Draft IV

4/7/80

ASNE SPEECH

April 10, 1980

We are at the beginning of one of our quadrennial
debates about foreign policy. Its forms have become
stylized as a Japanese kabuki play. The party in office
claims that it inherited a debacle and by a near miraculous
effort succeeded in raising our prestige to unprecedented
heights. The party out of office assails the prevailing
chaos and promises a radically new start. Friends and
adversaries watch some in bewilderment, some in dismay
as leaders only recently insisting on the permanent
validity of their views change places and contest who will
emerge as paragon, who as villain.

In this we court two grave dangers. For our own public
the process creates the impression that the foreign policy
of the United States is only a reflection of the idio-
syncracy of the different candidates. It masks the funda-
mental lesson which we seem to have forgotten: that the

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national interest of the United States does not change in
years divisible by four; if we are to shape events
rather than become their prisoner, it must be pursued
consistently and purposefully over extended periods of
of time.

And for the other nations of the world, the con-
troversy is profoundly unsettling whatever the side of the
debate on which they find themselves. America is
the linchpin of the free world's security; we are the
repository of the non-Communist world's hope for progress.
If every four years the premises of our foreign policy
are up for grabs America itself becomes an element of
instability. We give even our friends an incentive
to free themselves of the vagaries of our decision; we
sow the psychological seeds of neutralism.

Our national debate must take place within a frame-
work that permits us to work together as a united people
after the election is over. For our foreign policy challenge

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is monumental. I agree with the President that the danger
to our country is the gravest in the modern period.

I supported the Administration on the ratification
of the Panama Treaty, the Middle East arms sales, the
Camp David agreement, the Olympic boycott, and worked
to find a non-partisan basis for SALT. No doubt I
did not always avoid the reluctance to grant successors
the clear vision and profound wisdom that in hindsight
I associate with my stewardship. Other Republicans, too,
may well have strayed from the dispassionate insight and
analysis which all of us associate with the Grand Old
Party.

But whatever administration is in office bears the
principal responsibility for setting the tone of our
national debate. And it cannot be denied that it has been
almost unprecedentedly partisan. Three years ago I
said that "every administration proclaims its desire to
change the world. It is the special characteristic of
this administration to think it created the world." A

joke has turned into bitter reality. An administration
that can claim that it found NATO "weak and dispirited"
and has now "rejuvenated" the North Atlantic Alliance, and
that it is the first to have friendly relations with both
Japan and China, raises doubts about its grip on reality.

An administration that in its fourth year in office
blames its predecessors for every difficulty and that
indeed makes the confessions of error a key instrument of
policy, inevitably invites the question whether anyone
relying on us does not run the risk of later disavowal.

One cannot make history by rewriting it; a government
exists to find solutions to its problems, not alibis.

An administration capable of the innuendo that one of the
most decent men ever to have occupied the Presidency
needlessly risked American lives in a previous hostage
situation for a transient popularity tempts an equally
unworthly examination of its own motives, especially when
its chief negotiator for it appears to be the President's
principal political operative. And it raises the question
whether it may not be crossing the line from prudence

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to impotence and thus be generating new pressures and
dangers by its ostentatious abjuring of the
Whoever is victorious in November will find that he needs a unified people
behind him because
resort to force./ the present international situation is
precarious without precedent. We are sliding towards a
world out of control, with our relative military power
declining, with our economic lifeline increasingly
vulnerable to blackmail, with hostile radical forces growing
in every continent and with the number of countries
willing to stake their future on our professions
dwindling.

We did not arrive at this point all at once or
entirely in one Administration, though I believe that
this administration has accelerated most dangerous
trends. Our peril is structural. It cannot be removed
by rhetoric or quick fixes. It requires a sustained
national effort over an extended period of time. There
are, I believe, three interrelated issues which must
be addressed coherently and objectively: the military
balance; the geopolitical equation; the attitude towards

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the process of change in the world. The temptations
of our electoral process will not excuse our failure
to address these questions. For they are beyond partisan-
ship and personality. They touch our future as a nation
whoever shall be the next President -- or the next and
the next as well.

