W. W. Rostow
Oxford-Cambridge Boat Club

April 11, 1969

I

My claim to speak at an Oxford-Cambridge Boat Club dinner is
tenuous, since I only once operated in a shell. The object of the
exercise was to proceed up the Isus to a Gordoulli Boat Club dinner.
We made it up, but only a few hundred yards back. As the shell
capsized, a loud, clear Australian voice was heard to say, "It's all
right, men, I'll save the grog."

With the grog saved, the shell parked on the towpath; oars over
our shoulders, we proceeded, dripping and weaving, several miles down
the towpath; then up the High and back to Balliol, each to be greeted
scrupulously with a "good evening, sir," from the Head Porter as we
stumbled across the threshold.

But abiding ties of memory and affection -- rather than oarsmanship --
justify our presence here tonight.

II

This is, we might agree, a steady, but not a particularly golden
moment in Anglo-American relations.

For Britain, the entry into Europe is unresolved; its balance of
payments presents a nagging, dangerous problem; as a society, it is
groping for a new balance between material affluence and the quality of

-2-

life -- searching for the kind of existence men should contrive when
brute problems of scarcity are no longer central for a considerable
proportion of the people.

We in America confront the same question, plus the searching
issues of race and the cities, as well as Vietnam.

Between the two countries there remain sturdy strands of inter-
dependence; and these are recognized by the two governments. But
there are no great common adventures or challenges to make us exploit
to the hilt the storehouse of common values that are still there, when we
most need them.

In unpacking old books and papers in Austin, my wife came upon two
yellowed clippings from the London *Times*, which reflect something of
my response to the situation in both countries. One clipping sports the
headline: ENGLAND HOPES DISPELLED. The subheading reads:
"Women's Defeat in Table Tennis."

The other clipping is a letter to *The Times* which sparked a protracted
debate some of you may recall. The heading is: GOING DOWNHILL.
The first two sentences of the text of the letter read: "Sir, -- Having
recently returned from a winter-sports holiday in Switzerland, I feel it
necessary to raise comment concerning the dress of certain Britishers
in fashionable winter resorts.

-3-

"On numerous occasions during my stay abroad I encountered English people on the slopes and in the hotels in supposed skiing dress that wouldn't have done credit to a tramp."

This is clearly not a world or time that invites or justifies complacency. But we do have the right to a certain perspective.

For Britain and the United States have faced a difficult half century since the terrible events of August 1914; both nations have carried, since then, extraordinary strains and burdens -- and, on the whole, carried them well.

### III

Britain took -- and survived -- the awful bloodletting that went with the struggle on the Western Front of the First World War.

It recovered its fibre sufficiently to stand alone for a critical two years that bought time for the American weight to be felt in the Second World War.

In 1944 it moved from senior to junior partner in that war, with a maturity and poise that few nations could muster -- and those of us who closely observed the process will never cease to admire.

Its domestic political life and institutions continue to exhibit the flexibility and responsiveness that have marked them since 1688 -- except for the worst days of George III -- moving, in the tradition of the Reform Bill of 1832 and the crisis of the House of Lords in 1913, to the postwar

-4-

welfare state and a radically widened social basis for British life --
Beatles, the new provincial universities, and all.

It transformed with grace the Empire into the Commonwealth and
pioneered the concept of collective development assistance through the
Colombo Plan. Despite balance of payments burdens, Britain is quietly
there in many of the multilateral arrangements which now support
progress in the developing continents.

And Britain took its share of the postwar shocks to international
order -- from its role in the Berlin airlift down through the protracted
Malayan campaign and the Malaysian confrontation.

IV

As for America, despite deeply rooted illusions about our interests
in the world, we acted on Dr. Johnson's old proposition that "The sight
of the gallows concentrates the mind marvelously."

-- We moved in the face of unrestricted German submarine warfare
in the Atlantic in 1917; broke out of isolationism after Paris fell in 1940;
and, on both occasions, our effort, added to that of others, avoided the
rupture of the civilization of which we are a part.

-- And we learned something from those experiences: a Congress
elected in 1946 to bring the boys home and to get rid of meat rationing,
supported President Truman in the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan,
and the building of NATO.

-5-

-- We demonstrated in Berlin and the Cuban missile crisis that our democracy, led by President Kennedy, had the nerve and will to turn back, without war, as ugly a game as has ever been played on the international scene -- nuclear blackmail.

-- Despite the heavy costs assumed by President Truman and President Johnson, we have thus far acted to prevent a violation of the power balance of Asia, which would have brought short-term catastrophe and the subsequent likelihood of major war, in a nuclear age.

-- While facing this succession of pressures, we have had the margin of vision and determination to reach out across the potentially mortal barriers of the Cold War to try to begin to tame the nuclear arms race; and we have acted with others to give substance -- more substance than is generally understood -- to the notion of the 1960's as the Decade of Economic Development.

-- And -- also along with others -- we have learned the Keynesian devices; tamed the business cycle to a significant degree; and built a network of world trade and monetary arrangements which -- however imperfect -- proves that the international community remembers the suicidal economic nationalism of 1929-33.

V

But, of course, the good Lord made us no better than we should be.

Churchill was right in calling the Second World War "the unnecessary war." And the major blame must rest with the self-delusions of interwar isolationism.

-6-

Britain could -- and should -- have thrown itself into Europe in 1947 when Europe virtually begged for its leadership.

The United States has been slow to recognize the enormous distortion that the mass automobile and the migration to suburbia have wrought in our old cities, a distortion that converges with the challenge of bringing the Negro to full equality in the Nation's life.

Neither of us has done well lately, despite our great natural advantages as practiced democracies, in building the deep consensus required to tame inflation, via wage and price self-discipline -- a clear requirement of long-term viability for our societies, once unemployment is taken to be an act of man and not of God.

And this by no means exhausts the list of our errors -- some extremely costly to ourselves and to the civilized world as a whole.

VI

The test of a nation's policy cannot be simply the Abbe Sieyes' account of what he did during the French Revolution. He said, you will recall, "I have survived." But in the world we have faced since 1914, it is something to have maintained unbroken the continuity of national life and lived to fight another day.

-7-

VII

But, of course, the fight cannot be another great war.

The fight -- for Britain and the United States -- and for all the rest
willing to help -- must be to struggle on with a task which is at mid-passage
at best: the task of building a stable and peaceful international order --. the
order broken in 1914 and now, more than a half century later, still not
replaced.

The character of the common task was obscured for a time by the
apparent shift in power and responsibility from London -- and Western
Europe, in general -- to the United States. There were those who saw it
as, simply, the assumption by a new, great power of responsibilities
earlier borne by others. With relief or regret, nostalgia or recrimination,
they turned to cultivate their gardens and leave the world's burdens largely
to America.

You will all recall, I am sure, the flap in London late in 1962 when
Dean Acheson produced his *bon mot* that Britain had lost an empire but had
not found a role.

But there are no new empires to build; and the United States, in any
case, has not been in a mood to build one since the pre-1900 adventures
of Teddy Roosevelt.

It is fair to say, I think, that we are in a phase of history when every major nation is searching to escape from old memories and impulses, seeking to define a stable and acceptable role for itself in the world.

