The Great Ideas Today 1976 0852293216

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Animal

Fate

Aristocracy

Form

Art

God

Astronomy

Good and Evil

Beauty

Government

Being

Habit

Cause

Happiness

Chance

History

Change

Honor

Citizen

Hypothesis

Constitution

Idea

Courage

Immortality

Custom and Convention

Induction

Definition

Infinity

Democracy

Judgment

Desire

Justice

Dialectic

Knowledge

Duty

Labor

Education

Language

Element

Law

Emotion

Liberty

Eternity

Life and Death

Evolution

Logic

Experience

Love

“

The Great Ideas Man

Reasoning

Mathematics

Relation

Matter Mechanics

Revolution

Medicine

Rhetoric

Memory and Imagination

Same and Other

■

Metaphysics

Science

I

Mind

Sense

Monarchy

Sign and Symbol

_

Nature

Sin

I

Necessity and Contingency

Slavery

Oligarchy

Soul

One and Many

Space

Opinion

State

Opposition

Temperance

Philosophy

Theology

Physics

Time

Pleasure and Pain

Truth

Poetry

Tyranny

Principle

Universal and Particular

Progress

Virtue and Vice

Prophecy

War and Peace

Prudence

Wealth

Punishment

Will

Quality

Wisdom

Quantity

World

I

Adam Smith, oil painting by an unknown artist, in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

The Great Ideas Today 1976

EncyclopcEdia Britannica, Inc. Chicago • London • Toronto • Geneva • Sydney • Tokyo • Manila • Seoul

The Great Ideas Today

1976

© 1976 by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. Copyright under International Copyright Union. All rights reserved under Pan American and Universal Copyright Conventions by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Table One of the symposium article “The Developing Countries” is reprinted from Atlas: Population, per Capita Product and Growth Rates (1974), by permission of The World Bank, Washington, D.C. Table Two is reprinted from N. H. Stern’s article, “Professor Bauer on Development,” in the Journal of Development Economics, vol. 2, no. 4, with the permission of the North Holland Publishing Company, N. H. Stern, and I. M. D. Little, Senior Advisor for The World Bank. The partial lyrics of “Those Were the Days,” Copyright © 1971 by The New Tandem Music Company, Los Angeles, California, page 76, are reprinted by permission of the publisher. The lyrics are by Lee Adams and the music by Charies Strouse. ’ Don Quixote's Profession, by Mark Van Doren, is reprinted with permission of Dorothy Van Dor^n. Printed in the U.S.A (Subsequently they limited themselves to only one site each.) Essentially, both sides abandoned weapons systems they no longer intended to build and retained the right to upgrade their existing systems as they desired. The second round of talks, still in progress as of this writing, is con¬ cerned chiefly with the delicate issue of MIRVs, or multiple warheads within a single missile, and with the classification of new weapons systems, particularly the Soviet Backfire bomber and the American cruise missile. ^jj^Vs are paTticularly significant for the arms race because they poten¬ tially provide the capability for a successful first strike against the enemy’s land-based missiles. Only a fraction of the attacking nation’s missiles, if equipped with multiple warheads, could knock out the enemy’s entire

207

Old Problems and New In International Relations land-based force. The United States was first in developing MIRV, just as it was the first to develop the atomic and hydrogen bombs, and since this powerful genie has gotten out of the bottle it has proved impossible to get it back in again. The Soviets are now developing it as well. Because verifi¬ cation of any strict limits on multiple warheads is impossible without actu¬ ally taking enemy missiles apart and looking inside the warheads—some¬ thing neither side is willing to let the other do —the only practical basis for agreement is evidently to allow each side to MIRV every missile of certain specified types that it has. Once a nation has tested MIRVs for a specific category of missile, it is to be assumed that all missiles in that category will be counted toward a total limit on MIRVs. It is this point that makes mutual agreement to monitor each other’s tests so important. The second problem in the current talks relates to the cruise missile, a new American weapon which could be fired from planes, ships, or land outside Soviet airspace into the Soviet Union. The Soviets argue that such a missile represents a new strategic weapon and should be counted against the American ceiling on weapons. The Americans have countered that the new Soviet Backfire bomber also has strategic capabilities and should bal¬ ance the introduction of the cruise missile. What, then, is the impact of these agreements? Certainly any new arms pacts are valuable as steps toward effective international arms control, and perhaps as a means of enabling civilian bureaucracies to resist the expen¬ sive demands of their military counterparts. On the other hand, the agree¬ ments contemplated at present would not stabilize current stocks of strate¬ gic weapons, much less begin to reduce them, and would leave plenty of room for enormous arms expenditures in the years ahead. It can be ar¬ gued, furthermore, that as long as American nuclear strategy rests upon deterrence—that is, upon maintenance of a sufficiently large and suffi¬ ciently invulnerable nuclear force to ensure destruction of the Soviet Union after any Soviet first strike—American security depends less on the level of Soviet offensive weapons than on the security of the American force. It is possible, for example, that MIRVs will effectively make the land-based missile obsolete within a decade, whether new SALT agree¬ ments are reached or not.22 The United States might be better off address¬ ing the question of how to provide effective deterrence at the lowest possi¬ ble cost, rather than attempting to set limits jointly with the Soviets—limits which political pressure will probably force the U.S. to build up to whether they are necessary or not. To the extent that detente involves a new relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, it would seem to suggest a movement toward cooperation, rather than confrontation, in attempting to find solu¬ tions to conflicts in which both powers are involved. Presumably, increased mutual confidence and the recognition of broader areas of mutual agree¬ ment should allow the two superpowers to work together in solving con¬ flicts between small powers, much as Roosevelt clearly hoped he could 208

David £ Kaiser and Phiiip M. Kaiser

continue to work with Stalin after the Second World War. In fact, however, detente seems to have made little or no progress toward such a goal. A logical place to work together in a search of a settlement is the Middle East, but the American government, led by Kissinger, in its attempts to find a settlement has not sought so far to balance American influence on Israel with Soviet influence on the Arab world. In the Middle East, Kis¬ singer has apparently seen the Soviet Union as the same old aggressive, dangerous, destabilizing influence and has attempted to keep it out of the process of reaching a settlement as much as possible. Rather than enlist Soviet cooperation, he has concentrated on trying to outbid Moscow for influence in the Arab world, using arms sales, nuclear reactors, and his well-advertised charm in an attempt to make American influence preemi¬ nent on both sides of the conflict. Kissinger’s efforts can be interpreted as a legitimate response to increas¬ ing Soviet strategic capabilities in the Middle East vis-a-vis the United States. His aim has been to limit the possibility of Moscow’s intervention by eliminating Soviet political influence. It might also be argued, however, that since the Soviets presumably share the United States’ interest in avoiding superpower confrontation, and since the potential for Soviet mili¬ tary intervention in the Mideast will remain, a more lasting settlement might be reached by making use of the much-heralded new MoscowWashington relationship.^^ In a sense, American policy in the Mideast con¬ tinues to fight the cold war despite proclaiming its end. Such a course casts some doubt on the value of detente. So far, the concept of detente has also had little or no effect on Ameri¬ can policy in the underdeveloped world. Has it enabled the United States to adjust to the exposure of a major cold war fallacy —namely, the concep¬ tion of the entire world as one interrelated bipolar international system, where gains for one side could only occur at the expense of the other? The evidence that this was a fallacy has multiplied during the last few years. Changes in Southeast Asia have not rebounded upon Western Europe; the American public faced the Communist victory in Cambodia and South Vietnam in April 1975 without fearing that these events would lead to the toppling of a new chain of dominoes. Furthermore, although the Ameri¬ can public is certainly less enthusiastic about foreign commitments than it was ten or twenty years ago, there has been no widespread call for whole¬ sale withdrawal from Western Europe or the Mideast, suggesting that the public is willing to distinguish between degrees of American interest in different parts of the world. Such distinctions are essential to the development of an effective new foreign policy.The Ford administrations reaction to the Vietnam debacle, however, suggested that it is not yet prepared to make them. Ford re¬ frained from asking for authorization to resume American bombing dur¬ ing the last weeks of war-as President Nixon almost surely would have done—but neither he nor Kissinger ever seized upon the obvious oppor209

