4/9/80

READING COPY

ASNE SPEECH

We are at the beginning of another of our quadrennial
debates over foreign policy. Its forms have become as
stylized as a Japanese kabuki play. The party in office
claims that it inherited a debacle and by a near-miraculous
effort has raised our prestige to new heights. The
party out of office assails the current debacle and promises
a radically new start.

This process courts two dangers. For our own public,
it creates the impression that the foreign policy of the
United States reflects only the idiosyncrasies of
personalities. And for the other nations of the world,
if every four years the basic premises of our foreign policy
seem to be up for grabs, America itself becomes an element
of instability in the world. We must make clear that our
national purposes do not change every four years. [We give
our friends an incentive to free themselves of the vagaries of
our political process; we sow the psychological seeds of
neutralism.]

Therefore, our national debate must take place in
a framework that permits us to work together as a united
people after the election is over.

I supported the Administration on the ratification of
the Panama Canal treaties, Middle East arms sales, the
Camp David agreement, the retaliatory steps in response to
Afghanistan; and I worked to find a nonpartisan basis for
SALT. No doubt I did not always ascribe to my successors the
clear vision and profound wisdom that in hindsight I
associate with my stewardship. Other Republicans, too,
may well have strayed from the calm, disinterested analysis
which all of us normally associate with the Grand Old Party.

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But a major responsibility for setting the tone of
our national debate rests with the incumbents. And the
present Administration, frankly, has been unusually
partisan in its comments. An administration that can claim
that it "rejuvenated" a "weak and dispirited" NATO
Alliance, that it is the first to have friendly relations
with both Japan and China, raises doubts about its grasp
of reality. An administration capable of the innuendo
that President Ford, one of the most decent men ever to occupy
the Presidency, needlessly risked American lives for a
transient popularity in a previous hostage situation surely
complicates the achievement of national unity in the present
dangerous phase. One cannot make history by rewriting
it. A government's job is to find solutions to its problems,
not alibis.

The Balance of Military Power

First of all, it can no longer be seriously denied that the overall military balance is shifting sharply against us. Every objective observer--such as the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London--has reached this grim conclusion. Whatever the causes, unless current 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. In this decade we confront, for the first time, a potentially unfavorable strategic balance; a shifting balance against us in theater nuclear forces in Europe; and continuation of the long-standing Western inferiority in forces for regional defense.

For thirty years the defense of the free world 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

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I pointed out that a strategy relying on such a threat
is incredible, irresponsible, and escapist--even for NATO.

I was severely criticized--today's equivalent of shooting
the messenger to avoid the message. But a danger ignored
is debacle invited. A country that can defend its interests
only by threatening the mutual mass extermination of
civilians dooms itself to strategic, and therefore
eventually geopolitical, paralysis.

The danger is less an imminent nuclear attack on us,
than an increased Soviet willingness to run risks in local
conflicts. And that seems to me the minimum consequence
of what is ahead. 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.] With our
present military establishment, regional conflicts, whether
deliberately promoted by the Soviets or not, threaten increasingly
to exceed our ability to respond unless we drastically reverse
the growing imbalance in <u>all</u> categories of military power.

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We will pay a heavy penalty if we continue to take
comfort in soporific assurances that our military establishment
is still "second to none." [ It is this complacency which has
brought us to our present pass over an extended period of time. ]

Fairness requires the recognition that President Carter
inherited a difficult situation caused largely by the debates
of the Vietnam war. But it must also be noted that the Admini-
stration has compounded the problem by systematically
deprecating the role of power and by cancelling or stretching
out every strategic program it inherited, [ by treating the
whole defense budget more as a bargaining chip to win
approval for SALT than as a serious instrument of national
policy. History judges leaders by the adequacy of their
response, not the magnitude of the challenge. ]

To be sure, in the current defense budget there are
increases, somewhere between three and five percent.

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But the baseline for these calculations is unclear; the
inflation rate is underestimated or hedged; key costs are
understated. It turns out that the _real_ increase is
closer to one percent--or nearly irrelevant to the magnitude
of the problem we face. [In any event, the adequacy of
our response is not measured in the percentage of budgetary
increase but by whether we are closing the gaps which every
objective study reveals. And] the gaps which every objective
study reveals are simply not being closed; in fact many of
them are still growing. History judges leaders by the
adequacy of the response, not the magnitude of the challenge.

For a few weeks after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,
it seemed that we had learned some lessons.

