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The ancient Greeks loved words, and one of their best was "oxymoron," a contradiction in terms, like a hot ice cube or a tiny giant.

At times, it seems that my subject today, "business ethics," qualifies perfectly. This year's headline stories about the atmosphere of corruption that prevailed at General Dynamics, the nation's third largest defense contractor, recall the bribery stories of Lockheed in the 1970's, the General Electric scandals of the decade before, and so on.

And in the general society, the municipal corruption that seems so widespread; shabby influence-peddling even at the level of the White House staff; insider trading taken matter-of-factly on Wall Street; the casual indifference with which the country's largest and most respected banks laundered huge amounts of what was obviously criminal cash — all of these (and the other scandals that will undoubtedly be revealed in next week's or next month's headlines) pose fearful problems for those leaving the university and entering the business world.

The public today seems to believe that throughout the business world sharp practice is admired, duplicity and deliberate misrepresentation are the norm, and the

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only crime involved in outright fraud consists in getting caught. The average businessman is seen as echoing Mark Twain's view that while he believed in honesty, he didn't "make a fetish of it."

Worst of all is a widely-held perception that such a standard is expected of you, and that you cannot succeed in business without it. Perhaps even your own family and friends are nervously wondering if, for business success, you must make some Faust-like pact with Mephistopheles.

Relax; your souls are safe.

That is, they are safe if you want them to be. For that is what history tells us.

Morality and worldly success are not now, and never have been, necessarily incompatible. And just as every society contains some people with larceny in their hearts, so every society known to man has had people who conducted themselves honorably, and who led satisfying and fulfilling lives in the process.

Sir Thomas More, a moral giant and the author of "Utopia," was the most successful private lawyer of his day. Cicero, the moral voice of republican Rome, was also the most successful (and perhaps the richest) lawyer of his time. Michel de Montaigne, the great essayist and a man who could be called "wisdom personified," was also a successful vineyard owner and wine merchant, mayor of Bordeaux, and an effective diplomat. And of Benjamin Franklin, it could be said that while "Richard" may have been "Poor," Ben himself was not.

Ours is clearly what R. H. Tawney called "The Acquisitive Society," run to a great degree by the profit

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motive, resulting in what has been called a "money
culture" or a "business civilization."

So be it. If we do not have the moral atmosphere of a
medieval monastery or of King Arthur's Round Table,
they did not have antibiotic medicines, symphonic
recordings or fresh raspberries in December — all the
result of someone's desire to make a dollar.

Some people mistakenly believe that economic
transactions are "zero sum games," in which a gain for
one must mean a loss for another. They gag over the
bewildering paradox that blatant private self-interest
can work for the public benefit, and that unlovely
people with unlovely motives can actually advance the
goals of society; but that's the way the world works
now.

Someday it may be otherwise; and in an imaginative
essay entitled "Economic Prospects for Our
Grandchildren," John Maynard Keynes forecasts a
society of such prodigious abundance that misers,
workaholics and ambitious "Type A" personalities will
be put in mental hospitals.

In the meantime, the workaholic is a hero of sorts,
and society's problem is how to channel his energies,
talents and resources productively, while making sure
that the Devil does not take the hindmost.

We in the real estate world can take satisfaction in
being in the "productive" rather than the "predatory"
part of the business economy, creating wealth rather
than merely transferring it. Junk bonds, leveraged buy-
outs, mergers and acquisitions — none of those add to
the true wealth of the society but building housing,
offices, hotels and so forth really does.

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Another point about real estate development we tend to gloss over is that it really is a lot of fun. For all I know, commodity speculators, insurance actuaries, perhaps even undertakers, enjoy their work and look forward to getting to the job, or the morgue, each morning. I know developers do.

Even the richest and most successful men in our field tend to work almost indefinitely; to such exuberant types, profit is a way of "keeping score" in a game they play for sheer delight.

"Understated good taste" and "becoming modesty" may be in short supply in our field, but there is certainly no lack of energy, imagination or the willingness to take risk; and a typical developer pursues his goals with the intensity of a salmon swimming upstream to spawn.

But to return to my theme. A business civilization it is, indeed; and your professors hope that Adam Smith's "invisible hand" will guide you into unwitting pursuit of the public good while making large sums of money (some of which, I may add, they probably hope you will contribute to the M.I.T. Alumni Fund).

But in the process of making that money, you do not have to forego the normal standards of civilized people.

In the business world, as in life generally, there are temptations, pressures, morally "gray" areas. In many fields, what is technically "legal" may not be truly ethical. The used car dealer who, with a straight face, swears that the car was driven "only by a little old lady to and from church," is following accepted practice, as is the renting agent who uses "luxury" to describe any housing unit with electricity and running water. The

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international oil man dealing with middle eastern potentates convinces himself that there is indeed a difference between a "bribe" and a "shakedown," just as the publisher who bemoans the use of narcotics happily prints all the cigarette advertising he can get; and in virtually all fields, political contributions will pose a very real problem to anyone dealing with government as long as politicians have to finance expensive television campaigns by gifts from constituents.

But one always has choices, exercises judgment, makes personal decisions.

Speaking as one rational person to other rational people, I maintain that not only is it possible to function effectively in the business world today as a moral individual, but that such conduct leads to a more satisfying and fulfilling career.

On an occasion like this it is appropriate to spell out the real-world ground rules by which civilized people have always functioned, and to shout from the rooftops that: a) morality is a personal matter for each individual to wrestle with, and that you are morally responsible for your own actions; b) that morality is demonstrated not by what you believe or say, but by what you do; and c) that morality is not a question of theoretical dilemmas; it consists of attitudes, habits and outlooks that are developed over a lifetime by the influence of parents, teachers and religious leaders, and that are reflected in everything one values, one respects and one does.

It would be naive to close one's eyes to the moral climate in which we live. At the highest levels of government, industry and the professions, the examples

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we all can recite are heartbreaking. "Abscam" only confirmed what many already felt about elected officials. Leading accounting firms are seen as mere bookkeepers for amoral clients. Top lawyers are regarded as little more than "hired guns" able to confuse or "guide" juries and tie in knots less-skilled public prosecutors.

Even those trusting souls with faith in our court system are sorely troubled by some well-publicized recent jury verdicts, one, for example, letting scot-free a former automobile manufacturer in spite of motion pictures clearly showing his cocaine sales. It calls to mind the story of the sanctimonious attorney who cabled news of a successful verdict to his mobster client with the message, "Justice has triumphed," and the client cabled back, "Appeal at once."

How, in such a society, does a rational person justify moral conduct?

The answer, I believe, is to try to understand that society and one's own place in it.

At the moment, our society is driven by a mad desire for "success," with such success measured almost exclusively in dollar terms. All other values seem to be subordinate, and our present moral climate is a result. Physicists describe the relationship of oxygen to a fire as "necessary but not sufficient." You cannot have a fire without oxygen, but oxygen alone is not enough. For success in the business world today a certain degree of economic achievement is also "necessary but not sufficient." In such a case, the dollar becomes *one* — but surely not the *only* — measure of success.

That is what the wisest men have *always* said. Self

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respect; pride in a job well done; the satisfaction of
productive contribution; the legitimate esteem of those
you respect — those values and others like them play a
part in the moral landscape of those we most admire
and should wish to emulate. To such people, integrity,
loyalty, responsibility, sincerity and what modern
philosophers call "authenticity" are not meaningless or
hypocritical terms. They can be watchwords to live by,
especially for people who want to be able to look at
themselves in the mirror each morning with a clear
conscience.

The goal, then, is clear; the problem is how to
achieve it.

