Speech at Loyola University

"Our foreign policy reacts to what the other people do, instead of acting on the beliefs and principles on which this country was established, on the philosophy behind the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, on the belief that we have a government based on the consent of the governed, that every human being has inaltenable rights given to them by their Creator provides a philosophical foundation for a particular type of political and economic community."
Baltimore, MD • March 01, 1976

I am happy to be invited to speak in the august, academic surroundings of Loyola University. And I am very glad to be delivering here today not just a campaign talk, not just a bit of campaign oratory, not just a few quips and a few quotes, but a speech which I hope will encourage you to pursue your studies in international affairs, international law and foreign policy and encourage you to concentrate even more than you have in the past on some of the more serious issues which will be facing the next generation of Americans, rather than just our own or past generations.

I have decided to do this today because about four or five days ago our Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, gave an extremely thoughtful speech in Boston. Some of you may have read parts of it -- maybe you didn’t. But one part of the speech consisted of a series of questions in which Mr. Kissinger challenged his critics. He asked specifically what they would propose as an alternative to the Nixon/Kissinger/Ford foreign policy.

I am here today to reply to his questions -- which I will do immediately and then put some questions to him and to President Ford, who after all is still supposed to be in charge of foreign policy.

Dr. Kissinger’s first question was this, and I am trying to get the wards as accurately as I can, although in part they are paraphrased. What do his critics propose as an alternative to the Nixon/Kissinger/Ford policy of detente with the Soviet Union?

Well, I propose not only a new concept of detente, but a new strategy for living together, the Russians are our only military opponent. This strategy means working together to solve global problems that require cooperation, problems which cannot be solved by confrontation. I refer specifically to the urgent necessity to:

- stop the arms race in conventional as well as nuclear weapons,

- halt the spread of nuclear weapons to other nations,

- clean up the waters of the high seas and protect the fish population for ourselves and for future generations,

- combat world hunger and challenge and enlist the young people of the world in the struggle against hunger, poverty, disease and war.

Instead of Dr. Kissinger’s ineffective detente with the Soviet Union in which every strategic arms control agreement escalates the arms race, I propose we start now on the long journey to disarmament. We can begin this journey with diplomatic talks to demilitarize the Indian Ocean now. This whole Ocean basin should be made into a demilitarized zone and I include Somalia as well as Diego Garcia, the coasts of Burma and India, the openings into the Persian Gulf as well as the East Coast of Africa.

Secretary Brezhnev said several weeks ago that he was willing to discuss the neutralization of this entire area of the world. We should take up that offer and possibly convene a multinational conference dedicated to removing this entire area of the world from the Cold War confrontation.

You know that some are saying detente is a one-way street. So Dr. Kissinger asked: What have we given up in our arms negotiations with the Soviet Union? The answer is nothing -- nothing has been given up, and that’s precisely the reason why I condemn his arms control policy. After seven years of talks, neither the Soviet Union nor the United States has given up a single offensive strategic weapon or even stopped any planned weapon development program. Both countries have continued to build up their nuclear stockpiles like nuclear alcoholics. We have added an average of 2 nuclear warheads to our arsenal every single day since the 1972 SALT TALKS were signed. That’s not detente. Even the French haven’t got a word to describe this lunacy in which we are engaged.

The stock market, happily, has reached new heights. And so has the arms race. Apparently, Henry Kissinger and Jerry Ford are bullish on bombs. The Ford/Kissinger/Nixon accords reached at Vladivostok have succeeded in authorizing higher levels of nuclear arms than ever before in history -- in a sense, we have legitimized mass death. We must reduce the numbers of these weapons now, rather than signing pacts that preserve every weapons program sought by the militarists on both sides.

Dr. Kissinger asks: What levels of confrontation do his critics seek?

I say -- the lowest possible levels of confrontation. Cooperation and consultation are what we need. Even George Kennan, the distinguished analyst of international affairs and former Ambassador to Russia and Yugoslavia says that containment, a policy he conceived, is no longer possible. No responsible American can advocate confrontation when each country holds thousands of nuclear warheads like daggers pointed at the heart of the other country.

Dr. Kissinger asks: What threats would his critics make?

I say we should threaten the Soviet Union with freedom -- political freedom, economic freedom, religious freedom. We don’t need Schlesinger’s surgical sabre rattling. We don’t need threats to use nuclear weapons first. We don’t need to make empty threats of military intervention in Africa to support the illegitimate rule of racist regimes in Rhodesia and Namibia.

Instead of always using military threats, we should humanize our foreign policy. Instead of placating the Russians by refusing invitations to heroes, like Alixander Solzenitzyn, we should stand up for what we believe in. The Soviets respect intellectual and moral convictions perhaps even more than they fear military threats. We must make our social and political philosophy known to them. We must stick to our principles at home, as well as abroad.

