# I. THE STRUCTURAL PROBLEM

The Twentieth Century has known little repose. Since the turn of the century, international crises have been increasing in both frequency and severity. The contemporary unrest, although less apocalyptic than the two world wars which spawned it, is even more profoundly revolutionary in nature. ¹

The essence of a revolution is that it appears to contemporaries as a series of more or less unrelated upheavals. The temptation is great to treat each issue as an immediate and isolated problem which once surmounted will permit the fundamental stability of the international order to reassert itself.

But the crises which form the headlines of the day are symptoms of deep-seated structural problems. The international system which produced stability for a century collapsed under the impact of two world wars. The age of the superpowers which temporarily replaced it is nearing its end. The current international environment is in turmoil because its essential elements are in flux simultaneously.

For the first time in history, foreign policy has become global. In the past, the various continents conducted their foreign policy essentially in isolation. Throughout much of

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

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history, the foreign policy of Europe was scarcely affected
by events in Asia. When, in the late 18th and 19th Centuries,
the European powers extended their influence throughout
the world, the effective decisions remained with a few
great European capitals. Today, statesmen face the un-
precedented problem of conducting policy toward well over
a hundred countries. Geographic isolation no longer
exists. Every nation, no matter how insignificant, parti-
cipates in international affairs. Ideas are transmitted
almost instantaneously. What used to be considered
domestic events can have world-wide consequences.

The revolutionary character of our age can be summed
up under three aspects: (a) the number of participants
in the international order has increased and their nature
has altered; (b) the technical ability of these participants
to affect each other has vastly grown; (c) the scope of
states' purposes has expanded.

Whenever the participants of the international
system change, a period of profound dislocation is
inevitable. This change can occur because new states
enter the political system. Or it can originate in
a change in values as to what constitutes legitimate rule.
Finally, it can come about because of the reduction in
influence of some traditional units. In our period, all
of these factors have combined. Since the end of the

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Second World War, several scores of new states have come into being. The emergence of even a few new nations in the 19th Century produced decades of adjustment. The post-World War I world never assimilated the successor states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Our age has yet to find a structure which matches the responsibilities of the new nations to their aspirations.

At the same time, technology multiplies the resources available for the conduct of foreign policy while the domestic structure increases the ability of the state to mobilize them. As long as the states' ability to mobilize resources was limited, the severity of their conflict had definite bounds. The impact of 18th Century foreign policy was relatively benign, at least in part because the rulers by "divine right" were limited by custom in the exactions they could demand from their subjects.

Our period has seen the culmination of a process started by the French Revolution: the basing of governmental legitimacy on popular support. Even totalitarian regimes are aberrations of a democratic legitimacy; they depend on popular consensus even when they manufacture it through propaganda and pressure. But the people, by definition, cannot oppress itself and limitations of tradition lose much of their restraint. It is an ironic result of the democratization of politics that it has enabled states to marshall ever more resources for conflict.

4.

This process has been aided by a scientific rev-
olution which, to all practical purposes, has removed
technical limits to the exercise of power in the field
of foreign policy. It has magnified insecurities
because it has made survival seem to depend on the accidents
of a technological breakthrough.

Ideological conflict compounds these dislocations.
Its expression on the international plane is an almost
complete lack of agreement about the permissible aims and
methods of foreign policy. A similar outlook about aims
and methods eases the tasks of diplomacy--it may even
be a precondition for it. In the great periods of
diplomacy, diplomats spoke the same language, not only
in the sense that French was the lingua franca, but more
importantly because they tended to understand intangibles
in the same manner. In the absense of such a consensus,
diplomats can still meet but they lose the ability to
persuade. More time is spent on defining contending
positions than in resolving them. What seems most reason-
able to one side will appear most problematical to the
other.

When there is ideological conflict, political loyalties
no longer necessarily coincide with national boudaries.
Conflicts among states merge with divisions within nations;
the dividing line between domestic and foreign policy

5.

begins to disappear. At least some states feel threat-
ened not only by the foreign policy of other countries,
but also, and perhaps especially, by domestic transformations.
A liberalized *Communist* regime in Prague-- which had
on no way challenged Soviet pre-eminence in foreign policy--
caused the Kremlin to believe that its vital interests
were threatened and to occupy the country without even
the pretext of legality.

The tensions produced by this state of affairs are
exacerbated by the reduction in influence of the pre-
World War I great powers. As a result, the world has
become bipolar on the military plane. Only two powers--
the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics--
possess the full panoply of military might. Over the next
decade, no other country or groups of countries is
capable of challenging their physical pre-eminence.
Indeed, the gap in military strength between the two giant
nuclear countries and the rest of the world is likely to
increase rather than diminish over that period. More-
over, the two superpowers have the ideology, the self-
confidence and technical resources to try to order affairs
on a global scale.

Military bipolarity is a source of rigidity in foreign
policy. The guardians of the equilibrium of the 19th
Century were prepared to respond to change with counter-

6.

adjustment; the policymakers of the superpowers in the
second half of the 20th Century have much less con-
fidence in the ability of the equilibrium to right it-
self after disturbance. Whatever "balance" there is bet-
ween the superpowers is regarded as both precarious and
inflexible. A bipolar world loses the perspective for
the relative; a gain for one side appears as an absolute
loss for the other. Every issue seems to involve
a question of survival. The smaller countries are torn
between a desire for protection and a wish to escape
big power dominance. Each of the superpowers is beset
by the desire to maintain its pre-eminence toward its
allies, to increase its influence among the uncommitted
and to adjust its relations to its opponent. The fact
that some of these objectives may well prove incompatible
adds to the strain on the international system.

