August 17, 1992 GOVERNOR CLINTON'S FOREIGN POLICY THE LOS ANGELES SPEECH GEORGE BUSH HAS A

August 17, 1992

                  GOVERNOR CLINTON'S FOREIGN POLICY
                       THE LOS ANGELES SPEECH

GEORGE BUSH HAS ACHIEVED MORE IN AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN A SINGLE
TERM THAN ANY OTHER AMERICAN PRESIDENT SINCE THE EARLY DAYS OF THE
REPUBLIC.  BILL CLINTON HAS NEVER MADE A FOREIGN POLICY DECISION IN
HIS LIFE.

o    Bill Clinton is taking on the "Bear" Bryant of foreign policy
     and trying to tell him that he doesn't know how to rack up
     victories.  Months after George Bush has compiled a magnificent
     record, Clinton is carping about game strategy and play
     selection -- complaints he never voiced at the time.  With
     George Bush providing Western leadership:

     --   The West won the Cold War.

     --   Eastern Europe was liberated.

     --   Germany was peacefully united within NATO.

     --   The Soviet Union disintegrated, communism collapsed.

     --   We smashed the Iraqi army and dashed Saddam Hussein's plans
          for conquest and nuclear weapons.

     --   Israel and all its Arab neighbors, for the first time in
          Israel's 44-year history, sit at the same peace table.

     --   President Bush has won Russian agreement to eliminate four-
          fifths of superpower nuclear weapons and most of the
          nuclear weapons in the world; Russia has agreed to destroy
          the most destabilizing missiles ever built.

     --   Panama was liberated and its drug-running dictator was
          brought to justice; El Salvador and Nicaragua have became
          working democracies.

     --   And the President is creating the world's largest free
          trade area to create hundreds of thousands of new American
          jobs.

WHILE THE PRESIDENT'S EXPERIENCE, SKILL, AND VISION ENSURED A FINAL
VICTORY IN THE COLD WAR, CLINTON'S INEXPERIENCE COULD LOSE THE
PEACE. 

o    Clinton gave a serious national security policy speech in Los
     Angeles on August 13.  Because of the gravity of the subject,
     his criticisms of President Bush and Clinton's own policy
     prescriptions both deserve careful examination.  

o    Shutting America Out of the World Economy:  Clinton said his
     first foreign policy priority was to restore America's economic
     vitality.  But Clinton's plan would hurt, not revitalize the
     American economy.  American business must have global markets to
     sustain production lines and offset the skyrocketing R&D costs
     of high technology products.  Opening the world's markets means
     a policy of free trade.  But Clinton, imprisoned by Democratic
     special interests and Big Labor, cannot bring himself to pair
     the words "free" and "trade" (nor did the Democratic platform). 
     
     Clinton has even backed away from his earlier support for the
     North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).  Though he has said
     that he puts economics first, Clinton did not even mention NAFTA
     in a speech to a Southern California audience the day after the
     agreement was announced.  Clearly, establishment of the largest
     free trade area in the world has dropped off his economic
     agenda.  

     Clinton also misjudges American competitiveness.  He ignores the
     record-breaking growth in U.S. exports and world-beating
     productivity, particularly in manufacturing.  He continues to
     promote radical environmental measures -- such as an unnecessary
     increase in auto efficiency standards -- that would sacrifice at
     least 300,000 American jobs.  His spending increases would crowd
     out private investment.  His economic design would increase the
     budget deficit by at least $200 billion over four years, and
     erase the significant progress that America has made in the last
     four years in lowering interest rates, keeping inflation down,
     and cutting the foreign trade deficit.

     Nor does he understand how to bring down trade barriers.  He
     declared that the stalemate in GATT derives from US weakness. 
     He does not seem to understand that the GATT standoff comes from
     American strength and will -- to fight against Europe's
     agricultural subsidies.  America's farmers and cattlemen are
     ready to compete with those from any other nation.  American
     pressure to achieve cuts in European subsidies will make this
     possible. 

o    Defense Policy:  Clinton would slash America's defense by nearly
     $60 billion more than the President's careful defense
     reductions.  To cite just one example, the Arkansas governor
     advocates a ten carrier Navy.  But independent Congressional
     Budget Office analyses show that such a force would have been
     too weak to support America's Gulf War victory.  Clinton's
     defense cuts will also put as many as one million Americans out
     of work.  He would turn a sensible defense drawdown into a
     freefall, cracking the morale and readiness of our military,
     bringing back the dispirited "hollow" army of the Carter era.

     The man who, as Governor of a small state, got kicked out of
     office for letting unarmed Cuban refugees roam around the West
     Arkansas countryside, is not the man to plan America's national
     security needs into the next century.  George Bush, the man who
     oversaw the most successful and extensive mobilization of 
     American fighting men and women in decades, is. 

o    Gulf War Waffle:  Though he persists in claiming that "I
     supported the decision to use force to get Saddam Hussein out of
     Kuwait," the truth is that Clinton said absolutely nothing on
     the issue until two days after Congress voted to authorize the
     use of force.  At the time Clinton's instinct was to continue
     sanctions instead of taking decisive action:  "I agree with the
     arguments of the people in the minority on the resolution --
     that we should give sanctions more time and maybe even explore a
     full-scale embargo ... before we go to war," (AP, as printed in
     the Pine Bluff Commercial, 1/15/91).  But, he could not resist
     waffling -- trying as usual to have it both ways:  "I guess I
     would have voted with the majority if it was a close vote.  But
     I agree with the argument the minority made" (Arkansas Gazette,
     1/15/91).

o    Support for Yeltsin and Democracy in Russia:  In his speech on
     August 13th, Clinton charged that the President "snubbed Boris
     Yeltsin."  Unfortunately for Clinton, Yeltsin's own words prove
     the emptiness of his charge:  addressing the U.S. Congress this
     June, Yeltsin thanked the President by name, and the American
     people, for supporting Russian democracy against the dark forces
     of reaction.  

