Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call the attention of my colleagues to the powerful and eloquent lecture former President Carter delivered upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize last December. With the establishment of the Carter Center in…
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call the attention of my colleagues to the powerful and eloquent lecture former President Carter delivered upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize last December.
With the establishment of the Carter Center in 1982, President Carter embraced one of the humanity's loftiest and most widely shared goals-- the alleviation of human suffering. The Carter Center has worked to virtually eliminate the crippling Guinea worm disease in Africa and treat millions of others who suffer from river blindness and trachoma. The Center's efforts to promote peace and democracy throughout the world are also well-known, monitoring elections in emerging democracies such as Sierra Leone and East Timor while promoting peaceful conflict resolution in places like the Sudan.
There is certainly little doubt that Jimmy Carter has earned the title of elder statesman and has become a voice of authority on foreign policy issues. His Nobel lecture was an affirmation of the principles that have guided his efforts for so many years. He articulated his vision of a world sharing the goals of ``peace, freedom, human rights, environmental quality, the alleviation of suffering, and the rule of law.'' But he also sounded a stern warning, a reminder that we live in a dangerous time that requires international cooperation and resolve, rather than preemptive unilateral action.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the text of President Carter's Nobel lecture, delivered December 10, 2002, be placed in the Record.
Nobel Lecture
(By Jimmy Carter)
Your Majesties, Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee,
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is with a deep sense of gratitude that I accept this
prize. I am grateful to my wife Rosalynn, to my colleagues at
The Carter Center, and to many others who continue to seek an
end to violence and suffering throughout the world. The scope
and character of our Center's activities are perhaps unique,
but in many other ways they are typical of the work being
done by many hundreds of nongovernmental organizations that
strive for human rights and peace.
Most Nobel laureates have carried out our work in safety,
but there are others who have acted with great personal
courage. None has provided more vivid reminders of the
dangers of peacemaking than two of my friends, Anwar Sadat
and Yitzhak Rabin, who gave their lives for the cause of
peace in the Middle East.
Like these two heroes, my first chosen career was in the
military, as a submarine officer. My shipmates and I realized
that we had to be ready to fight if combat was forced upon
us, and we were prepared to give our lives to defend our
nation and its principles. At the same time, we always prayed
fervently that our readiness would ensure that there would be
no war.
Later, as President and as Commander-in-Chief of our armed
forces, I was one of those who bore the sobering
responsibility of maintaining global stability during the
height of the Cold War, as the world's two superpowers
confronted each other. Both sides understood that an
unresolved political altercation or a serious misjudgment
could lead to a nuclear holocaust. In Washington and in
Moscow, we knew that we would have less than a half hour to
respond after we learned that intercontinental missiles had
been launched against us. There had to be a constant and
delicate balancing of our great military strength with
aggressive diplomacy, always seeking to build friendships
with other nations, large and small, that shared a common
cause.
In those days, the nuclear and conventional armaments of
the United States and the Soviet Union were almost equal, but
democracy ultimately prevailed because of commitments to
freedom and human rights, not only by people in my country
and those of our allies, but in the former Soviet empire as
well. As president, I extended my public support and
encouragement to Andrei Sakharov, who, although denied the
right to attend the ceremony, was honored here for his
personal commitments to these same ideals.
The world has changed greatly since I left the White House.
Now there is only one superpower, with unprecedented military
and economic strength. The coming budget for American
armaments will be greater than those of the next fifteen
nations combined, and there are troops from the United States
in many countries throughout the world. Our gross national
economy exceeds that of the three countries that follow us,
and our nation's voice most often prevails as decisions are
made concerning trade, humanitarian assistance, and the
allocation of global wealth. This dominant status is unlikely
to change in our lifetimes.
Great American power and responsibility are not
unprecedented, and have been used with restraint and great
benefit in the past. We have not assumed that super strength
guarantees super wisdom, and we have consistently reached out
to the international community to ensure that our own power
and influence are tempered by the best common judgment.
Within our country, ultimate decisions are made through
democratic means, which tend to moderate radical or ill-
advised proposals. Constrained and inspired by historic
constitutional principles, our nation has endeavored for more
than two hundred years to follow the now almost universal
ideals of freedom, human rights, and justice for all.
