At a time when American foreign policy seems to be marking time, torn between reality and its expectation of it, exhibiting great skill in surviving periodic crisis, but little sense of direction in forestalling them, it is well to be recalled to some first principles of one of our "elder" statesmen. Mr. Dean Acheson would undoubtedly reject the adjective though it refers to the experience and not to the age of the man who guided America's transformation from a largely isolationist power to the leadership of the free world coalition.

POWER AND DIPLOMACY represents a series of four lectures delivered by Mr. Acheson at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Its great strength is the skill, balance and wisdom of a sweeping analysis. Its weakness is inherent in the lecture format. It is impossible in four lectures to do full justice to all the ramifications of the challenges confronting America's foreign policy. Inevitably, such a book must raise more questions than it answers. It is a tribute to the power of its analysis that one wishes the proposed remedies had been spelled out more fully.

POWER AND DIPLOMACY takes its title from the central thesis of Mr. Acheson's book: that the collapse of the nineteenth century world order, the growth of Russian power and the rising tides of the anti-colonial revolution have created a serious strain in the cohesiveness and strength of the non-Communist world. Accordingly, Mr. Acheson defines the establishment of a "workable and secure non-Communist world system" as the criterion of a sound United States foreign policy. He wisely analyzes

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his central problem of the need to develop the requisite counterpower
to increases in Soviet strength on these levels: that of military require-
ments; that of the need for strength at the center, in which Mr. Acheson
includes the Western Hemisphere and European security; and that of the
requirements of leadership.

In his discussion of strategy, Mr. Acheson has many trenchant
things to say about the instability of a military policy which in the threat
of massive retaliation has staked everything on the threat of suicide. His
alternative, it must be said in fairness, is not wholly satisfying either.
Mr. Acheson is in favor of strengthening United States and British nuclear
power on the Continent of Europe but he is less than enthusiastic about a
similar strengthening of European forces. He rejects the possibility of a
limited nuclear war while relying on nuclear weapons to provide our massive
deterrent and while implying that a conventional war might be fought in
shadow. He does not make clear how conventional weapons European forces
are to act in concert with the two nuclear allies or how an aggressor can
treat our nuclear establishment on the Continent in any other way than as if
it might be used. Nevertheless this ambivalence may be inherent in modern
technology and those of us who hold slightly varying opinions must admit
that no one can be certain of his position in a situation fraught with so many
intangibles.

It is in his analysis of the political requirements of a free world

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coalition that Mr. Acheson shows his surest touch. He has many wise
observations about the importance of Western Hemisphere relations and
the crucial role of NATO in the system of free world alliances. At a time
when there is fatuous talk of "summit conferences," "disengagement,"
and "neutrality"; when Khmushchev delivers lectures whose reasonable tone
only obscures their explosive and potentially disastrous quality, it is
reassuring to read Mr. Acheson's sane and profound comments about the
illusions of a "neutral belt," the relationship between NATO and East
European freedom and the dangers of too much patness in dealing with
collateral problems of our allies. He is surely correct in pointing up the
inextricable connection between our domestic performance and our impact
abroad. His discussion of the Suez fiasco is a powerful study of the bane
of shortsightedness coupled with self-righteousness.

If the book falls short of ultimate stature it is because of a certain
mechanical approach to the problems of foreign policy. There is a tendency
to assume that the analysis of a problem also supplies the
solution that the exposition of a fallacious way of thinking itself indicates
the remedy. Mr. Acheson is undoubtedly right in asserting that the problem
of the free-world is to establish a secure non-Communist world system, but
it is doubtful whether this statement by itself is adequate to give a sense of
direction to the aspirations of a world in turmoil, where old standards are
disintegrating and millions are looking for a new orientation. Mr. Acheson
correctly emphasizes the importance of a coalition of free states. It is less