The Atlantic Community

To our friends and associates in the Atlantic Community: We propose a broader partnership that goes beyond our common fears to recognize the depth and sweep of our common political, economic, and cultural interests.

We welcome the recent heartening advances toward European unity. In every appropriate way, we shall encourage their further growth within the broader framework of the Atlantic Community.

After World War II, Democratic statesmen saw that an orderly, peaceful world was impossible with Europe shattered and exhausted.

They fashioned the great programs which bear their names—the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan—by which the economies of Europe were revived. Then in NATO they renewed for the common defense the ties of alliance forged in war.

In these endeavors, the Democratic Administrations invited leading Republicans to full participation as equal partners. But the Republican Administration has rejected this principle of bi-partisanship.

We have already seen how the mutual trust and confidence created abroad under Democratic leadership have been eroded by arrogance, clumsiness, and lack of understanding in the Republican Administration.

The new Democratic Administration will restore the former high levels of cooperation within the Atlantic Community envisaged from the beginning by the NATO treaty in political and economic spheres as well as military affairs.

We welcome the progress towards European unity expressed in the Coal and Steel Community, Euratom, the European Economic Community, the European Free Trade Association, and the European Assembly.

We shall conduct our relations with the nations of the Common Market so as to encourage the opportunities for freer and more expanded trade, and to avert the possibilities of discrimination that are inherent in it.

We shall encourage adjustment with the so-called "Outer Seven" nations so as to enlarge further the area of freer trade.