[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 152 (Tuesday, November 4, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11695-S11698]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         INTERNATIONAL REPUBLICAN INSTITUTE 1997 FREEDOM AWARD

 Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, late last month in downtown 
Washington, the International Republican Institute honored Ronald 
Reagan as the recipient of their 1997 Freedom Award. Seldom, if ever, 
has a Washington dinner been held to honor an American when the honor 
was more richly deserved or more sincerely conferred. There was a deep 
and abiding outpouring of respect, admiration and affection for our 
Nation's 40th President. Even a touch of nostalgia was present as 
guests and speakers recalled when our Nation was led by a President 
guided by a clear vision and deeply-held convictions.
  The formal program included remarks by James Billington, the 
Librarian of Congress, and our colleague, the chairman of I.R.I., 
Senator McCain of Arizona. Mrs. Reagan was there to represent her 
husband and she made a brief statement in his behalf when the award was 
presented. These statements focused on Ronald Reagan's indispensable 
leadership that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and to freedom for 
hundreds of millions throughout the globe.
  Mr. President, the statements of these distinguished Americans 
deserve the attention of the Senate and the American people. Moreover, 
they should be part of the public record so that future generations 
will have convenient access to them as they examine the life and 
influence of this great American whose vision and leadership changed 
the world.
  Accordingly, Mr. President, I ask that the statements by Senator 
McCain and Dr. Billington, as well as the brief remarks by Mrs. Reagan, 
be printed in the Record.

[[Page S11696]]

  The statements follow:

The Foreign Policy of President Ronald Reagan (by James H. Billington, 
               Librarian of Congress, September 25, 1997)

