AMERICAN POLICY AND PREVENTIVE WAR

By Henry A. Kissinger

Every so often there emerges out of the confusion of day-to-day events a sequence that illuminates the very essence of our international problems. Like a flash of lightning in the dark it reveals its object only briefly. But, however fragmentary the view, it can be disregarded only at our peril.

So it was during the period from July through September, 1954, when the United States for the first time since the end of the war found itself isolated at an international conference (Geneva) and when the keystone of our European policy (EDC) collapsed in the face of all our threats and blandishments. To be sure, by a remarkable reversal of our tactics we have since made up some of the lost ground. But it would be a tragic error were we to confuse a tactical advance with a strategic transformation. Our period of maximum danger is still ahead, and the factors that created the impasse last summer are still operative. They can be summarized as follows: within the past two years the USSR has made great strides in the development of its nuclear weapons and thus confronts the free nations of Eurasia with imminent neutralization; the Soviet bloc holds the diplomatic initiative among the uncommitted nations of Southeast Asia, where it has so completely captured the peace offensive that the United States increasingly appears as an obstacle to international harmony. Now even in Western Europe the demands for more conferences can be expected to multiply. The vote on German rearmament in the French Assembly demonstrates that the forces which led to the collapse of EDC are still potent, while West Germany has obtained everything the West is able to give it and may in the post-Adenauer era find Russian overtures increasingly attractive.

In these circumstances it is not surprising that there have emerged advocates of radical solutions, temporarily muted but certain to reemerge all the more strongly when our difficulties are renewed. Threatened with neutralization or isolation, we are being offered war as a preferable alternative and preventive war as a means of forcing a showdown before the cards become hopelessly stacked against us. But war is too serious a matter to be undertaken in a fit of frustration. And before admitting the bankruptcy of policy it may be wise to analyse the causes of our difficulties, the range of possible alternatives, and the requirements of our security.

Perhaps we should begin with a warning: the difficulties confronted by the United States may have been heightened by certain policies of the past two years, but they were not produced by them. On the contrary, the search for scapegoats and isolated causes merely represents the reverse side of a state of mind that has characterized American policy since the end of the Second World War: an overconfidence in diplomatic gadgetry and a rationalism which considered the recognition of a problem tantamount to its solution. It was only natural, of course, that a nation which in less than a decade transformed itself from an insular into a world power, and in the

process took on a range of commitments almost unique in history, should have become fascinated by the process of its involvement rather than its underlying causes. The pacts, the alliances, the aid programs have come to seem self-evident guideposts along an unalterable route, ends in themselves requiring no justification beyond their obvious utility for dealing with the Soviet threat. For having wrenched itself loose from its dreams of isolation, the United States has grown to regard the Soviet colossus ominous in proportion as our yearning for peace is great. Thus the Soviet threat has turned into a basic postulate of United States policy, the final legitimization of our system of alliances.

But however correct this view, it has increasingly come to miss the point abroad for a basic fact about the rest of the world has been the reluctance of the other powers to believe in unbridgeable schisms. This can be variously explained--by the fear of nuclear destruction, by the memory of two world wars followed by occupations--but it is a fact of political life. The desire for peace is the predominant feature of the domestic situation in almost all the countries of the world, and any attempt to act counter to it is bound to erode the domestic support of their governments. The primary American policy should have been constantly to demonstrate Soviet intransigence and thereby create a climate of opinion for common action. Instead, we have assumed that the chief task was to bring about a certain level of military strength and that this depended almost entirely on United States policy and United States pressure.

Communist strategy has thus had an unnecessarily easy task. Since our coalition effort has been justified by a threat which was not felt as such by the public opinion of our allies, Soviet "peace offensives" have had fertile ground for cheap victories. American pressure could be represented to seem almost as pervasive as that of the USSR, and American intransigence has become the shibboleth of the very people who would blanch at the prospect of being left alone in Eurasia with the USSR. Our strategy has thus put the cart before the horse. It has conceived its task as primarily technical: to create an adequate defense force. But in fact the problem has proved to be principally psychological: to bring about a climate of opinion that would support such a force. Thus the groundwork for the collapse of EDC and for the difficulties encountered by German rearmament was laid: the governments of our allies, knowing the facts of life, formally agreed to our proposals; but this very act of agreement made them lose domestic support and led to the paradoxical situation that present-day foreign ministers enjoy considerable popularity in every country save their own. The real danger to the American system of alliances may well prove to be not Communism but reverse Titoism--nationalist governments which, to prove their independence of the United States, will lean increasingly on the USSR.

This danger has been magnified by the American view of the Western alliance, as exemplified by Mr. Acheson's article in the "New York Times Magazine." Mr. Acheson's major thesis--that everything which strengthens an alliance is good while its opposite is detrimental--cannot be questioned. But if in practice it leads to a conception of unity as an end in itself, it becomes self-defeating. For if an alliance is equated with the consensus

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of its members, its policy is shaped by its weakest component. And if each
action has to be preceded by the agreement of every single ally, an intolerable
strain will be placed on the domestic support of weak governments. Skilful
Soviet diplomacy has been able to exploit this dilemma; by means of peace
offensives it has paralyzed, or at least delayed, any decisive action even
in areas where there exist a community of interests and the power to make
it effective, as in Europe. And by confining its aggressive moves to areas
of only peripheral interest to our allies, the Sino-Soviet bloc has put a
great strain on allied action. Korea is a case in point: it is safe to say
that the only interest of our European allies in the Korean War was symbolic,
to commit the United States to the principle of collective security. Beyond
that any decisive action was inhibited by the reluctance of our allies to
run the risk of nuclear war in a theatre of only the remotest concern to
them. This is not to say that our allies were "wrong": simply that they
tended to look at the Korean War from a perspective which did not make for
long-range thinking.

Thus, even before the change of administration certain trouble spots
in the position of the free world had become apparent. The psychological
basis for the military effort projected by American policy was slipping away,
as shown by the difficulties already experienced by EDC. In addition, the
insistence on formal unity caused allied relationships to be conducted in a
never-never land of formal agreement and lagging implementation, of mutual
reluctance to antagonize coupled with lawyer-like evasions, and of the
sacrifice of the substance of action to the form of agreement. In the
process the domestic support of all governments in the Western coalition
was being eroded, setting the stage for what has happened in the past two
years, when energy has been increasingly absorbed in an effort to hold
our allies in line.

It is paradoxical that the United States should have been almost con-
stantly on the diplomatic defensive during the past two years, a period of
maximum strain for the USSR, during which it has had to change its leader-
ship, put down satellite revolts, and gear its economy to an increased pro-
duction of consumers' goods. American policy is not alone responsible for
this, but it has contributed through its military policy, its indecisiveness
for the crucial eighteen months after the death of Stalin, as well as through
the general confusion engendered by the plethora of conflicting statements
emanating from Washington.

