FOREIGN AFFAIRS: Speech - Los Angeles, CA - 8/13/92 REMARKS OF GOVERNOR BILL CLINTON Los Angeles World Affairs Council August 13, 1992 We stand blessed as the inheritors of a new world. It is a world of hope and opportunity, made possible by a half century of bipartisan leadership and unstinting sacrifice by the American people and our allies-- and above all by the courage of the women and men who tore down the walls of repression and stood down the tanks of tyranny. Now the Iron Curtain has collapsed. The Cold War has melted under the irrepressible flame of freedom. It is a cause for rejoicing. But this new world we have helped create places new demands on the kind of presidential leadership America needs. The new world remains a place of peril. While the Soviet Union is gone, a president must still be ready to defy and defeat those who threaten us. Whatever else we expect of our presidents, we still need a resolute leader who will wield America's might and marshall our global alliances to defend our nation's interests. Yet today there are new tests of leadership as well: The first is to grasp how the world has changed. The second test is to assert a vision of our role in this dynamic new world. The third test is to summon all our strengths -- our values, our economic power, when necessary our military might -- in service of that vision. I do not believe President Bush has met these new tests, despite his effectiveness in organizing the response to Iraq's aggression. Too often the administration has held on to old assumptions and policies, trying to prop up yesterday's status quo, failing to confront our new challenges. I have agreed with President Bush on a number of foreign policy issues. But I do not believe he has a vision of our role in this new era. In a world of change, security flows from initiative, not inertia. Next week, the Republican Party will gather in Houston to nominate Mr. Bush and praise his record abroad. The question will be: Do they paint a partisan portrait of the past, or do they render a vision of the future Americans can build together? In their campaign, the Republicans already have tried to claim success for America's Cold War victory. And they suggest that in their second term they will bring to domestic policy the same energy and expertise they say marked foreign policy in their first term. Their argument misreads both history and current events. The notion that the Republicans won the Cold War reminds me of the rooster who took credit for the dawn. The truth is, from Truman to Kennedy to Carter, Democratic as well as Republican presidents held firm against the expansion of Communism; and from Richard Russell to Scoop Jackson to Sam Nunn, Democratic leaders in Congress helped build the finest defense forces in the history of the world. But even more flawed is the Republican claim that, just as they changed the world in their first term, they will change America in their second. We must understand that foreign and domestic policy are two sides of the same coin. If we're not strong at home we can't be strong abroad. If we can't compete in the global economy, we'll pay for it at home. The same president who refused to make changes as American wages fell from first to thirteenth in the world was slow to recognize the changes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The same Administration that did nothing as 10 million Americans lost their jobs due to tired, old economic policies also stood by as courageous Chinese students were attacked with tanks in Tiananmen Square. I believe global change is inexorable and can work to our advantage or to our disadvantage, depending on what we do. No one understands the opportunities and hazards of change better than the people of California. Your commerce and culture stand as testaments to the benefits we derive from our engagement with Mexico, Japan, and the other nations of the Pacific. Your economy has been hurt by the lack of a national economic strategy, especially the lack of a plan to convert defense cuts into domestic economic investments. Last December at Georgetown University and last April in New York, I outlined the role I see for America in this era of change. I marked the steps we must take to meet our new challenges: to reestablish America's economic leadership; foster the spread of democracy abroad; and revamp our Cold War military to meet our new security needs. Today I want to expand on what leadership in this new era requires, particularly in rethinking our security strategy and modernizing our defenses. Leadership for a Strong Economy In this new era, our first foreign priority and our first domestic priority are one and the same: reviving our economy. America must regain its economic strength to play our proper role as leader of the world. And we must have a president who attends to prosperity at home if our people are to sustain their support for engagement abroad. The world needs a strong America, and American strength begins right here. This has been the administration's most glaring foreign policy failure. An anemic, debt-laden economy; the developed world's highest rates of crime and