[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 137 (Monday, October 5, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H9514-H9518]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        INTERNATIONAL ENGAGEMENT--WHY WE NEED TO STAY THE COURSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) is 
recognized for the balance of the minority leader's time, approximately 
30 minutes.
  Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, it has been almost 10 years since the fall 
of 1988 when the Communist government of Poland agreed, under great 
popular pressure, to permit free elections, elections which ultimately 
led to the ``velvet revolution'' throughout eastern Europe. It has been 
9 years since the historic fall of 1989, when the border between 
Hungary and western Europe opened and thousands of east Europeans first 
swept aside the Iron Curtain and then brought it crashing down. It has 
been 8 years since the two Germanys agreed to reunification and 7 years 
since the Soviet Union disintegrated.
  For the United States, the events of a decade ago were the beginning 
of the end of a long struggle, a struggle that was characterized by 
terrible sacrifices in Korea and Vietnam; by periods of great national 
confidence and occasional episodes of uncertainty; by debates in the 
halls of Congress that were sometimes historic and solemn and sometimes 
partisan and shrill; and above all by a widely shared sense of national 
purpose that endured despite occasionally bitter internal divisions.
  The constancy with which the United States carried out its global 
responsibilities over the long course of the Cold War is great 
testimony to the character of the American people and to the quality of 
the leaders who guided the Nation through those often trying times. In 
spite of the costs, in the face of great uncertainties and despite 
grave distractions, our Nation showed the ability to persevere. In 
doing so, we answered the great question about America that Winston 
Churchill once famously posed. ``Will you stay the course?'' he asked? 
``Will you stay the course?'' The answer is, we did.
  Today we need to raise a similar question once again, but this time 
for ourselves and in a somewhat different form. Churchill's question 
``Will you stay the course?'' implied that there might some day be an 
end to the struggle, as there was to the Cold War, though no one 
foresaw when and how it would come. Today the key question is perhaps 
more challenging because it is more open-ended. It is, ``Will we stay 
engaged?''
  The term ``engagement'' has not yet captured as broad a range of 
support among political leaders and the public as those who coined it, 
early in the Clinton administration, evidently hoped it would. But 
neither did the notion of containment capture broad support until 
several years after it was articulated during the Truman 
administration. Some political leaders who later championed containment 
as the linchpin of our security initially criticized the notion as too 
passive and even timid.
  Engagement, while not yet widely embraced as a characterization of 
our basic global posture, seems to me to express quite well what we 
need to be about in the post-Cold War era, that we need to be engaged 
in the world, and that we need to be engaged with other nations in 
building and maintaining a stable international security system.
  Engagement will not be easy to sustain. It has become clear in recent 
years it will be as challenging to the United States to fully remain 
engaged in the post-Cold War era as it was to stay the course during 
the Cold War. We now know much more about the shape of the post-Cold 
War era than we did 8 or 4 or even 2 years ago. We know that we have 
not reached the end of history. We know that we face challenges to our 
security that in some ways are more daunting than those we faced during 
the Cold War. We know that it will often be difficult to reach domestic 
agreement on foreign affairs because legitimate, deeply held values 
will often be hard to reconcile. We know that we will have to risk 
grave dangers and pay a price to carry out our responsibilities, and 
because of the costs, it will sometimes be tempting to think that we 
would be more secure if we were more insulated from turmoil abroad. We 
know that we will have to struggle mightily not to allow domestic 
travails to divert us from the tasks that we must consistently pursue. 
We also know that our political system, which encourages open debate 
and which constantly challenges leaders to rise to the demands of the 
times, gives us the opportunity, if we are thoughtful and serious about 
our responsibilities, to see where our interests lie and to pursue our 
values effectively.
  Mr. Speaker, today I want to say a few things about engagement in the 
world, why it may sometimes be difficult to sustain, why it is 
nonetheless necessary, and, finally, how it has succeeded in bolstering 
our security.

