IN OUR TIME; IN OUR HANDS Ambassador Matthew W. Barzun Four Seasons Hotel, London September 26, 2013

Transcription

1 1 IN OUR TIME; IN OUR HANDS Ambassador Matthew W. Barzun Four Seasons Hotel, London September 26, 2013 Mr. Chairman. What a warm, wonderful welcome - thank you. I m especially grateful to you, Ron, and to you Lord Boyce, and to all the Pilgrims - Brooke and I could not feel more welcome. And we share the excitement of all the new members here, and are truly honored to be among you. Actually, one of your New York-based Pilgrims gave me an early welcome this summer before I came over. He gave me two very specific bits of advice. First, he said I must be sure to give my first major speech to this group. And so here I am. Second, he said, beware: the British press will build you up at first and then tear you down. Two days later the first story appeared in a UK paper about me becoming Ambassador. It described me as and I quote: a potato with hair. That s the building up. Needless to say I m bracing myself for the tearing down. My next brush with the British press came just six days after I arrived in London. It was this: A Death Notice for the Special Relationship on the front page of your biggest-selling daily newspaper. One of the great bastions of freedom and world stability for decades had apparently been killed-off suddenly by 13 non-binding votes on a Thursday night at the end of summer. And, you know, it s really too bad because we had a nice run there. Let s see: Saved the world from fascism built prosperity from the ruins of World War II prevailed in the Cold War took the fight to terrorists. Ah...memories. It was good while it lasted I guess, but now well... And it makes tonight kind of awkward, doesn t it? I mean if what they re saying is true, Brooke and I may as well pack up our three children, our dog Lincoln, and head back home to Kentucky.

2 2 Perhaps, for the sake of efficiency and tradition, we should make tonight both a welcome and a farewell dinner... Okay, I think you all get the point. The truth is - as you know better than anyone - the special relationship is not only alive and well, it s as strong as it s ever been. The Syria crisis didn t spell the demise of the relationship. The impassioned arguments in Parliament and Congress over enforcing human rights norms showed just the opposite. Those debates were expressions of the most sacred value that our nations share: faith in a free, fair, inclusive democratic political process. And there are so many other indications that the special relationship between our governments remains as vital as ever: On climate change, law enforcement, development. On trade & investment, defense & intelligence, open government & civil society. In fact, you name it, Britain and America are talking about it and we re working on it. So our relationship is vibrant and remains essential to our shared ambition, which is as President Obama said in his address at Westminster Hall in 2011 and again this week at the United Nations to make the world more peaceful, more prosperous, more just. Still, since healthy self-examination is never a bad thing, we can use this artificial near-death experience to our advantage. I think there is something to take away from this episode. Something we can do differently. As Pilgrims and ambassadors we believe in the value and strength of the Anglo-American alliance. When we are asked to defend if it s alive and if it matters - as we have been recently - we do so. That s a good thing. But as I have listened, with great appreciation, to smart defenders from both sides of the Atlantic and their expressions of support and as I listened to my own attempts, it struck me that we often fall into two traps when trying to defend it. The first tendency is to hark back to history and the triumphs of the past, as I just did invoking images of bronze statues, of Churchill, FDR, Eisenhower, the Eagle squadron. These mental images reinforce a sacred quality, as they should, but they can also make our relationship feel like a relic.

3 3 The other trap is to go to the other extreme and divert attention to the laundry list of programs and initiatives our governments cooperate on today, as I also just did and when something gets tricky or sticky, to wait for the next day's paper to call attention to some topic of total agreement. Or, put more simply, we cast the special relationship in bronze or paper over it. In both cases it can make this relationship feel remote and restricted. So the work for all of us who value strong Anglo-American ties is not simply to address the question of whether the special relationship is alive, and answer yes, and move on. It is to do away with the question altogether by expanding people s understanding of our alliance: to explain that the relationship lives with us in our time, and is the business of everyone. And this evening I want to invoke three images that I believe can help us in this endeavor. Three images that I hope are familiar to all Pilgrims: white fences, whiskey, and Winant - as in Ambassador Winant. Whenever I feel like we are falling into the nostalgic trap, I remember the warning from one of my favorite British writers, GK Chesterton, who brings us the first image: white fences. He wrote that the quickest way to make a white fence black is to do nothing. Just let the elements and outside forces take their toll. If you leave something alone, he argued, you subject it to a torrent of change. So, he goes on, if you love your old white fence you need to be constantly painting your new white fence. I like this image of each of us painting our plank of the fence. Because the special relationship is not made up of just the President and Prime Minister; Secretary of State and Foreign Secretary; or the Joint Chiefs and Chiefs of Staff. It s exchange students and executives, artists and activists, scientists and scholars, geneticists and genealogists, engineers and entrepreneurs, publishers and Pilgrims. And all of them are the lifeblood of this unique, indispensable partnership that is the envy of the world. Our challenge is to take the special relationship out of the history book and into people s daily lives. To take it out of London and Washington, and into Aberdeen and Albuquerque, Belfast and Buffalo, Cardiff and Cleveland, Dover and Detroit. It is, in short, to paint our part of our plank of the fence every day through the continuous back-andforth of conference calling, Facebook friending, songlist swapping, trip-taking and much more. You, of course, are already doing it. And it's working.

