# I. THE STRUCTURAL PROBLEM

The Twentieth Century has known little repose. Since the turn of the century, 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.

It is the essence of a revolution that it appears to contemporaries as a series of more or less unrelated upheavals. The temptation is great 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 international system which produced stability for a century collapsed under the impact of two world wars. The age of the superpowers which

1. Others in this series are dealing with specific policy issues. This paper will concentrate on structural and conceptual problems.

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temporarily replaced it is itself nearing its end. The current
international environment is in turmoil because 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, 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, statesmen face the unprecedented problem of
conducting policy toward well over a hundred countries. Geographic
isolation no longer exists. Every nation, no matter how insigni-
ficant, participates in international affairs. Ideas are trans-
mitted almost instantaneously. What used to be considered domestic
events can have world-wide consequences.

The revolutionary character of our age can be summed up under
three aspects: (a) the number of participants in the international

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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
occur because new states enter the political system. Or it can
originate in 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 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.

At the same time, technology multiplies the resources
available for the conduct of foreign policy while the domestic

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structure increases the ability of the state to mobilize them.
As long as the states' ability to mobilize resources was limited,
the severity of their conflict had definite bounds. The impact
of 18th Century foreign policy was relatively benign, at least
in part 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 culmination of a process started by
the French Revolution: the basing of governmental legitimacy on
popular support. Even totalitarian regimes are aberrations of a
democratic legitimacy; they depend on popular consensus even when
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
democratization of politics that it has
enabled states to marshall ever more resources for conflict.

This process has been aided by a scientific revolution
which, to all practical purposes, has removed technical limits to

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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.

Ideological conflict compounds these dislocations. Its
expression on the international 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.

Ideological conflict produces a situation in which political
loyalties no longer necessarily coincide with national boundaries.

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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 exacerbated 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 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

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technical resources to try to order affairs on a global scale.

Bipolarity is a source of rigidity in foreign policy.

The guardians of the equilibrium of the 19th Century were prepared to respond to change with counteradjustment; the policymakers of the superpowers in the second half of the 20th Century have much less confidence in the ability of the equilibrium to right itself after disturbance. Whatever "balance" there is between the superpowers is regarded as both precarious and inflexible. 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.

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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 multipolarity. Weaker allies have
good reasons to believe that their defense is in the overwhelming
interest of the senior partner. 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 pro-
tected by the rivalry of the superpowers. Nationalism leads to
ever bolder assertions of autonomy.

This political multipolarity does not necessarily guarantee
stability. Rigidity is diminished; but so is manageability.
Nationalism may succeed in curbing the pre-eminence of the super-
powers; 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.

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This then, is the structural challenge to U.S. foreign
policy: the international environment lacks an agreed concept
of order; the awesome power available is unrestrained by any consensus
legitimacy; ideology and nationalism in their different ways
deepen international schisms. Many of the elements of stability
which characterized the international system in the 19th Century
cannot be recreated in the modern age. The stable technology,
the multiplicity of major powers, the limited domestic claims
and the frontier which permitted adjustments may be gone forever.
The stability of the international order in the modern period
will have to depend on the ability to relate political bipolarity
to political multipolarity.

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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

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some concept of military security; it involves doctrinal considerations
of the uses to which power can be put in the modern period.

Throughout history, statesmen considered the acquisition of
additional increments of power to be an obvious and paramount
objective. As late as twenty-five years ago, it would have been
inconceivable that a country could possess _too much_ strength for
effective political use; 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 the objectives
likely to be in dispute. The major nuclear powers are capable of
devastating each other. But they have great difficulty translating
this power into policy 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

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willing and able to resist for a number of years can count on
domestic divisions and pressures of world public opinion to
assist it.

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 can be 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 relate to policy deterrence has become
the dominant military policy. But deterrence depends above all on
psychological criteria. It seeks to keep an opponent from a given
course by posing risks he is unwilling to confront. For purposes

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of deterrence, the opponent's calculations are decisive. 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 tradi-
tional notions of balance of power. In the past, stability has
always presupposed the existence of an equilibrium of power which
prevented one state from imposing its will on 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 severely 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

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Western Europe, but had remained without nuclear weapons, it would
be less powerful than in its present extent with the existing nuclear
arsenal. In other words, 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 analyze 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 his 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 purposes. When the domestic
decisionmaking process contains so many elements peculiar to each
system, the possibility that the two superpowers will understand
security in the same manner becomes increasingly complicated.

The abstract, intangible 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 the very premises of defense policy.

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Perhaps there was no need for preparedness 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.

The problem is increasingly complicated, even with conventional
weapons. After the capture of the Pueblo, the U.S. called up 13
thousand reservists and moved an aircraft carrier off the shores
of Korea. Did 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 understanding the political uses of military power.
A massive breakdown of communication occurred within the U.S.
policymaking machinery and between U.S. and Hanoi. It would have
been difficult over the past five years to receive a clear
definition of what the U.S. government understood by 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.

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The attempt to escape these insecurities has spurred a new interest in arms control negotiations, especially those dealing with strategic missiles. These negotiations can be important for the peace and security of the world. But 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 the last comprehensive, bi-partisan, high-level re-evaluation of all aspects of national security: the Gaither Committee. A new administration should move quickly to bring about such a review. It should deal with some of the following questions:

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

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b. Implications and feasibility (both military and political) of various postures -- superiority, parity, etc.

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

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

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III. POLITICAL MULTIPOLARITY: THE CHANGED
NATURE OF ALLIANCES

For most of the post-war period, the United States identified
security with alliances. A global network of relationships grew up
based on the proposition that aggression would be effectively
deterred by assembling the largest grouping of powers.