Any attempt to treat foreign and military policy as separate problems
usually leads to the atrophy of both: the former runs the risk of an over-
concern with finesse, the latter of being reduced to empty posturing. This
has never been more true than at the present, when the available power and
the manner of its employment so largely delimit the available alternatives.
Thus the real difficulty with the "new look" is that it cannot decide whether
it is a strategy for fighting the Cold War or a means of winning a shooting
war. Insofar as the doctrine of "massive retaliation" is based on the con-
viction that in the event of a major war the United States must choose the
theatre of conflict to its own advantage, it is unexceptionable. But if it
is conceived as a means of winning the Cold War without a major conflict,
it runs counter to any coalition policy, because it tends to magnify the

sense of impotence which is already one of the chief banes of America's allies. Since among the nations of the West the United States maintains a near-monopoly of atomic production, since it alone has the capacity to deliver nuclear weapons, our reliance on an all-or-nothing military policy tends to encourage irresponsibility on the part of our allies--domestically by the tying together of anti-Americanism and the quest for peace, and internationally by the advocacy of "peaceful co-existence" even on terms akin to surrender. As long as the United States had a monopoly of nuclear weapons, "instant retaliation" was a workable strategic concept. But in the face of the increasing Soviet atomic capability the chief aim of our allies will always be to avoid, not to win, a nuclear war.

Moreover, as the growing Soviet nuclear arsenal impairs even our willingness to run the risks of a major war, the recent reduction of our conventional military forces places an additional strain on our coalition policy. With nineteen divisions we are clearly in no position to fight local wars, and in any case we have repeatedly announced our reluctance to do so. But one of the chief concerns of the leaders of those parts of Eurasia not yet under Soviet domination has been to avoid the moral and physical ravages of a Soviet occupation. They will not be reassured by the fact that as the consequence of a Soviet move which engulfs them nuclear devastation will be visited on Moscow. For, as has often been pointed out, especially by European leaders, the fate of their countries depends not on the last battle but on the first, and our present strength in conventional forces does not augur well for it. We cannot, in short, proclaim that all-out nuclear war represents the sole deterrent to Soviet aggression without isolating ourselves. If we want to derive political benefits from our nuclear superiority we must emphasize the tactical rather than the strategic aspect of recent technological developments, the aspect, in other words, that can arrest a conventional army on the ground.

That the free world should face this dilemma seems all the more striking if viewed against the background of its missed opportunities during two crucial points of maximum Soviet weakness, the first in 1946 when the USSR was emerging from an unparalleled blood-letting, and the second in 1953 after the death of Stalin. But on both occasions the Soviet Union transformed its weakness into an asset and thus emerged stronger for its difficulties: in 1946 by bluffing a nonexistent strength, in 1953 by means of a peace offensive which bids fair to split the free world. In 1946 America was still too close to the period of friendly wartime relations with Russia to adopt a bold and flexible policy. In any case the opportunities available in that period are irretrievably lost. But we are still suffering from our mistakes of omission in 1953. It can never be proved, of course, that a bolder policy then could have reversed the strategic situation. The advocates of inaction always have the advantage in debate, that the risks of an alternative course of action are certain while its benefits remain conjectural. But if ever there was a moment when it might have been possible to drive a wedge between the USSR and its satellites, or to reduce the Soviet sphere, that time was after the death of Stalin--unless we wish to admit that the United States can under no circumstances affect Soviet measures.

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For the death of Stalin confronted the USSR with all the dilemmas of succession in a dictatorship, in a society that had been living at high tension for a decade and with a government which, during the crucial transition period, was divided within itself. The Politbureau had all it could do to change the leadership, put down internal schisms, defeat satellite revolts, and increase the production of consumers' goods. A determined American diplomatic offensive might well have brought to a head all the disagreements within the Kremlin as to future policy, while providing a basis for exploiting the satellite unrest. Thus a call for a four-power meeting of the Chiefs of State would have confronted Malenkov with the problem whether he dared to leave Russia without Beria, quite apart from the strain put on the Soviet governmental apparatus in preparing for such a conference. And concrete American proposals for German unity would have placed the uprising of June 17 in its proper context.

It should have been the task of the United States to expose Soviet inconsistencies, to prevent the USSR from riding two horses at the same time; the nationalist in its peace offensive aimed at European neutralism, and the ideological in its support of China in Asia. Instead we pursued a policy of half-measures: our tone was sufficiently intransigent to lend color to the Soviet peace offensive, but our actions were not sufficiently so to induce Soviet hesitations. In this manner the USSR obtained the advantages of the advocacy of peaceful coexistence without any of the risks of its accomplishment while achieving its maximum objective: to gain time and to disrupt the United States' system of alliances. When the USSR reemerged on the diplomatic scene, we permitted a European conference, in which we held most of the cards, to be transformed into an Asian one, where we held none, without obtaining a single equivalent--for the sake of insuring the ratification of a defense system whose demise Geneva only accelerated. Indeed, the USSR appears to have been strengthened by the death of Stalin. Its policy is more flexible; even the satellite revolts have proved advantageous for they have led to the identification of some of the anti-Communist underground organizations. And containment denounced only two years ago as unimaginative and limited has in turn come to seem almost unattainable.

The situation then remains serious despite the undoubted improvement of the past six months. Despite SEATO, Southeast Asia is in dire jeopardy and with it the whole power-balance is in danger. A bloc extending from the Elbe to Malaya, if given sufficient time to develop its resources, may soon test the resolution of the Free World to the utmost and will always represent an overpowering threat to the free nations of Eurasia. It is not surprising that at this juncture there should appear proponents of radical solutions who propose to cut the Gordian knot at one blow by a preventive war. But, though this proposal appears in the guise of "hard-boiled realism," it seems better designed for bringing about an atrophy of policy than a resolution of its difficulties. By posing impossible alternatives and by defining them as the only available ones, it assures the continuation of the very course it seems to be attacking.

For the argument for preventive war has about it an air of unreality. It evades the key problem of policy as the art of the possible by assuming that all options are equally open, that there are no limits set by Congress

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or by public opinion to our action. It should be clear, moreover, that our present military policy prevents us from considering preventive war even from the purely military point of view. One simply does not start a global war with nineteen divisions and without allies. In present circumstances, a preventive war would be an act of frivolity whose consequences might well prove more terrible than the conditions it seeks to allay. It would not be an act of policy but of desperation. Instead of assailing each other with self-righteous imprecations, both the opponents as well as the advocates of preventive war might therefore better spend their energy on an attempt to find an intermediary program which avoids the dangers of our present course without exposing us immediately to nuclear war. Those most concerned about our present difficulties should be the most ready to do so. For even a policy of maximum risks would have to move through some intermediary phases to prepare public opinion, to strengthen America's military power, and to rally our allies, if possible. The real questions concerning us in the short term therefore are twofold: the nature of these intermediary steps and the minimum conditions of United States security. Only thus can we determine whether our objectives can be attained by measures less cataclysmic and self-defeating than preventive war.

