- 6 -

strong assets -- a sound design for an international
role, major foreign policy achievements in recent
years, a *vibrant* strong and compassionate country and the
enormous capacities of an industrious and gifted
people. We have the resources -- and the will --
to turn adversity into opportunity.

-7-

Indo-China

Let me start with our most tragic problem.

I can add nothing to the President's appeal for military
and humanitarian assistance for the anguished people of
South Vietnam. I support his appeal totally and I have
testified to that effect before several Congressional committees.

The time will come when it will be clear that no President
could do less than to ask aid for those who with our encourage-
ment fought at our side for fifteen years, and who need our help
in their hour of travail. And when that day comes Americans
will be glad that they had a President who refused to turn his
back

In Indochina our nation undertook a major enterprise for
almost fifteen years. We invested enormous prestige; tens
of thousands died and many more were wounded, imprisoned

- 8 -

and lost; we spent over 150 billion dollars; and our domestic
fabric was severely strained.

Whether or not this enterprise was well-conceived
does not now change the nature of our problem. When
such an effort founders, when a great nation debates its
exit as we are doing, it is an event of profound significance
-- for ourselves and for others.

The Administration has made its case. We will abide
by the verdict -- without recrimination or vindictiveness.

Where so many think that the war was a dreadful
mistake, where thousands grieve for those they loved and
where ~~still~~ others sorrow over their country's setback --
there has been ~~enough~~ heartache to go around.

I, for one, do not believe it was ignoble to have sought
to preserve the independence of a small and brave people.

- 10 -

We were convinced that a continuing, strong American role was indispensable to global stability and progress. But we knew as well that this required tailoring our role to new realities abroad and a new mood at home.

The postwar order of international relations ended with the last decade. No sudden upheaval marked the passage of that era, but the cumulative change by the end of the 1960's was profound. Gone was the rigid bipolar confrontation of two coalitions headed by Moscow and Washington and vying for adherents in the third world. In its place was a much more fluid and complex world-with many centers of power, more subtle dangers, and fresh openings. Western Europe and Japan were stronger and more self-confident; our alliances needed to be adjusted more equal ( move from American predominance towards partnership). The Communist world had fractured over doctrine and national

- 12 -

It is worth recalling how far we have come a long way

Our major allies in the Atlantic world and Japan have been placed in a position of strength, politically and economically; they have grown in strength, politically and economically; they have achieved their own identity and are the firm anchors of the world because they are working for the new order of security and prosperity. They now provide a solid basis for the new order of peace, for close cooperation on a range of unprecedented new problems -- from détente to energy.

We have launched a hopeful new dialogue with Latin America, and moved toward resolving long-standing issues. We are looking to a new era of relations with Africa, and Asia.

We have taken historic steps to stabilize and improve our relations with our major Communist adversaries. We have reduced tensions, deepened dialogue, and produced some of the extremely important major agreements.

We have begun to bring under control the strategic arms race which threatens global catastrophe. A new order is being made in the world. The new order is based on the principle that all nations have an equal share of power. This new order will bring peace, prosperity and freedom to all the nations of the world.

The process will be very slow. The process of world order is very slow. But we must have a new order based on the principle that all nations have an equal share of power. This new order will bring peace, prosperity and freedom to all the nations of the world.

- 17 -

achievements in American foreign affairs, the preservation
and maintaining global prosperity, the peace
of peace and the reconstruction of order are taken for granted.

An impersonal, technological, bureaucratized, materialistic
society provides too few incentives for dedication and idealism.

To satisfy this frustration, too much iconoclasm and cynicism
is offered by our intellectual leaders.

