# CENTRAL ISSUES OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

## CONTENTS

<table><tr><td>I</td><td>The Structural Problem</td><td>1 - 7</td></tr><tr><td>II</td><td>The Limits of Bipolarity: The Nature of Power in the Modern Period</td><td>8 - 15</td></tr><tr><td>III</td><td>Political Multipolarity: The Changed Nature of Alliances</td><td>16 - 31</td></tr><tr><td>IV</td><td>Bipolarity and Multipolarity: A Conceptual Problem</td><td>32 - 45</td></tr><tr><td>V</td><td>An Inquiry Into the American National Interest</td><td>46 - 53</td></tr></table>

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# I. THE STRUCTURAL PROBLEM

The Twentieth Century has known little repose. Since the turn of the century, international crises have been increasing in both frequency and severity. The contemporary unrest, although less apocalyptic than the two world wars which spawned it, is even more profoundly revolutionary in nature.

The essence of a revolution is that it appears to contempories as a series of more or less unrelated upheavals. The temptation is great to treat each issue as an immediate and isolated problem which once surmounted will permit the fundamental stability of the international order to reassert itself.

But the crises which form the headlines of the day are symptoms of deep-seated structural problems. The international system which produced stability for a century collapsed under the impact of two world wars. The age of the superpowers which temporarily replaced it is nearing its end. The current international environment is in turmoil because its essential elements are in flux simultaneously.

For the first time in history, foreign policy has become global. In the past, the various continents conducted their foreign policy essentially in isolation. Throughout much of history, the foreign policy of Europe was scarcely affected by

1. Others in this series are dealing with specific policy issues.
This paper will concentrate on structural and conceptual problems.

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events in Asia. When, in the late 18th and 19th Centuries, the
European powers extended their influence throughout the world,
the effective decisions remained with a few great European
capitals. Today, statesmen face the unprecedented problem of
conducting policy toward well over a hundred countries. Geo-
graphic isolation no longer exists. Every nation, no matter how
insignificant, participates in international affairs. Ideas are
transmitted almost instantaneously. What used to be considered
domestic events can have world-wide consequences.

The revolutionary character of our age can be summed up
under three aspects: (a) the number of participants in the
international order has increased and their nature has altered;
(b) the technical ability of these participants to affect each
other has vastly grown; (c) the scope of states' purposes has
expanded.

Whenever the participants of the international system
change, a period of profound dislocation is inevitable. This
change can occur because new states enter the political system.
Or it can originate in a change in values as to what constitutes
legitimate rule. Finally, it can come about because of the
reduction in influence of some traditional units. In our period,
all of these factors have combined. Since the end of the Second
World War, several scores of new states have come into being.
The emergence of even a few new nations in the 19th Century pro-
duced decades of adjustment. The post-World War I world never
assimilated the successor states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Our age has yet to find a structure which matches the responsibi-
lities of the new nations to their aspirations.

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At the same time, technology multiplies the resources available for the conduct of foreign policy while the domestic structure increases the ability of the state to mobilize them. As long as the states' ability to mobilize resources was limited, the severity of their conflict had definite bounds. The impact of 18th Century foreign policy was relatively benign, at least in part because the rulers by "divine right" were limited by custom in the exactions they could demand from their subjects. Similar limitations obtained through much of the 19th Century.

Our period has seen the culmination of a process started by the French Revolution: the basing of governmental legitimacy on popular support. Even totalitarian regimes are aberrations of a democratic legitimacy; they depend on popular consensus even when they manufacture it through propaganda and pressure. But the people, by definition, cannot opress itself and limitations of tradition lose much of their restraint. It is an ironic result of the democratization of politics that it has enabled states to marshall ever more resources for conflict.

This process has been aided by a scientific revolution which, to all practical purposes, has removed technical limits to the exercise of power in the field of foreign policy. It has magnified insecurities because it has made survival seem to depend on the accidents of a technological breakthrough.

Ideological conflict compounds these dislocations. Its expression on the international plane is an almost complete lack of agreement about the permissible aims and methods of foreign policy. A similar outlook about aims and methods eases the

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tasks of diplomacy -- it may even be a precondition for it.
In the great periods of diplomacy, diplomats spoke the same
language, not only in the sense that French was the _lingua
franca_, but more importantly because they tended to understand
intangibles in the same manner. In the absense of such a
consensus, diplomats can still meet but they lose the ability
to persuade. More time is spent on defining contending positions
than in resolving them. What seems most reasonable to one side
will appear most problematical to the other.

When there is ideological conflict, political loyalties
no longer necessarily coincide with national boundaries. Con-
flicts among states merge with divisions within nations; the
dividing line between domestic and foreign policy begins to
disappear. At least some states feel threatened not only by
the foreign policy of other countries, but also, and perhaps
especially, by domestic transformations. A liberalized _Communist_
regime in Prague -- which had in no way challenged Soviet pre-
eminence in foreign policy -- caused the Kremlin to believe that
its vital interests were threatened and to occupy the country
without even the pretext of legality.

The tensions produced by this state of affairs are
exacerbated by the reduction in influence of the pre-World War I
great powers. As a result, the world has become bipolar on the
military plane. Only two powers -- the United States and the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics -- possess the full panoply
of military might. Over the next decade, no other country or

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group of countries is capable of challenging their physical pre-
eminence. Indeed, the gap in military strength between the two
giant nuclear countries and the rest of the world is likely to
increase rather than diminish over that period. Moreover, the
two superpowers have the ideology, the self-confidence and
technical resources to try to order affairs on a global scale.

Military bipolarity is a source of rigidity in foreign
policy. The guardians of the equilibrium of the 19th Century
were prepared to respond to change with counter-adjustment; the
policymakers of the superpowers in the second half of the 20th
Century have much less confidence in the ability of the equili-
brium to right itself after disturbance. Whatever "balance"
there is between the superpowers is regarded as both precarious
and inflexible. A bipolar world loses the perspective for the
relative; a gain for one side appears as an absolute loss for
the other. Every issue seems to involve a question of survival.
The smaller countries are torn between a desire for protection
and a wish to escape big power dominance. Each of the super-
powers is beset by the desire to maintain its pre-eminence toward
its allies, to increase its influence among the uncommitted and
to adjust its relations to its opponent. The fact that some of
these objectives may well prove incompatible adds to the strain
on the international system.

But the age of the superpowers is now drawing to an end.
Military bipolarity has not only failed to prevent, it has
actually encouraged political multipolarity. Weaker allies have

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good reason to believe that their defense is in the overwhelming
interest of their senior partner. Hence, they see no need to
purchase its support by acquiescence in its policies. The new
nations feel protected by the rivalry of the superpowers and
their nationalism leads to ever bolder assertions of self-will.
Traditional uses of power have become less feasible while new
forms of pressure have emerged as a result of trans-national
loyalties and weak domestic structures.

This political multipolarity does not necessarily guarantee
stability. Rigidity is diminished, but so is manageability.
Nationalism may succeed in curbing the pre-eminence of the super-
powers; it remains to be seen whether it can supply an integrating
concept of order more successfully in this century than in the last.
Few countries have the interest and only the superpowers have the
resources to become informed about global issues. The result is
a diplomacy often geared to domestic politics and more concerned
with striking a pose than contributing to international order.
Equilibrium is difficult to achieve among states widely divergent
in values, goals, expectations and backgrounds of previous
experience.

This, then, is the structural challenge of the contemporary
international system: the greatest need of the international
community is an agreed concept of order; in its absence, the awe-
some available power is unrestrained by any consensus as to legi-
timacy; ideology and nationalism in their different ways deepen
international schisms. Many of the elements of stability which

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characterized the international system in the 19th Century cannot be recreated in the modern age. The stable technology, the multiplicity of major powers, the limited domestic claims and the frontier which permitted adjustments are gone forever.

