1999 (52 page)

We must therefore reject the new isolationist agenda of withdrawing from Europe, curtailing our nuclear guarantee to our allies, erecting a wall of protectionist tariffs, cutting off support to freedom fighters, and retreating from the battle of ideas. In the superpower rivalry, to the extent that the United States prevails, the world will be safe for free nations. To the extent that the Soviet Union prevails, the world will be unsafe for free nations. Soviet-style tyranny survives by expanding. Liberty will expand by surviving. But to expand, it must first survive.

We must continue to assume the burden of leadership not just for the sake of others but also for our own sake. De Gaulle wrote, “France is never her true self except when she is engaged in a great enterprise.” This is true for all nations. It is true for individuals. But it is particularly true for America. Only if we commit ourselves to be an active force for good in the world can America keep faith with its founding principles. Only if we commit ourselves to take part in the great enterprise of shaping the future of human civilization can we be true to ourselves.

In the twenty-first century, man will remake the world. We must play a central role in this great enterprise. We will remake the world materially through an explosion of technological innovation. We must try to remake the world politically through a strategy to achieve real peace. At the same time, we must not fail to address ourselves to the spiritual dimension of man.

Advances in science will transform the material world in the twenty-first century. It is estimated that 90 percent of all scientific knowledge has been developed in the last three decades. That knowledge will double by the turn of the century. In the years beyond, science will advance at an exponential rate. We are on the verge of an explosion of knowledge so tremendous that in its wake literally nothing in the world will remain the same.

In the years beyond 1999, we will see whole new industries develop and revolutionize our lives. Chemical fuel cells will enable us to build electric cars that can travel over a thousand miles without recharging. Superconductors will transform the transmission and production of electricity. Synthetic-fuel technology will create a permanent oil glut. We will conquer the problems of the fusion nuclear reactor and thereby develop an inexhaustible form of clean energy. Our descendants in the twenty-first century will look back and wonder what the energy crisis was all about.

We will see great advances in medical technology. In biotechnology, we will develop reliable artificial human organs for transplants. We will invent ways to regenerate damaged brain and nerve tissue. We will devise substances to lubricate arthritic joints. We will build machines that can scan inside the human body to diagnose problems and illnesses. Through DNA research, we will eradicate scores of diseases, perhaps even cancer and AIDS. For our descendants, life spans of 100 years will no longer be unusual.

We will be able finally to solve the problems of world hunger and poverty. We will see DNA researchers create new strains of crops that produce greater yields, that make more efficient use of sunlight, that resist disease and insects, and that thrive in poor soil. Famine will exist only in the history books. Futurist Herman Kahn predicted that the per-capita income of the world, which was
$200 when our country was founded and which is about $2,000 today, will grow to $20,000 in the twenty-first century.

We will see a continuing revolution in computers. We will perfect the voice-operated word processor. We will increase the speed of computers by whole orders of magnitude at a time. We will create artificial intelligence—computers that can not only execute complex calculations but also think creatively. We will see robot technology take over traditional manufacturing industries. In just twenty years, a computer as small as a cigar box will be able to store the equivalent of ten Libraries of Congress. And that will be child's play compared with the technology that we will develop later in the century.

These are just a few of the changes we can anticipate—and they will be dwarfed by those that cannot yet be foreseen. America needs to stay at the cutting edge of the technological revolution. To do so, we must enhance our competitiveness in the global economic system. Our business leaders must start to think about the next century rather than being obsessed only with the profit figures of the next quarter. Our educators must become serious about creating a first-rate school system at every level. Our political leaders must resist the protectionist impulse, for building tariff walls is the refuge of weak and declining powers.

We must also overcome the antitechnology syndrome of the 1960s. This is particularly true in the area of nuclear power. Anti-nuclear lobbyists have made building a nuclear power plant impossible. They claim to be concerned for the danger to the environment. But the fact is that nuclear power is the cleanest form of energy. Moreover, unlike the Soviet power plant at Chernobyl, Western nuclear plants have multiple safety systems. In addition, we will see advances in technology create nuclear power plants that are inherently safe, that will shut down the nuclear chain reaction automatically if the reactor temperature becomes too hot. In nuclear power, we have seen the future—and it works.

If America is to capitalize on the tremendous promise of the next century, we must reject the call of the antitechnologists. If we accept the advice of these modern-day Luddites, with their mindless opposition to scientific progress, we will condemn America to the status of a technological backwater.