       The Cold War was the central conflict of the second half of 
     the 20th century, the longest and most unconventional war of 
     the entire modern era and an altogether unprecedented 
     experience for Americans. We never directly fought our 
     principal antagonist, the Soviet Union, but we were faced for 
     the first time in our history--and over a long period--with 
     an opponent who was both ideologically committed to overthrow 
     our system and materially equipped to destroy us physically.
       President Ronald Reagan was the single most important 
     political figure in ending the Cold War without either making 
     concessions or incurring major loss of life on either side. 
     It was an astonishing accomplishment. Not surprising, those 
     who never thought such an outcome was possible in the first 
     place have been slow to recognize that the unraveling of the 
     Soviet Empire began, and became irreversible, on his watch--
     and in no small part as a result of his special qualities of 
     leadership.
       In his monumental study of the rise and fall of 
     civilizations, written just as the Cold War was beginning, 
     Arnold Tonybee suggested that empires begin their inevitable 
     decline when they meet a challenge to which they are 
     systematically unable to respond. The hierarchical control 
     system of the Soviet Empire met such a challenge with the 
     Solidarity Movement in Poland. As a bottom-up mass movement 
     rooted in religion within the largest Soviet satellite, 
     Solidarity was not the kind of movement which Soviet imperial 
     managers could domesticate either by decapitating or co-
     opting the leaders or by offering carrots and sticks to its 
     members. John Paul II, the first Slavic Pope, spiritually 
     inspired it, and President Reagan's political support 
     helped it survive martial law to become the decisive 
     catalyst in the eventual chain reaction of Communist 
     collapse at the end of the 1980's.
       What were the key elements of Ronald Reagan's role in all 
     of this? First of all, he was guided by a simple vision that 
     ordinary people everywhere could understand--rather than by 
     some complex strategic doctrine intelligible only to foreign 
     policy wonks. In 1981 at Notre Dame, he spoke not of winning 
     the cold war but of the bright prospects ``for the cause of 
     freedom and the spread of civilization,'' indicating that 
     ``the West will not contain Communism; it will transcend 
     Communism.''
       He made it clear at the beginning of the administration 
     that tokenism in arms control and photo-op summit solutions 
     to serious problems would no longer be accepted. In effect, 
     he told the world he would not go on playing the old favorite 
     Russian game of chess, the aim of which always seemed to be 
     to play for a draw. Here, at last, was a good old-fashioned 
     American poker player who knew he had the stronger hand, was 
     willing to raise the ante to a level that the strained Soviet 
     system could not meet, and had the imagination to throw in 
     the wild card of a strategic defensive initiative. He proved 
     that an American President could be reelected without having 
     had a summit meeting of any kind--let alone the kind which 
     legitimized Soviet leaders and placed the spotlight on 
     weapons: the one area where the Soviet Union did, in some 
     respects, enjoy parity with America.
       Reagan's strategic defense initiative addressed a need 
     which is arguably still important today with the possibility 
     of rogue states acquiring deadly delivery capabilities. But, 
     at that time, it represented as well a second key challenge 
     to which the Soviet system was systematically unable to 
     respond--neither materially, because of their backwardness in 
     computers and high technology, nor politically, because 
     ordinary people (as distinct from policy wonks) could not 
     believe that a defensive system that we were willing to share 
     with others really threatened anybody.
       If the first element of the Reagan leadership, then, was 
     vision backed by strength in his first term, the second 
     ingredient was his ability to be an altogether gracious 
     winner in his second term. By establishing a genuinely warm 
     and basically non-adversarial relationship with Gorbachev, 
     cemented by a rapid-fire set of summits in his second term, 
     President Reagan defied the general assumption of the foreign 
     policy establishment that summits had to be basically 
     choreographed by experts and incremental in accomplishment. 
     He began at Geneva by going one-on-one with Gorbachev. He 
     reacted to the accelerating crisis of communism in a way that 
     did not humiliate but, in fact, honored an opponent who was 
     moving things in the right direction.
       It is easy to forget now just how ritualized the Soviet-
     American conflict had become by the end of the 1970's--and 
     how fatalistic the Western establishment had become in 
     accepting a more-or-less indefinite coexistence with a Soviet 
     Empire then at the height of its expansiveness. What helped 
     change all that was the third element in President Reagan's 
     formula: the disarmingly simple way he redefined the conflict 
     itself as being not fundamentally between systems, alliances, 
     or even nations but between good and evil.
       His famous ``evil empire speech,'' which met with almost 
     universal condemnation in the Western media and academia, may 
     well have played an important role in unclogging the logjam 
     in the Soviet system and ending the menace of accidental or 
     mutual destruction that always hovered over the Cold War. Two 
     different Soviet reformist politicians told me amidst the 
     alcoholic bonhomie of the state dinner at the Reagan-