-8-

For the United States, I believe more progress has been made in
the last few years than is generally understood in making that definition.
President Johnson, rejecting isolationism, on the one hand, and accepting
the Nation's uneasiness at the disproportionate involvement that came
with filling vacuums of power in the immediate postwar years, set about
systematically to build an alternative to both: a policy of partnership and
fair shares -- a policy outlined at New Orleans on September 10, 1968, but
conducted systematically over previous years.

Day by day, decision by decision, he shifted the underlying basis of
our position in trade, monetary affairs, and in aid, while throwing America's
weight actively, for the first time, behind regionalism in Latin America,
Africa, and Asia. Underlying this sustained effort was a judgment -- a
judgment that there was and would remain in American political life a
willingness to take our fair share of the burdens of building world order
if others -- in their regions and globally -- would do the same.

The halfway house between isolationism and over-involvement will
require much further effort, over many years, by many hands. But the
concept is there and the initial structures and institutions -- except in
the Middle East.

Whether this strategy succeeds depends, of course, on how others
emerge from their efforts to define their roles. The outcome depends,
in fact, on the answers to a series of questions akin to those which conclude
episodes in a continuing television soap opera:

-9-

-- Will France, having failed at its Gaullist peak to persuade continental Western Europe to follow its lead or to produce, with all its continental and technological sophistication, a serious impact on the great problems outside of Western Europe -- will France take the road once again to Western European integration?

-- Will Britain, harassed by the delay, hold steadily to its object of fully entering the institutions of Europe?

-- Will Asia, understanding that America can only buy time for it to assume larger responsibilities for its own destiny through regional cooperation, continue to move down that path?

-- Will Latin America -- anxious for the benefits of sophisticated industry -- overcome its heritage of excessive tariffs, monopoly, and fragmentation and move forward to the economic integration required for its full modernization?

-- Will Africa -- its institutional foundations laid -- make the most of them and transcend the limitations of its national boundaries -- in the long road ahead?

-- Will mainland China come to accept that it can dominate neither Asia nor the world Communist movement, turn to its own unfulfilled tasks of modernization, emerge from its century of torment, and normalize its relations with non-Communist Asia, the Soviet Union, the United States, and the whole United Nations community?

-10-

-- And will Moscow come to accept that Stalin's and Khrushchev's imperial visions will not work and find its role in working with others to keep an inherently volatile and dangerous world from explosions as dangerous to the Soviet peoples as to others?

We in the United States have only limited margins of influence in determining how this series of momentous soap operas comes out. What we can do, we should do. The stakes for all of us are evidently high.

The American stake, for example, in the degree of effective unity in Western Europe, is a major stake; for without effective Western European unity, the United States will have to carry a disproportionate burden and this will continue to put unnatural -- and even dangerous -- strains on our political life. But my point tonight is rather narrow: once the image of a simple succession of United States to the old responsibilities of Western Europe is put aside and the common task is perceived as building, block by block, the elements of a stable world order, there is an ample role for all to play. No one can afford to sulk in isolation; no one can legitimately dream of empires lost which others gain.

And when Britain and the United States -- or better, Europe and the United States -- come to some such common definition of the task, then the possibilities of partnership will enlarge again.

-11-

VIII

We cannot tell, of course, whether the human race is capable of finding good answers to these questions and moving towards a stable world order.

But if we -- and our children -- have a chance of getting there, it will be because there remains in Britain and the United States wellsprings of good sense and gallantry, experience and inner-confidence.

We have come through a bad half-century in reasonably good shape. We have capsized on a number of occasions; but we have always -- thus far -- managed to "save the grog." We ought to be able to stay the course. If we stay close and keep our sense of perspective, we may yet help shepherd the human race through this most difficult and dangerous of passages to quieter and more peaceful times.

Our possibilities of playing this joint role are enhanced by our capacity to give due attention to table tennis and skiing decorum -- and Oxford-Cambridge Boat Club dinners.

#####

May 19, 1970

Walt Rostow - Thurs morning early
(Last name and pending date)
or Thurs. evening -
May 21, 1970

KISSINGER, HENRY A.

Name: W. Walt Rostow

Request: Will be in town from Wednesday evening - departing Friday afternoon. Is letting us know because HAK asked him to let him know the next time he was in town. Either very early on Thursday or Thursday evening, May 21, 1970, would like to see HAK if HAK would like to see him. Does not want to be a bother.

DRY's

This Recommendation:

HAK's Answer:

Date and Time:

Party Contacted:

Additional Information: Walt Rostow gave the above information to Gen. Haig on the phone today. Also Dave McManis is arranging for Mr. Rostow to have some reading material to look at while he is here.

Resolution:

RECEIVED

MAY 23 1970

CENTRAL FILES

Rather than using the University address,
please use:

W. W. Rostow
Federal Office Building
300 East 8th Street
Austin, Texas 78701

Telephone: area code 512 475-5425

RELEASE TIME 6:30 P. M., CDT, OCTOBER 22, 1970

W. W. Rostow Speech Before
Dallas United Nations Association

Thursday, October 22, 1970

UNITED NATIONS: A LOOK AHEAD

I

After my appearance here was announced, I received a few letters
from members of the Dallas community. They were concerned that
someone holding the views I do on Vietnam should be invited -- and
should be willing to appear -- to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the
United Nations. Those letters reversed an old and familiar story. They
seemed to say: "What would a bad boy like you be doing in a nice place
like this?"

However my views on Vietnam and Asia are judged, I am wholly at
ease in coming to join in this anniversary occasion. I am one of the very
few Americans who has served both as an official in the American Govern-
ment and as a working member of the United Nations Secretariat.

One of the adventures of my life was to join Gunnar Myrdal in 1947
as his special assistant in helping set up the Economic Commission for
Europe in Geneva. That is, as you know, a branch of the United Nations.
Its membership includes nations from Eastern as well as Western Europe,
the Soviet Union as well as the United States.

We set this piece of international machinery into motion at the very
worst of the Cold War. Molotov had left the Paris meeting on the Marshall
Plan in July 1947. In the months ahead Stalin was consolidating Moscow's

2

The next year
control over Eastern Europe. /Berlin was blockaded, sustained through a
difficult winter only by airlift.

In this harsh setting we worked to hold together in Geneva every
strand we could find that might ameliorate the tension between East and
West, and provide a future basis for East-West cooperation. We worked
in the faith that the tides of history and the work of men of good will would
bring better days. We believed that Stalin's satellite empire in Eastern
Europe was not history's final decision. It was hard but rewarding work;
a good education in the realities of the postwar world, and in the
possibilities and limitations of the United Nations.

I believe those that worked together in Geneva at that time were as
able and dedicated a team of international civil servants as has ever been
assembled. I am proud to have been among them.

In any case, the United Nations and its future have been a living part
of my life and my thought for some twenty-three years. And so I was
delighted to receive your invitation.

II

The United Nations is not one institution. It is a collection of related
institutions designed to serve different purposes. They reflect an inter-
national scene where sovereign governments exist; and they act upon the
international scene to the extent sovereign governments can agree to let them
act -- or the Secretariat can goad or negotiate them to act together -- or
let action go forward.

3

In its first quarter of a century the United Nations has reflected the political facts of life in the world that emerged after the Second World War. These facts of life decreed that the maximum hopes of all of us, registered in the United Nations Charter at San Francisco in 1945, could not immediately be achieved.

