself to looking north and south in the future. This century has established that Europe as a whole cannot be peaceful without a stable southern flank, and recent weeks have reminded us of your country's crucial and positive role in this part of the continent.

Let me now apply the principle of the open door to another institution that Romania aspires to join -- the European Union. In our minds, there is a direct connection between the two institutions -- NATO and the EU. We Americans have made no secret of our hope that the enlargement of NATO will contribute to the conditions for the enlargement of the EU. This is not just a matter of NATO setting an example. It's a matter of NATO 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.

We have, fortunately, passed the point when there is any doubt about the EU expanding. In December, the Union invited six countries to begin accession negotiations, with exploratory talks to follow with the other five applicant countries, Romania included. Last Thursday, Ambassador Geoana and I heard the British presidency of the EU reaffirm that "exploration" means what we would hope: you explore a place where you want actually to go. In other words, the EU is genuinely open to Romania and other deserving applicants as they qualify in the future.

Let me add a word in this regard about your neighbor and fellow applicant to the EU, Turkey. As a very interested non-member of the EU, the United States hopes that the EU will apply the principle of the open door to Turkey as well. That is because we believe that Turkey is more likely to make the right choices about its own future if we demonstrate that the Turks' future lies with us. That means designing and building our institutions in a way that holds open a place for them when they are ready.

There is a larger issue at stake here -- one that goes to the very heart of Europe's nature and fate. Over the centuries, Europe at its best and its most peaceful and most prosperous has defined itself in terms of universal values, not in terms of artificial barriers -- a river here, a mountain range there, a concrete-and-barbed-wire wall somewhere else -- nor in terms of religious, ethnic, or ideological divisions. The "Europeanness" of a country, a city, or a village should not depend on whether its landmarks are the spires of a cathedral or the dome of an orthodox church or the minarets of a mosque.

Those nations that will prove most successful in adapting themselves to the realities and opportunities of the age in which we live -- an age of global interdependence -- will be the ones that make a virtue and a strength out of their own diversity; the successful will be those that are most inclusive in the way they define citizenship and statehood.

Romania, as I fully appreciate, is grappling with this issue itself, particularly with respect to the place of ethnic Hungarians in your national life. The inclusion of the ethnic Hungarian Party -- the UDMR -- in the government allows you to work through the challenges of diversity by democratic means.

In closing, let me assure you that we -- your American friends -- are optimistic about Romania's ability over time to meet all the challenges you face. We are confident of Romania's ability to carry through its difficult but essential economic reforms. We are confident of its ability to be a force for stability and prosperity in this region. And we are confident of its ability to take its place in the larger Euro-Atlantic community of democracies -- including through its membership in the most successful military and political alliance in history.

One reason for our optimism about the future of Romania and about the future of the U.S.-Romanian Strategic Partnership is that Romania has come so far in such a short period of time. Even by the standards of the modern world -- when the video cassette recorder of history sometimes seems to be in a fast-forward mode -- Romania has made extraordinary progress in an extraordinarily short period of time and against extraordinary odds.

President Clinton could feel that achievement and that potential in the air of Bucharest when he stood outside in the sunshine on University Square last July. On that occasion, you applauded him graciously. I come here today in part to return that applause -- to hail you, your fellow citizens, and your leaders -- for what you've accomplished over the past decade, and to express the pride and confidence we Americans feel at the bright possibilities of what we can accomplish together in the new century -- which, by the way, starts in only 1 year, 9 months, 1 week, 5 days, 10 hours, and 55 minutes. That barely leaves us time for what I'm sure will be a lively discussion, so we'd better get started. I look forward to your comments and questions.

Thank you very much.

[End of Document]

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