This problem is particularly serious for the United States. Whatever United States' intentions or policies, there is the inescapable fact that the United States disposes of the greatest single aggregate of material power in the world. This power is increasing at an exponential rate. The greater part of the world has no foreseeable capacity to match it. Yet United States influence is not proportionate to its power; it has even declined as American power has grown. It is not necessarily desirable that America's international role be strictly proportionate to its power for American hegemony is in no one's interest, least of all in America's. But a new international order is inconceivable without a significant American contribution. For the two decades following World War II our international activities were based on the assumption that technology plus managerial skills produced an ability to restructure the international system and to bring about domestic transformations in "emerging countries." This direction "operational" concept of international order has proved too simple. Political multipolarity makes it impossible to impose an American design. The deepest challenge will be to evoke the creativity of a pluralistic world; to base order on multipolarity even while the military relationships remain dominated by the two superpowers.

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## II. THE LIMITS OF BIPOLARITY: THE NATURE OF POWER IN THE MODERN PERIOD

Throughout history, military power was considered the final recourse. Statesmen considered the acquisition of increments of power to be an obvious and paramount objective. As late as twenty-five years ago, it would have been inconceivable that a country could possess _too much_ strength for effective political use; every increment of power was -- at least theoretically -- politically effective. The minimum aim was to assure the impermeability of the territory. As late as World War II, a state's strength could be measured by its ability to protect its population from attack.

The nuclear age has destroyed this traditional relationship. Offensive power and defensive power are no longer commensurable. Increasing strength does not necessarily confer the ability to protect the population. No forseeable force level -- not even full-scale ballistic missile defenses -- can prevent levels of damage eclipsing those of the two world wars. Operational definitions of victory in any sense that would have been meaningful in the past -- even by World War II standards -- are almost impossible.

These conditions have made the definition of the nature of power particularly elusive. The problem goes beyond developing some concept of military security; it involves doctrinal considerations of the uses to which power can be put in the modern period. The major problem is to discipline power so that it

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bears a rational relationship to the objectives likely to be in
dispute. The major nuclear powers are capable of devastating
each other. But they have great difficulty translating this
power into policy except to prevent direct challenges to their
own survival -- and this condition is interpreted with increasing
strictness. The capacity to destroy is difficult to translate
into a plausible threat even against countries with no capacity
for retaliation. In the 19th Century, the European powers could
engage in decades of colonial wars without effective opposition
from public opinion either at home or internationally. Today,
any developing country willing and able to resist an industrialized
state for a number of years can count on domestic divisions and
pressures of world public opinion to assist it.

The paradox of contemporary military policy is that a
gargantuan increase in power has eroded its relationship to policy.
The margin of superiority of the superpowers over the other states
is widening; yet other nations have an unprecedented scope for
autonomous actions. In relation to many domestically weak
countries, a radio transmitter can be a more effective form of
pressure than a squadron of B-52's. In other words, power no
longer translates automatically into influence. This does not
mean that impotence increases influence, only that power does not
automatically confer it.

In a world in which power has never been greater but also
never been more difficult to relate to policy, deterrence has
become the dominant military policy. But deterrence depends
above all on psychological criteria. It seeks to keep an opponent

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from a given course by posing unacceptable risks. For purposes
of deterrence, the opponent's calculations are decisive. A
bluff taken seriously is more useful than a serious threat
interpreted as a bluff. For political purposes, the meaningful
measurement of military strength is the assessment of it by the
other side. Psychological criteria vie in importance with
strategic doctrine.

This state of affairs has profound consequences for tradi-
tional notions of balance of power. In the past, stability has
always presupposed the existence of an equilibrium of power which
prevented one state from imposing its will on the others.

The traditional criteria for the balance of power were
territorial. A state could gain overwhelming superiority only
by conquest; hence, as long as territorial expansion was fore-
closed, or severely limited, the equilibrium was likely to be
preserved. In the contemporary period, this is no longer true.
Some conquests add little to effective military strength; major
increases in power are possible entirely through developments
within the territory of a sovereign state. China gained more
in real military power through the acquisition of nuclear
weapons than if it had conquered all of Southeast Asia. If the
Soviet Union had occupied Western Europe, but had remained
without nuclear weapons, it would be less powerful than with its
existing nuclear arsenal in its present borders. In other words,
the really fundamental changes in the balance of power have all
occurred within the territorial limits of sovereign states. There

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is an urgent need to analyze just what is understood by power --
as well as by balance of power -- in the nuclear age.

This would be difficult enough were technology stable.
It becomes enormously complicated when a scientific revolution
produces an upheaval in weapons technology at five-year intervals.
Slogans like "superiority," "parity," "assured destruction"
compete without clear definition of their operational military sig-
nificance, even less a consensus on their political implications.
The gap between expert and decisionmakers is widening. The
decisionmaker rarely has as many hours to study a problem as the
expert has years. The result is that the decisionmaker runs the
risk of unprecedented dependence on his technical staff. He is
informed by "briefings," a procedure which stresses theatrical
qualities and leaves its subject with the uneasy feeling that he
has been "taken", even -- or perhaps especially -- when he does
not know exactly how. Decisions may reflect an attempt to ward
off conflicting pressures rather than a clear conception of long-
range purposes.

The abstract, intangible nature of modern power affects
the domestic structure in yet another way. Deterrence is tested
negatively by things which do _not_ happen. But it is never possible
to demonstrate why something has _not_ occurred. Is it because we
are pursuing the best possible policy or only a marginally effective
one? Bitter debate even among those who believe in the necessity
of defense policy is inevitable and bound to be inconclusive. The
difficulty is even greater with respect to those who question the
need for _any_ defense policy. The longer peace is maintained -- or

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the more successful deterrence is -- the more it furnishes
arguments for those who are opposed to the very premises of
defense policy. Perhaps there was no need for preparedness in
the first place because the opponent never meant to attack?
In the modern state, national security is likely to be a highly
devisive domestic issue.

The enormity of modern power has destroyed its cumulative
impact to a considerable extent. Throughout history, the use
of force set a precedent; it symbolized a demonstrated capacity to
use power for national ends. In the 20th Century, any use of force
sets up inhibitions against resorting to it again. Whatever
the outcome of the war in Vietnam, it is clear that it has
greatly diminished American willingness to resist this form of
warfare elsewhere. Its utility as a precedent has therefore
been importantly undermined.

The nature of modern power has been partially obscured by
the enormous strategic superiority which the United States
possessed until recently. A limit was placed on challenges by
the consciousness that a United States pre-emptive attack was at
least conceivable. This degree of superiority no longer exists
and cannot be regained under foreseeable circumstances. Future
crises -- some of which may not be deliberately caused -- will
take place against a background of what will amount to effective
parity whatever the numerical relationship.

The difficulty of forming a conception of power is paralleled
by the problem of how to use it diplomatically. In the past,
measures to increase readiness signaled the mounting seriousness

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1

with which an issue was viewed. But such measures have become
more difficult and dangerous when weapons are always at a high
state of readiness -- solid-fuel missiles require less than 10
minutes to be fired -- and are hidden either under the ground
or under the oceans. With respect to nuclear weapons, signaling
increased readiness will either prove unsuccessful or should it
succeed, may trigger a pre-emptive strike.

Even when only conventional weapons are involved, the pro-
blem of what constitutes a politically meaningful threat is
increasingly complicated. After the capture of the "Pueblo", the
United States called up 13 thousand reservists and moved an air-
craft carrier off the shores of Korea. Did the fact that we had
to call up reserves when challenged by a fifth-rate military
power convey that we meant to act or that we were overextended?
Did the move of the aircraft carrier indicate a decision to
retaliate or was it intended primarily to strike a pose? What
indeed was the appropriate response?

