REFLECTIONS ON AMERICAN DIPLOMACY

by Henry A. Kissinger

"Policy" wrote Metternich, the Austrian minister who steered his country through thirty-nine years of crisis by a tour de force perhaps never excelled "is like a play in many acts which unfolds inevitably once the curtain is raised. To declare then that the play will not go on is an absurdity. The play will go on either by means of the actors or by means of the spectators who mount the stage...The crucial problem [of statesmanship], therefore, resides in the decision of whether to assemble the audience, whether the curtain is to be raised and above all in the intransic merit of the play."

There can be little doubt that U. S. foreign policy is undergoing a crisis. For several years we have been groping for a concept to deal with the transformation of the cold war from an effort to build defensive barriers into a contest for the allegiance of humanity. But the new Soviet tactics coupled with the equally unassimilated increase in the destructive potential of the new weapons technology have led to a crisis in our system of alliances and to substantial Soviet gains among the uncommitted of the world.

It would be a mistake, however, to ascribe our difficulties to this or that error of policy or to a particular Administration, although the present Administration has not helped matters by its pretense of "normalcy."

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To return to Metternich's metaphor: It can be argued that our policy has
reached an impasse because of our penchant for happy endings; the Soviets
have been able to use negotiations to their advantage because we insisted
on reading from an old script. As in all tragedies, many of these problems
have been produced in spite of our best intentions and have been caused, not
by our worst qualities, but by our best. What is at issue, therefore, is
not a policy, but an attitude.

It is with this attitude and its consequences in the conduct of
negotiations and our policy of alliances that this article seeks to deal.

I

It is understandable that a nation which for a century and a half
had been preoccupied with its domestic affairs should seek to apply their
pattern to international affairs. But the very success of the American
experiment and the spontaneity of our social institutions has served to
emphasize the dilemma faced at some stage by every country: how to reconcile
its vision of itself with the vision of it as seen by others. To itself,
a nation is an expression of justice and the more spontaneous its social
institutions, the more this is true; for government functions effectively
only when most citizens obey voluntarily and they will obey only to the
extent that they consider the demands of their rulers just. But to other
nations, a state is a force to be balanced. This is inevitable because
external sovereignty can be controlled only by superior force and because
national strategy must be planned on the basis of the other side's capabilities
and not merely a calculation of its intentions. There exists a double

standard, therefore, in all foreign policy; internally, foreign policy
is justified like all other policy in terms of an absolute standard
because the nation has no other; but abroad, what is defined as justice domestic
becomes a program to be compromised by negotiation. If the institutions
and values of the states comprising the international order are sufficiently
similar, this incommensurability may not become apparent. But in a revolu-
tionary period like the present, it affects profoundly relationships among
states.

Foremost among the attitudes affecting our foreign policy is
American empiricism and its quest for methodological certainty: nothing
is "true" unless it is "objective" and it is not "objective" unless it is
part of experience. This makes for the absence of dogmatism and for the
ease of social relations on the domestic scene. But in the conduct of
foreign policy, it has pernicious consequences. Foreign policy is the art
of weighing probabilities; its mastery is the grasp of the nuances of
possibilities. To attempt to conduct it as a science can only lead to
rigidity. For only the risks are certain, but the opportunities are con-
jectural; one cannot be "sure" about the implications of certain events
until they have happened and when they have occurred it is too late to do
anything about them. Empiricism in foreign policy leads to a penchant for
ad hoc solutions; the rejection of dogmatism makes our policy makers
reluctant to commit themselves until all facts are in; but by the time
the facts are in, a crisis situation has usually developed or an opportunity
has passed. Our policy is, therefore, geared to dealing with emergencies;
it finds difficulty in gaining acceptance for long-range programs that might
forestall them.

Another symptom of our quest for methodological certainty is the
vast number of governmental committees charged with examining and developing
policy. The very multiplicity of committees makes it difficult to arrive
at decisions in time; it injects an element of uncertainty because
responsibility is obscured. As a result, in our governmental structure
sovereign departments negotiate national policy among themselves with no
single authority capable of following up these decisions or of applying them
over a period of time. The temptation to conduct policy administratively
is ever present, of course, in a government organized, as ours is, primarily
for the conduct of domestic affairs. But the spirit of policy and that of
bureaucracy are fundamentally opposed. Profound policy thrives on creativeness;
good administration thrives on routine. Policy involves an adjustment of
risks; administration an avoidance of deviation. The attempt to conduct
policy administratively leads to a standard which evaluates by mistakes
avoided rather than by goals achieved. It is no accident that most great
statesmen were opposed by the "experts" in their foreign offices, for the
very greatness of the statesmen's conception tends to make it inaccessible
to those whose primary concern is with safety and minimum risk.

Our methodological doubt leads to the dispatch of a plethora of
emissaries to foreign capitals to inform themselves without a sufficient
consideration of the impression of vacillation they convey. It makes for
vulnerability to Soviet maneuvers in two ways: On the one hand, every
Soviet change of line is taken at least in part at face value, for we
cannot be certain that the Soviets may not "mean" it this time until they
have proved they do not, and they will do their best to try not to prove it

until the tactic has served its purpose. On the other hand, we have found
to new situations
it difficult to adjust our tactics/so that we always tend to speak in the
categories of the most recent threat but one. We are, therefore, in the
paradoxical position that we, the empiricists, appear to the world as
rigid, unimaginative and even somewhat cynical; while the dogmatic Bolsheviks
exhibit flexibility, daring and subtlety. This is because our empiricism
dooms us to an essentially reactive policy that improvises a counter to
every Soviet move. While the Soviet emphasis on theory gives them the
epistemological certainty to act, to maneuver, and to run risks. The very
fact of action shifts the risks of countermoves to the other side; it
absorbs its energies in essentially defensive maneuvers.

