Mr. Secretary General, Mr. President, world leaders, and distinguished delegates,
welcome to New York. It is a profound honor to stand here in my home city as a
representative of the American people to address the people of the world. As
millions of our citizens continue to suffer the effects of the devastating
hurricanes that have struck our country, I want to begin by expressing my
appreciation to every leader in this room who has offered assistance and aid.
The American people are strong and resilient, and they will emerge from these
hardships more determined than ever before.
Fortunately, the United States has done very well since Election Day
last November 8. The stock market is at an all-time high, a record.
Unemployment is at its lowest level in 16 years, and because of our regulatory
and other reforms, we have more people working in the United States today than
ever before. Companies are moving back, creating job growth, the likes of which
our country has not seen in a very long time, and it has just been announced
that we will be spending almost $700 billion on our military and defense. Our
military will soon be the strongest it has ever been. For more than 70 years,
in times of war and peace, the leaders of nations, movements, and religions
have stood before this assembly.
Like them, I intend to address some of the very serious threats before
us today, but also the enormous potential waiting to be unleashed. We live in a
time of extraordinary opportunity. Breakthroughs in science, technology, and
medicine are curing illnesses and solving problems that prior generations
thought impossible to solve. But each day also brings news of growing dangers
that threaten everything we cherish and value. Terrorists and extremists have
gathered strength and spread to every region of the planet. Rogue regimes
represented in this body not only support terror but threaten other nations and
their own people with the most destructive weapons known to humanity.
Authority and authoritarian powers seek to collapse the values, the
systems, and alliances, that prevented conflict and tilted the word toward
freedom since World War II. International criminal networks traffic drugs,
weapons, people, force dislocation and mass migration, threaten our borders and
new forms of aggression exploit technology to menace our citizens. To put it
simply, we meet at a time of both immense promise and great peril. It is
entirely up to us whether we lift the world to new heights or let it fall into
a valley of disrepair. We have it in our power, should we so choose, to lift
millions from poverty, to help our citizens realize their dreams, and to ensure
that new generations of children are raised free from violence, hatred, and
fear.
This institution was founded in the aftermath of two world wars, to
help shape this better future. It was based on the vision that diverse nations
could cooperate to protect their sovereignty, preserve their security, and
promote their prosperity. It was in the same period exactly 70 years ago that
the United States developed the Marshall Plan to help restore Europe. Those
these beautiful pillars, they are pillars of peace, sovereignty, security, and
prosperity. The Marshall Plan was built on the noble idea that the whole world
is safer when nations are strong, independent, and free. As president, Truman
said in his message to Congress at that time, our support of European recovery
is in full accord with our support of the United Nations.
The success of the United Nations depends upon the independent strength
of its members. To overcome the perils of the present, and to achieve the
promise of the future, we must begin with the wisdom of the past. Our success
depends on a coalition of strong and independent nations that embrace their
sovereignty, to promote security, prosperity, and peace, for themselves and for
the world. We do not expect diverse countries to share the same cultures,
traditions, or even systems of government, but we do expect all nations to uphold
these two core sovereign duties, to respect the interests of their own people
and the rights of every other sovereign nation.
This is the beautiful vision of this institution, and this is the
foundation for cooperation and success. Strong sovereign nations let diverse
countries with different values, different cultures, and different dreams not
just coexist, but work side by side on the basis of mutual respect. Strong
sovereign nations let their people take ownership of the future and control
their own destiny. And strong sovereign nations allow individuals to flourish
in the fullness of the life intended by God. In America, we do not seek to
impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for
everyone to watch.
This week gives our country a special reason to take pride in that
example. We are celebrating the 230th anniversary of our beloved Constitution,
the oldest constitution still in use in the world today. This timeless document
has been the foundation of peace, prosperity, and freedom for the Americans and
for countless millions around the globe whose own countries have found
inspiration in its respect for human nature, human dignity, and the rule of
law. The greatest in the United States Constitution is its first three
beautiful words. They are "We the people." Generations of Americans
have sacrificed to maintain the promise of those words, the promise of our
country and of our great history.
In America, the people govern, the people rule, and the people are
sovereign. I was elected not to take power, but to give power to the American
people where it belongs. In foreign affairs, we are renewing this founding
principle of sovereignty. Our government's first duty is to its people, to our
citizens, to serve their needs, to ensure their safety, to preserve their
rights, and to defend their values. As president of the United States, I will
always put America first. Just like you, as the leaders of your countries, will
always and should always put your countries first.
All responsible leaders have an obligation to serve their own citizens,
and the nation state remains the best vehicle for elevating the human
condition. But making a better life for our people also requires us to with
work together in close harmony and unity, to create a more safe and peaceful
future for all people.