     Gorbachev Moscow summit in June 1988 that they used the 
     unprecedently undiplomatic nature of that talk to convince 
     other Soviet leaders that they should try to accommodate 
     and not continue to confront the West. It seems of course, 
     paradoxical to suggest that a belligerent speech could 
     pave the way to peaceful change. But what seems unlikely 
     in theory may well be true in real life. Real life is told 
     in stories. No one was a greater storyteller in real life 
     than Ronald Reagan; and he had a good basic story to tell. 
     In my view, the end of the Cold War represented 
     essentially the victory of a story over a theory.
       The United States of America is the result not of any 
     theory but of a story--made up over the years out of hundreds 
     of individual human stories. The Soviet Union was the product 
     of a theory suddenly superimposed by politicized 
     intellectuals through a coup in the midst of the inhuman 
     chaos of World War I. Because Communism as a theory was, in 
     some ways, inherently appealing, Americans were often 
     reluctant to believe that the Soviet system was evil rather 
     than just a temporary victim of Stalin's paranoia or perhaps 
     of defective genes traceable back to Ivan the Terrible or 
     Genghis Khan. It had been easy for intellectuals to believe 
     that Nazi totalitarianism represented a threat because of its 
     exclusivist, racist underpinnings, but it seemed hard to 
     believe that anything could be fundamentally wrong with the 
     inclusive ideal of an egalitarian society or with fellow 
     intellectuals like Marx and Lenin, who spent so much time in 
     the British Museum even if they never worked in factories.
       The capacity to provide gratuitous excuses for Soviet 
     behavior had reached a grotesque climax in the immediate 
     aftermath of the Afghan invasion. For the first couple of 
     days, the only explanation the Soviet regime could offer was 
     that they were intervening at the invitation of the leader 
     whom they had then proceeded to shoot. They were soon rescued 
     from this embarrassment by the gratuitous rationalizations 
     and explanations for their behavior provided by the Western 
     media.
       Reagan, the storyteller, instinctively realized that 
     America was a story, not a theory; that stories tend to unify 
     people; and that the best stories are based on relatively 
     universal archetypes that deal with good and evil. Theories 
     rarly bring peace, since they inspire divisions based on 
     right and wrong and invite argument that leads to conflict. 
     Stories are shared; theories are debated.
       Anyone who came within the President's orbit was 
     immediately attracted by his stories. They invariably drew 
     the diverse people at his table together and were essentially 
     inclusive. Theories, on the other hand, tend to exclude those 
     who do not believe in them--and to induce arrogance in those 
     who do.
       The American academic experts whom President Reagan 
     periodically gathered around a lunch table in the White House 
     were often perplexed by his tendency to relate tales of his 
     own negotiations with labor leaders in Hollywood. Yet, as I 
     listened to these stories, I saw that he was both securing a 
     measure of buy-in from the often skeptical intellectual 
     community and, at the same time, pre-testing his future 
     tactics by probing for the reaction of theorists to the 
     practicalities of his negotiating techniques.
       President Reagan could negotiate from strength because he 
     had reassured us that our own story was a positive one, and 
     that the sun was rising and not setting on America.
       I do not know exactly what the substance was of the 
     President's early conversations with Gorbachev, but they 
     seemed to involve more the telling of stories than the 
     debating of theories. Debates like wars have a winner and 
     loser, but a story can celebrate the common victory of a 
     higher good. President Reagan never claimed victory in the 
     cold War. Rather, he seemed to be welcoming Russia into the 
     near-universal story of movement toward freedom and openness.
       President Reagan also had respect for the Russians' own 
     story. In his important addresses of June 1988 at Moscow 
     State University, he repeatedly used Russian examples to 
     illustrate the universal principles of freedom and moral 
     responsibility. During the same Moscow summit, he invited for 
     lunch a full range of dissident Russian voices, each of whom 
     had a story to tell; and at the State dinner at Spaso House, 
     he invited many of these same figures and mixed them up at 
     tables with political leaders. Each dinner table brought the 
     best storytellers of the emerging reforms face-to-face for 
     the first time in one room with the powerful perpetuators of 
     outmoded theories.
       I was able to observe first-hand, in the course of 
     preparations for and the execution of President Reagan's 
     Moscow summit in June 1988, how he supported the forces of 
     change at the level of both vision and tactics. The President 
     had asked me, as perhaps he had asked others on the eve of 
     the summit, a simple but centrally important question. How 
     was it possible, he asked, for people to survive with sanity 
     in such a cruel and repressive system? I did not have time to 
     think much about the question and responded instinctively, 
     largely on the basis of my own family's experience of living 
     there, ``Because of the women, Mr. President.'' It was the 
     babushkas who held the family together, staying at home while 
     both parents worked, creating a nest of warmth and honesty 
     that compensated for the falsehoods and