Old Problems and New In International Relations tunity to redefine and specify American interests in other parts of the world while conceding that America could live with the eventual outcome in Indochina. Instead the administration presented South Vietnam’s de¬ feat as a setback to American prestige around the world. When the Mayagiiez was seized, Washington eagerly resorted to force to prove American will was not crippled by having had to recognize the inevitable in Vietnam, and the administration subsequently hinted that it would re¬ sort to nuclear weapons, if need be, to forestall any new attack on South Korea. Recent revelations of American policy toward the Allende government in Chile also raise questions about the extent to which American foreign policy has adjusted to the reality of a diversified, pluralistic world, not dominated by the ideological confrontation between the two superpowers. One might have hoped that by the early seventies the United States would have become accustomed to the emergence of various forms of socialism in developing nations, and that it would have seen it in its own long-term interest to accommodate itself to a regime which, despite widespread na¬ tionalization of American business, operated within the framework of an established democracy and maintained essential freedoms. Instead, as the investigations of the Senate Intelligence Committee have now revealed, Nixon and Kissinger—acting through the CIA—encouraged a coup to prevent Allende from taking power. Subsequently, Washington used eco¬ nomic pressure to weaken the Chilean economy and covertly supported opposition forces. Ultimately, a further blow was dealt to democracy in Latin America and to the United States’ image in the developing world — all in the name of cold war ideology. Recently the Angolan question raised new issues regarding the mean¬ ing of detente and the United States’ appropriate world role. It is increas¬ ingly clear that detente has not precluded Soviet intervention in conflicts in the developing nations, and equally clear that no American consensus exists on the proper response to such intervention. Administration argu¬ ments in favor of assistance to the anti-Soviet factions have a distinct cold war ring to them. In general, Kissinger has argued that our chief interest in the conflict is the prevention of a gain for the Soviet Union —in the form of a victory by the Soviet-backed forces—which would inevitably mean a corresponding loss, in his view, for the United States. Such an analysis implies that the world is still the same bipolar chessboard it was held to be at the height of the cold war. On the other hand, the Senate seems determined to block, willy-nilly, any new American commitment that could remotely be equated with United States involvement in Viet¬ nam. The general unwillingness to look more closely at the origins, the history, or the probable outcome and consequences of the actual situation in Angola is far from encouraging. Thus, the policies of the last eight years seem to fall short of the wideranging redefinition of American interests, goals, and commitments re210

David £ Kaiser and Philip M. Kaiser

quired to adjust effectively to the end of the cold war era. The new empha¬ sis on relations with America’s adversaries, the Soviet Union and China, has led to some important new agreements and has at least opened up the possibility of a more flexible foreign policy. These improved relations, however, have not led to increased big-power cooperation in the resolu¬ tion of conflicts involving smaller powers, or to a realistic redefinition— publicly, at least—of American commitments. Nor have the new arrange¬ ments been without their price. The secretive manner in which new rela¬ tionships with Moscow and Peking have been pursued—specifically, the failure to keep our Western European allies fully informed of progress on the SALT talks, or to inform Japan of the impending change in our China policy —has led to a lessening of confidence in our relationships with our allies. The United States remains bound to Western Europe and Japan both economically and politically, and in an era of declining Ameri¬ can worldwide commitments and responsibilities, close American relations with her allies are more, not less, important. Negotiations with allies may not produce the spectacular results or political dividends sometimes achieved in negotiations with adversaries, but they are at least as impor¬ tant. America’s relations with her allies cannot be allowed to remain on the “back burner” too often or too long. Kissinger’s attitudes toward the United States’ allies suggest that even he, the supposed master of subtlety, is susceptible to the kind of simplistic thinking that has often plagued American foreign policy. Having entered the administration at a time when relations with potential adversaries had perhaps been un¬ deremphasized, he moved to reverse the existing trend. He did not ac¬ complish this, however, without needlessly damaging relationships with American allies. American policy has often tended to oversimplify, to ignore the com¬ plexities of international relations, and to cast issues in black and white. During the cold war, these tendencies combined to create an almost exclu¬ sive national consensus. It is the confused, rapidly changing world of today that Americans find harder to deal with. Several breakthroughs in Ameri¬ can thinking must be made to adapt to a new era successfully. Ideology, first of all, can no longer play so predominant a part in our foreign policy: the world is too complex and too diverse for the United States to be guided by her preferences rather than by her interests. Hav¬ ing recognized that we can coexist with Moscow and Peking, should we not be able to do so with Allende’s Chile or Castro’s Cuba as well? The role of those elements of the foreign policy establishment that remain committed to a purely ideological policy should be redefined. Second, although it is true that the continuing strategic bipolarity of today’s world requires that we give a high priority to relations with the Soviet Union, we must not allow a catchword like detente to serve as a substitute for serious question¬ ing of what good relations with Moscow can and cannot do for us. Bargains with the Soviets must be evaluated on a hardheaded, businesslike basis. 211

Old Problems and New In International Relations not in terms of their contribution to a vague concept of detente. Third, we must take the difficult step of reevaluating our various commitments. Some of them —to Western Europe, Japan, and Israel—should be main¬ tained or perhaps even strengthened. Others represent survivals of an outdated cold war mentality and should be redefined or gratefully allowed to lapse. It is only while redefining our commitments that any new national consensus on our world role can be reached. The process of arriving at new policies and a new consensus is particu¬ larly difficult because American foreign policy is at present in the hands of men who evidently believe that all these questions are too subtle and too important to be decided in consultation with the Congress, the press, or the people. In fact, no new policy which does not win the broad acceptance of the public will ever achieve stability. Consequently, effective policymak¬ ing and policy execution require the widest possible public participation and support. We will return to this question in our discussion of the con¬ text of foreign policy today.

