Communism Is Dead

...What are the implications of historical trends for U S foreign policy9 Definition ot the broad framework, m turn, enables us to see in sharper relief the true interests and goals of the United States in specific regions of the world, such as Europe or Asia As I look at international politics, I see five major changes taking place, which together are fundamentally altering the nature of international relations in our day These changes are not obvious, because they are slow, but their cumulative impact is most important and has definite meaning foi the U S posture in world affairs 1 The waning ideological conflicts among the more developed nations Since the time of the French Revolution, conflicts between states have been profoundly emotionalized by mass struggles induced by a mixture of ideology and nationalism Where that mixture was particularly intense as in the case of Nazism, the conflicts were particularly bloody and destructive By and large during the last 150 years or so relations among the more advanced states, especially in Europe, have been poisoned by the emotionalizing impact of absolute doctrinal responses to most basic issues of humanit) Due to a variety ot lactors, this condition is waning First of all nuclear weapons have necessitated greater and greater control The realization of the enormous destructiveness of nuclear conflict has had a most sobering effect on statesmen Hitherto, one could calculate the cost and potential advantages of war, today, this is no longer possible Thus, even the most bitter ideological hatreds have to be restrained by common sense Secondly, and equally important, we are coming to realize moie fully that social change is such an enormously complex and interrelated process, with so many variables, that it cannot be leduced to a few simple ideological formulas—as was the case in the early stages of industrialization Ideological attitudes are theretore giving way to a problem-solving, engineering approach to social change Thirdly, Communism the principal, and until recently most militant, revolutionary ideology of our day, is dead Communism is dead as an ideology in the sense that it is no longer capable of mobilizing unified global support On the contrary, it is being increasingly fragmented by conflicts among constituent units and parties, and this has contributed to ideological disillusionment among its members Communist states, Communist movements and Communist subversion are still very important on the international scene, but Communist ideology as a vital force is no longer with us Revolutionary movements m different parts of the world now relate themselves more specifically to local radical traditions and try to exploit local opportunities The common doctrine and its alleged universal validity are being diluted by these adaptations, and the process is destroying the universal appeal and global effectiveness of ideology The role ot ideology is still quite important, however, m relations among the less developed states For there the problems are simpler, the issues can be translated into black-and-white propositions, and the absolute doctrinal categories continue to appear superficially relevant 2 The decline of violence among the more developed nations...

...autonomous human being We cannot effectively respond to these twin challenges if we are preoccupied with ideological and doctrinal conflicts that no longer have much relevance to the fundamental concerns of our day Given the traditional American quest for human fieedom and today s US global power, we have the oppoitumty and the responsibility to take the lead in responding to these twin challenges...

...Since the early 19th century, the international scene has been dominated by conflicts fought principally among the more advanced, and mostly European, nations of the world The focus of violence is now shifting to the Third World Today, the conflicts are often between some of the developed and less developed nations, and increasingly, instability in the underdeveloped world is itself the source of global tension This is a basic reversal of the dominant pattern ot the recent past The new curbing ot violence between the advanced states is also largely a result of the nuclear age It should be acknowledged that without the presence of nuclear weapons a major war would probably have erupted m the course of the last 20 years Given the range of differences, the frequent tensions and the occasional clashes between the United States and the Soviet Umon, a war between them would likely have ensued m almost any other era in history The presence of nuclear weapons has introduced an overriding factor of restraint into relations among the more advanced states and has helped to preserve world peace This control is still largely absent in the case of the less developed states Moreover, their ideological passions and nationalist feelings have not yet run full course Consequently, the propensity toward total reaction, total commitment and total violence is still quite high in the Third World The pros and cons aside the Vietnamese war offers a good example of the generalization made above It reflects the shift of focus jn global affairs from conflicts between developed states to a conflict where a wealthy and highly advanced country is seeking to create regional stability The Soviet Umon's unwillingness to become fully drawn into the struggle stems from the realization of its greater interest in preserving peace m the nuclear age, and from the gradual ideological erosion that has weakened its sense of total identification with every revolutionary movement m the world 3 The end of the supremacy of the nation-state on the international scene...