Back in the days when a title of nobility presumably
also meant that one followed a noble code, two
interesting concepts were taught the young: "noblesse
oblige" and "obedience to the unenforceable." The first
meant that since you had greater advantages, more was
expected of you; the second, that there were some
things in life that were "done" and others that just were
"not done." In such a context, "rights" implied "duties,"
"privileges" implied "responsibilities."

By and large, these concepts are reasonable guides
for today, although we might add the wisdom of the
Lord's Prayer, which says, not "Let me be good" but
rather, "Lead me not into temptation."

In more specific terms, as the basis for a practical
code for here and now, let me propose a modern
decalogue for the real estate field today.

I Think "profession" rather than "trade"

A trade is an activity carried on to make money,

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period. A profession has overtones of a formal body of
knowledge, standards, a code of ethics, and a sense of
responsibility to the general public and to one's
professional colleagues, as well as to one's own
pocketbook. The Roman writer, Tertullian, could have
been referring to the world of real estate when he wrote
that, "Any calling is noble if nobly pursued."

## II Master your field

Easier said than done, of course. Solid professional
skills, appropriate knowledge, and relevant experience
should be your goals as you seek to acquire true
expertise. Remember Nicolo Machiavelli's single
religious insight that, in the short run at least, the armed
Biblical prophets triumphed, whereas the unarmed
prophets failed. In a similar vein, an old Russian saying
has it that, "A fine character is of no help in a chess
game." In short, have a fine character _and_ learn to play
chess well, too!

## III Choose your battleground carefully

Where the deck is stacked against you or where
your opponents are playing with marked cards, do not
try to compete. If what William Safire calls
"corruppies" are ready to use bribery or outright
chicanery, for example making agreements they try to
renegotiate more favorably as soon as the contract is
signed, you should realize that there are some games in
which you do not choose to play, since you know at the
outset that you cannot win.

If everything you do can be written up
without embarrassment on the front page of the New

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York Times, you may lose some opportunities, but you will have peace of mind and are apt to gain other opportunities as well.

There are clients or partners who understand that your refusal to steal for them is the best guarantee that you will not steal from them, either.

## IV Think "relationships" rather than "deals"

Try to have each transaction you complete be your recommendation for the next. Continuity builds reputation, and reputation, for better or worse, becomes part of what you bring to the table. Presumably, in a next go-around, even the Trojans would not have accepted the gift of, say, a large Wooden Cow.

Our field has its share of P.T. Barnums and hokum experts, but there are also role models who built careers on doing their best to "give fair value." They are *trusted* because they have proved that they are *trustworthy*.

## V Be accurate and complete in agreements

Thieves will try to wriggle out even of ironclad agreements, and honorable people will abide by handshakes. But everyone loses when painful but legitimate differences arise through sloppy or incomplete documentation of original understandings. Robert Frost observed that, "Good fences make good neighbors;" a commercial equivalent might be, "Well drawn agreements help make good relationships."

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## VI Do not try to win the "battle of the headlines"

To a degree that would surprise the public, the business press largely reflects flackery and blatant public relations puffery. Ben Sonnenberg, the PR master, once defined his role as "putting very large pedestals under very little men." A somewhat different point of view was that of Cato in ancient Rome who, in rejecting a proposed statue of himself in the Forum, said that he would rather people asked why there was **not** a statue of him than why there **was**.

It is a fact of life that the American public refuses to differentiate among "fame," "notoriety" and "celebrity." Albert Einstein, for example, is famous; Al Capone is notorious; and Zsa Zsa Gabor is celebrated.

It is an interesting sign of our times that the Watergate crew are delighted at their present "name recognition," that the so-called "Mayflower Madam" claims that American Express wants her to do a promotional ad, and that the deliberate, illegal demolition of a building at midnight in Times Square has proved absolutely no social or professional handicap for those involved.

For some reason that is not entirely clear, the real estate development field seems to attract many flamboyant megalomaniacs.

There's nothing really wrong with that, I suppose — just a question of taste — but newcomers to the field should not feel that wide "name recognition" is a mandatory part of development life.

To be "well known" and perhaps feared seems to be the aim of the most prominent people of our period.

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Others seek "respect." But for some, "honor," a term
that sounds quaint to 20th century ears, can still be
a living concept to be pursued; and to live so that you
reflect well on yourself, your family, your schools and
your career field is not an unrealistic goal.

## VII Put money in proper perspective

At this stage in your lives, determining your
personal goals and values is an important challenge.
Wise people try to think them through carefully, and
only a fool would put costs and benefits in purely
monetary terms. It might be a worthwhile exercise for
each of us to define for himself the word "greed."

It was right here in Cambridge that Oliver Wendell
Holmes observed that, "The reward for the successful
general is not a bigger tent but a more challenging
command."

Whether you pursue a career in the private sector or
the public, whether on your own or in a large
organization, conduct yourself well and good things are
likely to follow.

## VIII Don't be stampeded

Peer pressure; the plea that "it's for the company;"
the promise that "no one will ever know;" the excuse, as
expressed by one prominent real estate man on the front
page of the New York Times, that "The world is a
jungle, and you gotta get them first" — be prepared to
hear all of these again and again through the years. You
will be tempted by them. Yeats was thinking of real life
situations when he wrote that, "The best lack all
conviction and the worst are full of passionate

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intensity," and that can apply to *your* colleagues, too.
There are times in life when one must just say "no."

## IX Include a "Pro Bono Publico" Component in Your Life

Whether through charitable work as a volunteer, teaching or writing in your career field, mastering some outside activity as a hobby, or perhaps working politically for some cause you believe in — devoting time and effort to some activity other than your own pocketbook will add a dimension to your life and give it a resonance that the wisest individuals have always sought.

Robber baron types who gave shiny new dimes to street urchins sought the *appearance* of public spiritedness; those who strove for the *reality* were fuller human beings who led more admirable and satisfying lives.

In perhaps the saddest lines in all American literature, Robert Frost wrote of a man who lived with "nothing to look back on with pride, nothing to look forward to with hope." Thoughtful people try to live otherwise.

Well, I have rambled on; but before I get to my last bit of advice, let me point out that it could have been worse.

At a Yale commencement once, a minister gave a lengthy moral sermon, taking for his theme Y for "youth," A for "age," L for "life" and E for "eternity." When he finally finished, someone said, "Thank heaven we're not at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology!"

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For my tenth and final point, let me note that in a
play written over 300 years ago, a long-winded,
pretentious and somewhat foolish figure gave tedious
advice to his son; but ever since, thoughtful people have
taken Polonius' last comment to heart:

"This above all, to thine own self be true, and it shall
follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false
to any man."

Graduates, it has been M.I.T.'s responsibility to
teach you to make a living; now it is your responsibility
to make a life.

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CLC

AUG 19 1987

WARNER BROS.

Warner Bros. Inc.
4000 Warner Boulevard
Burbank, California 91522
818 954-1534
Cable Address: Warbros

James R. Miller
Senior Vice President
Business Affairs

July 30, 1987

Mr. Steve Ross
Chairman of the Board
WARNER COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
75 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, New York 10019

Dear Steve:

A week ago Tuesday I spoke with Rose Ganguzza of Pele's office about a movie project in which they have some interest. At lunch with Rose and Pele, the conversation turned to soccer and I told them of an idea I have had since the 1984 Olympics where soccer was a hugely successful Olympic event.

In short, the idea is to create a fully integrated league of North, South and Latin American teams that would compete with one another in regular season play so that South and Latin American teams, with international experience and appeal, would be playing regularly in the United States against United States teams and hopefully attracting a large hispanic, as well as American, interest. Part of the plan would be to hold an "America's Cup" for soccer in the intervening even years in which there is no World Cup competition. The "America's Cup" competition would be exclusive for North, South and Latin American teams.