  First, why engagement may be difficult to sustain. Just in the past 
few months, we have had a series of object lessons in the difficulties 
of international engagement. Last month our embassies in Nairobi and 
Dar es Salaam were attacked by terrorists who have vowed to wage war 
against the United States as long as we are engaged in the Middle East. 
As President Clinton aptly put it, ``America is and will remain a 
target of terrorists precisely because we are leaders; because

[[Page H9515]]

we act to advance peace, democracy and basic human values, because 
we're the most open society on earth; and because, as we have shown yet 
again, we take an uncompromising stand against terrorism.''
  Mr. Speaker, both the President and the Secretary of State warned 
that the terrorist attacks in Africa and the U.S. retaliation will not 
be the end of our struggle. In an age of chemical, biological and 
nuclear weapons of mass destruction, the United States faces 
particularly grave dangers in its conflict with these forces. So 
engagement is difficult, first of all, because it entails costs and 
carries risks. To quail in the face of these risks would be far more 
damaging to our security than to confront them. But we should not 
underestimate the dangers we face.
  Engagement is also difficult because it requires us to make policy 
choices in which values we hold dear are troubling to reconcile. The 
recent debates in this Chamber over policy toward China illustrate this 
point forcefully. Many of my colleagues were critical of President 
Clinton's decision to go to China in the first place, and especially 
critical of the fact that the President would set foot in Tiananmen 
Square. All of us find China's human rights abuses, forced abortions, 
forced sterilization, religious and political repression and 
exploitation of prison labor to be abhorrent. For my part, I believe 
that U.S. security interests are well-served when we stand up for human 
rights. Tyranny has crumbled all over the globe in large part because 
of our active commitment to human rights and because we hold out an 
example of freedom that millions all over the world hope to emulate. 
Those who have criticized U.S. policy toward China do so out of deeply 
held convictions that are entirely legitimate.
  It is also true that we cannot sustain a policy of isolating China, 
and that such a policy would be self-defeating. As former Senator Sam 
Nunn pointed out in a speech last November, the United States and China 
have far more interests in common than not. The U.S. presence in Asia 
bolsters stability that is in China's interest. The U.S. defense of 
Middle East oil protects China's largest source of energy. We need 
China to play a constructive role in preventing war in Korea. We need 
China to be more cooperative in halting weapons proliferation. Both we 
and China will benefit if we can cooperate in building a framework for 
stability in former Soviet central Asia. As China develops, the entire 
world has an interest in encouraging China to pursue energy systems 
that are environmentally sound and to prevent the spread of 
communicable diseases.
  Constructive engagement with China, therefore, is essential, but it 
also challenges us to remain true to our fundamental beliefs in human 
rights. We need to emphasize our common interests with China, but 
because of our commitment to human freedom, we should not sell short 
the leverage we may have in encouraging greater liberty inside China. 
So engagement is difficult because we cannot easily reconcile our 
deeply held convictions about what is right and necessary in relations 
with other nations.
  Other recent events show that engagement with long-standing allies 
may also be turbulent at times. Many if not most of our allies have 
not, for example, wholeheartedly supported our efforts to enforce 
sanctions on nations that we believe guilty of sponsoring international 
terrorism or that we see as threats to the peace. The Clinton 
administration's decision to pursue a new tack in policy toward Iraq 
reflects in part the fact that some of our allies apparently do not 
place as high a priority as we do on halting weapons proliferation. In 
effect, we could not count on them to back us up in carrying out the 
U.N. enforcement regime as vigorously as we had been doing and as 
forcefully as many Members of Congress, including myself, would like.
  This is especially frustrating, because our allies rely much more on 
oil from the Persian Gulf than we do. For that matter, they have 