But the age of the superpowers is now drawing to an
end. Military bipolarity has not only failed to prevent,
it has actually encouraged political multipolarity.
Weaker allies have good reason to believe that their
defense is in the overwhelming interest it their senior
partner. Hence, they see no need to purchase its support
by acquiescence in its policies. The new nations feel
protected by the rivalry of the superpowers and their
nationalism leads to ever bolder assertions of self-will.

7.

International
moments

This political multipolarity does not necessarily
guarantee stability. Rigidity is diminished, but so is
manageability. Nationalism may succeed in curbing the
pre-eminence of the superpowers; it remains to be seen
whether it can supply an integrating concept of order
more successfully in this century than in the last.
Few countries have the interest and only the superpowers
have the resources to become informed about global issues.
The result is a diplomacy often geared to domestic politics
or more concerned with striking a pose than contributing
to international order. Equilibrium is difficult to
achieve among states widely divergent in values, goals,
expectations and backgrounds of previous experience.

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

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## II. THE LIMITS OF BIPOLARITY: THE NATURE OF POWER IN THE MODERN PERIOD

Throughout history, military power was considered the final recourse. Statesmen considered the acquisition of increments of power to be an obvious and paramount objective. As late as twenty-five years ago, it would have been inconceivable that a country could possess _too much_ strength for effective political use; every increment of power was -- at least theoretically -- politically effective. The minimum aim was to assure the impermeability of the territory. As late as World War II, a state's strength could be measured by its ability to protect its population from foreign attack.

The nuclear age has destroyed this traditional relationship. Offensive power and defensive power are no longer commensurable. Increasing strength does not necessarily confer the ability to protect the population. No forseeable force level -- not even full-scale ballistic missile defenses -- can prevent levels of damage eclipsing those of the two world wars. Operational definitions of victory in any sense that would have been meaningful in the past -- even by World War II standards -- are almost impossible.

These conditions have made the definition of the nature of power particularly elusive. The problem goes beyond developing some concept of military security; it involves doctrinal considerations of the uses to which power can be put in the modern period. The major problem is to discipline power so that it

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bears a rational relationship to the objectives likely to be in
dispute. The major nuclear powers are capable of devastating
each other. But they have great difficulty translating this
power into policy except to prevent direct challenges to their
own survival -- and this condition is interpreted with increasing
strictness. The capacity to destroy is difficult to translate
into a plausible threat even against countries with no capacity
for retaliation. In the 19th Century, the European powers could
engage in decades of colonial wars without effective opposition
from public opinion either at home or internationally. Today,
any developing country willing and able to resist an industrialized
state for a number of years can count on domestic divisions and
pressures of world public opinion to assist it.

The paradox of contemporary military policy is that a
gargantuan increase in power has eroded its relationship to policy.
The margin of superiority of the superpowers over the other states
is widening; yet other nations have an unprecedented scope for
autonomous actions. In relation to many domestically weak
countries, a radio transmitter can be a more effective form of
pressure than a squadron of B-52's. In other words, power no
longer translates automatically into influence. This does not
mean that impotence increases influence, only that power does not
automatically confer it.

In a world in which power has never been greater but also
never been more difficult to relate to policy deterrence has
become the dominant military policy. But deterrence depends
above all on psychological criteria. It seeks to keep an opponent

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3

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from a given course by posing unacceptable risks. For purposes of deterrence, the opponent's calculations are decisive. A bluff taken seriously is more useful than a serious threat interpreted as a bluff. For political purposes, the meaningful measurement of military strength is the assessment of it by the other side. Psychological criteria vie in importance with strategic doctrine.

This state of affairs has profound consequences for traditional notions of balance of power. In the past, stability has always presupposed the existence of an equilibrium of power which prevented one state from imposing its will on the others.

The traditional criteria for the balance of power were territorial. A state could gain overwhelming superiority only by conquest; hence, as long as territorial expansion was foreclosed, or severely limited, the equilibrium was likely to be preserved. In the contemporary period, this is no longer true. Some conquests add little to effective military strength; major increases in power are possible entirely through developments within the territory of a sovereign state. China gained more in real military power through the acquisition of nuclear weapons than if it had conquered all of Southeast Asia. If the Soviet Union had occupied Western Europe, but had remained without nuclear weapons, it would be less powerful than with its existing nuclear arsenal in its present borders. In other words, the really fundamental changes in the balance of power have all occurred within the territorial limits of sovereign states. There

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is an urgent need to analyze just what is understood by power --
as well as by blance of power -- in the nuclear age.

This would be difficult enough were technology stable.
It becomes enormously complicated when a scientific revolution
produces an upheaval in weapons technology at five-year intervals.
Slogans like "superiority," "parity," "assured destruction"
compete without either clear definition of their operational
military significance, or consensus on their political implications.
The gap between expert and decisionmakers is widening. The
decisionmaker rarely has as many hours to study a problem as the
expert has years. The result is that the decisionmaker runs the
risk of unprecedented dependence on his technical staff. He is
informed by "briefings," a procedure which stresses theatrical
qualities and leaves its subject with the uneasy feeling that he
has been "taken", even -- or perhaps especially -- when he does
not know exactly how. Decisions may reflect an attempt to ward
off conflicting pressures rather than a clear conception of long-
range purposes.

The abstract, intangible nature of modern power affects
the domestic structure in yet another way. Deterrence is tested
negatively by things which do _not_ happen. But it is never possible
to demonstrate why something has _not_ occurred. Is it because we
are pursuing the best possible policy or only a marginally effective
one? Bitter debate even among those who believe in the necessity
of defense policy is inevitable and bound to be inconclusive. The
difficulty is even greater with respect to those who question the
need for _any_ defense policy. The longer peace is maintained -- or

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the more successful deterrence is -- the more it furnishes
arguments for those who are opposed to the very premises of
defense policy. Perhaps there was no need for preparedness
in the first place because the opponent never meant to attack?
In the modern state, defense is likely to be a highly divisive,
domestic issue.

