Speech Transcript:

It is again my high privilege to extend personal greetings to the
members of the 85th Congress.

All of us realize that, as this new session begins, many Americans
are troubled about recent world developments which they believe may
threaten our nation's safety. Honest men differ in their appraisal of
America's material and intellectual strength, and the dangers that
confront us. But all know these dangers are real. The purpose of this
message is to outline the measures that can give the American people a
confidence--just as real--in their own security.

I am not here to justify the past, gloss over the problems of the
present, or propose easy solutions for the future. I am here to state
what I believe to be right and what I believe to be wrong; and to
propose action for correcting what I think wrong!

I. There are two tasks confronting us that so far outweigh all others
that I shall devote this year's message entirely to
them.

The first is to ensure our safety through strength. As to our
strength, I have repeatedly voiced this conviction: We now have a
broadly based and efficient defensive strength, including a great
deterrent power, which is, for the present, our main guarantee
against war; but, unless we act wisely and promptly, we could lose
that capacity to deter attack or defend ourselves.

My profoundest conviction is that the American people will say, as
one man: No matter what the exertions or sacrifices, we shall
maintain that necessary strength!

But we could make no more tragic mistake than merely to concentrate
on military strength.

For if we did only this, the future would hold nothing for the world
but an Age of Terror.

And so our second task is to do the constructive work of building a
genuine peace. We must never become so preoccupied with our desire
for military strength that we neglect those areas of economic
development, trade, diplomacy, education, ideas and principles where
the foundations of real peace must be laid.

II. The threat to our safety, and to the hope of a peaceful world,
can be simply stated. It is communist imperialism. This threat is not
something imagined by critics of the Soviets. Soviet spokesmen, from
the beginning, have publicly and frequently declared their aim to
expand their power, one way or another, throughout the world.

The threat has become increasingly serious as this expansionist aim
has been reinforced by an advancing industrial, military and
scientific establishment.

But what makes the Soviet threat unique in history is its
all-inclusiveness. Every human activity is pressed into service as a
weapon of expansion. Trade, economic development, military power,
arts, science, education, the whole world of ideas--all are harnessed
to this same chariot of expansion. The Soviets are, in short, waging
total cold war. The only answer to a regime that wages total cold war
is to wage total peace.

This means bringing to bear every asset of our personal and national
lives upon the task of building the conditions in which security and
peace can grow.

III. Among our assets, let us first briefly glance at our military
power.

Military power serves the cause of security by making prohibitive the
cost of any aggressive attack.

It serves the cause of peace by holding up a shield behind which the
patient constructive work of peace can go on. But it can serve
neither cause if we make either of two mistakes. The one would be to
overestimate our strength, and thus neglect crucially important
actions in the period just ahead. The other would be to underestimate
our strength. Thereby we might be tempted to become irresolute in our
foreign relations, to dishearten our friends, and to lose our
national poise and perspective in approaching the complex problems
ahead. Any orderly balance-sheet of military strength must be in two
parts.

The first is the position as of today. The second is the position in
the period ahead.

As of today: our defensive shield comprehends a vast complex of
ground, sea, and air units, superbly equipped and strategically
deployed around the world. The most powerful deterrent to war in the
world today lies in the retaliatory power of our Strategic Air
Command and the aircraft of our Navy. They present to any potential
attacker who would unleash war upon the world the prospect of virtual
annihilation of his own country. Even if we assume a surprise attack
on our bases, with a marked reduction in our striking power, our
bombers would immediately be on their way in sufficient strength to
accomplish this mission of retaliation. Every informed government
knows this. It is no secret.

Since the Korean Armistice, the American people have spent $225
billion in maintaining and strengthening this overall defensive
shield.

This is the position as of today.

Now as to the period ahead: Every part of our military establishment
must and will be equipped to do its defensive job with the most
modern weapons and methods. But it is particularly important to our
planning that we make a candid estimate of the effect of long-range
ballistic missiles on the present deterrent power I have described.

At this moment, the consensus of opinion is that we are probably
somewhat behind the Soviets in some areas of long-range ballistic
missile development. But it is my conviction, based on close study of
all relevant intelligence, that if we make the necessary effort, we
will have the missiles, in the needed quantity and in time, to
sustain and strengthen the deterrent power of our increasingly
efficient bombers. One encouraging fact evidencing this ability is
the rate of progress we have achieved since we began to concentrate
on these missiles.

The intermediate ballistic missiles, Thor and Jupiter, have already
been ordered into production. The parallel progress in the
intercontinental ballistic missile effort will be advanced by our
plans for acceleration. The development of the submarine-based
Polaris missile system has progressed so well that its future
procurement schedules are being moved forward markedly.

