POSSIBLE FUTURES FOR THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY:

A COMMENT ON PROF. J. B. DUROSELLE'S PAPER*.

By Eugene V. Rostow

The topic listed on the agenda today is "What future relations are feasible and desirable among the Atlantic nations"? In the arbitrary manner of lawyers, taking the word "and" to be commutative, I shall interpret the command to read, "What future relations among the Atlantic nations are desirable and feasible?" I find the order more congenial.

We are instructed by the Committee which prepared this Conference to concentrate on the year 1976 -- that is, on a moment in time a decade hence. We have not been told why that date was chosen. It may represent simply an exercise in "futuribles", the fashionable game of prediction or conjecturing which has, I gather, replaced the war game, scenarios and even bridge at the Rand Corporation and similar monasteries on both sides of the Atlantic. I prefer, however, to believe that the date 1976 was selected as the focal point for our colloquy with the events of 1776 in mind, to ring the Bell of Liberty, and signal the end of all hegemonies.

This surely is the heady and exhilarating sense in which M. Duroselle approached the subject in the germinal paper which opened our conversation. It is a brilliant and original essay, and a pleasure to read. I propose to approach our theme today in the perspective of his argument. Let me say

* Revision of a talk given on 9 July 1966 at the Transatlantic Colloquium held at the Abbaye of Royaumont, France, under the auspices of the Atlantic Institute and the Committee on Atlantic Studies of the Atlantic Council of the United States. Inevitably, the text borrows from the manuscript of a book on which I am working, tentatively called "Law, Power and the Quest for Peace."

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at once that I agree with much -- perhaps most -- of the analysis M. Duroselle has put before us with such cogency and wit -- with his analysis, that is, but not with *many* of the conclusions he draws from his analysis. That being the case, I think I should start by briefly stating my views on the factual pre-dicate of our theme, before going on to my own conclusions. Obviously, it is not very reasonable to talk about what relations are "feasible" and "desirable", or "desirable" and "feasible", among the Atlantic nations without first defining the problems they face, separately and together.

M. Duroselle began, you will recall, by sketching a model he hoped we should not follow here. He evoked the characteristic atmosphere of sessions of this kind in the United States in recent years, sessions at which a troupe of travelling players, occasionally supplemented by guest artists, went through substantially the same performance over and over again, to substantially the same final curtain. The subject was always America and Europe. The dominant theme was the supposed mystery of President de Gaulle, a topic discussed in a variety of voices, ranging from the philosophical to the philistine. Some spoke de haut en bas, more in pity than in anger. With others, reflecting the tone of *that* talk in the corridors of power in Washington, it was just the other way around. A few speakers, who do not share the passions President de Gaulle seems to inspire in so many bosoms, tried to discern significant patterns of cause and consequence in the flow of events. They were ignored as heretics.

Meetings of this kind are a legitimate subject of fun, and M. Duroselle enjoys some entirely legitimate fun in recalling their moments of earnest absurdity. But, as he also points out, such meetings are not without importance. In the modern world, with its unmanageable multiplication of personnel and of books, a useful counter-tendency has developed. In every field, those who

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fancy themselves as "important" -- the élites, M. Duroselle calls them -- seek to recreate the atmosphere of intimacy which used to prevail when all the people "who mattered" met regularly in the same clubs, cafés or spas, either every day or every season. One can judge the status of a member of this new aristocracy by what he reads. Really important people never read books, except in mimeographed form before publication. They exchange ideas in drafts, or at places like Bellaggio or Royaumont, in meetings of Edwardian opulence organized under the benign patronage of a great foundation.

Such ventures, M. Duroselle rightly stresses, should be taken seriously. They are part of an indispensable effort to substitute understanding for stereotype, and to discover a firm basis for policy in a shared appreciation of reality. To humanize and deepen the relationship among the élites should help to make this goal a possibility. Understanding in depth at that level of our societies, -- an understanding tested in situations of sustained and serious work -- should be infinitely more fruitful, as he says, than superficial mass contacts or tourism. Such mutual knowledge should permit a few at least to appreciate the penumbra of meaning associated with words used by men of a somewhat different experience. From that capacity, a great deal could follow, through the usual methods for dispersing ideas, if only we could be sure that at meetings of this kind the participants ever listened.

M. Duroselle argues that the development among our masters of this capacity for understanding in depth is desirable not only as a means of enriching our several cultures, but because as a group the Atlantic nations face common threats and tasks.

Here his argument rests on two interrelated axioms, one of reality, the other, I rather think, an axiom of myth.

Let me take up first what I regard as his axiom of myth -- the thesis

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that we should invent vast common enterprises in order to recover not only
our unity, but our greatness, our dynamism and our creativity.

I am too much of an anarchist to favor unity, or even cohesion, for
its own sake. I am willing to consider the feasibility of such relations
only if we first decide they are necessary or desirable. Like M. Duroselle
in another mood, I prefer the diversity of wide freedom, surely one of the
highest values of our common civilization. During the century and a half
which ended in 1914, the Western world enjoyed its most brilliant modern period
of creativity in every realm -- in literature, science, art, technique and
philosophy. The creativity of western civilization was nearly universal, and
in all the countries involved it went through stages of style and mode which
were closely linked. Yet there were no great common enterprises in that period,
unless we include the coalition to suppress Napoleon, and the effort to keep
the peace thereafter. But the Concert of Europe, whatever its successes and
failures, was carried on behind the scenes by shrewd, cynical, and manipula-
tive chancellors, utterly without charisma. Their efforts to maintain order,
however important, hardly involved the spirit and feelings of the people of
Europe, and certainly not their enthusiasms. They were hardly a "vast common
enterprise" in M. Duroselle's sense of the phrase.

No, I don't think we need unity and great common enterprises in order
to be creative. I have no fears for the creativity of our civilization if
it is allowed to develop within a framework of peace.

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II

But I do think we need a great deal of cohesion and unity in order to achieve and maintain a durable framework of peace, more cohesion and unity, indeed, than we have had during the last twenty years. This proposition brings me to M. Duroselle's axiom of reality: that there are risks of aggression on the part both of the Soviet Union and of China, risks which threaten all of us, and threaten us all equally as citizens of nations that would almost surely be drawn into general war, or reoriented politically and socially by any considerable change in the balance of power. It goes without saying that the security risks of 1966, and those in prospect for 1976, are not those of 1946, or of 1956. But M. Duroselle says -- and I fully agree -- they are and will remain considerable.