Since then we have been sliding back to our posture
of ambivalence. Despite the invasion of Afghanistan,
the President submitted precisely the defense budget
that had been prepared _before_ Afghanistan and on
the expectation that SALT would be ratified. How can that

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forces will be available near the area for its defense?

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 the Administra-
tion's profound ambivalence about the role of power in the
world. Too many of its officials give the impression of
feeling ashamed of American power and being fearful of
military strength. They seem to operate on the premise that
there is a guilt we must expiate rather than values we
should defend.

Yet we cannot avoid the responsibilities that our power
and principles confer upon us. Adication will not purify
us; it only creates a vacuum that will send to their
destruction those who rely on us. At some point prudence
turns into weakness which tempts danger; the ostentatious
renunciation of force has the paradoxical consequence of
magnifying risks. We will either become ensnared in
defense or a fearful pain will be paid - first by ourselves,
then by others; in time - and fearfully - it will be paid by us.

The Geopolitical Balance


This bring me to my second concern: the geopolitical
balance. By this I mean the alignments and assessments that
determine whether moderates friendly to us, or radicals
hostile to us, dominate key regions; whether our alliances
are vital or sliding towards lassitude.

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; by whether, indeed,
they will even risk engaging in self-defense--as
illustrated by Pakistan's refusal of our offer of military
aid.

And it depends as well on <u>our</u> ability to perceive
trends and dangers <u>before</u> they become overwhelming. A
stateman must act on judgments about the future that cannot
be proved true when they are made.

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 important bulwark of other moderate forces in the entire region.

Four years ago, after the Senate vote cutting off aid to Angola, I warned 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 of buying graver crises at higher cost later on." That is exactly what happened.

Precariously situated countries in the Middle East, see the Soviet-supported Cuban advance coming up through Africa to Ethiopia right across the Red Sea. They observe a Soviet base in South Yemen threatening the Arabian peninsula; they see Soviet-armed guerrillas invading Morocco, a traditional friend and moderate government; they see a Soviet arms depot in Libya--a precursor of future interventions in Africa and the Middle East.

To them the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan 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 notice that India and Pakistan are both vying for Soviet favor. Even in the Western Hemisphere they see radical upheavals rending Central America and the Caribbean, buttressed by a small Soviet combat force in Cuba. And they see no effective resistance.

This has its inevitable effect, which is to accelerate the demoralization of all moderate allies, driving friends toward neutralism and neutrals toward radicalism. The Administration has explained certain of its actions as an effort to win the approbation and allegiance of the Third World countries.

12 (D)

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.

It is a simpleminded proposition perhaps, but for a great
power it is the prerequisite, indeed the definition of an
effective foreign policy.

Moreover each new upheaval tends to start a rockslide. In the wake of Nicaragua, 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 not be driven towards radicalism and anti-Americanism by forces we encouraged but did not know how to channel?

Similar trends exist, of course, in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East.

How do we relate our human rights professions to the defense of our remaining friends in that vital area when most of their domestic procedures fall short of our standards and when crude attempts to reform them invite chaos?

Is it surprising that the few remaining moderate regimes are confused and apprehensive? Unless we get our priorities straight, external pressures will accelerate internal upheavals and produce a growing sense of insecurity and a growing trend of dissociation from the United States. Where would we be in the Middle East but for the miracle of Sadat's greatness?

20 (N)

Previous administrations perhaps showed too little sensitivity to the problem of domestic change. We do need a concept of change to which moderate democratic humane forces can rally. But currently there is entirely too much insouciance about a process that could easily engulf us.

We live in a more hostile world today, in a weakened position, and the beginning of wisdom is to stop pretending that we are better off now because we have made obvious our desire to be universally loved.

## US-Soviet Relations

Finally, let me address myself to the current crisis in US-Soviet relations.

In the age of thermonuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles, the interaction between the two superpowers must always be a central concern of American foreign policy.

On this relationship depend the prospects for peace, our security and survival, and the hopes of the whole world for a better future.

Our relationship with Moscow is inherently ambiguous.

Ideology implies an ineradicable conflict; nuclear weaponry

compels coexistence. Geopolitical rivalry produces inevitable tension; military technology necessitates the peaceful solution of outstanding issues. How to achieve both peace and justice, how to prevent the fear of nuclear war from turning into nuclear blackmail, is a central challenge for American statesmanship.

Coexistence with the Soviet Union has always raised moral dilemmas for Americans.

This explains why we have lacerated ourselves for decades in a debate over whether "containment" or "detente" or something else should be the goal of our policy toward the Soviet Union. Those two concepts have indeed become epithets. In reality, a sensible long-term policy needs elements of both. We get into difficulty precisely when we misstate our alternatives.

