Presidential Candidate Bill Clinton's Foreign Policy Association Speech, New York, April 1, 1992 (Excerpt)

We need to respond forcefully to one of the greatest security challenges of our time: to help the people of the former Soviet bloc demilitarize their societies and build free political and economic institutions. We have a chance to engage the Russian people in the West for the first time in their history.

The stakes are high. The collapse of communism is not an isolated event; it's part of a worldwide march toward democracy whose outcome will shape the next century. For ourselves and for millions of people who seek to live in freedom and prosperity, this revolution must not fail.

I know it isn't popular today to call for foreign assistance of any kind. It's harder when Americans are hurting, as millions are today. But I believe it is deeply irresponsible to forgo this short term investment in our long term security. Being penny wise and pound foolish will cost us more in the long run in higher defense budgets and lost economic opportunities.

Supporting a Democratic Russia

What does a democratic Russia mean to Americans? Lower defense spending. A reduced nuclear threat. A diminished risk of environmental disasters. Fewer arms exports and less proliferation. Access to Russia's vast resources through peaceful commerce. And, the creation of a major new market for American goods and services.

As I said at Georgetown [University] last December, "We owe it to the people who defeated communism, the people who defeated the coup. And we owe it to ourselves...Having won the Cold War, we must not now lose the peace."

Already, chaos has threatened to engulf Russia. Its old economy lies in ruins. Staples remain scarce, and lawless behavior is spreading. The immediate danger is not a resurgence of communism, but the emergence of an aggressively nationalistic regime that could menace the other republics and revive the old political and nuclear threats to the West.

Boris Yeltsin has embarked on a radical course of economic reform; freeing prices, selling off state properties, and cutting wasteful public subsidies. Hopes for a democratic Russia ride on these efforts, which must produce positive results before economic deprivation wears down the people's patience.

I believe America needs to organize and lead a long-term Western strategy of engagement for democracy. From Russia to Central Europe, from Ukraine to the Baltics, the U.S. and our allies need to speed the transition to democracy and capitalism by keeping our markets open to these countries' products, offering food and technical assistance, helping them privatize key industries, converting military production to civilian uses, and employing weapons experts in peaceful pursuits.

Make no mistake: Our help should be strictly conditioned on an unswerving commitment by the republics to comprehensive economic reform and on continued reductions in the former Soviet nuclear arsenal.

Russia faces two economic challenges. The short term challenge is to stabilize the economy and stem hyperinflation, so that Russia doesn't go the way of Weimar Germany. The long term challenge is to build a market system from the ground up--to establish private property rights, create a banking system, and modernize its antiquated capital stock, which outside the defense sector lags behind world standards.

Russia is intrinsically a rich country. What it needs is not charity but trade and investment on a massive scale. What the major financial powers can do together is help the Russians help themselves. If we do, Russia's future holds the possibility of a stronger democracy rather than a resurgent dictatorship, and a new American market rather than a new American nightmare.

We should look at this assistance not as a bailout, but as a bridge loan, much as a family gets from the bank when it buys a new house before selling off their old house. I propose that the U.S. must take the lead in putting together a bridge loan to help Russia make the transition from its old system to its new economy.

We must have no illusions: The West cannot guarantee Russia's prosperity. Even with our help, the future of Russia and the other republics is uncertain. But, we can give President Yeltsin's reforms and Russian democracy a fighting chance.

The West should establish a $6 billion fund to help stabilize the Russian ruble. Without this fund the ruble will continue to lose its exchange value, and inflation will continue to soar. America's share would be about $1 billion, in the form of a loan, not a gift. In return, Russian leaders have to agree to tough conditions. They must rein in public spending and stop excessive printing of money. A fund of this kind is like a net for acrobats: By building confidence, it reduces the chance it will ever be used.

