## Program

### WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION OF SPEAKER

Scudder Mersman, Jr.
President, World Affairs Council of Northern California

### ADDRESS
DR. HENRY A. KISSINGER
SECRETARY OF STATE

### QUESTION & ANSWER SESSION

John B. Bates
President, Commonwealth Club of California

Head Table

RICHARD G. HEGGIE

Executive Director, World Affairs Council

THE HONORABLE A. FRANK BRAY

Chairman, Luncheon Program Committee, Commonwealth Club

THE HONORABLE STANLEY A. WEIGEL

Immediate Past President, World Affairs Council

BRUCE T. MITCHELL

Past President, Commonwealth Club

GORDON FURTH

Vice President, World Affairs Council

DAVID J. McDANIEL

Chairman, Executive Committee, Commonwealth Club

EDITH S. COLIVER

THE HONORABLE JOHN SENDUK

Dean of the Counsular Corps, San Francisco

JOHN B. BATES

President, Commonwealth Club

DR. HENRY A. KISSINGER

SCUDDER MERSMAN, JR.

THE HONORABLE GEORGE MOSCONE

Mayor of San Francisco

BERNICE W. BEHRENS

Director, U.S. Department of State Reception Center

JAMES W. HALLEY

Vice President, Commonwealth Club

THE HONORABLE BREWSTER H. MORRIS

DONALD P. KROTZ

Immediate Past President, Commonwealth Club

MRS. MARRINER S. ECCLES

Secretary, World Affairs Council

THE HONORABLE MURRAY DRAPER

OTTO E. MEYER

Treasurer, World Affairs Council

DURWARD S. RIGGS

Executive Director, Commonwealth Club

- 4 -

conditions that gave rise to the policy that
has come to be known as "detente", the goals we
seek, and the relationship of our Soviet policy
to the over-all design of American diplomacy.

The United States
America, as it enters its third century, is in history
confronted by one challenge unprecedented in its
own history, and another challenge without precedent
in the history of the world. Today America finds
itself, for the first time, permanently and
irrevocably involved in international affairs.

The end of the Sixties marked the conclusion of a
time in our history when we could enter or leave
world politics at will. Today we cannot withdraw
no matter what our desires, for to do so would
inevitably mean our destruction as a nation. At the

- 8 -

restored. We considered our deployment of troops
We changed the policy of unconquerability to a more
in Europe to be temporary. After our exertion in
otherwise
the Korean War, we looked for new military
decisions
strategies -- to hold Moscow responsible for
what we did
everything so that we could avoid the need to
assist others in their own local defense.
contrary

At the same time, the place of moral ideals in
American life always made us acutely sensitive to
the purity of means -- and when we disposed of
overwhelming power we had a great luxury of choice.
Our moral certainty made compromise difficult; our
preponderance often made it unnecessary.

Today, for the first time in our history, we
face the stark reality that the challenge is unending;
and yet we need
that there is no easy or final answer; that there are

- 11 -

are at a premium, at this moment above all, to be afforded
We cannot swing recklessly between confrontation and abdication. We can no longer act as if we engage ourselves in foreign affairs only when we choose, or only to overcome specific problems, which, in the present state of affairs, we must not withdraw back to our natural condition, with ourselves, in isolation. We must not confuse tough rhetoric with strong action. There can be no security and progress without our continued vigilance and our continual efforts to maintain a stable equilibrium of power.

This responsibility has come to us when global freedom, security and progress alike depend on our wisdom and perseverance. It is in this context that U.S.-Soviet relations must be seen.

-14-

The Contemporary Challenge of US-Soviet Relations

In the period after World War II, we feared that the Soviet Union, after consolidating its occupation of Eastern Europe, might seek to spread its control to other contiguous areas in both Europe and Asia. Our policies therefore concentrated on building

positions of military strength from which we could contain and isolate the Soviet Union

could be resisted. The "containment" doctrine of our postwar policy sought to block the Soviet Union's advance and isolate it from the

external world. In this way the Soviets might be forced to settle for peace, and transformations might occur within Soviet society that would curb expansionist tendencies and gradually change the USSR into a less antagonistic and, over time, more cooperative participant in the international system. Meanwhile, by major

-15-

American effort, the regions around the Soviet Union, especially Western Europe, would be restored to vigor and self-confidence.

These policies served us and our allies well. Soviet expansion did not spread beyond the areas absorbed immediately after the war. Behind the shield of security that we erected, our friends and allies in Western Europe restored their economies and democratic institutions, and took promising steps toward unity.

Yet the hope that these policies would produce a permanent stability, greater normality, and evolution of the Soviet system, was only partially fulfilled. For as the Soviet Union recovered from its own wartime wounds and steadily increased its industrial strength, forces were at work that carried it onto a new plane of its own historical evolution.

-16-

In the immediate postwar period, the aggressiveness of the Soviet Union obscured the real weakness of the Soviet state.

A country with relatively backward technology, having just suffered 20 million casualties in a heroic struggle was in no position to run major real risks -- a fact not always clearly understood in the West at that time. But as late as the time of the Cuban missile crisis, the United States enjoyed a five-to-one superiority in strategic missiles, a three-to-one superiority in strategic bombers, total naval superiority everywhere, and rough equality on the ground in Europe.

But in time, Gradually, with the revolution in military technology and with the acquisition of nuclear communications and the transformation of the international system through decolonization, the Soviet Union began to emerge as a

-17-

first-class power in military terms and became a vigorous actor
on the international stage. It acquired the most advanced weapons, which
enabled it, for the first time in its history, to threaten distant places
beyond the Eurasian landmass, including the United States. It
- as with the naval powers in the past - became a naval power, and began to acquire the habits of the great
naval powers of the past in attempting to translate this power into
political influence in regions never before of interest to Caarist
or even Bolshevik Russia. Despite the many flaws in its economic
system, the Soviet Union was prepared to allocate massive
economic resources to military purposes and for aid programs and to
expand its influence and appeal; the supply of arms became an
important vehicle for its outward thrust. Soviet diplomacy moved
into vigorously in the Middle East and in Africa and Asia, as one after

-18-

another of the old colonial regions cut their ties to their
former imperial powers. Through most of the postwar period,
the Soviet Union has been developing into a full-fledged
and comparable super-power on a global scale. It is so now.

Today, the overriding fact is that Soviet power continues
to grow in several dimensions. In strategic military terms the
USSR has achieved a broad equality with the United States,
as was inevitable for a nation whose rulers were prepared to
impose great sacrifice on their people and to give military strength
the absolute top priority in resources. (Its military expenditure
is slightly more than ours, even though it GNP is only half of ours,
a reflection of relative national priorities.)

With no part of the world outside the range of its military
forces, the USSR has begun to define its interests and objectives
in global terms for the first time in Russian history. This evolution

-19-

is now rooted in real power; it is not simply a rhetorical manifestation of a universalist doctrine which in fact has very little validity or appeal.

Thus, the United States, and indeed the world at large, is now confronted with the emergence of the Soviet Union as a superpower on a world scale. This condition is likely to be with us for the indefinite future. Coping with its implications is the central security problem we have faced for the last several years. Whoever exercises leadership responsibility in the coming years will confront the same problem. It was not caused by American policy; it could not have been prevented by American policy, unless by launching a nuclear war. It will not go away, and it will not ever be conclusively "solved."

-21-

But historically, the adjustment of an existing order to the arrival of one or more new actors almost invariably was accompanied by war -- to impede the upstart, to remove or diminish some of the previously established actors, to test the balance of forces in a revised system. But in the nuclear era, the use of force to cope with the emergence of a new power

threatens to entail the risk of utter catastrophe. When casualties in a general nuclear war will involve hundreds of millions in a matter of days, no American administration could follow such a policy. We must moderate Soviet power without global war. We cannot afford either abdication or a strategy of unremitting confrontation.