[[Page S11697]]

     absurdities of the system and the coldness of both the 
     climate and the bureaucracy.
       At a dramatic moment at the Moscow summit of 1988, 
     President Reagan was asked by a Russian reporter on live 
     television if he had any messages to leave behind to the 
     Russian people. He replied that he wanted to send this 
     heartfelt greetings to the women of Russia for their role in 
     holding families together and transmitting the traditions and 
     values of the Russian people from one generation to another. 
     This spontaneous response was mentioned by almost all 
     Russians with whom I talked in the additional week I stayed 
     on after the summit to inventory popular reactions. And I 
     thought of this remark again when I was in Moscow three years 
     later as the entire system imploded during 48 dramatic hours 
     in August 1991. Crucial in the resistance against the coup 
     attempt of the dying Communist system were the old women who 
     castigated the young boys in the tanks and, in effect, became 
     an alternate chain of command, demanding that they obey their 
     mothers rather than their officers.
       President Reagan's Moscow summit in 1988 coincided with the 
     Russian celebration of the Millennium of Christianity, and 
     the President had planned to visit the newly restored Danilov 
     Monastery and to identify himself with the old Biblical story 
     that Russians were then recovering. Many Americans, however, 
     were urging him to cancel this visit because of the role that 
     the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy had played in 
     suppressing the rights of Uniate Catholics in the Ukraine. 
     The President resolved this dilemma not by retreating from 
     the visit but by using it energetically to endorse the 
     rights of the Catholic minority in the very sanctuary of 
     Russian Orthodoxy. He seems instinctively to have 
     understood that even imperfect sources of the good should 
     be supported if the mission is to expel the real evil that 
     had so long been camouflaged under the mask of utopian 
     perfection.
       Of course, Ronald Reagan was not the only, and at times not 
     the main, hero of the story of the Cold War's ending. The 
     peoples of Eastern Europe and leaders like Gorbachev 
     basically affected the changes; and, on the American side, it 
     was a cumulative and essentially bi-partisan accomplishment.
       But President Reagan, in playing out the all-important end 
     game of the Cold War, had a rare gift for making the American 
     people comfortable with the main lines of his foreign policy 
     even when they were uncomfortable with details.
       At the end of an ideal story, good not only triumphs over 
     evil, but those who had been in darkness find the light and 
     every one lives happily ever after. We all know that even 
     this happy story did not quite work out this way. Many are 
     still in darkness in the East; there were and are some 
     shadows in our light; and it was not the end of history.
       But the long-lingering cloud of potential total war was 
     evaporated along with the empire that might have activated 
     it. And our children and our children's children will always 
     owe a lot to a man who had a good story to tell, and like 
     most great storytellers, was at heart a romantic.
       In most morality tales that have human appeal, there is a 
     strong woman who helps the forces of good overcome those of 
     evil and redeem the follies of man.
       Ronald Reagan had--and still has--such a woman at his side. 
     At the Moscow summit of 1988, the President was sustained and 
     supported at every turn by a wife who did not simply do 
     traditional, ritual things, but read richly into Russian 
     history and subjected herself to a cram course that continued 
     right up to the moment Air Force One touched down in Moscow. 
     She then plunged into an overdrive schedule of visiting and 
     empathizing with almost all the positive elements in Russia 
     that were then pressing for change. As she debarked from the 
     plane, she was whisked by Raisa Gorbachev into the Cathedral 
     of the Assumption in the Kremlin, where she politely asked 
     why it was no longer the center of worship that it had been 
     and would once again soon become. She got up early the next 
     morning and asked to see Russia's greatest icons which had 
     been removed from public view by the regime, ostensibly for 
     restoration but probably also to avoid excessive veneration 
     during Russia's Millennium year of Christianity. By prying 
     these holy pictures out of the reserve collection of the 
     Tretyakov Gallery, she enabled Russians to see them since 
     there had to be television coverage of her visit.
       She visited schools, writers, and Pastenak's grave, and--
     all on one hectic day--the greatest single mind and the two 
     best cultural centers in St. Petersburg before returning by 
     plane to host the state dinner at which she inter-seated the 
     Soviet political establishment with its own cultural and 
     political opposition.
       This whirlwind of activity exhausted her traveling 
     companions, like the wife of the Russian President, Mrs. 
     Gromyko, who observed on the plane going back to Moscow that 
     she had solemnly concluded that some kind of Supreme Being 
     might actually exist. Gorbachev met for the very first time 
     at Nancy Reagan's dinner Tengiz Abuladze, whose great film 
     ``Repentance'' was probably the most important, single 
     cultural document in pushing for the repudiation rather than 
     just the modification of the Soviet system.
       Thanks, largely to Nancy, the Reagan story is not over just 
     because the sound track is now silent. The one key 
     illustration for this story is that of a man and woman, hand-
     in-hand, who made their sunset years those of America's 
     sunrise.
                                                                    ____


