Ambassador don Beyer's Lecture " Obama's Idea of a World without Nuclear Weapons: Prerequisites, Paths and Issues." University of St. Gallen (May 17, 2011)
Ambassador Beyer at the Sicherheitspolitisches Forum St Gallen
Ambassador Beyer during his speech
1. Opening
2. A Historical Perspective
a. The History of Nuclear Weapons
b. Switzerland’s plans to acquire nuclear weapons
c. The Advent of the Cold War
d. The Arms Race and U.S. – Soviet Agreements
3. A New Era of American Leadership
a. The Prague Spirit
b. Where Do We Currently Stand?
• The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START)
• The Nuclear Posture Review (NPR)
• The Nuclear Security Summit
• The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference
4. The Big Challenges
a. Iran’s Nuclear and Ballistic Missile Activity
b. North Korea’s Provocations
5. Conclusion
I am terrified of nuclear weapons.
I got into politics 30 years ago because of my angst over the possibility of nuclear war.
I grew up in Washington DC in the 1950s and 1960s. We all believed the three most likely targets for the beginning of the end of the world were New York City, Moscow, and Washington DC. The Roman Catholic sisters who taught us math and English also taught us how to hide under our school desks, with our arms over our heads and our eyes closed against the atomic flash.
I read every book about nuclear Armageddon I could find – On the Beach by Nevil Shute, Failsafe by Eugene Burdick, A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller, and many more, all the way to today’s The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
I watched the apocalyptic movies, from Dr. Strangelove to The Planet of the Apes to today’s Terminator series. I learned all about the EMP – the electromagnetic pulse that would render all electronic communication worthless in the first hours. I learned about nuclear winter, the two to three years with no direct sunlight, and the death of most plants. And as an armchair biologist, I read about how 99% of all species which ever existed are now extinct – what possible guarantee is there of humanity’s survival?
I subscribed to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Do you know that magazine?? It was created by a group of nuclear scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project, after the first bombs. It has been a forum for writing about the prevention of nuclear war for 66 years, and is most famous for creating and updating The Doomsday Clock on its cover. As more nations armed, as tensions between the US and the USSR, or between India and Pakistan heated up, they hand of the Doomsday Clock moved towards midnight. And as arms control treaties were passed, as weapon levels fell, the minute hand retreated.
I even joined the Arms Control Association, as a young automobile dealer. I think I am the only car salesman ever to belong. And at age 30, I started volunteering on the campaigns of people I believed would work to create a world free from the peril of nuclear weapons.
And so, somehow, I am here with you tonight to talk about this.
Good evening! It is an honor and a pleasure to be here with you tonight. Thank you to S P F and the University of St. Gallen for this opportunity to address this distinguished audience and its student body.
2. A Historical Perspective (top of page)
But first, let’s talk a little about History. In Bern, in 1905, some young patent examiner living in an apartment on Marktgasse, spent a great deal of quiet time trying to figure out how the speed of light could be the same for all observers. Albert Einstein, of course – and one of the unintended consequences of his revolutionary theory of special relativity is that matter and energy were, in fact, interchangeable. They are simply different representations of the same physical reality. Einstein gave us undoubtedly the most famous mathematical equation of all time – E = mc2. Matter is equivalent to energy, by a factor of the speed of light squared. Easy. But what did this really mean?
I will not take you through the whole course of the atomic particle physics of half a century, but you know this inevitably led to the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard’s famous letter to US President Franklin Roosevelt. Szilárd was directly responsible for the creation of the Manhattan Project. He read a novel by the Englishman H.G. Wells, titled The World Set Free, in which Wells describes “atomic bombs.” Szilard designed the first ones, using a chain reaction. And in 1939, he drafted a confidential letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt explaining the possibility of nuclear weapons, warning of Nazi work on such weapons and encouraging the development of a program which could result in their creation. He then asked his old friend, Albert Einstein, the most famous scientist in the world, to sign the letter, to make sure it got read.
