From: U45301@uicvm.uic.edu (Mary Jacobs)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.europe
Subject: CLINTON SPEECH TEXT: LOS ANGELES WORLD AFFAIRS COUNCIL
Date: 19 Aug 92 06:45:28 GMT
Article-I.D.: uicvm.92232.014528U45301
Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago

CLINTON SPEECH TEXT NOW POSTED ON ALT.POLITICS.CLINTON

SEND COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS REGARDING THIS INFORMATION TO THE
CLINTON/GORE CAMPAIGN AT 75300.3115@COMPUSERVE.COM
(This information is posted for public education purposes.  It does
not necessarily represent the views of The University.)
========================================================================

                REMARKS OF GOVERNOR BILL CLINTON
                Los Angeles World Affairs Council
                         August 13, 1992


     We stand blessed as the inheritors of a new world.  It is a world
of hope and opportunity, made possible by a half century of bipartisan
leadership and unstinting sacrifice by the American people and our
allies-- and above all by the courage of the women and men who tore
down the walls of repression and stood down the tanks of tyranny.  Now
the Iron Curtain has collapsed.  The Cold War has melted under the
irrepressible flame of freedom.  It is a cause for rejoicing.

     But this new world we have helped create places new demands on
the kind of presidential leadership America needs.  The new world
remains a place of peril.  While the Soviet Union is gone, a president
must still be ready to defy and defeat those who threaten us.  Whatever
else we expect of our presidents, we still need a resolute leader who will
wield America's might and marshall our global alliances to defend our
nation's interests.  Yet today there are new tests of leadership as well:

~    The first is to grasp how the world has changed.
~    The second test is to assert a vision of our role in this dynamic
     new world.
~    The third test is to summon all our strengths -- our values, our
     economic power, when necessary our military might -- in service
     of that vision.

     I do not believe President Bush has met these new tests, despite his
effectiveness in organizing the response to Iraq's aggression.  Too often
the administration has held on to old assumptions and policies, trying to
prop up yesterday's status quo, failing to confront our new challenges.

     I have agreed with President Bush on a number of foreign policy
issues.  But I do not believe he has a vision of our role in this new era.
In a world of change, security flows from initiative, not inertia.

     Next week, the Republican Party will gather in Houston to
nominate Mr. Bush and praise his record abroad.  The question will be:
Do they paint a partisan portrait of the past, or do they render a vision
of the future Americans can build together?

     In their campaign, the Republicans already have tried to claim
success for America's Cold War victory.  And they suggest that in their
second term they will bring to domestic policy the same energy and
expertise they say marked foreign policy in their first term.

     Their argument misreads both history and current events.  The
notion that the Republicans won the Cold War reminds me of the rooster
who took credit for the dawn.  The truth is, from Truman to Kennedy
to Carter, Democratic as well as Republican presidents held firm against
the expansion of Communism; and from Richard Russell to Scoop
Jackson to Sam Nunn, Democratic leaders in Congress helped build the
finest defense forces in the history of the world.

     But even more flawed is the Republican claim that, just as they
changed the world in their first term, they will change America in their
second.  We must understand that foreign and domestic policy are two
sides of the same coin.  If we're not strong at home we can't be strong
abroad.  If we can't compete in the global economy, we'll pay for it at
home.

     The same president who refused to make changes as American
wages fell from first to thirteenth in the world was slow to recognize the
changes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.  The same
Administration that did nothing as 10 million Americans lost their jobs
due to tired, old economic policies also stood by as courageous Chinese
students were attacked with tanks in Tiananmen Square.

     I believe global change is inexorable and can work to our
advantage or to our disadvantage, depending on what we do.  No one
understands the opportunities and hazards of change better than the
people of California.  Your commerce and culture stand as testaments
to the benefits we derive from our engagement with Mexico, Japan, and
the other nations of the Pacific.  Your economy has been hurt by the
lack of a national economic strategy, especially the lack of a plan to
convert defense cuts into domestic economic investments.

     Last December at Georgetown University and last April in New
York, I outlined the role I see for America in this era of change.  I
marked the steps we must take to meet our new challenges: to
reestablish America's economic leadership; foster the spread of
democracy abroad; and revamp our Cold War military to meet our new
security needs.  Today I want to expand on what leadership in this new
era requires, particularly in rethinking our security strategy and
modernizing our defenses.

