The Vision Shared Uniting Our Family, Our Country, Our World The Republican Platform - 1992 UNITING OUR WORLD - PART 2 - AMERICA'S SECURITY Because America won the Cold War, our homes and neighborhoods are more secure than they have been for half a century. Our children are safer. The greatest peace dividend is peace itself. For it, we thank God. Victory was never inevitable. It was won in blood and treasure, over five decades. by the American peopleÑfrom the military on the front lines to the taxpayers sustaining the forces of freedom. It was also secured, and the course of mankind profoundly changed for the better, because two successive Republican Presidents, Ronald Reagan and George Bush, were dedicated to peace through strength. "Peace through strength" was more than a slogan. It was the calculated Republican plan for, first, the survival and. then, the triumph, of America. But freedom did not come cheaply, and the new world we celebrate today required great sacrifice. In 1981 we inherited from Jimmy Carter and anti-defense Democrats a crippled military: demoralized, underfunded, ill-equipped. Republicans told thc truth to the American people; they heeded our call to arms. We restored our Armed Forces to their proper place in both the budget and the pride of the Nation. Our men and women in uniform today are thc equals of the finest soldiers, sailors, and airmen who ever wore the uniform of our country. Like earlier generations in I 9 I 8 and I 945, they won a great victory. Now, as in the aftermath of those earlier conflicts, comes the difficult task of reducing both the size and cost of defense without letting down America's guard. In the past, terrible mistakes were made, and we paid dearly for them when war came to Korea. We will not allow that to happen again. AMERICA CHALLENGED. The greatest danger to America's security is here at home, among those who would leave the Nation unprepared for the new realities of the post-Cold War world. The ruthless demagogues in rogue regimes are real; and so are the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons they seek. The danger of nuclear proliferation is real, especially with the dispersal of nuclear know-how after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. That is why the Republican Party, whose leaders like Dan Quayle insisted upon fielding a new Patriot missile in the 1980s, now calls for a new generation of defense against the Scuds of tomorrow. Rather than admit their mistakes of the past, the same liberal Democrats who sought to disarm America against the Soviet threat now compound their errors with a new campaignÑhalf audacity, half mendacityÑto leave the Nation unprotected in a still dangerous world. Republicans call for a controlled defense drawdown, not a freefall. That is why President Bush proposes to carefully reduce defense spending over the next four years by an additional $34 billion, including $18 billion in outlays, with a 25 percent reduction in personnel. He has already eliminated over 100 weapon systems. Around the world, American forces are coming home from the frontiers of the Cold War. More than ~0 overseas bases are being closed or realigned. Yet U.S. forces retain the ability to meet the challenge of another Desert Storm with equal success. U.S. defense spending already has been reduced significantly. Five years ago, it was more than a quarter of the federal budget. By 1997 it will be less than a sixth. Spending on defense and intelligence, as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product, will be the lowest it has been since before World War II. Yet any defense budget, however lean, is still too much for the Democrats. They want to start by cutting defense outlays over the next four years by nearly $60 billion beyond the President's cuts, throwing as many as one million additional Americans out of work. And this may be just the beginning, as the Democrats use the defense budget as a bottomless piggybank to try to beat swords into pork barrels. This is folly. It would take us back to the "hollow military" of the Carter era. Once American defenses are allowed to decay, they cannot be rebuilt overnight. Effective arsenals, like effective leaders, require years of patient development. And our greatest asset of all, the people on whom our security depends, deserve a constant long-term investment in their quality, morale, and safety. Republicans pledge to provide it. AMERICA SECURE. Because the U.S. will rely on a smaller force of offensive nuclear weapons to deter aggression in the post-Cold War era, we will maintain the triad of land, sea, and air-based strategic forces. We will continue to test the safety, reliability, and effectiveness of our nuclear weapons. With a smaller military, modernization of conventional forces is more important than ever. Desert Storm showed the importance of "force multipliers" like smart munitions, stealth technology, and night-fighting capabilities. We will upgrade existing weapons and selectively procure those that hold the promise of dramatic forward leaps in capability. Under no circumstances will we yield our technological superiority. We must remain ready to defend American citizens and interests wherever they may be threatened. Essential to that readiness is maintenance of a strong, global navy and modernization of vital airlift and sealift capacity. We remain committed to combating terrorism in all its forms wherever it threatens U.S. citizens or interests. Republicans will preserve the Nation's access to space for defense, as well as for other purposes, and ensure that space technology does not fall into dangerous hands. Transformed by the collapse of Communism, our Strategic Defense Initiative is now designed to provide the U. S. and our allies with global defenses against limited ballistic missile attacks. SDI is the greatest investment in peace we could ever make. This system will be our shield against technoterrorism. Russia has agreed to be our partner in it, sharing early warning information and jointly moving forward to stop those who would rain death upon the innocent. We will use missile defenses to assure threatened nations that the~ do not need to acquire ballistic missiles of their own. We will move beyond the ABM Treaty to deploy effective defenses with the goal of someday eliminating, not merely reducing, the threat of nuclear