Let us remember that America's commitment to
embircralism even if our dreams were temporarily
submerged by the
evolutions of world
war I and
the post-war
era.

involvement in the world has always been problematical. The
roots of isolationism, nourished by geography and history,
go deep in the American tradition. The reluctance to be
involved in foreign conflicts, the belief that we somehow defiled
ourselves if we engaged in "power politics" and balances of

power, the notion that weapons are themselves the causes of
conflict, the conception that humanitarian assistance and
the
participation in economic order are an adequate substitute

- 18 -

for political engagement -- all these were familiar
characteristics of the American isolationism of the '20's
and '30's. We took our power for granted, attributed
our successes to virtue and our failures to the evil of
others. We disparaged means. Thus in our foreign
involvement we have oscillated between exuberance and
exhaustion, between crusading and retreats into isolation.

Following the Second World War, a broad spectrum of
civic leaders, professional groups, educators, businessmen,
clergy, the media, Congressional and national leaders of
both parties -- led American public opinion toward a new
internationalist consensus. Taught by the experience of the
Second World War, the nation understood that we best
secured our domestic tranquility and prosperity by enlightened
participation, and leadership, in world affairs. Assistance to

- 19 -

friends and allies was not a price to be paid but a service
to be rendered to international stability and therefore to our
self-interest.

But in the last decade, as a consequence of Indochina
some of our earlier impulses have reemerged, though,
and other frustrations of global engagement, leadership
opinion has turned sharply against many of the internationalist
premises of the postwar period. For years now too many
have sought to drum into us the view that conflicts are
stimulated not prevented by American military equipment,
that suffering is prolonged, not eased, by American action,
the injustice is perpetuated by American inaction,
that defense spending is inherently wasteful, that intelligence
activities are immoral, that the necessary confidentiality
of diplomacy is a plot to deceive the American public, that
flexibility is cynical and amoral -- and that tranquility is

- 20 -

somehow to be ~~purchased~~ by an abstract purity of motive for which
history offers no example.

All of this has ~~produced~~ the complex problem of executive-
legislative relations, we face ~~today.~~ In every country, the ~~entireity of the~~
modern state seems frustratingly ~~remote from those whose~~
lives it increasingly affects; in ~~every country,~~ it is challenged
by legislators who themselves find it difficult to affect ~~policy~~
except piecemeal or negatively. "~~Accommodation of special~~
groups -- ~~the essence of problem-solving on domestic issues --~~
robs foreign policy of consistency and focus, the very essence
~~of a constructive international posture.~~ Issues become so
technical that legislative oversight becomes ~~nearly unmanageable~~
-- just as the issues became increasingly vital
-- sometimes in almost precise proportion to the importance
of an issue. Governments must make decisions before all
facts are clear, or else they abdicate control over events. Yet

- 21 -

predictions are impossible to prove; consequences avoided
are never evident. Skepticism and suspicion thus have
a field-day when they become endemic in executive-
legislative relations; reasoned debate is replaced by a
series of confrontations on peripheral issues.

For Americans, the adjustment to a more complex
world is in any case extremely difficult.

And so America today is a paradox. In the nation with the
highest standard of living and one of the richest cultures in the
world, in the nation that is perhaps the most secure in the
world, in the nation which has come closest of all to the
ideals of civil liberty and pluralist democracy -- we find a
deep and chronic self-doubt especially in the large urban
centers and particularly among presumptive leaders.

- 30 -

The Executive Branch will spare no effort to consult and to work in partnership. But cooperation must be a two-way street. Just as the Executive has an obligation to +actuate/ reexamine its policies, so the Congress should reconsider the paralyzed one policies actions which have produced paralysis with respect to events in Portugal, our loss of influence in the Eastern Mediterranean and weakened our hand in relations with the USSR and inhibited our dialogue in this hemispheric The problems we face are national problems, not those of

one Administration. Foreign policy must have continuity, if it becomes partisan the very alteration in office of our national parties becomes an element of international instability. If we now exacerbate foreign policy issues by struggles between us, they will only be inherited by the next Administration, but under worse conditions.