Leadership for a Strong Economy
     In this new era, our first foreign priority and our first domestic
priority are one and the same:  reviving our economy.  America must
regain its economic strength to play our proper role as leader of the
world.  And we must have a president who attends to prosperity at home
if our people are to sustain their support for engagement abroad.  The
world needs a strong America, and American strength begins right here.

     This has been the administration's most glaring foreign policy
failure.  An anemic, debt-laden economy; the developed world's highest
rates of crime and poverty; an archaic education system; decaying roads,
ports, and cities:  all these undermine our diplomacy, make it harder for
us to secure favorable trade agreements and compromise our ability to
finance essential military actions.  Mr. Bush's economic neglect has
invited foreign pity; it is time for economic leadership that inspires
foreign respect.

     Mr. Bush does not understand:  the currency of national strength
in this new era will be denominated not only in ships, tanks and planes,
but also in diplomas, patents and paychecks.  My first foreign policy
priority will be to restore America's economic vitality.  I have laid out
a strategy to raise our peoples' skills, boost productivity, spur innovation
and investment, and make us the world's strongest trading power.  I will
elevate economics in foreign policy; create an Economic Security
Council, similar to the National Security Council; and change the State
Department's culture so that economics is no longer a poor cousin to
old-school diplomacy.

     In a Clinton-Gore administration, presidential leadership will mean
mobilizing our country for the global economic competition that is the
hallmark of this new age.  It will mean securing commitments from
American business and labor to take on new cooperative responsibilities.
It will mean championing open world trade that benefits American
workers as well as American businesses -- from the roaring markets of
the Pacific Rim to the resurgent economies of Mexico and Latin
America.  And it will mean swift responses and stiff penalties to those
who abuse the rules of trade.

     One way we will strengthen our economy is through leadership for
environmentally sound growth.  President Bush abdicated that
leadership, before and during the Rio Earth Summit.  Al Gore and I will
reclaim it.  Someone recently noted there are only two groups in the
world who still don't understand that economic growth and a clean
environment depend on each other:  the Bush administration and the
former leaders of Eastern European Communism.  The fact is, if we
steer toward cleaner ways of doing business, we'll create new jobs and
make our firms more competitive.  That's why I've proposed a strategy
to boost U.S. energy efficiency and to use market-based incentives to
prevent pollution before it's created.  It's also one reason I picked Al
Gore to be my running mate.  We will put the U.S. back at the forefront
of global efforts to achieve sustainable development, and in the process,
leave our children a better world.

Leadership to Promote Democracy
     The second imperative of presidential leadership in this new era is
to reinforce the powerful global movement toward democracy and
market economies.  Our strategic interests and moral values both are
rooted in this goal.  As we help democracy expand, we make ourselves
and our allies safer.  Democracies rarely go to war with each other or
traffic in terrorism.  They make more reliable partners in trade and
diplomacy.  Growing market economies expand individual opportunity
and social tolerance.

     Yet Mr. Bush has been oddly reluctant to commit America's
prestige on the side of people inspired by American precepts and
example.  When democratic reformers sought to break up the Soviet
empire, Mr. Bush snubbed Boris Yeltsin, sided with the crumbling
Soviet center, and failed to lead the call for aid to Russia until he was
shamed into it by Richard Nixon and others.

     When 50 million Ukrainians sought emancipation from a dying
communist empire, Mr. Bush withheld moral support, and instead -- in
Kiev itself -- publicly chided Ukraine's voices of independence for
seeking a "suicidal nationalism."

     When China cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrators,
exported advanced weapons to radical regimes, and suppressed Tibet,
Mr. Bush failed to stand up for our values.  Instead, he sent secret
emissaries to China, signalling that we would do business as usual with
those who murdered freedom in Tiananmen Square.

     And when it was clear to all that Yugoslavia was inexorably
breaking apart, Mr. Bush and his secretary of state gave short shrift to
the yearnings of those seeking freedom in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia,
and ignored warning signs that Slobodan Milosevic was emerging as one
of Europe's bloodiest tyrants.

     From the Baltics to Beijing, from Sarajevo to South Africa, time
after time, George Bush has sided with the status quo rather than
democratic change -- with familiar tyrants rather than those who would
overthrow them -- and with the old geography of repression rather than
a new map of freedom.

