LET AMERICA HAVE A TRUE CHOICE

NATIONAL PRESS CLUB - WASHINGTON DC June 1, 1999

 Because I believe the two parties should present a clear choice of policies and philosophies, I am here to underscore my profound disagreements, not only with Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore, but with my principal rivals for the Republican nomination, Governor Bush, Senator McCain, Elizabeth Dole, and Steve Forbes... Thank you very much. It is an honor to appear at this podium two weeks after my friend John McCain, who inspires in me both awe and envy. I mean I thought I did a lot of television.

But John is clearly the runaway favorite for the 1999 William Ginsberg Trophy, named for Monica Lewinsky's legendary lawyer who, one Sunday, appeared on five morning interview shows, a record that may stand as long as Dimaggio's hitting streak.

When he spoke here, John was most gracious. He called me "an eloquent" and "forceful" advocate for a wrong-headed view of the world. John urged an all-out war, if necessary, including a U.S. invasion, to crush Serbia. He believes that friends and enemies alike will gauge future actions by our success or failure in the Balkans.

Let me commend Senator McCain for forthrightness, and not engaging in trivial pursuits, but contending about the central issues of our day. And now that that Long Parliament known as the Texas legislature has adjourned, and Governor Bush has emerged from his tutorials, perhaps the great debate, over America's destiny and role in the world in the new millennium can get underway.

Because I believe the two parties should present a clear choice of policies and philosophies, I am here to underscore my profound disagreements, not only with Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore, but with my principal rivals for the Republican nomination, Governor Bush, Senator McCain, Elizabeth Dole, and Steve Forbes.

While all are good and able individuals, all four endorsed the president's decision to launch this war on Serbia. Mr. Bush, Mrs. Dole, and Sen. McCain even endorse sending a U.S. army to fight its way into the Balkans to occupy Kosovo.

I am unalterably opposed. This war is a strategic blunder that may prove the ruin of the most successful alliance in history. It is an illegal and unconstitutional war, launched without authorization by Congress. There is not now, and there never has been, any vital U.S. interest in whose flag flies over Pristina, to justify the loss of a single platoon of U.S. Marines. Let us review the balance sheet of Bill Clinton's Balkan misadventure.

Our goals, he said, were to punish Milosevic, get Serb troops out of Kosovo, protect the Albanians, and stabilize the Balkans. But Serbia is today even more united behind Milosevic, and there are more Serb troops in Kosovo than ten weeks ago. Macedonia and Montenegro and Albania have been destabilized; and the Kosovar people we went to protect have gone through a human rights hell, with almost the entire population uprooted, and thousands dead.

Who has benefited, save Milosevic? The Serbs have seen their country smashed by Americans they once admired. The Kosovars have suffered a catastrophe. NATO has been defied by a tiny nation, and seen its credibility diminished. The U.S. has seen its superpower status and reputation for decency tarnished by the pounding of a tiny country that never threatened us. Our relations with Moscow and Beijing have been set back to Cold War status. Is there anyone who would not prefer the Balkans of ten weeks ago to today?

With Mr. Clinton's original goals lost, NATO is now bombing Serbia to ruins to restore its lost credibility, and a status quo ante that existed before the bombing began. But it is neither just nor moral for a superpower to ravage the civilian economy of a country for refusing to give up sacred land that has belonged to Serbia for generations.

Women and children and those in hospitals and homes for the elderly are the principal victims when the electricity is shut off, the lights go out, the heat cuts off, and the water supply is contaminated because the pumping stations have no power.

How are these innocent people supposed to force Milosevic to give up Kosovo? And if they cannot, why, in the name of humanity, are we destroying the critical utilities on which they depend for survival?

John McCain says that even if the decision to go to war was unwise, now that we are in it, we must win. Wrong, John. If a war is unjust or unwise-or unwinnable except at exorbitant cost-you do not send two hundred thousand soldiers to rectify the blunder and restore the reputations of the blunderers. You seek an armistice and end it, as Eisenhower did in Korea, DeGaulle did in Algeria, Reagan did in Lebanon, and Gorbachev did in Afghanistan. And let the blunderers go off somewhere and write their apologias.

As for Mr. Forbes' suggestion that we arm the KLA, that would insure an Afghanistan-type war between Moslems and Christians in the underbelly of Europe. Were the KLA to triumph, a regime would come to power in Kosovo that would seek to unite with its kinsmen in Macedonia and Albania; and the true nightmare scenario of the Balkans would unfold. How would that advance our goal of peace and stability in Europe?

Let me turn now to a second issue where I strongly disagree with Governor Bush, Mrs. Dole, Senator McCain, and Mr. Forbes. All four of them favor the Clinton-Gore policy of continuing China's privileged MFN trade status, under which Beijing has piled up $274 billion in surpluses with America over a decade.

But the Clinton China policy of "constructive engagement" has revealed itself to be a triumph of hope over experience. At best, it is willful self-delusion; at worst, it is willful appeasement.

Sen. McCain says that only "risks to the security of our vital interests or egregious offenses to our most cherished political values should disqualify a nation from entering into a free trade agreement with us."

But Beijing persecutes dissidents, Christians and Tibetans; it forces married women to undergo abortions and be sterilized for the crime of having a second child. Do these barbarous policies not represent an egregious offense to our most cherished values?

