国务卿马可·卢比奥讲话 希腊雅典

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国务卿马可·卢比奥讲话

希腊雅典

2026年10月7日


鲁比奥国务卿： 世界各地都有伟大的遗址。在很多情况下，这些地方似乎是历史的终点：它们是遥远文明的遗迹，早已超出了人们的记忆。

但雅典卫城则不同。

数千年来，在我身后这座建筑所孕育的文明，一直吸引着西方世界的想象力。一代又一代的政治家、艺术家和哲学家都曾仰望它——他们带着惊奇和敬畏的目光注视着它。

如今，时间往往会使人的感官变得迟钝：伟大的胜利和惨痛的失败，似乎都沦为教科书中的脚注，成为孩子们需要记忆和遗忘的又一个事实。但古希腊人却似乎对我们的记忆有着一种近乎神秘的吸引力。他们一次又一次地召唤着我们回到他们身边。

公元前480年，薛西斯的军队攻入这座城市，并将城中的圣地付之一炬。当时，大部分雅典人已乘船撤离到附近的一座岛屿。但仍有少数人拒绝离开家园。于是，他们固守在卫城的岩石堡垒中，进行殊死抵抗。他们将巨石从悬崖上扔下，砸向波斯入侵者，与当时最强大的帝国周旋数日。最终，他们还是被波斯人攻陷。波斯人洗劫了神庙，焚毁了圣地，并将卫城夷为平地。但当雅典人重返故土后，他们将卫城残垣断壁收集起来，埋葬在卫城曾经所在的山丘上。数十年后，在伯里克利的统治下，他们重建了帕特农神庙。

此后25个世纪，帕特农神庙屹立不倒。无数帝国在其荫庇下兴衰更迭。而建造它的先贤们——雅典和罗马的子孙——将他们的文明带到了世界的尽头。

在美利坚共和国成立两个半世纪之后，我今天站在这里，作为这个共和国的国务卿，作为从西班牙来到新大陆的移民的曾孙，我站在这里，是为了证明一份无论时间流逝、空间距离如何都无法抹去的恩情。

美国的历史，我祖国的历史，处处都留下了古代的印记。希腊的元素就镌刻在我们政府的建筑之中：高耸的柱廊、圆顶和遍布首都的纪念碑，无不体现着希腊的文化精髓。我们宪法的诞生地——费城——本身就是一个希腊名字。

我国的缔造者们对我们从你们那里继承的遗产着迷不已。他们博览群书，精通历史——他们对自己在历史中的独特地位有着清醒的认识——但没有哪个时代能像古代那样吸引他们的注意力，激发他们的想象力。许多人惊讶地发现，《联邦党人文集》中被引用最多的作者并非启蒙运动时期的哲学家或政治理论家。不，《联邦党人文集》中被引用最多的作者是普鲁塔克，这位希腊罗马伟人的传记作家。

关于古希腊对美国建国先贤思想的影响，以及对他们之前所有西方哲学家和政治家的影响，人们已经著述颇丰。我们大多数人都熟悉这段基本历史。雅典孕育了民主。柏拉图和亚里士多德为我们带来了西方哲学。我们对法律、美德、公民身份和共和政体的理解都源于希腊城邦。甚至我们许多政治词汇——例如民主、暴政，以及“政治”一词本身——也都源于此。

以上所述皆是事实。但我们作为美国人、作为西方人，对这片土地的亏欠远不止于此。这些制度和理念——它们是古希腊人身上更根本品质的外在体现，而这些品质无法被任何特定的政治制度或理论所概括。

在雅典，我们首次完整地看到了所有将定义西方世界的本质特征：强烈的个性与不懈的雄心；大胆的探索与发明；对发现、冒险、风险与荣耀的渴望。对世界及其运行规律永不满足的好奇心，对了解自然奥秘、掌握宇宙奥秘的渴求。对“不可能”的概念不耐烦，挑战一切界限与限制，竭力探寻未知的深渊。

这些不仅仅是某个哲学流派的公式或教条，它们更是一个民族的特征——体现在他们的传统、故事和想象力中；体现在他们对公民的品质要求中；体现在他们为之奋斗、为之牺牲的事物中。

