ASNE SPEECH

April 10, 1980

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 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
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.

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.

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

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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,
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
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

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.

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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 later.

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 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 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.

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. 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 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 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

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the expectation that SALT would be ratified. How can that
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
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. 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
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.

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The Geopolitical Balance


This brings 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-Israeli dispute or Southern Africa are possible, or whether the radical tide or Communist proxy intervention dooms all prospects of moderation and progress.

This 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 our ability to perceive trends and dangers before they become overwhelming. A statesman must act on judgments about the future that cannot be proved true when they are made. When the scope for action is greatest, the knowledge on which to base such action is often least; when certain knowledge is at hand, the scope for creative action has often disappeared.

In 1936, the movement of one French division could have dissuaded Hitler from his march into the Rhineland. If France had done so, the world might still be arguing today whether Hitler was only a misunderstood nationalist or really a maniac bent on world domination. By 1941 everyone knew that Hitler was a maniac bent on world domination-- but the world paid for its insistence on psychological certainty with millions of lives.

We face, I would submit, a similar 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

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a major ally of the United States and had in turn been an
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
many local upheavals in the world's political alignments.

Precariously situated countries in the Middle East see
the Soviet-supported Cuban advance coming 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
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. 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

* News Conference, February 12, 1976

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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
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.

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.

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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 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 inter-
vention 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
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

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

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. If improved judicial procedures were a main concern of Khomeini's revolution, he has kept it well hidden--with 700 executions and "thousands" of political 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?

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. 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.

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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, now 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. 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.

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 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

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Kremlin's insatiable 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, or from the tug of war between Congress and the Executive--run the risk of evaporating the restraints operating on Soviet conduct.

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 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 re-discovered 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 unwilling to resist the 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.

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I have supported the retaliatory steps announced by the President since January toward the Soviet Union--the deferral of SALT, the grain embargo, restriction on access to high technology, the Olympic boycott. These 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 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 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 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

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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 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 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 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

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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. 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
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 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
a confrontation would present us with greater problems
than our adversary.

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## 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.

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. 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.

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 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.

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

Draft I: 3/21-80

ASNE SPEECH

April 10, 1980

I want to tell all the Presidential candidates that I do not hold them to all the unkind things they have said about me under the emotional stresses of the campaign. They have to let off steam somehow...

But seriously, now that it is obvious that I am not speaking for any candidate, perhaps I can contribute to a timely public debate over the foreign policy challenges that our nation will face in the decade to come.

No Administration has the right to ask for a moratorium on public debate over foreign policy. In the Administrations I served, even though a war was going on during much of that time, you can imagine the howls of outrage that would have greeted any Presidential request for a moratorium on debate.

Foreign policy has become an issue in this campaign--as indeed it should, because we are entering a period of new

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dangers that are unlike any we have experienced in the
past. Whoever is elected in November will face these dangers.
Whoever is elected in November will need the backing of a
united country if he is to guide the ship of state safely
through treacherous shoals and stormy seas.

Let me discuss with you two problems: the military
and political components of a stable peace.

## The Military Balance with the Soviet Union

First, the military balance with the Soviet Union.

Americans have always been uncomfortable with the
notion of the balance of power. In most of the traditional
literature on international affairs, the phrase "balance
of power" seldom occurs without one of the adjectives
"outmoded" or "discredited" before it. But in a world
of many sovereign states, and particularly in an age of
thermonuclear weaponry, it is impossible to conceive of
a secure peace without some concept of equilibrium.

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The problem we face is that for 30 years, not only the sense of security but also the military strategy of the Atlantic Alliance have rested and relied upon a presumed American superiority in strategic nuclear weaponry. That superiority has now come to an end. And yet we have not fully adapted our thinking to this revolutionary fact, nor have we fully grasped its implications for our defense policy or our foreign policy.

