Mead / Hill 1/20/75
Eighth Draft

A NEW NATIONAL PARTNERSHIP
FOR AN ERA OF CHALLENGE

A half-century ago Winston Churchill began his book "The World Crisis" by observing that in palmier times it was the custom for statesmen to "rejoice in that protecting Providence which had preserved us through so many dangers and brought us at last into a secure and prosperous age." But "little did they know",

Churchill wrote, "that the worst perils had still to be encountered, and the greatest triumphs had yet to be won."

We do not depreciate the achievements of our predecessors in saying that the first truly "world crisis" is that which we face now. We know this crisis holds perils for us. But now the time has come to recognize that there are great triumphs to be won as well. For this crisis is above all an unprecedented opportunity.

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# THE TRADITIONAL AGENDA OF PEACE AND WAR

But despite their legacy of success, the issues of war and peace which they faced will continue to engage our efforts. In a world of political turmoil and technology, we still live in a world of proliferating nuclear weapons. We still have a world of weapons of horrifying destructiveness. We still are called upon urgently to adjust traditional alliances to changing conditions; to build new ties to old adversaries, and to seek to bring peace in areas where chronic instability threatens global security.

What we have achieved is that in the last few years we have made crucial progress in dealing with these questions; progress which has laid the foundation for future achievement; progress which reminds us how much remains to be done.

Let me review some of the basic elements of our foreign policy today. Before speaking of the new challenges we face, I want to review the major achievements we have made and upon which we can build.

Go easy on these claims of success

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that our future is in our own hands, and not at the mercy of

external forces. The health of freedom in many countries

will be affected by our success.

Building the Foundations of International Restraint

There can be no peaceful international order without a
constructive relationship between the United States and the
Soviet Union -- the two nations with the power to destroy
mankind.

moral antagonism

The fundamental differences between our two systems has not been ignored; it is the heart of the problem. will not soon disappear. But we have taken important steps in our relations with the Soviets toward conducting relations between ourselves, moderating tension, restraining Soviet action, and thereby encouraging a more positive evolution of Soviet and with the rest of the world in a more restrained and rational conduct. The SALT agreement, Berlin agreement, the dampening way. Our agreement at Vladivostok was a major achievement of crises over Cuba and the Middle East, the easing of tension in this process. For the first time in the nuclear age a ceiling Europe, the building of a network of cooperative bilateral relations with the Soviet Union in many fields -- these mark an undeniable change over the state of our relations 10 or even five years ago. The recent SALT agreement

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The fundamental differences between our two systems will not soon disappear. But we have taken important steps with the Soviets toward conducting relations between ourselves and with the rest of the world in a more restrained and rational way.

Despite fluctuations, a positive trend has been established; the new web of bilateral agreements; the easing of confrontation over Berlin, over the arms race, over the future shape of Europe and the emerging regions of the world. These steps are changing the character of international politics.

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Our relations with the Communist countries are a basic
condition of the world environment. If we seek peace, we
must seek to stabilize these relationships and build a long-term
basis for our coexistence. We will stand by our principles and
our interests; we will act firmly when challenged. But the kind
of world we seek to build depends on a broad policy of creating
mutual incentives for restraint and for cooperation.

## Containing Regional Conflicts

The urgent political responsibility of our time is to resolve
conflicts without war. It is tragic that long-standing national and
regional enmities and rivalries have so often broken the peace
and posed dangers to the wider world order,
to shore up the necessary components of world order.

Much of the world is now free of local conflicts; yet
We have achieved a certain momentum in containing regional
in many areas chronic tensions persist. It has always
strife, but disturbing situations of chronic conflict persist. Our
been America's policy to offer our help when we are
aim is to make progress toward disentangling such confrontations
in a position to promote peace through settlement, and at

# THE NEW AGENDA OF INTERDEPENDENCE

While we strive to manage the traditional concerns of foreign policy, we must also grapple with the fact that the

by our ability to contribute to the emergence of a new international order, yet unborn, which requires our imagination and vision to

that a whole new series of challenges is emerging which require a new approach.