The willingness to act need not derive from theory, of course.
Indeed, an overemphasis on theory can lead to losing touch with reality.
In many societies—in Great Britain, for example—policy developed from a
firmly held tradition of a national strategy. Throughout the 19th century
it was a tenet of British policy that Antwerp should not fall into the hands
of a major power. This was not backed by an elaborate metaphysics, but
simply by a tradition of British sea-power whose requirements were so
generally understood that they were never debated. It is the absence of
a tradition of foreign policy which exaggerates the biases of our empiricism
and makes it difficult to conduct our policy with a proper regard for
the timing of measures. It causes us to overlook the fact that policy exists
in time as well as in space, that a measure is correct only if it can be
carried out at the proper moment. To be sure, our cumbersome administrative

mechanism adds immeasurably to the problem. But in addition, our deliberations are conducted as if a policy were eternally true, as if a measure which might meet exactly the needs of a given moment could not backfire if adopted a year later. There is lacking in our policy for this reason the feeling for nuance, the ability to come up with variations on the same theme which have been so notable in Soviet tactics. We consider policy-making concluded when the National Security Council has come to a decision. And in fact, the process of arriving at a decision is so arduous that its very difficulty makes for rigidity and a reluctance to re-examine policies after they have outlived their usefulness. When Mr. Dulles used the words "agonizing reappraisal" he spoke truly for within our government any reappraisal is apt to be extremely painful.

But a written statement of policy is likely to amount to a truism; the real difficulty arises in applying it to concrete situations. And while we have often come up with the proper measures, we have not found it easy to carry them through time, to adapt our approach to the requirements of the situation. The different uses made by the Soviets of the time interval between the summit conference and the Geneva conference of foreign ministers illustrates this point. The Soviets established diplomatic relations with the German Federal Republic, they used the peace offensive to undermine the cohesiveness of NATO and concluded the arms deal with Egypt while we spent the interval working out positions for the imminent negotiations on disarmament and on Germany. By the time we arrived in Geneva, we found ourselves confronted by a series of fait accomplis and the conference foredoomed.

Related to the absence of a sense of timing is the difficulty of coming to grips with tragic experience. This is another result of our concentration on domestic problems during the greater part of our history. For while national experience is fraught with hardships, it is notably free of disaster. On the contrary, the American domestic experience exhibits an unparalleled success, of great daring rewarded, and of great obstacles overcome. It is no wonder, therefore, that to many of our most responsible men, particularly in the business community, the warnings of impending peril or of imminent disaster sound like the Cassandra cries of abstracted "egg-heads." For is not the attribute of the "egg-head" his lack of touch with reality, and does not American reality show an unparalleled wealth coupled with an unparalleled growth?

There has been much criticism of Secretaries Humphrey and Wilson for their defense economies. But in fairness, the psychological background of their decisions should be understood: despite all the information at their disposal, they simply cannot believe that in the nuclear age the penalty for miscalculation may be national catastrophe. They may know in their heads, but they cannot accept in their hearts, that the society they helped to build and that gave them the opportunity could disappear as did Rome or Carthage or Byzantium, which probably seemed just as eternal to their inhabitants. These characteristics make for an absence of a sense of urgency, a tendency to believe that everything can be tried once and that the worst consequence of mistakes may be that we may have to redouble our efforts later on. The irrevocable error is not yet part of the American experience.

Another aspect of this problem is our reluctance to think in terms of power. To be sure, American expansion both economic and geographical was not accomplished without a judicious application of power. But our Calvinist heritage has endowed success with the attribute of justice. Even our great fortunes, however accumulated, were almost invariably justified as imposing a social obligation; the great foundation is after all a peculiarly American phenomenon. As a nation, we have used power almost shamefacedly as if it were inherently wicked. We have wanted to be liked for our own sakes and we have wished to succeed because of the persuasiveness of our principles rather than through our strength. Our feeling of guilt with respect to power has caused us to transform all wars into crusades, to apply our power, when it has been used, in the most absolute terms. Intermediary applications for our power have been rarely conceived and reluctantly undertaken.

But international relations cannot be conducted without an awareness of power relationships. To be sure, the contemporary revolution cannot be managed merely by an exercise of force. But unless we maintain at least an equilibrium of power between us and the Soviet bloc we will have no chance to undertake any positive measures. And maintaining this equilibrium may confront us with some very difficult choices. We are certain to be confronted with situations of extraordinary ambiguity such as civil wars or domestic coups. Every successful Soviet move makes our moral position that much more difficult: Indo-China was more ambiguous than Korea; Egypt more ambiguous than Indo-China. There can be no doubt that we should seek

to prevent such occurrences. But while we should never give up our
principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles
unless we survive.

Consistent with our reluctance to think in terms of power has been
our notion of the nature of peace; that peace is the "normal" pattern of
relations among states, that it is equivalent to a consciousness of harmony,
that it can be aimed at directly as a goal of policy--these are truisms
rarely challenged in our political debate. Both major political parties
maintain that they work for a lasting peace, even if they differ about the
best means of attaining it. Both make statements which imply that on a
certain magic day, perhaps after a four-power conference, "peace will break
out."