It is no accident that an administration that three
years ago proclaimed its emancipation from "the ordinate
fear of Communism" allegedly afflicting its predecessors
has brought us to an historic low point in our relationship
with the Soviet Union. An administration more emotionally,
even sentimentally devoted to arms control than any other,
that proudly proclaimed that arms control could stand
on its own feet without linkage to other issues, now finds
its SALT treaty stymied--perhaps for that very reason. No
doubt the principal fault is the Kremlin's insatiable
tendency to exploit every strategic opportunity.

But it seems to me also true that we have confused
the Soviet leaders by inconsistent pronouncements and
unpredictable reactions.

This Administration has in the space of a few years
repudiated the SALT position of the previous administration
and then returned to its basic framework two months later;
we cancelled 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 announced the importance of Pakistan to the security 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 exploiting tensions. And after the Soviet armies reached the Khyber Pass we rediscovered linkage with a vengeance. We have been unwilling to resist these seemingly marginal encroachments that cumulatively now amount to a major erosion of the free world's 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.

This American hesitation is not just the product of liberal inhibitions about intervention inherited from the Vietnam experience. Some American conservatives, too, at times seem more interested in building Fortress America and in patriotic rhetoric than in efforts to resist Soviet adventures overseas. This last was painfully evident in the Angola debate of 1975.

All Americans should support the retaliatory steps announced by the President since January toward the Soviet Union. These were the minimal response to Soviet aggression, but they are only reflex reactions; they do not constitute a strategy.

The Administration has been rightly disappointed in the conduct of many of our allies, in particular the Europeans.

It is indeed dismaying that the industrial countries that are even 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 Western Alliance will surely be jeopardized by the new theory of "division of labor" by which the Europeans seek to retain the benefits of a relaxation of tensions while we assume all the burdens and risks of resisting Soviet expansionism.

Nevertheless, our allies also have grounds for concern.

They have been exposed to the same vacillations and cacophony of voices I have described with respect to East-West relations. They therefore wonder how long we will stick to our latest proclaimed course.

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But neither can we risk ignoring the lesson of World
War I, when a war broke out _despite_ the existence of a
military balance, when statesmen lost control over their
military planning and shortsighted posturing allowed an apparently
minor crisis to escalate into a cataclysm that no leader intended
or knew how to stop.

An attitude of rhetorical recalcitrance guarantees that
we will be driven to negotiations in the worst circumstances,
with our country torn apart by a debate over our "intransigence" and
our allies buffeted by domestic assaults portraying America as the
cause of world tensions.

So let us not debate whether we should negotiate, but on
what terms. Let us articulate our own purposes, and not be
driven into negotiations by the inevitable Soviet peace offensive.
Let us transcend the labels of liberal and conservative as far as
our foreign policy is concerned. They neither explain nor
illuminate our necessities. We should spell out a position to which
our people and our allies can repair, and negotiate at our own
pace and on our own agenda.

In the thermonuclear age, it is simply too dangerous for
the two superpowers not to be in contact.

After our election, whoever is in office should be prepared to open a dialogue with the USSR. But both sides must learn the lessons of the past. The greatest threat to peace is the Soviet tendency to exploit every tension for unilateral gain, undermining the security of free peoples. This must be stopped--even in the Soviet interest; the American people will not be defeated without noticing it, and when we react we shall resist--increasing the danger of war. Our goal in East-West diplomacy must be to determine what Soviet intentions are and spell out the limits of acceptable conduct. The era of proxy forces, military pressures, and encouragement of terrorists must be ended; it is incompatible with relaxation of tensions with the United States and must be shown to be so.

It is surely within America's capacity to establish the penalties and incentives to affect Soviet decisions and bring some measure of stability to the East-West relationship. We must avoid the temptation to identify progress with good personal relations or seek release in largely atmospheric gestures.

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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 up to us to establish these
realities by our own purposeful, consistent conduct.

If progress is possible towards a code of restraint,
we should be prepared to resume the SALT process. In my view
we would be well advised, if and when we return to the
negotiating table, to aim at a _new_ SALT agreement to run for
an extended period, say 10-15 years, that would limit the
next cycle of weapons developments. In this case, 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 that all of this
presupposes reliable assurances of an end to the current
Soviet geopolitical offensive. If these are unobtainable
we may have no choice except confrontation, and we only
weaken our position by implying, as is so often done, that
an arms race might work against our interests or that
a confrontation would present us with greater problems
than our adversary.

