Speeches, Remarks and Interviews
Leadership Challenges for a New Generation
Speech by
Ambassador Robert A. Bradtke
University of Rijeka
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
(As prepared)
Rector Rukavina, members of the faculty, and students of the University of Rijeka,
Thank you for the invitation to come to Rijeka today to speak with you.
Since my arrival in Croatia last July, I have visited Rijeka several times. In February, I was here, dressed somewhat differently, to attend your wonderful Carnival, and in October, I came to Rijeka to discuss the economic development of your city with Mayor Obersnell and with Zupanj Komadina.
I enjoyed those visits very much, but I am especially happy to be back in Rijeka today to come to your University and talk with you, because you are truly the future of Rijeka and the future of Croatia.
I want to talk with you today about the future, about the challenges that your new government will face, but also challenges that will go well beyond the time that this government or the next will be in office. They are the leadership challenges of your generation.
Of course, every generation faces different challenges. In recent decades, your fathers and mothers, your grandfathers and grandmothers, overcame great difficulties. The list of their accomplishments is impressive:
Croatia regained its independence and again took its place as a sovereign nation.
Croatia threw off communism and self-managed socialism to become a democratic society and free market economy.
Croatia became a respected member of the international community, winning a place for the next two years on the United Nations Security Council.
And, Croatia is on the threshold of joining NATO and the European Union, locking in a security and prosperity that even twenty years ago would have seemed unrealistic.
With these great, historic challenges largely behind you, the question is what lies ahead? What are the challenges for your generation?
It might be tempting to think that your generation can simply enjoy the fruits of the hard work done before you, that Croatia can look inwards at consolidating its reforms and strengthening its economy.
That is, perhaps, one path.
But I hope that your generation will take another path. Instead, I hope that you will recognize that you should contribute to dealing with new challenges, challenges beyond Croatia’s borders, and even beyond your own neighborhood in Southeastern Europe.
The world is becoming a smaller, more complicated, and in some ways more dangerous place, and as your generation of Croatians assumes positions of leadership, you will face difficult choices. You will need to decide how you use your new independence and freedom to build a more stable, more prosperous world; you will be called upon to think in global terms about problems far away from Croatia, but which can have great effects on your country; and, you will be asked to take responsibility as full members in the two great Euro-Atlantic institutions, NATO and the EU.
As I look at this city, it is clear to me that contributing to the resolution of problems in the wider world, outside Croatia and this region, is not just a matter of idealism, it is a matter of self interest.
You, here in Rijeka, know better than many in Croatia how interconnected and interdependent your world is.
You live in a city that since its founding has looked outward to the Adriatic and to the oceans beyond. Your great shipbuilding industry was based on trade and commerce. Your port has links to the Black Sea, the Middle and Far East, the Americas, and Africa. Your sea, mountains, and resorts attract millions of tourists from neighboring countries, providing employment and generating income. And your history tells you that you cannot isolate yourselves from difficulties elsewhere.
So, you and your generation have both a responsibility and a self interest in helping to solve problems outside your borders.
We could spend the rest of the identifying listing all of the problems that will need attention. Looking at Novi List this morning, one can see trouble spots around the world, but I would like you consider briefly three key sets of challenges that I see as critical for you and your generation.
To put these challenges in their grandest terms, they are: First, how do we keep the world safe? Second, how do we help it prosper and ensure that all can hope to benefit from this prosperity? And, finally, how do we protect the environment and ensure that future generations will also be able to enjoy these benefits?
With Croatia's help, the international community is already dealing with these challenges, some more successfully than others, but your future and the future of your children will depend upon how we and you manage them.
In presenting them, I will not give you a prescription for solving these problems. I am not here to tell you that America has the answers. I am here to try to convince you that these are not just America's or Germany's or France's problems. These are your problems too.
First, let me talk about the security challenges we face today and in the years to come.
In some ways, for the last several decades, we have lived in a safer world. Since the end of World War II, after centuries of repeated continental or even global warfare, armed conflict has been confined to regional conflicts that, while bloody, have not threatened total war.
And yet, the horrors of the September 11th attacks in New York -- and the long list of terrorist attacks since then in Madrid, Bali, Istanbul, London, and elsewhere -- has alerted us to the new risks to global security.
We now live in a world where the ungoverned corners of the globe, what we sometimes call "failed states,” are no longer a danger just to themselves and their immediate neighbors, but can export their instability to us all, through terrorism, through drug trafficking and arms smuggling or through refugee flows.
We now live in a world where fanatics, motivated by a twisted sense of religious righteousness or by a mix of ideological grievances, no longer use their terror tactics only for local aims. They now harbor global ambitions for their terror and view everyone in the world, from the aid worker in the Sahel, to the journalist in Pakistan, from the hotel maid in Kenya to the office cleaner in New York, as a potential target.