The Balance of Power

the
It can no longer be seriously denied that/overall
military balance is shifting sharply against us. What-
ever the causes, unless recent trends are reversed, the
1980's will be a period of vulnerability such as we have
not experienced since the early days of the Republic.
We confront, in the 1980's, a period of vulnerable
American land-based strategic forces; relatively invulner-
able Soviet land-based strategic forces; a shifting balance
against us in theater nuclear forces in Europe; and continua-
tion of the long-standing Western inferiority in forces for
regional defence.

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Perhaps we are fortunate that the Iranian and
Afghanistan crises illuminated our military deficiencies
while the full extent of the danger was still in the
future. Once awakened, we have the opportunity to redress
the balance but only if we act energetically. I do
not suggest that we could have prevented these particular
crises by military action. But it is clear that these
events *must* remind us of our inability to project forces
quickly into that vital region or else they will be
the precursor of even graver challenges later.

For thirty years the defense of the West relied on
our strategic superiority to compensate for our inferiority
in conventional forces. That period has now ended, perhaps
inevitably. Once we lost the ability to destroy the
Soviet retaliatory forces at acceptable cost to ourselves,
a general nuclear war spelled mutual suicide. Last year
in Brussels I pointed out that a strategy relying on such a
threat is incredible, irresponsible, and escapist--even

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for NATO. I was roundly criticized--the modern equivalent of shooting the messenger to avoid the message. But facts avoided are a debacle invited. A country that can defend its interests only by threatening mutual mass extermination of civilians dooms itself to progressive strategic, and therefore eventually geopolitical, paralysis.

Rarely in history has a nation so passively accepted such a radical change in the military balance. Never in history has an opponent achieved as large an advantage in so significant categories of military power as is now the case with the Soviet Union without attempting to translate it into some political benefit. The danger is not an imminent nuclear attack on us, but a heightened Soviet willingness to run risks in local conflicts. And that is the minimum consequence of what is ahead; the lesson of Afghanistan may indeed be that we have already arrived at this situation. We live in a world in turmoil; the safest prediction is continuing instability, some of it promoted by the Soviet Union, some of it only exploited by it. If current trends

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continue, nations and groups armed with Soviet weapons
will determine most outcomes, to the detriment of our
allies and friends. Since 1975 we have seen Cuban troops
in Angola and Ethiopia, two invasions of Shaba,a Soviet
base in South Yemen, East German so-called police forces
all over East Africa, the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan,
the Soviet-backed Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, and
the growth of terrorist groups globally. Unresisted
these tendencies spell eventual disaster. But our present
military establishment is not adequate to the challenge.
In direct US-Soviet confrontations of the Eighties, like
that in Cuba in 1962 or the Mideast alert in 1973, the
next occurrence will find the Soviet Union possessing the
quantitative superiority in strategic weapons that we
enjoyed when those crises were successfully resolved in our
favor. And its local advantage has grown exponentially.

So regional conflicts--whether deliberately promoted
or not--threaten increasingly to grow out of control
unless we drastically reverse the trend in all categories

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Tired phrases that our military establishment is second to none are soporifics for which we will pay a heavy penalty. It is this complacency which has brought us to our present pass over an extended period of time. In the Sixties we developed a strategic doctrine which based deterrence largely on theoretical calculations to inflict damage and this engineering approach produced equanimity in face of the relentless Soviet strategic build-up because we calculated only the damage we would inflict, not the inhibitions caused by the damage we would inflict. In the early Seventies, a Vietnam-era anti-military sentiment assaulted every military program whether or not it related to Vietnam. As a result the Anti-ballistic missile program--ABM-- passed by just one vote in 1969; forty Senators tried to stop all our MIRV testing; in 1971 we barely defeated the Mansfield amendment to cut our forces in Europe by 150 thousand men; in 1973 the Trident submarine program passed the

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Senate by only one vote. It was not till the advent of
President Ford that these trends were reversed.

Fairness requires the recognition that President
Carter inherited a difficult situation. But it must also
be stressed that the present Administration has compounded
the problem by systematically depreciating the role of
power, by cancelling or stretching out every strategic
program it inherited, by creating neither the forces nor
the doctrine to meet our mounting perils. And history
judges leaders by the adequacy of the response, not the
magnitude of the challenge.

To be sure, in the defense budget increases are announced,
sometimes of three, sometimes of five percent. But the base-
line for these calculations is unclear; the inflation rate
is underestimated or hedged; certain costs are understated.
The real increase is closer to one percent or nearly
irrelevant to the magnitude of the problem we face. The
current defense budget is some ________ billion behind the

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projections of the last five-year program submitted
by President Ford in 1977; it is even ____ billion
dollars behind the five-year program submitted by the
current Administration in ____.