-28-

including the ABM (which was carried by only one vote), MIRV, Trident --

and every Congress passed resolutions urging the Administration to reorder our national priorities away from defense. We were continually attacked for not making concessions in the SALT talks. The Congress and many interest groups pressed continually for the opening up of East-West trade and against the Administration's approach of linking progress in economic relations with progress in political relations. We endured a series of crises with the Soviet Union in 1970 and 1971 -- and the Government was often accused by its critics of provocation or bellicosity.

Can anyone seriously argue that initiating a policy of relaxation of tensions under these conditions was a

Thus a few short years ago the premises in (4) This country and allomo allies were

overwhelmingly to move rapidly toward better relations with Moscow, -29-

unilateral concession? Can anyone seriously point to lack of

vigilance then? Or are we not being confused by the illusion

that somehow we could avoid consequences inherent in

modern technology and industrialization while at the same time

being systematically deprived of the tools that could be used

to improve current conditions.

We visited these premises just as we now refuel our planes in the Adimitron's

muzelaše, and in the Adimitron's

In our view the court needed a balanced policy,

combining firmness and conciliation, strong defense and arms

control, political principles and economic incentives. And it had

to be a policy for the long term, one that the American people

could sustain, one offering promise of a constructive future.

Nothing has so helped Soviet policy as the systematic

attack on our intelligence capabilities which, deprived us,

has slowly reduced

# It is therefore ironic that in a few short years our national debate has in many respects come full circle. Those who pressed for concessions to Moscow now accuse the government of being too soft toward them. Those who complain about our response to Soviet moves, are often the very ones who took away the government's levers for action.

-30-

the effectiveness of an indispensable tool of national policy.
of any covert ability. Our defense budgets remain under pressure.
considerable

Most recently the denial of aid to Angolans resisting Soviet-

weakened the Fentler
Cuban military intervention removed the risks of expansionism,
which must be maintained if restraint is to become a habit.

And much of our economic leverage has been taken away.

Our effort to break down the autarchy that characterized
the Stalinist system -- to increase Soviet dependence on
western trade and technology and thereby provide ourselves
with powerful new economic levers -- has been blocked by
legislative restrictions.

The human rights issue is a matter of deep and
legitimate concern to all Americans. But the attempt to
link this with economic relations, without subtlety or

-32- 33-

(Y)

unilateral advantages.

-- We cannot first neglect our conventional forces and then blame the Soviet Union if the military balance shifts against us.

-- We cannot engage in a rhetoric of confrontation while depriving ourselves of the means of resistance.

reality, peril)

-- We cannot change the fact of the nuclear threat but we have it in our power to build a new relationship that transcends the nuclear peril.

The Administration is determined to pursue concurrently two policies.

-- To build strength to resist Soviet pressures;

-34-

Strategic Arms Limitation

There is no central fact that distinguishes our era from all previous historical periods from the existence of technology that permits the delivery of enormously destructive weapons over virtually unlimited distances almost instantaneously. No part of the globe is beyond reach. This reality has created the situation in a general sense. novel imperatives for both American and Soviet policies.

For centuries it was axiomatic that additions of military power could be translated into almost immediate political advantage. It is now clear that new increments of strategic weaponry do not automatically lead to either political or military gains. Yet in the nature of things, if one side seeks

-35-

increases of its strategic arsenal, the other side will inevitably respond. The race is maintained partly because a perceived inequality is considered by either side as politically unacceptable even though it has become difficult to define precisely what military purpose is achievable. At current and foreseeable levels of nuclear arms, it becomes increasingly dangerous to invoke them in a crisis. In no crisis since 1962 have the strategic weapons of the two sides been relevant to the outcome.

Today these arsenals increasingly find their purpose only in matching and deterring each other's forces. For under no foreseeable circumstance could we prevent suffering 100 million dead in a nuclear exchange. The Soviet Union faces similar prospects.⁹⁻¹¹

(N)

-38-

A realistic reduction of tensions can not coexist with unrestrained and aimless strategic competition.

Therefore, the United States has sought and achieved, since 1963, a series of arms control agreements that have begun to build some degree of restraint into nuclear rivalry. There was a significant breakthrough to limit strategic weapons in 1972. If the Vladivostik accord leads to a new agreement, as we are seeking to do, an even more important advance will have been made.

Yet, at this critical juncture, the American people are subjected to an avalanche of charges that SALT is a surrender of American interests, while there are nostalgic but unattainable demands that

-39-

we must seek to recapture the strategic superiority of the 1950's, and
that is our position on the issue of SALT. The Strategic Armament Act of
1962, which was passed by Congress and signed into law in March, creates
a series of obligations for the United States. It requires the Strategic
Balance Act of 1963, which states that the number of strategic missiles
we must acquire must be equal to the number of strategic missiles
the enemy has. It also requires the United States to maintain a
minimum of 150 strategic missiles. This is a number that has been
selected because of assertions that because of SALT the strategic balance
has tilted against us and that the Soviets have systematically violated the
SALT agreements. On the one hand, we are making significant
investments in strategic missiles. On the other hand, the
Soviet Union is acquiring strategic missiles. Despite the apparent
timely nature of these acquisitions, what are the facts?

First of all, deliberate American policy decisions, made in
the 1960's and based on judgments by those then in positions of
responsibility, set the level of our strategic forces for the 1970's.
We then had the choice between two landbased weapons. A large, heavy
throwweight missile called Titan and a smaller more flexible weapon
called Minuteman. The Administration then in office deliberately
chose to build an arsenal of small, sophisticated and highly accurate
ICBMs and submarine-launched missiles, along with heavy bombers;
we deployed them rapidly, and then stopped our build-up of launchers

(1)

Sixties, there were no American programs. Nor would the numerical

to restore the numerical

balance begun to be restored before 1977.

When more modern

sea-based missiles and tomcats were scheduled to become
operational.

The Interim SALT Agreement of 1972 froze overall numbers

for five years.

of launchers on both sides, -- thereby limiting the momentum of

Soviet building programs without affecting any American program
for the duration of the agreement. It stopped the Soviet build-up

of heavy missile launchers. It forced the Soviets to dismantle

land-based

missiles

permitted, missile carrying submarines

210 older missiles to reach agreed ceilings. The silo limitations

agreed upon permitted us to increase the throwweight of our own
missiles, if we decided on this avenue of improving our strategic

We have so

forces. The Department of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff have

not thus far chosen to do so although, through R & D, retaining

-42-

that option. By any measure of the strategic balance, the
SALT agreements prevented the then evolving situation from
worsening. We prevented the gap in numbers from widening. We froze
the situation. We gave up no planned programs of our own.

Through the SALT agreements we also ended for an indefinite
period the prospect of a dangerous and uncertain competition in
anti-ballistic missile defense -- a competition that promised no
strategic advantage, but potentially serious instabilities and the expenditure
of a large part of our money.

The first SALT agreements were therefore without question
in the American national interest. We made clear from the beginning
that in the five-year respite gained by the 1972 Interim Agreement,
it was our intention to negotiate a long-term agreement on offensive
weapons that would place equal numerical ceilings on both sides.

-43-

This was ~~precisely~~ what President Ford achieved in Vladivostok in
November 1974.

In this accord, both sides agreed on a ceiling of 2400 ~~strategic weapons~~ on each side, covering strategic missiles and heavy bombers -- but ~~not~~ counting any of our forward-based aircraft and missiles in Europe, or our allies' strategic weapons, many of which can reach Soviet soil. The ceiling of 2400 was ~~lower~~ than the level the Soviet Union already had reached and would require their ~~so-called~~ while ~~they~~ could dismantling of many weapons. Our planned force levels require no reduction by us.

An equal ceiling of 1320 was placed also on numbers of strategic weapons with MIRV warheads. Together with the 2400 ceiling this would place a cap on strategic numerical competition for a 10-year period, yet preserve all the programs we need to assure deterrence and strategic sufficiency.

-44-

Obviously no single agreement can solve every problem.

Indeed, it would be surprising if two countries, so long
vigorous competitors, could agree in one or two agreements
to end every aspect of competition. Therefore, even under
conditions of SALT agreements, we must not neglect improvements
in our strategic forces.

