THE CONDUCT OF FOREIGN POLICY
Hottetet, Richard C.
BOOKS THE CONDUCT OF FOREIGN POLICY RICHARD C. HOTTELET Diplomacy for a Crowded World GEORGE W. BALL Atlantic-Little, Brown, $12.95 George Ball is a big man, a prophet with honor. As...
...Such concessions as the Russian leaders have made, says Ball, are those they would have made tactically in any case as in SALT, under the pressure of their economic inadequacy...
...What would make Moscow less perverse and how long would it take...
...Few are as well qualified to present their views on the conduct of U.S...
...As for cutting off food shipments and industrial capital to the Soviet Union-this would be possible only in a situation of clear urgency, as President Ford found out when he walked into a political buzz saw with his brief food embargo...
...a moral theme to give coherence to what we as a nation are trying to do," the Old Pro turns to criticizing the Kissinger policy for no longer reflecting "the evolving realities...
...It confuses exhibitionism with liberty and, in the current state of taste and literature, substitutes a puerile cynicism for loyalty to the community or any actions beyond self-interest...
...Today sober historians are often outshouted by revisionists who twist events like pretzels to fit them into the Marxist mold, or systematically strip the American experience of any glory or heroism...
...They sound rather familiar and would draw no objection from the Ford-Kissinger combination...
...There is much astringent common sense in this book, although in the post-Watergate period some of the wisdom is fairly conventional...
...Permanent Representative to the United Nations because, as he said, he could not imagine a more urgent necessity than to work against Richard Nixon's election to the presidency...
...Ball scoffs at the notion that the Soviet Union may be tied down by gossamer strands of self-interest such as those elaborated in the first Nixon-Brezhnev summit...
...Fourth, initiate a period of "polite neglect" in place of obsessive attention to the Soviet Union...
...It had flowered in the 1950s and '60s in Britain, France and Germany, to name only three of the allies...
...They will be around for a while and will not be ignored...
...But before he ties himself in knots in an effort to define "what is missing...
...Executive aggrandizement is a danger, however the alternative to a presidential foreign policy is not congressional policy but none at all...
...As Under-Secretary of State, he saw sooner than anyone in the top ranks of government the disaster built into the Vietnam commitment...
...BOOKS THE CONDUCT OF FOREIGN POLICY RICHARD C. HOTTELET Diplomacy for a Crowded World GEORGE W. BALL Atlantic-Little, Brown, $12.95 George Ball is a big man, a prophet with honor...
...Ball hazards no guess about the time span but suggests four central considerations that should guide U.S...
...Multinational Corporations, nuclear proliferation, international terrorism and other headaches entered the diplomatic lexicon in the 1970s...
...Having said all this, colorfully and emphatically, Ball strays off into a non sequitur...
...Well, now...
...He reproaches Kissinger for not "enlisting Soviet support" in trying to find peace in the Middle East but then comes back, practically on the next page, to ask, "why should we collaborate to give the Soviet Union world recognition as a superpower, so long as it perversely frustrates every sensible initiative to deal with world problems that are as dangerous to the Soviet Union as to ourselves...
...foreign policy...
...He does so robustly- and, for the most part, right on target...
...In fact, detente reflects the inherent and wholesome urge of a democratic society 1o have its leaders "go more than halfway" to ensure peace and of those leaders to have themselves handsomely confirmed in office by doing so successfully...
...The Population/Food dilemma is likely to be on the priority of every future Secretary of State...
...Diplomacy for a Crowded World A vote of thanks, incidentally, for expert treatment of what might in times past have been considered "technical" elements of diplomacy, but which have taken on the proportion of major political issues...
...Unquestionably stimulated by the Vietnam ordeal, such antipatriot-ism is part of the nihilism that mars the present age-nihilism with its emphasis on the antihero...
...Third, localize local conflicts and do not automatically treat each one as a proxy skirmish with Moscow...
...One might wish that Ball's colleagues in banking and business would take to heart his reduction of detente to a conceptual shambles...
...He has a target: Henry Kissinger and the Nixon-Kissinger style...
...It is manifest in our current literature, in the glorification of violence and the outlaw, in the taste for black humor and erotic books and films...
...And he presents as a worthy objective to "sustain the present balance of power, sphere of influence system and thus preserve an essential equilibrium...
...Sympathizers will cheer and the many good points he makes will speak for themselves but George Ball's admirers may feel that he lapses into overkill when he should have stayed with judicious analysis...
...NATO's troubles go back long before Kissinger and if the notion of detente, which compounded them, was carried to absurd and self-serving extremes by the Nixon administration, it was a U.S...
...it is nonsense to believe that they can be cajoled or bribed into giving up their first principles and joining in the liquidation of their own system...
...Later, he resigned as U.S...
...Individuals may see clearly the need for unflagging vigilance but free societies seem to respond only to disappointment-sometimes shockingly late...
...He points out that the Soviets have used the Basic Principles of Relations signed in Moscow in May 1972 to gain precisely that selfish advantage which the Principles were meant to overcome-in Vietnam, the Middle East, Africa and Central Europe...
...Second, instead of talking about detente, put it to the test...
...Congress must indeed be a partner in foreign policy, but one might have expected from a man who knows how the machinery of diplomacy works some stronger admonition against Congress seeing itself as the senior partner...
...No food or credits unless Moscow stops fiddling with "wars of national liberation...
...policy...
...He starts-not at all reluctant to give credit where credit is due-with the Kissinger concept of the Soviet Union as a revolutionary power, in the sense that the Kremlin does not accept the values of the world around it but pursues its own goals with whatever means come to hand...
...invention...
...But there's the rub...
...The Third World's clamor for a global redistribution of wealth in a New International Economic Order must be dealt with...
...And, in a time of recession and slow recovery, no one has yet even seriously proposed canceling the credits which make jobs...
...Moscow and the Soviet bloc have collected enormous western credits-$40 billion is the latest estimate-and given nothing of consequence in the way of political and economic cooperation or of arms control, let alone arms reduction...
...If that doesn't sound like the Professor himself...
...This does not rule out prudence, restraint and gestures of amiability but it does exclude the kind of agreement the United States may reach with even fractious friends like France, Greece or Turkey...
...He beats it to a pulp . . . shuttle and Lone Ranger diplomacy, circus summitry, Nixon shocks to Europe and Japan, secrecy, linkage -the lot...
...Ball has great fun, in a serious way, ringing the changes on the moral imperative in America's view of the world and smiting Realpolitik...
...First, keep up our military guard and encourage our allies to make NATO strong...
...Especially, since he arrives at substantive conclusions which are not all that strikingly different from Kissinger's own-except for the Middle East, and possibly detente...
Vol. 103 • September 1976 • No. 20