So far as the Soviet Union is concerned, he concludes that the danger of direct aggression has declined, but that we must remain vigilant. -- or at least that the United States should remain vigilant. (p. 19. Revise page reference to correspond to printed version). As I read M. Duroselle's paper, I think he would agree that the danger of Soviet aggression has declined, in comparison with the danger in 1946, 1948, 1956 and 1962, for three basic reasons:

(1) the success of the Truman Doctrine, which the Soviet Union seems to have accepted, after a long cycle of thrust and response, as a basic rule of peaceful coexistence -- the rule, i.e., that there can be no change in the frontiers of the Cold War by unilateral action;

(2) the ultimate deterrence of the United States nuclear arsenal; and

(3) the pressure of China's rising strength, helping to induce a mood of relative calm on the Soviet Union's second front in Europe.

M. Duroselle also considers the state of revolutionary êlan in the Soviet Union as an autonomous factor. He probes the possibility that affluence may

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erode the missionary zeal of Russian Communists. I am dubious about this
fashionable form of economic determinism. So far as I can see, owning a
motor car does not make a man either a pacifist or a democrat. Relative
affluence did not diminish the ardor of the Germans and the Japanese for war.
I should prefer in this context to pin my hopes for peace on the effects in
the Soviet Union of a spreading loss of faith in Communist ideology. As many
documents and conversations attest, both events and thought are surely weaken-
ing the appeal of Communism as a doctrine and as a program. It is so manifest-
ly the less successful revolutionary principle in the modern world, and the
more reactionary. This process of intellectual change, as it continues,
should affect the will of those who direct the several branches of the Communist
movement, and shift them, consciously or unconsciously, to a defensive posture.

But this is still only a possibility. It is common, but illusory, to
suppose that such miracles have already occurred, and that the Red Army will
soon withdraw from Germany and Eastern Europe. As M. Duroselle rightly stresses
no such events have taken place. Soviet reinforcements obeyed orders in Buda-
pest. And a technological break-through could precipitate another crisis like
that of Cuba in 1962.

So far as China is concerned, M. Duroselle observes, but only in passing,
that the dangers of Chinese expansion are real, and are increasing. He con-
cludes that the risks will become world-wide, and that the Alliance should
adapt itself to this fact. (p.22). Indeed, his paper ends on this troubled
and troublesome note.

M. Duroselle does not develop the implications of his estimate of Chinese
policy. His paper is far more European than universal in its orientation, des-
pite the comments on China which I have just mentioned, and his strong feelings
against American action in Vietnam.

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I have no quarrel with the essential points in his vision of reality, although I should add that I do not agree with his views on Vietnam.

### III

M. Duroselle's axiom of reality concisely defines the community of interests and of responsibilities which unites the Atlantic nations and Japan. We have a common interest in avoiding either a nuclear disaster or a conventional war. And, as major powers necessarily in gage in the event of war, we have both the capacity and the responsibility to contain and tame the forces which have pressed towards war during the last twenty years, and which seem likely to do so, as M. Duroselle points out, during the next decade.

In safeguarding our common interest in peace, I should say that the Atlantic nations and Japan face equal risks, and bear equal, that is to say, proportional responsibilities.

In this connection, we considered several possible meanings of the word "equality" yesterday.

One was the juridical notion of equality — the bundle of rights we sometimes call "sovereignty", — which in principle includes the right to be neutral, and to have one's neutrality respected, if the other nations agree.

The trouble with viewing Europe as a potential neutral in the process of world politics is two-fold. First, Europe is too important a factor in the balance of world power to expect that its neutrality could be maintained if the United States were defeated. Neutrality, like celibacy, becomes untenable if too wide-spread. Europe would necessarily be a prize of world war — and a prize of cardinal importance.

In the second place, the problem of peace is world-wide, not regional. The basic arithmetic of power decrees that both Europe and the United States — and Japan as well — are indispensable elements in the equation on which the

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chance of peace depends. It is factually erroneous to think of the United States as "choosing" between Asia and Europe. Our foreign policy has made no such choice, and no such choice is open to us, if we continue to live in the world as it is. Neither Europe nor the United States could long remain purely regional powers.

A second notion of "equality" mentioned yesterday was one we might call each state's equal sovereign right to be frivolous. The classic example is that of the United States before 1945. For more than a century, we enjoyed security in a system of order conducted largely by others. We were protected by Great Britain, and unaware of the fact. With great gusto, we exercised the costless privilege of complaining often about how badly Britain and France were carrying out the task of order. This position is an enviable luxury if the state of world politics permits it.

The essence of my argument today is that the present condition of the world, and the prospects of disorder ahead, do not permit Europe to follow the frivolous example of the United States in the nineteenth century. The only notion of equality among the nations which the times permit, I believe, is a third denotation of the word -- that of equality in responsibility, measured by a rule of proportionality sometimes described by the old slogan, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

To my way of thinking the search for peace in our world is "the great common enterprise" which should unite the Atlantic nations now, and for the next decade at least. Coming together for that purpose is not only desirable but essential in our common interests, given the magnitude of the task. Therefore, it must be feasible. If we consider the political condition of the southern Hemisphere, which has become almost entirely Balkan in the classical hazards it presents -- in its vulnerability, and in its capacity to

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embroil the great powers; if we consider the rising power and the politi-
cal postures of China and the Soviet Union, both in themselves and in rela-
tion to the turbulent third world — it follows, I submit, that the quest for
peace today requires cohesion among the Allies even more than it did in 1948,
when we faced the outward thrust of the Soviet Union in Europe, and in 1950,
when the attack on Korea was undertaken, while China had barely ended its war
and begun its reconstruction. The task of maintaining security today should
be differently organized than was the case in 1949 and 1950. The organization
of the Alliance should take into account, and indeed should anticipate the
political changes which are taking place not merely in Europe, but in the
world as a whole. It should involve a wider set of Allies, and a changed defi-
nition of their political relationships. But the task is inescapable.

Unless the leading industrial nations of Europe and Asia meet their res-
ponsibility for the organization of peace, and the enforcement of the interna-
tional law against aggression, the other great common enterprises M. Duroselle
recommends will not have much opportunity to flower. He mentions three or
four programs of great merit as possible rallying points for the Atlantic Com-
munity — the task of achieving conditions of peaceful co-existence with Eastern
Europe, and, I should add, with China; that of solidarity in helping the third
world; and finally, the effort to overcome a number of technological gaps within
the universe of the advanced countries. These are all labors of importance
and promise. They are good in themselves, and their fulfillment could raise
the odds on peace. But success in these endeavors depends, in my opinion, upon
the prior resolution of the problem of peace — a political problem which can
best be managed in this polycentric world by means of a Concert of the Powers,
built on the principle of collective responsibility.

