ACHIEVING A TRULY PRO-AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

[This is an address I am delivering at the Conservative Leadership Summit conference here in Washington tomorrow, Saturday May 5.]

I am not going to begin this discussion with a litany of examples of how we don't have a pro-American foreign policy, but rather an anti-American foreign policy, examples that would go back for so many decades.

We're not going to waste our time demonstrating the obvious and focus on the past.  We'll focus on the future instead and how we can affect it for the betterment of our country.

But I will tell you just one story.

The most famous, the most defining quote of Ronald Reagan's presidency is, of course, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"  (Just as the defining quote of Bill Clinton's presidency, to be immortally remembered, is:  "It depends on what the meaning of ‘is' is.")

President Reagan's famous line in his speech at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate on June 12, 1987 is a supreme example of a truly pro-American foreign policy.  What is little known is the hysterical objection to it by the State Department at the time.

When State deleted it from the initial draft of the speechwriters', one of those speechwriters, Dana Rohrabacher, mentioned this to the National Security Council's specialist on Eastern Europe, Paula Dobriansky.  In a briefing she gave to the President on his upcoming trip, she quietly told him about the deletion, and Mr. Reagan responded, "But that's exactly what I want to say!  Have that line put back in!"

When it was, Secretary of State George Schultz objected at a Cabinet meeting.  Mr. Reagan politely said it would remain.  At the end of the meeting, Schultz stood in the doorway of the Roosevelt Room to block the President of the United States from leaving.

"Mr. President, I must insist that this overly-provocative line be deleted from your speech.  It will do grave damage to our relations with the Soviet Union," said Schultz vehemently.

Mr. Reagan kindly replied, "Well, George, I certainly appreciate how you feel about this.  But I really do have to get to another appointment."  And with that, the President had to gently but physically push the Secretary of State out of the way.

The evening of June 11, in his hotel room in Berlin, Mr. Reagan was reviewing the final draft of the speech he was to give the next day.  When he came to the place where the immortal line should be, it was not there.  It had been deleted once again.  Mr. Reagan wrote it back in with his own hand:

"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Finally, with Ronald Reagan, we had a pro-American foreign policy.  But Mr. Reagan's stated policy towards the Soviet Union – "We win, they lose" – triumphed in spite of the State Department and its professional diplomats, certainly not because of it.

So if we want a truly pro-American foreign policy, we must focus on the State Department bureaucracy.

For the tragic political truth about America today is that it is no longer a democracy, with a government run by people elected by voters.  Our government is run by unelected federal bureaucracies, to which the president – and it doesn't matter if he is Republican or Democrat – appoints a thin layer of folks at the top who quickly find out they have no control whatever over the seething horde of tenured civil servants under them.

That's what happened to George Schultz, that's what's happened to Condi Rice – what happens to almost all appointees is they become the creatures of the permanent bureaucracy.

So let's focus on the bureaucracy of Foggy Bottom, and let's indulge in a fantasy thought-experiment – that it is January 2009, that I have been called into the Oval Office for a meeting with President Fred Thompson… who asks me how to best create a pro-America State Department.

I would tell him I would do three things.

First, I would hire a small team of the smartest independent lawyers I could find to determine every policy maker and foreign service officer (FSO) who can be, by whatever legal rationale, fired without cause.  Then I would fire them. 

For those remaining, I would permanently reassign them to our greatly-enlarged embassies in the Central African Republic, Papua New Guinea, Tajikistan, and Madagascar.  Then I would offer them all early-retirement packages.

In other words, I want the entire foreign service establishment of the department gutted, as in gone, a ghost town.  No exceptions.  No arguments.  We want you out of here, all of you, so we can begin again from scratch.  In the new hiring process, old FSO's may be rehired on a selective, case-by-case basis signed off on by the Secretary personally.

New FSO's to be hired would be required to have at least a college minor in economics and/or the history of Western Civilization, with a selection preference for those from smaller colleges that still teach respect for our civilization.  An Ivy League degree would be considered a negative on their resumé.

Second, I would not pay much attention to most senators and congressmen, but focus strictly on the dozen or so folks on the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee of Appropriations. 

The State Department's budget originates and is controlled by the currently eight Democrats and five Republicans now on the House Foreign Ops Subcommittee.  (Hopefully, this ratio will flip in January '09.)

