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Remarks delivered at The Claremont Institute’s President’s Club Meeting Laguna Beach, CA May 28-30, 1998

In April of 1961, just a few months after President Kennedy became President, he was pacing around the Oval Office; this was during the time of the Bay of Pigs. He was pacing in the Oval Office, back and forth, in front of his guest. His guest was former Vice President Nixon, whom he invited to come to the White House. Even though they had been opponents, they had great respect for each other.

[The President] invited him to come to the White House to talk about foreign policy. He was in a mess with the Bay of Pigs. The meeting took place in the middle of it, and they talked for over an hour about Cuba, Khrushchev, Laos, Vietnam, and West Berlin. President Kennedy said, “You know, it really is true that foreign policy is the only area that a President should handle.” He said, “I mean, who gives a ‘hoot,’”—-I am substituting a word—-“Who gives a hoot whether the minimum wage is $1.15 or $1.25 when you compare it to something like this?”

President Nixon felt that from that moment forward, President Kennedy had what you could call a global view. He saw that the world was an entity and that one incident in one country could have a tremendous effect on another country and another and another, until it has an effect on the United States. He was not very good at it in the beginning, and he admitted that. He was not, probably, good at it for about another year and a half, and then he got quite good at it. No matter what you may think about individual policies, he did get this very rare, global view. It took about a year and a half and then, of course—-you know what happened. His administration was cut short by his assassination.

We now have a President who, after five and a half years—-and I am not even saying this out of partisanship—-he just does not get it. He does not have a global view. He does not understand foreign policy. He has not caught on. His actions and his inaction convince me that that is not his passion. He wings it, as you would call it in acting. He wings it. He goes from incident to incident, and we are going to have tremendously terrible repercussions that are going to go on for a long period of time because of it.

It is a very serious thing for a President not to have this ability to see what happens in one country and its effect on others and others and others. Now, I said, whether you agree with the policy or not is not the issue right now; it is the idea of being able to determine what you are going to do, based on the whole scope of the world.

We had a President who did not have a global view and did not throughout his entire administration. That was President Carter. I recognize that he is a nice guy and a decent guy, and he has done some fine things, particularly since he has been in retirement. But, he never had a global view, and he did some terrible, terrible things that have had long-range effects.

I am convinced that there would not be an Islamic Fundamentalist Revolution today, if it were not for President Carter. He got rid of the Shah because of human rights violations, and the alternative was the Ayatollah Khomeni and the Islamic Fundamentalist Revolution. His whole theme was human rights. When he first said it, I thought, “This is terrific. He is going to be talking about human rights in the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.” Not at all. It was about Iran and Nicaragua. And so we got rid of Samosa and replaced him with the Sandinistas, and a war in Central America that has taken tens of thousands of lives.

We have that example and we have the consequences to live with—-and to live with for a long time. We are not done with the consequences of the Carter administration. And now, we have a President who—-well, you do not describe him as sort of a nice, decent guy. I am sorry to say it, but you just do not.

But combined with that is this total lack of knowledge or, really, interest, I think, in foreign affairs. And the consequences are going to be very, very heavy. We have seen some of the consequences over the past week. I believe—I do not know if it is true today, but I certainly hope so—but it used to be that the National Security Council, in coordination with the State Department and the Department of Defense, had these tremendous volumes of contingencies: What happens if? What happens if?—Just volumes of them, some of the most absurd things and some of the most possible things. But a President has to have that. I assume that it exists somewhere in the White House, but I should not assume that because some of his actions would force me to believe that maybe those books do not even exist anymore.

I am going to give you just one contingency, one possibility. There could be a global conflict tomorrow, and I do not just mean a conflict between India and Pakistan. I mean a global conflict, a world war of tremendous proportion. Let me go into that somewhat.

India, since it became independent, has been involved in four wars. Its independence was in 1947; Great Britain gave it its independence. There was the partition of India into two states, but three geographical entities. They were India, West Pakistan, and East Pakistan—-Hindus, of course, in India and Muslims in both Pakistans because it just happened to be that on both sides of India, on both sides of the Northern Tier, were heavily Islamic communities.