It should be made clear at the outset that the alternative to preventive war is not peace as such. No idea has been more pernicious than that peace can be aimed at directly, as an end in itself where tensions suddenly disappear and the world will live henceforth with a consciousness of harmony. It is a residue of our age of optimism, which considered war as but a temporary aberration, and confused the security conferred by two great oceans with the normal pattern of international relations. But peace can only be achieved when not aimed at as a direct goal of policy. Whenever objectives are limited in this manner, appeasement is the inevitable consequence. And whenever a statesman thus entrusts the survival of his charge entirely to the continued good will of another sovereign power, he is merely deferring the inevitable showdown. For with the increasing disproportion of strength, self-restraint disappears. A settlement which does not contain a relative balance of forces will therefore prove ephemeral--at least history offers no example to the contrary. But in a world of two super powers such an equilibrium is peculiarly difficult to attain. The classic balance of power implied that no power or combination of powers would be able to defeat its opposite grouping totally. But the fewer the factors to be balanced the greater the penalty for miscalculation and the more inflexible the contending positions. Soviet-American relations would therefore be difficult at best, but they are given a particular urgency by the dynamism of a revolutionary ideology which regards all of the non-Communist world as potential enemies.

What power, then, can be balanced against the Soviet colossus to prevent the neutralization of the United States? All thinking on this topic has to start from the geopolitical fact that in relation to Eurasia the United States is an island power with inferior resources, at present only in manpower but in time even in industrial capacity. Were Eurasia to fall under the control of a single power or group of powers, and were this group given sufficient time to exploit its resources, the United States would be forced

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into a military effort not consistent with what is now considered the "American way of life." And even at that price the existence of the United States confronted by three-quarters of the world's population and not much less of its resources would be precarious. We can, therefore, never permit the resources of Eurasia to be organized by one power, even less by a power avowedly hostile to us. And as an island power our influence should be particularly strong in the peninsulas accessible to sea power: Korea, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, Turkey, Greece, and Western Europe. The basic questions, therefore, become, first, whether Western Europe and the peninsulas of Eurasia can be made secure against the Soviet threat and, second, whether, assuming they can be made secure, their security will prevent the neutralization of the United States.

It is easy to exaggerate the problem, however. It should not be forgotten that the crisis is one not only of power but of will--that the industrial capacity of the free world now and for the foreseeable future far exceeds that of the Soviet bloc. Our strategic problem can therefore be summarized as follows: there is less danger of physical neutralization of the United States than of moral isolation. The free world, even in its present extent, should be able to muster enough resources to contain any Soviet aggression. But our allies' will to use this strength is lacking through a combination of a sense of impotence produced by the memory of foreign occupations and the awareness of the Soviet superiority in conventional weapons. The Soviet possession of nuclear weapons gives the situation a particular urgency, because with both sides possessing ultimate weapons the risk of their use becomes so indeterminate as to be almost prohibitive. If this is true, the Soviet preponderance in conventional weapons and the present extent of the Soviet bloc become sources of constant peril. As long as Soviet armies are poised on the Elbe, Western Europe will remain insecure. As long as China strides unopposed through Asia, the uncommitted powers will seek their safety in neutralism. Thus our strategy should have two goals: in the short term, to prevent a further expansion of the Soviet sphere; in the long term to reduce the Soviet bloc to an extent from which it cannot win an aggressive conventional war while it will be deterred from a nuclear war by American technological superiority.

To this formulation of our long-term strategic goal it may be objected that the reduction of the Soviet sphere to such an extent is tantamount to a neutralization of the USSR and therefore unattainable without a nuclear war; but the reason will not be that a contraction would leave the USSR at our mercy, for the USSR reduced to the boundaries now comprising its metropolitan territories would still be a formidable enemy, even after it lost the capacity to win an aggressive war. The very vastness of its territories would inhibit attack, and its nuclear capacity would still exist for defensive purposes. A Russia incapable of winning an aggressive war but unassailable within its territories would merely have returned to its traditional posture vis-a-vis Europe.

But this has a corollary, if nuclear war is to be avoided. The USSR should not only be reduced to its metropolitan territories, but it should be made to feel secure within them, for otherwise no contraction of its

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sphere without desperate measures is conceivable. To be sure, the USSR is not likely to withdraw voluntarily at any price. Its insecurity derives, after all, from the existence of the United States as a non-Communist power, not from United States policy. Nevertheless, a combination of a more flexible diplomacy and an increase of our military strength would substantially alter the pattern of international relations. At a minimum it would really the free world. At a maximum, it might strengthen the "peace parties" within the Soviet bloc, the groups not willing to risk everything for peripheral objectives. Thus even if a Soviet withdrawal cannot be induced, the Soviet sphere could contract as the consequence of a rift within it. But what diplomacy can harmonize the minimum objective of reducing the Soviet sphere?

The first principle is for us to become aware of the changed nature of the conduct of international relations in an order which contains a revolutionary power. Its distinguishing feature is not that the revolutionary power feels threatened--this is inherent in the nature of international relations based on sovereign states--but that nothing can reassure it. Only absolute security, the neutralization of the opponent, is considered a sufficient guarantee. And absolute security for one power means absolute insecurity for all the others. Diplomacy, the art of restraining the exercise of power, of keeping power potential, cannot function when risks are so fearful. It is therefore misleading to assert that diplomacy can settle international conflicts if there is "good faith" and the "willingness to come to an agreement." It is precisely this "good faith" and this "willingness to come to an agreement" which will seem lacking in a "revolutionary" international order. Diplomats can still meet but they cannot persuade, for they have ceased to speak the same language. Diplomatic conferences become sounding boards, but not for the contending parties. Instead, they represent elaborate stage plays for the benefit of those yet uncommitted to attach themselves to one or the other of the contending parties.

This does not mean that diplomatic conferences have lost their utility, only that their purpose has altered: in a "legitimate" international order, demands once made are negotiable; in a "revolutionary" order they are programmatic. To formulate minimum demands in a stable order is to surrender the advantage of flexibility in negotiation. To present maximum demands to an antagonist who will in any case reject them is to compound the chief difficulty of a revolutionary period: to convince the uncommitted that the revolutionary is, in fact, a revolutionary, that his objectives are unlimited. Precisely because our allies are confronted by the dilemma that their governments know the extent of Soviet power while their public refuses to believe in the reality of this danger, we should not permit the Soviet bloc to legitimize its policy by the most basic fact of political life all over the world: the quest for peace. On the contrary, only by forcing the Soviet bloc to reduce the "peace offensive" to concrete terms can we expose its hollowness; only thus can we rally the free world. We should not be afraid of conferences, above all if we prepare them well; for a conference that fails, far from returning things to the starting point, can be used as a springboard for more decisive action.

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The problem of Germany can serve as an illustration. There is no
doubt that the USSR is eager to prevent German rearmament, although we
should not overlook the possibility that part of its show of concern may
be motivated by an effort to hold its satellites in line and to appeal
to French nationalism. But, in any case, we cannot deal with such steps as the
recent Sovdet overture to Western Germany by simply denouncing its motivation.
To be sure, it represents an attempt to influence the vote in the German
Parliament, as the State Department correctly insisted. But the mere
announcement of that fact does not solve our basic problem in Germany,
that we have not yet found a political framework for our military measures,
above all that we have still no answer to the problem of relationships
with a post-Adenauer government. The defense of the Elbe may be the con-
dition of policy; it is not itself a policy, and all the less so if it
seems to perpetuate the division of Germany. We must not mistake Adenauer's
electoral victory in 1953 as a permanent alignment of forces. It has given
us a breathing spell but it has not minimized the risk of a future Soviet-
German rapprochement. Adenauer himself is a great European; he is surrounded
by the nimbus of a remarkable economic recovery. But his views on German
unity are those of a Rhenish Catholic suspicious of the less civilized East.
It is not that he opposes unification; it is simply that he will not risk
too much for it.