What ever combination it takes of schmoozing, arm-twisting, oppo-research, or political pressure to get a majority of these folks – just seven out of 435 – to put a chokingly tight budgetary leash on State to bring it to pro-American heel, I would do it.

Because the only thing bureaucrats really care about is their budgets.  So the only way to get them to behave is to threaten those budgets.

Third, I would create a particular educational program and require everybody in the department to complete it.  This would be a course on Civilizational Confidence.

It would teach the accomplishments of our civilization, Western Civilization, and our country, America – and it would teach that those who represent that civilization and that country to the world have a moral right to take pride in those accomplishments.

It would teach that they are expected to not apologize for our country's achievements, prosperity, and success, or be embarrassed by them.  If other countries and their representatives resent us, it is their problem, not ours.

It would give them an assignment:  to locate a Chinese diplomat who lacks civilizational confidence for his country, who apologizes for China's existence. 

After all, the greatest mass murderer in the history of mankind, Mao Tse-tung, is on their currency.  If any diplomats in the world should be ashamed of their country's history, of the Communist tyranny, of millions of political prisoners languishing in a Chinese Gulag, of millions more slaughtered and starved, of the brutal imperialist colonization of Tibet, it is they.

Yet this is an assignment that no one can complete, for no such Chinese diplomats exist.  Can anyone doubt that Chinese leaders and diplomats exude civilizational confidence, and that this is a critical factor in the economic and diplomatic success China is currently enjoying?

Conversely, it should be realized that lack of civilizational confidence on the part of America's leaders and diplomats is in large part responsible for the wave of anti-Americanism sweeping now over the globe.

The perverse irony is that America is a moral nation, a free nation with a free people, and the People's Republic of Communist China is not.  American diplomats have a moral right to civilizational confidence while China's don't.

Only if our foreign policy is based on civilizational confidence can it be pro-American. 

Our diplomats must understand:  apologies are a sign of weakness, blood in the water for the world's sharks.  Those who do not wish to understand will be enjoying their time processing visa aps in Antananarivo, Madagascar.

Those who do understand will then learn how to conduct foreign policy adopted from the motto of the Marine Corps:  "America – your best friend, your worst enemy."

Foreign policy will consequently be based on identifying the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of other countries. 

Those that are or wish to be our friends we then help strengthen their weaknesses and correct their vulnerabilities.  Those that are our enemies and wish to damage us, we implement ways to exploit their weaknesses and worsen their vulnerabilities.

Thus, for example, the Mullacracy of Iran is extremely vulnerable to internal unrest and ethnic revolt – so it should be our explicit goal to promote such unrest and revolt until the regime implodes and collapses from within.

As for such enemies as Hugo Chavez – well, his principal vulnerability is that he is not bullet-proof.

For the phenomenon of Islamofascism as a whole, this must be understood as a pathological frenzy.  All such frenzies are unstable. The list of ways to destabilize fragile fanatical minds is long. 

Is there a suitcase nuke already secretly buried in Mecca that will vaporize Islam's most sacred shrine if America suffers another 9/11?  Who knows?  Maybe.

Has an experimental biofuel made with pig fat been secretly added to the world's airline fuel supplies, spreading pig fat molecules in the atmosphere of the Middle East, so impregnating the lungs of Moslem fanatics that the doors of Islamic heaven are shut to them?  Maybe.  Could be.

I mean, these folks are fools who want to go back to the 7^th century.  Their goofy minds should be putty in our hands.

As for that world's greatest collection of kleptocrats, crooks, and dictators, the United Nations.  There's no need to withdraw.  Just inform it that as we have one vote out of 193 member nations, our contribution to the UN general budget of $2 billion will be commensurate.  Rather than paying 22% of the budget or $440 million, we'll now be paying 1/193^rd, or $10 million for our one vote.  Doesn't that sound fair?

Here's the bottom line. 

The United States of America has created more prosperity and more freedom for more people around the world than any nation in history.  The United States of America is the most successful, the most powerful, the most prosperous nation in the entire history of humanity. 

And we have the right to be proud of it.

We can only maintain that status, maintain and improve our national security, if we have the civilizational confidence to do so.  If we do not, if we elect leaders in the White House and Congress that lack such confidence in the moral worth of America, then this pinnacle of human achievement that is America will be lost.

If we elect leaders who are confident of America's moral worth and proud of it, America will triumph over its enemies – and easily – creating a freer and more prosperous world.

After all, triumph, as Ronald Reagan knew, is pro-American.

Thank you all very much.