Economic interdependence and cultural diversity The energy crisis, with its dramatic revelation of the Western industrial nations’ dependence on foreign sources of raw materials essential to their way of life, has shocked us into recognizing more than ever before the extent of international economic interdependence. Within just a few years the United States, in particular, has gone from self-sufficiency in pe¬ troleum products to substantial dependence on foreign sources, and it is unlikely that this dependence can be reduced significantly in the near future. The magnitude of the problem faced by the United States and the rest of the Western industrialized nations was greatly increased by the decision of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, to quadruple the price of crude oil within a few months beginning in late 1973. The oil embargo after the Yom Kippur war illustrated the West’s vulnerability to a total cutoff of OPEC supplies. The combination of in¬ creased dependence on foreign energy sources and the new high price of petroleum has created a long-term crisis in the industrial nations’ balance of payments and in the Third World, and the solution to the crisis is not in sight. The enormous transfers of hard currencies necessary to purchase the West’s supplies of energy also threaten the fragile international mone¬ tary equilibrium. A new pattern of trade and finance will have to be devel¬ oped if the international economy is to retain any stability. In reality these problems are not as novel as is sometimes suggested. A quick survey of the history of the industrial world will show that depend¬ ence on overseas raw materials, the need to finance essential imports, and disturbances in international capital movements have played a vital role in international relations throughout the last century. During the twentieth 212

David £ Kaiser and Philip M. Kaiser

century, these elements of the international scene have had enormous political consequences. The new problems facing the United States have preoccupied the Western European nations and Japan for many decades, and the various alternatives proposed for the U.S. today—domestic selfsufficiency, expansion of international trade, “recycling” of capital from overseas, and even armed action to secure raw materials sources —have all been tried in turn by various other nations at different points in history. Two major factors, however, distinguish the current situation. First, the United States has had to face the problem of overseas dependence for the first time. America has been a vital factor in international trade and fi¬ nance for over two hundred years, and the most powerful nation economi¬ cally since the First World War, but it has never before been faced with reliance on foreign sources of essential raw materials. Second, the emer¬ gence of a new split between the developed and developing nations has made the solution of problems in international trade and finance far more difficult. In the past, such problems have led to major conflicts, but at¬ tempts to solve them have generally proceeded on the basis of common assumptions and common goals. This basis may no longer exist. It is not clear that Britain and Iran, the United States and Libya, or Japan and Indonesia share any broad view of what a stable international economic or political order should be. Despite the complicating factor of the nouveaux riches OPEC countries, the split between developed and developing na¬ tions is essentially between haves and have-nots, and the material inequal¬ ity underlying it will persist for a long time. The rich and the poor will have to find areas of common ground if a new international economic order is to be developed. This will probably prove even more difficult internationally than it has been within individual societies. A quick look at the history of international economic problems and a survey of the mechanics of the present situation are necessary prerequi¬ sites of an examination of the shape possible solutions of our current dilemmas may take. Most of the suggestions we hear today have been tried in the past, and it is worth our time to see how they have turned out in different circumstances. International trade is of course as old as national communities, but it assumed drastically new importance in the wake of the British industrial revolution in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the course of transforming their society from an agricultural to an industrial one, the British urbanized and expanded their population far beyond the capacity of their agriculture to feed it. In 1846, in the midst of a severe food crisis, the British nation explicitly recognized its dependence on for¬ eign foodstuffs and effectively endorsed the principle of free trade among nations by repealing her tariffs on grain, the Corn Laws. In succeeding years Britain took advantage of her substantial head start in industrializa¬ tion to establish a worldwide network of industrial exports, particularly textiles and heavy industry products. These exports dramatically increased 213

Old Problems and New In International Relations

British prosperity throughout the nineteenth century while also increasing British dependence on foreign sources of raw materials, particularly food¬ stuffs and textile fibers. Because Britain was the first country to depend on international trade for its livelihood, and because it had always had the best-developed financial system in Europe, it became a leader in establish¬ ing a worldwide system of financial and commercial procedures for the conduct of international trade. As the nineteenth century wore on, the French and Germans followed the British model, albeit with significant variations. In both countries in¬ creased industrialization led to increased imports and exports and ulti¬ mately to dependence on foreign sources of raw materials. Both, however, unlike the British, slowed down this process by continuing substantially to protect domestic agriculture. The case of the United States was different. Although it industrialized rapidly in the late nineteenth century and had become the world’s leading industrial power by the time of the First World War, international trade—as distinguished from international capi¬ tal movements —played little part in the process. The United States’ great territorial and climatic advantages enabled it to remain self-sufficient in foodstuffs, and most important in raw materials, while high tariffs effec¬ tively barred foreign imports well into the twentieth century. American industry depended on the American internal market and did not have to compete with the British and Germans for export orders. By 1914, then, the major European industrial powers were all depen¬ dent on foreign sources of raw materials. In examining the similar prob¬ lem they face today, it is interesting to note that before the First World War none of the European industrial nations completely covered its import needs with matching exports. In the years before 1914 Germany exported about 10 percent less than it imported, Britain about 20 percent less, and France as much as 30 percent less. All three nations made up the differ¬ ence out of the returns on their investments in foreign countries, espe¬ cially in North and South America and in Russia. European capital fi¬ nanced the industrialization of the United States, the railroads of South America, and the new industries of Russia. The dividends earned by these investments enabled the Europeans to keep imports in excess of exports and increase their standard of living. To a certain extent, the maintenance and expansion of European pros¬ perity depended on the availability of new investment opportunities. It should be noted, however, that this does not support the Leninist conten¬ tion that European territorial expansion in Africa and Asia during the late nineteenth century represented a response to the imperatives of capital¬ ism. Investment opportunities did not generally arise in these areas, but rather in countries whose cultural, linguistic, and climatic affinities with Europe made them strong candidates for industrial development on the European modeU^

214

David £ Kaiser and Phiiip M. Kaiser From the perspective of our troubled world it is tempting to look upon the years immediately prior to the First World War as something of a golden age in Western history. Despite cyclical setbacks, prosperity steadily increased in most of Europe and in the United States. International trade, international economic interdependence, and international movements of ideas and culture grew apace, generally to the benefit of all concerned. A gradual worldwide movement toward liberalization in politics could be observed as well. Of course, such a picture is far from complete. The economic progress of societies as a whole was purchased by enormous suffering and hardship among large segments of their populations, and millions lived under conditions that would not be tolerated in any Western nation today. What is more important for our purposes, however, is to realize that this era of steady progress toward mutually beneficial eco¬ nomic interdependence and freely increasing international trade will probably not be duplicated in our lifetime. It depended on two essential preconditions which no longer exist and probably cannot be brought into being again. The first of these factors was the maintenance throughout the nine¬ teenth century of a stable international monetary system based on the gold standard. Despite the industrial revolution and the enormous expansion of production, trade, and credit between 1814 and 1914, the gold parities of major currencies underwent no major alteration during that time. Monetary stability had a very beneficial effect on international trade and international capital movements. Such stability was possible for two rea¬ sons. First, during the late nineteenth century fortuitous discoveries of precious metals in South Africa, Australia, and Alaska enabled the world’s bankers to finance the necessary expansion of the world money supply within the framework of the gold standard. Second, there were practically no fiscal or political pressures on financial institutions to prevent them from making the monetary adjustments necessary to maintain the gold standard. Since governments did not yet provide many social services that have come to be regarded as essential, their budgets remained trivial in relation to their gross national products, and they were virtually always in balance. Furthermore, because governments did not recognize much re¬ sponsibility for helping the unemployed or indigent—and because no one really understood how governments might reduce unemployment by in¬ creasing government spending to raise aggregate demand—there was no pressure on them to take steps that would decrease social misery while inflating their currencies. Finally, trade unions were not yet powerful enough to prevent periodic drops in wages. Until the First World War the only politically- significant instance of pressure on a government to inflate its currency was the American Free Silver Movement of the 1890s. It was a dismal failure. Price stability was maintained between 1814 and 1914 to an astonishing extent. Such stability was a casualty of the First World War.

