"Europe can awaken from its long slumber and rekindle the flame that was lit here millennia ago"

There are grand ruins in every corner of the world. In many cases, they are places where history seems to have run its course: the remains of distant cultures, long since faded from living memory. But the Acropolis is different. For thousands of years, the civilisation that built what stands out behind me has captivated the imagination of the Western world. Generations of statesmen, artists and philosophers have looked upon it with wonder and awe. Time tends to dull the senses: great victories and catastrophic defeats end up being reduced to a footnote in a textbook, yet another fact that our students memorise and then forget. But the ancient Greeks seem to hold an almost mystical hold over our memory. They draw us back to them, time and again. In 480 BC, Xerxes’ armies arrived in this city and set its sanctuaries ablaze. Most Athenians had already fled by sea to a nearby island, but a small group refused to abandon their homes. They barricaded themselves inside the Acropolis fortress for an extraordinary last stand, hurling enormous boulders down the cliffs at the Persian invaders and holding off the greatest empire of the age for days on end. In the end, they were overwhelmed. The Persians plundered the temples, burnt the sanctuaries and razed the Acropolis to the ground. But when the Athenians returned, they gathered the shattered remains of the old Acropolis and buried them in the hill upon which it had stood. And decades later, under Pericles, they erected the Parthenon.

The Parthenon has stood for twenty-five centuries. Empires have risen and fallen in its shadow. (...) Two and a half centuries after the founding of the American Republic, I stand here as Secretary of State of that Republic, and as the great-grandson of settlers who arrived in the New World from Spain. I stand here to bear witness to a debt that no passage of time and no distance can ever extinguish. The history of America, the history of my country, is imbued with the traces of antiquity. Greece is carved into the architecture of our government: in the imposing columns, domes and monuments of our capital. (...)

The men who founded my country were fascinated by the legacy we had inherited from yours. (...) Many people are surprised to discover that the most frequently cited author in the Federalist Papers was neither an Enlightenment philosopher nor a political theorist. No: the most frequently cited author in the Federalist Papers was Plutarch, the Greek biographer of the great men of Greece and Rome. Much has been written and said about the influence of ancient Greece on the ideas of the American Founding Fathers and, indeed, on all the Western philosophers and statesmen who preceded them. Almost all of us are familiar with the basic story. Athens gave us democracy. Plato and Aristotle gave us Western philosophy. Our ideas of law, virtue, citizenship and republican government took shape in the Greek city-states. Even much of our political vocabulary – words such as ‘democracy’, ‘tyranny’ and the very word ‘politics’ itself – originated there. All this is true. But what we owe to this place, as Americans and as Westerners, is in fact much, much deeper. (...)

Here, in Athens, we found the first full realisation of all the essential traits that would come to define the West: a proud individuality and a relentless ambition; the spirit of exploration and invention; the aspiration towards discovery, adventure, risk and glory. (...) An insatiable curiosity about the world and the principles that govern it, a hunger to understand the mysteries of nature and to grasp the secrets of the cosmos. An intolerance of the very idea of the impossible, which kicks against every boundary and every limit, striving to peer into the depths of the unknown. (...) To understand these principles is to understand ourselves. What blossomed here was the Western desire to bring to light all that ignorance, darkness and distance had kept hidden from the human mind. The Greeks did not merely shape history: they gave us history itself. (...) While others looked inwards, the Greeks were the first to turn their gaze outwards, to pursue the thrill and glory of seeing all that was strange and new. (...) It was this trait that drove the West to create and build what others could not, setting us apart from so many other cultures and civilisations in which stability and subsistence were the supreme aims of life.

But we do not merely inherit from the Greeks the ambition to explore the unknown: we inherit the conviction that the unknown can be known. The confidence that the world can be charted, measured, mapped and understood, and that there exists a rational order to the cosmos, governed by fundamental laws which men can observe and the mind can come to understand. This formed the foundation of the Western mind: our mathematics, our science, our medicine. Our philosophy, our ethics, our religion. It prepared the ground for the Gospel of Jesus Christ to find fertile soil in Europe and flourish until it became the empire of Christendom. It was the foundation of the richness of Christian theology, of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and of the entire tradition of natural law. It gave rise to a civilisation characterised not only by a common culture, but by a common anthropology, by a shared vision of humankind and its place in the universe. (...)

For the ancient Greeks, the pursuit of excellence was the very principle of human existence. They organised their entire civic life around rivalry, ambition and competition: in philosophy and poetry, in sculpture and theatre, in athletics and the arts, in warfare and the art of governance. The classical Greek city-state functioned as an arena in which great men tested themselves, honing their potential through a perpetual struggle to be the best, striving ever closer to perfection. It is recognized that to modern ears, the approach described—this way of life—may sound strange, even cruel. The ideal of many contemporary ideologies has become, frankly, a world of perfect security, devoid of risk and failure, with neither the glory of victory nor the shame of defeat.