When it is remembered that our country has concentrated on the
development of ballistic missiles for only about a third as long as
the Soviets, these achievements show a rate of progress that speaks
for itself. Only a brief time back, we were spending at the rate of
only about one million dollars a year on long range ballistic
missiles. In 1957 we spent more than one billion dollars on the
Atlas, Titan, Thor, Jupiter, and Polaris programs alone.

But I repeat, gratifying though this rate of progress is, we must
still do more!

Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the
vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.

What I have just said applies to our strength as a single country.
But we are not alone. I have returned from the recent NATO meeting
with renewed conviction that, because we are a part of a world-wide
community of free and peaceful nations, our own security is
immeasurably increased.

By contrast, the Soviet Union has surrounded itself with captive and
sullen nations. Like a crack in the crust of an uneasily sleeping
volcano, the Hungarian uprising revealed the depth and intensity of
the patriotic longing for liberty that still burns within these
countries.

The world thinks of us as a country which is strong, but which will
never start a war. The world also thinks of us as a land which has
never enslaved anyone and which is animated by humane ideals. This
friendship, based on common ideals, is one of our greatest sources of
strength.

It cements into a cohesive security arrangement the aggregate of the
spiritual, military and economic strength of all those nations which,
with us, are allied by treaties and agreements.

Up to this point, I have talked solely about our military strength to
deter a possible future war. I now want to talk about the strength we
need to win a different kind of war--one that has already been
launched against us.

It is the massive economic offensive that has been mounted by the
communist imperialists against free nations. The communist
imperialist regimes have for some time been largely frustrated in
their attempts at expansion based directly on force. As a result,
they have begun to concentrate heavily on economic penetration,
particularly of newly-developing countries, as a preliminary to
political domination.

This non-military drive, if underestimated, could defeat the free
world regardless of our military strength. This danger is all the
greater precisely because many of us fail or refuse to recognize it.
Thus, some people may be tempted to finance our extra military effort
by cutting economic assistance. But at the very time when the economic
threat is assuming menacing proportions, to fail to strengthen our own
effort would be nothing less than reckless folly!

Admittedly, most of us did not anticipate the psychological impact
upon the world of the launching of the first earth satellite. Let us
not make the same kind of mistake in another field, by failing to
anticipate the much more serious impact of the Soviet economic
offensive.

As with our military potential, our economic assets are more than
equal to the task. Our independent farmers produce an abundance of
food and fibre. Our free workers are versatile, intelligent, and
hardworking. Our businessmen are imaginative and resourceful. The
productivity, the adaptability of the American economy is the solid
foundation-stone of our security structure. We have just concluded
another prosperous year. Our output was once more the greatest in the
nation's history. In the latter part of the year, some decline in
employment and output occurred, following the exceptionally rapid
expansion of recent years. In a free economy, reflecting as it does
the independent judgments of millions of people, growth typically
moves forward unevenly. But the basic forces of growth remain
unimpaired. There are solid grounds for confidence that economic
growth will be resumed without an extended interruption. Moreover,
the Federal government, constantly alert to signs of weakening in any
part of our economy, always stands ready, with its full power, to take
any appropriate further action to promote renewed business expansion.

If our history teaches us anything, it is this lesson: so far as the
economic potential of our nation is concerned, the believers in the
future of America have always been the realists. I count myself as
one of this company.

Our long-range problem, then, is not the stamina of our enormous
engine of production. Our problem is to make sure that we use these
vast economic forces confidently and creatively, not only in direct
military defense efforts, but likewise in our foreign policy, through
such activities as mutual economic aid and foreign trade.

In much the same way, we have tremendous potential resources on other
non-military fronts to help in countering the Soviet threat:
education, science, research, and, not least, the ideas and
principles by which we live. And in all these cases the task ahead is
to bring these resources more sharply to bear upon the new tasks of
security and peace in a swiftly-changing world.

IV. There are many items in the Administration's program, of a kind
frequently included in a State of the Union Message, with which I am
not dealing today. They are important to us and to our prosperity.
But I am reserving them for treatment in separate communications
because of my purpose today of speaking only about matters bearing
directly upon our security and peace.

I now place before you an outline of action designed to focus our
resources upon the two tasks of security and peace. In this special
category I list eight items requiring action. They are not merely
desirable. They are imperative.

1. DEFENSE REORGANIZATION

The first need is to assure ourselves that military organization
facilitates rather than hinders the functioning of the military
establishment in maintaining the security of the nation.