Roosevelt took it seriously, and in less than six years, on July 16, 1945, the US exploded the first atomic bomb. Three weeks later, on August 6, a bomb named “Little Boy” fell on Hiroshima, killing 80,000 people. The Japanese leadership was disoriented, confused, and refused to surrender, and three days later, another bomb fell, this time on Nagasaki, killing another 60,000 immediately. The death toll for both cities over the first four months is estimated to be as high as one quarter of a million people, almost all of them non-combatants. Japan surrendered a few days later.
But a new war was about to begin. Radically different ideologies, economic systems, and forms of government led to 45 years of Cold War, marked especially by a nuclear arms race. Through most of my childhood, each country had 10,000 nuclear missiles targeted on the other country. We could destroy all life on the planet many, many times over.
The prevailing strategic theory was called MAD – mutual assured destruction. The Soviets cannot launch an attack on the US because the US will always be able to retaliate – nuclear nations are in a perpetual standoff, unable to disarm, but also unable to use their weapons, lest they themselves be destroyed.
A new profession was born – nuclear High Priests. These were the scientists and military strategists who could imagine the end of the world – who could plan for the deaths of 100 million people, and then figure out who might come out on top. Many of my friends’ families had Fallout shelters – places to hide, perhaps for months, until the radiation had dissipated.
But it was not just the superpowers. The United Kingdom, France, India, Pakistan, and China all developed atomic bombs. Some observers have long believed that Israel has nuclear capabilities, a claim it has never admitted. South Africa developed the bomb, then dismantled all its weapons after the end of apartheid, the only nuclear power ever to do so.
Even Switzerland: in 1946, the Swiss government created a nuclear energy commission with the mandate to study the civil use of atomic energy and by secret order to study the scientific and technical bases for building nuclear weapons.
In March 1957, Army Chief of Staff Louis de Montmollin formed the secret study commission for the possible acquisition of its own nuclear weapons. The commission’s recommendations turned out to be favorable and in December 1958, the Federal Council mandated the Federal Department for Defense to investigate the effects, the acquisition, the purchase and the manufacture of nuclear arms.
By 1963, the country had drawn up detailed technical proposals to start developing a nuclear program, but financial concerns prevented the allocation of funds from the defense budget to such a program and the proposal never got off the ground.
In November 1969, Switzerland signed the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and has since then been using nuclear energy solely for peaceful purposes.
But, now, back to the Cold War:
In 1952, the United States tested its first thermonuclear device, and nine months later, the Soviet Union tested a thermonuclear bomb of their own. These events and others were part and parcel of a growing divide and rivalry between the Communist and Democratic worlds, that consisted of a nearly four-decade long state of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition. Although the Soviet Union and the U.S. never engaged directly in a military conflict, indirect conflicts played out through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, extensive aid to states deemed vulnerable, espionage, propaganda, and the nuclear arms race.
The rivalry between the countries reached its apex during what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had attempted to deploy medium range ballistic missiles and intermediate range ballistic missiles in Cuba. This was a reaction to the fact that the US had been able to position nuclear-weapon equipped ballistic missiles on Turkish soil, within easy reach of major Soviet cities.
Once operational, these Russian nuclear-armed weapons could have reached most of the cities in the continental United States. When President Kennedy learned of these nuclear missile sites, he ordered a U.S. naval quarantine around Cuba to prevent the Soviet Union from bringing in additional military supplies. He also demanded the removal of the missiles already there and destruction of the sites.
No one knew how Khrushchev would respond to this action. The most serious of the Cold War confrontations, the two superpowers stood on the brink of nuclear war. At times, the world was just minutes away from the launch of an apocalyptic war. Fortunately, in the end, the leaders of both superpowers recognized the devastating possibility of a nuclear war. Khrushchev agreed to dismantle the weapons sites in exchange for Kennedy’s pledge that the United States would not invade Cuba, and that the missiles in Turkey would be removed.
But both leaders were seriously shaken by the Cuban Missile crisis. They knew how close they had come to ending all human life. John Kennedy made a major speech the following summer, just months before he was assassinated, on June 10, 1963, at American University. For the first time, an American President called for a nuclear test ban treaty, and for talks to begin to reduce tensions between the superpowers.