了解他们就是了解我们自己。

这里孕育了西方渴望揭开所有因无知、黑暗和距离而隐藏在人类心灵深处的事物的愿望。希腊人不仅塑造了历史，他们更赋予了我们历史本身。我们对许多古代文明的了解，几乎完全来自希腊探险家和历史学家的记录。这些探险家和历史学家不仅记录了自己民族的历史，还远赴世界各地，观察并记录了异域民族和文化的传奇故事。

当其他人都在内省时，希腊人率先将目光投向外部，追寻探索新奇事物所带来的刺激与荣耀。正是这种特质——正是这种特质——推动西方创造和建设了其他人无法企及的事物，使我们从众多以稳定和生存为最高目标的文化和文明中脱颖而出。

但我们从古希腊人那里继承的，不仅仅是探索未知的雄心壮志，更是对未知之物的认知。我们坚信，世界可以被绘制、测量、描绘和理解——宇宙存在着一种理性的秩序，由某些基本法则支配，这些法则人类可以观察，也可以被理解。

这奠定了西方思想的基石：我们的数学、科学、医学，我们的哲学、伦理和宗教。它为耶稣基督的福音在欧洲找到沃土并最终发展成为基督教帝国铺平了道路。它是基督教神学——奥古斯丁、阿奎那以及整个自然法传统——的基石。

它孕育了一种文明，这种文明不仅以共同的文化为标志，更以共同的人类学——一种关于人类及其在宇宙中地位的共同观点——为标志。它的后代不仅共享自然秩序的观念，而且共享对美德、命运、真、善、美的独特理解；共享指导人类生活方式的准则；共享为人应当追求的客观标准和理想。

对古希腊人而言，追求卓越是人类存在的根本原则。他们将公民生活的方方面面都围绕着竞赛、抱负和竞争展开：哲学和诗歌、雕塑和戏剧、体育和艺术、战争和治国之道，无不体现着这一点。古典希腊城邦是伟人们检验自身、证明自我的竞技场，他们通过永无止境的奋斗磨砺自身潜能——力争成为最优秀、最强大、最俊美之人，不断努力，向完美迈进。

我知道，在现代人听来，我刚才描述的这种生活方式或许显得怪异，甚至残酷。坦白说，当今许多意识形态的理想已经沦为一个绝对安全的世界，没有风险，没有失败，既没有胜利的荣耀，也没有失败的耻辱。如今，我们常常自相残杀。我们制定标准，确保无人失败；我们更关注最差者的舒适，而非最佳者的潜力。我们把最杰出的人才，拱手让给了平庸、普通、庸碌之辈。

建造帕特农神庙的人们，向上攀登。他们认为，人生最高尚、最崇高的追求就是超越一切，力求在所有方面都做到最好。古希腊城邦充满活力，充满了强烈的激情、竞争、派系斗争和冲突。但正是在这种对卓越的不懈追求中，艺术、哲学、政治和思想的伟大繁荣得以孕育，最终将地中海沿岸的城邦联盟转变为世界上最伟大文明的摇篮。

古希腊人称之为“激情之火”（thumos）——激情、力量、勇气和骄傲的火焰——是伟大文明的核心。而没有它呢？没有它，国家就会失去战斗的意志、奋斗的意志和生存的 意志。

如今，西方太多人已经忘记了这种品质。随着时间的推移，我们西方人开始为那些让我们与众不同的特质感到羞耻。我们为自己的成就让我们与世界其他国家区别开来而感到尴尬。我们的繁荣不知何故成了罪恶感的来源。我们不再相信我们配得上、也不再相信我们配得上我们所取得的伟大。

“民族主义”一词成了贬义词。于是，我们拆毁了纪念碑，谴责了自己的历史。在很多地方，我们甚至教导我们的孩子为他们将要继承的国家感到羞耻。在这个过程中，我们开放了边境，将产业外包，任由军队衰落瓦解。

