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general nuclear war, United States' dead would range from 40 to
120 million. This trend will, if anything, increase. It will
become more and more difficult to demonstrate that anything is was
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.
Though the changeability of US policy has no doubt contributed to
loss of confidence in US leadership, some of the problems are
inherent in the nature of modern technology and cannot be removed
by the ritualistic repetition of the reassurances of the late
Forties.

Another fundamental fact is the growth of European economic
strength and political self-confidence. When NATO was formed,
Europe was dependent on the United States for economic assistance,
political stability and military protection. In these circumstances,
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
their weight as personalities. A form of consultation grew up whereby

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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 not healthy. 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 American or however conciliatory a European posture.

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This change has been difficult for those in the United
States who deserve most credit for forging existing Atlantic
relations. But their aim of returning to the "great days" of the
Marshall Plan is impossible. 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. Nuclear bipolarity paradoxically has produced political
multipolarity.

It is often argued that the breakdown in Atlantic relation-
ships is technical: inadequate European resources for playing a
global role or inadequate consultation. European unity, so the
argument goes, would give Europe the economic base to share our
global responsibilities. But while there are strong arguments for
European unity enabling Europe to play a global role is not one
of them. A nation assumes responsibilities not only because it has
resources; it depends very much on the society's view of itself.
Through the greater part of its history -- until World War II --

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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 other forms than a global partnership. A basic problem in Atlantic relationships will be to devise partly coordinated, partly divergent policies for the various portions of the world.

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

[y]

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unilateral changes in strategic doctrine have tended to produce disquiet and to undermine the domestic situation of ministers who had staked their future on supporting the American viewpoint.

It is, however, far from self-evident that more extensive consultation within the existing framework can do more than ameliorate the difficulty. 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 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 is meant by the joint planning 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 of a decision-making

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process which even in an American context 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 require-
ments 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 involve-
ments. The disagreement here is caused not by a failure of understanding
but because the two sides understand each other only too well.

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.

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But the final problems of consultation are not technical.

The losing party in a domestic dispute has three choices: (a) it can accept the setback with the expectation of winning 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. They cannot
affect the process by which allied decisionmakers are chosen though
this may be crucial for their fate. They cannot go into opposition
without wrecking the alliance. Indeed, so long as the need to
maintain the alliance overrides all other concerns, sustained
disagreement is likely to be stifled. Advice without responsibility
and disagreement without an outlet can turn consultation into a
frustrating exercise which compounds rather than alleviates discord.

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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 whose enthusiastic support on a wide range of activities is necessary -- 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. However abrupt his methods, de Gualle has grasped that influence depends not 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 general philosophy underlying it which was of the deepest concern to the Federal Republic especially, but also to some other allies. Each ally makes its own approach to Eastern Europe or the USSR without any coherent concept for the total 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 with answers to undefined questions.

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Two decades of hegemony have produced the illusion that present Atlantic relationships are "natural," that wise policy consists of making the existing framework more tolerable. "Leadership" has come to be equated with implementing American designs. This is why American policymakers have paid lip service; they have tended to recoil before its implications. Partnership has too often been interpreted as enabling Europeans to share our burden, to apply on a global scale the pattern of cooperation heretofore confined to the Atlantic area. Such

Such a view fails to take into account the realities of political multipolarity. 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 "natural" that US leadership consist of gearing Atlantic policies to American conceptions. Countries do not assume burdens because it is fair; only because it is necessary. Even within the Atlantic area, a more equitable distribution of responsibilities presupposes that two conditions are met: (1) there must be some consensus in the analysis of the international situation, at best as it affects Europe;

[Y]

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(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 cireses -- for many of them, Atlanticism is an acceptable 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 above all. No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every

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moment of time. If we cannot trust the area closest to us in tradition and with a long history of independent foreign policy to conduct an autonomous policy, the future is dim indeed for other areas of the world. Far from discouraging autonomous centers of initiative, we should foster them especially in areas whose fundamental interests are likely to parallel our own. 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.

We will have to assume that Europeans will understand the requirements of their own survival without pervasive American tutelage and that if they do not, American tutelage will not long be able to substitute for lack of European understanding.

