PUBLIC AFFAIRS

# The New Secretary-General

HANS J. MORGENTHAU

THE UNITED NATIONS Charter describes the Secretary-General as "the chief administrative officer of the organization." It limits his political initiative to "bring[ing] to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security." In the performance of other non-administrative functions, he is instructed to act upon the initiative, and as the agent, of the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, and the Trusteeship Council. He and his colleagues are enjoined to "refrain from any action which might reflect on their position as international officials responsible only to the organization."

This limited and subordinate character of the functions assigned by the Charter to the Secretary-General is predicated upon the assumption that the main political agencies of the United Nations—the Security Council and the General Assembly—are able to act in accordance with the intentions of the Charter. This assumption has proven illusory, for the Security Council has been rendered impotent by the cold war between the Soviet Union and the other permanent members of that body, and the General Assembly has been made unwieldy by the increase in membership from the original fifty-one to the present one hundred and ten. As the Russian veto has immobilized the Security Council, so a large and disparate membership threatens the ability of the General Assembly to marshal a two-thirds majority behind any substantive policy. The present eminence of the office of the Secretary-General, unforeseen and unintended by the Charter, is a function of this decline of the Security Council and the General

Assembly as the main political organs of the United Nations. First, the weight of political decision shifted from an impotent Security Council to the General Assembly, and then it shifted from an unwieldy General Assembly to the Secretary-General.

Yet this latter shift would not have been possible if not for the fortuitous circumstance that during the decisive period, from 1953 to 1961, the office of Secretary-General was occupied by a man endowed with unsurpassed qualities of wisdom, skill, and courage: Dag Hammarskjold. Without him, the United Nations could never have become what it is today, and it might well have followed the League of Nations into oblivion as an operating political institution. Hammarskjold developed into a kind of prime minister of the United Nations; by virtue of delegations of power by the Security Council or the General Assembly, his office took over political functions which the Security Council and the General Assembly themselves should have performed but could not. The terms of the delegation were frequently most vague, such as the restoration of peace and order in the Congo, and thus gave broad discretion to the Secretary-General's initiative, limited only by the willingness of member states to implement it with the required financial, technical, and military means.

Mr. Hammarskjold's initiative, however cautiously and skillfully conceived and executed, could not help being controversial. More particularly, he and his policies were violently attacked by the Soviet Union. It was inevitable that this conflict should have arisen between the great imperialistic power of the age and the chief political officer of an international organization which by its very nature is committed to the defense of

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ISRAEL'S THREE CITIES 61

seeking pragmatic approaches. It is impossible to live here, for however short a time, without facing the religious conflicts. Sab bath in Jerusalem has the distinctive, bleak, and humanly forsaken qualities of a Welsh or Scottish Sunday. If the weather is hot, long queues stand at the head of the main roads, importuning passing cars, sometimes waiting in vain half a day for a lift to the seaside. Yet the newly formed League for the Prevention of Religious Coercion finds little support. When the League ran buses out to the Hadassah Hospital over a trial period, there was little popular approval, nor much advantage taken of the service. The very kibbutzim which had provided the transport felt uneasy about their con-nivance. Even so, the religious extremists make their influence felt at all levels of daily life, not only politically through the complicated coalition that allows them to barter votes for concessions, but in their everyday contacts and continuous encroach-ments on other citizens' liberties. Everybody knows the opinions of the handful of the Naturei Karta, and differentiates between them and the lesser fanaticisms. For the highly opinionated dogmas of the extrem-ists are treated half as exoticisms and half as a spiritual heritage worthy of under-standing and, sometimes, of admiration. The central attitude lies somewhere within this ambivalence, for what potentially could be an irreconcilable clash has become café talk. Mea Shearim, accordingly, is half a tourist attraction and half an asset, a thing which is quite pleasant to have around because it adds another dimension to life. There are a few inconveniences, but these are quite easy to shrug off; and meanwhile there is work to be done which cannot be hampered or de-layed by intractable religious considerations. Mea Shearim slowly shrinks into itself, recorded by the tourists' cameras.

EVERYTHING in Jerusalem, Mea Shearim included, is drawn closer by the wall, with its single aperture at the Mandelbaum Gate opening into the Arab countries. Un-expectedly, the wall rises round the street corners, a thin, high, ugly strip of discolored concrete. Most of the views in Jerusalem, from whatever vantage points, are toward the Old City and its encompassing hills, across no-man's land, with the wall some-

where below one's feet. As in West Berlin, fortified even more obstructively, the wall and the patrolling troops provide a sense of identity, an almost medieval feeling of living within manned battlements, shuttered against hostile forces. But unlike West Ber-lin, the identity produced is not high-strung but self-reliant. One afternoon I happened to be looking toward the Old City when a fatal shooting occurred in the streets of Musrara not far below. It was all over and done with in two minutes. The only reper-cussion came from a party of French tourists who felt themselves directly threatened, and cowered, as if still in danger, for a long time afterward. By chance I ran into them again the following day at the university, and they were still complaining of the ordeal. But to their Jerusalem audience, it was a matter of past history.

Behind the wall, inside the university, around its traditions, somehow Jerusalem has fused into an integrated city—perhaps by virtue of the associations of its name, or the tolerance of its elder generation—the Bubers and the Agnons—or because, simply, it is the seat of government. Rooted in the past, it is prepared for Israel's future in some purposeful way not reciprocated in Tel Aviv or Haifa which are far more modern cities in many, perhaps more essential, ways. It does not mean that life in Jerusalem is pleasanter or more interesting, more cul-tivated or more self-conscious than else-where. On the whole it is probably none of these things, and many details of daily life are naturally common to all the three large cities of Israel. It is the attitudes and aspira-tions of their inhabitants that differ. Charac-teristics which can be defined as specifically Israeli are being evolved at a different pace in different parts of the country. Many of these attitudes of mind and ways of behaving have grown out of what preceded them, yet nevertheless exist essentially in their own right, created by the circumstances in which they were generated. This welding process is too large to have any uniformity: the finished product depends upon the handi-craft of many welders working in isolation from one another. The deep contrast be-tween the three towns, then, is one of pace. The tortoise and the hare are at it again: the hare has a more interesting style, but the tortoise has all the surprises.

THE NEW SECRETARY-GENERAL 63

a particular status quo, to be changed only by peaceful and lawful means. Mr. Hammarskjold could be, and was, impartial in his attitude toward different nations; he could not be, and was not, neutral when it came to this fundamental issue of changes in the status quo by violent or illegal means. Thus political opposition was added to the lack of constitutional base and weakness of institutional support that threatened Mr. Hammarskjold's new conception of the Secretary-General's office. That his conception prevailed is above all a tribute to the extraordinary qualities of the man. This triumph of a single individual—powerfully supported, it is true, by the universal fear of war—has served to conceal the inner weakness of the organization on behalf of which he spoke and acted. He walked on the most brittle of grounds. It was only the sureness of his step which made those grounds seem less brittle than they actually were.

THESE observations are prompted by the George Huntington Williams Memorial Lecture which the new Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. U Thant, gave at Johns Hopkins University on December 2, 1962. The lecture was delivered two days after Mr. U Thant's election and therefore commands special attention as a programmatic statement of the new Secretary-General's political philosophy. As such it is disquieting, both in its general subject matter and in the specific views it contains.