After its humiliation in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the Soviet Union embarked on an all-out, systematic, and sustained expansion in all categories of its military power--a buildup that has not yet stopped, and is even accelerating. The Soviets have invested annually about 11 to 13 percent of their Gross National Product; our corresponding figure is per cent. In absolute terms, total Soviet defense spending over the last ten years has exceeded ours by 30 percent. In 1979 their defense expenditure was almost 50 percent higher than ours. In the late 1960's,

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the US adopted a nuclear strategy that was geared to a level
of civilian damage to be inflicted on the Soviet Union,
rather than to the scale of the threat against us. There-
fore, we halted the growth of our ICBM force when we reached
the theoretically adequate level. The Soviets unfortunately
did not reciprocate; they caught up with us--and continued
to build. The Soviets have today developed a strategic
nuclear force superior to ours in many categories; theater
nuclear forces approaching the level and quality of what
always used to be an American superiority; land armies that
exceed NATO's on the European front while permitting a
force of over a million men to face down China on the
Eastern front; an ocean-going navy and modernized airlift
capable of intervention at any point on the globe; and
depots in such countries as Libya and Ethiopia enabling the
Soviet Union to move its own--or proxy--troops rapidly to
their prepositioned weapons.

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At the same time, America, for a combination of reasons, has reduced its commitment to defense over the last ten years. The Vietnam war not only diverted resources from investment and procurement; it also spawned a pervasive anti-military sentiment that condemned all defense spending as immoral, wasteful, and dangerous. "Reordering national priorities" was the slogan of the early 70's--a euphemism for cutting the defense budget. The assault on defense spared no element of our national power: The ABM passed by one vote in 1969 and was later allowed to atrophy; 40 Senators sought to halt all MIRV testing and development; the Trident submarine and missile program was nearly cancelled in the Senate (passing by one vote in 1973); the C-5A transport aircraft, which later saved an ally in the 1973 Middle East war, was constantly attacked on budgetary grounds; only an all-out effort prevented the Senate in 1971 from cutting our troop deployments in Western Europe by half.

It is true that Republican Administrations tried to preempt this sentiment by anticipatory trimming to demonstrate that the defense budgets were truly "lean."

It is also true that Democratic Congresses cut $33 billion more from the defense budgets actually requested during President Nixon's term of office.

The result is that unless these trends are reversed, the 1980's will be a period of vulnerable American land-based strategic forces matched against invulnerable Soviet land-based forces; a shifting balance against us in theater nuclear forces in Europe; and continuation of the long-standing Western inferiority in forces for regional defense.

Rarely in history has a nation so passively accepted such a radical shift in the military balance against it.

Never in history has a nation gained an advantage in so many significant categories of military power without gaining some political advantage from it. The prospect we face is that in local crises around the world, adversaries armed with

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Soviet weapons will determine the outcomes, to the detriment of our allies and friends. The prospect we face is that in direct US-Soviet confrontations, like that in Cuba in 1962 or the Mideast alert in 1973, the *next* occurrence will find the *Soviet Union* enjoying the quantitative superiority that *we* enjoyed when those crises were successfully resolved in our favor.

It is inevitable that unless the military imbalances are redressed, the crises we have been witnessing--in Angola, Ethiopia, South Yemen, Indochina and Afghanistan--will multiply, and recur, in as yet unforeseeable areas--and indeed in some foreseeable ones.

This is the kind of world we will face in the 1980's unless the trends in the military balance are urgently reversed.

The Afghanistan crisis, it seems to me, illuminated our danger. I do not believe that the United States could have prevented the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But it

-8-

is clear that the vulnerability of the West's oil lifeline
to the Persian Gulf was suddenly and starkly illuminated.

Our military weakness, or inability to project our power into
that crucial region--a product of decades of inadequate
defense investment for which many Administrations and many
Congresses must share responsibility--is now staring us in
the face.

Perhaps we are lucky that the danger is still only
Potential; we have the opportunity to restore our capability,
or at least begin to, before it's too late.

Yet after Afghanistan, as the President groped for
ways of penalizing the Soviet Union, amid all the embargoes
and boycotts he seemed to have overlooked one of the
most obvious, most relevant, and most significant responses
he could make: an increase in our defense budget. Let
the Soviet Union know that when it asserts its power so
heavy handedly, so callously, so brutally, it will provoke
an American rebuilding program--just as Sputnik provoked a

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crash program in science and technology, education, and
military preparedness. Yet, amazingly, the modest increases
in the President's new defense budget of January are those
already added *before* Afghanistan; they are the increments
added to try to win support for SALT. *Nothing* has been
added since the Afghanistan crisis.