Since World War II, the purpose of achieving maximum organizational
efficiency in a modern defense establishment has several times
occasioned action by the Congress and by the Executive.

The advent of revolutionary new devices, bringing with them the
problem of overall continental defense, creates new difficulties,
reminiscent of those attending the advent of the airplane half a
century ago.

Some of the important new weapons which technology has produced do
not fit into any existing service pattern. They cut across all
services, involve all services, and transcend all services, at every
stage from development to operation. In some instances they defy
classification according to branch of service.

Unfortunately, the uncertainties resulting from such a situation, and
the jurisdictional disputes attending upon it, tend to bewilder and
confuse the public and create the impression that service differences
are damaging the national interest. Let us proudly remember that the
members of the Armed Forces give their basic allegiance solely to the
United States. Of that fact all of us are certain. But pride of
service and mistaken zeal in promoting particular doctrine has more
than once occasioned the kind of difficulty of which I have just
spoken. I am not attempting today to pass judgment on the charge of
harmful service rivalries. But one thing is sure. Whatever they are,
America wants them stopped.

Recently I have had under special study the never-ending problem of
efficient organization, complicated as it is by new weapons. Soon my
conclusions will be finalized. I shall promptly take such Executive
action as is necessary and, in a separate message, I shall present
appropriate recommendations to the Congress.

Meanwhile, without anticipating the detailed form that a
reorganization should take, I can state its main lines in terms of
objectives:

A major purpose of military organization is to achieve real unity in
the Defense establishment in all the principal features of military
activities. Of all these, one of the most important to our nation's
security is strategic planning and control. This work must be done
under unified direction. The defense structure must be one which, as
a whole, can assume, with top efficiency and without friction, the
defense ofAmerica. The Defense establishment must therefore plan for
a better integration of its defensive resources, particularly with
respect to the newer weapons now building and under development.
These obviously require full coordination in their development,
production and use. Good organization can help assure this
coordination.

In recognition of the need for single control in some of our most
advanced development projects, the Secretary of Defense has already
decided to concentrate into one organization all the anti-missile and
satellite technology undertaken within the Department of Defense.

Another requirement of military organization is a clear subordination
of the military services to duly constituted civilian authority. This
control must be real; not merely on the surface.

Next there must be assurance that an excessive number of compartments
in organization will not create costly and confusing compartments in
our scientific and industrial effort.

Finally, to end inter-service disputes requires clear organization
and decisive central direction, supported by the unstinted
cooperation of every individual in the defense establishment,
civilian and military.

2. ACCELERATED DEFENSE EFFORT

The second major action item is the acceleration of the defense
effort in particular areas affected by the fast pace of scientific
and technological advance.

Some of the points at which improved and increased effort are most
essential are these:

We must have sure warning in case of attack. The improvement of
warning equipment is becoming increasingly important as we approach
the period when long-range missiles will come into use. We must
protect and disperse our striking forces and increase their readiness
for instant reaction. This means more base facilities and standby
crews.

We must maintain deterrent retaliatory power. This means, among other
things, stepped-up long range missile programs; accelerated programs
for other effective missile systems; and, for some years, more
advanced aircraft.

We must maintain freedom of the seas. This means nuclear submarines
and cruisers; improved anti-submarine weapons; missile ships; and the
like.

We must maintain all necessary types of mobile forces to deal with
local conflicts, should there be need. This means further
improvements in equipment, mobility, tactics and fire power.

Through increases in pay and incentive, we must maintain in the armed
forces the skilled manpower modern military forces require.

We must be forward-looking in our research and development to
anticipate and achieve the unimagined weapons of the future. With
these and other improvements, we intend to assure that our vigilance,
power, and technical excellence keep abreast of any realistic threat
we face.

3. MUTUAL AID

Third: We must continue to strengthen our mutual security efforts.
Most people now realize that our programs of military aid and defense
support are an integral part of our own defense effort. If the
foundation of the Free World structure were progressively allowed to
crumble under the pressure of communist imperialism, the entire house
of freedom would be in danger of collapse.

As for the mutual economic assistance program, the benefit to us is
threefold. First, the countries receiving this aid become bulwarks
against communist encroachment as their military defenses and
economies are strengthened. Nations that are conscious of a steady
improvement in their industry, education, health and standard of
living are not apt to fall prey to the blandishments of communist
imperialists.

Second, these countries are helped to reach the point where mutually
profitable trade can expand between them and us. Third, the mutual
confidence that comes from working together on constructive projects
creates an atmosphere in which real understanding and peace can
flourish. To help bring these multiple benefits, our economic aid
effort should be made more effective.

