Senator Malcolm Wallop (center) is presented with the Ronald Reagan Award in Washington, DC, on November 16, 2005 -- Credit: Carrie Devorah / WENN
Malcolm Wallop was a great American… and a firm believer in American greatness. He was, moreover, a clear-sighted analyst of our nation’s role in global affairs.
In 1995, while serving as a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, he delivered a wonderful speech entitled “Keeping America Great” at a policy symposium. The cautionary words he spoke then ring just as clear and true today:
No great nation can remain great, free, and prosperous without strength, purpose, and courage. Today America has the latter, some of the former, and none of the middle.”
A decade later, I was proud to serve with him on the congressionally-mandated Task Force on the United States and the United Nations. It was a bi-partisan affair that produced the kind of half-hearted, half-baked reform proposals typical of such bodies. But it was wonderful to see Malcolm in discussions with the other task force members—by turns charming and blunt-spoken, cajoling and unyielding, he was responsible for much of the backbone that made it way into the final report.
While expert in the entire spectrum of foreign relations, Malcolm had a special interest in Asian affairs. In the late 1990s, he became Heritage’s first Chung Ju-Yung Fellow for Policy Studies. His outspoken advocacy of freedom for all who desire it—and his insistence that the U.S. honor its moral and legal obligation to defend the freedom-loving peoples of Taiwan from the threats of tyranny—are still remembered and appreciated throughout that region of the world.