suffered from terrorism over the years more than we have. So here is a 
case in which we are doing the heavy lifting, and in the process 
deepening the enmity of anti-Western elements throughout the region, 
without being able to rely on the wholehearted support of allies who 
ultimately benefit most from our stabilizing efforts in the region.
  Engagement is difficult, therefore, because leadership itself is 
difficult, because allies do not always meet our expectations, because 
burdens are not fairly shared, because other nations seek to enjoy the 
fruits of our labor while shirking the cost, because foreign leaders do 
not always see things through the same lens as we do and sometimes may 
not have as much backbone as we would like. It is tempting in such 
cases to conclude that we should do less and let the consequences 
unfold as they will. But that would ultimately, Mr. Speaker, be self-
defeating.
  The related difficulty of engagement is what might be called the 
paradox of burdensharing. In some cases our leadership role may require 
that we commit our resources, including our military forces, even in 
cases where our allies have more at stake than we do, because others 
cannot act decisively without us.
  The obvious example is Bosnia, in which our allies had forces on the 
ground for some years, but without being able to forge a peace 
agreement until we committed our own ground troops.
  A forceful, coordinated, diplomatic effort, backed up by military 
power, required our involvement. Here is the paradox: We generally 
think that burden sharing, that is getting the allies to do more, will 
reduce the weight we must bear. In fact, getting the allies to do more 
often requires that we do more as well. Engagement is difficult, 
therefore, because it means that we will sometimes become embroiled in 
undertakings overseas that, on the face of it, cost us more than our 
immediate interests appear to justify.
  The reason we must be engaged is that our overarching interest in 
building effective security cooperation with our allies requires us to 
do one thing, and that is exercise leadership.
  Engagement is also difficult for domestic political reasons. To be 
blunt, neither the President nor the Members of Congress get elected by 
promising to devote a great deal of time and attention to foreign 
affairs. Moreover, it is easy for those out of power to criticize 
allies, deplore China and Russia, deprecate the United Nations, condemn 
actions for being too costly, and denounce inaction for being too 
timid. Meanwhile those in positions of responsibility must make 
compromises, choose between alternatives that are often bad and less 
bad, take risks to get things done, and bear the criticism when 
initiatives fail.
  The world cannot be molded to our liking. It is politically difficult 
to persist, nonetheless, in the essential task of trying to shape it.
  Finally, engagement is difficult because it is financially expensive. 
In recent years it has been difficult to find the resources to meet 
obvious needs in defense and foreign affairs because of pressures to 
reduce the budget deficit. Now that the deficit has been brought under 
control, a part of the discussion of budget priorities ought to be how 
to restore a reasonable level of investment in meeting our 
international security requirements.
  Mr. Speaker, despite these difficulties, there is no alternative to 
continued, active U.S. engagement in the world. To me, the fundamental 
reason for engagement in the world is moral. I say this with a full 
appreciation of the fact that the very idea of laying out a moral basis 
for U.S. foreign policy makes some thoughtful people cringe. It will 
strike some here at home as a call for a degree of international 
activism that we cannot sustain, and it will strike many abroad as just 
another example of American arrogance.
  In fact, U.S. foreign policy must always have a moral basis to it, or 
it cannot be sustained. We persevered in the Cold War precisely because 
we felt it our responsibility as a nation to defend against tyranny. In 
the name of that moral mission, and it was a moral mission, we may 
sometimes have asked too much of ourselves, and particularly of our 
young sons and daughters in the military, but it was nonetheless a goal 
worthy of our people.
  Now we have a very different moral responsibility before us, which 
may be somewhat more difficult to express, but which I think is equally 
important. Our responsibility now is to use our unchallenged position 
of global leadership