There are many of us who doubt whether the present
defense budget and five-year projection are adequate.

The test is not money alone, but whether significant gaps
are closed and new vulnerabilities forestalled.

The Rapid Deployment Force is one useful project--
but we must bear in mind that it will not be in
existence as a serious force until 1984 or 1985. The President
and Secretaries Vance and Brown deserve credit also for their
success in gaining NATO acceptance of Theater Nuclear
Force modernization.

In the strategic area, there is one crucial program--
the MX missile. Whatever the basing mode, a new heavy-
throwweight land-based strategic missile is absolutely

vital to the military security of the United States. And
the reasons go far beyond the abstract necessity of equality
with the Soviet Union.

Land-based ICBM's, for the foreseeable future, will be
the most accurate and most powerful strategic weapons on
both sides, the ones most capable of rapid attack on
the military targets of the other side. Since NATO's
military doctrine and strategy have depended much more
on strategic forces than have the Soviet Union's, even
overall equality revolutionizes the postwar security
equation. But in fact the situation is worse. My principal
worry is not merely the growing vulnerability of our land-
based forces to the new generation of Soviet MIRV'd ICBMs--
though this must be remedied--but the growing invulnerability
of Soviet land-based forces.

It is unacceptable that a Soviet counterforce cability
against us be passively tolerated while an American counter-
force capability is ruled out as somehow "provocative."

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If this situation is allowed to continue, the deterrent effect of our strategic forces in defense of allies will continually decline; our strategic forces will surely lose their ability to offset the Soviet capacity for regional intervention. And this capacity will be reinforced by the growing edge in Soviet theater nuclear forces, a naval and airlift capability which immeasurably extends the reach and preponderance of Soviet conventional power.

It is not necessary for present purposes to debate whether the Soviet Union would in fact run a risk of war on the global level; it will be grave enough if the Soviet willingness to run risks in regional conflicts is magnified. And that seems to be the minimum consequence of what is ahead. The side that can defend its interests only by threatening to initiate the mutual mass extermination of civilians will gradually slide towards strategic, and therefore eventually geopolitical, paralysis.

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The consequence, to put it bluntly, is that in the
1980's regional conflicts--whether deliberately promoted or
not--threaten increasingly to grow out of control unless
we drastically reverse the trend in <u>all</u> categories of
military power.

The Geopolitical Balance

For we must preserve, in the 1980's, not only the
military balance but the geopolitical balance. By this I
mean the balance of alignments that determines whether
moderates or radicals dominate the Third World, especially
vital regions like the Persian Gulf; it means the overall
conditions of security that determine <u>whether peaceful</u>
solutions of problems
like the Arab-Israeli dispute are possible, or whether
the radical tide or Communist proxy intervention dooms
all prospects of moderation and progress.

The geopolitical balance is measured partly by
intangibles--by whether friends of the United States believe
that they have a secure future, or by whether they have

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confidence in our ability to aid them against challenges and
deter outside threats to their regional security.

And it depends as well on <u>our</u> perception of trends
and dangers before they become overwhelming. A statesman
must act on assessments of the future that cannot be
proved true when they are made. When the scope for action
is greatest, the knowledge on which to base such action is
often at a minimum. When the knowledge is more certain,
the scope for creative action has often disappeared.

In 1936, one French division could have dissuaded
Hitler from his attempt to remilitarize the Rhineland.
If France had done so, the world might still be arguing
today whether Hitler was only a misunderstood nationalist
or really a maniac bent on world domination. By 1941 every-
one knew that Hitler was a maniac bent on world domination--
but the world paid for this certain knowledge with millions
of lives.

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We face, I would submit, a similar challenge from the
Soviet Union--not in the sense that they are implementing a
design for world conquest but in the sense that incremental
challenges not resisted will only lead to greater challenges,
even if the Soviets are only exploiting opportunities that
arise.

