Remarks to the Institute
for Foreign Policy Analysis at a Conference on the Strategic Defense Initiative
Well,
Dr. Pfaltzgraff, thank you,
and thank you all very much. Let me say it's a great honor to be addressing so
many distinguished scientists, business leaders, and academics, so many who
live the life of the mind and use their talents for the benefit of mankind.
I
want to thank the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, a staunch ally when it
comes to strategic defenses, for bringing this first-class group together on
SDI's fifth anniversary. And it's good to see so many other friends here as
well: Dr. Teller, who is proof that life begins at 80 -- [laughter] -- and 3 of
SDI's best friends in the Congress, Senators Wallop and Quayle, Congressman
Chappell; and the frontline offense of our strategic defense team, Ambassador Rowny, General Abrahamson, and Bill Graham. And we're all
hoping this even will be chronicled in his indubitable fashion by Tom Clancy.
[Laughter]
It
hardly seems like 5 years since we first embarked together on this noble
enterprise to find an alternative to nuclear terror. When I addressed the
American people on that March 1983 day, I said it was time to turn the great
technological might of our nation not to inventing ever more deadly weapons of
destruction but instead to creating new instruments of peace -- defensive
technologies that harm no one. I said it would take years, probably decades, of
effort. There would be setbacks and failures as well as successes. But we could
not ignore this great challenge: to develop the means of rendering ballistic
missiles impotent and obsolete. If anything, we overestimated the technological
challenge back then. The technologies of our Strategic Defense Initiative have
progressed more rapidly than many of us ever dreamed possible. The creative
genius and ingenuity of
But
if we've learned anything in 5 years, it's that it's sometimes easier to bring
into being new technologies than it is to bring about new thinking on some
subjects. Breakthroughs in physics are sometimes easier than breakthroughs in
psyches. Perhaps the most astounding reaction to the announcement of our
Strategic Defense Initiative was the sudden conversion of many on a certain
side of the political spectrum to the strategy of mutual assured destruction,
whose very appropriate acronym is
The
philosopher John Stuart Mill said, I think aptly, that ``no great improvements
in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the
fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.'' Sometimes, however, it's
not so much mankind in general as it is the experts who have trouble changing
the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought. The fact is, it would probably stop any inventor dead in his tracks if
he listened for too long to the advice of experts in his field.
Throughout
history, it seems, they have agreed on one basic
principle: Progress must stop at the limits of their expertise. [Laughter] I'm
fond of quoting Charles Duell, the Commissioner of
the United States Office of Patents, who advised President McKinley in 1899 to
abolish the Patent Office because, he said, ``Everything that can be invented
has been invented.'' [Laughter] Of course, Presidents aren't immune from such
blunders either. There's the story of Rutherford B. Hayes, who said after
witnessing a scientific demonstration, ``That's an
amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?'' He was talking
about the telephone.
Well,
we've had our share of naysayers when it comes to SDI
as well. But some of the difficulties they said were insurmountable have
already been surmounted much more rapidly and effectively than anticipated. For
example, our Delta 180 and, most recently, 181 tests, demonstrating among other
things our ability to track fast-moving targets in space and distinguish
between dummy warheads from the real thing, showed a technical ability that
some scientists, concerned and otherwise, had said could not be achieved so
quickly. But, you know, I don't give up hope for our opponents. It has been
estimated that the sum total of human knowledge doubles every 8 years. Maybe
they just need a little bit more time.
Now,
for the impressive technological feats that we've recently seen, immense credit
goes to the brilliant and hard-working scientists and engineers who made them
possible. And I want them to know they are not working late into the night to
construct a bargaining chip. They are building a better future, free from the
nuclear terror, and generations to come will thank them. We'll continue to
research SDI, to develop and test it, and as it becomes ready, we will deploy
it.
There's
one serious problem that the SDI program has had a great deal of difficulty
with, however. It would probably be listed in the physics textbooks under the
heading, ``Inertial Resistance of Large Bodies'' -- [laughter] -- in this case,
some in the United States Congress. In every one of the last 4 years, Congress
has cut back on our requests for SDI funding. And those cuts have already set
the program back 1 to 2 years. In what can only be described as a
self-fulfilling prophecy, they have voted down funding because they say SDI
won't work.
Well,
it won't if we don't develop it and test it. Congress should realize that it's
no longer a question of whether there will be an SDI program or not. The only
question will be whether the Soviets are the only ones who have strategic defenses,
while the
Well,
everything, one might add, and more. The Soviet defense
effort, which some call Red Shield, is now over 15 years old, and they have
spent over $200 billion on it. That's 15 times the amount that we have
spent on SDI. The Soviets already have the world's only deployed ABM defenses.
