A New Era of Peril and Promise
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A New Era of Peril and Promise
President-elect Clinton
Address before the Diplomatic Corps, Georgetown University,
Washington, DC, January 18, 1993
came to this university at a time
when a fallen president had asked
my generation to give something
back to our country. I was looking for a
place to prepare for that calling.
Georgetown and its School of Foreign
Service have made enormous contribu-
tions not only to my life but to public
service in general. Many of its gradu-
ates, including my classmates, are now
distinguished members of our Foreign
Service, our armed forces, or serving in
other areas of public and private life.
Recently, Georgetown has made yet
another contribution in my friend,
Dr. Madeleine Albright, who has
agreed to be our nation's voice at the
United Nations.
I also chose to speak to you here,
today, because of Georgetown's histori-
cal tradition. George Washington
spoke at this building, Old North, in
1797, when the college was not yet
10 years old. Our republic, scarcely
20 years old, stood not with great pow-
ers then but with great hopes. The
Marquis de Lafayette, whose friend-
ship and cooperation with our nation
was so vital to its birth, was escorted to
this campus by a troop of light horse
cavalry in 1824. And across America's
generations, presidents, dignitaries,
and scholars have chosen this site to
speak about our collective hopes for the
future of our nation and the world.
In December of 1991, as I launched
my campaign for the presidency, I
came back here to Georgetown to de-
liver three speeches which laid out the
principles and policies that would be-
come the heart of my candidacy. In the
first of those speeches, I recalled the
lesson taught me by one of my George-
town professors, Carroll Quigley....
Carroll Quigley argued that the de-
fining idea of Western civilization and
of the United States in particular was
what he called future preference-the
idea that the future can be better than
the present and that each of us has a
personal, moral responsibility to make
it so.
When we embraced that idea, it
was a revolutionary one. Now, all
around the world, people are beginning
to think that way. That idea was the
heart of my campaign for the presi-
dency, and it is a lesson that now
applies with equal force to the commu-
nity of nations at the end of the Cold
War. While we cannot yet discern all of
the contours of the new age in which
we are living, we know it is clearly an
era of both peril and promise when the
future for millions and millions of
people around the globe can be better
than the present; when the dreams of
freedom and democracy and economic
prosperity and human rights can be-
come real-but they may or not,
depending on what we do.
This is a season for hope. The Ber-
lin wall today exists now only in the
little remnants of stone that have be-
come the personal mementos of a
historic triumph of freedom over tyr-
anny. A worldwide democratic
revolution has shown its strength and
tenacity, from the shipyards of Gdansk
to the streets of Moscow, from the cam-
puses of Beijing to the villages of El
Salvador and the townships of Soweto.
The spread of freer markets has
brought the possibility of better living
conditions from the factories of the
Baltics to the fertile fields of Africa and
Latin America.
But the events of the last week re-
mind us anew that this era will not lack
for dangers. We are all mindful of the
tension in Iraq and of Saddam Hus-
sein's continuing provocations against
the international community and his
own people. He must understand that
America's resolve during this transi-
tion period will not waver.
I support the international
community's actions designed to bring
him to full compliance with all UN Se-
curity Council resolutions, and I ask
each of you in the diplomatic corps to
emphasize this point to your own gov-
ernments. The policy of this country
will remain American policy after Janu-
ary 20.
We face many immediate other per-
ils in this new era-the rise of ethnic
hatreds in the former republics of Yu-
goslavia and the Soviet Union, the
suffering in Somalia, the turmoil in
Haiti, the proliferation of advanced
weaponry, the spread of terrorism and
drug trafficking, the AIDS epidemic,
and the degradation of the global envi-
ronment-and each will require strong
American leadership if we are to over-
come them.
The American people have called
for a new Administration, yet there is
an essential continuity in our foreign
policy. Our relations and actions
abroad are rooted in enduring inter-
ests, alliances, friendships, and
principles. My Administration will
build on the successes of my predeces-
sors in specific areas: in the quest for
peace in the Middle East, in the effort
to secure a safe reduction in our
nuclear arsenals and stem weapons of
mass destruction from proliferation, in
the bold decision to relieve the suffer-
ing in Somalia, [in] the assistance to the
process of reform in the former Soviet
Union, [and] in the search for new and
expanding markets around the world.
Yet, the world has changed in fun-
damental ways, and we also must
change with it. We need to state
clearly how we plan in the United
States to adapt our nation's foreign
policy goals and institutions to this new
era. Such a clear statement is neces-
sary if we are to rally the support of
the American people here at home be-
hind a policy of active international
engagement, which remains as critical
to our own prosperity and security to-
day as at any time in this century. It is
critical for our nation to speak clearly
about our purposes so that the nations
US Department of State Dispatch e February 1,
1993 * VoL 4, No. 5](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/dsptch8&div=58&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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A New Era of Peril and Promise
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