Pele and Rose thought my idea was great and enthusiastically embraced it. Maybe too much so. Although I asked them to talk to you about it before they did anything to see if we had any continuing interest in a soccer league, Rose informed me yesterday that although they hadn't spoken to you they had approached FIFA, the international governing body for soccer, and that the idea was warmly received by the FIFA authorities. I only bring this to your attention so that if we are still interested in a soccer league, you could make sure we are involved to the extent we want to be.

A Warner Communications Company

SEP 17 1986

NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY
INSTITUTE FOR NATIONAL STRATEGIC STUDIES
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20319

FROM: Anne M. Cushman, Secretary

TO: Dr. Kissinger

DATE: 15 Sept 86

The enclosed is a copy of a recent speech
by Professor Eugene Rostow for the
National Defense University's Workshop on
the National Strategy.

# The Soviet View of Grand Strategy

By
Eugene V. Rostow*

I warmly applaud the initiative Senator Warner and his colleagues have taken to stimulate a national conversation about American grand strategy in world politics; equally, I applaud the National Defense University's vigorous leadership in responding to Senator Warner's challenge. Through such a conversation, conducted with civility and respect for the facts, the American people should and I hope will achieve a new state of public opinion about the security problems the nation faces, and thus make possible a creative renewal of our foreign policy, which has been floundering since Vietnam. The absence of a clear and generally accepted theory of our national strategic goals is the greatest single weakness of American and Western foreign and defense policy. In no realm is the admonition of the Book of Proverbs more pertinent: "Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he." Every day's news confirms the urgency of the task. The government and its armed forces cannot be expected to carry out their missions

* Sterling Professor of Law and Public Affairs Emeritus, Yale Law School, and Distinguished Visiting Research Professor of Law and Diplomacy at the National Defense University since 1984.

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abroad effectively if the American people are not broadly agreed
on what those missions are.

The debate will not be easy. Since the late eighteenth
century, Americans have comfortably believed in incompatible
theories of our foreign policy. We have always told each other
that our ancestors had crossed the ocean not only to worship as
they pleased but to escape the wicked wars of princes and their
senseless game of power politics. "The balance of power" is a
pejorative phrase in the American language, although it is
difficult to understand why this should be so. No people is more
deeply imbued than we are with the basic instinct behind the idea
of the balance of power. But if at any time during the last two
hundred years, a representative sample of our people had been
asked whether the purpose of our foreign policy was the protection
of our national security interests or the fulfillment of our
national ideals; the achievement of a system of world order based
on a stable balance of power or the universal triumph of
democracy and human rights, the answers world have been the same,
in approximately the same words, delivered with the same passion.
The essence of those answers, if one pushed hard enough, would
have been and remains that as a people we want "all of the above":
we cheer for liberty abroad with enthusiasm, and protect our

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national security interests with resignation or even with
resentment, usually after a long period of resisting the evidence
that national security is indeed imperiled. In the present period
of far-reaching structural change and turbulence in world
politics, complicated by the presence of nuclear weapons and other
extremely destructive weapons, it has become much too dangerous
for us to continue to live with unresolved contradictions on these
fundamental subjects.

In tackling my assignment in this conference, I should make
it clear that I am not a card-carrying Sovietologist. I do not
read Russian, although I love and admire Russian culture, and have
had an extended experience both with Russian culture and with that
of the Soviet Union. I have of course read a considerable number
of books, articles, and speeches by Soviet experts in strategy.
I find these writings sterile--indeed, absolutely blank--so far as
Soviet grand strategy is concerned, although many of them are
rich, sophisticated, and revealing about Soviet military and para-
military tactics.

The reason for the sterility of the Soviet literature about
grand strategy is not hard to find. That literature points out,
over and over again, that wars are caused by the contradictions of
capitalism and the exploitative greed of imperialism:
imperialism, that is as defined by the writings of Lenin, who on
this subject echoed the erroneous views of J. A. Hobson,

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not imperialism as practised by Lenin and his successors.
Therefore, the Soviet writers say, the armed forces of the Soviet
Union exist to defend the Soviet Motherland and Socialist
Commonwealth against the inevitable or nearly inevitable day when
the armed forces of imperialism launch a crippling pre-emptive
attack. There is an active subliterature devoted to the question
whether such a war is "inevitable" or only "almost inevitable."

I shall not pause to examine the absurdity of this theory
about the causes of war, especially for a world in which every
empire except that the Soviet Union has been dissolved. One need
simply recall that the United States did not invoke its nuclear
monopoly of the early post-1945 period in order to persuade the
Soviet Union to cooperate in the management of a world order
governed by the rule of law. It is equally difficult to imagine
that the intelligent and well-trained Soviet writers on these
subjects actually believe that the timid, apologetic, and nearly
pacifist western nations are exploiting the rest of the world and
secretly preparing to conquer it. The industrial democracies, far
from exploiting other nations, have been subsidizing both the
Communist countries and the Third World Nations on a huge scale
ever since the end of the Second World War. Internally, the
industrial democracies confront great social and economic
difficulties as they cope with the accelerating influence of the
principle of comparative advantage, which is inexorably shifting

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low-technology industries to the Third World--and some high
technology industries as well. And they hate to spend money on
defense. Far from threatening the Soviet Union, they want nothing
more than to be allowed to cultivate their gardens in peace, and
ignore the turmoil beyond. Furthermore, the Soviet writers cannot
suppose that the West perceives Soviet military activities in
Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan, or the Caribbean as
"defensive" in even the most elastic sense of that word.

This obligatory obeisance to Marxist orthodoxy in the Soviet
literature, cynical as it is, smothers any serious consideration
of grand strategy on the Soviet side, certainly in documents
available to the public and, I suspect, in the top-secret
memoranda of the General Staff and the Politburo as well. Why
should a Soviet citizen risk his career--and more than his career-
-by explaining to us or to each other--or indeed, even to his wife
and children in complete privacy--that the strategic goal of the
Soviet Union is not the defense of the Soviet homeland or the so-
called Socialist Commonwealth but the domination of the entire
Eurasian-African land mass in accordance with the geo-political
analysis of Professor Sir Halford Mackinder? We can hardly expect
such candor, and none is to be uncovered in the libraries. The
only partial exception I know to this generalization is an
exchange which took place during a conversation between a high
Soviet official and his American opposite number a few years ago.

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The American urged "restraint" and moderation on the Soviet Union in the international use of force--a euphemism all too typical of the western diplomatic style. The Soviet official replied, "You are asking us to give up a foreign policy rooted in our nature as a society and a state."

Clausewitz is favorably mentioned in the Soviet military literature. Lenin had praised Clausewitz, who fought with Russia against Napoleon. But Clausewitz, after all, brilliant and important as his book is, wrote little about strategy and nothing about grand strategy:--that is, about the preconditions of a nation's security or indeed the strong points it must hold if it is bent on conquest. Clausewitz' book is confined almost entirely to tactics--that is, to the art of winning the wars the political authorities of the day order their soldiers to fight. Whether the great Mackinder is discussed in the Soviet literature, save to be dismissed as a geographer the Nazis took up, I cannot say. I have not come across evidence of his influence, even as a ritual decoration. He is, nonetheless, the unwitting and unwilling high priest of Soviet grand strategy, as he was of Hitler's.