随着时间的推移，我们似乎将越来越多的主权外包出去，将我们的决策权转移到远远超出我们控制范围的全球官僚机构。

但其他人却乐于填补我们留下的真空——我们软弱无力造成的真空。随着西方信心的动摇，它的对手和竞争对手反而更加咄咄逼人，趁我们之势积累财富、壮大势力。

而今天，我们正站在人生的十字路口。因为未来十年以及我们所做的决定，将谱写下一个世纪的篇章。我们所采取的道路，将决定西方能否继续保持世界领先地位，还是会屈服于衰落、奴役和衰落的未来。我们要么选择现在就行动，要么就彻底失去行动的选择权。

在特朗普总统的领导下，美国已经做出了选择。我们选择毫不妥协地追求国家实力：重新掌控关键供应链，重振经济，重建国防，为未来技术和产业的主导地位而战。

我们选择开拓新的领域：在先进制造业和超级智能领域；在无人机、武器和战争领域；在芯片、矿产、网络安全以及人类所能涉足的每一个领域。释放我们的能量，重建我们的工厂，将宇航员送回月球，开启太空探索的新时代。

尽管古希腊人拥有崇高的理想，但他们并非天真无知。他们明白国家有其自身利益。他们明白治国之道需要审慎和外交，但也明白在审慎和外交失效时，必须具备运用武力的能力。他们明白，权力不仅需要具备自卫的手段，更需要拥有使用权力的信誉。

这是特朗普政府希望重新夺回的经典政治和治国之道——不仅是为了我们国家，更是为了我们整个文明。

我们相信，欧洲能够从长久的沉睡中醒来，重新点燃几千年前在这里点燃的火焰。

已经有迹象表明这一点。

在整个欧洲大陆，我们正在见证我们希望是代际转变的开端：国防开支飙升，大量新的伙伴关系和项目涌现，制造业和生产规模扩大，这一切都源于去年在海牙做出的历史性国防承诺。

希腊一直是这一转变的中心。这个国家的人民再次证明，无论在能源、移民还是国防等各个领域，希腊都是欧洲和美国不可或缺的朋友，堪称盟友的典范。

我们衷心希望整个欧洲都能效仿你们的做法。

尽管激情有时会使美国和欧洲之间的友谊纽带变得紧张，但我们绝不能允许它破​​坏这种纽带。我们必须携手加强联盟，以应对我们这个时代的各种威胁。

我们能够做到。因为我们不认为跨大西洋友谊应该是零和博弈。恰恰相反：我们设想的联盟力量大于各部分力量的总和。就在上个月，我们见证了这一愿景的实现——美国、丹麦和格陵兰达成了一项前所未有的新协议，这项协议将重塑北极格局，并增强整个北约的安全。协议中的三个伙伴都从中获益。整个欧洲、北约和美国都因此变得更加安全、强大和可靠。

我们想要一起赢。我们必须一起赢。

如今，一种时髦的观点认为，开明的外交政策意味着将国际社会的利益置于本国人民的利益之上。我认为，在这方面，我们同样可以从古希腊人身上学到很多东西，因为他们明白，忠于国家并非自私或错误，为捍卫国家利益而战也并非自私或错误。

他们坚信伟人的理想：那些凭借自身功绩获得永生的杰出人物。但他们也相信，荣耀和名望是通过奋斗、牺牲和为超越自身利益的伟大目标而取得的。古希腊世界反复出现的英雄，正是那些愿意为值得他忠诚的事业付出任何代价的人。

我们在苏格拉底身上看到了这一点，他即使付出生命的代价也拒绝放弃对真理的探求。我们在传奇的斯巴达勇士300人的抵抗中看到了这一点——他们被波斯大军包围，寡不敌众，却放弃了自救的机会，选择战斗到最后一人，也不愿放弃阵地或职责。我们在阿喀琉斯的史诗神话中也看到了这一点，他可以选择回家过上长久而平静的生活，但他却选择留在特洛伊，为追求永恒的荣耀而牺牲。

这些——正是这些品质塑造了西方人的道德想象。从拒绝背叛信仰的基督教殉道者，到为国捐躯的爱国者；从圣托马斯·莫尔到阿拉莫战役，贯穿始终的是《美国独立宣言》不朽的结尾语：“我们彼此以生命、财产和神圣的荣誉互相担保。”