215

Old Problems and New In International Relations The difficulty of restoring it today is that governments are unwilling to pay its price. The second factor that made for such steady economic development was the lack of any major ideological cleavage among the nations of the world. Despite great differences in forms of government and stages of economic development, no major government called the capitalist system itself into serious question. Furthermore, while colonialism made the under¬ developed world an enormous field for exploitation by the advanced na¬ tions, the subject peoples of the tropics were powerless to resist. The colo¬ nizing powers possessed both the means and the will to deal mercilessly with any challenges to their authority, as shown by the British in India, the Germans in Southwest Africa, and the Americans in the Philippines. When Colombia stood in the way of United States plans for the Panama Canal, it suffered the loss of the relevant portion of its territory; when turmoil in Egypt threatened British financial interests and access to the Suez Canal, British troops moved in for a long-term occupation. The enforced world¬ wide economic and political consensus of the years before the First World War is now also a thing of the past. The First World War destroyed the world political and economic equi¬ librium that had been built up so patiently over the preceding one hun¬ dred years. In its aftermath the Western European nations were faced by many problems which they, the United States, and Japan are confronted with today. The enormous strain of financing the war destroyed the gold standard, in much the same way that the burdens of financing the United States’ worldwide defense commitments ultimately destroyed the stability of the dollar in the late sixties and early seventies. By the close of the First World War the franc had fallen to a fraction of its gold value; attempts to reestablish the pound sterling at its prewar gold parity ended in disastrous failure in 1931; the German mark was restored to its old value only after a ruinous inflation had liquidated the German national debt and wiped out the savings of many Germans. The prewar equilibrium of trade and capi¬ tal movements was a war casualty as well. The three Western European nations lost their positions as creditor countries in the rest of the world. German foreign investments were largely confiscated after the war, and the Erench and British emerged with enormous war debts to the United States. The European countries’ need for imports had not diminished, but they had lost much of the investment income that had previously enabled them to run current account deficits. They were equally unable to increase their exports; the United States returned to a policy of prohibitive tariffs after the brief interlude of the Wilson administration, and during the 1930s protectionist barriers sprang up around the world in response to the general depression. Japan also faced the problem of paying for large and increasing imports of food and raw materials for its expanding popu¬ lation. Today, when the United States must deal with long-term dependence 216

David £ Kaiser and Philip M. Kaiser on foreign raw materials and intermittent balance-of-payments difficulties, it is interesting to examine the solutions attempted by the other industrial powers between the wars. The British and French largely fell back on their own empires, seeking to build up new economic units within which they could continue to exchange their manufactures for foodstuffs and tropical raw materials on advantageous terms. The British abandoned free trade and established imperial preference in 1932; the French, who had always been more protectionist, raised their trade barriers during the thirties while diverting more and more of their trade to their empire. Germany, which faced more difficult problems, tried several solutions, finally settling on one which led directly to the Second World War. During the twenties the Germans, saddled with large foreign debts and reparations payments, attempted to repay them with a mixture of exports and continual borrow¬ ing from overseas. These efforts collapsed during the depression, which choked off the flow of foreign capital and dealt a critical blow to world trade. The depression also made it possible for Adolf Hitler to come to power. Hitler, a fanatical believer in racial-national independence and self-suffi¬ ciency, recognized Germany’s inability to fall back upon her own limited resources but detested the idea of dependence on foreign markets.^® He sought to create a new German territorial empire in Eastern Europe that would make Germany strategically impregnable and economically self-suf¬ ficient. Such an empire could be created only by force; thus, in key deci¬ sions in the early years of his regime. Hitler consistently gave priority to rearmament at the expense of German export industries. Since rearma¬ ment increased the need for German imports of essential raw materials while diverting productive power from the export industries. Hitler’s policy only made the foreign exchange crisis worse. During the late thirties the Germans tried to solve this problem in two ways, both of which have a familiar ring today. First, under the Four-Year Plan of 1936, they attempted to manufacture substitutes for vital raw materials, including oil and rubber. They had some success, but the substi¬ tutes were extremely expensive; ultimately the program could be only a temporary expedient pending the conquest of sources of natural raw materials. Second, the Germans kept their arms industry at peak efficiency and improved their foreign exchange position through large-scale exports of arms.26 Although the context is different, both the search for substitutes for foreign raw materials and the use of arms sales to secure needed foreign exchange are elements of American energy and trade policy today. The Second World War was in part an ideological struggle. It was also a battle to determine which nations would dominate a new international order. Germany and Japan recognized that they could not function as world powers within their existing territorial boundaries. They sought to expand, only to be defeated by the United States, the Soviet Union, and the British Empire. The Soviets emerged from the war strategically secure 217

Old Problems and New In International Relations but crippled by enormous human and material losses; the British ex¬ hausted their financial reserves and were soon faced with the disintegra¬ tion of most of their empire. The United States emerged from the conflict absolutely and relatively stronger than ever before. Its losses in men were comparatively slight, and its economy had benefited from the war, rising from the persisting depression of the thirties to undreamed-of heights of productive power. In contrast to the aftermath of the First World War, the United States displayed a new sense of international responsibility in financial and eco¬ nomic matters. It took the lead in organizing new structures of interna¬ tional finance and trade, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the permanent facilities for tariff negotiations established under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). During the immediate postwar years American economic power, like American political influence, moved into the vacuum left by the collapse of Western Europe and Japan. The Marshall Plan of 1947 provided the European nations with the capital they needed to get back on their feet. Japan was given similar help. America’s domestic economic strength made the dollar seem impregnable; it became a worldwide reserve currency, valued almost as highly as gold, and vital to the maintenance of the new system of stable exchange rates. By the mid¬ fifties American overseas financial commitments appeared to be paying enormous dividends. European and Japanese economic recovery was the marvel of the world, with Japan helped by the fact that it did not have to rebuild its military machine. The IMF seemed to function smoothly to maintain a stable monetary system, and trade barriers in the Western world were lowered by tariff negotiations and the formation of the Euro¬ pean Economic Community (EEC). Cracks in the new international economic edifice began to appear in the late fifties and early sixties. Even the dollar was not strong enough to perform all the functions that had been entrusted to it. America’s world¬ wide military commitments led to enormous dollar payments abroad. Fur¬ thermore, the extremely rapid economic growth in Europe led to a con¬ tinuous flow of long-term American investment capital across the Atlantic. Since American exports to Europe could not keep pace with these capital flows, these investment dollars quickly found their way into European central banks. In the nineteenth century such dollar flows would have led quickly to adjustments under the gold standard. Interest rates in the United States would have risen until they began to attract capital back across the Atlantic. Now, however, the gold standard mechanisms no longer operated, and the central banks’ dollar balances continued to grow. Ultimately the banks were forced to agree simply to hold them indefi¬ nitely. By the late fifties the United States’ deficit on capital account had become a major problem in its balance of payments. Soon the United States began encountering serious problems on cur¬ rent account as well. Until the 1930s American tariffs had protected the 218

David £ Kaiser and Philip M. Kaiser home market; after the Second World War the United States had had little industrial competition. In the late fifties and sixties, however, American imports increased sharply as a result of foreign inroads into important consumer goods industries, among them automobiles, textiles, and televi¬ sion sets. Furthermore, the American government, perhaps lulled by its allies’ willingness to accumulate dollars, neglected to take advantage of opportunities to alleviate the problem. Washington might, for example, have put more pressure on the European Common Market to adopt a less protective agricultural policy, on the assumption that increasing American imports of European industrial products would have to be balanced by continuing and increasing agricultural exports. The Vietnam war increased the strain on the American balance of pay¬ ments while also stimulating domestic inflation. The dollar could not sur¬ vive it. After numerous palliatives had postponed the final reckoning, the dollar was devalued by about 10 to 15 percent relative to the other West¬ ern currencies in December 1971. Within one year this tardy adjustment had proved to have been insufficient; the dollar was devalued again in early 1973, and a new system of floating exchange rates was adopted. The problem of the dollar involved the unwillingness or inability of the United States government to exercise restraints necessary to maintain a stable balance of payments. International cooperation allowed the United States to run large capital and current account deficits for many years, but it could not avert a final reckoning. In addition, the steady buildup of dollar balances abroad has now become a major danger to monetary sta¬ bility. Private interests now have the power to move enormous sums of foreign exchange across frontiers within a matter of days. There are indi¬ cations that these problems may continue to plague efforts to create a new, stable international monetary system. The United Kingdom, for example, is currently in the throes of a similar but more serious and chronic crisis in its balance of payments, brought about in large part by the inability of successive governments to exercise necessary fiscal and financial restraints. Once again international cooperation in the form of loans and lines of credit has allowed Britain to stay precariously solvent, but the ultimate outcome of the process is far from clear. Inflation, which apparently has become endemic in the industrial nations—and which is only partially due to increases in the price of oil—is another continuing threat to monetary stability.

