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# I. THE STRUCTURAL PROBLEM

The Twentieth Century has known little repose. Two World Wars destroyed the international system which had given the world, if not peace, at least a century of tranquility. Since the collapse of this, international crises have been increasing in both frequency and severity. The contemporary unrest may be less apocalyptic than the two world wars which spawned it but is even more profoundly revolutionary in nature. Others in this series are dealing with specific policy issues. This paper will concentrate on structural and conceptual problems.

It is the essence of a revolution that it appears to contemporaries as a series of more or less unrelated upheavals, especially for a people like the Americans blessed by geography to be able to stand aloof from world politics for the greatest part of its history, the temptation is to treat each issue as an immediate and isolated problem which once surmounted will permit the fundamental stability of the international order to reassert itself.

But the crises which form the headlines of the day are symptoms of deep-seated structural problems. The contemporary turmoil goes beyond the policy differences which expresses it. The current international environment has been beset by unprecedented challenges because all its essential elements are in flux simultaneously.

For the first time in history, foreign policy has become global. In the past, the various continents conducted their foreign policy essentially in isolation. Throughout much of history, the foreign policy of Europe was scarcely affected by events in Asia. When,

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in the late 18th and 19th Centuries, the European powers extended their influence throughout the world, the effective decisions remained located in a few great European capitals. Today, foreign policymakers face the unprecedented problem of conducting policy toward well over a hundred countries. Geographic isolation no longer exists. Every nation, no matter how insignificant, is part of the international system. Ideas are transmitted almost instantaneously. Even domestic events can have world-wide consequences.

At the same time, the domestic claims of countries have vastly increased and the technological revolution multiplies their resources with every year. The scope of domestic claims determines the resources available for the conduct of foreign policy and therefore for conflict. If the states' ability to mobilize resources is limited, so is the impact of their power and the severity of their conflict. The wars of the 18th Century were limited partly because the rulers, by "divine right", were limited by custom in the exactions they could demand from their subjects. Similar limitations obtained through much of the 19th Century.

Our period has seen the culminations of a process started by the French Revolution: the basing of governmental legitimacy on regimes are popular support. Even totalitarian/aberrations of a democratic legitimacy; they depend on popular consensus even though they manufacture it through propaganda and pressure. But the people, by definition, cannot oppress itself and limitations of tradition lose much of their restraint. It is an ironic result of the democratizations

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of politics that it has enabled states to marshall even more
resources for conflict.

This process has been aided by a scientific revolution which,
to all practical purposes, has removed technical limits to the
exercise of power in the field of foreign policy. It has magnified
insecurities because it has made survival seem to depend on the
accidents of a technological breakthrough. The consciousness
of this danger creates a vicious circle. The more statesmen
become conscious of the dangers of a technological breakthrough,
the more they must spur their own research and development
thus multiplying the incentives for a similar effort by their
contemporaires.

The revolutionary character of our age can be summed up
under three aspects: (a) the number of participants in the inter-
national order has increased and their nature has altered;
(b) the technical ability of these participants to affect each
other has vastly grown; (c) the scope of purposes of states has
expanded.

Whenever the participants of the international system change,
a period of profound dislocation is inevitable. This change can
happen because new states enter the political system. Or it can
occur because there is a change in values as to what constitutes
legitimate rule. Finally, it can come about because of the
reduction in influence of some traditional units. In our period,
all of these factors are combined. Since the end of the second
World War, several score of new states have come into being. The
emergence of even a few new nations in the 19th Century produced

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decades of adjustment. The post-World War I world never assimilated
the successor states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Our age has
yet to find a structure which matches the responsibilities of the
new nations to their aspirations.

This process would be difficult enough; it is made even more
unmanageable by ideological conflict whose expression on the inter-
national plane is an almost complete lack of agreement about the
permissible aims and methods of foreign policy. A similar outlook
about aims and methods eases the tasks of diplomacy -- it may even
be a precondition for it. In the classical periods of diplomacy,
diplomats spoke the same language, not only in the sense that French
was the _lingua franca_, but more importantly because they tended to
understand intangibles in the same manner. In the absence of such
a consensus, diplomats can still meet but they lose the ability to
persuade. More time is spent on defining contending positions than
in resolving them. What seems most reasonable to one side will
appear most problematical to the other.

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Ideological conflict produces a situation in which political loyalties no longer necessarily coincide with national boundaries. Conflicts among states merge with divisions within nations; the dividing line between domestic and foreign policy begins to disappear. At least some states feel threatened not only by the foreign policy of other countries, but also, and perhaps especially, by domestic transformations. A liberalized *Communist* regime in Prague -- which had in no way challenged Soviet pre-eminence in foreign policy -- caused the Kremlin to believe that its vital interests were threatened and to occupy the country without even the pretext of legality.