But no idea could be more dangerous. To begin with, and quite apart
from any ideological disagreement, the polarization of power in the world
would give international relations a degree of instability and the present
volatile state of technology is likely to compound this sense of insecurity.
Moreover, whenever peace--conceived as the avoidance of war--has become
the direct objective of a power or a group of powers, international relations
have been at the mercy of the state willing to forgo peace. There are four
ways of avoiding war: by surrender or by vigilance, by predominance or by
equilibrium. No statesman can entrust the fate of his country entirely to
the continued good will of another sovereign state, if only because the best
guarantee for the will remaining good is not to tempt it by too great a
disproportion of power. Peace, therefore, cannot be aimed at directly; it

is the expression of certain conditions and power relationships. It is to
these relationships--not to peace--that diplomacy must address itself.

It is obviously to the Soviet interest to equate peace with a state
of good feeling unconnected with power relationships or past usurpations,
for such an attitude ratifies all their gains since World War II. By
the same token, it is to the U. S. interest to leave no doubt that the
tension of the Cold War was produced not only by the intransigence of the
Soviet tone, but also by the intransigence of their measures. As long as
the Soviets can give the impression that conciliatory statements alone are
a symptom of peaceful intentions, they can control the pace of negotiations
and gain the benefits of the advocacy of peace without paying any price for
its achievement. U. S. diplomacy should, therefore, have set itself the
task of reducing the Soviet peace offensive to concrete terms as quickly
as possible, to make clear that the requisite for a real relaxation of
tension was Soviet concession on issues which had produced the tension in
the first place such as the division of Germany or the satellite orbit. If
the Soviets are given the privilege of initiating negotiations when it suits
their purpose and to break them off without any penalty, diplomacy will
become a tool of Soviet propaganda. And the variety of Soviet maneuvers
will in time erode the cohesion of the Free World.

II

With this we have reached one of the major problems confronting
current U. S. diplomacy: the changed nature of negotiations in a revolutionary
political order. An international order, the basic arrangements of which
are accepted by all the major powers, is "legitimate"; a system which contains

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a power or a group of powers which refuses to accept either the arrangements of the settlement or the domestic structure of the other states is "revolutionary". A legitimate order does not make conflicts impossible; it limits their scope. Wars may arise, but they will be fought in the name of the existing system and the peace will be justified as a better expression of the agreed arrangements. In a revolutionary order, on the other hand, disputes do not concern the adjustment of disputes within a given framework, but the framework itself.

There can be little doubt that we are living through a revolutionary period. On the physical plane, there has occurred a disequilibrium between the power of weapons and the objectives for which to employ them, so that at a moment of unparalleled strength, we find ourselves paralyzed by the implications of our own weapons technology.¹ On the political plane, many of the newly independent powers continue to project on the international scene the revolutionary fervor that gained them independence. On the ideological plane, the rapid rate of communicating ideas, the rise in expectations, the newly awakened aspirations of many areas hitherto dormant have combined to lay the groundwork for contemporary ferment. And the Soviet bloc eager to exploit all dissatisfactions for its own ends has given the present situation its revolutionary urgency.

This is true despite the conciliatory statements of the 20th party congress. For "peaceful coexistence" was not advanced as an acceptance of the *status quo*. On the contrary, it was justified as the most efficient

1. For a fuller discussion of the physical factors, see the author's "Force and Diplomacy in the Nuclear Age," *Foreign Affairs*, April 1956.

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offensive tactic, as a more effective means to subvert the existing order.
Neither the class-struggle with its postulate of irreconcilable conflict,
nor the inevitable triumph of Communism with its corollary of the dictatorship
of the proletariat were given up. To be sure, war was declared as no
longer inevitable, but only because soon the USSR would possess preponderant
strength. Behind "peaceful coexistence" stands the prospect of other tactics
should the present method prove less fruitful than anticipated. "In the
world from now on," Mao has said, "neutrality is only a word for deceiving
people."

This has been a hard lesson to come by. Lulled by a century and a
half of tranquility and without experience with disaster, we have been
reluctant to take at face value the often-repeated Soviet assertion that
they mean to smash the existing framework. We have tended to treat Soviet
protestations as if their intent were merely tactical; as if the USSR over-
stated its case for bargaining purposes or were motivated by specific
grievances to be assuaged by individual concessions. There is a measure
of pathos in our effort to find "reasonable" motives for the Soviets to cease
being Bolshevik: the opportunity to develop the resources of their own
country, the unlimited possibilities of nuclear energy, or of international
trade--all examples of a state of mind which cannot come to grips with a
policy of unlimited objectives. The picture of an antagonist vanquished
by the persuasiveness of argument, the belief in the efficacy of the process
of negotiation, reflect the dominant role played in our diplomacy by the
legal profession and our conception of diplomacy as a legal process.