Above all, there was the failure of the great powers to maintain their wartime unity on the central security questions of the postwar world. That continued unity was to have been the bedrock upon which the Security Council of the United Nations would work. Only substantive unity could have permitted the Security Council to perform the functions envisaged in the United Nations Charter. The veto provided in the Security Council might have been merely a powerful goad to find agreement. But once the veto came to be used against the majority will -- and against the will of major powers -- the result was predictable; that is, a world divided and in contention.

The United Nations has thus had to find its missions -- to do what it could do to fulfill the injunctions of the Charter -- in a world of Cold War struggle. In the late 1940's and early 1950's that conflict raged along the northern line from Seoul to Berlin. Then it shifted to the south, with the emergence of the post-colonial world of nationalism and modernization. Since the mid-1950's -- say, from the Egyptian arms deal with Moscow in 1955 -- the Cold War contest has suffused the great struggle of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America to find roles of dignity in the modern world.

4

And throughout this whole period the United Nations has had to do its job in a world where the Baruch plan was rejected by the Soviet Union and nuclear weapons spread out from one to five national states.

The United Nations has reflected all too vividly the Cold War conflict of this generation -- the tensions and crises of a contending and revolutionary world over which was suspended the nuclear sword of Damocles.

But it has also acted upon that world in many constructive ways:

-- as a forum where diplomats could meet and talk constructively in private after delivering their formal positions for the record and for the folks back home;

-- as an instrument for limiting conflict and for keeping the peace, for a time at least -- in the Middle East, for example; between India and Pakistan; and at certain critical moments in the Congo.

-- the United Nations spawned regionalism not only in the Economic Commission for Europe but also in regional commissions for Latin America, Asia and the Far East, and Africa;

-- the United Nations contributed significant elements to growth and social progress in the developing regions, through its own programs as well as those of the specialized agencies which are linked to it;

-- and there is much more to the good in its record.

5

Despite all its evident weaknesses -- which are mainly the weaknesses of the world in which we live -- the United Nations has earned its keep. It is right that the peoples and governments of the world would strongly resist any effort to dismantle it.

### III

I recall these elements of the record of the United Nations only briefly because my intent today is to look forward rather than backward.

It is my belief that it is not impossible -- I repeat, not impossible -- that we shall see in the years ahead a favorable change in the international environment within which the United Nations has to act; and that the United Nations in the future could come nearer than in the past to fulfilling its mission as defined at San Francisco.

In elaborating this theme, I shall try to do two things: first, to explain why I believe the forces at work in the world around us could move us in the direction of a stable peace in the years ahead; and, second, to suggest three directions in which the United Nations might both assist the movement toward stable peace and make the most of that movement as it occurs.

### IV

On what grounds can a man stand before his fellow citizens and assert that there are forces at work moving us toward stable peace? How can this be said in a world where two major regions -- the Middle East and Southeast Asia -- are both caught up in daily bloodshed and confrontation to which no man can see the end?

6

I am, of course, aware of these conflicts; and I might add that no one who has served in the posts which I was privileged to hold between 1961 and 1969 can be a naive optimist.

Nevertheless, I believe there are two forces at work in the world which could move us in the years ahead toward stable peace.

First, there is the diffusion of power away from Moscow and Washington.

This is no new phenomenon. It began, in a sense, for both capitals in 1948.

For the United States it began as a matter of national policy. It began when the American Congress voted the funds for the Marshall Plan and threw its weight behind the movement towards Western European unity. We set about reviving a region which we hoped to see emerge as a partner, not a satellite. In effect, we set about purposefully to reduce the power we could then exercise in a critical part of the world.

As for Moscow, the diffusion of power began when Tito defied Stalin and proved that Yugoslavia could survive on that basis.

This diffusion has continued over the past generation, gathering momentum, in particular, after the Cuban missile crisis.

For good or ill, that crisis persuaded men in many parts of the world that the Soviet Union was not as dangerous as it had been in the past, and, therefore, they could act with greater independence of Washington, as well as of Moscow. The missile crisis also brought Moscow's split with Peking into the open and intensified it.

7

So far as American policy is concerned, I believe we can take pride
in the fact that in the first postwar generation we threw our political
influence, as well as our economic resources, behind the desire of
nations to stand up straight and fashion their own destiny. And we have
moved in recent years -- notably, under President Johnson's leadership --
to the active support of regionalism in Latin America, Africa, and Asia,
as well as continuing our support for regionalism in Western Europe.

But what about Moscow?

In 1960, after the Presidential election, I was sent to take part in a
Pugwash conference in Moscow on arms control. I was asked to speak
towards the end of the sessions. At one point I said this:

> "As an historian, I am convinced that the central historical
> fact of our time is this: power is being rapidly diffused away from
> Moscow and Washington. What we are seeing in the world is an
> equivalent of the process which occurred after 1815. In 1815
> Great Britain was the only country in the world which had
> absorbed the tricks of then modern technology. It alone had
> experienced an industrial revolution. In the century after 1815,
> the industrial revolution took hold in Belgium, France, Germany,
> Russia, Japan, and North America.

> "Now the industrial revolution is taking hold in the areas
> which were skipped during the century after 1815 -- that is to say
> the industrial revolution is taking hold in China and Eastern Europe;

8

and it is occurring -- or it will soon occur -- in the whole southern
half of the globe.

"The inevitable result is that industrial potential, military
power, and influence on the world scene is being diffused and will
continue to be diffused.

"Faced with this fact, there are three choices open to the Soviet
Union and the United States. We can stumble into a war and destroy
a large part of what man has built on the face of the earth and a large
part of the world's population. We can continue the Cold War until
the diffusion of power removes the capacity to decide from Moscow
and Washington. Or, working constructively together, we can create
the terms on which power will become diffused.

"This is the limit of the historical powers of the Soviet Union
and the United States. I would hope that we would choose the third
path. This is the historical responsibility we owe to our peoples."
I believe that assessment was essentially correct in 1960; and it
remains correct, although the continued concentration of nuclear capacity
in the United States and the Soviet Union makes it necessary to define the
diffusion of power with some subtlety.

I cannot say that the Soviet officials who heard me in 1960 immediately
agreed; and, much as I should like to believe it, I do not think Soviet policy
has yet firmly accepted this doctrine. But I do believe that there are more

9

men in Moscow than there were ten years ago who understand that the
world emerging in the latter half of the twentieth century is not going
to be dominated by any single power or any single ideology; and that their
duty to their own peoples is to help organize the world peacefully rather
than to try to control it directly from Moscow. That is what the
Nonproliferation Treaty is about, the SALT talks, and the occasional
Soviet efforts to join others in damping, rather than exacerbating, crises.
What has happened in the Middle East since 1967 and in Czechoslovakia in
1968 should remind us that this doctrine has not been accepted fully. But
we are closer to it; and the forces making for the diffusion of power will
certainly persist, not diminish.

So far as the United Nations is concerned, it will have more work to
do -- and more constructive work -- in a world of diffused power than in
one controlled primarily by Moscow and Washington. Its institutions are
designed to organize and make sense of a world of varying interests, not
to mediate between two hard blocs.

Related to the diffusion of power is a second major force which could
lead us in the direction of stable peace. That is the decline of the aggressive
revolutionary romantics.

