[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 98 (Tuesday, July 21, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1363]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      A TRIBUTE TO JOHN M. FISHER

                                 ______
                                 

                     HON. RANDY ``DUKE'' CUNNINGHAM

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 21, 1998

  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, one of the most rewarding aspects of my 
career on Capitol Hill has been serving as the Administrative Co-
Chairman of the bipartisan National Security Caucus (NSC). The Caucus 
includes 275 lawmakers and it is the largest Congressional Member 
Organization. The NSC focuses on a wide range of foreign policy, 
defense and international economic issues and it is through the Caucus 
that I have come to know John M. Fisher.
  He is the Chairman of the American Security Council and the National 
Security Caucus Foundation and he is being honored today at a luncheon 
at the Heritage Foundation. John Fisher has long been a leader in the 
national security community and he has spent a lifetime pursuing the 
principles of peace through strength.
  It is thanks to the tremendous yeoman labor of John Fisher that the 
United States was not stuck in a posture of strategic vulnerability in 
the 1970s. In 1978, he helped organize the National Security Caucus, a 
bipartisan alliance of Members of Congress who agreed on a resolution 
listing the principles of a national strategy of peace through 
strength.
  In 1984, the American Security Council worked with experts, 240 
Members of Congress, 96 national organizations and 514 universities and 
colleges in preparing the study ``A Strategy for Peace Through 
Strength,'' and over 400,000 copies of this study were distributed 
across the nation. President Reagan declared one week in September 1984 
as ``Peace Through Strength Week.'' A documentary film was created and 
shown by 187 television stations nationwide, and more than 50 rallies 
were held across the U.S.
  Our national security policy has always involved military and 
economic considerations, but now it must also reflect a world 
integrated by telecommunications and trade. At John's urging, my 
colleagues in the National Security Caucus are now working on a new 
strategy for global peace and prosperity.
  The military balance was restored in the 1980s and John Fisher is 
entitled to significant credit. His predictions of Peace Through 
Strength have come true. The Russians saw the strategic and 
conventional modernization program as a sign the U.S. was prepared to 
use its technological superiority to trump their military power, their 
one claim to superpower status.
  The American Security Council, under John Fisher's guidance, led the 
fight against the nuclear freeze, for INF deployment and the Reagan 
Doctrine, which put American arms and money behind a worldwide anti-
communist guerrilla campaign on three continents. The combination of 
INF, SDI, the Reagan Doctrine, and the defense build-up made it clear 
to the Marxist/Leninists that they were facing a future they could only 
lose.
  The 1970's have been called the Decade of Disarmament, and from 1975 
to 1980 an independent nation fell to communism every year. A great 
deal of credit must be given to leaders like John Fisher who finally 
convinced Jimmy Carter to raise the defense budget to help arm the 
Mujaheddin in Afghanistan, place an embargo on Soviet grain, and 
cutting off aid to the Sandinistas. The peace through strength policies 
advocated by John Fisher and adopted by Ronald Reagan and George Bush 
helped to create the stability we know today.
  George Washington once said ``To have peace, prepare for war.'' These 
words from our first Commander-in-Chief are engraved at the American 
Security Council's Congressional Conference Center. They are as 
applicable today as they were 200 years ago. John Fisher believes in 
these words and has spent his lifetime devoted to the maintenance of 
peace and freedom for the American people.

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