Russia also needs to import food, medicine, and the materials required to keep the economy functioning. According to the IMF, which has just endorsed Russia's economic reform program, that country needs a minimum of $12 billion in financial assistance in 1992 to do so--primarily in the form of loans. Without this Russia faces more than a 20 percent drop in GNP in 1992, a bigger drop than America suffered in any year of the Great Depression. This assistance should be carefully aimed at those sectors where it can do the most good, and should come from the Western democracies, including Japan, and perhaps also from other countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, South Korea and Taiwan. The U.S. share of these loans would be roughly 10 percent.

Finally, it is also crucial to give Russia some breathing space for servicing its external debts, at a time when it doesn't have the money to stabilize its currency or import goods.

Taking the Political "Flak"

Let me be clear: Our nation can afford this. This is not an exorbitant price to pay for a chance to create new American markets and anchor a revitalized Russia firmly in the democratic camp. The amount of money we need is available from defense and other foreign aid savings that the end of the Cold War makes possible. If Boris Yeltsin and his economic advisors stay the course, the chances are good that Russia will be in a position to pay us back in full by the latter part of the decade. Nevertheless, passing such aid will require an act of political will by Congress and the President, and the kind of leadership from the White House we have not previously seen.

I also strongly support fulfilling the commitment America has made to our share of the IMF quota increase. Of a total increase of $60 billion, our share is 19 percent, or roughly $12 billion. But we are not talking about giving the $12 billion away. It is like a line of credit in a cooperative bank, and we earn interest on it. The quota increase was voted two years ago. It was necessary to help emerging democracies in Eastern Europe. It is all the more urgent now, with Ukraine, the Baltics, and other newly independent nations whose economic fate depends on it. Every other country in the IMF has agreed to pay their share, except the U.S. Why? Because our President has not taken the lead in persuading the Congress to authorize the necessary funds. We need a President who doesn't mind taking a little flak to seize this moment in history.

At the same time, we should encourage private American investment in the former Soviet Union. The newly independent republics, after all, are rich in human and natural resources. One day, they and Eastern Europe could be lucrative markets.

But Russia needs to do more than make the transition from state socialism to free markets. Constitutional democracy must take root firmly there as well. The popular movement for Russian democracy has been held together more by anti-communism than by a clear or common understanding of how to build a democratic society. Democracy remains an abstract and theoretical notion; there is an enormous deficit of knowledge in the former Soviet Union about the texture and dynamics of a free society.

No one on earth can fill that gap better than Americans. We need to make our engagement for Russian democracy a matter for people, not just governments. We need person-to-person contacts: a Democracy Corps, as Rep. Dave McCurdy has proposed, to send Americans over there; a crash program as others have proposed to bring tens of thousands of Russians and others here to learn how free institutions work; and a strong National Endowment for Democracy to lead the way in spreading American values. Promoting democracy is not just a task for the American government. For years, labor unions, universities, and volunteer organizations in this country have nurtured the democratic revolution around the world.

Without democratic institutions and values, economic reforms will not succeed. Our nation's greatest resource is ultimately not our dollars nor our technical expertise, but our values of pluralism and enterprise and freedom and the rule of law--and our centuries of experience in making those values work. In an era of fledgling democracies, those values can be our proudest export and our most effective tool of foreign policy.

This spring, Russia is scheduled to be admitted to the IMF and the World Bank. The lead role that such bodies will take points to a broader opportunity at this pivotal point in history; to reinvent the institutions of collective security.

U.N. Peacekeeping and Collective Security

At the outset, let me be clear: I will never turn over the security of the U.S. to the U.N. or any other international organization. We will never abandon our prerogative to act alone when our vital interests are at stake. Our motto in this era will be: together when we can; on our own where we must. But it is a failure of vision not to recognize that collective action can accomplish more than it could just a few years ago--and it is a failure of leadership not to make use of it.

The role of the United Nations during the Gulf War was a vivid illustration of what is possible in a new era. Too often in the past, the U.N. has looked like New York's own Tower of Babel--a costly debating society where Soviet client-states and others engaged in anti-American demagoguery and outrageously equated Zionism with racism. But the end of the East-West standoff opens a range of new opportunities for these institutions. Through them, we can share the burdens of making this a safer world.

