Europe must avoid being held prisoner by its history - Richard C. Holbrooke, Asst. Sec. for European and Canadian Affairs, May 29, 1995 - Transcript

US Department of State Dispatch, June 26, 1995

The world is horrified by a Serb's willingness to kill a Muslim in revenge for ancestors who allegedly fought at Kosovo in the year 1389. Constantly stoked with intergenerational resentment, the memory of past horrors fuels their repetition in the future. The Scottish poet Edwin Muir once wrote of his despair over this murderous wheel of history: "...loves and hates are thrust upon me by the acrimonious dead, the buried thesis, long since rusted knife, revengeful dust...."

It is not my purpose here today to suggest that we circumvent history. History as our guide and teacher, history as a cautionary tale that informs us, is indispensable to our self-awareness. But can this region free itself from history's ghosts? We must learn from history--but not be imprisoned by it.

When the Soviet empire collapsed, it revealed among the peoples of the entire region both a strong yearning for civil society and powerful ethnic passions. It was, perhaps, inevitable that there would be some tension between the two. "This post-communist Europe of ours is rent by a great conflict of two spiritual cultures," Adam Michnik wrote in 1990. "One of these cultures says, let us join Europe and let us respect European standards, while the other says, let us go back to our own national roots and build an order according to our national particularity."

Tomas Masaryk saw the danger clearly a century ago. "I don't believe in a specially chosen nation," he said in 1895, "I have no need to belittle other nations in order that mine appear superior." And the Hungarian thinker Ishtvan Bibo warned decades ago that the greatest threat to democracy comes when "the cause of the nation separates from the cause of freedom."

It is important, in building the new democracies of this promising region, that healthy national pride not turn into the narrow nationalism that depends on creating hostility between national groups, each with its own view of history. That route leads directly to the tragedy of the Balkans today.

Of course, the dangers of narrow nationalism have never been confined to the eastern half of the continent. In 1915, the British historian Norman Angell said that every England--every country in Europe--has its Ireland, and every Ireland has its Ulster. But 80 years later, the people of Northern Ireland have embarked on a quest for peace--a quest that Central Europe and Cyprus should examine and eventually, I hope, emulate.

Let me share with you a recent experience that is relevant. I have just come from the White House Conference on Trade and Investment in Northern Ireland hosted by President Clinton and attended by hundreds of business and civic leaders from companies from the United States, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland. In a single room in a Washington Hotel sat representatives of every faction on that strife-torn isle--men and women whose sides had refused to speak to each other for generations. Now, astonished at their own boldness, with excitement and electricity in the air, they were busily discussing their common future.