# 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.

The essence of a revolution is that it appears to contemporaryes 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 history, the foreign policy of Europe was scarcely affected by

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

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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 unprecedented problem of
conducting policy toward well over a hundred countries. Geo-
graphic isolation no longer exists. Every nation, no matter how
insignificant, participates 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 Second
World War, several scores of new states have come into being.
The emergence of even a few new nations in the 19th Century pro-
duced 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 responsibi-
lities of the new nations to their aspirations.

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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. Similar limitations obtained through much of the 19th Century.

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 opress 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.

This process has been aided by a scientific revolution 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

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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 absence 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 reasonable to one side will appear most problematical to the other.

When there is ideological conflict, political loyalties no longer necessarily coincide with national boundaries. Conflicts among states merge with divisions within nations; the dividing line between domestic and foreign policy begins to disappear. At least some states feel threatened 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 in 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 power of military might. Over the next decade, no other country

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group 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. Moreover, 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-adjustment; the
policymakers of the superpowers in the second half of the 20th
Century have much less confidence in the ability of the equili-
brium to right itself after disturbance. Whatever "balance"
there is between 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 super-
powers 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
in 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 even stronger
assertions of self-will. Traditional uses of power have become less
feasible while new forms of pressure have emerged as a result of trans-
national loyalties and weak domestic structures.

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 and
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 greatest need of the international community is an agreed concept
of order; in its absence, the awesome available power 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
recreated in the modern age. The stable technology, the multiplicity of
major powers, the limited domestic claims and the frontier which per-
mitted adjustments may be gone forever.

This problem is particularly serious for the United States. Whatever
United States intentions or policies, there is the inescapable fact that the
United States disposes of the greatest single aggregate of material power in
the world. This power is increasing at an exponential rate. The greater
part of the world has no capacity to match it. It is impossible to create an
international order without the American component; it is equally true that
U.S. influence is not commensurate to its power -- nor perhaps even
desirable that it be -- for American hegemony is in no one's interest,
least of all in America's.

The concern with an international order which seeks to evoke the
creativity of pluralism is novel in American experience with foreign policy.
Prior to World War II, the United States attitude was laissez-faire non-
engagement. After World War II we assumed international responsibilities.
These were based on the assumption that technological arts plus managerial
skills produced an ability to restructure the international system and to bring
about domestic transformations in "emerging countries." This direct
"operational" concept of international order has proved too simple. The
deepest challenge will be to relate military bipolarity to political multipolarity.