In the first decade and a half after World War II, this system
of alliances was in difficulty outside the Atlantic area because it
tried to apply the traditional maxims of collective security and of
alliance policy. These principles were essentially drawn from the
multipolar world of several major powers of the 18th and 19th
Centuries. They did not really fit a world of two superpowers
dealing with countries which could only add marginally to their
strength or to each other's capabilities. Thus CENTO and SEATO have
never been vital.

In the Atlantic area on the other hand, the NATO organization
did reflect the facts of bipolarity. Major decisions remained in
the hands of the United States. Our allies were confined to a largely
advisory role. In NATO, the difficulties became acute when the
United States was slow to recognize the emerging polical

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multipolarity.

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 power whose aid is sought must be believed to have some
alternative to extending assistance; otherwise protection will be
taken for granted and the mutuality of obligation will break down.

In the system of alliances developed by the United States
after World War II, these conditions were never met outside the NATO
area. 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 conception of
common interests, the members of these alliances were never able to
develop common policies with respect to issues of war and peace.

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Had they been able to do so, these policies might well have been
stilborn anyway, because the technical means of cooperation have
been lacking. Most allies had neither the resources nor the will
be render mutual support. A state which finds it difficult to main-
tain order or the coherence of policy at home, does not increase
its strength by combining with states suffering similar disabilities.

In these circumstances, SEATO and CENTO have become moribund
as instruments of collective action. Because the United States has
often seemed more eager to engage in the defense of its allies than
they themselves, America's SEATO and CENTO allies have become
convinced that non-cooperation has no costs. Allies have been able
to give the impression that it would be worse for us than for them
if they fell to Communism. As a result, SEATO and CENTO have become,
in effect, unilateral American guarantees. At best, they provide a
legal basis for bilateral U.S. 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

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into being. Thus in its first decade and a half, NATO was a dynamic
and creative institution.

Nevertheless, NATO is today in disarray as well. Some of the
decline in allied cohesiveness is due to U.S. actions -- above all,
to frequent, unilateral changes of U.S. policy. But the most
important cause is the transformation of the international
environment, specifically the decline in the pre-eminence of the
superpowers and the emerging political multipolarity.

When NATO was founded in 1949, Europeans had a dual fear:
(1) the danger of an imminent Soviet attack; (2) the prospect of
By the late 1960's eventual U.S. withdrawal. /however, the fear of Soviet invasion has
declined. Even the attack on Czechoslovakia is likely to <u>restore</u>
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
U.S. assistance against aggression must be

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purchased by acquiescence in our policies.

When NATO was formed, moreover, the principal threat to
world peace seemed to lie in a Soviet attack on Europe. In recent
years, the view has grown that equally grave risks are likely to
arise in trouble spots outside of Europe which do not appear as
immediate threats to their independence or security. The irony
here is striking. 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.

These are symptoms of deeper, structural problems, however.
The growth of Soviet nuclear power -- and the changed nature of
power in the modern period -- were bound to affect NATO profoundly.
As the risks of nuclear war have become more enormous, the
credibility of traditional pledges of support was bound to be

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undermined. In the past, a country would carry out a commitment
because it could plausibly be argued that the consequences of not
doing so were worse than those of coming to the ally's assistance.
However, each of the last three annual statements on the U.S.
defense posture has estimated that in case of a general nuclear war,
United States' *dead* would range from 40 to 120 million. This trend
will, if anything, increase. In these circumstances, it will
become more and more difficult to demonstrate that anything is worse
than the elimination of over half of a society in a matter of days.
Basing the defense of NATO increasingly on a variant of the doctrine
of massive retaliation complicates the problem even more.

Another facet of this transformation is the growth of
European economic strength and political self-confidence. At the
end of World War II, Europe was dependent on the United States for
economic assistance, political stability and military protection.
In these circumstances, Europe needed the shelter of a superpower.
American predominance was inevitable. European statesmen dealt
with the United States as lobbyists rather than as diplomats. Their
influence depended less on the weight of their countries than on

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their weight as personalities. A form of consultation grew up
whereby Europeans sought to influence American actions by giving
us a reputation to uphold or -- to put it more crudely -- by
oscillating between flattery and almost plaintive appeals for
reassurance. The United States, secure in its predominance, in
turn concentrated on soothing occasional European outbreaks of
insecurity rather than on an analysis of their causes.

Tutelage is a comfortable relationship for the senior
partner, but it is demoralizing in the long run. It breeds
illusions of omniscence on one side and attitudes of impotent
irresponsibility on the other. In any event, the United States
could not expect to perpetuate the accident of Europe's post-war
exhaustion into a permanent pattern of international relations.
Europe's economic recovery inevitably led to a return to more
traditional political pressures in relations with the United States.
Rapid, unpredictable oscillations in United States policy have
contributed to the reduction in American influence. De Gaulle has
accelerated this process. However, the basic causes have been
structural and could not have been removed by however wise an

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American or however conciliatory a European posture.

It is often argued that the breakdown in Atlantic relationships is inadequate consultation.

The problem of consultation is complex. No doubt unilateral American action has compounded the uneasiness produced by American predominance and European weakness. Whatever the merit of individual policies, the shift in the emphasis of American policy, from the NATO multilateral force to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the frequent unilateral changes in strategic doctrine have all tended to produce disquiet and to undermine the domestic position of ministers who had staked their futures on supporting the American viewpoint.

