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Mr. Chairman:

Thank you for the opportunity of appearing before you to discuss the direction of post-Cold War American foreign policy. It is surely one of the most difficult international challenges in our history, less dangerous than the Cold War had been but more complicated; less ominous than the world we encountered at the end of the Second World War, but more intricate. For the task before us is nothing less than to distill a sense of direction from a world in which almost all key elements are changing simultaneously, ~~while~~ and too many Americans under the illusion that their foreign policy tasks are already accomplished seem tempted to turn their back on the world beyond our shores.

That challenge has not yet been mastered. A variety of factors--absence of a philosophical consensus, an uncertain

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Executive Branch, divisions between the Executive (Branch)
and the Congress--all combine to threaten to marginalize

American foreign policy. NATO is drifting; Western

Hemisphere policy is marking time, torn between constructive
pronouncements and operational lassitudes; in Asia, we are

confronting the major powers China and Japan simultaneously
relating with China as a collusive course.

Around the world, more and more decisions are taken which
the United States does not shape and which therefore do not
take basic American interests adequately into account.

Gradually, a pattern of international politics could creep
into being that makes us increasingly uncomfortable, both in
terms of our values and of our economic self-interest.

This of course is far from inevitable. The United
States remains the most powerful nation and the strongest
economy. The values which we profess continue to animate
the quest for liberty in all parts of the globe. We retain

to realize our potential
the capability to shape a constructive world order. But

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requires a coherent foreign policy which engages a
bipartisan consensus over an extended period of time similar
to what sustained us through to victory in the Cold War.

The New International Environment

The United States faces an unprecedented <u>situation</u>
<u>which it tends to interpret on the basis of historical roots</u>,
which are in fact unique. Populated almost exclusively by
immigrants, ours is the only country that has never
experienced a powerful neighbor along its borders, and
therefore has never had to face the security issues
confronted by less favored nations. The Americans'
perception of foreign policy was always one of nearly
limitless choice and, above all, of having the ability to
participate or to withdraw from international engagements at
will. Every American initiative of the postwar period was
presented to the American public as having a terminal date,