Congress, in effect, killed our ASAT program. The Soviets already have an
operational antisatellite system. While the United
States Congress cuts back on our SDI, 10,000 top Soviet scientists and
engineers work on their military laser program, alone.
Even
now that the Soviets have acknowledged their own SDI-like program, some in
Congress would bind us to an artificially restrictive interpretation of the ABM
treaty that would effectively block development of our SDI program and
perpetuate the Soviets' advantages in advanced strategic defenses. This effort
makes even less sense when the Soviets aren't even abiding by the ABM treaty,
while we are. Virtually all experts, even some of our biggest critics, agree
that the Soviet construction of the large, phased-array radar at
A
few months ago, I raised a serious specter. I pointed out that it is not only
in the development of strategic defenses that the
There
has been a tendency by some in Congress to discuss SDI as if its funding could
be determined purely by domestic considerations, unconnected to what the
Soviets are doing. Well, that is, to put it plainly, irresponsible in the
extreme. The fact is that many Americans are unaware that at this moment the
It
can be said that the old discredited policy of MAD is like two adversaries
holding loaded guns to each other's head. It may work for awhile, but you sure
better hope you don't make a slip. People who put their trust in MAD must trust
it to work 100 percent -- forever, no slip-ups, no madmen, no unmanageable
crises, no mistakes -- forever.
For
those who are not reassured by such a prospect, and I count myself among their
number, we must ask: Isn't it time we invented a cure for madness? Isn't it
time to begin curing the world of this nuclear threat? If we have the medicine,
can we in good conscience hold out on the patients? I believe that, given the
gravity of the nuclear threat to humanity, any unnecessary delay in the
development and deployment of SDI is unconscionable. And that's why we'll move
forward, when ready, with phased deployments of SDI.
As
of last August, the Department of Defense has begun focusing on six specific
defensive technologies, and they are now moving ahead with them to the
demonstration and validation phase. The development and deployment of an
initial phase, when it is ready, will be undertaken in such a way that it
provides a solid foundation for a continued evolution toward a fully
comprehensive defense system, which is SDI's ultimate goal. Among the
objectives of this first phase will be to strengthen deterrence by denying the
Equally
important, SDI will continue to prove an irresistible force behind offensive
arms reductions. Our SDI program, in fact, already has helped to make this
world safer because, along with NATO's INF deployments, it was one of the major
factors that led to the treaty signed by General Secretary Gorbachev and myself
that will for the first time reduce the nuclear arsenals threatening mankind.
It was an historic reversal of the trend of more and more nuclear weapons, and
SDI helped make it happen.
At
the same time, we must work to strengthen our conventional deterrence. SDI will
likely prove instrumental here, too, by providing high-tech spinoffs
for NATO's Conventional Defenses Initiative, CDI, that
could help to address the imbalance of forces in
A
few days ago, when I went to Notre Dame, nostalgia was much the order of the
day, but I did bring up an issue, a very serious issue. I spoke about when I
was in college and a debate that I remember having in one of my classes in those post-World War I days, when the bomber was just being
recognized as the potent weapon that it later became. Our class debated whether
or not Americans -- people who, to our way of thinking, stood for high moral
standards -- would ever drop bombs from a plane on a city. And the class was
about evenly divided. Half felt it might be necessary. The other felt that
bombing civilians would always be beyond the pale of decency, totally unacceptable
human conduct, no matter how heinous the enemy. We believed that young men in
It's
hard to say they changed for the better. We have the opportunity to reverse
this trend, to base the peace of this world on security rather than threats, on
defense rather than on retaliation. Those who say it can't be done, who stand in the way of progress and insist that
technology stops here -- I plead with them to consider what they're saying. For
no matter how effective arms reduction negotiations ever are, we can never ``uninvent'' the nuclear weapon. We can never erase the
knowledge of how to build a ballistic missile. If they were able to succeed in
stopping SDI, then we would be left forever with that loaded pistol to our
heads, with an insecure and morally tenuous peace based forever on the threat
of retaliation.
But
the world is rapidly changing, and technology won't stop here. All we can do is
make sure that technology becomes the ally and protector of peace, that we
build better shields rather than sharper and more deadly swords. In so doing,
maybe we can help to bring an end to the brutal legacy of modern warfare. We
can stop the madness from continuing into the next century. We can create a
better, more secure, more moral world, where peace goes hand in hand with
freedom from fear -- forever.
Thank
you all very much. God bless you all.
Note: The President
spoke at