cc  >> Christopher Eichhorst:  Good afternoon, class.  >> Class: Good afternoon, sir.  >> Eichhorst: It's my honor  and privilege to introduce  our guest lecturer for today.  Jeremy Suri is the E Gordon Fox  Professor of History, the  director of the European Center  of Excellence and the director  of the Grand Strategy Program at  the University of Wisconsin.  He is the author of three books  on contemporary politics and  foreign policy.  "Power and Protest,"  "The Global Revolutions  of 1968,"  and most recently  "Henry Kissinger  and the American Century."  His research and teaching have  received numerous prizes.  In 2007 Smithsonian Magazine  named Professor Suri one of  America's top young innovators  in the arts and sciences.  His writings appear widely in  blogs and print media.  Professor Suri is also a  frequent public lecturer and  guest on radio and television  programs.  We are extremely thankful to you  for taking time to speak to this  group of our future Air Force  officers so they can learn a  little bit more about the world  they're about ready to enter  upon graduation. 

 So thanks for your time.  >> Jeremy Suri: Thank you  for having me.  Thank you, everyone, for  inviting me and for having me  here.  It's actually really a great  privilege for me.  Some of my best students, I will  say, semester in and semester  out, some of whom I see in the  audience here, are ROTC  students.  So it's really a great privilege  to have a chance to work with  you.  I'm always trying to figure out  if the Air Force or Navy  students are better, and I won't  say what I think about that.  It depends where I am when I'm  speaking.  Obviously the Air Force is  better when I'm in this context.  I also want to say I'm really  proud to be coming and speaking  before this course where you  guys are studying national  security affairs and blending  expertise in security and policy  and in military issues with area  studies expertise. 

 I think that's really, really  important.  And I don't know if Colonel  Eichhorst knows this, but I  actually chaired the  subcommittee for the Letters and  Sciences curriculum committee  that evaluated this course and  others for credit at the  university.  >> Eichhorst: How'd we do?  >> Suri: You did very well, and,  actually, I have to say I stole  some ideas from your course.  I think it's great to bring  together people with area  expertise and people with policy  expertise together in the same  framework and to have the  students exposed to that.  We need to do more of that in  education in general.  So it's really an honor to be  part of that process here.  So today I want to talk about a  topic that's very near and dear  to my heart as a scholar and as  someone who's interested in  policy, as well, which is the  relationship between the United  States and Europe.  And I've called it  "The Past and Future  of US-European Relations."  We might also call it  "The Past and Future  of Trans-Atlantic Society."  And the key point I really want  to begin by making is, I think,  brought to bear by this picture  that we all know but don't spend  a lot of time thinking about.  Of course in the Tehran  conference in 1943, When  president Franklin Roosevelt,  seated in the center, always  seated in the center, negotiated  in what was a difficult set of  negotiations with the leader of  the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin,  and Winston Churchill, of  course, seated to the left.  Winston Churchill always seems  to be adequately liquored at all  of these meetings as you can  tell by looking at him there. 

 They sat together in Tehran,  as they did a little earlier and  a little later at other great  power meetings during World War  II, to decide not just the fate  of the war, but to decide the  basis upon which they would  build a cooperative, diplomatic  and military world order for the  period after the war.  And this was very difficult  because the key question was,  who would control Europe and how  would the future of Europe be  defined after the fascist  regimes were defeated?  And lest you think this was a  scholarly or academic  discipline, it was actually  everything that politics was  about, especially for the United  States and the Soviet Union.  They had been drawn into a war,  in the American case certainly  not of American making, a war in  Europe that was all about the  single greatest problem in  international politics for the  past 200 years.  Which is that Germany, in the  center of Europe, was too small  just to be another country in  Europe, but too big, or shall we  say, too big to be just another  country in Europe but too small  to dominate Europe.  Too big to be just another  country but too small to  dominate Europe.  And the future of Europe, the  instability in Europe, the  conflict over Germany's place  within Europe, which of course  involved Soviet Union and  France, as well as the United  States and Great Britain, lead  to continual warfare in this  region.  The greatest achievement of  these three men and the greatest  achievement of post war politics  and the greatest achievement in  Europe that I'm going to spend a  lot of time talking about has  been to prevent that history  from replaying itself.  There are plenty of problems we  have in the world today.  We have no shortage of  challenges as you all know  better than I know.  But we should at least take  solace from the fact that after  200 years of continual warfare  in the same place over the same  issues because of decisions made  during World War II and in the  early years after, not perfect  decisions but important  decisions, that history was not  replayed. 

 And none of you would have bet  on it.  In fact, I know, having done the  research, none of your Air Force  predecessors in the late 1940s  would have bet on that.  In fact, everything the Air  Force did was to prepare for the  next war in Europe.  That's why the RAND Corporation  was created and funded by the  Air Force, that's why SAC was  created, strategic air command.  Everything the Air Force did was  to prepare for what the Air  Force assumed would be World War  III.  And thankfully that never  happened.  It never happened in part  because of a set of decisions  that were made, and it never  happened in part because of the  ways in which Europe  transformed, transformed due to  external and internal  influences.  Again, this is not a perfect  story, but it's a story of major  transformation and a  transformation that affects  deeply the kind of world we live  in today for better and for  worse.  And that's what I want to talk  about.  I've written a lot about Henry  Kissinger, in particular because  this is also the world that  Henry Kissinger came of age in. 

 And that's the second point I  want to stress, that these  issues of post-war  transformation that the Air  Force and other parts of society  have dealt with in the US and  Europe since 1943 and there  upon, that these issues are not  issues about somewhere over  there, they're issues about us  as well.  The reason I wrote about Henry  Kissinger more than anything  else is because he blends those  two worlds.  He was a child of the very  conflicts in Europe in Germany  that I discussed.  He was a child of World War II.  He came of age, he became who he  is because as an immigrant  forced out of Germany during the  period of genocidal attacks upon  Jews, forced out of Germany, he  came to the United States as an  immigrant and became, in his own  words, Americanized not as an  immigrant in an Orthodox Jewish  household in New York City but  actually became Americanized in  the Army going back to Germany  to be part of the American  occupation.  And made his entire career over  trying to prevent the replay of  the very events that I just  discussed.  That's who Henry Kissinger is.  You could argue he is part of a  huge cohort of people who come  of age in this period, come of  age from Europe to the United  States defining their  Americanism by their connection  to Europe.  That is to say then that our  connection to Europe and these  issues is not just an issue of  over there, it's and issue about  us, as well, an issue about us,  as well.  And that shows up in our  politics, by the way. 