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. The practical consequence has been that more emphasis has been given to the .

But the emerging political multipolarity forces us to relearn a lesson quite familiar to previous periods: Nations cooperate not

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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 disagreements
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
consultative arrangements.

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

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jeopardizing European interests first. Thus there are objective limits
to Third Force policies.

If the emerging multipolarity is to be used creatively, a
decentralization of decisionmaking -- including the military field --
is the prerequisite for closer cooperation on the issues which really
matter. 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 --
founded on a common analysis where this is feasible. It is high time
that the nations bordering the Atlantic deal -- formally, systematically
and at the highest level with questions such as these:

[y]

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(a) what are the relative roles of Europe and the US 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 US concentrates on relationships with the USSR?

(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 explained. For example, under present circumstances, a community of interests can be developed especially meaningfully in the social sphere. All modern states face problems of bureaucratization, pollution, environmental control, urban growth. These problems should be addressed by the best minds free beyond the confines of national considerations. If the nations of the Atlantic work together on these issues -- either through private or governmental channels or both -- a new generation used to cooperative efforts could develop similar to that spawned 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

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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 about conflicts
in Asia or Africa, an effort to bring about global burden sharing may
only produce stagnation. The 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 faces major
obstacles in the American approach to foreign policy. Pragmatism
tends to create 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 problem of world order is seen in extremely personal terms.

A society which considers peace normal, 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.

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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 give the impression that the nature of a possible settlement is perfectly obvious -- neither Mr. Acheson nor Mr. Dulles ever 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.

- 40 -

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 Soviet intentions can be interpreted 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 as unacceptable to Moscow as to Washington; but this truism does not automatically produce detente. It can also be used to lessen the risks of 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

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third time in a decade and a half against an _allied_ country.
Unquestionably, Communist consumers press their leaders to satisfy
their demands. It is equally true that an expanding modern economy
is able to supply _both_ 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). It may develop a vested
interest 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 stilborn.
There have been at least five periods of peaceful coexistence since
the Soviet seizure of power. Each was hailed in the West as ushering
in a new era of reconciliation and indicating a final change in
Soviet purposes. Each was ended by a new period of intransigence.
There were many reasons for this. But a contributory cause was surely

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the tendency of many in the West to confuse 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 outstanding differences.
Postponing the choice in turn has the result that latent crises may
run away with the principal protagonists.

The eagerness of many in the West to emphasize Soviet
domestic trends and to make a favorable evolution of Soviet trends
a test of good faith may have the paradoxical consequence of
strengthening the Soviet hard liners. Soviet troops had hardly
arrived in Prague when Western leaders insisted that this would not
affect the quest for detente. It is a melancholy commentary that
Communist countries like Rumania and Yugoslavia manafested(?) a
greater moral outrage about the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia
than those of the West. 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

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rather than as a serious attempt to remove the scourge of nuclear
war.

Gearing policy discussions to Soviet purposes confuses 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 deflects us
from articulating our own purposes which we should pursue, what-
ever 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 world is confronted with profound structural problems.
These are to a considerable extent independent of the intentions
of the principal protagonists and they cannot be solved in fits
of good will. Can anyone seriously suppose that all tensions would
disappear if the Soviet Union became a parliamentary democracy?
The history of dealings with Russia before 1918 would suggest
otherwise. Is it to be believed that a China with a strong central
government presents problems to its neighbors only because of its
ideology? A thousand years of Chinese suzerainty over neighboring

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territories indicates the opposite. Whatever the governments,
political evolution would not stop. A conception of what we
understand by a stable world order is essential whatever assumptions
we make of Communist purposes.

This challenge is perhaps even more 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 new
world with the great movements of religious conversion. 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 has been an independence of a curious nature: defined not as
European nationalism 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.

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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 life and the meaning of political legitimacy -- key issues also in the modern state -- poses itself in its 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 greater the success in sweeping away the existing

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structure, the greater is the difficulty of finding an adequate
consensus for positive action. Contrary to all expectations, the
task of construction has emerged as less glamorous and more complex
than the struggle for freedom. Yet the escalating 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.

