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# CHAPTER I

## DEEP FORCES IN CONTEMPORARY CONFLICT

We are agreed that certain great and discernible currents are moving in the international scene, and that these are the primary cause of the present disturbed condition of world affairs. All of them are rooted in old ideas; the new element is that the forces set in motion have become vastly more powerful in the context of a remarkable expansion of technological resource (military and economic), unprecedented rapidity and scope of communication, and evergrowing pressure of population.

### I

#### THE "WORLD-WIDE" SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Until the nineteenth century, the modern world assumed that a great part of its inhabitants must live in permanent poverty and want; the best these could hope for was subsistence, possibly alleviated by occasional experiences of approximate satisfaction. In the pyramid of each society, of course, some would do better; a small group considerably better; a few would command resources affording luxury and power.

In the late eighteenth century the justice of such a social order was challenged, and with it the validity of political systems which maintained it. First the American (1776), then the French (1789) revolution proclaimed the theory of political equality for all men. In the ensuing century the

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governmental structure of most of the Western world (Russia being the notable exception) was changed to conform, more or less, to this theory. Its content did not include economic equality, or offer any very direct promise of improved economic well-being, except as it was thought that capacity of the governed to choose and influence their government would tend to assist their condition.

One result was acceptance of the principle of "free enterprise" in place of enterprise by privileged grant from government; but, as Barbara Ward has pointed out, liberty was not a product of free enterprise: rather, free enterprise was the product of liberty.

A generation later the current of early nineteenth century socialism squarely attacked the validity of any economic system which did not offer a greater measure of economic welfare or at least an approach to economic equality. This line of thought maintained that political equality without economic welfare was meaningless; that economic disparities were so great that a majority of people (workers, peasants and so forth) could make no real use of their right of political participation. As the Industrial Revolution increased productivity but in its earlier phases certainly did not distribute equitably (its mineteenth-century phase produced a new, privileged, quasi-feudal ownership group), private property in productive enterprise was assumed to be a buttress of economic privilege -- just as royalist and feudal institutions had been instruments opposed to doctrines of political liberty. Though the socialist movement failed to gain power in the "lost revolution"

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of 1848, its doctrine persisted as a continuing political force on the continent of Europe. It eventually found a philosopher-economist in Karl Marx, a political genius in Lenin, and an opportunity when World War II brought about collapse and revolution in the one great country, Tsarist Russia, which had effectively avoided any substantial liberal reform. This result was to bring about a dynamic Communist-Socialist movement throughout the world, backed by a huge country with vast resources, whose population was and is capable of great achievement but with limited experience of Western life.

In Russia this revolution proved capable, first, of organizing the country; second, of securing substantial economic advances in a single generation through forced industrialization, though at enormous human cost; third, of formulating a dogma which claimed to have universal validity for the depressed populations of the world; fourth, of attracting the support of certain intellectual groups (of varying strength) in a great many countries.

In this same period world economics had undergone marked change. After World War I, possibly due to its stimulus, came a notable spurt in technology, in accumulation of capital, and in productivity. Both the Eastern and the Western worlds began to see the possibility of an economic life in which no great part of the population needed to suffer the extreme want generally prevailing in all save Western European countries and the United States. The idea gained credence that political organization of a state could be so handled as to produce this desired result; and the

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Communist revolution in Soviet Russia claimed to have a formula and method for so doing. The fact that productivity and distribution involved many other factors besides political and economic organization (a basis of education, fiscal discipline, recognition of individual as well as collective motives, and so forth) was not appreciated; certainly it was not stressed. Under impetus of a world-wide economic depression (1929-1935) practically every government in the world undertook a substantial degree of responsibility for the economic life of its country and for the economic condition of its people. Probably in many countries this was little more than an intensification or enlargement of a degree of responsibility earlier assumed; nevertheless, at the outbreak of World War II few governments (and those usually in backward or underdeveloped areas) were not endeavoring to organize or reorganize their economic systems.