It is far from self-evident, however, that more extensive consultation within the existing framework can be more than a palliative. Any political process - including consultation - involves not only a problem of advice but also an issue of decision. Even within governments, the ultimate outcome usually requires the overruling of some group or interest. Indeed, in the modern bureaucratic state, the resolution of conflicting advice has proved

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much more difficult than obtaining it in the first place. Those
who argue for a greater European voice in our decision-making
process -- often in return for some concession like giving up
nuclear weapons -- rarely explain what they mean. A veto over all
of US foreign policy? A veto over SAC plans? Do Europeans know
what joint planning will imply in practice in a bureaucracy
operating so much on a case-by-case approach and in which plans
almost never influence crisis actions? Have American advocates of
this argument thought through the problems for a decision-making
process which already has great difficulty absorbing the available
information and which for really crucial decisions tends to be
confined to an ever smaller range of key decision makers? Have
foreigners understood the staffing requirements for such a procedure?
How are disputes resolved if views differ or interests do not
coincide? No amount of consultation will remove the different
perspective about extra-European involvements. The disagreement
here is caused not by a failure of understanding but because the two
sides understand each other only too well.

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One issue concerns technical competence. In any large bureaucracy -- and an international consultative process has many similarities to domestic administrative procedures -- the weight given to advice bears some relation to the competence it reflects (it also depends on the options of the advisor). If one partner possesses all technical competence, the process of consultation is likely to remain barren. The minimum requirement for effective consultation is that each ally have enough knowledge to give meaningful advice. The NATO nuclear committee has made a great contribution in this respect for the military problem.

But the final problems of consultation are not technical
The effectiveness of consultation depends party on technical
competence, partly on the options thought to be available in case
of disagreement. Even domestically, those departments which can
act on their own -- such as the Department of Defense -- are
likely to get a fuller hearing than those whose competence is
primarily technical or advisory. This is even more true internationally.

The losing party in a domestic dispute has three choices:
(a) it can accept the setback with the expectation of winning

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another battle later on -- this is the usual bureaucratic attitude
and it is based on the knowledge of being able to force another
hearing later on; (b) if advice is consistently ignored, the
losing party or group can resign and go into opposition;
(c) opposition can have the purpose either of inducing the existing
government to change its course or to replace it. If all these
avenues are closed, violence or mounting frustration are the
consequences.

Only the first option is open among sovereign states bound
together by an alliance. The partners cannot resign or go into
opposition without wrecking the alliance. They cannot affect the
process by which allied decisionmakers are chosen though this may
be crucial for their fate. Indeed, as long as the need to maintain
the alliance overrides all other concerns, sustained disagreement
is likely to be stifled. Advice without responsibility and dis-
agreement without an outlet can turn consultation into a frustrating
exercise which compounds rather than alleviates discord. However
abrupt his methods, de Gaulle has grasped that influence depends not

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only on intellectual qualities but also on a certain capacity to
maneuver.

Consultation is especially difficult when it lacks an
integrating overall framework. The consultation about the Non-
Proliferation Treaty concerned specific provisions but not the
underlying general philosophy which was of the deepest concern
to many of our allies, especially the Federal Republic and Italy.
Each ally makes its own approach to Eastern Europe or the USSR
without any coherent concept of a coherent Western enterprise. In
these circumstances, consultation runs the risk of being irrelevant.
The issues it "solves" are peripheral; the central issues are
inadequately articulated. It deals haphazardly in answers to
undefined questions.

This situation has been especially difficult for those in
the United States who deserve most credit for forging existing
Atlantic relations. Their aim to return to the "great days" of
the Marshall Plan is impossible. They call for American
"leadership." Two decades of hegemony have produced the illusion that
present Atlantic relationships are "natural," that wise policy

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consists of making the existing framework more tolerable.

"Leadership" has come to be equated with implementing American designs. Partnership is identified with applying on a global scale the pattern of cooperation heretofore confined to the Atlantic area.

Such a view fails to take into account the realities of political multipolarity. Nothing would sunder Atlantic relationships so surely as the attempt to reassert the notions of leadership appropriate to the early days of NATO. Events will no longer conform to an American design. The challenge of the Seventies will be to tap the energies of a pluralistic Atlantic world. It is not "natural" that the major decisions about the defense of an area so potentially powerful as Western Europe should be made 3,000 miles away. It is not "normal" that U.S. leadership consist of gearing Atlantic policies to American conceptions. Countries do not assume burdens because it is fair, only because it is necessary. While there are strong arguments for Atlantic partnership and European unity, enabling Europe to play a global role is not one of them. A nation assumes responsibilities not only because it has resources, but because it has a certain view of its own destiny. Through the

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greater part of its history -- until World War II -- the United
States possessed the resources but not the philosophy for a global
role. Today, the poorest West European country -- Portugal -- has
the widest commitments outside of Europe because its historic image
of itself has become bound up with its overseas possessions. This
condition is unlikely to be met for any other European country --
with the partial exception of Great Britain -- no matter what their
increase in power. Partially as the result of de-colonization,
Europeans are unlikely to conduct a significant global policy
whatever their resources or their degree of unity. Cooperation
between the United States and Europe will have to take forms other
than global partnership. A basic problem in Atlantic relationships
will be to devise partly coordinated, partly divergent policies for
the various portions of the world.

Even within the Atlantic area, a more equitable distribution
of responsibilities has two prerequisites: (1) there must be some
consensus in the analysis of the international situation, at least

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as it affects Europe; (2) there must be a conviction that the
United States cannot or will not carry all burdens alone.

Neither condition is met today. Allied consultations for
all practical purposes never deal with the fundamental problems of
international order: the shape of Atlantic relationships or the
evolution of Western policy. The United States seems so eager --
indeed importuning -- to continue traditional patterns that it
undermines any European incentive for greater autonomy.