The history of our escalation in Vietnam demonstrates the
difficulty of understanding the political uses of military
power. A massive breakdown of communication occurred not only
within the United States' policymaking machinery but also between
the United States and Hanoi. Over the past five years, the United
States' government has found it difficult, if not impossible, to
define what it understood by victory. President Johnson extended

1. Sometimes these measures got out of control; the mobilization schedules were one of the principal reasons for the outbreak of World War I.

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an open-ended offer for unconditional negotiations. Yet our troops were deployed as if this offer did not exist. It made sense only in terms of an attempt to achieve unconditional victory. Our deployment did not take into account the possibility that it might have to support a negotiation -- the timing of which we had, in effect, left to the opponent. Strategy divorced from foreign policy proved sterile.

These perplexities have spurred new interest in arms control negotiations, especially those dealing with strategic missiles. These negotiations can be important for the peace and security of the world. Stabilizing the nuclear environment is essential apart from the fluctuations of the political relationships. But to be effective, these negotiations require an intellectual resolution of the issues which have bedeviled the formulation of military policy. Unless we are able to give an operational meaning to terms such as superiority or stability, negotiations will lack criteria by which to judge progress.

Thus, whatever the course -- a continuation of the arms race or arms control -- a new look at the United States' national security policy is essential. Over ten years has passed since the last comprehensive, bi-partisan, high-level re-evaluation of all aspects of national security: the Gaither Committee. A new administration should move quickly to bring about such a review. It should deal with some of the following problems: (a) a definition of the national interest and national security over the next decade; (b) the nature of military power in that period; (c) the relationship of military power to political

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influence; (d) implications and feasibility (both military and political) of various postures -- superiority, parity, etc; (e) the implications both political and military of new developments such as MIRV (multiple warheads) and ballistic missile defenses; (f) the prospects for arms control including specific measures to moderate the arms race.

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III. POLITICAL MULTIPOLARITY: THE CHANGED
NATURE OF ALLIANCES

During the post-war period, the United States identified security with alliances. A global network of relationships grew up based on the proposition that deterrence of aggression required the largest possible grouping of powers.

In the first decade and a half after World War II, this
system of alliances was in difficulty outside the Atlantic area
because it tried to apply principles essentially drawn from the
multipolar world of the 18th and 19th Century when several major
powers of roughly equal strength existed. Then indeed it was
impossible for one country to achieve dominance if several others
combined to prevent it. But this was not the case in the era of
the superpowers of the Forties and Fifties. Outside of Europe,
our allies added only marginally to our strength; they were in no
position to reinforce each other's capabilities.

Alliances, to be effective, must meet four conditions:
(1) a common objective -- usually defense against a common
danger; (2) a degree of joint policy at least sufficient to define
the *casus belli*; (3) some technical means of cooperation in case
common action is decided upon; (4) a penalty for non-cooperation:
the power whose aid is sought must be believed to have some alter-
native to extending assistance; otherwise protection will be taken
for granted and the mutuality of obligation will break down.

In the system of alliances developed by the United States
after World War II, these conditions were never met outside the
NATO area. In SEATO or CENTO (to which we have belonged in all but

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name) there has been no common conception of the threat.
Pakistan's motive for obtaining United States' arms was not
security against a Communist attack, but protection against
India. The Arab members of CENTO armed not against the USSR
but against Israel. Lacking a conception of common interests,
the members of these alliances were never able to develop common
policies with respect to issues of war and peace. Had they been
able to do so, these policies might well have been stillborn
anyway, because the technical means of cooperation have been
lacking. Most allies had neither the resources nor the will
to render mutual support. A state which finds it difficult to
maintain order or the coherence of policy at home, does not
increase its strength by combining with states suffering similar
disabilities.

In these circumstances, SEATO and CENTO have grown moribund
as instruments of collective action. Because the United States
has often seemed more eager to engage in the defense of its
allies than they themselves, America's SEATO and CENTO allies
have become convinced that non-cooperation has no cost. Allies
have been able to give the impression that it would be worse for
us than for them if they fell to Communism. As a result, SEATO
and CENTO have become, in effect, unilateral American guarantees.
At best, they provide a legal basis for bilateral U.S. aid.

The case is different with NATO. Here we are united with
countries of similar traditions and domestic structures. At the
start, there was a common conception of the threat. The technical
means for cooperation existed. Mechanisms for developing common
policies came into being -- especially in the military field. Thus
in its first decade and a half, NATO was a dynamic and creative

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institution.

Nevertheless, NATO is today in disarray as well. United
States' actions -- above all, frequent unilateral changes of
policy -- are partially responsible. But the most important
cause is the transformation of the international environment,
specifically the decline in the pre-eminence of the superpowers
and the emerging political multipolarity. Where the alliances
outside of Europe were never vital because they failed to take
into account the military bipolarity of the Fifties, NATO is in
difficulties because it has yet to adjust to the political multi-
polarity of the late Sixties.

When NATO was founded in 1949, Europeans had a dual fear:
(1) the danger of an imminent Soviet attack; (2) the prospect
of eventual United States withdrawal. By the late 1960's,
however, the fear of Soviet invasion has declined. Even the attack
on Czechoslovakia is likely to restore anxiety about Soviet military
aggression only temporarily. At the same time, two decades of
American military presence in Europe coupled with American pro-
dominance in NATO planning, have sharply reduced the fear that
America might wash its hands of European concerns. As a result,
Europeans neither believe that the need for American support
against military attack is so urgent as to decades ago nor that
United States' assistance against aggression must be purchased
by acquiescence in our policies.

When NATO was formed, moreover, the principal threat to
world peace seemed to lie in a Soviet attack on Europe. In recent
years, the view has grown that equally grave risks are likely to
arise in trouble spots outside Europe. To most Europeans, these

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do not appear as immediate threats to their independence or security. The irony here is striking. In the Fifties, Europeans were asking for American assistance in areas outside of Europe with the argument that they were defending the greater interests of freedom. The United States replied that these very interests required American aloofness. Today, the roles are precisely reversed. It is Europe which evades our entreaties to play a global role; that is to say, Europeans do not consider their interests at stake in America's extra-European involvement.

These are symptoms of deeper, structural problems, however. The growth of Soviet nuclear power -- and the changed nature of power in the modern period -- were bound to affect NATO profoundly. As the risks of nuclear war have become more enormous, the credibility of traditional pledges of support was inevitably reduced. In the past, a country would carry out a commitment because it could plausibly be argued that the consequences of not doing so were worse than those of coming to the ally's assistance. This is no longer self-evident. In each of the last three annual statements of the U.S. defense posture, the estimate of dead in a general nuclear war, ranged from 40 to 120 million. This trend will, if anything, increase. It will become more and more difficult to demonstrate that anything is worse than the elimination of over half of a society in a matter of days. Basing the defense of NATO increasingly on a variant of the doctrine of massive retaliation complicates the problem even more. The consciousness of nuclear risk by the two superpowers has hazarded Allied relationships in yet another way. For understandable reasons, the superpowers have sought to make the nuclear

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environment more predictable, witness the Nuclear Test Ban
Treaty and the Non-Proliferation Treaty. At the same time,
our allies have seen in the effort to stabilize the strategic
environment the possible forerunner of an arrangement about their
vital interests from which they were excluded. The uncertain
United States' response to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia --
especially the reluctance to give up the prospect of a summit
meeting -- reinforced suspicions. In short, military integration
has not been matched by political consensus.