 Again, American politics are  European politics in a sense.  Everyone knows who we have here,  John F. Kennedy.  Forever young in our eyes.  This moment of great exuberance  in American society.  The moment people keep coming  back to when they think of him  is actually his trip to Europe.  One of his important trips was  his visit to the Berlin wall in  1963.  When he went and said,  "Ich bin ein Berliner,"  "I'm a jelly doughnut."  He meant to say,  "I'm a Berliner,"  "Ich bin Berliner."  Putting in the indefinite  article, he made it actually a  jelly doughnut rather than  saying he's German.  The point being he defined  freedom.  The speech said all free men are  citizens of Berlin because  Berlin, the divided Berlin and  the effort to maintain western  access to Berlin in the western  part of the city free from  Communist isolation, was to him  a symbol of what freedom was all  about.  So he said, all free men come to  Berlin and as a free man I  consider myself a Berliner. 

 And Berlin became the symbol of  the Cold War, it became the  center of the Cold War, of the  post-World War for that reason.  It had been the center of  conflict before World War II and  remained the symbol of  everything that American liberal  capitalism was supposed to be in  Europe defined that way.  And this was not just about  Kennedy.  This was about millions of  people.  Look at that crowd in 1963.  It was the largest crowd in  Berlin since the Nazi rallies,  when John F. Kennedy came.  I have boingo wireless here  I see.  The largest crowd in Germany,  and in Berlin certainly, since  the Nazi rallies for an  American president defining  American freedom by the  protection of west Berlin.  And it wasn't just Kennedy.  Ronald Reagan's perhaps finest  moment was also his visit to the  Berlin wall, 1988. 

 Famously, when visiting the  Berlin wall, said,  actually 1987, excuse me,  June of 1987, famously said,  "Mr. Gorbachev,  tear down this wall."  This was during the period of  rapid extraordinary reform and  restructuring, perestroika, in  the Soviet Union.  Reagan made it clear, and he did  this despite many of his  advisers, that the future of a  free Europe required the end of  the division, the end of the  post-war division.  Gorbachev was seeking in some  ways to preserve that division,  and Reagan made it quite clear  that that was not acceptable.  He defined American aims and he  defined the future of Europe in  Berlin as well,  not in Washington, DC.  And President Obama did the same  thing, actually this was before  he was president, you all  remember this, when he was  running for office.  He made a visit to Berlin to  show his foreign policy  credentials, but also to define  what he saw as the new Europe  connected to the new United  States.  He was trying to separate  himself from his predecessor  whom he argued had been  inattentive to the importance of  American partnership with our  European allies and inattentive  to America's core strategic and  economic interest in Europe.  So he argued.  And so he went during his  campaign.  He campaigned for the president  of the United States by visiting  Berlin. 

 Quite extraordinary actually.  And actually the crowd was  probably the second largest  crowd any American has received  in Berlin after John F. Kennedy,  for Obama.  It's not about the policies, per  se, it's about the connection  between the United States and  Europe.  I think these images tell us a  lot about not just our politics,  they tell us a lot about Europe  and they tell us a lot about  what Europe means to American  security and what the United  States means to European  security post-World War II.  It's quite clear that our two  sides of the Atlantic are deeply  hinged together, and that has  not changed, in fact, I will  argue that has only been  reinforced by the rise of China  as a potential competitor and by  the rise of non-state  asymmetrical threats.  Europe is all the more important  in our eyes, it seems to me, all  the more important in our  strategic thinking, and we are  all the more important to them.  Why is this one of the most  obvious reason is that putting  aside the history of differences  that we've had, there is no  doubt that the present day  European Union and the present  day United States stand for a  model of democratic  representative government that  is not mimicked or even copied  in many other places.  And as such, there is a mutual  interest we have in seeing our  two versions of that, and they  are different versions but yet  versions of the same thing,  survive and prosper.  The Chinese model is not a model  of representative liberal  democracy.  The Indian model is a model  of democracy but it's a  different kind of democracy and  different kind of society. 

 It's not to say we're better,  but it is to say we share  certain basic values.  Foreign policy is about values  on some level.  Second, our economies, our  interpersonal connections, our  societies in terms of who we  develop and how we define  ourselves, are deeply connected  ever more so and ever more so  relative to what we see in other  parts of the world, other  dynamics in other parts of the  world that I want to discuss.  Most significant, I want to  argue that the European Union,  that I am required to defend  because the European Union funds  the center on campus that I run,  but also that I deeply believe  in, that the European Union  represents the closest that we  can come to, in our eyes in  looking at the world, to a body  of multicultural diverse peoples  who have come together to put  war behind them in every way  they can and to build what we  would call civil society.  It's not to say it's only in  Europe, but it's the best model  out there.  If you want to compare what the  European Union has done with  China or other models out there,  the European Union stands far  ahead.  It is a progressive set of  institutions that have been  built slowly, gradually,  consensually, for the most part,  between societies far and wide  on a continent of historic  warfare.  And what they have built is a  set of connections through  trade, a set of connections  through finance, a set of  connections through politics and  social policies, as well as  military foreign policy, that  has been supported by the United  States and that supports more  closely than any other region of  the world does the aims and  beliefs that we stand for, which  are democratic change,  representative government,  individual freedom, the rights  of people to choose the kinds of  lives they want to lead and to  have governments that are  uncorrupt and relatively  efficient, or at least not  totally inefficient, in serving  those needs.  No other part of the world could  you say that about.  And so we might have cultural  squabbling between French and  Americans and we might have  differences in viewpoints over  the social welfare state, but I  say to you, those are all  secondary issues when it comes  down to it. 

 Fundamentally, what we are  fighting for is what they are  fighting for.  And it's not just that they are  relying upon us quite often to  provide the military support for  them, they are building  institutions that are helping  that be possible in their part  of the world and elsewhere.  What are the things the European  Union has done?  Just quickly to go through some  of these, I'll talk about some  more of them in more detail as I  go on.  Well, the first thing they've  done is they've built a workable  political community that spans  from Portugal to Estonia,  Ireland to Bulgaria.  So areas that were formally not  just part of the Communist Bloc,  societies occupied by the Soviet  Union, but actually were parts  of the Soviet Union.  Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.  And what this means is that you  can travel relatively freely,  almost as freely as you can  within the United States,  between Portugal and Estonia or  between Ireland and Bulgaria.  For example, the last two or  three summers I've been in  Norway and Italy and Germany and  when you travel internally in  Europe now you don't need a  passport.  If you go to the airport in  Florence to fly to Frankfurt, as  I did, it's an internal European  airport, you don't need to show  a passport, you just go.  Free travel. 

 People can pretty much move from  one society to another.  Students, through the Erasmus  program, actually have an easier  time transferring from one  university to another in Europe  than they do within the United  States.  Businesses frequently operate  across areas.  Almost anywhere you go in the  western part of Europe you'll  see a sizable population of  former east Europeans who now  work in those parts of Europe.  It doesn't mean they don't face  certain prejudices, but there's  openness to that kind of  movement.  Every part of Europe I have ever  been in, and it covers east,  west, north, south, is filled  with a free press.  Free speech, debate,  argumentation and governments  that are elected and governments  that one way or another are  defined by how they serve their  people, not by how the people  serve them.  Again, this is not to say that  everything is perfect.  But it is to say that these  institutions that have been  constructed are extraordinarily  representative and democratic,  are extraordinarily similar to  the things that we are  defending.  And unlike our own history, they  come out of a history of great  warfare and much the opposite of  what we see today. 