Mr. U Thant does something which to the best of my recollection Mr. Hammarskjold never did: he reviews the international scene, analyzes and assesses the trend of events, praises and criticizes particular policies, and offers advice to the governments of the world. He postulates compromise as a universal principle of foreign policy. He distinguishes between Khrushchev's foreign policy and Stalin's and takes the West to task for not reacting properly to the changes. He approves of the Cuban and Laotian settlements. He seems to favor neutralism as a general principle for the non-aligned nations. He sees "one of the root causes of political tension" in the disparity in the wealth of nations.

With these statements, Mr. U Thant postulates an entirely novel conception of the Secretary-General's office, for he speaks here

as a kind of superego in the conduct of foreign policy. His appears to be the voice of truth and reason, to be heard above the melee by the less enlightened and less pure nations. However, no man, no matter how great his wisdom and purity of motive, can perform the function which the new Secretary-General of the United Nations has here assumed, and the attempt to perform it is not only doomed to failure but also fraught with mortal danger to the United Nations. It is because the United Nations is an important, if not an indispensable, instrument for the preservation of peace in the contemporary world that one must point to the weakness of Mr. U Thant's position.

Mr. U Thant obviously thinks that by a sheer act of will an individual, such as the Secretary-General of the United Nations, can elevate himself to a perspective above the political conflicts of the times and judge the positions and policies of different nations by completely objective standards. He is capable of doing this, so he seems to believe, because he is identified not with any particular nation or group of nations, but with the organization of all nations, the United Nations. In this belief, Mr. U Thant is mistaken. The United Nations does not exist in separation from the interests and policies of its members. Either it represents and gives actual substance to the consensus of a majority of its members, expressed through the procedures of the Charter and supported by effective power, or it does not exist at all as a significant operating agency. When in the past the Security Council or the General Assembly delegated their powers in a specific instance to the Secretary-General, it was left to the genius of Mr. Hammarskjold to sense the limits within which the consensus of the members and their power would support his action; and it can well be argued that in the Congo he went to those very limits, if he did not in fact overstep them.

The Secretary-General's voice and action, then, are not his own, nor do they belong to the United Nations in the abstract. Rather, the Secretary-General speaks and acts as the agent of a temporary majority which has coalesced in support of a particular policy aimed at a specific issue. He can speak for the United Nations in the abstract only on one occasion: when he offers the peace-preserving and -restoring procedures of the

64 COMMENTARY / JAN. 63

United Nations by pointing out what the United Nations could do if the members were only to avail themselves of its facilities. This was always the burden of Mr. Hammarskjold's argument presented in his classic annual reports.

A Secretary-General who tries to do more than that by pretending to judge the positions and policies of individual nations by the objective standards of truth and reason is bound to end up speaking only for himself, supported by one and opposed by another nation, as the case may be. This is as it must be in a world of many nations; it has happened to John Foster Dulles and Mr. Nehru, among others. Yet when it happens to the Secretary-General of the United Nations it has not just happened to another statesman whose pretenses have left the facts behind, but to the United Nations itself. The United Nations, with its collective political organs paralyzed or ineffective, has only one agent left through whom it can act: its Secretary-General. His political purity, as it were, is his most precious political asset. When the chips are down, he cannot help antagonizing the nation or group of nations who are trying to change the status quo by illegal or violent means. Thus he cannot help using up his political capital as the price of his effectiveness; this was the fate of Mr. U Thant's predecessors. But neither can he afford to squander that capital in futile and dubious pronouncements which have no bearing upon the concrete issues he is called upon to deal with as Secretary-General. How can he command the requisite political and military support of the member states if he has impaired his reputation for impartiality by pretentiously pontificating on the affairs of the world? A few such pronouncements, antagonizing a sufficient number of nations, may well end the usefulness of the Secretary-General as the agent of a majority of member states. They may also thereby bring to an end the usefulness of the United Nations as "a dynamic instrument of governments," to use Mr. Hammarskjold's pregnant phrase.

THIS DANGER would arise even if the Secretary-General's pronouncements on concrete policies were pearls of wisdom, for it would not necessarily be a wisdom palatable to the nations who possess a preponderance of numbers and power. But it becomes

doubly dangerous when the pronouncements of the Secretary-General are, far from being wise, rather trivial and beside the point. I shall not concern myself here with statements in Mr. U Thant's address which are controversial in that they express a preference for one kind of policy as over against another, such as his approval of the Cuban and Laotian settlements and his call for a compromise on Berlin. I shall instead analyze a statement which is so deficient intellectually that it might be subject to universal criticism, regardless of national preference:

> ... the system created and maintained by Stalin was manifestly ruthless and obsolescent even before his departure. Mr. Khrushchev, who is now in control of the reins of government, belongs to a different category of leaders, with a coherent philosophy of the world based on the thesis, not of the inevitability of war, but of the imperative of competitive coexistence.

We may or may not agree with his philosophy or with his aims, but we have very good reasons to believe that he does not want war. The West does not seem to appreciate the full significance of this obvious change of political climate in the Soviet Union.

I submit that this analysis is trivial insofar as it is correct, and that it completely misses the decisive issue.

No statesman in his senses wants war as an end in itself; that was as true of Stalin as it is of Khrushchev and as it has been of most statesmen in modern times. The real issue, to which Mr. U Thant does not address himself at all, is whether certain statesmen pursue objectives which can only be achieved at the risk or through the actual employment of war. Two examples of such objectives are the Communization of the world by the Soviet Union and the establishment of an Asian empire by China. The difference between the foreign policies of Stalin and Khrushchev is a matter of method, not of objectives; Mr. Khrushchev's words and deeds testify to that. A case could even be made in support of the proposition that Stalin's objectives were limited in the tradition of Czarist imperialism while Khrushchev's objectives restore the universalistic aims of Lenin. How would Mr. U Thant have the West react to that change? His answer is: through bargaining and the give

THE NEW SECRETARY-GENERAL 65

and take of compromise. These are indeed
instruments of foreign policy which, as I
have tried to point out for the past fifteen
years, have been too little used by the gov-
ernment of the United States. But they must
be used with discrimination; they are not
universal principles. There are situations in
which compromise is appropriate; there are
others in which it is not. After all, the
Munich settlement of 1938 was also a com-
promise! To turn to the present, how do you
bargain with a nation that believes in the
inevitable universal triumph of Communism
and regards itself as charged with the mis-
sion of bringing about your doom? What
can you give a nation by way of compromise
if that nation is bent on taking all? How can

India bargain with China, when China is
seeking its downfall?

Mr. U Thant does not raise these ques-
tions, and as Secretary-General of the
United Nations he has no business raising
them. But the questions he has raised in-
stead are the wrong questions. By raising
questions which he should not have raised
at all even if they had been the right ones,
he has put in jeopardy the effectiveness of
his office. Since without the effectiveness of
that office the United Nations cannot sur-
vive as an instrument for the preservation
and restoration of peace, he has done a dis-
service to the international organization
which under present circumstances must
stand or fall with him.