For example, the U.N. has started unprecedented efforts to transform Cambodia's killing fields into a fertile place for civilian life and electoral freedom and to bring peace in Yugoslavia. The Congress should support those efforts. And we should build on the Desert Storm coalition and these new initiatives, by exploring new ideas for U.N. preventive diplomacy to head off conflicts before they break out. One such idea is a U.N. Rapid Deployment Force that could be used for purposes beyond traditional peacekeeping, such as standing guard at the borders of countries threatened by aggression; preventing mass violence against civilian populations; providing humanitarian relief; and combatting terrorism. It would not be a large standing army but rather a small force that could be called up from units of national armed forces and earmarked and trained in advance.

Together, we must also tackle problems that transcend national borders, such as threats to the earth's environment, global population growth, world trade, and weapons proliferation. We should be outraged by an indifference in the White House that could wreck the Rio Earth Summit before it has even begun. President Bush should have agreed to attend that summit long before now. The United States should lead the fight to slow global warming, instead of dragging our feet and ignoring important scientific data. We should sign a global environmental agreement to reduce a carbon dioxide emissions with specific targets and timetables.

Judging by its dogged performance in tracing down Iraq's nuclear facilities since the war, the International Atomic Energy Agency is proving to be an effective weapon against proliferation. The U.S. should lead an effort to enable the IAEA to conduct surprise inspections anywhere in a member nation, to ensure that it is keeping its commitment to refrain from building nuclear weapons. We must also work much harder than the Administration has done to make sure that the U.S. and other countries do not export dangerous nuclear materials and technology to aspiring nuclear powers. We simply cannot afford to lose the war against nuclear proliferation.

Finally, we can make these institutions more effective and sustainable by reapportioning the burden of collective security. The answer is not to shortchange our contributions to these bodies, as the President and Congress have lamentably done with the U.N. But it is also time to insist that other nations start to shoulder the burden--not just because it will reduce our expense, but because it will make these institutions more effective. We should seek to reduce our 30 percent financial share of U.N. peacekeeping operations to the 25 percent we pay for the U.N.'s regular budget. But we should also pay up--and pay up now--the past dues we owe to the U.N.

Japan and Germany should be made permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. And we should seek larger contributions from those with the greatest interest in particular efforts. For example, Japan should pay a full 30 percent of the large peacekeeping costs the U.N. will soon incur in Cambodia.

We should look to our alliances to take a more active role in the defense of their own regions. In Europe, we must maintain our ties to NATO even as the Europeans play a stronger role both within NATO and in the evolution of future security arrangements for the continent. In this hemisphere, the Organization of American States has demonstrated more leadership than the Administration in response to the coup in Haiti.

Many of the challenges we face in this new era will call for sacrifice. All of them will test our vision. Most hold more opportunity than danger for America--it we rise to meet them.

It might be convenient to delay a debate over the contours and demands of the new era until this political season is over. But history does not grind to a halt during American Presidential elections. History is calling upon our nation to decide anew whether we will lead or defer; whether we will engage or abstain; whether we will shape a new era or instead be shaped by it.

These are important choices, but they are not partisan ones. I would rather lose an issue than see America lose an opportunity. The best, boldest, and most successful moments of America's foreign policy have come when we stood together as a nation, joined not in separate parties but in common purpose.

I welcome the fact that the President--today--is announcing a program of assistance to Russia. I hope that his statement represents not only a declaration of intent, but a commitment to lead on this issue. And I tell you today, that as he does so, I will offer my support in convincing the American people and the Congress that this course is necessary for our country.

I am running for President, and I am running hard. Yet at this unique moment, just as important as our choice of national leaders is our affirmation of international leadership. That is what is at stake in 1992. After World War II, in similar circumstances, our nation proclaimed its character with an historic pledge to defend, to build, and to lead. I am confident the American people stand ready to affirm that pledge again today.

(Text provided by the Bill Clinton for President Committee. Mr. Clinton is Governor of Arkansas.)