Perhaps most dangerously of all, we now live in a world where an increasing number of increasingly unstable countries and regimes possess, or are trying to acquire nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
For the next two years, Croatia, as a non-permanent member of the Security Council will be called on every week to make decisions about how we as an international community can best respond to and help prevent these threats from developing. These decisions are not easy.
How can we prevent or limit the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, particularly to States that threaten their neighbors or have ties to terrorist groups?
Under what conditions can we have confidence that nuclear energy programs in countries such as Iran or North Korea are truly energy programs, and not weapons programs? And if Iran or other countries refuse to accept inspections and other conditions, how can the international community force them to reconsider?
We need to tighten controls on the materials that could be used to build nuclear bombs, chemical weapons and biological agents.
We need effective inspection regimes through institutions such as the IAEA in Vienna or through operations such as NATO’s Active Endeavor to search suspect shipments on the high seas.
We need to be able to isolate regimes through diplomacy and political pressure as well as through economic sanctions, to convince regimes that their future interests are best served not by confrontation, but by cooperation with international standards.
In dealing with terrorism, we must ask ourselves how we can best use a range of tools, such as better security measures in public places, tighter controls on financial flows, increased intelligence gathering and sharing, and enhanced police capabilities.
Do we need to give up some of our freedoms to help protect ourselves from attack?
When should we take military action, for example to strike a terrorist camp? Finally, how do we reach out to those populations that are not terrorists, but which have sympathy for the terrorists, and persuade them that the tactics of terrorism will bring no solution to their problems, no improvement to their lives, but only more violence, poverty and desperation?
We need a combination of law enforcement, diplomacy, development and military programs to address the terrorist threat. The United States is sometimes accused of responding to terrorism with only military means. My response to that is that, for any of these responses to be effective, we need partners and allies, actively engaged. Measures to deny terrorists the funds they need will not work if other banking centers will still do business with suspect customers. Law enforcement efforts to find out where bombers obtain their materials will fail, if the trail goes cold the first time it crosses a border.
In responding to regional conflicts, and in trying to rescue failed or failing states from chaos, the challenges for the international community are great.
Even in this region, we still have not yet solved all of the problems created by the break-up of Yugoslavia. In Sudan, more than 300,000 people have died in the Darfur region. Somalia still has no effective government, and an estimated 200,000 persons there are suffering from malnutrition. Afghanistan is struggling to overcome the disastrous rule of the Taliban. Iraq is plagued by sectarian strife and conflict. And in Burma, a military regime has even taken on the country's Buddhist monks.
When can the international community intervene to deal with a political or humanitarian crisis inside another country and who makes that decision? Is it better to act through the United Nations or through regional organizations such as NATO or the African Union? What if one country, as is the case with Russia and Kosovo, blocks action by the Security Council? How can we make international peacekeeping and peacemaking operations more effective, and where will the resources come to pay for these expensive operations? What happens after the international community intervenes? How can we create democratic structures in countries with little or no history of democracy, or convince regimes to respect basic human rights?
As I mentioned, Croatia will soon be dealing with these questions of security around the world on a weekly, even daily basis as a UN Security Council member. And, Croatia is already participating in over a dozen UN peacekeeping missions and has 200 troops in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
But our responsibility, your responsibility, to confront these issues will not end in two years, when you leave the Council. If you want to have the ability to travel in and trade with the rest of the world, to share the benefits of your rich culture and industry and to enjoy the riches and products of other countries and markets, then you must contribute to keeping the world secure.
As a member of the United Nations, and soon NATO and the EU, these are questions which Croatia will be called upon to help answer. Some of you may ask yourselves, "Well, maybe we shouldn't join the EU, or NATO, or even the UN Security Council, and then we won't have to deal with these problems." But that's not the way it works. You don't have these responsibilities because you join these organizations. You join these bodies because you already have these responsibilities, and it is as a member of NATO or the EU or UN that you can have a voice in decisionmaking and most effectively contribute to meeting these responsibilities, in concert and coordination with others.
But our shared responsibilities do not end with just questions of security.
We face economic challenges and responsibilities as well. Our world is increasingly inter-linked and inter-dependent.
In 1960, international trade represented about 9 percent of the United States' GDP. Today, America's international trade is equal to more than 25 percent of our GDP. In a smaller country, such as Croatia, the links with world markets are even stronger, with your international trade equaling some 74 percent of your GDP.
This is the phenomenon of globalization, a phenomenon that is both praised and feared.
On the positive side, globalization has brought many benefits. Global income has increased massively over the past five decades, as more and more of the world's population have become active participants in the modern economy. People are living longer, healthier and more productive lives than a century ago. There is a reason why, in so many poorer parts of the world, rural populations continue to move toward urban centers.
But globalization does have its failings, and one of our responsibilities is to consider how to address those failings.
One issue is how to address inequality. Over one billion people in the world still live on less than $1 a day. Although there have been gains over the last 15 years and the percentage of people in the developing world living in extreme poverty has fallen from 28% in 1990 to 21% today, these gains have been uneven and much more needs to be done.
