[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 66 (Tuesday, May 24, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 24, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                   WE NEED AN IMPROVED FOREIGN POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
February 11, 1994, the gentleman from California [Mr. Royce] is 
recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ROYCE. Madam Speaker, I rise today to express some of my concerns 
about the state of our foreign policy. In recent weeks we have seen a 
gathering crisis of confidence emerge in regard to the President's 
handling of foreign policy. Polls show that only 13 percent of the 
American public believes that the President has a coherent foreign 
policy. I take no pleasure in these facts. But who can dispute them?
  The revolution in communications brings frightful sights to our 
screens--murdered American soldiers being dragged through the streets 
of Somalia; Haitian thugs turning away the United States Navy; 
strutting dictators and their nuclear swagger, and even at home, 
our World Trade Towers smoldering--these things are very real and very 
unsettling. From this Chamber to ``Nightline,'' the question of foreign 
policy is beginning to vex so many. Americans are beginning to feel 
uncomfortable.

  They are beginning to sense that all of this turbulence might just 
mean there is no pilot up front. Senior-most members of the President's 
own party, in both Houses, have joined commentators, analysts, and 
statesmen around the world in expressions of apprehension and 
incredulity. This week's Time magazine asks if its time for Warren 
Christopher to say goodbye; but I say that the President of the United 
States is supposed to be the pilot, and sacrificing a navigator is not 
going to solve the problem.
  Goals, when articulated, seem to lapse into excuses and 
rationalizations. Human rights, nonproliferation, and democracy are 
posited, and China, North Korea, and Haiti result. A commitment is made 
to preserving America's hard earned role as a force for good in the 
world, and then Bosnia belies the lack of resolve and underscores the 
absence of vision. The use of force is hinted at, or expressly 
threatened, and then withdrawn as if it were a campaign ad.
  When the parameters that will define our security for the next 
century are in such uncertain focus, there are those who would rush to 
severely constrain our defense and intelligence capacities. We must not 
fall into the trap of having a crisis of credibility compounded by a 
crisis in capability.
  Speaking of crises, I want to speak for just a moment about the 
nuclear issue. The administrator says, and rightly so, that nuclear 
proliferation is the greatest threat to U.S. security and global 
stability. They claim a goal of a global ban on fissile-material 
production, yet they have sought to skirt the only piece of 
nonproliferation legislation we have on the books.
  The administration has vacillated on North Korea's nuclear threat 
while that threat continues to grow. First, the President says a North 
Korean bomb will not be tolerated, then within weeks the CIA says there 
are probably two, and possibly more, bombs in hand or in the works. The 
President's response to North Korea's nuclear shell game is to cancel 
our joint exercises with the South, send Patriot defense batteries by 
the slow boat, and tell us to pray for our 37,000 troops.

                              {time}  1100

  Now the news comes this past weekend that North Korea has purchased 
40 nuclear-missile-capable submarines from the former Soviet Union. You 
can bet they did not arrive by slow boat. Kim Il-song has listened to 
our threats, measured our resolve, and shrugged. The crisis on the 
Korean Peninsula is real; it will not go away with a gentleman's 
passing grade from the IAEA. Kim Il-song will continue to build, and 
sell, his weapons, including his ballistic missiles to all takers. He 
will continue to threaten the region, and this threat can be expected 
to impel others in the region unfortunately to enhance their forces as 
well.
  The administration rightly asserts that the number one nuclear threat 
in the world--what it calls the principal threat to United States 
national security--is the former Soviet Union. That is why it is so 
troubling to me that the $800 million of Nunn-Lugar funds for the 
dismantling of that threat remains largely unspent. This means that the 
dismantling of the world's largest nuclear arsenal, in Russia and the 
three other nuclear States of the former Soviet Union, though agreed to 
during the last administration, remains a distant task under this 
administration. Moreover, the $12 billion buydown of the former Soviet 
Union States' fissile-materials supply will last well in to the next 
century. In the meantime, Russia is supplying submarines to North 
Korea, and may, according to administration officials, supply Iran and 
other terrorist states with the nuclear reactor technology and materiel 
they are so desperately seeking.
  Madam Speaker, I see a troubling pattern emerging--a pattern which 
sends a signal to the Saddam Husseins, Kim Il-songs, and Slobodan 
Milosevics--and to all those like them waiting patiently in the wings 
around the world, a signal that the United States will not stand in 
their way, and will not take their measure until it is too late and too 
costly. The United States cannot afford to send this signal. Fledgling 
democracies around the world remain fragile and cannot suffer our lack 
of focus distraction; the Middle East peace process is in its infancy 
and cannot be stillborn from our indifference; in Latin America, Asia, 
and Africa, new transitions to markets are being tested and cannot 
afford to fall victim to regional instability or shifting alliances. In 
Russia and China, military apparats and their followers need to know 
that their old systems cannot be fixed, and that pluralism and peace 
are the path forward.
  So much has been brought to the fore with the end of the cold war and 
the opportunities are great. The corollary of course, is that so much 
is at risk. Sustained leadership attention is critical; episodic 
attention will not suffice. Foreign policy leadership is not a 
Presidential option; it is a high duty.
  We have an obligation to keep faith with those people who placed 
their faith in us during the cold war and its struggles. By the same 
token, we have a duty to maintain and strengthen the institutional 
arrangements and alliances which served the peace longer than any 
others in modern memory. We should not hasten into new arrangements for 
the sake of some imagined order. We do not need redefinition; we need 
resolve. We do not need a policy guided by polls and hunger strikes; We 
do not need global town meetings. We need a policy rooted in principle 
and underpinned by strength. We need a policy that clearly sets forth 
what we view as the acceptable rules of international behavior in the 
post-cold-war era and what price we attach to their violation.

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