Since there are no Soviet texts to cite, I propose to approach my subject in another way. Rather than parade before you the usual string of opaque quotations from Soviet military journals, I shall invoke what the lawyers call the theory of

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"objective" intent. The law rarely requires evidence of "subjective" intent, that is, evidence of what a person consciously intends to do. In most situations, the law, like any other practical institution, has to get along with "objective" intent, purpose inferred from behavior. The law assumes that people intend the natural consequences of their acts, that they intend what any moderately reasonable person would intend under the circumstances. This, I take it, is what Mr. Gorbachev meant when he remarked in the press conference he held after his summit meeting with President Reagan that foreign policy decisions have to be made on the basis of capabilities, not intentions, and quoted Palmerston's famous remark that nations do not have permanent friends, only permanent interests.

## II

### THE SOVIET GRAND STRATEGY

If we examine Soviet grand strategy in the perspective of Mr. Gorbachev's remarks and the theory of objective intent, what do we see?

We see, I suggest, a clear and simple pattern of Soviet behavior and Western response since the Second World War.

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During and immediately after the war, the United States and Great Britain, later joined by France, the smaller nations of Europe, West Germany, and Japan, made strenuous and sustained efforts to persuade and induce the Soviet Union to cooperate with the Western nations in the tasks of peace. The United Nations was organized in 1945 in order to institutionalize that cooperation within the framework of a post-war state system governed by the principles of the United Nations Charter. In 1946, the United States offered to put its monopoly of nuclear weapons and nuclear technology under international control in order to cement the peace and make it irreversible. With the benefit of hindsight, that offer looms up as a remarkable act of imagination and statesmanship, and its rejection by the Soviet Union as a tragic turning point in the history of the Cold War. The United States also offered the Soviet Union reconstruction loans during the war, in response to a Soviet request, and later invited the Soviet Union and the Communist nations of Eastern Europe to participate in the Marshall Plan for rebuilding the nations ravaged by the war.

The Soviet Union vacillated about the American war time proposal for a reconstruction loan until it was too late for a major grant, although a small loan was made. And it firmly and repeatedly rejected the Marshall Plan proposal, and even forced Poland and Czechoslovakia to withdraw their immediate acceptances of the Marshall Plan invitations. Instead of cooperating with the Western Nations in fulfilling the promise of peace under the

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United Nations Charter, the Soviet Union followed a policy of conquest and expansion which began during the war, and has continued with increasing momentum ever since. The Red Armies pursuing the defeated Germans and Japanese in 1944 and 1945 had political teams in their baggage trains, ready to install Communist governments in the liberated countries of Eastern Europe; in Germany and Austria; and in North Korea and elsewhere in the Far East. The Soviet Union vigorously supported Communist armies seeking to take power in China, in Greece, and in many other countries of Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. At the end of the war, the Soviet Union made a feint towards Iran, but withdraw in the face of an American warning.

At Yalta and Potsdam, Stalin promised his Western Allies that free elections would be held in the liberated countries of Eastern Europe, then under Soviet occupation. As Mackinder had pointed out, the independence of those nations is the pivot on which the balance of world power turns. Their autonomy would make it impossible for Germany, the Soviet Union or any other country or "axis" to dominate the enormous reservoir of power available in Asia, Africa, and the whole of Europe.

But the Soviet Union ignored the promises it had made to Britain and the United States at Yalta and Potsdam. The Western Allies were still hoping for a change of heart in Moscow, and did

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nothing to insist on the fulfillment of those crucial commitments, despite the American nuclear monopoly at the time. For reasons which reflect the finest qualities of Western culture, the Allies could not turn on their Soviet ally the moment hostilities against Germany and Japan ended, despite the ominous behavior of the Soviet Union. The nature of Soviet policy was evident to the Western governments on many occasions during the war, and had been manifest as well before the war, when the Soviet Union made its grim pact with Hitler. Psychologically, it was necessary for the Western Allies to make further diplomatic efforts to achieve a peaceful understanding with Soviet Union before reaching the conclusion that Soviet policy was serious and determined, and that such efforts were futile. Thus by failing to insist on the independence of Eastern Europe in 1945 and 1946, the Western nations committed a major mistake in grand strategy. The mistake was probably inevitable, given the nature of the American character. And it was committed by President Truman, our best and most successful President since 1945. But it was a mistake nonetheless.

These events of the immediate post-war period did serve one useful purpose. They were important alarm clocks alerting the West to the necessity for resisting the outward thrust of the Soviet Union before it became too powerful to be resisted. The process of Western resistance began in earnest in 1947, with the announcement of the Truman Doctrine and the passage of the

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Vandenberg Resolution, which led in turn to the formation of NATO and other regional alliances of collective self-defense in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. The intellectual basis for this policy was the theory of "containment"--the assumption that if the Western Nations deterred and if necessary defeated any further Soviet expansion for ten of fifteen years, Soviet policy would mellow under the powerful influence of Russian high culture, and the Soviet Union would join the other permanent members of the Security Council in maintaining the peace, much as Russia had cooperated with the other leading powers of Europe in the time of Alexander I and intermittently thereafter during the nineteenth century.

Many in the West have wondered about the "intent" of the Soviet Union during the last forty years in relentlessly seeking to enlarge the territories under its control both around the periphery of the Soviet Union and then, with the aid of a blue-water navy and highly developed air lift capabilities, in areas of strategic significance in other parts of the world. Why on earth, distinguished voices in the West have asked, are the Soviet leaders sacrificing the standard of living of their people for these costly adventures in imperialism and for the enormous military forces on which they depend? Are they possessed by a maniacal dream of world conquest or by paranoid fears for their

11

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own security, natural enough in a country which has been invaded
so many times? Do we have to prepare ourselves to fight a new
Alexander, a new Napoleon, or only to reassure a justifiably
anxious and suspicious nation, a rather primitive one suffering
from inferiority complexes, that it has nothing to fear from the
West?

Thomas Wolfe of the Rand Corporation once answered these
naive and condescending questions definitively. To ask whether
the Soviet leadership really wants to rule the world, he said, is
to ask the wrong question. We can never bring ourselves to
imagine that human beings might actually entertain such an
impossible dream. We should think about the Soviet drive for
power, Wolfe says, the way we think about the behavior of some
very rich men. We never ask whether they are trying to accumulate
all the money in the world. But we know that if they see a chance
to make a little more money, they will take it. The Soviets in
this regard are like the Widder Brown in a story President Johnson
enjoyed telling. The widow was accused of wanting to own the
whole State of Texas. "That is unfair," she said. "I don't want
to own the whole State of Texas. All I care about is my own
property and the immediately adjoining property." The Soviet
leaders, of course, have outdone the Widder Brown. Angola,
Ethiopia, Vietnam, Cuba, and Nicaragua hardly adjoin the Soviet
Union.

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The Soviet Union has pursued its course of expansion for more
then forty years. There is no way to escape the conclusion which
Professor Bernard Lewis put in these terms: "The Soviet
leadership in this generation seems to have the appetite,
ferocity, smugness, and sense of mission which are the essential
components of the imperial mood, and which in the West have given
way to satiety, guilt, and doubt."

The Soviet campaign of expansion is not, however, a random
exercise in aggrandizement for its own sake. The pattern of
Soviet behavior is consistent with only one possible hypothesis,
that the Soviet Union has been systematically and rationally
seeking to gain control of the entire Eurasian-African land mass
and to deter any American interference in that process.

Some wag once commented that the British Empire was put
together in a fit of absence of mind. Knowing the British, one
must concede that the quip has a certain plausibility. But the
astute and exceptionally able leaders of the Soviet Union are not
in the least absent minded. So far as I know, there are no
brilliant, whimsical, light hearted, British style amateurs in
the Politburo. Soviet officials believe in planning, and their
approach to policy making is almost painfully intellectual and
thorough. In the realm of foreign policy and military affairs,

13

they have long since learned the lesson Solzhenitsyn dramatised so powerfully in his *August, 1914*, whose theme is the disasters that can occur when a nation tries to muddle through a war without the discipline of first class strategic and tactical thought.