The hoard of hard currency China has piled up from its trade surpluses is being used for the greatest military buildup in Asia since the 1930s. Since 1996, Beijing has increased five-fold its missiles targeted on Taiwan; it is mock test-firing rockets at U.S. bases in Asia, and is targeting America itself with ICBMs. Does that not present "risks to the security of our vital interests"?

With its missile buildup and missile transfers, Beijing today threatens U.S. interests in ways Belgrade never could and never did. Yet we bomb Belgrade and appease Beijing. Why do we continue to feed this tiger? Does the Business Roundtable now speak louder in the corridors of power than the national interest? Too much soft money makes for too many soft heads.

Speaking as one of ten surviving members of the official U.S. delegation that opened up the Peoples Republic with Mr. Nixon in 1972, let me say: I do not want a hot war with China, or a Cold War with China or confrontation with China. Nor do I desire to "contain China" against the natural growth of its influence in Asia. China is a great nation and the Chinese are a great people.

But we, too, must demand respect, and reciprocity. When China manifests its hostility to our values and interests, it is craven folly to treat China as a partner and friend. Just as Beijing imposes stiff taxes on U.S. imports, we should impose the same taxes on Chinese goods entering the United States. One-sided concessions only earn China's contempt. And as we have agreed to pay for the damage done to its embassy by our accidental bombing in Belgrade, China should pay the cost of repairing our embassy in Beijing, which was trashed at the instigation of that regime.

It is time the kowtowing came to an end.

Let me return to my friends and rivals, Messrs. Bush, McCain, Forbes, and Mrs. Dole. All four supported NAFTA and GATT; all four support "fast track" authority for Mr. Clinton; all four backed U.S. entry into a World Trade Organization that operates on a one-nation, one-vote rule, where America has no veto power. All four endorse the trade policies of Clinton, Barshefsky, Kantor, and Gore, which have given us a merchandise trade deficit well in excess of $300 billion in the current year.

On trade, the establishment Republicans offer America not a choice but an echo. For Congress to vote fast track authority would surrender constitutional power to the least competent negotiators since the tsar's agent sold Alaska to William Seward for $7 million. As for U.S. accession to the WTO, that was a unilateral surrender of our national sovereignty.

For what? We control the greatest market on earth; we do not need international bureaucrats to defend America's interests in trade negotiations. We can look out for ourselves. Why would we accept a single vote in the WTO, and let Europe have two dozen?

Under NAFTA and GATT, thousands of factories have been shut down in America; millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost. Our dependence on foreign nations for vital necessities has grown to levels unseen in this century. We are surrendering our economic independence and squandering the birthright of future generations for the instant gratification of today's consumers.

There is a rising danger in our growing dependence on foreign regimes for the necessities of national life. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because it was starved for oil, and the U.S. fleet could block its path to the East Indies. America went to war in the Gulf for "o-i-l," as our Secretary of State put it; yet our dependence on foreign oil is greater today than in 1990, greater than ever before in history.

An even more insidious danger lurks, that my rivals refuse to acknowledge or cannot see. Any economic free trade zone will call into existence a political regime to rule over it. The free-trade zone adopted by the 13 states at Philadelphia went hand-in-hand with a central government that grew supreme. The Common Market called into being a European Union that is moving to take control of the currencies, tax policies, immigration policies, even the defense policies of the once-independent nations of Europe.

The dynamiters and deconstructionists of all barriers to trade know that a Global Economy must call into existence a global government. Globalism is at war with patriotism. So-called "free-trade conservatives" are not conservatives at all, but the unwitting masons of a One World Government. The final payment for any global free trade zone is an end to American sovereignty and the loss of American independence. No matter who seeks to lead us there, we will not go gentle into that good night.

As America crosses over into a new millennium, we deserve a choice of policies, philosophies, and destinies. Yet, on the extension of permanent U.S. war guarantees to the Baltic and Balkan states, war in Kosovo, MFN for China, the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, foreign aid, open-borders immigration, Bush, Dole, McCain and Forbes are virtual Xerox copies of Clinton and Gore.

If one of these wins the GOP nomination, we risk a replay of 1992 and 1996, where both major parties will agree on most major issues, and a pillow fight will ensue over some dinky tax cut. This may satisfy the Establishment, but it would cheat Middle America. Tens of millions of Americans will not vote; millions more will cast protest votes for the Reform Party, the Taxpayers Party, the Green Party, and the Libertarian Party.

America deserves better than a politics of inconsequentiality, where the presidential choice is between two free-trade globalists, two compulsive interventionists, two open-borders one worlders, enthralled by a Utopian vision of a different America, or seized by the allure of some New World Order.

My vision is of an America forever independent and free, her full sovereignty restored; of a constitutional republic that is wholly self-sufficient, where elected leaders-not UN officials, NATO bureaucrats, or the ancient commitments of Cold War statesmen-determine whether we go to war.

I am not a citizen of the world; I am an American. And I am not running for president of the world, but for president of the United States. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- P. O. Box 2000,  Dunn Loring, Virginia 22027 Web: http://www.gopatgo2000.org Email: hq@gopatgo2000.org Tel: 703-734-2700 Buchanan 2000 Scott B. Mackenzie, Treasurer ©1999 Buchanan 2000