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# I. THE MAINSPRINGS OF THE AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC PROCESSES

It has seemed curious to some Americans and natural to many others that there has never been a comprehensive rationale or critique of the American Democratic process. Great writers and poets have created evocations but no analysis has yet been achieved.

Our panel believes that is natural for no such categorical imperative or manifesto of democracy to exist. In many ways the practice of democracy -- whether by a President of the United States or a local PTA chairman -- is more an act of spontaneous creation or an institutionalized credo than the observance of rules and customs and theses. Nonetheless, we recognize that it is our responsibility to focus on or in other ways delimit this wide and subtle area; without some ground rules of diction and substance, no discussion of the U. S. democratic process is possible.

As we go on with our report we hope various aspects and dynamics of the process will define themselves. And while from time to time we shall underline certain points by adding specific recommendations for future improvements, in a larger sense they are redundant. For the people *is* the democratic process and once the people becomes aware of the challenges and realizes its beliefs and institutions are at stake, automatically the dynamism of a free society is set in motion; the excitement of the democratic process is rekindled; and recommendations for the improvement are in result only a description of the actions which a people has already decided of and by itself to take.

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The Goals of the Democratic Process

Of course, any process is only a means to some end predetermined by
the goals and aspirations which set the process in motion. Thus there can be
no discussion of democratic processes without an effort to define aims. Indeed
it is a central problem for any society to formulate, communicate and give sub-
stance to its purposes and aspirations. And it is especially necessary for a
democratic society to be clear about the goals which precondition its proces-
ses, even though it may believe those goals are self-evident.

The elegance and economy of words in certain of the great American
documents make it possible to state our generally agreed national purposes
briefly and simply. If these seem trite, this is one of our present problems,
for words which have lost much of their strength for being taken for granted
are loaded with 2500 years of political discussion and centuries of conflict
and trial and error in the search for a tolerable relation between governors
and governed and between nations. . .

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to ensure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." . . .

"We, the people of the United States, in order to

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form a more perfect Union
establish justice
insure domestic tranquility
provide for the common defense
promote the general welfare
and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves
and our posterity . . ."

Such are some of the evocative mottoes which summon up the common
memories, and convictions and objectives of our nation. They serve to sus-
tain and inspire our society and they indicate the general moral direction in
which our society moves. But although they are an historic expression of our
national intent, one more American document is needed to complete the defi-
nition of our national faith

of the people, by the people, for the people . . .

If there be any basic conviction and basic goal most basic in our demo-
cratic process, surely it is the soaring concept of the unique grandeur and
importance and inviolability of the individual human being. And our society
in all its aspects is no more than the sum of the separate and unique individ-
uals who choose to make common human consensus for the sake of the further
protection and enrichment of the people, not of some larger unit of the state
or proletariat or aristocracy, but for the people -- not the people embodied

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and made carnate as a state, an aristocracy or proletariat, but people in
their only democratic validity: as individuals.

And our panel has chosen to vary the Emancipators phrase as a method
of illumining the moral and ethical basis of the democratic process. We see
it as a tripartite process:

for the individual: the system of checks and balances
which refuses to any man or group a higher or more final power
of judgment or decision.

by the individual: the achievement of an American con-
sensus, a democratic modus operandi whereby together the vari-
ous ingredients in our system come gradually to reconcile their
differences and act along common lines respectful both of the
majority's right to decide and preserving the various minorities'
right to be heard and to be protected from the majority, the
democratic society comes gradually to find a common line
respectful of the majority's right to act along the lines of its
needs and wishes.

of the individual: the leadership principle in our sys-
tem whereby the society through its individual members and
gifts and selections elevates acting as a consensus of where-
by from the individuals concerned some are selected by their

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fellows to be the administrators and guides and electors;

in their differing ways first, but always first among equals.

For the Individual: Checks and Balances

If our task is to seek appropriate goals in ways compatible with democracy, what are those central elements of the democratic process as we know and practice them that we wish to preserve and to extend if possible? What are the conditions and criteria that our government and leaders should observe in their efforts to indicate goals, to marshal resources, and to build consent?