The agreement to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis was the first of many agreements in an effort to lessen the tensions created by the arms race and address the issues of growing stockpiles of nuclear weapons. The United States and the Soviet Union made a breakthrough of sorts in arms negotiations in 1963 when they signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty.
The Soviet Union, the United States, the United Kingdom and 59 other countries signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968. This treaty formed the basis for international cooperation on halting the spread of nuclear weapons. The treaty rests on three pillars: nonproliferation, disarmament, and the right to peacefully use nuclear technology. In addition to international action, both superpowers continued bilateral negotiations into the 1970s resulting in the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) in 1972 and later SALT II in 1979.
Nevertheless, despite these numerous negotiations and agreements, the arms race continued. The agreement failed to include the necessary restrictions and ceilings to prevent weapons development. While efforts to negotiate a more robust treaty to reduce existing nuclear weapon stocks were successfully concluded with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in 1994, reducing the vast stockpiles that existed had not yet been fully addressed.
And, let’s be honest – in all countries with atomic weapons, there existed powerful industries that made money on the design and production of these arms. In 1960, President Dwight Eisenhower, the general who led the Allied Forces over Hitler, warned us against the undue power and influence of the Military-Industrial Complex.
But, little by little, the world has made progress. The Cold War has ended. Democracies have broken out all over the world. US Presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama have worked with Soviet and Russian leaders to bring down stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
So where we are now? For me, this is a New Era of American Leadership. (top of page)
As many of you know, President Obama has made nuclear nonproliferation one of his administration’s top priorities -- drastically reversing the direction of previous administrations’ approach to nuclear policy -- and is actively pursuing measures, both at the national and international level, to help make the world more secure without nuclear weapons.
Admittedly, this is a tall order, but since the President’s now famous speech two years ago in Prague, the United States government is ‘walking the talk’ – we are living up to our commitments and taking bold and significant political and economic steps to encourage our allies and the rest of the world community to join in efforts to eliminate the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
The Obama policy strategy is straightforward and recognizes the central role of U.S. nuclear policy in reducing the nuclear threat.
In Prague, President Obama said:
“As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it; and help seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons”
The President’s agenda is based on four priorities:
• First: The countries that possess nuclear weapons, primarily the United States and Russia, will move to reduce the number and role of nuclear weapons.
• Second: To prevent additional countries from acquiring nuclear weapons we will strengthen the international non-proliferation regime and hold accountable any countries that have violated their obligations -- in particular, Iran and North Korea.
• Third: In order to ensure that terrorist groups never acquire a nuclear weapon, we will secure vulnerable nuclear materials and strengthen international cooperation on nuclear security.
• Fourth: We will ensure that countries can have access to safe, secure, and renewable nuclear power. If they choose so, we can jointly develop new mechanisms to support the growth of safe, secure and renewable nuclear power in ways that reduce the spread of dangerous technologies.
The President’s strategy also recognizes that nuclear threats are connected. For example, the failure to enforce nonproliferation treaty rules greatly expands the potential of additional countries being able to acquire or develop nuclear weapons. In turn, this increases the availability of nuclear materials and delivery systems to criminal and terrorist organizations.
The good news is -- the reverse is also true: The President strongly believes that by decreasing global nuclear arsenals this will help generate the necessary international will and cooperation to secure and eliminate nuclear stockpiles, thus reducing significantly the availability and access to nuclear weapons.
So Where Do We Currently Stand?
The President and his team have exhibited tremendous leadership and dedicated significant financial, political, and technical resources to promote nonproliferation, and since the Prague speech, there have been several key developments in the President’s nuclear security agenda.
Probably of greatest significance is the activation of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Strategy Treaty (START) with Russia, which in the words of our Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher, is “moving our relationship with Russia from one of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ (the old MAD) to one of ‘Mutually Assured Stability’.”
