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Remarks of the President and Question and Answer Session at the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations, the Palmer House Hotel [Ford Speech or Statement]
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Remarks of the President and Question and Answer Session at the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations, the Palmer House Hotel [Ford Speech or Statement]
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Digitized from Box 23 of the White House Press Releases at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MARCH 1>, 1976
[12]
OFFICE OF THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY
(Chicago, Illinois)
THE WHITE HOUSE
REMARKS OF THE PRESIDENT
AND
QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION
AT THE
CHICAGO COUNCIL OF FOREIGN RELATIONS
THE PALMER HOUSE HOTEL
12:25 P.M. CST
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Gus, John
Reilley, Senator Chuck Percy, Congressman John Anderson,
Governor Ogilvie, distinguished guests, ladies and
gentlemen:
I really welcome this opportunity to answer your
questions at the conclusion of my remarks about the
foreign relations of the United States.
Founded shortly after the first World War, your
organization recognized earlier than many Americans the
importance of the international role which had been thrust
upon this country by the course of history.
For more than a half a century you have contributed
significantly to greater understanding by our citizens of
the foreign policy issues facing the United States.
In the crucial years of the thirties, just before
World II broke out in Europe, one of your former Council
Presidents, the late Governor Stevenson, pointedly stated
your purpose, and I quote: "Only if we make ourselves
aware of the problems that confront this tormented world
of ours can the freedom and privileges which we have come to
take for granted be assured to the future generations yet
unborn."
Years later, when I was campaigning ardently for
General Eisenhower against Governor Stevenson where I never
dreamed that I would be quoting both of them here in
Chicago in this capacity today. But I can do so because the
record-books of public service to America clearly show that,
political rivals though they were, when the chips were down
and the national interests of the United States were at stake
both President Eisenhower and Governor Stevenson were effective
and dedicated champions of our bipartisan post-war policy of
peace through strength.
MORE
Page 2
President Eisenhower clearly stated our national
purpose in these words, and I quote: "We seek peace, knowing
that peace is the climate of freedom. nd now, as in no other
age, we seek it because we have been war ed, by the power of modern
weapons, that peace may be the only climate possible for human
life itself. We are called to meet the price of this peace.
To counter the threat of those who seek to rule by force,
we must pay the cost of our own needed military strength and
help to build the security of others."
Our policy of peace through strength is not something
that I have recently invented. It is something we first
found in our history books when we read George Washington's
wise counsel and again I quote: "To be prepared for war is one
of the most effectual means of preserving peace."
Peace through strength was an issue in my first
political campaign when I followed the late Senator Arthur
Vandenberg, my friend and mentor from home, in supporting
NATO, the Marshall Plan and aid to Greece and to Turkey.
Peace through strength is my consistent guide or
was in the 535 votes I cast on defense and foreign policy
issues while a member of the House of Representatives in the
Congress and as ranking Republican of the Defense and Foreign
Aid Appropriations Subcommittees and as Minority Leader of
the House.
Peace through strength has been my constant goal
as your President, and let me tellyou what I mean by peace
through strength -- not with election rhetoric but by the
record.
Let me define our national security policy not with
words but what we have actually done to advance peace in the world
and to maintain strength at home. And my very first words after
taking the solemn oath as President I pledged an uninterrupted
and sincere search for peace. I said America will remain
strong and united, but its strength will remain dedicated to
the safety and to the sanity of the entire family of man as
well as to our own precious freedom.
One need only remember Pearl Harbor and some in this
audience do, to know that weakness invites war. But now that
Americans are no longer fighting on any front, there are
many sincere but, in my judgment, shortsighted who believe
that billions for defense could be better spent for other programs.
MORE
Page 3
I am convinced that adequate spending for natinal
defense is an insurance policy -- an insurance policy for
peace that we cannot afford to be without in today's world.
We must have this life insurance because we face a powerful
adversary armed with deadly weapons whose price and whose
purposes are fundamentally different from ours.