But the United States cannot afford to adopt such a course. It cannot
stake its policy on the life of an eighty-year-old man. And it cannot permit
the USSR to emerge as the chief protagonist of German unity. If we continue
to justify German rearmament by a contribution of twelve divisions to the
defense of the West, we shall be increasingly confronted by the opposition
of nationalists and socialists, and by a clamor for direct negotiations with
Russia. There is, moreover, no reason for us to be afraid of making bold
proposals for German unity. A Soviet withdrawal from East Germany would
mean much more than shifting the Soviet boundary 100 miles to the East. It
would above all involve the sacrifice of a satellite government and thus
serve as a warning to the East-European states that they are expendable.
Precisely because the USSR knows that this would encourage Titoism, we
can afford to bid very much higher for German unity than we have heretofore,
and we must above all refrain from rejecting Soviet proposals with waspish
irritability as delaying our immediate objective of German rearmament. The
granting of sovereignty to West Germany was a useful first step, but it
should have been followed by concrete proposals showing how it might lead
to reunification. And if our rearmament of Germany had been coupled with a
detailed plan for disarmament on the Continent according to a fixed ratio,
say that Germany's army should not exceed that of France and Poland, we
might have assuaged French fears while bringing pressure on the Soviet bloc
in the process. In short, German rearmament is not an end in itself. It
should be presented as an aspect of the quest for German unity and legiti-
mized by a proposal for general disarmament. This is not to say that we
should relax our effort to build defensive barriers; only that these
barriers will be more efficiently built if they are placed in a wider per-
spective. Military strength is essential, but it cannot legitimize itself.
It is incumbent on the United States to find a political framework for its
military goals.

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But this raises another problem, the nature of American leadership. Here, too, we must beware of alternatives which on closer examination appear more wishfully attractive than real. As the strongest power in the world the United States does not have the choice between commitment and isolation, only between leadership and the creation of a vacuum. It is being said that Geneva and the fate of EDC indicate the limits of American leadership, that in fact the illusion of American omnipotence has been more baneful than the recognition of limits. But Geneva and EDC prove merely the limitations of oscillating and formalistic leadership. Geneva reached an impasse because it was badly prepared, because the United States did not get clear about its objectives and in a last-minute frenzy of indecision shifted the responsibility for action to allies hard put to make a decision even in their own primary sphere of interest. And EDC should never have been given such importance in the first place. The United States can go far in setting common objectives; it cannot prescribe all the means to attain them. EDC was one of the policies to achieve German rearmament--which in turn was at this point the only really essential objective for American leadership, and one it bids fair to achieve. And the subsequent course of events has demonstrated that leadership is sometimes all the more effective for taking the form of self-restraint.

It can never be the task of leadership to solicit a consensus, but to create the conditions which will make a consensus possible. A leader, if he performs his true function, must resign himself to being alone part of the time, at least while he charts the road. That there will be disagreements in the allied camp before such actions is much less important than what will occur afterward. Decisive American leadership and unilateral intervention in Indo-China could have demonstrated that the other side does not face nuclear bombing with equanimity either and that the neutralists cannot escape their dilemma by inhibiting American action. And had this unilateral action been accompanied by a political proposal, such as a political trusteeship committee for Indo-China under Asian chairmanship and a guarantee of China's southern boundary, it would have done more to demonstrate our determination and moderation than any number of formalistic declarations. Had this action succeeded without a general war--as it likely--it would have strengthened our system of alliances as much as Geneva moralized it. And had a general war developed after we had given sufficient guarantees of limited objectives, its moral basis would not have been badly prepared. In short, it should be the task of American leadership, unilaterally if necessary, to pose the contingencies which make united action more than a drain on America's freedom of maneuver. By unyielding perseverance under pressure and by moderation where we have the upper hand, we may give courage to our allies and, in the best circumstances, bring about a split in the Soviet bloc.

But if the United States reserves the right to act unilaterally in posing certain contingencies, it must be willing to stand alone for limited periods of time and for specific objectives. We must not insist on perfect unanimity, particularly in areas outside the main sphere of interest of unstable governments. To ask a French ministry that is having trouble playing a European role to make itself responsible for our measures in

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Asia is to hamstring any decisive action and to erode the ministry's domestic support. Indeed, a modicum of dissociation may strengthen the governments domestically and make their support all the more meaningful when offered on essential issues. The United States' interest is not to be found, after all, in the creation of satellite, but of self-reliant governments. And it is in the nature of self-reliant governments that they have their own ideas. Strong, non-Communist governments--even if they disagree at times with the United States--are more useful than vacillating weak ministries and more certain to act decisively on fundamentals. We must therefore stop paying a price for the pretense of united action and concentrate on those areas in which common action is attainable. When it is not attainable, we shall be free to decide whether our own interests or the total strategic position requires unilateral action; and our allies should be similarly free in areas of most concern to them. This is another way of saying that we must learn to use foreign governments, not in terms of what we wish them to be, but in terms of what they are. If India refuses to join in the physical defense of Southeast Asia, we may still use it as a channel to the other nations in that area, even to Red China. If India opposes SEATO, we might yet use India's prestige to legitimize our political goals or to remove the stigma of colonialism, perhaps by inviting it to join a plan for the economic development of Southeast Asia.

Such a course, while rallying the free world, might also be a means to separate the USSR from its satellites. While it is impossible to predict the precise circumstances of such a split, it may be possible to outline the general framework in which it may occur. The USSR may give up its hold on its satellites if it finds that the effort to hold them in line absorbs ever more of its strength. And this effort may become increasingly difficult if the satellites should become convinced not only that they are pawns, but that they are expendable, that to follow the Soviet line may confront them with disaster without an assurance of effective or total Soviet aid. Just as the Western system of alliances has been severely strained by Soviet moves in areas of peripheral interest to our allies, so the United States should attempt to bring about contingencies which accentuate potential differences in interest within the Soviet bloc. It was not easy for Britain to risk nuclear bombing for Northern Indo-China, but it is doubtful whether the USSR would have risked everything for the sake of increasing the power of China, particularly if our intervention has been accompanied by a face-saving formula such as a guarantee of China's southern boundary, perhaps under the supervision of an Asian commission. And how much would China risk to prevent the unification of Germany? We must explode the myth that the Soviet bloc is perfectly flexible, perfectly free in its decisions, and willing to run all risks. To the extent that hésitation appears within the Soviet bloc, the resolution of our allies will improve; and even more is this true should there appear a real fissure.