Two elements of the situation as it has developed since 1945 make direct war between the Soviet Union and the United States unlikely.

The first, of course, is the American capacity for nuclear retaliation, so long as we retain it. The United States has already made it clear to the Soviet Union that it might well use nuclear weapons in the event of a Soviet conventional force attack on Western Europe, Japan, China, South Korea and other interests which are inherently vital to the balance of power or which may become vital in the context of Soviet campaigns of expansion.

Thus far, the Soviet Union has responded to most of those warnings cautiously.

The second factor making a full scale Soviet-American war unlikely is that the Soviet leadership, recalling the defection of its forces in Hungary in 1956, does not trust its own troops or those of its East European allies to fight the Western powers. The Soviet Union therefore pursues a fluid, flexible, and indirect approach, but a constant one, steadily increasing in intensity.

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When checked in the West after its attacks on Greece, Turkey, Czechoslovakia, and Berlin, it shifted to Korea and then to Vietnam. Its direct threats to Japan, China, and Western Europe having failed, it sought to outflank these great centers of power in the Middle East, Africa, and South East Asia. For more than thirty years, it has patiently worked to establish and then to enlarge military bases in the Caribbean, as Germany tried to do in both world wars.

The strategic ideas which inform the Soviet thrust for power are old and familiar. The Soviet strategists have skillfully adapted them to the scale and technology of the modern political universe. The Soviet leadership necessarily plans with respect to the entire globe, rather than the tiny Mediterranean microcosm about which Thucydides wrote; the larger area the Romans organized into their successful regional empire; or the Eurocentered world which witnessed the successive bids for mastery of Spain under Philip II, of France under Louis XIV and Napoleon, and of Germany during the first half of this century. But the Soviet leaders seek what all their predecessors sought:--the accumulation of military power so much greater than that of any possible adversary or combination of adversaries as to guarantee dominance without a major war.

15

[LC]

There are differences, of course, between the Soviet effort and those of earlier quests for dominion. In the Soviet drive for hegemony, the ultimate weapon is completely new--a nuclear first strike capacity designed to intimidate and paralyze any Western resistance through the use either of conventional or of nuclear forces. The factor of ideology is a more important weapon in the Soviet arsenal than was the case even in the conflicts with Napoleon, Philip II, or Hitler. And the Soviets, restrained by the nuclear element in the contest, rely to an unusual degree on what Sun Tzu called the extraordinary, indirect forces of war--not violence, or violence alone, but the threat of violence backed by political, psychological, and propaganda efforts intended to sap the enemy's will to defend itself successfully. The Soviet exploitation of its nuclear power as a political and psychological weapon is the supreme example of its use of the methods Sun Tzu extolled as the highest form of warfare. For Americans, war is an extension of politics by other means, in Clausewitz' famous maxim. As Raymond Aron remarked in his last book, the Soviet Union has reversed Clausewitz' formula. It regards politics as an extension of war by other means. Sun Tzu perceived the importance of the idea many centuries ago, and no philosopher of war since that time has developed his insight as brilliantly as he did.

16

[LC]

The Soviet grand strategy rests on an acute appreciation of
the geography of power, particularly as it was analyzed by
Mackinder and his successors, most notably by Spykman. Mackinder
stressed the fact that while the oceans occupy 75 percent of the
earth's surface, Europe, Asia, and Africa together, connected by
land and surrounded by oceans, comprise two-thirds of the land
surface of the earth, while Great Britain, Japan, the Americas,
and the smaller islands constitute the remaining third. More
than 80 percent of the world's population lives on the Eurasian-
African land mass, which Mackinder called the World Island.

Mackinder used the phrase "the Heartland of the World Island"
to identify the central patch of Asia and Europe extending from
the Arctic shores of Siberia to Persia and Baluchistan, and from
the Pacific coastal regions of Asia to the larger part of Germany.
Until recently that critical area has been accessible only from
the land. Air power, missiles, and computers have changed that
aspect of the military problem. Mackinder's Heartland is no
longer beyond attack.

The Heartland area constitutes an enormous center of power
from which military forces have attacked the coastal regions of
Asia and Europe (the Rimlands, in the terminology of Mackinder and
Spykman), and regions beyond the coasts as well, since the
beginning of time. The moral of that history is by no means a

17

[LC]

matter of merely antiquarian interest. The Soviet Union, like many earlier land powers, is building a huge navy. It is outflanking Norway, showing great interest in Iceland, Malta, and the North African coast, and directly threatens Iran and Baluchistan. A brilliant American student of strategy once said Russia should never be allowed to go south of the line between Tehran and Kabul. Today the Soviet Union occupies Afghanistan, and has forces in Indo-China, putting pressure on China, India, Pakistan, and Japan. And it is devoting enormous efforts to its central strategic goal, the separation of Europe from the United States and the neutralization of Europe, and therefore of Japan, China, and the Indian subcontinent in consequence.

Some who view history in this perspective have seemed to disagree about the relative importance of sea power and land power in the wars and diplomacy of the past. Equally, they seem to disagree today about the relative significance of air power and nuclear power as compared to the older forms of land and sea power. Certain advocates of sea power have undoubtedly exaggerated the military value of blockades and of economic warfare more generally, just as the enthusiasts for air power and nuclear power have made excessive claims in their turn. Nonetheless, the main positions in the literature of strategy are easily reconciled. Sea power is of immense utility in enabling the Island and Rimland powers to prevent any one power from

18

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dominating the Eurasian Heartland, and thus achieving supremacy. But the bases of sea power are sometimes vulnerable to attack from the land, as Hannibal demonstrated when he invaded Italy, and as Japan did when it captured Singapore during World War II. And to be significant, sea power must be amphibious; its purpose is not to control the fishes, but to project military power on land. The defeat of the Spanish Armada did not end Spain's thrust for dominance in Europe: Elizabeth I had to fight with allies on the Continent to achieve that end, as her successors did against different aspirants for hegemony in the time of Marlborough, Wellington, and the leaders of the Western alliance in both the World Wars of this century. Similarly, for all the immense importance of air power as an adjunct to land and sea operations, it has not become an independent dimension of warfare, while the principal function of nuclear weapons thus far has been political, in permitting or not permitting states to use conventional or unconventional non-nuclear forces.

In modern politics, given modern technology in transportation, communication, and war, the military potential of the Eurasian-African land mass is even more overwhelming than in the past, provided it is brought under the control of a single power. This will remain the case unless demography, sociological change, the spread of education, and technology transform geopolitics radically. Western and Central Europe have formidable military resources. The Soviet Union is stronger than Russia ever

19

was. And Central Asia is no longer the home only of nomad horsemen armed with spears or old rifles. India is already the fourth industrial power in the world. China is modernizing. Japan is of course extremely powerful. And the intelligent, hard-working, and prolific people of Asia, skilled in the arts of modern industrial life, are rapidly restructuring the world economy and the arithmetic of world politics.

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### III.

#### The Reaction of the United States and its Allies to Soviet Grand Strategy

If the Soviet grand strategy since the Second World War has been in the familiar historical style of the occasional strong country which tries to break loose from the restraints of the existing balance of power, the reaction of the United States and its associates in Europe and Asia since 1946 and 1947 is equally familiar as an historical phenomenon. Starting in President Truman's time, the United States has sought to form defensive coalitions in Europe, in Asia, and in the Middle East in order to contain Soviet expansion and to establish and maintain a new balance of power attuned to the changing structure of world politics and the changing technology of war.