So it was divided into three entities, but two countries. There was a massacre; this was during the time of Mahatma Gandhi and of Prime Minister Nehru. The largest conflict of that time was over the really small area in the western Himalayan Mountains called Kashmir and Djanhu. It was never decided who was going to get it. The British did not decide it; they did not put it on their map. It was disputed territory, and they have been fighting about it ever since. That was 1947.

In 1962, there was a war between India and China over a border area in the eastern Himalayan Mountains. In 1965, there was another war between East and West Pakistan and India, again over Kashmir. Then, in 1971, there was the last war. That was when East and West Pakistan split, and East Pakistan became Bangladesh. Now we have Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. India was on the side, obviously, of Bangladesh because it was against Pakistan. In all of these conflicts, China was behind Pakistan.

We all know, and this has been a contingency forever, that there could be another war over Djanhu and Kashmir. We just know that because the conflicts go on, and in the past year and a half, it has gotten much worse. There are casualty figures, generally, in the hundreds every week from that area.

What would make it different, today, from the other wars, so that you just would not put it in a chronology of events of these things that have happened in that area of the world? A number of things: obviously, they both have the bomb now—they did not in any of the other conflicts; they both have delivery systems, they did not in the other conflicts; the People’s Republic of China is a very big and important military entity now, and it was not in those other conflicts; and something else:

There is a new political entity that did not exist during those other conflicts, and that is the Islamic Fundamentalist Revolution. What if there was an attack, a real attack, over Kashmir tomorrow? What would happen? You could say with absolute certainty that the People’s Republic of China would be on the side of Pakistan. I do not think that there is any doubt of that.

With the Islamic Fundamentalist Revolution (there are 42 Islamic states), you could have in one moment a war in which over half the population of the world would be fighting—over half the population of the world! You would have China and the Islamic Fundamentalist Revolution against India. I am not saying this is going to happen, but I am saying that this is the kind of contingency planning that I hope is done. I cannot believe that it has been, or we would not have the policies that we have towards China.

What happened in this past week could be a terrible, terrible tragedy, and I do not mean because they both exhibited that they had the bomb, but the tensions are getting terribly high. We knew they both had the bomb; India exploded one in 1974. But, what we have done is, we have now created—and I say created—a situation, which I am not positive we know how to get out of. We gave missile technology to China. They will say it is satellite technology; they will say, “Well, it’s for our satellites.” The devil with our satellites! Of course, it is missile technology.

When the Administration gives that line about the importance of satellites and says that they are just launching them and all of that, I want you to remember this: In 1957, the United Nations had something they called the International Geophysical Year. Each country was given an assignment; they had to do something. The Soviet Union was given some underwater assignment. Ours was to launch the first satellite.

Ike was President. We started with a rocket called the Vanguard, and the darn thing could not get off the ground at Cape Canaveral. Every time there was a static launch—-it was not even meant to go up—-the thing would blow up the launching site. When we felt, finally, that we could actually launch the thing, it blew up. Nothing was happening; it just was not going.

Werner Von Braun, the German scientist who invented the V-2 rocket that was used against London had been working on the Redstone missile, a military missile. He went to President Eisenhower from Huntsville, Alabama, and he said to forget the Vanguard—-all you have to do is use our military missile, and we already have it: the Redstone.

President Eisenhower did not want to do it. He did not want to do it because he did not want this military connotation. This was space; this was not the military. So, he did not want to use the Redstone; he did not know anything about these kinds of things, anyway. Also, he did not know if Von Braun was just being enthusiastic because rocketry was his stuff.

Then came October of 1957, and Sputnik One went up. And this nation really went through a trauma. For the first time, we were not number one, and we saw that. It was a very, very terrible feeling. People were walking out of their homes to look up; they were told that that little dot was from the Soviet Union. It was an awful feeling.

Eisenhower went back to Von Braun and said: “Okay, go ahead and do it, but change the name of the missile.” He changed the name from Redstone to Jupiter. It did not mean anything; it was the same missile. And we got up in January of 1958. Less than three months after Sputnik, we were up. We had Explorer One into orbit.

