1989 Malta Summit – Celebrating Open Societies

This year we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Malta Summit, a key milestone in the revolutions for freedom and democracy across Europe.

In 1989, citizens rebelled against oppression, overthrew dictators, and gave rise to a new era of open societies, where democracy, human rights and global cooperation are nurtured. The transatlantic community has grown stronger together as friends, partners, and allies over the last 30 years. We are bound together by our shared democratic values, as well as our mutual goals of prosperity, stability, security, and cooperation.

As in 1989, Malta continues to be a valuable partner in international efforts to guarantee peace, security, and freedom in the world. In

2018, the United States and Malta, in partnership with Italy, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, established the Central Mediterranean Security Initiative to collectively address challenges and provide a safe space to share concerns, investigations, and best practices that improve security in the region.

And yet 30 years later, we find once again that the underlying struggle in today’s world is open versus closed societies. Open societies like the United States and Malta are the models that many citizens of closed societies aspire to. Open societies are noisy, messy, often chaotic – and we would not have it any other way. In open societies, individual liberty is sacred, and citizens have come together to insist that a better life is possible as they push their leaders to protect the rights and the dignity of all people. The benefits of unleashing the creativity and potential of all diverse members of an open society are all around us. People, goods, and knowledge flow freely, and hundreds of millions have been lifted out of extreme poverty since 1989. The solutions to the challenges of today’s world come from educated, innovative, and free minds, wherever they are to be found, and it must be the duty of any open society to nurture them. This is one of the lessons of 1989, although the inevitable drive for individual liberty and open societies has been cyclical and goes back centuries.

In the struggle between open and closed societies, there can be no moral equivalency between nations that control and suppress their people and those that uphold the rule of law, empower women, and respect individual rights. We join this struggle today as generations before us did, since around the world today we see a rise of closed societies at the same time as we see new popular thirst for open societies and individual liberty. Hong Kong. Chile. Bolivia, to name just a few. We cannot take individual liberty and democratic norms for granted.

Prosperity and peace for the transatlantic community depends on a strong, capable, transatlantic alliance. This is one of the key lessons of history as we celebrate 30 years since the 1989 revolutions and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today, just as it did in 1989, a trust deficit persists between Russia and the open societies of the United States and European Union member states. We believe it is possible to identify areas for coordination and cooperation, even as we compete and defend against attempts to sow divisions within our societies, drive the two sides of the Atlantic apart, and undermine the political and economic successes that we have achieved since the end of the Cold War. Even as the United States has imposed unprecedented penalties for Russian aggression, we have been clear that the door to dialogue is open, should Russia take credible steps toward a constructive path. Thirty years later, perhaps the memory of 1989 offers new opportunities moving forward.

We can advance together, and many of today’s challenges demand that we do so.

A fine example of this is the International Space Station. Thanks to collaboration between the United States, Russia, and other partners, there has been human presence on the International Space Station for over fifteen years. In 2016 NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko completed an International Space Station record year-long mission to collect valuable data on the effect of long duration weightlessness on the human body that will be used to prepare a human mission to Mars.

Looking back at 1989 and beyond, to the uprisings and independence movements of the 1960s, to 1945, 1918, 1848, and back to the American and French revolutions, the lessons of history are clear. Human beings have a very limited tolerance for being controlled and told what to do. And when governments and ruling elites get too far away from the people, it is ultimately the people who have the last word. Our open societies show the world our strengths, our weaknesses, our ideas, and our people. So today the struggle goes on, but with the lessons of 1989 now refreshed, we rededicate ourselves to our shared values and history, and look forward to building a shared future.