The United States will forever be a great friend to the world and
especially to its allies. But we can no longer be taken advantage of or enter
into a one-sided deal where the United States gets nothing in return. As long
as I hold this office, I will defend America's interests above all else, but in
fulfilling our obligations to our nations, we also realize that it's in
everyone's interests to seek the future where all nations can be sovereign, prosperous,
and secure.
America does more than speak for the values expressed in the United
Nations charter. Our citizens have paid the ultimate price to defend our
freedom and the freedom of many nations represented in this great hall.
America's devotion is measured on the battlefields where our young men and
women have fought and sacrificed alongside of our allies. From the beaches of
Europe to the deserts of the Middle East to the jungles of Asia, it is an
eternal credit to the American character that even after we and our allies
emerge victorious from the bloodiest war in history, we did not seek
territorial expansion or attempt to oppose and impose our way of life on
others. Instead, we helped build institutions such as this one to defend the
sovereignty, security, and prosperity for all. For the diverse nations of the
world, this is our hope.
We want harmony and friendship, not conflict and strife. We are guided
by outcomes, not ideologies. We have a policy of principled realism, rooted in
shared goal, interests, and values. That realism forces us to confront the
question facing every leader and nation in this room, it is a question we
cannot escape or avoid. We will slide down the path of complacency, numb to the
challenges, threats, and even wars that we face, or do we have enough strength
and pride to confront those dangers today so that our citizens can enjoy peace
and prosperity tomorrow.
If we desire to lift up our citizens, if we aspire to the approval of
history, then we must fulfill our sovereign duties to the people we faithfully
represent. We must protect our nations, their interests and their futures. We
must reject threats to sovereignty from the Ukraine to the South China Sea. We
must uphold respect for law, respect for borders, and respect for culture, and
the peaceful engagement these allow.
And just as the founders of this body intended, we must work together
and confront together those who threatens us with chaos, turmoil, and terror.
The score of our planet today is small regimes that violate every principle
that the United Nations is based. They respect neither their own citizens nor
the sovereign rights of their countries. If the righteous many do not confront
the wicked few, then evil will triumph. When decent people and nations become bystanders
to history, the forces of destruction only gather power and strength.
No one has shown more contempt for other nations and for the well-being
of their own people than the depraved regime in North Korea. It is responsible
for the starvation deaths of millions of North Koreans. And for the
imprisonment, torture, killing, and oppression of countless more. We were all
witness to the regime's deadly abuse when an innocent American college student,
Otto Warmbier, was returned to America, only to die a few days later.
We saw it in the assassination of the dictator's brother, using banned
nerve agents in an international airport. We know it kidnapped a sweet
13-year-old Japanese girl from a beach in her own country, to enslave her as a
language tutor for North Korea's spies. If this is not twisted enough, now
North Korea's reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles
threatens the entire world with unthinkable loss of human life. It is an
outrage that some nations would not only trade with such a regime, but would
arm, supply, and financially support a country that imperils the world with
nuclear conflict.
No nation on Earth has an interest in seeing this band of criminals arm
itself with nuclear weapons and missiles. The United States has great strength
and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have
no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket Man is on a suicide
mission for himself and for his regime. The United States is ready, willing,
and able, but hopefully this will not be necessary. That's what the United
Nations is all about. That's what the United Nations is for. Let's see how they
do.
It is time for North Korea to realize that the denuclearization is its
only acceptable future. The United Nations Security Council recently held two
unanimous 15-0 votes adopting hard-hitting resolutions against North Korea, and
I want to thank China and Russia for joining the vote to impose sanctions,
along with all of the other members of the Security Council. Thank you to all
involved. But we must do much more.
It is time for all nations to work together to isolate the Kim regime
until it ceases its hostile behavior. We face this decision not only in North
Korea; it is far past time for the nations of the world to confront another
reckless regime, one that speaks openly of mass murder, vowing death to
America, destruction to Israel, and ruin for many leaders and nations in this
room.
The Iranian government masks a corrupt dictatorship behind the false
guise of a democracy. It has turned a wealthy country, with a rich history and
culture, into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence,
bloodshed, and chaos. The longest-suffering victims of Iran's leaders are, in
fact, its own people. Rather than use its resources to improve Iranian live,
its oil profits go to fund Hezbollah and other terrorists that kill innocent
Muslims and attack their peaceful Arab and Israeli neighbors.
This wealth, which rightly belongs to Iran's people, also goes to shore
up Bashar al-Assad's dictatorship, fuel Yemen's civil war, and undermine peace
throughout the entire Middle East. We cannot let a murderous regime continue
these destabilizing activities while building dangerous missiles, and we cannot
abide by an agreement if it provides cover for the eventual construction of a
nuclear program. The Iran deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions
the United States has ever entered into. Frankly, that deal is an embarrassment
to the United States, and I don't think you've heard the last of it. Believe
me.