 Or to put it in other terms, if  you were sitting in Tehran in  1943 you would probably bet the  United States would look the way  it looks today.  It looks pretty similar.  You would not have put money,  any money of your own, that  Europe would become this.  In fact, you would have put  money, as the Air Force did at  the time, that Europe would go  back to war, which it didn't.  That's an extraordinary set of  achievements.  And that fundamentally, more  than anything else, is what  connects the United States and  Europe, and it's the message I  think, and I hope I'm not  overstating this, that I think  we need to remember.  Because we sometimes, because we  are so similar, because we know  each other so well, and because  we are willing to argue, we  sometimes emphasize the  differences.  But in fact, that's not right.  The similarities far exceed the  differences.  I lectured last summer to a  group of military officers from  the Danish Navy. 

 And they were proudest of two  things.  They were proud that I could  lecture in English and they  could understand me and I could  not understand their Danish,  which is true.  And second, they were proud that  they were taking more  casualties, proportionally, than  anyone else in Afghanistan.  They define their commitment to  who they were as defining, they  were opposed, many of them in  private would say they were  opposed to some of the other  things we were doing in the  Middle East, but they believed  that they were part of a larger,  shall we say, trans-Atlantic  effort to end terrorism or at  least to stamp out some of the  sources of terrorism which were  affecting their society and they  defined themselves in that way.  And I don't think that's  unrepresentative.  Europe might have a much smaller  military arsenal, it might be a  much, much less evident  practitioner of some of the  important antiterrorist  activities that we undertake, it  might be less involved in  counterinsurgency activities,  but don't forget that it's there  and don't forget how important  it is.  And I'll talk some more about  that as I go along.  One last point about the  European Union that I want to  make is that the European Union  has not only committed itself to  democratic development it has  also become a major source of  economic growth.  Despite all the problems, and  there are serious problems, of  the last few years and certainly  beyond that in terms of debt  problems, productivity issues,  nonetheless, the European Union  is a center of economic growth  in the world.  And that's important if one  thinks about global economy, as  well. 

 It's something I'll come back  to.  It seems to me that there are  four historical lessons that  relate to our strategic analysis  of Europe today that I want to  deal with.  The first starts with what I  just said, prosperity.  What is the nature of the  economic development and  prosperity in Europe and how  does that relate to the United  States in its position with  regard to Europe.  The nature of partnership, how  has this partnership worked,  historically, and what does that  tell us about the partnership  today.  Pluralism, I want to spend a  little bit of time on this as I  get to it.  Europe is a pluralistic society.  It's amazing how we sometimes  just say they're white  Europeans.  As if that covers everyone over  there.  It's not right and that's the  important part of this too. 

 And then what's the nature of  power.  What is it that makes Europe so  powerful and how does that power  relate to our power in the  world?  I think these are the four Ps  for a strategic assessment of  what Europe looks like as a  foreign policy and political  entity in the world.  And those are the four bases  upon which I think we can talk  about Europe as a unified or  single entity.  So let me put up now what I  think is the most important  graph of the United States which  is going to be my beginning  point for talking about  prosperity and economy in  Europe.  If you want to understand  American wealth and prosperity,  you need to look at this graph.  This is the story from the  Depression to the financial  crisis of the last few years, I  intentionally cut it off there  to make my point stronger, of  the growth of American wealth.  And just think of how much  wealthier we are as a society  now than we were before.  The problem we face now is we're  not so sure this will continue.  Every generation has lived  better than the last since the  Depression, a lot better,  but we're not sure  that will continue.  And maybe it won't, maybe it  will. 

 But this is the story of  American growth.  Look at the productivity gains  of the United States from the  1930s on.  And look at how American gross  domestic product has increased.  That's what's allowed us to  consume so much more.  We consume more than anyone else  in the world, by far.  And you can see this as students  every day.  How much more you have than your  counterparts do in any other  society.  We are a heavy-consumption  society because we have been  able to out-produce anyone's  imagination before.  Now we often talk about this as  being production based upon the  virtues of American society.  And there is something to that. 

 There is an entrepreneurial  spirit we have, we have  resources that we've used  efficiently that we haven't  simply let sit in the ground and  we've been well organized, we've  had a good government that's  allowed that to be possible.  But it hasn't just been about  what goes on at home.  It has to do, primarily, I would  argue, with Europe.  The two largest economies in the  world are the United States and  the European economy.  China is larger than any single  European economy, but the EU is  still a larger economy and  projected to be one going  forward.  And in fact, Europe has been  consistently, if you take Europe  as a whole, it has been the most  important consistent American  trading partner since the end of  World War II.  Or to put it in other terms, we  would not be as wealthy if we  didn't have Europeans to buy our  stuff nor if we had stuff of  theirs to buy ourselves.  It's a very important part of  the global trade network.  Take it one step further beyond  trade, which might be the most  obvious part, financial  activities.  London, in particular, is still  one of the financial capitals of  the world. 

 And it is the financial  dealings, the trading and money,  the loaning of money, the  insuring of loans on money, that  is still centered upon an axis,  largely New York to London, but  certainly American to Europe.  And that is the source of much  of American economic growth and  development.  And this did not just happen.    This did not just happen.  This is what Europe looked like  in 1945.  This is Berlin when the Soviets  come, and this is a staged  photo.  The Soviets staging the putting  of the flag on the Reichstag in  1945.  And you've all seen pictures of  this before.  This is what Berlin looked like.  Thanks to you guys it had been  all bombed out. 

 You guys and your British  counterparts.  The most incredible, to its  time, aerial bombardment of  counter-value targets, civilian  targets occurring in Germany in  late '44 and 1945, by early 1945  the Germans had no air defenses  left.  And the strategy, of course, of  the United States and Great  Britain was in Germany, as in  Japan, to basically bomb the  population into submission.  So we consistently destroyed  everything we could in every  industrial area.  And the foremost plan coming out  of World War II, the foremost  American plan, which was also  the Soviet plan, was to keep  Germany and much of Europe  looking like that.  It had been the growth of German  power, it had been German  industrialization that had of  course caused all the wars.  Certainly caused World War II,  certainly was part of the cause  for World War I, certainly was  part of the cause for the  Franco-Prussian War in 1871.  Henry Morgenthau, the American  Secretary to the Treasury, had a  plan called the Morgenthau Plan  which was the plan everyone  believed the United States would  implement, and it called for the  pastoralization of Germany,  which is to say keep the Germans  down.  And the Soviets, in fact,  pursued that plan early on.  Their foremost activity in the  eastern sectors of Germany was  to pull as many resources out as  they could. 

