[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 141 (Thursday, October 3, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12342-S12344]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    FIVE CHALLENGES FOR PEACE: UNFINISHED BUSINESS IN FOREIGN POLICY

 Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, for the past 18 years, I have 
been privileged to watch the march of world history from the vantage 
point of the U.S. Senate. The world has changed dramatically in my time 
here.
  We live in an era of great transition from a terrible cold war order 
we understood to a new order we do not yet know. We are, to borrow from 
Dean Acheson's trenchant phrase, ``present at the re-creation.''
  As I prepare to leave the Senate, I want to offer some parting 
thoughts on unfinished business in American foreign policy and five 
challenges we must meet in coming years.


                      i. infrastructure for peace

  The principal challenge of our time is to re-engineer the structures 
that can sustain the peace we have won. From the institutions and 
alliances of the cold war, we have inherited an unprecedented 
infrastructure for peace.
  That infrastructure rests on three pillars. Each must be 
strengthened.
  The first pillar is the only worldwide institution focused on 
international peace and security--the United Nations.
  We need to rebuild the consensus, both domestically and 
internationally, on what we want the U.N. to be and what we want it to 
do in the international system of the 21st century. I believe we must 
build this consensus among the major donor countries and powers.

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  For too long, the United Nations has tried to do too much for too 
many and, as a result, has outgrown the bounds of its legitimacy. I 
believe the basis for consensus is a return to the core functions that 
we need the United Nations to do--refugees, nuclear inspections, 
health, and security, for example. And it may well be time for the 
United Nations to get out of the development business entirely and 
leave that work to other institutions better suited to the task such as 
the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
  When we have consensus on what the United Nations should do, we then 
will need a dramatic restructuring of the U.N.'s institutions and 
bureaucracy to meet its new, narrow focus. This will be a dramatic 
shake-up of the United Nations that can only be driven by its most 
powerful member states. It will require the leadership of current heads 
of state and government, as well as other international figures of 
stature. I imagine this to be analogous to the process that led to the 
San Francisco Conference in 1945 where the Charter was signed.
  The second pillar consists of the institutions for international 
economic development, reform and growth. The World Bank, the 
International Monetary Fund, and the new World Trade Organization have 
important capacities that our bilateral development programs simply do 
not. They can encourage and even compel the kind of fundamental changes 
in outdated and inefficient economic systems abroad that ultimately 
promote self-sufficiency. And they can set and police uniform standards 
for economics and trade that promote America's long-term interests in 
certainty and stability.
  Yet, we have fallen behind sustaining our key contributions to these 
organizations. For example, we continue to lag behind in our 
contribution to the World Bank's soft-loan window, the International 
Development Association. As we consider trade-offs among our foreign 
policy budget expenditures, I believe that sustaining our contributions 
to these organizations should move to the top of our priority list for 
international affairs spending.
  The third pillar is America's alliances. I continue to believe that 
we must find new consensus on the purpose of our principal alliance, 
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The halting and ad hoc approach 
that ultimately led to NATO intervention in Bosnia, is decidedly not 
the type of shared purpose that can sustain a close alliance over the 
long term. I, for one, remain skeptical that we should proceed with 
admitting new members to NATO before the alliance finds its new role.
  At the same time, the United States must give serious thought to the 
structure of its alliances in the Pacific. Beyond our close alliances 
with Japan and South Korea, we must consider what type of expanded 
alliance structures can best protect peace and stability throughout the 
region well into the next century.


                 ii. arms control and non-proliferation

  In addition to repairing the institutions for peace, I believe we 
must do more to control the weapons of war. That is our second 
challenge.
  I believe it is an indispensable element in America's long-term 
security strategy. We face two types of challenges in dealing with the 
threat posed by weapons of mass destruction.
  First, we must reduce the numbers of these terrible arms that exist 
on the face of the Earth. This means fully implementing START I and 
START II, both here and in Russia. It means establishing and 
implementing a regime to control and destroy chemical weapons 
stockpiles. It means continuing to press for universal adherence to a 
comprehensive ban on nuclear testing. It also means that America must 
be willing to foot much of the bill whenever necessary--the cost of 
destroying weapons abroad by agreement is far less than the cost of 
having to destroy them by war.
  Second, we must contain and secure stockpiles and prevent the spread 
of these weapons. Our recent efforts to retrieve unsecured nuclear 
material from abroad and bring them to the United States should be 
expanded. We should remain committed to efforts of the Nunn-Lugar 
program to secure stockpiles throughout the former Soviet Union. And we 
must always remain fully committed to strict enforcement of the nuclear 
Non-Proliferation Treaty.
  The threat to our security from weapons of mass destruction is 
growing, not declining. Critics of arms control in general, or of 
specific arms control agreements, must always be held to answer a 
single difficult question: If you oppose our approach, then what would 
you do to diminish the urgent threat to our country? In my view, that 
is where critics of the Chemical Weapons Convention have fallen short, 
and I hope the Senate will ratify that important agreement early next 
year.