Thus we are back to our fundamental problem, which concerns the psychological attitude of the United States and its military potential. The program outlined in these pages is not possible without sacrifices, without an awareness by the American people of the critical years ahead. This is a problem of leadership, and in the American system only the President can

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supply it. He must bring the domestic and foreign policies of the United
States into closer alignment; above all he must decide whether a balanced
budget and world-wide commitments are compatible. The country has rarely
been an obstacle to decisive Presidential leadership. Had the President
in the year before Geneva spoken with less equivocation, Nixon's trial
balloon might have suffered a happier fate. And yet nothing will avail,
not even the undoubted improvement in the flexibility of our diplomacy,
unless we increase our military strength. With nineteen divisions we doom
ourselves to ineffectualness except in a general war, which we will become
increasingly reluctant to unleash as the Soviet nuclear capability grows.
It will be therefore imperative to increase our army, our air defense, our
tactical nuclear capacity, and our military expenditures, for the simple
reason that no diplomacy is stronger than the power behind it.

These, then, are the basic principles which might guide American
strategy and the steps which might avert the alternatives of surrender or
total nuclear war, between which alternatives we must hold our course so
far as our human and material resources permit. If however we fail, and
should finally be forced to face the extremity of total war, we could still
hope by the course here suggested to have helped prepare for ourselves
and our allies the strongest basis, both moral and physical, to meet it.

THE
YALE
REVIEW
*A National Quarterly*

SPRING 1955

American Policy and Preventive War . Henry A. Kissinger

The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens . Randall Jarrell

Toward an American Conservatism . Clinton Rossiter

The Arts in Italy: The Burden of the Past Joseph H. Summers

Seamarks . Saint-John Perse

Australia: America's Uneasy Ally . Nathaniel Peffer

The North African in France . David S. McLellan

New Books in Review . Erwin D. Canham, Alfred Harbage, Richard L. Park, Emery Neff, P. M. Pasinetti, Robert Phelps, William H. Jordy, C. M. Bowra, J. P. Cooper, J. P. V. D. Balsdon, Kingsley Davis, Paul Pickrel.

Reader's Guide . Contributors to This Number

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THE
YALE REVIEW

VOL. XLIV • PUBLISHED IN MARCH, 1955 • No. 3

BY HENRY A. KISSINGER

EVERY so often there emerges out of the confusion of day-to-day events a sequence that illuminates the very essence of our international problems. Like a flash of lightning in the dark it reveals its object only briefly. But, however fragmentary the view, it can be disregarded only at our peril.

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In these circumstances it is not surprising that there have emerged advocates of radical solutions, temporarily muted but certain to reëmerge all the more strongly when our difficulties are renewed. Threatened with neutralization or isolation, we are being offered war as a preferable alternative and preventive war as a means of forcing a showdown before the cards become hopelessly stacked against us. But war is too serious a matter to be undertaken in a fit of frustration. And before admitting the bankruptcy of policy it may be wise to analyse the causes of our difficulties, the range of possible alternatives, and the requirements of our security.

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in proportion as our yearning for peace is great. Thus the So-
viet threat has turned into a basic postulate of United States
policy, the final legitimization of our system of alliances.

But however correct this view, it has increasingly come to
miss the point abroad, for a basic fact about the rest of the
world has been the reluctance of the other powers to believe in
unbridgeable schisms. This can be variously explained—by the
fear of nuclear destruction, by the memory of two world wars
followed by occupations—but it is a fact of political life. The
desire for peace is the predominant feature of the domestic
situation in almost all the countries of the world, and any at-
tempt to act counter to it is bound to erode the domestic sup-
port of their governments. The primary American policy
should have been constantly to demonstrate Soviet intransi-
gence and thereby create a climate of opinion for common ac-
tion. Instead, we have assumed that the chief task was to bring
about a certain level of military strength and that this depended
almost entirely on United States policy and United States pres-
sure.

Communist strategy has thus had an unnecessarily easy task.
Since our coalition effort has been justified by a threat which
was not felt as such by the public opinion of our allies, Soviet
"peace offensives" have had fertile ground for cheap victories.
American pressure could be represented to seem almost as
pervasive as that of the USSR, and American intransigence has
become the shibboleth of the very people who would blanch at
the prospect of being left alone in Eurasia with the USSR. Our
strategy has thus put the cart before the horse. It has conceived
its task as primarily technical: to create an adequate defense
force. But in fact the problem has proved to be principally
psychological: to bring about a climate of opinion that would
support such a force. Thus the groundwork for the collapse of
EDC and for the difficulties encountered by German rearma-
ment was laid: the governments of our allies, knowing the facts
of life, formally agreed to our proposals; but this very act of
agreement made them lose domestic support and led to the
paradoxical situation that present-day foreign ministers enjoy

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considerable popularity in every country save their own. The
real danger to the American system of alliances may well prove
to be not Communism but reverse Titoism—nationalist govern-
ments which, to prove their independence of the United States,
will lean increasingly on the USSR.

This danger has been magnified by the American view of
the Western alliance, as exemplified by Mr. Acheson's article
in the "New York Times Magazine." Mr. Acheson's major
thesis—that everything which strengthens an alliance is good
while its opposite is detrimental—cannot be questioned. But if
in practice it leads to a conception of unity as an end in itself,
it becomes self-defeating. For if an alliance is equated with
the consensus of its members, its policy is shaped by its weakest
component. And if each action has to be preceded by the agree-
ment of every single ally, an intolerable strain will be placed
on the domestic support of weak governments. Skilful Soviet
diplomacy has been able to exploit this dilemma: by means of
peace offensives it has paralyzed, or at least delayed, any deci-
sive action even in areas where there exist a community of
interests and the power to make it effective, as in Europe.
And by confining its aggressive moves to areas of only periph-
eral interest to our allies, the Sino-Soviet bloc has put a great
strain on allied action. Korea is a case in point: it is safe to say
that the only interest of our European allies in the Korean War
was symbolic, to commit the United States to the principle of
collective security. Beyond that any decisive action was in-
hibited by the reluctance of our allies to run the risk of nuclear
war in a theatre of only the remotest concern to them. This is
not to say that our allies were "wrong": simply that they tended
to look at the Korean War from a perspective which did not
make for long-range thinking.

Thus, even before the change of administration certain trou-
ble spots in the position of the free world had become apparent.
The psychological basis for the military effort projected by
American policy was slipping away, as shown by the difficulties
already experienced by EDC. In addition, the insistence on

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It is paradoxical that the United States should have been almost constantly on the diplomatic defensive during the past two years, a period of maximum strain for the USSR, during which it has had to change its leadership, put down satellite revolts, and gear its economy to an increased production of consumers' goods. American policy is not alone responsible for this, but it has contributed through its military policy, its decisiveness for the crucial eighteen months after the death of Stalin, as well as through the general confusion engendered by the plethora of conflicting statements emanating from Washington.