The difficulty of forming a conception of power is paralleled
by the problem of how to use it diplomatically. In the past,
measures to increase readiness signaled the mounting seriousness
with which an issue was viewed. But such measures have become
more difficult and dangerous when weapons are always at a high
state of readiness -- solid-fuel missiles require less than 10
minutes to be fired -- and are hidden either under the ground or
under the oceans. With respect to nuclear weapons, signaling
increased readiness will either prove unsuccessful or should it
succeed, may trigger a pre-emptive strike.

Even when only conventional weapons are involved, the
problem constitutes a politically meaningful threat is increasingly
complicated. After the capture of the Pueblo, the United States
called up 13 thousand reservists and moved an aircraft carrier off
the shores of Korea. Did the fact that we had to call up reserves
when challenged by a fifth-rate military power convey that we
meant to act or that we were overextended? Did the move of the
aircraft carrier indicate a decision to retaliate or was it intended
primarily to strike a pose? What indeed was the appropriate response?

1. Sometimes these measures got out of control; the mobilization schedules were one of the principal reasons for the outbreak of World War I.

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[y]

The history of our escalation in Vietnam demonstrates the difficulty of understanding the political uses of military power. A massive breakdown of communication occurred not only within the United States' policymaking machinery but also between the United States and Hanoi. Over the past five years, the United States' government has found it difficult, if not impossible, to define what it understood by victory. Our troops were deployed as if the President had not extended an open-ended offer of negotiations. Our deployment did not take into account the possibility that it might have to support a negotiation -- the timing of which we had, in effect, left to the opponent. Strategy divorced from foreign policy proved sterile.

These perplexities have spurred new interest in arms control negotiations, especially those dealing with strategic missiles. These negotiations can be important for the peace and security of the world, apart from the fluctuations of the political relationships. But to be effective, these negotiations require an intellectual resolution of the issues which have bedeviled the formulation of military policy. Unless we are able to give an operational meaning to terms as superiority or stability, negotiations will lack criteria by which to judge progress.

Thus, whatever the course -- a continuation of the arms race or arms control -- a new look at United States' national security policy is essential. Over ten years has passed since the last comprehensive, bi-partisan, high-level re-evaluation of all aspects of national security: the Gaither Committee. A new

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[y]

administration should move quickly to bring about such a review.
It should deal with some of the following problems: (a) a
definition of the national interest and national security; (b) the
nature of military power in that over the next decade; (c) the
relationship of military power to political influence; (d) implications
and feasibility (both military and political) of various postures --
superiority, parity, etc.; (e) the implications both political
and military of new developments such as MIRV (multiple warheads)
and ballistic missile defenses; (f) the prospects for arms
control including specific measures to moderate the arms race.

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[y]

### III. POLITICAL MULTIPOLARITY: THE CHANGED NATURE OF ALLIANCES

During the post-war period, the United States identified security with alliances. A global network of relationships grew up based on the proposition that deterrence of aggression required the largest possible grouping of powers.

In the first decade and a half after World War II, this system of alliances was in difficulty outside the Atlantic area because it tried to apply principles essentially drawn from the multipolar world of the 18th and 19th Century when several major powers of roughly equal strength existed. Then indeed it was impossible for one country to achieve dominance if several others combined to prevent it. But this was not the case in the era of the superpowers of the Forties and Fifties. Outside of Europe, our allies added only marginally to our strength; they were in no position to reinforce each other's capabilities.

Alliances, to be effective, must meet four conditions: (1) a common objective -- usually defense against a common danger; (2) a degree of joint policy at least sufficient to define the casus belli; (3) some technical means of cooperation in case common action is decided upon; (4) a penalty for non-cooperation: the power whose aid is sought must be believed to have some alternative to extending assistance; otherwise protection will be taken for granted and the mutuality of obligation will break down.

In the system of alliances developed by the United States after World War II, these conditions were never met outside the NATO area. In SEATO or CENTO (to which we have belonged in all but

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name) there has been no common conception of the threat. Pakistan's motive for obtaining U.S. arms was not security against a Communist attack, but protection against India. The Arab members of CENTO armed not against the USSR but against Israel. Lacking a conception of common interests, the members of these alliances were never able to develop common policies with respect to issues of war and peace. Had they been able to do so, these policies might well have been stillborn anyway, because the technical means of cooperation have been lacking. Most allies had neither the resources nor the will to render mutual support. A state which finds it difficult to maintain order or the coherence of policy at home, does not increase its strength by combining with states suffering similar disabilities.

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

The case is different with NATO. Here we are united with countries of similar traditions and domestic structures. At the start, there was a common conception of the threat. The technical means for cooperation existed. Mechanisms for developing common policies came into being. Thus in its first decade and a half, NATO was a dynamic and creative institution.

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Nevertheless, NATO is today in disarray as well. U.S. actions -- above all, frequent unilateral changes of policy -- are partially responsible. But the most important cause is the transformation of the international environment, specifically the decline in the pre-eminence of the superpowers and the emerging political multipolarity. Where the alliances outside of Europe were never vital because they failed to take into account the military bipolarity of the Fifties, NATO is in difficulties because it has yet to adjust to the political multipolarity of the late Sixties.

When NATO was founded in 1949, Europeans had a dual fear: (1) the danger of an imminent Soviet attack; (2) the prospect of eventual U.S. withdrawal. By the late 1960's, however, the fear of Soviet invasion has declined. Even the attack on Czechoslovakia is likely to restore anxiety about Soviet military aggression only temporarily. At the same time, two decades of American military presence in Europe coupled with American prodominance in NATO planning, have sharply reduced the fear that America might wash its hands of European concerns. As a result, Europeans neither believe that the need for American support is so urgent as two decades ago nor that U.S. assistance against aggression must be purchased by acquiescence in our policies.