...is imitating it Paradoxically, because the United States is the only global power, we are finding it ever more difficult to concentrate our resources or policies on any specific region of the world This creates sharp dilemmas and difficulties, but we will have to live with them because oui involvement is also a major factor ot stability m the world 5 The growing fragmentation of the world The widening gulf between the developed and underdeveloped states is of course much talked about What I have in mind though, are the growing differences between the U S and the rest of the advanced world The United States is becoming a new society, a society no longer shaped by the impact of the industrial process on social, economic and political life That impact still shapes European lite It you look at the changes in the nature of the European political elite, European problems of employment or unemployment or welfare, the efforts to create greatei access to education in Europe—you see that all of these are manifestations of the effect of the industrial process on a formerly rural and traditional society The United States has gone beyond this era Our social concerns are mostly with leisure, physical well-being, automation, psychic well-being, alienation of youth (usually from well-to-do middle-class families) They stem from a standard ot living that has become lelatively stable and high, from a society that in many respects faces new questions of purpose and meaning We are becoming, in effect, a postmdustnal society where computeis and communications control our way of life to an ever greater degiee Our education and our image of the world are shaped more and more by television and less and less by sequential, logical media like books and newspapers Europeans are today experiencing the automobile revolution, which extends physical mobility, Americans are undergoing an electronic revolution, which extends our senses and nervous systems This induces new peispectives and attitudes, and sharpens the differences between us and the rest of the developed world It also creates underlying tension, in addition to the obvious problems that already exist, such as the Kennedy Round nato, East-West relations, and so forth What are the implications ot the five major changes I have outlined for U S foreign policy9 The first, I think, is that we should not become ideological latecomers We have traditionally been the pragmatic society, free of ideological shackles It would be unfortunate if we now succumbed to mternal and external ideologization, eithei because of belated anti-Commumst rigidity at a time when the Communist world is becoming fragmented, or because of radical leactions to the new internal dilemmas of our society that I have mentioned It would be unfortunate if we responded to these new dilemmas—inherent in the United States' becoming a new type of society—on the basis ot essentially irrelevant, outmoded, 19th-centuiy ideological formulations This is the gieat danger, particularly with the New Lett which is looking for ideological guidance and too often tuins to outmoded anarchistic, Trotskyite, oi nihilistic doctrines completely irrelevant to our present society We ought to avoid the prescriptions of the extieme Right or the extreme Lett in our foreign policy as well The Right too often says erroneously, that to protect a bettei America we should stay out of the world, the New Left says that to build a better America we have to stay out of the world Both are wrong, for today our global involvement and oui pieponderance of power is such that our disinvolvement would create international chaos of enormous proportions Our involvement is a historical tact—there is no way to end it at this stage One can debate the forms it ought to take, its scope and the way it is applied, but one can no longer debate in absolutist terms whether we should or should not be involved at all It would be a mistake, too, to underestimate the role of revolutionary nationalism in the world because of our own historical formation While we have to pursue the task ot building a world of cooperative communities, we must leahze that revolutionary nationalism is a stage ot development that in many cases cannot be avoided We should therefoie be very careful not to get oveunvolved in conflicts that pitch us against revolutionary nationalisms and make it appear that we are an impediment to social change This raises the extremely complicated issue ot intervention Under what conditions should we intervene9 It is extraordinarily difficult to define clear-cut criteria, but as a broad generalization, it might be said that intervention is justified whenever its absence will create regional instability of expanding proportions It has to be judged largely on its international merits, and not m terms of specific domestic consequences within individual states It is that distinction which justifies intervention—it is that distinction which warrants our involvement today m the effort to create regional stability in Southeast Asia In seeking ties with the developed nations of the world, and with Western Europe in particular, we have to emphasize, besides specific political and security arrangements, broader efforts to resolve the fundamental social issues inherent in the United States' growing lead We ought to try to shaie and distribute our new knowledge and technological skills, because this is the unique asset of the postindustnal society At the same time, we should tiy to make other industrial societies more aware of the novel character of our problems By learning from us they can perhaps avoid some of our difficulties We need to forge new social bonds, especially between oui younger geneia-tion and the youngei Europeans—and uigently so, foi we are at a time in history when the two continents find themselves m different histoncal eras Finally, to briefly apply my argument as a whole to Europe Since the ideological age is waning, :mce the developed world is becoming the zone of tranquillity, since the United States is playing a predominant role in the woild, and since we are in a new historical era that gives us special assets, it is oui task to develop a broader approach to Europe Oui purpose should be to end the Cold War gradually through reconciliation, to remove that lemnant of the civil war that has divided the most advanced paits of the world tor the last 150 years Accordingly, we must adapt the Atlantic concept to the post-Cold-War era We must strive to shape a community of developed nations containing four basic components the United States, a more homogeneous and integrated Western Europe, with close ties to the United States but also with incieasingly close links to Eastern Europe, an Eastern Europe that will eventually stand on its own feet and engage in subregional integration moie independently of the Soviet Union, while at the same time letaimng ties with the Soviet Union, and a Soviet Union which would enter into constructive relationships with Western Euiope and the United States Only by developing such a community ot the developed nations—of which Japan should naturally be a member—can we hope to assure a measure of oidei in a world which will otherwise be incieasingly dominated by chaos If we look ahead 20 years, we can clearly see a challenge to the suivival of organized society m several paits ot the world And when we look 20 years ahead in the developed parts ot the world—above all in the United States, where the scientific, technological, medical and chemical revolutions are progressing most rapidly—we can see a rising challenge to the individual as a mystenous...

