Speech by Amb. John B. Richardson (2001-05) on 'Justitia and her role in Foreign affairs'

Very often in life we are faced with choices between apparently incompatible things. If we are asked if an object is black or white, we know that we have a clear choice, don't we?

Well, no, we do not. It is a very Western idea that an object can only be black or white. There is a famous board-game called Stratego, whose pieces are black on one side and white on the other. And it is a principle of Eastern philosophy that many things can in fact represent a combination of opposites, Yin and Yang, both of which are needed to form a whole.

So far so good. We are still dealing with black and white. But the technical definition of a black surface is that it reflects no light. And how many of you have ever seen such a surface? Imagine a black car in the sunlight. Does the sun not reflect off its polished paintwork? The reflection we see is not black at all. Similarly the definition of a white surface is that it reflects the whole spectrum of light falling on it. But think of a white wall on which a shadow falls. Is not the shadowed part a shade of grey?

I want to make some remarks this morning, which start from the premise that life seldom gives us a choice between black and white. We are much more often faced with choosing between shades of grey, we much more often have to balance the achievement of one goal with the achievement of a second goal.

On courtrooms across the Western world we are used to seeing representations of Justitia, an imposing lady holding up a set of scales. She indicates that in searching to do justice we need to search for balance. This is a key element of our intellectual tradition. It is very different from the old biblical concept of an eye for an eye. It is a product of the Enlightenment, of the struggle to base our judgements on reason and not on emotion.

Let me now say something about the European Union and why balance has been so necessary in its development. The European Union was born amid the rubble of the Second World War, born of a determination to make an end of the wars between European nations, which made up so much of the content of the history books which I read at High School.

The idea was to come together in a common project by pooling the sovereignty of our states and doing many things much more effectively together than any individual state could do separately, whether it be regulating our economy or acting together in the world. And by doing so the age-old differences and enmities would be overcome, our peoples would grow together and new wars would become an impossibility. This great project has been a success and the zone of peace and prosperity we have created now embraces, since our latest enlargement to 25 member states, a very large part of the continent of Europe. The goal of your President George Herbert Walker Bush of a Europe whole and free is within our grasp.

But there is an important limit to what we can do collectively. The separate identities of the citizens of our individual Member States still exist. A Frenchman would react very sharply if you told him he was no different from a German. An Irishman will not like it if you take him for a Brit. And as we take more and more decisions centrally, we run a greater and greater risk of creating fear among our citizens that their identity is under threat, and that their way of life is under threat from institutions in a faraway city called Brussels.

You have a not so dissimilar situation in the US, with a balance being struck between the power of Washington and the rights of the states. We neglect this balance at our peril.

In Europe we are very proud of the model of society, which we have developed. We have anchored the principle of solidarity between all members of our society in our Treaties and the economies of all our member states can fairly be described as social market economies, in which the state provides a social safety net for those members of society who are unable in the unforgiving environment of a free market economy to earn enough to finance a life which guarantees them a minimum of comfort and human dignity.

But this social safety net does not come cheap. The burden of our regulations, which implement it, and the taxes which finance it, must be carried by our economy in general. Experience has shown that if we are not careful, this burden will throttle economic growth and kill the goose that lays the golden egg. We must strike a balance between our sense of solidarity and the need for economic dynamism, and we often struggle to get this right.

In the area of foreign policy you will find that there is a huge discussion about whether it should be based on the propagation of values or on the defense of interests. Should our policy towards the Middle East be dictated by our need for its oil or on the desire to bring democracy to its peoples?

In the European Union we try to resolve this dilemma by saying that the propagation of the values of the rule of law, of democracy and human rights, of the market economy, will bring about a more peaceful and prosperous world, which is also in our economic interest. And we try to pursue this policy largely through persuasion, by so-called soft instruments of foreign policy.

In contrast the United States is often seen as such a strong superpower that it can use military force or the threat of military force to achieve similar aims. These are the hard instruments of foreign policy.

The political scientist Robert Kagan made a name for himself not so long ago by referring to these differences and saying that Americans are from Mars - the God of war - while Europeans are from Venus - the Goddess of Love.

The best response I have seen came from Javier Solana, our foreign policy chief, who pointed out that Mars found no peace until he lay in the arms of Venus. And the product of their union was Harmonia. Again a balance is necessary. I would argue that transatlantic partnership in foreign policy is a good way to achieve this.

Different foreign policy problems require different solutions. Our tools range from persuasion, which is best done by setting a good example, through trade concessions or trade sanctions, the offer of development aid or technological know-how, to the use of military force. We need a complete toolbox. As a recent commentator put it: "if you only have a hammer in your toolbox, you may be tempted to think that every problem is a nail."

Turning now to the United Nations we see similar problems of balance. The reality is that the organization itself, its secretariat and its Secretary-General Kofi Annan have no power. It is not a world government. So when we call for the United Nations to take firm action we are really asking for the impossible. The reality is that it is the member countries of the UN which have to implement its decisions and they will only do so on the basis of a really solid consensus, which only usually emerges, if at all, after many long days, months, or even years of discussion.

But when this happens, the action taken will have the full weight of the world community behind it. It will carry legitimacy.

It is easy to get impatient with this process and, if you are a big powerful country, to believe that you can act alone instead, without waiting for the UN to finish its deliberations. The result can be swift action, but without the legitimacy which comes from the UN. There is a trade off, and a leader such as the US president must ask himself where the right balance lies. These are not easy decisions. There is no black and white here.

A word about the UN Security Council. Its reform is currently a hot topic and centers around the question of how its membership should be increased to render it both more representative of all UN members and also more effective in ensuring peace and security. To make it more effective there are proposals for India and Brazil, Germany and Japan to become new permanent members, alongside the US, Russia, China, the UK and France. This would give permanent membership to those countries which are big enough and strong enough to provide both power and resources for security purposes.

But would it also make the membership more representative and thus more legitimate? No, it would not. It would give proportionately more weight to powerful countries and less to weaker countries. So you see there is a tradeoff between the idea of equal representation of countries and the reality of power in the world. And there is no point in ignoring this and no ideal solution. A balance between competing principles will need to be found.

One final remark for this introduction to our discussion. Robert Rubin, who was President Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury, entitled his memoirs, "In an Uncertain World: Tough Choices from Wall Street to Washington." His main thesis is that in the whole of his career in business and in politics he had had to take decisions based on too little information, based on uncertainty about the facts and uncertainty about the results of his actions, and had always agonized about them.

If you don't read the book, at least remember the idea. In politics and international relations we should always be aware of that uncertainty, we should avoid the temptation to see black and white where there are only shades of grey, and we should agonize about these decisions which affect the lives of so many. And we should always have the figure of Justitia in the backs of our minds as we try to weigh alternatives and find the right balance.

In my experience this is not easy. But who ever thought that things which are worth doing well should be easy?

Thank you.

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• Description of the European Commission Delegation in New York (1/4/2005)