When NATO was formed, moreover, the principal threat to world peace seemed to lie in a Soviet attack on Europe. In recent years, the view has grown that equally grave risks are likely to arise in trouble spots outside of Europe. To most Europeans, these

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[y]

do not appear as immediate threats to their independence or security. The irony here is striking. In the Fifties, Europeans were asking for American assistance in areas outside of Europe with the argument that they were defending the greater interests of freedom. The United States replied that these very interests required American aloofness. Today, the roles are precisely reversed. It is Europe which evades our entreaties to play a global role; that is to say, Europeans do not consider their interests at stake in America's extra-European involvement.

These are symptoms of deeper, structural problems, however. The growth of Soviet nuclear power -- and the changed nature of power in the modern period -- were bound to affect NATO profoundly. As the risks of nuclear war have become more enormous, the credibility of traditional pledges of support was inevitably reduced. In the past, a country would carry out a commitment because it could plausibly be argued that the consequences of not doing so were worse than those of coming to the ally's assistance. This is no longer self-evident. In each of the last three annual statements of the U.S. defense posture, the estimate of dead in a general nuclear war, ranged from 40 to 120 million. This trend will, if anything, increase. It will become more and more difficult to demonstrate that anything is worse than the elimination of over half of a society in a matter of days. Basing the defense of NATO increasingly on a variant of the doctrine of massive retaliation complicates the problem even more.

Another aspect of this transformation is the growth of European economic strength and political self-confidence. At the

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end of World War II, Europe was dependent on the United States for economic assistance, political stability and military protection. As long as Europe needed the shelter of a superpower, American predominance was inevitable. In relations with the United States, European statesmen acted as lobbyists rather than as diplomats. Their influence depended less on the weight of their countries than on the impact of their personalities. A form of consultation evolved whereby Europeans sought to influence American actions by giving us a reputation to uphold or -- to put it more crudely -- by oscillating between flattery and almost plaintive appeals for reassurance. The United States, secure in its predominance, in turn concentrated on soothing occasional European outbreaks of insecurity rather than on analyzing their causes.

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

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This situation has been especially difficult for those in
the United States who deserve most credit for forging existing
Atlantic relations. Two decades of hegemony have produced the
illusion that present Atlantic relationships are "natural," that
wise policy consists of making the existing framework more
tolerable. "Leadership" and "partnership" are invoked; but the
tendency is to apply globally the pattern heretofore confined to
the Atlantic area. European unity is advocated to enable
Europeans to share burdens on a world-wide scale.

Such a view fails to take into account the realities of
political multipolarity. The aim of returning to the "great days
of the Marshall Plan" is impossible. Nothing would sunder Atlantic
relationships so surely as the attempt to reassert the notions of
leadership appropriate to the early days of NATO. Events will no
longer conform to an American design. The challenge of the
Seventies will be to tap the energies of a pluralistic Atlantic
world.

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It is not "natural" that the major decisions about the
defense of an area so potentially powerful as Western Europe should
be made 3,000 miles away. It is not "normal" that U.S. leadership
consist of gearing Atlantic policies to American conceptions. In
the Forties and Fifties, practicing unity -- through formal
resolutions and periodic reassurances -- was important. It was
useful as a reassurance for Europe and it was profoundly important
for us as a constant symbol of the end of our isolationism. In the
decade ahead, unity cannot be aimed at as an end in itself; it must
emerge from specific cooperation and common conception

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"Burden-sharing" will not supply that impetus. Countries do not assume burdens because it is fair, only because it is necessary. While there are strong arguments for Atlantic partnership and European unity, enabling Europe to play a global role is not one of them. A nation assumes responsibilities not only because it has resources, but because it has a certain view of its own destiny. Through the greater part of its history -- until World War II -- the United States possessed the resources but not the philosophy for a global role. Today, the poorest West European country -- Portugal -- has the widest commitments outside of Europe because its historic image of itself has become bound up with its overseas possessions. This condition is unlikely to be met for any other European country -- with the partial exception of Great Britain -- no matter what their increase in power. Partially as the result of de-colonization, Europeans are unlikely to conduct a significant global policy whatever their resources or their degree of unity. Cooperation between the United States and Europe will have to take forms other than global partnership. A basic problem in Atlantic relationships will be to devise partly coordinated, partly divergent policies for the various portions of the world.

Even within the Atlantic area, a more equitable distribution of responsibilities has two prerequisites: (1) there must be some consensus in the analysis of the international situation, at least as it affects Europe; (2) there must be a conviction that the United States cannot or will not carry all burdens alone.

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Neither condition is met today. The traditional notion of American leadership tends to stifle European incentives for autonomy. Improved consultation -- the remedy usually proposed -- can only alleiviate, not remove the difficulty.

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

It is far from self-evident, however, that more extensive consultation within the existing framework can be more than a palliative. Any political process -- including consultation -- involves not only a problem of advice but also an issue of decision. Even within governments, the ultimate outcome usually requires the overruling of some group or interest. Indeed, in the modern bureaucratic state, the resolution of conflicting advice has proved much more difficult than obtaining it in the first place. There are inherent limits to consultation when policy is made so much on a case-by-case approach and when plans rarely influence crisis actions. No amount of consultation will remove the different perspective about extra-European involvements. The disagreement here is caused not by a failure of understanding but because the two sides understand each other only too well.

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

But the final problems of consultation are not technical. The losing party in a domestic dispute has three choices: (a) it can accept the setback with the expectation of winning another battle later on -- this is the usual bureaucratic attitude and it is based on the knowledge of being able to force another hearing later on; (b) if advice is consistently ignored, the losing party or group can resign and go into opposition; (c) opposition can have the purpose either of inducing the existing government to change its course or to replace it. If all these avenues are closed, violence or mounting frustration are the consequences.

