230. Editorial Note
On January 31, 1985, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held the first of a series of hearings on the future of U.S. foreign policy. In opening the hearings, Committee Chair Richard Lugar (R–Indiana) asserted: “The need for a restoration of consensus behind American foreign policy is great.” He also argued, “If a new consensus is to develop behind American foreign policy, we must go back to basics. We need to deal with first principles. We need to define vital interests with greater precision. We need to formulate our objectives more clearly. We need to work together in the development of a strategy for pursuing those objectives. And finally, we need to debate and consult over appropriate means for achieving foreign policy objectives. These are the prerequisites of forging a new foreign policy consensus.” Lugar yielded the floor to Senator Claiborne Pell (D–Rhode Island), the ranking minority member of the Committee, for an opening statement, before introducing Secretary of State George Shultz.
Shultz began his remarks with an overview of the post-World War II era, noting the various geopolitical changes and commenting that the United States continued to experience change and “new realities”: “But we are not just observers. We are participants and we are engaged. America is again in a position to have a major influence over the trend of events, and America’s traditional goals and values have not changed. Our duty must be to help shape the evolving trends in accordance with our ideas and our interests; to help build a new structure of international stability that will ensure peace, prosperity, and freedom for coming generations. This is the real challenge of our foreign policy over the coming years.”
After identifying several “broad trends” in world politics and the global economy, Shultz stated that “two very important and very basic conclusions” stemmed from them:
“First, the agenda for the immediate future seems to me to be an agenda on which the American people are essentially united. These are goals that are widely shared and tasks that are likely to reinforce another important trend: namely, the reemergence of a national consensus on the main elements of our foreign policy.
“This, indeed, may be the most important positive trend of all, because so many of our difficulties in recent decades have been very much the product of our own domestic divisions. I hope, Mr. Chairman, that our two parties and our two branches of Government will find ways to cooperate in this spirit, which would enormously strengthen our country in the face of the new opportunities and challenges I have described.
“Second, Mr. Chairman, all the diverse topics I have touched upon are, in the end, closely interrelated. President Reagan made this point [Page 993] in his speech to the United Nations last September. The United States seeks peace and security. We seek economic progress. We seek to promote freedom, democracy, and human rights. The conventional way of thinking is to treat these as discrete categories of activity. In fact, as we have seen, it is now more and more widely recognized that there is a truly profound connection among them, and this has important implications for the future.
“It is no accident, for example, that America’s closest and most lasting relationships are its alliances with its fellow democracies. These ties with the Atlantic Community, Japan, and other democratic friends have an enduring quality precisely because they rest on a moral base, not only a base of strategic interest.
“When George Washington advised his countrymen to steer clear of permanent alliances, his attitude was colored by the fact that there were hardly any other fellow democracies in those days. We were among the first, and we had good reason to be wary of entanglements with countries that did not share our democratic principles. In any case, we now define our strategic interests in terms that embrace the safety and well-being of the democratic world.
“Similarly, as I have discussed, it is more and more understood that economic progress is related to a political environment of openness and freedom. It used to be thought in some quarters that socialism was the appropriate model for developing countries because central planning was better able to mobilize and allocate resources in conditions of scarcity. The historical experience of Western Europe and North America, which industrialized in an era of limited government, was not thought to be relevant.
“Yet the more recent experience of the Third World shows that a dominant government role in developing economies has done more to stifle the natural forces of production and productivity and to distort the efficient allocation of resources.
“The real engine of growth, in developing as well as industrialized countries, turns out to be the natural dynamism of societies that minimize central planning, open themselves to trade with the world, and give free rein to the talents and efforts and risk taking and investment decisions of individuals.
“Finally, there is almost certainly a relationship between economic progress, freedom, and world peace. Andrei Sakharov has written:
“‘I am convinced that international trust, mutual understanding, disarmament, and international security are inconceivable without an open society with freedom of information, freedom of conscience, the right to publish, and the right to travel and choose the country in which one wishes to live. I am also convinced that freedom of conscience, together with other civic rights, provides both the basis for scientific progress and a guarantee against its misuse to harm mankind.’
“The implication of all of this is profound. It is that the Western values of liberty and democracy, which some have been quick to write off as culture bound, or irrelevant, or passe, are not to be so easily dismissed. Their obituary is premature. These values are the source of our strength, economic as well as moral, and they turn out to be more central to the world’s future than many have realized.
“After more than a century of fashionable Marxist mythology about economic determinism and the crisis of capitalism, the key to human progress turns out to be those very Western concepts of political and economic freedom that Marxists claimed were obsolete. They were wrong. Today—the supreme irony—it is the Communist system that looks bankrupt, morally as well as economically. The West is resilient and resurgent.
“And so, in the end, the most important new way of thinking that is called for in this decade is our way of thinking about ourselves. Civilizations thrive when they believe in themselves. They decline when they lose this faith. All civilizations confront massive problems, but a society is more likely to master its challenges, rather than be overwhelmed by them, if it retains this bedrock self-confidence that its values are worth defending. This is the essence of the Reagan revolution and of the leadership the President has sought to provide in America.
“The West has been through a difficult period in the last decade or more. But now we see a new turn. The next phase of the industrial revolution, like all previous phases, comes from the democratic world, where innovation and creativity are allowed to spring from the unfettered human spirit. By working together, we can spread the benefit of the technological revolution to all.
“And on every continent, from Nicaragua to Cambodia, from Poland, to South Africa, to Afghanistan, we see that the yearning for freedom is the most powerful political force all across the planet.
“So, as we head toward the 21st century, it is time for the democracies to celebrate their system, their beliefs, and their success. We face challenges, but we are well poised to master them. Opinions are being revised about which system is the wave of the future. The free nations, if they maintain their unity and their faith in themselves, have the advantage—economically, technically, morally.
“History is on freedom’s side.” (Commitments, Consensus and U.S. Foreign Policy: Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Ninety-Ninth Congress, First Session, January 31, February 4, 5, 6, 7, 20, 25, 26, October 31, November 7 and 12, 1985, pages 2–3, 5, 17–18)