The split between developed and developing countries Essentially, the problem of international economic stability revolves around the change in governmental priorities that began after the First World War and accelerated after the second. The goals of governments have shifted from a balanced budget and financial stability to the mainte219

Old Problems and New In International Relations nance of a high level of employment and the provision of social services. Furthermore, the interests of business and labor have reduced the down¬ ward elasticity of prices. Certainly the new role of government is a healthy and necessary one, but it is possible that some new form of restraints — perhaps strict wage and price controls—will be necessary if meaningful stabilization of exchange rates and financial stability are to be achieved. Goodwill, American dollars, and the IMF kept the Western economy ex¬ panding smoothly for twenty-five years after the Second World War but could not avert a final reckoning. Difficult problems of economic theory and politics will have to be surmounted before a new, stable structure can be built. Difficult as inflation may be, it is no more serious than the worldwide monetary imbalance created by the energy crisis and OPEC’s decision to quadruple the price of oil in the winter of 1973-74. This problem is not purely economic. It has its roots in a new and deepening division within the international community; the split between rich and poor nations, be¬ tween the tropical and temperate zones. The new split could become the most significant factor in international relations during the next few decades, and the hikes in oil prices could turn out to be only the opening salvo in a battle as long and as bitter as the cold war. That the fate of the Western world can now lie to such an extent in the hands of the relatively few men who rule the OPEC countries is indicative of the enormous change that has come over the international system in the last forty years. A new legitimacy seems to have emerged within the inter¬ national community—an anticolonialist legitimacy based on militant na¬ tionalism, largely hostile to Western ideas and institutions. Before the Eirst World War, if any weak, underdeveloped nation had attempted to exert the kind of pressure the OPEC states are now employing, the West would have dealt with it immediately and severely by any necessary means. Only twenty years ago Western intelligence agencies helped overthrow Moham¬ mad Mossadegh, then prime minister of Iran, for attempting to control the Iranian operations of Western oil companies. Now, despite some calls for armed action to secure Persian Gulf oil fields,27 it is generally agreed that such action is not a real possibility, if only because of the repercussions it would have upon relations between the developed and developing na¬ tions. In any case, such a venture becomes militarily more difficult with each passing day, as we continually press sophisticated military equipment upon the Arabs and Iranians, partly in an attempt to get some of our petrodollars back. It is ironic that the United States, which has become so unpopular among the militant developing states, did more than any other country to loose the flood of new independent nations in the years after the Second World War. Proud of its heritage as the first modern state to overthrow its colonial master, the United States ceaselessly pressed its allies to hasten decolonization in the late forties and fifties, making exceptions only in 220

David £ Kaiser and Philip M. Kaiser cases like French Indochina and British Malaya, where Communist insur¬ gents were involved.^s During the Suez crisis of 1956 the United States cooperated with Moscow in dealing the deathblow to Western European freedom of action in the ex-colonial world. At first this attitude secured the U.S. considerable credit with the new nations. Their good opinion of America probably reached its height under the Kennedy administration, which founded the Peace Corps, cultivated the new African states, and tried to increase foreign aid, partly from idealism and partly to outbid the Soviet Union in the underdeveloped world. Both the American govern¬ ment and American business apparently assumed American enterprises would always be welcome in the new states; in the fifties and sixties the major oil companies increased Western dependence on Middle Eastern oil without regard to the possible consequences. The sixties brought significant changes. In Vietnam the United States seemed to assume the mantle of the old imperialist powers. The flow of American aid to underdeveloped nations was reduced to a trickle. New types of regimes emerged in the Third World, more militant, more na¬ tionalist, and less disposed to follow Western patterns of political and eco¬ nomic development. United States policy changed as well, as Washington began supporting Portugal’s attempts to maintain colonies in Africa and lessened its opposition to South Africa and Rhodesia.* Ultimately Ameri¬ can support for Israel became the focal point for the developing nations’ resentment of the United States, and the spur to the oil embargo of 1973. International economic problems will have to be solved against the background of this new split between developed and developing nations, and without becoming excessively alarmist it may be said that the split may well get worse, not better. The two groups are separated by both material interests and ideological outlook. For the last century or more the rich industrial nations have become accustomed to the idea that they are enti¬ tled to the world’s raw materials at roughly their cost price. The develop¬ ing nations, on the other hand, have long resented their role as the suppli¬ ers of the richer nations’ needs and are only just beginning to realize they can do something about it. They seem less and less willing to follow the Western model of political development, with even India abandoning democracy in favor of an authoritarian regime. The split is likely to be widened by the growing worldwide realization that our planet’s resources are finite. In an age of increasing scarcity it will be increasingly more difficult to convince the developing nations that the United States, with about 6 percent of the world’s population, should consume about 30 per¬ cent of the world’s resources. Before the century is out we may witness food crises far-more serious than the energy shortage of 1973-74, involv¬ ing widespread famine and difficult decisions on the allocation of the * Secretary Kissinger’s 1976 trip to Africa represented a first step in reversing these NixonFord policies.

221

Old Problems and New in International Relations world’s food supplies. It is quite true, as American political leaders are continually pointing out, that rich and poor nations need one another to solve their economic problems, but this does not mean that they view these problems in the same way or that they will find it easy to agree upon common goals. Since the oil embargo and the rise of petroleum prices, a new four-way division of the world has emerged. The first group comprises the old industrial states of Europe and North America and Japan, frequently re¬ ferred to as the OECD nations, after the Organization for Economic Coop¬ eration and Development, to which they all belong. Second are the newly rich OPEC nations, particularly those whose enormous petroleum re¬ serves and small populations guarantee them a large surplus of Western currencies in the coming years. Third are the less developed countries, or LDCs, who are not blessed with large deposits of fossil fuels or with sources of other highly valued raw materials. Although they are suffering the most from the recent high prices of oil and food, they generally re¬ main political allies of OPEC. Last are the Communist nations, who appar¬ ently will be self-sufficient in oil for the foreseeable future and are gener¬ ally remaining on the sidelines during the current crisis. What will happen to the economic relationships between these groups in the coming years?^^ Essentially, the power of decision rests with the OECD nations. Presumably OPEC will continue to try to get the highest possible return for their petroleum consistent with a relatively stable relationship with their customers, and it is up to the OECD nations themselves to determine their reaction. Their freedom of action is far from absolute; nothing can eliminate their need for substantial quantities of OPEC oil in the immediate future. Certainly in the short run they could make more of an effort to make an alliance with the LDCs, who are suffering far more than they from current conditions, in an effort to lower the price, but the long-range choices of the OECD nations revolve around the degree to which they are willing to accept continued dependence on OPEC. They have two alternatives. First, they can attempt to solve the problem of high OPEC prices and the resulting transfers of capital to OPEC nations within the framework of the present world economic and monetary system for ten to fifteen years, when North Sea and Alaskan oil and other new energy sources will substantially reduce their dependence on OPEC. Second, they can make an immediate, radical effort to save energy, develop new sources, and reduce dependence at once, in the conviction that continued reliance on OPEC energy sources carries with it a political and diplomatic price which is too high to pay. The first alternative has been succinctly argued by Hollis Chenery of the World Bank.30 He suggests that the OECD nations can afford to pay OPEC prices for ten to fifteen years without significant economic disruption. The OPEC nations will have to lend their foreign exchange surpluses back to the OECD nations in order to enable the latter to finance their energy 222

