76-13-B5

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Strategy I

Transcript Some months ago American Cause, a bipartisan, tax-exempt , political education organization directed by former Senator George Murphy, sent out a warning authored by a former editor with FORTUNE magazine, C.J.V. Murphy, and James Angelton, former chief of counterintelligence for the C.I.A. Their warning is even more timely today and we should be grateful to American Cause for making it available. They asked these questions: QUOTE -- "Do Soviet bloc aims and use of power imperil American security and, if so, what is the nature of the threat? If the danger is real, what should our defense posture be? Can we accept military inferiority? Shall we settle for parity or superiority? Are alliances essential? Are we prepared to demonstrate that the American leadership can be counted upon in a crisis? If the danger is real and must be met with allies, what new direction and stimulus should be imparted to our strategic policies to restore our deterrence to aggression?"-- UNQUOTE. These questions aren't new. They were first faced by President Harry Truman in 1950. In August of 1949, our monopoly on nuclear weapons had ended. The Soviet Union had the bomb. In April of 1950, the President was handed a very timely National Security Council paper to be called NSC 68. Only five years had passed since World War II and Stalin had gathered in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania and implanted dictatorships over the countries of Eastern Europe. In two months, he would send the North Koreans against Americans and South Korea and launch a new and bloody war. NSC 68 said, -- QUOTE -- "The Soviet Union, animated by a new, fanatic faith antithetical to our own, seeks to impose its authority over the rest of the world. It calls for the complete subversion or forcible destruction of the machinery of government and the structure of society of non-communist nations by means, both violent and non-violent, and by infiltration and intimidation." -- UNQUOTE. Declaring that even then the Soviet Union had armed forces far in excess of those needed for defense, the paper called for the United States to have overwhelming atomic capability and conventional forces sufficient to make us not altogether dependent on nuclear weapons. NSG 68 said, QUOTE -- "No moral restraints, only calculations of practicality, would govern the Kremlin's decision whether to resort to a surprise attack -- including nuclear." -- UNQUOTE. Then these points were made, -- QUOTE -- "The Kremlin recognizes us as the only threat to its aims of world domination. We must realize the cold war (which rewriters of history today would have us believe was only imaginary) is a real war and the survival of the free world is at stake. With sacrifice and discipline we and our allies would have to achieve a rapid, sustained build up of economic policy and military strength. Without superior strength, a policy of containment is no more than a bluff." -- UNQUOTE. And finally, this statement, -- QUOTE-- "We stand in greater danger of defeat from lack of will than from any mistakes likely to flow from a show of purp9se. No nation ever saved its freedom by disarming in the hopes of placating an enemy." -- UNQUOTE. Those were the findings and recommendations given to Harry Truman 27 years ago. I'll carry on with this tomorrow. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.		Details Batch Number 76-13-B5 Production Date 05/04/1977 Book/Page RihoH-110 Audio Youtube? No
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