...This process is far from consummated, but the trend seems to me irreversible It is not only a matter of security interdependence among allied states It is also a matter of psychological change Throughout history people have expanded their sense of identification At the outset men identified with their families, then with their villages, then with their towns, then with their surrounding areas and provinces, then with their nations Now people are beginning to identify with their continents and regions This change has been induced by the necessities of economic development and ot the technological revolution, by progress in the means of communication—all of which cause people to identity themselves more and more with wider, global human interests 4 The emergence of ths United States as the preponderant world power The conventional view is that since 1945 we ha\e seen three basic stages of international development U S nuclear monopoly, bipolarity, based on two homogenous alliances rigidly confronting each other, and currently polycentnsm, with many states playing the international game I submit that this is a wrong perspective, in fact, the sequence has been the opposite The first postwar era?945-50—was basically a polycentnc era The United States was largely disarmed It had a nuclear monopoly, to be sure, but its nuclear power was essentially apocalyptic, it could only be used m circumstances everyone wished to avoid, hence it was not politically relevant In addition to being disarmed, the United States was just beginning to become involved in Europe, was hardly involved in Asia, and there were still two major empires on the scene, the French and the British The Russians were asserting their regional control over Central Europe, but they were not yet involved m Asia Asia itself was in turmoil This truly was the polycentnc eia It gave way to the era ot bipolarity, of dichotomic confrontation, if you will, between two alliances—one led by the Soviet Union, the other by the United States During this period the Soviet Union acquired nuclear capacity Between 1958-62, under Nikita Khrushchev, it misjudged its nuclear strength and attempted a polic) designed to assert Soviet global supremacy These years were dominated by the Soviet effort to throw the West out ot Berlin, to put missiles in Cuba and to force a showdown However Khrushchev discovered in 1962 that the Soviet Union still had only apocahptic powei Its nuclear aisenal was not relevant when faced with U S power, which by then had become much more complex and could be used in a far gieater diversity ot situations Thus the United States stared down Khrushchev in Cuba protected its interests in the Dominican Republic and the Congo and now is doing the same in Vietnam The Soviet Union did not dare to react even m the area of its domination—Berlin Today, the Soviet Union is m effect a regional power, concentrating primarily on Em ope and on the growing danger from China US powei meanwhile has become applicable —with a long-range delivery system with the ability to assert itself through a global reach But fai more important recent years have witnessed continued economic growth in this country and expansion on the v, orld scene ot U S technological know-how Incieasingl) the U S way ot life, our styles, our patterns ot hung, are setting the example Today, if there is a creative society in the world, it is the United States—in the sense that eveiyone, verv often unconscious...

...THINKING ALOUD Communism Is Dead By Zbigniew Brzezinski International politics is dominated by crises As a result we often mistake these crises for the underlying reality Going from one to the next, we simply lose sight ot the more basic, and often more significant, changes that imperceptibly reshape the world in which we live It is useful, therefore, to pause sometimes and ask in a detached way What is the nature of our era7 What is really changing in international politics...