David E. Kaiser and Phiiip M. Kaiser imports, but if economic growth continues throughout OECD the strain of repaying these loans should not be excessive. In terms of the GNPs of the countries involved, in fact, these capital transfers should be no more dif¬ ficult to accomplish than those involved in United States aid to Europe in the postwar period under the Marshall Plan. Such a course of action is tempting because, if successful, it would involve less dislocation of the world economy than any other. Those who advocate it fear that economic growth will inevitably suffer if the OECD nations make a rapid attempt to become more self-sufficient in energy and significantly curtail their energy consumption. A new economic slump might in turn have political conse¬ quences similar to those of the 1920s and ’30s. So far, the United States, at least, and to some extent the other OECD nations as well, appear to be following this course. The U.S. has made no substantial effort to reduce its dependence on OPEC; in fact, the oil producers have had less trouble than anticipated in spending their surpluses. The difficulty of this alternative is that it involves a major gamble. If it is to work, OECD and OPEC will have to cooperate nearly as closely as the United States and Western Europe did during the Marshall Plan period. Such cooperation can be based only on a recognition of mutual interests and on a degree of mutual confidence for which there may be no basis. Simply put, the West will have to trust OPEC not to make irresponsible use of its enormous financial power to disrupt international capital mar¬ kets, much less to institute new embargoes. The establishment of the necessary degree of trust between the two parties will require at the very least a lasting Middle Eastern peace settlement, which will not be easy to achieve. The temptation to believe that the world economy will continue to function smoothly despite political splits is great precisely because the OECD nations have depended on their power to draw upon the resources of the underdeveloped world for so long. Unfortunately, it is harder to be sure that the OECD nations can afford the political consequences of de¬ pendence on OPEC than it is to show that they can bear the purely eco¬ nomic burdens. The second alternative would involve more rapid and costly searches for new energy sources, coupled perhaps with greater efforts at energy conservation. New energy would be sought in areas still under the OECD nations’ political control.^' The advantages of this course of action, were it to be successful, would be the strengthening of an OECD political-eco¬ nomic bloc that would provide more economic security for its members than continued dependence on OPEC. By becoming economically more self-sufficient, OECD would gain in political and diplomatic freedom. The difficulties of this alternative are financial and political. The rapid development of new energy sources would be extremely costly, and signifi¬ cant energy conservation would involve major changes in Western life¬ styles, particularly in the United States. The American people were per¬ haps willing to contemplate such changes at the height of the oil embargo 223

Old Problems and New In International Relations in the winter of 1973-74, but that chance was allowed to slip by, and there seems to be increasing reluctance to take any drastic steps to conserve energy as long as the flow of imported oil continues. In addition, the development of new energy sources, notably atomic power, is increasingly coming under fire on environmental grounds; no consensus on a proper balance of energy and environmental goals has been reached. The price of increased economic independence would be significant domestic dislocation. As in the political realm, the alternatives eventually selected must be chosen on the basis of sound calculation of interests, not blindlyj in obedi¬ ence to vague catchwords, or willy-nilly in response to the pressure of events. It has become fashionable, in discussing international economic problems, to refer to the phenomenon of interdependence, but real inter¬ dependence can rest only on common assumptions, common interests, and common goals, and not merely on one country’s need for another’s raw materials. To the extent that the OECD nations work together to solve their energy problems, they are on relatively firm ground. They are bound together by history, by common systems and institutions, and by common political interests. Attempts to build a new relationship between OECD and OPEC are necessary as well, but they must proceed with cau¬ tion. In recent months new international institutions have been launched to deal constructively with world energy and raw material problems; eighteen advanced industrial nations have established the International Energy Agency to coordinate the approach to issues in this field, including energy sharing, pricing policies, and development of alternative sources. France refused to join lEA. Apparently it feels it has a special relationship with key OPEC countries which it can exploit for its own national interest. Its public explanation is that the lEA is too narrowly based, too industrialnation-oriented, and consequently bound to antagonize the OPEC/LDC countries. Instead, France took the initiative in organizing the conference on International Economic Cooperation, an initiative which the United States agreed to support. This represents an attempt to deal constructively and on a broad scale with the problems resulting from the fact that rela¬ tively few less developed countries control the main sources of essential raw materials. Twenty-seven nations, representing industrial, OPEC, and less developed countries, participated in the first meeting of the confer¬ ence, held in late 1975. They set the institutional framework for future cooperative effort. Intergovernmental committees have been established to come up with plans designed to reconcile the interests of OECD, OPEC, and the LDCs. The United States has many assets in the new international economic situation, not least of them its enormous agricultural surplus. So far, con¬ venience and political considerations have dictated the disposal of this surplus in ways designed to further detente. It is debatable whether this is indeed the best use that can be made of this asset. Even more than in the 224

Da vid £ Kaiser and Philip M. Kaiser political realm, the primary characteristic of today’s international eco¬ nomic problems is their complexity. They require fuller investigation, the widest possible publicity, and dispassionate consideration.

Structural problems in foreign policy How well are the governments of the Western world—and particularly of the United States—equipped to deal with the complex demands of the new era in international relations? Can Washington develop an appropri¬ ate strategy for at least the next decade and convince the American people that it will serve the country’s best interests? How adequate is the govern¬ ment machinery for handling foreign affairs? Is it likely that public opin¬ ion, Congress, and the executive branch can be harmonized sufficiently to sustain an effective foreign policy? In retrospect, devising and implementing foreign policy during the fif¬ teen years after the Second World War was relatively easy. During the cold war era American objectives seemed clear, the tactics required to achieve them reasonably simple, and necessary resources readily available. Con¬ sensus prevailed among the American people in support of cold war objec¬ tives, and there were sufficient trained and talented personnel to carry them out. With the changes that have taken place during the last two years —changes which we have attempted to analyze—the world has become more complicated. Multipolarity, detente, the emergence of new power centers, and other new issues around the world all require more varied and subtle policies. Carrying out an effective foreign policy in this new context is likely to prove much more difficult than the management of our international affairs during the cold war era. Essentially, the structural problems of foreign policy in a modern democracy are of two kinds: the reconciliation of the claims of existing bureaucracies involved in one way or another with foreign policy, and the relationship of the bureaucracies to democratically elected leaders and institutions. Neither problem is new, but both are becoming increasingly acute. Historians are only just beginning to delve into the ways in which competition between bureaucracies has affected foreign policy in the past; in the context of a large modern government the problem of making the nation speak with one voice is particularly difficult. The interplay of public opinion, democratic politics, and foreign policy has become more and more important throughout this century. Both problems are exacerbated by the greater complexity of the issues we now face, and the breakdown of the consensus of the cold war era. One legacy of the cold war is the enormous proliferation of foreignpolicy bureaucracies in Washington today. To the State Department itself enormously expanded—have been added the huge permanent mili¬ tary services, the civilian bureaucracy of the Department of Defense, and 225