The test of the adequacy of our program is not some
theoretical percentage increase but whether the gaps
which every reasonably objective observer--such as the
London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies--
has identified are being closed or maintained. If we
do not first narrow and ultimately eliminate these gaps
our perils will mount. And none of our current programs
closes these gaps.

For a few weeks after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,
I thought that we had learned some lessons. And I
therefore made several speeches in Europe urging support
for the Administration. Since then we have returned to
our posture of ambivalence. After the invasion of Afghanistan
the President submitted precisely the budget which had been

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prepared on the expectation that SALT would be ratified.

How can that possibly be adequate when in the meantime we have undertaken a major new defense commitment embracing the Persian gulf? Since then even that budget had been reduced as part of the anti-inflation program and has shrunken in real terms because it underestimated the inflation rate. Nor do the projected forces show any sense of urgency. The MX missile is planned for 1987. The lift for the first brigade of the ready deployment forces of which so much is made will not exist before 1985; that for the first division will not come into being before 1987 (aside from the fact that the forces are inadequate) How do we propose to cope in the first half of the decade generally recognized as our period of maximum danger?

The inadequacy of our forces reflects a reluctance to formulate a clear-cut doctrine to which threatened countries can rally and of which adversaries must take note.

The Administration has offered no rationale for which it

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proposes to relate our capabilities to our commitments.

Within two weeks of announcing the Carter doctrine the
President asserted that we alone could not defend the
vital Persian Gulf. Who then will join us? How can they
help? What is our strategy? What forces will be avail-
able near the area for its defense, especially as we seem
reluctant to undertake substantial deployments in the area?

How do we propose to meet our perils? How can our current
military establishment defend NATO, much less save distant
allies? Why should we be surprised if threatened countries
shy away from our protection?

These shortcomings in
my view reflect a profund ambivalence about the role of
power in the world. Too many key officials in the
second and third level of the Administration are graduates
of the debates of the Sixties. They feel guilty about
America's role in the world. They believe in a guilt
we must expiate rather than a purpose we should assert.
But we cannot avoid the responsibilities our power and
principles confer on us. Abdication does not purify us;

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it will create a vacuum which will first send to their
obstruction those that rely on us and eventually will
engulf us.

The Geopolitical Balance

This brings me to my second concern: the geopolitical
balance. By this I mean the assessments that determine
whether countries will even risk their self-defense, whether
moderates friendly to us, or radicals hostile to us,
dominate the Persian Gulf or Central America. It defines
the psychological conditions that determine whether
peaceful solutions of problems like the Arab-Israeli
dispute or Southern Africa are possible, or whether the
radical tide or Communist proxy intervention dooms all
prospects of moderation and progress.

The geopolitical balance is measured partly by
intangibles--by whether friends of the United States believe
they have a secure future, by whether they have confidence
in our ability to aid them against challenges and deter
outside threats to regional security.

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And it depends as well on *our* ability to perceive
trends and dangers before they become overwhelming.

A statesman must act on judgments about the future that
cannot be proved true when they are made. When the scope
for action is greatest, the knowledge on which to base
such action is often at a minimum; when knowledge is
at hand the scope for creative action has often disappeared.

In 1936, the movement of one French division could
have dissuaded Hitler from his march into the Rhineland.

If France had done so, the world might still be arguing
today whether Hitler was only a misunderstood nationalist
or really a maniac bent on world domination. By 1941
everyone knew that Hitler was a maniac bent on world domina-
tion--but the world paid for its psychological certainty
with millions of lives.

We face, I would submit, a similar challenge from the
Soviet Union--not because they are implementing a time-
bable for a world conquest as Hitler did but in the
sense that incremental challenges not resisted will lead

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inexorably to greater challenges, even if the Soviets
are only exploiting opportunities that come their way
in consequence of developments not all of which they
create. This was precisely the issue in Angola, in
Ethiopia, in South Yemen, in the Shaba, and finally
in Afghanistan. It was compounded and partly reflected
by the collapse, for whatever reason, of a friendly
government in Iran, which for 37 years had been a major
ally of the United States and had in turn been an important
bulwark of other moderate forces in the entire region.
Its collapse, avoidable or not, has let loose a whole
flood of inimical forces in the region.