西方从古希腊继承了其责任感——对自身准则、事业和国家的坚定忠诚。我们的英雄，西方的英雄，正是那些在最艰难、最痛苦的时刻依然选择忠于职守的人：信守诺言的人，绝不弃守岗位的士兵，与船同沉的船长，名副其实的船长。

这与我们今天所看到的完全不同，例如伊朗的激进毛拉等狂热分子，他们的死亡崇拜将儿童自杀式炸弹袭击者奉为民族英雄，并将殉难本身描绘成一种目的。

我们的英雄——我们的英雄或许愿意为他们的事业献出生命；但他们并不崇拜死亡。正因为我们珍视生命，我们才能真正理解那些宁愿牺牲生命也不愿背叛原则的人的英雄气概。如今，我们接受了西方对英雄主义、荣誉和责任的理解，并将它们视为理所当然。我们想当然地认为，这些品质对所有时代、所有地方的人们都是普遍适用的。然而事实并非如此。它们是特定民族性格的产物，这种独特的性格诞生于此，并塑造了后世文明的整个发展历程。今天，我们必须像我们的先辈一样，满怀激情地捍卫这一文明。

建造帕特农神庙的先贤们之后，欧洲基督教世界的建筑师们接过了他们的衣钵，建造了米兰、科隆和佛罗伦萨的大教堂。古希腊雕塑家们对完美人体形态的追求，在米开朗基罗身上得到了新的诠释。希腊哲学家们对宇宙结构的探索，被哥白尼、伽利略、开普勒和牛顿继承。

对新知识的渴望，催生了麦哲伦的首次环球航行、哥伦布对美洲的发现，并最终促成了阿波罗11号的登月之旅。而亚历山大征服整个已知世界的那些特质，也在凯撒、查理曼和科尔特斯身上重现。

在美国，同样的传统焕发了新的生机。一片广袤无垠的土地，成为了西方想象力和雄心壮志复兴的沃土。希腊人对新天地的渴望，演变成了美国的边疆精神。雅典和罗马的文明，将一个初生的沿海共和国，发展成为一个横跨大陆的帝国。

每一代最伟大的美国人都继承了先辈们的鲜明特征——生于雅典，受罗马塑造，在基督教世界受洗，在中世纪欧洲的熔炉中淬炼，拥有英国人追求自由的天性，然后跨越大西洋，在新世界的海岸上重生。

我们现在必须共同重拾这种精神。我们正处于一个转折点——不仅是我国历史上的一个转折点，也是我们整个文明的一个转折点。

我们今天面临的威胁与古代戏剧舞台上的威胁一样真实。

国家利益并未因国际机构的出现而消失。战争也并未因为我们崇尚和平而消失。其他国家依然在扩充军备，寻求影响力，争夺领土、技术、资源、市场、能源和权力。

如今，战争再次爆发。大国之间再次展开竞争。脆弱性、侵略性、恐怖主义，以及一系列新的威胁和袭击再次出现。

因此，我们必须重建我们的制度和联盟，共同应对这些威胁——同时要明白，这些举措的目的并非废除组成它们的国家的主权，而是为了捍卫它们。各国也无需为了承认共同利益而放弃其独特的身份认同。

我们已经与希腊的合作伙伴建立了这样的模式。这体现在我们的国防合作、能源和技术领域，以及我们共同致力于保护欧洲边界免受大规模移民威胁的愿景中。

我们的友谊可以追溯到我国建国之初。1821年，希腊摆脱奥斯曼帝国数个世纪的统治，奋起反抗，争取独立。美国人在这场斗争中看到了似曾相识的景象。三年后，伟大的美国政治家丹尼尔·韦伯斯特在国会发表了著名的演讲，将希腊革命的历程带到了年轻的美国共和国的代表面前。

他首先让大家注意到周围的一切。他在演讲中这样说道：“这种自由的政府形式，这种民众集会……这种自由辩论和公共讨论的实践，这种思想的交锋……甚至我们集会的这座建筑，这些比例匀称的柱子，这些装饰华丽的建筑，都在提醒我们，希腊曾经存在过，而我们，和全人类一样，都深深地感激着她。”