While poverty in East Asia has decreased, primarily thanks to the rapid growth of China, in Sub-Saharan Africa it has deepened. Large sections of Africa are at the same level of per capita income today as they were in 1960. In fact, since 1980 the GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa has actually decreased by 14 percent.
In part, this is because globalization has largely bypassed the people of these countries. Even if they had products to sell, often their goods, such as agricultural products or textiles, face significant barriers in world markets. They are not able to sell their products abroad, and they have no money to take advantage of the new opportunities the world could bring them. Globalization has done little to ease their lives.
Meanwhile in developed economies increased trade, while boosting the national economy, can be very disruptive to individuals in industries that suddenly face tougher competition from more efficient or lower cost markets. Here in Rijeka, you need to look no further than your own shipbuilding industry.
Thus we face the challenge of how to respond to globalization. How can we gather its benefits, while lessening its negative impact? How can we keep our economies open to the innovation and dynamism of the world economy, and still help those who may not yet have the skills to succeed in a more competitive environment? How can we preserve our own cultural traditions and values, while remaining open to the rich diversity of the human spirit from around the world?
If globalization and the security challenges I mentioned earlier are not enough to make you decide never to stop being a student, I want to mention one final challenge that, if not addressed, could have an even more profound affect on the entire globe – and that is climate change.
You may think it is strange that an American is putting climate change on the list of global challenges. After all, the United States has not signed the Kyoto Treaty on Climate Change.
However, it would be a mistake to think that not signing the Kyoto Treaty means that United States does not see climate change as a serious, potentially catastrophic problem. In fact, the U.S. is responding to the challenge of climate change.
U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases in 2006 declined by 1.5 percent from 2005, even as the American economy grew by 2.9 percent. Let me say that again. U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases in 2006 declined by 1.5 percent from 2005, even as the American economy grew by 2.9 percent.
The United States is working hard to encourage research on technological developments that will help us improve further on this. Since 2001, we have spent almost $37 billion on climate science, technology development, efficiency incentives and international assistance to address climate change.
To illustrate just how difficult this problem is and why we need to move beyond discussions of Kyoto, it is useful to look at the example of the European Union. The EU member states have ratified Kyoto and committed themselves to an 8 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2012. However, in the period from 2000 to 2004, the 25 member states of the EU actually increased their emissions by 2.1 percent. Nobody doubts the sincerity of Europe to address the problem of climate change, but clearly international agreements with arbitrary mandatory targets are not going produce the results we need.
Nor is this a problem that can be solved by the U.S. or Europe alone. China may already be the largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, and India’s emissions are rising rapidly. So, we will need a global response. But achieving this cooperation will be difficult. How can we expect China and India, at their current stage of development, to forego the easy way to development via energy intensive growth? But at the same time, how can we afford to let them repeat some of the mistakes we made?
Part of the solution will be the availability of better technology, which could allow equivalent levels of economic productivity for far lower levels of energy consumption. But it is time for a new international approach that we all can agree on how to address climate change. In Bali, the United States, along with other members of the United Nations is meeting this month to discuss a new international agreement to replace Kyoto, which expires in 2012.
Energy security and climate change are some of the most important challenges we face, and Croatia must be a part of forging this global response.
Croatia can make a contribution to the research needed, it can participate in the negotiations of a new approach, and it must make the same adaptations toward a more energy-efficient form of economic development that we are all undertaking.
This is truly a daunting list of challenges --security, globalization, and the environment -- and, I haven’t even mentioned other important issues like peace between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. But, I hope that I have given you something to think about as you consider your future, and the future of Croatia.
In closing, I want to come back again to the question of what contribution Croatia can make.
I believe Croatia can -- and should -- play a role in dealing with the problems of the future. Your ministers and leaders will be together with those of NATO and the EU when issues are discussed and when decisions are made. You will have an important voice, and often in international affairs, just as in football, as we have recently seen, it is the skill and ability of a country that is more important than its size.
I also believe that you can bring important experience to the decision-making table, the experience of a country that had to go through great transitions, that fought a war and had to rebuild, that transformed its economy from socialism to a free market system, that went from dictatorship to democracy, that has worked hard to reintegrate minorities and refugees into its society.
You can also bring another very important perspective to dealing with all these challenges, the perspective of a country that suffered when the international community was slow to act, that experienced the consequences when the international community failed to act effectively.
So, I hope you and your generation of Croatians will choose a path of engagement, that you will keep Croatia involved, not just in this region but with problems of the world outside Southeastern Europe.
I hope that your generation will make its own contribution, a contribution that will be worthy of the country you are inheriting from your parents.
And, I hope that you will use the freedoms and the international standing which your parents fought so hard to achieve to contribute to a more peaceful, stable, and prosperous world.
Thank you.