- 31 -

When other countries look to the United States, they see one nation. When they look to Washington they see one government. They judge us as a unit -- not as a series of unrelated actions or essentially uncoordinated institutions

branches. If we cannot achieve certain sorts of agreements within our own body politic -- between the executive and the legislative authorities between both and the great public on which they together ultimately depend -- there is little hope of our being able to negotiate effectively with others abroad, whether they be friendly to our purposes, neutral to them, or openly hostile. Just as we cannot wish to impose our will on others outside our shores, our system cannot operate where there is no will to concede and to acknowledge that wisdom is not the prerogative of any single individual or group.

5

- 32 -

Perhaps the most important lesson to be drawn from recent events is to restore the civility of our domestic discourse. Over the years of the Vietnam debate rational dialogue has yielded to emotion, sweeping far beyond the issues involved. Not only judgments but motives have been called into question. Not only policy but character has been attacked. What began as overwhelming national consensus progressively deteriorated into vicious, poisonous contention. And disturbing traces remain.

This type of debate must be put behind us. Civil discourse is a two-way street: leaders in Government and must be their slave; others allied with them have at times abused their position and demonstrated excesses of conduct and rhetoric.

The Administration, following the President's example, will

do its utmost to inject moderation and respect into the
~~mistrual~~
dialogue. But equally foreign policy in a democracy

cannot be conducted when vilification becomes the staple
~~public disingenuousness~~
of debate, when the integrity of those who conduct the

nation's affairs is constantly put into question. In the end
~~that whatever ~~truly~~ whatever the public interest~~
~~the whole nation suffers.~~
~~that is, the people~~

The American people yearn for an end to the bitterness
and divisiveness of the past decade. Our domestic stability
requires it. Our international responsibilities impose it.

Our friends in this audience are in a unique position
to contribute to ~~the sealing~~ of the nation

## The Coming Agenda

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said "No great man ever
complained of a want of opportunity." Neither does a great
nation.

- 34 -

Our resources are vast, our leadership is essential,

our opportunities are unprecedented and insistent:

The challenges in the coming decades will dwarf

A new world order is taking shape
> today's disputes. We must lift our sights and go forward
> around us. It will engulf us or isolate us if we do not
> with characteristic American zest and faith. Beyond each
> act baldly. We cannot consume ourselves in self-destruction. We will be
> of our more immediate tasks lie broader vistas, a fresh-
> isolated normally even if not physically if we do not record our
> faith in ourselves. We have great hopes stills lives:
> vocabulary in international relations.

Taylor himself.

-- We must maintain the vigor of the great

democratic alliances. They can provide

the anchor of shared values and purposes

as we grapple with a radically new agenda.

-- We must emerge from the current economic

A domestic energy program is thus an urgent
national priority. Looking ahead, we want to
and energy crisis. Our more positive goal

is fundamental reform of the international

economic system, a Bretton Woods for the

1980's and beyond.

- 36 -

consider ~~as a threat to world peace and~~ contrary to the national interest. Beyond the immediate task of peacemaking lies the ennobling challenge of regional reconciliation and collective efforts to better the human condition.

-- We must cap the spiral -- and the spread -- of nuclear weapons. We can then move on to a more ambitious agenda -- mutual reductions in strategic arms, progress on the control of military other weaponry, restraint in other environments, the inclusion of other powers.

-- We must ease famine and protect against nature's vagaries. But the fundamental challenge is to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry in the year 2000.

- 38 -

If not, the field will lie open to others -- others not necessarily friendly to us. The result could be a reshaping of the world which takes little account of our values and our interests, and produces great dangers of war.

In the words of Longfellow, it is time to "look not mournfully into the past. Wisely improve the present. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear, and with a manly heart."

In an era of turbulence, uncertainty and conflict, the world still looks to us for a protecting hand, a mediating influence, a path to follow. It sees in us, most of all, a tradition and a vision of hope. Just as America has symbolized for generations man's conquest of nature, so too has America -- with its banner of progress and

- 39 -

freedom -- symbolized man's mastery over his own
future.