## Conclusion

Let me conclude, in other words, on a hopeful note. Almost all the problems outlined here are self-inflicted. We should keep in mind that we alone have twice the Gross National Product of the Soviet Union and, with our allies, five times the Gross National Product of the Soviet Union.

We should remember that the Soviet system of government has never managed a legitimate succession. There have only been four leaders in the entire history of the Soviet Union in over 60 years. Two died in office, the third was replaced by a palace coup, and the fourth is determined to return to the earlier tradition.

Given the decrepitude of the current leadership, such a system cannot represent the wave of the future. Nor has any planned economy ever been able to match the performance of a market economy.

Stagnation seems inherent in the Soviet system. The Kremlin's dilemma is that one cannot run a modern economy with total planning, but it may also be impossible to run the Soviet system without such planning.

Two partly contradictory trends are thus involved.

We face a period of maximum danger in the next five years,
while the military balance is still tipping against us
and the cycle of local revolutions is playing itself out.

After that, the certainty is that Soviet domestic problems
will mount, and our new defense programs can restore the
equilibrium. But before then, Soviet reformers and Soviet

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conservatives may be able to unite on only one set of goals:
to secure their international environment brutally and
urgently before reassessing their domestic system. It is
within our power to close off the avenue of adventurism, but
the time is growing short. As is often the case, the seemingly
boldest course is really the safest; procrastination will
only prolong and thereby magnify our danger. But once
we do so, we face an historic opportunity. Let us make clear
that we are ready for a more constructive future: a world
free of the danger of nuclear blackmail; a world in which
mankind's desire for peace does not become a weapon in the
hand of the most ruthless but is allied to the determination
of the just; a world of hope and of progress. With all
our travail we remain the most fortunate people in the
world.

History will not do our work for us. But history
tells us that we can help ourselves.

4/9/80

ASNE SPEECH

April 10, 1980

This process courts two dangers. For our own public,
it creates the impression that the foreign policy of the
United States reflects only the idiosyncracies of whoever is the
incumbent. It masks a fundamental lesson which we seem to
have forgotten: that the national interest of the United States
does not change in years divisible by four.

And for the other nations of the world, the controversy
is profoundly unsettling, whether they are foes watching in
bewilderment or friends observing in dismay. America is the

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linchpin of the free world's security, the repository of
the world's hope for progress. If every four years the
basic premises of our foreign policy are up for grabs,
America itself becomes an element of instability in the
world. We give our friends an incentive to free themselves
of the vagaries of our political process; we sow the
psychological seeds of neutralism.

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(N)

But a major responsibility for setting the tone of
our national debate rests with the incumbents. And the
present Administration, frankly, has been unusually partisan.
An administration that can claim that it "rejuvenated"
a "weak and dispirited" NATO Alliance, that it is the first
to have friendly relations with both Japan and China, raises
doubts about its grasp of reality. An administration capable
of the innuendo that President Ford, one of the most decent
men ever to occupy the Presidency, needlessly risked American
lives for a transient popularity in a previous hostage
situation tempts an equally unworthy examination of its own
motives in the present situation. An administration that
in its fourth year in office continues to blame its
predecessors for every difficulty, and indeed seems to have
made the confession of prior error a key instrument of policy,

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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's job is to find solutions
to its problems, not alibis.

Whoever is victorious in NOvember will find that he
needs a unified people behind him because he will face a
monumental challenge in foreign affairs. I happen to agree
with President Carter that the danger to our country is
the gravest in the modern period. 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 friendship dwindling.

We did not arrive at this point all at once or during
one administration--though I believe that this Administration
has accelerated the most dangerous trends. Our peril

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is structural and conceptual. It requires a sustained
national effort over an extended period of time whoever
shall be the next President--or the next and the next as
well. There are, I believe, four interrelated issues that
must be addressed: First, the military balance; second,
the geopolitical equation; third, the attitude towards the
process of change in the world; and fourth, US-Soviet
relations.

The Balance of Military Power

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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. If they
do nothing else, these events _must_ remind us of our inability
to project forces quickly into vital regions, or else they
will be the precursor of even graver challenges.

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I was severely criticized--today's equivalent of shooting
the messenger to avoid the message. But a danger ignored
is a debacle invited. A country that can defend its interests
only by threatening the mutual mass extermination of
civilians dooms itself to 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 many significant categories of military power without
attempting to translate it into some political benefit.