The central moral and political value is respect for the dignity, the perfectibility and the welfare of the individual. The dignity of the individual requires that both his freedom and his opinion be respected, in political terms, such rights and practices as equality before the law, the right of petition, an adequate system of representation, and the opportunity to hold public officials responsible by periodic elections and by other means. Perfectibility implies the opportunity for education and for self-realization.

Welfare implies opportunities for the achievement of material and spiritual well-being.

Our democratic processes as expressed in our political system, is a series of bulwarks erected between the individual citizen and government, which we Americans have always recognized as hungry for more power and authority at his expense. Four of these protections are especially important:

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1) limitations upon the power of government, whether Federal, state or local, and the location of residual power in the people;

2) a holding of governmental action to account through popular consent and due process of law;

3) respect for the underlying consensus that the general welfare rules our action either by majorities or minorities which could destroy the community consensus;

4) ultimate power over important decisions is lodged in the citizens.

These precepts shape the meaning of American freedom under law; the deepest and most broadly shared consensus, since it frames the fundamental agreement that makes possible differences on party aims and programs. The United States of America is, and we trust will always remain, a constitutional democracy. It is not a government founded on the proposition that a majority of the adult people of the United States rules on every issue. In its Federal system, which gives special weighting to the states, particularly in the Senate, and in its protections of basic civil rights, the Constitution restrains the operation of simple majoritarian democracy.

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American society has sought to resolve the eternal dilemma of liberty
versus order by a subtle set of compromises. The democratic political pro-
cess itself is merely one expression of the effort to balance individual liberty
and communal responsibility. Our politics accepts the legitimacy of the vot-
ing majority and the legitimacy, as well as the inevitability, of special inter-
ests. But American government is not founded merely upon the proposition
that the voting majority rules, nor upon the proposition that good policy con-
sists merely in the compromised clash among special interests. The majority
rules in the United States only within powerful moral and constitutional limits.

Our formal legal and constitutional procedures set concrete rules for
the democratic process. They limit the power of the majority over public
policy; and they limit the sway of public policy over the individual. They
provide for delegation of political power to duly elected or appointed offici-
als; and they set limits on the degree and time such delegated power may be
exercised. Above all, the Constitution, in protecting the life and private
rights of the citizen, guarantees his right to speak, to write, and to organize
not merely for the promotion of individual and group purposes but also for
the purpose of expressing views as to how the country can best be governed
-- a privilege out of which Americans promptly fashioned that wholly extra-
constitutional institution, the two-party system.

The system of government of the United States is one that limits
majorities to their appropriate areas of consensus and competence, in

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territorial, in moral, and in functional terms. Willingly foregoing the greater efficiency which may come from our system limits sharply the areas of concern by the central government and leaves to the states and municipalities across our nation many rights and responsibilities with which other societies build up the power of their central governments. The Constitution itself can only be modified by very extraordinary majorities. The judiciary of the Federal system, as well as of the states, enjoy special protections against intimidation and have in the main, throughout our history, occupied the role of umpire, sustained by the constitutional morality of acceptance by the bulk of the people and their elected officials.

## The Instruments of the Democratic Processes

Again, in our system labor unions, business associations, political party organizations, civic groups and dozens of other conglomerates of individuals share in deciding or effecting in limiting local, state and national policy. We have ever been reluctant to place final trust, or final power in the hands of any man or class of men. A healthy democracy must maintain the sources of its vitality in the small neighborhood communities of the nation, which still continue to breed a preponderance of its leaders. It must nourish the kind of self government at the grass roots without which no democracy can long survive. The essence of our federal and state constitutional system is to preserve this balance in the nation, which reflects in turn a balance basic to our concept of human nature and of its responsible moral

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development in the individual. Liberty must go with responsibility and with
that respect for the rights of others which is the essence of constitutional
democracy, an essence to be found not only in its formal political processes,
but in its daily habits. Political parties, business organizations, churches,
and schools, as well as the individual who creates them in a constitutional
democracy, must combine this balance of liberty and responsibility, of rights
and duties, which is the chief mark of a responsible moral personality.