This state of affairs is not healthy in the long run. Those
in Europe most ready to accept American tutelage may not prove very
steady allies in times of crises -- their motive may be a form of
abdication from international affairs, a psychological form of
neutralism. Their opponents may become convinced that European
autonomy must be seized from the United States; they may develop a
vested interest in anti-Americanism. Such a polarization of
European political life cannot be in our interest.

The problem is equally serious for the United States. If
the United States insists on remaining the trustee of every non-
Communist area, it will exhaust its psychological resources.
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe

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at every moment of time. A more pluralistic world -- especially
in relationships with friends -- is profoundly in our long-term
interest. Political multipolarity while painful is the precondition
for a new period of creativity. Painful as it may be to admit, we
could benefit from a counterweight to discipline our occasional
impetuosity and to supply historical perspective to our penchant
for abstract and "final" solutions.

Involved here is the American conception of how nations
cooperate. A tradition of legalism and habits of predominance
have produced a tendency to multiply formal arrangements. "Integration"
has become identified with Atlanticism.

But the emerging political multipolarity forces us to learn
that nations cooperate not because they have a legal obligation to do
so but because they have common purposes. Command arrangements
cannot substitute for common interests. It is contradictory to place
so much emphasis on coordinated strategy and so little on coordinated
diplomacy. The reverse should be the case.

It is in the American interest to encourage greater European
autonomy even in the military field. The possibility of disagree-

- 36 -

ments on peripheral issues may be the price for unity where it really matters. We must get used to dealing with Europeans through a balancing of interests rather than through the elaboration of formal legal obligations. In the military field, the responsibility for developing doctrine and force level should shift in the first instance to Europeans, perhaps by vitalizing such institutions as the WEU, perhaps by creating new structures. The Supreme Allied Commander should in time become European. In the political field, entirely new forms of cooperation must be developed.

It is sometimes argued that such a course will encourage Third Force tendencies in Europe. This depends on how one understands that term. Europe as a powerful and responsible entity is in our interest even if it does not always follow our preferred prescription. The memory of European impotence and American tutelage should not delude us into believing that we understand Europe's problems better than it does itself. It is hard to visualize a "deal" between the Soviet Union and Europe which would jeopardize our interests without jeopardizing European interests first. Thus there are objective limits to Third Force policies. If Europeans do not

- 37 -

understand the requirements of their own survival without
pervasive American tutelage, American tutelage will not long be
able to substitute for lack of European understanding.

Under current conditions, no statesman will risk a cataclysm
simply to fulfill a legal obligation. The only motive for running
the risks of nuclear war is likely to be a degree of political
cooperation which causes the fate of each partner to be felt to
be at stake in the survival of the others. This requires an
entirely new order of political creativity. In the coming decade,
military command arrangements can no longer symbolize Atlantic
cooperation. They should be confined to military functions.
Instead, new forms of political cooperation are essential. It is
high time that the nations bordering the Atlantic deal -- formally,
systematically and at the highest level -- with questions such as
these: (a) what are the relative roles of Europe and the U.S. in
East-West contacts? (b) is a division of functions conceivable in
which Western Europe plays the principal role in relation to Eastern
Europe while the U.S. concentrates on relationships with the USSR?

- 38 -

(c) what forms of political consultation does this require?

(d) in what areas of the world is common action possible? Where are divergent courses indicated? How are differences to be handled?

In addition, cooperative efforts in hitherto neglected areas should be explored. For example, under present circumstances, an especially meaningful community of interests can be developed in the social sphere. All modern states face problems of bureaucratization, pollution, environmental control, urban growth. These problems know no national considerations. If the nations of the Atlantic work together on these issues -- either through private or governmental channels or both -- a new generation habituated to cooperative efforts could develop similar to that spawned in different circumstances by the Marshall Plan. Similarly, why does our space program have to be a national effort? Would not European participation in it supply an effective answer to the "technological gap?"

A creative approach to Atlantic relations would take into account how much common action outside of Europe is really desirable or possible. Given the changed European perspective, an effort to bring about global burden sharing may only produce stagnation. The

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allies will be able to agree primarily on doing nothing. Any
crisis occuring anywhere will turn automatically and organically
world-wide. European autonomy implies also a degree of American
autonomy.

We thus face the root question of a multipolar world. How
much unity do we want? How much diversity can we stand? These
questions never have a final answer within a pluralistic society.
Adjusting the balance between centralization and autonomy will be
the key challenge of the emerging Atlantic relations.

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IV. **BIPOLARITY AND MULTIPOLARITY: A CONCEPTUAL PROBLEM**

In the years ahead, the profoundest challenge to American
policy is philosophical: to develop some concept of what we
understand by order in a world which is bipolar militarily but
multipolar politically. But a philosophical deepening, however
necessary, will not come easily to those brought up in the American
tradition of foreign policy. Pragmatism encourages a case-by-case
approach. Problems are segmented into components, each of which
is dealt with by experts in the special difficulty it involves.
The heavy influence of the legal profession magnifies this tendency.
It leads to high analytical skill with respect to the immediate
problem but a reluctance to confront the "hypothetical" cases
involved in long-range planning.

The lessons of American history reinforce this tendency. Our
pragmatism and optimistic conception of peace partly originate in
the fact that our political society was one of the few which was
**consciously created** at a point in time. At least until the emergence
of the race problem, we have been blessed by the absence of class

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conflicts or other conflicts as to ultimate ends. Reluctance to think in terms of structural factors reflects a sense of self-sufficiency which is but a step short of a sense of omnipotence.

The lessons of two world wars seem to many Americans to prove that we saved the world twice in a century.

All this produces a bias in favor of single-factor analysis and comprehensive total solutions. Yet the dilemma of multipolarity in a nuclear world is that we must deal politically even with opponents and learn to be creative with the autonomy of friends which do not follow our prescriptions and which may even oppose us at times.