All too often these days, we build downwards. We set our standards so that no one loses out; we are more concerned with the comfort of the worst than with the potential of the best. (...) The men who built the Parthenon built upwards. They believed that life’s highest and noblest aspiration was to surpass all others, to strive to be the best at everything. From that constant struggle for distinction sprang the great flowering of art, philosophy and political and intellectual energy that would transform a cluster of Mediterranean cities into the cradle of the world’s greatest civilisation. ‘Thumos’, as the ancient Greeks called it – the fire of passion, strength, courage and pride – is the heart of every great civilisation. And without it? Without it, nations lose the will to fight, the will to struggle, the will to survive. Today, much of the West has forgotten this quality. Over time, we Westerners have come to feel ashamed of the very thing that made us exceptional. We were embarrassed by the fact that our achievements set us apart from the rest of the world.

Our prosperity has, in a way, become a source of guilt. We no longer believed we deserved or had earned our greatness. The term ‘nationalism’ has become a dirty word. And so we have torn down our monuments; we have condemned our own history. And in far too many places, we have taught our children to be ashamed of the countries they would inherit. In doing so, we opened our borders and outsourced our industry, and we allowed our armed forces to weaken and fall into decline. And year after year, it seemed as though we were outsourcing more and more of our sovereignty, handing over our decisions to global bureaucracies far beyond our control. But others have been only too happy to fill the void we left behind – the void created by our weakness. And whilst the West’s confidence faltered, its adversaries and rivals have become increasingly assertive, amassing wealth and power in our place.

Today we find ourselves at a crossroads. For the coming decade and the decisions we make will shape the history of the next century. The path we choose will determine whether the West retains its place at the helm of the world or resigns itself to a future of stagnation, servitude and decline. Either we choose to act now, or we will lose the very chance to choose. Under President Trump, the United States has made its choice. Let us choose the uncompromising pursuit of national power: to regain control of our critical supply chains, to reindustrialise our economy, to rebuild our defence, and to strive for dominance in the technologies and industries of the future. Let us choose to push towards new frontiers: in advanced manufacturing and superintelligence; in drones, weapons and warfare; in chips, minerals, cyber and every other realm of human possibility. To unleash our energy, rebuild our factories, return our astronauts to the Moon and usher in a new age of space exploration. For all their noble ideals, the ancient Greeks were not naive. They understood that nations have interests. They understood that the art of government requires prudence and diplomacy, but also the ability to use force when prudence and diplomacy fail. They understood that power requires not only the means to defend oneself, but also the credibility of being prepared to use them.

This is the classical conception of politics and the art of governance that the Trump Administration hopes to reclaim, not only for our country, but for our entire civilisation. We believe that Europe can awaken from its long slumber and rekindle the flame that was lit here millennia ago. There are already signs of this. Across this continent, we are witnessing what we hope is the beginning of a generational shift: defence spending soaring, a flurry of new partnerships and programmes, and expanding production and manufacturing, in the wake of the historic defence commitments made last year in The Hague. Greece has been at the heart of this shift. The people of this nation have once again proved themselves to be an indispensable friend to Europe and the United States, on everything from energy to migration to defence, where Greece has been a model ally. It is our sincere hope that the entire continent will follow your example.

Although passions may at times have tested the bonds of affection between the United States and Europe, we must not allow them to be severed. Together, we must strengthen an alliance capable of tackling the threats of our time. And we can do so. Because we do not believe that transatlantic friendship should be a zero-sum game. On the contrary: our vision is of an alliance whose strength is greater than the sum of its parts. It is a vision we saw in action just last month, in an unprecedented agreement between the United States, Denmark and Greenland – an agreement that will reshape the Arctic and strengthen the security of the whole of NATO.

All three partners have emerged as winners. The whole of Europe, NATO and the United States have emerged safer and stronger. We want to win together. We must win together. Today, it has become fashionable to believe that an enlightened foreign policy means putting the global community before one’s own people. And I believe that here, too, we have much to learn from the men of ancient Greece, because they knew that there was nothing selfish or wrong about loyalty to one’s own nation, nor in fighting to defend its interests above all else. They believed, with pride, in the ideal of the great man: the exceptional individual who achieves immortality through his deeds. But they believed that glory and fame were won through struggle, self-sacrifice and the accomplishment of great deeds for something greater than oneself. The recurring hero of the ancient Greek world was the man willing to pay any price for a cause worthy of his loyalty.

