Mark Hatfield, U.S. senator, Oregon
Foreign Policy in a Transition Era
Landon Lecture
April 26, 1982
President Acker, ladies and gentlemen: Professor Richter and I on the platform today, I suppose, are the only non-presidents. President Rogenmoser, President Bulmahn and President Acker constitute that exclusive club today of presidents. It's interesting to be in this environment and say "Mr. President" without referring to a man who lives in the White House. I might say that it's an interesting ambivalence that I have.
I'm delighted to be back on the campus at Kansas State University and especially for this particular lecture. As one who grew up, more or less, cutting his eye teeth on political campaigns, I am of that vintage that can remember the 1936 presidential election. I was, I think, in about the seventh grade at the time, but I recall I was so confident of Gov. Landon's election — after all, the Literary Digest had told me that he was going to be elected — that I engaged in my only experience of gambling. I bet 12 milkshakes on Gov. Landon, and then the results came in; I was not only terribly disappointed that my favorite candidate had not won, but it took at least three weeks of saving my allowance to pay off my debts in gambling. I must say that even throughout the period that I served in the Navy in World War II, I never did again engage in gambling. I teamed at an early age that it is not one of those experiences that you enter into lightly or to win.
I do feel that in coming here for this particular lecture, I am honored to be listed as a lecturer of the Alf Landon Series; not only because of the longevity of this great American but because I have the privilege of serving with his daughter, Nancy Landon Kassebaum, in the United States Senate today, along with your Sen. Robert Dole.
I have come to recognize that there is a certain American character embodied in Gov. Landon. It is probably a product of the Middle West, but it is increasingly something that, through the nostalgia and the new interest in the roots of our own heritage individually and as a nation, is coming to the surface. Gov. Landon comes more and more to represent the kind of Middle America and the kind of drive and ambition that contributed so much to the building of this nation — and continues to contribute much to the building of this nation. I consider him one of the great Americans. I am also reminded that some of the greatest political leaders never achieve the White House. We begin to think back in history to some of those who profoundly influenced national policy but were denied that so-called grand prize of the White House: Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and others even in the modern age such as Thomas Dewey and Gov. Landon. So, it is with great pride that I am here today under these auspices.
Recently, I introduced into the Congressional Record a quotation from Jonathan Shell's book, "The Fate of the Earth." It was a very interesting experience because as I read these words, I not only felt the impact again upon my own thinking, but I've had many comments from my colleagues upon the emphasis given to these words as they later read them in the Congressional Record. Let me repeat them this morning: "The possible consequences of the detonations of thousands of megatons of nuclear explosives include the blinding of insects, birds and beasts all over the world; the extinction of many ocean species... the scalding and killing of many crops... cancer and mutation around the world... the attendant risk of global epidemics... and the outright slaughter on all targeted continents of most human beings and other living things by the initial nuclear radiation; the fireballs; the thermal pulses; the blast waves; the mass fires; and the fallout from the explosions; and considering that these consequences will all interact with one another in unguessable ways... one must conclude that a full-scale nuclear holocaust could lead to the extinction of mankind."
Let me just share with you, since we are all, to a great degree, a product of our environment and circumstances and experiences, my experience within a month after the bomb had been dropped at Hiroshima, Japan. I happened to be in the naval forces that went into that city. Having stood in the midst of this rubble where every sense of the human character and human being was appealed to, I could look in any and all directions and see utter and indiscriminate devastation. I could hear the deathly silence that thundered in upon us as we looked upon a dead city — a literally dead city. The odor of the unrecovered bodies came to our nostrils in the sense of smell. I suppose that experience was indelibly written upon my memory. I realized with ambivalence that this bomb was beyond my comprehension. I also realized that it had probably saved my life, for we were staging for the invasion of Honshu Island at the time that the bomb was dropped.
As I say, I could not comprehend and I don't think any of us could comprehend the magnitude of what had happened. All we knew was that one bomb had created this kind of destruction. I suppose, my friends, that I would say that at any given hour that you and I exist on this earth today, we are living on the brink of utter extinction. We are all living under policies that could lead to global suicide. I know of no other way to describe it. I am not so much concerned about this happening by design as by accident. Let me remind you that a 10-cent computer chip caused miscommunication within our advance warning system last year. Once it was a flock of geese that gave us a miscommunication. If our advance warning system sends out this kind of miscommunication, and it is considered to be far more sophisticated than the advance warning system of the Soviet Union, what kind of miscommunications are they receiving?
I also believe that such a horror could occur as a result of panic, but there is nothing — no fear, no objective, no principle, no military strategy — that would be worth the cost of global suicide. Let me say to you, not in my estimation, but in the words of Nael Gaylor, writing in yesterday's New York Times, who was a former commander in chief of all U.S. forces in the Pacific and the former director of the National Security Agency of this nation, that, "There is no military use for the nuclear weapon today." He said, "There is no conceivable military objective worth the risk of nuclear war, whether it be strategic weapons, theater weapons or tactical weapons."
Now, I think we have to recognize that any society that shuts its eyes to the urgent peril to its very physical survival, such as we face today, and fails to take steps to save itself, cannot call itself psychologically well. I would like to take this opportunity today to discuss with you why I believe becoming, as a nation, like a gambler who disregards his family's welfare, who blinds himself to the future and blanks out the past in a feverish attempt to achieve immediate and total security.