Another aspect of this transformation is the growth of
European economic strength and political self-confidence. At
the end of World War II, Europe was dependent on the United
States for economic assistance, political stability and military
protection. As long as Europe needed the shelter of a super-
power, American predominance was inevitable. In relations with
the United States, European statesmen acted as lobbyists rather
than as diplomats. Their influence depended less on the weight
of their countries than on the impact of their personalities.
A form of consultation evolved whereby Europeans sought to
influence American actions by giving us a reputation to uphold
or -- to put it more crudely -- by oscillating between flattery
and almost plaintive appeals for reassurance. The United States,
secure in its predominance, in turn concentrated on soothing
occasional European outbreaks of insecurity rather than on
analyzing their causes.

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Tutelage is a comfortable relationship for the senior partner, but it is demoralizing in the long run. It breeds illusions of omniscience on one side and attitudes of impotent irresponsibility on the other. In any event, the United States could not expect to perpetuate the accident of Europe's post-war exhaustion into a permanent pattern of international relations. Europe's economic recovery inevitably led to a return to more traditional political pressures.

In itself, this could have led to a difficult transitional period to be followed by a new partnership between the United States and an economically resurgent and politically united Europe as has been envisaged by many of the early advocates of Atlantic unity. However, the European situation is more ambiguous. Thoughtful Europeans know that Europe must unite in some for if it is to play a major role politically in the long run. They are aware too that Europe makes nothing like the defense effort of which it is capable. But European unity is stymied and domestic politics has almost everywhere dominated security policy. The result is a massive frustration which expresses itself in special testiness toward the United States. Atlantic relations thus for all their seeming normalcy face a profound crisis.

This situation has been especially difficult for those in the United States who deserve most credit for forging existing Atlantic relations. Two decades of hegemony have produced the illusion that present Atlantic arrangements are "natural," that wise policy consists of making the existing framework more tolerable.

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"Leadership" and "partnership" are invoked; but the tendency is to apply globally the pattern heretofore confined to the Atlantic area. European unity is advocated to enable Europeans to share burdens on a world-wide scale.

Such a view fails to take into account the realities of political multipolarity. The aim of returning to the "great days of the Marshall Plan" is impossible. Nothing would sunder Atlantic relationships so surely as the attempt to reassert the notions of leadership appropriate to the early days of NATO. In the bipolar world of the Forties and Fifties, order could be equated with military security. Integrated command arrangements sufficed as the principal bond of unity. In the Sixties and Seventies, security, while still important, will not be enough. A new international order requires above all a common political conception. The challenge of the Seventies will be to tap the energies of a pluralistic Atlantic world.

It is not "natural" that the major decisions about the defense of an area so potentially powerful as Western Europe should be made 3,000 miles away. It is not "normal" that United States' leadership consist of gearing Atlantic policies to American conceptions. In the Forties and Fifties, practicing unity -- through formal resolutions and periodic reassurances -- was important. It was useful as a reassurance for Europe and it was profoundly important for us as a constant symbol of the end of our isolationism. In the decade ahead, unity cannot be aimed at as an end in itself; it must emerge from common conception and new structures.

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"Burden-sharing" will not supply that impetus. Countries do not assume burdens because it is fair, only because it is necessary. While there are strong arguments for Atlantic partnership and European unity, enabling Europe to play a global role is not one of them. A nation assumes responsibilities not only because it has resources, but because it has a certain view of its own destiny. Through the greater part of its history -- until World War II -- the United States possessed the resources but not the philosophy for a global role. Today, the poorest West European country -- Portugal -- has the widest commitments outside of Europe because its historic image of itself has become bound up with its overseas possessions. This condition is unlikely to be met for any other European country -- with the partial exception of Great Britain -- no matter what their increase in power. Partially as the result of de-colonization, Europeans are unlikely to conduct a significant global policy whatever their resources or their degree of unity. Cooperation between the United States and Europe will have to take forms other than global partnership. A basic problem in Atlantic relationships will be to devise partly coordinated, partly divergent policies for the various portions of the world.

Even within the Atlantic area, a more equitable distribution of responsibilities has two prerequisites: (1) there must be some consensus in the analysis of the international situation, at least as it affects Europe; (2) there must be a conviction that the United States cannot or will not carry all burdens alone.

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Neither condition is met today. The traditional notion of American leadership tends to stifle European incentives for autonomy. Improved consultation -- the remedy usually proposed -- can only alleviate, not remove the difficulty.

The problem of consultation is complex, of course. No doubt unilateral American action has compounded the uneasiness produced by American predominance and European weakness. The shift in emphasis of American policy, from the NATO multilateral force to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the frequent unilateral changes in strategic doctrine have all tended to produce disquiet and to undermine the domestic position of ministers who had staked their futures on supporting the American viewpoint.

It is far from self-evident, however, that more extensive consultation within the existing framework can be more than a palliative. One problem concerns technical competence. In any large bureaucracy -- and an international consultative process has many similarities to domestic administrative procedures -- the weight given to advice bears some relation to the competence, the process of consultation is likely to remain barren. The minimum requirement for effective consultation is that each ally have enough knowledge to give meaningful advice. The NATO nuclear committee has made a great contribution in this respect for the military problem.

But there are other, even more important, limits to the process of consultation. The losing party in a domestic dispute has three choices: (a) it can accept the setback with the expectation of winning another battle later on -- this is the usual

[Y]

- 25 -

bureaucratic attitude and it is based on the knowledge of being able to force another hearing later on; (b) if advice is consistently ignored, the losing party or group can resign and go into opposition; (c) opposition can have the purpose either of inducing the existing government to change its course or to replace it. If all these avenues are closed, violence or mounting frustration are the consequences.

Only the first option is open to sovereign states bound together by an alliance. The partners cannot resign or go into opposition without wrecking the alliance. They cannot affect the process by which allied decisionmakers are chosen despite the fact that this may be crucial for their fate. Indeed, as long as the need to maintain the alliance overrides all other concerns, sustained disagreement is likely to be stifled. Advice without responsibility and disagreement without an outlet can turn consultation into a frustrating exercise which compounds rather than alleviates discord.

Consultation is especially difficult when it lacks an integrating overall framework. The consultation about the Non-Proliferation Treaty concerned specific provisions but not the underlying general philosophy which was of the deepest concern to many of our allies, especially the Federal Republic and Italy. During periods of detente, each ally makes its own approach to Eastern Europe or the USSR without concept of a coherent Western enterprise. In these circumstances, consultation runs the risk of being irrelevant. The issues it "solves" are peripheral; the central issues are inadequately articulated. It deals haphazardly in answers to undefined questions.

- 26 -

This state of affairs is not healthy in the long run. Even
with the best will, the present structure encourages American
unilateralism and European irresponsibility. This is a serious
problem for the United States. If the United States remains the
trustee of every non-Communist area, it will exhaust its psycholo-
gical resources. No country can act wisely simultaneously in every
part of the globe at every moment of time. A more pluralistic
world -- especially in relationships with friends -- is profoundly
in our long-term interest. Political multipolarity, while difficult,
is the precondition for a new period of creativity. Painful as it
may be to admit, we could benefit from a counterweight to discipline
our occasional impetuosity and to supply historical perspective to
our penchant for abstract and "final" solutions.

All of this suggests that there is no alternative to
European unity either for the United States or Europe. In its
absence, the malaise can only be alleviated, not ended. In its
deepest sense, this is a problem primarily for the Europeans. In
the recent past, the United States has often defeated its purposes
by committing itself to one particular form of European unity --
that of federalism. It has also complicated British membership
in the Common Market by making it a direct objective of American
policy.

In the next decade, this architectonic approach to Atlantic
policy is no longer possible. The American contribution must be
more philosophical; it will have to consist more of understanding
and quiet, behind-the-scenes encouragement than in the propagation
of formal institutional structures.

