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out of the ring, and his main aim will be to continue to focus on domestic rather the international issues.
5. Against this relatively promising background Clinton gave his third major foreign policy speech in Los Angeles on 13 August (copy attached). This was largely a repetition of his Georgetown and New York speeches which we have previously reported. The main interesting new points include:
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
Clinton was more critical of Bush than in previous speeches. Bush was stuck in a Cold War mentality and had failed to grasp the changes that had taken place in the world. He had tried unsuccessfully to prop up the status quo for instance by opposing Ukrainian independence (Clinton hopes to win support from the large Ukrainian community and other ethnic communities around the country). Bush had coddled Iraq prior to the invasion of Kuwait.
Clinton went further to emphasise the differences between his positions and those of Bush. He stressed again the importance of economics in foreign policy and repeated the idea of establishing an Economic Security Council to parallel the National Security Council. He would change the ethos of the State Department to give greater priority to economic issues. He attacked Bush for his failure to offer environmental leadership at the Rio Conference.
He promised to keep up pressure on South Africa until real democracy was establshed.
P
He again insisted that China's MFN status should be linked to progress on human rights and weapons' sales. He proposed a Radio
Free Asia.
6. The main focus of the speech was security policy. Clinton's aim was to demonstrate that he too would be prepared to use force if necessary:
(a)
(b)
As the US scaled down its military it must keep up its guard. There were two wrong headed approaches: the Administration were simply shrinking the existing Cold War force structure, while some Democrats were using defence cuts as a piggy bank to fund domestic wish lists. A Clinton Administration would instead identify the new threats to American security, define military missions to meet those threats and adapt forces to carry out those missions. He listed as potential threats the former Soviet Republics (should democracy fail), proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, historic tensions in the Korean peninsula and Middle East and the related risk of terrorist attack as well as ethnic violence in Yugoslavia and elsewhere.
The US needed to base a larger fraction of its forces in the US. Forces in Europe and Asia should be reduced, but a credible presence maintained. US forces should be more mobile. There should be additional sea lift. He supported the C17 and V22. The military should be more flexible and able to operate with diverse partners, including those with Warsaw Pact equipment.
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