This was precisely the issue raised four years ago by
the Soviet-Cuban intervention in Angola. There the USSR
transported thousands of Cuban troops--equipped with
Soviet arms, trained by Soviet advisers, and flown in
Soviet aircraft--to tip the scales in a local conflict
between three Angolan liberation movements. It was the
first instance of Soviet military intervention thousands
of miles from the Soviet Union--an attempt that President
Ford and I considered it essential to resist and an attempt
that, in my view, succeeded only because the United States
failed to resist. When the Congress halted our limited
military assistance to groups friendly to us, I warned that it

-15-

would be a precedent. As I said at a news conference on
February 12, 1976, (and on several other occasions):

"This is a pattern which...the United States
treats with indifference only at the risk of buying
graver crises at higher cost later on."

The issue was not then, as it is not exclusively in
Afghanistan, the intrinsic importance of Angola. The
issue was that if a small Caribbean country can send an
expeditionary force, financed by the Soviet Union, equipped
by the Soviet Union, under the shelter of Soviet military
protection, into a distant continent, with total impunity,
what will all the leaders of that area conclude? What will be
the perception of the willingness and ability of the United
States to maintain the global balance?

We heard then that we would be involved in another
Vietnam, though the Administration had no thought of
introducing American forces. Those Cuban forces then
spread from Angola to Ethiopia, where they are now a direct

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threat to the oil producing regions of the Middle East.
And they went from Ethiopia to South Yemen.

And the first Communist coup in Afghanistan did not occur two months ago, but two years ago, when a Communist government was installed to replace a previously nonaligned government and 5,000 Soviet advisers appeared in all the ministries of Kabul. The United States gave no sign then that it perceived a significant event to have taken place. Friendly countries in the area drew disturbing conclusions.

It is this sequence of events which has contributed to a general climate of uncertainty and insecurity. And it was compounded by the collapse, for whatever reason, of the government of Iran, which for 37 years had been a major ally of the United States and had in turn been an important supporter of other moderate forces in the region.

All of this has raised the fundamental question whether the United States is willing or able to maintain the balance not only against the Soviet Union, but against those radical

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forces that are sponsored by the Soviet Union and against
that network of terrorists that is trained and equipped in
Communist locations, and that is dedicated to undermining
the security of most of these countries.

And, therefore, if we are serious about dealing with
the current crisis, we must address ourselves not only to
the immediate retaliatory steps such as the embargoes on
grain and high technology and the Olympic boycott--which I
support and which I believe all Americans should support--
but in a deeper sense to how we can go about conveying to
other nations that may be threatened, or whose cooperation
we want, some perception that we understand what we must
resist, and how it is that we are going to resist it. In
short, do we have a strategy that they can understand?

If Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or any of our other
friends is threatened, what is the threat, how are we going
to resist it, what is the role that these countries will
play, and what is the role that we shall play?

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Are we acting now in order to punish the Soviet Union for an individual act? Or are we committing ourselves to a long-term strategy that we can communicate to others, that they can understand, that our people will support, and that will be carried out by our leadership groups of both parties regardless of the accident of political fortune?

For if we change our policies with every election, the United States itself becomes an element of instability in the world, and an added element of insecurity to those who depend on us.

This reassurance is precisely what we did *not* give Pakistan. And this is why Pakistan rejected our aid.

This was an extraordinary event: a long-time ally, suddenly confronted by 80,000 Soviet troops on its frontier. The President of the United States made aid to Pakistan a centerpiece of his strategy in two major speeches, and sent his national security adviser--a position of great importance, as you all know. The result was that Pakistan said no (at least

-19-

for now). What it meant was that Pakistan preferred to remain relatively defenseless and talk accommodation with the Soviet Union, rather than take the risks of being closely associated with the United States.

This is an extraordinary humiliation for us, and we should not pretend otherwise. It is an unprecedented event, a potentially revolutionary change in international affairs, and an overwhelming vote of no confidence in the United States.