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But the analogy of the legal method does not apply to a revolutionary situation. The legal method presupposes a framework of agreed rules which supply the background for negotiating skill. It is not the process of negotiation as such which accounts for the settlement of legal disputes, but a social environment which permits this process to operate. This explains why conciliatory American statements have so often missed their mark. To the Soviet, the key to their ultimate triumph resides in their superior understanding of "objective" forces and of the processes of history.² Even if they accept the "subjective" sincerity of American statesmen, they would still believe them powerless to deal with the "objective" factors of American society which will ultimately produce a showdown. Conciliatory American statements will appear to the Soviet leaders either as hypocrisy or as stupidity, as a form of propaganda or a form of ignorance. It is, therefore, futile to seek to sway Soviet leaders through logical persuasion or by invocations of abstract justice. Soviet statesmen consider conferences a means to give expression to an "objective" situation; the only logic they accept is the logic of facts. A Soviet diplomat who wishes to make concessions can justify them at home only if he can demonstrate that they resulted from a proper balancing of risks.

In short, diplomacy has a different function in a revolutionary international order. In a legitimate order diplomacy seeks to compromise differences in order to perpetuate the international system. Adjustments

2. There is no little exasperation in the Soviet replies to our repeated assertion that a change of tactics on their part implies a surrender of Marxism: "We always tell the truth to our friends as well as to our enemies," Khrushchev has said (September 17, 1955). "We are in favor of a detente, but if anybody thinks that for this reason we shall forget about Marx, Engels and Lenin, he is mistaken. This will happen when the shrimps learn to whistle."

occur because agreement is itself a desirable goal, because of a tacit
agreement to come to an agreement. In a revolutionary order, on the other
hand, adjustments have primarily a tactical significance: to prepare
positions for the next test of strength. Negotiations in a legitimate order
have three functions: to persuade by stating a plausible reason for settlement;
to formulate by expressing agreements or discords in a manner that does not
open unbridgeable schisms; to perpetuate by providing a forum for making
concessions. But in a revolutionary period, most of these functions have
changed their purpose: diplomats can still meet, but they cannot persuade,
for they have ceased to speak the same language. Instead, diplomatic
conferences become elaborate stage plays which seek to attach the uncommitted
to one or the other of the contenders.

Nothing is more futile, therefore, than to seek to deal with a
revolutionary power by "ordinary" diplomatic methods. In a legitimate order,
demands once made are negotiable; they are put forward with the intention
of being compromised. But in a revolutionary order, they are programmatic;
they represent a claim for allegiance. In a legitimate order, it is good
negotiating tactics to formulate maximum demands because this facilitates
compromise without loss of essential objectives. In a revolutionary order,
it is good negotiating tactics to formulate minimum demands in order to gain
the advantage of the advocacy of moderation. In a legitimate order, proposals
are addressed to the opposite number at the conference table. They must,
therefore, be drafted with great attention to their substantive content
and with sufficient ambiguity so that they do not appear as invitations to

surrender. But in a revolutionary order the protagonists at the conference table address not so much one another as the world at large. Proposals here must be framed with a maximum of clarity and even simplicity, for their major utility is their symbolic content. In short, in a legitimate order, a conference represents a struggle to find formulae to achieve agreement; in a revolutionary order, it is a struggle to capture the symbols which move humanity.

The major weakness of U.S. diplomacy has been the insufficient attention given to the symbolic aspect of foreign policy. Our positions have usually been worked out with great attention to their legal content, with special emphasis on the step-by-step approach of traditional diplomacy. But while we have addressed the Soviets, the Soviets have used us as a forum to speak to the people of the world. With a few exceptions we have not succeeded in dramatizing our position, in reducing a complex negotiation to its symbolic terms. In major areas of the world the Soviets have captured the "peace offensive" by dint of the endless repetition of slogans that seemed preposterous when first advanced, but which have become common currency through usage.

The power which has added 150 million people to its orbit by force has become the champion of anti-colonialism; the state which has developed slave-labor as an integral part of its economic system has emerged in many parts of the world as the champion of human dignity. Neither on German unity nor on that of Korea nor on the satellite orbit have we succeeded in mobilizing the opinion of the world. But Formosa has become a symbol of American intransigence and our overseas air-bases a token of American aggressiveness. We have replied to every Soviet thrust like a pedantic professor sure of his righteousness; but the world is not moved by legalistic phrases, at least in a revolutionary period.

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This is not to say that negotiation should be conceived as mere propaganda; only that by failing to include the psychological aspect in our calculations, we have left the field free for the Soviets.

As a result, the international debate is carried on almost entirely in the categories and at the pace established by the Soviets; the attention of the world is directed toward the horror of nuclear weapons, but not toward the fact of aggression which would unleash them. The Soviets negotiate when a relaxation of tension serves their purpose and they break off negotiations when it is to their advantage without being forced to shoulder the onus for their failure. We were right to agree to the summit conference and the subsequent meeting of the foreign ministers. But it was not necessary to permit the four-power meetings to become an effort to turn the Soviets respectable; or for the President to give the Soviet a certificate of good conduct by assuring Bulganin he believed in his peaceful intentions. Nor was it wise to let the Soviet build up a distinction between the President and the rest of the U.S. government, so that any increase in tensions will be ascribed to the fact that the President succumbed to the pressures of his advisors or to the operation of the "objective" factors of the U.S. economy or to a change of Administration. Because of our inability to raise the negotiations above the commonplace, they were conducted in a never-never land where a Soviet smile was considered to outweigh the fact of the perpetuated division of Germany, and where problems were evaded simply by denying that they existed.