Any attempt to treat foreign and military policy as separate problems usually leads to the atrophy of both: the former runs the risk of an overconcern with finesse, the latter of being reduced to empty posturing. This has never been more true than at the present, when the available power and the manner of its employment so largely delimit the available alternatives. Thus the real difficulty with the "new look" is that it cannot decide whether it is a strategy for fighting the Cold War or a means of winning a shooting war. Insofar as the doctrine of "massive retaliation" is based on the conviction that in the event of a major war the United States must choose the theatre of conflict to its own advantage, it is unexceptionable. But if it is conceived as a means of winning the Cold War *without* a major conflict, it runs counter to any coalition policy, because it tends to magnify the sense of impotence which is already one of the

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chief banes of America's allies. Since among the nations of the West the United States maintains a near-monopoly of atomic production, since it alone has the capacity to deliver nuclear weapons, our reliance on an all-or-nothing military policy tends to encourage irresponsibility on the part of our allies—domestically by the tying together of anti-Americanism and the quest for peace, and internationally by the advocacy of “peaceful coexistence” even on terms akin to surrender. As long as the United States had a monopoly of nuclear weapons, “instant retaliation” was a workable strategic concept. But in the face of the increasing Soviet atomic capability the chief aim of our allies will always be to avoid, not to win, a nuclear war.

Moreover, as the growing Soviet nuclear arsenal impairs even *our* willingness to run the risks of a major war, the recent reduction of our conventional military forces places an additional strain on our coalition policy. With nineteen divisions we are clearly in no position to fight local wars, and in any case we have repeatedly announced our reluctance to do so. But one of the chief concerns of the leaders of those parts of Eurasia not yet under Soviet domination has been to avoid the moral and physical ravages of a Soviet occupation. They will not be re-assured by the fact that as the consequence of a Soviet move which engulfs them nuclear devastation will be visited on Moscow. For, as has often been pointed out, especially by European leaders, the fate of their countries depends not on the last battle but on the first, and our present strength in conventional forces does not augur well for it. We cannot, in short, proclaim that all-out nuclear war represents the *sole* deterrent to Soviet aggression without isolating ourselves. If we want to derive political benefits from our nuclear superiority we must emphasize the tactical rather than the strategic aspect of recent technological developments, the aspect, in other words, that can arrest a conventional army on the ground.

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weakness, the first in 1946 when the USSR was emerging from an unparalleled blood-letting, and the second in 1953 after the death of Stalin. But on both occasions the Soviet Union transformed its weakness into an asset and thus emerged stronger for its difficulties: in 1946 by bluffing a nonexistent strength, in 1953 by means of a peace offensive which bids fair to split the free world. In 1946 America was still too close to the period of friendly wartime relations with Russia to adopt a bold and flexible policy. In any case the opportunities available in that period are irretrievably lost. But we are still suffering from our mistakes of omission in 1953. It can never be proved, of course, that a bolder policy then could have reversed the strategic situation. The advocates of inaction always have the advantage in debate, that the risks of an alternative course of action are certain while its benefits remain conjectural. But if ever there was a moment when it might have been possible to drive a wedge between the USSR and its satellites, or to reduce the Soviet sphere, that time was after the death of Stalin—unless we wish to admit that the United States can under no circumstances affect Soviet measures.

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It should have been the task of the United States to expose Soviet inconsistencies, to prevent the USSR from riding two horses at the same time; the nationalist in its peace offensive aimed at European neutralism, and the ideological in its support of China in Asia. Instead we pursued a policy of half-measures: our tone was sufficiently intransigent to lend color to the Soviet peace offensive, but our actions were not sufficiently so to induce Soviet hesitations. In this manner the USSR obtained the advantages of the advocacy of peaceful coexistence without any of the risks of its accomplishment while achieving its maximum objective: to gain time and to disrupt the United States' system of alliances. When the USSR reëmerged on the diplomatic scene, we permitted a European conference, in which we held most of the cards, to be transformed into an Asian one, where we held none, without obtaining a single equivalent—for the sake of insuring the ratification of a defense system whose demise Geneva only accelerated. Indeed, the USSR appears to have been strengthened by the death of Stalin. Its policy is more flexible; even the satellite revolts have proved advantageous for they have led to the identification of some of the anti-Communist underground organizations. And containment denounced only two years ago as unimaginative and limited has in turn come to seem almost unattainable.

The situation then remains serious despite the undoubtedly improvement of the past six months. Despite SEATO, Southeast Asia is in dire jeopardy and with it the whole power-balance is in danger. A bloc extending from the Elbe to Malaya, if given sufficient time to develop its resources, may soon test the resolution of the Free World to the utmost and will always represent an overpowering threat to the free nations of Eurasia. It is not surprising that at this juncture there should appear proponents of radical solutions who propose to cut the Gordian knot at one blow by a preventive war. But, though this proposal appears in the guise of "hard-boiled realism," it seems better

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For the argument for preventive war has about it an air of unreality. It evades the key problem of policy as the art of the possible by assuming that all options are equally open, that there are no limits set by Congress or by public opinion to our action. It should be clear, moreover, that our present military policy prevents us from considering preventive war even from the purely military point of view. One simply does not start a global war with nineteen divisions and without allies. In present circumstances, a preventive war would be an act of frivolity whose consequences might well prove more terrible than the conditions it seeks to allay. *It would not be an act of policy but of desperation.* Instead of assailing each other with self-righteous imprecations, both the opponents as well as the advocates of preventive war might therefore better spend their energy on an attempt to find an intermediary program which avoids the dangers of our present course without exposing us immediately to nuclear war. Those most concerned about our present difficulties should be the most ready to do so. For even a policy of maximum risks would have to move through some intermediary phases to prepare public opinion, to strengthen America's military power, and to rally our allies, if possible. The real questions concerning us in the short term therefore are twofold: the nature of these intermediary steps and the minimum conditions of United States security. Only thus can we determine whether our objectives can be attained by measures less cataclysmic and self-defeating than preventive war.

It should be made clear at the outset that the alternative to preventive war is not *peace as such*. No idea has been more pernicious than that peace can be aimed at directly, as an end in itself where tensions suddenly disappear and the world will live henceforth with a consciousness of harmony. It is a residue of our age of optimism, which considered war as but a tempo-

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rary aberration, and confused the security conferred by two
great oceans with the normal pattern of international relations.
But peace can only be achieved when not aimed at as a direct
goal of policy. Whenever peace—considered as the avoidance
of war—becomes the only objective of a power or group of
powers, the international system is at the mercy of its most
ruthless member. Whenever objectives are limited in this man-
ner, appeasement is the inevitable consequence. And whenever
a statesman thus entrusts the survival of his charge entirely to
the continued good will of another sovereign power, he is
merely deferring the inevitable showdown. For with the in-
creasing disproportion of strength, self-restraint disappears. A
settlement which does not contain a relative balance of forces
will therefore prove ephemeral—at least history offers no ex-
ample to the contrary. But in a world of two super-powers such
an equilibrium is peculiarly difficult to attain. The classic bal-
ance of power implied that no power or combination of powers
would be able to defeat its opposite grouping totally. But the
fewer the factors to be balanced the greater the penalty for
miscalculation and the more inflexible the contending posi-
tions. Soviet-American relations would therefore be difficult
at best, but they are given a particular urgency by the dyna-
mism of a revolutionary ideology which regards all of the non-
Communist world as potential enemies.