## The New Nations and Political Legitimacy

This challenge is especially crucial with respect to the new nations. For all the confusion and torment of the process, future historians are likely to class developments in the emerging countries with the great movements of religious awakening. Continents which had been dormant for centuries have suddenly developed political consciousness. Regions which for scores of years had considered foreign rule as natural, struggle for independence. Yet it is curious

- 42 -

nationalism-defined not as in Europe by common language or history
but often primarily by the common experience of foreign rule.

Boundaries -- especially in Africa -- have tended to follow the
administrative convenience of the colonial powers. Divided along
religious or tribal lines, the new nations have faced both a
problem of identity and of political authority. They lack social
cohesiveness or they are split into competing groups each with a
highly developed sense of identity.

It is no accident that between the Berlin crisis and the
invasion of Czechoslovakia, the principal threats to the peace came
from the emerging areas. Domestic weakness encourages foreign
intervention. The temptation to deflect domestic dissatisfactions
into foreign adventures is ever present. Leaders feel little sense
of responsibility to an overall international equilibrium; they are
much more conscious of their local grievances. The rivalry of the
superpowers offers many opportunities for blackmail.

Yet the traditional foreign policy manifestations are not
the most significant aspect of the turmoil of the new countries.
It is in the new countries that the issue of the purpose of political

- 43 -

life and the meaning of political legitimacy -- key issues also
in the modern state -- pose themselves in their most acute form. The
new nations weigh little in the physical balance of power. But
the forces unleashed in the emergence of so many new states may
well affect the moral balance of the world -- adding a new dimension
to the problem of multipolarity.

Almost all of the new countries suffer from the revolutionary
malaise: revolutions succeed through the coming together of all
resentments. But the degree to which the existing structure is
eliminated, compounds the difficulty of establishing political
consensus. A successful revolution leaves as its legacy a profound
dislocation. In the new countries, contrary to all revolutionary
expectations, the task of construction has emerged as less
glamorous and more complex than the struggle for freedom. Yet the
exaltation of the quest for independence cannot be perpetuated.
Sooner or later, positive goals must replace resentment of the former
colonial power as a motive force. In the absence of autonomous social
forces, this unifying role must be performed by the state in the new
countries.

- 44 -

But this produces another cause of instability. When social cohesiveness is slight, the struggle for control of authority becomes increasingly bitter. When government is the principal, sometimes the sole expression of national identity, opposition tends to be considered as treason. The profound social or religious schisms of many of the new nations turn the control of political authority quite literally into a matter of life and death. Where political obligation follows racial, religious or tribal lines, self-restraint breaks down. Domestic conflicts assume the character of a civil war. Such traditional authority as exists is personal or feudal. The problem is to make it "legitimate" -- to develop a nation of political obligation which depends on legal norms rather than on the existence of coercive power or on merely personal loyalty.

This process took centuries in Europe. It must be accompanied in decades in the new nations where preconditions of success are less favorable than at comparable periods in Europe. In addition, the new countries are subject to foreign pressures which

- 45 -

Europe was spared. There is a premium on foreign adventures to
bring about domestic cohesiveness.

The American role in the effort of building legitimate
authority is in need of serious re-examination. The dominant
American view about political structure has been that it would
follow more or less automatically upon economic progress and that
it would then take the form of constitutional democracy.

Both assumptions are subject to serious questions. In every
advanced country, political stability preceeded rather than emerged
from the process of industrialization. Where the rudiments of
popular institutions did not exist at the beginning of the industrial
revolution, they did not receive their impetus from it. To be
sure, these institutions were broadened and elaborated as the
countries prospered -- but their significant features antedated
economic development and are not attributable to it. In fact,
whatever system of government has brought about industrialization,
has tended to be confirmed by this achievement.

Nor is democracy a natural evolution of nationalism. In the
last century, it depended on the existence of an aristocratic

- 46 -

ruling class and a middle class -- not professional revolutionaries --
whose estimate of themselves was founded outside the political
process. The trend was butressed by a political philosophy which
considered the state to be a referee of the ultimately important
social forces rather than the principal focus of national consciousness.

The pluralism of the West had many causes which cannot be
duplicated elsewhere. These included: a church organization out-
side the control of the state and therefore symbolizing the
limitation of governmental power; the Graeco-Roman philosophical
tradition of justice based on human dignity reinforced later by the
Christian ethic; an emerging bourgeoisie; a stalemate in religious
wars imposing tolerance as a practical necessity; a multiplicity of
states. Industrialization was by no means the most significant of
these factors. Had any of the others been missing, the Western
political evolution could have been quite different.

Communism has never succeeded in the industrialized countries
for which its theory was devised; its greatest successes have been
in agricultural societies. This is no accident. Industrialization--
in its early phases -- multiplies dislocations. It smashes the

- 47 -

traditional framework. It requires a system of values which makes
the sacrifices involved in capital formation tolerable and which
furnishes some integrating principles to contain psychological
frustrations. It supplies a legitimacy for the sacrifices
inseparable from capital formation in an age when the maxims of
laisser-faire are no longer acceptable.

Too, Leninism provides a rationale to revolutionary leaders
for holding on to power. After all, the leaders of the new countries
sustained themselves through the struggle for independence by visions
of the transformations to be brought about after victory. They are
not predisposed even to admit the possibility of giving up power
in their hour of triumph. Since they usually began their struggle
for independence while in a small minority and sustained it against
heavy odds, they are not likely to be repelled by the notion that
it is possible to "force men to be free."

