    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George H. W. Bush (1991, Book I)]
    [April 13, 1991]
    [Pages 364-369]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at Maxwell Air Force Base War College in Montgomery, Alabama
    April 13, 1991

        Thank you all very, very much for that warm welcome. General Boyd
    and General McPeak, the distinguished Members of the Congress with us--
    Senators Heflin, Shelby,

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    and Bill Dickinson. Mayor Folmar--a nonpartisan event, but I'm glad to
    see some friends of long standing over here--[laughter]--who were
    enormously helpful to me in getting to be President of the United
    States.
        It is my great pleasure to look out across what essentially is a sea
    of blue, to meet this morning with the men and women of the Air
    University--the Air War College, the Air Command and Staff School, the
    Squadron Officers School, and of course, the NCO Academy. And I'm glad
    to see democracy in action--I see a Navy guy here or there, or maybe a
    coastguardsman--[laughter]--maybe the Marines, maybe the Army over here.
    And I think I recognize some friends from overseas, members of our
    coalition who helped us so much in achieving our objectives halfway
    around the world. They're more than welcome.
        The history of aviation has been shaped here since the Wright
    brothers brought their strange new mechanical bird to Montgomery and
    housed it in a hangar not far from where we stand. This institution,
    from its early days as the Air Corps Tactical School, has defined the
    Nation's air strategy and tactics that have guided our operations over
    the fields of Europe and the seas of the Pacific, from the First World
    War to the 1,000 hours of Desert Storm.
        It falls to all of you to derive the lessons learned from this war.
    Desert Storm demonstrated the true strength of joint operations: not the
    notion that each service must participate in equal parts in every
    operation in every war but that we use the proper tools at the proper
    time. In Desert Storm, a critical tool was certainly air power. And
    every one of you can take pride in that fact. Our technology and
    training ensured minimal losses, and our precision--your precision--
    spared the lives of innocent civilians.
        But our victory also showed that technology alone is insufficient. A
    warrior's heart must burn with the will to fight. And if he fights but
    does not believe, no technology in the world can save him. We and our
    allies had more than superior weapons; we had the will to win.
        I might say parenthetically, this will is personified by the man who
    leads you. I know that General Boyd often speaks about what he calls the
    unlimited liability of the military profession. He knows because he's
    put it all on the line. As a veteran of Vietnam, he flew 105 combat
    missions before being shot down over Hanoi. And he spent almost 7
    years--2,500 cruel days--in captivity. And yet he emerged brave,
    unbroken. He kept the faith to himself and to his nation.
        And let me just say a word about this man over here on my left,
    General McPeak. I remember early on a meeting up at Camp David with Tony
    McPeak. Secretary Cheney was there; General Powell was there; Brent
    Scowcroft; other chiefs--the other chiefs, I believe, were with us,
    Tony. And in a very laid-back way--typical of him with his modesty--but
    with total confidence, he told me exactly what he felt air power could
    do. And after he left--I don't mean to show my native skepticism--but I
    turned to my trusted national security adviser who's standing over here,
    General Brent Scowcroft, and I said, ``Brent, does this guy really know
    what he's talking about?'' [Laughter] And Lieutenant General Scowcroft--
    Air Force Lieutenant General--said, ``Yes.'' And General McPeak did.
        And to be doubly sure then--and he'll remember this--just before the
    war started, I invited General McPeak and Secretary Cheney to join me
    and General Scowcroft upstairs at the Residence in the White House--
    quiet lunch there. And I asked Tony--I think he'd just come back then
    from the theater, the other theater--[laughter]. And I put the question
    to him--I think this is exactly what I said: ``Are you as certain now as
    you were up at Camp David?'' And he said, ``Even more so.'' And the war
    started just a few days later, and history will record that General
    McPeak was 100 percent right, right on target.
        Here at Air University it's your business to read the lessons of the
    past with an eye on the far horizon. And that's why I wanted to speak to
    you today about the new world taking shape around us, about the
    prospects for a new world order now within our reach.
        For more than four decades we've lived in a world divided East from
    West, a world