Those grants of power that we have given from time to time to leaders
in or out of government, are conditional -- conditional upon situations, con-
ditional upon the special times and purposes for which concentration of power
has seemed proper and vital. This conditional granting of power rests, in
turn, on a recognition that no man or class of men possesses a monopoly of
virtue or wisdom; that the sense of the community itself, while presumably
wiser than the single view of any individual, is also conditioned, and that
today's judgment should not prejudice tomorrow's freedom to judge.

But if such a carefully elaborated system of checks and balances is
to be contrived to safeguard the individual, he must be protected for some-
thing as well as from something. And in the period ahead of us, the indi-
vidual American and the American system has much to do. In Chapter II of
our Report we shall consider in some detail the various challenges to the
democratic process and some of the more significant areas of confusion,
indecision or failure, and we begin focusing on the crucial practical problem

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that lies in front of our political process: a far better series of more consid-
ered and wise decisions on military and foreign affairs.

However, no one studying the American performance in the last few
years, could fail to be impressed with the demonstrated capacity of our sys-
tem to enable its citizens to share widely in the taking of major, and wise,
decisions in military and foreign policy at moments of acute crisis. This
realization led our panel to a question which automatically limited the scope
of our considerations for the remainder of this Report. How can the magnifi-
cent but occasional performance of the American democracy be made more
steadily and dependably a part of the world scene in the next 10-15 years?
And the nature of the question brought us into two large areas of the demo-
cratic process in which the bulk of our Report will be concerned!

One: the nature and methods of democracy's unique method for
group action: freely arrived at and widely accepted national consensus by
the people.

Two: the second and inseparable part of the same central democratic
process, the nature and methods of democracy's unique instrument for group
action: a freely-selected and willingly-followed system of leadership. This
leadership must be of and with the people or it is impotent and no leadership.

The proposition might be put another way: ours is a chain of consen-
sus in which no decision is stronger than its weakest link. President, Cong-
ress, state and local officials, every imaginable type of group organization

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at every possible level of our society, and the individual himself are all
linked in a mutually effecting and effected process. It is this interjoined
function of each as part of the rest which our Report will consider.

Although we are forced by reasons of clarity to consider these two fact-
ors separately, we consider them at _an equal value level_; neither is more
important, neither is less precious.

Of the Individual: Leadership

The fact that common moral views are accepted in our society, and
that we share moral beliefs and values and a sense of destiny of the commun-
ity, does not mean that we can assume that the community always knows
what is required at any given moment in order for such a common system to
survive.

With all our constitutional emphasis on the protections of rights and
on political responsibility, the first aim of all government must be to govern.
There must, in short, be a basic unity of national purpose, to meet the chal-
lenges with which the nation is now confronted. Every society can be meas-
ured in terms of the achievement of its own aims by the kind of leadership it
produces to realize these deeper and abiding ends. The degree to which such
leadership is diffused and supported throughout the society determines whether
a nation can turn into realities its moral purposes.

And, if the American democratic processes are to guide leaders, it
does this first of all only by providing the moral framework within which

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leadership must operate. The consensus does not give us a simple calculus of answers, but a focus of questions: it identifies the thread of central values in the tangle of daily issues; it provides the core of meaning which lifts leadership above a consideration of techniques to a contemplation of ends.

It is of course the responsibility of the community to choose, educate and nurture leaders but in the modern world, the identification of courses of action in world politics is pre-eminently a function of national leadership. For national leadership to be fully effective, however, it must draw strength and support from the rest of society.

In our Report we choose to put extended attention and devote several chapters to the processes of leadership -- national, regional, local, private -- not only because this area is more prominent than ever in our history, but because it is so vital to extend the capability of national leadership to cope with the challenges which now confront us. And it is true that the Presidency, unique in its concentration of the leadership function, and the Congress are political focal points and testing points of the democratic process. And here at the national level of leadership is the greatest concern and responsibility of the greatest number of Americans bound together in any one organization, the electorate of the United States.

But as we discuss modern American leadership we hope that it will remain self-evident, even in the special domain of national policy, that democratic leadership is a *process*, not a job for a few men: a process

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involving not merely the three branches of the national government, not merely
the two political parties, but also those many private institutions and volun-
tary associations which give to the American community a special strength
and depth. And, to a degree, on the great issues of national policy, every
responsible individual citizen has an active role in the leadership process.