这些话在今天依然适用，正如他当时所说。我们所有人——不仅是美国人，还有欧洲人和我们在西方的朋友们——都必须重新学习我们的先辈从这片土地及其历史中汲取的教训。

希腊历史——希腊历史不仅仅让我们得以窥见过去，它并非仅仅展现我们制度的早期形态。希腊历史向我们展现了我们自身的面貌。

它向我们表明，我们继承了伟大英雄的遗产，我们应该为我们的出身感到骄傲——无比骄傲。我们应该惊叹于先辈们在这片土地上创造的奇迹。我们文明的故事是人类历史上最伟大的故事。而它就始于此，始于西方的第一批男女。从他们身上——从他们身上——我们可以重新发现美德、勇气和力量，去面对我们这个时代所面临的种种挑战。

谢谢。

（掌声。）

MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE
THE PNYX

ATHENS, GREECE

OCTOBER 7, 2026


SECRETARY RUBIO: There are great ruins all across the world. In many cases, they are places where history seems to have exhausted itself: remnants of distant cultures that have long passed beyond living memory.

But the Acropolis is different.

For thousands of years, the civilization that built what stands behind me has captivated the imagination of the Western world. Generations of our statesmen, artists, and philosophers have looked to it – they’ve looked to it with wonder and they’ve looked to it with awe.

Now time has a tendency to dull the senses: great victories and catastrophic defeats, they seem to shrink to becoming like a footnote in a textbook, another fact for our schoolchildren to memorize and forget. But the Greeks of antiquity, they seem to have an almost mystical hold on our memory. They call us back to them, again and again.

480 years before Christ, the armies of Xerxes arrived in this city and they put its sanctuaries to the torch. Most Athenians had by then evacuated by ship to a nearby island. But there was a handful of them that refused to leave their home. So instead, they barricaded themselves in the rocky fortress of the Acropolis to fight an extraordinary last stand, heaving massive stones down the cliffs onto the Persian invaders and holding the greatest empire of the age at bay for days. They were eventually overwhelmed. The Persians plundered the temples, burned the shrines, and razed the Acropolis to the ground but when the Athenians returned, they gathered the broken remains of the old Acropolis and buried them in the hill where it had stood. And decades later, under Pericles, they raised the Parthenon.

For 25 centuries since, the Parthenon has stood. Empires have risen and fallen beneath its shadow. And the progeny of the men who built it – the sons of Athens and Rome – have carried their civilization with them to the ends of the Earth.

Two and a half centuries after the founding of the American republic halfway across the world from where I stand now – I stand here today as the Secretary of State of that republic, and a great-grandson of settlers who arrived in the new world from Spain – I stand here to testify to a debt that no lapse of time, no distance of space can ever extinguish.

The history of America, the history of my country, is covered with the fingerprints of antiquity. Greece is literally carved into the architecture of our government: in the towering columns, in the domes and the monuments across our capital city. The city where our Constitution was born – Philadelphia – is itself a Greek name.

The men who founded my country were fascinated by the heritage we inherited from yours. They were exceptionally well-read in history – they were vividly aware of their unique place in it – but no other age of the past held their attention or their imagination quite like that of antiquity. Many, many people are surprised to learn that the most commonly cited author in the Federalist Papers was not an Enlightenment philosopher or political theorist. No, the most commonly cited author in the Federalist Papers was Plutarch, the Greek biographer of Greece and Rome’s great men.

Now, much has been written and said about the influence of ancient Greece on the ideas of the American Founders – and, for that matter, on all of the Western philosophers and statesmen that preceded them. Most of us are familiar with the basic history. Athens gave us democracy. Plato and Aristotle gave us Western philosophy. Our ideas of law, of virtue, of citizenship, and republican government were shaped in the Greek city-states. Even much of our political vocabulary – words like democracy, tyranny, the word “politics” itself – found its origins here.

Now, all of that is true. But the things we owe to this place – as Americans, and as Westerners – are actually far far deeper. These institutions and ideas – these institutions and ideas were the outward expression of more fundamental qualities we see in the ancient Greeks – qualities that can’t be reduced to any particular political system or theory.