With the benefit of hindsight, there is little difficulty in identifying moments when humanity broke from old ways and moved in a new direction.

Swings out of its old paths onto a new route -- the fifth century B. C., the twelfth century, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the great industrial and political revolutions

of the past two centuries. But it is often difficult for those who live during periods of great change to see events as more than a series of unrelated crises; to perceive accurately the ultimate significance of what is taking place; to avoid disaster →

to shape their own destiny rather than be engulfed by it. By acting from a new perception of reality.

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We now are beginning to be able to see, however dimly, the outlines of the era, which we are entering. While much of the dimension of issues on the international agenda, unfinished business of the past -- problems of war, peace and unprecedented in type and scale, national security -- remains to be dealt with, it is now clear that we also are confronting a new agenda -- one which contains problems of heretofore unimagined scale. The insistent problems of energy, resources, environment, population, the uses of space and the seas, have begun to overshadow the narrow national military security, questions of politics, ideology and territorial rivalry which until recently have been regarded as the essential issues of this century.

But our approach to this new agenda has a familiar starting point. As in the past, our first priority must be to define our national interest and to devise ways to protect it. When truly lies an act in accordance with that interest, boldly

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But these challenges need not overwhelm us. We are steps to address the challenge of energy in already moving to regain control of our economic destiny. Solidarity with our traditional allies.

## Energy

The only solution is

(In energy, we look toward a cooperative solution among the producers and consumers; nothing else is feasible in an inter-dependent world. But we cannot achieve this except on two foundations.

The first is solidarity among the major consumers. Alone, no consuming country can defend against an oil embargo or a withdrawal of oil dollars. Alone, no country except perhaps the United States can invest enough to develop new energy sources to achieve self-sufficiency. Only by acting together can the consuming countries move confidently to free their economies from overdependence on imported oil.

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The degree to which we have already achieved consumer liberty
Already we have taken major steps toward solidarity. In
is now unmitakable Last
November, the United States and 15 other countries signed an
unprecedented agreement to help each other in a new emergency.

The agreement commits each country to build an emergency
stock of oil; if a new embargo comes, each country will cut its
consumption by the same proportion, and available oil will be
shared. The agreement means that an embargo against one will
be an embargo against all, It means that the oil consumers are
prepared and united, determined to resist any new interruption
in oil supply.

Equally important is solidarity for financial security.

The stability of individual industrialized countries can be
threatened if producers elect to stop the flow of oil dollars,
or to withdraw funds already deposited. But we can meet this

danger also by acting together. For oil producers have no
choice but to put their money in the industrial world; whatever
they take out of one industrial country they must deposit in
another. The industrial countries can offset such financial
shifts by reloaning the money to each other. This is the pur-
pose of the $25 billion dollar financial safety net, which the
industrial countries agreed to establish ten days ago. It is not
an aid fund; it is a mutual insurance scheme. It will defend the
consumers against financial domination by the producers. And
it demonstrates that resolve to shape our own destiny remains
thoroughly alive among our people and governments.

The second imperative is for major consuming countries to reduce their dependence on imported oil. This means a concerted effort to reduce energy uses -- in driving, in lighting, in heating, in transportation, in our way of life, until we are prepared to live a modern lifestyle. which we have come to accept as our way of life. It also means that we need for our安全 and our independence a major and lasting effort. The consumers new laws, an unrelenting selection of the $25 billion dollar financial safety net, which the producers will have improved, will make us more capable of meeting our own safety needs. The various interrelated measures ahead, along with thePresident's important safety net, but it would be useless

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accelerated development of alternative energy sources, such as
nuclear power, oil shale, the oil of the outer continental shelf,
Alaska, the North Sea, and elsewhere.