But if we succeed in concluding the

SALT agreement now being negotiated, it will be possible
~~will~~
to say that we have crossed the threshold between total,
unrestrained competition and the difficult but promising
beginning of long-term strategic equilibrium at lower levels

The US + the Soviet Union ( already agreed to start
of forces. We already have a Soviet commitment to negotiate
~~with the negotiations~~
reductions in strategic forces in the next phase. Starting in 1977.

One would havethought that these accomplishments would
speak for themselves. Instead they have triggered a welter
of irresponsible charges that they put us at a disadvantage

led instead to the American
people + our friends, give us more compression
of resources + our advantages + convenience to
expect more from a new agreement that is in the process
of being negotiated.

-45-

or that they are being isolated.

I have already explained that the first SALT agreement
more dangerous than the allegation had the United
ratified a situation we had no way of altering for the five
States has knowingly tolerated violations of the first
SALT agreements.
years the agreement was supposed to run. As for violations,

What are the facts? It is quite true that several issues have
arisen that caused us concern. A Standing Consultative
Commission was created by the agreements of 1972 to consider
disputes or ambiguities in implementation, which would

almost inevitably arise in a first agreement bet ween long-standing
agreements with weapons systems of虽 complexity
adversaries. Every questionable activity that has arisen was
but considered by the President & his
systematically analyzed by this Government. It was then
promptly raised with the Soviets. All instructions to the
American representative on this commission reflected the
unanimous views of all agencies dealing with the subject.

-47-

is served by leading our own public and the Soviet Union to believe -- incorrectly -- that the United States is blind to violations or deliberately deceives its public.² Can anyone seriously believe that the Administration which has resisted Communist advances in every part of the world -- and is often criticized for it -- would ignore Soviet violations of a formal agreement.³

I can assure you that this Administration will vigorously resist violations. But we will not be driven by demagogery. In an era of modern technology and complex limitations verified by national means, there are bound to be grey areas of activity and interpretation. But no violation of the terms of the SALT agreement will be tolerated. Nor has any appeared or been claimed by any department or agency involved in this problem.

In an era of modern technology and complex limitations verified by national means, there are bound to be grey areas of activity and interpretation. But no violation of the terms of the SALT agreement will be tolerated. Nor has any appeared or been claimed by any department or agency concerned with this problem.

-48-

As we assess SALT we must face squarely
The present and future agreements must be weighted
one question; what is the alternative?
against the alternative of a situation without agreement.

If we choose to repudiate the SALT Process, we must consider
what new or additional strategic programs we would undertake,
their likely cost, and above all, a strategic purpose. An
accelerated strategic buildup over the next five years, in the
absence of SALT, could cost as much as an additional 30 billion
dollars as both sides engage in new programs. Failing a
satisfactory agreement, this may well be the path we must
travel. We would consider it a tragic missed opportunity. For,
in the process of such a build-up, and the atmosphere it would
emerge, it would be difficult to return to serious negotiations for some
time.

Tensions are likely to increase; a new, higher baseline will emerge from
which future negotiations would be undertaken. And in the end,
eventually, love will

-50-

-- The President is determined to pursue the effort to find a more stable strategic balance, preferably through the SALT negotiations, because it is in our interest, and because we have an obligation to our own people and to world peace.

## The Soviet Union and Angola

As the United States pursues a more peaceful world, it should be determined to contain the strategic arms race and to maintain the hopeful trends in US-Soviet relations in other fields. In this effort we shall never forget that global stability and security rest upon an equilibrium between the great powers. If the Soviet Union is permitted to exploit opportunities for expansion, the hopes we have for progress toward a more selectively peaceful world order will ultimately be undermined.

-51-

This is why the Soviet Union's massive and unprecedented
intervention in the internal affairs of Africa with nearly
200 million dollars of military equipment, its advisors, and the
<u>large</u> hugh expeditionary force of 11,000 Cuban combat troops must be
a matter of urgent concern.

It is hard to understand why those who have agitated so
noisily about alleged Soviet violations that are extremely
problematical and of marginal significance have been so
strangely silent in the face of a direct assault on the international
equilibrium.

Angola represents the first time since the <u>aftermath</u> of
World War II that the Soviets have moved militarily at long
distances to impose a regime of their choice. It is the first

-53-

begs the principal question. If the United States is seen to ~~emasculate itself~~ in the face of massive Soviet and Cuban intervention, what will be the perception of leaders around the world as they make decisions concerning their future security? What conclusions are they to draw when Cuba sends over 11 thousand combat troops and the Soviet Union send 200 million dollars in military equipment while the United States refuses even financial assistance to ~~hard-pressed~~ *friends*, for their very existence?! And what conclusions will an unopposed superpower draw when the next opportunity for intervention beckons?

It is in this context that we have framed our goals in Angola: a ceasefire; withdrawal of all outside forces -- Soviet, Cuban and South African; cessation of foreign military involvement; and negotiations among all three Angolan factions.

-54-

This approach was taking effect last fall. In the hope of halting a dangerously escalating situation, the United

States using the leverage provided by our financial support

to those in Angola who sought to resist Soviet domination. Using this as leverage, we undertook a wide range of diplomatic activity aimed at an active diplomacy to promote an end to the戰爭.

African solution to an African problem. We acted quietly, to avoid making a major crisis and raising the stakes of prestige on both sides. It was feared that in

Our diplomacy was effective so long as we maintained the leverage of a possible military balance. African determination became more and more evident. We warned Moscow of the consequences and offered

to cooperate in encouraging a peaceful outcome. Indeed, it appeared as if the Soviet Union itself had begun to take stock.

On December 9, the President announced a new policy of containment and more evident. We warned Moscow of the consequences and offered

to cooperate in encouraging a peaceful outcome. Indeed, it appeared as if the Soviet Union itself had begun to take stock. They halted their airlift from December 9 until December 24.

(Y)

-58-

arrangements with the Soviet Union which benefit us as well as it.

But history has proved time and again that expansion can be checked only when there is a local balance of power; indirect pressures can succeed only if rapid local victories are foreclosed.

Where are we now? By failing to respond to an early stage of expansionism, we may well be tempting miscalculation and necessitating a greater response in the future. If we do not exercise our responsibilities to maintain the international balance, if Congress and the Executive are unable to act in concert when vital national interests are affected, then world security may well be seriously undermined.

The time has come -- in both America and Moscow -- to recognize clearly the implications of Soviet and Cuban actions in Angola. Only then can this country effectively tailor its

-60-

divisions are likely to deprive us of even minimal leverage over developments of global significance?

This Government has a duty to
We must make clear that Angola sets no precedent, that
this type of action will not be tolerated again. Congress and
the Executive must come together in this -- in the national interest
and in the interest of world peace.

The Administration will continue to make this case
however unpopular it may be. . . . National leaders
must stand for what is right and what they believe to be in the
national interest.

We are dedicated to overcoming the classical pattern of
accumulating marginal advantages and moving the world towards
more constructive relationships.

But we are also dedicated to opposing wanton disregard for the

-61-

interests of others and the cause of world peace.

Relaxation of tensions can be built only upon strict
adherence to both these principles.

## National Strength and the Debate at Home

We live in a world without simple answers. We hold
our values too dear to relinquish defending them; we hold
human life too dear to cease the quest for a secure peace.
The first requirement of stability is to maintain our defenses
and the balance of power; the highest aim of policy in the nuclear
age must be to create out of the sterile equilibrium of force
a more positive relationship of peace.

Our own interests, and common sense, require us to pursue
two strands of policy simultaneously:

- to maintain our defenses and yet seek to build a more
secure world beyond the realm of power,

-62-

-- to defend allies and support friends against
encroachments and pressures, and yet seek a new
order based on cooperation rather than confrontation.

What are the essential foundations of this effort? What,
then, is required of us?

First, we must maintain our national strength and security.