 And not because they were mean,  well, they might have been mean,  but it wasn't really because of  that, it was because they  had lost 30 million people,  the Soviets had.  They had lost all of their  capital and they needed anything  they could get from anywhere  else.  That's what it looked like.  That's what you would have been  looking at if you were sitting  in the Air Force in 1945-1946.  That's what you would have  expected.  The extraordinary achievement of  the post-World War that American  wealth possible, that made that  graph possible, was not really  what happened in the United  States.  That's only part of the story,  it's what's happened in these  areas.  And that's the story of the  European Union, that's the story  of post-war Europe.  It's the story of going from  this to this.  Within two decades, within two  decades Germany went from being  almost completely bombed out to  being one of the most productive  economies in the world. 

 And I love this image.  It's a design for --, which  can mean "home" but it sort of  means "the comfortable living  place for someone."  It has a very nativist feel to  it.  Germany goes from being this  devastated society of war and  intolerance within two decades,  within less than two decades, a  decade and a half really, to  being a major producer of  automobiles, a major consumer of  fashion and, to Germans living,  get this, by the mid-1950s,  better than all the victors in  Europe were living.  In 1953-1954 Great Britain still  had rationing of meat and other  products, Germany no longer had  that.  And by every measure, the  Germans were living better than  the Brits and others.  How did this happen?  It wasn't because there was  something about the Germans.  Because even if there had been  something about the Germans that  allowed them to be super  productive, they didn't have the  resources to do this at the end  of World War II.  They didn't have the social  organization.  They didn't even have the  bodies.  Think of what World War II did  to the demographic balance in  Germany. 

 The people who fixed the roads  in Munich in 1945 and '46 were  the women of Munich.  Why?  Because the men of Munich were  no longer alive to do that.  There were just not enough  people and enough resources for  this to inherently happen from  within Germany.  The policies that were pursued  after World War II, and it took  a while, but the policies that  really began to be pursued  from 1947-1948 on were a set of  cooperative policies designed to  build the infrastructure for  prosperity in Germany, in the  western sector of Germany and  the rest of Europe.  They involved the investment of  American cash.  But that was only one part of  the story.  American cash was invested even  though the United States was  coming out of a depression and  did not have the money itself,  the United States invested, what  in the end, became close to  $50 billion in these  reconstruction efforts.  But beyond that it wasn't simply  just American money that was  invested.  Within these societies, the few  resources that were available  were organized in ways that were  designed not to be dominated by  a central government, nor to be  dominated by a free market of  people simply enriching  themselves but what the Germans  came to call co-determination.  Co-determination. 

 Intentional efforts of business  people, government officials,  labor groups and others sitting  down and trying to figure out  policies and investments of  money that will provide for  mutual gain.  Mutual, cooperative planning of  policy.  And the building and investment  of infrastructure that would  allow this to be possible.  So it meant that Marshall Plan  money from the United States  went into building automobile  factories, but automobile  factory owners and automobile  factory labor leaders and local  city governors sat down and  organized cooperative mechanisms  for making sure that money was  invested effectively and  maximizing output.  It was an organized, intentional  set of policies.  It was not laissez-faire  economy.  It was a commitment to a belief  as Ludwig Erhard, the economics  minister, later -- really the  man who oversaw this process  from the center, as he put it,  it was a commitment people had  to building democracy through  prosperity and through a  prosperity for as many people as  possible.  There was a common consensus  held by Germans and Americans  and other Europeans that fascism  was a result of economic  destitution.  That during the depression too  many people were too poor and  they blamed Jews and others for  it and the fascists took  advantage of that.  The way to prevent this from  happening was to provide some  basis for max prosperity. 

 Prosperity would create  democracy.  It's actually kind of true for  the American case as well.  We've just been lucky to be so  prosperous for so much of our  history that we haven't had the  errors and the issues of  desperation that many Europeans  faced for quite some time in  their continent in the 19th and  20th centuries.  So the commitment to joint  prosperity and the commitment to  building democracy through joint  prosperity is what we know as  the social welfare state.  It had its pre-World War II  origins but it is actually the  state that was created.  And the European Union is  actually a Europe-wide effort to  make that possible for all  Europeans.  It's different for the United  States.  This involves more planning.  This involves more coordinated  action.  It involves more emphasis upon  equality and less emphasis upon  entrepreneurship than our  society. 

 And that's sometimes why  American society produces more  creative outcomes.  Maybe that's our big difference.  But it is a reasonable  democratic and effective  response to the conditions  Europeans have had, and it is  the reason we have been so  prosperous too.  Because they have been able to  do this because Germany and  Europe came to look like this  and not like this, we were able  to pursue our own path.  If they had stayed like this, as  Dwight Eisenhower himself said  at the end of World War II, if  Europe had stayed in this  condition the United States  could never have pursued its own  wealth creation because we would  have been stuck in more wars  there, we would have been stuck  in more investments there, we  would not have had a market to  work with there, we would not  have had a financial system to  work with there.  So the creation of the social  welfare state, I'm arguing, in  Europe that I've tried to  describe to you, is crucial to  the creation of American  economic wealth.  And the social welfare state is  not something about communism or  about European laziness, it's  about a European commitment to  building democracy through mass  prosperity.  We, in the United States, place  a little more emphasis upon  entrepreneurship and being rich.  And we value that a little more.  Europeans value, have come to  value because of their  historical experience, a common  basis for prosperity which might  limit how wealthy you can become  but also often puts a floor on  how poor you can become as well. 

 There is much more economic  inequality in the United States  than there is in Europe.  But, again, it's a function of  the historical circumstances.  There is also, in Europe to this  day, a deep fear of what happens  during periods of economic  dislocation because of the  experience of economic  dislocation and the rise of  fascism and the rise of  communism in Europe.  So there is a deep commitment in  the European Union to the  management of the economy to  prevent it going through some of  the swings that the American  economy goes through.  Europeans are not comfortable  with people getting rich and  then poor, rich and then poor.  We see that as a thing that  happens in our society.  Silicon Valley people, some of  whom I went to college with, can  get super rich quickly and then  they can lose it all.  We say that's entrepreneurship.  We say that's risk-taking.  Europeans are very, very  uncomfortable with that because  of the experience they've had of  how that has contributed to  intolerance in politics, how  it's contributed to this  outcome. 

