MANY THANKS FOR SENDING ME A COPY OF YOUR VERY FINE TALK TO THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87M00539R000800960011-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 19
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 8, 2009
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: February 14, 1985
• Content Type: LETTER

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THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
WASHINGTON, THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Executive Registry
86- 360/3
February 14, 1985.
Honorable William J. Casey
The Director of Central Intelligence
Washington, D.C. 20505
Many thanks for sending me a copy of
your very fine talk to the Union League Club.
in New York in January. It is most important
that the message contained in that fine talk
be spread as widely as possible, so I hope
.you can give it again to many other groups
around the country.
Thank you again, and with best wishes,
Sincerely,
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THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
WASHINGTON, D.C. 203014
OFFICIAL BUSINESS
PENALTY FOR PRIVATE USE, $300
Honorable William J. Casey
Director of Central Intelligence
Washington, D.C. 20505
POSTAGE AND
FEES PAID
DEPARTMENT
OF DEFENSE
DOD-302
03274
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The Director of Central Intelligence
Executive Registry
-
.360/2
22 January 1985
The Honorable Robert McFarlane
Assistant to the President for
National Security Affairs
The White House
Washington, D. C. 20500
Pursuant to our discussion at lunch today, you
may find some. useful material in this talk I gave a
week or so ago in which I developed the worldwide
nature of totalitarian regimes and resistance to
them, as well as the failure of the Communist economic
model in the Third World.
Yours,
William J. Casey
Attachment:
The Union League Club speech,.
dtd 9 January 1985
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85
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The Dircctor of Central Intelligence
Washington.D.C.20505
Executive. Registry
360/1
22 January 1985
The Honorable Caspar Weinberger
Secretary of Defense
Washington, D. C. 20301
Dear Cap:
Pursuant to our discussion at lunch today, you
may find some useful material in this talk I gave a
week or so ago in which I developed the worldwide
nature of totalitarian regimes and resistance to
them, as well as the failure of the Communist economic
model in the Third World.
Yours,
William J. Casey
Attachment:
The Union League Club speech,
dtd 9 January 1985
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The Director of Central Intelligence Execu'div f;> ~ ,,,qty
Washingon.D.C.20S05
22 January 1985
The Honorable George Shultz
Secretary of State.
Washington, D. C. 20520
Dear George:
Pursuant to our discussion at lunch today, you
may find some useful material in this talk I gave a
week or so ago in which I developed the worldwide
nature of totalitarian regimes and resistance to
them, as well as the failure of the Communist economic
model in the Third World.
Yours,
William J. Casey ,
Attachment:
The Union League Club speech,
dtd 9 January 1985
These three letters sent with PDB, morning
of 23 Jan 85. jp
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REMARKS OF WILLIAM J. CASEY
DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
before
THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB
The Union League Club
New York City
Wednesday, 9 January 1985
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It is a special pleasure for me to speak at this important forum covering
public policy for almost a century and a quarter and. I'm here as a member of
this club. I hope my dues are up to date. The club seem to be doing alright
with or without my dues. I see Abraham Lincoln looking down on me and I
think he'll understand if I speak about human rights. We are challenged
today by flagrant abuses of human rights in Africa, Asia and Latin America
which are massive and laden with a horror unequaled since the Nazi holocaust
of forty years ago. The horror of the wars and brutal repression inflicted
by Marxist-Leninist regimes is compounded by the failure and devastation
wrought by the bankruptcy of Marxist-Leninist economic and political policies
wherever they prevail. All this, with its enormous implications for our
national security, and in the challenge and opportunity it presents to the
free world is widely ignored--to a degree which we can only find appalling
if we appreciate the true nature and dimension of what is happening from
Ethiopia to Afghanistan to Cambodia and to our own hemisphere. That's
what I want to lay out for you today.
Where should one start on so sweeping a phenomenon? In the aftermath of
the Geneva talks and the hope that they have laid.the groundwork for a gradual
scaling down of the nuclear monster, I would go back 20 years to a warning
Nikita Khrushchev gave the world. He proclaimed that Communism would win
not by nuclear war which might destroy the world, nor by conventional war
which might lead to nuclear war, but by national wars of liberation. In
those 20 years, the Soviet Union was transformed from a continental power to
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a global power, acquiring bases and surrogates in Cuba, Vietnam, Ethiopia,
Angola, South Yemen, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Afghanistan. Their navy has
secured the use of harbors, airports, communications stations, or port of
.call rights in some 14 nations. In a mere ten years, the number of Warsaw
Pact and Cuban troops, military advisors and technicians stationed in Third
World countries increased an incredible 500 percent. They have expanded
their reach to a number of countries near the strategic choke points of the
West--the Panama Canal, the Straits of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, the
Strait of Hormuz, the entrance to the Red Sea, and from Can Rahn Bay in
Vietnam to the sea lanes of East Asia.
