Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Citibank in Melbourne ("Challenges of the 21st Century")

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: Melbourne, Australia
Source: Thatcher Archive
Editorial comments: Embargoed until 1230 local time.
Importance ranking: Major
Word count: 3162
Themes: Civil liberties, Conservatism, Defence (general), Economic policy - theory and process, Foreign policy (Asia), Foreign policy (Australia & NZ), Foreign policy (International organizations), Foreign policy (USA), Foreign policy (USSR & successor states)

CHALLENGES OF THE 21ST CENTURY

A changing Australia …

This is my first return visit to Australia since leaving office. But my first ever visit was as Leader of the Opposition in 1976. The Australia I found then was very different to the country I find now — but then so is Britain. Your country's economy was still unreformed, held back by heavy interventionism and controls. Sentimental and practical ties with Britain — through the monarchy, the Commonwealth and shared memories of the Second World War — were still very strong. Australians were just beginning to consider their country as a substantial force having vital interests in the Asia-Pacific region.

I came to Australia again in 1988 on the occasion of the Bicentennial celebrations. There was a new self-confidence in the air. There was a serious resolve to tackle economic problems. Australians were also thinking hard about relations with the already booming Asia-Pacific economies. Indeed, I took as the subject of a speech I made in Canberra on that occasion the importance of Australia's role as a regional power.

The nature of Australia's role in the Asia-Pacific is also one of the topics of my speech today.

But there is hardly any need to stress its importance. The Australian Government's foreign policy priority has become the “enmeshment” of Australia in the Asia-Pacific. And Australia has become a driving force behind the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC).

Ties with Britain nowadays seem at one level less important than in the past. The question of Australia's constitutional position is hotly debated — and, though as Prime Minister I had some heated debates with Australians, this is one which I have no wish to enter. I would only reflect that those who imagine that a politician would make a better figurehead than an hereditary monarch ought perhaps to make the acquaintance of more politicians.

I say that the ties between our two countries are “at one level” less important, because at another they remain strong and should become stronger. The United Kingdom is the second largest investor in Australia. And Australia is the third largest direct investor in the United Kingdom. Around 13,000 British citizens a year migrate to Australia for permanent settlement. So both in economic and in human terms the Anglo-Australian relationship is very much alive and well.

… in the vanguard of democracy

Such relationships ebb and flow. But one thing that does not change about Australia is the vigour of its democracy.

In this region, however, economic freedom seems generally to be prized — at least by governments — more highly than full political freedom. My own belief has always been that economic and political freedom are two sides of the same coin. Without economic freedom, political freedom is very difficult to develop: for without the rights of property and of free exchange the powers of government overwhelm anyone wishing to stand up against it. Moreover, once people experience the opportunities and responsibilities which a free economy brings with it, they also quickly develop a taste for political freedom as well.

That is particularly the case when an educated and self-confident middle class emerges.

Here in the Asia-Pacific region — and, of course, there are large differences between particular countries — we are, I believe, seeing the beginnings of the transition from economic prosperity to political maturity. And this, of course, is something which is of great concern to Australia.

The economic advance of the Asia-Pacific countries …

But let me first briefly recall a few of the more startling economic facts. Today the Asia-Pacific region has the highest growth rates in the world. By the end of this decade trade within the Asia-Pacific area is expected to exceed trade within Europe. Across the region, output per person is doubling every ten years. Savings rates are running at over 30 per cent of GDP.

Between now and the end of the century the number of people in the crucial 20-39 year old age group will decline in the United States. It will decline in Japan. It will decline in Europe. But in the Pacific Rim countries it will increase by some 80 million, representing a huge advance in buying power and the capacity to produce more goods and services.

… has political implications — for power usually follows prosperity

The accelerating economic progress of the Asia-Pacific has important political implications. In the long term, power usually follows wealth. We can therefore expect that in the next century Europe will count for less and the Asia-Pacific countries for more than in the twentieth, let alone than in the nineteenth, century.

This transition will have to be managed carefully. Economic prowess is a great deal, but it is not everything. The West — and particularly the United States — will have a crucial role in ensuring a free, just and orderly world for the foreseeable future, no matter what GDP figures may come to suggest.

But with the rise of the Asia-Pacific countries to new prominence, it is more important than ever that we should agree upon and implement the right principles to direct our foreign and security policies in the years ahead — and that we should win acceptance for them from the emerging powers. This is a task for Australia in particular, as you are, after all, the oldest democracy in the region. But it is also a task for democracies everywhere.

History's lesson: …

It is worth glancing backwards at the past before trying to map out the future. One of history's most poignant lessons is that free, peace-loving countries are all too inclined to forget how they became free and peaceful. In this post-Cold War era, we must not fall into the same trap.

… foreswear false optimism

We should remember how optimistic our forebears must have been at the beginning of this century. The progress of science and technology seemed to ensure previously undreamt of improvement in people's living standards. Unfortunately science and technology do nothing to improve the standards of people's behaviour.