But this produces another problem. 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 take on the character of a civil war. Such traditional
authority as exists is personal or feudal. The problem is to make

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it "legitimate" -- to develop a nation of political obligation which
depends on legal norms and not exclusively on the existence of coercive
power or on merely personal loyalty.

This process took centuries in Europe. It must be accomplished
in decades in the new nations where preconditions of success are less
favorable than at comparable periods in Europe. The disappearance of
familiar patterns of obligation unleashes forces whose elemental
passions will in time spill over into the advanced countries as well.

The American role in the effort of building legitimate authority
is in serious need of 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,

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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 ruling class -- not professional revolutionaries --
whose estimate of itself was founded outside the political process
and 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.

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
traditional framework. It requires a system of values which makes
the sacrifices involved in capital formation tolerable and which

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furnishes some integrating principles to contain psychological frus-
trations. 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 while the U.S., pro-
fessing an idealistic philosophy often fails because of its heavy
reliance on economic factors. This does not mean that our goal

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should be to transfer American pluralistic institutions to the
new nations. The pluralism of the West had many causes which
cannot be duplicated elsewhere. These included: a church organi-
zation outside the control of the state and therefore symbolizing
the limitation of governmental power; the Graeo-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.

The fact remains that the issue 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 understand 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. Already

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the heroes of some of the protest movements of the younger
generation are leaders of new countries even of repressive societies.

The absurdity of founding a claim for freedom on protagonists of
the totalitarian state underlines the fact that the travail of
the new countries spills over into societies which show none of
their technical but some of their spiritual problems -- especially
the problem of the nature of authority in the modern world.

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.

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

Wherever we turn then, the central issue of American foreign
policy is to define the current international situation 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

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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 oppose less
the fact of particular changes than the method by which it was
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 and not a
particular transformation which threatens our interests, causes us
to multiply our commitments while diminishing our staying power
when we try to carry them out. Lack of clarity as to our purposes
has characterized our commitment in Vietnam which has been justified
variously in terms of stopping Communist China, aggression by North
Vietnam or as a fulfillment of SEATO obligations.

Part of the reason is our reluctance to think in terms of power
and equilibrium. For example, a State Department memorandum in 1949

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justified NATO as follows: "(The treaty) obligates the parties to defend the purposes and principles of the United Nations, 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 translated into practice; stability has always been related to an equilibrium which made physical domination difficult. Interest is not necessarily immoral; 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 happened) and the control of the seas by anybody (even if the immediate intentions were not hostile). No more important challenge confronts a new Administration than to relate the commitments of

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America to its interests and its obligations to its purposes.

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 bend 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 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 bring about a situation which our contribution makes the difference between success and failure. In general, ours

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cannot be the sole or even the principal effort.

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 understanding of historical trends, an ordering of our preferences and above all an understanding of the difference which our preferences in fact can make.

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 reasons is the pragmatic, issue-oriented bias of our decisionmakers. 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. Overruling the staff has psychic and not only

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substantive costs. In any event, the policymaker may lack the
knowledge to do so.

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. Lip service is paid to planning; but it
consists more often in projecting the present into the future than in
true creativity. These problems which are serious enough within any
society are compounded when two huge administrative machines confront
each other; they may become unmanageable when this confrontation is
hostile. The modern bureaucratic state begins to resemble the
dinosaur; its very bulk inhibits the capacity to adapt to its
problems.

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 --

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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 inconclusiveness
of much of the dialogue between the West and many of the leaders
of the new countries. To individuals concerned primarily with the
present and with economic wellbeing, it is easy to identify an
increase of the Gross National Product with political stability.
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 since there can
be no stability without us, the problems of world order will become
even 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

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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 life which increasingly
emphasizes bureaucratic challenges and offers no deeper purpose 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 help give a sense of direction to
the constructive elements. The young people who in their thousands
volunteered for the Peace Corps, coming out of an idealistic
tradition, could not fail to respond if their challenge were part
of helping to construct a new world order which leaves scope for the
creativity of all.

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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
patent solutions so much as on asking the right questions. Above
all, it must recognize that we will never be able to contribute to
building a stable and creative world order unless we first form some
conception of it.