The politics of developing nations has been marked in the generation
since 1945 by a group of autocratic or totalitarian leaders who have chosen
to build their domestic politics on "anti-imperialism" and to channel a high

10

proportion of the limited energies, talents, and resources available to them into external expansion: in Asia the roster includes Mao, Ho, Kim, and Sukarno; in the Middle East, Nasser and the other radical Arab leaders; in Africa, Nkrumah and Ben Bella; in Latin America, Castro. In one way or another these men were deeply involved in the world's major crises since South Korea was invaded, more than twenty years ago.

Some of these leaders are gone and the fate of others -- and their policies -- is still to be determined. In general, however, they encountered three forces which have tended to frustrate them.

First, they encountered other people's nationalism. Their revolutionary doctrines had a certain resonance in other countries within their regions; but it is one thing to be a radical nationalist Arab, a believer in Black African unity and assertiveness, or to hold that the social ills of Latin America require radical solutions: it is a different matter to agree to take your orders from Cairo, Accra, or Havana.

Second, they have encountered the resistance of those who have not wished to see the regional balances of power upset. Although the United States has carried in our time the major burden of supporting those under pressure of regional aggression, the British and Australians stood with Malaysia; fifteen nations with South Korea; six with South Vietnam; in 1958 Britain and the United States stood with Jordan and Lebanon; since 1967 the United States has helped keep the balance of regional forces from overwhelming Israel.

11

Third, the relative neglect of domestic welfare gradually imposed attrition on domestic political support for policies of external grandeur which failed to yield decisive results. It is easy initially to excite the people with visions of quick redress for real or believed old grievances or humiliations; but, in time, the desire to eat better, to see the children grow up with better health and more education asserts itself.

It was in such settings of frustration and disabuse that Nkrumah, Ben Bella, and Sukarno gave way to successors more focused on tasks of welfare and growth; the great debate proceeds between Mao and his opposition; and the North Vietnamese begin to surface their inner debate on the priority of victory in the south versus "building socialism" in North Vietnam.

It is no easy thing for a group of political leaders to abandon a vision to which their mature lives have been committed and which, up to a point,

12

granted them success. Mao, evidently, has refused, and will probably
refuse to the end, to acquiesce in the pragmatic bent of his "revisionist"
opponents who would (in the phrase of one of Mao's opponents) encourage
policies based on "objective economic laws" at home and external policies
such that "the world can bask in the sunlight of peace" and "infants can
slumber in the cradles, and mothers and wives may no longer live in
nightmares." Kim's dream of ruling all of Korea from Pyongyang will
die hard; although Kim has been brought up short by a hard, simple,
stabilizing, sobering fact: the rate of growth of South Korea is two or three
times the rate of growth of North Korea. The dream of the men in Hanoi --
that they alone are the proper successors to the French colonial empire in
Asia -- will also fade slowly, and with great pain for men who have
sacrificed almost a million human beings in its fruitless pursuit. Castro
will never find in producing sugar a substitute for his vision of converting
the Andes into the Sierra Maestra of South America. And Nasser, tragically,
would not hold for long to the idea that occasionally engaged him -- that
Cairo will only be great when Egypt, by its performance in economic and
social development, helps lead the Middle East by example in overcoming
its heritage of poverty and reconciling an intractable Arab culture with the
exigencies of the modern world.

In the case of Hanoi, Pyongyang, Cairo, and Havana, the availability
of large external resources permits postponement of the decision to shift
from expansion abroad to growth and welfare at home.

13

And before these dreams are abandoned, we may see final desperate acts to fulfill them.

But, in the end -- soon or late -- they will confront the destiny of the first great romantic revolutionary expansionist -- Napoleon. And they -- or their successors -- will echo Napoleon's memorandum to his finance minister in December 1812, when he abandoned the Continental System and the attempt to throttle Britain: "Undoubtedly it is necessary to harm our foes, but above all we must live."

V

I believe the forces at work yielding a diffusion of power and the decline of the romantic revolutionaries are real and strong; but I would not for a moment predict a sudden emergence of our world into the sunlight of stable peace; nor do I expect these two forces to work out smoothly and automatically to hand us peace on a platter.

There are ample forces also at work which could yield disruption and chaos; and there are a number of specific dangers.

For example, the turn away from radical expansionism to a concentration of the tasks of growth and welfare for the people is not yet visible in the Middle East; although the popularity of the American peace initiative among the people of Jordan and Egypt suggests that the latent impulse might be there.

14

For example, a frustration of growth in important parts of the developing world could induce a shift away from a pragmatic concentration on economic and social progress to more disruptive policies at home and abroad.

Let me pause and underline this point, and make it as blunt as I can. I can think of no worse period for a decline in American aid to the developing world than right now. President Kennedy suggested the 1960's might be called the Decade of Development. And that decade saw much more progress than is generally understood. In every region there are success stories which demonstrate that the job **can** be done: from South Korea and Thailand to Iran and Turkey; to Tunisia and the Ivory Coast; to Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela. But the job is **not** done. We have at least another decade of hard work before the nations containing the bulk of the population in the developing world will have moved into self-sustained growth.

At just this critical time -- when we know that success is possible, but before it has been achieved -- the American contribution to development has fallen away. Of the developed nations of the world, we now stand eleventh in terms of the proportion of our gross national product devoted to this task. It is a rather scandalous performance.

Now, of course, increased external assistance to developing countries will not, alone, deal with all their problems; for example, the urgent need to bring down the birth rate in the Indian subcontinent, Java, and elsewhere. But increased external assistance is essential, if we really wish to move the world in the direction of stable peace and to make the most of historical forces which trend in that direction.

15

There are still other dangers of disruption and conflict which could arise within the Communist world; for example, out of the Soviet fears of a nuclear China and Soviet fears of rising nationalism and liberalism in Eastern Europe.

But the biggest question mark is our own country.

We evidently face a number of searching and difficult problems at home. We have carried a high proportion of the burdens and responsibilities of the world community for a quarter-century. There are those who believe this is enough; and that we should now come home.

I do not doubt that in a world of diffusing power -- where others wish to take a larger part in shaping their own destiny -- the relative role of the United States should and will decline with the passage of time. It has declined in Europe and Latin America; and it is declining in Asia. And the role and responsibilities of others should and will increase. That, after all, is the whole point of the Marshall Plan and the similar policies we have followed in other parts of the world where we have sought not satellites but partners, preferably working on a regional basis.

But still, if we pull back too fast -- in Europe or the Middle East, Latin America or Asia -- we could move the world not towards stable peace but towards chaos and enlarged areas of violence and international conflict.

This is the responsibility we Americans bear and cannot escape. We can gradually, cautiously, pull back in degree, as others gather strength; but we cannot safely walk away from our responsibilities.

16

The world community has come a long way in the quarter-century
since the Cold War began: in Western Europe and East-West relations;
in the balance of forces at work in Asia; in the process of modernization
in the developing regions. And I deeply believe we can make more progress
in the next quarter-century than we did in the past. But much depends on
us -- on the United States. Our role is diminishing as we wish it to diminish.
But we remain the critical margin.