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M. Duroselle would answer, if I read him correctly, that political agreement between Europe and the United States is impossible while the campaign in Vietnam continues. This is not the occasion to explore the pros and cons of the American position in Vietnam, although I think the subject should be examined dispassionately, soon, and at the highest level of scholarship and sophistication by groups like this one. For present purposes, let me remark only that the vital security interests of states are not often deflected by considerations of this order. The Truman Doctrine, the Vandenberg Resolution, and the North Atlantic Treaty were all given effect by the United States at a time when major portions of American public opinion, and indeed the government of the United States, were convinced that most of our European Allies were engaged in illegal acts of colonial oppression in many parts of the world. If I am correct in contending that the problem of peace is indivisible, not regional, and that the achievement and maintenance of a stable world political system is the common interest and the common responsibility of Western Europe, the United States, and Japan (and, hopefully, of other major countries as well, including some now behind one or another of the political curtains) then possible disagreement over the rightness of the American position in Vietnam should not prevent those fundamental interests from being protected. Indeed, a confrontation of the political element in the alliance -- so long deferred -- should facilitate the resolution of disagreements like that over Vietnam.

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IV

I should start this phase of my argument by calling into question a factual premise of M. Duroselle's paper, and of President de Gaulle's policy -- that the general task of deterrence and containment, both in Europe and in Asia, can be left indefinitely to the United States. Political opinion is as dynamic in the United States as it is elsewhere. Europe is not the only part of the world in flux. The United States has borne a very large part of the world's police work during the last twenty years. That work is intensely unpopular among the American people. They understood and accepted the fact that in the first period after the war we were almost alone in our capacity to act, and therefore that we had to act, both unilaterally and as surrogate for a system of collective security. But the nations of Europe have recovered from the war, as Japan has recovered. And American public opinion resents being required to carry so large a fraction of the task alone. That resentment could lead to far-reaching changes in American policy, which it would be difficult to limit if they ever began to gain momentum.

This condition of opinion in the United States is the counterpart and mirror-image of M. Duroselle's complaint, frequently and naturally met in Europe, about American "domination" or "hegemony" within the Alliance. In the early post-war period, inevitably, Europe was under the protection of the United States, as Japan has been. It was evident that while Europe made exertions in its own behalf, and actively participated in the several efforts to contain and deter aggression, those efforts would have been insufficient without the American guaranty. The weight of the American guaranty had certain consequences when political and military considerations were combined -- most notably at Suez, where the United States and the Soviet Union in effect over-

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ruled decisions of the French, British and Israeli governments. In many other contexts, the American protectorate was not and probably could not be translated into political "domination" or "hegemony". Thus European countries pursued independent courses in relation to China, Africa, trade with Eastern Europe, the policies of the United Nations, and many other sensitive issues.

However one measures the degree of American hegemony in the Alliance, the essential political fact is that while some American officials certainly enjoy an illusory sense of supreme command, American public opinion is clear-cut in wanting company in the task of peace keeping, and in favoring the reality, and not merely the facade, of partnership and collective security.

M. Duroselle's argument depends upon the proposition that states are "cold monsters" whose normal foreign policy is completely egoistic. He gives this sentence a turn of rationality, contrasting what he calls "anti-sentimental reason" with the myths and illusions we lesser mortals use when we talk about foreign policy, and other subjects too. Therefore, he contends, the United States will protect the peace, because it is in its interest to do so, even if Europe should relax. I wish he were right. I wish that governments did perceive and understand their national interests, and act rationally and with perfect egoism to protect them. The history of the last sixty-six years, to go back no further, is littered with catastrophes which occurred only because the various governments of the world failed to perceive their interests in time, or failed to protect them. The world has suffered two world wars that rational egoism could easily have prevented — tragic wars from which many further tragedies flowed. Prudent policy can hardly take for granted the rationality either of man or of his governments.

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I share M. Duroselle's enthusiasm for the greatness of the achievement in which President Truman played a leading part. Stability and détente in the relationship between Western and Eastern Europe, which made the recovery of Western Europe possible, was the first great success of the Truman Doctrine and of the Atlantic Alliance. A perfectly rational perception of national interests would have initiated the policy somewhat earlier, and somewhat further to the east. But a line was finally drawn in Greece and in Berlin, as it had been drawn earlier in Iran and Turkey, and was to be drawn again in Korea, and, I should say, in Vietnam as well. These firm but modulated actions by President Truman were necessary conditions for the cycle of political initiatives which have established living institutions of European and Atlantic solidarity.

The position President Truman defined for the United States in the post-war period is a new phenomenon in world politics, and despite its strong roots in the American national interest, it cannot be taken as the order of nature.

The American view of our responsibilities in world politics is colored by certain notable features of history and experience.

In the first place, there is a widespread feeling that the American people betrayed Wilson and the League in the two decades after 1919, and that a large part of the world's subsequent misery was our fault. Wilson's view of the world has a central place in the American mind, both because its idiom is sympathetic, and because his prophesies have the special magic associated with martyrdom.

Secondly, there is a more limited realization that we have a national stake in the balance of power; that every great disturbance in the international order necessarily involves us; and that we can no longer afford to leave to others the primary task of achieving and maintaining peace.

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On the other hand, as children of 1776 we automatically supported all
movements for freedom within the colonial empires, and invariably opted for
decolonization against security, even though that meant opposing at various
times the positions taken by France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Great Britain.
The same sense of identification with a revolutionary tradition has complicated
our reaction to military efforts which called themselves revolutionary in
Greece, in China, in Cuba, and now in Vietnam. M. Duroselle is quite wrong,
I think, in accepting the popular view that American opinion has a strong emo-
tional preoccupation with Communism as such. Our republican and revolutionary
heritage is infinitely the stronger theme in public feeling. American opinion
favored the Spanish Republic, not Franco, thirty years ago, despite the impli-
cations of the Popular Front. The revolutionary forces in China were initial-
ly the more popular, as General Marshall's mission to China would indicate, and
Castro was welcomed by our government in the beginning, and offered aid which
he spurned. There is an underlying yearning for friendship with Russia in
American opinion and policy -- a yearning which is strongly expressed whenever
it is given the slightest encouragement.

It has been difficult, and is difficult still, for Americans to view the
world in terms of the idea of the balance of power, especially when considera-
tions of security require us to tolerate or to protect regimes which are criti-
cized as undemocratic. "Power politics" is a term of reproach in the American
language. We prefer Wilson's rhetoric to the logic of Metternich, a fact which
makes our present posture in world politics less stable than it seems. When
men as well-informed as Senators Fulbright and Mansfield advocate withdrawing
American troops from Europe out of pique at President de Gaulle, we realize
how precarious the foundations of our policy are.