 That is a historical judgment  they've made.  And it is the fact that they've  put that judgment into action  that has been a source of their  stability.  This did not happen because of  free markets alone, this  happened because of good  economic planning, good  capitalist economic planning.  Now this takes me to the next  issue I wanted to talk about  which is about partnership at a  political level.  We tend to talk about the United  States as a society that makes  its own opportunities for  itself.  That builds itself out of its  own political and military  activities at home and abroad.  I want to argue that going back  to World War II and before,  American politics have been  deeply connected not just having  European allies but to a deep  intersection in the use of  resources and, fundamentally, in  political visions and that this  is important to understanding  Europe today.  This is one of my favorite  images.  This is George Washington and  Lafayette, Marquis Lafayette.  Lafayette, as you all know,  basically provided important,  crucial French military support  to the revolutionaries. 

 It was the French military  support that in the end made it  possible for the revolutionaries  not to defeat the British.  They didn't really defeat the  British.  They made it too costly for the  British to keep fighting.  And the British decided that, in  fact, India was more valuable to  them, they didn't want to  continue fighting in the United  States.  We made it too costly for them.  And the French made that  possible.  And then of course we went ahead  and negotiated a separate peace  with the British without the  French at the time, as well.  But this deep intersection is so  important.  And Lafayette, this is of course  a propaganda image, but  Lafayette's relationship with  Washington is crucial to the  ways in which Americans have  defined their politics and the  ways in which Europeans have  defined their politics.  From the time of the American  revolution to the present,  Europe and Europeans have  thought of themselves as, in  many ways, a cultural center of  the world. 

 But they have relied,  continually, upon the United  States as a military and a  political partner.  And that is deeply built into  the way Europeans see themselves  and their place in the world.  For example, the Monroe  Doctrine, articulated, of  course, in 1823, as some of you  have heard me say before, was a  doctrine designed to end  colonialism or to end any  expansion of colonialism in the  western hemisphere, serving  American interests but American  interests were serving British  interests deeply, as well.  Because the last thing the  British wanted were more Spanish  colonies in Latin America or  more French colonies in Latin  America.  Even though the two societies  were not officially allied, they  actually worked together.  That's what made the Monroe  Doctrine work.  It was the British Navy that  enforced it.  The United States had no Navy in  1823 to enforce the Monroe  Doctrine.  In fact until around 1898, it's  the British that enforced the  Monroe Doctrine.  No new colonies for any European  power in the western hemisphere  because the Brits wouldn't let  them go there. 

 But that couldn't work if the  United States didn't support  that as well.  The United States allowed or  encouraged other countries to  colonize in the western  hemisphere.  That, of course, would not be  possible.  The British would not be able to  prevent that from happening.  That partnership was deeply  built and the British defined as  they would hence forth their  economic growth as based upon  political cooperation with their  brethren in the United States  even though they had fought  against the United States as  such.  During the Civil War, the  confederates could have very  easily won, which is to say they  could have broken away and not  become part of a permanent  union, if the British had  recognized the confederacy and  provided them an endless source  of arms, which is what they  wanted, and an endless source of  money.  The British could have continued  to buy confederate cotton,  confederates would never have  run out of money if they did  that.  But, in fact, the British didn't  do that.  They saw a common interest with  the United States, with the  union, with Abraham Lincoln, who  they despised because they saw  him as an ignoramus from the  Kentucky frontier, but  nonetheless they saw in Abraham  Lincoln and the union, they saw  a common interest in building a  hemispheric order that was  liberal capitalist and not  dominated by slavery and the  confederate paternalistic  approach to politics.  The Russians also, in fact,  allied themselves with the  United States in those terms. 

 And through the late 19th  century the United States  continually was a political  partner of Europe's.  All of this is a matter of  saying a very simple thing.  That Europeans conceive of their  western extension, which is to  say the United States across the  Atlantic, as being an area of  assumed peace and cooperation,  not an area of conflict.  It's not a conflictual frontier  and has not been a conflictual  frontier since the 18th century.  And that's crucial to the ways  in which Europeans constructed,  maintained their empires after  the revolution, it's crucial to  the way they structured their  military forces, it's crucial to  the way they look at the world.  The areas of conflict for them  are south and east, not west.  South and east, not west.  And what made the Soviet Union  such a challenge was that the  Soviet Union didn't play by  those rules.  That's what made the Cold War so  significant, that's what made it  such a bifurcated structure  because the west Europeans did  not see the United States as an  enemy but saw the United States,  instead, as part of this long  train of friendly borders to the  west.  Whereas the Soviet Union saw the  United States and its liberal  capitalist world order as a  threat to what they sought to  create. 

 So this partnering west and east  is a very important part of this  relationship.  And it plays forth in the 20th  century in ways that are very   important to European identity.  We look at this early picture  that I started with and we see  the early Cold War.  You focus, you have to focus on  Roosevelt and Stalin in this.  And it's always interesting how  Stalin wears the military  uniform and Roosevelt does not.  This is what we focus on.  But, in fact, the most  interesting part of this photo  for Europeans is Churchill.  Because Churchill represents, in  this image, the end of empire.  He represents the end of empire.  He was the last, the last  prominent European statesman to  try to defend empire as a  permanent way of political  management in Europe. 

 He famously said when signing  the Atlantic Charter in 1940  that brought in initial American  aid and created the basis for  the United Nations before the  United States was in the war, he  famously said he had not signed  the Atlantic Charter to see the  death of the British empire.  But in fact that's exactly what  he was doing.  World War II made it impossible  for the British to have the  resources or the legitimacy to  maintain their empire any  longer.  And the presumption of a  post-empire, a post-imperial  Europe, was the presumption of  American partnership.  The only way Europe could  maintain its standing, and this  is what Churchill is all about  here, the only way Europe could  remain as strong and central to  international politics after  World War II as it had been when  it had an empire that never saw  the sun set because it stretched  so far across the globe, the  only way that could remain  possible, Europe could maintain  its standing and punch above its  weight, is if the United States  helped.  And Churchill comes out of this  experience and creates a whole  career for himself writing about  Anglo-American partnership and  familial connection.  And in fact all of his  subsequent British prime  ministers, to the present, will  talk about a special  relationship between Britain and  the United States.  That's what that's all about.  That's what that's all about.  The end of empire only increases  the story of partnership between  the United States and western  Europe, and that partnership,  again, is not just about the  instrumental purposes served by  Lafayette and Washington, it's  now about Europe remaining  Europe. 

 Which is to say remaining a  central geopolitical entity  because of its connection to  the United States.  Why does Europe need the United  States after World War II?  Well, one, it needs the military  protection.  That's the most obvious thing.  It needs the money, it needs the  markets, but it needs a lot more  than that.  It needs friends when the world  is largely going to be more and  more composed of entities that  were part of European empires  and don't trust the very former  imperial overlords who now want  to be their friends.  It should be clear to us all why  Indian leaders, why leaders in  Indonesia, why leaders in  various parts of former  colonialized territories,  especially in the Middle East,  don't look to the British as  political inspiration as they  are seeking their independence  post-World War II.  The United States provides, on  the one hand it provides the  British with the connection to  an anti-imperial ideology, even  if at times we end up taking  over empire for them.  And the United States also  provides a friendly base for  future international politics.  This is absolutely crucial and  every British prime minister  will follow this route to the  point where you'll have a club  created, and that's really what  we have to call it,  called the G8.  And the G8 are the largest  economies in the world, but they  are also, with the addition of  Japan, they are also the former  imperial economies with the  United States added on. 

