Which Way U.S. Foreign Policy? - An Exchange Revitalizing Western Unity

...The complex structure of United States foreign policies has been anchored on this assumption...

...the massive incursion of Soviet power in the Middle East and the Mediterranean...

...But even if the correlation of these variables were as close as it is alleged to be, the priorities of United States foreign policy are still largely determined by the foreign policies of other states, notably the Soviet Union...

...They were reasonable, too, because the United States had the means to resist Communist force whenever it threatened to spill over into the free world or attempted to make up for domestic failure by aggression abroad...

...The West's political disunity mars its economic performance: Gold and liquidity crises are political rather than economic phenomena...

...or by elevating the arms race and thereby creating a new instability between two superpowers, whose primary interest is in keeping their own empires (spheres of influence, if you will) intact...

...Within a federal system, they would be handily resolved and probably could not occur at all...

...The obsolescence of the nation-state system has braked the progress of mankind...

...and the prudent use of power to negotiate the settlement of issues that might erupt into war...

...So powerful is the magic of change in contemporary democratic discourse that patient perseverance, an essential ingredient of foreign policy, ranks lowest among political appeals...

...They drew the proper conclusions and conducted their strategy accordingly...

...The foreign and national security policies of the Johnson Administration have weakened the Western alliance...

...There is no hard evidence showing that the domestic priorities of the Soviet Union are the same as ours...

...The policy of containment has been predicated on the strategic superiority of the United States—a status-quo-minded power and leader of a status-quo-minded alliance—vis a vis the Soviet Union—a revisionist and hence potentially dynamic power and leader of a Communist alliance...

...The function of nato was to convince the Soviet leaders that they could not enforce a unilateral settlement of the issues-in-confiict—and that they had nothing to gain by the use of arms...

...It is tempting to look for instant global solutions that appear to afford escape from our frustrating dilemmas...

...The unity of the West is needed to negotiate with the Soviet Union settlements of the issues-in-conflict in Europe and the Middle East...

...The reasons why the West chose to concede this boon to the Communist countries and now audibly groans under a lightened arms burden are complex—as complex as the convolutions of the West's public psyche...

...This antagonism, explicitly acknowledged by the Soviet leaders, does not feed on reciprocal delusions, mutual misapprehensions and self-reinforcing fears that could be removed by psychological therapy...

...If the Soviet rulers had not faced up to the American challenge, they would have been deviants from both normal psychology and Communist personality patterns...

...Even the percentage increase in the United States defense budget, inflated by the costs of the war in Vietnam, lags behind that of the ever-rising gnp and income...

...Because it is much easier in international politics to recognize another party's capabilities for war than its intentions for peace, the reevaluation of Soviet purpose had to be entrusted to the sophisticated expertise of sociology and psychology rather than laborious military intelligence...

...Abroad and at home, the American people have been wedded to the idea of peaceful change...

...Now one of those prongs has weakened: The credibility of the West's deterrent, especially the American strategic deterrent upon which hinges the collective safety of the Western alliance, is not as absolute as it was in the moments of global crisis from Berlin to Lebanon and on to Cuba...

...Although arms control agreements do not remove the political issues which, in the first place, have given rise to the arms race, they can result in substantial economic savings and, in the field of nuclear weapons, safeguards against the dangers of surprise attacks and accidental firings...

...They understood the impossibility of compromise...

...The rhetoric of our official spokesmen has confirmed them in their error...

...I do not suggest giving any one of our European allies a liberum veto over policies toward the Soviet Union that we and all the others, upon mutual deliberation, have worked out...

...If the first objective of the Nixon Administration's foreign policy is to repair the Western alliance, then the second and closely related objective should be pooling the productive resources and financial reserves of all the free world's advanced industrial countries...

...All Administrations have sought to achieve a genuine accommodation with the Soviet Union...

...a greater role for our Pacific allies in the military defense and economic development of the region...

...Yet mutual trust engendered ethical consensus...

...Under the Johnson Administration, the grand design was blurred and, sometimes, the priorities were shuffled...

