We are gathered together in Placentia Bay in 2011 where, 70 years ago, Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote the first draft of the Atlantic Charter, subsequently the basis for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Our purpose today is to acknowledge that their goals have been fulfilled, and that protection of humanity from the scourge of war must pass into other hands. So it must be, or the purposes of Churchill and Roosevelt will be denied and defeated.
NATO itself has become, like Frankenstein, an organism beyond the imagination of its creators, a parallel organization to the United Nations, yet providing neither the peace nor the security long hoped for.
The attacks on September 11, 2001, aroused in the United States a desire to act alone. Under these circumstances, we must recall the words of George Orwell: "There is only one rule in power politics, and that is that there are no rules".
In times such as these, NATO has become an enabler of power politics. It has played its part, and we now consign it to the deeps. May the Lord have mercy on its intentions.
Our purpose today is to acknowledge that their goals have been fulfilled, and that protection of humanity from the scourge of war must pass into other hands. So it must be, or the purposes of Churchill and Roosevelt will be denied and defeated.
NATO itself has become, like Frankenstein, an organism beyond the imagination of its creators, a parallel organization to the United Nations, yet providing neither the peace nor the security long hoped for.
The attacks on September 11, 2001, aroused in the United States a desire to act alone. Under these circumstances, we must recall the words of George Orwell: "There is only one rule in power politics, and that is that there are no rules".
In times such as these, NATO has become an enabler of power politics. It has played its part, and we now consign it to the deeps. May the Lord have mercy on its intentions.