Leadership in the United States is a living process running across
from the national government into the smallest community gathering.

And the whole of this leadership process is -- from time to time, and
to a degree -- caught up in the making of national policy. National policy
is not made in the White House nor even in the Executive Branch as a whole;
it is made by a subtle and sensitive interaction among the Executive Branch,
public opinion, and the Congress. To this interaction our two-party system
imparts an extra cross-cutting dimension, as does the myriad private volun-
tary groups which give to American communal life a unique inner strength and
depth. At every stage and in every dimension individual Americans take those
acts of responsibility in the face of communal problems we would designate
as part of the leadership process.

Here, leadership and consensus must unite to achieve new dimensions
of both understanding and organization of effective national purpose and
communication, on a two-way basis, both to the citizens of our own land and
to those to whom it must speak abroad. There is in democracy a filtering
process by which the individuals as members of groups test the successive

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stages of leadership in terms of what they can understand of their leaders'
character and consistent behavior. Ideas and programs are in that way the
product of many leaders and of the conflicts of views about them from which
democratic consensus must emerge.

By the Individual: The Chain of Consensus

The essence of democratic society is a sober, calculated act of
faith: a faith that individuals -- properly nurtured, trained and educated --
are capable not merely of pursuing private advantage but also of assuming a
degree of intelligent responsibility for the fate of the community. In the case
of American democracy the act of faith was wholly conscious. The Constitution
was made by a generation acutely aware —from the long historical past and
from its own times -- that men were capable of pressing their short-run
interests to the disadvantage of their long-run communal interests. But in the
end the Founding Fathers left the nation's destiny substantially in the hands
of a free electorate, on whose responsibility -- as well as upon the checks
and balances of the constitutional institutions -- they counted.

This measured faith is the ultimate basis for our freedoms. It is on
this commitment to the responsible individual and his political realization
through the national consensus that all the fundamental non-political
institutions of American society are built, our families and churches and
schools. Our institutions and procedures could never have survived the
vicissitudes of one hundred and seventy years if they had not been operated
by men who shared not merely a sense of responsibility for the community but

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also a set of moral values. It is because, in the end, even the most purposeful and ardent special interest groups accept the moral as well as the legal rules of the national game that our society is a going concern.

Today in our pluralistic system, where the pressures from outside more than ever require a greater degree of integrated planning in the meeting of deadlines in defense programs and in the timing of diplomatic procedures and policies, the main political problem of American society is to find a workable consensus in the area of military and foreign affairs. Our society must be capable of achieving this broad consensus when its system of government is made up of competing parties and must also persuade or placate or neutralize large numbers of groups and associations whose interests may be affected, directly or indirectly -- and sometimes injuriously from their own point of view -- by a given proposed action. We are caught up in a phase of American history which has irrevocably thrust us out onto the world scene; and our national survival demands that we sustain leadership of a global coalition in an environment of rapid change, full of dangers and potentialities for the American interest. Our sustained involvement in world affairs since 1945 has strained and tested American democracy in many directions: from a tax rate that passes resources to the state at an unprecedented peacetime level to a painful reconsideration of the meaning of civil liberties under conditions of protracted communist assault on our society. And all this while at home our national life has maintained its dynamic character and in direct consequence, confronted us with new sets of domestic problems, from

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the baby boom to the reconstruction of our cities.

There is reason for confidence that our traditional method of relatively
diffused leadership is capable of identifying most of the domestic issues we
face, of formulating alternative solutions, and of ensuring action before
disaster overtakes us; although, as noted earlier, the character of the
domestic problems on the American agenda is likely to place an increased
premium on the leadership process at the national level over coming years.
This confidence stems not merely from the existence of a widespread tradition
of communal responsibility in domestic affairs but also from the fact of a
working consensus on the major particular problems of our time.