[HANS J. MORGENTHAU is director of the Center for the Study of American Foreign and Military Policy at the University of Chicago. His 3-volume collection of essays, Politics in the 20th Century, which includes all the pieces he has previously contributed to this bi-monthly department, has just been published by the University of Chicago Press.]

IN THE COMMUNITY

Festivals and Judges

MILTON HIMMELFARB

The Twelve Weeks of Christmas

The last decorations will surely have been taken down from the lampposts by Lincoln's birthday, so the end of the Christmas season is in sight. The Jews of America are completing another cycle of ease and unease—in November, Thanksgiving; in December, Christmas.

Thanksgiving seems made to order for Jews. As a friend and colleague has noted, it is celebrated by eating, and Jews eat rather than drink. Again, what one eats is not the flesh of an unclean animal or a fish without fins and scales, but a thoroughly kosher bird. And what comes out of the mouth on Thanksgiving is equally Jewish—both the message and the tone. Thanksgiving is the great point of intersection between Judaism and the sacral tradition of America. The Spanish-Portuguese Congregation's Thanksgiving rite, which goes back to the 18th century, consists largely of psalms, including two from the Hallel.

In my town three Jewish and two Protestant congregations came together in a Conservative synagogue on the night before Thanksgiving, and aside from having to cover their heads and turn pages from right to left, the Christians seemed to find nothing exotic or inapposite about what was done and said. After all, the Methodist minister said in his sermon, thanksgiving psalms were recited in the Temple at Jerusalem long before the rise of Christianity. "We Gather Together" was also sung. It, too, is at home in a synagogue.

A rabbi told me that it was the Protestant ministers who had suggested a service on Wednesday night. In their experience attendance was likely to be unsatisfactory Thursday morning, because of the greater

attraction of golf or sleeping late. They had heard that Jewish congregations did better on Friday night than Saturday morning, and for Thanksgiving they wanted to try Wednesday night. The experiment was successful. The *'erev-Thanksgiving service next year will be held in one of the churches and the sermon will be preached by a rabbi.*

(Reform Judaism in the United States tried two alternatives to its Saturday-morning service, which is not well attended: Sunday morning and Friday night. People found it as easy to stay away on Sunday as on Saturday, but late Friday night worked. Afterward the Conservatives took over the emphasis on Friday night, and now their Saturday-morning service can be so much the private domain of Bar Mitzvah boys, families, and guests that anyone else is apt to feel like a gate-crasher. Protestants have been complaining for years about their Sunday-morning attendance. Will they follow the Jewish example? And, since Saturday night will not do, will it be Friday night for Methodists and Baptists too? That would be a significant Jewish contribution to American religious life.)

IN THE old days, say ten or fifteen years ago, Christmas did not start until after Thanksgiving. Now the merchants seem to be starting it earlier (and ending it later), and in the midst of our Thanksgiving weal we taste our Christmas woe. As Thanksgiving represents the convergence of the Jewish and the American, so Christmas represents their divergence. Christmas is inherently problematic for Jews—and ex-Jews—while it is not problematic in the same way even for ex-Christians. A Jew can have a tree, hang stockings on the

66

PUBLIC AFFAIRS

On Trying to be Just

HANS J. MORGENTHAU

To do justice and to receive it is an elemental aspiration of man. It is as elemental as the aspiration to live on after death, to be free from the power of other men, to exert power over man and nature, to love and to be loved. Justice, immortality, freedom, power, and love—those are the poles which attract and thereby shape the thoughts and actions of men. They have one quality in common that involves the distinction of men from beasts and gods alike: achievement falls short of aspiration. A beast does not seek to be more than it is by nature; while a god, being perfection by definition, cannot seek to be more than he is by nature.

Man alone is, as it were, suspended between heaven and earth: an ambitious beast and a frustrated god. For he alone is endowed with the faculty of rational imagination, which outpaces his ability to achieve. His desire to live forever must be satisfied by an act of faith which, insofar as it has an empirical basis at all, rests upon the tenuous foundation of things preserved and deeds remembered. His freedom is marred by the power of others, as his power is by their freedom. His capacity to love and to be loved falls short of his desire. And so it is with justice, but in a peculiar way. Freedom, power, and love, man can have; what he cannot have is the kind and quantity of freedom, power, and love he would like to have. But with justice, as with immortality, it is different: the question here is whether he can have it at all.

The school of thought that answers this question in the negative without qualification traces its ancestry to the very beginning of Western philosophy when Plato's Callicles and Thrasymachus defined justice as the

interest of the stronger—that is, equated it with power. As Thrasymachus put it in *The Republic*: “... in all states there is the same principle of justice which is the interest of the government; and as a government must be supposed to have power, the only reasonable conclusion is that everywhere there is one principle of justice which is the interest of the stronger.” In this view, justice for the many who are lacking in power is an illusion. It is, as we would say today, an ideology with which the powerful conceal and legitimize their power, thereby making its exercise acceptable to the many who are weak. The invocation of justice, then, is an instrument of domination. In the measure that it succeeds, it makes the weak a voluntary subject of the power of others; it internalizes the power relation in the mind and will of the subject. In consequence, the invocation of justice serves the economy of power; for the more that power is voluntarily accepted as just, the less will it be necessary for the holders of power to impose it from above.

This view of justice has been echoed in modern times from Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Spinoza to Marx and Kelsen, and history seems to bear it out. Powerful and weak alike tend to equate their interests with justice. The powerful defend the status quo as just and condemn those who oppose it as unjust. The opponents of the status quo, in turn, proclaim the justice of their cause and the iniquity of things as they are. Nations, religion, classes, parties, litigants, parents and children, husbands and wives—they all fight each other in the name of justice. Since they cannot all be right, may it not be fair to conclude that they are all wrong, deceiving themselves and the world? Per-

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THE FIRST ELECTROCUTION 419

considers it an honor to have been chosen as the journal to vindicate the freedom of the press," and only oblique and inconspicuous references were made to the fact that other newspapers had been indicted as well. The *Sun* then joined the campaign. It printed broadsides of opposition to the law from leading citizens—every city desk has a book containing names of leading citizens who are willing to be quoted on any subject. The *Sun* also announced it would oppose every candidate for the legislature who didn't pledge himself in advance to fight for repeal of the press provision.

The next legislature promptly passed a bill to repeal the old electrocution law, and enacted a new one which was more responsive to the interest of the press and the public. It was signed by the governor just in time for the newspapers to cover —legally—the execution of Charles E. McElvaine who had murdered a grocer about two and a half years before. District Attorney Nicoll had the indictments dismissed

by the court and the victory for a free press was won.

Eight reporters were invited to McElvaine's execution, among them the redoubtable Arthur Brisbane, then with the *World*. A seasoned observer, Brisbane found that electrocution was a more unpleasant sight than decapitation but "not as repulsive as an average hanging." His conclusion was:

> What most repels the spectator at such an execution as that which occurred yesterday, is the sight of a number of men, who have wives and daughters at home and decent associations generally, deliberately occupying themselves with killing a helpless fellow creature.