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Despite the facts of international life, and the currents of feeling--
indeed, of conviction, which shape our response to them -- the old isolationist
sentiment is by no means dead in the United States. It is common to hear men
ask, with great vehemence, why we have to take care of trouble in Korea and
Berlin, to say nothing of Vietnam. Both President Truman and President Johnson
have had to pay heavily for the actions they took -- rightly or wrongly -- to
deter and contain what they regarded as aggression. The violent reaction of
public opinion against President Truman's course in Korea certainly played a
part in his decision not to run in 1952, and in President Eisenhower's election
in that year. The same forces which supported Henry Wallace in 1948 are now
running nearly 100 peace candidates in the Congressional elections this fall
to punish President Johnson and the Democratic Party for their support of South
Vietnam against a revolution aided by North Vietnam. Many of President John-
son's men are running for cover behind various equivocal formulae of wishful
words. And both the Senators Kennedy are flirting with the same position, even
though it involves them in seeming to challenge positions their brother took.

I mention United States policy in Vietnam here only to stress a simple
point, which is central to the theme of this conference. In situations like
that of Greece, Korea or Vietnam, an American President may be right or wrong,
but he acts only out of the most serious conviction that his action is indis-
pensable to the national interest. He cannot win one vote by such policies:
on the contrary, he knows in advance that he will lose many, perhaps a great
many.

The question I wish to pose, therefore, is whether European nations can
safely rest their foreign policies on the expectation that America will continue
to enforce the Truman Doctrine with perfect rationality and egoism, and thus
maintain a degree of order in the world, a balance of power, from which we could

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hope for an East-West detente in Europe, and other benefits as well. Future
Presidents may not have the courage to do what President Truman did, and
what President Johnson is doing, even though I agree with M. Duroselle that
it would be in our national interest to do so, with or without the aid of allies.

A revolt of American opinion is a serious affair. Once such a revolt
starts, there is no telling where it would end. The opinion that turns away
from Vietnam would also refuse to engage in efforts M. Duroselle would regard
as more crucial to the problem of security. Many of the voices now criticizing
our course in Vietnam were raised in the same terms, and with the same vehemence,
against President Truman's policies in Iran, Turkey, Greece and Berlin. After
Korea, a comparable revolt of opinion led to Suez, and laid the foundation for
our present troubles in Vietnam and Laos.

Given these factors in the making of American policy, I submit that the
course of unity is the course of prudence. The time is passing when countries
protected by the United States can afford the position of "Having one's cake
and Eating it too" which we enjoyed during the nineteenth century, and the
first part of this one. Collective action would be infinitely easier for Ameri-
can opinion to accept than another Vietnam, or another Korea.

I fully understand, as all of you do, the burdens of history which make
a sharing of responsibility for peace in Asia so difficult for European nations,
and for Japan. But if we are even approximately to obey M. Duroselle's injunc-
tion of anti-septic and antisentimental rationalism, we must look at the prob-
lem of order as it is. It is worth noting in this connection that despite the
tragic quality of many shared memories, Britain is still an active presence
in India, as France is in Algeria.

In the second place, I suggest that the problem of achieving and main-
taining equilibrium is today more difficult than it was in 1949 or 1950.
The world is becoming more polycentric, and it is less easy than it was ten

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years ago to mount enough credible sanctions to contain local turbulence, and prevent it from threatening the general peace. The "special relation" between the United States and the Soviet Union is no longer sufficient, as the case of Vietnam proves, to keep all local troubles from escalating dangerously. General Beaufre's game can get out of hand, if it leads the players not to harmless paralysis, but to panic.

The combination of these two factors -- the political attack on the Truman Doctrine in the United States, and the increasing magnitude and complexity of the security problem in a centrifugal world -- defines a most unstable political pattern. And instability on such a scale, as we should long since have learned, is a primary cause of war. In our lunatic world of nation states, war can come, even in the absence of a Napoleon or a Hitler, when one or more of the players gets tired, or desparate, when he feels a strong current setting in, a current in which he feels he might drown if he doesn't strike out. The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 illustrates part of what I mean. President Kennedy experienced a sense of quite violent rage during that crisis, a feeling most of the world shared, although the event provoking his reaction was not in itself an act of war, or even a violation of international law. It is not hard to imagine situations of comparable danger -- if, for example, the coup d'état in Indonesia had succeeded a few months ago, or the war between India and Pakistan had dragged on.

The ultimate bipolarity of the world is fading, and fading rapidly. With or without treaties against nuclear proliferation, we can no longer rely on the tacit understanding between the United States and the U.S.S.R to keep political rivalry within tolerable limits. The rule of the Truman Doctrine against unilateral change in the frontiers of the two systems is not, as M. Duroselle suggests at one point (p. 14), a device for maintaining what he calls American predominance. It is, as he recognizes elsewhere ( ), a policy of peace and of peaceful coexistence, which has so far prevented

cumulative eruptions in the balance of power -- eruptions of the kind
that could induce waves of panic, and the separate remedies men adopt
when they are panicky.

It doesn't help to say that the world ought to be more rationally
organized, under a world government, or an Atlantic government, or the
famous "dumbell" plan of partnership between the United States and a
federated Europe. It would not be difficult to imagine a more sensible
world constitution than the system we have inherited. But we can't stop
the world and get off until some such plan is adopted. We can't escape the
ordeal of trying to achieve peace within the present system by talking
about something else. We should of course have long term goals for foreign
policy in mind and take no short-term actions which are inconsistent with
our hopes for the longer-run. We cannot, however, refuse to act now
because the world is badly organized. That is true, but hardly relevant to
the task of peace.

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V.

If we try to peer ten years into the future, on the basis of M. Duroselle's observations, and the amendments to them I have just proposed, what perspectives do we see for the relationships among the Atlantic states? What connections are both desirable and feasible, in the language of our agenda, from the point of view of peace?

M. Duroselle's analysis of the future politics of Europe rests on certain assumptions. Despite his warning that the Alliance must take China into account, he takes it as given that the United States will somehow prevent disorders in Asia from engulfing the world, with or without help from Britain. I think he assumes also that as a consequence of our involvements in Asia, we shall pull back somewhat from the detailed politics of Europe, save as an ultimate guarantor of its freedom. After these two steps, he prescribes several more as a method for seeking improvement in East-West relations, one of the "vast enterprises" in his view, which could revitalize the Atlantic community. He recommends that this improvement be sought by separate and dispersed negotiations, qualified by consultations. On this basis, and, if I understand him, on this basis alone (p. 21), an East-West rapprochement should be possible in Europe.