The Contemporary Problem of Consensus

In our domestic life we are within range of achieving an effective
consensus on many important issues. We have hammered out, in the century
or so since American industrialization began, a view of how industrialization
can be made consistent with abiding moral, social, and political values.
While there is still plenty to argue about, men inside and outside the govern-
ment are pretty well agreed as to what we ought to argue about. And looked
at closely, the range over which argument proceeds is relatively narrow.
Fruitful debate takes place, in similar terms, from the highest levels of the
government down to discussions within the family or local groups.

In military and foreign affairs the case is different. Even so perceptive
and well-informed an electorate as ours cannot - from day to day, and from

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month to month -- accurately and confidently gauge how well or badly we are
doing in our relations with the world. The consequences of a given stream
of military and foreign policy is only revealed, and then often not clearly,
when that policy fails and a flagrant crisis is upon us.

Looking back over the experience of the nation in military and foreign
affairs over the past fifty years a simple fact stands out: the United States
has, frequently failed to identify the major dangers it confronted in time to
organize a policy which prevented major crises from coming about. This is
true of all the nation's major military engagements from the First World War
to the Korean War; and it is true also of a good many of its non-military
crises, from the rejection of the League of Nations in 1920 to Suez in 1956.
Certain of the causes for the convulsive pattern of our national performance
lie in the character of American institutions of leadership and are subject to
remedy by institutional modification. It is essential, however, to acknowledge
that some of the basic factors which have determined the result lie outside
the terrain of institutions, and that they will only yield to changes in men's
minds -- in ways of looking at ourselves in relation to the world -- rather than
to changes in tables of organization.

The weakness of democracy in military and foreign affairs, except in
a protracted major war, is, of course, a familiar theme. In modern America
this weakness does not arise from a lack of public information; nor does it
reflect an unwillingness of the American voter to make sacrifices in the

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national interest. But it does link directly to a lack of consensus on the
character of the national interest. We need an understanding of our national
purpose which will enable us to identify major problems so that staff work can
proceed on appropriate and acceptable solutions before the nation slides into
a crisis so dangerous and self-evident that some form of national response
is evidently called for.

This lack of consensus on the national interest is not a matter of a
gap between a well-informed minority and an unintelligent majority of citizens:
there is every evidence that American cabinets of the twentieth century have
been as badly split on this matter as the American public. We stand at a
particular unresolved stage of our evolution as a nation in which it is essential
that we consolidate the accumulated experience of dealing with the world --
notably in the past fifty years -- into a working consensus, on the nature of
the national interest. This consensus must be such as to suffuse equally
NSC papers and the thought of responsible citizens in every community. Such
a consensus on the character of the national interest does not now exist.

Specifically there are two themes in our history and experience that
have not been reconciled in an orderly way. One derives from the insights
of Mahan and the remarkable group of men who developed in the early years
of this century concerned with our foreign and military policy. These men
faced the fact of power in the world and the need of the United States actively
to apply its power on its world environment in order to ensure the national
interest. The second strand is the American concept of its ideological interest

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in the world. This is rooted, of course, in the deep conviction that from its founding, our experiment in democracy had a meaning which transcended the American borders.

But right down to the present-right down to the application of the Eisenhower Doctrine in the Middle East -- we are uncertain as to how these two elements relate to each other and to the ultimate interest of the United States as a society. Whether we are committed in the Middle East to stop the extension of Soviet military power or to help build viable, independent, increasingly more democratic societies are closely related questions: but we can regard them as identical questions only at our peril.

The nation's problem in defining the national interest usefully and operationally reflects a more general difficulty to be seen in many aspects of American life: a tendency to articulate our purposes in terms of large ideal goals while operating from day to day in a pragmatic way. Special interests and the facts of power play a larger role in American behavior than our political orations make clear. In our domestic life we are subtle and expert at reconciling moral and ethical values and special interests; and we have been so ever since our remarkably sophisticated and wise Constitution was formulated. But we are still awkward in articulating our purposes to ourselves and before the world and acting upon them in such a way that our real ideological and real power interests are put into an orderly relationship, and lead directly to well-balanced, well-articulated lines of action.

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The Lesson of Crises Surmounted

This is not to suggest that the democratic processes are incapable
of such foreign affairs consensi. Several noteworthy times in recent years,
particularly in the case of the Lend Lease and the Marshall Plan debates,
the processes have worked magnificently.