Some seven hundred electrocutions later, in March 1963, the New York state legislature revised the execution law so that the death penalty is no longer mandatory for convictions of first degree murder. Whether or not this means that the deliberative body of New York State, or of forty-one others, will come eventually to agree with Brisbane's final point remains to be seen.

ON TRYING TO BE JUST 421

haps Mr. Justice Holmes had the last word on the subject when he wrote to Sir Frederick Pollock about judging "the goodness or badness of laws": "... I have no practical criticism except what the crowd wants." And perhaps we can do no better than Pontius Pilate by washing our hands and letting the majority decide what justice requires.

We are not here concerned with debating the view that justice is a mere illusion. Rather we want to show that, even assuming the reality of justice, man is incapable of realizing it. These two positions are by no means identical—any more than denying the existence of God is identical with the view that man is incapable of knowing God, even if He does exist. The position we are taking here has the advantage, at least for cognitive purposes, of coinciding with the one men have always taken because they could not do otherwise. Men have always thought and acted as though justice were real. We are proceeding here on the same assumption, but we are trying to show that man cannot achieve justice for reasons that are inherent in his nature. The reasons are three: man is too ignorant, he is too selfish, and he is too poor.

Justice requires that men give to others, and receive from others, what is their due. To be just, man must give to others what they deserve in view of their natures, desires, needs, and actions; and in order that justice be done to him he must receive what he deserves. But where do we find the standards by which we can measure the adequacy of what a man receives and gives? How do we determine the point at which a man gives and receives neither more nor less but exactly what is required by justice?

We all, as a matter of course, pass judgments which assume certain knowledge of such standards. It is the common quality of such judgments that they derive from a particular view of the world, of its constitution and purpose, and of man's place within it. When we say that it is unjust for a man to have so much power or wealth or to use his power or wealth in such a manner, we imply that we know how much power or wealth he ought to have and how he ought to use it. In our society such knowledge typically derives from an equalitarian conception which assumes that justice requires

that disparities in the distribution of power and wealth be kept to a minimum. An aristocratic philosophy, on the other hand, assuming the natural inequality of men, will find justice in the unequal distribution of power and wealth and injustice in leveling them off. A libertarian philosophy will identify justice with freedom and be unconcerned with the issue of equality, at least in its economic aspect. And a theocratic philosophy may find both equality and freedom within secular society irrelevant to the issue of justice, since justice will be done in the other world by God. In sum, our knowledge of what justice demands is predicated upon our knowledge of what the world is like and what it is for, of a hierarchy of values reflecting the objective order of the world. Of such knowledge, only theology can be certain, and secular philosophies can but pretend to have it.

HOWEVER, even theology can have that knowledge only in the abstract and is as much at a loss as are secular philosophies when it comes to applying abstract principles to concrete cases. The two great Papal Encyclicals, formulating the principles of social justice for modern Catholicism, exemplify this insufficiency. In 1891, Leo XIII declared in *De Rerum Novarum* that: "Among the most important duties of employers the principal one is to give every worker what is justly due him. Assuredly, to establish a rule of pay in accord with justice, many factors must be taken into account." Forty years later, Pius XI recognized in *Quadragesimo Anno* that "certain doubts have arisen concerning either the correct meaning of some parts of Leo's Encyclical or conclusions to be deduced therefrom...." And quoting Leo's definition of just pay, Pius has nothing to add but this paraphrase: "The just amount of pay, however, must be calculated not on a single basis but on several...." "Relations of one to the other [capital and labor]," says the Pope in another passage, "must be made to conform to the laws of strictest justice—commutative justice, as it is called—with the support, however, of Christian charity. ... The public institutions themselves, of peoples, moreover, ought to make all human society conform to the needs of the common good; that is, to the norm of social justice."

422 COMMENTARY / MAY 63

It is clear that nothing follows from these abstract pronouncements, in good measure tautological, for the decision of concrete cases. Was it just for the steel companies to try to raise the price of steel in 1961? Was there justice in the demands of the employees of the New York newspapers in 1963? The pronouncements of religion do not answer these questions, or rather they answer them whichever way one wants them to be answered. The substance of the answers derives not from abstract pronouncements, but from concrete interests. They fill the gap between abstract statements and particular cases.

All of us look at the world and judge it from the vantage point of our interests. We judge and act as though we were at the center of the universe, as though what we see everybody must see, and as though what we want is legitimate in the eyes of justice. Turning Kant's categorical imperative upside down, we take it for granted that the standards of judgment and action, produced by the peculiarities of our perspective, can serve as universal laws for all mankind. The great philosophers have pointed to man's capacity for self-deception, and modern psychology has systematically explored its unexpected all-persuasiveness.

This propensity for self-deception is mitigated by man's capacity for transcending himself, for looking at himself as he might look to others. However feeble and ephemeral it may be, this capacity is grounded in man's rational nature which enables him to understand himself and the world around him with a measure of objectivity. Yet where rational, objective knowledge is precluded from the outset, as it is with justice, the propensity for self-deception has free reign. As knowledge restrains self-deception, so ignorance strengthens it. Since man cannot help judging and acting in terms of justice and since he knows for sure what he wants but cannot know what justice requires, he invariably and dogmatically equates justice with his own point of view. Empirically we find then as many conceptions of justice as there are vantage points, and the absolute majesty of justice dissolves into the relativity of so many interests and points of view. "Why do you kill me?" asks Pascal. "But don't you live on the other side of the water? My friend, if you lived on this

side I would be an assassin and it would be unjust to kill you thus; but since you live on the other side I am a hero, and that is just."

Even third parties not directly involved in the conflict of interests—judges, arbitrators, innocent bystanders—cannot, try as they may, escape the relativity of justice. At worst, they will satisfy their interests vicariously by favoring the interests similar to their own. At best, they will bring their particular view of the world to bear on the case; yet the justice they do is justice only within the limits of that perspective.

It is the saving grace of ignorance and egotism that they are easily concealed. For if they were not, they would be a deadly affront to our need to be just. Thus with that biological wisdom which is a quality not only of our bodies but of our minds as well, the poison of ignorance and egotism creates illusion as its own antidote. In order to save ourselves we are not only able, but compelled to delude ourselves into believing that ignorance is knowledge and egotism, impartiality.

The predicament of poverty is a heavier burden because it is not so easily concealed. Here we think we know what justice requires, and we are resolved to act in accordance with it; but we do not have what it takes. We know what we ought to do, and we want to do it; but we cannot. That is the tragedy of trying to be just.

IN THE economy of justice, demand exceeds supply. The freedom people claim from the government as their due cannot be granted without impairing the power government needs to maintain order. So many people have in justice a claim on our love, but there is not enough love in us to satisfy them all. How does one in justice reconcile the demands of one's work with the claims of one's family, the claims of one's family with those of one's friends, the claims of the individual members of one's family with each other? How does one do justice to oneself and to others at the same time? After satisfying the demands of self (even if they were not inflated as they generally are) what is left over is not enough to go around. However one may try, the accounts of justice never square: there is too much demanded and not enough to give.

ON TRYING TO BE JUST 423

Yet man cannot afford to let it go at that. He must see to it that justice is done, and he cannot admit that it cannot be done. Thus he calls to the aid of justice three remedies, which are expected either to compensate for the deficiencies of human nature or to transcend the problem of justice altogether. The remedies are equal distribution, power, and love.