Both these policies will be costly, —Conservation measures
* ways that do not or may initially have a depressant effect on output and jobs. —Develop-
ment of new energy sources will divert investment capital from
* other uses, slowing growth in non-energy sectors of the economy.*

But if we fail to take these steps we will remain too vulnerable to
the power of the oil producers, our economy exposed to disruption,
* both physically and
* only when we are in
our position in the world permanently impaired. And our allies
* are position to act with impact and決isiveness,
* could lose confidence in our will to resolve the problem.*

This is the meaning of President Ford's State-of-the-Union
proposals calling for national self-sufficiency in energy by 1985.

*To achieve this goal, it is essential that we develop a national consensus
for a national program. However much we may wish otherwise,*

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voluntary efforts, one-time emergency programs, trial and
error approaches, will not give us the sustained ten-year
effort we need, for ourselves and for our allies.

The choice then, is not whether we will achieve energy
independence, but how. The Administration, President Ford will work with Congress
in finding solutions all can accept. But he has made clear that
we cannot long delay; he will use his administrative powers to
limit imports if effective legislative programs are not agreed upon
promptly and carried out.

America cannot and will not solve the energy crisis alone.
We are asking our allies in the new International Energy Agency
to match our conservation actions by similar cuts of their own,
and they are responding. We will ask them to join us in
an energy program with major imaginative efforts of our own.

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The Need for Allied Cooperation

As we deal with this new agenda of global interdependence,

the first requirement is cooperation with our traditional

friends, Europe, Canada and Japan. Together we produce

eighty percent of the world's industrial goods and most of its

surplus food. We are the major source of the technology which

holds out such promise for the future. And our own economies

are now so inextricably linked that neither inflation nor recession

can be contained within national borders. Thus whether each of

us prospers and whether the global economy returns to the path

of economic growth depends above all on what we do together.

We must coordinate our economic policies more closely

than ever before. This has been a primary purpose of the

President's meetings this winter with the leaders of Germany,

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Japan, France, Canada and Britain. Each country is taking
action to stimulate economic activity -- through lowered
taxes, higher spending, easier money, or all three.

But we share something even more fundamental in this
time of profound crisis and change. For at stake is the future
of the industrialized democracies, who have perceived their
destiny in common and sustained it in common for 30 years,
though dynamism or not whether they must decline.
can continue

Our decisive action now is essential -- not simply to stimulate
our economies, but even more to preserve our moral and
political dynamism, to recover the sense that our future is in
our own hands, not at the mercy of external forces.

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Thus the United States has a special interest and obligation
to make cooperation with those countries the heart of the larger
framework of peace and prosperity we are seeking to create.

The Need for National Unity

But our striving for a more secure and stable world, our
attempts to master the challenges which confront America today,
will be unavailing unless we in the United States are united in a
new national partnership.

This will require an achievement totally unprecedented in
our history: the conduct of a complex foreign policy in close
cooperation with Congress. Foreign governments can only
deal with our government as an entity, not as a complex of
divided institutions. They must be able to count on our main-
taining both our national will and our specific undertakings.

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Recently disagreements between the Congress and Executive have resulted in certain patterns which could undermine our reputation as a responsible and reliable partner in world affairs.

Therefore, we must urgently address the question of relations between Congress and the Executive. We do not with the object of assigning blame. If our divisions lead to a failure of our policy, the consequences will be national, affecting us all. To appeal for cooperation on foreign policy in our government is not a maneuver or a slogan designed to cloak supremacy of the Executive. It is not merely a preference. It is a necessity for our national survival.

The Ford Administration recognizes the constitutional responsibilities of Congress in the field of foreign affairs.

We actively seek a national partnership between Congress and

the Executive, as co-equal branches, in the making of American
foreign policy, It has been said that the Executive wants a

blank check to conduct foreign affairs, without interference. But
we would not, even if it were possible, seek to return to the
excessive discretion which the Executive enjoyed in the 1960's,
until recently.

For to try to exclude Congress from a major role would deny
our policy, at a critical time, the broad support that is indis-
possible in a democracy. A new level of public understanding is
required because of the urgency of our challenges and the direct
impact which efforts to solve them will have on our domestic
society. And public support is impossible without Congressional
support.