There can be no true world peace without a stable balance
of power. This is the lesson of history, and it cannot be forgotten
now. Maintenance of our strength has always been a prerequisite
of our policy and the only reliable basis for our efforts to seek
political solutions and more constructive relations with the Soviet
Union.

-63-

The military programs of our potential adversaries continue to expand. There is an irreducible minimum below which we cannot reduce our defense effort without endangering our country's safety as well as our ability to resist challenges before they affect us in ways which could compel our direct military response.

This effort can only be carried out by a confident, united and resolute people.

Foreign nations must be able to deal with America as an entity, not as a complex of divided institutions. If our divisions paralyze our efforts in the world, it is America as a whole that will suffer. If our unity brings success, it is the nation as a whole that will benefit. We have no more

-64-

urgent task than that of achieving a new sense
of trust and shared purpose between the American
people, the Congress, and the Executive -- a new
partnership that can enable the President of the
United States, in his constitutionally-determined
role, to address the world with the central
authority of the spokesman of a united and
purposeful America.

Debate is the essence of democracy. But
restraint is the lubricant of national cohesion.
It is time to end the self-torment and obsession
with our guilt which has threatened to paralyze us
for too many years. It is time to purge ourselves
of the vicious accusations, the constant assault
on motives and the insistent self-will which
threatens our security and our future. History has
stop dismantling our national institutions & underlining our national
infidence.

-65-

Let us stop pretending that 300 million dollars in credits can change the Soviet domestic structure but that a tenth of that amount must not be spent to resist Soviet adventures in distant continents.

Let us end the vilification that implies that the growth of Soviet strength results from U.S. policies and ask ourselves what we can do to shape a coexistence within which freedom can thrive.

We must learn -- even in an election year -- to moderate special interests in the definition of a national interest. We must have the self-discipline to shape our domestic debates into a positive, not a destructive process.

One of the forgotten truths of our history is

Draft II

January 22, 1976

The Permanent Challenge of Peace:
United States Policy Toward the Soviet Union

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I welcome this opportunity to address you tonight on one of the
principal issues facing our foreign policy: how to conduct the re-
lationship between the two nuclear superpowers of the world, the
United States and the Soviet Union.

In an election year it is only natural that foreign policy be a
major topic of the public debate. This only reflects the importance
of foreign affairs to the state of the nation. But all of us who love this
country know that too much is at stake to allow our public dialogue
to degenerate into demagoguery. Our democracy will survive only
if our debate contributes to and does not undermine the shaping of an
effective national policy. And all those who would take part in this
debate have a duty to illuminate and not obscure the real issues
facing this nation.

- 2 -

For the challenge of maintaining peace is now a permanent
responsibility of United States policy.

Rivalries between major powers in previous eras in history have
almost invariably led to war. In our era -- the age of thermonuclear
weapons -- this cannot be permitted. We must manage a fundamental
clash of ideology and national interest in the shadow of nuclear peril.
To this challenge there is no parallel in history.

Maintaining the peace is a responsibility that this nation has borne
with extraordinary success for over thirty years. The world knows
that America is the defender of freedom, the linchpin of security,
and the beacon of progress -- a role that no other country in history
has played with such dedication and impact.

The source of our strength has been our moral as well as
our physical resources: our idealism -- our goal of freedom which
inspired others and inspired ourselves to great endeavors; our
pragmatism -- the know-how and ingenuity by which we attacked

-3-

make point early that we see
man's future and in our own.

make + not slide into
it, namely that US for 1st
time in century must

undertake
permanent
foreign
policy
based on
interests
united
dip in + and
upsetters

choose whether or not to be part of the world.

For the first century and a half of our existence our peace and
security were provided for us -- by two oceans, the shield of the
British Navy, and the continuing equilibrium among the European
powers. But our dramatic progress at home, and the absence of
direct threat from abroad, nourished our sense of uniqueness and
fostered an illusion that America, unlike other nations, could
choose whether or not to be part of the world.

Since Tocqueville it has been a cliché about American democracy
that we as a people were slow to arouse, but that once aroused we
were a tremendous and implacable force. We disposed of tremendous
power -- but preferred peace. Even as we came to venture forth
into foreign affairs, we identified foreign involvement with exertion
and treated it as a temporary disruption of the norm of domestic
tranquility. Our own history -- except for the Civil War -- was a

- 4 -

out

history with tragedy, without the impending sense of

external limits that colored the experience of almost every

other people.

And so our own successes seemed to teach us that any
problem would be solved -- once and for all -- by one
determined effort; that a resolution of any international
conflict could bring -- or rather restore -- permanent
peace. We entered World War I as "the war to end wars."
We fought World War II until "unconditional surrender."
In the period just after World War II -- an era of great
creativity and unprecedented engagement in foreign affairs --
we acted as if the world's problems of security and economic
development could be overwhelmed by America's commitment
of resources, know-how and effort. We projected the
enthusiasm and reformism of the New Deal overseas.

The supremacy of moral ends in American life made us
acutely sensitive to the purity of means -- and we had such luxury of choice
in periods when we disposed of overwhelming power. Moral judgments

- 5 -

Ironically it was Tocqueville who also foresaw, nearly one
hundred fifty years ago, that America and Russia would some day
be the giants of the planet, supplanting Europe as the dominant
forces of Europe's own history. And so it has happened. But
America responded to this challenge as to others: After 1917 we
passed moral judgment on the Bolshevik regime and refused to
recognize it for sixteen years; in World War II we confidently joined
it in a Grand Alliance against Nazism, hoping for lasting friendship.
We were shocked by disillusionment; in the postwar period we under-
took the containment of Communism -- expecting this policy to
bring about the eventual mellowing and transformation of the
Soviet system.

-6-

But history is cold-blooded and presents us only
with more profound challenges. Today, at the very
moment when we are more conscious than ever of our limits,
we face as well the stark reality that our challenge
is unending. There are no automatic solutions; there
are no permanent solutions. The truth we face now, for
the first time ever in our history, is the prospect of
long-term involvement in foreign affairs, without
escape and without respite.

In military power, we no longer enjoy a nuclear
monopoly as we once did; we must maintain a balance with
the Soviet Union, which has inevitably and inexorably
acquired strategic power commensurate with its industrial
strength. In economic power we share leadership among
the industrial nations with Western Europe, Canada, and
Japan, and we must deal with newly wealthy developing nations

-7-

and make new choices about our economic relations with the
Communist countries. In political influence, our ideals now
compete in a strange new world of ideologies which assert
progressive goals and pursue them by methods incompatible with
our libertarian principles.

But in a shrinking planet, there is no place to hide. Instant
communications, intercontinental missiles, an interdependent global
economy, tie us to the world. Our own interests in every respect --
our security, our prosperity, our ideals -- compel us to act in the
world with constancy, foresight, and strength. We have learned that
by serving the goals of world peace and human progress, we serve
ourselves.

The permanence of our involvement now combines with the
relativity of our power. We can neither overwhelm our problems
with our resources, nor abdicate responsibility. We can no longer

- 8 -

act as if we engage ourselves in foreign policy only by choice or only to
overcome specific problems and then withdraw back to a state of
natural security. We can no longer imagine that a world of peace
will come automatically without sustained American effort to bring
it about. There can be no security without vigilance and maintenance
of a stable equilibrium of power.

The responsibility to resist Soviet expansionism has been a
feature of American policy for thirty years. What is new is the
culmination of thirty years of growth of Soviet industrial, technological
and military power. No American policy caused this; no American
policy could have prevented it. The central challenge of international
order in our time is to harness the US-Soviet rivalry into a stable
coexistence, and to keep open the possibilities for a more positive
future. "For," as President Kennedy said, "in the final analysis our
most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all
breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are
all mortal."

- 9 -

US-Soviet Relations

Relations with the Soviet Union have been central to our security for the past 30 years. In the period after World War II our concerns focused mainly on the possibility that the USSR, having absorbed into its orbit the adjacent nations of Eastern Europe, might seek to spread its control to other contiguous areas, both in Europe and Asia. Our policies in that era therefore concentrated on building positions of military strength from which potential Soviet expansion could be resisted.