I started this talk by observing that Americans like to talk about international affairs in the language of liberty. But the conditioned reflexes which govern their behavior respond to entirely different stimuli. Throughout American history, our foreign policy, like that of every other nation, has been profoundly influenced by changes or prospective changes in the world balance of power. During the revolutionary war, the United States was passionately attached to its alliance with France under the Bourbons--hardly a model democracy by any standard. And no

[LC]

Americans of this generation have had the slightest difficulty in understanding why it was desirable for the United States to ally itself with Stalin in order to defeat Hitler, or later to cooperate with China as a counter-weight to Soviet expansion. We feel no embarrassment about these alliances either with the Bourbons or with one or another of the Communist regimes, despite their undemocratic character.

The essential principle of the balance of power as a political idea is simplicity itself: never allow a potential adversary to become too strong. The instinct behind the concept applies to the organization of any society, domestic or international. Although Americans hate to admit it, the American domestic order is probably the supreme example of the principle of the balance of power at work. Under our Constitution, American life is organized as an intricate system of rules and habits designed to assure personal freedom by preventing any institution, region, class, or group from dominating the nation. Similarly, in the society of nations, the states which wish to preserve their independence always react in the same way when they confront a strong state seeking dominion. The threatened states come together in new patterns of alliance to deter and if necessary defeat the bidder for hegemonic power. Thus in the last forty years China, Western Germany, Japan, and many smaller nations have joined the United States, Great Britain, and France in order to manage the Soviet threat to their autonomy. For four centuries, Great Britain led such coalitions over and

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[LC]

over again to defeat the successive bids of Spain, France, and
Germany for mastery in Europe. Now the task of such leadership is
inescapably ours. The Soviet bid can be resisted only by a series
of regional alliances, each necessarily led by the United States
because only the United States can provide a counterweight to the
Soviet nuclear arsenal for the forseeable future.

For the United States, an island state like Britain and
Japan, the first problem of national security, therefore, is to
prevent the emergence of a decisive aggregation of power either in
Europe or in Asia.

When the Concert of Europe broke down in 1914 and collapsed
finally in 1939, the United States intervened almost automatically
to help restore the balance of power. The United States
recognized the threat to its security in the prospect that the
Eurasian land mass might be dominated by a single power. We
fought in both world wars to keep Germany from achieving a
position of dominance in Eurasia. And in 1949 we took the lead in
organizing NATO to prevent the Soviet Union from attaining the
same goal. That experience demonstrates why the independence of
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and
Romania, at a minimum, is so important to the security of the
West. In 1962, President Kennedy told the Soviet people that

23

(LC]

there could be no peace between the Soviet Union and the United
States until the Soviet Union carried out its promise of free
elections in Eastern Europe. That judgement will remain valid
indefinitely.

Few Americans talked about the issue in those terms, but
nearly everybody understood it. This view of world politics has
always been part of the American outlook. When Napoleon invaded
Russia in 1812, Thomas Jefferson saw at once--despite his strong
sympathies for France and for the French Revolution--that America
would be endangered if France prevailed. In such an event,
Jefferson said, France would have so much power that it could
spare some to make trouble for us in this Hemisphere. And we have
always realized that the control of Asia by a single power would
equally be a threat to the security of the United States. Thus we
have fought four major wars in Asia in this century, and issued
secret nuclear warnings to the Soviet Union both to bring the
Korean War to an end and to prevent a Soviet attack on China.
As President Nixon and Premier Chou En Lai declared in their
Shanghai Communique of 1972, the United States and China are
agreed in opposing "any hegemonial power in Asia." Later, despite
intense Soviet pressure, Japan adhered to that declaration, a
classic instance of island and coastal powers combining to deter
the strongest land power of the day from gaining ascendency. This
is the strategic consideration for which we fought the Korean and

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Vietnam wars. It justifies our interest in the Philippines, Taiwan, the ASEAN States, and the island nations of the South Pacific.

It has taken longer for the United States to accept the implications of these events for policy. When Germany was beaten in 1918, we retreated pell-mell into isolation and tried to seal ourselves off from world politics. It took more than twenty years of debate and another World War to convince America that its national security required it to participate in rebuilding a world wide state system on the foundation of a balance of power, and in managing that system in accordance with the rules of state practice necessary to its peaceful functioning. The Covenant of the League of Nations and now the Charter of the United Nations embody characteristically American ideas about the nature of those rules--not only the rules required to achieve peace among the states, but rules of international cooperation in the interest of social and economic progress as well.

Today discouraged and frustrated by four decades of the Cold War, and deeply disturbed by the tragic dimensions of the nuclear weapon, Americans are asking themselves why we cannot live in the world as we did in the nineteenth century, or as Switzerland does now. The isolationist impulse in American life has not been so strong since the Nineteen Thirties. We recoil from the memory of

25

the wars in Korea and Vietnam. Both were fought to resist
aggression actively supported by Soviet Union. Both threatened
important security interests of the United States--Japan in the
case of the Korean War, and China and South East Asia in Vietnam.
As a result of these wars, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are
secure and successful; China has moved closer to the United
States; the Philippines is independent, and South East Asia,
except for Indo-China itself, is relatively stable. Nonetheless,
the United States and the Western Nations tend to view those
bitter campaigns as aberrations, and avert their eyes with a
shudder at the thought they might happen again.

As a result, many Americans are recommending that the United
States withdraw some or all of its military forces from forward
bases in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Some go so far as to
urge the abrogation of the security treaties and other security
arrangements we have made since the late 'Forties. The advocates
of retreat offer different reasons to justify their proposals.
But their policy recommendations all collide with the same
implacable fact: there is no way for the United States to retreat
from the realities determining its geo-political position. We
cannot abandon our interest in maintaining the independence of
Western Europe, the Middle East, Japan, China, and the smaller
coastal and island states of the Pacific Basin. If we remove our
forces from Western Europe and allow our nuclear deterrent to

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[L.C]

become doubtful, Japan, China, and the European Allies would draw
their own conclusions, and make their own accommodations with the
Soviet Union. We should be left isolated, impotent, and furious
in a world beyond our influence. With those areas neutral or
under Soviet control, the task of protecting the liberty and
independence of the United States would be mathematically
impossible. This is why those of our fellow citizens who advocate
"global unilateralism" are so profoundly wrong. They chafe at the
sometimes a tiresome restraints of conducting alliance policy and
want to free the United States to strike out on its own. In
coping with the pressures of Soviet policy, we have no such
alternative. Like Great Britain over the centuries, we cannot do
the job alone. For us, alliances with like minded nations are a
strategic necessity. Alliance diplomacy is sometimes tiresome,
but the alternative is worse.

Some who view the purposes and implications of Soviet policy
in terms of the analysis presented here--Professor Brzezinski for
example--describe the struggle between the Soviet Union and the
United States as a struggle between two imperial systems competing
"for nothing less than global predominance," as Brzezinski
concludes in his important recent book, _Game Plan: a Geo-Strategic
Framework for the Conduct of the U.S.--Soviet Contest._

I believe this judgment to be in error, and that the error is of
capital importance. The Soviet Union has been struggling for more

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than forty years to obtain control of the Eurasian-African land mass from a base which already includes not only the territories of the Russian Empire in 1914 but the other states of Eastern Europe and a considerable part of Germany as well. The United States and its allies are not trying to obtain control of the Eurasian-African land mass; they are trying to prevent the Soviet Union from achieving that degree of power, an altogether different strategic objective. The grand strategy of the Soviet Union is to achieve imperium, Pax Sovietica; that of the United States and its allies and associates is to establish an open and pluralistic state system, based on a stable balance of power and governed by general respect for the rules of international law and politics necessary to its progressive development in peace.

