[LC]

Mr. Kissinger

George has a copy of your Preface, so you will probably be hearing from him on it. I think it is excellent -- but you were _much_ too nice to me. I think you were fine about everyone else, but I wondered if you might want to add, in the part where you mention Paul Willen and Randolph Major, Elizabeth Valkenier? She did a lot on the Russian things where Major couldn't cope and also has gone through it to "consisticize" the Russian transliterations to make them of the same school of doing so. She will also go through the page proofs of the text, and the bibliography, just to be sure again.

The galleys of the bibliography will be back toward the end of next week -- do you want to let us have the extra bit you were going to add now, or wait until later?

Here is another copy of the list of people for the Preface. They can all be fitted into the Foreword. Mr. Burden is willing to be listed now -- his secretary said you had promised him a copy of the Preface. (I wonder if he really means the Foreword.) We can send him both, if you wish.

The page proofs will not be back at all next week, but will start coming in the following one, according to the printer -- as there were so many revisions they have to take their time a bit. Then, we will proofread them with great care, etc., and start grappling with all the see-belows, etc.

I may go away next week, but won't know until tomorrow (depending on some other things here), to go skiing in Aspen - if I do I'll be back here on Monday, the 8th. I won't be needed on this book next week, but if you have anything you wish to say, etc., perhaps you could tell me tomorrow -- or tonight. (However, I may not go.)

I'll pick up the Preface tomorrow a.m.

→ [ovv]

Lorna

PREFACE

It would be difficult to think of a subject with more of a built-in inducement to humility than that of nuclear weapons and foreign policy. Mankind has at its disposal the means to destroy itself at the precise moment when schisms among nations have never been deeper. And the attempt to come to grips with the horrors of the new technology confronts the additional handicap that we can draw only limited evidence from previous experience because much of it has been made irrelevant by the very enormity of nuclear means of mass destruction.

The challenge of the nuclear age is not only the enormity but also the inescapability of the challenge. Within a generation the peaceful uses of atomic energy will have spread across the globe. Most nations will then possess the wherewithal to manufacture nuclear weapons. Foreign policy henceforth will have to be framed against the background of a world in which "conventional" technology is nuclear technology.

Contemporaries are in a peculiarly difficult position to assess the nature of revolutions through which they are living. All previous experience will tempt them to integrate the new into what has come to seem familiar. They will have difficulty understanding that what is most taken for granted may be most misleading because a new order of experience requires new ways of thinking about it. A revolution cannot be mastered until it develops the mode of thinking appropriate to it.

So it is with the impact of nuclear weapons on foreign policy. Nostalgia for a more secure and less cataclysmic past is understandable. But facts cannot be changed; they can only be used. Many familiar assumptions about war, diplomacy and the nature of peace will have to be modified before we have developed a theory adequate to the perils and opportunities of the nuclear age.

2

This book attempts to be a first step in that direction. I have
sought to set forth the considerations on which policy and strategy may be based
and the pitfall of many of our traditional concepts about the nature of security.
To be useful a work of this kind must indicate the nature of possible choices,
if only because the dilemmas of policy appear in the resolution and not in
the contemplation of problems. To govern, it has been said, is to choose.
A book about foreign policy which refused to state its position would seem
to me to beg the principal question. Humility cannot take the form of recoiling
before the consequences of every course of action.

I have tried to be deeply aware, however, that while as an independent
author I may have had the advantage of perspective, the awful responsibility
for the ultimate decision on which our survival may depend rests on other
shoulders and that statesmen are permitted only one guess. To some extent
those who have to make the final decisions can be aided by dispassionate
public discussion. If this book does no more than elicit fuller and wiser
statements of our strategic problem, it will have been well worthwhile.

An author who is invited by the Council on Foreign Relations to work
under its auspices is in a fortunate position. He can draw on the experience
of an extraordinary group of individuals who have been exposed to the practice
of the problem with which he is dealing. And he has at his disposal scholarly
facilities, including a library service of exceptional efficiency, which
guarantee that the inadequacies of his work must be his own.

The Council procedure is particularly helpful in a book such as this
because published material on strategic and diplomatic implications of the
new technology is scant. The wisdom we possess is largely in the minds of those
who have been placed in positions of responsibility where they have had to
guide our policy even while the new technology was daily changing its presuppositions.

3

I have profited more than I can say from the discussions of the extraordinary
group of men assembled by the Council on Foreign Relations under the wise and
patient chairmanship of Gordon Dean. Their deliberations gave me a sense of
the dimensions of the problem and of the considerations on which policy is
based which I could have acquired in no other way. It was my good fortune to
work with Gordon Dean, the chairman of the over-all group, and with Joseph E.
Johnson, William A. M. Burden and Frank Pace, Jr. who headed sub-committees.
I am deeply indebted to them, not only for what they have taught me personally,
but for the skill and dedication with which they guided the deliberations of
the various groups. To enumerate the many ways in which this book profited
from the counsel of members of the study group either jointly or individually
would transcend the bounds of a preface. I hope they will forgive me if I use
this opportunity to express my gratitude to them collectively.

In fairness to the study group I must emphasize that while this book has
grown out of its deliberations, the conclusions, judgments and analysis are my
own. It was always understood that the purpose of the effort was to develop
a coherent theory and not a group agreement. No attempt was made at any of
our meetings to arrive at a consensus. The manuscript was never considered by
the group as a whole. I am deeply indebted to members of the study group
who have read individual chapters and who have made exceedingly helpful suggestions.
They include: Frank Altschul, McGeorge Bundy, James T. Hill, Jr., Frank Nash,
Henry DeWolf Smyth, Carroll L. Wilson and Arnold Wolfers. Caryl P. Haskins
has read the entire manuscript and his friendship and encouragement have been
a constant inspiration to me. None of these individuals is responsible, however,
for the conclusions of this book.

The atmosphere at the Council on Foreign Relations is particularly conducive to producing the best work of which one is capable. Advice and assistance are always available and all the more helpful for being so unobtrusive. If I were to list my indebtedness, I should have to mention the entire staff. In a subtle and civilized way they create an environment in which ideas are absorbed almost by osmosis and in which one draws the strength which comes from being with a group of individuals who form a community in the best sense. I have profited greatly from the encouragement of John C. Campbell, William Diebold, Jr., and Melvin Conant. Philip E. Mosely, Philip Quigg and George S. Franklin, Jr. have read the entire manuscript and have made innumerable extremely helpful suggestions. Philip Quigg, in addition to his invaluable substantive advice, has put his subtle editorial pen to my resistant style. Portions of this book have appeared in *Foreign Affairs* and, as any author of this distinguished journal knows, I owe a great deal to the incisive judgments of Hamilton Fish Armstrong.

The library of the Council on Foreign Relations, under the able direction of Miss Ruth Savord, has performed miracles in collecting material and checking references. Its clipping files of newspapers are unique.

I am grateful to Kurt de Witt and to Harold Fletcher, Jr., who helped with the research on German and French material respectively. Paul Willen and Randolph T. Major, Jr., assisted in the collection of Soviet sources.

Margaret Dreyfus was a patient and efficient research assistant and secretary.

Without the dedication of Lorna Brennan who transformed my elementary notions of organization of footnotes and of chapters into a meaningful pattern this book could never have been finished.

The understanding and devotion of my wife Ann through the difficult months of writing this book were a constant source of encouragement.