Here, in Athens, we found the first full realization of all the essential traits that would come to define the West: fierce individuality and relentless ambition; daring exploration and invention; a yearning for discovery, for adventure, risk and glory. An insatiable curiosity about the world and the principles by which it operates, a hunger to know the mysteries of nature and grasp the secrets of the cosmos. An impatience with the notion of impossibility, chafing at all boundaries and limits, straining to peer into the depths of the unknown.

These were not just the formulas or precepts of a particular school of philosophy. They were the characteristic of a people – expressed in their traditions, their stories, their imagination; in the qualities they demanded of their citizens; in the things they lived and fought and died for.

To know them is to know ourselves.

What blossomed here in this place was the Western desire to uncover all that ignorance, darkness, and distance had kept hidden from the mind of man. The Greeks did not just shape history; the Greeks gave us history itself. Much about – much of what we know about many ancient civilizations comes almost entirely from the records of Greek explorers and historians, explorers and historians who didn’t just chronicle the histories of their own people, but ventured outwards to observe and record the sagas of foreign peoples and cultures all across the world.

Where others looked inward, the Greeks were the first to direct their focus outward, to chase the thrill and glory of seeing all that was strange and new. It was this trait – it was this trait that would push the West to create and build things that others could not, marking us out from so many other cultures and civilizations where stability and subsistence were the highest ends of life.

But it is not just the ambition to explore the unknown that we inherit from the Greeks; it is the conviction that the unknown canbe known. The confidence that the world can be charted and measured and mapped and understood – and that there is a rational order to the cosmos, governed by certain fundamental laws, laws that men can observe and the mind can come to understand.

This was the foundation of the Western mind: our math, our science, our medicine. Our philosophy, ethics, and religion. It paved the way for the gospel of Jesus Christ to find fertile soil in Europe and flourish into the empire of Christendom. It was the foundation of the riches of Christian theology – of Augustine and Aquinas and the whole tradition of natural law.

It gave birth to a civilization marked not just by a common culture, it was marked by a common anthropology – a common view of man and his place in the universe. Its descendants would share not just the idea of a natural order, but a distinctive understanding of virtue; of destiny and fate; of truth, goodness, and beauty; of a code that dictates how men ought to live; of objective standards and ideals to strive towards.

For the Greeks of antiquity, the pursuit of excellence was the very principle of man’s existence. They organized all of civic life around contest, ambition, competition: in philosophy and poetry, in sculpture and drama, in athletics and art, in war and statecraft. The classical Greek city was an arena for great men to test and prove themselves, to hone their potential through perpetual struggle – to be the best, the strongest, the most beautiful, straining to inch ever closer to perfection.

Now I know that to modern ears, what I just described, this way of life, may sound odd; it may even sound cruel. The ideal of many ideologies in our time has, frankly, become a world of perfect safety, devoid of risk or failure, with neither the glory of victory nor the shame of defeat. Too often these days, we build downwards. We design our standards to ensure no one will lose; we preoccupy ourselves more with the comfort of the worst than the potential of the best. We hold the most exceptional things among us hostage to the average, the ordinary, the mediocre.

The men who made the Parthenon, they built upwards. They held that the highest and most noble aspiration in life was to surpass all others, to strive to be the best in all things. The ancient Greek city-states were filled. They were filled with intense passion and rivalry and faction and conflict. But from that constant struggle for distinction – from that came the great flowering of art and philosophy and political and intellectual energy that would transform a collective of Mediterranean cities into the birthplace of the greatest civilization in the world.

The thumos, as the ancient Greeks called it – the fire of passion, strength, courage, pride – is the heart of great civilization. And without it? Without it, nations lose their will to fight, the will to strive, the will to survive.

Today, too much of the West has forgotten this quality. Over time, we in the West came to feel ashamed of the very things that made us exceptional. We felt embarrassed that our achievements set us apart from the rest of the world. Our prosperity somehow became a source of guilt. We no longer believed we deserved and had earned our greatness.