We must also rededicate ourselves to the exploration of space. We will exploit space for practical purposes, such as communications satellites and space stations with laboratories for creating medical vaccines and flawless industrial crystals in perfect weightlessness. But we must do more than that. We must renew our spirit of exploration. Shortly after the Russians launched Sputnik in 1957, one of America's premier scientists was briefing the National Security Council on what we could gain from the exploration of space. He pointed to a chart which listed ten possibilities, including such items as weather, communications, and medical research. Then he turned to President Eisenhower and said, “Mr. President, probably the most important discovery we will make is not on this chart.” No better case could be made for space exploration. After all, those who discovered America thought they were going to find the East Indies.

In the twentieth century, man landed on the moon; in the twenty-first, he will walk on Mars and then reach beyond our solar system, to the stars. We must be involved if only to take part in the thrill of the adventure and the challenge of the enterprise. In these great endeavors, we can ennoble the American spirit, we can unite ourselves in the pursuit of a common goal, and we can take pride in achieving together what none of us could have achieved alone.

As we transform the material world, we must try to remake the world politically. In the twentieth century, our technological progress outstripped our political progress. We must not let this happen in the next century, because our material progress has reached the point where failure to match it with political progress can lead to our total destruction. In the twenty-first century, if we are to maximize material progress not only for ourselves but for all mankind, we must find ways to match our scientific advances with greater political progress in reducing the chances of war and sharing the benefits of peace.

Compared with creating new and better inventions, our political tasks will be infinitely more difficult. We can expect massive changes in the political and economic balance of power in the
twenty-first century. While the United States and the Soviet Union will remain the dominant powers at the turn of the century, all bets are off thereafter. At present growth rates, Japan will surpass the United States in GNP, and it will be as strong militarily as it chooses to be politically. China will become an economic and military superpower. If Western Europe matches its economic prowess with political unity, it too will join the ranks of the superpowers. We will no longer be able to lead by virtue of our superior economic and military power. Instead, we will have to lead by virtue of superior political vision.

For the balance of this century and the beginning of the next, the dominant players on the world stage will be the United States and the Soviet Union. We will see this great rivalry—so insightfully foreseen by Tocqueville—reach its climax. We will face two key questions: Can we avoid nuclear war? Can we avoid defeat without war? We must work to find ways to avoid seeing the scientific capacities that can produce unlimited progress used to produce unlimited destruction. We must at the same time defend our system and our values, not only for ourselves, but also for our posterity.

One of the most promising developments has been Gorbachev's recognition of the need to deal with the desperate internal problems of the Soviet Union. He is admitting that in important respects the Soviet system has failed. He knows that his superior military power—which was created at tremendous expense—cannot be used against his main adversaries without courting catastrophe. He knows that his internal economic problems constrain his capacity to compete for influence around the world. He knows that Moscow's steady expansionism into contiguous territories has now run up against formidable opponents on all fronts. He knows that the problems he faces will require at least a generation to solve. He needs a generation of peace—or to put it more precisely, a generation without war.

Our task is to formulate an agenda to exploit those twenty years for the cause of freedom and real peace. We must first of all reject the counsel of the new negativists in our great universities, in the news media, in big business, and in politics. One of the most disturbing aspects of their approach is the new isolationism. Unlike
the old isolationists, those afflicted with the new strain of this deadly virus oppose not only American involvement abroad but also defense programs at home. They are obsessed with the twin fears of another Vietnam and of nuclear war and are incapable of facing up to the threat posed by the Soviet Union. Whenever Western interests are at risk, they can only tell you how not to do it. Their knee-jerk response to a crisis is to turn it over to the United Nations—which means, in effect, to do nothing.

If we have only twenty years before a reinvigorated Soviet Union turns its sights to renewed expansion, we have no time to lose. We must think boldly and act boldly. We must seek to shape the world; but we should not seek to remake the world in our image. We must recognize that a system which works for us may not work for others with different backgrounds. We must reject the fashionable but intellectually sterile doctrine of moral relativism. We deeply believe in our values. But one of the fundamental tenets of those values is that we will not try to impose them on others. Only by example and never by force will our values be extended to others.

We must restore the credibility of the U.S. strategic deterrent by reducing its vulnerability to a Soviet first strike. We must bolster our conventional forces for key theaters—like Europe, Korea, and the Persian Gulf—so that Soviet leaders will never believe they could win a war with conventional forces alone.

We must take advantage of Moscow's flagging economic strength to improve our competitive position around the world, fortifying our friends and improving ties with those we wish to be our friends. We must continue to build our cooperative relations with the other major power centers in the world: Western Europe, Japan, and China. We should help those who are fighting to prevent a communist victory and those who are trying to overturn a communist victory. We should also work to improve living conditions in other countries in order to undercut the political appeal of communist slogans. We should make it clear that even if there were no communist threat we would devote our efforts to reducing the poverty, misery, disease, and injustice that plague most of the people in the world. By investing in progress abroad, we are ensuring progress at home.