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    locked in a conflict of arms and ideas called the cold war. Two systems,
    two superpowers separated by mistrust and unremitting hostility. For
    more than four decades, America's energies were focused on containing
    the threat to the free world from the forces of communism. That war is
    over. East Germany has vanished from the map as a separate entity. Today
    in Berlin, the wall that once divided a continent, divided a world in
    two, has been pulverized, turned into souvenirs. And the sections that
    remain standing are but museum pieces. The Warsaw Pact passed into the
    pages of history last week, not with a bang but with a whimper--its
    demise reported in a story reported on page A16 of the Washington Post.
        In the coming weeks I'll be talking in some detail about the
    possibility of a new world order emerging after the cold war. And in
    recent weeks I've been focusing not only on the Gulf but on free trade:
    on the North American free trade agreement, the Uruguay round trade
    negotiations, and the essentiality of obtaining from the United States
    Congress a renewal of Fast Track authority to achieve our goals. But
    today I want to discuss another aspect of that order: our relations with
    Europe and the Soviet Union.
        Twice this century, a dream born on the battlefields of Europe died
    after the shooting stopped--the dream of a world in which major powers
    worked together to ensure peace, to settle their disputes through
    cooperation, not confrontation. Today a transformed Europe stands closer
    than ever before to its free and democratic destiny. At long last,
    Europe is moving forward, moving toward a new world of hope.
        At the same time, we and our European allies have moved beyond
    containment to a policy of active engagement in a world no longer driven
    by cold war tensions and animosities. You see, as the cold war drew to
    an end we saw the possibilities of a new order in which nations worked
    together to promote peace and prosperity.
        I'm not talking here of a blueprint that will govern the conduct of
    nations or some supernatural structure or institution. The new world
    order does not mean surrendering our national sovereignty or forfeiting
    our interests. It really describes a responsibility imposed by our
    successes. It refers to new ways of working with other nations to deter
    aggression and to achieve stability, to achieve prosperity and, above
    all, to achieve peace.
        It springs from hopes for a world based on a shared commitment among
    nations large and small to a set of principles that undergird our
    relations: peaceful settlements of disputes, solidarity against
    aggression, reduced and controlled arsenals, and just treatment of all
    peoples.
        This order, this ability to work together, got its first real test
    in the Gulf war. For the first time, a regional conflict--the aggression
    against Kuwait--did not serve as a proxy for superpower confrontation.
    For the first time, the United Nations Security Council, free from the
    clash of cold war ideologies, functioned as its designers intended--a
    force for conflict resolution in collective security.
        In the Gulf, nations from Europe and North America, Asia and Africa
    and the Arab world joined together to stop aggression, and sent a signal
    to would-be tyrants everywhere in the world. By joining forces to defend
    one small nation, we showed that we can work together against aggressors
    in defense of principle.
        We also recognized that the cold war's end didn't deliver us into an
    era of perpetual peace. As old threats recede, new threats emerge. The
    quest for the new world order is, in part, a challenge to keep the
    dangers of disorder at bay.
        Today, thank God, Kuwait is free. But turmoil in that tormented
    region of the world continues. Saddam's continued savagery has placed
    his regime outside the international order. We will not interfere in
    Iraq's civil war. Iraqi people must decide their own political future.
        Looking out here at you and thinking of your families, let me
    comment a little further. We set our objectives. These objectives,
    sanctioned by international law, have been achieved. I made very clear
    that when our objectives were obtained that our troops would be coming
    home. And yes, we want the suffering of those refugees to stop, and in
    keeping with our nation's compas-

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    sion and concern, we are massively helping. But yes, I want our troops
    out of Iraq and back home as soon as possible.
        Internal conflicts have been raging in Iraq for many years. And
    we're helping out, and we're going to continue to help these refugees.
    But I do not want one single soldier or airman shoved into a civil war
    in Iraq that's been going on for ages. And I'm not going to have that.
        I know the coalition's historic effort destroyed Saddam's ability to
    undertake aggression against any neighbor. You did that job. But now the
    international community will further guarantee that Saddam's ability to
    threaten his neighbors is completely eliminated by destroying Iraq's
    weapons of mass destruction.
        And as I just mentioned, we will continue to help the Iraqi
    refugees, the hundreds and thousands of victims of this man's--Saddam
    Hussein's--brutality. See food and shelter and safety and the
    opportunity to return unharmed to their homes. We will not tolerate any
    interference in this massive international relief effort. Iraq can
    return to the community of nations only when its leaders abandon the
    brutality and repression that is destroying their country. With Saddam
    in power, Iraq will remain a pariah nation, its people denied moral
    contacts with most of the outside world.
        We must build on the successes of Desert Storm to give new shape and
    momentum to this new world order, to use force wisely and extend the
    hand of compassion wherever we can. Today we welcome Europe's
    willingness to shoulder a large share of this responsibility. This new
    sense of responsibility on the part of our European allies is most
    evident and most critical in Europe's eastern half.
        The nations of Eastern Europe, for so long the other Europe, must
    take their place now alongside their neighbors to the west. Just as
    we've overcome Europe's political division, we must help to ease
    crossover from poverty into prosperity.
        The United States will do its part--we always have--as we have
    already in reducing Poland's official debt burden to the United States
    by 70 percent, increasing our assistance this year to Eastern Europe by
    50 percent. But the key to helping these new democracies develop is
    trade and investment.
        The new entrepreneurs of Czechoslovakia and Poland and Hungary
    aren't looking to government, their own or others, to shower them with
    riches. They're looking for new opportunities, a new freedom for the
    productive genius strangled by 40 years of state control.
        Yesterday, my esteemed friend, a man we all honor and salute,
    President Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia called me up. He wanted to
    request advice and help from the West. He faces enormous problems. You
    see, Czechoslovakia wants to be democratic. This man is leading them
    towards perfecting their fledgling democracy. Its economy is moving from
    a failed socialist model to a market economy. We all must help. It's not
    easy to convert state owned and operated weapons plants into market-
    driven plants to produce consumer goods. But these new democracies can
    do just exactly that with the proper advice and help from the West. It
    is in our interest, it is in the interest of the United States of
    America, that Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary strengthen those
    fledgling democracies and strengthen their fledgling market economies.
        We recognize that new roles and even new institutions are natural
    outgrowths of the new Europe. Whether it's the European Community or a
    broadened mandate for the CSCE, the U.S. supports all efforts to forge a
    European approach to common challenges on the Continent and in the world
    beyond, with the understanding that Europe's long-term security is
    intertwined with America's and that NATO--NATO remains the best means to
    assure it.
        And we look to Europe to act as a force for stability outside its
    own borders. In a world as interdependent as ours, no industrialized
    nation can maintain membership in good standing in the global community
    without assuming its fair share of responsibility for peace and
    security.
        But even in the face of such welcome change, Americans
    will remain in Europe in support of history's most successful alliance,
    NATO. America's commitment is the best guarantee of a secure Europe, and
    a secure Europe is vital to American interests and