This is not the position of the French government. In a recent speech to the National Assembly, M. Couve de Murville said that his government's decisions with regard to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization were made on the basis of a judgment that only drastic action to reduce European dependence on the United States could force the governments of Europe to resume their proper responsibilities in world politics. Under the pressure of necessity, he argued, and only under such pressure would they form a political Europe, a Europe capable in itself of taking a major

they form a political Europe, a Europe capable in itself of taking a more
the presence of necessity, he argued, and only under such pressure would
of Europe to resume their proper responsibilities in world politics. Under
reduce European dependence on the United States could force the governments
tion were made on the basis of a judgment that only drastic action to
government's decisions with regard to the North Atlantic Treaty Organis-
ation to the National Assembly, M. Convè de Muvillie said that he
This is not the position of the French Government. In a recent
West reproachment should be possible in Europe.

basis, and, if I understand him, on this basis alone (p. 51), an East-
separate and dispirited negotiations, unshifted by consultations. On this
the Atlantic community. He recommends that this improvement be sought by
relations, one of the "last enterprises" in his view which could reidealize
prescribes several more as a method for seeking improvement in East-West
as an ultimate guarantor of its freedom. After these two areas, he
we shall buffeted somewhat from the detailed politics of Europe, save
I think he assumes also that as a consequence of our involvements in Asia
disorders in Asia from enraging the world, with or without help from Britain
into account, he takes it as given that the United States will somehow prevent
certain assumptions. Despite his warning that the Alliance must take China
M. Dufoselle's analysis of the future politics of Europe rests on
of our agenda, from the point of view of peace?

states? What connections are being desirable and feasible, in the language
what perspectives do we see for the relationships among the Atlantic
Dufoselle's observations, and the amendments to them I have just proposed.
If we try to be ten years into the future, on the basis of M.

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share in its own defense, and of influencing the course of world affairs.
This view of French strategy would indicate that France envisages a
political Europe, presumably organized along the lines of the Fouchet-
Erhard plans, undertaking East-West and other negotiations under the
ultimate protection of the American umbrella.

For the moment, however, in the absence of such a Europe, we
face the prospect which M. Duroselle's advocates, namely, a series of
dispersed bilateral negotiations, somewhat mitigated by consultations
among the Allies. The atmosphere of the Atlantic relation deteriorates,
under the strain of cumulative and mutually reinforcing irritations and
suspicions, as we go on playing an unseemly game of carrousel. We, the
French, the Germans, the British, and the Italians have all taken a
series of initiatives with each other, with Eastern Europe, and with the
Soviet Union. Each produces a separate round of anxieties. If we talk
at length with the Russians, all Europe worries, and Germany is alarmed.
Who has special relations with Washington? London? Paris? Bonn? or
Moscow? Is there a London-Bonn axis? or a Paris-Bonn axis? or no axis
at all? If we make proposals about Europe, we are hegemonial. If we do
not, our leadership has flagged.

I suggest that this procedure is not calculated either to produce
a significant detente in East-West relations, or to provide the negotiating
basis, now or later, through which the German question could be resolved.
If we know anything about negotiation, a bargaining situation in which
one large country, the Soviet Union, deals successively with a series of
smaller countries, somewhat divided, somewhat jealous of each other, and
somewhat different in outlook, is hardly a propitious one for the smaller
countries. It is, on the contrary, ideally attractive for the Soviet Union,

countries. It is, on the contrary, essentially attractive for the Soviet Union, some-where different in outlook, to identify a proposition one for the smaller smaller countries, some-where divided, somewhat homogeneous of each other, and one large country, the Soviet Union, state successively with a series of states, now or later, through which the German operation could be resolved. A significant defeat in East-West relations, or to provide the negotiating I engage that this procedure is not calculated either to promote not, our leadership has failed.

at all. If we make proposals about Europe, we are regrettably. If we do Moscow? Is there a London-Bonn axis? Or a Paris-Bonn axis? Or no state who has special relations with Washington? London? Paris? Bonn? Or at least with the Russians, all Europe worries, and Germany is insured.

Bonn Union. Each produces a separate round of anxieties. If we talk series of initiatives with each other, with Eastern Europe, and with the French, the Germans, the Britains, and the Italians have all taken a stand. A separate, as we go on fighting an asymmetrically more homogeneous, mutually reinforcing irritations and among the Axis. The atmosphere of the Atlantic relation deteriorates. Statements of different negotiations, somewhat mitigated by consultations these the prospect which M. Duracelle's advocates, namely, a series of

For the moment, however, in the absence of such a Europe, we
ultIMATE PROTECTION of the American umbrella.
Bonn axis, undertaking East-West and other negotiations under the
belligerent Europe, presumably organized along the lines of the Konech-
This a view of French strategy would indicate that France envisages a
strategy in its own defense, and of infusing the commerce of world allies.

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21.

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and tempting to chantage. It is also a way of poisoning the atmosphere of the Alliance, and paving the way, on Soviet initiative at the right moment, for the bargain always most attractive to the Russian mind -- that with the largest and most powerful country, the United States.

If M. Duroselle's course of decentralized East-West negotiation seems risky, that of M. Couve de Murville's speech seems riskier still. A political Europe may come about someday, and probably will. Especially if it comes to life under the pressure of President de Gaulle's forced draft, it is bound for a time to be relatively weak, and divided internally. The Third Force strategy has always seemed an imprudence, to say the least. It is meaningless unless it establishes a certain distance between the United States and Europe. Yet that certain distance is precisely what Europe has sought to avoid, ever since the outward pressure of Russian expansion began to be felt in the late forties. The safest means of containing that pressure by political means, before it becomes so strong as to require at least a demonstration of counter force, is the credible assurance of Western solidarity.

There is a paradox in the cycle of contentions and counter-contentions which swirl about this issue. The French say that Europe must take primary responsibility for its own safety, for the United States cannot always be relied upon to take the course Europe deems right. Some American Presidents might not be willing to risk bombs on New York or Washington for the sake, let us say, of Danzig. In this, the French argument is surely correct. One need look no further than Suez or Indo-China to confirm the point. The paradox, however, is that the alternative course is even less secure. However rapidly a federal or confederal Europe is

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22.

formed, European self-defense will in the nature of things be dependent upon American power for a long time to come. That being the case, uncoordinated initiatives and conflicting views would seem calculated to reproduce the miseries of the 'Thirties, when Britain made a separate naval treaty with Germany, and the Western Alliance divided in recriminations and bitterness.

