美国务卿约翰·克里在弗吉尼亚大学的演讲

爱思英语编者按：约翰·福布斯·克里（John Forbes Kerry，1943年12月11日－）美国政治家，国务卿，马萨诸塞州参议员。1962年，克里进入耶鲁大学学习政治学，1966毕业获学士学位。他毕业后即加入海军预备役，1968至1969年参加越南战争，并因此获得三枚紫心勋章。2004年7月29日获民主党提名为该党2004年美国总统选举的候选人，同当时的在任总统小布什竞选美国总统一职。2008年12月，克里当选为美国参议院外交委员会主席。2013年1月29日，接替希拉里出任新一任美国国务卿，这是16年来美国第一位白人男性国务卿。

Address at the University of Virginia

John Kerry, Secretary of State

University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

February 20, 2013

Thank you. Thank you very, very much. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for an extraordinarily warm welcome, Charlottesville. I am really honored to be here.

Senator Tim Kaine, thank you very, very much for your generous words of introduction. Tim, as he mentioned, has only been on the Foreign Relations Committee, I guess now for a total of a few weeks, but I can, based on his testimony a moment ago, positively commend him on his voting record. (Laughter and applause.) He’s really – he’s found himself new job security too, because here in Virginia you have a single-term governor for four years, so he has traded one single four-year term for a six-year term with potential extension. (Laughter.) So given the fact that I traded the several extensions for a four-year term and then I’m finished, maybe he knows something and I ought to be listening to him. (Laughter.) I could learn a thing or two from him.

We didn’t overlap for long, but I want to tell everybody here that we know each other pretty well from service as a Lieutenant Governor and when he was Governor of the state. I was Lieutenant Governor of my state, so we have that in common before being senators.

I’ll tell you a quick story. And I don’t know what you do in Virginia as Lieutenant Governor, but in Massachusetts, once upon a time Calvin Coolidge was Lieutenant Governor. And he was at a dinner party, and his dinner partner turned to him and said, “What do you do?” And he said, “Well, I’m Calvin Coolidge. I’m Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.” And she said, “Oh wow, that must be really interesting. Tell me all about the job.” And he said, “I just did.” (Laughter.) So I trust, because they embraced you and me, we made something more out of it.

But I have huge admiration for the path that Tim Kaine has followed. I know his sense of what America means to the world was forged in the early days that Congressman Hurt referred to about his missionary work, the Catholic missionary working in Honduras, just helping other people to live healthier lives. And I know, because two weeks after the election, Tim called me and he asked if he could serve on the Foreign Relations Committee. Well, in the Senate, I will tell you, you don’t always get those calls. People who step forward and volunteer in that way on a committee that doesn’t have the opportunity to bring bacon back home and perhaps deliver it as easy a reelection. So I know that in Tim Kaine, Virginia has a senator who’s going to make his mark on that committee, and he’s going to make the mark for your commonwealth and our country, and we’re grateful for your service, Tim. Thank you very, very much. (Applause.)

I also am particularly grateful for Congressman Robert Hurt being here today. I have left partisan politics and it’s wonderful for me to be able to welcome people in the complete spirit of nonpartisanship, not just bipartisan, but nonpartisanship. And I’m particularly grateful to him for his service in the state legislature, in both houses, now in the House, and I’m confident from the words you expressed and the conversation we had, you’re going to make your contribution too. And I thank you for your presence here today. (Applause.)

President Sullivan, thank you so much for welcoming me here to this historic, remarkable campus. I just feasted on the view as I walked across the lawn with President Sullivan, and I have to say you all are very lucky to go to school here. (Laughter.) It is an honor to join you here on Grounds – (laughter and applause) – this very, very beautiful monument to the potential of the human mind. And I have to tell you, to stand here beneath the gaze of the sages of Athens, those thinkers who gave us the idea of democracy, which we obviously still continue to perfect, not only in our own nation but around the world, we are grateful for that.

I will tell you also, I was here a long time ago as an undergraduate. I played lacrosse down on that field over there against you guys, and my first act of diplomacy is literally to forget who won. I have no idea. I don’t know. (Laughter.)

I want to thank the folks in uniform. I want to thank the ROTC and all those of you who have served and will continue to serve in some way for our nation. There is no greater declaration of citizenship than that, and I happen to believe the word “citizen” is one of the most important in the American lexicon.

Some might ask why I’m standing here at the University of Virginia, why am I starting here? A Secretary of State making his first speech in the United States? You might ask, “Doesn’t diplomacy happen over there, overseas, far beyond the boundaries of our own backyards?”

So why is it that I am at the foot of the Blue Ridge instead of on the shores of the Black Sea? Why am I in Old Cabell Hall and not Kabul, Afghanistan? (Laughter.)

The reason is very simple. I came here purposefully to underscore that in today’s global world, there is no longer anything foreign about foreign policy. More than ever before, the decisions that we make from the safety of our shores don’t just ripple outward; they also create a current right here in America. How we conduct our foreign policy matters more than ever before to our everyday lives, to the opportunities of all those students I met standing outside, whatever year they are here, thinking about the future. It’s important not just in terms of the threats that we face, but the products that we buy, the goods that we sell, and the opportunity that we provide for economic growth and vitality. It’s not just about whether we’ll be compelled to send our troops to another battle, but whether we’ll be able to send our graduates into a thriving workforce. That’s why I’m here today.

I’m here because our lives as Americans are more intertwined than ever before with the lives of people in parts of the world that we may have never visited. In the global challenges of diplomacy, development, economic security, environmental security, you will feel our success or failure just as strongly as those people in those other countries that you’ll never meet. For all that we have gained in the 21st century, we have lost the luxury of just looking inward. Instead, we look out and we see a new field of competitors. I think it gives us much reason to hope. But it also gives us many more rivals determined to create jobs and opportunities for their own people, a voracious marketplace that sometimes forgets morality and values.

I know that some of you and many across the country wish that globalization would just go away, or you wistfully remember easier times. But, my friends, no politician, no matter how powerful, can put this genie back in the bottle. So our challenge is to tame the worst impulses of globalization even as we harness its ability to spread information and possibility, to offer even the most remote place on Earth the same choices that have made us strong and free.

So before I leave this weekend to listen to our allies and partners next week throughout Europe and the Middle East, and in the coming months across Asia, Africa, and the Americas, I wanted to first talk with you about the challenge that we face here at home, because our engagement with the rest of the world begins by making some important choices together, and particularly about our nation’s budget. Our sense of shared responsibility, that we care about something bigger than ourselves, is absolutely central to the spirit of this school. It’s also central to the spirit of our nation.

As you well know, and Dr. Sullivan reminded you a moment ago, our first Secretary of State founded this great university. Students of his day, when he did, could basically only study law or medicine or religion. That was about it. But Thomas Jefferson had a vision, and he believed that the American people needed a public place to learn a diversity of disciplines – studies of science and space, of flora, fauna, and philosophy. He built this university in the image of what he called “the illimitable freedom of the human mind.”