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    vital to world peace. This is the essential logic of the Atlantic
    alliance which anchors America in Europe.
        This century's history shows that America's destiny and interests
    cannot be separate from Europe's. Through the long years of cold war and
    conflict, the United States stood fast for freedom in Europe. And now,
    as Eastern Europe is opening up to democratic ideals, true progress
    becomes possible.
        The Soviet Union is engaged in its own dramatic transformation. The
    policies of confrontation abroad, like the discredited dogma of
    communism from which those policies sprang, lies dormant, if not
    mortally wounded. Much has changed. The path of international
    cooperation fostered by President Gorbachev and manifested most clearly
    in the Persian Gulf marks a radical change in Soviet behavior. And yet,
    the course of change within the Soviet Union is far less clear.
        Economic and political reform there is under severe challenge.
    Soviet citizens, facing the collapse of the old order while the new
    still struggles to be born, confront desperate economic conditions--
    their hard-won freedoms in peril. Ancient ethnic enmities, conflict
    between Republics and between Republics and the central Government add
    to these monumental challenges that they face.
        America's policy toward the Soviet Union in these troubled times is,
    first and foremost, to continue our efforts to build the cooperative
    relationship that has allowed our nations and so many others to
    strengthen international peace and stability. At the same time, we will
    continue to support a reform process within the Soviet Union aimed at
    political and economic freedom--a process we believe must be built on
    peaceful dialog and negotiation. This is a policy that we will advocate
    steadfastly, both in our discussions with the central Soviet Government
    and with all elements active in Soviet political life.
        Let there be no misunderstanding, the path ahead for the Soviet
    Union will be difficult and, at times, extraordinarily painful. History
    weighs heavily on all the peoples of the U.S.S.R.--liberation from 70
    years of communism, from 1,000 years of autocracy. It's going to be
    slow. There will be setbacks. But this process of reform, this
    transformation from within, must proceed. If external cooperation and
    our progress toward true international peace is to endure, it must
    succeed. Only when this transformation is complete will we be able to
    take full measure of the opportunities presented by this new and
    evolving world order.
        The new world order really is a tool for addressing a new world of
    possibilities. This order gains its mission and shape not just from
    shared interests but from shared ideals. And the ideals that have
    spawned new freedoms throughout the world have received their boldest
    and clearest expression in our great country, the United States. Never
    before has the world looked more to the American example. Never before
    have so many millions drawn hope from the American idea. And the reason
    is simple: Unlike any other nation in the world, as Americans we enjoy
    profound and mysterious bonds of affection and idealism. We feel our
    deep connections to community, to families, to our faiths.
        But what defines this nation? What makes us America is not our ties
    to a piece of territory or bonds of blood; what makes us American is our
    allegiance to an idea that all people everywhere must be free. This idea
    is as old and enduring as this nation itself--as deeply rooted, and what
    we are as a promise implicit to all the world in the words of our own
    Declaration of Independence.
        The new world facing us--and I wish I were your age--it's a
    wonderful world of discovery, a world devoted to unlocking the promise
    of freedom. It's no more structured than a dream, no more regimented
    than an innovator's burst of inspiration. If we trust ourselves and our
    values, if we retain the pioneer's enthusiasm for exploring the world
    beyond our shores, if we strive to engage in the world that beckons us,
    then and only then will America be true to all that is best in us.
        May God bless our great nation, the United States
    of America. And thank you all for what you have done for freedom and for
    our fundamental values. Thank you very

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    much.

                        Note: The President spoke at 9:16 a.m. in the Fuel
                            Cell Hangar at the base. In his remarks, he
                            referred to Gen. Charles G. Boyd, Air University
                            Commander at Maxwell Air Force Base; Gen.
                            Merrill A. McPeak, Air Force Chief of Staff;
                            Senators Howell Heflin and Richard C. Shelby;
                            Representative Bill Dickinson; Emory M. Folmar,
                            mayor of Montgomery; Secretary of Defense Dick
                            Cheney; Gen. Colin L. Powell, Chairman of the
                            Joint Chiefs of Staff; Brent Scowcroft,
                            Assistant to the President for National Security
                            Affairs; President Saddam Hussein of Iraq;
                            President Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia; and
                            President Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union.