Elsewhere, Marxist-Leninist policies and tactics have unleashed the
four horses of the apocalypse--famine, pestilence, war and death. Throughout
the Third World we see famine in Africa, pestilence through chemical and
biological agents in Afghanistan and Indo-China, war on three continents,
and death everywhere.
The horror of what. has been happening calls for a closer look. Apart
from a few islands of vitality, mostly in East Asia, less impressive in
Latin America and Africa, we see countries like Afghanistan, Angola, and
Cambodia kept under control by more than 300,000 Soviet, Cuban and Vietnamese
troops. We will see half a dozen other countries--Ethiopia, Nicaragua,
South Yemen, Cuba and Vietnam--controlled by committed Marxist-Leninist
governments with military and population control assistance from the East
bloc. Most of the other countries in the Third World are suffering some
degree of stagnation, impoverishment or famine.
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What do we see in the occupied countries--Afghanistan, Cambodia, Ethiopia,
Angola, Nicaragua--in which Marxist regimes have been either imposed or
maintained by external forces? In the aggregate there has occurred a holocaust
comparable to that which Nazi Germany inflicted in Europe some 40 years ago.
Over four million Afghans, more than one-quarter of the population, have had
to flee their country into Pakistan and Iran. The Helsinki Watch tells us
that they have fled because "the crimes of indiscriminate warfare are combined
with the worst excesses of unbridled state-sanctioned violence against civilians."
It cites evidence of "civilians burned alive, dynamited, beheaded; crushed
by Soviet tanks; grenades thrown into rooms where women and children have
been told to wait.. .From throughout the country come tales of death on every
scale of horror, from thousands of civilians buried in the rubble left
by fleets of bombers to a young boy's throat being dispassionately slit by
occupying soldiers." Tens of thousands of children have been taken from
their parents and sent outside of the country for reeducation.
In Cambodia, 2-3 million people, something like one-quarter of the
pre-war population, have been killed in the most violent and brutal manner
by both internal and external Marxist forces. The invasion of the country
by the Vietnamese army in 1978 and the scorched earth policy adopted then
created a famine. When international relief agencies, including the Red
Cross and the International Rescue Committee, tried to feed the starving
population by a "land bridge" of trucks coming in from Thailand, the Vietnamese
government blocked them. We estimate that some 350,000 civilians died in
that year.
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In Nicaragua, our Department of State has reported
widespread violations of basic human rights. The International
League for Human Rights has stated that the Sandinistas have forcibly relocated
up to 14,500 Indians and completely destroyed entire villages.- In late 1983,
some 200 members of one of the largest non-Marxist political parties, the
Democratic Conservative Party, were in jail for political activities. Censorship
is extensive, opposition leaders have been prevented from traveling abroad,
people in the cities are organized block-by-block and kept under the scrutiny
and control of a system of neighbor informers based on the Cuban system.
Angola is an economic basket case as a Marxist government is kept in
power by the presence of 30,000 Cuban troops. In all these countries the
indigenous army formed by the Marxist government suffers large and continuing
desertions to the resistance and is almost entirely ineffective.
In Ethiopia, a Marxist military government is supported with extensive
military support from Moscow and thousands of Cuban troops as it spends
itself into bankruptcy trying unsuccessfully to extinguish opposition in its
northern provinces. By collectivizing agriculture, creating state farms and
collectives, and keeping food prices low in order to maintain urban support,
it. has exacerbated a famine which threatens the lives of millions of its
citizens. It has blocked emergency food deliveries to the hungry remote
areas, particularly those in provinces where insurgencies are active. It
has exploited the famine by using food as a weapon. In urban areas, for
example, food rations are distributed through party cells. In government-
controlled emergency feeding stations, incoming victims must be registered
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and certified by party authorities. The government is using the drought and
famine as an excuse to forceably relocate tens of thousands of victims from
northern provinces hundreds of miles to the south, without any evident efforts
to receive them in the new camps.
Cuba, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Angola, and Nicaragua,.all economic basket
cases, receive in the aggregate five to six billion dollars in military and
economic aid from the Soviet Union. This enables Vietnam to maintain the
fourth largest army in the world, Ethiopia the largest army in Africa, Cuba
the second most powerful military apparatus in the Western Hemisphere, Nicaragua
a military force larger than all its Central American neighbors put together.
There are over 100,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan, 170,000 Vietnamese
troops in Cambodia, 40,000 Cuban troops in Africa. This is worldwide
military aggression directly and by proxy. That and the horror of it is the
bad news.
