1/30/76

[LC]

(Laramie)

# Preliminary Remarks on Senator Gale McGee

In the late 19th century it was said that there were two kinds of people in Wyoming: ranchers who did a little rustling on the side, and rustlers who did a little ranching on the side.

Gale McGee upholds that great tradition of standing on both sides of respectability. He used to be a professor who practiced a little foreign policy on the side and now is a foreign policy practitioner who does a little teaching on the side.

The last time I spoke on foreign policy in Laramie it was as a Harvard professor, invited here to the University's Institute for International Relations headed by Professor Gale McGee. Prof. McGee's method of instruction was so inspired that his students at that time were prevailing upon

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him to run for the United States Senate. I somewhat

ruefully recalled at that time that my students wanted me out

of town as well -- not so much as a contribution to the nation

probably different

as to their own peace of mind.

As an influential member of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, as the distinguished chairman of the Post Office
and Civil Service Committee, and in Senate floor debates,

Senator Gale McGee has demonstrated time and again that

those University of Wyoming students of nearly two decades
ago possessed remarkable vision; American foreign policy

has been the better for their willingness to part with a great
teacher.

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Gale McGee's responsible approach to the question of redefining the U. S. intelligence role commensurate with our national principles as well as responsibilities; his support for an effort to build a new era of international economic cooperation; and his statesmanlike efforts to promote an effective national partnership between Congress and the Executive -- for all this and more, Gale McGee deserves the gratitude of this Administration and the thanks of the American people.

Preliminary Remarks on Senator Clifford Hansen

The nation owes a double debt of gratitude to Wyoming.

In this era when we have come to realize that economic issues are central to all else that we hope to accomplish in the world, we are fortunate indeed to have Senator Clifford Hansen's strong presence on the Senate Finance Committee. His has been a clear and influential voice for the importance of fiscal stability.

And time and again he has taken courageous stands on questions of defense spending -- always inspired by his deep understanding that our nation's military strength is the indispensable foundation of peace in the world.

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But the field in which Clifford Hansen reflects most brilliantly the influence of this university and the needs of this state is that of energy. To this complex and increasingly crucial international problem he has contributed a clear vision of America's requirements and the role America must play.

But none of this is new to you here. As Governor and Senator, you have wisely elected him to Wyoming's highest offices since 1963.

AMERICA'S DESTINY: THE GLOBAL CONTEXT

University of Wyoming, Laramie

February 4, 1976

It is good to be here in the West. The people of this
land remind me once again that America is not the cynical,
confused, and tired nation so many in Washington would
have us believe it is. Instead, as I have so often seen in my
trips, the American people continue to have pride in their
country. They know that America has done more for the
world, and for peace, over the past 30 years than any nation
in history. They know we have given more of our resources,
fed more of the starving, takin in more immigrants, and
educated more people from other lands than any other nation
before us.

The American people are tired of hearing how evil
we are, how terrible are our mistakes, and how

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misguided our purposes. They know better. And they want better.

It is true that we have passed through a decade and more of tragedy; we have been witness to assassination; we have suffered through a tragic war that shattered our domestic unity; and we have endured our greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War.

But we have come through these difficult times with our institutions as strong as ever. We remain the world's greatest democracy; we continue to be the bastion to which other nations look for their protection; and we remain the symbol of hope to the millions around the world who live in tyranny and poverty but yearn for freedom and prosperity.

America, from its birth, has meant much to the world. The Founding Fathers were animated by a sense of

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obligation, and of mission, to other peoples and to posterity.

Our revolution, our independence, and our democracy set examples which excited and encouraged imitation around the globe. America represented an inspiration and the most important political experiment of modern history -- the spectacle of successful self-government, economic opportunity, social equality, civil and religious liberty and the tremendous capacities of a free people to shape their own destiny.

Later in our history these values affected the world in a new way -- as a powerful magnet drawing great tides of immigration. It was a movement of ideas as well as people, which not only shaped this nation, but vastly altered the assumptions and social structures of the old world.

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In recent decades, America's impact on the world
has been more immediate. For much of this century,
global peace and prosperity have depended upon our
contribution. When World War II ended, we took the
lead in helping a shattered globe rebuild from devastation.
We shaped the commercial and financial system that
spread prosperity and economic opportunity to far corners
of the world. We built peacetime alliances to maintain
global stability and defend the values we share with the
great industrial democracies. We resisted aggression.
We mediated conflicts. We helped ease the process of
decolonization. And we led the fight against disease,
hunger, ignorance and the forces of oppression and terror
that have scarred this century.