The essence of what was done on these occasions lay in a widespread
sharing of responsibility for the nation's decision: the President and the
Executive Branch responsibly laid before the public the problem the nation
confronted, the facts bearing upon it, and the choices that appeared open to
us. The President personally committed himself concerning the broad direction
in which a solution was to be found The Congress held extensive hearings,
permitting all manner of opinion to be expressed, fixing public attention on
the problem in hand over a considerable period. Finally, the extraordinary
substructure of private associations which characterize American life was
galvanized into taking positions.

Out of this complex, apparently disorderly process -- wholly different
from any image of a single wise leader charting his course and an obedient
public following along -- three things happened: first, the nation's political
and military leaders presented responsible views of the problem to the people;
second, a wide range of representative and trusted communal leaders performed
their individual and group functions -- not merely Congressmen, but business,
labor, and farm leaders, churchmen, professors, etc.; third, a public,

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informed to the limit of its absorptive capacity, with every opportunity for
communication open, reached a majority consensus, and its assent was
registered by a Congress.

And a lesson to be learned from these successful exercises in
consensus is that when the political process was widened out from the
Executive Branch and the Congress and the public was brought into the arena
of decision -- notably through those men and women who lead the voluntary
associations -- the nation acquired a capacity to act boldly and strongly in
foreign affairs.

The public needs, of course, to be responsibly informed on major
issues of military and foreign policy as they arise; but political leaders need
equally to be reminded of the intelligence and of the capacity for action and
sacrifice of the American electorate when it is brought into position of a
responsibility. The development of a consensus by the people is, however,
an essential condition for a policy -- and a flow of day-to-day actions --
capable of forestalling crises; it is an essential condition for the nation's
allocating adequate talents and resources to deal with the challenges and to
exploit the potentialities it now confronts; it is an essential condition for
the public support of a military and foreign policy required to maintain the
nation's security under rapidly changing circumstances.

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## II. THE CHALLENGE TO THE AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC PROCESS

When our Panel looked ahead for 10-15 years, we first found ourselves concerned with the terrible challenges which the democratic process faces, challenges which in our judgment are the gravest which we, or any system like ours, have ever faced. Then as we analyzed the challenges and the nature of the democratic strengths with which we could respond to them, we began to feel more confident about the future and the opportunities with which our society is going to be confronted -- perhaps in spite of itself, but in a deeper sense because of itself.

### World in Transition

In mid-century to face a flow of problems which demand respect the United States faces a crescendoing adjustment to changing circumstances. Over the foreseeable future, the issues which confront us, in our relations with the world and in relation to one another at home, require that the American democratic system function with heightened effectiveness at every level of our society. The successful management of our domestic affairs in the next 10-15 years requires that we perform increasingly as a national community rather than continue practices which have made our system too frequently only a forum where the violent antheses of special interests could be compromised.

Today, our democratic processes must make possible a far broader American consensus. At home most of our major domestic problems -- education, inflation, urban reconstruction, etc., can no longer be resolved by

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the reliance on the interplay of special interests. And many aspects of
our domestic life must be disciplined by the requirements of external security.
For however we ignore or solve our domestic problems, they are overshadowed
by the international challenges to the democratic process.

We live, and will continue to live in the most revolutionary period the
world has yet seen. And upon our shoulders rests a major burden of respon-
sibility our actions or lack of response will determine what kind of world and
what kind of values and freedom crystallizes from these times of chaos.

The massive challenges which the democratic process faces in the
next 10-15 years might be divided into three principal categories.

The first is the challenges on the world scene resulting from the
unparalleled revolutions taking place in our environment -- scientific,
political, psychological, etc. Among these challenges, are the
emergence of communism as a world power, the discovery of nuclear
energy and the rising tide of expectation of the underprivileged
peoples of the world.

The second is the challenges on the home scene which confront the
first truly mass democracy in the worlds history. Among these
challenges are better distribution of our national wealth, the trend
away from farms, the growing tendency of our great cities to become
slum areas, social security, public health, etc.