...Hypothetically, moreover, a united Europe might seek to isolate itself from the United States...

...On the face of it, too, the Soviet Union's manifest reliance on armed force for the settlement of international differences should have argued for increased caution and circumspection in the Johnson Administration's pursuit of arms control treaties, though not necessarily for the abandonment of the effort to reduce the international arms burden...

...The rationale of the protractedness of the protracted conflict is found in the fundamental incompatibility of the respective political systems...

...The formula of United States foreign policy was a simple one, though not easy to apply: the prudent use of power to forestall aggression and, thus, war...

...Neither the American people nor the peoples of Western Europe could have been persuaded by their respective governments to join in an aggressive war against the Soviet Union...

...Representative statements, such as those by former President Lyndon B. Johnson on the timeliness of "building bridges" to the Communist states of Eastern Europe...

...the rationale of limited cooperation on specific issues is found in the strategic equation...

...Beyond these limits, the unrequited search for a "better understanding" and "good feelings" becomes ludicrous and even dangerous: It befuddles the Western public, and it misleads the Soviet leaders into believing that we do not see what is so plainly visible, namely, the avowed antagonism of their intentions and unavowed but massive growth of their countries capabilities for waging war...

...In all probability, the growth of prosperity throughout the Western democracies has not only failed to satisfy rising popular expectations but has aroused ever more precipitous expectations...

...The explicit acknowledgement of this irreconcilable difference does not signify infatuation with the cold war or rejection of the diplomatic search for the peaceful resolution of conflict...

...and, last but not least, peace in the Middle East...

...The crucial element of United States policy toward the Soviet Union was, and still is, time...

...Soviet policy, in other words, remains unchanged...

...the West's enemies are unimpressed by the publicity releases celebrating the renaissance of Western unity in Brussels...

...The time has come for enlisting the participation of the leading industrial powers, particularly Germany and Japan, in developmental undertakings that have placed an excessive burden upon United States resources...

...Since World War II, all United States Administrations have sought to rid the world of the nuclear incubus and the economic waste of armament...

...and by former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey on the policy of "reconciliation" with the Soviet Union that the United States should now pursue, would be incomprehensible if it were not for the underlying assumption of fundamental change in Soviet aspiration and purpose...

...There always would be one alternative beckoning the Soviet rulers: to isolate and, ultimately, destroy the center radiating the forces making for change within their own system and blocking Communist expansionism throughout the globe...

...Nothing bespeaks more poignantly the distance separating the United States and Europe from that epoch of great expectations than the slogans of the more recent student demonstrations that have laid waste the Western world's greatest halls of learning...

...The appetite," as the French saying goes, "comes while eating...

...During the last few years, American policymakers have come perilously close to glossing over the contradictions not only of Soviet and American world political objectives but also of their respective value systems, as if these divergencies were intriguing paradoxes rather than fundamental conflicts...

...The momentum of creative foreign policies, generated by the great statesmen of the '40s and '50s, has carried forward into our times...

...It is far from clear how savings extracted from the military budget can be effectively applied to the improvement of our cities, or whether such savings are indispensable to the achievement of a just social order in the most affluent country on earth...

...To master these forces and to foster the evolutionary growth of this, the greatest of the world's communities, is the foremost task of future United States foreign policy...

...Massive empirical evidence shows that Communism has been damaging to peoples who have fallen under its sway...

...To this extent, the value system of the Soviet state is far removed from the ethics of Western democracy and should be repugnant to us...

...On the face of it, Moscow's behavior should have persuaded the U.S...

...No doubt such a prospect is not pleasing to the Soviet Union...

...Not all the foreign policies of the outgoing Administration have been ill-conceived or unsuccessful...

...Theoretically, a Communist takeover of a country need not be fatal to that country or signify a defeat for us: About 100 countries have not yet gone Communist, and, conceivably, one of them might not find Communism an unlivable political system...

...there is abundant hard evidence showing that in domestic, foreign and military affairs, the priorities of the Soviet Union are not the same as ours...