Thus the Soviet and the Western conceptions of grand strategy are not mirror-images of each other, as Professor Brzezinski's book implies. They are completely different, as aggression and self-defense are different. The closed state system sought by the Soviet Union is a recipe for tyranny. The open state system sought by the United States and its allies, the world order posited by the United Nations Charter, is one of freedom and independence for each state. The contest for power between the Soviet Union and the rest of the world is not a game, as the title of Professor Brzezinski's book implies. It is a contest of immense meaning to every human being on the planet, and above all

28

[LC]

to the democratic peoples. Its outcome will determine whether for
the next century mankind will live in a world of hope or in one
ruled by Leviathan.

There is another major feature of Mr. Brzezinski's argument
which should be noted here. Despite his clear recognition of the
primordially important interest of the United States in preventing
Soviet control of Western Europe, he advocates a substantial
reduction in the American military presence there.

Professor Brzezinski advances two reasons for his paradoxical
position.

The first is that a thinning out of the American military
forces in Europe would induce the Soviet Union to withdraw from
Eastern and Central Europe, and liberate the nations of Eastern
Europe, including East Germany. Unless the Soviet Union were
willing to abandon the policy of expansion it has pursued since
the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, there is no imaginable reason
why the Soviet Union should follow Professor Brzezinski's
scenario. For nearly seventy years, Soviet policy has been
influenced only by sticks, never by carrots. Its major strategic
goal since 1945 has been to separate Western Europe from the
United States, and bring Western Europe into its own orbit.
Andropov once explained the goal of the Soviet "detente" policy

29

[LC]

toward Western Europe as the achievement of a relationship with Western Europe like that the Soviet Union enjoys with Finland. So long as that goal remains the first principle of Soviet grand strategy, Professor Brzezinski's argument is wishful thinking, denied by the entire history of the Cold War.

Professor Brzezinski's second argument for reducing American forces in Europe is irritation with what he considers to be the unwillingness of our European allies and Canada to bear a larger share of the defense burden. He thinks that reductions of American troops would "force" our allies to do more. The argument about "burden-sharing" among the allies has been going on for years. It is complex, difficult to quantify, and inconclusive. For example, the United States does not have conscription, and its costs for the pay of troops (and retirement allowances) are much greater than those of its allies. Politically, it is more plausible to contend that American troop reductions in Europe would drive Canada, our European allies, Japan, and China towards neutralism than towards a higher defense effort.

In any event, the argument is irrelevant. We keep troops in Europe and other forward bases as an act not of philanthropy, but of self-interest. If for basic reasons of American national security we must prevent the Soviet Union from gaining control of Canada, Mexico, Europe, Japan and other areas vital to the

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equation of world power, it behooves us to make sure that the Allied capacity to maintain a conventional defense, and not rely exclusively on nuclear weapons, is manifest and genuine. If the United States faces the risk of war, and even of nuclear war, in order to defend interests vital to its independence, we should not delegate to others the management of the early stages of a conflict which could escalate to the nuclear level. This is why our conventional forces are in and near Europe, South Korea, and other sensitive areas of the world, and why they must remain there in sufficient numbers to be altogether convincing. A military band showing the flag, a trip wire for the nuclear weapon, simply will not do.

Brzezinski meets this response by pointing out that the Soviet leaders are prudent and cautious, and can be depended on not to mistake our intentions. It is true that the Soviet leaders do not seem to love war for its own sake as romantics like Napoleon and Hitler did. But they too can make mistakes. Many of their moves since 1945 clearly rested on miscalculations--in Korea, for example; in the Middle Eastern wars of 1967 and 1973; and in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. And they fully understand the strength of American isolationist and anti-nuclear opinion. The course they are pursuing is inherently dangerous.

Western policy cannot be based on the assumption that the Soviet leadership will never make a fatal mistake.

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There is another and even more conclusive reason for rejecting Professor Brzezinski's case for a partial withdrawal from Europe. Under present circumstances, it is infinitely wiser and no more expensive to maintain some of our armored divisions in Europe rather than in Texas. If the Soviet Union applies the pressures of its politics to the point of near explosion, the power of those armored divisions on the alert in Europe and South Korea exerts a deterrent influence on Soviet adventurism whose importance cannot be exaggerated.

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IV.
Conclusion

If we look at the sketch I have tried to draw from a
distance, the conclusion, I suggest, is rather optimistic.
Despite the sometimes vertiginous ups and downs of the last forty
years, the basic position of the United States in world politics
is favorable, or at least it would be favorable if we could bring
ourselves to accept the world as it is. The Soviet Union has not
dared to attack the United States, Europe, Japan, China, or the
other critical American interests directly since the policy of
containment was declared in 1947. Instead, it has persisted in a
long, expensive, and thus far inconclusive campaign of
envelopment, attempting to gain control of those areas by
outflanking them.

Western policy has made many mistakes since 1947, and the
wisdom, skill, and energy with which its policy of containment has
been carried out have varied, inevitably. But in its broad
outlines the policy has remained viable and effective. It should
be brought up to date and supplemented by a policy of more active
defense because George Kennan's assumptions on which it is based
have proved to be too optimistic. But so long as the Western
nations are even moderately rational in countering Soviet grand
strategy and pursuing their own, the Soviet Union's stupendous bid

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[L.C.]

for dominance will fail, as all such efforts have failed since
the fall of Rome. We have welcomed China's move to escape from
the suffocating embrace of Soviet overlordship, as we have
welcomed comparable moves by Yugoslavia and Egypt. The Soviet
Union will never succeed in gaining control over the huge and
growing states of the Indian Sub-Continent. With Western Europe,
Japan, and China firmly in the Western camp, the ultimate balance
of world power would be favorable to the coalitions led by the
United States, provided we learn how to rally and use that
potential power effectively and well.

There are no signs as yet that the Soviet Union under
Gorbachev has realized how expensive its drive for hegemony is;
how unlikely it is to succeed; and how much better off the Soviet
Union would be if it followed the example of Germany and Japan,
and abandoned the military road for the economic. On the
contrary, the Soviet Union is still intensifying its expansionist
efforts on a number of fronts throughout the Third World.

The moral of the story, I believe, is that our national
security interest in world politics, our grand strategy, has two
strands, one negative, the other positive. The negative element
is that we must at all costs prevent a potential adversary from
becoming too strong in a political environment which now embraces
the entire world. The second is that in the small, volatile,

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nuclear world in which we live, there can be no true security for
any country unless the principal nations, on the foundation of
such a balance of power, create the system of world order
envisioned for our time by the Charter of the United Nations: a
just and progressive system, based on general respect for the
rules of peace, and sustained by habits of cooperation among the
great powers like those which made the nineteenth century so
successful:--successful, that is, when compared with the appalling
period which has succeeded it. Only that kind of grand strategy
can meet the security needs of the United States and satisfy
the twin goals which have been the dominant themes of American
thought about foreign affairs ever since the United States became
a nation: power under law.

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HENRY A. KISSINGER

January 30, 1987

Dear Gene:

I appreciate your sending me a copy of your cogent piece on the Reykjavik meeting. I found it quite stimulating, and except for some technical points (such as the use of the word "tentatively" in the first sentence!) and differences of emphasis, I generally concur with your analysis.

Your fundamental point must be understood in Congress--that a military posture which guarantees the deterrence of attacks on the US and on our allies, as well as which provides for protection of US interests abroad, is essential to US independence.