III

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But could we have carried our allies and the uncommitted along on a different policy? Perhaps the best way to approach a discussion of our system of alliances is to analyze the historic role of coalitions. In the past, coalitions have generally been held together by a combination of three motivations:

(a) To leave no doubt about the alignment of forces and to discourage aggression by assembling superior power -- this in effect is the doctrine of collective security. (b) To provide an obligation for assistance in addition to the requirements of the national interest. Were the national interest unambiguous and unchangeable, each power would know its obligations and also the course of its opponents without any formal pact. But the national interest fluctuates within limits; it must be adapted to changing circumstances. An alliance is a form of insurance against contingencies, an additional weight when considering whether to go to war. (c) To provide a legitimacy for the assistance of foreign troops or for intervention in a foreign country.

An alliance is effective then to the extent that its power appears formidable and its purpose unambiguous. If an alliance is composed of too many disparate elements or if its members pursue too varying aims it will not survive a real test; the legal obligation by itself will not make operative a coalition which has no common purpose or is incapable of giving its purpose a military expression. The French system of alliances between the two wars, however imposing on paper, could not survive the conflicting interests of its components and its lack of a unifying military doctrine. It is not the fact of alliance which deters aggressors but the application it can be given in any concrete case.

If we examine the structure of the present U.S. system of alliances we discover that most of the historic conditions for coalitions no longer apply or apply in a different sense. From the point of view of power relationships

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none of our alliances, save NATO, adds to our effective strength. And NATO is
in difficulty because we cannot give it a military doctrine which makes sense to
our NATO partners. The U.S. interest in the alliance is twofold: (a) to prevent
Eurasia from being dominated by a hostile power, because the U.S. confined to the
Western Hemisphere could survive, if at all, only through an effort inconsistent
with what is now considered the American way of life; (b) to add to our over-
all strength vis-à-vis the U.S.S.R. by obtaining overseas facilities, particularly
air-bases. Our empiricist bias has, however, caused us to reduce these objectives
to a specific threat -- that of overt Soviet military aggression -- and to look
at this threat only in terms of the total strategic relationship between us and
the Soviet bloc. In these terms, Eurasia is protected not by our capability for
local defense, but by our strategic superiority in an all-out war and we have,
therefore, tended to justify our alliances because of the air-bases they afford us.

An alliance is useless, however, unless it expresses a mutuality of
interest between the partners. We have considered the defense of Eurasia primar-
ily as a problem of the total strategic relationship between us and the Soviet bloc.
But eventual victory is of no interest to our allies if meanwhile they have under-
gone the moral and material ravages of a Soviet occupation. Moreover, our allies
realize that in all-out war they will add to our effective strength only by sup-
plying facilities; they see no significance in a military contribution of their
own. As long as our military doctrine threatens to transform every war into an
all-out war, our system of alliances will be in jeopardy.

This difficulty is compounded by our notion of collective security
drawn from the lessons of the 1930's, when a united front of the powers might

3. See Paul Nitze, "Atoms, Strategy and Policy," *Foreign Affairs*, January 1956.

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well have deterred Hitler, and motivated by our historical bias in favor of federal structures. We base our coalitions on the assumption that unless all allies resist any aggression anywhere no effective resistance is possible at all. But this notion of collective security has the paradoxical result of paralyzing the partner capable of resisting alone. For governments hard-pressed to act in areas of direct concern to them cannot be brought to run risks outside that area, so that the effort to obtain NATO support in Asia tends to undermine the cohesiveness of NATO even within Europe. On the other hand, in some of our alliances the combinations of purposes even within the geographic area of primary concern to them is extremely various. Pakistan desires arms more for their effect on India than for the protection they afford against the U.S.S.R. or China; Iraq is interested in the Baghdad Pact primarily for the military advantages it gives over Saudi Arabia and Egypt. And in neither SEATO nor the Baghdad Pact are we associated with partners with whom we share the degree of common purpose conferred by the common cultural heritage that connects us with our European allies.

The problems of our system of alliances can, therefore, be summed up under two headings: either the alliances add little to our effective strength or they do not reflect a common purpose, or both. In such circumstances a system of collective security leads in fact to a dilution of purpose and to an air of unreality in which the existence of an alliance, and not the resolution behind it, is considered the guarantee of security. Thus, we speak of plugging gaps in defenses as if a treaty instrument were itself a defense. We will not be able to overcome these difficulties until we develop a new approach to our coalition policy, above all until we set in less ambitious goals: we have to confine our alliances to the purposes we and our allies share.

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But can such a coalition policy be developed? The implications of the growing Soviet nuclear capacity would seem to impose a measure of harmony between the U.S. interest in an over-all strategy and our allies' concern with local defense. For it appears now that the most effective over-all strategy involves the graduated employment of force and that the best deterrent resides in a capability for local defense. A deterrent is effective only to the degree that it is plausible and as the Soviet nuclear stockpile grows our willingness to run risks of a major war for peripheral objectives will diminish. In any case, in the face of the horrors of an all-out thermo-nuclear war, it is to the U.S. interest to use it only as a last resort; to seek to defend Eurasia by means other than all-out war. The justification for our alliances is, therefore, less that they add to our over-all strength, than that they give us an opportunity to apply our power subtly and with less fearful risks than an all-out thermo-nuclear war.