After the Senate vote cutting off aid to Angola,
I warned on February 12, 1976, that the Soviet/Cuban
military intervention in Angola was the beginning of a
pattern which, if unresisted, "would have the gravest
consequences for peace and stability and it is one which
the United States treats with indifference only at the risk

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buying gravcrises at high cost later on." Since then Soviet arms, Soviet proxy troops, Soviet friendship treaties, and outright Soviet intervention have determined the direction of far too many changes in the world's political equation.

Precariously situated countries in the Middle East see the Soviet-supported Cuban advance coming up through Africa to right across the Red Sea in Ethiopia. They observe a Soviet base in South Yemen and a Soviet arms depot in Libya making other interventions easier. To them the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan coming eighteen months after an unopposed Communist coup in Kabul overshadows the Persian Gulf like the northern arm of a great pincer. They observe Vietnam swallowing Cambodia and seeking hegemony over Southeast Asia under the protection of a Soviet friendship treaty. They see Soviet-armed querrilas invading Morocco and radical upheavals sending Central America and buttressed by small Soviet combat force in Cuba. And they see no effective

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resistance.

This has its inevitable effect, which is to drive
friends toward neutralism and neutrals towards
radicalism. The Administration has explained many of its
actions as a novel approach to win the allegiance of the
Third World countries. But the outcome of the last confer-
ence of the non-aligned nations in Havana last September
demonstrated that the policy was built on quicksand. Never
has the Conference passed such stridently anti-American,
such unabashedly pro-Soviet resolutions, shocking even such
founders of the non-aligned movement as President Tito.

This suggests that the issue may have been mis-
conceived when put in terms of preference and allegiance.
For almost none of the countries immediately threatened
prefer the Soviet system. Their problem is the
pressure they face from outside military force or internal
subversion, the menace of radical groups flaunting their
implacable ideological hatred of America, undermining

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the balance of power even when they are not -- as they often
are--financed, armed, and trained by the Soviet bloc.

Somewhere, somehow the United States must show that it is
capable of rewarding a friend or penalizing an opponent.

It must be made clear after too long an interval that our
allies benefit from association with us and our enemies
suffer. The policy of self-accusation must end. It is
a simpleminded proposition perhaps, but for a great power it
is the prerequisite, indeed the definition of an effective
foreign policy.

## The Attitude Towards Domestic Change

Thirdly, what should be our attitude to the process
of domestic change in the world? The Administration view

we should embrace its
is that, votaries to win them to our side. By demonstrating
our moral values and concern for human rights-- if necessary
by condemning our own previous actions-- we will, so
it is said, gain the approbation of mankind and thus out-
flank the Soviets.

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Reality is more complex. It is true that American foreign policy must be grounded in the humane values of our people and of our democratic tradition. We would be neither faithful to ourselves nor effective if in an age of upheavals we defended every status quo.

The problem, however, is to relate these general propositions to the national interest of the United States in each concrete theater of actions. It is a hard fact, but true, that some societies friendly to us in key parts of the world and the Persian Gulf are governed by authoritarian conservative governments and that indeed there is no democratic regime in our sense in the area.

This is no accident, for constitutional democracy is the result of a process extending over centuries in the West. Forcefeeding the process of change in developing societies is not impossible, but it has the paradoxical consequence of involving us in permanent intervention at the precise moment when the mood in America is not exactly hospitable to the extension of our commitments and when we have dismantled

the intelligence capability on which such a policy would
importantly depend. Ironically those who have decried
covert intelligence activities have now launched the United
States on a policy of overt intervention far more intrusive
than was ever imagined in what currently mythology pictures
as the good Old days. Recent events should have taught
us that we do not necessarily serve our values by over-
throwing conservative regimes and then leaving the scene
of the accident. If we do not succeed in putting in their
place a moderate democratic alternative, our human rights
policy will wind up by making the world safe for anti-
American radicalism, more brutal governments evenless respectful
of human rights. All this tends to compound the geo-
political disintegration I have described earlier.