In proposals for future economic aid, I am stressing a greater use of
repayable loans, through the Development Loan Fund, through funds
generated by sale of surplus farm products, and through the
Export-Import Bank.

While some increase in Government funds will be required, it remains
our objective to encourage shifting to the use of private capital
sources as rapidly as possible.

One great obstacle to the economic aid program in the past has been,
not a rational argument against it on the merits, but a catchword:
"give-away program."

The real fact is that no investment we make in our own security and
peace can pay us greater dividends than necessary amounts of economic
aid to friendly nations.

This is no "give-away."

Let's stick to facts!

We cannot afford to have one of our most essential security programs
shot down with a slogan!

4. MUTUAL TRADE

Fourth: Both in our national interest, and in the interest of world
peace, we must have a five-year extension of the Trade Agreements Act
with broadened authority to negotiate. World trade supports a
significant segment of American industry and agriculture. It provides
employment for four and one-half million American workers. It helps
supply our ever increasing demand for raw materials. It provides the
opportunity for American free enterprise to develop on a worldwide
scale. It strengthens our friends and increases their desire to be
friends. World trade helps to lay the groundwork for peace by making
all free nations of the world stronger and more self-reliant. America
is today the world's greatest trading nation. If we use this great
asset wisely to meet the expanding demands of the world, we shall not
only provide future opportunities for our own business, agriculture,
and labor, but in the process strengthen our security posture and
other prospects for a prosperous, harmonious world.

As President McKinley said, as long ago as 1901: "Isolation is no
longer possible or desirable. . . . The period of exclusiveness is
past." 5. SCIENTIFIC COOPERATION WITH OUR ALLIES

Fifth: It is of the highest importance that the Congress enact the
necessary legislation to enable us to exchange appropriate scientific
and technical information with friendly countries as part of our
effort to achieve effective scientific cooperation.

It is wasteful in the extreme for friendly allies to consume talent
and money in solving problems that their friends have already
solved-- all because of artificial barriers to sharing. We cannot
afford to cut ourselves off from the brilliant talents and minds of
scientists in friendly countries. The task ahead will be hard enough
without handcuffs of our own making. The groundwork for this kind of
cooperation has already been laid in discussions among NATO
countries. Promptness in following through with legislation will be
the best possible evidence of American unity of purpose in
cooperating with our friends.

6. EDUCATION AND RESEARCH

Sixth: In the area of education and research, I recommend a balanced
program to improve our resources, involving an investment of about a
billion dollars over a four year period. This involves new activities
by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare designed
principally to encourage improved teaching quality and student
opportunities in the interests of national security. It also provides
a five-fold increase in sums available to the National Science
Foundation for its special activities in stimulating and improving
science education. Scrupulous attention has been paid to maintaining
local control of educational policy, spurring the maximum amount of
local effort, and to avoiding undue stress on the physical sciences
at the expense of other branches of learning. In the field of
research, I am asking for substantial increases in basic research
funds, including a doubling of the funds available to the National
Science Foundation for this purpose.

But federal action can do only a part of the job. In both education
and research, redoubled exertions will be necessary on the part of
all Americans if we are to rise to the demands of our times. This
means hard work on the part of state and local governments, private
industry, schools and colleges, private organizations and
foundations, teachers, parents, and--perhaps most important of
all--the student himself, with his bag of books and his homework.

With this kind of all-inclusive campaign, I have no doubt that we can
create the intellectual capital we need for the years ahead, invest it
in the right places--and do all this, not as regimented pawns, but as
free men and women!

7. SPENDING AND SAVING

Seventh: To provide for this extra effort for security, we must apply
stern tests of priority to other expenditures, both military and
civilian.

This extra effort involves, most immediately, the need for a
supplemental defense appropriation of $1.3 billion for fiscal year
1958. In the 1959 budget, increased expenditures for missiles,
nuclear ships, atomic energy, research and development, science and
education, a special contingency fund to deal with possible new
technological discoveries, and increases in pay and incentives to
obtain and retain competent manpower add up to a total increase over
the comparable figures in the 1957 budget of about $4 billion.

I believe that, in spite of these necessary increases, we should
strive to finance the 1959 security effort out of expected revenues.
While we now believe that expected revenues and expenditures will
roughly balance, our real purpose will be to achieve adequate
security, but always with the utmost regard for efficiency and
careful management.

This purpose will require the cooperation of Congress in making
careful analysis of estimates presented, reducing expenditure on less
essential military programs and installations, postponing some new
civilian programs, transferring some to the states, and curtailing or
eliminating others.