The same missile, Jupiter—that was really Redstone—launched Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom. The first orbital flight for John Glenn and for the others of the Mercury Seven was in the Atlas—an ICBM. It is the missile that launches the spacecraft. The only thing that is different is what you put on top of the missile, and then you put a nosecone on top of that. The technology that we have been giving to China is missile technology, and it should be called that.

At the same time, President Clinton has used a word to define the relationship between the People’s Republic of China and the United States that I have never heard used before in association with that country. He calls it a “partnership.” A partnership? With that government? He has used it as recently as yesterday. A partnership.

This would scare the devil out of India, and I do not blame it for scaring the devil out of India. I do not blame Prime Minister Avapai for doing what he did. I have got to say that I do not blame Prime Minister Sharif in Pakistan for doing what he did. And I know that President Clinton had to impose economic sanctions.

Now we have economic sanctions against India and Pakistan, and, with the People’s Republic of China, we have Most-Favored Nation status. In a sense, China will be the privileged sanctuary of this conflict. China will give material to Pakistan, and [China] will receive material from the United States. It will be a laundry exercise.

If I was the Prime Minister of India, I would be infuriated—as he is—with the kind of “partnership” that we have with China. We gave them MFN status, so they get whatever they want—they buy; they sell. We know what China gives to Pakistan. It is a real threat to India, and the new Defense Minister, under Prime Minister Avapai, said, “The chief threat to India is China.” He meant it, and I understand it. Yesterday, when Prime Minister Sharif gave the announcement of the five, atomic blasts, he added to it, “We thank the People’s Republic of China.” For What? Well, I think we know what it is all about.

Now, what if that did happen? If there was a war over Kashmir—which is likely, which is probable, which has happened before—where do you think Iran would go? On the side of Hinduism? On the side of India? Not a chance. It has been getting supplies from the People’s Republic of China, too. We know exactly where it would go.

Where do you think Iraq would go? Saddam Hussein has lately wanted to give the impression of being a great believer in Islam. I doubt if he knows where Mecca is. He changed the flag so it would say, “Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar,” (God is great, God is Great). In every speech he gives, now, he quotes from the Koran, and he is building the biggest mosque in the world. 45,000 people will be able to pray at the same time—that is pretty big. It is called, as you might suspect, Saddam Mosque. So, we know where he would go.

This could be a conflict that would involve Asia, the Mid-East, Northern Africa, and even Europe—the Muslims in Bosnia. We had an opportunity in Bosnia. There was no question that the Muslims were right. There was just no question when it came to Bosnia. If you saw what was going on at the height of the conflict between Bosnia and Serbia, it was like a piece of film from Schindler’s List, with men and women being separated and their wives being left behind and the men and boys going on trains. The only difference was that it was not in a movie theater; it was on CNN.

There was no question that the Muslims were right, and—I have to blame President Bush for this—we did nothing. We did nothing. We should have helped the Muslims. We did nothing when President Clinton came to office. For three and a half years, we did nothing. We did worse than nothing—we had embargoes against arms for the Muslims. It was just a tragedy. Then, they accepted aid from the Islamic Fundamentalist Revolution. And, of course, we should have known they would. I sure do not blame them for doing it. The Islamic Fund was the only place that was giving them aid. And so they accepted it.

What President Clinton did do, finally—and I give him credit for doing something—was a strange thing. He formed an aisle way without taking a side. In other words, we do not have a side. And he was very pronounced about this: we were not taking any sides.

Three months after his election to office, Clinton made a very strange statement, the biggest change in foreign policy in our history. I thought it would make headlines, but it made nothing. It was on April 23rd of 1993 that he said, “The United States should never be engaged in a war as a partisan.”

Not as a partisan? How else do you engage yourself in a war? I did not understand what he meant because, as I recalled, we were always on one side or the other whenever we engaged in a war. He meant it. I see exactly what it was. He wanted to form a unified Peace Corps that would go into places like Bosnia and form an aisle way. God knows how it would ever end.