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No other nation has made such a contribution. No other nation can make such a contribution now. The best hope for a planet still beset by war, poverty and tyranny is a strong, committed, vigilant America.

## Nation-Building in the Global Context

We must never forget that in serving peace and progress we both serve ourselves and live up to our best traditions.

We declared our independence "in decent respect to the opinions of mankind." Our Founding Fathers were sophisticated statesmen who understood the European balance of power and knew how our country could profit from it. Our independence was not won by American arms alone. The shrewd diplomacy of Franklin and Jefferson

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led to the involvement of Britain's enemies France, Spain and Russia and eventually engineered the only defeat Britain suffered in the modern era. We then cut loose from our temporary allies when John Jay won the British Crown's recognition and liquidated the residual problems of our war with England.

For more than three decades after we gained our independence, we lived in an age of international turmoil that saw us go to the brink of war with France and suffer the capture of our capital by Britain. Again, alert to new opportunities provided by changes on the international scene, we moved astutely to take advantage of them. The effective elimination of France and Spain from the hemisphere, the expansion of Russia in the Pacific

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northwest, and the growing disaffection of Great Britain
from the European powers led us in 1823 to concert the
Monroe Doctrine with Great Britain.

Thereafter, for the hundred years between Waterloo and
1914, America benefitted from the existence of a world balance
of power, presided over by Britain, which maintained
global stability and prevented international war. In
the words of Prime Minister Canning, the Doctrine
"called the new world into existence to redress the
balance of the old."

Thus, the balance of power in Europe and our skill
in using it protected the young United States; it enabled
us, in reliance upon the British Navy, to turn our
back on the Atlantic and open the continent before us.

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Theodore Roosevelt noted that long before Jefferson negotiated an end to the French claim to Louisiana, foreign claims had been effectively undermined by the great western movement of Americans and the free communities they quickly founded. But the consolidation of their pioneering achievement was made possible by those negotiations and by the subsequent series of remarkable diplomatic successes. The annexation of Florida, the Oregon boundary settlement with Great Britain, the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo, the Gadsden Purchase, Secretary of State Seward's purchase of Alaska from Russia -- all were triumphs of diplomacy during decades when most citizens believed America did not have -- or need -- a foreign policy.

Indeed, our very achievements in dealing with the

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world brought Americans under the sway of a shared
mythology. As a society made up of men and women
who had fled the persecutions and power politics of the
old world, Americans -- whether Mayflower descendants
or refugees from the failed revolutions of 1848 --
came to assume that we were beyond the reach of the
imperatives of traditional foreign policy.

While our security continued to be assured by
our place in the international structure of the time,
we became bemused by the popular belief that President
Monroe's obligation to defend the Western Hemisphere and,
indeed, almost any obligation we might choose to assume,
depended on unilateral American decisions to be entered
into or ended entirely at our discretion. Shielded by two
oceans and enriched by a bountiful nature, we proclaimed

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our special situation as universally valid even while
other nations with a narrower margin of survival knew
that their range of choice was far more limited.

The preoccupation of other nations with security only
reinforced our sense of uniqueness. We came increasingly
to regard diplomacy with suspicion. Arms and alliances
were seen as immoral and reactionary. Negotiations were
considered less a means of reconciling our ideals with our
interests than a device to entangle us in the endless
quarrels of a morally questionable world. Our native
inclination for straight forwardness brought increasing
impatience with diplomacy, whose essential attribute is
ambiguity and compromise.

In this atmosphere even the purchase of Alaska --
which excluded Russia from our continent -- was regarded

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in its day as a towering folly explainable only in terms of
American gullibility in the face of old world diplomatic
guile. [Congress was prevailed upon only with the greatest
difficulty to provide the seven million dollars to complete
the deal.] The mythology of American ineptitude in its
diplomatic pursuits has carried into the twentieth century.

Will Rogers was always assured of a laugh when he cracked,
"America never lost a war and never won a conference."
With the humility for which I am famous, I of course
reject this attitude.

Forgetful of the wisdom and skilled statecraft
by which the Founding Fathers won our independence and
secured our safety, and disdainful of the techniques by
which all nations -- even the United States -- must

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preserve their interests, America entered the twentieth
century -- the most complex and turbulent time in
history -- largely unprepared for the part we would be
called upon to play.