Modern war is socialized by necessity, and World War II compelled governmentalization -- socialization perhaps -- of the entire economic life of much of the earth's surface as a necessary incident of carrying on the war. At its end many of the patterns set up by war stress were carried over into peacetime life.

World War II again vastly stimulated the process of technology and production. Surprisingly, despite its waste and its destruction, the recent modern wars have proved forcing-beds for technology and productivity. The United States, for example, approximately doubled its national product from

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1940 to 1945. British lower classes were, literally, better fed and clothed during World War II than in peacetime. Renewed demonstration had thus been made that the problem of poverty and want might be conquered. Worldwide Communist propaganda naturally proclaimed this idea, adding that modern industrial and technical plant and its generous yield could be obtained within a measurable period of time if only Communist dictatorship under Soviet leadership were accepted.

In result, almost everywhere throughout the world arose a demand for a better standard of living, to be brought about by change in political processes. Conditions accepted for centuries came to seem intolerable in economics, and social life. Existing institutions were brought under attack; dominant groups were held responsible for failure to have taken appropriate measures earlier. This condition has been called "the revolution of rising expectation." This is now a phenomenon of almost universal existence, though understandably weakest in the United States where expectations have more nearly been met than elsewhere.

No doubt it is true, as in all such situations, that the demands made, the expectations engendered and the political and other movements brought into being, are the work of relatively small militant groups, with the majority of the population only mildly stimulated to action. Many, perhaps most, of these groups were not Communist. Yet, the groups were large enough and the followings they energized were activist enough to make impossible in

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many areas the carrying on of orderly government unless they were at least
partially satisfied.

The "world-wide revolution" thus was primarily an enlargement of
desire on the part of populations or at least of groups capable of energizing
them, coupled with a fixed belief that change in social and political organi-
zation coupled with political control of economic processes offered hope of
fairly rapid satisfaction of these desires. In parts of the world this revolu-
tion was organized by Communist groups following the dogma of Leninism
and the example of the Soviet Union. Elsewhere, it found other foci. Sub-
stantial agreement on certain objectives exists between both Communist and
non-Communist fabricators of world change: both, for example, state their
intention to lift the level of economic well-being for the masses. Methods
differ widely. Communists propose to defer welfare for a generation or so
while they construct and organize production economy after their fashion.
Non-Communist fashioners -- for example, Nehru -- propose that welfare
and reorganization of economy shall go hand-in-hand. Philosophically, of
course, the differences are enormous. The constant is that of popular
expectation and desire, and not of political pressure for social change.

In a recent book (*The Great Transformation*), Professor Karl Polanyi
insists that the world-wide revolution was caused by, and is a revolt against,
the human cost of unorganized markets and *laissez-faire* economy. His
thesis need not be accepted in its entirety; but the fact unquestionably is

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that, though in varying degree, demand is being made for new conceptions of
economic order within countries or between nations, or both.

II

THE FALL OF IMPERIAL WORLD ORGANIZATION

Simultaneously with the social economic revolution -- perhaps as a
partial result of it -- came the downfall of the old and recognized methods of
maintaining order and economic exchange in world affairs. Perhaps, no half-
century in history has seen any comparable extent of change. In the calendar
of historical time, what occurred was a cataclysmic cascade of events.

Until the fall of the Spanish Empire in 1898, thirteen empires had ruled
the old world; the new world was a nascent community of nations protected by
the Monroe Doctrine and operating under the hegemony of the United States.
These empires, working on the principle of "balance of power," grouped them-
selves into alliances and counter-alliances. In the main they had maintained
world peace (with minor interruptions) in the century following the Napoleonic
wars. The imperial systems in their areas did provide order, administration,
arrangements for economic exchange. Their diplomacy did provide a means
of adjusting disputes. The system left a great deal to be desired. It was not
aimed at producing world-wide social justice. But as an over-all machinery
it worked.