- 27 -

Involved here is the American conception of how nations cooperate. A tradition of legalism and habits of predominance have produced a tendency to multiply formal arrangements. "Integration" has become identified with Atlanticism.

But the emerging political multipolarity forces us to learn that nations cooperate less because they have a legal obligation to do so than because they have common purposes. Command arrangements cannot substitute for common interests. Coordinated diplomacy is even more crucial than coordinated strategy. The possibility of disagreements on peripheral issues may be the price for unity where it really matters. The memory of European impotence and American tutelage should not delude us into believing that we understand Europe's problems better than it does itself. Third Force dangers are not avoided by legal formulae, but they are in any event overdrawn. It is hard to visualize a "deal" between the Soviet Union and Europe which would jeopardize our interests without jeopardizing European interests first. Thus, there are objective limits to Third Force policies. If Europeans do not understand the requirements of their own survival without pervasive American tutelage, American tutelage will not long be able to substitute for lack of European understanding.

In short, our relations with Europeans are better founded on a balancing of interests than on the elaboration of formal legal obligations. No precise blueprint for such an arrangement is possible because various fields of activity will imply different needs. In the military field for example, modern technology will impose a greater degree of centralization than is necessary in other areas. Whatever their formal autonomy, it is almost

- 28 -

inconceivable that our allies would _prefer_ to go to war _without_ the United States support given the relatively small nuclear forces in prospect for them. Close coordination between Europe and the United States in the military field is dictated by self-interest and Europe has more to gain from it than the United States.

For this very reason, it is in our interest that Europeans should assume much greater responsibility for developing doctrine and force levels in NATO, perhaps by vitalizing such institutions as the West European Union (WEU), perhaps by creating new structures. The Supreme Allied Commander should in time become European.

Military arrangements are not enough, however. Under current conditions, no statesman will risk a cataclysm simply to fulfill a legal obligation. The only motive for running the risk of nuclear war is likely to be a degree of _political cooperation_ which links the fate of each partner with the survival of all the others. This requires an entirely new order of political creativity. Heretofore, Atlantic political cooperation concentrated on developing common policies. In the decade ahead, the problem will be to work out a philosophy which makes possible partly coordinated, partly divergent approaches.

Coordination is especially necessary in East-West relations. The traditional view is that NATO can be as useful an instrument for detente as for defense. This is doubtful -- at least in NATO's present form. A military alliance, one of the chief cohesive links of which is its integrated command arrangement, is not the best instrument for a flexible diplomacy. Turning NATO into an instrument

- 29 -

of detente, may reduce its security contribution without achieving
a relaxation of tensions.

Moreover, a diplomatic confrontation of NATO and the Warsaw
Pact has all the rigidities of a bipolar world. It will raise
fears in Western Europe of a United States'-Soviet condominium
and it will tend to legitimize the Soviet hegemonial position in
Eastern Europe. Above all, it will fail to take advantage of the
flexibility afforded by greater West European unity and autonomy.
As Europe gains structure, its attraction for Eastern Europe is
bound to increase. The major initiatives for relations between
Western and Eastern Europe should be originated in Europe with
the United States in a reserve position.

Such an approach can work only if there is a real consensus
as to objectives. Philosophical agreement can make possible
flexibility on method. This will require a form of consultation
much more substantial than what now exists and a far more effective
and coherent European contribution.

To be sure, events in Czechoslovakia demonstrate the limits
of East European autonomy that the Soviet Union is now prepared to
tolerate. But the Soviet Union may not be willing indefinitely to
continue to use the Red Army primarily against allies as it has
done three times in a decade and a half. In any event, no Western
policy can guarantee a more favorable evolution in Central Europe;
all it can do is to take advantage of the opportunity if it arises.

Policy outside of Europe is likely to be divergent. Given
the changed European perspective, an effort to bring about global
burden sharing may only produce stagnation. The allies will be

- 30 -

able to agree primarily on doing nothing. Any crisis occuring
anywhere will turn automatically and organically world-wide.
American understanding for European autonomy implies also European
understanding for a degree of American autonomy with respect to
areas in which, for understandable reasons, European concern has
lessened.

In addition, cooperative efforts in entirely new areas should
be explored. For example, our space program need not be national.
European participation in it could supply an effective answer to
the "technological gap".

Finally, under present circumstances, an especially meaningful
community of interests can be developed in the social sphere. All
modern states face problems of bureaucratization, pollution,
environmental control, urban growth. These problems know no
national considerations. If the nations of the Atlantic work
together on these issues -- either through private or governmental
channels or both -- a new generation habituated to cooperative
efforts could develop similar to that spawned in different
circumstances by the Marshall Plan.

It is high time that the nations bordering the Atlantic deal --
formally, systematically and at the highest level -- with questions
such as these: (a) what are the relative roles of Europe and the
United States in East-West contacts? (b) is a division of functions
conceivable in which Western Europe plays the principal role in
relation to Eastern Europe while the United States concentrates
on relationships with the USSR? (c) what forms of political
consultation does this require? (d) in what areas of the world is

- 31 -

common action possible? Where are divergent courses indicated?
How are differences to be handled?

Thus, we face the root questions of a multipolar world.
How much unity should we want? How much diversity can we stand?
These questions never have a final answer within a pluralistic
society. Adjusting the balance between integration and autonomy
will be the key challenge of the emerging Atlantic relations.

- 32 -

IV. **BIPOLARITY AND MULTIPOLARITY: A CONCEPTUAL PROBLEM**

In the years ahead, the most profound challenge to American policy is philosophical: to develop some concept of what we understand by order in a world which is bipolar militarily but multipolar politically. But a philosophical deepening, however necessary, will not come easily to those brought up in the American tradition of foreign policy.

Our political society was one of the few which was **consciously created** at a point in time. At least until the emergence of the race problem, we have been blessed by the absence of class conflicts or other conflicts as to ultimate ends. The lessons of two world wars seem to many Americans to prove that we saved the world twice in a century.

These factors produce the characteristic aspects of American foreign policy: a certain manipulativeness and pragmatism, a bias against long-range planning, a reluctance to think in structural terms -- all qualities which reflect a sense of self-sufficiency not far removed from a sense of omnipotence. Yet the contemporary dilemma is that there are no total solutions; we are engulfed in a permanent process not in a quest for a total goal. A multipolar world forces us to learn to be creative with the autonomy of friends who do not follow our prescriptions and who may even oppose us at times. Nuclear bipolarity has as its imperative, constant political contact with opponents.

- 33 -

a. <u>The New Nations and Political Legitimacy</u>

This challenge is especially crucial with respect to
the new nations. Future historians are likely to class the
confusion and torment in the emerging countries with the great
movements of religious awakening. Continents which had been
dormant for centuries have suddenly developed political con-
sciousness. Regions which for scores of years had considered
foreign rule as natural, struggle for independence. Yet it is
a curious nationalism which defines itself not as in Europe
by common language or history but often primarily by the common
experience of foreign rule. Boundaries -- especially in
Africa -- have tended to follow the administrative convenience
of the colonial powers. Divided along religious or tribal lines,
the new nations have faced both a problem of identity and of
political authority. They lack social cohesiveness or they
are split into competing groups each with a highly developed
sense of identity.

It is no accident that between the Berlin crisis and the
invasion of Czechoslovakia, the principal threats to the peace
came from the emerging areas. Domestic weakness encourages foreign
intervention. The temptation to deflect domestic dissatisfactions
into foreign adventures is ever present. Leaders feel little
sense of responsibility to an overall international equilibrium;
they are much more conscious of their local grievances. The
rivalry of the superpowers offers many opportunities for
blackmail.