[[Page H9516]]

in a fashion that will make the universal hope for peace, prosperity 
and freedom as much as possible into the norm of international 
behavior.
  Let me be clear about one thing, the world will never be completely 
at peace, but it is possible that the coming century will be at least 
spared the global horrors that scourged the first half of the 20th 
century, perhaps the bloodiest period in human history.
  Today, the United States is the bulwark of a relatively secure 
international order in which small conflicts, though endemic and 
inevitable, will not decisively erode global stability.
  As such, our global engagement is also a means of preventing the 
growth of new powers that could, in time, constitute a threat to peace 
and evolve into the enemy that we do not now foresee.
  If the United States were not to try, at least, to use our current 
position of strength to help construct an era of relative peace and 
stability, it would be a moral failure of historic magnitude. More than 
that, to fail to exercise our strength in a fashion that builds global 
cooperation would also, in the long run, leave us weaker and more 
vulnerable to dangers from abroad.
  Indeed, perhaps the most striking feature of the U.S. position in the 
world right now is that it is an extraordinarily complex mixture both 
of strength and vulnerability.
  We are strong, obviously, because no single nation remotely matches 
our military power and economic vitality.
  We are strong, more importantly, because in almost all parts of the 
globe, other nations recognize that our leadership is essential to 
build and maintain a stable, peaceful and regional security 
environment.
  We are vulnerable, similarly, in some profoundly important ways. We 
live in a truly global society in which our prosperity and our security 
are affected by events in every part of the world, however seemingly 
remote. Our security depends on cooperation from other nations, 
including long-standing allies, long-time neutrals, and especially 
former enemies, in coping with global challenges ranging from weapons 
proliferation, to terrorism, to narcotics and international crime, to 
rogue states that threaten international order, to environmental 
degradation.
  We are vulnerable, paradoxically, because our leadership, which is 
our greatest strength, makes us a target for those who want to destroy 
regional order.
  The need for engagement follows both from our strength and from our 
vulnerability.
  We need to be engaged because only the United States can provide the 
leadership necessary to respond to global and regional challenges to 
stability and only the United States can foster the growth of regional 
security structures that will prevent future challenges from arising.
  We need to be engaged because our continued presence gives other 
nations confidence in our power and in our reliability and makes us the 
ally of choice if and when conflicts arise.
  We need to be engaged because only by actively shaping effective 
regional security systems can we create an environment in which nations 
that might otherwise challenge stability will instead perceive the 
community of interests with the United States and with our regional 
allies.
  We need to be engaged because only by recognizing and responding to 
the security concerns of other nations can we expect them to support 
our security interests and concerns.
  We need to be engaged because cooperation of other nations is 
essential to deter and defeat enemies who want to undermine global 
order.
  Mr. Speaker, since the end of the Cold War, we have learned many 
things. We have learned that the end of the Cold War did not mark the 
end of history. The fundamentally ideological struggle between Soviet-
style communism and Western-style capitalism may have been resolved but 
the battle for human freedom continues against a host of other 
challenges.

