- On the Tenth Anniversary of -
- President Reagan's Announcement of the SDI -
This is former presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche
speaking.
As one of the key figures among the few who know the true
story behind President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, it
is my pleasure and duty to remind people on this tenth
anniversary of President Reagan's televised announcement, that
that announcement was one of the most important events of the
past 50 years.
It was an announcement which changed the course of history,
an announcement which led, inevitably, as some of us saw back
then, to either new cooperation between the United States and
Moscow along the lines President Reagan proposed, or else the
collapse of the Soviet empire for economic reasons within about
five years.
This was a decision by the President to adopt this policy
and to promulgate it, made against the strongest opposition from
within leading circles within the United States and even within
his own administration--even within his own White House
organization. It was a decision of courage which changed the
course of history for the better, which obviated the risk of
thermonuclear war for that period.
Unfortunately, following the President's departure from
office, his successor, George Bush, together with Margaret
Thatcher, bungled the greatest opportunity for peace in history,
by failing to realize the importance of carrying out the
principles of economic-development cooperation embedded in the
original Strategic Defense Initiative proposal as I outlined
these terms in pre-1983 back channel negotiations and discussions
with the Soviet government.
Bush and Thatcher will go down as the greatest political
failures of the late twentieth century because of their bungling
of this opportunity with their fads of radical monetarism,
radical free trade, with their shock therapy proposals, and with
their collaboration with the Gorbachov regime to unleash the
British-U.S. assets--or shall we say the Kissinger Associates
assets--around Milosevic in attacks on the southern flank of the
very Central Europe on which eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union depended for the mediation of serious, effective economic
cooperation.
We must take note of that unpleasant fact on this
anniversary date, this tenth anniversary of President Reagan's
brave and important announcement of the SDI, because once again
the time has come for similar bold initiatives.
This time the ball is in the lap of President Clinton; and
one can hope that the President will listen to the advice of some
of those who supported President Reagan in the making of the SDI
announcement, that a similar brilliant, imaginative initiative
will come from President Clinton even over the objections of some
of his closest advisers and supporters.
We must change the situation as we attempted to change the
situation with the SDI; and if President Clinton can follow and
succeed President Reagan in that respect, he will have in history
a successful presidency.