- 34 -

Yet the traditional foreign policy manifestations are not the most significant aspect of the turmoil of the new countries. It is in the new countries that the issue of the purpose of political life and the meaning of political legitimacy -- key issues also in the modern state -- pose themselves in their most acute form. The new nations weigh little in the physical balance of power. But the forces unleashed in the emergence of so many new states may well affect the moral balance of the world -- the convictions which form the structure for the world of tomorrow. This adds a new dimension to the problem of multipolarity.

Almost all of the new countries suffer from the revolu-
tionary malaise: revolutions succeed through the coming together
of all resentments. But the degree to which the existing structure
is eliminated, compounds the difficulty of establishing political
consensus. A successful revolution leaves as its legacy a pro-
found dislocation. In the new countries, contrary to all
revolutionary expectations, the task of construction has emerged
as less glamorous and more complex than the struggle for freedom;
the exaltation of the quest for independence cannot be perpetuated.
Sooner or later, positive goals must replace resentment of the
former colonial power as a motive force. In the absence of
autonomous social forces, this unifying role must be performed by
the state.

But this produces another cause of instability. When
social cohesiveness is slight, the struggle for control of
authority becomes increasingly bitter. When government is the

- 35 -

principal, sometimes the sole expression of national identity,
opposition tends to be considered treason. The profound social
or religious schisms of many of the new nations turn the control
of political authority quite literally into a matter of life and
death. Where political obligation follows racial, religious or
tribal lines, self-restraint breaks down. Domestic conflicts
assume the character of civil war. Such traditional authority
as exists is personal or feudal. The problem is to make it
"legitimate" -- to develop a nation of political obligation
which depends on legal norms rather than on the existence of
coercive power or on merely personal loyalty.

This process took centuries in Europe. It must be
accomplished in decades in the new nations where preconditions of
success are less favorable than at comparable periods in Europe.
In addition, the new countries are subject to foreign pressures
which Europe was spared. There is a premium on foreign
adventures to bring about domestic cohesiveness.

The American role in the effort of building legitimate
authority is in need of serious re-examination. The dominant
American view about political structure has been that it would
follow more or less automatically upon economic progress and that
it would then take the form of constitutional democracy.

Both assumptions are subject to serious questions. In
every advanced country, political stability preceeded rather than
emerged from the process of industrialization. Where the
rudiments of popular institutions did not exist at the beginning
of the industrial revolution, they did not receive their impetus

- 36 -

from it. To be sure, representative institutions were broadened and elaborated as the countries prospered -- but their significant features antedated economic development and are not attributable to it. In fact, the system of government -- whether popular or authoritarian -- which brought about industrialization, has tended to be confirmed by this achievement.

Nor is democracy a natural evolution of nationalism. In the last century, it was started by an aristocratic ruling class whose estimate of itself was founded outside the political process. It was buttressed by a middle-class, holding a political philosophy which considered the state to be a referee of the ultimately important social forces rather than the principal focus of national consciousness. Professional revolutionaries were rarely involved; their bias is seldom democratic.

The pluralism of the West had many causes which cannot be duplicated elsewhere. These included: a church organization outside the control of the state and therefore symbolizing the limitation of government power; the Graeco-Roman philosophical tradition of justice based on human dignity reinforced later by the Christian ethic; an emerging bourgeoisie; a stalemate in religious wars imposing tolerance as a practical necessity and a multiplicity of states. Industrialization was by no means the most significant of these factors. Had any of the others been missing, the Western political evolution could have been quite different.

Communism has never succeeded in the industrialized countries for which its theory was devised; its greatest successes

- 37 -

have been in agricultural societies. This is no accident.
Industrialization -- in its early phases -- multiplies dislocations.
It smashes the traditional framework. It requires a system of values
which makes the sacrifices involved in capital formation tolerable
and which furnishes some integrating principles to contain
psychological frustrations.

Communism is able to supply legitimacy for the sacrifices
inseparable from capital formation in an age when the maxims of
laisser-faire are no longer acceptable. Too, Leninism has the
attraction of providing a rationale for holding on to power. Many
of the leaders of the new countries are revolutionaries who sustained
themselves through the struggle for independence by visions of the
transformations to be brought about after victory. They are not pre-
disposed even to admit the possibility of giving up power in their
hour of triumph. Since they usually began their struggle for inde-
pendence while in a small minority and sustained it against heavy
odds, they are not likely to be repelled by the notion that it is
possible to "force men to be free."

The ironic feature of the current situation is that Marxism,
professing a materialistic philosophy, is accepted only where it does
not exist: in some new countries and among protest movements of the
advanced democratic countries. Its appeal is its idealistic com-
ponent and not its economic theory. It offers a doctrine of substantive
change and an explanation of final purposes. Its philosophy has been a
total failure in inspiring the younger generation in Communist countries
where its bureaucratic reality is obvious.

On the other hand, the United States, professing an idealistic

- 38 -

philosophy, often fails because of its heavy reliance on economic
factors. It has answers to technical dislocations but has been able
to contribute much less to building a political and moral consensus.
It offers a procedure for change but little content for it.

The problem of political legitimacy is the key to political
stability in regions containing two-thirds of the world's population.
An American agenda must include some conception of what we under-
stand by it. In an age of instantaneous communication, we cannot
pretend that what happens to over two-thirds of humanity is of no
concern or interest to the United States. This does not mean that
our goal should be to transfer American institutions to the new
nations -- even less that we should impose them. Nor should the pro-
blem be defined as how to prevent the spread of Communism. The issue
is the problem of building a moral consensus which can make a pluralis-
tic world creative rather than destructive.

Irrelevance to one of the great revolutions of our time will
mean that we will ultimately be engulfed by it -- if not physically,
then psychologically. Already some of the protest movements have
made heroes of leaders of repressive new countries. The absurdity
of founding a claim for freedom on protagonists of the
totalitarian state -- such as Guevara or Ho or Mao -- underlines
the fact that the travail of the new countries affects societies
which share none of their technical but some of their spiritual
problems -- especially the problem of the nature of authority in the
modern world. To a young generation in rebellion

- 39 -

against bureaucracy and bored with material comfort, these societies offer at least the challenge of unlimited opportunity (and occasionally unlimited manipulativeness) in the quest for justice.

A world which is bipolar militarily and multipolar politically thus confronts an additional problem. Side by side with the physical balance of power, there exists a psychological balance based on intangibles of value and belief. The presuppositions of the physical equilibrium have changed drastically; those of the psychological balance remain yet to be discovered.

## b. The Problem of Soviet Intentions

Nothing has been more difficult for Americans to assimilate than the fact that in the nuclear age, even enmity is complex. In the Soviet Union, we confront an opponent whose public pronouncements are insistently hostile. Yet the nuclear age imposes a degree of cooperation and a limit to which conflicts can be pushed.

The military relationship with the Soviet Union is difficult enough; the political one confronts us with a profound conceptual problem. A society which regards peace as the normal condition, tends to ascribe tension not to structural causes but to wicked or shortsighted individuals. Peace is thought to result either from the automatic operation of economic forces or from the emergence of a more benign leadership abroad.

The debate about Soviet trends between "hard liners" and "soft liners" illustrates this problem. Both sides tend to agree

- 40 -

that the purpose of American policy is to bring about a more
benign evolution of Soviet society -- containment was after
all supposed to bring about the _domestic_ transformation of the
USSR. They are at one that a settlement presupposes a change in
the Soviet system. Both groups give the impression that the
nature of a possible settlement is perfectly obvious -- the
apostles of containment never defined what would be the American
negotiating program for the situation of strength their policy
was designed to achieve. Nor have the advocates of relaxation
of tensions tended to emphasize precision; they have been more
concerned with atmosphere than with the substance of talks.