The balance of power system broke down in 1914. The ensuing war
ended the German, Austrian, Turkish and Russian empires. The Chinese

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empire, long decaying, was already in the throes of the revolution of Sun Yat Sen.

The following twenty years released the energies of the Russian revolution throughout the Soviet Union, and of the Nazi-Fascist revolutions in Germany and Italy. In 1939 these precipitated World War II; and at the close of World War II (and in the ten succeeding years) most of the remaining imperialist system dissolved. Japan's ended with her defeat in 1945. The Netherlands and France were unable to resume the colonies they had lost to Japanese armies when the Japanese invaders drew back. Great Britain saw fit, under pressure of events, to withdraw from much of her empire: successively, India, Burma, Egypt, Ceylon, Malaya and small parts of Africa were granted independence. Indo-China and Morocco split away from France, while the fate of Algeria is still in doubt. Portions of the old imperial systems still remain: Britain has large holdings in Africa and a remaining position in the Middle East; Portugal, Belgium and The Netherlands likewise have holdings. But the system of empire as a means of maintaining world order, arranging world economics and settling international disputes ceased to be valid for practical purposes in 1946.

The chief tool by which empires were destroyed was militant nationalism -- the passionate desire of colonial peoples (or at least of political groups able to energize them) for political independence and sovereignty within national borders. The desire was sufficiently strong so that the empires

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Factually, few anti-colonial revolutions have been dominated thus far
by Communists. Russian additions to her system have been primarily the
result of Russian army occupations (mid-European Iron Curtain countries).
The Chinese have thus far succeeded only in taking over, by the same process,
North Korea and probably Viet Minh.

At present the assumed organization of the world consists of ninety
independent sovereign countries, of which twelve are (for all practical pur-
poses) comprised within the Russian and Chinese military empires. The other
emergent states are gradually seeking for regional or economic groupings of
greater or less stability. Obviously they have attained far less structure and
stability than they had as colonies under the predecessor imperial systems.
Yet the economic lives of the peoples of most of these succession countries
literally depend upon their being within some sort of "system." None of them
can defend itself alone, and few, if any, can maintain alone their economic
lives, still less satisfy the expectations generated in their peoples. Much
of the current confusion is rooted in the groping of these countries for some
sort of international structure which will at once assure their safety, recog-
nize their demand for self-determination, and offer hope of attaining that
freedom from want which they believe can be reached.

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III

THE DRIVE OF POPULATION: DEMOGRAPHY ON THE MARCH

For undiscovered reasons, the last half-century has produced a current
of population increase beyond expectation. From it comes population pressures
whose effects are scarcely calculable now.

(There should be inserted here a paragraph or two giving some of
the outstanding demographic facts. The staff can draw these.)

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Demographers like other scientists can be mistaken in their predict-
ions; a generation from now it is possible that present estimates of population
increase will seem as exaggerated as calculations made thirty years ago have
proved ridiculous underestimates. Yet without projecting present estimates
too far into the future, it is sufficiently clear that the present population of
the world (about three billion) may be expected to increase by at least another
billion in the next thirty years. In some areas -- South America, for example
-- where there is ample "lebensraum," the result of population pressure will
probably be to settle new lands and develop natural resources. But in great
parts of the world (for instance, Japan and China, Indonesia, India, Western
Europe) pressures of impressive force may be set up. These pressures, if
organized along nationalist or competing race lines almost inevitably will
collide. They will also strain greatly the new-found technical ability of the
world to produce sufficient to satisfy elementary wants.

Both the Soviet Union and the United States (with which Canada is
locked by geography, economics and a high factor of common interest) despite
their present position as "world leaders" are both "small population" and
sparsely settled countries. Each has about 200 millions, each occupies
great areas. Population in other areas is increasing more rapidly. The numeri-
cal position of both, relative to the rest of the world, a generation from now
is likely to have diminished, judged by demographic standards. If primacy is
maintained by either the Soviet Union or the North American peoples, it will be
due to resources of character and mind; certainly not to force of numbers.