It is time for the entire world to join us in demanding that Iran's
government end its pursuit of death and destruction. It is time for the regime
to free all Americans and citizens of other nations that they have unjustly
detained. Above all, Iran's government must stop supporting terrorists, begin
serving its own people, and respect the sovereign rights of its neighbors. The
entire world understands that the good people of Iran want change, and, other
than the vast military power of the United States, that Iran's people are what
their leaders fear the most. This is what causes the regime to restrict
internet access, tear down satellite dishes, shoot unarmed student protesters,
and imprison political reformers.
Oppressive regimes cannot endure forever, and the day will come when
the people will face a choice. Will they continue down the path of poverty,
bloodshed, and terror, or will the Iranian people return to the nation's proud
roots as a center of civilization, culture, and wealth, where their people can
be happy and prosperous once again? The Iranian regime's support for terror is
in stark contrast to the recent commitments of many of its neighbors to fight
terrorism and halt its finance, and in Saudi Arabia early last year, I was
greatly honored to address the leaders of more than 50 Arab and Muslim nations.
We agreed that all responsible nations must work together to confront
terrorists and the Islamic extremism that inspires them.
We will stop radical islamic terrorism because we cannot allow it to
tear up our nation and, indeed, to tear up the entire world. We must deny the
terrorists safe haven, transit, funding, and any form of support for their vile
and sinister ideology. We must drive them out of our nation. It is time to
expose and hold responsible those countries whose support and fi — who support
and finance terror groups like al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Taliban, and others
that slaughter innocent people.
The United States and our allies are working together throughout the
Middle East to crush the loser terrorists and stop the reemergence of safe
havens they use to launch attacks on all of our people. Last month I announced
a new strategy for victory in the fight against this evil in Afghanistan. From
now on, our security interests will dictate the length and scope of military
operation, not arbitrary benchmarks and timetables set up by politicians. I
have also totally changed the rules of engagement in our fight against the
Taliban and other terrorist groups.
In Syria and Iraq, we have made big gains toward lasting defeat of
ISIS. In fact, our country has achieved more against ISIS in the last eight
months than it has in many, many years combined. We seek the deescalation of
the Syrian conflict, and a political solution that honors the will of the
Syrian people. The actions of the criminal regime of Bashar al-Assad, including
the use of chemical weapons against his own citizens, even innocent children,
shock the conscience of every decent person. No society could be safe if banned
chemical weapons are allowed to spread. That is why the United States carried
out a missile strike on the airbase that launched the attack.
We appreciate the efforts of the United Nations agencies that are
providing vital humanitarian assistance in areas liberated from ISIS, and we
especially thank Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon for their role in hosting refugees
from the Syrian conflict. The United States is a compassionate nation and has
spent billions and billions of dollars in helping to support this effort. We
seek an approach to refugee resettlement that is designed to help these
horribly treated people and which enables their eventual return to their home
countries to be part of the rebuilding process. For the cost of resettling one
refugee in the United States, we can assist more than 10 in their home region.
Out of the goodness of our hearts, we offer financial assistance to
hosting countries in the region and we support recent agreements of the G20
nations that will seek to host refugees as close to their home countries as
possible. This is the safe, responsible, and humanitarian approach. For decades
the United States has dealt with migration challenges here in the Western
Hemisphere.
We have learned that over the long term, uncontrolled migration is
deeply unfair to both the sending and the receiving countries. For the sending
countries, it reduces domestic pressure to pursue needed political and economic
reform and drains them of the human capital necessary to motivate and implement
those reforms. For the receiving countries, the substantial costs of
uncontrolled migration are born overwhelmingly by low-income citizens whose
concerns are often ignored by both media and government.
I want to salute the work of the United Nations in seeking to address
the problems that cause people to flee from their home. The United Nations and
African Union led peacekeeping missions to have invaluable contributions in
stabilizing conflict in Africa. The United States continues to lead the world
in humanitarian assistance, including famine prevention and relief, in South
Sudan, Somalia, and northern Nigeria and Yemen.
We have invested in better health and opportunity all over the world
through programs like PEPFAR, which funds AIDS relief, the President’s Malaria
Initiative, the Global Health Security Agenda, the Global Fund to End Modern
Slavery, and the Women Entrepreneur's Finance Initiative, part of our
commitment to empowering women all across the globe.
We also thank — we also thank the secretary general for recognizing
that the United Nations must reform if it is to be an effective partner in
confronting threats to sovereignty, security, and prosperity. Too often the
focus of this organization has not been on results, but on bureaucracy and
process. In some cases, states that seek to subvert this institution's noble
end have hijacked the very systems that are supposed to advance them. For
example, it is a massive source of embarrassment to the United Nations that
some governments with egregious human rights records sit on the UN Human Rights
Council.