President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev negotiated new reductions in both nations’ weapons stockpiles. While earlier U.S.–Russia joint statements often focused on the threat of other nations’ weapons, Presidents Obama and Medvedev focused instead on their own weapons and their own obligations. In a joint statement the two Presidents agreed:
“We committed our two countries to achieving a nuclear-free world, while recognizing that this long-term goal will require a new emphasis on arms control and conflict resolution measures, and their full implementation by all concerned nations.”
The emerging plan can best be summarized as reduce, secure, and prevent with work progressing on all three levels simultaneously:
• Reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world and their role in national security strategies — beginning with the United States and Russia but eventually including all nuclear-armed states.
• Secure all stockpiles of nuclear weapons materials, preventing nuclear terrorism and building international cooperation.
• Prevent the emergence of new nuclear states through a combination of strong sanctions to penalize states that violate their treaty obligations and realistic engagement that offers these states a more secure non-nuclear future.
The New START Treaty with Russia will bring the United States’ stockpile of deployed strategic warheads to its lowest point since the early 1950s and includes limits of 1,550 accountable strategic warheads, 700 deployed strategic delivery vehicles, and 800 deployed and non-deployed strategic launchers.
The United States is also committed to pursuing post-New START arms control talks with Russia that address not only strategic weapons, but also non-strategic and non-deployed nuclear weapons. This is interesting stuff, and very relevant for a country like Switzerland in the very heart of Europe. Most of the arms control agreements we have talked about were concerned with so-called “strategic” nuclear weapons. They are designed to destroy cities, major manufacturing centers, even the weapons delivery systems of the enemy. But there also exists a large class of weapons we call “tactical” – these are the battlefield weapons, the ones soldiers might use in a pitched battle with tanks and planes and armored personnel carriers. For most of our lives, Europe has been rife with tactical nuclear weapons. These are not delivered by rockets and missiles, but might be handheld, or from an artillery shell or a cruise missile flying close to the ground.
Why tactical nuclear weapons? Because for more than 50 years, the United States and NATO have been the guarantors of the peace in Western Europe. Part of the guarantee has been the strategic “nuclear umbrella” that covers Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, etc. But another important piece has been the thousands of tactical weapons aimed at the Fulda Gap, the logical pass for a Soviet invasion of Western Europe.
In 1964 China announced a “no first use” policy – it would use nuclear weapons to respond to a nuclear attack, but would never be the first to use them. The Soviet Union followed suit, but the US and NATO have never been able to adopt No First Use – because in the event of a Soviet ground force attack, only the use of tactical nukes might hold back the superior forces.
So this is the good news today – after the recent START talks, the next step will likely be these weapons.
Other notable achievements include the United States adopting in 2010 a Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that promotes nonproliferation and reduces the role of nuclear weapons in the United States’ national security policy. U.S. law stipulates that the government must review and establish U.S. nuclear policy, strategy, capabilities and force posture for the next five years to ten years. The Review outlines the President’s strategy for implementing his Prague agenda including concrete steps we can and should take now. Additionally, the Review explains how the United States will sustain a safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent for them and their allies as long as nuclear weapons exist.
The Nuclear Posture Review has five key objectives:
1. For the first time, the Nuclear Posture Review places preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism at the top of the U.S. nuclear agenda. It defines specific steps to strengthen the global non-proliferation regime, and accelerate the securing of nuclear materials worldwide. It renews the U.S. commitment to hold fully accountable any state, terrorist group, or other non-state actor that supports or enables terrorism.
2. U.S. policy has been updated to bring it into alignment with 21st century needs. The United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and in compliance with their nuclear nonproliferation obligations. This is as close to No First Use as we have ever come. The United States would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners. The United States will continue to strengthen conventional capabilities and reduce the role of nuclear weapons in deterring non-nuclear attacks, with the objective of making deterrence of nuclear attack on the United States or our allies and partners the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons.