     This pattern was most glaring in Mr. Bush's treatment of Iraq prior
to its invasion of Kuwait, and his failure to support Saddam Hussein's
opponents after the success of Desert Storm.  I supported the President's
effort to drive Saddam out of Kuwait, and I respect his conduct of the
war itself.  But now we are learning how his administration appeased
Saddam in the months prior to August, 1990.  Even after the conclusion
of the Iran-Iraq War, after Saddam had gassed his own Kurdish
population, this administration coddled Iraq with economic credits,
licensed militarily useful technology, and offered an obliging silence
about its savage human rights record.  In keeping with the president's
directive to woo Saddam, the State Department even wrote an apology
after the Voice of America dared to criticize Iraq's tyrannical regime.

     My administration will stand up for democracy.  We will
international assistance to emerging, fragile democracies in the former
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and create a Democracy Corps to
help them develop free institutions.  We will keep the pressure on South
Africa until its day of true democracy has dawned.  We will stand by
Israel -- our only democratic ally in the Middle East -- and press for
more accountable governance throughout the region.  We will link
China's trading privileges to its human rights record and its conduct on
trade and weapons sales.  We will create a Radio Free Asia, like the
successful Radio Free Europe, to carry news and hope to freedom-loving
people in China and elsewhere.  We will buttress democratic forces in
Haiti, Peru, and throughout the western hemisphere.  And we will make
the U.S. the catalyst for a collective stand against aggression, the action
I have urged in response to Serbian aggression in Bosnia, one with
which the Bush administration now agrees after first calling it reckless.

Leadership to Modernize America's Defenses
     No test of presidential leadership is more important than the
president's actions as commander in chief.  The threats to America may
change, but a president's willingness to confront them must be
unwavering.

     The world remains a dangerous place.  Moreover, the dangers are
now different and less apparent.  So as we scale down our military, we
must also keep up our guard.  U.S. military strength will remain a force
for stability -- and, yes, justice -- as the old global order continues to
collapse and a new one emerges.

     We can never forget this essential fact:  power is the basis for
successful diplomacy, and military power has always been fundamental
to international relationships.  So a president must provide the American
people with a clear explanation of our enduring security interests, and
a new estimate of the threats we are likely to face in the post Cold-War
era.  Mr. Bush has failed to supply either.  His lack of a clear strategy
for national security is fueling isolationism on both the left and the right.

     Today there are two wrong-headed, dangerous approaches to
adjusting our defenses for the new era.  One is the administration's.  It
mouths the rhetoric of strategic change, but simply shrinks the existing
Cold War force structure.  Continuation of this policy runs the risk of
weakening the two elements that were key to our victory in the Gulf:
superbly trained and motivated personnel and world-class weapons
technology.

     At the same time, there are those -- some in my party -- who see
defense cuts largely as a piggy bank to fund their domestic wish lists,
with our defense structures and missions as an afterthought, rather than
a starting premise.  This policy could also weaken our technological
superiority and the quality and morale of our personnel.

     Leadership demands more than either "Cold War Minus" or
"Domestic Spending Plus."  A president must identify the new threats
to our security, define military missions to meet those threats, adapt our
forces to carry out those missions, and back up those forces with the
training, technology and intelligence they need to win.

     We must start with a fresh assessment of the new dangers that
could threaten our interests and potentially require the use of force.
These include:  the risk of new threats from the former Soviet republics,
should democracy fail; the spread of weapons of mass destruction;
historic tensions in various regions, especially the Korean peninsula and
the Middle East, and the related risks of terrorist attacks; and the
growing intensity of ethnic, fundamentalist and separatist violence, as in
Yugoslavia and elsewhere, that can spill across borders.

     The mission of containing an expansionist Soviet Union has
disappeared.  But enduring missions remain:  to maintain nuclear
deterrence even as we reduce our nuclear arsenals; to reassure our
friends and democratic allies and discourage potential adversaries; to
pursue our interests when possible through strengthened institutions of
collective security; to preserve freedom on the high seas and protect our
global economic interests; and to provide the superior technology and
forces that are the ultimate guarantee of liberty.

     House Armed Services Chair Les Aspin is right:  The
administration's "base force" plan leaves us with a military that does not
fit our strategy and cannot do what we ask.  It is burdened with
redundancy.  Key parts lack flexibility and mobility.  Just as you don't
shoot gnats with a howitzer, we can't always respond rapidly and
flexibly to far-flung regional conflicts with forces designed for warfare
in Europe.  In other words, we must understand the new world's threats,
not merely to decide how much force we need, but to design the right
forces.