The third challenge area is the challenges to our system at philo-

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sophical and moral levels. Among these can be listed, our predelic-
tion for the status quo, our yearning for times without crises, the
need for a more adequate philosophy of the role of force in today's
world, the moral obligations of sharing more of our material gains with
less fortunate humans, etc.

For the next 10-15 years, the United States will be confronted by the
dilemmas of a revolutionary world where the rate of change will continue to be
without precedent. Scientific revolution places world survival in question by
the discovery of nuclear energy. Economic systems, from capitalism to com-
munism, evolve faster than textbooks can be rewritten. Old empires crumble
away and new nations emerge at a pace never before seen in history.

And the rising revolution in expectations of the underprivileged ninety
percent of the world's people will force still another level of change.

World communism has added its dimension of immediate risk and
danger to this revolutionary world. Whether we wish it or not, the United States
is in the midst of a tremendous and highly dangerous arms competition where
it must constantly discover newer weapons and apply them efficiently in front
line strength. Should the arms race yield to diplomacy, we face the even more
difficult task of instituting an international system of arms control.

Power-wise, either the Russo-Chinese communist bloc dominates the
world or the United States leads and gives strength to an alliance which will
frustrate Soviet aggression. Simultaneously our responsibilities are multiplying

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geometrically in a divided Europe, an emergent Africa, a still semi-colonial South America, an explosive Middle East and a confused turbulent Far East with its billion more underprivileged human beings.

## Communism

The most immediate challenge to the democratic process comes from the existence today of an alternate and antithetical set of forces and values. This threat all the more urgent because it operates simultaneously on three levels: military, industrial, ideological.

Our society is already furiously seeking to respond to the military, political and moral challenge posed by world communism, as shifts in the balance of power force us to re-examine not only longer-range our goals but the threat to our national security. The relative military power of the United States is very rapidly being equalized, and the enemy has enjoyed growing success in taking over huge areas and populations without major war and in sowing fear, doubt and confusion, plus division among our allies and the neutrals.

Communism has put together a world bloc of increasingly powerful and expansionist-minded nations pursuing a relentless imperialism and the United States is thus precipitated into a tremendous, dangerous and costly series of competitions with the communist bloc for military survival which demands continued and fantastically expensive weapons research. We must first win the race of weapons development and then be able and willing to apply them

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to preserve our strategic deterrent and present a force in readiness which will
make aggression undesirable to the communists.

Simultaneous with the military challenge from the world's second
super-power, the Soviet Union, the United States is challenged by the rising
industrial might of the Kremlin. Russian industrial production -- from
armaments and scientists to machinery and industrial plants for export -- is
rising far more rapidly than our own; each year finds the communists with
more disposable capital goods available for use to undermine non-communist
governments via Soviet Point Four operations, and thus to pave the way for
communist seizures of power.

The technological and industrial revolution which the communists are
exploiting would have been impossible without the multiform voluntary
cooperations and interrelations of a democratic system based on the dignity and
validity of the individual. There is a rising tide of demand by less privileged
peoples that we help make it possible for them -- quickly -- to enjoy many
of the same benefits we have achieved for ourselves. But they often do not
understand the connections between our material wealth and democratic values.
The communist system promises quick benefits at what they argue is the small
cost of political and individual freedom. Since many of the underprivileged
peoples do not know and have not enjoyed such freedom, the sacrifice often
does not seem excessive.

Thus we face a challenge abroad of simultaneously persuading non-
communists that freedom makes better health and higher standards of living

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worth waiting for, while at the same time we demonstrate that our system
will more slowly but surely bring these material gains.

And it would indeed be running away from a central threat to our
process if we did not face up to the third aspect of the communist challenge:
to many millions of determined men and women, its philosophy seems to
offer an alternate organization of a society based on a dynamic whose power
has been illustrated by the rapid rise of the communist strength. To such
people, communism is no second-best idea: it is the only valid idea for
organizing and conducting a system in this period of the world; it is the rising
tide of events they believe will wash away the capitalistic systems because
they have proved themselves impotent to cope with the world's complexities
and showed themselves unwilling to give to the peoples of the world the
material benefits which communism can provide.

