Mikheil Saakashvili: “For all of us, who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, Ronald Reagan was, and will always remain, the initiator of our liberation; the instigator of the great dream of Europe.”

I’m incredibly humbled by the introduction.

I feel myself as a schoolboy that was driven here to have the first taste of what was the greatest political career of not only the 20^th century, but I think in history.

Certainly, Ronald Reagan is not just another president or just another leader I think this is the name that defines who we are, me, my friends, and any country, including my own. What America is for the world, what being American is for the people who have the honor and privilege before this country.

So I’m really very humbled and grateful that I was invited here today. Certainly, it is a great honor to be here and address the Reagan Library; and all of you who came to this event.

For all of us, who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, Ronald Reagan was, and will always remain, the initiator of our liberation; the instigator of the great dream of Europe.

He was and will always remain the President, the man who went in front of Brandenburg gate on June 12 in 1987, and famously ordered: “Come to this gate Mr. Gorbachov, open this gate and tear down this wall.

For all of us oppressed people living in a depressing society that was hated with our soul, heart, and mind, Ronald Reagan was a symbol of freedom and hope. I was, at that moment when he said those words, a Soviet border guard and I would keep a very small radio receiver under my pillow. It was punishable by at least two weeks of arrest in a military prison.

I was always searching on my receiver for these kinds of things and then heard Reagan’s speech on BBC.

It was really a miserable reality for me back then and I hated every second of it, but then Reagan gave me not just a kind of hope but a belief that lifted me from that place and put me somewhere else I couldn’t even imagine.

It would be the same reaction for people in labor camps, gulags, prisons or some other secured place. I remember that moment very well.

I was a young student in parallel that time, and despite my education in human values and what I stood for I still could not imagine how much these principles and visions could influence my nation’s fate and my personal life. I came here today, to share with you my optimism.

It can look strange coming from a leader whose country is partially occupied by a country a hundred times larger than his own that is under an existential threat, a country where there are daily provocations.

But here I am in the Reagan library to share with you my optimism; my optimism for freedom, about American leadership in the world, about the future of NATO and the future inside NATO of my own country, Georgia.

This optimism was one of the most important characteristics of Ronald Reagan as a man, a political leader, and as a President.

I always recall when I have doubts in my mind about certain things, his inauguration speech of June 20, 1981. Back then, the whole world was talking about America’s decline and the tsunami of pessimism had overwhelmed the West, the US economy was seen as hopeless.

And here in the message Reagan delivered to the world: We have every right to have heroic dreams, those who say otherwise; they just don’t know where to look. In the entire world he brought optimism.

There is another important phrase, by Reagan, which exactly replicates the phrase that I have on the façade of the Presidential Palace. It comes from Georgia in the 12^th century. An epic poem by Shota Rustaveli, which is an amazing classic, “The Knight in the Tiger’s Skin”, and what Reagan said was: “I know in my heart that man is good and what is right will eventually triumph.”

It’s on the facade of our palace, it comes from our history, from our literature, but this is what I guess all of the great geniuses in their times believed in, there is no other way you would carry on, if you didn’t believe in that.

When your country is occupied, and when you are living with these permanent menaces, this kind of optimism is unique. Reagan’s optimism does not only bring comfort, but it is simply true and Georgia has been a good testament to this.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Georgia was the most corrupt, the most criminalized place in the corrupt and criminalized Soviet Empire and then in the post-soviet space. It was a country divided by hatred, suffocated by totalitarian political and social structures, crippled by corruption and crime; 10 years ago.

A new generation came to power with the Rose Revolution.

Two Reagan principles: downsize the government and look forward not backward. “We, in the government, should look at our country with the eyes of entrepreneur, see possibilities where others see problems.” that’s what Reagan said and that’s exactly what we did.

What we need is a total change of mentality. We implemented democracy, scraping 80, 90% of the bureaucracies, agencies, all these useless people who tried to sell their jobs as useful, and that process changed the mentality all over this place.

It changed the mentality in terms of how people view their institutions, how people view their government, how people view their responsibilities, and how people approach different ethnic groups and religious groups.  That was a big thing in the former soviet sphere; to manipulate people through these hostilities, strain relations between different religious, ethnic and linguistic groups.

In America voyages matter more than the destination, which is what democracy is all about and that’s also true about Georgia today. We are all building a society on meritocracy, which is not based on who you are or who your ancestors were or where you were born.

Ladies and gentlemen,

As you know these principles actually work everywhere, they work in the US, they work in Georgia as well, they would work anywhere where you have men and women who believe in it.

Thanks to those principles, thanks to the idealism and optimism Georgia has achieved, a transformation has occurred as we could hardly foresee in our craziest dreams.

This is not an accident that a Ronald Reagan statue stands in the middle of our capital. His vision has guided us, it has lead us, our generation, to believe everything is possible. Georgia has become more than a country, in our region it is an ideal. For our troubled region the surprising survival and shining success of the Georgian democratic experience is a message for everyone around us.

For a long time people thought that in the post-soviet space that there are only two choices: one – messy, so-called democracy like they had in Russia in early 90s, with freedom of  word – if you wouldn’t  join you would be killed, but still there was freedom of word, freedom of assembly. Huge corruption, high crime rate, declining status of life or the other alternative that Vladimir Putin brought to Russia later; authoritarian rule and regulated corruption.

The alternative that Vladimer Putin brought to Russia was authoritarian rule, regulated corruption, put it under the control of crime subjects, corrupt subjects, then everyone is under control.

And Georgia has shown that in fact, besides this regulated corruption, Georgia has shown that  there is third choice, the choice of  democracy, of course it brings the highest dangers to us, because we are challenging the very  basis of the Russian regime, but we have an important alliance with the United States of America. Without President Bush and President Obama, I would not be here today.

Reagan said in 1984, “History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.”

The alliance with the US is based on common values and its more than that, more than a diplomatic choice, or a national security issue, it is a choice of values, choice of society and choice of life.

For those who are on the frontline of the fight for democratic values, there is no such thing as an American decline.

From the Arab world to the post soviet space, from Asia to Europe people are still looking to you and your nation as the main force for world freedom and good.

This is not a matter of democratic or a republican administration, this goes beyond an economic downturn, this is the very essence of the American role in the world.

American’s best days are yet to come, let me quote him once again, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction; we didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for and protected.”

These words resonate better with Georgia than anyone. We know how precious freedom is, and how fragile at the same time. We know what it means to fight for it, freedom is everything, it is at the same time the sun making things grow by its light and the light that lets us see those things. Nothing is valuable without freedom and nothing exists in fact, without freedom.

Ronald Reagan gave true meaning of American predominance in the world, America is less of a place than an idea, an idea that has been deep in the souls of men, and certainly this great idea that is deep in the souls of men is all about freedom, and that’s what we are trying to protect and develop in Georgia today.