The equal rationing of necessities of life which are in short supply appears to compensate both for ignorance and poverty. If we are not sure how much we owe and if we do not possess enough of what we know we owe, the best we seem able to do is give to each claimant an equal share of what we have. Yet what may appear to the giver to be the best he can do must still leave the recipient dissatisfied. Since justice requires giving everyone his due, everyone has the right to have his case considered on its individual merits and not on a footing of mechanical equality with all others. That claim, inherent in the concept of justice, is strengthened and exaggerated by the egotism of the claimants, all of whom are naturally convinced that they are superior in need or merit, and that they therefore deserve more than an equal share. King Solomon, proposing to cut the baby in half, shows up the fallacious and even self-defeating character of a remedy which could only be a true remedy if justice—in contrast to law—required nothing more than the mechanical distribution of equal shares.

King Solomon had one great asset which enabled him to do justice in the case of the two women, each claiming the baby as her own: he had the power of a king. Those who think they know what justice requires but have no way of seeing it done can either resign themselves to the injustice of this world, or they can find in that combination of conviction and impotence the motive force for the acquisition of the power to make justice prevail. Men seek to acquire such power through movements of reform, revolution, and war. The more certain men are in their knowledge of what justice requires, the more ruthless they are in the search for, and the use of, power. The end of justice, clearly seen, justifies the means of power necessary to achieve it.

Yet men want power not only as a means to the achievement of justice but also for its

own sake. While the aspiration for justice seeks to use power for the ends of justice, it also eggs on the lust which seeks power for power's sake. And in that dialectic between justice and power, power gets the better of justice. For the work of justice is never done and always dubious; the work of power, however ephemeral it may be, is clearly seen and simply enjoyed. "Justice," to quote Pascal again, "is subject to dispute; might is easily recognized and is not disputed. So we cannot give might to justice, because might has gainsaid justice and has declared that it is she herself who is just. And thus, being unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just."

It is, then, the predicament of trying to be just that we are too ignorant, too selfish, and too poor to do what justice demands of us. Yet there is a mode of being and action to which knowledge is irrelevant, in which selfishness is overcome and poverty at the very least takes on the appearance of wealth—and that is the mode of love. Love as the spontaneous surrender of two persons to each other transcends the calculus of justice. The lover does not ask what is his and the beloved's due; he gives and receives all that can be given, even at the risk of the sacrifice of self.

But is it justice to give and receive all that can be given rather than what one ought to give and receive? Love may be superior to justice in its denial of self, but it is not justice; for it is of the very essence of justice to require an objective standard of distribution or retribution which allows us to say: I have received what is my due, and I have given what is the other's due. Thus love evades the problem of justice by transcending it; it does not answer the question justice asks. Trying to compensate for Hamlet's debilitating doubt with Lear's indiscriminate love, we only exchange one defect for another.

Thus we are condemned by the nature of justice and our own to give and to receive either too little or too much, or at least to be ignorant of whether we have received and given too little or too much. In the eyes of man, the accounts of justice never square. Yet we must go on trying to square them—even though, like Sisyphus, we cannot succeed.

IN THE COMMUNITY

# Some Attitudes Toward Jews

MILTON HIMMELFARB

## Formalist in the Kremlin

The Jews are a nuisance to Mr. Khrushchev, and he must wish that he could wake one morning and find that they had disappeared—though not by emigration, of course. Writing to Bertrand Russell, talking with foreign visitors, even making speeches to Russian intellectuals, he has to deny Soviet anti-Semitism. Khrushchev is not to be suspected of self-doubt, but it is just barely possible that what infuriates him all the more is a tiny worry he may have about the logic of his denials.

Not that he is worried when he proves to foreigners the impossibility of Soviet anti-Semitism by adducing the number of Jewish wives of the Soviet elite. Only the unfortunate inhabitants of capitalist countries will perceive a likeness between "some of my best friends are Jews" and "some of our best wives are Jewesses." But when Khrushchev tells Russell that the Soviet Union overcomes crime "by educating and re-educating" criminals, it may occur even to him that it is hard to educate someone (for instance, a speculator, real or alleged, or an embezzler) who has been shot by the executioner. Our ancestors believed that after death they would be rewarded by an eternity of study in Paradise, but that is not a tenet of dialectical materialism. When Khrushchev tells Russell: "There never has been and there is not any policy of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, since the very nature of our multinational socialist state precludes the possibility of such a policy," can he really have forgotten the Doctors' Plot? After Stalin's death the "collective leadership"—it all seems so long ago—denounced the accusation against the doctors as an attempt to "inflame feelings

of national enmity," which is to say, as a policy of anti-Semitism. And if Khrushchev tells Russell that anti-Semitism has nothing to do with the campaign against economic criminals, because others besides Jews have been accused and sentenced, can he have entirely forgotten that in the Doctors' Plot, too, not all the accused were Jews? Only a majority of them were, as only a majority of the executed so-called embezzlers and speculators have been Jews.

To Russell, and in similar language to the Soviet intellectuals, Khrushchev insists that "which nation has more or fewer criminals of any kind at one time or another is a social and not a national question." There are good, proletarian Jews, and there are bad, bourgeois Jews. There are good, proletarian Russians, and there were bad, bourgeois Russians. To the intellectuals, illustrating the difference between good and bad Jews, Khrushchev recalls that when the Soviet army captured Marshal von Paulus, a Soviet Jew was serving as his interpreter (bad); but that another Jew, Vinokur, well and favorably known to Khrushchev, was a commissar in a brigade that took part in the capture (good). It is curious that Khrushchev, a faithful collectivist, should have such a marked partiality for anecdotes about this man and that man. But then, if he were to talk of social movements and social forces, the bad Jewish interpreter would not count for much, and it might be more appropriate, in distinguishing between good Russians and bad Russians, to talk about something rather more significant than anecdotes—for instance, Vlasov's turncoat army, which had no use at all for Jews, even as interpreters.

It is not the most important criticism that

424

Articles by Hans Morgenthau

"America and the World Revolution". *Commentary*, 36:278-296,
October, 1963.

"Four Designs for Tomorrow's Europe". *New York Times Magazine*,
p. 18+, May 17, 1964.

"Germany gives Rise to Vast Uncertainties". *New York Times*,
p. 21+, September 8, 1963.

"Morgenthau on Nuclear War". P. Ramsey in *Commonweal*, 78:554-557,
September 20, 1963.

"Public Affairs (continued)", *Commentary*, 35:62-5; 420-3, January
and May, 1963.

"Public Affairs, (continued)", *Commentary*, 36:884-6, November, 1963;
37:61-3, January, 1964.
Commentary

"Public Affairs, (continued)", March, 1964, pp. 66-9.

"Public Affairs, continued". *Commentary*, May 1964, 68-71.

"Political Conditions for an International Police Force". *International
Organization*, vol. 17:393-403, Spring 1963.