poverty; an archaic education system; decaying roads, ports, and cities: all these undermine our diplomacy, make it harder for us to secure favorable trade agreements and compromise our ability to finance essential military actions. Mr. Bush's economic neglect has invited foreign pity; it is time for economic leadership that inspires foreign respect. Mr. Bush does not understand: the currency of national strength in this new era will be denominated not only in ships, tanks and planes, but also in diplomas, patents and paychecks. My first foreign policy priority will be to restore America's economic vitality. I have laid out a strategy to raise our peoples' skills, boost productivity, spur innovation and investment, and make us the world's strongest trading power. I will elevate economics in foreign policy; create an Economic Security Council, similar to the National Security Council; and change the State Department's culture so that economics is no longer a poor cousin to old-school diplomacy. In a Clinton-Gore administration, presidential leadership will mean mobilizing our country for the global economic competition that is the hallmark of this new age. It will mean securing commitments from American business and labor to take on new cooperative responsibilities. It will mean championing open world trade that benefits American workers as well as American businesses -- from the roaring markets of the Pacific Rim to the resurgent economies of Mexico and Latin America. And it will mean swift responses and stiff penalties to those who abuse the rules of trade. One way we will strengthen our economy is through leadership for environmentally sound growth. President Bush abdicated that leadership, before and during the Rio Earth Summit. Al Gore and I will reclaim it. Someone recently noted there are only two groups in the world who still don't understand that economic growth and a clean environment depend on each other: the Bush administration and the former leaders of Eastern European Communism. The fact is, if we steer toward cleaner ways of doing business, we'll create new jobs and make our firms more competitive. That's why I've proposed a strategy to boost U.S. energy efficiency and to use market-based incentives to prevent pollution before it's created. It's also one reason I picked Al Gore to be my running mate. We will put the U.S. back at the forefront of global efforts to achieve sustainable development, and in the process, leave our children a better world. Leadership to Promote Democracy The second imperative of presidential leadership in this new era is to reinforce the powerful global movement toward democracy and market economies. Our strategic interests and moral values both are rooted in this goal. As we help democracy expand, we make ourselves and our allies safer. Democracies rarely go to war with each other or traffic in terrorism. They make more reliable partners in trade and diplomacy. Growing market economies expand individual opportunity and social tolerance. Yet Mr. Bush has been oddly reluctant to commit America's prestige on the side of people inspired by American precepts and example. When democratic reformers sought to break up the Soviet empire, Mr. Bush snubbed Boris Yeltsin, sided with the crumbling Soviet center, and failed to lead the call for aid to Russia until he was shamed into it by Richard Nixon and others. When 50 million Ukrainians sought emancipation from a dying communist empire, Mr. Bush withheld moral support, and instead -- in Kiev itself -- publicly chided Ukraine's voices of independence for seeking a "suicidal nationalism." When China cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrators, exported advanced weapons to radical regimes, and suppressed Tibet, Mr. Bush failed to stand up for our values. Instead, he sent secret emissaries to China, signalling that we would do business as usual with those who murdered freedom in Tiananmen Square. And when it was clear to all that Yugoslavia was inexorably breaking apart, Mr. Bush and his secretary of state gave short shrift to the yearnings of those seeking freedom in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia, and ignored warning signs that Slobodan Milosevic was emerging as one of Europe's bloodiest tyrants. From the Baltics to Beijing, from Sarajevo to South Africa, time after time, George Bush has sided with the status quo rather than democratic change -- with familiar tyrants rather than those who would overthrow them -- and with the old geography of repression rather than a new map of freedom. This pattern was most glaring in Mr. Bush's treatment of Iraq prior to its invasion of Kuwait, and his failure to support Saddam Hussein's opponents after the success of Desert Storm. I supported the President's effort to drive Saddam out of Kuwait, and I respect his conduct of the war itself. But now we are learning how his administration appeased Saddam in the months prior to August, 1990. Even after the conclusion of the Iran-Iraq War, after Saddam had gassed his own Kurdish population, this administration coddled Iraq with economic credits, licensed militarily useful technology, and offered