As a result, the rise and then the defeat of two powerful but perverted ideologies — Nazism and Communism — characterised what should have been a century of progress. Professor R.J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii has observed that this century has seen 36 million people killed in battle, while at least 119 million more (over three times as many) have been killed by government genocide, massacres, and other mass killings - as many as 95 million by Communist regimes. To any civilised society these figures appear incomprehensible. But they result from the marriage of absolute ideology with absolute power. To the communists all institutions, cultural norms, traditions and sentiments were expendable. And as Professor Rummel says “the people were as though lumber and bricks, to be used in building the new world.”

We must hope — but we dare not assume — that the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the patchy progress towards reform in most of the remaining communist countries will usher in a new era.

With the demise of the Soviet Union, the prism of East/West rivalry through which the world was viewed for forty years has gone.

As a result problems which once seemed intractable are now being resolved: in South Africa, in the Middle East, across Central America and, of course, in South East Asia. Indeed the position in this part of the world has been transformed — look at the Philippines, Cambodia and Vietnam, and I hope that it is not too long before we see similar progress in Burma.

A new world order?

The end of the Cold War was the most significant political event of my lifetime: but it did not mean the end of conflict. There will always be conflict: it is part of human nature, part of the eternal battle between good and evil. There will always be those who are prepared to use force to attain their objectives — dictators will not suddenly become an extinct species.

Although we now live in a better and freer world, ironically the end of the Cold War meant that we live in a more disorderly world. There are increasing dangers of nuclear proliferation as Soviet materials and expertise find their way to regimes which would have few scruples about their use. At the same time, the discipline which the Communist powers exerted over their third world client states has decayed, paradoxically giving such international outlaws as Saddam Hussein greater freedom to cause trouble. Moreover, ethnic or tribal hostilities, previously suppressed by authoritarian regimes, have broken out, leading to bloodshed and instability — as in Bosnia.

This is not a New World Order: it would be better described as a New World Dis-order.

How in such a world can we secure the gains for freedom which have been made? How can those gains be extended further? I wish to suggest three principles which should guide us.

Fighting the battle of ideas

First, we have to be bold and vigorous in fighting the battle of ideas. The case for democracy, free enterprise and human rights has to be re-stated time and time again. Certainly over the last few years democracy has been spreading through every continent — the former Communist bloc, Latin America, Africa and Asia. Instant information provided by the telecommunications revolution, expectations generated by rising prosperity and the eternal appeal of individual freedom are a powerful combination.

But the moral case still has to be argued. There will always be potential tyrants and deeply entrenched vested interests which claim to offer a quicker way to a better life. We have to remind those taking the first steps on the path to freedom that there will be risks and difficulties ahead. As in the former Soviet Union, where people who are totally unused to shouldering responsibility are coming to accept it.

But once a functioning democracy, underpinned by a free economy is achieved, the moral and material results will be greater than anyone could have anticipated.

Moreover, democracy is not only desirable in itself: the spread of democracy is a strategy for peace. History shows that genuine democracies do not go to war with each other.

Regimes which respect human rights at home are more likely to foreswear aggression abroad. The values of freedom give even culturally very different countries a common understanding of the need for restraint, compromise and respect.

All this is especially important for the Asia-Pacific region — overshadowed as it is by the growing power of China.

In China, Deng Xiaoping since 1978, although denying political liberty, has steadily encouraged a market or enterprise economy. “I wish we had started that way” , the Russian leaders used to say to me — but historically, the Russians had little taste for enterprise and their brief experience of it was snuffed out by Lenin in 1917. Moreover, while China benefited from investment from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, Russia has had no such diaspora to help her. But perhaps the greatest difference between the Russians and the Chinese is that the Chinese are born traders.

I believe that as the people of China grow used to taking everyday decisions in the market place so they will wish to have more say over the rest of their lives. Once you grant economic liberty, political liberty will soon follow.

But what is vital is to reject the argument advanced by the Chinese and others that human rights and aspirations to democracy are somehow inappropriate in Asia. Had anyone from the West put forward such a monstrous proposition, he would have been adjudged racist. Moreover, the thesis has no validity — indeed India disproves it. Human rights belong to each and everyone by virtue of being human.

They outrank cultural differences and they should be a bridge between peoples, not a barrier.

Keeping up a strong defence …

Our victory over Communism in the Cold War was only achieved because the United States, staunchly supported by its friends including Britain and Australia, kept her defences strong, her technology advanced, and her alliances in good repair.

The same conditions must apply now that our task is to secure and extend the advance of liberty.

It was, I believe, right to reconsider our levels of defence spending in Western countries when the threat from the Soviet Union greatly diminished at the end of the 1980s. But too many people forgot that the only peace dividend we had a right to expect from victory in the Cold War was peace itself. In my view, Western countries have been cutting back their defences too far. We must remember that it is not strength that causes wars, but weakness.