October 9, 1968

Professor Hans J. Morgenthau
City College
Convent Avenue and 138th Street
New York, N. Y. 10031

Dear Hans:

I have been delaying a letter to you about your article in the *New York Review of Books* of August 22 because I wanted the political dust to settle first.

There is not too much point in an exchange now except to say that I found the tone and the content of your article extremely painful. We have been friends for long enough so that one should be able to assume that in writing about each other we would avoid the crudest interpretations that can be made.

I consider the phrase "the most elaborate attempt to date on the part of supporters of the war to cover their tracks is Nelson Rockefeller's" really unworthy. Whatever else Nelson Rockefeller has done in his life, this was not the intention. Indeed, I suspect that over a period of years his positions on major foreign policy issues will stand up fairly well. As for myself, my record is clear. When the history of the peace negotiations is written, your phrase will seem particularly inappropriate.

As for Rockefeller's specific plan, it is simply untrue that he requires the Viet Cong to disarm militarily or politically. There was no mention whatever of the Viet Cong, only of the North Vietnamese. I would have thought that a mutual American-North Vietnamese withdrawal which left the South Vietnamese to settle their own problems would not be inconsistent with your own views.

their own problems would not be inconsistent with your own views. Vietnamese withdrawal which left the South Vietnamese to settle Vietnamese. I would have thought that a mutual American-North was no mention whatsoever of the Viet Cong, only of the North requires the Viet Cong to disarm militarily or politically. There was for Rockefeller a specific plan, it is almost impossible that he

priese will seem partially inappropriate.

When the history of the peace negotiations is written, homases will stand up fairly well. As for myself, my record is that over a period of several years positions on major foreign policy has done in his life, this was not the intention. Indeed, I suspect Rockefeller's, really unwordly. Whatever else Nelson Rockefeller part of supporters of the war to cover their tracks is Nelson I consider the phrase "the most elaborate attempt to date on the greatest interpretations that can be made.

to saame that in writing about each other we would avoid the
We have been friends for long enough so that one should be able
to find the tone and the content of your article extremely helpful.
There is not too much point in an exchange now except to ask that

that to settle first.

York Review of Books of Annual 33 because I wanted the political
I have been delaying a letter to your spout your article in the New

Dear Hans:

New York, N. Y. 10021
Conway Avenue and 138th Street
City College
Professor Hans J. Mordentman

October 1, 1988

Professor Hans J. Morgenthau
Page Two

I would not have been associated with a plan that I did not believe
had a chance of being accepted. Hanoi's reaction, in any event,
was more temperate than yours and really criticized only the
lack of reference to a bombing pause.

I do not see any point in debating the relative merits of the
McCarthy and Rockefeller positions, but I would doubt that the quick
way to end the War is through a coalition government. Still in
stating my views I would hope to be able to express my disagreements
without reflecting on the motives of Senator McCarthy or of his
friends.

militarist Usserlin, who like the
radical English puritans of the previous
century, preached Philo-Semitism as the
preliminary to religious conversion.
Similar views were held by Madesherbes,
the author of the effect on 1787 for the
termination of Protestants. Thus on all
sides the liberals the emancipators were
determined to destroy the separate com-
munal structure of Jewish life, while the

Jewish syndics, theobiliarising sought at
every turn to delay "emancipation and
to fortify that expropriation, and their own
authority within it. The Jews no less
than the philosophers were divided
among themselves, and the struggle be-
tween the Dispersed and the Zionists can
be discerned even before the Emancipa-
tion which laid open its battleground.

dation, as an insane act is more specta-
cular than a sane one. To advocate the
latter is not a mark of originality. Rather
it is a mark of that very sanity which
we tend to take for granted and which
we miss and long for only when it is
conspicuously absent.

THE GENERAL TONE of McCarthy's
foreign policy is indicated in the title of
his book *The Limits of Power* as well as
in its first sentence:

If this book has a principal theme,
it is that our foreign policy should
be more restrained and, insofar as
prudent judgment can determine,
more closely in keeping with the
movement of history.

McCarthy does not believe in the philo-
sophy of American supremacy as pro-
pounded by Professor Brzezinski, until
recently an enthusiastic supporter of the
Vietnam War and the principal foreign
policy adviser of Vice President Hum-
phrey. This philosophy has whittled down
Henry Luce's "American Century" of
twenty years ago to "the American De-
cade," during which the United States
is supposed to have a preponderance of
power sufficient to provide stability and
order to the world. McCarthy does not
see the United States standing outside
history, a chosen nation, enabled by a

unique combination of virtue and power
to reform the world. Rather the United
States is the creation of history, as are the
other nations, and therefore must try to
change the world from within the histori-
cal process.

In this view, the solution of our
 domestic problems is in the long run
 more relevant to our ability to change
 the world than the power we are able to
 bring to bear directly upon other nations.
 Thus we better serve the goal of pro-
moting racial justice throughout the
 world by setting an example in our race
 relations at home than by exerting pres-
sure on South Africa. The American
 mission is not to dominate but to lead.
 Leadership for McCarthy does not mean
to impose one's will upon unwilling
citizens and nations but to educate and
persuade, thereby releasing the energie
of peoples and institutions.

This conception of the American mis-
sion abroad harks back to a concept
which originally informed American
foreign policy: America as a model for
other nations to emulate. McCarthy's
emphasis on the American mission at
home postulates a philosophy of the
Presidency radically at variance with
that practiced by the present Adminis-
tration. Indeed this Administration has
tried to dominate both abroad and at
home, and failed. It has been unable to
impose its will upon Vietnam, which It
made the test of American power, and
in the process it squandered a most pre-
cious and uniquely American asset, the
moral attractiveness of America. Domes-
tically, President Johnson has tried to
dominate both the government and the
people by the same methods of manipula-
tion which stood him in good stead when
he was Majority Leader of the Senate.
In consequence, he lost control of the
two most important congressional com-
mittees, Ways and Means and Foreign
Relations, and he lost popular support
to such an extent as to make an attempt
at renomination and reelection too
hazardous for him to undertake.

THIS PHILOSOPHY of the Presidency
does not denote a weak President, nor
does McCarthy's philosophy of foreign
policy argue for a return to isolationism.
Both suggestions have been advanced,
but they are without foundation. What
McCarthy seeks is a different type of
President from that to which we have
been accustomed, a President who is
strong in exactly those qualities in which
the present incumbent is deficient. We
know from experience that a hyper-active
President, concerned with the details of
the execution of policy, is not necessarily
an effective one. McCarthy stresses the
historic functions great Presidents have
performed: framing and supervising
long-range policies, educating the people,
embodying their aspirations, and stimu-
lating the creative forces latent in
society.

As for American foreign policy, McCarthy is convinced that the great innovations which radically transformed American policy in the spring of 1947—the policy of containment, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan—are irreversible. But he also believes that these policies suffer from two major deficiencies. They have not been adapted to drastically changed circumstances, and they have been corrupted by a disproportionate emphasis upon military measures. This is particularly true of NATO. McCarthy, however, advocates our continuing military presence in Europe for political reasons, that is, in order to support the Western orientation of Germany and to prevent its isolation.