The "Containment" doctrine which underpinned these policies rested on the assumption that by damming in Soviet expansionist drives on the Eurasian landmass, while simultaneously isolating the USSR from the external world, transformations might occur within Soviet society itself that would curb expansionism and gradually change the USSR into a less antagonistic participant in the international system. Meanwhile, with the help of major American exertions, the regions around the USSR, especially Western Europe, would be restored to vigor and self-confidence.

- 10 -

This would reduce the role of communist parties, which were then
openly the instrumentalities of Soviet policy and patterned on
the model of the Soviet ruling party.

As is our national custom, we expected that these policies
would produce permanent solutions. They did serve us well.
They limited Soviet expansion to the areas absorbed immediately
after the war, though this extension of the Soviet totalitarian
system to areas with which we had historic ties caused us much
anguish, and behind the security wall thus erected, our friends
and allies in Western Europe were able to rebuild their vitality,
confidence and democratic institutions.

Yet the hope that these policies would produce a permanent,
or at least extended, stability and eventually greater normality
with a gradually evolving Soviet Union, were only partly fulfilled.
For at work in the Soviet Union, as it healed its own wartime
wounds and steadily increased its industrial strength, were
forces that drove it into a new phase of its historical evolution.

- 11 -

Gradually, with the revolution in military technology and communications and the transformation of the international system through decolonization, the Soviet Union began to emerge as a first class power in militant terms, and became a vigorous actor on the international stage. It acquired weapons which, for the first time in its history, enabled it to threaten distant places beyond the Eurasian landmass, including the United States. It became a naval power and began to acquire the habits of the great naval powers of the past in attempting to translate this power into political influence in regions never before of interest to Czarist or Bolshevik Russia. Despite the many flaws in its economic system, the Soviet Union was prepared to allocate economic resources for aid programs patterned on those then used by ourselves and other industrialized nations in order to expand its influence and appeal.

The early manifestations of this new phase of Soviet history occurred in the Middle East and subsequently in Africa and Asia,

- 12 -

as one after another of the old colonial regions cut their ties
to their traditional metropoles. Yet even though it appeared
in the mid-1950's, when the first dramatic Soviet intrusions
into distant regions took place, that the Soviet Union was al-
ready a full-fledged imperial power, the trend was in fact merely
in its embryonic stage. It was to undergo both setbacks and adjust-
ments. It would require of us long-term policies of indefinite
duration and of unprecedented complexity.

In some respects, the expectations that accompanied the
initial Soviet leaps over the barriers of containment were
exaggerated. Although Soviet influence in distant places is more
extensive than it was earlier, Soviet domination and control has
almost nowhere reached the level prevalent in the satellite empire of
the 1950's. Soviet institutions, doctrines and cultural patterns
have generally proved less attractive than the seeming appeals of
Marxist thought and authoritarian methods in many of the third world
regions would have suggested. The Soviet model for economic growth

- 13 -

and modernization has found few imitators. And such economic
assistance as the USSR has provided the newly independent
countries has on the whole had little impact in shaping their
evolution. One important reason no doubt is that the Soviet
imperial impulse occurs in an historic era in which nationalist
yearnings for identity and self-determination act powerfully to
limit the capacity of external powers to assert control and impose
patterns of development.

Nevertheless, the overriding fact is that Soviet power
continues to grow in several dimensions. In strategic military
terms the USSR has achieved a broad equality with the United States,
as was perhaps inevitable for a nation whose rulers were prepared
to give "military superiority" the absolute top priority in
resources. For Soviet Russia, this has meant that for the first
time in its history it can bring to bear force against areas beyond
the Eurasian landmass. And the reach of intercontinental weaponry
is now reinforced by the capacity of naval power to display presence

- 14 -

and exert other forms of influence at great distances. With no part of the world outside the range of its military forces, the USSR has begun to define its interests and objectives in global terms for the first time in Russian history. This evolution is now rooted for the first time in real power and is not simply a manifestation of a universalist doctrine which, as noted above, in fact has very little validity or appeal.

Thus, the United States, and indeed the world at large, is now confronted with the emergence of the Soviet Union as a super-power on a world scale. This is a process that is likely to be with us for a generation or more. How to cope with its implications is the central security problem we have faced for the last several years. Whoever holds leadership responsibility in the coming years will confront the same problem. It will not go away and it will not be "solved."

The emergence of new powers into an existing structure of power is not new; it is a recurrent phenomenon that goes back as far as recorded history. But historically the manner in which an

- 15 -

existing international order adjusted to the arrival of one or
more new actors almost invariably included the use of force -- to
impede the upstart, or to remove or diminish some of the pre-
viously established actors, or to find some modus vivendi in
a revised system. But in the nuclear era, the use of force to
cope with emergence of a new power involves risks of utter
catastrophe. It is the historic challenge of modern statecraft,
on all sides, to make the traditional adjustments of power in the
world without recourse to the ultimate uses of force.

This is the challenge of the process called "detente",
rather than the alleged hunger for relaxed tensions, agreements
at any price, and good feelings which the caricaturists of our
policies have pictured. It is a problem we cannot evade either
by denying its existence or by simply giving voice to our repugnance
for the Soviet internal system. Nor can we deal with it by simply
aging confinement for this own sake
attempting to confront Soviet power with American power, though
our own vigorous strength is indispensable. Nor can we deal with

- 16 -

it by the old policies of ostracism and isolation, since even we, if it were to ignore the realities of Soviet power, that power would still affect us, our allies and others whose independence is of crucial interest to us.

The policies pursued by this Administration and its predecessor have been designed to build a set of relationships in which the Soviet Union will, equally, be conscious of the risks and penalties of the absence of restraint. This is a long-term policy whose success cannot be readily measured on a weekly, monthly or annual basis. But it is based in the first instance on the fact that we, our allies and other possess great strengths of our own and that it is thus far from preordained that Soviet power will come to be dominant in the world.

Regrettably, far too many among us are still under the spell of the Stalinist myth that the evolution of world history will in fact follow the laws that Marxist-Leninists claimed to have discovered, but which in practice have proved to be anything but laws or even moderately accurate descriptions of the human condition.

- 17 -

Moreover, it is a fact that Soviet power, while growing, is also evolving with considerable unevenness. Soviet society is no longer impermeable; while its rigidity and essential conservatism is in one sense an asset for a nation seeking "its place in the sun," it is also a brake on the growth of the USSR into a modern, technologically advanced and innovative society. It is clear that the Soviet economy, while capable of enormous feats of industrialization and supporting a powerful military apparatus, is not able, with its own resources, to modernize Russia to the level of other industrialized societies. Yet this is high among the aspirations of Soviet leaders and elites.

Thus the combination of our own strength and those of the rest of the industrial world on the one hand, and Soviet shortcomings and requirements from the external world on the other hand, provide the basis for a long-term policy of influencing the manner in which the USSR emerges as a world power.

- 18 -

We have approached the formulation and implementation
of our policy toward Moscow by setting forth the principles of
responsible relations in the nuclear age: respect for the
interests of all, restraint in the uses of power, and abstention
from efforts to seek unilateral advantage at the expense of others.
We have negotiated a series of agreements that would seek to
buttress these principles, including in the area of arms control
and on methods of crisis management. And we began some years ago to
establish a network of cooperative agreements in a great variety
of functional areas -- economic, scientific, medical, environmental,
and others -- from which can flow concrete benefits when power
is used with restraint and with due regard for the interest of
others.

The effects on political conduct of such a network of agree-
ments and of the development of vested interests in their
maintenance can be measured only over an extended period of time.
For it is only when a degree of interdependence has been established

that statesmen and societies will be conscious of what the loss
of the acquired benefits might mean to them; and then leaders
cannot avoid including such risks and penalties in their calcula-
tions as they contemplate international actions.