 They don't call themselves any  longer the imperial economies of  the world.  But, in fact, they are the  dominant economies of the world  and they claim a certain  legitimacy not just because they  are big, but also because they  have a cooperative entity around  them and they are not imperial,  the United States is to argue  that they are instead a  post-imperial, a democratic set  of economies.  And I love this picture, by the  way, this is when Angela Merkel  in Germany, the first  eastern-born post-war  German chancellor for the entire  united Germany hosts the G8  meeting.  What's also extraordinary about  this is you've gone in Europe,  this is in Europe, this is in  Germany, this is designed in  many ways to show that Germany  is still the center of the world  economy and Anglo-American is  bringing all these men from the  other economies together for  this, what is it extraordinary  about this is that all the old  trappings of Europe are gone  except for the background.  No kings and queens at the  meeting.  No traditional British or French  armory.  Instead you have American-style  businessmen and a woman coming  together.  These guys, if you look at them,  they could show up in any  American boardroom.  They would not have looked that  way 75 years ago.  This is the Americanization of  an international political  discourse that we're seeing  here. 

 It doesn't mean that it's  necessarily always better, but  it means that it's significantly  different.  Partnership is about the  cultures and assumptions in ways  in which people think about  themselves as much as it is  about the deals they make.  The deals they make are the  outgrowth of that.  Partnership is fundamentally  about trust.  Partnership is fundamentally  about a belief in commonality.  Partnership is fundamentally  about having a common history, a  history you continue to build  on.  Many of these countries that  you're looking at here are  actually not the largest  economies in the world.  The G8 includes Italy.  You think of Italy as driving  the world economy?  If you do you haven't been to  Italy.  They might drive the world  cuisine, but they don't drive  the world economy. 

 Yet they are part of the G8,  they are part of this club, part  of this definition of trusted  partnership that serves the  purposes of these countries but  that also defines Europe.  Europe is defined by its status  as such.  It's not just somewhere else.  It's part of this process.  And this is really important for  the third point that I want to  deal with, the third of our  piece, pluralism.  Because Europe is an incredibly  pluralistic place.  Europeans do not define  themselves any longer as they  did about a hundred years ago or  even 50 years ago by virtue of  having been born in Europe, born  on that continent.  Even though the European Union  is a particular geography,  people are not European because  they'd been born in that  geography.  Not anymore.  Europe is as much part of the  Muslim world as it is part of  the white non-Muslim world,  whatever that may be, such a  thing never actually existed  really. 

 This is a wonderful map in  making this point.  Clearly the concentrations of  Islamic citizens or those  claiming to be Muslim one way or  another is smaller in Europe  than it is in North Africa, for  example, or the Middle East.  But Europe is part of that  story, France in particular.  And it goes much beyond the  numbers.  Many of the most prominent  contributors to European  culture, toward the EU  represents on a day-to-day  basis, are people who are not  traditional Europeans.  My favorite is Salman Rushdie.  Everyone knows about Salman  Rushdie because of the many  controversies about his writing.  But he is one of now tens of  non-European born writers in  Europe who are winning all the  literature prizes.  Year in and year out the Booker  Prize winner, this is the  coveted prize for the best work  of original literature written  in Great Britain, year in and  year out the winner of the  Booker Prize is someone like  Rushdie not someone born in the  -- or born in north Hampton or  born in Scotland, but someone  like Salman Rushdie, born in  Bombay, Muslim background, who  came to London, calls himself a  Brit, sees himself as a resident  and citizen of that part of the  world.  In his case, it's the British  government that's protected him  against people who had been  trying to kill him because of  the things he's written about or  they believe he's written about,  Islam. 

 He represents the pinnacle of  European culture now.  The artists, the writers, the  thinkers, the movie makers, it's  gotten to the point now when  they were alive, Ismail  Merchant, his film group, that  film group, Ismail Merchant film  group, would actually produce  films about Jane Austen.  So you would have Indian born  people living in Europe telling  us how to understand Jane Austen  and what traditional British  society was.  Europe has become an incredibly  pluralistic and diverse place.  And it's not just the numbers.  This is very important because  what defines Europe now is not  that everyone is the same race  because they're not.  And not that everyone is western  because they're not, just as  we're not all western, just as  we're not all the same race.  They don't actually all think  the same things.  They share different religions.  If you walk through London, as I  did when I spent much of the  summer there last summer, you  find, in fact, that it is an  incredible smorgasbord of  religions, smorgasbord of smell,  smorgasbord of practices. 

 There are entire communities of  Hindus, of Muslims, of Jews, of  Bahais, of Buddhists throughout  London and Paris, actually rival  and are probably more  religiously and ethnically  diverse than New York City and  many parts of the United States  that we consider to be the  pinnacles of diversity.  European universities are in  some ways as diverse as American  universities.  Maybe not in exact numbers but  most major universities now in  Europe have prominent faculty,  as we have in the United States,  who were not born in Europe and  large numbers of students.  In fact, there are more Indian  students from the Indian  subcontinent in many ways in  European universities than there  are in American universities.  So if you go to university  there, you would see as much, if  the not more, cultural and  religious diversity than you see  in the United States.  In the business world as well.  Throughout Europe this is the  case.  So Europe is a pluralistic  environment just as the United  States is.  And the people who drive your  taxis, the people who are at  universities, the people who are  writing are often people who  were not born there.  Some are immigrants, some of the  most successful people within  that society at the time. 

 And this is vital because it  means that is another similarity  between the United States and  Europe.  It means we are probably two of  the most open societies in spite  of all the prejudice that still  exists, open to diversity and we  are models of pluralism.  There are few models that are as  pluralistic as our own.  It's a source of strength, it's  a source of creativity, it's a  source of openness, it's a  source of newness, it's a source  of innovation.  But it also is a complex issue,  as well.  It means it's very hard to build  consensus.  The more diverse people are, the  more diverse things they think.  And that makes it hard to get  everyone on board with things.  We should expect more debate, we  should expect more protest,  that's actually a sign of  strength in this regard.  The other thing pluralism does  is it does provide cover for bad  guys. 