For the better part of two centuries our forefathers,
citizens of a small and relatively weak country, met
adversity with courage and creativity. And in the course
of their struggle they built the freest, richest and most
powerful nation the world has ever known. As we, their
heirs, take America into its third century, as we take up
the agenda of the modern world, we are determined to
recover the belief in ourselves that characterized the most
creative periods in our history.

We are no longer innocent.

Nor are we guilty.

We have come of age.

We shall do our duty.

Draft VI

4/15/75

ADDRESS BY SECRETARY OF STATE KISSINGER
TO THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF NEWSPAPER EDITORS

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- April 17, 1975

I am here to sound a note of hope about the future of
our foreign policy *despite the fact that*

We are now going through a period of adversity.

A nation facing setbacks can submerge itself in acrimony,
looking for scapegoats rather than lessons.

It can ignore or gloss over its difficulties *blithely* proceeding as if nothing serious had happened.

Or it can examine its situation dispassionately, draw
appropriate conclusions, and chart its future with realism
and hope.

President Ford has chosen this latter course. A week
ago he called upon Congress and the American people to
turn this time of difficulty into a demonstration of spirit --

- 2 -

to prove once again our strength and our courage, and to
put these into the service of building a better world.

For the entire post-war period our strength and our
leadership have been essential in preserving peace and
promoting progress. If either falters, major shifts in
political alignments will occur all around the world. ~~This will be new dangers for America's security and threaten our economic well-being.~~ The only way to prevent these dangers is for all nations to work together.

The Middle East war and oil embargo of 1973 demonstrate how distant events can threaten world peace and global prosperity simultaneously.

How other nations perceive us is thus a matter of
major consequence. Every day I see reports ~~from our~~ embassies all over the world, relaying anguished questions raised by our friends. What do events in Indochina, the southern flank of NATO and the Middle East signify for

- 3 -

America's competence -- constancy -- credibility -- coherence? How will Americans react? What are the implications for future American policy?

We can be certain that potential adversaries are asking themselves the same questions not with sympathy, but in order to estimate their opportunities.

It is fashionable to maintain that pointing out dangers produces a self-fulfilling prophecy; that it is the prediction of consequences which brings them about. Unfortunately, life is not that simple. But we have no need to act like ostracives. We cannot achieve credibility by rhetoric, and we cannot manufacture coherence by proclamation, and we cannot change facts by not talking about them.

We are strong enough and confident to face the problems flowing from the world's concerns. Some worry about the wisdom and adequacy of our past actions; others are uneasy.

about our own reaction to our difficulties.

We can do little about the past except to deal with its consequences wisely and honorably. But our future reactions to these

are within our control. We have it in our power to take

charge of our destiny, to usher in another era of creativity and accomplishment.

We intend to do just that.

I know that it is not easy for a people that faces major domestic difficulties to gear itself up for international renewal. But our own economic future is so bound up with the rest of the world -- and with international developments in energy, trade and economic policy -- that our economic health depends on the preservation of American leadership abroad.

This country has no choice. We must, for our own sake

- 5 -

play a major role in world affairs. We have strong assets

policy achievements in recent years, a vibrant and compassionate country and the enormous capacities of an industrious and gifted people. We have the resources -- and the will -- to turn adversity into opportunity.

## Indochina

Let me start with our most tragic and immediate problem.

I can add nothing to the President's request for military and humanitarian assistance for the anguished people of South Vietnam. I support this appeal totally and I have testified

to that effect before several Congressional committees over the past several days.
The time will come when it will be clear that no President

ment fought at our side for fifteen years. And when that day

- 6 -

comes Americans will be glad that they had a President who
abandon those who desquatelyAGREE on
refused to turn his back on those who cry out for help in
an
their hour of travail.