> As Lord Bryce said in his *American Commonwealth*,
> America had been sailing "on a summer sea", but a cloud
> bank was "on the horizon and now no longer distant, a
> time of mists and shadows, wherein dangers may be concealed
> whose form and magnitude she can scarcely conjecture."
> 
> America's Ascendancy: Maintaining Global Stability

In the early years of this century, America seemed
to face a choice between continued detachment and active
involvement in world affairs. But this was more apparent
than real, for the Pax Britannica on which we had relied for

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so long was coming to an end. We had become --
almost without noticing it -- the world's major economic
power. Increasingly, we were the only democratic nation
with sufficient power to maintain a precarious world
balance. But nothing in our experience had equipped
us to recognize our new responsibility. We continued to
reject the demands of the politics of security, and abhorred
alliances as contrary to American principles. In the
place of foreign policy we fell back on our tradition of law,
in repeated and unsuccessful attempts to legislate solutions
to international conflicts. Many thought that power
and principle were forever incompatible.

Our entry into World War I was produced by
real geopolitical interest, such as freedom of the sea

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and the threat of the domination of Europe by a hostile power; but we chose to interpret our participation in legal and idealistic terms; we fought the war "to end all wars."

The inevitable disillusion with an imperfect outcome led to a tide of isolationism. We responded again with moral and legal gestures -- humanitarian relief; new disarmament schemes; the Kellogg-Briand pact to ban war -- at a time when the very nature of the international order was being brought into question by the convulsions of the new century.

We sought security in aloofness, just as we looked for scapegoats -- rooting out the so-called "munitions makers" -- to explain why we had ever engaged in such an undertaking as the First World War. The Great Depression drew our energies further inward to deal with the problems

(le)

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of our own society, even while economic upheaval
simultaneously generated overwhelming perils abroad.

Our refusal to admit that foreign policy should be
related to interests led us, in the years between the
wars, to treat allies as rivals, whose armaments had to
be limited because they contributed to international
tensions. On the brink of World War II, isolationism had
been transformed from a comfortable assumption to
a deeply-felt conviction. Just as the world was about to
impinge upon us as never before, we had virtually abandoned
the basic precautions needed to preserve our national
security. Only with the greatest difficulty could President
Franklin D. Roosevelt begin to assert international leadership
openly and take steps against the mounting global threat

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by preparing America for war.

World War II was well underway before we were shocked out of isolation by external attack. Total victory and the refusal to consider the security of the postwar world in terms of any notion of equilibrium, ill prepared us for the war's aftermath -- when the destruction of Europe's traditional power centers suddenly drew Soviet power into the heart of the European continent.

Yet in the first postwar years America found within itself extraordinary capacities of statesmanship and creativity. Leaders of both parties and many backgrounds -- Truman and Eisenhower, Vandenberg and Marshall, Acheson and Dulles -- built a national consensus for responsible American world leadership, for a foreign

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policy based on both principle and pragmatism.

Albert Einstein said at the outset of the nuclear age that "everything has changed, except our mode of thinking."

To cope with a world whose basic conditions were so radically altered was a task comparable in magnitude to that which faced the Founding Fathers. When Dean Acheson said he was "present at the creation", he referred not only to the creation of our postwar policy, but to a new era in the history of mankind.

American foreign policy had come full circle. With sophistication, the Founding Fathers had manipulated the balance of power to gain our independence and then drew on the international system to assure our survival. A century and a quarter of almost total security had tempted

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us into isolationism. And now, after two World Wars in this century, we have learned that the responsibilities -- and the burdens -- of world leadership are inescapable.

Americans can be enormously proud of what their country has accomplished in the post war decades to build a more stable, secure and prosperous world. The recovery of Western Europe and Japan, the creation and revitalization of peacetime alliances, the shaping of the global trade and monetary system, the economic advance of newer and poorer nations, the measures to control the nuclear arms race -- these comprise an enduring achievement of American statesmanship.

America has been thrust into the role of global leadership with a dual responsibility; we must maintain

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our security and global peace by the traditional methods
of balance of power and diplomacy. But we know that
nuclear war could destroy civilization, and therefore
we must go beyond traditional foreign policy to shape a
more cooperative world reflecting the imperatives of
interdependence and justice.

## The Traditional Agenda of War and Peace

Our well-being begins with strength at home. To
keep America strong and secure, we will maintain the
military power needed to meet any challenge. But
security cannot be achieved in isolation. Our close ties
with the industrial democracies of Western Europe, Canada
and Japan have been the cornerstone of world stability and
peace for a generation. We share a common conception of

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human dignity, a common interest in peace and prosperity
and a common conviction of linked destiny. Today we and
our allies look beyond military issues to joint endeavors
across a broad range of human activity: we have coordinated
our diplomacy to ease global tensions, our policies for
economic growth and our efforts in new fields such as
energy.