There is nothing unusual in the French argument. I agree that Europe cannot be sure that the United States will always act effectively to protect Europe's interest. But the same thing could be said of the European governments. And the American people can't rely on the American government always to protect their interests, either. Such is the nature of governments. The moral, I suggest, is that there is no way to escape the fact that Europe and the United States depend upon each other for their security, and that in the next decade the United States will need the support of Europe almost as much as Europe will need that of the United States.

To me, therefore, the safest course in the politics of peace is that of Allied cohesion, in which the political arrangements and procedures would reflect the realities of our interdependence: — the realities, I hasten to stress, of our relationships today and tomorrow, not those of 1949. To my way of thinking, the surest way to achieve and maintain an equilibrium is to rebuild the Alliance as a strong coalition of the industrialized free nations, including Japan and India; such a coalition should be capable of conducting policies of detente and of peaceful coexistence with China and the Soviet Union, through the U.N. and otherwise. On this firm but conciliatory footing, the free industrialized nations could take on, as M. Duroselle suggests, the primary burden of protecting

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23.

the Third World, and supplying it with the capital, entrepreneurship, education and skills needed to assure its economic and social development.

To my way of thinking, then, the first task of the Alliance is that of peace. Peace is basically a political problem, and I can see no way of approaching it save directly, by new devices of political collaboration. I think we should by now have learned that political concord is not a by-product of economic, military or cultural cooperation. Quite the contrary, I see little hope for various projects of collaboration in other fields until the political atmosphere is changed, and a system of political consultation achieved. Such a system should be conducted, as M. Duroselle points out, according to the sound old rules of the Entente Cordiale. We didn't follow such rules during the period of decolonization. And now Europeans are taking human satisfaction in talking about American policies in Santo Domingo and Vietnam very much as Senators John Kennedy, Fulbright and others used to talk about European policies in Algeria, the Congo, the East Indies, and Indo-China. But such talk can be corrosive. And it has consequences.

Consultation is something more than a matter of atmosphere -- of M. Duroselle's 7th category, the "Yes, but" system of Atlantic cooperation. What I have in mind is a method of making political decisions in common, which should assure two things: solidarity in most cases, and mutual understanding in the event differences survive the process of consultation. In the nature of things, it is difficult to conduct our system of nation states without disaster -- more difficult today, surely, than it was a century ago. Without established mores of consultation among the states chiefly responsible for the future of peace, the task is nearly impossible.

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VI.

If this analysis is correct -- that is, if political collaboration among the main industrial nations is desirable, the next question is whether such modes of cooperation are feasible. To make a program of this kind feasible, as I see it, two barriers have to be overcome: on our side, the strong American preference for unilateral action, based on Pentagonian assumptions of omnipotence, and on habits of autonomy so ingrained as almost to be unconscious. On the side of Europe, the barrier to be faced, and exorcised, is the complex of political attitudes arising out of the last 20 years -- the resentment at American attitudes during decolonization, and at American actions like Suez and Nassau; the exasperation of those who have to deal with our improbable government over long periods of time; and the yearning for that most cherished political freedom, freedom from responsibility.

I think it is feasible, although by no means certain, that the United States would soon be willing to join with others in imagining and constructing a new structure for the Alliance, based on the principles of consultation and equality. I believe such a change in United States policy is possible for a number of reasons of national interest. I think that every one except a number of our most obtuse officials now understands that the revolt led by President de Gaulle expresses certain real political feelings throughout Europe, and is not simply an inexplicable eccentricity. Secondly, the political attack on our policy in Vietnam weakens one of the great forces for unilateralism in the United States government -- namely, the military and naval element in the formation of policy, which has always been particularist, especially about affairs in the Pacific. Thirdly, a good many people perceive the American interest in a policy of coalition

25.

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insofar as science and technology is concerned, a topic of central importance I shall consider separately in a few moments.

What about the political attitudes of Europe, and Japan? Is it reasonable to expect that a policy of political cohesion, leading to comparable programs of cohesion in the realms of economics, the military, science, intellectual life, and aid to underdeveloped countries, would now appeal to Europe, Japan and India as desirable and feasible modes of political action? Or is it inevitable after 20 years of dependence under American protection that the protected countries go through a period of frisky autonomy, in which they demonstrate their independence, to themselves and everybody else, by differing with the United States in public?

The European participants in this colloquium are in a better position than I am to know whether Europe wishes to take a full share of responsibility for maintaining world peace: that is, of great power responsibility for order in Asia as well as in Europe and Africa. How serious is the support for a political Europe, and for European initiatives in its own defense, and in world politics? Is there fire, or only smoke behind the slogan "No annihilation without representation"?

If Europe is ready to take on this labor, I am certain that acceptable modes of collaboration with the United States could be worked out. The United States can be counted upon to lean over backwards on this point. Our present course is lonesome, and that of collective action most appealing. Before evidence of a will to share, I should suppose that even the Kennedy-McNamara position at Athens would be abandoned, and the McMahon Act modified.

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The problem of security appears different to each country, and indeed it is somewhat different for each country. Germany, Japan and Britain face different risks over the next ten years, and have different sets of attitudes and opinions to resolve at home. And then, not to breach M. Duroselle's rule about conferences of this kind, there is the politics of France, which has so far most vividly and most openly articulated the protest against the indefinite continuance of an American protectorate in Europe.

I regard President De Gaulle as a perceptive and scholarly man, more a professor at the Ecole de Guerre than a field officer, a man of insight and instinct whose entire career has been devoted not to the past but to the future. I never thought it likely that the colonel who anticipated tank warfare would become enmeshed in dreams of the 17th century. He has in fact shown a truer grasp of the decisive political forces governing his world than many of his critics. Like Metternich, he is now cross-ruffing with a weak hand (while we play dummy), taking tricks otherwise beyond him. That is the course of a bold, confident player, a player who counts the cards carefully, not one who deceives himself by confusing dreies and wishes with reality. President de Gaulle never fails to proclaim the necessity of the Atlantic Alliance to European security, at least for the time being. And he is the last man in the world not to understand the links between peace in Europe and in Asia. He has not forgotten that the war in Korea led to German rearmament, and that the campaign in Vietnam could have even more general consequences unless it is ended reasonably soon.

27.

One view of his course over the last few years -- that advanced by some of the most eminent among the de Gaulle watchers -- is that he has been preparing a position of strength for the eventual negotiation between France and the United States. He has talked and written about several Grand Designs, including the idea of a greater Mahgreb, and he has probed first Bonn, then London, Spain, South America, Roumania, and now Moscow in quest of a policy.