Thus, taking all the doubts and question marks together -- ourselves
included -- it would not be difficult to envisage future movement not towards
order and reconciliation and progress but towards disruption, fragmentation,
mass hunger and renewed danger in a fragile nuclear world.

What can be said on the basis of a quarter-century's effort against
considerable odds is that the task of moving in the next generation towards
stable peace does not appear impossible; and those are about as good odds
as man is ever granted in great enterprises.

VI

I turn now to my second question.

With these prospects and hopes, possibilities and dangers, how ought
the United Nations to change in the years ahead, both to reflect the forces at
work and to try to tip them in the right direction.

I have three concrete suggestions.

17

First, it is clear from the way negotiations and policy are moving
with respect to China and Germany that the question of a universal United
Nations will soon be upon us. I believe we shall have to face this matter
in the time ahead; and that we should face it.

The question of a universal United Nations -- containing East and
West Germany, North and South Vietnam, North and South Korea, repre-
sentatives from the governments in both Peking and Taipei -- is a matter
of timing and a matter of how the job is done.

As for timing, I think the time may soon be ripe.

The confidence in their own capacity to deal with their Communist
adversaries, evident in the Federal Republic of Germany and in the Republic
of Korea, has lifted many of the fears and anxieties which would have made
movement towards a universal United Nations unsettling rather than constructive
in the past.

With respect to North and South Vietnam, the invitation of both govern-
ments to the United Nations could provide an appropriate framework for the
settlement in Southeast Asia, which ought to come in the time ahead if
rationality prevails in Hanoi. It is worth recalling that Moscow proposed
membership in the United Nations for both governments as early as 1957.

So far as mainland China is concerned, its fears of the Soviet Union
and the many divisions now mounted on the Soviet side of the border are
leading Peking towards more normal relations with the rest of the world.
Nevertheless, the problem of China is the most difficult of the four -- perhaps
equally difficult for Peking and Taipei. It has been complicated by the fact

18

that the Canadian recognition of Peking has been accompanied by withdrawal
of recognition from Taipei. I do not believe that this is the right way forward.

This brings me to the manner in which a universal United Nations is
created. The object must be universality and not tipping the balance of
diplomacy and power against one or another of the governments concerned.
The object should be simply a universal United Nations, leaving each capital
to carry on with whatever theology it chooses concerning its status vis-a-vis
its adversary.

In the case of the Chinese Nationalist Government on Taiwan, it is
clear that its role in the Security Council is anamolous. Nationalist China is
not a great power. But it is equally anomolous to remove that government
from the United Nations or to reduce the number of governments recognizing
Taipei. The Government of Nationalist China, from most difficult and
unpromising beginnings in 1949-50, has organized the economic and social
development of some 13 million people in a remarkably successful way. It
has become a recognized and responsible member of the Asian and the world
community. It has contributed in Africa exceedingly effective technical
assistance programs. As countries within the United Nations go, Nationalist
China is a medium-sized, not a small nation.

In bringing about a universal United Nations, the world community
would be most unwise to treat Taiwan and its government casually, carelessly,
or with lack of respect for its demonstration of how modernization can proceed
in loyalty to the ancient culture of China.

19

Moreover, it is time to examine afresh the structure of the Security Council. There is a tendency still to think in terms of the Big Five; that is, Britain, France, the United States, Soviet Union, and China. This is an odd and parochial way to look at the world. After all, 60 per cent of the world's population lives in Asia. Therefore, it may be time to bring not only mainland China into the Security Council but also India and Japan.

I suggest this not only because Asia deserves better balanced representation than a Communist China. I suggest it also because Communist China is unique in Asia for only one reason: it has manufactured nuclear weapons.

It is important that this not very distinguished achievement -- which India and Japan could duplicate, and more, in very short order -- not be rewarded.

In suggesting that the time has come for us to look afresh and creatively at this whole problem, I would like to underline that I do not believe that the creation of a universal United Nations will be a panacea or yield instant stable peace. A universal United Nations will not be easy to bring about; and with all its new members assembled, there will be difficulties as well as advantages. For a time, some of the work of the United Nations might even be slowed up. But, in the end, the United Nations ought to be a political institution which reflects the realities. And those realities include the existence of the governments not now represented.

To bring them into the United Nations at this time would not only make the United Nations truly representative of how politics is organized

20

on this troubled, striving, turbulent planet but it would also tend to under-
line a rule which ought to prevail; namely, the unification of countries
divided by the Second World War and its aftermath should come about
by peaceful means only. If there is any lesson from this difficult quarter-
century that ought to be written into the rules of this planet, that lesson
should come near the top. And a universal United Nations would make it
more likely rather than less likely that rule will be obeyed. We have had two
major crises between East and West Germany centered on Berlin; two in
the Taiwan Straits; and bloody wars in Korea and Vietnam in which
Pyongyang and Hanoi have sought unification by force of arms. That is
enough.

Now a second observation on the future of the United Nations.

In a world of diffusing power, trying to move towards stable peace,
the smaller nations must assume greater responsibilities than in the past
for making peace and keeping peace.

The rhetoric and common law of the United Nations over the first
postwar generation needs some changing. The lesser powers have never
lacked rhetoric in urging the major powers -- notably the United States
and the Soviet Union -- to increase their efforts in arms control and other
forms of movement towards peace. On the other hand, their actions
(as opposed to their rhetoric) have sometimes reduced the possibilities
for peace in two ways.

21

First, their tendency to cherish their regional quarrels rather than to settle them. This is true of the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East. It remains true of a few old quarrels in Latin America. It was true of Southeast Asia, but that may be improving a little. In any case, the rule to be stated loud and clear in a world of diffusing power is this: peacemaking is everybody's business; and it begins with your next door neighbor.

Second, the small and medium powers have tended to remain remarkably philosophical when problems did not affect them directly. I find it quite shocking, for example, that the smaller nations of the world should accept so passively the invasion of Cambodia by North Vietnamese forces. Cambodia is a member of the United Nations. It proclaimed its neutrality. That neutrality has been violated systematically over the years; and in recent months it has been violated grossly by North Vietnam in its effort to take over South Vietnam.

Quite apart from the debate on South Vietnam, I should think the smaller nations of the world would take rather seriously this kind of violation of a member's integrity.

Whenever this kind of action is passively accepted, it is for all of us -- and especially the smaller powers -- for whom the bell tolls.

The representatives of the smaller nations could, of course, argue for some time that too much power was concentrated in Moscow and in Washington; that the best they could do was to keep out of the way, encourage the Big Two to ameliorate their relations, and exploit --

22

even cynically exploit -- the possibilities opened up for them by differences between the great powers.

As an historian, I can understand such a policy without moralizing about it. After all, it was precisely the policy Washington commended to the American people in 1796 and which we followed for a century. But in a world of diffusing power, this is not good enough. Peacemaking must become the business of all. The time for double standards -- whether for Communist versus non-Communist nations, or for big nations versus smaller nations -- the time for such double standards, which have marked so much United Nations debate and behavior, is coming to a close.

Now a final suggestion -- concerning possibly expanded initiatives from the United Nations itself.

The major constitutional difference between the League of Nations and the United Nations is that under the United Nations Charter the Secretary General has the power to initiate a proposal -- the power to lay a piece of paper on the table to which governments must react. This power of initiative is a considerable challenge and opportunity for the Secretary General and the secretariats which support him. If used well, it is a positive force for good. It is also a power which, if used beyond the political realities, can reduce rather than increase the stature of the United Nations. Except at rare moments and under rare men, that authority of the Secretary General has not been employed effectively.