We will work to reduce confrontations and
avoid nuclear castrophe but we must also be prepared to
meet challenges wherever and whenever they occur. It is no
secret that the United States and the USSR have fundamental
differences in political and economic ideology. We will
never cease the defense of the principles for which we
stand -- freedom, individual rights and our deep belief that
Government exists to serve its citizens. Our task is a
dual one, to defend and promote the ideals of the American
people and to seek to reduce whenever possible the tensions
and confrontations which could lead to nuclear holocaust.
To do this we must maintain a position of unquestioned
strength. That is why a few months after becoming President
I sent to the Congress the highest peace time defense
budget in the Nation's history, more than $104 million.
Regrettably, Congress cut over $6 billion from that budget.
This year again I have gone to the Congress
with another record peace time defense budget request of
$112.7 billion. My current defense budget request before
the Congress at the present time reflects my determination
to maintain America's defenses, both strategic
and conventional, at the levels our national security
requires.
They include an increase in real dollars of
$7.4 billion to buy new weapon systems, to continue to
improve the readiness of our existing forces end to increase
selective forces while trimming off all the fat that we can.
MORE
Page 4
Funds are included for 16 new Navy ships and
continued modernization of the fleet including nuclear powered
submarines and guided missile frigates. I will ask for more in the
way of Navy shipbuilding if a current study shows we need a
faster buildup.
Work will continue on the Trident Submarine, the
B-1 strategic bomber, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.
A new combat fighter for the Army, the Navy and the Air Force,
and advance tanks, amphibious and infantry vehicles for the
Army.
Juat as I have persistently worked to maintain
elements of America's strength, I have also diligently sought peace
through strength. Three times as President, I have gone to
Europe to reaffirm our NATO commitment. With our Western
allies, to coordinate our economic and energy policies
with the industrialized democracies and to improve our trade
and contacts with the peoples of Eastern Europe, and reassure
them of the bond between us.
I went to Europe to say to the leaders of the Warsaw
Pact Nations, indeed to the 33 European nations as well as West,
that the decendents of Europeans in America still live by the
principles set here some 200 years ago. That all men, not just
men, but all men and women everywhere are endowed by their
creator with inalienable rights with the life, liberty and
pursuit of happiness.
I told them plainly, and I am proud to say it here
again today that we Americans still believe in those principles,
that they remain the guidelines of our national policy, and they
continue to give hope to millions of people who long for
liberty in Europe and around the world.
Twice as President, I have traveled to Asia to
strengthen our vital partnerships with postwar Japan and our
other free allies, and to further improve our relations with
Mainland China, which are essential to peaceful progress
under our Pacific Doctrine.
I also met in Vladivostok with General Secretary
Brezhnev where we reached preliminary agreement on limits
to uncontrolled strategic nuclear arms race between the Soviet
Union and the United States.
As you know, we are still negotiating the details
of such an agreement, and I cannot say when or even whether this
will be completed, but I can say that ever since the Russians
set off their first nuclear explosion in 1949, every President
of the United States has been trying to slow down or stop this
deadly dual, and this is the closest we have ever come, and I
will say also without hesitation that I will never agree to any
such treaty or submit it to the United States Senate for
ratification unless I am totally convinced that it is in the best
interests of the United States and of the peace of the world.
MORE
Page 5
If we do get a good SALT I agreement, it will
keep a lid on strategic arms forthe ne: t seven to te.: years.
It will compell the Russians to cut ba ( on their cui rent
strategic military capability.
To fully verify any such agreement, and that is
absolutely essential, we will have to maintain our United
States intelligence capability as the finest in the world.
That is why I have ordered a basic reform to strengthen and
to improve our foreign intelligence operation, and at the
same time stop any future abuses of the rights of all
Americans.
Both these duties are the job and the responsibility
of the President of the United States, but I will not let
anybody wreck our worldwide intelligence capability.