     To lead and build effective coalitions we must also have the ability
to operate on our own if necessary.  We need to base a larger fraction
of our forces in the U.S. and maintain a modern and well-equipped
Navy and  Marine Corps, so we can project power wherever we need.

     Our new military must be more mobile, because the new world
will not simply be one of fixed flash points.  We need the additional
sealift that the Bush administration refused for so long to build.  We also
need the capabilities of the C-17 airlifter, which can fly long distances
and then land on short fields close to the front.

     Our new military must be more agile, because, with the end of the
nuclear standoff, the new battlefields will likely be dominated by
maneuver, speed, and outthinking the enemy.  That is why, for example,
I support a technology the Bush administration has tried to cancel -- the
V-22, the only aircraft capable of certain special operations, including
the rescue of Americans held deep in hostile territory.  And as House
Intelligence Chair Dave McCurdy has said, we must have superior
intelligence, to know where to apply force with best effect.

     Our new military must be more precise and able to reduce
casualties, because we may need to operate among civilian populations,
and because the credibility of our threats to use force will often depend
on our ability to limit the loss of life.  We must upgrade the smart
weapons that were so essential during Desert Storm, and develop new
systems that can help reduce American and civilian casualties.

     Our new military must be more flexible to operate with diverse
partners, because in the new world coalition operations will often be
important for political legitimacy.  New friends might be armed with
former Warsaw Pact equipment, and new enemies armed with Western
weapons.  That is why we must find new ways to protect American and
allied troops against the mistaken use of our own and allied weapons.

     Our new military must be more ready, because the new world will
be unpredictable.  We must be ready in the future to reconstitute our
forces if major new contingencies arise.  And our new military must
have deep roots in America, which is why it should make increased use
of Guard and Reserve forces in regional contingencies, so that our use
of force will be considered with utmost seriousness, maintained
affordably, and supported broadly at home.

     In all, by shifting from a force designed to win the Cold War to
one better equipped to respond rapidly to regional flare-ups, the Clinton-
Gore defense budget brings savings of about $60 billion over the current
Bush plan, through 1997, close to the numbers of Senator Nunn and
Representative Aspin.

     And our efforts must go further.  I agree with Senator Sam Nunn
that it is time to take a fresh look at the basic organization of our armed
forces.  We have four separate air forces -- one each for the Marines,
Army, Navy and Air Force.  Both the Army and Marines have light
infantry divisions.  The Navy and Air Force have separately-developed
but similar fighter aircraft and tactical  missiles.  We have at least three
and in some cases four separate Medical Corps, Chaplain Corps, Dental
Corps, Legal Corps and Nursing Corps.  Each service also has its own
administrative, training and logistics facilities.

     While respecting each service's unique capabilities, we can reduce
redundancies, save billions of dollars, and get better teamwork.  In
1948, Secretary of Defense Forrestal convened a meeting of the military
service chiefs in Key West to allocate responsibilities among the four
services.  It failed.  As president, I will order the Pentagon to convene
a similar meeting to hammer out a new understanding about
consolidating and coordinating military roles and missions in the 1990s
and beyond.

     My administration will make security and savings compatible.  We
will reduce our forces, but maintain a credible presence in Europe and
Asia, and make reductions in consultation with our allies.  We will stand
up for our interests, but we will share burdens, where possible, through
multilateral efforts to secure the peace, such as NATO and a new,
voluntary U.N. Rapid Deployment Force.  In Bosnia, Somalia,
Cambodia, and other torn areas of the world, multilateral action holds
promise as never before, and the U.N. deserves full and appropriate
contributions from all the major powers.  It is time for our friends to
bear more of the burden.

     Our new security strategy also will ensure our defense industry can
supply the weapons and technologies America may need in the future.
This administration lacks any such strategic sense.  It is letting major
production lines go cold, for everything from tanks to planes to
submarines, often ignoring the capacities they represent.

     We cannot keep every production line and military lab open.  But
we will define the core skills and industries for America's security.  We
will eliminate needless military specifications that make defense
production so unique, separate, and expensive.  We will pursue new
technologies with both civilian and defense uses.  And we will also
pursue a strong upgrade program to keep current lines operating and
start limited production of next generation equipment.