The acceleration of radical trends in the world
abetted by our policies is visible to all. Nicaragua
is often cited as a case history of the new enlighten-
ment. But I must question what we have in fact achieved

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when the human rights report of the State Department
lists four hundred executions and seven thousand prisoners in
the six months of the new dispensation. I note that a
Sandinista delegation visited Moscow to applaud the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan and to "condemn the campaign
launched by imperialist and reactionary forces..., to
undermine the unalienable right of the Democratic Republic
of Afghanistan's people...to go the way of progressive trans-
formation." Radical Marxist anti-American forces are
gaining in El Salvador; Castroite elements are already
implanted in Jamaica and Grenada and beginning the assault
in Guatemala. With such currents sweeping Central
America and the Caribbean, are we identifying with the
wave of the future or are we abetting our own progressive
isolation and irrelevance? Will Mexico in self-defense
be driven towards radicalism and anti-Americanism by
forces we encouraged but did not know how to channel?
Do we have a policy for dealing with these trends other

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than capitulating before them? Similar trends exist in
the Persian Gulf. The revolution in Iran has not eased
the lot of Iranians but has led to our progressive humila-
tion. And how do we relate our human rights professions
to the defense of our remaining friends in the Persian
Gulf and the Middle East, all of which fall short of
our domestic standards?

The result is that military, geopolitical and internal
factors combined to produce a growing sense of insecurity
and dissociation from the United States. (In what has
been called the "arc of crisis," we see India and Pakistan
both vying for Soviet favor; Iran is systematically
humiliating us and thereby undermining our position in the
area whatever the intentions of its leaders; Iraq is
encouraging radical forces inimical to key allies; South
Yemen and Ethiopia provide Soviet military bases; Libya
finances terrorism and anti-Americanism world-wide but
especially in Central Africa. A traditional friend,
Morocco, is under assault by Soviet-armed guerrillas and an

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old ally Turkey is sliding towards chaos at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Is it surprising that the few remaining moderate regimes are confused and apprehensive? Where would we be but for the miracle of Sadat's greatness?

Perhaps previous Administrations probably showed too little sensitivity to the problem of domestic change. Cut currently there is entirely too much insouciance about a process that could easily engulf us. In too many parts of the world, we are facing progressive irrelevance. We live in a hostile world in a weakened position and the first stage of wisdom is to stop pretending that we are better off because we are now universally loved. We must stand for our values, but statemanship is to relate purpose to necessity, not to rhetoric.

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## East-West Relations

In the age of thermonuclear weapons the management of East-West relations must always be a central aspect of American foreign policy. On it depend the prospects for peace, the attainment of security, and the hopes for a better future. The relationship between us and Moscow is inherently ambiguous. Ideology implies ineradicable conflict; technology compels coexistence. Geopolitical rivalry produces inevitable tension; modern weapons force a peaceful solution of outstanding issues. How to achieve both peace and justice, how to prevent the fear of nuclear war from turning into nuclear black-mail, is a central challenge for American statesmanship.

Coexistence with the Soviet Union has always raised moral dilemmas for Americans. Indeed it delayed our establishment of diplomatic relations with the USSR for over 16 years after the Bolshevik Revolution. And the same ambivalence persists. Today, liberals fear the military build-up and geopolitical vigilance that are the only

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basis for a secure relationship with the USSR; conserva-
tives are uneasy lest the process of negotiation with the
Soviet leaders tend to erode moral dividing lines, sap-
ping the West's will to resist and our public's support
for the necessary level of defense.

This explains why we have torn ourselves apart
for much of the last decade in a debate over whether
"containment" or "detente" should be the goal of our
policy toward the Soviet Union. The two concepts have
indeed become epithets. In reality, a sensible long-
term policy needs elements of both. We get into dif-
ficulty precisely when we misstate our alternatives.

It is no accident that the Administration which
three years ago proclaimed that it was "free of the inor-
dinate fear of Communism" allegedly afflicting its predeces-
sors is at a low point in its relationship with the Soviet
Union. An administration more emotionally, even sentimen-
tally attached to arms control than any other finds
itself stymied, despite insisting that arms control can

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stand on its own feet without linkage to other issues and
perhaps for that very reason. No doubt the principal
fault is the Kremlin's insatiable tendency to exploit
every strategic opportunity. There can be no peace with-
out self-restraint; there can be no coexistence while the
Soviet Union presses to the margins of the tolerable and
often beyond. The shifting balance of power is producing
unprecedented opportunities for Soviet pressures. Until
we close that "window" of Soviet opportunity by decisive
action we will be living precariously.