I happen to believe it is time we stopped
downgrading America and its priceless institutions. I have faith
in this country, in the goodness of its people and the rightness
of its purpose. Because we abused our great strength and our
great, great abundance to help others, the United States is
able to play a positive role as peacemaker in the world.
The Sinai Agreement between Israel and Egypt reached
last September is working well and is a milestone toward a
permanent settlement in the Middle East. We are strengthening
old and new friendships with the nations of Latin America and
Africa, and I have warned Castro's Cuba and its Soviet
sponsors against any further armed adventurism in either
continent.
We are standing up and speaking out for our
principles in the United Nations, and we continue to do so.
We are promoting our overseas trade and have reached or
restored a favorable balance in large part through the efforts
of the American farmers whose productivity is one of the
Nation's greatest strengths for peace.
Peace and strength are a part of a single policy --
two sides of the same coin, Secretary of State Kissinger,
Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, are carrying out a single
policy for the United States. A good example of this appears
in this week's U. S. News and World Report, which contains
extensive interviews with both of my Cabinet Members.
They were questioned separately, and neither knew
that the other was being questioned, and obviously didn't know
the answers the other was giving, but the policy they
set forth is clearly and completely consistent.
MORE
Page 6
They have different responsibilities, but a single
goal. That goal, peace through strength, is the right policy
for this country in the very difficult and very dangerous
times in which we live. Lincoln told troubled Americans of
his time to have faith, that right makes might. He did not
neglect the strengths that material might provide, nor can we.
But neither must we forget the rightness of what we stand
for throughout the world. We stand for freedom because freedom
is right.
We stand for peace because peace is right. We stand
for strength, our national strength that makes both peace
and freedom secure for ourselves and for others because that
kind of strength is right and will certainly prevail.
Thank you very kindly.
QUESTION: Thank you very much, Mr. President.
I will lead off with the question to be followed
by questions from the audience, and the first question is, as you
know, a number of your critics of American defense policy have
stated that the American people are no longer prepared to
pay the cost of a defense budget that is required to support
our foreign policy role as we have defined it for the past
two decades.
What is required, they argue, is a fundamental
redefinition or cutting back of our commitments and our
interests in the world. I wonder if you would respond to that
question.
THE PRESIDENT: I am an optimist that the American
people, if they are told the facts and the logical arguments
that can been given, will support an adequate defense policy.
We have had, for the last 10 to 15 years, a declining trend in
support for our military capability. We have been spending a
lesser and lesser amount in real dollars.
I think the time has come that we must reverse that
trend, and the budget that I submitted in January of this year
for $112.7 billion is the mechanism by which we can reverse
that trend.
The American people went through a traumatic period
during the war in Vietnam. For reasons I think we all understand,
whether we agree with them or not, the American people became
somewhat disillusioned with what our role and responsibilities
have to be throughout the world.
MORE
Page 7
Perhaps in the days gone by, we went too far, but
whether we like it or not, we have responsibility for our own
security and to help others in a responsible and constructive way.
To do that, to deter aggression, to maintain peace, to
protect our own security, we have to have this change in the
direction of our defense programs and policies.
I am convinced, and I see a feeling coming through
as I travel around the country, as I listen to people, that the
American people have gotten over that traumatic experience in
the last 10 or 15 years and are now beginning to have the
same fine attitude that they had in the post World War II period.
That is essential for us and for what we stand for
around the world, and I am an optimist the American people will
support it.
QUESTION: The second question. In his Boston
speech yesterday, Secretary of State Kissinger warned about
communist gains in Italy and France, and the question is,
what are the Administration's plans of doing something about
this problem?
THE PRESIDENT: From my first visit to Brussels in
May of last year, when I met for the first time with the
heads of the Government of the NATO Nations, I said then, and I
will reiterate now, we would have a weakened NATO if the
Governments of any one of the NATO countries were controlled by
the communist elements of that country. We have a very difficult
decision in Italy.