Dr. Kissinger asks: What risks would his critics run?

I say that the only risks of war that we should ever run are those which respond to direct dangers to the United States, our NATO allies, Japan, Israel, or other lands where government of the people already exists or is struggling to be born.

Dr. Kissinger asks: What precise changes in our defense posture, what levels of expenditure over what periods of time do these critics advocate ?

I have already recommended a number of precise changes in our defense posture, and a defense budget, let’s say, of approximately $100 billion, rather than the $114 billion now being proposed or the $150 billion which Secretary Schlesinger said we should be spending by 1980. Our strategic policy must be based on deterrence of nuclear war. We must stop developing dangerous counterforce weapons such as the new land-based missiles with high accuracy -- the so-called “MX,” the Minuteman super-accurate weapon which would then be aimed only, it is alleged, at the silos of the foreign country where their weapons are located.

The theory is that you can make them so accurate that they will land right on top of the silo of an enemy’s missiles. You will merely destroy the enemies’ missiles and not the people -- only kill 2 million Russians, according to one study, and 10 million according to another. These new weapons in fact threaten the Russian capacity to deter us. The very concept that we can fight a limited nuclear war is an invitation to disaster because when we threaten their capacity to deter us, we escalate their fears and their expenditures.

I can assure you that if we spend $200 billion on arms, they will spend $200 billion. If we spend $300 billion, they will spend $300 billion. There is no way in which the Russians are going to allow themselves to be put back into a position of nuclear inferiority. If necessary, to maintain the relative equality which they have achieved, they will sweat it out of their people. So instead of incessantly increasing our defense budget, we should seek negotiated, bilateral reductions. Ford’s new defense budget is up 7%, even allowing for inflation. I say we should encourage the Soviets to reduce their spending. They have said they will. Let’s test their word. I am not saying we should accept their word, but test it, and see whether a first step could be made toward de-escalation of the arms race.

I am for a strong America. But a strong America does not mean waste and inefficiency in the Pentagon. Look at the example of the $6 billion which was spent to develop an anti-ballistic missile system. The day it was finally finished, the Defense Department closed it down because it wouldn’t work. But our money, $6 billion of our money, went into that worthless project.

A strong America does not need more goldplated weapons that waste billions and add nothing to our security -- like the B-1 bomber; like Ford’s nuclear powered missile cruiser, a one and one-half billion dollar boat even the Defense Department didn’t want. And we don’t need an expanded Trident missile submarine capacity at a billion 250 million dollars per submarine.

Finally, Dr. Kissinger asks: How concretely do his critics suggest managing U.S./Soviet relations in an era of strategic equality?

I say that it is only during such an era of strategic equality that there exists the chance for cooperation instead of confrontation. If we try to get ahead of the Soviets, they will spend whatever it takes to keep even. Dr. Kissinger’s problem is that he sees the world in a bipolar situation where only the United States and the Soviet Union count. He is blind to the true revolution of our times, which is that the world is becoming more and more interdependent, not just between nations, but between the economies of countries and between peoples. A new world is struggling now to be born. And it is going to come into being despite the efforts of those who seek merely to protect the status quo.

Now, I have a few questions for Henry Kissinger and President Ford.

Why do you never mention the captive people of Eastern Europe, millions of whom are longing to be free? Why don’t we speak up for the Christians in Eastern Europe, as well as in the Soviet Union? These people long to practice their religion in accord with their conscience, not confined by the strictures of an atheistic and outmoded ideology. Even the Communists in Italy and France are attempting, like the Communists in Czechoslovakia under Dubchek attempted, to develop communism with a human face. Maybe they won’t succeed, Maybe they’re not sincere, but why isn’t there any effort on the part of our government to encourage that type of development behind the Iron Curtain?

Why haven’t we persuaded the Russians to participate in exchanging agricultural information, as was proposed at the Rome Conference on Food over a year ago? Why haven’t we set up an international grain reserve as a buffer against world hunger? Why don’t we follow the same principles of economic assistance and development in our own national overseas economic development programs as the World Bank does? The World Bank under Secretary MacNamara, the former Secretary of Defense, emphasizes aid which reaches the people, rather than projects which serve as monuments to local rulers American vanity? These are the policies we proposed at the Peace Corps. They worked then, and they work now. But in Washington, the State Department doesn’t appear to know what the World Bank is doing.