Regrettably, the rather promising beginnings that were made
in the early seventies in developing the structure of inter-
relationships have been seriously slowed down by our inability
to proceed with the establishment of long-term economic ties
with the USSR and by the wholly false characterization of these
policies as "give-aways" and "one-way streets." First of all,
in the present world, trade with the USSR will go forward whether
we like it or not. Other industrialized nations engage in it, and,
unless we wanted to institute extensive export and import controls,
so will our own firms. But the essential question is: Is this
economic activity going to be harnessed to the long-term purpose of
coping with the emergence of the USSR as a world power? Or is the
USSR alone going to determine the terms of economic contact, while
our firms act on perfectly valid desires for profit which do not

- 20 -

necessarily support a long-term overall policy. By linking the human rights issue -- itself a matter of deep and legitimate concern -- with economic relations, and by putting the Soviet Union in the driver's seat in determining the nature and magnitude of economic relationships, our Congress has denied us important instrumentalities for pursuing a long-term strategy vis-a-vis the USSR. And in so doing it has done nothing for the cause of human rights; indeed emigration from the Soviet Union has been dropping steadily.

I stress this issue not because we have any illusion that trade and proliferating economic contacts have the determining role in dealing with the problem of Soviet power. They are but one aspect of this policy. But this issue illustrates the imperative that we design our policies for the long run, build up the instrumentalities for their conduct, make realistic use of our assets, and utilize all the available opportunities for affecting Soviet behavior.

- 21 -

In sum, our policy challenge is how the Soviet Union is to be integrated into the international system, which is itself in enormous flux, without a catastrophic war and while our interests and values and those of our friends and others are protected. This is therefore not a problem for the U.S. alone. Literally all nations, certainly those in regions close to the USSR, but others at greater distance as well, have an interest in seeing Soviet power balanced. No country, even those who enjoy good relations with the USSR, has an interest in the Soviet Union's becoming dominant either regionally or, even less, globally. We happen to have the principal responsibility and the means to balance the global power of the USSR in the present period; and we clearly have an interest and responsibility in helping to balance Soviet regional power in such key areas as Europe and Asia. But others must share the effort.

It is time for those who have chosen to challenge and mis-construe these objectives and these policies to come clean. What is their alternative? Just how would they propose to deal with

the problem of Soviet power in the nuclear age? Just how
would they do so while preserving the essential values and
interests of our society? Just how would they do so while pre-
serving the cohesion of our alliances and the respect of friends
and potential foes alike? Talk is cheap. But precisely what are
the concepts and what are the policies that are supposed to take
the place of the course we have chosen?

Against this backdrop of our general approach to the Soviet
Union let us look at some of the concrete issues that are high
on our current agenda:

-- The control of nuclear arms, which lies at the heart of
dealing with the emergence of the Soviet Union as a superpower.

-- The issue of Angola, which reflects the outward reach
of Soviet influence.

-- The question of communist parties in Western Europe,
which affects the cohesion of the West in maintaining the global
balance.

-24-

Salt
---

The central fact that distinguishes our era from all
previous historical periods is the existence of nuclear
weapons. This creates certain imperatives for American policy.

It imposes a special responsibility on the United States
and the Soviet Union to lessen the danger of war. Our ability
to fulfill this responsibility will ultimately determine the
character of Soviet-American relations.

It is already clear that the continuation of an unrestrained
strategic arms race will ultimately be to neither side's
strategic or political advantage. If the race
continues, it will have profound consequences for the future,
indeed, the very survival, of civilization.

The time has come to end the rhetoric of exaggetated
claims as well as exaggerated fears. We have already achieved
in existing agreements a substantial measure of progress.

There have been positive breakthroughs; we are on the verge
of an even more important step in the current negotiations.

-25-

Yet at this critical juncture, we are faced with extreme arguments that SALT is a delusion, and that we must somehow make an effort to recapture the strategic superiority of the 1950s. The debate is further confused by exotic analyses of the strategic balance and distorted by wildly irresponsible charges about the implementation of SALT agreements.

What are the facts?

-- First, there is a difference in the strategic arms of each side; the Soviets have very large missiles, whereas in the early 1960s we chose small, sophisticated and highly accurate missiles, not as a result of agreement but by our decision.

-- This led to a disparity in one aspect of the strategic relationship -- that is, a greater throw weight for the Soviet missile force. But this was created not by SALT but by unilateral American decisions made over a decade ago; indeed nothing in the SALT agreements prevents us from redressing the balance if we choose this option of increasing the power of our missiles. As we leave Vietnam & us

-26-

-- And this disparity is more than compensated for by the American lead in other categories such as number of warheads, accuracy, diversity, etc.

-- Another unilateral decision of the 1960s was to halt our missile building program at 1000 ICBMs and 656 submarine launched missiles; we chose to improve the successive models rather than add numbers.

-- In 1970 the Soviets surpassed us in the number of missiles. Therefore, our basic SALT objective was to freeze the numbers, lest the gap widen, this was achieved, halting Soviet programs while no American program was sacrificed.

In the first round of SALT we also ended for an indefinite period the prospect of a dangerous and uncertain competition in anti-ballistic missile defense -- a competition that promised no strategic advantage. Indeed, it was the great fear that if both sides achieved high defensive levels, one side would be tempted to strike first on the calculation that the resulting retaliatory attack could be handled by ABM systems.

-27-

These agreements laid the basis for the negotiation that led to the Vladivostok accords. Having halted the growth of offensive missiles the next step was to put these weapons, as well as heavy bombers, under a long term numerical ceiling equal for both sides. This is the heart of the Vladivostok agreement, which also included an equal ceiling on the number of missiles with multiple warheads.

Thus we are engaged in a continuing process. No single agreement is likely to solve every problem. Indeed, it would be surprising if two countries, so long aggressive competitors, could agree to end every aspect of competition. But it is already possible to say that we have crossed the threshold between total, unrestrained competition and the difficult but promising effort to find a strategic equilibrium.

The charge is made that the agreements have been violated. What are the facts? Several issues have arisen that caused concern. The incidents were ambiguous -- not clearly violations, but activities that called for clarification. Every potential

-28-

violation was systematically analyzed, and those of sufficient
importance were raised with the Soviets. They in turn questioned
some activities on our side.

The point is that these issues have been handled through
a process that has proved effective and was set up for that
very purpose. Yet we are faced with a barrage of demagogic
accusations that intentionally lump together relatively minor
incidents and sweeping accusations that have no foundation.
And these critics provide no recommendation of what they would
do. Would they simply throw over all agreements, even if the
alleged transgression had no strategic consequences?

An agreement of this nature can never be fool proof; in
a unique relationship there are bound to be some grey areas.
But it would be totally irresponsible to seize on an uncertainty
to abrogate a solemn agreement that is clearly in our interest.
The agreements must be seen in their totality, and they must
be weighed against the alternative.

-29-

(N)

If we choose to repudiate the SALT process, we then must consider what strategic programs we would undertake, what their likely cost would be, and, above all, what would be their strategic purpose. A major, accelerated strategic build-up over the next five years could cost as much as 30 billion dollars. It would naturally produce a counter-program on the Soviet side. Thus we must consider whether at the end of that period we would have created a strategic advantage. If so, how would we use it? To coerce the USSR? In the process of such a build up would we create an atmosphere where it would be possible to return to serious negotiations, or would we only succeed in creating much greater tensions and a new, higher baseline from which the arms race would continue?

And we must face the brutal fact that in foreseeable circumstances there is no conceivable combination of weapons systems that could prevent there being over 100 million American dead in any nuclear exchange. This means the end of

-30-

America as a funcitoning society. It is little comfort that
the same condition would result in the USSR.

Thus, we can never consider the Limitation of Strategic
Arms a favor we grant to the Soviet Union, to be turned off
according to the ebb and flow of our relations. It is an
obligation we have to our own people, to other countries and
to world peace. It is a process we will preserve energetically --
ensuring that our strategic posture will remain second to none
and fulfilling our obligations to future generations.