3. The NPR Report reflects the Administration’s commitment to renew arms control and work with Russia to reduce our nuclear forces while maintaining strategic stability. The NPR provided inputs to the instructions to U.S. negotiators and the resulting New START agreement helps to significantly advance this third objective:
4. The NPR reflects the Administration’s commitment to strengthening deterrence against 21st century threats to the United States, our allies, and partners. The Administration is pursuing a comprehensive approach to broaden regional security architectures, including through missile defenses and improved conventional forces. As long as regional nuclear threats to our forces, allies, and partners remain, deterrence will require a nuclear component. The United States will retain the capability to forward-deploy U.S. nuclear weapons on tactical fighter-bombers and heavy bombers. The nuclear-tipped, sea-launched cruise missile (TLAM-N) will be retired as redundant in the overall mix of capabilities.
5. The United States will sustain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear arsenal as long as nuclear weapons exist. The United States will modernize the nuclear weapons infrastructure, sustain the science, technology, and engineering base, invest in human capital, and ensure senior leadership focus. The significantly increased investments called for in the NPR will not only guarantee our stockpile, but also facilitate further nuclear reductions, and help enhance our ability to stem nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. It will also extend the life of warheads currently in the nuclear arsenal. This is an alternative to developing new nuclear weapons, which we reject.
Several principles will guide this effort:
1. The United States will not conduct nuclear testing, and will seek the U.S. Senate’s ratification of and entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
2. The United States will not develop new nuclear warheads. Life Extension Programs (LEPs) will use only nuclear components based on previously tested designs, and will not support new military missions or provide for new military capabilities.
3. The Administration will study options for ensuring the safety, security, and reliability of nuclear warheads on a case-by-case basis, consistent with the congressionally mandated Stockpile Management Plan. The full range of Life Extension Programs approaches will be considered: refurbishment of existing warheads, reuse of nuclear components from different warheads, and replacement of nuclear components.
4. In any decision to proceed to engineering development for warhead Life Extension Programs, the Administration will give strong preference to options for refurbishment or reuse. Replacement of nuclear components would be undertaken only if critical Stockpile Management Program goals could not otherwise be met and if specifically authorized by the President and approved by Congress.
• The Nuclear Security Summit
The United States also convened a successful Nuclear Security Summit in April 2010 where the leaders of 47 nations met to advance a common approach and commitment to nuclear security at the highest level. The Nuclear Security Summit, endorsing many elements of President Obama’s nuclear security agenda, was the largest gathering of world leaders convened by a U.S. president since 1945. At the summit the nations agreed on the critical importance of securing all vulnerable nuclear materials within four years to prevent that material from falling into the hands of terrorists.
• The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference
U.S. leadership was instrumental to achieving a consensus Action Plan at the 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, and reaffirmed the strong support of the international community for the Treaty as the cornerstone of the international nonproliferation regime.
Finally, The Big Challenges (top of page)
The President’s goal requires a lot of patience and persistence; especially when some countries, such as Iran and North Korea, refuse to join the overwhelming majority of nations in their efforts to reduce nuclear proliferation.
Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile activity currently poses the biggest threat to global nuclear security because it is not upholding its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran has repeatedly refused to present proof that its nuclear program is peaceful. Not only is the country not complying with its international obligations, but it is also expanding its nuclear program and strengthening its ability to develop nuclear weapons.
The United States together with the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, and China (the P5+1) have engaged in discussions with Iran on its nuclear program, and the “Vienna Group”, composed by the United States, Russia and France, negotiated a proposal under the International Atomic Energy Agency to send Iran’s own low-enriched uranium to Russia for enrichment and then to France for fabrication into fuel. Iran rejected the proposal and stopped the discussions with the P5+1. Instead, the country announced the development of new enrichment facilities. The U.S. therefore coordinated at the UN in New York to adopt the most comprehensive international sanctions that the government of Iran has ever faced.
We did not however close the door for Iran. On the contrary, we welcome good faith negotiations with Iran, if they are serious about complying with their international obligations. We want Iran to seek a diplomatic solution with the international community. We want Iran to have peaceful nuclear power. We want Iran to take its place among the leaders of a free, democratic world, with a real emphasis on human rights. What we do not want is a new arms race, with insecure nations around the region developing atomic weapons in a panic to hold off the threat of a nuclear Iran.
