Who Controls Foreign Policy?
Stillman, Stanley
Stanley StiMilan Who Controls Foreign Policy? AA "...soon or late, it is ideas which are dangerous for good or evil." —John Maynard Keynes The nexus between human action and human values is...
...But in the most fundamental way the nation's intelligentsia properly bear the primary responsibility...
...Stanley StiMilan Who Controls Foreign Policy...
...Is it proper or reasonable to expect them to demand sacrifices of the nation if whenever they do they are subjected to harsh criticism and if two, four, or at best six years hence they face reelection...
...Political leaders in a democratic society, by contrast, depend in the most fundamental sense upon public opinion...
...This question raises the central issue in the SALT talks compromise: Who really is responsible for fashioning the country's public opinion on such crucial issues...
...Furthermore, even if they resist public pressure, they are still expected essentially to respond to the felt needs of society and to fashion social, political, and economic programs that reflect its values, not to create them in the first place...
...Given such vulnerable positions, why should politicians bear anything but the most limited responsibility for shaping public opinion...
...the senseless violence of Kubrick' s A Clockwork Orange...
...They are Charged with having given up potential superiority in strategic weapons over the Soviet Union for parity in the number of ballistic missiles...
...And yet if the public issues of the day are to be comprehended at all, the proper connection must be grasped...
...the mystical egalitarianism of Ivan Illich's writings...
...Often quoted on economic subjects, Keynes' remarks were clearly meant to apply to political philosophy as well...
...Poets and philosophers operate from independent positions and institutions...
...John Maynard Keynes The nexus between human action and human values is surely one of the most difficult of social phenomena to understand...
...the value-empty bankruptcy of children's programming on television...
...The restraint on foreign and defense policies, therefore, comes not so much from Kissinger and Ford as from the present character of America's will...
...Paul Nitze, a former top official in the State and Defense departments of both Democratic and Republican administrations, has given the sharpest focus to this criticism...
...He acknowledged that the "main basis" for the Ford-Kissinger decision was their "judgment that congressional and public opinion will not support the measures necessary to halt present trends [toward parity...
...But," he asked rhetorically, "is the Executive Branch taking the steps which might lay a foundation for a more favorable climate next year and the year after...
...The only way to lay such a foundation, under present circumstances, is to receive cooperation from the value-molding institutions in society...
...When such ideas dominate, it is foolish to expect the people, or their elected representatives, to strive for anything more than parity with the Soviet Union...
...Sorry as the situation in America may betoday, it isn't nearly as bad as France in 1958, upended by the Algerian war, or China in 1949, wracked with revolution...
...They are also useful in looking at foreign policy and the crucial issue of how much power a nation really wields in world politics...
...They therefore ultimately shape society's public policies, including foreign policies, its perception of vital interests, and its determination to defend those interests...
...It is a sign of the times that defense spending has risen by only a paltry 4.3% since 1970...
...and the negative vision of human achievement in Robert Heilbroner's book, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect, which asks us to give up the dominant theme of our civilization, the goal-striving myth of Prometheus, for the burden-bearing myth of Atlas...
...For "leadership requires," as Paul Nitze has put it in private correspondence on this subject, "not only a leader but also an audience that resonates to his leadership...
...Keynes once wrote that he was "sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas...
...This is a direct outgrowth of such influences on the society's values as the hedonism of Fellini's Satyricon...
...There is a limit to the criticism that mor(continued on page 28) 14 The Alternative: An American Spectator November 1975 FOREIGN POLICY (continued from page 14) tal political leaders can take in trying to influence public opinion...
...They must confront it head-on in each election...
...From the sublime to the ridiculous, the serious to the frivolous, these materials all undermine the values required to sustain purposeful, forceful foreign and defense policies...
...It is the poets and philosophers of the education, religious, and media communities whose ideas shape the basic values of society...
...Critics may argue that Ford and Kissinger should give defense policies first priority, that they should concentrate their marginal powers of influencing public opinion on stressing the need for greater defense spending, even if it means drawing the antagonism of Congress and, more important, of the articulate intelligentsia...
...To survive, even the best of them must bend at times to its vagaries and williwaws...
...They can run against the grain of popular fashions and direct public opinion one way or another without fear of losing their jobs...
...AA "...soon or late, it is ideas which are dangerous for good or evil...
...But the President has also taken unpopular stands in trying tc influence energy and economic legislation, and who would deny that these are important issues on which to take stands...
...Some people suggest the President is...
...Ouronce dynamic respect for individual self-reliance, progress, and man's ability to influence his destiny has been replaced by an unrealistic commitment to equality, static harmony, and a Malthusian fatalism about the environment...
...28 The Alternative: An American Spectator November 1975...
...Both of them emerged to power, however, only after they had wandered in the wilderness for many years and their countries had been so humiliated that their people received them and their ideas with open arms...
...Recently, for example, Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger have been heavily criticized in certain quarters for having compromised the national interest in the SALT disarmament negotiations...
...He certainly plays a role...
...An intellectual political leader like de Gaulle or Mao Tse-tung, perhaps, can change the ethos of a nation without jeopardizing his position...
...The nexus between human values and ideas is even more mysterious...
...Political conditions are not sufficiently critical to permit Ford and Kissinger to lay a foundation in public opinion for strong defense and foreign policies...
...Our once strong spirit of achievement and drive to produce has been replaced by an air of consumptive self-indulgence in not only material things but also the arts...
Vol. 9 • November 1975 • No. 2