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This deep current of population pressure unquestionably exaggerates many of the international problems as they currently emerge. The problem of Egypt, for example, would be complicated enough in any event. But behind the political problems raised by General Nasser and his associates and foreign allies is the fact that the Egyptian population of 23 million increases by several hundred thousand each year, while its single strip of arable land is hideously over-crowded already, and Egypt has no other ready resource with which to support the growing population.

American policy cannot escape dealing with this deep current. Obviously, no present American capability exists to arrest population increase, even assuming that limitation were the answer. Yet populations fighting each other for "lebensraum" merely forecast an indefinite period of war, if the movement and habits of these populations are to be framed by the racial and nationalist urges which have created and directed their institutions up to now.

American policy-makers inevitably must concern themselves with measures and institutions by which population growth shall not imply a predestined struggle between population groups -- if the American objective of a peaceful world is to be attained.

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IV

WORLD-WIDE COMMUNICATION: THE EFFECT
OF INSTANTANEOUS TRANSMISSION OF IDEAS AND INFORMATION

A fourth deep current which imposes itself on foreign affairs is the almost instantaneous effect which any event or significant idea anywhere has on events, ideas and men everywhere. For the first time in history, transmission of information is instantaneous, and reaction to transmitted information occurs over great areas if it is not world-wide. No problem or stream of events is now necessarily disconnected with other streams of events. Race disputes in the United States will be known in Paris, Moscow, Cairo, Ceylon and Tokyo as rapidly as radio broadcasts can chronicle them. The political reactions will follow as a matter of course. The Russian invasion of Hungary, the British action in Oman, the cutting of the American armament budget, the announcement of a continental missile in Moscow become part of the political grist in Capetown, or Canada, Peiping or Paris.

Equally, a really attractive synthesis of ideas stands a chance of finding a following from one end of the world to the other.

We cannot undertake to solve the problem why some idea-groups prove attractive to many men Profound analysis of this phenomenon is one of the tasks before modern philosophers. Why, for example, did the Islamic faith attract and hold hundreds of millions in the relatively short time after its promulgation; why is scientific doctrine sought for, grasped and used

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throughout the entire literate world today? Why are some thought currents
enduring; others evanescent? What qualities of conception energize human
action? Only the crudest answers are presently available and they are too
fragmentary and incorrect to offer little basis for conclusion. The clear fact
is that whereas the Christian revolution took three centuries to dominate the
Roman Empire, the Communist revolution took less than half a century to
reach its probable zenith in 1951. Today currents of ideas and thought can
be transmitted almost instantaneously; they can probably produce political
effects more rapidly than ever before -- for war or peace, for welfare or
destruction, for life or death, in relatively small matters as in great affairs.
The instruments now exist by which information, ideas, conceptions can have
(according to their force) immediate and widespread impact.

The results of this situation -- it has come about only in the past
thirty years -- can only be guessed at. Two of them at least are clear. One
is that there is no longer a clear line between what Americans call "domestic
policy" and what they call "foreign affairs." An American government cannot
determine its policy in respect to, let us say, disarmament or race relations
without taking into account the fact that such policy has repercussions not
only in the United States but in crucial foreign areas, for example, West
Europe and Asia. A new dimension has thus been added to national action --
unless, of course, the United States is prepared to accept the position of a
self-contained, isolated power -- a practical impossibility.

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Libraries have been written analyzing the Communist movement. It is enough to say here that the Communist dogma has been surrounded by an organization in the Soviet Union upon which depend organizations in countries where Communism has gained power, and also organizations (of varying degree of strength) in most parts of the world.