In Indochina our nation undertook a major enterprise
for almost fifteen years. We invested enormous prestige;
tens of thousands died and many more were wounded, imprisoned
and lost; we spent over 150 billion dollars; and our domestic
fabric was severely strained.

Whether this enterprise was well-conceived does
not now change the nature of our problem. When such an
effort founders, when a great nation debates its exit as we
are doing, it is an event of profound significance -- for
ourselves and for others.

But where so many think that the war was a dreadful

- 8 -

The Design
---

Let us therefore turn to the future. We start with a
sound foreign policy structure. And with purpose and
resolve we can continue to make major progress.

The central thrust of our foreign policy has been to
adjust our conceptions, our methods, and our commitments
*as well as*
define it

*to the conditions of a new era -- including an America*

*already fatigued by Indochina.*

We are convinced that a continuing, strong American
role is indispensable to global stability and progress. But
we know as well that this requires tailoring our role to new
realities abroad and the new mood at home.

- 9 -

of the 1960's was profound. Gone was the rigid bipolar
confrontation of two coalitions each vying for adherents
in the third world. In its place was a much more fluid
and complex world--with many centers of power, more
subtle dangers, and new hopeful opportunities. Western
Europe and Japan were stronger and more self-confident;
our alliances needed to be adjusted towards a more equal
partnership. The Communist world had fragmented over
doctrine and national interests; there were promising
prospects for more stable relations based on restraint and
negotiation. And many of our friends in other parts of the
globe were prepared to shoulder the future responsibility for
their security and well-being, but they needed our assistance
during the period of transition.

Our domestic mood demanded changes as well. The

- 12 -

We have begun the process of controlling
the strategic arms race which threatens global
security.

A catastrophe. When the Vladivostok agreement is
completed a ceiling will have been placed for
the first time on the strategic arsenals of
the superpowers.

We have helped to ease long-standing
political conflicts in such sensitive areas as
Berlin and the Middle East.

And we have taken the major initiatives to
mobilize the international response to new global
challenges such as energy, food, environment and
new sources of sea.
the vast reaches of the oceans.

In all these areas the American role has
been (frequently) decisive. The design still
stands, our responsibilities remain. There is
every prospect of achievement. There is every
reason for confidence.

- 15 -

of bureaucracy, questions of public policy often turn into issues for institutional bargaining. Instant communications force the pace of events and of expectations.

Persuasion -- the essential method of democracy -- becomes extraordinarily difficult in an era where issues are complex and outcomes uncertain. A premium is placed on simplification -- which is an invitation to demagogues. Too often, the result is disaffection that simultaneously debunks government and drains it of the very confidence a democracy needs to act with conviction.

All of this has compounded the complex problem of executive-legislative relations. In every country, the authority of the modern state seems frustratingly impersonal or remote from those whose lives it increasingly affects;

- 17 -

America faces as well the problem of a new generation.

The gulf between their historical experience and ours is enormous. They have been traumatized by Vietnam as we were by Munich. Their nightmare is foreign commitment as ours was abdication from international responsibility.

It is possible that both generations learned their lessons too well. The young take for granted the great post-war achievements in restoring Europe, building peacetime alliances, and maintaining global prosperity. An impersonal, technological, bureaucratized, materialist society provides them too few incentives for dedication and idealism.

Let us remember that America's commitment to international involvement in the world has always been ambivalent even during the war. While our doubts were temporarily submerged by the exertions of World War II and the post-war era, the roots of

- 18 -

isolationism, nourished by geography and history, go
deep in the American tradition. The reluctance to be
involved in foreign conflicts, the belief that we somehow
defiled ourselves if we engaged in "power politics" and
balances of power, the sense that foreign policy is a form of
Old World imperalism, the notion that weapons are the
causes of conflict, the belief that humanitarian assist-
ance and participation in the economic order are an
adequate substitute

- 19 -

for political engagement -- all these were familiar
characteristics of the American isolationism of
the '20's and '30's. We took our power for
granted, attributed our successes to virtue
and blamed our failures on the evil of others.

