‘Too much focus on history can become a prison for nations’

It was American Realism that enabled the United States to come into being in the first place. It was American Realism that led us to rally our allies to build a balance of power that favoured freedom in the last century.

Different nations will find ways to express democratic values that reflect their own cultures and their own ways of life. And yet the basics are universal and we know them — that men and women have the right to choose those who will govern them, to speak their minds, to worship freely, and to find protection from the arbitrary power of the state.

And democracy is the most realistic path to lasting peace among nations. In the short run, there will surely be struggles and setbacks. There will be stumbles and even falls. But delaying the start of the democratic enterprise will only mask tensions and breed frustrations that will not be suppressed forever.

America has no permanent enemies, because we harbour no permanent hatreds. The United States is sometimes thought of as a nation that perhaps does not dwell enough on its own history. To that, I say: Good for us. Because too much focus on history can become a prison for nations.

Our confidence that there are no permanent enemies also gives us hope that two states, Israel and Palestine, will one day live side by side in peace and security.

All conflicts must end, and nations need not have permanent enemies. But the United States has permanent allies: They are the allies with whom we share values — allies like Japan, and South Korea, and Australia, the allies we have in our own hemisphere, and of course, the allies we have across this continent — within NATO and the European Union.

I recognise that this is not easy work. We have all struggled to master the challenge of counterinsurgency — of marrying our civilian reconstruction and development efforts with our military operations.

But for all of the challenges NATO is facing, let us remember how far we have come. I remember when NATO saw the world in two parts: There was Europe, and then there was “out of area” — which was pretty much everything else. So who could have imagined seven years ago that our alliance today would be training troops in Iraq, providing air lift in Darfur, and rooting out terrorists in places like Kandahar?

Optimism and confidence in our ideals are perhaps a part of the American character, and I admit that this can make us a somewhat impatient nation. Though we realise that our ideals and our interests may be in tension in the short term, and that they are surely tested by the complexities of the real world, we know that they tend to be in harmony when we take the long view.

Yes, our ideals and our optimism make Americans impatient, but our history, our experience, should make us patient at the same time. We, of all people, realise how long and difficult the path of democracy really is. After all, when our Founding Fathers said “We the People,” they did not mean me. It took the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, to overcome the compromise in our Constitution that made the founding of the United States of America possible, but that made my ancestors three-fifths of a man.

So we Americans have no reason for false pride and every reason for humility. And we believe that human imperfection makes democracy more important, and all who are striving for it more deserving of patience and support. History provides so many affirming examples of this.

After all, who would have thought that Japan would be a pillar of democratic stability in Asia? Once, that seemed impossible. Now, it seems inevitable. Who would have thought that Germany and France would never go to war again and would instead join in union? Once, that too seemed impossible. Now, it too seems inevitable. And who would have thought that NATO and the European Union would erase old divisions of East and West, that they would unite democratic nations across Europe, and that the Alliance would hold its 2006 Summit in Latvia? Once, that seemed impossible. Now, it too seems inevitable.

And I have seen what a better future could look like when, improbably, I have watched the American president stand with elected leaders under the flags of a democratic Iraq, a democratic Afghanistan, and the democratic future state of Palestine.

Excerpted from Rice’s keynote address at the World economic forum, Davos, January 23