Thus we are opposed in every dimension by a communist bloc whose
great strength we must frustrate while simultaneously we accelerate a
sequence of international alterations which will favor our values and
eventually bring more freedom into the world.

## War and Peace in the Nuclear Age

Precipitated by the technological revolution and intensified by the
rising power of the communist bloc is the brooding menace of nuclear war.
Man has achieved dimensions of physical power which allows him to wreck
himself and the whole world, civilized and uncivilized, backward and

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advanced, communist and non-communist.

Never before have men been required to proceed with more balance and restraint; this is a particularly difficult challenge to all Americans, for steadiness of purpose, moderation in action, restraint in reaction are not among the prime characteristics for which the democratic process has been noted. No longer can free people afford the luxury of temporary hysterias when they are frightened or annoyed.

There is also the correlated threat of the continued existence as a nation if there would be an all-out war. A dictatorship can force its people, in advance of catastrophe, to the needed realizations and preparations for continued survival after nuclear attack. This is far more difficult for a democracy; it is natural for people to wish to evade even the contemplation of such appallingly unpleasant possibilities; it is equally natural for an uninformed electorate to refuse to vote the billions and billions of dollars necessary to provide adequate civil defense shelters and other precautionary measures.

Quite aside from the final menace of all-out war, revolution and, in the military area, the United States is faced with another and far more subtle challenge: limited war. Peripheral and ambiguous attack now presents a far greater danger to democracy than the possibility of more Pearl Harbors or invasions of Poland. This is a particularly difficult area for democratic action. We are accustomed to react convulsively to flagrant challenges with all-out responses.

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Can a people respond to a small challenge with a limited reaction?
Can we have the foresight and steadfastness to be willing to fight limited wars,
to draft its sons to die in contests which by definition neither side dares
precipitate into the survival contest of all-out war! American opinion is
wholly unaccustomed to this conception of war. War, being considered wholly
evil, has been justified only as a response to greater evil: an unavoidable
reply to clear and unambiguous enemy aggression. So seen and justified,
all-out war is fought unrelentingly and unremittingly to win total victory.

But justification of limited war -- its initiation, its forms of restriction,
its continuation, and its termination -- is almost beyond our experience, with
the exception of the Korean impasse. A precondition, is the creation of a
working consensus of what limited war is. The concept of unlimited application
of all available force leading to "victory" will not serve us here as in the
past. The objective is no longer the destruction of the enemy's capacity to
fight, but the weakening of his will to fight. Diplomacy and propaganda will
be wedded to military operations with special intimacy, for the power brought
to bear on the enemy's will to fight includes temptation as well as suffering,
offers as well as the suasion of arms. Terms must be opened to the enemy
at various points in the struggle that seem more attractive to him than its
continuation, yet are compatible with the limited war aims at our side. Limited
war may be waged in alternative bursts of military operations and diplomacy,
with periodic time out for the participants to ponder the balance of advantages
between continuation or cessation of the military passage.

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Thus, limited war is a dimension of challenge with which neither American leadership nor American consensus has ever before been confronted. And it seems the communist's most likely next tactic of expansion.

Another challenge to the democratic process also can be well illustrated in the area of war and peace and is how to deal with present policies and problems in such ways as to be able to deal effectively with future problems. In our time, this involves a frequently confusing and unsettling mixture of challenge and comfort, tension and relaxation.

A striking example of this general problem of combining present effectiveness with future flexibility exists in the nuclear area of war and peace, arms and disarmament where we must balance massive preparation for adequate military strength with sincere and evangelical efforts to create a world atmosphere conducive to eventual peace. Unless we reduce our own fears and tensions and work for similar changes abroad, we increase the danger of war. Yet, over-emphasis on the prospects of peace in our time can leave our people unprepared morally or materially to fight if need be. And the very preservation of peace itself may depend on a military posture adequate to deter or defeat a possible aggressor not only in the horrible event of all-out war, but at the more probable level of limited war.

## The United States at Home

The spectrum of our domestic challenges is as wide as the revolutionary changes which are affecting our system: expanding populations, changes in