The corollaries to that fundamental truth which you articulated should also be memorized by US politicians: arms control agreements are of little value if they do not succeed in reducing the threat of a nuclear first strike; numbers are not as important as an overall agreement that reduces first strike capability; SDI should not be considered a bargaining chip but an essential means to deter a first strike; a moratorium on testing or a comprehensive test ban treaty does not reduce that threat.

We are also in agreement that the INF problem is more political than military, and for that reason

The Honorable
Eugene V. Rostow
Institute for National
Strategic Studies
National Defense University
Washington, DC 20319-6000

SUITE 1021 • 1800 K STREET, N. W. • WASHINGTON, D. C. 20006 • (202) 872-0300

Final Draft--15 December 1986

High Noon at Reykjavik--and Since

by

Eugene V. Rostow*

When, more than a decade ago, Henry Kissinger spoke tentatively about the "linkage"
between nuclear arms control efforts and Soviet expansion, he was denounced for placing
impossible obstacles in the path of peace. His critics said that we must understand and
accept Soviet expansion as a fact of life. They advanced a number of theories to justify
Soviet international behavior. The aggressive use of force, some suggested, was the
prerogative of a great power seeking status, recognition, and legitimacy. Alternatively,
other critics explained, the Soviet drive for power was a defensive symptom of nearly
paranoid suspicion or the manifestation of an inferiority complex. None of the critics
explained how the state system can be expected to function if one of its major members
persistently violates its most basic rule.

Such theories comfort those who cherish them, but they are unfair to the serious,
intelligent, and well-trained men who govern the Soviet Union. The Soviet leaders know
what they are doing, and they are doing it well. As Bernard Lewis once wrote, "Soviet
leadership in this generation seems to have the appetite, ferocity, smugness, and sense of
mission which are the essential components of the imperial mood, and which in the West
have given way to satiety, guilt, and doubt."**

*Distinguished Visiting Research Professor of Law and Diplomacy, National Defense University, and former Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1981-83. A shorter version of this paper is scheduled for publication in the February, 1987, issue of *Commentary*.

** Bernard Lewis, *Russia in the Middle East*, Round Table, 1970, 257 at p. 263.

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Since the Soviet Union will not give up its imperial mission, Kissinger's critics concluded, we in the West must make sure that our more and more limited efforts at containment do not explode into nuclear war. At a minimum, they urged, nuclear arms control agreements are useful ways to stabilize the inevitable competition of the two super-powers, rules of the game that could at least keep them from going over the precipice. Some went so far as to imply that arms control agreements could do more,--that they could of themselves produce peace, and were in effect a substitute for the harsh and costly burden of having a foreign policy at all. "Linkage" became an idea politicians and bureaucrats avoided, and scholars and journalists ignored.

But the startling beams of light which pierced the fog of Reykjavik reveal once more that linkage is a reality which cannot be evaded or exorcised. Arms control agreements, after all, are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. For the West that end can only be the goal of peace:--a pluralist world order of independent states, based on a balance of power and generally governed by the rules of international behavior set out in the United Nations Charter. The end sought by the Soviet Union is altogether different. The Soviet Union is not trying to establish a balance of world power but to escape from its restraints. It is steadily building an alternative state system based not on equilibrium but on Soviet dominance:--a true Pax Sovietica. The nuclear weapon is and will remain a key factor in the continuing struggle between these rival conceptions of world public order:--for the West, the ultimate deterrent of Soviet expansion; and for the Soviet Union, the ultimate deterrent of any Western defense against Soviet expansion.

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Thus far, the American commentary on the Iceland Summit has been focussed almost entirely on its character as a sporting event. Most of our pundits, unlike some of their counterparts in Europe and Japan, have concentrated on who won and who lost; who hit home runs, who struck out; how the President fumbled--or didn't fumble; and so on. The main and hardly novel lesson most Americans draw from the Reykjavik affair is that the present leaders of the Soviet Union are not gentlemen--Nekulturny, as the Russians say. They ambushed Reagan and tried to bully him into making a catastrophic agreement. They played on political realities they knew he could not resist, and made him come to the meeting at the height of the American election campaign, although he had told them a year before that he did not want to have a summit meeting during the electoral season. They broke the most sacred rule of the Foreign Ministers' Club by not following the tentative program Shultz and Schevarnadze had prepared. And, just to make the point unmistakable, they arrested Daniloff, and offered Reagan the choice between a summit meeting and an exchange of "prisoners." Their behavior since Reykjavik has been in the same style.

The Soviets were too clever by half, as the British say. Whoever staged the meeting has the words but not the music of American life. The Soviet dramatics were excessive. And President Reagan refused to be mugged:--a considerable achievement under the circumstances. But Reagan's escape from Gorbachev's trap is not in itself a triumph for American foreign policy. We expect Presidents to spot Soviet traps and avoid them.

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The Iceland meeting was not a sporting event. It was a typical confrontation of the kind we have known so many times since 1945. The message of peace it contains may be genuine this time; we should surely do our best to find out. On the other hand, that message may be as false as all its predecessors turned out to be, whether the doves were released at Yalta, Potsdam, Geneva, Moscow, Vladivostok, or Camp David. The question for Western policy, therefore, is not whether Russians are gentlemen. There are as many ladies and gentlemen among the Russian people as there are in any other human community. The point is that the Soviet government is engaged in a complex, many facetted, and insidious quasi-war against the West.

While that quasi-war has fluctuated in intensity since 1945, the trend is unmistakable. In the late 'Forties, the war was conducted along the periphery of the Soviet Union. Now its campaigns take place in Africa, the Caribbean, and Southern Asia as well. Many in the West still refuse to recognize the war for what it is. Nonetheless, it exists, and it is one of the main driving forces of world politics. The principal question the Iceland Summit poses for Western policy is whether the Soviet Union is ready as yet to make peace. It is too soon to tell what the answer to that question will be. But the prudent operational assumption for Western policy is that the answer is still "No."

In its potential both for good and for harm, the Reykjavik Summit should be compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 among the Soviet-American confrontations since 1945. In both episodes, the Soviet Union sought to convert its nuclear power into a coercive political force. But the stakes at Reykjavik were, and remain, much higher than those of 1962. In 1962, Khrushchev was trying to obtain a quick but not decisive change in the Soviet-American nuclear balance and an

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American pledge not to throw Castro out. At Reykjavik, however, Gorbachev pressed hard for a show-down. What he demanded, behind the smoke screen of anti-nuclear pieties, was Western recognition of the Soviet Union's "right" to build a nuclear first-strike capacity based on a formidable array of offensive nuclear weapons coupled with a monopoly in defensive systems. This objective has been the constant theme of the Soviet nuclear build-up and of its negotiating policy in the nuclear arms control talks. There is no evidence since Reykjavik that this Soviet goal has been abandoned or even modified.

The long-term consequences of the Iceland meeting will be determined not so much by what has happened already, but by what happens next. This was the case also with the Cuban Missile Crisis. In retrospect, it is obvious that Kennedy settled for too little in 1962. At a minimum, he should have vindicated the Inter-American system which has evolved from the Monroe Doctrine, and restored Cuba as a free democracy. It is vital that Reagan not repeat Kennedy's mistake during the demanding next rounds of the Soviet-American and the larger East-West negotiating process.

Gorbachev's brilliant preparations for the Iceland meeting, and his skillful conduct of the talks, were a stunning demonstration of the methods of Soviet aggression in the bipolar nuclear environment of contemporary world politics. Since deliberate open warfare between the Soviet Union and the United States and its allies is highly improbable so long as we retain a sufficient nuclear retaliatory capacity, the Soviet Union relies heavily on what Sun Tzu, the great Chinese philosopher of war, called the "indirect" methods of warfare, the psychological and political exploitation of latent military power. The goal of such efforts is to destroy the enemy's will to

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