Only the first option is open to sovereign states bound together by an alliance. The partners cannot resign or go into opposition without wrecking the alliance. They cannot affect the process by which allied decisionmakers are chosen despite the fact that this may be crucial for their fate. Indeed, as long as the need to maintain the alliance overrides all other concerns, sustained disagreement is likely to be stifled. Advice without

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responsibility and disagreement without an outlet can turn
consultation into a frustrating exercise which compounds rather
than allieviates discord.

Even domestically, those departments which can act on their
own -- such as the Department of Defense -- are likely to get a
fuller hearing than those whose competence is primarily technical
or advisory. This is even more true internationally. However
abrupt his methods, de Gaulle has grasped that influence depends
not only on intellectual qualities but also on the options available
in case of disagreement.

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

This state of affairs is not healthy in the long run. Those
in Europe most ready to accept American tutelage -- even in its
modified form of improved consultation -- may not prove very
steady allies in times of crises; their motive may be a form of
abdication from international affairs, a psychological form of
neutralism. Their opponents may become convinced that European

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autonomy must be seized from the United States; they may develop
a vested interest in anti-Americanism. Such a polarization of
European political life cannot be in our interest.

The problem is equally serious for the United States. If
the United States insists upon remaining the trustee of every
non-Communist area, it will exhaust its psychological resources.
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the
globe at every moment of time. A more pluralistic world --
especially in relationships with friends -- is profoundly in our
long-term interest. Political multipolarity while difficult, is
the precondition for a new period of creativity. Painful as it may
be to admit, we could benefit from a counterweight to discipline
our occasional impetuosity and to supply historical perspective to
our penchant for abstract and "final" solutions.

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

But the emerging political multipolarity forces us to learn
that nations cooperate less because they have a legal obligation
to do so than because they have common purposes. Command arrange-
ments cannot substitute for common interests. It is contradictory
to place so much emphasis on coordinated strategy and so little on
coordinated diplomacy.

It is in the American interest to encourage greater European
autonomy. The possibility of disagreements on peripheral issues

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may be the price for unity where it really matters. The memory
of European impotence and American tutelage should not delude us
into believing that we understand Europe's problems better than it
does itself. Third Force dangers are not avoided by legal formulae, but
they are in any event overdrawn. It is hard to visualize a "deal".
between the Soviet Union and Europe which would jeopardize our
interests without jeopardizing European interests first. Thus,
there are objective limits to Third Force policies. If Europeans
do not understand the requirements of their own survival without
pervasive American tutelage, American tutelage will not long be
able to substitute for lack of European understanding. In short,
our relations with Europeans are better founded on a balancing of
interests than on the elaboration of formal legal obligations. No
precise blueprint for such an arrangement is possible because
various fields of activity will imply different needs. In the military
field for example, modern technology will impose a greater degree of
centralization than is necessary in other areas. Whatever their formal
autonomy, it is almost inconceivable that our allies would _prefer_
to go to war _without_ the United States support given the relatively small
nuclear forces in prospect for them. Close coordination between
Europe and the United States in the nuclear field is dictated by
self-interest and Europe has more to gain from it than the United
States.

For this very reasons, it is in our interest that Europeans should
assume much greater responsibility for developing doctrine and force
levels in NATO, perhaps by vitalizing such institutions as the West
European Union (WEU), perhaps by creating new structures. The
Supreme Allied Commander should in time become European.

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Under current conditions, no statesman will risk a cataclysm simply to fulfill a legal obligation. The only motive for running the risk of nuclear war is likely to be a degree of political cooperation which links the fate of each partner with the survival of all the others. This requires an entirely new order of political creativity. Heretofore, Atlantic political cooperation concentrated on developing common policy. In the decade ahead, the problem will be to work out a philosophy which makes possible partly coordinated, partly divergent approaches.

Coordination is especially necessary in East-West relations. The traditional view is that NATO can be as useful an instrument for detente as for defense. This is doubtful -- at least in NATO's present form. A military alliance, one of the chief cohesive links of which is its integrated command arrangement, is not the best instrument for a flexible diplomacy. Turning NATO into an instrument of detente, may reduce its security contribution without achieving a relaxation of tensions.

Moreover, a diplomatic confrontation of NATO and the Warsaw Pact has all the rigidities of a bipolar world. It will raise fears in Western Europe of a U.S.-Soviet condominium and it will tend to legitimize the Soviet hegemonial position in Eastern Europe. Above all, it will fail to take advantage of the flexibility afforded by greater West European unity and autonomy. As Europe gains structure, its attraction for Eastern Europe is bound to increase. The major initiatives for relations between Western and Eastern Europe should be originated in Europe with the United States in a reserve position.

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[y]

Such an approach can work only if there is a real consensus as to objectives. Philosophical agreement can make possible flexibility on method. This will require a form of consultation much more substantial than what now exists and a more effective European contribution.

To be sure, events in Czechoslovakia demonstrate the limits of East European autonomy that the Soviet Union is now prepared to tolerate. But the Soviet Union may not be willing indefinitely to continue to use the Red Army primarily against allies as it has done three times in a decade and a half. In any event, no Western policy can guarantee a more favorable evolution in Central Europe; all it can do is to take advantage of the opportunity if it arises.

Policy outside of Europe is likely to be divergent. Given the changed European perspective, an effort to bring about global burden sharing may only produce stagnation. The allies will be able to agree primarily on doing nothing. Any crisis occuring anywhere will turn automatically and organically world-wide. American understanding for European autonomy implies also European understanding for a degree of American autonomy with respect to areas in which, for understandable reasons, European concern has lessened.