  We have learned that we face quite different and much more varied 
threats than those we first imagined. In the wake of the Persian Gulf 
War, Iraq and Korea were regarded as the major, archetypal threats to 
regional and world security. Though they remain threats, the gravest 
danger they pose now appears to be through development of weapons of 
mass destruction, and a host of other, equally serious threats that 
have become apparent.
  Sophisticated terrorists with global capabilities directly threaten 
the U.S. homeland. Bitter ethnic conflicts have led to horrible 
bloodshed and may yet threaten regional stability in strategically 
important parts of the world. India and Pakistan have stepped onto the 
threshold of a nuclear arms race. Just over two years ago, China was 
trying to intimidate Taiwan with a show of military strength. Ballistic 
missile proliferation has accelerated. Stable economies in the East 
have crashed. The Russian economy has collapsed.
  In view of these largely unpredictable international developments, it 
is striking to me that debates we have had in the Congress about 
security issues in recent months do not seem to have evolved very much 
from the debates we had 4 or 5 years ago. We still seem to be mired in 
disputes over issues that we should have resolved long ago. Some 
traditional champions of a strong national defense still complain that 
the demands of engagement appear to divert attention away from our real 
national security interests. Engagement seems too multilateralist. It 
embroils us in regional conflicts that seem remote. It appears to put 
too much emphasis on peacekeeping or humanitarian missions that are 
costly and that are not obviously directly related to our vital 
security interests.
  It appears to emphasize arms control measures that impose constraints 
on our own defenses, while being difficult to enforce on others. 
Engagement requires building constructive relationships with former 
enemies, when no one can quite be sure that we are thereby 
strengthening a future regional or even global competitor.
  For others, who believe the world ought to be more peaceful and less 
militarized in the post-Cold War era, engagement has seemed to require 
too much U.S. military involvement in distant parts of the globe. It 
appears to justify military and other ties with regimes that are 
distasteful or worse. It seems to emphasize security matters at the 
expense of other interests, such as human rights, fair trade practices 
or environmental protection. It appears to some even to be a 
questionable rationale for continued high military spending in a world 
with no direct, obvious threats.
  Some of these concerns are entirely legitimate, I believe; some less 
so. Certainly they reflect some aspects of engagement that are 
difficult for many to embrace. But those who see themselves as 
proponents of a strong national defense and as advocates of assertive 
American power, should, I think, reconsider their position in view of 
the compelling evidence that engagement is essential to our military 
security.
  Similarly, those who see themselves as advocates of ``soft power,'' 
of preventing conflicts from arising by promoting multilateral 
cooperation, should understand that military engagement abroad is 
essential to build and enforce a more peaceful, cooperative world in 
which our other interests and values can flourish.
  Mr. Speaker, now that we are almost a decade into the post-Cold War 
era, we should try to draw some lessons from our experience. We should 
all try to review the events of recent years and reconsider our 
expectations about the nature of the world order, or disorder, it 
appears, that would arise. We should also then try to think through 
what we believe is needed to carry out our responsibilities as a 
nation.
  The fact that we have been engaged in many smaller scale military 
operations in recent years should lead us to rethink our attitudes 
toward such missions. As I just noted, some proponents of a strong 
defense have tended to regard certain missions at least as a diversion 
of resources away from our real national security needs. There has 
been, in some quarters, a tendency to denigrate peacekeeping or 
humanitarian missions, in particular, as somehow unworthy of our 
efforts. As one writer generally opposed to such operations put it a 
couple of years ago, superpowers do not do windows.
  In this quite widely shared view, the overriding responsibility of 
U.S. military forces is to prepare for major conflicts, other, lesser 
demands to divert our efforts away from this task and should be 
avoided. One conclusion is

[[Page H9517]]

that the United States should seek to establish a division of 
responsibility with the allies, in which they engage in smaller-scale 
stability operations, while the United States remains the bulwark of 
global defense against larger threats.
  A variation on this theme is that the United States needs to focus 
much more on defense of the homeland in the face of new challenges to 
security.
  Though there is something of value to these views, and there is, I 
also think that they have become increasingly untenable over the past 
few years. The valuable points are two. First, it is in fact the case 
that smaller-scale operations demand more resources than military 
planners had assumed. The answer is not to forswear such operations, 
which I don't believe we can do, but rather to acknowledge the resource 
demands and meet those requirements.
  Second, it is important to be selective in making commitments and in 
using the military. Above all, we need to ensure a balance between the 
interests we have at stake and the commitments we are making.
  The problem with this criticism of smaller-scale operations is that 
our security increasingly depends on maintaining stability in key 
regions of the globe. The United States cannot, for good or ill, leave 
to others the responsibility to enforce stability. For one thing, as 
Bosnia shows, even our major allies cannot act effectively without our 
leadership. Moreover, we have a direct interest in maintaining 
stability even in distant parts of the globe because major regional 
threats to our security are likely to grow out of smaller regional 
conflicts if we do not prevent them from getting out of control.
  For that matter, if we expect to gain access to distant regions in 
the event of a major regional threat, then we have to be engaged with 
allies in the region in responding to lesser threats to their security.