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prediction is continuing instability, some of it promoted by
the Soviet Union, some of it only exploited by it. Since
1975, in Africa, in the Middle East, in Southeast Asia,
radical forces with Soviet weapons, or Cuban proxy troops,
and now the Red Army itself, have determined the outcome in
almost every local conflict, to the detriment of our allies
and friends. If this process continues and leads to direct
US-Soviet confrontations, like that in Cuba in 1962 or the
Mideast alert in 1973, it will be the Soviet Union which
will possess the quantitative superiority in strategic
weapons that we enjoyed when those and comparable crises were
successfully resolved in our favor. And the Soviet local
advantage has grown exponentially. Thus regional conflicts,
whether deliberately promoted or not, threaten increasingly
to exceed our ability to respond unless we drastically
reverse the growing imbalance in all categories of military
power.

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We will pay a heavy penalty if we continue to take
comfort in soporific assurances that our military establishment
is still "second to none." It is this complacency which
has brought us to our present pass over an extended period
of time. In the 1960's, American strategic doctrine based
deterrence largely on our theoretical capacity to inflict
civilian casualties and economic damage on the Soviet Union,
regardless of the size of the Soviet forces. This confused
strategy with economic analysis. It not only overlooked
the moral inhibitions that would surely affect an American
President's willingness to launch such an attack; it also
encouraged equanimity in the face of the relentless Soviet
strategic buildup. Then in the early 1970's, a Vietnam-era
anti-military sentiment assaulted every defense program
whether or not it related to Vietnam. The anti-ballistic
missile system (the ABM) passed the Senate by just one vote
in 1969; forty Senators then tried to stop all our MIRV

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testing; in 1971 we barely defeated the Mansfield amendment
to cut our forces in Europe by 150,000 men; in 1973 the Trident
submarine program passed the Senate by only one vote. It
was not until the advent of President Ford that these
trends were reversed.

Fairness requires the recognition that President Carter
thus inherited a difficult situation. But it must also
be noted that the present Administration has compounded the
problem by systematically deprecating the role of power,
by cancelling or stretching out every strategic program it
inherited, by treating the whole defense budget more as a
bargaining chip to win approval for SALT than as a serious
instrument of national policy. History judges leaders by
the adequacy of their response, not the magnitude of the
challenge.

To be sure, in the current defense budget there are
increases, somewhere between three and five percent. But

11

the baseline for these calculations is unclear; the
inflation rate is underestimated or hedged; key costs are
understated. It turns out that the _real_ increase is
closer to one percent--or nearly irrelevant to the magnitude
of the problem we face. And in any event, the adequacy of
our response is not measured in the percentage of budgetary
increase but by whether we are closing the gaps which every
objective study reveals. And these gaps are simply not
being closed; in fact many of them are still growing.

For a few weeks after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,
it seemed that we had learned some lessons. And I therefore
made several speeches in Europe urging hesitant allies to
support the Administration. Since then we are sliding
back to our posture of ambivalence. Despite the invasion of
Afghanistan, the President submitted precisely the defense
budget that had been prepared _before_ Afghanistan and on
the expectation that SALT would be ratified. How can that

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possibly be adequate when in the meantime we have under-
taken a major new defense commitment embracing the Persian
Gulf? Since then even that budget appears to have been cut
further in the new anti-inflation program. Nor do the
projected forces show any sense of urgency. The MX
missile is planned for 1987. The air-and sealift for the
first brigade of the Rapid Deployment Forces of which so
much is made will not exist before 1985; that for the first
division will not come into being quite before 1987 (besides
which, the force level is inadequate).

How do we propose to cope in the first half of the
decade before this new capability comes into being? How
does the Administration propose to relate our capabilities
to our new commitments? Within two weeks of announcing the
Carter Doctrine, the President acknowledged that we alone
could not defend the vital Persian Gulf. Who then will
join us? How can they help? What is our strategy? What

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Yet we cannot avoid the responsibilities that our power
and principles confer upon us. Abdication will not purify
us; it only creates a vacuum that will send to their
destruction those who rely on us. At some point prudence
turns into weakness which tempts danger; the ostentatious
renunciation of force has the paradoxical consequence of

14

magnifying risks. The fate of those who have fallen under
Communist rule since 1975 makes clear that such hesitations
can no longer parade under the banner of superior morality.
At first the price for our ambivalence will be paid by
others; in time--and fearfully--it will be paid by us.

