There are, in fact, better, more prosaic reasons for the perceived absence of American new thinking. At the policy-making level, the most basic explanation for lack of sweeping new policy toward the Soviet Union is an outdated chart. Third, like other corporate structures, government agencies, universities, and think tanks suffer from institutional inertia. The United States emerged from World War II with unparalleled power-politically, economically, and militarily. Today, we don not have unparalleled power.
Policy planning is more complicated now.
As we shape our responses, we have to recognize our real assets and our real strengths. That doesn't mean that we don't have a potential to lead, but that we have to lead in partnership. Such policies grow out of an array of anachronistic treaties and relationships dating from World War II and the Korean War. What the West desperately needs is not a patching up of old policy but a new, fresh look at developments in the communist world, particularly in Asia. One contribution of the Chinese student martyrs may have been to make this latent situation manifest to concerned citizens of the United Sates and other countries.