an obliging silence about its savage human rights record. In keeping with the president's directive to woo Saddam, the State Department even wrote an apology after the Voice of America dared to criticize Iraq's tyrannical regime. My administration will stand up for democracy. We will international assistance to emerging, fragile democracies in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and create a Democracy Corps to help them develop free institutions. We will keep the pressure on South Africa until its day of true democracy has dawned. We will stand by Israel -- our only democratic ally in the Middle East -- and press for more accountable governance throughout the region. We will link China's trading privileges to its human rights record and its conduct on trade and weapons sales. We will create a Radio Free Asia, like the successful Radio Free Europe, to carry news and hope to freedom-loving people in China and elsewhere. We will buttress democratic forces in Haiti, Peru, and throughout the western hemisphere. And we will make the U.S. the catalyst for a collective stand against aggression, the action I have urged in response to Serbian aggression in Bosnia, one with which the Bush administration now agrees after first calling it reckless. Leadership to Modernize America's Defenses No test of presidential leadership is more important than the president's actions as commander in chief. The threats to America may change, but a president's willingness to confront them must be unwavering. The world remains a dangerous place. Moreover, the dangers are now different and less apparent. So as we scale down our military, we must also keep up our guard. U.S. military strength will remain a force for stability -- and, yes, justice -- as the old global order continues to collapse and a new one emerges. We can never forget this essential fact: power is the basis for successful diplomacy, and military power has always been fundamental to international relationships. So a president must provide the American people with a clear explanation of our enduring security interests, and a new estimate of the threats we are likely to face in the post Cold-War era. Mr. Bush has failed to supply either. His lack of a clear strategy for national security is fueling isolationism on both the left and the right. Today there are two wrong-headed, dangerous approaches to adjusting our defenses for the new era. One is the administration's. It mouths the rhetoric of strategic change, but simply shrinks the existing Cold War force structure. Continuation of this policy runs the risk of weakening the two elements that were key to our victory in the Gulf: superbly trained and motivated personnel and world-class weapons technology. At the same time, there are those -- some in my party -- who see defense cuts largely as a piggy bank to fund their domestic wish lists, with our defense structures and missions as an afterthought, rather than a starting premise. This policy could also weaken our technological superiority and the quality and morale of our personnel. Leadership demands more than either "Cold War Minus" or "Domestic Spending Plus." A president must identify the new threats to our security, define military missions to meet those threats, adapt our forces to carry out those missions, and back up those forces with the training, technology and intelligence they need to win. We must start with a fresh assessment of the new dangers that could threaten our interests and potentially require the use of force. These include: the risk of new threats from the former Soviet republics, should democracy fail; the spread of weapons of mass destruction; historic tensions in various regions, especially the Korean peninsula and the Middle East, and the related risks of terrorist attacks; and the growing intensity of ethnic, fundamentalist and separatist violence, as in Yugoslavia and elsewhere, that can spill across borders. The mission of containing an expansionist Soviet Union has disappeared. But enduring missions remain: to maintain nuclear deterrence even as we reduce our nuclear arsenals; to reassure our friends and democratic allies and discourage potential adversaries; to pursue our interests when possible through strengthened institutions of collective security; to preserve freedom on the high seas and protect our global economic interests; and to provide the superior technology and forces that are the ultimate guarantee of liberty. House Armed Services Chair Les Aspin is right: The administration's "base force" plan leaves us with a military that does not fit our strategy and cannot do what we ask. It is burdened with redundancy. Key parts lack flexibility and mobility. Just as you don't shoot gnats with a howitzer, we can't always respond rapidly and flexibly to far-flung regional conflicts with forces designed for warfare in Europe. In other words, we must understand the new world's threats, not merely to decide how much force we need, but to design the right forces. To lead and build effective coalitions we must also have the ability to operate on our own if necessary. We need to base a larger fraction of our