The word “nationalism” became a dirty word. And so we tore down our monuments; we condemned our own history. And in too many places, we taught our children to be ashamed of the countries they would inherit. In the process, we opened our borders and outsourced our industry, and allowed our militaries to wither and to decay.

And with every passing year, we seemed to outsource more of our sovereignty, transferring our decisions to global bureaucracies far beyond the reach of our control.

But others were all too happy to fill the vacuum that we left – the vacuum left behind by our weakness. And as the West’s confidence faltered, its adversaries and its rivals only grew more assertive, building up their own wealth and their own power in our stead.

And now, today, we find ourselves at a crossroads. Because the next decade and the decisions we make will write the story of the next century. The course we take will determine whether the West maintains its place at the head of the world or resigns itself to a future of atrophy and servitude and decline. We will either choose to act now or lose the choice to act at all.

Under President Trump, the United States has made its choice. We choose the unapologetic pursuit of national power: to take back control of our critical supply chains, to reindustrialize our economy, to rebuild our defense, to fight for dominance of the technologies and industries of the future.

We choose to reach for new frontiers: in advanced manufacturing and super intelligence; in drones, weapons, and warfare; in chips, minerals, cyber, and every other domain of human possibility. To unleash our energy, to rebuild our factories, to return our astronauts to the moon and launch a new age of exploration in space.

Now for all their lofty ideals, the ancient Greeks were not naive. They understood that nations have interests. They understood that statecraft requires prudence and diplomacy, but they also understood that it requires the ability to wield force when prudence and diplomacy fail. They understood that power requires not only having the means to defend yourself, it requires the credibility that you are willing to use it.

This is the classical understanding of politics and of statecraft that the Trump Administration hopes to reclaim – reclaim not just for our country, but for the whole of our civilization.

We believe that Europe can awaken from its long slumber and rekindle the fire that was lit here millennia ago.

There are already signs.

Across this continent, we are witnessing what we hope will be the beginnings of a generational shift: skyrocketing defense spending, a flurry of new partnerships and programs, expanded manufacturing and production, following on the historic defense commitments made last year in The Hague.

Greece has been at the center of this shift. The people of this nation have proved themselves once again to be an indispensable friend to Europe and to the United States alike, on everything from energy to migration to defense, where Greece has been a model ally.

And it’s our sincerest hope that all of Europe will follow your example.

Though passions may, at times, have strained the bonds of affection between the United States and Europe, it must not be allowed to break them. Together, we must strengthen an alliance capable of confronting threats of our age.

And we can. Because we do not believe the transatlantic friendship should be zero sum. Quite the opposite: 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 new agreement between the United States, Denmark, and Greenland – an agreement that will reshape the Arctic and bolster the security of all of NATO. All three partners in that deal emerged victorious. All of Europe – and NATO and the United States emerged safer, stronger, and more secure because of it.

We want to win together. We must win together.

Now it’s has become fashionable today to believe that enlightened foreign policy means prioritizing the global community over one’s own people. And I think 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 your nation, nor anything selfish or wrong about fighting to defend its interests above all else.

They believed – fiercely – in the ideal of the great man: the exceptional individual who obtains immortality through his own deeds. But they believed that glory and fame, those things were won through striving, sacrificing and achieving greatly for something larger than yourself. The recurring hero of the ancient Greek world was the man who was willing to pay any cost for a cause worthy of his loyalty.

We see this in Socrates, who refused to abandon the inquiry into truth even at the cost of his own life. We see it in the legendary stand of 300 Spartans – surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered by the vast armies of Persia – who refused the chance to save themselves, choosing to fight to the last man rather than abandon their post or abandon their duty. And we see it in the epic myth of Achilles, who is offered the choice to return home and live a long and peaceful life – but chooses instead to remain at Troy and perish in pursuit of eternal glory.

These – these are the qualities that would shape the Western moral imagination. 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, running through the immortal closing words of the Declaration of Independence of the United States which says, “We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

It is from the Greeks that the West inherited its sense of duty – an unbreakable loyalty to one’s code, one’s cause, one’s country. Our heroes, 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 who is bound by his word, the soldier who will not abandon his post, the captain, the proverbial captain, who goes down with his ship.

