US Presidency
1988

For the first time, the differences between East and West, fundamental differences over important moral questions dealing with the worth of the individual and whether governments shall control people or people control governments for the first time, these differences have shown signs of easing, easing to the point where there are not just troop withdrawals from places like Afghanistan but also talk in the East of reform and greater freedom of press, of assembly, and of religion. Yes, fundamental differences remain. But should talk of reform become more than that, should it become reality, there is the prospect of not only a new era in Soviet-American relations but a new age of world peace. For such reform can bring peace, history teaches. And my country has always believed that where the rights of the individual and the people are enshrined, war is a distant prospect. For it is not people who make war; only governments do that.