Why haven’t we been bringing tens of thousands of foreign students to the United States, rather than shipping billions of dollars of arms abroad? Why aren’t we using politically gifted Black citizens and Spanish-speaking American citizens to represent us in Latin America and Africa? Why don’t Kissinger and Ford visit Black Africa? Can you imagine that after 7 or 8 years in a key position in American foreign policy, Secretary Kissinger has never set foot in Africa, south of the Sahara. No wonder panic has replaced policy in dealing with Angola, Rhodesia and other African trouble spots. Why did it take seven years of his pre-eminence in power, before he ever went to South America? Is it surprising that the people of Africa and Latin America vote against us in the United Nations, when the chief architects of foreign policy never bother to talk to them about their problems? Must we move Burning Tree to Bangladesh before the President can go out there to see people who are really hungry -- hungry for food for their bodies and hope for their hearts. Better that the President of the United States face the living and starving people of those countries than the dead stones of the Great Wall of China.

Why don’t we act to use our influence to prevent West Germany from selling an entire nuclear fuel cycle to Brazil? Nobody says anything about that. But that simple sale greatly increases the danger that nuclear weapons technology will be developed on the South American continent.

Why do we flood the Middle East and enemies of Israel with American weapons. If there is another war, and I pray that will not happen, both sides will be fighting with U.S. weapons and each side will be seeking more U.S. weapons to shoot at the other side.

Why is it that the Peace Corps gets smaller and smaller every year? Why is it that no challenges are offered to the young people of America to participate in our foreign policy? Can’t we use their energy, their charisma, their talent and imagination in some constructive way to exemplify America to the world? This generation of young people of America are realistic. They sense that our previous Cold War position is collapsing, all around the world. They know we must align our nation with the people, not just the powers of the world.

Why, Dr, Kissinger and President Ford, has our nation become the world’s leading merchant of death? Why don’t we conduct an open foreign policy? Why does policy have to be made covertly? Why is it that the first time we ever hear about Angola is when suddenly it is said that it is a national threat? Why weren’t we there working with the people of Angola, if Angola was a serious concern to our national security? Why don’t we base our foreign policy on people, not power?

I’d like to conclude with that thought because it is true internally, as well as externally. We lose votes at the U.S. because our policies are wrong. And our policies are dictated by power considerations. We support South Africa, we trade with Rhodesia in violation of the United Nations agreement, because we are interested in the powerful people in those countries. But when it comes to countries that have no power, economic or military, but just people, we pay no attention to them. So suddenly Angola erupts because we ignored the people. We don’t pay much attention to South America because they don’t have great economic or political power. But let one South American country develop a nuclear bomb, and we will suddenly be interested. Should the Russians help Algeria to invade Spanish Sahara, that will hit page one. If Mozambique invades Rhodesia, using military equipment from Russia, then it will be page one and we will be asked to send money to help Rhodesia.

Our foreign policy reacts to what the other people do, instead of acting on the beliefs and principles on which this country was established, on the philosophy behind the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, on the belief that we have a government based on the consent of the governed, that every human being has inaltenable rights given to them by their Creator provides a philosophical foundation for a particular type of political and economic community. Do we really believe that today? Do you still, even here at Loyola University, really believe that you as an individual have rights given to you by your Creator and that no government can impinge upon those rights or take them away from you. If you really believe that, if our country really believes that, then we have to start standing up for that philosophy of government and view of the nature of human beings. If we believe in that, we can once again become a country which is a symbol of hope for the world.

In the last 10 years our fall from grace has been a precipitous one. The War in Vietnam, the Watergate, the FBI, the CIA, the improper bribes to foreign companies and foreign officials have shown the sorry side of America. It is up to you, the young people who are here in this university, and to your teachers to return us once again to the fundamental philosophy on which this country is based, to recreate that commitment inside of you, to build up your own spirit, not just the spirit of the country, but your individual spirit, and having built that up, stand up for it.

Look at Solzenitzyn. You don’t have to agree with all of his views. I don’t. But I am in awe of his moral courage. One man with nothing, no wealth, no arms, nothing, but his courage and his intellect and a pencil and paper became such a symbol that the huge authoritarian dictatorship of the Soviet Union, the most absolute government in the world today, could not digest him. He was a foreign object they could not assimilate. What was it about him that made assimilation impossible? One thing - his moral and intellectual courage. Nothing else. And yet he became a titan, a symbol of the free human spirit to everybody in the world.

Even one person -- one man, one woman -- can stand up to the bullies of the world. That’s what I would hope. I know that’s what I would hope that the students at Loyola, especially those in international affairs, would aspire to be. Not just technicians of intellect, not just technicians of foreign policy, not just students of the subject, but practitioners of that kind of moral and intellectual courage which will once again make people believe that the United States is the one country to which they can turn for hope and inspiration.

Peace requires the simple but powerful recognition that what we have in common as human beings is more important and crucial than what divides us.
RSSPCportrait
Sargent Shriver
Get the Quote of the Week in Your Inbox