We disparaged means. ~~We~~ in our foreign
involvement we have oscillated between exuberance
and exhaustion, between crusading and retreats
into isolation.

Following the Second World War, a broad
spectrum of civic leaders, professional groups,
educators, businessmen, clergy, the media,
Congressional and national leaders of both
parties -- led American public opinion to a
new internationalist consensus. Taught by the
experience of the War, the nation understood

- 20 -

that we best secured our domestic tranquillity and
prosperity by enlightened participation and
leadership in world affairs. Assistance to friends
and allies was not a price to be paid but a
service to be rendered to international stability
and therefore to our self-interest.

But in the last decade, as a consequence
of Indochina and other frustrations of global
engagement, some of our earlier impulses have
reasserted themselves. Much leadership opinion
has turned sharply against many of the internationalist
premises of the postwar period. For years now
too many have put forward the view that conflicts
are stimulated not prevented by American military
equipment, that suffering is prolonged by American
involvement, that injustice is perpetrated by American
action, that injustice is perpetrated by American
inaction, that defense spending is inherently

- 22 -

Will the American people support a responsible
and active American foreign policy in these
conditions? I deeply believe that they will --
if their leaders, in and out of government, give
them a sense that they have something to be
proud of and something important to accomplish.

When one ventures away from Washington into
the heart of America one is struck by the
confidence, the buoyancy, and the lack of any
corrosive cynicism. We who sit at what my
friend Stewart Alsop -- a great journalist --
once called "the center" tend to dwell too much
on our problems; we tend to dissect in overly
exquisite detail our difficulties and our disputes.

I find it remarkable that two-thirds of
the Americans interviewed in a nationwide poll in

- 27 -

To focus the national debate on secret agreements
~~no party has ever suggested or implied~~ that which no party ever claims is to indulge what
Mencken called the "national appetite for bogus
revelation." It goes without saying that a commit-
ment involving national action must be known to the
Congress to be meaningful.

One lesson we must surely learn from Vietnam
is that new commitments of our nation's honor and
prestige must be carefully weighed. As Walter
Lippman observed, "for foreign relations, as in
all other relations, a policy has been formed
only when commitments and power have been brought
into balance." But after our recent experiences
we have a special obligation to make certain that
commitments we have made will be rigorously kept --
and that this is understood by all concerned.
Let no ally doubt our

- 29 -

Vietnam used to make a mockery of its signature on
the Paris accords.

At home, a great responsibility rests upon all of us
in Washington.

Comity between the executive and legislative branches
is the only possible basis for national action. Their
cooperation is a complex problem in every democracy.

In this country the task is complicated by the system of checks and balances and the separation of powers. Today there is the added difficulty of the weakening of traditional patterns of authority within the Congress, occurring at the same time as the weakening of the authority of the Executive Branch.

The decade-long struggle in this country over executive
dominance in foreign affairs is over. It is last year's

- 30 -

issue. The assertion of Congressional authority is the

is the dominant fact of national politics today. The Executive has

that

must have

every intention to give the Congress both the sense and

foreign

the reality of participation to do its utmost to make foreign

must be

policy a shared enterprise. The question is whether the

Congress will go beyond the setting of guidelines to the

conduct of tactics; whether it will block diplomacy by

the Executive in the conduct of diplomacy depriving it of discretion and authority while being unable

While at the same time remaining institutionally
and indeed unsuited to formulate or carry out a clear

incapable of formulating or carrying out a clear
national policy of its own. At this moment in our history

there is a grave national imperative for a spirit of

cooperation and humility between the two branches of our

government. The Constitutional system has always rested
September has always rest

on the restrained exercise of the powers and rights conferred

by it.