This is wholly different from what we see, even now, for example from fanatics like the radical mullahs of Iran, whose cult of death hails child suicide bombers as national heroes, and portrays martyrdom as an end to itself.

Our heroes – our heroes may be willing to die for their cause; but our heroes do not worship death. It is precisely because we value life that we come to recognize the heroism in those who would sooner sacrifice it than to betray their principles. Now, we take the West’s conception of these things – heroism, honor, duty – we take these things for granted. We assume that these somehow are universal to all people in all times and in all places. They are not. They are the product of a distinct character, a distinct character which arose here and shaped the whole story of the civilization that came after it. A civilization that we must fight to defend today with the same passion as our forefathers did.

The men who built the Parthenon were succeeded by the architects of European Christendom, who raised the cathedrals of Milan, Cologne, and Florence. The quest to perfect the human form that moved the ancient Greek sculptors found a new expression in Michelangelo. The Greek philosophers’ search for the structure of the universe was inherited by Copernicus, and then Galileo, then Kepler, and in Newton.

The hunger for new knowledge, that’s what gave birth to Magellan’s first expedition around the world, to Columbus’ discovery of the Americas, and ultimately to Apollo 11’s journey to the moon. And the qualities that led Alexander to conquer the entire known world reappeared in Caesar, then Charlemagne, and Cortes.

And in America, that same tradition rediscovered itself anew. An open and wild land became the site of a great revival of Western imagination and ambition. The Greek aspiration for new horizons became the American frontier spirit. The civilization of Athens and Rome transformed an infant seaboard republic into a continental empire.

The greatest Americans of every generation have carried the unmistakable features of their forefathers – born in Athens, formed by Rome, baptized in Christendom, hardened in the furnace of medieval Europe, endowed with the English genius for liberty, and then carried across the Atlantic to be reborn on the shores of a new world.

Together, we must now rediscover that spirit. We are at an inflection point – an inflection point not only in the history of my nation, but an inflection point in the whole of our civilization.

The threats we face today are every bit as real as they were on the dramatic stage of antiquity.

National interests did not vanish in the face of international institutions. War did not disappear simply because we preferred peace. Other states continued to arm, to seek influence, to compete for territory, and technology, and resources, and markets, and energy, and power.

And now, there is war again. There is new competition between great powers again. There is vulnerability, aggression, terrorism, a whole universe of new threats and attacks again.

And so we must rebuild our institutions and our alliances to face these threats together – understanding that the purpose of these things is not to abolish the sovereignty of the nations that constitute them; it is to defend them. And that nations need not abandon their distinct identities in order to recognize their common interests.

We have built a model of that with our partners here in Greece. In our defense partnerships, in energy and technology, in our shared ambition to secure Europe’s borders from the threats of mass migration.

Our friendship dates back to the earliest years of my nation. When Greece rose in 1821 to recover its independence after centuries of Ottoman rule, Americans recognized something familiar in that struggle. Three years later, the great American statesman Daniel Webster, he delivered a famous address to Congress, helping bring the cause of the Greek Revolution before the representatives of the young American republic.

And he began by calling their attention to everything around them. This is what he said in his speech; he said: “This free form of government, this popular assembly… this practice of free debate, and public discussion, the contest of mind with mind… even the edifice in which we assemble, these proportioned columns, this ornamented architecture, all remind us that Greece has existed, and that we, like the rest of mankind, are greatly her debtors.”

Those words are as true today as they were when he said them. And all of us – not just Americans, but Europeans and our friends across the West – must relearn the lessons our forefathers took from this place and from its history.

The history of Greece – the history of Greece does not just offer us a glimpse – it does not offer a glimpse of our institutions in their earliest forms. The history of Greece shows us an image of ourselves.

It shows us that ours is the inheritance of great heroes, and that we should be proud – that we should be intensely proud – of where we come from. We should marvel at what our forefathers carved out of this countryside. The story of our civilization is the greatest story ever known to man. And it began here, with the first men and women of the West. From them – from them – we can rediscover the virtues, the courage, and the strength to confront the dangers that we face in our time.

Thank you.

(Applause.)