forces in the U.S. and maintain a modern and well-equipped Navy and Marine Corps, so we can project power wherever we need. Our new military must be more mobile, because the new world will not simply be one of fixed flash points. We need the additional sealift that the Bush administration refused for so long to build. We also need the capabilities of the C-17 airlifter, which can fly long distances and then land on short fields close to the front. Our new military must be more agile, because, with the end of the nuclear standoff, the new battlefields will likely be dominated by maneuver, speed, and outthinking the enemy. That is why, for example, I support a technology the Bush administration has tried to cancel -- the V-22, the only aircraft capable of certain special operations, including the rescue of Americans held deep in hostile territory. And as House Intelligence Chair Dave McCurdy has said, we must have superior intelligence, to know where to apply force with best effect. Our new military must be more precise and able to reduce casualties, because we may need to operate among civilian populations, and because the credibility of our threats to use force will often depend on our ability to limit the loss of life. We must upgrade the smart weapons that were so essential during Desert Storm, and develop new systems that can help reduce American and civilian casualties. Our new military must be more flexible to operate with diverse partners, because in the new world coalition operations will often be important for political legitimacy. New friends might be armed with former Warsaw Pact equipment, and new enemies armed with Western weapons. That is why we must find new ways to protect American and allied troops against the mistaken use of our own and allied weapons. Our new military must be more ready, because the new world will be unpredictable. We must be ready in the future to reconstitute our forces if major new contingencies arise. And our new military must have deep roots in America, which is why it should make increased use of Guard and Reserve forces in regional contingencies, so that our use of force will be considered with utmost seriousness, maintained affordably, and supported broadly at home. In all, by shifting from a force designed to win the Cold War to one better equipped to respond rapidly to regional flare-ups, the Clinton- Gore defense budget brings savings of about $60 billion over the current Bush plan, through 1997, close to the numbers of Senator Nunn and Representative Aspin. And our efforts must go further. I agree with Senator Sam Nunn that it is time to take a fresh look at the basic organization of our armed forces. We have four separate air forces -- one each for the Marines, Army, Navy and Air Force. Both the Army and Marines have light infantry divisions. The Navy and Air Force have separately-developed but similar fighter aircraft and tactical missiles. We have at least three and in some cases four separate Medical Corps, Chaplain Corps, Dental Corps, Legal Corps and Nursing Corps. Each service also has its own administrative, training and logistics facilities. While respecting each service's unique capabilities, we can reduce redundancies, save billions of dollars, and get better teamwork. In 1948, Secretary of Defense Forrestal convened a meeting of the military service chiefs in Key West to allocate responsibilities among the four services. It failed. As president, I will order the Pentagon to convene a similar meeting to hammer out a new understanding about consolidating and coordinating military roles and missions in the 1990s and beyond. My administration will make security and savings compatible. We will reduce our forces, but maintain a credible presence in Europe and Asia, and make reductions in consultation with our allies. We will stand up for our interests, but we will share burdens, where possible, through multilateral efforts to secure the peace, such as NATO and a new, voluntary U.N. Rapid Deployment Force. In Bosnia, Somalia, Cambodia, and other torn areas of the world, multilateral action holds promise as never before, and the U.N. deserves full and appropriate contributions from all the major powers. It is time for our friends to bear more of the burden. Our new security strategy also will ensure our defense industry can supply the weapons and technologies America may need in the future. This administration lacks any such strategic sense. It is letting major production lines go cold, for everything from tanks to planes to submarines, often ignoring the capacities they represent. We cannot keep every production line and military lab open. But we will define the core skills and industries for America's security. We will eliminate needless military specifications that make defense production so unique, separate, and expensive. We will pursue new technologies with both civilian and defense uses. And we will also pursue a strong upgrade program to keep current lines operating and start limited production of next generation equipment. We must not forget the American heroes of the Cold War whose lives will be turned upside down as our forces