How do we respond? I deplore the march of totalitarianism. I condemn the brutality and the spiritual bankruptcy of their system. But we must stand for something rather than just being against. Our signals of strength and resolve to the Soviets are, in fact, signals of confused purpose and hollow commitment. I believe we must confront ourselves with brutal honesty. We have come to view nuclear nonproliferation, respect for human rights and true friendship between nations as hopeless goals, and the only recourse is to live for the moment.
Hunger and nuclear weapons pose the most urgent pivotal problems we face as part of humanity. Yet we seem prepared to abandon everything, including the planet itself, in deference to the all-consuming myopic anti-Sovietism that so pervades our national policy. How rational individuals can allow themselves to succumb to such bankrupt interpretations of national security is totally beyond my grasp. Even after we saw the Shah of Iran — the eloquent evidence of a man who depended excessively upon military hardware for security to the neglect of the social, economic and the political problems which faced his country — go down in defeat, we still do not seem to understand that hardware could not have saved him or his regime. Oftentimes that which masquerades as realism is increasingly proving itself removed from reality. Just what is the alternative we have chosen if the future runs its course according to the present plans? The new strategic use we are choosing will be characterized by a world bristling with time, urgent offensive weapons entailing dramatic loss of effective human control over their use, and the movement of war technology into space and into the floors of the oceans. We become the victims of our technology rather than masters of our technology. We'll increasingly find ourselves depleted of raw materials, minerals and natural resources.
Therefore, my friends, if war is to be our lot in the future — and God forbid — let me tell you, in my view, it will not be over political or ideological differences; it will be over the access to raw materials and minerals and natural resources. The oil of the Middle East is but the tip of the iceberg of what we see increasingly in the life of the superpowers as they commit more and more of their resources to war-making capabilities. So, we have the dramatic increase of the possibility of an all-out nuclear war. Don't forget this nation and the world were put on a nuclear alert in 1973. Don't forget that Secretary of State Kissinger and Secretary of State Haig, Secretary of Defense Brown and Secretary of Defense Weinberger, under Democratic and Republican administrations, have publicly stated that the United States must maintain the option of using nuclear weapons to secure our oil in the Middle East.
At the same time, we are reducing dramatically the budgetary commitments to energy conservation, research and development into the synthetic fuels and the other alternatives that would make us less dependent upon the Middle East. Yet we increase our capability to destroy the Middle East, and, inadvertently, the world, in the quest for oil. We invest millions of our best minds and our precious resources to transform the greatest nightmare imaginable into reality.
It must stop! It must stop now!
In my view, we have an instrumentality before us. That is, a resolution proposed to freeze, on a mutually agreed basis, the testing, the production and the deployment of all nuclear weapons with the Soviet Union as the first step toward a second step objective of de-escalating the arms race. In my view, this momentum has come not from the politicians, for I can recall vividly only two years ago introducing a moratorium as a reservation to the Salt II Treaty while we had it before the Senate, and not causing a blip on the political screen. As this resolution has come to life, it has not been an initiative of political leadership as much as it has been in response to what has taken place among the citizens of this nation and the world. That is the growing perception; that we are living on the brink and they want to see a change in political policy. It's happening not only in New England town halls but across this nation: in synagogues and churches, houses of worship, in academic institutions as in the case of Kansas State University. It is happening in business groups, in labor groups, in every part of the American life today. This contagious view is sweeping this country. To those who think such an idea naive, I ask in response, where is the realism in the mentality which now prevails and tells us that nuclear war is thinkable and winnable? How can it possibly be justifiable to create weapons so profoundly indiscriminate and destructive that they assure that the innocent will suffer as well as a probability of the loss of all humankind and life on the planet? Yet, we have found the will to develop missiles capable of flying over the polar cap, landing within a few hundred yards of their destination.
This is not innovation — it is a profound distortion of man's purpose on earth. Omar Bradley, a five-star general, once observed that, "We have become a nation of nuclear giants and spiritual infants. We have learned more about dying than about living. We have learned more about war than peace. We know so little," he concluded, "about the Sermon on the Mount. We must set a new course."
President Eisenhower, upon leaving office, observed that, "One of these days the people will require that the governments and the politicians stand aside and let them have peace." I believe this is the day that President Eisenhower foresaw. We are taking a bold step in that direction, with the nuclear freeze. We cannot avoid these challenges. We cannot go about our daily lives without concern for the global dilemma. All of us must feel the suffering, anticipate the crises and inject ourselves into the unfolding drama with commitment and with courage equal to that which we display when the condition is in the eye's view. If we do not develop global values and mentality, a global consciousness, we will surely come to know the price of our neglect.
Faith, hope and love are powers and weapons that are practical and pragmatic. They provide the knowledge, they provide the direction. It is but that kind of sensitivity and commitment and vision that can build within the hearts and the minds of the citizens who will help create a revolution — a spiritual revolution — not only in this country but throughout the world; an understanding of what we are as humanity and an understanding of the total profanity and blasphemy in threatening the Creator with the destruction of His creation.
For, my friends, I would say to you this is not a military issue, nor is it exclusively a political issue or an economic issue. This is fundamentally a spiritual issue and only out of spiritual renaissance will we ultimately be able to deal with it pragmatically and effectively. Therefore, I implore you to embrace this challenge for survival today.