                              {time}  2200

  We could not have expected Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states 
to rely on the United States to respond to Iraq's aggression in 1990 if 
we had not maintained close security ties with those nations for many, 
many years.
  Finally, in this era of global trade and communications, direct 
threats to the U.S. homeland will arise out of local conflicts that we 
might, in an earlier age, have dismissed as remote battles between 
exotic and unfamiliar peoples. Today, neither distance nor indifference 
can insulate us from such conflicts. Only our engagement in ream 
natural stability abroad can limit the threats we face.
  For those who still believe that the United States should further 
reduce its military capabilities, who think that military threats in 
the post-Cold War era are less demanding than the two major theater 
wars that we originally prepared for, and who believe that nonmilitary 
instruments of influence should be emphasized. I agree with that part 
of it. We should devote more resources to the nonmilitary aspects of 
engagement abroad. For the rest, all I can say is where have you been 
for the last 5 years?
  What we have discovered is that effective international engagement 
requires much more active and extensive U.S. military involvement 
abroad than many expected. In the wake of the Cold War, we decided to 
maintain a permanent military presence of about 100,000 troops both in 
Europe and in Asia.
  These deployments, in retrospect, hardly appear excessive. On the 
contrary, our forces in Europe, if anything, have been badly 
overworked. They have been involved in countless joint exercises with 
old and new allies and with former enemies that have been critically 
important in building a new, cooperative security order in Europe.
  They have been deployed repeatedly to hot spots throughout Europe and 
Africa. They have provided the bulk of U.S. forces in Bosnia, which has 
strained our resources in the region to the limit.
  In Asia, our continued strong presence has proven critically 
important. We have continued to deter conflict in Korea. In the spring 
of 1996, U.S. naval forces responded forcefully to Chinese threats 
against Taiwan. China's response was not to escalate the confrontation, 
but soberly and realistically, to seek a more cooperative relationship 
with United States, entirely, because of our demonstrated strength and 
resolve.
  Last year, the United States and Japan announced a new cooperative 
security agreement that reflects Japan's confidence that the U.S. 
commitment, and that will be a pillar of regional security in the 
future.
  While we anticipated keeping these forces in Europe in Asia, 
engagement has required much more. It has also entailed a constant, 
rotational presence in the Persian Gulf, a commitment which we now 
should recognize is on par with the commitments we have maintained in 
Europe and the Far East. It has involved military intervention in 
Haiti, an ongoing peacekeeping operation in Bosnia, and literally 
dozens of smaller-scale military operations, ranging from the 
humanitarian mission in Rwanda, to several noncombatant situation 
missions, to our recent strikes against terrorists in Afghanistan and 
Sudan.
  In Congress, we have debated these various commitments of military 
operations extensively. Some, perhaps most of us, have favored some 
activities and opposed others. But whatever position we take on 
particular instances of military involvement abroad, we should by now 
all be clear about one thing: as long as we are actively engaged 
abroad, the pace of military operations is likely to be much more 
demanding than any of us had imagined a few years ago.
  This, in turn, should lead us to reconsider the military posture that 
we adopted in the wake of the Cold War. To its credit, the Defense 
Department began to do that last year in the Quadrennial Defense Review 
or QDR.
  The QDR articulated a much broader statement of strategy than the 
earlier Bottom-Up Review of 1993 had been expressed, a vision that 
aptly reflected our subsequent experience in the post-Cold War era. The 
QDR had one failing, however. It did not adequately reassess projected 
resource requirements in view of the more demanding strategy that laid 
it out.
  Now, it appears, the leadership of the Defense Department has 
reconsidered budget needs, and I am confident that the President and 
the Congress will give full consideration to the requirements that have 
been identified.
  Mr. Speaker, the final point I want to make--and perhaps the most 
important thing we need to keep in mind--is that the U.S. policy of 
engagement, as practiced by Administrations of both parties since the 
end of the Cold War, has been a success. Yes, we have suffered some 
failures. No, we have not accomplished everything we might have hoped. 
Yes, we have made some mistakes. But failures, shortcomings, and 
mistakes are inevitable in international affairs--there has never been 
a government in history that has not run into such difficulties. The 
key tests are, first, whether we, as a country, have learned from our 
mistakes and, second, whether we remain resolved to persist despite the 
difficulties.
  The successes of engagement are many, though we don't often focus on 
them. Cooperation with Russia and constructive engagement with China 
may or may not succeed in the long run in avoiding a return to global 
competition in the future. For the present, Russia is struggling 
through an economic and political crisis that, unfortunately, we can do 
little to mitigate and that might, in the fairly near future, lead to 
some dangerous developments. Even so, in the years since the collapse 
of the Soviet Union, our policy has helped to prevent the widespread 
proliferation of Soviet nuclear weapons and other arms to rogue nations 
and terrorists. Russia has also cooperated with us, with some ups and 
downs, on regional security issues in Bosnia and the Persian Gulf. It 
is, in any case, far better to have Russia as a cooperative partner 
than the Soviet Union as a bitter enemy.
  Engagement with China has had its ups and downs, the nadir coming 
with the confrontation over Taiwan in 1996. Since then, however, China 
has endeavored, as we have, to improve relations. Time will tell how 
cooperative china will be in the future in preventing weapons 
proliferation and in continuing to keep North Korea in check. 
Engagement with China on security matters clearly holds out the best 
hope of building a long-term relationship that emphasizes shared 
interests, even as we still assert our concerns about human rights, 
more open trade, and peaceful resolution of disputes.
  We have not succeeded in halting the spread of weapons of mass 
destruction and other military technology--but it would be unrealistic 
to expect a halt to proliferation. We have slowed down proliferation, 
and we may be able to constrain it further in the future. Iraq is still 
in a position to pursue dangerous weapons technologies rapidly in the 
future unless