                        III. tools of diplomacy

  The third challenge we must meet is to maintain a diplomatic capacity 
strong enough to secure our many national interests abroad.
  We live in an age of exceptional nuance, diversity, and subtlety in 
foreign policy, and we must learn patience and the limits of our 
influence. This is particularly apparent in Africa--a continent of 
special interest to me--where America has many interests that can only 
be defended by diplomatic means.
  But our diplomatic interests are truly worldwide. In just the past 6 
years, 25 new states have entered the international community. The end 
of the Soviet empire has left us with many more power centers to deal 
with and far more nuance to understand.
  Yet, while the military had its Bottom-Up Review, and the 
intelligence community has undergone comprehensive review of its 
missions and needs since the cold war's end, we have not undertaken 
such an authoritative review of our diplomatic interests and needs.
  So we stumble along with no objective to guide our way, our debates 
on diplomacy--to the extent we have any--driven largely by budget 
factors and the vagaries of domestic politics rather than by any sober 
assessment of what diplomatic tools and structures we need to secure 
our national interests.
  I believe our diplomatic spending should be driven by our interests, 
and I would urge a Bottom-Up Review of our diplomatic needs.
  At the same time, I have come to fear that in recent years, the 
quality of the U.S. foreign service has slowly deteriorated. We have 
too often failed to attract and keep top-quality officers, rewarded 
mediocrity, and allowed ambassadors to be excluded from the 
policymaking process. We have some tremendously capable foreign service 
officers, but unfortunately we also have ample room for improvement. I 
believe comprehensive foreign service reform is long overdue.


                       iv. national energy policy

  Our fourth foreign policy challenge must be addressed here at home. 
The time has come for America to devise and implement an energy policy 
that will reduce our reliance on foreign oil.
  We now rely on foreign sources for more than half our oil--
significantly more than during the energy crisis of the 1970's. From 
Nigeria to Central Asia, this dependence skews our foreign policy 
priorities--and, with many of the world's new oil fields in China and 
Russia, we can ill afford that pattern to be repeated.
  The Middle East is the prime example. Our dependence has led, for 
example, to American commitments in that region that far exceed what we 
would undertake but for the 15 million barrels of oil that leave the 
Persian Gulf each day.
  During my time in the Senate, we have sent Marines to Beirut, 
escorted Kuwaiti tankers through the Straits of Hormuz, fought a major 
land war in the region, and subsequently redeployed troops at least 
twice. We also have established an ever-expending web of formal and 
informal security commitments that may ultimately exceed our capacity 
to uphold.
  And our commitments in that oil-rich region continue to grow. Before 
the 1991 gulf war, we had only a few thousand troops in the region and 
no institutional presence. Today, we have nearly 20,000 troops in the 
area more or less permanently, including about 6,000 ground troops and 
a carrier task force. We are expanding military facilities in Saudi 
Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and the Emirates, and we have expanded our 
presence in Turkey. We are spending some $40 billion each year to 
support our military operations in the region.

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  The Middle East is an important region in its own right. But no 
honest observers could believe that our tremendous commitments there 
would exist without the region's oil riches. The risks we have 
undertaken because of oil are large indeed.
  The answer to this difficult problem is not just drilling for more 
oil here at home--for, at best, that can only delay the inevitable. The 
answer is a significant and sustained effort to integrate alternative 
energy sources into the mainstream of our national economy. The time 
has come for America to promote development of conservation and 
alternative energy sources as a matter of national security.


                        v. trans-national issues

  The final foreign policy challenge is to come to grips with trans-
national threats, many of which have no human form. New diseases and 
large-scale environmental degradation may have origins far from our 
shores, but their effects touch the lives of Americans. Similarly, 
international criminal organizations, including drug traffickers, can 
assault our citizens and our security from locations outside the United 
States.
  Combating these threats will require that we work on many levels. We 
must work together with friends and allies abroad. We must encourage 
and help countries that host these threats to combat them, which means 
we must come to better understand the important relationship between 
overseas development and our own national interests. And we must better 
integrate the work of different agencies of our own Government so that 
America speaks with a single voice and acts decisively to protect our 
interests.


                               conclusion

  Mr. President, these are five daunting challenges. They come at a 
time when the role of world affairs in American public and political 
discourse has diminished substantially.
  All of us are tempted to focus less on foreign policy or to try to 
view it through a domestic lens. But I believe that would be a mistake.
  The public may not be demanding a renewed focus on foreign policy, 
but our national interest is. These challenges to America's future 
demand serious attention from serious minds.
  I am optimistic we will meet them.

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