Beyond the military balance I also believe that we
have confused the Soviet leaders by erratic pronouncements
and unpredictable reactions. Erratic shifts whatever their
reason--whether from one Administration to another, or
within the term of one Administration, or from the tug of
war between Congress and the Executive--run the risk of
evaporating the restraints operating on Soviet conduct.

We have in the space of a few years repudiated the
SALT position of the previous Administration and then

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returned to its basic framework two months later; we can-
celled the neutron bomb and a year later pushed theater
nuclear weapons; we proclaimed that the Persian Gulf needed
no policeman and then announced a doctrine for its defense;
we asserted the importance of Pakistan for the defense of
the area, then put forward a program incompatible with
our stated objective, and finally dropped the entire
project. We repeatedly rejected "linkage," which would
have made progress in areas in which the Soviets had a
stake-such as trade or SALT--dependent on Soviet restraint
in fomenting tensions. This produced the spectacle that
arms control proceeded while Soviet proxy forces moved into
Ethiopia, while Soviet bases were established in South
Yemen, and while two Communist coups were taking place
in Afghanistan. And when Soviet troops moved to the
Khyber pass we suddenly rediscovered linkage with a ven-
geance. We have been unwilling to resist the encroach-
ments that taken singly can be explained away as marginal
until cumulatively they amount to a major erosion of free

world security. Paradoxically, by our acquiescence in
the initial stages, the Soviets may even have felt misled
when we later suddenly reacted--as we finally did after
Afghanistan.

And American hesitation is not just the product of
liberal inhibitions about intervention inherited from the
Vietnam experience; American conservatives too sometimes
seem more interested in building Fortress America and in
ideological rallying than in supporting efforts to resist
Soviet adventures overseas. This was painfully evident
in the Angola debacle of 1975.

I have supported the retaliatory steps announced by
the President since January toward the Soviet Union--
the deferral of SALT, the grain embargo, restriction on
access to high technology, the Olympic boycott. These
measures were the minimal response to Soviet aggression,
but they are only initial moves; they do not constitute a
strategy. Their effectiveness depends on a broad base
of international support. The Administration has been

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rightly disappointed in the reaction of many of our allies,
in particular the Europeans. It is indeed dismaying that the
industrial countries, who are more threatened than we by
the turmoil in the Persian Gulf, are reluctant to accept
the risks of a forward policy against the Soviet Union.
The Alliance will be jeopardized by a proposed division
of labor in which the Europeans seek to retain the benefits
of a relaxation of tensions while we assume the burdens
and risks of resisting Soviet expansionism.

Nevertheless, our allies also have grounds for
concern. Their hesitation and reluctance is not an ac-
cident. They have witnessed and been exposed to the same
vacillations and cacophony of voices I have described
with respect to East-West relations. They therefore ques-
tion for how long we will stick to our latest dispensation.

to gear their policies to ours,
If we want allies, we need a policy understandable both in
substance and style. Our partners must be able to relate
not only to the
immediate punitive steps, but to the long-term direction

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and thrust of our policy. Have we conveyed to them our
perception of what the long-range problem is? Are we
acting now in order to punish the Soviet Union for an
individual act, after which we will resume the previous
rhetoric and dialogue? Can our allies make sense of
a new doctrine that generates additional commitments but
no new forces? How are we reconciling containment and
detente? Are we committing ourselves to a long-term
strategy that our allies can understand, that our Congress
and public will sustain, and that will be carried out by
the leadership groups of both parties regardless of who
is victorious in November? And what is that strategy?

The questions must be answered lest we wind up with
empty posturing everywhere: on our side defiance
unrelated to purpose, with our allies conciliation devoid
of reality. I favor, as is clear, greater firmness and
vastly augmented defense. But I view them as the foundation
for a new approach to East-West diplomacy. We must never
forget the lesson of World War II, when the democracies

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failed to maintain the balance of power and thereby
invited aggression. But neither can we risk slighting
the lesson of World War I, when a war broke out even
despite the existence of a military balance, because
statesmen lost control over their military planning and
belligerent shortsighted conduct allowed an apparently minor
crisis to escalate into a cataclysm intended by no leader.