In these terms our alliances should be conceived from the military point of view as devices to organize local defense and our assistance a means to make local defense possible. We should make clear to our allies that their best chance of avoiding thermo-nuclear war resides in our ability to make local aggression too costly. They should understand that they cannot avoid their dilemmas by surrender or neutrality for if we were pushed out of Eurasia they would bring on what they fear most. Confined to the Western Hemisphere we would have no choice but to fight an all out war. To be sure, the Soviets have skillfully fomented neutralism by giving the impression that local resistance must inevitably lead to all-out war. But the Soviets can be no more interested than we in an all-out war; the fear of thermo-nuclear extinction would provide a powerful sanction against expanding a conflict. Regional mutual security arrangements, not

4. See the author's "Force and Diplomacy in the Nuclear Age," *Foreign Affairs*, April 1956. The argument of that article was for a nuclear military establishment with a wide range of capabilities.

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a doctrine of general collective security would seem to furnish the best basis for our coalition policy.

The corollary to the regional approach to our system of alliances, however, is U.S. willingness to act alone if the over-all strategic balance is imperiled. None of our allies, with the exception of Great Britain, has the capability or the willingness to act outside its own geographical area. To ask them to do so will only undermine the domestic position of already weak governments and demoralize them further. It will lead to subterfuges and to the dilution of common action behind the form of joint communiqués. We have to face the fact that only the U.S. is strong enough domestically and economically to assume worldwide responsibilities and that the attempt to obtain the prior approval by all our allies of our every step will lead not to common action but to inaction. For if an alliance is equaled with the consensus of its members, its policy is certain to be shaped by its weakest component. To be sure, wherever there exists a community of purpose, as for example with Great Britain in the Middle East and perhaps in Southeast Asia, we should concert our efforts. But we must reserve the right to act alone, or with a regional grouping of powers, if our strategic interest so dictates. We cannot permit the Soviets to overturn the balance of power for the sake of allied unity, if only because whatever the disagreement of our allies on specific measures their survival depends on our unimpaired strength.

The military point of view must not supply the sole motivation for our system of alliances, however. In fact, in many areas, particularly those newly independent, our emphasis on the military factor is the cause for our failure to develop any sense of common purpose. We are undoubtedly right in our belief in the Soviet menace. But revolutions are not logical and the Asian revolution is interested more in economic development than in foreign affairs. Our insistence

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that they focus some of their energies outward appears to them as an irritating interruption of their primary concern and lends color to Soviet peace offensives. Moreover, the military contribution of both the Baghdad Pact and SEATO does not compensate for the decision of Egypt and India to stand apart and for the domestic pressures these instruments generated in some of the signatory countries.

The primary function of these pacts is to draw a line across which the U.S.S.R. cannot move without the risk of war, and to legitimize U.S. intervention should war break out. But the line could have been better drawn by a unilateral U.S. declaration or by a screen of U.S. token forces. Behind this shield we could then have concentrated on the primary problem of creating a sense of common purpose by emphasizing shared objectives, primarily by striving for the grouping of powers to assist in economic development. Had we emphasized these non-military functions of SEATO, it would have been much more difficult for India or Indonesia to stay aloof. As these political groupings gain in economic strength, their own interest would dictate a more active interest in common defense or at least it would provide the economic base for a meaningful defense. A powerful grouping of states on their borders is against the interests of the U.S.S.R. regardless of whether this grouping comes into being as the result of a military or some other joint effort, and by the same token, such a grouping is desirable from the U.S. point of view even if it does not go along with our every policy.

The problem of the uncommitted cannot be solved merely by an economic grouping of powers, however. It is related to the whole U.S. posture. Anti-Americanism is fashionable today in many parts of the globe. As the richest and most powerful nation, we are the natural target for all frustrations. As the power which bears the primary responsibility for the defense of the Free World,

23

we are unpopular with all who are so preoccupied with the development of their
own country that they cannot pay sufficient attention to foreign threats. We
should, of course, seek to allay legitimate grievances, but we would be wrong to
take every criticism at face value. Many of our most voluble critics in Southeast
Asia would be terrified were U.S. military protection suddenly withdrawn. Nehru's
neutrality is possible, after all, only as long as the U.S. remains strong. A
great deal of anti-Americanism hides a feeling of insecurity both material and
spiritual. Popularity is a hopeless mirage in a situation which is revolutionary
precisely because old values are disintegrating and millions are groping for a
new orientation. It is impossible for this reason to base policy solely on an
inquiry into what people desire; it is equally necessary to supply a sense of
direction. In the uncommitted areas popularity may be less important than respect.

The U.S. must, therefore, develop in its relations with the uncommitted not
only a greater compassion, but also a greater majesty. The picture of high
American officials scurrying to all quarters of the globe to inform themselves on
each crisis as it develops cannot but make an impression of moral uncertainty.
The nervousness exhibited in our reactions to Soviet moves must contrast un-
favorably with what seems like the deliberate purposefulness of the Soviets. If
every sale of Soviet arms is followed by an offer of economic aid to the recipient
country, we shall merely reward unresponsibility. Because of what appears to
other nations as vacillation and uncertainty, the pressures of those powers which
want above all to preserve the peace are in every crisis directed against us as
the more flexible factor in the equation. To the degree that we can project a
greater sense of purpose, some of these pressures may be deflected on the Soviet
bloc. A revolution, like Egypt's or even India's cannot be managed by understand-
ing alone; it also requires a realiness on our part to bear the psychological
burden of difficult decisions.