What power, then, can be balanced against the Soviet colos-
sus to prevent the neutralization of the United States? All
thinking on this topic has to start from the geopolitical fact
that in relation to Eurasia the United States is an island power
with inferior resources, at present only in manpower but in
time even in industrial capacity. Were Eurasia to fall under
the control of a single power or group of powers, and were this
group given sufficient time to exploit its resources, the United
States would be forced into a military effort not consistent with
what is now considered the "American way of life." And even
at that price the existence of the United States confronted by
three-quarters of the world's population and not much less of
its resources would be precarious. We can, therefore, never

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It is easy to exaggerate the problem, however. It should not be forgotten that the crisis is one not only of power but of will —that the industrial capacity of the free world now and for the foreseeable future far exceeds that of the Soviet bloc. Our strategic problem can therefore be summarized as follows: there is less danger of physical neutralization of the United States than of moral isolation. The free world, even in its present extent, should be able to muster enough resources to contain any Soviet aggression. But our allies' will to use this strength is lacking through a combination of a sense of impotence produced by the memory of foreign occupations and the awareness of the Soviet superiority in conventional weapons. The Soviet possession of nuclear weapons gives the situation a particular urgency, because with both sides possessing ultimate weapons the risk of their use becomes so indeterminate as to be almost prohibitive. If this is true, the Soviet preponderance in conventional weapons and the present extent of the Soviet bloc become sources of constant peril. As long as Soviet armies are poised on the Elbe, Western Europe will remain insecure. As long as China strides unopposed through Asia, the uncommitted powers will seek their safety in neutralism. Thus our strategy should have two goals: *in the short term*, to prevent a further expansion of the Soviet sphere; in the long term to reduce the Soviet bloc to an extent from which it cannot win an aggressive conventional war while it will be deterred from a nuclear war by American technological superiority.

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objected that the reduction of the Soviet sphere to such an extent is tantamount to a neutralization of the USSR and therefore unattainable without a nuclear war. It may be that the reduction is not possible without a nuclear war; but the reason will not be that a contraction would leave the USSR at our mercy, for the USSR reduced to the boundaries now comprising its metropolitan territories would still be a formidable enemy, even after it lost the capacity to win an aggressive war. The very vastness of its territories would inhibit attack, and its nuclear capacity would still exist for defensive purposes. A Russia incapable of winning an aggressive war but unassailable within its territories would merely have returned to its traditional posture vis-à-vis Europe.

But this has a corollary, if nuclear war is to be avoided. The USSR should not only be reduced to its metropolitan territories, but it should be made to feel secure within them, for otherwise no contraction of its sphere without desperate measures is conceivable. To be sure, the USSR is not likely to withdraw voluntarily at any price. Its insecurity derives, after all, from the existence of the United States as a non-Communist power, not from United States policy. Nevertheless, a combination of a more flexible diplomacy and an increase of our military strength would substantially alter the pattern of international relations. At a minimum it would rally the free world. At a maximum, it might strengthen the "peace parties" within the Soviet bloc, the groups not willing to risk everything for peripheral objectives. Thus even if a Soviet withdrawal cannot be induced, the Soviet sphere could contract as the consequence of a rift within it. But what diplomacy can harmonize the minimum objective of rallying the free world with the maximum objective of reducing the Soviet sphere?

The first principle is for us to become aware of the changed nature of the conduct of international relations in an order which contains a revolutionary power. Its distinguishing feature is not that the revolutionary power feels threatened—this is inherent in the nature of international relations based on

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sovereign states—but that nothing can reassure it. Only absolute security, the neutralization of the opponent, is considered a sufficient guarantee. And absolute security for one power means absolute insecurity for all the others. Diplomacy, the art of restraining the exercise of power, of keeping power potential, cannot function when risks are so fearful. It is therefore misleading to assert that diplomacy can settle international conflicts if there is "good faith" and the "willingness to come to an agreement." It is precisely this "good faith" and this "willingness to come to an agreement" which will seem lacking in a "revolutionary" international order. Diplomats can still meet but they cannot persuade, for they have ceased to speak the same language. Diplomatic conferences become sounding boards, but not for the contending parties. Instead, they represent elaborate stage plays for the benefit of those yet uncommitted to attach themselves to one or the other of the contending parties.

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The problem of Germany can serve as an illustration. There
is no doubt that the USSR is eager to prevent German rearma-
ment, although we should not overlook the possibility that part
of its show of concern may be motivated by an effort to hold
its satellites in line and to appeal to French nationalism. But
in any case, we cannot deal with such steps as the recent Soviet
overture to Western Germany by simply denouncing its moti-
vation. To be sure, it represented an attempt to influence the
vote in the German Parliament, as the State Department cor-
rectly insisted. But the mere announcement of that fact does
not solve our basic problem in Germany, that we have not yet
found a political framework for our military measures, above
all that we have still no answer to the problem of relationships
with a post-Adenauer government. The defense of the Elbe
may be the condition of policy; it is not itself a policy, and all
the less so if it seems to perpetuate the division of Germany.
We must not mistake Adenauer's electoral victory in 1953 as
a permanent alignment of forces. It has given us a breathing
spell but it has not minimized the risk of a future Soviet-Ger-
man rapprochement. Adenauer himself is a great European; he
is surrounded by the nimbus of a remarkable economic recov-
ery. But his views on German unity are those of a Rhenish
Catholic suspicious of the less civilized East. It is not that he
opposes unification; it is simply that he will not risk too much
for it.

But the United States cannot afford to adopt such a course.
It cannot stake its policy on the life of an eighty-year-old man.
And it cannot permit the USSR to emerge as the chief protag-
onist of German unity. If we continue to justify German re-
armament by a contribution of twelve divisions to the defense
of the West, we shall be increasingly confronted by the opposi-
tion of nationalists and socialists, and by a clamor for direct
negotiations with Russia. There is, moreover, no reason for us

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to be afraid of making bold proposals for German unity. A
Soviet withdrawal from East Germany would mean much
more than shifting the Soviet boundary 100 miles to the East.
It would above all involve the sacrifice of a satellite govern-
ment and thus serve as a warning to the East European states
that they are expendable. Precisely because the USSR knows
that this would encourage Titoism, we can afford to bid very
much higher for German unity than we have heretofore, and
we must above all refrain from rejecting Soviet proposals with
waspish irritability as delaying our immediate objective of
German rearmament. The granting of sovereignty to West
Germany was a useful first step, but it should have been fol-
lowed by concrete proposals showing how it might lead to re-
unification. And if our rearmament of Germany had been
coupled with a detailed plan for disarmament on the Continent
according to a fixed ratio, say that Germany's army should not
exceed that of France and Poland, we might have assuaged
French fears while bringing pressure on the Soviet bloc in the
process. In short, German rearmament is not an end in itself.
It should be presented as an aspect of the quest for German
unity and legitimized by a proposal for general disarmament.
This is not to say that we should relax our effort to build de-
fensive barriers; only that these barriers will be more efficiently
built if they are placed in a wider perspective. Military
strength is essential, but it cannot legitimize itself. It is in-
cumbent on the United States to find a political framework for
its military goals.