The same lack of confidence is evident in Western Europe. Apparently our allies are skeptical that we will persist in the new course so suddenly embarked on by the President in January. They wonder whether we will stick to a longer-term policy of resistance to the Soviet Union. They are apparently not convinced that we understand the problem or have a strategy for dealing with it. Former Prime Minister Edward Heath, for example, has complained that while the Soviet Union had a world strategy, "the West has

-20-

no such world strategy:"

"There is at present no sign of such a
design being created. Until it is, the West
will continue to react to events in a vain
attempt to catch up with them, rather than
foreseeing developments and trying to control
them."

## Elements of a Strategy

What are the elements of such a strategy? I will
mention two.

The first is some understanding of who our friends
are in the world, and a willingness to carry out the
responsibility of a great power to be a dependable ally.
In the aftermath of what happened in Indochina, this is
not a trivial question. Doubts were bound to be raised
then about our reliability as an ally--whatever the
claims of antiwar critics that this was all a myth or
a groundless fear. The doubt is now approaching epidemic

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proportions.

In the name of what do we support our friends in the world? It is true that our country stands for human rights, for democratic liberties, and for the freedom of the individual.

But it is also true that the fate of freedom depends also on the geopolitical balance in the world. It is also true that the history of other nations is not always the same as ours, that democracy in the West is the product of an evolution that took centuries, and that in many parts of the world our immediate choice is not between perfection and evil, but between fundamental threats and situations which, while not ideal, have within them the possibility of a moderate evolution. It is also true that authoritarian regimes of the right seem more susceptible to evolution to democracy--witness Spain, Portugal, Greece--than totalitarian regimes of the left, none of which has ever given way to democracy once irreversibly entrenched.

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I have been criticized because I believed that the
United States should not lightly discard a friend of
37 years whose eight American presidents had praised to
the skies, in his hour of need. But whatever the merits
of that debate, if one considers what has been described
as the "arc of crisis," one finds it almost exclusively
governed by regimes that do not meet all our ideal standards.

Are we then going to repeat our Vietnam debate of a
decade, and in their hour of need remember all their
imperfections and use them as an excuse for inaction?

Or will we recognize what is essential for our survival,
and we recognize what is essential for our survival, and
leave to an historical process those situations where the
best we can do is to keep open the possibility for a longer,
but never-ending evolution? If we cannot answer this
question, we will find that further offers of help that we
extend may not be readily received. Or we may experience,
when they are received, the same domestic divisions which

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from Vietnam through our current period have paralyzed
national action and made it impossible to formulate a national
consensus behind any policy. If we are not able to formulate
this national consensus, then we will not be able to meet
the current crisis.

Another element of a national strategy must be to
bear in mind that in the longer term, the United States
and the Soviet Union must find some basis for a stable
coexistence.

In 1968, after the Soviets occupied Czechoslovakia,
a television network asked me--I was still a Harvard
professor--whether I was afraid that the Soviets were
now going to attack western Europe. And I said, "I'm not
afraid of the military attack that the Soviets are now
going to launch. I am afraid of the peace offensive
that is certain to follow." Five months later, to my
amazement, I was asked to join the Administration of a
President whom I had consistently opposed for the previous
decade when I worked for Governor Rockefeller. And in the

-24-

first months of the Nixon Administration we were harrassed
by the Congress, our allies, and the media, to pick up
the overtures for peace which five months after Czechoslovakia
the Soviet Union was extending to us.

Sooner or later there will be

-25-

another Soviet peace offensive. Sooner or later we
will be again involved in negotiations. We will be
involved in negotiations because, just as we are the
leaders of the free world in defending against Soviet
expansionism, so we have to be the leaders of the free
world in defining what we mean by peace.

So now is the time to get clear in our mind what it is
that we want when we negotiate, what are the terms which we
consider compatible with peace, security, and our moral
values. What do we want -- a change of tone or a change in
conduct? And if a change in conduct--which is, of course,
what I would insist on--what change in conduct?

Let us not again slide into negotiations and find that
a huge debate occurs after they are already concluded. Let
us use this time, when we ready our defenses and organize
our alliances and give courage to our friends, also to
define what it is that we are ultimately prepared to negotiate
upon.