The tensions produced by this state of affairs are compounded by the reduction in influence of the pre-World War I great powers which has in effect made the world bipolar on the military plane. Only two powers -- the U.S. and the USSR -- possess the full panoply of military might. Over the next decade, no other country or group of countries is capable of challenging their physical pre-eminence. Indeed, the gap in military strength between the two giant nuclear

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countries and the rest of the world is likely to increase rather
than diminish over that period. Moreover the two superpowers have
possessed the ideology, self-confidence and technical resources to
try to order affairs on a global scale.

In a bipolar world, diplomatic adjustments are difficult because
any relative gain for one side appears as an absolute loss for the
other. Every issue seems to involve a question of survival. The
smaller countries are torn between a desire for protection and a
wish to escape big power dominance. Each of the superpowers is beset
by the desire to maintain its pre-eminence toward its allies, to
increase its influence among the uncommitted and to adjust its
relations to its opponent. The fact that some of these objectives
may well prove incompatible adds to the strain on the international
system.

This state of affairs while uncomfortable, has had at least
the advantage of familiarity. But the age of the superpowers is now
drawing to an end. Military bipolarity has not only failed to prevent,
it has actually encouraged political miltipolarity. Allies are
convinced that their defense is in the overwhelming interest of the

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senior partners. Hence, they see no need not to purchase its
support by acquiescence in its policies. The new nations, even
though technically neutral or uncommitted, feel protected by the
rivalry of the superpowers. Nationalism leads to ever bolder
assertions of autonomy.

This political multipolarity does not necessarily guarantee
stability. Nationalism may succeed in curbing the pre-eminence of
the superpowers; it remains to be seen whether it can supply an
integrating concept of order more successfully in this century than
in the last. Few countries have the interest, only the superpowers
have the resources, to become informed about global issues. The
result is a diplomacy often geared to domestic politics or more
concerned with striking a pose than contributing to international
order.

This then, is the structural challenge to U.S. foreign policy:
the international environment lacks an agreed concept of order; its
awesome power is unrelated to any consensus on legitimacy; ideology
and nationalism in their different ways deepen international schisms.

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Beyond all issues of policy, the United States has the task of
developing a conception for dealing with a world which is bipolar
in some respect and multipolar in others.

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## II. THE LIMITS OF BIPOLARITY: THE NATURE OF POWER IN THE MODERN PERIOD

Throughout history, military power was considered the final recourse; its minimum aim was to assure the impermeability of the territory. As late as World War II, a state's strength could be measured by its ability to protect its population from foreign attack.

The nuclear age has destroyed this traditional relationship. Offensive power and defensive power are no longer commensurable. Increasing strength does not necessarily confer the ability to protect the population. No forseeable force level -- not even full-scale ballistic missile defenses -- can prevent levels of damage eclipsing those of the two world wars. Operational definitions of victory in any sense that would have been meaningful in the past -- even by World War II standards -- are almost impossible.

The conditions have made the definition of the nature of power particularly elusive. The problem goes beyond developing some concept of military security; it involves doctrinal considerations

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of the cases to which power can be put in the modern period.

Throughout history, statesmen considered the acquisition of additional increments of power to be one of their dominant problems. As late as twenty-five years ago, it would have been inconceivable that a country could possess _too much_ strength for effective political use; in other words, every additional increment of power was -- at least theoretically -- politically effective.

In the contemporary period, the major problem is to discipline power so that it bears a rational relationship to objectives likely to be in dispute. The major nuclear powers are capable of devastating each other. But they do not know how to put this power to political use except to prevent direct challenges to their own survival -- and this condition is interpreted with increasing strictness. The capacity to destroy is difficult to translate into a plausible threat even against countries with no capacity for retaliation. In the 18th Century, the European powers could engage in decades of colonial wars without opposition from public opinion either at home or internationally. Today, any developing country willing and able to

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resist for a number of years can count on domestic divisions and pressures of world public opinion to assist it. Even in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union has to make some concession to gain the sanction.

legitimacy

The paradox of contemporary military policy is that a gargantuan increase in power has eroded the relationship to policy. The margin of superiority of the superpowers over the other states is widening; yet other nations have an unprecedented scope for autonomous actions. In relation to many domestically weak countries, a radio transmitter is a more effective form of pressure than a squadron of B-52's. In other words, power can no longer be translated automatically into influence. This does not mean that impotence increases influence, only that power does not automatically confer it.