In addition, cooperative efforts in entirely new areas should be explored. For example, our space program need not be national. European participation in it could supply an effective answer to the "technological gap".

Finally, under present circumstances, an especially meaningful community of interests can be developed in the social sphere. All modern states face problems of bureaucratization, pollution, environmental control, urban growth. These problems know no national

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[y]

considerations. If the nations of the Atlantic work together on
these issues -- either through private or governmental channels
or both -- a new generation habituated to cooperative efforts
could develop similar to that spawned in different circumstances
by the Marshall Plan.

It is high time that the nations bordering the Atlantic
deal -- formally, systematically and at the highest level -- with
questions such as these: (a) what are the relative roles of
Europe and the United States in East-West contacts? (b) is a
division of functions conceivable in which Western Europe plays
the principal role in relation to Eastern Europe while the United
States concentrates on relationships with the USSR? (c) what
forms of political consultation does this require? (d) in what
areas of the world is common action possible? Where are divergent
courses indicated? How are differences to be handled?

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

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

In the years ahead, the most profound challenge to American policy is philosophical: to develop some concept of what we understand by order in a world which is bipolar militarily but multipolar politically. But a philosophical deepening, however necessary, will not come easily to those brought up in the American tradition of foreign policy.

Our political society was one of the few which was **consciously created** at a point in time. At least until the emergence of the race problem, we have been blessed by the absence of class conflicts or other conflicts as to ultimate ends. The lessons of two world wars seem to many Americans to prove that we saved the world twice in a century.

These factors produce the characteristic aspects of American foreign policy: a certain manipulativeness and pragmatism, a bias against long-range planning, a reluctance to think in structural terms -- all qualities which reflect a sense of self-sufficiency not far removed from a sense of omnipotence. Yet the contemporary dilemma is that there are no total solutions; we are engulfed in a permanent process not in a quest for a total goal. A multipolar world forces us to learn to be creative with the autonomy of friends who do not follow our prescriptions and who may even oppose us at times. Nuclear bipolarity has as its imperative, constant political contact with opponents.

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a. The New Nations and Political Legitimacy

This challenge is especially crucial with respect to the new nations. Future historians are likely to class the confusion and torment in the emerging countries with the great movements of religious awakening. Continents which had been dormant for centuries have suddenly developed political consciousness. Regions which for scores of years had considered foreign rule as natural, struggle for independence. Yet it is a curious nationalism which defines itself not as in Europe -- by common language or history but often primarily by the common experience of foreign rule. Boundaries -- especially in Africa -- have tended to follow the administrative convenience of the colonial powers. Divided along religious or tribal lines, the new nations have faced both a problem of identity and of political authority. They lack social cohesiveness or they are split into competing groups each with a highly developed sense of identity.

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

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[y]

Yet the traditional foreign policy manifestations are not the most significant aspect of the turmoil of the new countries. It is in the new countries that the issue of the purpose of political life and the meaning of political legitimacy -- key issues also in the modern state -- pose themselves in their most acute form. The new nations weigh little in the physical balance of power. But the forces unleashed in the emergence of so many new states may well affect the moral balance of the world -- the convictions which form the structure for the world of tomorrow adding a new dimension to the problem of multipolarity.

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

But this produces another cause of instability. When
social cohesiveness is slight, the struggle for control of
authority becomes increasingly bitter. When government is the

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

This process took centuries in Europe. It must be
accomplished in decades in the new nations where preconditions of
success are less favorable than at comparable periods in Europe.
In addition, the new countries are subject to foreign pressures
which Europe was spared. There is a premium on foreign
adventures to bring about domestic cohesiveness.

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

Both assumptions are subject to serious questions. In
every advanced country, political stabiliti preceeded rather than
emerged from the process of industrialization. Where the
rudiments of popular institutions did not exist at the beginning
of the industrial revolution, they did not receive their impetus

[y]

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from it. To be sure, representative institutions were broadened and elaborated as the countries prospered -- but their significant features antedated economic development and are not attributable to it. In fact, the system of government -- whether popular or authoritarian -- which has brought about industrialization, has tended to be confirmed by this achievement.

Nor is democracy a natural evolution of nationalism. In the last century, it was started by an aristocratic ruling class whose estimate of itself was founded outside the political process. It was buttressed by a middle-class holding a political philosophy which considered the state to be a referee of the ultimately important social forces rather than the principal focus of national consciousness. Professional revolutionaries were rarely involved; their bias is seldom democratic.

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

Communism has never succeeded in the industrialized countries for which its theory was devised; its greatest successes

- 35 -

have been in agricultural societies. This is no accident. Industrialization -- in its early phases -- multiplies dislocations. It smashes the traditional framework. It requires a system of values which makes the sacrifices involved in capital formation tolerable and which furnishes some integrating principles to contain psychological frustrations.

Communism is able to supply legitimacy for the sacrifices inseparable from capital formation in an age when the maxims of laissez-faire are no longer acceptable. Too, Leninism has the attraction of providing a rationale for holding on to power. Many of the leaders of the new countries are revolutionaries who sustained themselves through the struggle for independence by visions of the transformations to be brought about after victory. They are not predisposed even to admit the possibility of giving up power in their hour of truimph. Since they susally began their struggle for independence while in a small minority and sustained it against heavy odds, they are not likely to be repelled by the notion that it is possible to "force men to be free."

The ironic feature of the current situation is that Marxism, professing a materialistic philosophy, is accepted in many new countries because of its idealistic components -- it is the philosophy of the underdog and the downtrodden in non-Communist societies. Its philosophy has been a total failure in inspiring the younger generation in Communist countries. On the other hand, the U.S., professing an idealistic philosophy, often fails because of its heavy reliance on economic factors. It has answers to technical

- 36 -

discolations but has been able to contribute much less to
building a political and moral consensus.