It would be a terrible thing if, as a lot of people are saying, we would have to give an exit date—that would be outrageous. I think that shows that too many of them grew up in a generation where they were not in the service. The first thing you learn in the military is that you never tell your opponent when you’re going to leave, never. Give an exit date?—Too bad, we are there. The genocide has stopped, but I am worried that it is only postponed. By the same token, you do not tell any hostile force when you are going to leave. You do not let them know, or they sit on their hands until you leave.

What would happen in other parts of Europe? Look at a place like London—a very big Pakistani community, a very big Indian community. Do you think they are just going to sit on their hands, if you think of this in terms of what it could be and what we should have done and what we should do?

I want to go on to one other area: What do you think Yassir Arafat would do? Do you think he is going to go along with India? Not a chance. And we have had, under President Clinton the most absurd policy towards the Arab-Israeli conflict—towards the Palestinian Authority—what we used to call the PLO and what we still call Yassir Arafat.

Generally, in the United States, people say they support the peace process. I do not. I do not support it at all because it is not a peace process—it is the name it was given. In my mind, it is a guaranteed war process—guaranteed, if it were to go through.

First, what it will do is automatically push Israel back to its pre-1967 borders. It has to if one looks at what they have given up. They won the Sinai, the Golan, Judea, and Sumeria, which is called the West Bank and Gaza. Now, the Sinai is back in Egypt. The Gaza is now in the hands of the Palestinian Authority. Of the West Bank, Palestinians already have 27 percent, and we are trying to talk them into getting 13 percent more. And we are trying to talk to Hafaz Assad in Syria, so that there can be a deal worked out where they can get the Golan Heights back. That is back to the 1967 borders, and if anyone remembers the 1967 war…I do not quite understand why we would want Israel back to the 1967 borders.

It bothers me very much that, when an enemy wins a war, as North Vietnam did over South Vietnam, we give them diplomatic relations. That is what this administration did. We do not say, “Okay, you have had your fun, now give back South Vietnam.” We do not do that. We give them diplomatic relations; we honor them as being the legitimate government. But when a friend wins a war—-a war that they sure did not want—we say, “Okay, now give it back. Give back the occupied territory.” To me, that is outrageous.

Also, I do not believe in “land for peace” because it means someone is saying, “Land or war.” Otherwise, why would you ever invent a phrase like that? “Land for peace” means that someone is challenging you. I would not give land for peace.

I live in a condominium. If a bunch of gangs moved in next door and around the hallway and they said, “Hey, listen, could we have one room of your condo, and we’ll give you peace—no problem?” Do you think that I would say, “Oh, Okay, come on in?”

Let us say, in the next century, Mexico gets very militarily strong. What if it says to our President, “We want our occupied territory back—not the whole thing, just as far as the Surf and Sand Hotel in Laguna?” What are we going to do? Say, “Okay”? “Yeah, I guess so”? “It is occupied territory; we did take it in the war”? That is why our policy, I believe, is so detrimental, even to our own interests.

I also do not believe in negotiated settlements, unless they are with democracies. Whenever you have negotiated a settlement with a tyrant, it does not work out. We have had our experiences with negotiated settlements. In World War II, it was not a negotiated settlement; it was unconditional surrender for the Axis Powers. We had a negotiated settlement with Korea and 45 years later, we are still talking about the 38th parallel, and are still worried about it.

We had a negotiated settlement with North Vietnam in the Paris Peace Accords of 1973. They violated every measure and, eventually, in two-and-a-quarter years, took over South Vietnam. It was too bad about the Peace Accords in Paris, for which Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho won the Nobel Peace Prize. That is why I do not believe in a negotiated settlement with a tyranny. You can only do it between two people who are dedicated to peace and two people who represent democracies, rather than represent totalitarian or non-democratic states.

