Blair in Australia: We Must Say United -- Plus Say No to American Isolationism!

The struggle in our world today is not just about security. It is a struggle about values and about modernity, whether to be at ease with it or in rage at it. To win this struggle we have to win the battle of values as much as arms. We have to show that these are not Western, still less American or Anglo-Saxon, values, but values in the common ownership of humanity, universal values that should be the right of the global citizen.

This is the challenge I believe we face and ranged against us are, of course, the people who hate us; but beyond them are many more who do not hate us but question our motives, our good faith, our even-handedness, who could support our values but believe we support them selectively. These are the people we have to persuade. They have to know that this struggle is about justice and fairness as well as security and prosperity.

If we want to secure our way of life, there is no alternative but to fight for it. That means standing up for our values not just in our own countries but the world over. We need to construct a global alliance for these global values and act through it. The immediate threat is from Islamist extremism.

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Wherever people live in fear, with no prospect of advance, we should be on their side, in solidarity with them, whether in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burma or North Korea. Where countries, and there are many in the Middle East today, are in the process of democratic development, we should be there extending a helping hand.

This requires, across the board, an active foreign policy of engagement, not isolation. It cannot be achieved without a strong alliance. This alliance does not end with, but it does begin with, America. For us in Europe and for you, this alliance is central.

I do not always agree with the US. Sometimes they can be difficult friends to have. But the strain of, frankly, anti-American feeling in parts of European and in world politics is madness when set against the long-term interests of the world we believe in.

The danger with America today is not that they are too much involved. The danger is that they decide to pull up the drawbridge and disengage. We need them involved. We want them engaged. The reality is that none of the problems that press in on us can be resolved or even contemplated without them. Our task is to ensure that, with them, we do not limit this agenda to security. If our security lies in our values and our values are about justice and fairness as well as freedom from fear, then the agenda must be more than security and the alliance include more than America.