United States, 1999

Today, we look ahead to the

new millennium. And at this last General Assembly of the

twentieth century, we look back on a century that taught

us much of what we need to know about the promise of

tomorrow. We have learned a great deal over the last one

hundred years: how to produce enough food for a

growing world population; how human activity affects the

environment; the mysteries of the human gene. An

information revolution now holds the promise of universal

access to knowledge. We have learned that open markets

create more wealth, that open societies are more just. We

have learned how to come together, through the United

Nations and other institutions, to advance common

interests and values.

Yet for all our intellectual and material advances, the

twentieth century has been deeply scarred by enduring

human failures: by greed and lust for power, by

hot-blooded hatreds and stone-cold hearts. At century’s

end, modern developments magnify greatly the dangers of

these timeless flaws. Powerful forces still resist

reasonable efforts to put a human face on the global

economy, to lift the poor, or to heal the earth’s

environment. Primitive claims of racial, ethnic or religious

superiority, when married to advanced weaponry and

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terrorism, threaten to destroy the greatest potential for

human development in history, even as they make a

wasteland of the soul.

Therefore, we look to the future with hope, but with

unanswered questions. In the new millennium, will nations

be divided by ethnic and religious conflicts? Will the

nation-state itself be imperiled by them, or by terrorism? Or

will we keep coming closer together instead, while enjoying

the normal differences that make life more interesting? In

the new century, how will patriotism be defined — as faith

in a dream worth living, or as fear and loathing of other

people’s dreams? Will we be free of the fear of weapons of

mass destruction, or forced to teach our grandchildren how

to survive a nuclear, chemical or biological attack? Will

globalism bring shared prosperity, or will it make the

desperate of the world even more desperate? Will we use

science and technology to grow the economy and protect

the environment, or put it all at risk in a world dominated

by a struggle over natural resources?

The truth is that the twentieth century’s amazing

progress has not resolved these questions. But it has given

us the tools to make the answers come out right — the

knowledge, the resources, the institutions. Now, we must

use them. If we do, we can make the millennium not just

a changing of the digits, but a true changing of the times —

a gateway to greater peace, prosperity and freedom. With

that in mind, I offer three resolutions for the new

millennium.

First, let us resolve to wage an unrelenting battle

against poverty and for shared prosperity so that no part of

humanity is left behind in the global economy.

Globalization is not inherently divisive. While infant

mortality in developing countries has been cut nearly in half

since 1970, life expectancy has increased by 10 years.

According to the United Nations Human Development

Index, which measures a decent standard of living, a good

education, a long and healthy life, the gap between rich and

poor countries on this measure has actually declined.

Open trade and new technologies have been engines

of this progress; they have helped hundreds of millions to

see their prospects rise by marketing the fruits of their labor

and creativity abroad. With proper investments in education,

developing countries should be able to keep their best and

brightest talent at home and to gain access to global

markets for goods and services and capital.

But this promising future is far from inevitable. We

are still squandering the potential of far too many. As many

as 1.3 billion people still live on less than a dollar a day.

More than half the population of many countries has no

access to safe water. A person in South Asia is 700 times

less likely to use the Internet than someone in the United

States. Forty million people a year still die of hunger,

almost as many as the total number killed in World

War II. We must refuse to accept a future in which one

part of humanity lives on the cutting edge of a new

economy, while the other lives at the knife edge of

survival.

What must we do? We can start by remembering

that open markets advance the blessings and

breakthroughs we want to spread. That is why we in the

United States have worked to keep our markets open

during the recent global financial crisis, though it has

brought us record trade deficits. It is why we want to

launch a new global trade round when the World Trade

Organization meets in Seattle this fall. It is why we are

working to build a trading system that strengthens the

well-being of workers and consumers, protects the

environment and makes competition a race to the top, not

the bottom. It is why I am proud we have come together

at the International Labour Organization to ban abusive

child labour everywhere in the world.

We do not face a choice between trade and aid, but

instead the challenge to make both work for people who

need them. Aid should focus on what is known to work:

credit for poor people starting businesses, keeping girls in

school, meeting the needs of mothers and children.

Development aid should be used for development, not to

buy influence or finance donors’ exports. It should go

where Governments invest in their people and answer to

their concerns.

We should also come to the aid of countries

struggling to rise but held down by the burden of debt.

The G-7 nations have adopted a plan to reduce by up to

70 per cent the outstanding debt of the world’s poorest

countries, freeing resources for education, health and

growth.

All of us, developed and developing countries alike,

should take action now to halt global climate change.

What has that to do with fighting poverty? A great deal.

The most vulnerable members of the human family will

be hurt first and hurt most if rising temperatures devastate

agriculture, accelerate the spread of disease in tropical

countries and flood island nations.

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Does this mean developing countries must sacrifice

growth to protect the environment? Absolutely not.

Throughout history, a key to human progress has been

willingness to abandon big ideas that are no longer true.