A secure and stable world requires as well that
we seek a reconciliation of interests with potential
adversaries. We shall never lose sight of the fact that
in an age threatened by thermonuclear extinction, the
search for peace is a moral imperative; without it
nothing else we do will be of enduring value.

Peace, to be stable and durable, must place on a

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more reliable basis the relations between nations that possess the power to destroy our planet. The suspicion and rivalry of two generations will not soon be swept away, and we have no illusion about the continuing moral and ideological conflict. But we will spare no effort to seek reliable, reciprocal measures for containing the strategic arms race; we will continue to pursue cooperative arrangements across a wide range of technical, cultural and commercial fields to deepen the mutual stake in peace.

Progress towards relaxation of tensions, and our overall attitude toward those who would oppose us, have always depended upon restrained and responsible conduct on their part -- on issues where America's interests are affected directly, as in Europe, as well as in peripheral

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conflicts, such as Angola. Let no nation misconstrue
America's commitment to an easing of tensions as a
license to fish in troubled waters. Let no country
believe that Americans will long remain indifferent to
the dispatch of expeditionary forces and vast amounts of
materiel to impose minority governments -- especially
when that expeditionary force comes from a nation of the
Western Hemisphere. Americans may be slow to rouse
but they will do their duty implacably once a threat is clear.

If the world is to remain at peace and advance in
progress, an active American role in the world is
essential. The Middle East is perhaps the most critical
example. We must be involved there because of our
historical and moral commitment to Israel; because of

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our important interests and friendships in the Arab
world; because continued instability in the Middle East
strains our relations with allies and risks severe global
economic dislocation; and because continuing crisis risks
direct U. S. - Soviet confrontation.

The broad implications and imminent dangers of
regional conflicts such as those in Angola and the Middle
East have compelled us to play an active part. But it
would be wrong to conclude from this that the United States
seeks to operate as the world's policeman. There are
innumerable local conflicts around the globe in which
we neither have nor seek any role. We do not seek to
police the world -- but neither will we accept it if the
Soviet Union attempts to do so. The Soviet and Cuban

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pattern of conduct in Africa, if continued in other areas,
could unravel global security. The tensions of the
Middle East, if not overcome, could threaten global
peace. With prudence and wisdom, we can prevent
dangers to our wider interests by engaging ourselves
now at far less cost than we will inevitably have to pay
later if we abdicate responsibility. We cannot escape
the fundamental reality that it is the United States,
alone among the free nations of the world, that is
capable of -- and therefore responsible for -- maintaining
the global balance against those who would seek
hegemony and to shape a new world of hope and progress.

The New Agenda: Building a Cooperative International Order

True progress requires more than security. We

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must seek to break past patterns of confrontation and
response. It is no longer possible for America or any
other nation to achieve its purposes by physical power
alone; in today's world influence derives not only from
military strength, but also from economic, social, and political
factors, from the ability to inspire other nations with the
conviction that they have a stake in a shared future.

On a shrinking planet of diffused power and linked
destinies, we are called upon to demonstrate vision and
patience. Our generation has the opportunity to shape a
new international order. If we succeed, the prospects
for America and the world are bright. If we fail, the world
will be shaped by others who do not share our principles;
our period will witness mounting conflict and suffering.

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We can approach these new challenges with confidence.

Our technological advance, our managerial genius, our
achievements in science and medicine, the productivity
of our farms and industries, our physical resources, our
commitment to the rule of law -- ensures for us a role of
leadership. And we have been demonstrating the
resiliency of our economy by emerging from a global
recession faster and more steadily than any other nation.

Fundamental to our wellbeing is international
economic cooperation. In the past few years, Americans
have seen clearly just how much international economic
relations determine the progress of all nations including
our own. The oil embargo of 1973 and the subsequent
price increases with their devastating global consequences

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wealth of the oil producers -- into
improving the financing, production,
storage, and distribution of food.

-- We have developed and implemented a
strategy to end our domestic and
international energy vulnerability. We
have joined with the other industrial
consuming countries in solidarity
programs to protect us against further
oil embargoes and against destabilizing movements
of assets held by oil-producing countries.
Only last week the International Energy
Agency -- a group of industrial consuming
countries brought together at our initiative --

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adopted a sweeping program of cooperative
action. We consider this one of the most
significant cooperative efforts of the past
decade. The industrial democracies will
now begin to coordinate their research and
development effort to develop alternative
supplies of energy -- both nuclear power
and the more exotic sources such as
synthetic and solar energy.

-- And the United States has presented to
the United Nations General Assembly
Special Session a comprehensive and
practical program for multilateral
effort to promote economic development.