In a world in which power has never been greater but also never been more difficult to translate into policy deterrence has become the dominant military policy. But deterrence depends above all on psychological criteria. It seeks to keep an opponent from an undesirable course by posing risks he is unwilling to confront. For purposes of deterrence, the opponent's calculations are decisive.

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A bluff taken seriously is more useful than a serious threat interpreted as a bluff. Military strength must be assessed as it is seen by the other side. Psychological criteria vie in importance with strategic doctrine.

This state of affairs has profound consequences for traditional notions of balance of power. History teaches that in the past, stability has always presupposed the existence of an equilibrium which prevented one state from discriminating against the others.

The traditional criteria for the balance of power were territorial. A state could gain overwhelming superiority only by conquest; hence, as long as territorial expansion was foreclosed, or severaly limited, the equilibrium was likely to be preserved.

In the contemporary period, this is no longer true. Some conquests add little to effective military strength; major increases in power are possible entirely through developments within the territory of a sovereign state. If China conquered all of Southeast Asia, it would gain less in real military power than it did through the acquisition of nuclear weapons. If the Soviet Union had conquered Western Europe, but had remained without nuclear weapons, it would be less powerful

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than in its present extent with the existing nuclear arsenal. The
really fundamental changes in the balance of power have all
occurred within the territorial limits of sovereign states. There is
an urgent need to reconsider just what is understood by balance of
power in the modern period both for the international system and for
United States foreign policy.

This would be difficult enough were technology stable. It
becomes enormously complicated when a scientific revolution produces
an upheaval in weapons technology at five-year intervals. Slogans
like "superiority," "parity," "assured destruction" compete without
clear definition of their operational military significance, or
without consensus as to their political implications. The gap
between expert and decisionmakers is widening. The decisionmaker
rarely has as many hours to study a problem as the expert has years.
The result is that the decisionmaker runs the risk of unprecedented
dependence on this technical staff. He is informed by "briefings",
a procedure which stresses theatrical qualities and leaves its subject

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with the uneasy feeling that he has been taken, even -- or perhaps especially -- when he does not know quite how. Decisions may reflect an attempt to ward off conflicting pressures rather than a clear conception of long-range purpose. When the domestic decisionmaking process is so uncertain, the possibility that the two superpowers will understand security in the same manner becomes increasingly complicated.

The abstract, esoteric nature of modern power affects the domestic structure in yet another way. Deterrence is tested negatively by things which do _not_ happen. But it is never possible to demonstrate why something has _not_ occurred. Is it because we are pursuing the best possible policy or only a marginally effective one? Bitter debate even among those who believe in the necessity of defense policy is inevitable and bound to be inconclusive. The difficulty is even greater with respect to those who question the need for _any_ defense policy. The longer peace is maintained -- or the more successful deterrence is -- the more it furnishes arguments for those who are opposed to _any_ defense policy. Perhaps there was

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no need for a defense policy in the first place because the
opponent never meant to attack? In the modern state, defense is
likely to be a highly divisive domestic issue.

The difficulty of forming a conception of power is paralleled
by the problem of how to use it diplomatically. In the past,
measures to increase readiness signaled the mounting seriousness
with which an issue was viewed (sometimes these measures got out
of control; the mobilization schedules were one of the principal
reasons for the outbreak of World War I). But when weapons are
always at a high state of readiness -- solid-fuel missiles require
less than 10 minutes to be fired -- and hidden underground or under
the oceans such measures are becoming more difficult and dangerous.
With respect to nuclear weapons, signaling increased readiness will
either prove unsuccessful or if it succeeds, it may trigger a pre-
emptive strike.

Even with conventional weapons, the problem grows increasingly
complicated. After the capture of the Pueblo, the U.S. called up
13 thousand reservists and moved an aircraft carrier off the shores
of Korea./ the fact that we had to call up reserves when challenged

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by a fifth-rate military power convey that we meant to act or
that we were overextended? Did the move of the aircraft carrier
indicate a decision to retaliate or was it intended primarily to
strike a pose? What indeed was the appropriate response?

The history of our escalation in Vietnam demonstrates the
difficulty of becoming clear about the political use of military
power. It would have been difficult over the past five years to
receive a clear definition of victory. Our troops were deployed
as if the President had not extended an open-ended offer of
negotiations. Our deployment did not take into account that it
might have to support a negotiation -- the timing of which we had,
in effect, left to the opponent. Measures we meant to signal
resolve were interpreted by Hanoi as within its capability to
withstand. Strategy divorced from foreign policy proved sterile;
diplomacy unrelated to strategic conceptions produced posturing.