     Clinton, in his speech in Los Angeles, emphasized the need to
     encourage democratic forces.  But he failed the most important
     test of judgment, the rise of democracy in Russia.  He went to
     Moscow in June 1991, at the time Yeltsin was running for the
     office of Russian president.  Clinton did not meet with Yeltsin;
     yet, he found time to talk to Yeltsin's opponent (Bakatin), a
     Communist Party hack.  Then Clinton publicly accused Yeltsin of
     manipulating the election, suggesting that Yeltsin had scheduled
     it "in a hurry so the other candidates wouldn't have time to get
     known" (Arkansas Gazette, 6/13/91).  He recklessly took sides
     against the man leading the future of democracy in Russia.  

o    Clinton Falters During the August Coup in the Soviet Union,
     1991:  Two weeks before the August 1991 coup, Clinton praised
     President Bush for "handling the Soviets well today" (Washington
     Times, 8/1/91).  Now he finds it politically convenient to
     change his mind and criticize the President.  But when
     democratic reform in the Soviet Union faced its gravest threat
     during the August coup, Clinton typically dithered.   After the
     President had branded the plot "misguided and illegitimate" and
     while the resurgence of democratic forces was still in doubt,
     Clinton granted the coup plotters a measure of legitimacy, 
     saying: "We'll just have to wait and see what the intentions of
     the new president and that team who are apparently in control
     are" (Arkansas Gazette, 8/19/91).

o    Clinton Comments on Bush and Gorbachev:  In Los Angeles, Clinton
     analogized the end of the Cold War to the dawn, an inevitable
     force of nature.  He thus shows startling ignorance of diplomacy
     and its instruments, misreads history and does not grasp
     American strategy and tactics that make all the difference.  For
     example, he charges that the President should have abandoned
     Gorbachev and rushed faster to recognize the Baltic states and
     the new nations in the former Soviet Union.  Clinton's reckless
     idea of undermining Gorbachev prematurely, while he was still
     the essential agent of a peaceful transition, would have
     threatened perestroika, halted Soviet withdrawal from Eastern
     Europe and Germany, caused a crisis with our allies, and led to
     a Soviet veto in the United Nations of the resolution backing
     war against Saddam Hussein.  

o    Creating Democracies:  Bill Clinton says that the central
     purpose of his foreign policy would be to spread democracy. 
     Yet, since 1989, at least thirty-nine countries have moved from
     communism or authoritarianism toward democracy:  from the former
     Soviet Union, to the countries of Eastern Europe, to the freely-
     elected government in Panama.  

o    Clinton's Self-Professed Role Models -- Jimmy Carter and George
     McGovern:  While American Embassy personnel were being held
     hostage in Teheran, Clinton thought Jimmy Carter was performing
     his executive role brilliantly:  "Iran has helped him enormously
     because people are seeing in him again what they thought they
     saw when they elected him -- a smart, good, solid, profoundly
     thoughtful and firm man doing his best in a difficult time ..."
     (Arkansas Gazette, 12/30/79).

     Last September, in a tribute to George McGovern, Clinton said,
     "History has borne you out, and I'm still proud to have worked
     for you."  This remarkable statement was excised by the Clinton
     campaign from official speech texts distributed to the media.

o    Clinton and the Middle East:  Clinton accused the President of
     mishandling the peace process and the issue of loan guarantees
     to Israel.  Yet, just this week, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak
     Rabin complimented the President's decisiveness in defeating
     Saddam, destroying the most dangerous threat to Israel's
     security.  It is because of George Bush's extensive skill and
     experience that today Israel has achieved face-to-face
     negotiations with all of its Arab neighbors -- the top
     diplomatic objective of the Jewish State since it was founded in
     1948.


o    Yugoslavia:  Clinton's statements have wandered in defining the
     war aims he proposes for American military action in the
     Balkans.  Following Clinton's stumbling performance, the Boston
     Globe reported (on 8/10/92) that Clinton seemed "vague, hesitant
     and uncharacteristically [sic] unsure of himself on several
     questions."  The Globe concluded that Clinton was "muddy about
     what he had in mind when it came to military force in the
     Balkans, seemingly suggesting that simply contemplating its use
     was a policy end capable of achieving a foreign policy result." 

George Bush has had to face the wrenching decision of whether to put
America's fighting men and women in the line of fire.  He moved
decisively in the Persian Gulf and Panama when America's interests
were directly threatened.  He understands the need to have clearly
defined military missions, clearly obtainable political objectives,
and to think through these options -- especially where American lives
could be put at risk -- before speaking.  Clearly, Clinton does not.