In Asia, McCarthy favors normalizing our relations with China, of which diplomatic recognition is of course an indispensable precondition. Yet in contrast to those who advocate the containment but not the isolation of China, McCarthy realizes that our relations with China must remain abnormal, carrying within themselves the seeds of war, so long as the issue of Taiwan remains unsettled. In other words, McCarthy has not fallen for the illusion that one can shove the issue of Taiwan under the rug and proceed with normalizing our relations with China as though that issue did not exist. More than a hundred conversations between our and Chinese diplomatic representatives in Geneva and Warsaw have made it perfectly clear that the issue of peace or war between the United States and China hinges upon the disposition of Taiwan. McCarthy realizes that no quick or easy formula will resolve this crucial issue. Its outcome will depend upon the internal situation on Taiwan, once Chiang has left the stage, and particularly on the nature of the over-all settlement between the US and China.

THIS ANALYSIS of our relations with China reveals a persistent quality of McCarthy's thinking. Debates on American foreign policy are permeated with deceptive appearances, distinctions without differences, intellectual shadow-boxing, political make-believe, and phony solutions. It is intellectually easy and politically convenient to allow oneself to be deceived and partake in the deception of others. The debate on our China policy is a case in point. Official policy seeks both to isolate and to contain China within its present territorial limits. The critics appear to take a different position: they propose to end the isolation of China by establishing private and diplomatic contacts, encouraging trade, etc., while they maintain a policy of containment that ignores the issue of Taiwan. The real issue between the United States and China, however, is not isolation but containment. And since the "critics" are as unwilling as is the Administration to, face the issue of containment, their policy amounts to nothing more than a more attractive-look-ing variant of official policy. McCarthy has not been deceived by these apparent differences between the supporters of an essentially identical position, and he has faced the reality of the central issue, however intellectually taxing and politically inconvenient it is to do so.

Another case in point is foreign aid and our relations with the developing nations in general. The history of these relations has been the story of hopes disappointed, of human and material resources wasted, of an unjust and frequently unworkable status quo supported

by American resources and power. McCarthy clearly sees the inner contradiction in the attempts to stimulate radical reform through oligarchic governments which have a vital interest in maintaining the status quo. This contradiction has spelled the doom of the Alliance for Progress. McCarthy agrees with the recent declaration of Latin American bishops which proclaims the inevitability of revolution in Latin America. It follows that a rational foreign policy in many parts of Latin America will not be based on a choice between the status quo and revolution but should limit itself to preventing revolution from damaging the vital interests of the US.

McCarthy appears to think little of foreign aid as a political weapon because it can be used as blackmail by the receiving as well as the giving nation. He favors Senator Fulbright's proposal to increase the economic effects of foreign aid as much as possible by channeling it through international agencies.

The most spectacular case in point is of course Vietnam. It has become de rigueur among politicians who feel they must speak out about the settlement of the Vietnam War to sound "reasonable." to support "a political instead of a military solution," to advocate an "honorable compromise." It has also become a political requirement for the political and academic supporters of the war to make it appear that either they never supported it or at least they haven't done so since March 31, 1968. Since the Vietnam ship is obviously sinking, the once enthusiastic and cooperative mates are jumping overboard, and one can readily visualize Captain Johnson and First Mate Rusk (or will it be only the latter?) standing in not-so-splendid isolation on the bridge when the ship finally goes down. The most eminent defector is Vice President Humphrey. Yet, as I know from personal observation, the war could have had no more genuinely committed supporter than the Vice President. It is only now, in an election year, that the Vice President feels compelled to make it appear that this is Mr. Johnson's, but not necessarily Mr. Humphrey's, war. Considering the mood of the electorate, he must advocate an end to the war. We remember that in 1964 Mr. Johnson ran as the peace candidate against Mr. Goldwater.

THE MOST ELABORATE ATTEMPT to date on the part of supporters of the war to cover their tracks is Nelson Rockefeller's four-stage peace plan of July 13, which is reported to be the brain-child of Pro-fessor Kissinger. The fatal weakness of this plan lies in its basic assumptions: identical with those that moved its authors until recently to support the war. The plan assumes that the Saigon govern-ment is the legitimate government of South Vietnam, threatened by foreign aggression and internal subversion. It invites the aggressors to leave and the subversives to disarm politically and militarily, in return for which act of abnegation the latter are "guaranteed a role in South Vietnamese politics." It also proposes to de-Americanize the war by letting the South Vietnamese army bear its main burden.

But is it not obvious that if the South Vietnamese army were willing and able to bear, that burden and if the Saigon government could rely on its support, it would not be necessary for more than half a million American troops to keep that government in power? Can the Viet

Cong really be expected to lay down their arms and deliver themselves to the tender mercies of the Saigon government, which is armed to the teeth and of proven determination to use its arms against its political opponents? Is it likely that Ho Chi Minh, who has been sold down the river twice before, in Paris in 1945 and in Geneva in 1954, will put his trust in "free elections" and in an "international peace keeping force," meaningless terms in Vietnam? Why should the Viet Cong and the government of Hanoi surrender what they have gained by force of arms in exchange for unenforceable paper promises, especially since they have not been defeated in the field?

Here is indeed the rub. The negotiating position implicit in the Rockefeller-Kissinger plan assumes, as does the negotiating position of the Administration, that we have won the war. This assumption is of course fictitious, and Governor Rockefeller has made that point himself. But President Johnson and Governor Rockefeller see eye to eye in that both would try to gain at the con-

ference table what the United States has been unable to achieve on the battlefield: the surrender of the enemy. No wonder that peace overtures so unrealistically conceived have been still-born.

In contrast to Rockefeller's deceptive and unworkable plan, McCarthy's approach to the Vietnam problem is characterized by intellectual honesty and political courage. Intellectual honesty requires the admission that, as Professor Reischauer has put it, in view of our original objectives, we have lost the war. For in spite of the presence of more than half a million American troops and an annual expenditure of approximately thirty billion dollars, there is still no government in Saigon that could keep itself in power without immense foreign support, and the Viet Cong still controls the only military, political, and administrative organization which is both functioning and indigenous. From this admission McCarthy draws two conclusions, both distinguished by political courage: a broadly based civilian government must be established.

## The Young in Prague

Stephen Spender

It would be nice to think of the protesting students as a kind of parliament of the young, a World Court, an International, judging their parents' worlds by values of life (youth equals life—age equals death?) which are more important than property, power, establishments. But although the revolt is, notoriously, world-wide, and although there are meetings between students of different nations, the closer one looks, the more one realizes that the students have differences rooted in national circumstances. Moreover they are much influenced by whether they come from America, Western Europe, or the communist Peoples' Democracies. They may of course hate the side which they happen to be on, the American students being anti-American, the East European students verging on anti-communism; and yet they have often a very chauvinistic way of indulging these views.

For them to agree about arms, they would have to look into the situations that separate them, analyze the circumstances which cause their disagreements, and seek below the surface for common, agreed-on values. I mean, those they attach to life, which they do agree about. But in do this they would need all the "imagination" of the French students, and the power of intellectual analysis of the German students. The French and Germans would have to understand what they have in common, and both understand what they have in common with the Czechs.