 Those who are able to fit into a  society and enter a society in a  way they couldn't before most of  the time will enter for good but  sometimes they'll enter for bad.  Or sometimes the pluralism of a  society will allow for pockets  of extremism to grow.  Pluralism exists because there  is decentralization and freedom  for people to pursue their own  way of thought.  Giving freedom to people to  pursue their own way of thought  might lead them to pursue  extremist, violent, hateful  means of thought, as well.  That comes with pluralism.  James Madison recognized that of  course.  He argued that you need a big  society with lots of pluralism  so no one group of extremists  would be able to tyrannize the  non-extremists.  If you were too small, one group  could tyrannize others.  But he recognized you would have  extremists.  And that's exactly what we see  in Europe. 

 That's why we have seen, in  addition to all the wonderful  pluralism and innovation that  has produced in Europe in the  last 10 to 20 years, we've also  seen more examples of extremism.  We've seen terrorist cells  formed in Europe and we've seen  the outgrowth of that.  Europe is a major source of  terrorism just as it's a major  source of cultural tolerance in  the world today.  And that's also true, to some  extent, for the United States.  We don't face the problem to  quite the same degree because  even though we are part of the  Muslim world ourselves, we're a  little more distant from it.  Distance still matters.  Distance still matters.  As just the incident on December  25th showed, the underwear  bombing or attempted underwear  bombing on the Delta flight, the  proximity of the Middle East and  areas where small minority  groups of extremists have been  able to build training camps and  others, that proximity to Europe  makes it a little easier for  them to draw upon the pluralism  in Europe to foster violent  activities than it does in the  United States because we're a  little more distant.  But even we are not completely  absent from this.  I think what happened at Fort  Hood, the terrible shooting  there, should remind us that we  have the same dynamic in our own  society. 

 The same dynamic in our own  society.  The shooter at Fort Hood had  been influenced by one of the  same clerics, one of the same  preachers of extremism who had  influenced the underwear bomber,  as you know.  Different cases but not totally  unrelated.  Pluralism is a common source of  strength but also a common  source of debate, difficulty and  challenge for the United States  and Europe.  The Europeans, I would argue in  some ways, ladies and gentlemen,  are ahead of the United States  on these issues.  Even though we have more  experience as a multicultural  society.  There's one thing Europeans and  the European Union have figured  out that we have not figured  out, and that is that pluralism  merged with inequality is a  recipe for long-term problems.  And the Europeans have, through  the EU, attempted, they have not  succeeded in all cases, but they  have attempted to put into place  policies that by building a  social welfare net, coming back  to where we started, provides  some basis for people even of  the poorest of backgrounds  to have access  to health insurance,  to have access to education,  to have access to basic  livelihoods.  Now it doesn't stop terrorism  from occurring in these areas,  it hasn't stopped violence, but  I would argue we could imagine  it being much, much worse if it  weren't for that.  And one thing the United States  has not come to grips with are  the ways in which inequality  within our own society combined  with pluralism has meant  there are whole communities  of people  in places like Detroit  and elsewhere that don't have  a chance, that don't really  have a chance in our society. 

 Our society offers great  opportunity for many people but  there are many who don't have  opportunity.  And this potentially could be a  long-term problem.  It hasn't been as much of a  problem in terms of domestic  violence as one might imagine  that it could have been, but it  is something we need to worry  about, it seems to me.  And that's another incident,  another part of the Fort Hood  incident, it seems to me, that  we need to keep in mind.  One other thing, by the way,  that's really important, in this  map of Europe that I showed you,  what's quite extraordinary is  that you have relatively free  movement for labor within this  framework, but you don't  necessarily have free movement  into and out of Europe.  As I mentioned before, you can,  if you were in Florence flying  to Frankfurt, as I did, you  don't need a passport.  You just go.  But if you were flying from New  Delhi to Frankfurt, you need a  passport.  The immigration checks are quite  significant.  And there's been a large push  toward excluding others from  coming into Europe. 

 These immigration issues remain  significant between the United  States and Europe.  We have the same problem, the  same problem.  We offer a lot to citizens  within our society, and there  are reasons why citizens want to  come to our societies, the US  and Europe, and we want those  citizens to come, we want the  best and the brightest, we want  the smartest, the most creative  to come to our societies.  We want the Salman Rushdies and  people like that.  But at the same time, we can't  let everyone in.  And how we negotiate that is a  dilemma that both the United  States and Europe face.  Our successes over the last 50  to 60 years have made us very  attractive to people who want to  come into our societies.  We want to continue to encourage  that, but we also recognize  there are limits to resources.  And how do we do that?  And how do we talk about that?  Oftentimes we talk about that as  if there were certain ethnic  groups that should be kept out  because they are not sources of  innovation, but we know that's  not true.  We know that's not true. 

 We sometimes talk about it as if  we could just build walls to  keep certain groups out of  certain towns.  We know walls don't work.  Figuring out how you manage open  borders without those borders  becoming overrun is a challenge  both the United States and  Europe face.  And it's a challenge only the  United States and Europe will  solve by working together on  these issues, by the way.  Just as we are concerned,  legitimately, but sometimes also  illegitimately, about our  Mexican border, Europeans are  concerned about their southern  and eastern borders.  And anywhere you go in Europe,  as anywhere in the United  States, someone will have a  story to tell you about an  immigrant who came in a took  their job.  Or immigrants who are creating  crime.  Statistically, there is some  truth to that but it's  exaggerated, as it is in the  United States.  But that doesn't solve the  issue.  How do you maintain openness as  a society but still regulate  borders?  That's a very difficult problem. 

 We are still a world of borders.  Borders still matter.  This comes to the final point  that I wanted to deal with,  how power is defined.  There's been a lot written about  how United States and Europe  define power differently.  Famously my friend Bob Kagan  made the argument that the  United States defines power in  terms of a Hobbesian world, they  recognize that the world is  filled with bad guys and we know  we've got to go out and  sometimes fight the bad guys to  protect the ideals we believe  in.  And he argued that Europeans  have basically become Kantian,  which is to say they believe the  world is filled with peaceful  people and if there were some  bad guys, someone else would  take care of it.  They wouldn't take care of it.  Probably most people in the  American military have thought  that at some point themselves.  It's hard not to as you look at  the commitments of Americans  overseas in so much greater  number than Europeans often to  protect things that Europeans  are as committed to as we are.  In fact, the Europeans are more  dependent on oil from the Middle  East than we are. 

 As it so happens, we have our  own reserves, we actually are an  oil-producing country of our  own.  So there is this sense, this  belief we often have that power  is defined differently.  But I don't think it's right.  I want to actually argue that  Europeans define power in ways  very similar to ours.  And this is when I'll finally  talk about NATO which I've spent  a lot of time studying and I  think is an incredibly important  subject to understand where we  are today.  NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty  Organization, created in 1949,  is the most successful alliance  in history.  Full stop.  The most successful alliance in  history.  No alliance has lasted, that I  could find records of and I  challenge someone else, lasted  60 years connecting so many  countries across such a broad  strategic terrain and  consistently providing peace  between those countries and  peace around them.  That's an incredibly successful  alliance. 

