Dear Mr. Minister, dear Ms. Director of the Delegation of the European Commission, dear guests,

Slovakia, upon its accession to the EU and NATO, confirmed its political maturity. By acquiring membership in these prestigious clubs we accomplished the process of our own national emancipation, proud statehood, completeness and ability to enter these multinational institutions.

It has taken us around one hundred years to get from the position of a marginalized minority, intended practically for diminishing, to the position of an equal European nation with its own government. We made a good use of the 20th century. However, it is a pity that due to the communist experiment we lagged behind on the path of economic and technological catching up with the most developed countries in the world. We got over it and we need to look forward to the future. I would like to make use of this occasion and again repeat and stress the reasons why Slovakia applied for the membership in NATO and the EU. These factors make up strong lines of our policy.

Our membership in the EU is a consequence of the need for uniting Europe with preservation of national and state specifics. From the global approach, even Germany and France are small countries these days. It was already well known to Coudenhove – Kalergi, who called for European unification since the 1920s. And it was also known to Milan Hodža. Without international integration we are not able to ensure an appropriate access to the global market, to raw materials, nor to provide for a sufficient social and economic development. In two decades the world will consist of several strong powers: USA, Russia, China, Japan, India, Brazil and several large regional integrations, whereby the European Union may be the most important of them.

Out of all possible historically mentioned alternatives, the accession to the EU is obviously the most natural for us.

It is clearly because our region, the region where we live, Slovakia, has been an integral part of Europe for more than a millennium; and the values that were gradually formed in Europe, are also our values: ancient civilization, Judaism, humanism, enlightenment, democracy. And, eventually, European structures already functioned, so it was not necessary to build them.

Dear participants, together with other European countries, we form one big civilization. This civilization bond was one of the decisive issues concerning our accession to the European Union. The European Union is based on political values of democracy and respect to human rights. We also subscribe to these values and we know that it is the cooperation with developed countries of the Western Europe that can help us to anchor them in our country too. There is a relatively extended solidarity in the Union and the less wealthier countries can use funds of the EU for their own development and thus saturate the development and progression of the entire European Community.

And last but not least, the Union is actually the decisive player on the European continent. By taking part in the decision making process, we can achieve more than we would if we were standing aside and actually became only an object, maybe even a passive element of its decisions. The same applies to NATO, but let me get to it later. Benefits resulting from the membership in the EU are evident and in general welcome in Slovakia. Let me repeat the most important of them: Euro funds for regions, solidarity of the stronger ones with the weaker ones, Schengen, Eurozone.

Dear participants, when justifying our membership in NATO, I must say few more words. First of all, it is because

our public often ignores possible military and security risks for Slovakia and the need to face them.

Well, and certain, let me repeat CERTAIN politicians do not like talking about unpleasant and terrifying issues to citizens. At present it may seem that we are safe in our Europe, however, we are obliged to take part in protection of outside walls of this European peace “greenhouse”.

Growing power of China, Russia, Islamic countries and other non-European players may cause serious global tension and pose a threat to western liberal democratic states.

They can face such threat only when they are united. And that is material! And therefore NATO is important, if I can say it that simply!

NATO is the strongest military organization in the world. It is better to be its member and take part in the peaceful development in the world and in protection of values of the democratic community that stand aside. The decisive country in NATO is the United States. If we look at it from the “pro futurum” viewpoint, a possible relative decline in its influence will be slow and gradual. Therefore the alliance with the United States is of key importance and valuable to us.

From the viewpoint of security guarantees, no other power can play the role of democratic guarantor as the present-day USA does.

Other powers, as well as Russia and China possess only a fraction of the American power, not to mention the power of entire NATO. Those who would like to weaken Slovak and European linkages to the USA and replace them with links to any other superpower either talk dream of a sort of Slovak neutrality or are trying to drive us to a strong adventurism. The United States and West-European allies are close to us in their civilization views and therefore are logical partners to us, as I have already mentioned. Those who think of a multipolar world, which seems, at the first sight, to be “more democratic” and more attractive, should realize that a sort of redistribution of power at the global level may be exploited by some middle–sized powers, such as Brazil, India, Iran, China, Russia, but not small countries like Slovakia and, in fact, Europe. American semihegemony – even though sometimes unjust from the global perspective – is favorable to us, thanks to our bonds to the USA, and any possible revolution in global power situation might only crash us. We have nothing to receive from it. I do not even know, if there was more democracy in the world, if countries that are internally non-democratic, such as Islamistic Iran or North Korea got more voice.

It is the intrinsically democratic nature of the USA with public policy that is the guarantee of certain self-restrictions in the foreign policy.

I am talking about “self-restrictions” that would not exist in an empire governed by a military-bureaucratic caste or religious zealots.

Along with that, our allies, USA and countries of Western Europe, cherish the same political values as we do. Alliance with developed democratic states serves as an impetus for us and a motivation for our own domestic development. Maybe a part of Slovak politicians are attracted by the situation in certain countries to the east from us, where the power of the political elite is often not controlled from the bottom; however, adoption of East-European  patterns for our political system would lead to the loss of the possibility to actually improve lives of our citizens.

NATO, of course, also means the structure whose internal mechanisms enable elimination of the threat of armed confrontations among its members. Alliance of the United States and other member states of NATO is important also from another viewpoint:

We must not omit national aspects, have you ever thought of the fact that there is actually one quarter of the Slovak nation living in the United States? Data vary, however, we can confidently talk about around 1.5 million Slovaks or people with Slovak origin who live in the USA.

Let’s not forget that American and Canadian Slovaks materially contributed to the establishment of Czech-Slovakia in 1918 and that it was also them who were fighting on fronts of the WW2.

Further 150,000 to 350,000 Slovaks live in the Czech Republic and several tens of thousands others live in other Western European countries, member states of NATO.

Dear participants, let me stress again that the Slovak Republic cannot not take part in the common protection of members states of the EU and NATO. We must make use of our involvement to modernize armed forces and also to improve their training. I am convinced that each ambitious professional soldier should have the opportunity to take part in military missions abroad. Otherwise we cannot find out if they are real soldiers, able to engage even their own lives, take the test and go through the baptism of fire. Solidarity and assistance to those who need it, in regional conflicts, against aggressors and terrorism. Along with humanitarian aid, friendly hand given out and for the sake of life. Such men should then form the core of our army with the best opportunities for their career growth. We may honestly desire peace, we want to do everything for peace, however, there are a lot of forces in the world that do not share this desire of ours and, on the contrary, they hate and spread hatred to others.

On the contrary, they perceive our pacifism and our good will as weakness and may misuse it. Europeans and Americans cannot find themselves in the position of England and France in 1938-1940. Both these countries desired peace so much that they attempted to use any compromises to soothe the aggressor – so they did a quasi reasonable humane policy. However, they failed to avoid military conflict anyway. Even despite that Arthur Neville Chamberlain, then prime Minister, after his return from Munich, said that he was bringing peace. And a few months after the Munich meeting they had to go into war under much worse conditions than they would have had in the case of adopting a more decisive attitude to fascist and Nazi states of then Europe: Italy and Germany.

Dear guests, friends, looking into the future I would like to provide citizens of the Slovak Republic with the best possible combination:

European culture, German legal system, British political values and democracy, Scandinavian social model, Polish or Russian bravery, Japanese technologies and American security strategy.

Together we will manage that.

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autor: Slovak Atlantic Commission

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