Old Problems and New In International Relations the CIA. The role of domestic bureaucracies, among them the Treasury, the Commerce Department, the Labor Department, and the Agriculture Department, has increased tremendously. During the cold war, reconciling differences between these various agencies was relatively easy because all of them generally agreed on certain objectives. In today’s more subtle and complex world, agencies can honestly differ on how best to serve the na¬ tional interest. Political scientists and historians, moreover, are becoming increasingly aware of the extent to which national policy often represents the outcome of a struggle between competing bureaucracies, rather than a judicious evaluation of the overall national interest. The State and Defense depart¬ ments, the military services, the intelligence agencies, and the domestic agencies involved in foreign policy are all constantly attempting to main¬ tain or enlarge their existing roles and to secure the maximum benefits for their particular constituencies. In such a context policy is as likely to be the outcome of competing bureaucratic interest as of the national interest. This process can result in tortured attempts to equate departmental inter¬ ests with those of the nation; at its worst, it can lead to outright deception of higher authority and of the nation at large. A military service may push a new weapon in an effort to maintain a preeminent role in national defense; an intelligence agency may exaggerate the threat it is detailed to monitor in an attempt to convince higher authority of its own indispensability.®2 If these tendencies are to be counteracted, procedures must exist for a realistic evaluation of the proposals of various agencies. Further¬ more, if the president is not ultimately to be confronted with the lowest common denominator of policy—that is, some generally unsatisfactory compromise whose only virtue is that it provides something for all the competitors—some individual agency must have the power to relate dispa¬ rate goals to a clearly defined, overall national strategy in international affairs, and to maintain continuity of policy despite changes in administra¬ tion. In an era characterized by increasing negotiation, and by subtle, mul¬ tipolar relationships rather than confrontation and rigid alliances, the logi¬ cal candidate for the overall coordination of foreign policy, and for the maintenance of its continuity, is of course the State Department. It has no domestic constituency per se; it is composed of trained professionals ex¬ perienced in foreign affairs; it is theoretically responsible for the actual administration of our relations with foreign countries. For a variety of reasons, however, the department does not now enjoy the power, prestige, or influence necessary to play this role.^® Historically, the foreign service officer’s lot has been neither easy nor happy; he has never been especially popular with his countrymen. For much of its history, America was committed to a policy of isolation. Formal diplomacy was considered characteristic of the cynical European world the United States had happily rejected. Americans were not sure their own 226

David £ Kaiser and Philip M. Kaiser diplomats were necessary. Not until 1924 was the foreign service career system created under the Rogers Act. Since the Second World War the new emphasis on foreign relations has resulted in considerable expansion of the foreign service, but for various reasons its influence has probably decreased. Within the State Department the proliferation of bureaus, desks, councils, and staff has meant that far too many individuals are involved in the determination of policy on any one issue. An emphasis on rotating officers in and out of Washington has added to discontinuity within the department. The McCarthyite purges of the late forties and early fifties, which removed a whole generation of Asian experts from the government, left a legacy of fear and caution in the department which further reduced its role. The practice of appointing noncareer ambassadors on the basis of their financial contributions to presidential election campaigns—significantly increased under President Nixon—has led to a further decline in the morale of career personnel. As if all this were not enough, the State Department has found it in¬ creasingly difficult to reconcile its role with the political needs of our democratically elected leaders. It is above all the president’s relationship with the department that is the theoretical executor of American foreign policy that has deteriorated during the last thirty years. The desire of recent presidents to put their own stamp on foreign policy by keeping foreign affairs tightly under their own control has led to a further down¬ grading of the State Department’s role. This process has been accelerated under the Nixon and Ford administrations. Dean Acheson once wrote that all presidents he had ever known were suspicious of the State Department, but none has ever been more so than Richard Nixon. When he made his first trip abroad in 1969, Nixon ar¬ ranged to meet with groups of influential private citizens in Western Euro¬ pean capitals. He instructed his ambassadors not to be present at these meetings because he believed private citizens would then speak more frankly to him outside the presence of his official representative. This absurd request provided a dramatic example of neurotic and self-defeat¬ ing suspicion. Any capable ambassador would have known most or all of the individuals invited, and the ambassador’s presence, far from intimidat¬ ing the guests, would probably have made them more open in their con¬ versations with the president. During the same year. Nelson Rockefeller, on a tour of Latin America as Nixon’s special representative, went even further, insisting that no American ambassadors be present during his conversations with the presidents and foreign ministers of the countries he visited. It is hardly necessary to point out how damaging such steps were to the prestige, and consequently to the effectiveness, of American ambassa¬ dors and career diplomats generally. Ignoring the State Department, Nixon relied upon Henry Kissinger, who served during his first administration as special assistant for national security affairs. Kissinger developed his own personal bureaucracy within 227

Old Problems and New in International Relations the framework of the National Security Council. In his hands the council — originally created during the Truman administration to coordinate for¬ eign policy, defense, and intelligence —became an exclusive mechanism rather than a consultative body. The system suited Nixon, who made a fetish of secrecy in foreign policy, but hardly contributed to the orderly workings of government. In some ways Kissinger’s appointment as secre¬ tary of state in 1973 has increased the State Department’s role: he has drawn on some of the expertise available within the career service, and his eminence has increased Foggy Bottom’s bargaining power in conflicts with other departments. Because decisions are still closely centered around his own peripatetic person, however, he has not built any potentially lasting institutional decision-making structure that is likely to survive him. His reliance on relatively few close associates is as much a question of personal style as of bureaucratic imperative. Ironically, in the long run Kissinger’s refusal to share authority can only undermine the kind of policies he claims to advocate. He has been instru¬ mental in creating a new international system of complex, multifaceted relationships through subtle diplomacy. To continue to make its way in this new environment the United States will need a body of sophisticated, well-trained diplomats, capable of understanding and executing the intri¬ cate policies appropriate to the new world. Furthermore, the maintenance of an extensive network of worldwide contacts will require that significant authority return to professional diplomats. Kissinger’s style has impeded the fulfillment of these needs in two ways. First, by monopolizing all major negotiations he has reduced drastically the responsibility and credibility of American missions abroad. It is in¬ creasingly obvious that just as Kissinger trusts no one but himself to im¬ part American policy to other foreign leaders, foreign governments do not believe they can effectively deal with the American government through anyone but Kissinger. Second, by allowing the morale of the foreign ser¬ vice to deteriorate further, he has made it harder to attract the highly qualified, well-trained cadres who will be necessary to administer foreign policy in the future. For all his magic, Kissinger will never master the art of being in two places at once, and there will inevitably come a time when he is replaced. His style makes it less likely that his policies will survive him. The problem of the effective use of bureaucracy is difficult enough; the problem of building a consensus in the Congress and the public at large is harder still. Within a modern democratic government, conflicts between an executive, seeking room to maneuver and autonomy to deal with for¬ eign powers, and the legislature, which tends to view an overly indepen¬ dent executive with distrust, are almost inevitable. In the United States today, executive-legislative relations may be at their lowest point since the controversy over the Versailles treaty. Historically, the American Congress has always been suspicious of executive initiatives in foreign policy. No president has ever been successful in this field without a good relationship 228

