Bush Lists Foreign Policy Goals, Backs ‘Star Wars’

Vice President George Bush on Tuesday put forth the principles that would guide his foreign policy if he were elected President--and insisted that multibillion-dollar “Star Wars” weaponry is essential not just to the United States but to the survival of Israel.

The candidate said that if elected he would give great priority to stopping the spread of ballistic missiles, much as the United States and other powers have made a priority of slowing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Bush’s reference was to ballistic missiles capable of carrying conventional or chemical warheads as well as nuclear devices.

“Star Wars,” the bitterly controversial Strategic Defense Initiative, envisions a space-based weapons system to act as a shield against attacking missiles.

“As President, I will not leave America defenseless against ballistic missiles,” Bush said, reiterating his longstanding support for expensive SDI research.

Further, Bush said he was proud to support joint U.S.-Israeli spinoff research on a land-based weapon, known as Arrow, designed to protect Israel against shorter-range ballistic missiles. The two nations agreed last month to pursue the project jointly.

“It is one thing to say you are committed to Israel’s security, but in the age of ballistic missiles, if you are against defensive systems such as SDI, that slogan has little meaning,” Bush said.

The vice president’s target, of course, was Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis, who ridicules SDI as a costly boondoggle at the same time he reaches out to Jewish-American voters. Although liberal-leaning as a bloc, U.S. Jews frequently list the defense of Israel as their No. 1 political concern.

Generally, Jews are believed to be moving from being a solidly Democratic voting group to one up for grabs, the result of GOP courting and of friction between Jews and former Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson.

Bush foreign policy adviser Dennis Ross, who accompanied the vice president here, argued in an interview that the added element of Israel’s security posed a simple test. “Israel can stop any plane from getting into its airspace, but it can’t stop a ballistic missile. . . . If you don’t believe in a defense against these missiles, then all the talk about Israel’s security is empty.”

The vice president and presumed Republican presidential nominee did not differentiate in his speech between the levels of technology involved in a ground-based anti-missile system, which is relatively proven as a limited defense, and a massive space-based system, which is still theoretical and highly controversial.

Defensive Challenges

But Bush went out of his way to say that the defensive challenges faced by the United States and its allies were not all in the form of superpower confrontation.

“There are few developments more frightening than that of unstable, sometimes irrational, Third World regimes being able to press a button and deliver weapons of terror across great distances,” he said.

A group of 800 Midwest business executives provided Bush his audience Tuesday. The event was hastily arranged to give him a forum to speak on a topic where he has greater experience and claims greater expertise than Dukakis.

In the decade ahead, Bush declared in apparent reference to his opponent, the United States can “move the world . . . or we can be pushed along by it. It is not a time for timidity, hesitancy and on-the-job training.”

Seven Objectives

Bush said that as President he would pursue seven foreign policy objectives.

First, he said, he would seek measured progress in relations with the Soviet Union to “avoid swings between unjustified euphoria and exaggerated pessimism.”

Second, he pledged “continued modernization” of U.S. forces. This, he said, would help bring about “a verifiable and stabilizing agreement” to reduce U.S. and Soviet strategic arsenals by half.

“I am confident we can find a better way than mutual assured destruction, with all its admitted shortcomings,” he said.

In his third point, Bush signaled his willingness to back up foreign policy objectives with gunboat diplomacy. He cited a case in point: U.S. naval forces in the Persian Gulf “have sobered the Iranian leadership and contributed to the conditions that seem, at last, to be bringing the gulf war to an end.”

Bush contrasted this with “our critics whose constant refrain amounts to using diplomacy while depriving it of its tools.”

‘Democratic Revolution’

Fourth, Bush said he would push “to increase the scope and momentum of the democratic revolution” in countries around the world.

Number five, Bush said, is to seek greater international efforts against terrorism and drugs.

Number six is to seek economic cooperation internationally.

Lastly, Bush said, “any successful U.S. foreign policy must grow from the roots of domestic support, economic and political. Our prosperous nation can do better.”

Bush finished his campaign day at a Washington rally, where ethnic Republican supporters waved tiny American flags and applauded loudly when Bush criticized Dukakis’ opposition to capital punishment and school prayer, his past support for a prison furlough program and his refusal to sign a Massachusetts bill that would have required teachers to lead students in the Pledge of Allegiance.

‘We’re Talking Values’

“We’re talking one language and we’re talking values, values that join all of us here together,” Bush told the crowd, composed largely of Eastern European-Americans.

In a reference to Dukakis’ fluency in Spanish, which Bush does not speak, the vice president added: “I don’t speak Spanish, but I can speak our language of ethnic values and pride, everlasting pride in the United States of America.”

Bush also related, to laughter from the crowd, a joking remark from his 6-foot-4 son Marvin that the Bush family had a “height advantage” over the Dukakis family.

“It isn’t the height advantage,” the unofficial Republican nominee declared, “it’s the depth.”

Staff writer Cathleen Decker in Washington contributed to this story.