President Richard M. Nixon met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David on an unknown date, sometime between 11:49 pm on August 17, 1972 and 12:45 am on August 18, 1972. The Camp David Hard Wire taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 204-011 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
In the third section of the speech, I turn now to an issue of overriding importance.
A selection for generations to come.
Progress we have made in building a structure of peace in the world.
Peace is too important for partisan politics.
I have seen five presidents in my voting lifetime.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson.
Their differences on summation is great.
And their
and second to none in the world.
I believe that the United States has the interest of world peace.
In America,
national role in the world, rather than they were united in their total opposition to isolation from America.
The belief that the interests
The possibilities of leadership in the world community.
We hated war.
We're dedicated to peace.
Or peace without surrender.
I'm going to have one now.
That's our most difficult mission.
Four years ago, I pledged to seek an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.
We've made great progress toward that goal.
Egypt is in a sentence.
About half a million men home from Vietnam.
We have amended America's ground combat rules.
No draft P's are being sent to Vietnam.
Casualties, which were running as high as 300 a week, now are less than 10 a week.
Peace on negotiating time.
A total withdrawal of all American forces.
An exchange of prisoners of war.
Internationally supervised.
In those elections by the communists.
Everything that they got to be that any honorable nation could offer.
We have not
And we'll never offer.
Two things we have not and will never offer.
We have not and will not do.
And make it free.
We will never abandon our field of use.
The war would be over.
The war in Vietnam would be over long before now.
As to what has to, what the enemy, how the enemy may react to our reasonable negotiating proposals.
But of this I am certain.
They will negotiate.
Whether they negotiate or not.
Because the South Vietnamese forces in stopping the massive communist offensives this spring have clearly demonstrated that they will soon have the capacity
There's no wonder why we insist on an honorable peace with Vietnam.
I understand why they suggested what I should do.
It's something to get out and do since I did not send them.
It will discourage our friends around the world, confuse the neutrals, and encourage our enemies to engage in aggression, which might lead to weaponry attacks.
The United States stands by its own.
Small nations.
Major.
Understandable that Vietnam dominates our concern for foreign policy.
We have this administration that we have not allowed the Vietnam War our capacity to policy
and the cause of peace in other parts of the world.
For this period of time, it will be recorded that the most profound contribution to peace we have made was our trip, were the trips we made to Peking and to Moscow.
In the space of four years in our relationship with the Soviet Union, we have moved from confrontation to negotiation to cooperation.
Peace.
We have begun to limit.
We have taken the first step in limiting.
We have laid the foundation for further limitations of nuclear weapons.
For reducing the burden of nuclear arms hangs over both is such an enormous
The burden of your arms.
The arsenals of your arms.
How are you?
Any other single issue?
Thank you.
Who will join our new majority?
This is the opportunity to continue these great initiatives.
that by our enemies, we have changed the world.
The danger of war is less.
The chances for peace are greater.
I'll be complacent.
and many cases conflicting interests.
We would not have been worth talking to unless we were a strong nation.
Okay.
We shall always be ready.
Make new agreements for the mutual reduction.
We'll always be willing to reduce our arm strength, provided...
unilaterally to reduce its strength.
That's the Soviet Union.
Oh, yes.
the other party.
It would mean that the United States would become the second strongest nation in the world.
We have no incentive then to negotiate a mutual reduction of strength.
The result would be that
Promising initiatives and limitation of arms would be destroyed.
The United States and all of the nations in the world that depend upon us, depend upon us, depend upon us, would be dangerously threatened.
Mr. Duke?
And mutual reduction of arms.
Must, will, must always have.
Oh, Americans.
Special, exciting, challenging years.
We have begun to result in the burdens of arms.
means of the enormous creative energies of the American people.
The Chinese people.
The devoted, now being devoted.
The war.
Ways of peace.
Peace.
At home, that in their way would be just as exciting.
That's a great initiative we have taken in the past four years through our
a winning war against poverty, misery, and disease.
Forces of poverty, misery, and disease, not only America, but throughout America.
And renewed
I've got the quality of life.
Our first priority.
I've got the quality of life.
I'll strike that.
Please move forward on the promises that we have begun.
Most important, turn away from conflict abroad.
Remove one of the major sources for conflict between among Americans at home.
We could have differences and debates and dependents, but those debates would not be about war.
The peace dividend has been described solely in monetary terms.
How much money from the arms budget, how much money it was.
The biggest dividend, however, is what peace, what true peace, true and lasting peace, the spirit of the American people.
But to our eternal credit, it can be said, as I said to the Russian, my address to the Russian people.
sure that you can see from what I have said.
So deeply believe that bringing peace to America and to the world.
So deeply believe that bringing peace to America and to the world is the most important single goal of this administration.
Do give me a magic to continue
That we have so uniquely begun in achieving that which has been the dream of mankind from the beginning of civilization.
Here we have an insert.
When you're talking about Vietnam, the question might put it.
I know that at the convention out here four weeks ago, there was a great deal of talk about America might provide, how we might, how this,
providing amnesty for those few hundred Americans who chose to desert their country rather than to serve it in Vietnam.
I've just come to put the word where it really belongs.
Heroes of America are not the few hundred who are not the deserters and the draft doctors.
our attention.
The real heroes walking among us.
The two and a half million young Americans that chose to serve their country rather than deserve it.
To deserve it.
To deserve it.
Each their due
They're panelists.
Serve.
Give the deserves, the panelists, they deserve.
Give those who serve respect.
They have so richly earned credit.
That's the end of it.
Ask.
Ask.
Ask.
Ask.
Ask.
Ask.
Ask.
Ask.
Ask.
Ask.
I've described this as a lonely office.
Others are complaining.
It has a different answer to this question.
It could be present, but it is not loving.
I do not find the soul in the office.
There is mine.
It has a different answer.
It is not easy for us.
It is not lonely.
I do not find it lonely.
And I do not consider it a burden.
It is life's most magnificent experience.
Had to do my best for the past four years.
In some areas.
Big misappointments in others.
Here's how.
Is that there is so much more to do.
And to do it.
America now has.
Building.
Building the lasting peace in the world.
May never come again.
We must seize the moment.
This president came at a time.
It's a war.
Protection from peace.
Quit your mother.
Left indelibly.
Peace.
Which mind?
get tired whenever I become discouraged.
A cemetery in Leningrad.
A thousand people.
And a siege of that city in World War II.
And mass graves.
All right.
A 12-year-old child.
A girl.
She was a beautiful child.
Her name was Tanya.
The pages of her diary.
These were the last words that I heard.
Quote, all are dead, only Tanya is left.
For a more peaceful world, let us think of Tanya, and of all the other Tanyas, and their brothers and sisters everywhere.
No other children will have truth.
The other children will not have truth.
I asked for their help after the auction to win a lasting peace, to build a new prosperity.
Wonderful things in art is capable of to help the sick, the poor, and rich people in this land.
Have a good day.
But only our work can build it.
New majority.
Let us be the majority in America.
For the victory in an election.
Not working, I just want an election.
For the peace of our war.
or or or or or or or or or or
Okay.