The situation in Portugal has gone through a very
difficult period, but if any one of the 15 countries in NATO
is controlled or dominated by the communist forces in those
countries, I think that NATO would be weakened.
In France, as you know, in the last election, the
communists joined with the socialists and came very, very close.
We see evidence of the leader of the Communist Party in France,
and the Communist Party in Italy, attempting to disassociate
themselves with the international communist movement. I have
to be somewhat skeptical of the sincerity of those positions. I
believe that NATO and the Western Alliance will be stronger without
any such involvement by a communist dominated government, so I
strongly support the policy that America should build the
alliance on free government policies and not governments
dominated by communist political parties.
MORE
Page 8
QUESTION: Another question, Mr. President, and
there have been quite a number on this subject. Since your
visit to China in December there has been, of course, a
change in the leadership there. Could you comment on the
Administration's policy both towards the mainland government
in Peking and secondly about the plans for this Administra-
tion's dealings with the government on Taiwan?
THE PRESIDENT: When I was in China in December
of this year of course it was the second trip that I had
made in 1972. I went with the Democratic House Leader and
the two of us spent almost two weeks there, and we went back
in December of this year and had the opportunity of meeting
with Chairman Mao and other top leaders in the People's
Republic of China.
I believe that the progress we are making in our
relations with the People's Republic is right on course
predicated on the Shanghai Communique of 1972. It is a
slow but I believe constructive process. We are developing
broadening relations with 800 million people, a country
that dominates the land mass in Asia, and I believe it is
in our interest to continue to broaden and strengthen that
relationship in a prescribed way that was laid out first at
the time of the Shanghai Communique.
The relations at the present time with the Chinese
Nationalist Government on Taiwan are good. We have a defense
treaty with the Chinese Nationalist Government. They have
had an amazing rebound in their economy and they are no
longer dependent upon us for economic or military assistance.
The relationship, we hope, can continue to be a beneficial
one and I hope as we move toward normalization with the
People's Republic that we can maintain a proper relationship
with the Chinese Nationalist Government, It is difficult to
write a prescription here in Chicago but I think it is
possible and I think it is in our national interest.
QUESTION: We have a number of questions about
the relations between the Executive Branch and Congress.
Specifically, how can a President in conducting foreign
policy operate efficiently if the majority of Congress is
going to operate politically and places severe restrictions
on the President?
MORE
Page 9
THE PRESIDENT: Let ne say I give th. Congress
the benefit of the doubt that what they do is not politically
oriented because I think whether I agree with them or not or
they agree with me, they have views that I have to respect
and I trust they respect mine. I have been disappointed,
however, in some of the actions that were taken in the last
19 months by the Congress; I think ley have been harmful
in the implementation of an* effective foreign policy. Let
me cite several.
In the 1974 Trade Act there were certain limita-
tions placed on what we could or could not do in trying to
stimulate our trade relations with the Soviet Union. This
was bound up indirectly, if not directly, with our efforts
to get the Soviet Union to expand the immigration of
primarily Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union to Israel.
In 1974, as I recall, some 35,000 Soviet Jews
left the USSR and primarily went to Israel. In 1975 that
dropped to about 12,000 to 15,000. Primarily because of the
language which was written into the Trade Act of 1974 the
Soviet Union felt that the obligations in that legislation
were such that they could not continue the trade relation-
ship with us, and I think it is perfectly obvious the net
result was there was a slow down in Soviet Jewish immigra-
tion to Israel. I think that was a bad mistake that the
Congress made because I was personally confident from
assurances that I had that instead of keeping the immigration
at 35,000 it probably would have increased if we had not had
the action by the Congress.