This principle is exemplified by Socrates, who refused to abandon the pursuit of truth even at the cost of his life. It is also seen in the legendary resistance of the 300 Spartans, surrounded and without hope, vastly outnumbered by the vast armies of Persia, who rejected the chance to save themselves and chose to fight to the last man rather than abandon their post or their duty. And we see it in the epic myth of Achilles, who was offered the choice of returning home to live a long and peaceful life, but who instead chose to remain at Troy and perish in pursuit of eternal glory. These are the qualities that have shaped the moral imagination of the West. From the Christian martyr who refused to betray his faith to the patriot who gave his life for his country; from Saint Thomas More to the Battle of the Alamo, right through to the immortal closing words of the United States Declaration of Independence: ‘We pledge to one another our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honour’. It is from the Greeks that the West has inherited a sense of duty: an unshakeable loyalty to one’s code, one’s cause, and one’s country. The heroes of the West are those who choose to remain faithful to their duty precisely when it is most difficult and painful to do so: the man bound by his word, the soldier who does not abandon his post, the captain – the proverbial captain – who goes down with his ship.

All this is radically different from what we still see today, for example, in fanatics such as Iran’s radical mullahs, whose cult of death glorifies child suicide bombers as national heroes and presents martyrdom as an end in itself. Our heroes may be willing to die for their cause, but they do not revere death. It is precisely because we value life that we recognise heroism in those who prefer to sacrifice it rather than betray their principles. We take the Western conception of these things – heroism, honour, duty – for granted. We assume they are, in some way, universal, applicable to all human beings, at all times and in all places. They are not. They are the product of a distinct character, a character that originated here and has shaped the entire history of the civilisation that followed. A civilisation that we must now fight to defend with the same passion as our forefathers. The men who built the Parthenon were succeeded by the architects of European Christianity, who erected the cathedrals of Milan, Cologne and Florence. The quest for perfection in the human form that drove the ancient Greek sculptors found a new expression in Michelangelo. The Greek philosophers’ quest to understand the structure of the universe was taken up by Copernicus, then by Galileo, Kepler and Newton.

The thirst for new knowledge gave rise to Magellan’s first round-the-world expedition, Columbus’s discovery of the Americas and, finally, the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon. The qualities that drove Alexander to conquer the entire known world reappeared in Caesar, then in Charlemagne and in Cortés. In America, that same tradition has found itself anew. An open and wild land has become the theatre of a great reawakening of Western imagination and ambition. The Greek aspiration for new horizons has become the American frontier spirit. The greatest Americans of every generation have borne the unmistakable traits of their forebears: born in Athens, educated in Rome, baptised into Christianity, tempered in the crucible of medieval Europe, endowed with the English genius for freedom, and then carried across the Atlantic to be reborn on the shores of a new world. Together, we must now rediscover that spirit. We stand at a turning point, not only in the history of my nation, but in the history of our entire civilisation. The threats we face today are as real as they were on the dramatic stages of antiquity. National interests have not vanished in the face of international institutions. War has not disappeared simply because we preferred peace. Other states have continued to arm themselves, to seek influence, to compete for territory, technology, resources, markets, energy and power.

And now there is war once again. There is renewed competition between the major powers. Once again, there are vulnerabilities, aggression, terrorism – a whole universe of new threats and new attacks.

We must therefore rebuild our institutions and our alliances to tackle these threats together, recognising that the aim of all this is not to abolish the sovereignty of the nations that make them up, but to defend it. And that nations do not need to give up their own identity in order to recognise their common interests. Together with our partners here in Greece, we have built a model of this: in our partnerships on defence, energy and technology, and in our shared ambition to protect Europe’s borders from the threats posed by mass migration.

Our friendship dates back to the very earliest years of my nation. When, in 1821, Greece rose up to regain its independence after centuries of Ottoman rule, the Americans recognised something familiar in that struggle. Three years later, the great American statesman Daniel Webster delivered a famous speech before Congress, helping to bring the cause of the Greek revolution to the attention of the representatives of the young American republic. He began by drawing their attention to everything around them. In that speech, he said: ‘This free form of government, this popular assembly… this practice of free debate and public discussion, the clash of minds… even the building in which we are gathered, these proportionate columns, this ornate architecture – all remind us that Greece once existed and that we, like the rest of humanity, owe it a great debt.’

Those words are as true today as they were when they were spoken. The history of Greece offers us not merely a glimpse of our institutions in their most ancient forms. The history of Greece shows us a picture of ourselves. It shows us that ours is the legacy of great heroes, and that we should be proud – intensely proud – of where we come from. We should marvel at what our forefathers achieved on this land. The history of our civilisation is the greatest story ever known to mankind. And it began here, with the first men and women of the West. From them we can rediscover the virtues, the courage and the strength to face the dangers of our time. Thank you.