23

But if my general assessment is right -- that we could move towards
more stable peace -- then the Secretary General's constitutional authority
might be exercised more fully than in the past.

The power of initiative does not mean that the Secretary General
can, as a unique, strong-minded individual, effectively assert what he
personally regards as right or wrong for the world. What is involved
is his trying to find, by a most careful process of political analysis and
consultation, solutions for particular problems which are within the
bounds of reality but which the nations themselves might not be able to
negotiate in a more conventional way. There is a margin -- sometimes,
on some matters -- where a creative third party can find a formula on
which diplomats themselves might not be able to hit or, even, articulate
to each other, unless a third party laid it on the table. It is that kind of
disciplined, painstaking leadership in moving towards peace which will
be increasingly possible and increasingly needed in the years ahead -- if
my assessment is correct.

* * * *

Now a final word.

We Americans have had some peculiar views about the United
Nations; and we ought to be candid about them.

Every time the going got tough, there were those who said: Why
not turn it over to the United Nations?

24

I heard this view expressed on Greece and Berlin, the missiles in Cuba, Vietnam, and on many other occasions. The answer is: when the United Nations is prepared to do the job, we should, of course, act within the United Nations; but we must never use the incapacity of the United Nations -- or divisions within it -- as an excuse for not protecting our interests or accepting responsibilities we have assumed through treaties.

The United Nations in 1950 did act in Korea as the result of the absence of the Soviet delegation. When it acted, the United States had to carry a substantial part of the load -- but we were not alone. And that is the way it will be every time the United Nations meets its responsibilities:

-- the United States will have to take a substantial part of the burden;

-- but we shall not be alone.

Thus, support for the United Nations is no substitute for American responsibility. It cannot safely be a pious route to isolationism.

On the other hand, the United Nations is the right road -- the road we should prefer when it can actually function in conformity to the Charter.

It is my belief -- my faith -- that if we do our job in the world, the historical forces at work could gradually, over the next generation, move us to a situation where more and more of our efforts on the world scene could be channelled through the United Nations and its various institutions.

25

That will not happen by wishing it so. It will happen only if the American people -- along with others -- dedicate themselves to a second quarter-century of building, stone-by-stone, the edifice of world order which was destroyed in 1914 and which has not yet been re-created.

There will be no soft answers or quick fixes.

But I do believe the job can be done if we have the stubborn idealism to stay with it.

000

National Interdepartmental Seminar, FSI

Washington, D.C.

Graduation Speech

W. W. Rostow

March 24, 1972

## Introduction

The events and experiences of the past decade have heightened the importance of clarifying a problem about which there has long been obscurity and ambiguity in the American mind and in American policy. The problem is the nature of the American interest in Asia. What I have to say this afternoon is an effort to contribute towards the building of a consensus we badly need -- now and for the years ahead.

## The Initial Asymmetry Between Europe and Asia

The problem of defining the American interest in Asia arose from an initial asymmetry between our experiences across the Atlantic and across the Pacific.

From the beginnings of our nationhood, if not as early as the Seven Years War, we were embroiled with the balance of power in Europe. A united Britain and France could have/stifled the American Revolution. Our independence was achieved only because Americans could exploit the conflict between Britain and France. We continued to exploit Europe's power conflicts to consummate the Louisiana Purchase; achieve London's acquiescence in our unilateral enunciation of the

2

Monroe Doctrine; and purchase Alaska. Fear of European acquisition of California from Mexico helped trigger the Mexican War.

In all this the delicately balanced but, in the end, converging interests of Britain and the United States permitted us to accept as a kind of free good the protection afforded us by British naval dominance of the Atlantic.

When, in 1917, Britain and British dominance of the Atlantic were threatened by unrestricted German submarine warfare, it was a shock for America to have to throw its weight directly into the European power balance to prevent the hegemony of a single power. After all, only five months earlier Wilson had won his second term on the slogans: "Too proud to fight"; "He kept us out of war". But, still, there was continuity; for in their bones Americans had known for the previous hundred and fifty years and more that a Europe united under a single power could threaten the security of the United States.

It was different in Asia. Initially, traditional Asia did not represent a threat to American security. It was an arena within which more advanced nations could compete for commerce and power; the missionaries, for converts. But starting with the Japanese take-off of the mid-1880's and the Russian take-off of the 1890's, things began to change. Industrialization and real military potential began to emerge in Asia. As early as 1905 Theodore Roosevelt applied a balance of power approach in settling at Portsmouth the Russo-Japanese War. He leaned marginally against rising Japan and shielded, a little, humiliated Russia. Tokyo never forgot this American stance, reinforced as it was by the inter-war negotiations of naval

3

U.S. and the Balance of Power in Asia, 1940-64

The beginning of modern American policy towards Asia is,
perhaps, the line drawn in the dust by Franklin Roosevelt's
resistance to the Japanese takeover of Indochina in 1940-41,
a resistance marked by the cutting off of American trade in
scrap metal and oil and the sequestering of Japanese assets in
the United States. Here, contrary to every short-run interest
in avoiding a war in Asia, President Roosevelt could not bring
himself to acquiesce in Japanese hegemony in East Asia. He
chose, in effect, to risk direct military confrontation with
the major power in Asia.

Why? There were, essentially, two concerns. First, the
fate of the rest of Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific,
including Australia and New Zealand. As Cordell Hull wrote:*

"...Japanese troops on July 21 [1941] occupied the southern portions of Indo-China and were now in possession of the whole of France's strategic province, pointing like a pudgy thumb towards the Philippines, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies....When Welles telephoned me, I said to him that the invasion of Southern Indo-China looked like Japan's last step before jumping off for a full-scale attack in the Southwest Pacific."

On December 6, 1941, President Roosevelt drafted a
message to the Japanese emperor in much the same sense.**

*The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, Vol. II, New York, 1948,
pp. 1013-14.

**James MacGregor Burns, *Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom*, New York, 1970, pp. 154-9.

4

Second, there was the question, more on London's mind than Washington's at the time, of the impact on India -- specifically, the possibility of Japanese control over the Indian Ocean and over Burma.

In the event, the Japanese were held, by costly and gallant efforts in New Guinea, short of Australia; and operations in the China-Burma-India theater shielded India and the sea routes to India, despite the loss of Singapore.

Taken as a whole, the experience of the Second World War, including the attack on Pearl Harbor, underlined to Americans that we could be threatened from Asia, as from Europe, if a single power achieved hegemony in that region. The old asymmetry ended; although memories of the longer past, cultural differences, differences in degree of modernization, and other factors continued to color and complicate our view of Asia.

With the Communist victory in China in 1949 and the Korean War -- agreed by Stalin and Mao in Moscow, early in 1950 -- the underlying symmetry between our approaches to Europe and Asia became institutionalized; but the symmetry was not exact.