Until a few years ago, the movement had a single undisputed center of decision: Moscow. Since the Korean War it is evident that a second center is developing in China; the two centers still work together but it is no longer clear that Moscow can indefinitely control Chinese Communist decisions. Further, in Western Europe the movement is divided: Yugoslavia has developed a "national" Communism which apparently cannot be reliably controlled by the Soviet Union. There is evidence that other Communist-controlled countries, notably Poland, are struggling towards similar independence. Possibly, indeed, Poland intellectually is more nearly freed from Soviet Communism than Yugoslavia, despite Soviet military occupation which controls her main lines of international action. The monolithic quality of international communism is therefore changing. While it is still true that the policy of Communist parties everywhere in the world prima facie is determined by requirements of Soviet Russian foreign policy, there is some reason to believe that this may not continue.

Communism and its organization is no more immune than other organisms and movements to change, and there is evidence that its original single-

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content; the moral fervor and ideological base is increasingly declining. The military power and the organized bureaucracy appears to be ascending; and with it the relative strength of intellectual Communism appears to be waning. In end result it is probable that the intellectual theories of the Communist Party will be increasingly diffused; in many places and areas they may even be partially adopted without bringing such areas into the dispositive control of Moscow, or in another range, of Communist China. On the other hand, both the Soviet Union and Communist China, though less ideologically inspired, are likely to continue as actively expansionist and imperialist as empires have been throughout history.

There is no particular reason to believe that Soviet-Russian or Chinese Imperialism will be easier to live with, internationally, than centralized or Soviet-directed Communism. They are, however, more understandable, more limited, less likely to seek or seize power beyond their immediate periphery.

VI

THE DECLINE OF THE NATIONALIST BASE IN A WORLD OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY AND ECONOMICS

The last of the deep currents dealt with here is, really, a vast groping towards regroupment of peoples. This is compelled by the economic and technical facts of life which are steadily rendering the old "nationalist" base of international life obsolete in two important respects.

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A "sovereign nation," however well organized internally, however choate racially, however homogeneous in ideas, culture, politics, cannot now perform two functions which, until recently, have been of the very essence of sovereign nationalism. They cannot defend themselves in the sense of guaranteeing their national survival from within their own borders. And they cannot provide an economic level of life which will satisfy the demands of their people, except as a part of an international economic complex. Further, their inadequacies in both respects will probably increase rather than diminish in the readily foreseeable future.

Briefly, no country, by itself, can now guarantee to its population and the vital sectors of its economy safety from destruction by air and atomic weapons. It is possible (though unlikely) that a degree of such defense can be achieved by maintaining lines far outside the area to be defended. On the military side the United States is endeavoring to organize its first-line defense in that manner at present. As the age of the airplane moves into the age of the guided missile, the situation may change. Thus far it would seem that the first effect of guided missile development will make defense even from lines far outside the borders of any country increasingly difficult (if possible at all), and completely impossible from within the country's own borders. Ultimately, it would appear that no defense (in the sense of guaranteeing substantial immunity of a population from destruction) can be worked out except on the basis of a world-wide policing system; this, of course, is beyond the present horizon of political reality.

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The corrosive effect of this development obviously varies with the size of each country. The Soviet Union, the United States, perhaps Communist China, clearly stand a somewhat better chance of survival; smaller countries like Great Britain, The Netherlands, or Germany stand little, if any hope, of survival. To be "nationalist" in anything less than the largest of nation-states means virtually entrusting the fate of the people, in case of war, to the purest chance, or to the almost equal hazard of hope, in the diplomatic maneuvering, of being one of the few countries escaping scot-free as did Sweden and Switzerland in the past century. The larger countries cannot even reckon on the possibility of staying out; they are almost certain to be the primary targets in case of war. Clearly their first line of possibility is to work up regional groupings such as that worked out by the United States through the Organization of American States, NATO and so forth. But they have to reckon on the fact that they, as polarizing elements in regional accommodations can do little to guarantee the immunity or survival of their allies or associates. The first motive of any military alliance -- to secure better protection for one's own country -- thus begins to disappear; reliance has to be placed on some deeper motive.