                     Remarks by Senator John McCain

       A long running dispute among historians is whether great 
     men and women shape their times or whether the times shape 
     the person. I suspect both propositions are true, but, there 
     is no doubt that Ronald Reagan, a man who's character was 
     certainly shaped by the times, profoundly influenced the 
     course of human history. He did so in many ways which Senator 
     Lott so ably identified.
       But, of all the lessons President Ronald Reagan also taught 
     the world, the one which transcended all the others was his 
     extraordinary insight into the universal appeal of American 
     Ideals and the ultimate futility of building walls to 
     freedom.
       At the time Ronald Reagan began his presidency there were 
     few among us who shared his remarkable confidence that a new 
     age of enlightenment for the rights of man would be ascended 
     in all the corners of the world. This was not only possible 
     in some distant century but probable in our time. For most of 
     us who have lived through the long struggle between the 
     forces of freedom and the forces of tyranny the prospect of 
     our eventual triumph seemed a long distance off. Ronald 
     Reagan did not see it that way, Ronald Reagan did not believe 
     in walls. That was his genius. Ronald Reagan predicted to a 
     skeptical world that it was inevitable, eminent for freedom. 
     ``Let us by shy no longer'' he asked, ``let us go to our 
     strength. Let us offer hope, let us tell the world that a new 
     age is not only possible but probable.'' These words 
     marshaled the American people and their allies for a 
     reinvigorated campaign to support the forces of liberty in 
     some of the most closed societies on earth.
       In one perfect sentence, that keen observer of the Reagan 
     Presidency, Lady Margaret Thatcher summed up President 
     Reagan's contribution to the astonishing changes in the world 
     today, `'Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without firing a 
     shot.'' Credit for the victory is shared by all who fought 
     and suffered for the idea that just government is derived 
     from the consent for the government.
       Americans and freedom fighters everywhere recognize 
     President Reagan as the godfather of the contemporary 
     movement that would liberate half a billion people from 
     communism and authoritarianism.
       Mrs. Reagan, tonight we are giving IRI's Freedom Award to 
     President Reagan to honor the man who's faith in our country 
     and it's mission is unyielding. But, we are here to honor you 
     as well for your long partnership with the President for the 
     work that has meant so much to America and the world. For 
     your shared commitment to preserve the ideals which make 
     America great, for your compassion for those who struggle to 
     live their lives as we live ours, free people in a free 
     country.
       This is a fitting expression of our gratitude but it will 
     not suffice to honor the service you and the President 
     rendered to humanity, merely a token of our appreciation. The 
     highest tribute we can pay it to keep faith, your faith, and 
     the faith that shouts to tyrants, ``tear down this wall.'' 
     Like Ronald Reagan we must be destroyers, not builders of 
     walls. All Americans, especially Republicans gain courage 
     from your example and not fear the challenge from an every 
     smaller world. We should build our walls in a futile attempt 
     to keep the world at bay, not walls to people, no walls to 
     the free exchange of ideas, no walls to trade. Ronald Reagan 
     knew and you did, that an open competition of our ideals and 
     ingenuity assure dour success. You both knew that 
     isolationism and protectionism is a fools error. You both 
     knew that walls were for cowards, not for us, not for 
     Americans.
       There are those who define this country by what we are 
     against and not what we are for. It is enough for them that 
     the United States opposed communism and once the threat 
     communism posed to our security was defeated they view 
     America as the champion of liberty to become an expensive 
     vanity which was sure to disappear with the Berlin wall. Such 
     a grand view of the American purpose insults the generous 
     spirit of Ronald Reagan who believed that supporting the 
     forces of democracy overseas was our abiding moral obligation 
     just as it was a practical necessity during the Cold War.
       I am proud of Americas long and successful opposition to 
     communism, but being anti-communist was not enough. It was 
     never enough. In our efforts to help others secure the 
     blessings of liberty distinguishes us from all other nations 
     on earth. It was necessary to defeat communism to protect the 
     well-being of Americans but it was also necessary to defeat 
     communism because it threatened America's best sense of 
     itself and our sublime legacy to the world.
       Mrs. Reagan, we thought long and hard about a gift to give 
     you and the President this evening in addition to the Freedom 
     Award. We decided upon something appropriate for the occasion 
     and to the spirit of the Reagan legacy. But without our 
     sincere commitment of carrying on that legacy, these tokens 
     will have little value, and on behalf of everyone here, I 
     give you and President Reagan that commitment.
       Many years ago now, I and a great many friends were kept 
     behind walls in a place where human beings suffered for their 
     dignity without a feel to a just government. When we came 
     home many of us were eager to visit with two people we knew 
     who didn't believe in walls, two people who did the right