David £ Kaiser and Philip M. Kaiser with Congress; those like Woodrow Wilson, who neglected Congress, paid the price. Today the Vietnam war, the recent revelations of abuses of secret practices within the intelligence agencies, and Secretary of State Kissinger’s emphasis on secrecy and private understandings in foreign relations have made the Congress more suspicious and more resentful than ever. Denied any real role in policymaking, often denied vital details of national policy itself, the Congress has frequently reacted with spas¬ modic, unproductive assertions of its own authority, such as the cutoff of aid to Turkey, which cannot substitute for a coherent foreign policy. A reasonably satisfactory relationship between the president, the bu¬ reaucracy, the Congress, and the public at large will have to be reestab¬ lished if the political and economic problems of the new era in interna¬ tional relations are to be dealt with coherently. Such a relationship will require flexibility in outlook and attitude, respect for the diversity of inter¬ ests of the American people and the complexity of our governmental insti¬ tutions which were created to deal with that diversity. In the years immedi¬ ately ahead it will be necessary to develop a new national consensus on goals, methods, ideological orientation, and morality in American foreign policy. In a democracy such a consensus is not easy to achieve. For over a century the United States handled this problem without too much dif¬ ficulty by following the advice of its first president and avoiding interna¬ tional entanglements. Under the leadership of President Wilson the Americans abandoned isolationism in 1917, but in the aftermath of the First World War the nation reverted to “normalcy” and rejected an active world role. The Second World War and the cold war created a remarkable degree of consensus, and for more than a generation the United States has been a major participant in world affairs. Vietnam, however, opened large new gulfs in American opinion. The Vietnam war is over, but the doubts and anxieties raised persist; the Angolan question shows they will reemerge whenever the U.S. is confronted with a situation that might involve direct intervention in areas other than Western Europe and the Middle East. Achieving consensus on energy and related economic problems will be no less difficult, necessitating as it does the reconciliation of numerous domestic and foreign interests and a reappraisal of long-term economic goals in relation to international objectives. The tasks involved are nothing less than the reconciliation of the ideals and institutions of Western democracy with the imperatives of foreign policy, and it is both ironic and fitting that the United States should be confronting this challenge so di¬ rectly in its bicentennial year.

229

Old Problems and New In International Relations

' For the most comprehensive available discussion of international relations theory and the postwar international system, see Raymond Aron, Peace and War (Garden City, N.Y.: Double¬ day 8c Co., 1966). ^ Alistair Buchan, The End of the Postwar Era (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1974), provides an excellent survey of current international relations. ^ For a lucid exposition of this traditional view of the cold war, see W. W. Rostow, The United States in the World Arena (New York: Harper & Row, 1960). ^ See William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, rev. and enl. ed. (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1962); Gar Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965); Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War (New York: Random House, 1968); David Horowitz, The Free World Colossus (London: Macgibbon & Kee, 1965). ® For a well-documented attack on the revisionists, see Robert James Maddox, The New Left and the Origins of the Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973). ® See Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy. ^ Alperovitz supplies some new evidence on this point in his essay “The Use of the Atomic Bomb,” in Cold War Essays, comp. Gar Alperovitz (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1970), pp. 51-74. ® Adam Ulam, The Rivals: America and Russia since World War 11 (New York: Viking Press, 1971), pp. 81-83. Ulam’s book is a brilliant and provocative discussion of the cold war. ® See Herbert Feis, From Trust to Terror: The Onset of the Cold War (New York: W. W. Norton 8c Co., 1970), for a discussion of the German problem. This account largely follows Ernest R. May, “Lessons” of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 19-51. ** Quoted in Richard M. Freeland, The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971), p. 89. May, “Lessons” of the Past, pp. 44-T5. Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1969), pp. 356-57. Soviet involvement in the North Korean military was such as to make certain Moscow knew the attack was coming, but whether the original initiative came from Moscow is imposible to say. On the Korean decision, see May, “Lessons” of the Past, pp. 52-86. The so-called China Lobby—an alliance of American religious and business groups interested in China and dedicated to the maintenance of Chiang Kai-shek in power—had protested the Truman administration’s failure to do more for Chiang in his fight with the Communists; it had been unable to overturn the policy. After Korea it succeeded in setting the tone of our China policy. ’’ Selig Adler, The Isolationist Impulse: Its Twentieth Century Reaction (New York: AbelardSchuman, 1957), pp. 55-72. Thus the language of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of lib¬ erty.” Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States (Washington, 1965), p. 268. On the problem of the U.S.’s self-image in world affairs, see Sir Denis W. Brogan, “The Illusion of American Omnipotence,” in Brogan, American Aspects (London: Hamish Hamilton 1964), pp. 9-21. Stanley Hoffmann, “Will the Balance Balance at Home?” Foreign Policy, no. 7 (Summer 1972) , pp. 60-87. 2' John Newhouse, Cold Dawn: The Story of SALT (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973) , gives a detailed account of SALT I. 22 Herbert F. York, Race to Oblivion: A Participant’s View of the Arms Race (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970), pp. 182-84. 23 For an argument along these lines, see Stanley Hoffmann, “A New Policy for Israel,” Foreign Affairs 53, no. 3 (April 1975): 421-22. 2^ Aron, Peace and War, pp. 259-78. 25 See Gerhard L. Weinberg (ed.). Hitlers zweites Buch (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1961), pp. 53-54, 59-60, 123-24. This is Hitler’s second book, written in 1928 but never published during his life.

230

David £ Kaiser and Philip M. Kaiser 26 See Friedrich Forstmeier and Hans-Erich Volkmann (eds.), Wirtschaft und Riistung am Vorabend des Zweiten WeUkrieges (Dusseldorf, 1975), pp. 81-131.

22 For example, Robert W. Tucker, “Oil: The Issue of American Intervention,” Commentary 59, no. 1 (January 1975): 21-31. 26 Roosevelt, in fact, had not intended even to allow the French back into Indochina, but this policy was reversed. 2^ For a review article listing many new works on these questions, see Geoffrey Barraclough, “Wealth and Power: The Politics of Food and Oil,” The New York Review of Books (August 7, 1975), pp. 23-30. 6® Hollis B. Chenery, “Restructuring the World Economy,” Foreign Affairs 53, no. 2 (January 1975): 242-63. 6' This alternative, and many of the objections to Chenery’s position presented above, are taken from Robert Moorsteen, “Action Proposal: OPEC Can Wait—We Can’t,” Foreign Policy, no. 18 (Spring 1975), pp. 3-11. 62 For a general discussion of the role of bureaucracy, see Morton H. Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1974); for a theoretical discussion and an analysis of bureaucratic input in the Cuban missile crisis, see Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1971). 66 For a fuller discussion of this subject, see Monteagle Stearns, “Making American Di¬ plomacy Relevant,” Foreign Affairs 52, no. 1 (October 1973): 153-57.

NOTE TO THE READER

Many passages in GBWW are of interest in connection with this essay. They are listed principally in Chapter 98 of the Syntopicon, War and Peace. See especially Topic 4a on the causes of war between states; Topics 5b and 5c dealing with the political and economic consequences of war; Topic 6, which is concerned with war as a political means or instrument; Topic 10a, where the formation of military policy is considered; and Topic 11 on the nature, causes, and conditions of peace. Related material will be found in Chapter 31, Government, at Topic 5a, dealing with the foreign "policy of governments, and in Chapter 90, State, at Topic 9, where passages concerned with the relation of states to one another are consid¬ ered. See also, in GGB, Vol. 7, the selection from Clausewitz’s On War; the same volume includes Dante’s discussion of world government, from De Monorchia; Kant’s essay Perpetual Peace; and Rousseau’s A Lasting Peace through the Federation of Europe.

231

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