Such related matters as the national debt ceiling and tax revenues
will be dealt with in later messages.

8. WORKS OF PEACE

My last call for action is not primarily addressed to the Congress
and people of the United States. Rather, it is a message from the
people of the United States to all other peoples, especially those of
the Soviet Union.

This is the spirit of what we would like to say:

"In the last analysis, there is only one solution to the grim
problems that lie ahead. The world must stop the present plunge
toward more and more destructive weapons of war, and turn the corner
that will start our steps firmly on the path toward lasting peace.

"Our greatest hope for success lies in a universal fact: the people
of the world, as people, have always wanted peace and want peace
now.

"The problem, then, is to find a way of translating this universal
desire into action.

"This will require more than words of peace. It requires works of
peace."

Now, may I try to give you some concrete examples of the kind of
works of peace that might make a beginning in the new direction.

For a start our people should learn to know each other better. Recent
negotiations in Washington have provided a basis in principle for
greater freedom of communication and exchange of people. I urge the
Soviet government to cooperate in turning principle into practice by
prompt and tangible actions that will break down the unnatural
barriers that have blocked the flow of thought and understanding
between our people.

Another kind of work of peace is cooperation on projects of human
welfare. For example, we now have it within our power to eradicate
from the face of the earth that age-old scourge of mankind: malaria.
We are embarking with other nations in an all-out five-year campaign
to blot out this curse forever. We invite the Soviets to join with us
in this great work of humanity.

Indeed, we would be willing to pool our efforts with the Soviets in
other campaigns against the diseases that are the common enemy of all
mortals--such as cancer and heart disease. If people can get together
on such projects, is it not possible that we could then go on to a
full-scale cooperative program of Science for Peace?

We have as a guide and inspiration the success of our Atoms-for-Peace
proposal, which in only a few years, under United Nations auspices,
became a reality in the International Atomic Energy Agency.

A program of Science for Peace might provide a means of funneling
into one place the results of research from scientists everywhere and
from there making it available to all parts of the world.

There is almost no limit to the human betterment that could result
from such cooperation. Hunger and disease could increasingly be
driven from the earth. The age-old dream of a good life for all
could, at long last, be translated into reality.

But of all the works of peace, none is more needed now than a real
first step toward disarmament.

Last August the United Nations General Assembly, by an overwhelming
vote, approved a disarmament plan that we and our allies sincerely
believed to be fair and practical. The Soviets have rejected both the
plan, and the negotiating procedure set up by the United Nations. As a
result, negotiation on this supremely important issue is now at a
standstill.

But the world cannot afford to stand still on disarmament! We must
never give up the search for a basis of agreement. Our allies from
time to time develop differing ideas on how to proceed. We must
concert these convictions among ourselves. Thereafter, any reasonable
proposal that holds promise for disarmament and reduction of tension
must be heard, discussed, and, if possible, negotiated.

But a disarmament proposal, to hold real promise, must at the minimum
have one feature: reliable means to ensure compliance by all. It takes
actions and demonstrated integrity on both sides to create and sustain
confidence. And confidence in a genuine disarmament agreement is
vital, not only to the signers of the agreement, but also to the
millions of people all over the world who are weary of tensions and
armaments. I say once more, to all peoples, that we will always go
the extra mile with anyone on earth if it will bring us nearer a
genuine peace.

CONCLUSION

These, then, are the ways in which we must funnel our energies more
efficiently into the task of advancing security and peace. These
actions demand and expect two things of the American people:
sacrifice, and a high degree of understanding. For sacrifice to be
effective it must be intelligent. Sacrifice must be made for the
right purpose and in the right place--even if that place happens to
come close to home!

After all, it is no good demanding sacrifice in general terms one
day, and the next day, for local reasons, opposing the elimination of
some unneeded federal facility.

It is pointless to condemn federal spending in general, and the next
moment condemn just as strongly an effort to reduce the particular
federal grant that touches one's own interest. And it makes no sense
whatever to spend additional billions on military strength to deter a
potential danger, and then, by cutting aid and trade programs, let the
world succumb to a present danger in economic guise.

My friends of the Congress: The world is waiting to see how wisely
and decisively a free representative government will now act.

I believe that this Congress possesses and will display the wisdom
promptly to do its part in translating into law the actions demanded
by our nation's interests.

But, to make law effective, our kind of government needs the full
voluntary support of millions of Americans for these actions.

I am fully confident that the response of the Congress and of the
American people will make this time of test a time of honor. Mankind
then will see more clearly than ever that the future belongs, not to
the concept of the regimented atheistic state, but to the people--the
God-fearing, peace-loving people of all the world.