It is a world of the Peace of Westphalia where each sovereign is free to profess what he wishes within his own territory except to profess an ideology such as national liberation or socialism which threatens to undermine the system. Established socialist regimes, as we have seen, are accorded Westphalian treatment. Repressive regimes which are prepared to use massive brutality to suppress democratic social change no longer need to be the basis of embarrassment and apology. On Southern Africa, Brazil, Vietnam the position of the United States is now clear. He and Nixon have gambled heavily en the cynicism of public opinion across the globe, that people will Put up with invisible violence and the death sentence of starvation that hovers over millions and back room torture to avoid the visible violence of war and revolution.
Peace is order and order is the continuation of the status quo.
Kissinger is betting that a world that has been convulsed by war, revolution and confrontation for three generations would welcome a generation of peace under American hegemony, however unjust, however repressive of those who resist it. That he now appears as the world's most admired public figure, praised in Peking as well as Rio shows how acute his political instinct has been. People are prepared to be deceived in exchange for a generation of peace, and that, quite literally, is all that he has promised. Tho, Sadat, appear to fall in line, the Kissinger policy is greeted with almost universal admiration. Vietnam has disappeared from the headlines, and that is peace.