Any condition brought about by technology may, of course, be changed by technology. This one may. Nothing has been brought to our attention, however, suggesting that a technological take-out will soon occur in the present situation though technicians are actually studying the problem of missile-

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stopping devices. Borders, either of a national state or of an alliance, for the present will continue to be indefensible, that is, they may be crossed by missiles with atomic warheads.

"Nationalism" and the "nation-state" thus lose one of their earliest basic arguments. Cannon are no longer the "ultimate argument" of kings; certainly not of any single king or state. Nor can we yet say that they are a final argument even of any group of states -- if its opponent group includes another nation with substantial atomic fire-power and range capacity. This is equally true of Communist and non-Communist powers and groups.

The other force is economic. No small country, and, increasingly, not even the largest countries can meet the expectation of their peoples merely by developing and using their own resources. They must also trade, exchange or plunder with or from others. Factually this must mean that they live in a more or less developed complex of countries all of whose economic lives complement each other's. The higher the density of population, and the higher its standard of living, the greater the pressure.

Pressure of that kind can be hydraulic. Measure may be found in what happens when access by any country to any other countries is substantially cut off, as occurred when the Allied blockade in World War I substantially cut off Germany and Austria from the rest of the world, leading to their defeat. This happened again in the like blockade against Germany and Italy in World War II. In peacetime the process of economic disintegration would be

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somewhat slower but no less complete. "Autarchy" is simply not a viable method of handling modern national economy.

Consequently, in two of its most important aspects the nation-state is in process of modification. Increasingly "nationalism" is the business of protection and maintenance of culture. Even to defend a culture involves expansion either of cooperative arrangements or of new institutions for defense and economic life which in either case limit the exercise of sovereignty, though they do not necessarily change its juridicial form. The highly developed and experienced states moved towards and into regional groups almost immediately after World War II: the Organization of American States, NATO, and so forth, and on the Soviet side, the Warsaw Pact. To these were added functional regional arrangements. These regional arrangements are separately studied in this report; their development is one of the spectacular evolutions in foreign affairs. Hard necessity struck the new, and commonly smaller, nations like a blow in the face almost at the moment of their attaining independence. Foreign exchange was lacking, yet they needed foreign imports. Unfriendly neighbors threatened, and they bitterly needed international order or at least defense.

Hence a turgid tide of movement. The anti-colonial movement brings into existence new states -- say Morocco, Libya, Ghana, Pakistan, Ceylon, Malaya or Outer Mongolia. At once such states while proclaiming the most passionate nationalism, silently seek help of the United States, or of Soviet

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Russia, or of Great Britain, or enter negotiations for some sort of economic pact by which they may enter an international process of exchange. Where the system is more complex (for example, in Western Europe) new devices and institutions are sought, of which the European Coal and Steel Community is the most novel, the most spectacular and perhaps most likely to become a norm or a nucleus for greater arrangements. The list of devices runs all the way from systems of trade agreements (as in the case of the United States) and "common markets" as in Europe and now proposed for Latin America, to new international entities: communities of specialized function.

Imperial organization which supplied the old framework has, we have noted, broken down. The number of juridicial nation-states has vastly increased. Substitute for empire has to be found at least in the two fields of defense and economics. So while there is apparently the greatest push for nation-statehood in modern times, there is an equally deep current of desire, if not positive demand for, new arrangements looking toward a regrouping in economic and military fields.

We do not yet know whether these groupings can pause in regional combinations, or whether there is no half-way house between nation-states so combined and a world community of states -- this last carrying a solid danger that it will impinge too greatly for acceptance on classic ideas of "sovereignty." The United States has thus far committed itself to the proposition that, in the economic field, its objective is world-wide arrangement,

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and it proposes to accept no regional economic arrangements for itself at least. Plainly this is partly nostalgia: the hope is for an open trade balance like that which the British Empire maintained during the nineteenth century. Yet few would be bold enough to predict that the nineteenth century comparative stability of convertible currencies and its comparative equilibrium in balance of trade, can be restored. Meanwhile, groups of new, passionate "nationalist" nation-states, without realizing their illogic, passionately urge (without realization of the corresponding obligations entailed) world-wide stabilization of prices, regional or world-wide banking available for credit, capital-sharing plans and a whole range of other non-nationalist (in fact, counter-nationalist) arrangements and institutions to assist them in realizing the potential of the twentieth century.

