[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 57 (Wednesday, May 11, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 11, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
   THE NATIONAL SECURITY EDUCATION PROGRAM AND THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF 
                        AMBASSADOR SOL LINOWITZ

  Mr. BOREN. Mr. President, this week marks an important beginning in 
the life of a program that I hope will help pioneer this country's 
commitment to international education. For the past several years, I 
have talked often about our country falling behind the rest of the 
world in preparing the next generation for the new global environment. 
As the cold war ended and regional problems became more important, I 
feared that we lacked an appreciation of the histories and complexities 
of places in the Middle East, the Baltics and Asia. While the world's 
economies became increasingly interdependent, I suspected that we 
lacked the understanding of markets in Beijing or Prague or Santiago.
  Based on these concerns, I proposed the National Security Education 
Act. Its aim was simple: To encourage students to study, and schools to 
focus on, non-Western languages and cultures important to our country's 
future. The bill created a trust fund to support graduate fellowships 
for students willing to serve in Government after their studies ended; 
scholarships for undergraduates to study in foreign countries; and 
language and cultural programs for universities to establish and 
maintain. In 1991, the NSEP was created by an act of Congress and 
signed into law by President Bush.
  This week, after overcoming obstacles to its implementation, the NSEP 
began the process of awarding scholarships and fellowships. It hopes to 
award the institutional programs this fall. What was once an idea is 
now becoming a reality fulfilling the hopes of 173 graduates and 317 
undergraduates to study in foreign lands. The students are a diverse 
and energetic group, representing all 50 States at over 100 colleges 
and universities.
  The graduate students will study 47 different languages and at 57 
countries, and in numerous areas of study. Many will go to Japan, 
Russia, and China--countries most important to our national and 
economic security. Many others will go to places like Vietnam, a 
country with whom the United States recently normalized economic 
relations. Some will go to South Africa where true democracy is now 
remarkably taking place.
  The undergraduates are no less ambitious than the graduates. From a 
pool of 1,811 applicants, over 317 students will learn 34 different 
languages at 48 different countries. They will study Spanish, Mandarin, 
and Slavic languages. They will also learn Arabic in Yemen and Quechua 
in Peru. They will, I hope, be exposed to cultures distinct from their 
experiences and ideas different from their own.
  With the coming announcement of these awards, I could feel the 
excitement in the room at last Monday's NSEP luncheon. Representatives 
from higher education, Government, and the private sector convened for 
the first NSEP Board meeting. The board is a group of 13 distinguished 
individuals from Government and the private sector who advise the 
Secretary of Defense, who serves as the administrator of the program, 
on policy matters and the selection of awards. I had the honor of 
speaking with them on the history of the program and sharing my ideas 
about its future. It was a special moment for me.
  Many people attended the luncheon who have been instrumental in the 
realization of NSEP. One of those present was my dear friend, Sol 
Linowitz. In many ways, he personifies the ideals and goals of the 
NSEP. He was an Ambassador to the Organization of American States 
during the Johnson administration and helped negotiate the very 
difficult Panama Canal Treaty and Camp David Accords. He has traveled 
widely and understands the great issues of the day. He is one of the 
wisest people in our country. I have depended on Sol Linowitz' wisdom 
on many occasions.
  It was several years ago that I told Ambassador Linowitz about my 
idea of an international studies program. He enthusiastically supported 
it. When I was developing the bill to create the program, he advised me 
on legislation. When the bill faced obstacles, he helped me navigate it 
through the political waters. His support was crucial. I ask unanimous 
consent to place into the Record the words he gave at the NSEP 
luncheon.
  There being no objection, the remarks were ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                       NSEP and National Security

                         (By Sol. M. Linowitz)