If political circumstances permit, my own guess is that after these probes he will conclude that only collaboration among the Atlantic nations can give what he wants for France, and that the alternatives are all either sterile or dangerous. After all, in the realm of science and technology, which President de Gaulle rightly regards as crucial, collaboration with the United States is far more feasible for France than it is with secretive Russia.

The most astute de Gaulle watcher I know stresses one cardinal feature of his character -- that he accepts reality, however unpleasant, and however contrary it may be to his preferences. If that hypothesis be correct, then the long voyage to Washington via nearly every other capital of the world makes sense, from the point of view of a negotiator.

I have consistently opposed the doctrine that nothing should be done to reform NATO until de Gaulle retires. This policy, which I have contended was always shallow, now stands revealed as self-defeating.

President de Gaulle has succeeded in kicking my most reluctant government into the process of reexamining the Alliance. That achievement is in itself a major one. And no one should underrate what may happen when American

28.

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energy and optimism are applied to the solution of a problem like that of NATO.

While I do not go so far as M. Duroselle, who thinks it is now impossible to achieve political cohesion within the Alliance, I agree that such a step will not be easy. The deeper political needs of Europe are real, and they point towards demonstrable independence of the United States. Can the psychological aspects of the security problem be reconciled with those of political and military reality? I believe the answer to this question must be "yes," if we allow ourselves to follow our instincts of self-preservation.

Let me conclude this stage of my argument by sketching alternative futures for the Atlantic Alliance.

The present posture is manifestly unstable. The United States is becoming politically restless under the burden of peace keeping, especially where the military efforts required to assure stability must be carried out unilaterally, and not in the name of the United Nations, NATO, or some other agency whose vote can be described in Wilsonian terms as an invocation of "collective security." The European nations, and Japan, fully recovered from the war, are torn between their desire to participate in the process of world politics, and the attractions of irresponsibility. They are protected by the deterrent force of American military power; they are free to criticize United States diplomacy; they are not required to devote massive fractions of their national income to military expenditure; and they are deterred from responsibility by powerful memories of past experience. The Third World is gradually and reluctantly accepting several facts: (1) the path to economic growth is long and slow; it requires a

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29.

great deal of work; it can be organized effectively only by large numbers of entrepreneurs, private or public as the case may be, who are in extremely short supply; (2) the economic and social revolution of the West in the postwar period has outstripped that of the Communist countries in every aspect, despite deeply established convictions to the contrary; and (3) the Communist movement is by no means necessarily the Wave of the Future, politically or otherwise. It has been contained in Europe, where it is dissolving into a series of uncoordinated fragments. Within a visible period, many of the people who supported Communist parties in France and Italy will be reintegrated into their national political communities. It is not fantastic to imagine the Eastern European countries, and even Russia, becoming part of Europe again, although that process is not without hazard to the general peace, both in Germany and elsewhere. The containment of Communism in Asia is not yet so obvious. But it is also difficult to imagine China waging a great war of expansion, with or without nuclear weapons, while it depends on the West for food. And it is equally difficult to see why the next generation of Chinese leaders should pursue grandiose schemes which come naturally to the men who led the long campaign for the conquest of China.

The perspectives toward the future implicit in this conjecture of flows of influence can be divided into three classes, under the head of three distinct premises about American policy:

(1) Effective, forceful and conciliatory American policy organizes a strong coalition of the industrialized free nations, including Japan and India, to stabilize world politics, and conduct policies of detente and peaceful coexistence with China and the Soviet Union, through the United

30.

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Nations and otherwise. On this footing, the free industrialized nations
would have the primary burden of protecting the so-called Third World,
and supplying it with the capital, entrepreneurship, education and skills
needed to assure its economic development. If a policy of this kind is
pursued by the United States, one could anticipate the avoidance of
general war, and transformations of the main Communist societies, under
the disintegrating influence of nationalism and the Western example.
Confronting so solid a combination, they would have little alternative,
separately or in combination, to a policy of cooperation.

(2) A tacit or not-so-tacit understanding between the United States
and the Soviet Union seeks stability and peace by efforts to maintain
nuclear bi-polarity, and dual hegemony of the kind made manifest at Suez,
and again recently during the war between India and Pakistan. This policy
on the part of the United States, is not necessarily an alternative to premise
(1), but is in fact a corollary or supplement to it -- or, more accurately,
a consequence of its influence. Coupled with premise (1), it could lead
to a most dangerous division of the world by color, unless India and Japan
are firmly included in the American coalition, if the United States and
the Soviet Union adopt joint, or at least parallel policies or programs
designed to contain and control China during the period of its aggressiveness.

(3) Weak and flaccid American policy accepts American withdrawal
from the mainland of Asia; Japan then reaches accommodation with China,
and becomes the energizing force of a program which would make China and
Japan together the masters of Asia, and a new world power of a most formidable
kind. However the system of world politics is organized, a vast industrial

VII.

32.

I have so far stressed my concern with the political side of the prob-
lems of peace, and with arrangements for political collaboration among the key
nations of the free world, because I believe it to be the first of our common
problems. The underlying reason for this conclusion, as I contended earlier,
is that I disagree with M. Duroselle's premise that we can rely on the so-called
stalemate between the United States and the U.S.S.R. to guarantee conditions of
general peace indefinitely. The period of Soviet-American duopoly of power is
ending, I believe; it behooves us to prepare for the next world.

Let me now put before you a corolary of this proposition -- namely,
that the control of nuclear weaponry is not a central problem, nor even a very
important problem, despite the obsessive interest it has aroused. The course
of world politics can hardly be determined by the intricacies of a game that
can't be played. The American nuclear monopoly did not prevent the breaches
of the Yalta and the Potsdam agreements, nor the seizure of power in Czecho-
slovakia and China. Veiled nuclear threats may have helped end the war in
Korea, and the missile crisis in Cuba. But there are less dramatic explana-
tions for those episodes. Nuclear power has not unseated Castro, nor does
it have a role in the crises which are the daily bread of all foreign offices --
affairs like Cyprus and the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, the troubles in Malaysia,
the Congo and the Middle East, the conflict over Kashmir.

I have no objection to sharing with our Allies the mysteries of nuclear
planning, such as they are, so long as the exercise doesn't absorb the time of
too many able people who might be more usefully employed. If our Allies feel
excluded from an area of knowledge which has become a symbol of importance, the
ark should be opened. And, as nuclear weapons spread, we should take advantage
of the emotions clustering around that fact to help paralyze the instinct for
war. I do not oppose such proposals. I simply object to what I regard as the

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mistaken view that they are a crucial part of the problem of peace, or that a committee to contemplate nuclear weapons is in any sense a substitute for a committee to coordinate the general course of Allied foreign policy, either in crisis situations, or before.