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omnipotence has been more baneful than the recognition of
limits. But Geneva and EDC prove merely the limitations of
oscillating and formalistic leadership. Geneva reached an im-
passe because it was badly prepared, because the United States
did not get clear about its objectives and in a last-minute frenzy
of indecision shifted the responsibility for action to allies hard
put to make a decision even in their own primary sphere of in-
terest. And EDC should never have been given such impor-
tance in the first place. The United States can go far in setting
common objectives; it cannot prescribe all the means to attain
them. EDC was *one* of the policies to achieve German rearma-
ment—which in turn was at this point the only really essential
objective for American leadership, and one it bids fair to
achieve. And the subsequent course of events has demonstrated
that leadership is sometimes all the more effective for taking
the form of self-restraint.

It can never be the task of leadership to solicit a consensus,
but to create the conditions which will make a consensus possi-
ble. A leader, if he performs his true function, must resign
himself to being alone part of the time, at least while he charts
the road. That there will be disagreements in the allied camp
*before* such actions is much less important than what will occur
*afterward*. Decisive American leadership and unilateral inter-
vention in Indo-China could have demonstrated that the other
side does not face nuclear bombing with equanimity either and
that the neutralists cannot escape their dilemma by inhibiting
American action. And had this unilateral action been accom-
panied by a political proposal, such as a political trusteeship
committee for Indo-China under Asian chairmanship and a
guarantee of China's southern boundary, it would have done
more to demonstrate our determination and moderation than
any number of formalistic declarations. Had this action suc-
ceeded without a general war—as is likely—it would have
strengthened our system of alliances as much as Geneva de-
moralized it. And had a general war developed after we had
given sufficient guarantees of limited objectives, its moral basis

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But if the United States reserves the right to act unilaterally in posing certain contingencies, it must be willing to stand alone for limited periods of time and for specific objectives. We must not insist on perfect unanimity, particularly in areas outside the main sphere of interest of unstable governments. To ask a French ministry that is having trouble playing a European role to make itself responsible for our measures in Asia is to hamstring any decisive action and to erode the ministry's domestic support. Indeed, a modicum of dissociation may strengthen the governments domestically and make their support all the more meaningful when offered on essential issues. The United States' interest is not to be found, after all, in the creation of satellite, but of self-reliant governments. And it is in the nature of self-reliant governments that they have their own ideas. Strong, non-Communist governments—even if they disagree at times with the United States—are more useful than vacillating weak ministries and more certain to act decisively on fundamentals. We must therefore stop paying a price for the pretense of united action and concentrate on those areas in which common action is attainable. When it is not attainable, we shall be free to decide whether our own interests or the total strategic position requires unilateral action; and our allies should be similarly free in areas of most concern to them. This is another way of saying that we must learn to use foreign governments, not in terms of what we wish them to be, but in terms of what they are. If India refuses to join in the physical defense of Southeast Asia, we may still use it as a channel to the other nations in that area, even to Red China. If India opposes SEATO, we might yet use India's prestige to legitimize our

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Such a course, while rallying the free world, might also be a means to separate the USSR from its satellites. While it is impossible to predict the precise circumstances of such a split, it may be possible to outline the general framework in which it may occur. The USSR may give up its hold on its satellites if it finds that the effort to hold them in line absorbs ever more of its strength. And this effort may become increasingly difficult if the satellites should become convinced not only that they are pawns, but that they are expendable, that to follow the Soviet line may confront them with disaster without an assurance of effective or total Soviet aid. Just as the Western system of alliances has been severely strained by Soviet moves in areas of peripheral interest to our allies, so the United States should attempt to bring about contingencies which accentuate potential differences in interest within the Soviet bloc. It was not easy for Britain to risk nuclear bombing for Northern Indo-China, but it is doubtful whether the USSR would have risked everything for the sake of increasing the power of China, particularly if our intervention had been accompanied by a face-saving formula such as a guarantee of China's southern boundary, perhaps under the supervision of an Asian commission. And how much would China risk to prevent the unification of Germany? We must explode the myth that the Soviet bloc is perfectly flexible, perfectly free in its decisions, and willing to run all risks. To the extent that hesitation appears within the Soviet bloc, the resolution of our allies will improve; and even more is this true should there appear a real fissure.

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supply it. He must bring the domestic and foreign policies of the United States into closer alignment; above all he must decide whether a balanced budget and world-wide commitments are compatible. The country has rarely been an obstacle to decisive Presidential leadership. Had the President in the year before Geneva spoken with less equivocation, Nixon's trial balloon might have suffered a happier fate. And yet nothing will avail, not even the undoubted improvement in the flexibility of our diplomacy, unless we increase our military strength. With nineteen divisions we doom ourselves to ineffectualness except in a general war, which we will become increasingly reluctant to unleash as the Soviet nuclear capability grows. It will be therefore imperative to increase our army, our air defense, our *tactical* nuclear capacity, and our military expenditures, for the simple reason that no diplomacy is stronger than the power behind it.

These, then, are the basic principles which might guide American strategy and the steps which might avert the alternative of surrender or total nuclear war, between which alternatives we must hold our course so far as our human and material resources permit. If however we fail, and should finally be forced to face the extremity of total war, we could still hope by the course here suggested to have helped prepare for ourselves and our allies the strongest basis, both moral and physical, to meet it.

# THE COLLECTED POEMS OF WALLACE STEVENS

BY RANDALL JARRELL

BACK in the stacks, in libraries; in bookcases in people's living rooms; on brick-and-plank bookshelves beside studio-couches, one sees big books in dark bindings, the "Collected Poems" of the great poets. Once, long ago, the poems were new: the book went by post—so many horses and a coach—to a man in a country house, and the letter along with it asked him to describe, evaluate, and fix the place in English literature, in 12,000 words, by January 25th, of the poems of William Wordsworth. And the man did.

It is hard to remember that this is the way it was; harder to remember that this is the way it is. The "Collected Poems" still go out—in this century there have been Hardy's and Yeats' and Frost's and Eliot's and Moore's, and now Stevens'—and the man who is sent them still treats them with rough, or rude, or wild justice; still puts them in their place, appreciates their virtues, says *Just here thou ail'st*, says *Nothing I can say will possibly ...* and mails the essay off.

It all seems terribly queer, terribly risky; surely, by now, people could have thought of some better way? Yet is it as different as we think from what we do to the old "Poems" in the dark bindings, the poems with the dust on them? Those ruins we star, confident that we are young and they, they are old—they too are animals no one has succeeded in naming, young things nothing has succeeded in aging; beings to which we can say, as the man in Kafka's story says to the corpse: "What's the good of the dumb question you are asking?" They keep on asking it; and it is only our confidence and our innocence that let us believe that describing and evaluating them, fixing their places—in however many words, by whatever date —is any less queer, any less risky.