-31-

The Soviet Union and Angola

To deal effectively with an emerging superpower requires
resistance to expansionism as well as the search for agreements.
Even as we seek to curb the nuclear arms race and engage the
Soviet Union in other constructive pursuits, we must move
to blunt its outward thrusts.

This basic issue is posed starkly in Angola. The
Soviet Union and its Cuban ally are intervening on a massive
scale on a distant continent to impose their own political
solution in a civil conflict.

Consider the facts:

-- Angola is 10,000 miles from Soviet borders and of
no historical or strategic interest to Moscow;

-- In the past ten months Soviet ships and planes have
delivered some $200 million worth of military equipment to
the MPLA faction in Angola, ranging from infantry weapons to
tanks, armored personnel carriers and aircraft. This equals
the total amount of all military equipment sent to all the rest

-32-

of sub-Saharan Africa by all other countries.

-- The Soviet Union has also transported about 14,000 Cuban troops to Angola. In some areas the Cubans are carrying on almost the entire battle without a pretense of significant MPLA participation.

-- The balance among the three factions in Angola has been decisively changed solely through this foreign interference. Africa has not suffered outside encroachment on such a scale since the height of the colonialist era.

This is an international event of major significance. It cannot be blithely ignored or explained away. Other countries must inevitably draw conclusions from this brutal exercise of power: the neighboring African states who see a direct threat to their security; our allies around the world; and other nations who also have a vital interest in the world equilibrium. Such adventurism, if unchecked, would inevitably lead to changes in the global balance of power which can only affect the prospects for stability and peace.

-33-

The United States cannot -- and will not -- allow this pattern of action to continue. The massive Soviet intervention in Angola is the kind of conduct in peripheral areas that will ultimately weaken the entire fabric of the evolving U.S.-Soviet relationship. If we are to move toward a genuinely stable relationship, both sides must exercise restraint in regional areas. They must not seek unilateral advantage nor act in such a way as to escalate tense local situations into possible confrontations.

For us these principles of mutual restraint -- agreed to by both sides -- are not abstract concepts but are the heart of how two responsible great powers must conduct their relations in the nuclear era. The easing of tensions must be just that -- the containment and resolution of conflicts, not a cover for exploiting them. It is clear that when one great power attempts to obtain a special position of influence based on military intervention, the other power sooner or later must act to offset this advantage. The likely result will

-34-

(4)

be a chain of action and reaction typical of those historic
eras in which great powers constantly maneuvered for advantage --
only to find themselves sooner or later embroiled in major
crises, perhaps in open conflict.

This pattern must be broken. If we do not do so in
Angola, then we may well have to act at another time, in another
place, and perhaps at a greater price. But somewhere it must
be made clear that expansionism will not be tolerated.

We could have met this test at relatively little cost in
Angola. In response to Soviet intervention we have been asked
to provide modest amounts of material assistance to African
countries who are deeply concerned about Soviet ambitions on
their continent. The question of American troops or advisers
has never arisen; nor will such action ever be contemplated.
From the beginning we have sought only to help stabilize the
situation and bring about a political solution by the Africans
themselves. We have undertaken extensive diplomatic activity --
working with African states, appealing to the Organization of

-35-

African Unity, warning Moscow about its intervention. And
from the very outset we have consulted extensively with the
Congress about our intentions and our actions.

Throughout our policy has been the same as once described
by Adlai Stevenson before the United Nations: "Africa for
Africans means Africa for Africans, and not Africa as a hunting
ground for big-power ambitions." Specifically, the United States
calls for:

- A standstill ceasefire in Angola;

- The withdrawal of all outside forces -- Cuban,
  Russian and South African;

- A cessation of all foreign military involvement; and

- negotiations among all three factions aimed at the
  establishment of a national government truly
  representative of the Angolan people.

The United States is prepared to accept any solution
that emerges from African efforts. We seek no special position
for ourselves. We have no particular preferences among the

-36-

various factions that are at war and are not opposed to any
group because of its ideology. Our only requirements are
these: the Soviet Union must not be permitted to distort
regional situations in ways that can affect the global balance
of stability; and Africa, a continent only recently freed
from external control, must be allowed to determine its own
destiny free of great power pressures.

This approach was taking effect last fall. There were
genuine prospects for an early diplomatic solution when the
Congress cut off the funds designed to assist our African
friends. Since then the result has been ever-increasing Soviet
and Cuban intervention without any effective counterweight;
a decisive military shift in Angola; and the paralysis of
efforts to bring about a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

Despite these adverse trends, fully half of the African nations
supported a position at the January OAU meeting that closely
paralleled our own.

-37-

Misleading and erroneous arguments have distorted the debate in this country. They have led the Congress to halt the relatively insignificant sum of tens of millions of dollars needed to stabilize the situation.

It is alleged that we might be heading for another Vietnam. The analogy is totally false; this nation must have the maturity to make even the most elemental distinctions. The Administration has asked for modest assistance to African countries to bring about a ceasefire and a coalition government chosen by the Angolans themselves. U. S. forces have never been an issue. It is precisely to avoid graver situations in the future that this nation must contain challenges before they mushroom to proportions that directly affect our security.

It is charged that the Administration has undertaken its actions secretively. In fact we have continuously briefed all relevant Congressional bodies from the beginning -- on some 26 thirty occasions with eight different committees. We purposely

-38-

tried to contain the conflict through private diplomacy so
as not to escalate it into a major U.S.-Soviet confrontation.

It is said that the Russians will inevitably be eased
out by the Africans themselves over a period of time. This
may or may not prove true. But such an argument, when carried
to its logical conclusion, implies that we can lightly abandon
the world to the play of interventionist forces. And whatever
the eventual fate of the Russians in Angola, in the meantime
they will have imposed a local political solution and demonstrated
their global reach without effective resistance. This must have
an impact on the perceptions of others.

It is maintained that we should halt the SALT negotiations
because of Soviet action in Angola. This suggests that the
limitation of strategic arms is a favor we grant to Moscow,
to be turned on and off according to the day to day changes
in U.S.-Soviet relations. The fact is that limiting the growth
of nuclear arsenals is in our overriding mutual interest. It

-39-

is a permanent and global problem that must be dealt with
urgently for our own sake and for the sake of world peace.

An unrestrained arms build up would have ominous implications
for the well-being of all humanity. At the same time it is
a fact that if tensions in peripheral areas increase, this cannot
but affect over time our general relationship with Moscow,
including even the SALT talks.

It is argued that we should cancel our grains agreement
with Moscow. This is certainly a perverse form of linkage.
The very people who refuse to provide tens of millions of
dollars suggest instead that American farmers and our balance
of payments position should forego billions of dollars of
business.

Would not work immediately quickly enough affect
Angola.

The time has come -- in both America and Moscow -- to
recognize clearly the implication of Soviet actions in Angola.
Only then can this country effectively tailor its policy to
the long term challenge of Soviet power. Only then will Moscow

-41-

(N)

## Communist Parties in Western Europe

While American leadership must inevitably play the leading role in dealing with the Soviet Union, we cannot do this alone. Our efforts to moderate Soviet behavior and draw Moscow into more productive relations depend crucially on the continued strength and cohesion of the great industrial democracies. Our alliances have provided the cornerstone of global peace for a generation; our economies have spread material prosperity and opportunity around the globe; and our pluralistic, democratic institutions and values are a beacon to peoples everywhere who cherish liberty.

These bonds were forged a generation ago to protect weaker allies against a military threat. Today we work together as equals not only on security but on a whole range of new issues. We have strengthened our common defenses in the face of growing Soviet power. At the same time we have coordinated our respective approaches to easing tensions with the East, and we have cooperated closely in our economic and energy policies.

-42-

Mutual security, the pursuit of peace, the building of a more
prosperous world -- all these enterprises rest heavily on our
allied foundations.

Thus we seek a dynamic Atlantic partnership. A stable,
more unified and democratic Europe is indispensable to all
our hopes for a more peaceful and cooperative world.