4 4 So my pledge to you this evening is to work with each of you in whatever way I can to keep painting that figurative fence. Together. And while it will take this kind of work to help our fellow citizens understand that the special relationship lives in our time and in our hands, it will also take honesty and authenticity. And that brings me to whiskey, our second image. When I consider the U.S.-UK relationship I think about whiskey and the fine traditions we have of making our own scotch, Irish, or American. Picture please a glass of whiskey. It takes three steps to make this fine mahogany-colored spirit. The first is fermentation, where you bring together the grain and water, add yeast and let the mixture bubble up. In this metaphor, the natural ingredients are our greatest resource - our talented people. And the yeast is the common culture of resourcefulness, creativity and ingenuity that act as the catalyst. A recent Ernst & Young report listed the U.S. and UK numbers one and two for best climates for entrepreneurship in the world. We re good at bubbling up. End the process here and you get beer, which is fine. But to develop something a little more potent, we need to keep going. The second step is distillation, where we sift through the new ideas, concepts and approaches that bubbled up in stage one and refine them. Distil them down. This is where we leave much behind in pursuit of something stronger and clearer. End the process here and you get vodka. Now, neither of us has a great vodka tradition. And, of course, there s nothing wrong with vodka. But with all due respect to our vodka-drinking friends you can make vodka in an afternoon. To get something more distinctive, more... special, you need the third step, which, if you ask people they generally guess is time, or aging. And that s part of it. But the technical term is maturation.

5 5 It s not just time. It s time in the barrel and time with fluctuations - where the clear liquid contracts into and out of the wood, pulling out the flavor and color. It is this cycle of expansion and contraction, in the heat and the cold, which gives good whiskey its color, character, and complexity. That, for me, is the part of the process that makes our relationship special. But too often we tend to tell a vodka history of our relationship, whereas the whiskey one is much more powerful. The vodka history goes like this: We were all one big happy family, then there was a bit of family feud in 1776 and in 1812 we had (how do I put this diplomatically) some retribution, but we soon went back to being the best of friends and fought and won wars together ever since. As you know, it is much more complicated than that. Or as a whiskey distiller might say, more complex. It is a history full of give and take. Of agreement and disagreement, resentment and gratitude, competition and cooperation. It s a history that reflects the way human events really take place, with triumph and struggle. And the real story is a more instructional and relatable history. And for being those things, it is also far, far more inspiring. Consider how we re about to launch into some pretty big discussions about a U.S.-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. There is no way that there won t be differences and disputes during the talks. Does the first time this happens spell doom for the relationship? Of course not. Nor does it when we have vigorous discussions within and between our democracies - about how we find the right balance between safeguarding our security and safeguarding our freedoms, including privacy. More likely, the relationship will be enhanced and enriched by resolving the contentious issues. So let s tell the whiskey version more often. Let s not dismiss those times when we ve had a difference of opinion but celebrate them as part of an organic process. That s the reality. The reality that as our nations evolve, so does our relationship. Now, as we go about the work of owning the special relationship for the here and now while embracing its complexities and imperfections, we never forget that we are standing on the shoulders of giants.

6 6 In fact, our approach should be inspired and guided by those Americans and Britons whose extraordinary labor and talents earned our partnership its name in the first place. Ambassador Gil Winant stands out for me. A man who did as much as any single American outside of FDR and outside of uniform to get America to join with Britain to defeat the greatest threat to freedom the world has ever known. And it s his image that s the third and last I want to invoke tonight. You, as Pilgrims, know Gil Winant well. He was welcomed by this group in March of 1941 as the new American Ambassador. I feel a special connection because he went to same small prep school in New Hampshire that I did. It also happens to be the same one Secretary Kerry John Kerry, our Secretary of State - attended. And, in fact, when Secretary Kerry was a student there he founded a club to debate foreign policy that he named The Winant Society. Gil Winant, of course, arrived at a time when his predecessor said Britain and its fight against fascism was a lost cause. But when he came here in 1941 he said it was his cause. And he did everything in his power to make it FDR's cause, the US Congress cause, and the American people's cause. His work is well-known now. The book to read if you haven t is Lynne Olsen s Citizens of London. He refused to live in the fancy residence because it seemed like an affront to him given what the British people were enduring. During the bombing he walked around London, inspecting the damage each morning, and doing what he could to help on the spot, and then reporting it all back to Washington. He was with Churchill when news of Pearl Harbor came. And then he helped to manage the unprecedented integration of our nations forces when America entered the war. He was famously both highly patient and highly effective. His words were sometimes halting but his conviction, expressed through hard work, integrity and compassion, expressed itself like thunder. His life ended too early and tragically, but the words on his gravestone taken from his memoirs about his life in diplomacy -- pay tribute to his work and world-view: Doing the day's work day by day, doing a little, adding a little, broadening our bases, wanting --not only for ourselves but for others also --a fairer chance for all people everywhere.

7 7 Day by day. Doing a little. Adding a little. Broadening our bases. Painting our plank of the fence. Accepting complexity. The prescription for growing the special relationship is right there on Winant s gravestone just as relevant today as it was in the age of the bronze statues in Grosvenor Square. And you, here in this room, as much as anyone have lived these words broadening bases day by day to form the millions of sinews of transatlantic strength. This is the relationship that our fellow citizens must understand and celebrate. The one that lives in the present tense, inside individuals, not just institutions. A real relationship that learns and builds and prospers from our differences as much as from our areas of agreement. A relationship that is inspired by history but never imprisoned by it. I look forward to working with each of you to help tell your stories, and to inspire more people to take up our cause and take ownership of our living special relationship. Thank you.