The problem of political legitimacy is the key to
political stability in regions containing two-thirds of the
world's population. An American agenda must include some
conception of what we understand by it. In an age of instan-
taneous communication, we cannot pretend that what happens
to over two-thirds of humanity is of no concern or interest
to the United States. This does not mean that our goal should
be to transfer American institutions to the new nations --
even less that we should impose them. Nor should the problem
be defined as how to prevent the spread of Communism. The
issue is the problem of building a moral consensus which
can make a pluralistic world creative rather than destructive.

Irrelevance to one of the great revolutions of our time
will mean that we will ultimately be engulfed by it -- if
not physically, then psychologically. Already some of the
protest movements have made heroes of leaders of repressive
new countries. The absurdity of founding a claim for freedom
on protagonists of the totalitarian state -- such as Guevara
or Ho or Mao -- underlines the fact that the travail of the
new countries affects societies which share none of their
technical but some of their spiritual problems -- especially
the problem of the nature of authority in the modern world.
To a young generation in rebellion against bureaucracy and
bored with material comfort, these socieites offer at least
the challenge of unlimited opportunity (and occasionally
unlimited manipulativeness) in the quest for justice.

- 37 -

A world which is bipolar militarily and multipolar
politically thus confronts an additional problem. Side by
side with the physical balance of power, there exists a
psychological balance based on intangibles of value and belief.
The presuppsitions of the -hysical equilibrium have changed
dreastically; those of the shychological balance remain yet
to be discovered.

b. The Problem of Soviet Intentions

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

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

The debate about Soviet trends between "hard liners" and
"soft liners" illustrates this problem. Both sides tend to
agree that the purpose of American policy is to bring about
a more benign evolution of Soviet society -- containment was

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after all supposed to bring about the _domestic_ transformation
of the USSR. They are at one that a settlement presupposes
a change in the Soviet system. Both groups give the impression
that the nature of a possible settlement is perfectly obvious --
the apostles of containment never defined what would be the
American negotiating program for the situation of strength
their policy was designed to achieve. Nor have the advocates
of relaxation of tensions tended to emphasize precision; they
have been more concerned with that atmosphere than with the substance
of talks.

In fact, the difference between the "hawks" and "doves"
has usually concerned an issue of timing: The "hawks" have
maintained that a Soviet change of heart, while inevitable, was
still in the future while the "doves" have argued that it has
already taken place. Many of the "hawks" tend to consider
all negotiations as fruitless. Many of the "doves" argue --
or did before Czechoslovakia -- that the biggest step toward
peace has already been accomplished by a Soviet change of heart
about the cold war; negotiations need only remove some essen-
tially technical obstacles.

This tendency affects and sometimes poisons -- the entire
American debate about foreign policy. Left-wing critics of
American foreign policy seem incapable of attacking U.S.
actions without elevating our opponent (whether it happens to
be Mao or Castro or HO, or Khrushchev) to a pedestal. If they
discern some stupidity or self-interest on our side, they
assume that the other side must be cirtuous. They then
criticize the U.S. for opposing the other side. The "Right"

- 39 -

follows the same logic in reverse: they presuppose _our_ good intentions and conclude that the other side must be perverse in opposing us. Both the Left and the Right judge largely in terms of intentions. They start with a view of America (which they think they understand) and then they attribute the opposite moral quality to the other side. In the process, whatever the issue -- whether Berlin or Vietnam -- more attention is paid to whether to get to the conference room that what to do once we arrive there. The dispute over Communist intentions has diverted attention from elaborating our own purposes. The test of dedication to peace has been whether one interprets Soviet intentions in the most favorable manner.

It should be obvious, however, that the Soviet domestic situation is complex and its relationship to foreign policy far from obvious. It is true that the risks of general nuclear war should be as unacceptable to Moscow as to Washington; but this truism does not automatically produce detente. It can also be used to lessen the risks involved in local intervention. No doubt the current generation of Communist leaders lacks the idealogical dynamism of their predecessors who made the revolution; at the same time, they have at their disposal a military machine of unprecedented strength and they must deal with a bureaucracy of formidable vested interests. (After all, senior elements in the Soviet hierarchy must have felt sufficiently threatened by freedom of the press in Prague to unleash the Red Army for the third time in a decade and a half against an _allied_ country.) Unquestionably, Communist consumers press their leaders to satisfy their demands; it is equally true that an expanding modern economy is able to

- 40 -

both guns and butter. Some Soviet leaders may have become more pragmatic. But in an elaborated Communist state the conclusions of pragmatism are comples: Once power is seized and industrialization is largely accomplished, the Communist party faces a difficult situation. It is not needed to conduct the government; it has no real function in running the economy (though it tries to do both). In order to justify its continued existnece and command, it may develop a vested interest in vigilance aganist outside danger and thus in perpetuating a farily high level of tension.

It is beyond the scope of this essay to go into detail on the issue of internal Communist evolution. But it may be appropriate to inquire why in the past every period of detente has proved still born. There have been at least five periods of peaceful coexistence since the Bolshevik seizuer of power, one in each decade of the existnece of the Sovbet state. Each was hailed in the West as ushering in a new era of reconciliation and as signifying the long-awaited final change in Soviet purposes. Each enede abruptly with a new period of intransigence which was then generally ascribed to a victory of Soviet "hard liners" rather than to the dynamics of the system. There were many reasons for this. But the tendency of many in the West to be content with changes of Soveit tone and to confuse atmosphere with substance merely did not help matters. This has enabled the Communist leaders to postpone the coice which they must make sooner or later: whether to use detente as a device to lull the WEst or whether to move to a resolution of

- 41 -

the outstanding differences. Postponing the choice in turn
leaves open the possibility that latent crises may run away
with the principal protagonists as happened in the Middle
East and perhaps even in Czechoslavakia.