This, not the least turbulent of the deep currents, is also one of the currents which seems to hold within it possibilities of hope. As between abstraction and reality, international life tends to impose reality. The forces can perhaps gradually be canalized, offering a measure of gradual progress towards the objectives which the United States likes to hold as its own and likes to believe are objectives for a peaceful world as well.

* * *

This review does not purport to deal with all of the currents. That would be impossible. It is suggested, however, that these are the principal

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tides energizing international political action through which -- or with which
-- or on which -- American policy must steer its course.

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CHAPTER II

AMERICAN CAPACITIES IN A WORLD OF CONFLICT

I

THE AMERICAN AFFIRMATION

Amid the deep currents, the United States "is"; that is to say, she
is a political force-in-being.

This is the first and most important element in any study treating of
American foreign policy. The United States is not merely a nation, but a
present, existing, polarizing and dynamic force exerting intended influence
and unintended gravitational pull or repulsion beyond her borders, moving
(by historical standards) with great speed and huge mass. The American whole,
in international equation, is more than the sum of its various parts, economic,
military, technical and intellectual. This force can not be described merely
as an aggregate of economic productivity, or of fire power, or of organizational
and social inventiveness; it is also animated by a high consensus of agreement
within the country based on moral, political and psychological principles.
Though these have never reached simple statement, and certainly are not
embodied in dogma, and are matter of continuous discussion, debate and
evolution, they have organized American life, and they determine the general
direction of American action. The United States is consequently, for better
or worse, a philosophical force backed by tremendous power. This, rarely

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recognized in the United States itself, is the salient fact in American relations practically everywhere throughout the world.

This force inspires varying emotions in other countries: admiration, hostility, hope, fear, bafflement. The United States is not merely a powerful nation among ninety-odd sovereign states; she is also a symbol. Few peoples with even fragmentary knowledge of her and however hostile, do not desire in some respects to be like her; few, if any, peoples do not believe that their destiny is in some way linked, or that their lives will be affected in greater or less degree, by American action or refusal to act.

Practically all countries desire industrial development comparable to that of the United States; many would like to find a method of securing an equivalent wide distribution of wealth and prosperity. The image of American life exerts powerful attraction even to countries which do not admit, or even reject, the individualist and humanist premises upon which the image was constructed. Because American power has twice proved decisive in world conflict there is realization that American willingness to use or to withdraw it can change political situations in great areas. This realization exists even in avowedly antagonistic countries, notably the Soviet Union. There is almost passionate interest in American structure and development. In result the dynamism of the United States is inescapable. An American government can not change this situation.

This synthesis of America is not capable of rapid change. All American history contributed to its formation; the synthesis continues to evolve as new

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elements of ideas, resources and spiritual insight are added, and as component
elements within it change, deteriorate or disintegrate. In foreign affairs, the
United States and its representatives, military, diplomatic or economic,
necessarily must work with the resultant force. If possible they may also
attempt to estimate its continuing development and may base policy on their
appreciation of what America will be in the nearer or more distant future.

Justice to any American administration and to the groups official or
unofficial who guide or influence its actions requires recognition of one fact:

they can only dispose of the resources, use the capacities and cope
with the fact of this existing United States with its limitations as well as its
unquestioned and in some respects its unequalled strengths. "Leadership"
consists in presently making the most of her present resources and capacities,
and energizing the intellectual and political forces which make for their
continuing growth.

This is the base on which any American study of American position and
possibilities of American action must rest.

II

AMERICAN OBJECTIVES

There is an "American consensus" upon certain objectives in world
relations. These objectives are, actually, dimly outlined pictures of an
ideal America, and of an ideal world in which America would like to move.