The good news is that the tide has changed. Today in Afghanistan,
Angola, Cambodia, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua, to mention only the most prominent
arenas, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people are volunteers in irregular
wars against the Soviet Army or Soviet-supported regimes. Whereas in the
1960s and 1970s anti-Western causes attracted recruits throughout the Third
World, the 1980s have emerged as the decade of freedom fighters resisting
Communist regimes. In many places, freedom has become as exciting and
revolutionary as it was here in America over 200 years ago.
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Despite this reversal of momentum, the Communists continue to come on
strong to consolidate the positions they have established. They are spending
close to $8 billion a year to snuff out freedom in these countries.
It is not necessary to match this in money, manpower or military weapons.
Oppressed people want freedom and are fighting for it. They need only modest
support and strength of purpose from nations which want to see freedom prevail
and which will find their own security impaired if it doesn't.
The Communists have this strength of purpose but not the means to
consolidate the far off positions they have established if the local resistance
can count.on durable support. In Afghanistan, Communist strategy is to keep
at bay and grind down the resistance, to isolate it from the mass of the
population or drive larger numbers out of the country, and to slowly build
up a Communist civil-military infrastructure through training, indoctrination,
and cooption--counting on a perception there and abroad of inevitable victory.
In Nicaragua, they are piling in weapons to extinguish the armed resistance,
cracking down on the political opposition and pushing negotiations to cut
off outside support and influence in order to buy time to consolidate their
first base on the American mainland.
Now let me turn to what's happening in the unoccupied Third World
countries. There, too, the Marxist economic model has failed. Third World
leaders have become disillusioned with Marxist-style economics. They have
discovered that Communist countries supply only meager amounts of economic
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aid and are unable to offer significant markets for Third World goods.
Last year, Moscow's commercial trade with the Third World, was less than that
of South Korea!
The Communist model of tight, centralized control is the major cause of
the economic stagnation in many countries. The. state-owned industries became
highly inefficient, while collectivization of agriculture lowered the incentive
to produce food and increased migration to already over-burdened cities.
Many Third World countries have found themselves increasingly dependent on
imported grain. In fact, like Russia itself, some Third World countries
that once were grain exporters now find themselves buying. grain abroad.
The contrast between North and South Korea as well as the experience of
newly industrialized economies such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and
Brazil have not been lost on Third World leaders. Both North and South
Korea share a common cultural heritage, indeed both share a small peninsula.
Yet from 1976 to 1983, South Korea's GDP grew some 7 percent a year while
North Korea's *growth. was a paltry 1.7 percent. Export-led growth in the
newly industrialized countries have raised their per capita Gross National
Product to $2,400, more than three times the average of the rest of the
Third World.
The experience of the Third World in the last 30 years indicates that
while elements of economic progress cannot be easily pinpointed, the private
sector is the crucial link. . Only private initiative can marshal the
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entrepreneurial resources necessary for sustained growth. Third World
countries need an economic environment that rewards individual's for their
hard work and their creativity.
They need to give the same fair treatment to foreign and domestic
investment. Foreign investment brings more to a developing nation than just
money. It brings technology, training, management, skills, and marketing
links. Foreign assistance should be used to supplement domestic savings.
We have seen that too much reliance on foreign assistance breeds dependency.
Trade must also be developed. Third World countries need exchange rates
that favor exporters rather than importers.
There are signs that many Third World countries are beginning to reassess
their economic policies. Investment barriers in some. places are beginning
to be eased. A growing number of countries are making innovative use of
export processing zones and joint ventures.
Public perceptions toward government regulatory practices and public
employment are also changing. State-owned enterprises have been turned over
to private firms in.: Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Zaire, The Philippines,
Jamaica, and Chile. Free markets have sprung up in China and Algeria.
Farmers in China now sign contracts with the state on what they will produce
and market their surplus freely. This has been a economic boon to the countryside
where for the past three years production has jumped over 30 percent and
rural income has climbed rapidly. State farms have been dismantled in
Mozambique, Mali, and Zambia. Bangladesh is turning from government to
private channels to distribute fertilizer.
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"Second economies" are springing up and beginning to be recognized as
helpful to economic development and also as a cushion during hard times. In
Peru, where it takes scores of permits to do business, a second "freer"
economy has grown to the point that it is nearly 50 percent larger than the
legal economy.
This changing climate presents significant economic opportunities for
the United States. We can help by promoting small-scale enterprises within
the Third World. Third World countries have often ignored the beneficial
impact of small businesses and even cottage industries. Yet these businesses
help achieve government goals through industrial decentralization, employment
generation, and income redistribution in rural areas. Small-scale,
domestically-oriented entrepreneurs help create a critical mass in terms of
economic progress. Entrepreneurs flourished in many West African countries
until government policies dampened their efforts. Likewise, Central America,
especially El Salvador, was fertile ground for beginning entrepreneurs until
their gains were set back by political turmoil.
