Thank you so much, Madam Secretary General, for that introduction and for your inspired leadership of the Community of Democracies [CD], and your commitment and willingness to continue to provide it at such an important time when it is so needed.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to welcome you to this first Governing Council of the United States presidency. We are very, very happy to play this role. We intend to lead this Community of Democracies with ruthless efficiency and no tolerance for dissent. (Laughter)

15 years ago, the participating countries of the CD signed the Warsaw Declaration, vowing to respect and uphold core democratic principles and practices. My good friend Mort Halperin, who I see right opposite me, was there at the creation. I imagine many others in this room were as well. It was, as we all recall, a somewhat different time in world affairs. I think there was a general sense and hope that democracy was advancing, that it would keep advancing, that there was very little ideological challenge to the principles of democracy around the world. This was post-fall of the Berlin Wall, pre-9/11, pre-Iraq War. A lot has changed in the years since. Not all of the change has been negative. In fact, I think that the desire for people around the world to make their own choices about their own governance is probably stronger today than at any other point in history. More and more people in more places know what their rights are, and are determined to fight for them. We’ve had tremendous successes just in the last couple of years: from Sri Lanka to Nigeria, to Tunisia, to Indonesia, the extraordinary movement across Africa and many other countries around the world, for respect of constitutional term limits, and so on, and so on.

I think in some ways, it’s because of this success and because of these growing demands that we see such a strong pushback in so many places. That said, the pushback is very disturbing and it has claimed many, many victims among our friends around the world. People go to prison, people lose their lives, for fighting for these principles. And many brave committed dedicated civil society organizations working on everything from human rights to development to the environment to anti-corruption, are facing growing difficulties under a mountain of bureaucratic and other requirements, designed to make their work more dangerous and increasingly impossible.

I think we do need to be cognizant that there is an ideology behind this pushback. We all heard it in President Putin’s speech to the General Assembly this week. The idea that by encouraging political competition and regular changes of leadership, by allowing people to say and write and think what they want, democracy destabilizes natural societies. The idea that it was the democratic movements of the Arab Spring that are responsible for unleashing the horrors of ISIL, and our somehow irresponsible and arrogant embrace of these principles that is responsible for that nihilism and destruction. That idea, which President Obama, I think, quite effectively characterized in his speech, inevitably leads to the conclusion that we should all be supporting the Assad regime in Syria in its campaign of barrel-bombs and destruction against the Syrian people, which in fact is the thing that unleashed ISIL.

And I mention this because the stakes are obviously very, very high. There are two competing ideas, and depending on which idea you embrace, you’re going to pursue policies that lead to very distinct outcomes, and many people’s lives depend on which of these ideas, and which set of policies, our governments choose. So under these circumstances, we think – and I trust that all of you agree – that the idea of democracy has to be championed and not taken for granted. The solidarity among democracies has to be maintained; we have to keep working on it. We cannot just assume it. That’s what the Community of Democracies was created to do. That’s why I think it is more needed today than it has been at almost at any point in its history.

Now, as the President of the Community of Democracies, basically, we want to work with all of you to try to develop an agenda. The words are very important; I don’t think we should dismiss the importance of asserting these values and asserting these principles. But at the same time, we also need to find ways to work together in concrete ways. So in the months since our Ministerial in San Salvador, we’ve consulted with your governments, with civil society, on what priorities we should adopt for our presidency. In consultation with you and with the Secretary General., we have identified three that I think are worth discussing for the moment.

First, the United States will continue to highlight the important connection between democracy and development, which was the focus of El Salvador, our predecessor in the CD presidency. This priority resonates very well with the attention given this past week to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. It is worth noting that when the world came together to lay out a road map for sustainable development for the next 15 years, there was actually a strong resistance to including a goal on advancing peace and good governance. And counter intuitively, some of this resistance came from democratic countries, countries with vibrant civil societies, whose recent history is actually a testament to the growing opportunities and prosperity that come with the openness and accountability that democracy brings. We were ultimately successful in embedding governance targets into global development goals where they belong but the true measure of our success will be whether governments follow through on the good governance components of the SDGs, including Goal 16, and we think this is a place where the CD can play an important role, and where we intend to focus our efforts on democracy and development. We’re going to try to elevate the attention given to democracy and good governance, and the implementation of the SDGs, explore ways to collaborate with the Open Government Partnership and with others, to offer assistance to countries striving to fulfill their Goal 16 commitments.

A second focus of our CD Presidency will be the connection between democracy and security. As the United States learned the hard way, this is not a simple issue. After our 9/11, we were faced with the challenge that many countries around the world now face in fighting back against a very real threat to the lives of our people, while maintaining our commitment to human rights and to democratic values. We made some initial mistakes that are very well-known. I think, overall, we learned those lessons well, and we showed one of democracy’s most important qualities, its capacity for self-correction, which we’re very proud of. We hope that other countries facing this threat don’t have to go through the same trajectory. Not just because we care about democracy and human rights, but because one of the lessons we learned is that when we compromise on those values, that undermines the fight against terrorism, because that fight requires for its success above all, maintaining trust between the authorities and the communities within which terrorists try to find their recruits. So this will be an area of focus, and I think we’re very eager to work with you to – on the basis of those lessons, develop a set of best practices for development, for example, of counterterrorism laws and institutions that fully respect democratic rights. Secretary Kerry, when he speaks to us later today, will have more to say on that subject.

Building trust between authorities and citizens is also a central focus of the third priority area that we want to focus on, and that’s the promotion and protection of civil society. This is an obvious one for us, given the important role that civil society plays in sustaining democracy and the threats that civil society is under in so many countries around the world. It’s almost become a cliché amongst us, that authoritarian states, unfortunately, backed now by great powers, are spreading worst practices, are actively promoting the passage and enforcement of laws that are designed to make it almost impossible for NGOs, particularly advocacy NGOs, to function. So we are working on and hope to find agreement on, in the Community of Democracies, a set of standards that reflect best practices on the regulation, registration of NGOs, the question of foreign funding, on all of the issues that come into play as NGOs struggle to survive in increasingly closed societies in other parts of the world. We ought to be able to agree on this. Even though our democracies are all in their own ways different and unique, there are core principles that are fundamental, that we should be able to agree on, and I trust, will be able to agree on.

If we stand together, I have absolute confidence that this most recent wave of attacks on civil society and on democratic principles can be pushed back. Democracies sometimes have trouble standing together. We each have our own constituencies, political communities at home that we listen to. First and foremost, we’re all comfortable in a political environment in which people disagree and differ, we are all individualists in our own ways, and yet, I think, when the idea that unites us is challenged, the time to stand together in defense of that idea has clearly come. We really want the Community of Democracies to be that unifying instrument of solidarity. When we need to speak out, we should do it together. When we need to work together in the United Nations in defense of democracy, we should do it as a community. We very much look forward to working with you to achieve that goal, and to getting your ideas on how we can do it even better. Thank you very much.