- 31 -

Cooperation must be a two-way street. Just as the Executive has an obligation to reexamine and articulate its policies, so the Congress should reconsider the actions which have paralyzed our policies in the Eastern Mediterranean, weakened our hand in relations with the USSR, and inhibited our dialogue in this hemisphere. If we exacerbate foreign policy issues through struggles between us, they will be inherited by the next Administration under worse conditions. Foreign policy must have

parelysis result. Problems are passed on to the future under progressively worse conditions. In the event an attorney general continuity. If it becomes partisan, the changing of

our elections, Administrations become itself an element of international instability.

When other countries look to the United States, they see one nation. When they look to Washington they see one government. They judge us as a unit -- not as a series of unrelated or uncoordinated institutions. If we cannot

- 32 -

agree amongst ourselves there is little hope of our being able to negotiate effectively with others abroad.

Indeed, the most important lesson to be drawn from recent events is the need to restore the civility of our domestic discourse. Over the years of the Vietnam debate rational dialogue has yielded to emotion, sweeping far beyond the issues involved. Not only judgments but motives have been called into question. Not only policy but character has been attacked. What began as over-whelming national consensus progressively deteriorated into vicious, poisonous contention.

Leaders in Government must do their share. The Administration, following the President's example, will strive for do its utmost to inject moderation and mutual respect into the national dialogue. We know that if we ask for public confidence we must keep faith with the people.

- 33 -

Debate is the essence of democracy. But it can
elevate the nation only if conducted with some restraint.

Your friends in this audience are in a unique position
to contribute to the healing of the nation.

## The Coming Agenda

The challenges in the coming decades will dwarf
today's disputes. A new world order is taking shape

- 34 -

around us. It will engulf us or isolate us if we do not
act boldly. We cannot consume ourselves in self-
destruction. We have great responsibilities:

-- We must overcome the current economic and energy crisis. A domestic energy program is thus an urgent national priority. Looking ahead, we envisage the fundamental reform of the international economic system, a Bretton Woods for the 1980's and beyond.

-- We must stand up for what we believe in
international forums, including the United

- 35 -

Nations, and resist the politics of
resentment, of confrontation, and stale
ideology. Our leadership and example for
International collaboration have a more vital
role now than ever, but so too mutual respect
among nations.

-- We must meet our continuing responsibility
for peace in many regions of the world,
especially where we uniquely have the confid-
ence of both sides, and where failure could
spell disaster beyond the confines of the region,
as in the Middle East.

36

We will not be pushed by threats of war or
economic pressure into giving up vital interests.
But equally, we will not in the President's words
"accept stalemate or stagnation with all its
attendant risks to peace and prosperity."

-- We must stop the spiral -- and the spread --
of nuclear weapons. We can then move
on to a more ambitious agenda -- mutual
reductions in strategic arms, control of
other weaponry, military restraint in other
environments, the inclusion of other
powers.

-- We must address the twin challenges of
the vagaries of
famine and protect against nature's

is to help others feed themselves so that

- 37 -

-- We must continue **striving** to reduce
conflict and tension with our adversaries.

Over time, we hope that our vigilance
and conciliation will lead to <u>increasingly</u>-
positive relationships and ultimately
a true global community.

-- We must ensure that the vast reaches of
the oceans and space become areas of
cooperation rather than conflict. We
can then leave to future generations
vast economic and technological resources
to enrich life on this earth.

Our nation is uniquely endowed to play a
creative and decisive role in the new order which
is taking form around us. In the words of Longfellow,

- 38 -

In an era of turbulence, uncertainty and conflict, the world still looks to us for a protecting hand, a mediating influence, a path to follow. It sees in us, most of all, a tradition and vision of hope. Just as America has symbolized for generations man's conquest of nature, so too has America -- with its banner of progress and freedom -- symbolized man's mastery over his own future.

For the better part of two centuries our forefathers, citizens of a small and relatively weak country, met adversity with courage and imagination. In the course of their struggle they built the freest, richest and most powerful nation the