One big idea that is no longer true is that the only way to

build a modern economy is to use energy as we did in the

industrial age. The challenge and opportunity for

developing countries today is to skip the costs of the

industrial age by using technologies that improve the

economy and the environment at the same time.

Finally, to win the fight against poverty, we must

improve health care for all people. Over the next 10 years

in Africa, AIDS is expected to kill more people and orphan

more children than all the wars of the twentieth century

combined. Each year diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis

and pneumonia leave millions of children without parents

and millions of parents without children. Yet for all these

diseases, vaccine research is advancing too slowly, in part

because the potential customers are too poor. Only 2 per

cent of all global biomedical research is devoted to the

major killers in the developing world.

No country can break poverty’s bonds if its people are

disabled by disease and its Government overwhelmed by

the needs of the ill. With United Nations leadership, we

have come close to eradicating polio, once the scourge of

children everywhere. We are down to 5,000 reported cases

worldwide. I have asked our Congress to fund a major

increase to finish the job, and I ask other nations to follow

suit. We have begun a comprehensive battle against the

global AIDS epidemic. This year I am seeking another

$100 million for prevention, counselling and care in Africa.

I want to do more to get to those who need them most new

drugs that prevent transmission from mothers to newborns.

And today I commit the United States to a concerted effort

to accelerate the development and delivery of vaccines for

malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS and other diseases that

disproportionately affect the developing world. Many

approaches have been proposed, from tax credits to special

funds for the purchase of these vaccines.

To tackle these issues, I will ask public-health experts,

the chief executive officers of our pharmaceutical

companies, foundation representatives and members of

Congress to join me at a special White House meeting and

to strengthen incentives for research and development,

working with, not against, the private sector to meet our

common goal.

The second resolution I hope we will make today is to

strengthen the capacity of the international community to

prevent and whenever possible to stop outbreaks of mass

killing and displacement. This requires, as we all know,

shared responsibility, like the one West African nations

accepted when they acted to restore peace in Sierra

Leone; the one 19 democracies in the North Atlantic

Treaty Organization (NATO) embraced to stop ethnic

cleansing in Bosnia and in Kosovo; the one that Asian

and Pacific nations have now assumed in East Timor,

with the strong support of the entire United Nations,

including the United States.

Secretary-General Annan spoke for all of us during

the Kosovo conflict, and more recently in regard to East

Timor, when he said that ethnic cleansers and mass

murderers can find no refuge in the United Nations, no

source of comfort or justification in its Charter. We must

do more to make these words real. Of course, we must

approach this challenge with some considerable degree of

humility. It is easy to say “never again”, but much harder

to make it so. Promising too much can be as cruel as

caring too little.

But difficulties, dangers and costs are not an

argument for doing nothing. When we are faced with

deliberate, organized campaigns to murder whole peoples

or expel them from their land, the care of victims is

important but not enough. We should work to end the

violence. Our response in every case cannot and should

not be the same. Sometimes collective military force is

both appropriate and feasible. Sometimes concerted

economic and political pressure combined with diplomacy

is a better answer, as it was in making possible the

introduction of forces to East Timor. Of course, the way

the international community responds will depend on the

capacity of countries to act and on their perception of

their national interests. NATO acted in Kosovo, for

example, to stop a vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing

in a place where we had important interests at stake and

the ability to act collectively.

The same considerations brought Nigerian troops and

their partners to Sierra Leone and Australians and others

to East Timor. That is proper — so long as we work

together, support each other and do not abdicate our

collective responsibility. I know that some are troubled

that the United States and others cannot respond to every

humanitarian catastrophe in the world. We cannot do

everything, everywhere. But simply because we have

different interests in different parts of the world does not

mean we can be indifferent to the destruction of innocents

in any part of the world. That is why we have supported

the efforts of Africans to resolve the deadly conflicts that

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have raged through parts of their continent. It is why we

are working with friends in Africa to build the African

Crisis Response Initiative, which has trained more than

4,000 peacekeepers from six countries. It is why we are

helping establish an international coalition against genocide

to bring nations together to stop the flow of money and

arms to those who commit crimes against humanity.

There is also a critical need for countries emerging

from conflict to build police institutions accountable to

people and the law, often with the help of civilian police

from other nations. We need international forces with the

training to fill the gap between local police and military

peacekeepers, as French, Argentine, Italian and other

military police have done in Haiti and Bosnia. We will

work with our partners and the United Nations to continue

to ensure that such forces can deploy when they are needed.

What is the role of the United Nations of in preventing

mass slaughter and dislocation? Very large. Even in

Kosovo, NATO’s actions followed a clear consensus,

expressed in several Security Council resolutions, that the

atrocities committed by Serb forces were unacceptable and

that the international community had a compelling interest

in seeing them end. Had we chosen to do nothing in the

face of this brutality, I do not believe we would have

strengthened the United Nations. Instead we would have

risked discrediting everything it stands for.