     We must not forget the American heroes of the Cold War whose
lives will be turned upside down as our forces shrink.  Mr. Bush has no
serious plan to help our defense workers and military personnel to make
the transition to a civilian economy.  I do.  For example, I support
incentives for military personnel to earn military retirement by taking
jobs as teachers and police.  In my administration, we'll also help retrain
defense technicians for work in critical civilian fields such as bio-
technology, renewable energy and environmental cleanup.  The Pentagon
stands as America's best youth training program, our most potent
research center and the most fully integrated institution in American life.
It's time to put those assets to work at home.  Senator Nunn has
proposed work for military forces and the National Guard in solving the
problems of infrastructure, education, and rural health -- offering
possibilities to serve as role models here at home, consistent with
fulfilling their primary military mission.

     Finally, we cannot make America more secure unless we act
against a host of new threats that don't respect national borders, such as
terrorism, drug trafficking, and global environmental degradation.  As
Al Gore has so compellingly argued, the damage we do to the earth can
be more than a threat to our health and resources; it can also aggravate
international tensions and raise the chance of war itself.

     One of the most dangerous new threats is the spread of military
technology, especially weapons of mass destruction.  We can't afford to
wait until a host of Third World nations acquire full arsenals of First
World weapons.  We all saw the enormity of that threat as Scud missiles
arced across the night skies of Israel and Saudi Arabia.  We need to
clamp down on countries and companies that sell proscribed
technologies, punish violators, and work urgently with all countries for
tough, enforceable, non-proliferation agreements.  We need better
intelligence to identify at an earlier stage foreign nuclear, chemical, and
biological weapons programs.  We need to give informational nuclear
inspectors the authority and means to make spot inspections.  And a
Clinton-Gore administration will not permit American firms again to sell
key technologies to outlaw states like Iraq.

     The ultimate test of presidential leadership, of course, is not
defense budgets or battle plans.  It is the judgment a president exercises
in those perilous moments when countries are invaded, our friends are
threatened, Americans are held hostage, and our nation's interests are
on the line.  When the American people choose a president, they want
someone they can trust to act when those moments arise.  Every
president in the last half-century has had to confront the fateful decision
to send Americans into combat.  I do not relish this prospect, but neither
do I flinch from it.  I know we must have the resolve constantly to
deter, sometimes to fight, always to win.  That is why Al Gore and I
supported the decision to use force to get Saddam Hussein out of
Kuwait.  And it is why we stand united with President Bush in sending
this message to Saddam as he flouts the U.N.'s resolutions:  toe the line
or face the music.

Conclusion
     Whatever the threat or opportunity, national security is and must
remain a bipartisan task.  As a nation, we have many opinions, but only
one foreign policy.

     Yet presidential elections are about choices.  And of the choices
the American people must make this year is about the kind of
presidential leadership we want in a fundamentally new era.  In this
election, President Bush will seek to establish his leadership by
emphasizing the time he has spent, the calls he has placed, and the trips
he has taken in the conduct of foreign policy.  But the measure of
leadership in the new era is not the conversations held or the miles
travelled.  It is the new realities recognized, the crises averted, the
opportunities seized.  I challenge him to set his vision of our nation's
purpose in a dramatically new era against the one I am presenting in this
campaign.  For in the final analysis, I believe there is only one
presidential candidate in this election ready to think anew as the world
is new.

     Today's leadership is rudderless, reactive and erratic.  It is time
for leadership that is strategic, vigorous and grounded in America's
democratic values.

     In 1960 John F. Kennedy told America that there was "a new
world to be won."  Today there is again.  My vision is of a world united
in peaceful commerce; a world in which nations compete more in
economic and less in military terms; a world of dynamic market-
generated growth that narrows the gap between rich and poor; a world
increasingly engaged in democracy, tolerant of diversity and respectful
of human rights; a world united against the common enemies of
mankind:  war, poverty, ignorance, disease, and environmental
destruction; a world we can pass on to our children and theirs with the
knowledge that we rose to the new responsibilities of this new world and
this new age.

     I am running for President because I believe that a strong America
-- strong in arms, strong in values, strong in wealth, strong in will --
remains the world's best of hope for turning that vision into a reality.
Thank you.