The ironic feature of the current situation is that Marxism,
professing a materialistic philosophy, is accepted in many new
countries because of its idealistic components -- it is the
philosophy of the underdog and the downtrodden. Its philosophy

- 48 -

appeals where there are moral grievances; it has been a total failure
in inspiring the younger generation in Communist countries. On the
other hand, the U.S., professing an idealistic philosophy, often
fails because of its heavy reliance on economic factors. It has
answers to technical dislocations but is much less relevant
to the political and moral consensus. This does not mean that our
goal should be to transfer American institutions to the new nations --
even less that we should impose them. The problem should not be
focused simply on how to prevent the spread of Communism. The issue
is the problem of building a moral consensus which can make a
pluralistic world creative rather than destructive.

The problem of political legitimacy is the key to political
stability in regions containing two-thirds of the world's population.
An American agenda must include some conception of what we under-
stand by it. In an age of instantaneous communication, we cannot
pretend that what happens to over two-thirds of humanity is of no
concern or interest to the United States. Irrelevance to one of
the great revolutions of our time will mean that we will ultimately
be engulfed by it -- if not physically, then psychologically.

- 49 -

Already some of the protest movements of the younger generation have made heroes of leaders of new countries even of repressive societies. The absurdity of founding a claim for freedom on protagonists of the totalitarian state -- such as Guevara or Ho or Mao -- underlines the fact that the travail of the new countries affects societies which share none of their technical but some of their spiritual problems -- especially the problem of the nature of authority in the modern world. To a young generation in rebellion against bureaucracy and bored with material comfort, these societies offer at least the challenge of unlimited opportunity (and occasionally unlimited manipulativeness) in the quest for justice.

A world which is bipolar militarily and multipolar politically thus confronts an additional problem. Side by side with the physical balance of power, there exists a psychological balance based on intangibles: the convictions which form the structure for the world of tomorrow. The presuppositions of the physical equilibrium have changed drastically; those of the psychological balance remain yet to be discovered.

- 50 -

The Problem of Soviet Intentions

Nothing has been more difficult for Americans to deal with
than the fact that even enmity is complex in the nuclear age.
In the Soviet Union, we confront an opponent whose public pro-
nouncements are insistently hostile. Yet the nuclear age imposes
a degree of cooperation and a limit to which conflicts can be pushed.

The military relationship with the Soviet Union is difficult
enough; the political one confronts us with a profound conceptual
problem. A society which regards peace as the normal condition,
tends to ascribe tension not to structural causes but to wicked or
shortsighted individuals. Peace is thought to result either from
the automatic operation of economic forces or from the emergence of
a more benign leadership abroad.

The debate about Soviet trends between "hard liners" and
"soft liners" illustrates this problem. Both sides tend to agree
that the purpose of American policy is to bring about a more benign
evolution of Soviet society -- containment was after all supposed to
bring about a Soviet _domestic_ transformation. They are at one, that
a settlement presupposes a change in the Soviet system. Both groups

- 51 -

give the impression that the nature of a possible settlement is
perfectly obvious -- the apostles of containment never defined
what would be the American program when the situation of strength
which was the goal of their policy had in fact been achieved. Nor
have the advocates of relaxation of tensions tended to emphasize
precision; they have been more concerned with atmosphere than with
the substance of talks. In fact, the difference between the "hawks"
and "doves" has usually concerned an issue of timing: the "hawks"
have maintained that a Soviet change of heart, while inevitable, was
still in the future while the "doves" have argued that it has already
taken place. Many of the "hawks" tend to consider that negotiations
are fruitless. Many of the "doves" argue -- or did before
Czechoslovakia -- that the biggest step toward peace has already
been accomplished through a Soviet change of heart about the cold
war; negotiations need only remove some essentially technical
obstacles.

This tendency affects and sometimes poisons -- the entire
American debate about foreign policy. Left-wing critics of
American foreign policy seem incapable of attacking U.S. actions

- 52 -

without elevating our opponent (whether it happens to be Mao or Castro or Ho, or Khrushchev) to a pedestal. If they discern some stupidity or self-interest on our side, they assume that the other side must be virtuous. They then criticize the U.S. for opposing the other side. The Right follows the same logic in reverse: they presuppose our good intentions and conclude that the other side must be perverse in opposing us. Both the Left and the Right judge largely in terms of intentions. They start with a view of America (which they think they understand) and then attribute the opposite moral quality to the other side.

In the process, whatever the issue -- whether Berlin or Vietnam -- more attention has been paid to whether to get to the conference room than what to do once we got there. The dispute over Communist intentions has diverted attention from elaborating our own purposes.

The test of dedication to peace has been whether one interprets Soviet intentions in the most favorable manner.

It should be obvious, however, that the Soviet domestic situation is complex and its relationship to foreign policy far from obvious. It is true that the risks of general nuclear war should be

- 53 -

as unacceptable to Moscow as to Washington; but this truism does not automatically produce detente. It can also be used to lessen the risks involved in local intervention. No doubt the current generation of Communist leaders lacks the ideological dynamism of their predecessors who made the revolution; at the same time, they have at their disposal a military machine of unprecedented strength and they must deal with a bureaucracy of formidable vested interests. (After all, senior elements in the Soviet hierarchy felt sufficiently threatened by freedom of the press in Prague to unleash the Red Army for the third time in a decade and a half against an <u>allied</u> country.) Unquestionably, Communist consumers press their leaders to satisfy their demands; it is equally true that an expanding modern economy is able to supply <u>both</u> guns and butter. Some Soviet leaders may have become more pragmatic; it can also be argued that once power is seized and industrialization is largely accomplished, the Communist party faces a difficult situation: it is not needed to conduct the government; it has no real function in running the economy (though it tries to do both). In order to justify its continued existence and command, it may develop a vested interest

- 54 -

in vigilance against outside danger and thus in a fairly high level
of tension.