In Europe, the threat represented by Soviet power yielded a NATO stretching in an arc from the Norwegian northern flank around the central front through the Mediterranean to Turkey. In Asia, the response to the potential threat represented by Communist power was institutionally more complex. Separate security links grew up in the 1950's between the United States and South Korea; with Japan; the Nationalist government on Taiwan; Australia and New Zealand; Thailand, the Philippines,

5

and the protocol states of former Indochina; and a subtle
relationship evolved with neutralist India, whose meaning only
became clear in the India-China confrontation of the autumn
of 1962.

The complexity of the American security ties to Asia
reflected real problems, not a failure to be tidy.

There was, for example, the special position of Japan --
neither geographically, psychologically, nor politically in
a position to play the kind of role in Asia of the 1950's
West Germany came to play in NATO. There was the memory of a
conventional attack in South Korea, leading to measures and
force dispositions to deter its recurrence; while in Southeast
Asia there was a widespread guerilla threat of the kind that
had almost conquered Greece, but which had been dealt with
before NATO was created, assisted by the Tito-Stalin split.
There were still, in the 1950's, problems of colonialism and
early post-colonial states, for which there was no equivalent
in NATO; the desire of Burma for a neutralism wholly acceptable
to India, to the other Southeast Asian states and the United
States -- if it could be made to work; the complexities of
Sukarno's Indonesia; the interests of Australia, New Zealand,
the Philippines -- real enough -- but not threatened in quite
the way the massed Soviet armies in Central Europe threatened
Western Europe. And there was an India determined to be
neutralist, anxious for various reasons (including the
diplomacy of the Kashmir question) to keep good relations
with Moscow as well as Washington.

To all this was added, starting in the early months of
1958, the evolving split between Moscow and Peking. This

6

provided the two-way leverage for Hanoi to revive the guerilla war, after four years' abeyance, to take over those parts of Indochina not granted in the Geneva Conference of 1954; and to revive it on terms in which it had the logistical as well as political support of both Moscow and Peking.

But behind the fragmented complexities of American policy in Asia was an underlying element of real symmetry with Europe. American policy -- as expressed by both the presidents and the Congress -- recognized that it was a vital interest of the United States that no single power dominate Asia; and, in a nuclear age, that it was peculiarly important that powers that might be tempted to reach for hegemony be forewarned. Thus, the case for the security treaties.

This was the state of things down to the passage of the Southeast Asia Resolution of August 1964. That resolution was plainly a basic reaffirmation of vital American interests and commitments in Southeast Asia, not an *ad hoc* response to the attacks in the Tonkin Gulf. As of August 1964 -- and well beyond -- President Johnson and the Congress stood together on the proposition that our security commitments to Japan and South Korea, to Taiwan and Southeast Asia, to Australia and New Zealand, were right and necessary. Together they meant the United States would oppose an unfavorable shift in the balance of power in Asia; and that the continued independence of these nations and regions was required to avoid that outcome.

## Asia and the U.S., 1965-72

The conflict among us over the war in Vietnam has evidently thrown into confusion these propositions; and this confusion was heightened by the emergence of an apparently more temperate

7

policy in Peking and the opening of a new diplomatic dialogue
between Peking and Washington.

Now, what happened in Asia between 1964 and 1972? That tempestuous period can be briefly summarized in these seven propositions.

1. In 1965, working in concert, Peking, Hanoi, and Djakarta tried to collapse and take over Southeast Asia. The method was to combine the introduction of regular North Vietnamese forces into South Vietnam with the Indonesian confrontation with Malaysia and the Communist effort to take over power in Indonesia, with Sukarno's connivance. This effort failed with the introduction of large American forces to South Vietnam, starting in July 1965; and the successful resistance of the Indonesian military to the Communist coup in October 1965.

2. President Johnson pursued in Vietnam a strategy designed to minimize the possibility of a larger war with China or the Soviet Union. It was a strategy which yielded slow but steady progress down to the end of 1967. On the other hand, its protracted character put great strain on the natural style of a nation whose instinct was to apply its capacities in a decisive way. More than half the American people, who designated themselves as hawks, wanted a heavier application of American power to North Vietnam than President Johnson's policy allowed; and in this setting of frustration those opposing the war or desiring a beginning of troop withdrawals rose from, say, 25% in 1965 to about 30% at the end of 1967.

3. Then came the Tet offensive of 1968. Hanoi tried to retrieve the waning Communist military and political situation

8

in South Vietnam through a massive effort to disintegrate the South Vietnamese army and take over the cities in what it called "a great uprising." The Tet offensive failed. The South Vietnamese emerged stronger politically as well as militarily. But the Tet offensive, as it was interpreted by the media in the United States, led to a shift in American public opinion. The number of those proclaiming themselves as hawks and doves emerged as approximately equal -- between 40 and 45%, with the balance undecided. Quite aside from the shift in the polls, the controversy over Vietnam policy became intensely enflamed and, occasionally, led to violence. It also led some Americans to abandon the notion that the fate of Southeast Asia was a serious and abiding concern of the United States. The old asymmetry between American views of Europe and Asia re-emerged. Influential voices proclaimed that while our ties to Europe and the Middle East should be preserved we could safely withdraw our concern with the balance of power in Asia.

4. In this setting, President Nixon exploited the gathering strength of the South Vietnamese after Tet 1968 to ease a sharply divided American public with the program of Vietnamization and American troop withdrawals. Hanoi, hoping for a further breakdown of American support for the Southeast Asian treaties and, perhaps, for a fracture in South Vietnamese political life has kept the war going, exploiting the weaknesses of Laos and Cambodia, while the South Vietnamese government consolidated its hold over more than 90% of the population.

5. Meanwhile, back in Peking, the Cultural Revolution began shortly after the Communist debacle in Indonesia and dominated the years 1966 and 1967. It was a struggle for

9

power and a debate over policy. After two years of political and diplomatic chaos and a declining economy, one could observe the gradual, erratic emergence of the moderates -- mainly military men and technocrats -- who advocated a systematic effort to expand the Chinese economy and to normalize relations with the external world.

6. This salutary outcome was, in part, brought about by two gathering fears in Peking relating to the balance of power in Asia: those arising from the gradual build-up of massive Soviet forces on the Chinese frontiers, starting in the wake of the first Chinese nuclear explosion of October 1964; and those arising from the explosive economic growth of Japan, emerging in the 1960's as the third industrial power in the world, evidently capable of translating its industrial potential into military power.

7. It was wholly understandable that a Peking which had found no answer to its political problems in the Cultural Revolution, which was falling behind the rest of Asia in economic development, and which faced threats to its security from Moscow in the short run and, perhaps, from Tokyo in the long run should look to the United States as a balancing force in Asia as it turned to its unfulfilled domestic tasks. And it is understandable that Washington should look to a more normal relation with such a government in Peking as part of the process of stabilizing the balance of power in Asia. Thus, the series of contacts climaxed by President Nixon's visit to China.

## Consolidating the Balance of Power in Asia

Now where do we stand?

The present position has within it real hope of yielding a

10

situation in Asia of stable balance, in which no power will
conceive it to be a realistic option to seek to dominate the
region. It seems likely that Moscow has set aside the notion,
which may have engaged it in 1969, of seeking a quick military
victory over China and denying to it a mature nuclear capacity.
A resumption of war against South Korea appears unlikely or a
military effort to take over Taiwan. For the moment, there is
little likelihood of military attack or of nuclear blackmail
directed against Japan.

Still two dangers remain.