holocaust. We support efforts to reduce armaments, both conventional and otherwise, but the most effective arms control of all over the long run is democracy. Free nations do not attack one another. That is why the promotion of democracy on every continent is an essential part of the Republican defense agenda. MANAGING THE PEACE. A new era in defense requires new approaches to management, to get more out of every dollar in a shrinking budget. That calls for dramatically different ways of doing business. For example, President Bush's reforms in defense management and acquisition already mean massive savingsÑ$70 billion through 1997Ñwithout sacrificing combat capability. Our Armed Forces will still depend on our superb industrial base for everything from belt buckles to submarines. We cannot lose that engineering and manufacturing capability. This is especially true of the high technology, demonstrated in Desert Storm, that made our enemies realize they had been left behind in the race for the future. We therefore pledge to maintain America's technological lead, preserve its defense industrial base, and maintain robust levels of investment in research and development. We will attack the problem of waste in the military, especially at its root in the pork barrel politics of Capitol Hill. A Republican Congress will end the costly micromanagement of defense programs and reduce the number and scope of oversight committees. We will urge the Department of Defense to encourage a broader constituency for saving and to continue genuine procurement reforms based on performance rather than unreasonable regulations imposed by the Democrat Congress. We will continue the successful effort to eliminate redundancy and streamline all facets of defense management. We applaud the President's efforts to assist all individuals and communities adversely affected by the ongoing defense builddown, with more than 30 defense adjustment programs already in place and over $7 billion committed to the effort in just the next two years. THE MEN AND WOMEN OF DEFENSE. Republicans created the all-volunteer Army and we hail its success. We pledge to keep faith with the men and women volunteers and with their families, for they are the backbone of the Nation's defense. We oppose Democrat efforts to bring back the draft, whether directly or through the subterfuge of compulsory domestic service. The Armed Forces are a color-blind meritocracy, a model for the rest of our society. Its enlistees should receive preference in federal education and retraining programs. We applaud the advancement of women in the military and single out for special recognition the outstanding contribution of women in Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm. However, we oppose liberal Democrat attempts to place women in combat positions just to make an ideological point. Unlike the Democrat Party and its candidate, we support the continued exclusion of homosexuals from the military as a matter of good order and discipline. The Department of Defense will not be an exception to our assertion of family values. Republicans will not tolerate sexual harassment or misconduct toward any individual in the ranks. We demand both its prevention and its punishment. To drive home that point, we urge a halt to the sale, in military facilities, of sexually explicit materials. We call for greater consideration of the needs of families when parents are called to duty. We must ensure that all of the various benefits, including medical, that were promised to the men and women who chose to make the military and the defense of their Nation a career are fulfilled even upon retirement. In the Republican tradition of support for America's veterans, we proposed and created a Department of Veterans Affairs so their concerns would be represented at the Cabinet table. We affirm our support for veterans preference in federal employment and for sufficient funding to maintain the integrity of the veterans hospital and medical care system. We strongly endorse programs to meet the needs of unemployed veterans. INTELLIGENCE. Desert Storm reminded us that our intelligence community is a national asset of critical importance to our security. Assuring the availability of timely and reliable information on regional threats and unrest, drug trafficking, terrorism. technology transfer, proliferation, and a host of other issuesÑthis is one of our highest national priorities in the post-Cold War world. U.S. policymakers also must have the best possible understanding of international trade, investment, industrial, financial, and other developments that affect our economic security. We must and will maintain the full range of our traditional intelligence capabilities, including covert action, to ensure our security in a dangerous and unpredictable world. We reject the Democrat candidate's proposal to cripple U.S. intelligence and decry the deep spending cuts to the intelligence budget sponsored by Democrats in Congress. PROVEN LEADERSHIP. George Bush has been the most important architect of Western aspirations and designs for the challenging world we are now entering. His record is clear. President Bush has shown he understands how to lead in this new era, where the preeminent position of the United States offers new opportunities to build an international consensus on key issues. President Bush, with experienced Republican leadership, has proven he knows how to place our Nation at the center of effective coalitions where our power is multiplied. The test of international leadership is on the field, not in a playbook. The Oval Office is no place for on-the-job trainingÑnot in carrying out the Presidential duty to protect and defend our Nation, not in managing the arsenal of the supreme nuclear power. There are those who talk and those who perform. George Bush has clearly performed for America, making the right calls in a series of tough decisions that helped transform the world. Now that we have won the Cold War, we must secure the peace that follows. History has shown that the years following conflict are often criticalÑ where the choices made can either lay the foundation for lasting peace or sow the seeds of future war. In this period of high hopes and great challenges ahead, the Nation needs the tested and experienced leadership of President Bush and the Republican Party.