The Geopolitical Balance

This bring me to my second concern: the geopolitical
balance. By this I mean the alignments and assessments that
determine whether moderates friendly to us, or radicals
hostile to us, dominate key regions; whether our alliances
are vital or sliding towards lassitude. It determines
whether peaceful solutions of problems like the Arab-Israel
dispute or Southern Africa are possible, or whether the
radical tide or Communist proxy intervention dooms all
prospects of moderation and progress.

15

And it depends as well on _our_ ability to perceive
trends and dangers _before_ they become overwhelming. A
stateman 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 least; when certain knowledge is at hand,
the scope for creative action has often disappeared.

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really a maniac bent on world domination. By 1941 everyone knew that Hitler was a maniac bent on world domination-- but the world paid for its insistence on psychological certainty with millions of lives.

We face, I would submit, a similiar challenge from the Soviet Union--not because they are necessarily implementing a timetable for world conquest but in the sense that incremental challenges not resisted will lead inexorably to greater challenges, even if the Soviets are only exploiting opportunities that come their way. This was precisely the issue when Soviet-supported Cuban troops occupied Angola, intervened in Ethiopia, sponsored two invasions of Zaire, and established a base in South Yemen; when there were two Communist coups in Afghanistan; and when finally the Soviet Army occupied that unhappy country. The problem 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

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important bulwark of other moderate forces in the entire
region. This development is a major cause of the slowdown
of the Mideast peace process, as moderates like Egypt,
Israel, and Jordan feel increasingly isolated, threatened,
and constrained. The increasing climate of insecurity in
the Persian Gulf affects not only political decisions but
economic decisions, including OPEC's behavior on oil
prices.

Four years ago, after the Senate vote cutting off aid
to Angola, I warned that the Soviet/Cuban military inter-
vention 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 of buying graver
* crises at higher cost later on."
Since then Soviet arms,
Soviet proxy troops, Soviet friendship treaties, and outright
Soviet intervention have determined the outcome of far too

* News Conference, February 12, 1976.

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many local upheavals in the world's political alignments.

Precariously situated countries in the Middle East see the Soviet-supported Cuban advance coming up through Africa to Ethiopia right across the Red Sea. They observe a Soviet base in South Yemen threatening the Arabian peninsula; they see Soviet-armed guerrillas invading Morocco, a traditional friend and moderate government; they see a Soviet arms depot in Libya--a precursor of future interventions in Africa and the Middle East. To them the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan now--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 notice that India and Pakistan are both vying for Soviet favor. Even in the Western Hemisphere they see radical upheavals rending Central America and the

19

This has its inevitable effect, which is to accelerate
the demoralization of all moderate allies, driving friends
toward neutralism and neutrals toward radicalism. The
Administration has explained certain of its actions as an
effort to win the approbation and allegiance of the Third
World countries. But the Conference of the Non-aligned
Nations in Havana last September demonstrated that such a
policy was built on quicksand. Never has the Conference
passed such stridently anti-American, such unabashedly pro-
Soviet resolutions, shocking even such a pillar of the non-
aligned movement as President Tito. The radicalism of many
Third World countries cannot be moderated by a more
"understanding" American posture; they object to our existence
or social structure, not to our policies. And the closer
we attempt to approach toward them, the more they are likely

20

to move further away from us simply to maintain their
ideological purity.

Even with the less radical Third World countries--and
they are still the majority--the issue is misconceived if
put in terms of approbation and allegiance. For hardly any
of the countries immediately threatened prefers 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 the balance of power even
when they are not financed, armed, and trained by the Soviet
bloc--as they often are.

21

The Attitude Towards Domestic Change

Thirdly, what should be our attitude to the process
of domestic change in the world? The Administration contends
that by demonstrating our moral values and concern for human
rights--if necessary by condemning our own previous actions--
we will gain the approbation of mankind and thus outflank
the Soviets.

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
effective nor faithful to ourselves if we sought to defend
every status quo in an age of upheavals.

The problem, however, is to relate this truism to the
national interest of the United States in concrete situations.
It is a hard fact, but true, that some societies whose

22

security is vital to us--particularly in the Persian Gulf--
are governed by authoritarian conservative regimes. In
the West constitutional democracy resulted from an evolution
extending over centuries. Forcefeeding the process in
developing societies is not impossible, but it has the
paradoxical result of involving us in permanent global
intervention at the precise moment when we have supposedly
learnt our limits in the aftermath of the Vietnam experience.

At the same time we have dismantled the intelligence
capability on which such interventionism would realistically
depend. Ironically, many of those who have decried covert
intelligence activities are urging a policy of overt
intervention far more intrusive than was ever imagined
in what current mythology pictures as the "bad old days."