[[Page S11698]]

     things to help free us from the walls which confined us. Two 
     people who we knew kept faith in us as we were challenged to 
     keep faith in our country. You and, then, Governor Ronald 
     Reagan, graciously attended a homecoming reception for us one 
     evening in San Francisco. It was an event none of us will 
     ever forget, nor our admiration and appreciation for you 
     began many years before when we learned that taps on walls 
     and whispered conversations was work being done to help us 
     return to a land without walls.
       This handsome box contains two symbols of the vision and 
     faith for which we and the President will always be 
     celebrating. The first is a piece of the multi-colored brick 
     taken from the rubble of what was once a prison wall built by 
     the French a century ago and called by the Vietnamese 
     `hoaloa'. The Americans who were later obliged to dwell 
     there, called it the `Hanoi Hilton'. These walls no longer 
     stand, the prison was demolished a few years ago and a real 
     hotel, presumably with better room service was erected in its 
     place.
       The second gift is a customized POW bracelet inscribed to 
     you and President Reagan for your faith, loyalty and 
     perseverance from all of us who came home, as well as those 
     who did not, remember with enormous gratitude your loyalty to 
     us and your steadfast faith in the cause we serve.
       There's a story about President and Mrs. Reagan that has 
     always impressed me, because it demonstrates their sincerity 
     and concern for Americans who suffer for their countries 
     sake. A long time ago, the President and Mrs. Reagan became 
     concerned about the plight of those who were held captive in 
     Vietnam. President Reagan decided to hold a press conference 
     to express his support for improvement in their treatment and 
     their rapid homecoming. At that press conference were 
     families and children of those who were missing in action at 
     that time. As President Reagan began his remarks for the bank 
     of cameras and media people there, a little boy, about three 
     years old, came forward from the crowd and tugged at his 
     sleeve. President Reagan bent over and the little boy 
     whispered in his ear and then President Reagan left with the 
     little boy to his office and then came back. It turns out 
     that the young boy had to go to the bathroom.
       Then as President Reagan began his remarks again the young 
     boy tugged his sleeve again and Ronald Reagan bent over and 
     he said, ``Please, can you help bring my daddy home?'' 
     President Reagan from that time on wore a bracelet with 
     Captain Hanson's name on it.
       Mrs. Reagan, your husband served and honored us and are 
     honoring us still. As you remember us, we will always 
     remember you. And stand witness to a greatness and a faith 
     that could not abide walls. Mrs. Reagan.
                                                                    ____


                   Remarks by Mrs. Nancy Reagan 1997

       Thank you very much. Thank you for all our presents and for 
     a very kind introduction. Thank you, Trent and thank you, Jim 
     for those wonderful remarks about my husband and me. I do 
     know that I am not the speech maker in the family or the 
     storyteller. But I am very honored to be here tonight to 
     accept the 1997 IRI Freedom Award on my husband's behalf. I 
     wanted to be here tonight for him, especially since tonight 
     is really a special night for the both of us. Not only is the 
     IRI honoring my husband but it's been done in partnership 
     with the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation that supports 
     the Reagan library and its programs. The library is a very 
     special place for both Ronnie and me. It's a place where the 
     legacy of Ronald Reagan is preserved for generations to come. 
     And speaking of legacies, the International Republican 
     Institute is really the living legacy of Ronald Reagan's 
     peace through strength approach to foreign policy. I know I 
     am being biased a little bit, I know you'll agree that during 
     his eight years in the White House, my husband encouraged 
     untold numbers of people around the world to move toward 
     democracy. Ronnie was a believer. He believed in the power of 
     freedom. He had a dream that in the twenty-first century 
     human beings would be respected everywhere, hoping that one 
     day, people of all nations would have the privilege of 
     basking in the light of freedom and I'm convinced that along 
     with your help and vision this dream will come true, and I 
     know you do to.
       Thank you for inviting me here, for acknowledging my 
     roommate. I know that he will enjoy being a part of these 
     special people. Thank you.

                          ____________________