In fact, the difference between the "hawks" and "doves"
has usually concerned an issue of timing: the "hawks" have
maintained that a Soviet change of heart, while inevitable,
was still in the future while the "doves" have argued that it
has already taken place. Many of the "hawks" tend to consider
all negotiations as fruitless. Many of the "doves" argue --
or did before Czechoslovakia -- that the biggest step toward
peace has already been accomplished by a Soviet change of heart
about the cold war; negotiations need only remove some essentially
technical obstacles.

This tendency affects -- and sometimes poisons -- the entire
American debate about foreign policy. Left-wing critics of
American foreign policy seem incapable of attacking United States'
actions without elevating our opponent (whether it happens to be
Mao or Castro or Ho) to a pedestal. If they

- 41 -

discern some stupidity or self-interest on our side, they assume
that the other side must be virtuous. They then criticize the
United States for opposing the other side. The "Right" follows
the same logic in reverse: they presuppose _our_ good intentions
and conclude that the other side must be perverse in opposing us.
Both the Left and the Right judge largely in terms of intentions.
They start with a view of America (which they think they under-
stand) and then attribute the opposite moral quality to the other
side. In the process, whatever the issue -- whether Berlin or
Vietnam -- more attention is paid to whether to get to the con-
ference room than what to do once we arrive there. The dispute
over Communist intentions has diverted attention from elaborating
our own purposes. The test of dedication to peace has been
whether one interprets Soviet intentions in the most favorable
manner.

It should be obvious, however, that the Soviet domestic
situation is complex and its relationship to foreign policy far
from obvious. It is true that the risks of general nuclear war
should be as unacceptable to Moscow as to Washington; but this
truism does not automatically produce detente. It can also be
used to lessen the risks involved in local intervention. No
doubt the current generation of Communist leaders lacks the
ideological dynamism of their predecessors who made the revolu-
tion; at the same time, they have at their disposal a military
machine of unprecedented strength and they must deal with a
bureaucracy of formidable vested interests. (After all, senior
elements in the Soviet hierarchy must have felt sufficiently

42

threatened by freedom of the press in Prague to unleash the
Red Army for the third time in a decade and a half against an
<u>allied</u> country.) Unquestionably, Soviet consumers press
their leaders to satisfy their demands; it is equally true that
an expanding modern economy is able to supply <u>both</u> guns and
butter. Some Soviet leaders may have become more pragmatic.
But in an elaborated Communist state, the conclusions of
pragmatism are complex: Once power is seized and industrializa-
tion is largely accomplished, the Communist party faces a
difficult situation. It is not needed to conduct the government;
it has no real function in running the economy (though it tries
to do both). In order to justify its continued existence and
command, it may develop a vested interest in vigilance against
outside danger and thus in perpetuating a fairly high level of
tension.

It is beyond the scope of this essay to go into detail
on the issue of internal Communist evolution. But it may be
appropriate to inquire why in the past every period of detente
has proved stillborn. There have been at least five periods
of peaceful coexistence since the Bolshevik seizure of power,
one in each decade of the existence of the Soviet state. Each
was hailed in the West as ushering in a new era of reconcilia-
tion and as signifying the long-awaited final change in Soviet
purposes. Each ended abruptly with a new period of intransigence
which was then generally ascribed to a victory of Soviet "hard
liners" rather than to the dynamics of the system. There were
many reasons for this. But the tendency of many in the West

- 43 -

to be content with changes of Soviet tone and to confuse
atmosphere with substance surely did not help matters. This
has enabled the Communist leaders to postpone the choice which
they must make sooner or later: whether to use detente as a
device to lull the West or whether to move to a resolution of
the outstanding differences. Postponing the choice in turn
leaves open the possibility that latent crises may run away
with the principal protagonists as happened in the Middle East
and perhaps even in Czechoslovakia.

The eagerness of many in the West to emphasize the
liberalizing implications of Soviet economic trends and to
make a favorable interpretation of Soviet intentions a test of
good faith may have the paradoxical consequence of strengthening
the Soviet "hard liners". Soviet troops had hardly arrived in
Prague when some Western leaders insisted that this would not
affect the quest for detente while others continued a nostalgia for
high-level meetings. Such an attitude hardly serves the cause of
peace. The risk is great that if there is no penalty for in-
transigence, there is no incentive for conciliation. The Kremlin
may use negotiations -- including arms control -- as a safety
valve to dissipate Western suspicions rather than as a serious
endeavor to resolve concrete disputes or to remove the scourge of
nuclear war.

If we focus our policy discussions on Soviet purposes, we
confuse the debate in two ways: (1) Soviet trends are too
ambiguous to offer a reliable guide -- it is possible that not
even Soviet leaders fully understand the dynamics of their

- 44 -

system; (2) it deflects us from articulating our own purposes which we should pursue, whatever Soviet intentions. Peace will not, in any event, result from one grand settlement but from a process of adjustment and this requires some clarity as to our destination. Confusing foreign policy with psychotherapy deprives us of criteria by which to judge real relaxation of tensions.

The obsession with Soviet intentions causes the West to be smug during periods of detente and panicky during crises. A benign Soviet tone is equated with the achievement of peace; Soviet hostility is considered as ushering in a new period of tension and evokes usually purely military countermeasures. The West is thus never ready for a Soviet change of course, it has been equally unprepared for detente as for intransigence.

These lines are being written while the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia outrages moral sensibilities. There is a tendency to focus on the military implications or to speak of strengthening unity in the abstract. But if history is a guide at all, there will be a new Soviet peace offensive sooner or later -- indeed if Soviet behavior after the invasion of Hungary is any guide, sooner rather than later. Thus reflecting about the nature of detente seems most important while its realization appears most problematical. If we are not to be doomed to repeat the past, it may be well to learn some of its lessons: We should not again confuse a change of tone with a change of heart. We should not pose false inconsistencies between allied unity and detente; indeed a true relaxation of tensions presupposes Western unity. We should concentrate negotiations on the concrete issues

- 45 -

that threaten the peace of the world such as intervention in the
Third world. Moderating the arms race must also be high on the
agenda. None of this is possible without a concrete idea of
what we understand by peace and a creative world order.

- 46 -

V. <u>AN INQUIRY INTO THE AMERICAN NATIONAL INTEREST</u>

Wherever we turn then, the central issue of American foreign policy is to analyze anew the current international environment and to develop some concepts which will enable us to contribute to the emergence of a stable order.

This requires that we recognize first the existence of profoundly structural problems to a considerable extent independent of the intentions of the principal protagonists and they cannot be solved merely by good will. The vacuum in Central Europe and the decline of the West European countries would have disturbed the equilibrium regardless of the domestic structure of the Soviet Union. A strong China historically has tended to establish suzerainty over many of its neighbors; one problem of dealing with China is that -- Communism apart -- it has no experience in conducting foreign policy between equals. China has either been dominant or subjected.

To understand the structural issue, it is necessary to undertake an inquiry from which we have historically shied away: into the essence of our national interest and into the premises of our foreign policy. It is part of the American folklore that while other nations have interests, we have responsibilities; while other nations are concerned with equilibrium, we are concerned with the legal requirements of peace. We have a tendency to offer our altruism as a guarantee of our reliability: "We have no quarrel with the Communists," Secretary of State Rusk said on one occasion, "all of our quarrels are on behalf of other people."

- 47 -

Such an attitude makes it difficult to develop a conception of our role in the world. It inhibits other nations from gearing their policy to ours in a confident way -- a "disinterested" policy is likely to be considered "unreliable." A mature conception of our interest in the world should obviously take into account the general interest in stability and peaceful change. It would deal with two fundamental questions: What is it in our interest to prevent? What should we seek to accomplish?