Having gone over that let me now just get back to China itself. The President is going to go there in about a month. He’s going to go to Tiananmen Square for a welcoming. Congressman Cox told us that great story about when the White House was saying that going to Tiananmen Square would be like going to the South Lawn for a welcoming, when Sam Donaldson said, “Yes, but no one was killed on the South Lawn.” That was terrific. There is one more difference: heads of state do not go to Tiananmen Square—-I have never heard of it. President Nixon never went to Tiananmen Square; he never saw it. I certainly do not recall any other President ever doing it.

I remember when, in 1989, President Gorbachev was in China. It was a big deal because it was the first time in decades that a Soviet leader was there since the rift between the two and Gorbachev did not go to Tiananmen Square. In fact, they kept him out of Tiananmen Square; the demonstrations were going on, prior to the massacre.

So, I have never heard of this being the place where Presidents go or chiefs of state go for welcoming ceremonies. It is not true, and what they are doing is rubbing America’s nose in it. They are saying, “You’re going to go to Tiananmen Square.” And Clinton is saying, “Yes.” Of course, he should refuse to go to Tiananmen Square, even if they say, “Well, then do not come.” My hope would be that they cancel this meeting anyway.

If he goes to China, he had better go to Pakistan. He had better go to India, too, though I sure do not want to be part of that Secret Service detail when he is in India because that is going to be rough.. Or else we are making a statement, very loud and clear to India, which is a democracy and which we have had trouble with before—-but we have had trouble with a lot of countries before—-he would be making the statement that we are going to continue this “partnership,” as we call it, with Jiang Zhemin. That could be absolutely devastating and could be a great incentive for a war.

What should we do, now that we are in this mess that we are in? I do not know where Clinton is getting his advice. I guess it is Sandy Berger of the National Security Council—who is not much of an advisor.

I believe that he should, certainly, reject the idea of Tiananmen Square. He should reject the idea of the trip. I know how difficult that is to do, once you have assigned a trip, and I know it presents a whole series of problems in doing it. But, under the circumstances, he has to cancel. If not, he has to go on to India; he has to go on to Pakistan and just bear the consequences.

I believe that we should stop Most-Favored Nation status for China immediately, under the conditions. I believe that. For God’s sake, get a ballistic missile defense in this country, and do it now. Do it. We can do it. As Congressman Cox said, “We can do it now; it is not pie-in-the-sky-stuff.” The idea of not doing it, in my view, is unconstitutional. The role of the Federal Government is to provide for the common defense. They are not doing it.

We should raise our defense budget substantially to Reagan levels, if for no other reason than for the perception of foreign chiefs of state. They are not afraid of us. President Clinton calls up Prime Minister Sharif five times, begging him not to explode a bomb, not to have a test. He does it anyway. We call ourselves a superpower and we cannot even convince the Prime Minister of Pakistan not to explode a bomb? And he even knows the economic consequences?

I want our diplomacy to be able to work, and the only way you can get it to work is if there is a lot of force behind it—a lot of force. When I say Reagan levels, I mean it, because there is no way for any legislator—-there is no way for any President—to know precisely what our defense budget should be, unlike any other item in the budget: you can calculate things based on interstate highways, you can calculate them based on population need, and all kinds of things. Everything in the budget can be calculated: Social Security, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services.

You can calculate what is going to happen tomorrow, but then ask: is there going to be a coup? Is there going to be an assassination attempt in some country? Is there going to be a bomb that goes off? We do not know, and so you have to guess. President Reagan guessed either just right or high, and I do not care what he did. He did not guess too low, and, boy, was that a great decision!

There is no Soviet Union today and, as a result of what we had during the Reagan administration, President Bush was able to fight that Persian Gulf War in a way that caused very, very few American casualties and won the liberation of Kuwait. So, he guessed either just right or too high, and we should always guess high. That also gives this great perception to other chiefs of state in the world.

Finally, everyone who works for the Federal Government, from the lowest clerk to the President of the United States, takes an oath to preserve and defend the Constitution of the United States: “To preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution of the United States of America—that is the way it is. I am convinced that this President has not read it, and I really mean it. It is worse if he did read it because then he is knowingly violating it.

I would just suggest that everyone in the Federal Government take the time, particularly the President of the United States, to read it.

Thank you.