It is beyond the scope of this essay to go into detail on the
issue of internal Communist evolution. But it may be appropriate
to inquire why in the past every period of detente has proved
stillborn. There have been at least five periods of peaceful
coexistence since the Bolshevik seizure of power, one in each
decade of the existence of the Soviet state. Each was hailed in the
West as ushering in a new era of reconciliation and as signifying the
long-awaited final change in Soviet purposes. Each ended abruptly
with a new period of intransigence which was then generally ascribed
to a victory of Soviet "hard liners" rather than to the dynamics of
the system. There were may reasons for this. But a contributory
cause was surely the tendency of many in the West to be content with
changes of Soviet tone and to confuse atmosphere with substance.
This has enabled the Communist leaders to postpone the choice which
they must make sooner or later; whether to use detente as a device
to lull the West or whether to move to a resolution of the out-
standing differences. Postponing the choice in turn has the result

[y]

- 55 -

that latent crises may run away with the principal protagonists
as happened in the Middle East and perhaps even in Czechoslovakia.

Many in the West have been eager to emphasize the liberalizing
implications of Soviet economic trends and to make a favorable
interpretation of Soviet intentions a test of good faith. This may
have the paradoxical consequence of strengthening the Soviet hard
liners. Soviet troops had hardly arrived in Prague when some Western
leaders insisted that this would not affect the quest for detente
or for high-level meetings. Such an attitude hardly serves the
cause of peace. The risk is great that if there is no penalty for
intransigence, there is no incentive for conciliation. The Kremlin
may use negotiations -- especially in arms control -- as a safety
valve to dissipate Western suspicions rather than as a serious
endeavor to resolve concrete disputes or to remove the scourge of
nuclear war.

If we focus our policy discussions on Soviet purposes, we
confuse the debate in two ways: (1) Soviet trends are too
ambiguous to offer a reliable guide -- it is possible that not even
Soviet leaders fully understand the dynamics of their system; (2) it

- 56 -

deflects /us from articulating our own purposes which we should pursue, whatever Soviet intentions. Peace will not, in any event, result from one grand settlement but from a process of adjustment and this requires some clarity as to our destination.

The obsession with Soviet intentions causes the West to be smug during periods of detente and panicky during crises. A benign Soviet tone is treated as the achievement of peace; Soviet hostility is considered as ushering in a new period of tension and evokes usually purely military countermeasures. The West is thus never ready for a Soviet change of course, it has been equally unprepared for detente as for intransigance.

These lines are being written while the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia outrages moral sensibilities. There is a tendency to focus on the military implications or to speak of strengthening unity in the abstract. But if history is a guide at all, there will be a new Soviet peace offensive sooner or later -- indeed if Soviet behavior after the invasion of Hungary is any guide sooner rather than later. If we are not to be doomed to repeat the past, it may be well to learn some of its lessons: We should not again confuse a change

- 57 -

of tone with a change of heart. We should not pose as false
inconsistencies between allied unity and detente; indeed a true
relaxation of tensions presupposes Western unity. We should
concentrate negotiations on the concrete issues that threaten the
peace of the world such as intervention in the Third world.
Moderating the arms race must also be high on the agenda. None of this
is possible without a concrete idea of what we understand by peace
and a creative world order.

- 58 -

V. <u>AN INQUIRY INTO THE AMERICAN NATIONAL INTEREST</u>

Wherever we turn then, the central issue of American foreign
policy is to analyze anew the current international environment and
to develop some concepts which will enable us to contribute to the
emergence of a stable order.

This requires that we address ourselves to a question from
which we have historically shied away: an inquiry into the essence
of our national interest. It is part of the American folklore that
while other nations have interests, we have responsibilities; while
other nations are concerned with equilibrium, we are concerned with
the legal requirements of peace. We have a tendency to offer our
altruism as a guarantee of our reliability: "We have no quarrel
with the Communists," Secretary of State Rusk said on one occasion,
"all of our quarrels are on behalf of other people."

Such an attitude makes it difficult to develop a conception
of our role in the world. It inhibits other nations from gearing
their policy to ours in a confident way -- a "disinterested" policy
is likely to be considered "unreliable." A mature conception of
our interest in the world should obviously take into account the

- 59 -

general interest in stability and peaceful change. It would deal
with two fundamental questions: What is it in our interest to
prevent? What should we seek to accomplish?

The answer to the first question is often confused by the
proposition that we will resist aggression anywhere since peace is
indivisible. A corollary is the argument that we do not oppose
the fact of particular changes but the method by which they were brought
about. We find it hard to articulate a truly vital interest which
we would defend however "legal" the challenge. This leads to an
undifferentiated globalism and confusion as to our purposes. The
notion that we resist aggression in the abstract causes us to
multiply our commitments. The denial that our interests are involved
diminishes our staying power when we try to carry out our commitment.
The American explanations for the war in Vietnam illustrate these
propositions.

Part of the reason is our reluctance to think in terms of
power and equilibrium. In 1949 for example, a State Department
memorandum justified NATO as follows: "(The treaty) obligates the
parties to defend the purposes and principles of the United Nations,

- 60 -

the freedom, common heritage and civilization of the parties and
their free institutions based upon the principles of democracy,
individual liberty and the role of law. It obligates them to act in
defense of peace and security. It is directed against no one; it
is directed solely against aggression. It seeks not to influence
any shifting balance of power but to strengthen a balance of
principle."