The answer to the first question is often confused by the proposition that we will resist aggression anywhere since peace is indivisible. A corollary is the argument that we do not oppose the fact of particular changes but the method by which they were brought about. We find it hard to articulate a truly vital interest which we would defend however "legal" the challenge. This leads to an undifferentiated globalism and confusion about our purposes. The notion that we resist aggression in the abstract causes us to multiply our commitments. The denial that our interests are involved diminishes our staying power when we try to carry out our commitments.

Part of the reason is our reluctance to think in terms of power and equilibrium. In 1949 for example, a State Department memorandum justified NATO as follows: "(The treaty) obligates the parties to defend the purposes and principles of the United Nations, the freedom, common heritage and civilization of the parties and their free institutions based upon the principles

- 48 -

of democracy, individual liberty and the role of law. It
obligates them to act in defense of peace and security. It
is directed against no one; it is directed solely against
aggression. It seeks not to influence any shifting balance
of power but to strengthen a balance of principle."

But principle, however lofty, must at some point be
related to practice; historically stability has always coin-
cided with an equilibrium which made physical domination
difficult. Interest is not necessarily amoral; moral conse-
quences can spring from interested acts. Britain did not con-
tribute any the less to international order for having a clear-
cut concept according to which it was in her interest to prevent
the domination of the Continent by a single power (no matter how
it happened) and the control of the seas by anybody (even if the
immediate intentions were not hostile). A new administration
confronts the challenge of relating the commitments of America
to its interests and its obligations to its purposes.

The task of defining positive goals is more difficult but
even more important. The first two decades after the end of
World War II posed problems well suited to the American approach
to international relations. Wherever we turned, massive dis-
locations required attention. Our pragmatic, _ad hoc_ tendency
was an advantage in a world clamoring for technical remedies.
Our legal bent contributed to the development of many instruments
of stability.

In the late Sixties, the situation is more complex. The
United States is no longer in a position to operate programs

- 49 -

globally; it has to encourage them. It can no longer design
its preferred solution; it must seek to evoke it. In the
Forties and Fifties, we offered remedies; in the late Sixties
and Seventies our role will have to be to contribute to a
structure in which the initiative of others can be fostered.
We are a superpower physically, but our designs can be meaningful only if they generate willing cooperation. We can continue
to contribute to defense and positive programs; but we must seek
to encourage and not stifle a sense of local responsibility. Our
contribution should not be the sole or principal effort but it
should make the difference between success and failure.

This task requires a different kind of creativity and
another form of patience than that which has distinguished us
in the past. Enthusiasm, belief in progress, the invincible
conviction that American remedies can work everywhere must give
way to an understanding of historical trends, an ordering of our
preferences and above all an understanding of the difference
which our preferences in fact can make.

The dilemma is that there can be no stability without
equilibrium but equally, equilibrium is not a purpose that
responds to the travail of our world. A sense of mission is
clearly a legacy of American history; to most Americans,
America has always stood for something other than its own
grandeur. But a clearer understanding of America's interests
and of the requirements of equilibrium can give perspective to
our idealism and lead to humane and moderate objectives both
especially in relation to political and social change.

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A conception of world order must have deeper purposes than
stability but greater restraints than would be possible if it
were approached only in a fit of enthusiasm.

Whether such a leap of the imagination is possible in the
modern bureaucratic state remains to be seen. New administrations
come to power convinced of the need for purpose and comprehensive
concepts. Sooner, rather than later, they find themselves sub-
jected to the pressures of the immediate and the ad hoc. Part
of the reason is the pragmatic, issue-oriented bias of our
decisionmakers. But the fundamental reason may be the per-
vasiveness of modern bureaucracy. What started out as an aid
to decisionmaking has developed a momentum of its own. Increasingly,
the policymaker is more conscious of the pressures and the morale
of his staff than of the purpose this staff is supposed to serve.
The policymaker becomes a referee among quasi-autonomous
bureaucratic bodies. Success consists of moving the administrative
machinery to the point of decision leaving relatively little
energy for analyzing its merit. The modern bureaucratic state
widens the range of technical choices while limiting the capacity
to make them.

An even more serious problem is posed by the change of
ethic of precisely the most idealistic element of American youth.
The idealism of the Fifties through the Kennedy era expressed
itself in self-confident, often zealous institution building. Many
in the present younger generation consider the management of power
irrelevant, perhaps even immoral. While the idea of service

- 51 -

retains a potent influence, it does so largely with respect to
problems which are clearly _not_ geared to over-all strategic
aspects of American foreign policy: the Peace Corps is a good
example. The new ethic of freedom is not "civic"; it is
indifferent or even hostile to systems and notions of order.
Management is equated with manipulation. Structural designs are
perceived as systems of "domination" -- not of order. The
generation which has come of age after the Fifties has had
Vietnam as its introduction to world politics. It has no memory
of occasions when American-supported structural innovations were
successful nor of the motivations which prompted these enterprises.

Partly as a result of the generation gap, the American mood
dangerously oscillates between being ashamed of power and expecting
too much of it. The former attitude deprecates the use or
possession of force; the latter is over-attuned to the immediate
possibilities of absolute action and overly indifferent to the
likely consequences. The danger of the rejection of power is
nihilistic perfectionism which disdains the gradual and seeks to
destroy what does not conform to its notion of Utopia. The danger
of the overconcern with force is that policymakers will respond
to clamor by a series of spasmodic gestures and stylistic
maneuvers and then recoil before their implications.

These essentially psychological problems cannot be over-
emphasized. It is the essence of a satisfied, advanced society
that it puts a premium on operating the familiar. It draws its
motivation from the present and it defines excellence by the

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ability to manipulate an established framework. But for the
major part of humanity, the present becomes endurable only
through a vision of the future. To most Americans -- including
most American leaders -- the significant reality is what they
see around them. For most of the world -- including many of the
leaders of the new nations -- the significant reality is what they
wish to bring about. If we remain nothing but the managers of
our physical patrimony, we will grow increasingly irrelevant.
And since there can be no stability without us, the prospects of
world order will decline.

We require a new burst of creativity, however, not so much
for the sake of other countries as for our own people, especially
the youth. The contemporary unrest is no doubt exploited by some
whose purposes are all too clear. But that it is there to exploit
is the result of a profound dissatisfaction with the merely
managerial and consumer-oriented aspect of the modern state and
with a world which seems to generate crises by momentum. The
modern bureaucratic state for all its panoply of strength often
finds itself shaken to its foundations by seemingly trivial causes.
Its brittleness and the world-wide revolution of youth -- especially
in advanced countries and among the relatively affluent -- suggests
a spiritual void, an almost metaphysical boredom with a political
environment which increasingly emphasizes bureaucratic challenges
and offers no deeper purpose than material comfort.

This problem has no easy remedy. Nor is the solution to be
found primarily in the realm of foreign policy. Yet a deeper non-
technical challenge would surely contribute to a sense of direction.

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[Y]

The best and most prideful expressions of American action in
the world have been when we acted in concert with others. Our
influence has depended on achieving a reputation as a member
of such a concert. To act consistently abroad we must be able
to generate coalitions -- not of military power but of shared
purposes. Regional grouping supported by the United States will
have to take over major responsibility for their immediate areas
with the United States concerned more with the over-all framework
of order than with the management of all enterprises.

In the best of circumstances, the next administration will
be beset by crises. In almost every area of the world, we have
been living off capital -- warding off the immediate, rarely dealing
with underlying problems. These difficulties are likely to multiply
when it becomes apparent that one of the legacies of the war in
Vietnam will be a mounting American reluctance to risk overseas
involvements.

A new administration has the right to ask for compassion and
understanding from the American people. But it must found its claim
not on pat technical answers to difficult issues; it must above all
ask the right questions. It must recognize that in the field of
foreign policy, the key issue is that we will never be able to
contribute to building a stable and creative world order unless
we first form some conception of it.