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

If we focus our policy discussions on Soviet purposes,
we conduse the debate in two ways: (1) Soviet trends are too
ambiguous to offer a reliable guide -- it is possible that
not even Soviet leaders fully understand the dynamics of
their system; (2) it deflects us from articulation our own
purposes which we should pursue, whatever Soviet intentions.
Peace will not, in any event, result from one grand settlement
from a process of adjustment and this requires some clarity
as to our destination. Confusing foreing policy with
psychotherapy deprives us of criteria by which to judge real
relaxations of tensions.

- 42 -

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

These lines are being written while the Soviet invasion of Czechoslavakia outrages morel sensibilities. There is a tendency to focus on the military implications or to speak of strengthening unity in the abstract. But if history is a guide at all, there will be a new Soviet peace offensive sooner or later -- indeed if Soviet behavior after the invasion of Hungary is any guide sooner rethat than later. If we are not to be doomed to repeat the past, it may be well to learn some ot its lessons: We should not again donfuse a change ot tone with a change of heart. We should not pose false inconsistencies between allied unity and detente; indeed a true relaxation of tensions presupposes Western unity. We should concettrate negotiations on the concrete issues that threaten the peace of the world such an internention in the Third World. Moderating the arms race must also be high on the agenda. None of this i possible without a concrete idea of what we understand by peace and a creative world order.

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

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

This requires that we recognize first the existence of
profound structural problems to a unindurable extent independent
of the intentions of the principal protagonists and they
cannot be solved merely by good will. The vacuum in Central
Europe and the decline of the West European countries
would have disturbed the equilibrium regardless of the
domestic structure of the Soviet Union. A strong China
historically has tended to establish suzerainty over many of
its neighbors; one problem of dealing with China is that --
Communism apart -- it has no experience in conducting
foreign policy between equals. China has either been
dominant or subjected.

To understand the structural issue it is necessary to
undertake an inquiry from which we have historically shied
away into the essence of our national interest. It is part
of the American folklore that while other nations are
concerned with equilibrium, we are concerned with the legal

- 45 -

requirements of peace. We have a tendency to offer our altruism as a guarantee of our reliability: "We have no quarrel with the Communists," Secretary of State Rusk said on one occasion, "all of our quarrels are on behalf of other people."

Such an attitude makes it difficult to develop a conception of our role in the world. It inhibits other nations from gearing their policy to ours in a confident way -- a "disinterested" policy is likely to be considered "unreliable". A mature conception of our interest in the world should obviously take into account the general interest in stability and peaceful change. It would deal with two fundamental questions: What is it in our interest to prevent? What should we seek to accomplish?

The answer to the first question is often confused by the proposition that we will resist aggression anywhere since peace is indivisible. A corollary is the argument that we do not oppose the fact of particular changes but the method by which they were brought about. We find it hard to articulate a truely vital interest which we would defend however "legal" the challenge. This leads to an undifferentiated globalism and confusion about our purposes. The notion that we resist aggression in the abstract causes us to

- 46 -

multiply our commitments. The denial that our interests are
involved diminishes our staying power when we try to carry
out our commitments.

Part of the reason is our reluctance to think in terms
of power and equilibrium. In 1949 for example, a State
Department memorandum justified NATO as follows: "(The treaty)
obligates the parties to defend the purposes and principles
of the United Nations, the freedom, common heritage and
civilization of the parties and their free institutions based
upon the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the
role of law. It obligates them to act in defense of peace and
security. It is directed against no one; it is directed
solely against aggression. It seeks not to influence any
shifting balance of power but to strengthen a balance of
principle."

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

- 47 -

A new administration confronts the challenge of relating the
comitments of America to its interest and its obligations to
its purposes.

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

In the late Sixties, the situation is more complex. The
United States is no longer in a position to operate programs
globally; it has to encourage them. It can no longer design
its preferred solution; it must seek to evoke it. In the
Forties and Fifties, we offered remedies; in the late Sixties
to and Seventies our role will have to be/contribute to a structure
in which the initiative of others can be fostered. We are a
superpower physically, but our designs can be meaningful only
if they generate willing cooperation. We can continue to
contribute to defense and positive programs; but we must seek
to encourage and not stifle a sense of local responsibility.
Our contribution should not be the sole or principal effort
but it should make the difference between success and failure.

- 48 -

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

The dilemma is that there can be no stability without equilibrium but equally, equilibrium is not a purpose the responds to the travail of our world. A sense of mission is axman clearly a legacy of American history; to most Americans America has always stood for something other than its own grandeur. But a clearer understanding of America's interests and of the requirements of equilibrium can give perspective to our idealism and lead to humane and moderate objectives. both especially in relation to political and social change. A conception of world order must have deeper purposes than stability but greater restraints than would be possible if it were approached only in a fit of enthusiasm.

Whether such a leap of the imagination is possible in the modern bureaucratic state remains to be seen. New administrations come to power convinced of the need for purpose and comprehensive concepts. Sooner, rather than later, they find themselves

- 49 -

subjected to the pressures of the immediate and the ad hoc.
Part of the reason is the pragmatic, issue-oriented bias of
our decisionmakers. But the fundamental reason may be the
pervasiveness of modern bureaucracy. What started out as an
aid to decisionmaking has developed a momentum of its own.
Increasingly, the policymaker is more conscious of the pressures
and the morale of his staff than of the purpose this staff is
supposed to serve. The policymaker becomes a referee among
quasi-autonomous bureaucratic bodies. Success consists of
moving the administrative machinery to the point of decision
leaving relatively little energy for analyzing its merit. The
modern bureaucratic state begins to resemble the dinosaur; its
problems.

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

This difference in perspective accounts for the inconclu-