In Germany I found the students critical of the French for their weakness in political theory, contemnuous of the English for their inability to exploit causes to fight about. We would give a million dollars to have the English racial issue in Berlin, one of their leaders said. And he added: "Why does the London School of Economics have such a reputation for revolutionary politics? I didn't notice any." I found it difficult in Berlin to express sympathy

with the Czech students without condemning myself out of my own mouth as a bourgeois reactionary. In Berlin, some students of the Astra (Algemeine Studentenausschuss) said that they feared that the Czech students "admired the West."

YET if one goes to Czechoslovakia, i

does not take long to understand that the Czech students live in a situation in which it would be difficult to want to do away with consumer goods. They have so few of them. To buy a car in Prague, I was told, you have to put half the price into a bank and then wait for three years at the end of which you may get the second half, and, if you are lucky, get your car. It, during the interval, you run short of cash and draw on the money you have set aside, then you are back at scratch, having to start all over again. Families, my informant said, go without

in Saigon; and that government must
negotiate the liquidation of the war with
the Viet Cong. The outcome of such
negotiations is bound to be a coalition
government. The success of such an ex-
periment will depend primarily upon the
distribution of power within the coalition.
Such a policy would surely do more to
achieve "self-determination" for the
Vietnamese than our present unqualified
support for a government which repre-
sents at best only a fraction of the
people.

THIS REFUSAL to deceive himself and to deceive others sets McCarthy apart from his peers. It connotes honesty in judgment and courage in action. When I suggested to him a certain course of action, he replied firmly and without a moment's reflection: "If I do that I am on my way to becoming a demagogue." For the same reason, he has not seen fit to lure the Kennedy people to his side or to make blatant appeals to the Negroes. Such honesty honors McCarthy as a man and as a public figure. What is more important, in view of the Ameri-

can political character and its poten-
tialities, is the strong possibility that this
man, a world apart from what the con-
ventional wisdom has taught us a politi-
cian must be like, could, according to
some recent polls, be nominated the
Presidential candidate of the Democratic
Party and elected President of the United
States, if our institutions and political
practices reflected the popular will.

That so many Americans seem
willing to put their trust in
a man of such qualities, who has come
to them without money, without organi-
zation, and without prestigious sponsor-
ship, honors them perhaps more than it
honors him. Win or lose in August and
November. Eugene McCarthy will have
this historic achievement to his credit:
to have made active and visible qualities
of goodness and sanity latent in the
American people, to have revealed a face
of America that was concealed beneath
the distorting mask of its political prac-
tices, and to have given us an intimation
of what the American people could be
like if they had a leader worthy of them.

meals in order to save up for a car. To
students in Paris and West Berlin, to
save up for the car that they gladly offer
up as a Consumer Good's Sacrifice
aflame on some barricade, would seem
a very bourgeois thing to do. But then
have they ever asked themselves whether
having no possessions does not help to
create the sense of the values of doing
without them?

This applies not just to consumer
goods, but also to less obviously palpable

—are in a better position to judge the
merits of having and not having than
those who have. For there can be no
doubt that those who don't have really
know what they are talking about:
while those who have may be deceiving
themselves when they say there is little
or no difference between having and not
having.

Thus my feeling with the Czech stu-
dents was that, whether or not they were
"bourgeois," they were talking out of
a more immediately experienced reality
than the Germans and French. One can
criticize them of course, for understand-
ing the situation of the other students as
little as the French and Germans do
theirs. But they seemed to have more
reason on their side for not sympathiz-
ing with their colleagues. Moreover their
candor is solid and convincing.

I MET in the offices of *Literarní Listy*
on June 27 the day of the publication
in that magazine of the famous docu-
ment "2,000 Words" three young men
who had been brought there to tell me
about their movement. They were happy
and excited about the 2,000 words. At
the same time they were modest about
the part the students had played in the
liberalizing movement. They described
their action as defensive rather than ag-
gressive. They said it was censorship and
attacks on their culture which had made
them criticize the regime. In doing so,
the students were followers of the
writers, and not the leaders. There arose
among the students what they described
as "an immense negative unity" among
people of the most varied opinions.
What they were defending was their con-
science, and they felt themselves com-
pelled along a line of action. Then when
students were expelled from the unper-
sity ("in our country if someone is ex-
pelled from the University, he carries this
punishment to his death") and mutual
police measures were taken against them,
they felt that the methods used against
the students were "unrighteous." Then
found themselves in a situation which it
was impossible to disguise. Everything,
they said, was very simple. It became

benefits such as a multi-party system
and freedom of speech. If you have these
things you may see that in many respects
they are false (the big interests, you say,
call the tune, and you may say that the
lack of freedom in the communist world
is better than the pretended freedom of
the so-called democratic countries. But
if you don't have any such freedom,
you may envy those who having it, re-
gard freedom as illusory. And on the
whole those who don't have either con-
sumer goods or freedom—or who have
had the experience of not having them

LCL

OCT 24 1968

The City University of New York

Graduate Center: 33 West 42 Street, New York, N. Y. 10036

212/790-4304

Ph.D. Program in Political Science

October 22, 1968

Professor Henry A. Kissinger
Center for International Affairs
Harvard University
6 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge, Mass., 02138

Dear Henry:

Your letter of October 9th reached me belatedly since it was addressed to City College, while I use most of the time my office at the Graduate Center on 42nd Street. Let me say first of all that I sincerely regret the pain which my comments have caused you. Let me say also emphatically that I did not intend to question your and Governor Rockefeller's motivations. What I intended to question was your political judgement.

I have reread carefully Governor Rockefeller's proposal, as reported in the *New York Times* of July 14th, and my own comments, and I see no reason to change my original evaluation. Both of you have supported the war in public and lent your considerable prestige to it. Both of you realize now, as does almost everybody else, that the war cannot be won and must be liquidated. But it is impossible to do this while maintaining one's original justifications for the war.

The real issue in South Vietnam is, who shall govern, the Communists or the opponents? Both of you have assumed that the Saigon government is the legitimate government of South Vietnam which has been the victim of foreign aggression and internal subversion. This assumption continues to underlie your proposal for peace. You tell the Vietcong to stop acting like guerillas, that is, to divest themselves of the main source of their political and military strength. If the Vietcong were to do this they would admit that they have lost the war and that the Saigon government is not only the legitimate but also the effective government of South Vietnam. The Vietcong have naturally no intention to surrender at the negotiating table what they have been able to defend on the battlefield, that is, the military and political control of a large portion of the territory of South Vietnam.

Thus I conclude that your proposal is as unrealistic as all the others which have been advanced by the supporters of the war. For they try to

Professor Henry A. Kissinger
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combine the faulty assumptions upon which the support for the war
was based with attempts at liquidating it. This inner contradiction
negates the practical effect of the proposals. It can be overcome
only by admitting the faultiness of the original assumptions. By not
doing this while advocating peace now, one indeed tries to cover one's tracks
in an intellectual sense: one seeks to appear to be wise now, while
actually whatever wisdom one might have acquired through bitter experience
is vitiated by the insistence on one's original errors.

As concerns your criticism of the suggestion of a coalition government,
I regard it only as a covering device and have never suggested it myself
as an instrument for the attainment of peace.

With best wishes,

HM:js