So everything that we’ve lived and learned tells us that we will never come out on top if we accept advice from soundbite salesmen and carnival barkers who pretend the most powerful country on earth can remain great by looking inward and hiding behind walls at a time that technology has made that impossible to do and unwise even to attempt. The future demands from us something more than a nostalgia for some rose-tinted version of a past that did not really exist in any case. And everyone understands that viscerally, internally, intellectually.

There is a massive transformation taking place around the world. Our leading corporations are going global. Health and medicine and film are going global. And you don’t have to be great at math to understand that our economy can’t grow if we don’t sell things to the 95 percent of the world’s customers who live in other countries. You don’t have to be a doctor to understand that we can’t be healthy if we can’t fight things like Ebola and Zika that may originate overseas but make us just as sick as the people they first hurt far, far from our shores. And many of you were in elementary school when you learned the toughest lesson of all on 9/11. There are no walls big enough to stop people from anywhere, tens of thousands of miles away, who are determined to take their own lives while they target others. Not in a clash of civilizations, but in an assault, a raw assault on civilization itself.


When I was younger, we had more than our share of national traumas, including a long and bloody war in Southeast Asia. But it was also a time when the dividing line between ideologies was simpler, when the primary forces shaping our world were governments of recognized states.

Today, we face a world that is much more complicated, less hierarchical, where nonstate actors play a central role; where disturbing images and outright lies can circle the globe in an instant; where dangers like climate change, terrorism, and disease do not respect borders or any of the norms of behavior; and where tribal and sectarian hatreds are as prominent as they have been in centuries. Now, for some people, that is all they need simply to climb under the sheets, close their eyes, and wish the world away. And shockingly, we even see this attitude from some who think they ought to be entrusted with the job of managing international affairs.

It seems obvious that understanding the need to engage with the wider world should be a threshold requirement for those in high office. And yet the specter of isolationism once again hovers over our nation. I thought we had learned the lessons from the 20th century, when an isolationist foreign policy and a protectionist tariff policy contributed to two global wars and the Great Depression.


Well, the desire to turn inward and to shut out the world may be especially seductive in an era as complicated as this. But it is not a responsible choice for the most prosperous and powerful nation on the planet.

When you consider the range of challenges that the world is struggling with, most countries don’t lie awake at night worrying about America’s presence; they worry about what would happen in our absence.

So we cannot be seduced. For us, the lessons of history are clear.

We don’t see an excuse for inaction. We see a mandate to lead. Because the greatest challenges that our world confronts are best addressed — and in some cases can only be addressed — by good and capable people working in common cause with citizens of other nations.

You often hear politicians talking about American exceptionalism, and indeed, this nation is exceptional. But remember, please, we’re not exceptional because we say we are and keep repeating it; we’re exceptional because we do exceptional things.

In other words, greatness isn’t about bragging. It’s about doing. It’s about never being satisfied. It’s about testing the limits of what we can achieve together — of what America and its partners can accomplish in the world. And that is exactly what we are trying to do, with the United States today already more deeply engaged on more important issues, in more parts of the globe, than ever before in our history. And we are profoundly conscious of the gravity of the challenges. In the words of the Haitian proverb, there are mountains beyond the mountains.


One mountain that we have to climb, which stands in the way of the calm that we want in our lives and the stability that we need to achieve many of the things we want to achieve, is the scourge of violent extremism that threatens communities around the world. And there can be no peace without eliminating this scourge.

Boston needs no lessons in how important it is to win the battle against terrorists. I want you to know, without exaggeration, we will win it and we are even winning it now. In Syria and Iraq, we have degraded the leadership of the terrorist group known as ISIL or Daesh, and we and our partners have liberated a third of the land that it once occupied, and we are continuing to move. They have not taken one piece of territory and held it since May of last year, but we’re not going to be successful in the long run if the world continues to turn away from other kinds of problems and allows the production of terrorists at such an alarming rate. And that is why it is critical that we expand our commitment to taking on violent extremism at the roots.

So all of us need to do much more to build relationships with partners overseas, to deliver assistance to families and communities abroad, to promote stability worldwide. And we need to do this not because it is morally right, which it is; not just because it’s in keeping with our national ethos, which is also true; but because our own security and prosperity demand it.

And all of this isn’t because of any one country or because of what governments do alone. It’s what happens when people have faith in their own values, in their own skills; when they respect the rights and dignity of one another; and when they believe in the possibility of progress no matter how many setbacks may stand in their way.