In order to make the most of this increasingly important evolutionary
and grass roots development process, we need to reorder economic aid programs
so that more assistance reaches the small-scale entrepreneur and the flow of
private capital, technology and skill to less developed countries is stimulated.
We can also use foreign capital to-help state enterprises become more
efficient and find ways to relinquish some functions to the private sector;
we can strengthen our trade, finance and investment links to less developed
countries based upon a growing mutuality of economic interest.
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The forces at play here have security implications as well. They can
strengthen the West's position relative to that of the Communist Bloc in the
Third World. Soviet domestic economic and foreign financial constraints
over the next ten years will make Moscow even less able to compete in
nonmilitary sectors. At the same time, Western security interests will
often coincide with opportunities for economic support, and security assistance
can reinforce the willingness and ability of lesser developed countries to
bring in and develop capital, technology and needed skills.
I don't want to leave you with the impression that all the problems and
threats we find around the world stem from Moscow or even from Marxist-Leninist
doctrines. In Africa, not only Marxist Ethiopia but all across Sub-Saharan
Africa, at least 14 million people, possibly more, face-permanent disability
and even death from famine during this year. The whole civilized world
faces a scourge of international terrorism. These perils are so imminent
and severe that they cry out for coherent international action.
We have launched the "African Hunger Relief Initiative" to relieve
famine in several African countries. Our country does not have the food
resources to meet African aid requirements fully but with other Western
countries enough food can be pulled together. However, African ports and
poor ground transportation can't distribute all the food that is required.
It will take Western equipment, technical assistance and air transport to
meet the needs of millions of people living in rural and remote locations.
It can be done. but it will take leadership and a degree of cohesion and
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cooperation which Western nations with their legislative and budget limitations
find it difficult to achieve. But the need cries for all-out action to work
through the necessary procedural steps as early this year as possible.
The continent-wide African food crisis will continue into 1986 and
beyond. Large populations will continue at risk because of declining
agricultural production, continuing civil wars and continuing failure to
achieve agricultural reform and development. We have the knowledge and
technical ability to restore African food productivity. Western nations
generally agree on the urgency of improvements in agricultural pricing,
elimination of state controlled marketing boards and collectivized agriculture,
as well as restructuring economic priorities in favor of food producers
instead of urban populations.
The several threads of our current policy such as pressing for meaningful
reforms from recipient governments, offering new forms and amounts of assistance,
and moving quickly could all be brought together in a major, coordinated
rescue effort. We have here an opportunity not only to save many lives but
to generate a new wave of progress which would demonstrate for all peoples
the fundamental superiority of free market policies and practices over statist
models. A dramatic and effective response to the food crisis could serve
to galvanize our efforts to generally reorient Western foreign assistance
programs toward the free enterprise development approaches President`Reagan
outlined at Cancun in 1982.
11
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Similarly, international terrorism calls for concerted action. We face
here a new weapons system which is dissolving the boundary between war and
peace. We've seen it move from plastic charges to assassinations, to highjacking,
to car bombs, and we worry about nuclear and biological terrorism. This
terrorism has a home in North Korea, Iran, Libya, Bulgaria. It is increasingly
used as a foreign policy instrument of sovereign states. This weapons system,
this foreign policy instrument must not be allowed to work. The implications
are too ominous.
American citizens and installations abroad are the primary targets.
Qadhafi recently assigned his most radical advisors to increase Libya's
capabilities for terrorist operations in Latin America, to strengthen leftist
militants and to promote anti-US actions there. He clearly intends to launch
a more aggressive effort to undermine US interests in this hemisphere.
Today there is no more urgent task for statesmanship than to develop an
effective way to check rampant terrorism through improved security, intelligence
gathering, retaliation and preemption against specific targets, and by imposing
political isolation and economic squeeze on states sponsoring terrorism. To
be effective the response to terrorism must be a concerted one on the part
of all civilized and peace-loving states. We got together to develop defenses
against airplane highjacking in the seventies. We are already late in
achieving international cooperation against today's more widespread and
virulent international terrorism.
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There's no time left to deal with the enormous burden of debt, or rapidly
growing population straining resources. But I would conclude by re-emphasizing
that none of these problems can be handled unless more advanced countries
step up to counter politically motivated violence and to re-energize
constructive economic forces in what promises in the years.ahead to be the
major battleground between those who want to see freedom prevail and those
who want to extinguish it.
Thank you.
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