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my page

Thus, the issue is not whether Congress should play a central
role in foreign policy. It is how Congress and the Executive can
best share a partnership which both branches of government affirm.

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We will work closely with Congress to find practical ways to reconcile the necessity for Congressional oversight with the need for an active Executive role in the execution of policy.

However, cooperation between us will be promoted if both branches seek to understand the issues before us in realistic terms.

-- The question is, not how much our policy serves the interests of others, but how it can best serve our own interests.

Elements of our policy such as foreign aid and food aid should be understood, not as handouts to others, but as vital tools that we need to help our friends help themselves, to construct more positive relations with potential adversaries, and to help solve the pressing economic problems of the developing world.

-- The issue is, not whether morality or expediency governs our policy, but how we can best promote our purposes. Every foreign policy must combine a concern for the ideal with an attention to what is practical. Tension is inevitable between

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Partnership between Congress and the Executive will
depend, not only on an effort to view the issues in parallel
terms, but on an active commitment to cooperation and goodwill
within our government:

We need for
--- There must be close consultation. During our tenure in
to the senior officials concerned with foreign
office, President Ford and I have made strenuous efforts to
consult with Congress, both formally and informally. I pledge,
on behalf of the President, that these efforts will continue and
intensify.

We need for
--- There must be nonpartisanship. The Administration
actively seeks consensual support for our foreign policy. We
do not seek, or expect, a total and sterile agreement regardless
of party. True nonpartisanship is achieved, not by an impossible
unanimity, but by a debate which transcends narrow political

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## CONCLUSION

In 1947 at another moment of crisis calling for consensus and creation, a member of the Senate recalled Lincoln's words to the Congress during *crisis a century ago*: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

For more than a decade our country has been dismayed by war and disheartened by constitutional crisis. We have often been more conscious of what divides than of what unites us. But this time of travail has brought us a new, more mature national strength. We have glimpsed the limits of power, but

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we also have felt the strength of our resilience. I believe
we will emerge with a new realism, a new confidence, a new
readiness for the future. Adversity has never daunted
Americans. It has hardened and honed a creative and
courageous pioneering spirit.

More than once have we learned that this century demands
much of America. Now we are challenged once again, to help
ourselves and the world find the way from a time of despair
to a time of hope. It is the challenge of recapturing for our
country the dynamism and probity we held at the time of the
Marshall Plan -- to recapture qualities which persuaded the
greater part of mankind that the flourishing of this Republic was
important to the well-being and the progress of the world.

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There is no doubt that it is only our country which can take
no other country can or will,
the lead in structuring a response to these new global challenges.

Our economy, our military strength, our background of com-
mercial and cultural experience and influence in the world sets
us apart. Other major nations recognize this and now, once
again, are looking to us for leadership. With the challenges
we face, with the high expectations placed upon us, there is no
more time for self-deprecation or doubt. We must turn to this
work united in our resolve and conception of what will be required
if we are to transform challenge into opportunity and opportunity
into achievement.

For two centuries in no area of our national life have we
been more united than in our view of America's meaning for
the world. Now as we strive to achieve a new balance between
our limits and our potential, between our new sense of the

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possible and our continuing striving for the ideal, let us remember
that our influence for good or ill will be measured by the world's
assessment of our constancy and self-confidence. Our foreign
policy will mean little if other nations see our actions as unre-
flective of a coherent national purpose or consensus. No foreign
policy -- no matter how creative or courageous -- can succeed
if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of
none.

We have no illusions that complete agreement on every
issue can ever be achieved. No genuine democracy can
obtain, nor should it strive for, total unanimity. But it does
mean that we can chart a common course and achieve a new
consensus about our larger purposes as a nation. For with it,
history could remember this as a time of great national

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creativity and of truly major accomplishment. The times and
circumstances call out for us to rise above narrow conceptions,
to make the kind of lasting and fundamental choices which
'comes' only once in a generation. Let us join together in that
endeavor.