The attempt to escape these insecurities has spurred a new
interest in arms control negotiations, especially those dealing
with strategic missiles. These negotiations are important. But

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to be conducted effectively, they require an intellectual
resolution of the issues which have bedeviled the formulation of
military policy. Superiority is often contrasted to stability
and it is argued that arms control negotiations should strive
for the latter. But unless we are able to give an operational
meaning to these terms, negotiations will lack criteria by which
to judge progress.

Thus, whatever the course -- a continuation of the arms
race or arms control -- a new look at U.S. national security policy
is essential. It is over ten years since there was a bi-partisan
panel to review that subject: the Gaither committee. A new
Administration should move quickly to constitute such a group.
It should deal with some of the following questions:

a. The nature of military power in the present period.

b. Implications and feasibility of various postures --
superiority, parity, etc. -- both militarily and, above
all, politically.

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c. The implications both political and military of new developments such as MIRV (multiple warheads) and ballistic missile defense.

d. The prospects for arms control including specific measures to moderate the arms race.

### III. POLITICAL MULTIPOLARITY: THE CHANGED NATURE OF ALLIANCES

Alliances to be effective, must meet four conditions:
(1) a common objective -- usually defense against a common danger; (2) a degree of joint policy at least sufficient to define the casus belli; (3) some technical means of cooperation in case common action is decided upon; (4) a penalty for non-cooperation: the protecting power must be believed to have some alternative to extending assistance.

In the system of alliances developed by the United States after World War II, these conditions were never met outside the NATO area and the last is difficult to fulfill even there. In SEATO or CENTO (to which we have belonged in all but name) there has been no common conception of the threat. Pakistan's motive for obtaining U.S. arms was not security against a Communist attack, but protection against India. The Arab members of CENTO armed not against the USSR but against Israel. Lacking a common conception of international affairs, the members of these alliances were never

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able to develop common policies with respect to issues of war and
peace. Had they been able to do so, these policies might well
have been stilborn, because the technical ability to cooperate
has been lacking. Countries with great difficulty in maintaining order
in their own territory do not increase their strength by combining
with states suffering similar disabilities.

In these circumstances, SEATO and CENTO have become, in effect,
unilateral American guarantees. But because the United States seemed
more concerned about defense than the guaranteed country, no penalty
for an independent policy has existed. Allies were able to give
the impression that it would be worse for us than for them if they went.
Communist. As a result, SEATO and CENTO have become moribund as
instruments of collective action; at best they provide a legal basis
for bilateral US aid.

The case is different with NATO. Here we are united with
countries of similar traditions and domestic structures. At the
start, there was a common conception of the threat. The technical
means for cooperation existed. Mechanisms for developing common
policies came into being.

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Nevertheless, NATO is in disarray as well. Some of this
decline in Allied cohesiveness is due to US actions -- above all,
to unilateral changes of US policy. But the most important cause
is the transformation of the international environment. When NATO
was formed, Europeans had a dual fear: (1) the danger of an
imminent Soviet attack; (2) the prospect of eventual US withdrawal.
By the late 1960's, the fear of Soviet invasion has declined. Even
the attack on Czechoslovakia is likely to restore anxiety about
Soviet military aggression only temporarily. At the same time,
two decades of American military presence in Europe coupled with
American predominance in NATO planning, have sharply reduced the fear
that America might wash its hands of European concerns. As a result,
Europeans neither believe that the need for American support is so
urgent as two decades ago nor that US assistance against aggression
must be purchased by acquiescence in our policies.

Moreover, when NATO was formed, it seemed that the principal
threat was a Soviet attack on Europe. In recent years, the view has
grown that the greatest risks are likely to be caused by trouble

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spots outside of Europe which to Europeans do not appear to
threaten their security immediately. In the Fifties, Europeans
were asking for American assistance in areas outside of Europe with
the argument that they were defending the greater interests of
freedom. The United States replied that these very interests
required American aloofness. Today, the roles are precisely
reversed. It is Europe which evades our entreaties to play a
global role; that is to say, Europeans do not consider their interests
at stake in America's extra-European involvement.

The most important reasons for the decline of NATO are
deeper however. The growth of Soviet nuclear power was bound to
affect NATO profoundly. As the risks of nuclear war have grown
more enormous, the credibility of traditional pledges of support
were bound to be undermined. In the past, a country would carry out
a commitment because it could plausibly be argued that the con-
sequences of not doing so were worse than those of coming to the
ally's assistance. However, each of the last three annual state-
ments on the US defense posture has estimated that in case of a