Iran should teach us that humane values are not
necessarily served by the overthrow of conservative regimes.
If we encourage upheavals without putting in their place a

23

moderate democratic alternative, a foreign policy conducted
in the name of justice and human rights will wind up by
making the world safe for anti-American radicalism. We
will see new governments not only hostile to us but even
more brutal toward human rights. All this tends to compound
the geopolitical 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 model of the new enlightenment. But while it is too
early to pass a final judgment, one is uneasy when the latest
human rights report of the State Department lists 400 summary
executions and the holding of 7200 political prisoners in
the six months of the new regime. And a Sandinista delegation
visiting Moscow in March applauded the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan and condemned what it called "the campaign launched
by imperialist and reactionary forces...to undermine the
unalienable right of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan's

24

people...to go the way of progressive transformation."

Similar trends exist, of course, in the Persian Gulf
and the Middle East. If improved judicial procedures were
a main concern of Khomeini's revolution, he has kept it well
hidden--wtih 700 executions and "thousands" of political

25

prisoners, according to the State Department report,
to say nothing of the illegal detention of our own diplomats.
And how do we relate our human rights professions to the
defense of our remaining friends in that vital area, most
of whose domestic procedures fall short of our standards?
Is it surprising that the few remaining moderate regimes
are confused and apprehensive? Unless we get our priorities
straight, external pressures will accelerate internal upheavals
and produce a growing sense of insecurity and a growing
trend of dissociation from the United States. Where would
we be in the Middle East but for the miracle of Sadat's
greatness?

26

In too many parts of the world, we are losing our power to
influence events for either good or ill. We live in a more
hostile world today, in a weakened position, and the
beginning of wisdom is to stop pretending that we are better
off now because we have made obvious our desire to be
universally loved.

US-Soviet Relations

27

Coexistence with the Soviet Union has always raised moral dilemmas for Americans. Indeed its dilemmas 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 buildup and geopolitical vigilance that are the only basis for a secure relationship with the USSR; conservatives are uneasy lest the very fact of negotiation with the Soviet leaders erode all moral dividing lines, sapping the West's will to resist and our public's support for the necessary level of defense.

28

It is no accident that an administration that three
years ago proclaimed its emancipation from "the inordinate
fear of Communism" allegedly afflicting its predecessors
has brought us to an historic low point in our relationship
with the Soviet Union. An administration more emotionally,
even sentimentally devoted to arms control than any other,
that proudly proclaimed that arms control could stand
on its own feet without linkage to other issues, now finds
its SALT treaty stymied--perhaps for that very reason. No
doubt the principal fault is the Kremlin's insatiable

29

tendency to exploit every strategic opportunity. There
can be no coexistence while the Soviet Union presses to
the margins of the tolerable and often beyond.

But it seems to me also true that we have confused
the Soviet leaders by inconsistent pronouncements and
unpredictable reactions. Erratic shifts in our policy,
whatever their reason--whether from one administration to
another, or within the term of one administration, of from
the tug of war between Congress and the Executive--run the
risk of evaporating the restraints operating on Soviet
conduct.

30

we asserted the importance of Pakistan to the security
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
exploiting tensions. This produced the spectacle that arms
control proceeded while Soviet proxy forces moved into
Ethiopia, while Soviet bases were established in South
Yemen, while a first Communist coup took place in Afghanistan
in 1978, and while a Soviet brigade was discovered in Cuba.
And when Soviet troops moved to the Khyber Pass, we
suddenly rediscovered linkage with a vengeance.

The essence of a strategic view is to see the interconnection
of events, and the trend of events. Yet we have been

31

Every American should support 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 were the

32

The Administration has been rightly disappointed in
the conduct of many of our allies, in particular the Europeans.
It is indeed dismaying that the industrial countries that 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 Western Alliance will surely be
jeopardized by the new theory of "division of labor" by
which the Europeans seek to retain the benefits of a relaxation
of tensions while we assume all the burdens and risks of
resisting Soviet expansionism.

Nevertheless, our allies also have grounds for concern.
Their hesitation and reluctance are not an accident. They
rightly complain of a failure of consultation. They have
been exposed to the same vacillations and cacophony of voices
I have described with respect to East-West relations. They

33

therefore wonder how long we will stick to our latest
proclaimed course. If we want allies to gear their policies
to ours, they must be able to comprehend not only the immediate
punitive steps, but the long-term direction and thrust of
our policy. Are we acting now in order to punish the Soviet
Union for an individual act, after which we will resume the
previous rhetoric and style? Or have we truly undertaken a
new policy of firmness? Can our allies make sense of a new
doctrine that generates additional commitments but no
new forces? 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?