But principle, however lofty, must at some point be related
to practice; historically stability has always coincided with an
equilibrium which made physical domination difficult. Interest is
not necessarily amoral; moral consequences can spring from interested
acts. Britain did not contribute any less to international
order for having a clear-cut concept according to which it was in her
interest to prevent the domination of the Continent by a single power
(no matter how it happen) and the control of the seas by anybody
(even if the immediate intentions were not hostile). A new
administration confronts the challenge of relating the commitments of
America to its interests and its obligations to its purposes.

- 61 -

A sense of mission is a legacy of American history. To most Americans, America has always stood for something other than its own grandeur. But a clearer conception of America's interests and of the requirements of equilibrium is also necessary. It can give perspective to our idealism and lead to objectives both en masse and moderate especially in relation to political and social change.

The task of defining positive goals is more difficult but even more important. The first two decades after the end of World War II posed problems well suited to the American approach to international relations. Wherever we turned, massive dislocations required attention. Our pragmatic, ad hoc tendency was an advantage in a world clamoring for technical remedies. Our legal bent contributed to development of many instruments of stability.

In the late Sixties, the situation is more complex. The United States is no longer in a position to operate programs globally; it has to encourage them. It can no longer design its preferred solution; it must seek to evoke it. In the Forties and Fifties, we offered remedies; in the late Sixties and Seventies our role will

- 62 -

have to be to contribute to a structure in which the initiative of
others can be fostered. We are a superpower physically, but our
designs can be meaningful only if they generate the willing
cooperation of others. We can continue to contribute to defense and
positive programs; but we must seek to encourage local initiatives
so that our contribution is not the sole or principal effort but
makes the difference between success and failure.

This task requires a different kind of creativity and another
form of patience than that which has distinguished us in the past.
Enthusiasm, belief in progress, the invincible conviction that
American remedies can work everywhere must give way to an under-
standing of historical trends, an ordering of our preferences and
above all an understanding of the difference which our preferences
in fact can make.

The dilemma is that there can be no stability without
equilibrium but equally, equilibrium is not a purpose that answers
a world in turmoil. A conception of world order must have deeper
purposes than stability but greater restraints than would be possible
if it were approached only in a fit of enthusiasm.

- 63 -

Whether such a leap of the imagination is possible in the modern bureaucratic state remains to be seen. New administrations come to power convinced of the need for purpose and comprehensive concepts. Sooner, rather than later, they find themselves subjected to the pressures of the immediate and the ad hoc. Part of the reason is the pragmatic, issue-oriented bias of our decision-makers. But the fundamental reason may be the pervasiveness of modern bureaucracy. What started out as an aid to decisionmaking has developed a momentum of its own. Increasingly, the policymaker is more conscious of the pressures and the morale of his staff than of the purpose this staff is supposed to serve. The policymaker becomes a referee among quasi-autonomous bureaucratic bodies. Success consists of moving the administrative machinery to the point of decision leaving relatively little energy for analyzing its merit. The modern bureaucratic state begins to resemble the dinosaur; its very bulk inhibits the capacity to adapt to its problems.

- 64 -

Yet the problem must be solved. It is the essence of a
satisfied, status quo, advanced society that it puts a premium on
operating the familiar. It draws its motivation from the present
and it defines excellence by the ability to manipulate an
established framework. But for the major part of humanity, the
present becomes endurable only through a vision of the future. To
most Americans - including most American leaders -- the significant
reality is what they see around them. For most of the world --
including many of the leaders of the new nations -- the significant
reality is what they wish to bring about.

This difference in perspective accounts for the inconclu-
siveness of much of the dialogue between the West and many of the
leaders of the new countries. To individuals concerned primarily
with the present it is easy to see stability as the primary purpose
of political activity. But to the charismatic heads of the new nations,
this seems too limited a goal. Their aims -- for better or worse --
are of a more heroic cast. If we remain nothing but the managers
of our physical patrimony, we will grow increasingly irrelevant. And

- 65 -

since there can be no stability without us, the problems of world
order will grow ever dimmer.

But we require a new leap of the imagination not so much for
the sake of other countries as for our own people, especially the
youth. The contemporary unrest is no doubt exploited by some whose
purposes are all too clear. But that it is there to exploit is due
to a profound dissatisfaction with the merely managerial and
consumer-oriented aspect of the modern state and with a world which
seems to generate crises by momentum. The modern bureaucratic
state for all its panoply of strength often finds itself shaken to
its foundations by seemingly trivial causes. Its brittleness and
the world-wide revolution of youth -- especially in advanced countries
and among the relatively affluent -- suggests a spiritual void, an
almost metaphysical boredom with a political environment which
increasingly emphasizes bureaucratic challenges and offers no deeper
purpœ than material comfort.

This problem has no easy remedy. Nor is the solution to be
found primarily in the realm of foreign policy. Yet a deeper non-
technical challenge would surely contribute to a sense of direction.

- 66 -

The young people who, in their thousands, volunteered for the Peace Corps, heirs of an idealistic tradition, could not fail to respond if they were challenged to help construct a new world order which sought to evoke the creativity of all countries.

In the best of circumstances, the next administration will be beset by crises. In almost every area of the world, we have been living off capital -- warding off the immediate, rarely dealing with underlying problems. These difficulties are likely to multiply when it becomes apparent that one of the legacies of the war in Vietnam will be a mounting American reluctance to risk overseas involvements.

A new administration has the right to ask for compassion and understanding from the American people. It can expect an end of a nihilistic perfectionism which seeks to destroy what does not conform to its notion of utopia. But it must found its claim not on pat answers to difficult issues; it must above all ask the right

It must recognize questions./ In the field of foreign policy, the key issue is that we will never be able to contribute to building a stable and creative world order unless we first form some conception of it.