 It was the idea not of the  Americans.  It was the idea of the Brits, in  particular Ernest Bevin, the  socialist foreign minister of  Great Britain, it was actually  his idea.  Pushed very strongly by  Europeans and then, of course,  strongly supported by the United  States, as well.  It was, as Lord Ismay put it,  was designed to keep the  Americans in, the Germans down,  and the Russians out.  The Americans in, the Germans  down, and the Russians out.  Now Dwight Eisenhower thought  this was a nice idea but that it  would not last.  Dwight Eisenhower, even when he  was president, believed and said  time and again the United States  will not and the American  people, he said, will not  tolerate the long-term  commitment of American forces on  European soil.  As early as 1955 he was saying  that.  In 1957 George Kennan, the  author of containment strategy,  famously got on the radio in  London and said, it's about time  for the American soldiers to  return home.  As you all know they're still  there. 

 They're still there.  And in fact, as NATO expands  eastward as it has into Romania,  Bulgaria, Poland, Czech  Republic, former parts of the  Soviet Bloc and probably one day  into Ukraine and Georgia,  probably, I would say, not for  certain but probably, as it  expands eastward, in fact those  American forces that are on the  ground now have committed  themselves to the security of  more and more societies moving  farther and farther east.  And European security has been  defined by the presumption that  the United States will be there.  No one in Europe is talking  seriously about getting rid of  NATO.  Even those who are most critical  of George W. Bush,  most critical of the Iraq war.  I did not hear any real serious  discussion of getting rid of  NATO.  There might have been discussion  about not expanding eastward but  that's the kind of moral hazard  argument one runs into.  We want it for ourselves but we  don't want to pay for others to  have it.  But there has not been an  argument to do away with NATO.  European power presumes the  existence of this alliance and  the European Union presumes it. 

 Notice how they overlap.  Notice how they overlap.  NATO is the security and power  architecture for the European  Union and the European Union is  the political architecture on  the ground for the security  structure that NATO provides.  They go hand in hand and, in  fact, the United States has  consistently supported both of  those processes, and the  advocates of the European Union  have consistently supported the  existence of NATO.  So much for their not believing  in military force.  NATO is a military alliance.  It involves the joint command  and control of military forces.  It involves joint military  planning.  It involves joint military  operations.  Today it involves military  operations in Afghanistan, as  well as in Europe. 

 This is central to the ways in  which Europeans define not just  their defense but the projection  of their power, as well.  NATO has another impact upon the  ways in which Europeans think  about their defense and think  about their power.  It means that they define their  future as connected to American  power for better or for worse.  And we define our future that  way, as well.  Notice when President Obama made  the commitment to more troops in  Afghanistan, he went to the  Europeans to get more of a  commitment, as well.  It's not just about the numbers.  It is, despite what happened in  Iraq we still define our mission  in Afghanistan and elsewhere as  part of an American-European  mission, a NATO mission, as well  as just an American mission.  And Europeans still want to see  it that way.  What was so jarring about the  Iraq war was it was the  exception that proves the rule,  and there was blame to go  on both sides, it seems to me.  It was the exception that proves  the rule. 

 Power is defined, antiterrorism  is defined, counterinsurgency,  defense, national security,  through a NATO architecture that  is about American and European  partnership and American and  European jointness, American and  European cooperation, American  and European military trust.  What's made NATO so  extraordinary is that so many  societies have been active  contributors to it for so long  and they trust each other to do  that.  That's what makes most alliances  hard.  Most alliances fail because at  the end someone distrusts  someone else and says, I don't  trust you with my military  forces, sorry you can't have the  guns.  But in fact, the degree of trust  that's built is extraordinary,  and, in fact, even during the  Iraq war, which so many  Europeans opposed, NATO was  still an important backup  structure.  As many of you know better than  I do, the American bases in  Europe were crucial for what was  going on.  The medical services that were  provided to American soldiers on  European soil during the Iraq  war was crucial in a logistical  way, if not in a direct  battlefield way, in Iraq and it  is certainly crucial in  Afghanistan.  This brings us back to Henry  Kissinger.  His life story is still the  story of Europe and still the  story of the United States.  Kissinger, as I said, came from  Europe, came to the United  States and was part of this  incredible generation after  Tehran, after 1943, after the  Roosevelt and Stalin and  Churchill meetings that built  this extraordinary partnership. 

 It was about the United States  for him and Europe defining  power together.  NATO, the European Union, these  were not about just serving  instrumental purposes but  long-term partnership between  these societies, and he has long  been a proponent of NATO and the  European Union for exactly these  reasons.  But it has also been a source of  mutual dialogue about common  problems.  Partnership is about dialogue.  Partnership is about sometimes  disagreeing.  Partnership is about trying to  solve problems together.  And partnership ultimately for  Kissinger and still today for  the Richard Holbrookes and the  Sarkozys and the Tony Blairs  and the others  that follow, Javier Solana  and others, is about  trying to figure out how to make  a common set of ideals that  Americans and Europeans both  believe in work in a world where  those ideals are often not  believed by other people who  have access to military force  and economic wealth.  Making those ideals, making  those values workable in a world  where not everyone is out to  kill us but many people are out  to do harm to what we believe  in, if not to us ourselves,  that's the struggle.  And I would say that's still the  center of European thought, as  well as it is American thought.  The European Union is a belief  that by working together as they  have not before, the countries  of Europe can support their own  values, protect their own values  and work better with their  friends like the United States,  than they ever could before. 

 And American foreign policy to  Europe is therefore keyed upon  the success of the European  Union just as it was at the end  of World War II keyed on the  reconstruction of Europe.  The United States and Europe are  two societies, two sets of  societies that have built each  other and that remain closely  tied together, and as other  competitors rise and fall this  relationship will only grow  stronger and more important.  Three pieces of evidence for  that that I'll close on.  To this day, still more  Americans travel and study in  Europe than anywhere else and  more Europeans travel and study  to the United States than  anywhere else.  Second point, to this day the US  and European economies are more  mutually dependent than any  other economies in the world.  We might require Chinese capital  and need the Chinese to buy our  bonds but if you think about  trade flows, if you think about  knowledge flows, if you think  about economic cooperation,  still the United States and  Europe and most significantly to  this day, thankfully, from the  end of at least the 1950s to the  present, Europe has been a  source of innovation, it has  been a source of economic growth  and it has been a source of  peace for much of the rest of  the world.  The major wars after World War  II were not fought in Europe,  and it doesn't look like they're  going to be fought in Europe in  the next few years either.  That is a source of pride for  Europeans, that is a source of  common identity and that is a  source, I should think, of  long-term partnership with the  United States.  Strategy is built on values and  strategy is built on strengths  and Europe is a strength in  American strategy just as the  United States is a strength in  European strategy.  So I'll leave it at that, and I  hope we have a few minutes for  questions.