These questions must be answered, lest the Alliance
wind up with empty posturing everywhere: on our side defiance
unrelated to concept, in Europe accommodation drifting

34

toward Finlandization.

At the same time, while I favor greater firmness and
augmented defense, I view them not as ends in themselves
but as the foundation of a new strategy of East-West diplomacy.
We must never forget the lesson of World War II, when the
democracies failed to maintain the balance of power and
thereby invited aggression. But neither can we risk
ignoring the lesson of World War I, when a war broke out
despite the existence of a military balance, when statesmen
lost control over their military planning and shortsighted
posturing allowed an apparently minor crisis to escalate into
a cataclysm that no leader intended or knew how to stop.

Some object to any negotiation with the Soviet Union,
on the ground that it leads to euphoria or appeasement. I
cannot accept the view that any serious dialogue with the
Soviet Union must produce our moral disarmament. An attitude
of rhetorical recalcitrance guarantees that we will be driven to
negotiations in

35

the worst circumstances, with our country torn apart by a
debate over our "intransigence" and our allies buffeted by
domestic assaults portraying America as the cause of world
tensions. Our people surely understand the moral difference
between tyranny and freedom and the necessity of both
strength and survival; to maintain the proper balance is
the task of leadership.

So let us not debate whether we should negotiate, but
on what terms. Let us define an agenda that is neither
sentimental nor bellicose, but is geared to the necessities
of peace in our age. Let us articulate our own purposes, and
not be driven into negotiations by the inevitable Soviet peace
offensive. Let us transcend the labels of liberal and conservative
as far as our foreign policy is concerned. They neither explain
nor illuminate our necessities. We should spell out a position
to which our people and our allies can repair, and negotiate
at our own pace and on our own agenda.

In the thermonuclear age, it is simply too dangerous
for the two superpowers not to be in contact. A stable

36

long-term future requires, first, an American commitment
to restore the balance of power; second, a perception that
actions in different spheres and different parts of the
world are linked in reality whatever one's theoretical
aversion to "linkage;" together with, third, a willingness
to settle outstanding issues on the basis of concreteness
and reciprocity, not atmospheric goodwill.

After our election, whoever is in office should be
prepared to open a dialogue with the USSR. But we
must learn the lessons of the past. The greatest threat
to peace is the Soviet tendency to exploit every tension
for unilateral gain, undermining the security of free peoples.
This must be stopped--even in the Soviet interest; the
American people will not be defeated without noticing it,
and when we react we shall resist--increasing the danger of
war. Our goal in East-West diplomacy must be to determine
what Soviet intentions are and spell out the limits of

37

It is surely within America's capacity to establish the penalties and incentives to affect Soviet decisions and bring some measure of stability to the East-West relationship. We must avoid the temptation to identify progress with good personal relations or seek release in largely atmospheric gestures. While the men in the Kremlin do not mind playing on Western preconceptions that identify diplomacy with warm personal relations, they really do not know how to deal with a sentimental American policy. 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

38

But I cannot stress sufficiently that all of this
presupposes reliable assurances of an end to the current
Soviet geopolitical offensive. If these are unobtainable
we will have no choice except confrontation, and we only
weaken our position by implying, as is so often done, that
an arms race might work against our interests or that

39

## Conclusion

Let me conclude, in other words, on a hopeful note. Almost all the problems outlined here are self-inflicted. We should keep in mind that we alone have twice 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 lagging militarily behind, it is through a lack of will, not of resources; it is within our capacity to rectify it.

40

Given the decrepitude of the current leadership,
such a system cannot represent the wave of the future.
Nor has any planned economy ever been able to match the
performance of a market economy. Whether one compares
Czechoslovakia and Austria, East and West Germany, North and
South Korea, market economies have invariably outstripped
socialist models. Stagnation seems inherent in the Soviet
system. The Kremlin's dilemma is that one cannot run a
modern economy with total planning, but it may also be
impossible to run the Soviet system without such planning.

41

Therefore, as soon as possible we must restore the
balance of military power. But once we do so, we face an
historic opportunity. Let us make clear that we are
ready, for a more constructive future: a world free of the
danger of nuclear blackmail; a world in which mankind's
desire for peace does not become a weapon in the hand of the
most ruthless but is allied to the determination of the just;
a world of hope and of progress. With all our travail we
remain the most fortunate people in the world: because
we have the means, if we have the will, to solve our own