IV

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We thus return to our original problem: the adequacy of American attitudes for dealing with the present crisis. This is above all a problem of leadership. For nations learn only by experience; they "know" only when it is too late to act. But statesmen must act as if their intuition were already experience, as if their aspiration were truth. The statesman is, therefore, like one of the heroes of classical tragedy who has had an intuition of the future, but who cannot transmit it directly to his fellowmen and who cannot validate its "truth." This is why statesmen often share the fate of prophets, that they are without honor in their own country and that their greatness is usually apparent only in retrospect when their intuition has become experience. The statesman must be an educator; he must bridge the gap between a people's experience and his vision, between its tradition and its future. In this task his possibilities are limited. A statesman who too far outruns the experience of his people will not be able to sell his program at home; witness Wilson. A statesman who limits his policy to the experience of his people will doom himself to sterility; witness French policy since World War I.

It would be wrong to be too pessimistic. No one would have believed when World War II ended that the U.S. would so completely end its traditional isolation and assume world-wide commitments. Were we not in mortal peril, we could take pride in what has been achieved. As it is, it will be a close race between our maturing and the developing Soviet threat. We wanted to be happy without being unjust; we wanted to develop our resources without concern with the outside world. But it was not to be so. The world has come crowding in at an ever-increasing rate. A power which has never hidden its hostile intent is building a thermo-nuclear capability and intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of destroying us. We have wanted peace, above all. But we are confronted by a state which aims, not for peace but for victory. Perhaps the really tragic element in our situation is the fact that in order even to maintain peace we cannot aim for less.

The Soviet peace offensive began with the agreement to the Austrian State Treaty and the visit of Bulganin and Khrushchev to Belgrade. Many commentators ascribed these Soviet concessions to U. S. pressure and patience. But it is dangerous to ascribe every favorable development to one's own skill, for such an attitude leaves one helpless against feints. Patience is not itself a factor that can induce an antagonist to yield; it merely affords the time for the development of other pressures. And it is difficult to find pressures that should have induced the Soviets to agree to an Austrian State Treaty or to liquidate their quarrel with Tito in the spring of 1955. On the contrary, in the light of what happened since it is reasonable to assume that the Soviets undertook these measures precisely because there was a relative absence of external pressure so that the USSR could obtain the maximum benefit of its show of moderation.

For the quarrel with Tito had become meaningless: whatever the humiliation of the visit to Belgrade, it was less costly than the exhibition of impotence involved in a continuation of the previous intransigence. And if any position had to be liquidated in Europe, Austria was the most likely place. No satellite government existed in the Soviet zone; no military bases had been developed. Only a complete misunderstanding could have led to the frequently heard argument that the withdrawal from Austria was a prelude to a withdrawal from Germany. The intent of the visit to Yugoslavia and of the withdrawal from Austria was symbolic: to demonstrate that there existed a "third choice," domestically by legitimizing deviation, internationally by legitimizing neutrality.

But why a peace offensive? Simply because a peace offensive was the most efficient offensive tactic. The Cold War for all its success in consolidating the Soviet sphere had the disadvantage that if they thought the schisms unbridgeable, the uncommitted might be forced to opt for the U. S. despite their hesitations. As

2

long as a military clash seemed imminent or even possible, the U. S. effort to build
defensive barriers could not be effectively attacked from within. But if the USSR
could create the impression that the disputes between the U. S. and the Soviet bloc
were relatively minor, that relations could be markedly improved by a change of
tone alone, the neutralists would be able to legitimize their fears by the seeming
harmony of the Big Four. To the extent that the USSR could give credence to the
belief that a direct arrangement between it and the West was conceivable, it forced
governments which had staked their prestige on ties with the West, such as Adenauer's,
to seek at least the same degree of rapprochement with the USSR as the U. S.
Finally, a relaxation of tension could become part of an effort to ratify past
usurpations by legitimizing the status quo in attitude if not in words. The Soviet
success is indicated by the fact that today mention of the satellite orbit appears
in many areas as American intransigence, and in a few years German unity may be in
the same category.

To be sure, the relaxation of tensions did not apply equally to all areas.
While the Soviets sought to freeze the status quo in Europe, they kept alive issues
in Asia, such as Indo-China and Formosa which might be used to isolate us later on.
Nor did the new Soviet tactics imply a renunciation of force. On the contrary, the
Soviet peace offensive gained impetus from "atomic blackmail": the growth of the
Soviet atomic stockpile and the Soviet propaganda of the horrors of a nuclear war.
The Soviet leaders have repeatedly insisted that the new weapons technology has not
eliminated the danger of war and the implication is not lost among our allies and
the uncommitted despite its defensive tone. Thus if one speaks of the Soviet peace
offensive one is really talking about four broad tactics:

a) An effort to identify the Soviets with the aspirations of the uncommitted areas of Asia and the Middle East;

b) An attempt to create facts of life, in Marxist terminology, "objective factors" to which the powers which could not be won over have to adjust. This tactic sought to use the peace offensive to freeze the status quo in areas where any change is likely to be unfavorable to the USSR, such as Germany;

c) A quest for demonstrating our impotence to affect the fate of countries which have based their foreign policy on close ties with the U. S., such as Germany or Pakistan;

d) An effort to keep open for use issues on which world opinion could be mobilized against the U. S., such as Quemoy and Matsu, Formosa and Indo-China.