Our president, Woodrow Wilson, was honored here for
promoting the League of Nations, whose two basic concepts
were profoundly important: ``collective security'' and
``self-determination.'' Now they are embedded in
international law. Violations of these premises during the
last half-century have been tragic failures, as was vividly
demonstrated when the Soviet Union attempted to conquer
Afghanistan and when Iraq invaded Kuwait.
After the second world war, American Secretary of State
Cordell Hull received this prize for his role in founding the
United Nations. His successor, General George C. Marshall,
was recognized because of his efforts to help rebuild Europe,
without excluding the vanquished nations of Italy and
Germany. This was a historic example of respecting human
rights at the international level.
Ladies and gentlemen:
Twelve years ago, President Mikhail Gorbachev received your
recognition for his preeminent role in ending the Cold War
that had lasted fifty years.
But instead of entering a millennium of peace, the world is
now, in many ways, a more dangerous place. The greater ease
of travel and communication has not been
matched by equal understanding and mutual respect. There is a
plethora of civil wars, unrestrained by rules of the Geneva
Convention, within which an overwhelming portion of the
casualties are unarmed civilians who have no ability to
defend themselves. And recent appalling acts of terrorism
have reminded us that no nations, even superpowers, are
invulnerable.
It is clear that global challenges must be met with an
emphasis on peace, in harmony with others, with strong
alliances and international consensus. Imperfect as it may
be, there is no doubt that this can best be done through the
United Nations, which Ralph Bunche described here in this
same forum as exhibiting a ``fortunate flexibility''--not
merely to preserve peace but also to make change, even
radical change, without violence.
He went on to say: ``To suggest that war can prevent war is
a base play on words and a despicable form of warmongering.
The objective of any who sincerely believe in peace clearly
must be to exhaust every honorable recourse in the effort to
save the peace. The world has had ample evidence that war
begets only conditions that beget further war.''
We must remember that today there are at least eight
nuclear powers on earth, and three of them are threatening to
their neighbors in areas of great international tension. For
powerful countries to adopt a principle of preventive war may
well set an example that can have catastrophic consequences.
If we accept the premise that the United Nations is the
best avenue for the maintenance of peace, then the carefully
considered decisions of the United Nations Security Council
must be enforced. All too often, the alternative has proven
to be uncontrollable violence and expanding spheres of
hostility.
For more than half a century, following the founding of the
State of Israel in 1948, the Middle East conflict has been a
source of worldwide tension. At Camp David in 1978 and in
Oslo in 1993, Israelis, Egyptians, and Palestinians have
endorsed the only reasonable prescription for peace: United
Nations Resolution 242. It condemns the acquisition of
territory by force, calls for withdrawal of Israel from the
occupied territories, and provides for Israelis to live
securely and in harmony with their neighbors. There is no
other mandate whose implementation could more profoundly
improve international relationships.
Perhaps of more immediate concern is the necessity for Iraq
to comply fully with the unanimous decision of the Security
Council that it eliminate all weapons of mass destruction and
permit unimpeded access by inspectors to confirm that this
commitment has been honored. The world insists that this be
done.
I thought often during my years in the White House of an
admonition that we received in our small school in Plains,
Georgia, from a beloved teacher, Miss Julia Coleman. She
often said: ``We must adjust to changing times and still hold
to unchanging principles.''
When I was a young boy, this same teacher also introduced
me to Leo Tolstoy's novel, ``War and Peace.'' She interpreted
that powerful narrative as a reminder that the simple human
attributes of goodness and truth can overcome great power.
She also taught us that an individual is not swept along on a
tide of inevitability but can influence even the greatest
human events.
These premises have been proven by the lives of many
heroes, some of whose names were little known outside their
own regions until they became Nobel laureates: Albert John
Lutuli, Norman Borlaug, Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Aung San
Suu Kyi, Jody Williams, and even Albert Schweitzer and Mother
Teresa. All of these and others have proven that even without
government power--and often in opposition to it--individuals
can enhance human rights and wage peace, actively and
effectively.