The world must wake up to the problems which Iran and Iraq may yet pose. The problem of North Korea has not been solved. You know too in this part of the world that there are disputes over the extent of territorial waters.

… and keeping America involved

All of this reinforces the need for America to remain committed to upholding international order. For there is no substitute for her leadership. Those who expected the United Nations to fulfil a role for which it was always ill-suited have now been shown to be wrong by events in Bosnia.

So America must remain a European power for the sake of the West and a Pacific power for the sake of the Asia-Pacific, and she is entitled to look to us for full support and a recognition of the burden which she bears.

It would have been a rash person who would have predicted at the end of the Vietnam War that America would still have substantial forces in Asia two decades later.

But thank goodness America has had the stamina and resolve to stay, because her presence is the critical element in the Asian security equation. While the countries of the region remain confident that America will not permit any one country to dominate militarily, they will feel secure. If on the other hand the United States were to withdraw, the balance would be upset and an arms race would inevitably follow.

So once again the world puts a big premium on America's wisdom and staying-power.

[square brackets in press release:] [The counterpart is that America must not be excluded from the benefits of economic cooperation in the region. The omens in fact look quite promising, with APEC assuming a larger role in the region's affairs. Indeed, the multilateral regional organisations such as APEC and ASEAN will have a key part in creating a sense of interdependence, which will improve the sense of security of all the countries in the region. The key to their success is that their members are not being asked to surrender sovereignty, but rather to work together as independent countries to pursue their common interests.]

Yet America, even with the help of her allies, can only be an enforcer of last resort.

A balance of power between Russia, China and Japan is evolving

Consequently, international relations have generally to be conducted now, as in the past, by reference to the principle of the balance of power. In this region that means above all the balance of power between Russia, China and Japan. Each of them are very different countries with very different strengths and weaknesses.

Within Russia, although there are signs of economic progress, the political situation is confused and worrying and not made any easier by concerns about President Yeltsin's health. Russia still has the weaponry and the reach to cause problems across half the globe — including the Pacific — if it is so minded. The time has probably come and gone when outsiders could make much impact on Russia's internal economic and political evolution. I would have liked the West to have done more and sooner. I also believe that the West is now too keen to appease Russian demands, whether as regards the issue of the expansion of NATO membership or as regards Bosnia. Generous-hearted firmness rather than penny-pinching weakness would have been a better policy.

For all her difficulties, Russia is still a powerful and potentially rich country. Like the United States, she is also a trans-continental power, which faces both the European-Atlantic area and the Asia-Pacific. Although for the time being Russia has virtually abdicated an effective role in this region, we shall surely in due course witness a resurgence of Russian influence. With one-third of the world's economic activity now in the Asia-Pacific, and major Russian security interests at stake in her relations with China and Japan, she will inevitably be drawn to play a role.

But the greatest change will undoubtedly come as a result of China's natural ambition to have a bigger voice in the security of the region. As her economy grows stronger her military strength is bound to increase, even if the proportion of GNP spent on defence remains unchanged. In practice, China is going to be a much more formidable military power than it is today.

This is not necessarily a cause for alarm. The question is how that military power will be used.

While China has always been vigilant about its borders and has occupied Tibet, it has not historically been an expansionist power with territorial designs on its neighbours. In recent years, it has muted its various border conflicts and played a more constructive part in the United Nations Security Council.

Even so, the other regional powers will need to be reassured that China's expanding forces and capabilities do not threaten them.

Their judgment will be affected — and rightly — by how far China's phenomenal economic development is matched by greater liberty. And on that score, I am, as I have indicated, cautiously optimistic.

The third player, Japan, is already an economic superpower. In recent years she has also been strengthening her defences. For reasons of history, Japan will probably remain reluctant to exercise military power in the region — provided always that her crucial security and defence links with the United States are preserved and do not fall victim to disagreements on trade and economic issues.

The English-speaking peoples — accepting a vocation to liberty

I have spent much of this speech analysing international affairs, including the affairs of this region, in terms of economic and military power. But I do not believe that it is the task of statesmen simply to be practitioners of realpolitik. Principles also matter — and moral principles at that.

This is indeed part of the political tradition of the English-speaking peoples. The English language itself is soaked in the values of liberty. That is one reason why the dominance of English as the global language of business is also making a contribution to the advance of democracy.

We can argue between ourselves about the historical origins of that.

But there is no doubt that the English-speaking countries of the world seem to have a special aptitude for combining the hard-headed pursuit of national interest with a commitment to high moral aims. It is in the national interests of both our countries to remain faithful to that tradition.

Perhaps, I can borrow the words employed by Winston Churchill almost half a century ago in his great Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri:

“We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world.”

It is a worthy vocation.