The Soviet policy in Germany can serve as an example of these tactics: Adenauer had justified NATO with the argument that the way to unity lay through strength and that in a world divided into two camps, the Federal Republic had no option but to choose the West. But at the very moment when the Federal Republic became a full-fledged NATO partner, the Soviet peace offensive began to undermine the psychological basis of Adenauer's policy. No sooner had we agreed to the summit conference than Adenauer was invited to Moscow, an invitation impossible to decline since Germany could not afford worse relations with the USSR than the U. S. When the summit conference ended with declarations of amity without a single Soviet concession, the stage was set for the next Soviet move: the Soviets learned that no penalty was attached to the failure of negotiations and on the way back from Geneva pledged themselves to perpetuate their East German satellite. Adenauer, on the other hand, was deprived by the "Geneva spirit" of any negotiating basis in Moscow, because in any negotiation the side which cannot risk failure is in a weak position.

Geneva had raised doubts about the progress to be achieved toward unity through the
assistance of the Western powers and in any case Adenauer could not afford to be
more intransigent than the President without lending color to the claims of his
domestic opponents that he was not interested in German unification. These considera-
tions and the skillful use of 10,000 German prisoners held in Russia forced Adenauer
to establish diplomatic relations with Moscow. And Moscow, in turn, used this
recognition to establish two de facto governments in Germany. Having thus laid
the basis for a claim that unity was a problem that concerned only the two Germanies,
the USSR could afford to let the Geneva foreign minister's meeting collapse abruptly.
Indeed the very abruptness of its collapse advanced Soviet strategy since it served
to emphasize our impotence to affect events. In this manner, the Soviet position
in Germany had been greatly improved: At the worst they could gradually eliminate
the Western allies from any discussions about German unity and deal with the Federal
Republic directly; at best, they could continue or even expand their salient into
Central Europe.

This raises the question about what the U. S. could have done to arrest
this trend. It would be a mistake, of course, to ascribe all unfavorable develop-
ments to U. S. errors or to Soviet cunning. Many factors that have strained our
system of alliances and contributed to the ferment in the uncommitted third of the
world are beyond our control. It would be futile to seek a magic formula which
could deal at once with the political instability of France, the economic stagnation
of Britain, the revolution of rising expectations in Asia and the increasing sense
of vulnerability brought about by the growth of the Soviet atomic stockpile. More-
over, we cannot seek to match the Soviets in Machiavellianism and cynicism without
denying the values which give meaning to our struggle with them in the first place:
it is unthinkable that Americans would hold prisoners as ransom for diplomatic

recognition as did the USSR in its dealings with Adenauer and Communist China in
its relations with us.

Nevertheless, Soviet policy during 1955 was made easier by certain errors
on our side. The U. S. had two essential tasks during the negotiations: a) to re-
late peace to a series of concrete conditions, and b) to give these conditions their
proper symbolic expression. Our major difficulty has been that we have not success-
fully related these two tasks. Of the two major items on the agenda during 1955 -
disarmament and Germany - the former was presented with a maximum of symbolic impact,
but our substantive program did not fulfill the original expectations. And on
Germany we developed so rigid a position that we have mortgaged Adenauer's policy.
Still, the dramatic impact of the President's "open sky" proposal demonstrates what
can be achieved by initiatives which focus the aspirations of humanity.

Where on disarmament we may have stressed symbolism at the expense of
substance, on Germany we have almost totally failed to identify ourselves with the
predominant currents in that country. We have been so concerned with the German
defense contribution, that we have not given adequate emphasis to the issue which
concerns the Germans most: unification. As a result, we treated the talks on Germany
as something necessary to obtain rearmament legislation, as an interruption of our
primary concern. We permitted the negotiations on German unity to be deflected by
the Soviets onto the slippery ice of European security where we were placed in the
position of reassuring the USSR and where we were on the defensive even with our
European allies to whom the German rearmament is at best a necessary evil. By the
time the talks returned to the issue of unification, the Soviets confronted us with
two de facto governments with which they had established diplomatic relations. Even
then we were content with demonstrating that the Soviets would not accept our optimum
solution: German political unity and free elections. But the Soviets were obviously

not prepared to dismantle the East German regime and in the face of the recent Soviet
moves, our proposals did not even look particularly plausible.

The Soviet maneuvers in the interval between the two conferences, had
made clear that they were playing for direct talks with the Federal Republic to the
exclusion of the Western Powers. It was also predictable that domestic pressures
on Adenauer for such talks would multiply. We could counter these moves only by
demonstrating that the Soviets would not only reject our maximum program, but that
they would reject _any_ program short of complete Sovietization. In short, we should
have sought to make clear that there was nothing left to negotiate about. As long
as political unity was unattainable, we might have proposed free elections for a
parliament charged with economic questions, or failing that, for a parliament charged
with determining the best modus for unification. This would have shifted the dis-
cussion from Soviet security to German unity; it would have projected a greater
impression of imagination and it would have made clear that the Soviets would not
risk free elections for _any_ all-German institution. The dangers of the course ac-
tually adopted are demonstrated by the increasing disaffection within Germany with
Adenauer's policy and the overthrow of the Christian-Democratic government in the
state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

A year of "peace offensive" has thus enabled the USSR to cut its losses in
South-Eastern Europe, to impair the psychological basis of NATO and to establish a
basis for the future penetration of Germany. For just as Adenauer was forced into
establishing diplomatic relations by being confronted with the fact of life of 10,000
German prisoners in Russia, so he or a subsequent government may in time face other
agonizing decisions, whether 2,000,000 Berliners can be left to starve because of a
refusal to sit at the same conference table with the East German regime. Moreover,
while the peace offensive enabled the Soviets to freeze the status quo in Europe at