The Nobel prize also profoundly magnified the inspiring
global influence of Martin Luther King, Jr., the greatest
leader that my native state has ever produced. On a personal
note, it is unlikely that my political career beyond Georgia
would have been possible without the changes brought about by
the civil rights movement in the American south and
throughout our nation.
On the steps of our memorial to Abraham Lincoln, Dr. King
said: ``I have a dream that on the red hills of Georgia the
sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will
be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.''
The scourge of racism has not been vanquished, either in
the red hills of our state or around the world. And yet we
see ever more frequent manifestations of his dream of racial
healing. In a symbolic but very genuine way, at least
involving two Georgians, it is coming true in Oslo today.
I am not here as a public official, but as a citizen of a
troubled world who finds hope in a growing consensus that the
generally accepted goals of society are peace, freedom, human
rights, environmental quality, the alleviation of suffering,
and the rule of law.
During the past decades, the international community,
usually under the auspices of the United Nations, has
struggled to negotiate global standards that can help us
achieve these essential goals. They include: the abolition of
land mines and chemical weapons; an end to the testing,
proliferation, and further deployment of nuclear warheads;
constraints on global warming; prohibition of the death
penalty, at least for children; and an international criminal
court to deter and to punish war crimes and genocide. Those
agreements already adopted must be fully implemented, and
others should be pursued aggressively.
We must also strive to correct the injustice of economic
sanctions that seek to penalize abusive leaders but all too
often inflict punishment on those who are already suffering
from the abuse.
The unchanging principles of life predate modern times. I
worship Jesus Christ, whom we Christians consider to be the
Prince of Peace. As a Jew, he taught us to cross religious
boundaries, in service and in love. He repeatedly reached out
and embraced Roman conquerors, other Gentiles, and even the
more despised Samaritans.
Despite theological differences, all great religions share
common commitments that define our ideal secular
relationships. I am convinced that Christians, Muslims,
Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, and others can embrace each other in
a common effort to alleviate human suffering and to
espouse peace.
But the present era is a challenging and disturbing time
for those whose lives are shaped by religious faith based on
kindness toward each other. We have been reminded that cruel
and inhuman acts can be derived from distorted theological
beliefs, as suicide bombers take the lives of innocent human
beings, draped falsely in the cloak of God's will. With
horrible brutality, neighbors have massacred neighbors in
Europe, Asia, and Africa.
In order for us human beings to commit ourselves personally
to the inhumanity of war, we find it necessary first to
dehumanize our opponents, which is in itself a violation of
the beliefs of all religions. Once we characterize our
adversaries as beyond the scope of God's mercy and grace,
their lives lose all value. We deny personal responsibility
when we plant landmines and, days or years later, a stranger
to us--often a child--is crippled or killed. From a great
distance, we launch bombs or missiles with almost total
impunity, and never want to know the number or identity of
the victims.
At the beginning of this new millennium I was asked to
discuss, here in Oslo, the greatest challenge that the world
faces. Among all the possible choices, I decided that the
most serious and universal problem is the growing chasm
between the richest and poorest people on earth. Citizens of
the ten wealthiest countries are now seventy-five times
richer than those who live in the ten poorest ones, and the
separation is increasing every year, not only between nations
but also within them. The results of this disparity are root
causes of most of the world's unresolved problems, including
starvation, illiteracy, environmental degradation, violent
conflict, and unnecessary illnesses that range from Guinea
worm to HIV/AIDS.
Most work of The Carter Center is in remote villages in the
poorest nations of Africa, and there I have witnessed the
capacity of destitute people to persevere under heartbreaking
conditions. I have come to admire their judgment and wisdom,
their courage and faith, and their awesome accomplishments
when given a chance to use their innate abilities.
But tragically, in the industrialized world there is a
terrible absence of understanding or concern about those who
are enduring lives of despair and hopelessness. We have not
yet made the commitment to share with others an appreciable
part of our excessive wealth. This is a potentially rewarding
burden that we should all be willing to assume.
Ladies and gentlemen:
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how
necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not
learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's
children,
The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the
divisiveness of our fears and prejudices. God gives us the
capacity for choice. We can choose to alleviate suffering. We
can choose to work together for peace. We can make these
changes--and we must.