       I am very pleased to be here and to have the opportunity to 
     say a few words about NSEP. It takes real presumptuousness 
     for me to undertake to talk with you about the area of your 
     own responsibility and concern. I am presuming to do so only 
     because I am so persuaded of the importance and the promise 
     of your mission, and I'd like to tell you why.
       At the outset, I want to pay my respects to the man who is 
     entitled to our lasting gratitude for his leadership in the 
     enactment of NSEP--Senator David Boren. Senator Boren is a 
     friend of mine and I know him to be man of commitment and 
     dedication who has clearly perceived the importance of 
     reaching out to the other people of this earth--of coming to 
     know them and their cultures--if we are to live together 
     peacefully in today's world. We are all deeply in his debt 
     for his independence, foresight and wisdom. As President of 
     the University of Oklahoma later this year, he will be 
     changing not his focus, priorities, commitments or 
     involvements--just his geography and work place--and we wish 
     him well with his university responsibilities.
       I think that to get a real sense of what NSEP really means, 
     it has to be seen against the backdrop of the kind of world 
     and the kind of time in which we live.
       For we are living at a difficult, anxious, uncertain time 
     in world history--a time which has been called both the Age 
     of Anxiety and the Age of Science and Technology. Both are 
     accurate, for indeed one feeds upon the other. As our 
     scientific and technological competence has increased, so 
     have our fear and anxiety.
       It is also a fateful time. In the past, men have warred 
     over frontiers. They have come into conflict over ideologies. 
     They have fought to better their daily lives. Today, however, 
     each crisis overlaps the other and we find ourselves at an 
     upheaval that touches every phase of our existence.
       Just think what has happened in the past few years.--
       The collapse of the Soviet Bloc has fundamentally and 
     irreversibly transformed international relations for our 
     time.
       The most significant military and ideological adversary of 
     the United States has ceased to exist. The central principle 
     U.S. foreign policy for the last half century--the Cold War--
     is over, and the foundation of our international alliances, 
     military strategies, and defense budgets has been swept away.
       Regional wars that involved the superpowers--Angola, 
     Cambodia, Central America--are all winding down. At the same 
     time, and as the war in the Persian Gulf and the fighting in 
     the former Yugoslavia and Armenia have made all too clear, 
     loss of superpower influence, combined with the deadly 
     proliferation of armaments, could lead to more rather than 
     less armed conflict in the world.
       Economic competition is displacing military conflict as the 
     main arena of international rivalry. According to recent 
     polls, most Americans now consider Japan--not the former 
     Soviet Union or Russia--to be our main adversary.
       From Argentina to Poland, authoritarian politics and 
     centralized economies have been discredited; and the value of 
     free elections and open markets has been strongly affirmed.
       The handling of the Persian Gulf crisis suggested that we 
     may be entering a new era of multilateral cooperation. But we 
     can't yet be sure whether a new world order will truly 
     emerge--or whether we will regress to a fragmented world of 
     regional power balances and conflicts.
       Whatever happens, we have not had to confront such 
     breathtaking global changes since the end of World War II.
       Against this backdrop it is important to recognize some 
     hard facts:
       First, the people of this world are no longer thousands of 
     miles away--but just down the runway. Whether we like it or 
     not--the world is pressing in upon us; and we simply can't 
     isolate ourselves or stop the world and try to get off. For 
     better or worse, we are all in this together.
       This means that problems, misunderstandings, confrontations 
     involving countries we have never seen or people we have 
     never met can suddenly and dramatically impinge upon our own 
     lives and drastically affect our future and the future of our 
     children.
       Second, we are living in an instantaneous world where the 
     world is as close to us as our TV sets--where we are all part 
     of a global society in which there is no longer such a thing 
     as separate areas of concern or a clear division between 
     domestic and foreign--a world in which peace is truly 
     indivisible; in which what happens in places like Somalia, 
     Bosnia, Russia, China is in the truest sense happening to us. 
     Our lives--our futures--are now inextricably intertwined with 
     those of the rest of the people in this world.
       Third, in such a world national security is inseparable 
     from global insecurity. We cannot hope to be safe and secure 
     if the world is unsafe and insecure.
       What do we mean when we use the word ``secure''? What does 
     the word ``security'' mean when we talk of the National 
     Security Education Program? Let me give you my own view: I 
     start with the fact that security in the world in which we 
     live depends on far more than military weapons or economic 
     strength. Security--real security--also depends on the kind 
     of relationships we have with other people and other 
     countries--where we are able to understand them and relate to 
     them and work with them toward a more stable, peaceful world.
       We will not find security for ourselves if we are estranged 
     from the other people of this world and alienated from them 
     and their cultures. We will not find peace for ourselves and 
     our children by continuing to ignore other people and by 
     arrogantly insisting that the rest of the world must learn 
     from us what we are willing to teach--and must speak to us 
     only in our tongue.
       In short, we will not be secure if we do not build bridges 
     of security--bridges of understanding and cooperation and 
     empathy to the other people on this earth. And that, I 
     believe, is what NSEP is all about.
       In Mexico City there stands the statue of Benito Juarez. On 
     it are the words: ``Respect the rights of others in peace.'' 
     Respect for the rights of others underlies the whole concept 
     of NSEP. It means treating others with dignity; respecting 
     their right to fulfill their own destiny in their own way; 
     learning their culture and their language.
       The Chinese write the word ``crisis''--by combining the 
     symbol for the word ``danger'' with the symbol for the word 
     ``opportunity''. In these times of crisis, we have been 
     confronted with both dangers and opportunities--and we have 
     failed to seize the opportunities to increase our 
     understanding of the other human beings on this earth.
       How bad is the situation? In introducing NSEP legislation, 
     Senator Boren presented some deeply disquieting facts. Let me 
     remind you of a few: Last year over 350,000 college 
     undergraduates came to America from other countries. At the 
     same time, only about 50,000 American students went to study 
     at the undergraduate level in the rest of the world; and--if 
     you exclude Great Britain, France and Germany--only 4,000 or 
     5,000 American students studied abroad.
       In the year 2000, the European community will require 
     fluency in two foreign languages for all high school 
     graduates. Japan now requires that all of their students 
     study at least two years of English before graduating from 
     high school. (By way of contrast, three-tenths of one percent 
     of Americans study Japanese.)
       At this moment when we should be trying to learn all we can 
     about the rest of the world, only 8 percent of our college 
     students are studying any foreign language and over 80 
     percent of all the universities in this country do not 
     require a foreign language for an undergraduate degree.
       I submit to you that we simply can't live with those 
     numbers if we expect to build the kind of future we say we 
     want.
       For in the future--as never before in our history--we will 
     need men and women who are at home in the world--who are 
     people of perspective and breadth with a far better 
     understanding of the world than has ever been required 
     before. We will need men and women who understand where we 
     have been and where we are going, who knows about the kind of 
     world in which we live and the future we should be trying to 
     achieve. We will need men and women able to communicate with 
     one another and with other people and other places; people 
     who know how to transmit and stimulate ideas; people who 
     recognize that things human and humane are even more 
     important than the computer, the test tube, the IBM or even 
     the Xerox machine. We will need people who understand that 
     know-why is even more important than know-how, people who 
     will see our problems as part of total human experience and 
     who will be able to understand something of what yesterday 
     teaches us about today and tomorrow.
       In short, we will need people of vision who will be able to 
     help us find effective solutions to the problems besetting 
     the world by coming to know and understand the people who 
     make up that world. I strongly believe that NSEP can do much 
     to move us in that direction and I wish you Godspeed on your 
     mission.

                          ____________________