By acting as we did, we helped to vindicate the

principles and purposes of the United Nations Charter to

give the United Nations the opportunity it now has to play

the central role in shaping Kosovo’s future. In the real

world, principles often collide and tough choices must be

made. The outcome in Kosovo is hopeful.

Finally, as we enter this new era, let our third

resolution be to protect our children against the possibility

that nuclear, chemical and biological weapons will ever be

used again. The last millennium has seen constant advances

in the destructive power of weaponry. In the coming

millennium, this trend can continue or, if we choose, we

can reverse it with global standards universally respected.

We have made more progress than many realize. After

the collapse of the Soviet Union, Belarus, Kazakhstan and

Ukraine courageously chose to give up their nuclear

weapons. America and Russia have moved forward with

substantial arms reductions. President Yeltsin and I agreed

in June, even as we await Russian ratification of START II,

to begin talks on a START III treaty that will cut our cold-

war arsenals by 80 per cent from their height. Brazil has

joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear

Weapons (NPT), capping a process that has almost totally

eliminated the threat of nuclear proliferation in Latin

America. We have banned chemical weapons from the

Earth, though we must implement that commitment fully

and gain universal coverage. One hundred and fifty-two

nations have signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban

Treaty and, while India and Pakistan did test nuclear

weapons last year, the international reaction proved that

the global consensus against proliferation is very strong.

We need to bolster the standards to reinforce that

consensus. We must reaffirm our commitment to the

NPT, strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention and

make fast progress on a treaty to ban production of fissile

materials. To keep existing stocks from the wrong hands,

we should strengthen the Convention on Physical

Protection of Nuclear Materials. And today, again I ask

our Congress to approve the Comprehensive Nuclear-

Test-Ban Treaty.

We must stop the spread of nuclear weapons,

materials and expertise at the source. Since 1992, we have

worked with Russia and the other nations of the former

Soviet Union to do that. We are expanding that effort

because challenges remain, but thus far we can say that

the nightmare scenario of deadly weapons flowing

unchecked across borders and of scientists selling their

services en masse to the highest bidder has been avoided.

Now, we must work to deny weapons of mass

destruction to those who would use them. For almost a

decade, nations have stood together to keep the Iraqi

regime from threatening its people and the world with

such weapons. Despite all the obstacles Saddam Hussein

has placed in our path, we must continue to ease the

suffering of the people of Iraq. At the same time, we

cannot allow the Government of Iraq to flout 40 — and

I say 40 — successive United Nations Security Council

resolutions and to rebuild his arsenal.

Just as important is the challenge of keeping deadly

weapons away from terrorist groups. They may have

weaker capabilities than States, but they have fewer

compunctions about using such weapons. The possibility

that terrorists will threaten us with weapons of mass

destruction can be met with neither panic nor

complacency. It requires serious, deliberate, disciplined

concern and effective cooperation from all of us.

There are many other challenges. Today I have

spoken about just three: the need to do something about

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the world’s poor and to put a human face on the global

economy; the need to do more to prevent killing and

dislocation of innocents; the need to do more to ensure that

weapons of mass destruction will never be used on our

children. I believe they are the most important. In meeting

them, the United Nations is indispensable.

It is precisely because we are committed to the United

Nations that we have worked hard to support the effective

management of this body. But the United States also has a

responsibility to equip the United Nations with the

resources it needs to be effective. As I think most Members

know, I have strongly supported the United States meeting

all its financial obligations to the United Nations and I will

continue to do so. We will do our very best to succeed this

year.

When the cold war ended, the United States could

have chosen to turn away from the opportunities and

dangers of the world. Instead, we have tried to be engaged,

involved and active. We know this moment of unique

prosperity and power for the United States is a source of

concern to many. I can only answer by saying this: In the

seven years that I have been privileged to come here to

speak to this body, America has tried to be a force for

peace. We believe we are better off when nations resolve

their differences by force of argument rather than force of

arms. We have sought to help former adversaries like

Russia and China become prosperous, stable members of

the world community because we feel far more threatened

by the potential weakness of the world’s leading nations

than by their strength. Instead of imposing our values on

others, we have sought to promote a system of

government — democracy — that empowers people to

choose their own destinies according to their own values

and aspirations. We have sought to keep our markets open

because we believe a strong world economy benefits our

own workers and businesses, as well as the people of the

world who are selling to us. I hope that we have been and

will continue to be good partners with the rest in the new

millennium.

Not long ago, I went to a refugee camp in Macedonia.

The people I met there, children and adults alike, had

suffered horrible, horrible abuses, but they had never given

up hope because they believed that there is an international

community that stands for their dignity and their freedom.

I want to make sure that, 20 or 50 or 100 years from now,

people everywhere will still believe that about our United

Nations. So let us resolve, in the bright dawn of the new

millennium, to bring in an era in which our desire to create

will overwhelm our capacity to destroy. If we do that, then,

through the United Nations and far-sighted leaders,

humanity finally can live up to its name.