shrink. Mr. Bush has no serious plan to help our defense workers and military personnel to make the transition to a civilian economy. I do. For example, I support incentives for military personnel to earn military retirement by taking jobs as teachers and police. In my administration, we'll also help retrain defense technicians for work in critical civilian fields such as bio- technology, renewable energy and environmental cleanup. The Pentagon stands as America's best youth training program, our most potent research center and the most fully integrated institution in American life. It's time to put those assets to work at home. Senator Nunn has proposed work for military forces and the National Guard in solving the problems of infrastructure, education, and rural health -- offering possibilities to serve as role models here at home, consistent with fulfilling their primary military mission. Finally, we cannot make America more secure unless we act against a host of new threats that don't respect national borders, such as terrorism, drug trafficking, and global environmental degradation. As Al Gore has so compellingly argued, the damage we do to the earth can be more than a threat to our health and resources; it can also aggravate international tensions and raise the chance of war itself. One of the most dangerous new threats is the spread of military technology, especially weapons of mass destruction. We can't afford to wait until a host of Third World nations acquire full arsenals of First World weapons. We all saw the enormity of that threat as Scud missiles arced across the night skies of Israel and Saudi Arabia. We need to clamp down on countries and companies that sell proscribed technologies, punish violators, and work urgently with all countries for tough, enforceable, non-proliferation agreements. We need better intelligence to identify at an earlier stage foreign nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs. We need to give informational nuclear inspectors the authority and means to make spot inspections. And a Clinton-Gore administration will not permit American firms again to sell key technologies to outlaw states like Iraq. The ultimate test of presidential leadership, of course, is not defense budgets or battle plans. It is the judgment a president exercises in those perilous moments when countries are invaded, our friends are threatened, Americans are held hostage, and our nation's interests are on the line. When the American people choose a president, they want someone they can trust to act when those moments arise. Every president in the last half-century has had to confront the fateful decision to send Americans into combat. I do not relish this prospect, but neither do I flinch from it. I know we must have the resolve constantly to deter, sometimes to fight, always to win. That is why Al Gore and I supported the decision to use force to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. And it is why we stand united with President Bush in sending this message to Saddam as he flouts the U.N.'s resolutions: toe the line or face the music. Conclusion Whatever the threat or opportunity, national security is and must remain a bipartisan task. As a nation, we have many opinions, but only one foreign policy. Yet presidential elections are about choices. And of the choices the American people must make this year is about the kind of presidential leadership we want in a fundamentally new era. In this election, President Bush will seek to establish his leadership by emphasizing the time he has spent, the calls he has placed, and the trips he has taken in the conduct of foreign policy. But the measure of leadership in the new era is not the conversations held or the miles travelled. It is the new realities recognized, the crises averted, the opportunities seized. I challenge him to set his vision of our nation's purpose in a dramatically new era against the one I am presenting in this campaign. For in the final analysis, I believe there is only one presidential candidate in this election ready to think anew as the world is new. Today's leadership is rudderless, reactive and erratic. It is time for leadership that is strategic, vigorous and grounded in America's democratic values. In 1960 John F. Kennedy told America that there was "a new world to be won." Today there is again. My vision is of a world united in peaceful commerce; a world in which nations compete more in economic and less in military terms; a world of dynamic market- generated growth that narrows the gap between rich and poor; a world increasingly engaged in democracy, tolerant of diversity and respectful of human rights; a world united against the common enemies of mankind: war, poverty, ignorance, disease, and environmental destruction; a world we can pass on to our children and theirs with the knowledge that we rose to the new responsibilities of this new world and this new age. I am running for President because I believe that a strong America -- strong in arms, strong in values, strong in wealth, strong in will -- remains the world's best of hope for turning that vision into a reality. Thank you.