Some object to any negotiation with the Soviet Union
because it might lead to dangerous euphoria. I cannot
accept the view that the United States is incapable of con-
ducting a dialogue with the Soviet Union without succumbing
to euphoria or appeasement. Those who fear that a US-
Soviet negotiation _must_ inevitably lead to our moral dis-
armament have no faith in democracy. Our people under-
stand the moral difference between tyranny and freedom
and the necessity of both strength and survival; to main-
tain the proper balance is well within the capacity of
a resolute and confident leadership. So let us not
debate whether we should negotiate, but over what.

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Let us define an agenda which is neither sentimental nor bellicose, but geared to the necessities of peace in our age. We must avoid seeming to be driven into negotiations by the inevitable Soviet peace offensive; we should define a position to which our people and our allies can repair and which will make clear whether

In an age of thermonuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles, it is simply too dangerous for the two superpowers not to be in contact. A stable long-term future requires an American commitment to the balance of power--restoring it cannot be delayed for any diplomatic effort; a perception that actions in different spheres and different parts of the world are linked in reality whatever one's theoretical aversions to "linkage;" together with a willingness to settle outstanding issues on the basis of concreteness and reciprocity, not atmospheric goodwill.

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We must urgently strengthen our defenses and simultaneously explore a more stable and long-term future.

After our election, whoever is in office should be prepared to open a dialogue with the USSR. But he must also be prepared to learn the lessons of the past. The greatest threat to peace is the lack of restraint in Soviet political conduct, the tendency to exploit every tension and to work relentlessly to undercut the security and stability of free peoples. This must be stopped even in the interest of the Soviet Union. We will not be defeated by subterfuge; and when we awaken we shall resist, increasing the danger of war.

We must determine what Soviet intentions are and attempt to define the limits of acceptable behavior. The era of proxy forces, military pressures, and encouragement of terrorist forces must be ended; it is incompatible with relaxation of tensions with the United States and must be shown to be so. The Soviets must clearly understand this choice: they cannot combine detente and expansion, relaxation of tensions and the constant exploitation of all tensions.

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This requires a careful unsentimental marshalling of
penalties and incentives. We must remember that while
the men in the Kremlin do not mind playing on Western pre-
conceptions that identify diplomacy with warm personal
relations, they really do not know how to deal with a
sentimental American policy. They have come up through a
hard school and survived in a brutal environment that
ruthlessly weeds out the timid and the scrupulous. They do
not want to be "understood;" they seek to prevail. They
can make concessions only to objective reality, not to moral
imperatives or personal good will. In the jungle of
Soviet politics, no Soviet leader can justify conciliatory
or self-denying policies toward the outside world except
by stressing that such actions will eventually serve some
Soviet aims or are necessary to avoid jeopardizing Soviet
interests. It is surely within America's capacity to
construct appropriate incentives and risks, and thereby
bring some measure of stability to the East-West rela-
tionship.

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If a code of restraint can be elaborated, we should be prepared to resume the SALT process. At the present time, SALT is in limbo. We now have the worst of all possible worlds--the precarious willingness of both sides to observe an unratified treaty which is highly controversial in this country. This is no basis for a secure future or for a sensible East-West relationship because it gives the Soviets all the benefits of the agreement without some of the constraints in terms of verification or reduction. In my view we should either ratisfy it without the Protocol or abrogate it depending on how the political talks go.

In any event, the present SALT treaty is largely irrevelant to the weapons problem. If ratified next year it would only have four years to run, a shorter time than most weapons programs. In my view we would be better advised, if and when we return to the negotiating table, to aim at reaching a new agreement to run for an extended period, say 10-15 years, that would address and seek to limit the *next* cycle of weapons developments. In this case

-38-

we could also broaden the negotiation to include Soviet
theater nuclear weapons, as well as planned NATO deployments,
in consultation with our allies. But I cannot stress sufficiently strongly that all of this presupposes reliable
assurances of an end to the current Soviet geopolitical offensive. If these are unobtainable we have no choice
except confrontation, in which our superior resources are
bound to be decisive provided we are dealing with our future
as a united people.

## Conclusion

Let me conclude on a hopeful note. Almost all the
problems outlined here are self-inflicted. We should
keep in mind that we alone have two times the Gross
National Product of the Soviet Union and, with our allies,
five times the Gross National Product of the Soviet Union.
If we are militarily behind it is through a lack of will
not resources; it is within our capacity to rectify it.

We should remember that the Soviet system of government
has never managed a legitimate succession. There have only