Now you can take another issue. The limitation
by the Congress on what we could do in delivering Turkish
military aid was very harmful. I know the intentions were
the best. The Congress, or a majority of the Congress,
felt that if we put the pressure on Turkey they would
withdraw 40,000 troops from Cyprus. Well, we had that
limitation on for about nine months and no movement. We
want to solve the problem in Cyprus, and if we had been
given a free hand to do so, I am convinced we could have
solved the problem of Cyprus months ago.
The action by the Congress actually delayed,
hampered, hindered the negotiating capability that we
had at that time to work with both the new Greek government,
Caramanlis, and the Turkish government under Prime Minister
Demirel. Finally, the limitation has been taken off not
totally but in part and we are beginning to get some move-
ment in the solution of the Cyprus problem, but the action
of the Congress in my opinion delayed and hampered some
action that I think could have solved it much, much quicker.
MORE
Page 10
What I am saying is if you go back to the debates
in the Federalists papers, you will see that our forefathers
who drafted the Constitution understood that for a day-to-day
implementation of foreign policy you need one single person,
you can't have 535 secretaries of state. Now I want to work
with the Congress, and we are, but at some point responsi-
bility has to be given to one person. I hope that in the
months ahead, without political operations or motivations,
we can work together. I certainly will bend over to the
maximum to achieve that relationship.
QUESTION: One final question, Mr. President,
related to your earlier remarks.
It is clear that the bipartisan tradition in
foreign policy is once again under strain in a campaign year
and that foreign policy issues have already become issues in
the primary campaign.
The question is, do you expect that foreign policy
issues will play a decisive role in the Presidential election
campaign itself in November?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I do regret that foreign
policy has been interjected into both the primary as well
as potentially in the Presidential election. I think the
finest implementation of foreign policy in this country came
at a time when Democrats and Republicans, Congress and the
President, were working together. There really should not
be wide division and I would hope that we could not do away
with the responsible discussion of foreign policy but I think
it has to be kept in the right context if we are to maintain
the assurances of support from our allies, if we are to have
adversaries around the world respect the United States.
I can assure you that when there are deep divi-
sions within our country on foreign policy, our allies begin
to question what direction will America go and I think our
adversaries are tempted to exploit or seek to exploit what
they seem to think are weaknesses. So I would hope to the
maximum degree possible that foreign policy will not be an
emotional issue. I think it is an area where we can have
responsible dialog but if it becomes a deep decisive
influence for the next six to nine months, I think it could
be harmful as we try to achieve what we all want, which is
peace, and at the same time opportunities for others.
I will take one more if you want to, John.
MORE
Page 11
QUESTION: We have several on the subject of
what are the prospects for continued stability in the
Middle East?
THE PRESIDENT: We, of course, in September of last
year, were very fortunate to get the Israelis and the Egyptians
to work together for the Sinai Agreement, We have participated
to the extent of providing observers in the neutral zone and
we are helping both Israel and Egypt and this has been a great
step forward, but obviously there are some very difficult
problems to solve -- the problems of the PLO, the West Bank,
the Golan Heights, the rest of the Sinai, the agreements
that are reached, whether it is full peace or non-belligerancy.
These are very complicated and emotional issues, but
I am an optimist, based on or predicated on the success that
we had working with Prime Minister Rabin and President Sadat.
I think that world pressure is going to be helpful in
continuing the momentum that we played an active part in
and I think it would be in the best interests of the world
as a whole and certainly the best interests of that volatile,
complicated, controversial area if we could continue to move
ahead responsibly bearing in mind that this country is
dedicated to the security and survival of the Government of
Israel, that this country believes that we have to work with
some of the Arab nations to convince them of our good faith
and they can trust us.
But if we stop and do nothing, if we don't move to
help the momentum going, I think we could have another out-
break, and we have had four in 25 years and each one gets
bloodier and worse with more world powers potentially involved.
So we have an obligation to work with the Israelis
as well as their Arab neighbors, and this Administration will,
because we have their faith, we have their trust and we have
shown results by working with them.
Thank you very, very much.
END
(AT 1:07 P.M. CST)