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Among the issues that we will inevitably return to, is
the SALT treaty. Presumably, the current treaty will not be
revived during this session of the Congress; the President
was right in setting it aside after Afghanistan, and he
would be making a mistake to try to push it through before
the election.

This leaves the issue of what to do after the election:

- Trying to ratify a treaty in the spring of 1971 would not be worth the political struggle. The Protocol would only have a few months to run, and should not be renewed in any case.

- This leaves the main treaty, which extends to the end of 1985. Voting a four-year agreement is of marginal value, particularly if we remember that at Vladviostok, which started the current process, we envisaged a ten-year agreement (from 1975 through 1985).

In my view we would be better advised to return to the negotiations, with the aim of reaching a new agreement to run for an extended period, say 10-15 years, which would address and seek to limit the next cycle of weapons developments. In this case we could also broaden the negotiation to

-27-

include Soviet theater nuclear weapons, as well as planned
NATO deployments.

But this whole question ought to be reviewed carefully
by the next Administration to determine whether we really
want "SALT without detente" as the saying goes, whether
we can make arms control an integral part of a broader
shift in US-Soviet relations, and if so how do we proceed
to link arms control and Soviet behavior.

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## Conclusion

In this period of constant crisis, it is easy to overestimate our perils. We should keep in mind that we alone have two times the Gross National Product of the Soviet Union and, with our allies, five times the Gross National Product of the Soviet Union.

We should remember that the Soviet Union is a system of government that has never managed a legitimate succession. There have only been four leaders in the whole history of the Soviet Union in the over 60 years of their history. Two died in office, one went on vacation without taking his colleagues with him, and the fourth is determined not to repeat that mistake.

A system of government in which the average age of the top leadership group, the Politburo, is about 70, hardly represents the wave of the future. Nor has any planned economy ever been able to compete with a market economy. Whether it is Czeckoslovakia and Austria, East and West Germany, North and South Korea, never have the market economies done

-29-

anything but outstrip the socialist countries.

So it is true we are in a critical period. It is true that we must make urgent efforts and sacrifices to restore the military balance. We have been shocked by a crisis and we have ahead of us some difficult years.

But if one looks at the longer term, the reality, the certainty, that Soviet domestic problems will mount while ours can be mastered. At some point the choice in Moscow must be for a genuine coexistence that we have not yet had. If we look to our security in the dangerous period immediately ahead, it is not excluded that we can close off Soviet options for adventurism. Then we must be ready once again to offer a more positive alternative.

Whether we achieve a world which is free of the danger of nuclear war, but also free of the danger of nuclear blackmail; a world in which the world'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: whether we

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can bring about a world of hope and of confidence, is
finally dependent on whether at last we solve our own
problems. It depends on whether we can unite and mobilize
our own efforts and the vitality of free peoples; whether
we understand that with all our adversity we are the most
fortunate people in the world, in the sense that the solu-
tion of our problems depends almost entirely on ourselves.

This is my reason for hope, indeed optimism, about
our future.

(Loud, prolonged applause. All stand.)

against Soviet expansionism,

organizing resistance, so we have to be the

mean by peace.

moral compatible with peace, security, and our values.

What do we want, a change of tone or a change in

conduct?

And if a change in conduct, which

is, of course, what I would insist on, what

change in conduct?

Let us not again slide into the old negotiations where the big debate occurs after the

and find it a huge debate occurs after the

prepared to negotiate upon.

This leaves the issue of what to do after the election.

-- Trying to ratify a treaty in the spring of 1981, would not be worth the political struggle. The Protocol would only have a few months to run, and should not be renewed in any case.

-- This leaves the main treaty, which extends to the end of 1985. Voting a four-year agreement is of marginal value, particularly if we remember that at Vladviostok, which started the current process, we envisaged a ten-year agreement (from 1975 through 1985).

In my view we would be better advised to return to the negotiations, with the aim of reaching a new agreement to run for an extended period, say 10-15 years, which would *address and seek to cover the 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.

But this whole *issue* ought to be reviewed carefully by the next Administration to determine whether we really want "SALT without detente" as the saying goes, whether we can make arms control an integral part of an