First, Southeast Asia, where North Vietnamese forces still
operate freely and illegally beyond their frontiers.

Why is Southeast Asia so important in the Asian balance of
power? It is important because its population, now approaching
300 million, and its resources give it a weight approximating
that of Latin America or Africa; because its geography commands
the sea routes of both the Southwest Pacific and the eastern
Indian Ocean; and because it is a critical buffer zone, if it
remains independent, separating India and China. It is important
also because its fragmentation -- and the early stage of modern-
ization of some of the nations within it -- has made it tempting
for larger powers to seek control over the area in the past;
and the temptation remains.

A stable settlement in Southeast Asia requires, therefore,
not merely that North Vietnamese armed forces retire within
their borders and stay there but that a series of abiding and
legitimate long-run interests be recognized by all the parties
concerned. It is a legitimate interest of Peking that no major
power emplace itself permanently in Southeast Asia in ways that
might threaten China's borders. India has a dual legitimate

11

interest in Southeast Asia: that no major power dominate the region and thereby the eastern portion of the Indian Ocean; and, more narrowly, that Burma, India's potential Ardennes, remain independent and not be dominated by China or any other major power. The United States, Australia, Japan, and others have a legitimate interest that no major power be in a position to dominate the Southwest Pacific from Southeast Asian bases, both for narrow security reasons and to assure the freedom of the seas in this critical area. Above all, the peoples of Southeast Asia have the right to shape their independent destiny without the movement of arms and men illegally across their frontiers.

So far as one outside the government can perceive, the consolidation of peace in Southeast Asia remains still the greatest piece of unfinished business in the wake of President Nixon's visit to China.

Danger remains not merely because of the continued tragic effort of Hanoi to take over the old French colonial empire in Asia. It arises from ambiguities in the American stance towards Southeast Asia. Quite aside from continued North Vietnamese operations against Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam there are guerilla forces in Burma, Malaysia, and Thailand capable of being influenced and activated by Peking. There are also substantial Chinese Communist engineering and other units in Laos building a road from the Chinese border to the Mekong. If Peking judges that the United States has abandoned its interest in the independence of Southeast Asia, it could greatly increase pressure on the area, at relatively little cost, from bases it already commands, without diverting major

12

forces from the Russian frontier. It is hard to believe
it would not do so.

The second danger lies in the nuclear future in Asia.
Here again American policy may be the critical variable.
India and Japan command the technical capacity to produce
nuclear weapons. They have refrained from doing so for a
complex of political and military reasons. One of the most
powerful is that a reliable relation to a reliable United
States is more advantageous than going it alone. As the
history of Sino-Soviet relations since 1958 suggests, a
decision to go it alone in nuclear matters can convert allies
and friends into near-enemies. I do not believe a Japanese
decision, for example, to produce nuclear weapons would
necessarily yield all the facets of hostility that go into
the Sino-Soviet split; but there is no doubt that the extra-
ordinarily intimate political and economic ties across the
Pacific that have evolved in the past quarter-century are
closely related to the fact that the United States was the
nuclear guarantor of Japan, just as the American nuclear
relation to Western Europe lies at the heart of political and
economic co-operation across the North Atlantic. Further
nuclear proliferation could fragment those essential
stabilizing links and upset the balance of power in both
Europe and Asia.

## Conclusion

As we look ahead, the importance of Asia to American
security will grow, not diminish. Japan, with a GNP per
capita of about $300 per capita (in 1965 dollars) was able
to mount the attack on Pearl Harbor and seize most of East

13

Asia. Today China commands nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. With the passage of time, the other nations of Asia, most of which are developing rapidly, will command the technological base required to produce such weapons and means of delivery, if they do not already do so. Two thirds of humanity lives in Asia, and the proportion may rise.

The stake for the United States in using its influence to maintain the balance of power in Asia is high; and it will grow in importance. And so, also, our stake in making a world of nuclear nonproliferation viable.

It's time, then, that we shook off the post-Tet blues; looked at Asia afresh; assessed the possibilities and dangers coolly; and committed ourselves to work steadily with the nations across the Pacific, as we are already committed to do across the Atlantic.

We shall find, I believe, that the possibilities of achieving a stable balance of power in Asia are real and hopeful; and the greatest danger we face lies in our own confusions.

In one of its joint passages, the Chinese-American communique of February 27, 1972, said this: "...the two sides stated that...neither should seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region and each is opposed to efforts by any other country or group of countries to establish such a hegemony...." That is good American policy, some seventy years old at least. If we steadily live by it, others are likely to accept it, and Asia and the Pacific could become a vast region of peace and progress.

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
COLLEGE OF SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
AUSTIN, TEXAS 78712

Return address:
W. W. Rostow
LBJ Library
2313 Red River
Austin, Texas 78705

June 2, 1972

Dear Henry:

Now that you're home, let me say how much I admire the results of the Moscow trip. I think I understand the amount of hard, sustained work that lay behind each of the agreements. As I told Al Haig when I was last in Washington, it is an effort which does you all great credit.

I was also pleased that President Nixon avoided Ike's 1955 post-summit error; that is, he warned against complacency and underlined the continuing need for strength. The strategic arithmetic is not all that good; but it's also not all that important if we keep our conventional strength and will.

It will take time for folks to realize it, but the summit was saved by President Nixon's decision of May 8th and by the stubborn, if sometimes disheveled, performance of the South Vietnamese on the ground. By God, they've earned their nationhood the hard way; and I was delighted to hear the Congressional applause for President Nixon's statement that he was not about to sell them out.

I wish someone would do a good, factual analysis of the Soviet role in Hanoi's offensive and what Moscow was quite prepared -- even eager -- to see happen to America, and President Nixon, this spring.

I've had Macmillan's send you bound uncorrected galleys of *The Diffusion of Power*. Whatever Macmillan's letter said, it is not sent to solicit a public comment. As the book begins to circulate and Georgetown gossip begins, I wanted you to have a copy to know what the book actually says.

I attach a passage from a letter to a close Japanese friend. I commend its sentiment for your trip to Tokyo.

Again, congratulations.

Honorable Henry A. Kissinger
Assistant to the President
The White House
Washington, D. C.

At some moment, Kei, the Japanese government ought to think
hard about the South Vietnamese. If -- as I hope and am inclined to
believe -- they successfully defend their country against the current
offensive, Japan should acknowledge how much it owes -- and all Asia
owes -- to that gallant, stubborn people. And it ought to take two big
steps:

-- offer (as we discussed in Japan in 1969) to help monitor
a settlement;

-- offer most generous help for the reconstruction of
South (and North) Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

You remember all the way back to the spring of 1965, when I first
visited Japan, the questions all Japanese put to me were: is there a
South Vietnamese nationalism on which to build, or will it be like Japan's
struggle in China; can the battle to save Southeast Asia be fought without
yielding an American war with China?

We don't yet have peace and the answers cannot yet be firm. But
a positive answer to both questions is more credible than when I gave
my responses in 1965. And the struggle of the South Vietnamese --
against particularly heavy odds in this offensive, with eleven American
divisions pulled out in two and a half years -- deserves our respect and
gratitude.

If they survive this offensive, the full weight of Japan ought to be
thrown into the balance to say: enough is enough; there must be real
and final peace in Southeast Asia.