North Korea’s Provocations
And then there is North Korea. After having signed the non-proliferation treaty, North Korea renounced it and left the IAEA. At the end of 2010, we received information that the country had constructed a sophisticated uranium enrichment facility. Although North Korea asserts that the uranium enrichment is for peaceful purposes, it has refused access by IAEA inspectors to the country since April 2009. North Korea’s provocations continue to pose a serious threat to international peace and security and as President Obama said:”We need to break the pattern that has existed in the past in which North Korea behaves in a provocative fashion; it then is willing to return to talks; it talks for a while and then leaves the talks seeking further concessions, and there’s never actually any progress on the core issues. (…) the door is open to resolving these issues peacefully, for North Korea to see over time the reduction of sanctions and its increasing integration into the international community but it will only happen if North Korea is taking serious steps around the nuclear issue.”
So, in Conclusion (top of page)
The U.S. has taken concrete steps to achieve the President’s ambitious goal of creating a world free of nuclear weapons, on the national, the bilateral and international level, but challenges remain and there is still a long way to go.
At the United Nations, last September, President Obama said, “This is what we have already done. But this is just the beginning. Some of our actions have yielded progress. Some have laid the groundwork for progress in the future. But make no mistake: This cannot solely be America’s endeavor. Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone. We have sought – in word and deed – a new era of engagement with the world. And now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.”
Non-nuclear-weapon States like Switzerland and civil society organizations can play an important role in nuclear disarmament.
The President of the Confederation Micheline Calmy-Rey said in a speech during the World Congress of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War last August: “We are all stakeholders in our planet’s survival. We have the right – and the obligation – to get involved. We cannot leave disarmament to the nuclear-weapon States.” I fully agree with her on this.
We very much encourage Switzerland to play an active role in our endeavor to create a world without nuclear weapons and to serve as an example how a country can solely use safe and secure nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Thanks to its credibility and its active neutrality, Switzerland will be able to lead nuclear-weapon states towards disarmament.
After 9/11, when Osama bin Laden announced that Al Qaeda was on a serious search for nuclear weapons to use against the infidel America, my wife and I had many second thoughts about raising our children within sight of the US Capitol. I spoke with many friends about the wisdom of ignoring the nuclear threat at a potential ground zero.
But I kept remembering a line attributed to Nikita Khrushchev about a nuclear war – “the living would envy the dead.”
Now you and I must do everything we can to prevent such a war – to make a world free of nuclear weapons. This is our sacred responsibility – we can do no less.
Years ago, I read a poem by the wonderful Wendell Berry. He wrote it after seeing photos of a Russian logger, at the height of our Cold War. To a Siberian Woodsman. Here are just a few lines:
1. You lean at ease in your warm house at night after supper, listening to your daughter play the accordion. You smile with the pleasure of a man confident in his hands, resting after a day of long labor in the forest, the cry of the saw in your head, and the vision of coming home to rest. Your daughter’s face is clear in the joy of hearing her own music. Her fingers live on the keys like people familiar with the land they were born in. You sit at the dinner table late into the night with your son, tying the bright flies that will lead you along the forest streams.
4. Who has invented our enmity? Who has prescribed us hatred of each other? Who has armed us against each other with the death of the world? Who has appointed me such anger that I should desire the burning of your house or the destruction of your children? Who has appointed such anger to you? Who has set loose the thought that we should oppose each other with the ruin of forests and rivers, and the silence of the birds? Who has said to us that the voices of my land shall be strange to you, and the voices of your land strange to me? Who has imagined that I would destroy myself in order to destroy you, or that I could improve myself by destroying you? Who has imagined that your death could be negligible to me now that I have seen these pictures of your face? Who has imagined that I would not speak familiarly with you, or laugh with you, or visit in your house and go to work with you in the forest? And now one of the ideas of my place will be that you would gladly talk and visit and work with me.
7. There is no government so worthy as your son who fishes with you in silence besides the forest pool. There is no national glory so comely as your daughter whose hands have learned a music and go their own way on the keys. There is no national glory so comely as my daughter who dances and sings and is the brightness of my house. There is no government so worthy as my son who laughs, as he comes up the path from the river in the evening, for joy.
Thank you very much.