I do not take the same view of nuclear science, nor of the ultimate deterrent effect of the Soviet and American nuclear arsenals, if we or the Soviets get angry enough to be thought capable of using them.

Nuclear science -- and, one should now add, other pioneer areas of advanced science as well - constitute one of the most important dimensions of the future of the Alliance. The infinitely reticulated connections among American, European and Japanese scholars, scientists and technological industries are multiplying every day, even though our collective politics go through tides of attraction and repulsion. This fact is one of the most important forces opposing the disintegration of the Alliance. In my view, at least, it also defines one of the most promising means for fulfilling the Alliance. For I believe that it is as much in the common interest of Europe, the United States and Japan to achieve an open, integrated, intellectual community as it is to concert their foreign policies.

Here I find myself in fundamental disagreement with M. Duroselle. He urges a more or less separate European science and industry as the best way to overcome the so-called gap between European and American technology. I cannot reconcile this emphasis in his argument with his zeal for an Atlantic pooling of education and research. Nor am I convinced that separate national or European initiatives -- indispensably valuable in themselves -- constitute a sufficient answer to the challenge of the technological gap.

Let us look at the problem a little more closely.

In the history of the industrial revolutions, several nations have successively taken the lead. First Britain led, then, with the development of German scientific education, Germany had its turn. At the present time, des-

34.

pite contrary myths, scientific knowledge is widely shared, and technological skills of the highest order are genuinely diffused. In certain industries, and in certain branches of knowledge, different industrial countries hold leading positions, and constitute the models. Nonetheless, there is a sense in which American industry is at the moment the most advanced in the world. It has a tradition of competitive energy, pushing in the direction of cost reduction. It has experience in vast enterprises, and the economies and diseconomies of scale. And, thanks to Hitler and Mussolini, and the forced draft of twenty five years of military spending, the surge of American technology in atomic engineering, electronics and space is pushing American industry ahead so rapidly that Europe faces the risk, in the phrase of a knowledgeable European, of becoming an underdeveloped continent within a few years.

The picture is not so simple, however. The present lead of American technique represents the application on a large scale of basic scientific ideas developed in Europe a generation or two ago. It could vanish as quickly as it came into being. American basic science -- the source of future technologies -- is by no means so advanced nor so clearly superior as American industrial technique. Indeed many observers share the view of a great American company, which has located its research laboratories in Belgium in order to remain in touch with European science, which it regards as "original," as compared with our own, which it considers "largely derivative." Whether this judgment is fully correct as a matter of fact is not important. I am convinced that it has enough substance to define an identity of interest between Europe and the United States in the field of science and technology. The point is given emphasis by even the most cursory examination of the history of recent innovations. In a surprising number of cases, from the jet engine to some of the newer techniques in steel making and construction, innovation originated in Europe, not in the United States. Obviously, the quickest way to bring European technology up to the level of American industry,

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where it does lag behind, is the most vigorous kind of interpenetration,
through competition, joint ventures, and a wide variety of procedures to
encourage and facilitate the spread of advanced methods.

The nature of knowledge, and the relationship of Europe and the
United States within a single intellectual and social universe, make it
equally foolish for Europe or for America to go it alone in science and
technology. It is in the equal interest of both to knit their science, and
that of Japan, Australia, New Zealand and India, into a single interrelated
resource on which our defense technologies, agriculture and industries of the
future could all draw.

I do not believe that such a course would result in American hegemony
in science or technology. I see no reason why it should, if European nations
spend enough on higher education and research to keep their educational estab-
lishments up to date. American intellectual hegemony does not exist in any
of the literatures I know myself -- those of economics, history, law and
philosophy. And I have yet to hear of an area of knowledge where such a claim
could be made. On the contrary, the approach of unity in the field of knowledge
should deepen the sense of interdependence among the nations, and its reality
as well.

Our educational and research institutions are becoming more and more
visibly mixed up. They constitute a dispersed but closely linked community
of scholars, among whom free communication is both a right and a force. I agree
with M. Duroselle that we should do a great deal to improve our facilities for
encouraging the movement of students and scholars within this community. I
should add that we should take steps if we can to present a dominant orthodoxy
in the administration of higher education from restricting the free development
of thought. Such an open community of scholars, universal in its scope and its
principles, drawing on the best resources everywhere, should achieve a uniformity
of intellectual standards throughout its realm. On that foundation, technological
lags should disappear, as the principle of comparative advantage effectively guides

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specialization.

I can see no other course which would be nearly so promising, either
for Europe or for the United States.

VIII.

Let me conclude with two or three general observations on M. Duroselle's
paper, and on the underlying problem set for us in our agenda.

I agree with him that the passage of time, the revival of Europe and
Japan, and the changing contours of world politics require us not to defend NATO
foot by foot, committee by committee, but to rethink the bases of our policy,
and if necessary to imagine entirely new structures for our alliance, which we
agree in regarding still as indispensable to security and desirable to the possi-
bility of progress. I should go further than he does. I think the obligation
to rethink conventional positions applies not only to United States opinion, and
to the American government, but to European opinion and to the European govern-
ments as well. The absence of serious thought is, I quite agree, an obstacle to
progress. No assumptions can be taken for granted, even the assumption that we
can or shall continue to enforce the Truman Doctrine almost single-handed. It
is implicit in what I say that the easy and popular rhetorical flourishes about
American policy in Vietnam, which give us so many people such an agreeable sense
of righteousness, need to be reexamined in the hard light of what M. Duroselle
praises as anti-sentimental reality. For me, at least, the first moral of our
experience since 1960 is how easy it is for intelligent and well-intentioned men
to make colloidal mistakes. To recall Churchill's famous quip, we all have a
great deal to be humble about, even Churchill. M. Duroselle calls for an un-
precedented effort of cultural cooperation, which might permit the growth of
mutual understanding, as the best means of progressively surmounting the emotional
crisis of the moment. I agree, but I should go much further than he.

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The educational institutions to which we belong are an old brotherhood. They developed before the nation-state, and in one perspective they are independent of the nation-state. The thrust of Benda's famous book a generation ago was that as intellectuals our highest loyalty, and our highest obligation, was not to the nation, but to another principle. We need unprecedented efforts of cultural cooperation not only among ourselves, but on a universal scale, embracing the universities and institutes of research in the new countries, and as well the intellectual institutions beyond the various political curtains of world politics. Only from the sense of understanding and solidarity that should come from such an effort can we hope to surmount not only the crisis in the Atlantic Alliance, but the more fundamental crisis in the organization of human society which has made the Atlantic Alliance a necessity.