[[Page H9518]]

allies join with us in enforcing U.N. resolutions vigorously. This is a 
battle we will likely have to fight for a long time. Iran is also 
making advances. Our sanctions on Iran have not, however, been wholly 
fruitless--the current government of Iran appears to be aware of the 
economic and other sacrifices the country has suffered because of the 
effectiveness of U.S.-sponsored sanctions. India and Pakistan have 
tested nuclear weapons--but both have felt under enough international 
pressure as a result of their policies that they are now talking, at 
least, about joining international non-proliferation agreements, 
including the Comprehensive Test Ban. So even though we may focus on 
breakdowns of multilateral constraints on technology transfers, the 
policy has still forced proliferators to pay a price.
  Our efforts to build effective structures of regional security have 
made real progress, though much remains to be done. In Europe, NATO has 
enlarged to include new members, and across much of the continent, 
military forces are engaged in extensive military-to-military contacts 
that bolster mutual confidence and security. Instability in the Balkans 
remains threatening, but allies are working together to address it. In 
Asia, the U.S.-Japan security relationship has grown stronger, China 
appears increasingly interested in security cooperation rather than 
confrontation, and most of the smaller nations in the region, while 
shaken by economic crises, see the United States as the ally of choice. 
In Latin America, though several nations are under assault from narco-
terrorism, democracy remains ascendant, and U.S. military-to-military 
contacts have played an overwhelmingly positive role. In Africa, the 
United States has supported the first small steps toward development of 
regional security structures, though tragic conflicts continue. The 
Middle East and the Persian Gulf remain dangerously unstable, and only 
our presence can deter conflict.
  Engagement, in sum, is as centrally important to our security--and to 
the prospects for peace in the world--as containment was during the 
Cold War. Perhaps above all, the key issue is whether we will persist 
despite the fact that the struggle to maintain relative international 
peace will never be concluded. This is not a struggle we can see 
through to the end--it is, nonetheless, an effort that we as a nation 
must continue to make.

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