It is for these reasons that we cannot but be concerned
about the growing influence and acceptability of Communist
parties in Western Europe. Many of these parties have undergone
major adjustments since the days when they were mere instru-
mentalities of the Soviet Union. This in part accounts for
their increasing weight in the interplay of political forces
in Western Europe. The possibility exists that over time
Communist parties may achieve a significant share of power
in some European governments.

This prospect brings us up against an unavoidable reality.
If one or more countries in the Atlantic world acquire
governments in which Communists actively participate, the

-43-

nature of our alliance and our political associations could
substantially change. Our concern derives not only from the
formal ties between the major Western European Communist parties
and Moscow -- although we cannot be indifferent to the
implications of those ties for Western security and for a
NATO alliance whose objective is to deter Soviet aggression.

But regardless of their affiliation with Moscow, if Communists
help to shape the political and budgetary priorities of
Western governments this will inevitably reduce the emphasis
which is placed on security. At a time when the Soviet Union
continues to increase both its strategic and its conventional
strength, the dangers for the West would be very real indeed.

The essential balance of power with the USSR could be severely
undermined and global stability thereby threatened. Furthermore,
these governments' positions on a whole range of international
issues -- political and economic -- could be tilted to our
disadvantage.

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The inclusion of Communist parties in European governments would also pose dangers for those democratic values which have made close cooperation between the United States and Western Europe a natural process. Some Communist parties swear fidelity to democracy and political pluralism; some have so far played by the rules to greater or lesser degree within their countries.

But none -- even for the sake of electoral tactics -- has foresworn the basic tenets of Marxism-Leninism, which identify these parties as Communist and are profoundly anti-democratic by any objective Western standard. They may stay within democratic means to gain power; we can be sure from the historical record that they would never permit such means to remove themselves from power.

Because of these concerns, the United States will give Communist parties no basis for arguing that the U.S. would be either favorably disposed or indifferent to their accession to power. Nor will we fail to express these concerns to our

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friends and allies in Western Europe. This is fundamentally a
European issue, arising from conditions on the continent which
Communists have been able to exploit. But because of the
importance we attach to our bonds with Western Europe, it is
an issue on which we cannot and will not remain silent.

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NATIONAL STRENGTH AND THE DEBATE AT HOME

It is against this background that our political debate
at home over the coming year must be judged.

We live in a world without simple answers. We hold
our values too dear to relinquish defending them; we
hold human life too dear to cease the quest for a secure
peace. The first requirement of stability is to maintain
our defenses and the balance of power; the highest aim of
policy must be to create out of the sterile equilibrium
of force a more positive relationship of peace.

In the nuclear age there is no alternative to peace.
This is reality, and anyone who offers panaceas or who
attacks without offering alternatives is unworthy of the
American people.

Our own interests, and common sense, require us to
pursue many objectives of policy simultaneously:

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-- to maintain our defenses and yet seek to enhance security through arms control.

-- to defend allies and support friends against encroachments and pressures, and yet seek fair political solutions to conflicts through negotiations.

-- to pursue more constructive relations with the Communist powers in the interest of peace, and yet resist the growth of anti-democratic forces in Western countries.

All these things we must do, and can do. We do them not out of charity, but for our own interest.

First, we must maintain our military power.

There can be no security without a stable balance of power.

This is the lesson of history, and it cannot be forgotten now, just at the moment when all the predictions made over many years of Soviet matching of American strength are about to be fulfilled. Maintenance of our strength has always been a prerequisite of our policy and the only reliable basis for our

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Those who claim to be skeptical of detente have a duty to
do something positive for their country where the main battle
is, they should join
is; they should join the President in doing battle in the
Congress against the determined cuts that will be attempted
in the defense budget he has submitted.

The President's military budget has been adapted to accord
with our many national needs and priorities. In terms of its
portion of the Federal budget and gross national product, our
defense spending is at its lowest level
defense spending is at its lowest level

Another irony of our time is that those who profess to
be more skeptical of Soviet intentions and more alarmed at Soviet
capabilities are nowhere to be found when it comes to defending

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our intelligence services against the nihilistic attacks that
they have endured for the past year. The President highlighted
this challenge, too, in his State of the Union address.

We must have every available national means of guaging
our adversaries' intentions and capabilities if we are to
resist their encroachments and formulate our own policies
wisely and precisely. We must have available every means of
action and influence if we are to meet challenges in the gray
area of conflict between diplomacy and military action. Other-
wise, we continually face the Hobson's choice of capitulation
or escalation.

The right and responsibility of the representatives of the
American people to oversee intelligence activities is unquestioned.
It has always been part of our Constitutional system. But the
necessity to act covertly has always been part of our system as
well. It is time for the Congress and the President to settle
once and for all on mutually-acceptable procedures and stick to
them. It is time that agreements be kept, sensitive information

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be protected, and scandal mongering be ended. It is time to
rebuild -- and preserve -- a responsible, responsive and
effective intelligence capability which is vital to this nation.

Thirdly, we must maintain the strength of the American
economy. In the last few years Americans have learned how
much all our objectives -- our security, our prosperity, the
cohesion of our alliances and the health of the international
environment -- depend upon our economic vitality.

The recession and inflation of the last two years have
had ominous international consequences -- which now we are on the
way to remedying. Recession and inflation eat away at the well-
being and hopes of groups and peoples on the margin of prosperity.
They breed disunity, drain the energies of nations away from
international concerns, and complicate the harmony of inter-
national relations. At home they undermine social peace,
confidence in Government, and the vitality of democratic
processes.

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Abroad economic strains tempt the Governments of the
industrial nations into protectionism or other measures of
rivalry; they threaten an era of bloc economic warfare between
rich nations and poor.

Yet no Government acting alone has a possibility of
correcting the fundamental economic conditions that beset it.
In the modern world our economies are tied together; we prosper
or decline together. The restoration of growth offers our
best hope of accommodating the aspirations of all who compete
for betterment of their own future. It frees resources for
meeting all our national needs. It restores faith in democratic
institutions and democratic leaders.

The position of the American economy is central. As the
President has said, "A resurgent American economy would do
more to restore the confidence of the world in its own future than
anything else we can do." We shall do what is required.

Finally, and most importantly, our national strength depends
on our unity as a people. There is no limit to what free men

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can accomplish acting together.

In the last quarter of this century, we are no longer
preponderant. We can no longer overwhelm our problems with our
resources; the diversity and complexity of the world no longer
offer moral simplicity. We are, therefore, called upon, as never
before, to show purpose, coherence, flexibility, and imagination
in the conduct of our foreign affairs.

We must be one Nation, one Government. We must learn --
even in an election year -- to moderate special interests in the
definition of a national interest. We must have the self-
discipline to shape our domestic debates into a positive, not
a destructive process. We must attack our problems and not
each other. Our unity as a people is our most precious
national resource.

One of the forgotten truths of our history is that our
Founding Fathers were men of great sophistication in
foreign affairs. They understood the balance of power; they
made use of the divisions of Europe for the advantage of our
own Revolution. They understood the need for a strong

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executive to conduct the nation's diplomacy. They
understood that America required links, economic and moral,
with other nations. They understood that our ideals were
universal ideals and they understood, and welcomed, the
impact of the American experiment on the destinies of
all mankind.

In our age whose challenges are totally without
precedent, we need once again the wisdom of our Founding
Fathers. Our ideals must give us strength -- and not be
used to foreswear all forms of involvement in foreign
relations. Our pragmatic tradition must help us under-
stand reality and shape it, not be submerged in technical
detail or in method without purpose. Our love of our
country must inspire us to persevere with patience and
dedication, not to denounce all compromise as treason.

The American people want an effective foreign
policy. They want America to continue to play a role of

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leadership to help shape the international order of the
coming generation according to our ideals.

An America that assaults or hobbles itself only weakens
itself. A great nation that loses its power to shape events
becomes their victim.

We no longer have the margin for error that we once
enjoyed. In a world that we no longer predominate, there
is a premium on our perseverance, our wisdom and our vision.

These are qualities that we have always displayed in
moments of challenge. These qualities are needed now.

I know that we shall not fail.