The United States is one out of 193 countries in the United Nations,
and yet we pay 22 percent of the entire budget and more. In fact, we pay far
more than anybody realizes. The United States bears an unfair cost burden, but
to be fair, if it could actually accomplish all of its stated goals, especially
the goal of peace, this investment would easily be well worth it. Major
portions of the world are in conflict, and some, in fact, are going to hell,
but the powerful people in this room, under the guidance and auspices of the
United Nations, can solve many of these vicious and complex problems. The
American people hope that one day soon the United Nations can be a much more
accountable and effective advocate for human dignity and freedom around the
world.
In the meantime, we believe that no nation should have to bear a
disproportionate share of the burden, militarily or financially. Nations of the
world must take a greater role in promoting secure and prosperous societies in
their own region. That is why in the Western Hemisphere the United States has
stood against the corrupt, destabilizing regime in Cuba and embraced the
enduring dream of the Cuban people to live in freedom.
My administration recently announced that we will not lift sanctions on
the Cuban government until it makes fundamental reforms. We have also imposed
tough calibrated sanctions on the socialist Maduro regime in Venezuela, which
has brought a once thriving nation to the brink of total collapse. The
socialist dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro has inflicted terrible pain and
suffering on the good people of that country.
This corrupt regime destroyed a prosperous nation — prosperous nation,
by imposing a failed ideology that has produced poverty and misery everywhere
it has been tried. To make matters worse, Maduro has defied his own people,
stealing power from their elected representatives, to preserve his disastrous
rule. The Venezuelan people are starving, and their country is collapsing.
Their democratic institutions are being destroyed. The situation is completely
unacceptable, and we cannot stand by and watch.
As a responsible neighbor and friend, we and all others have a goal —
that goal is to help them regain their freedom, recover their country, and
restore their democracy. I would like to thank leaders in this room for
condemning the regime and providing vital support to the Venezuelan people. The
United States has taken important steps to hold the regime accountable. We are
prepared to take further action if the government of Venezuela persists on its
path to impose authoritarian rule on the Venezuelan people.
We are fortunate to have incredibly strong and healthy trade
relationships with many of the Latin American countries gathered here today.
Our economic bond forms a critical foundation for advancing peace and
prosperity for all of our people and all of our neighbors. I ask every country
represented here today to be prepared to do more to address this very real
crisis. We call for the full restoration of democracy and political freedoms in
Venezuela. The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly
implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented.
From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, wherever true socialism or
communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and
failure. Those who preach the tenets of these discredited ideologies only
contribute to the continued suffering of the people who live under these cruel
systems. America stands with every person living under a brutal regime. Our
respect for sovereignty is also a call for action. All people deserve a
government that cares for their safety, their interests, and their well-being,
including their prosperity. In America, we seek stronger ties of business and
trade with all nations of goodwill, but this trade must be fair and it must be
reciprocal.
For too long the American people were told that mammoth, multinational
trade deals, unaccountable international tribunals, and powerful global
bureaucracies were the best way to promote their success. But as those promises
flowed, millions of jobs vanished and thousands of factories disappeared.
Others gamed the system and broke the rules, and our great middle class, once
the bedrock of American prosperity, was forgotten and left behind, but they are
forgotten no more and they will never be forgotten again.
While America will pursue cooperation and commerce with other nations,
we are renewing our commitment to the first duty of every government, the duty
of our citizens. This bond is the source of America's strength and that of
every responsible nation represented here today. If this organization is to
have any hope of successfully confronting the challenges before us, it will
depend, as President Truman said some 70 years ago, on the independent strength
of its members.
If we are to embrace the opportunities of the future and overcome the
present dangers together, there can be no substantive for strong, sovereign,
and independent nations, nations that are rooted in the histories and invested
in their destiny, nations that seek allies to befriend, not enemies to conquer,
and most important of all, nations that are home to men and women who are
willing to sacrifice for their countries, their fellow citizens, and for all
that is best in the human spirit.
In remembering the great victory that led to this body's founding, we
must never forget that those heroes who fought against evil, also fought for
the nations that they love. Patriotism led the Poles to die to save Poland, the
French to fight for a free France, and the Brits to stand strong for Britain.
Today, if we do not invest ourselves, our hearts, our minds, and our nations,
if we will not build strong families, safe communities, and healthy societies
for ourselves, no one can do it for us.
This is the ancient wish of every people and the deepest yearning that
lives inside every sacred soul. So let this be our mission, and let this be our
message to the world. We will fight together, sacrifice together, and stand
together for peace, for freedom, for justice, for family, for humanity, and for
the almighty God who made us all. Thank you, God bless you, God bless the
nations of the world, and God bless the United States of America. Thank you
very much.