...What made nato so objectionable to the Soviet leaders was not only its military power to contain aggression, but its innate capacity for political and economic growth...

...In brief, the gap is still about as wide as it was when the Johnson Administration decided that it had narrowed and could now be "bridged...

...The maintenance of the present balance of power, especially in Europe, the Middle East and the Indian Ocean, will be fraught with difficulties and risks having no precedents in post-World War II history...

...The differences have been in the emphasis placed on each of these goals and in the means selected to achieve them...

...Then, it was hoped, the increasing concern of these peoples for domestic improvement and the turn away from Communism's global aspirations would ease the settlement of international issues-in-conflict and conclusively shift competition from arms to trade...

...When the United States officially conceded the priority of arms control agreements, bilaterally negotiated between the United States and the Soviet Union, over the interests of major alliance members, it put in doubt the raison d'etre of the alliance...

...But keeping one's cool for the sake of continuing the diplomatic dialogue does not require the adoption of ideological quietism, not to speak of the pretense that the self-avowed adversary does not mean what he says and does...

...For a while, the United States will retain the means for achieving this goal...

...But commitment to this goal did signify a choice among alternatives and directed resources toward the achievement of select priorities...

...Not without good reason, they presumed on the West's lack of political staying power...

...American statesmanship must heighten its awareness of the place disarmament negotiations hold in the armory of Soviet political-psychological warfare...

...Then, too, in democratic politics the charm of novelty commands a premium in the competition for votes...

...It is we who are beginning to realize that our reaction to it has been overly concentrated on military factors...

...In politics, cynicism is the unavoidable excretion of the practitioner's glands...

...Sobriety is a necessary condition for the conduct of foreign policy in the age of nuclear confrontation...

...The young have turned their backs...

...The unity of the West is needed to consummate the global scientific-technological revolution that will not only sweep away oppressive political systems but also forge the unity of mankind...

...As can easily be seen from available statistics, had the West kept its defense expenditures proportionate to the sensational rise in its overall wealth, it could have comfortably "raced" and easily outpaced the Soviet and Warsaw Pact arms effort...

...From a variety of cautious hints, asides and equivocations that have seeped from official levels into the media of elite and mass communications, we may infer that our professional policy-makers have not taken such widely touted terms of detente rhetoric as, for example, "building bridges," "partnership" and "peaceful engagement," at full face value...

...While the present rulers of the Soviet Union might be hardened bureaucrats rather than "demons" (though the term might well be applied to Stalin and his henchmen), the Soviet regime fully meets the classical criteria of despotism and imperialism...

...At the time of the Cuban missile crisis the Kennedy Administration, benefiting from its predecessor's long and unstinting defense program, was able to rely on a wide margin of strategic superiority...

...This protracted conflict over specific, crucial issues has been going on for a long time...

...Another and feasible alternative would be the creation of regional defense communities, especially a modern European defense community built around the consolidation of the nuclear establishments of the United Kingdom and France...

...The operation of the free market would preclude such a "capitalist monopoly," the bogeyman of Marxist propaganda...

...The partnership between a Western Europe that has integrated its defense and economy, on the one hand, and the United States on the other, will be fraught with risks—as is every political innovation...

...American dplomacy was predicated on the acceptance by the Soviet Union—if not all at once, then at least through a gradual relaxation of its aggressive stance—of the principle of peaceful change...

...Weakening of Deterrence The richer the Western people grew in material goods, the less they seemed prepared not only to increase their defense contribution to nato but to meet their agreed quota of nato defense requirements...

...Pleasing or not, it does not pose an aggressive threat to the Soviet Union...

...These latter purposes found expression in the American quest for peaceful settlement of the issues-in-con-flict between East and West, notably the division of Europe...

...These crises are grist to the mills of Communist propaganda...

...The making of an Atlantic community is a distant goal...

...In this respect, the United States has always been, is now and, for a long time, will be the principal antagonist of the Soviet Union...

...If the purposes of the United States and the Soviet Union were symmetrical—if the Soviet Union attributed the same importance to the amelioration of its society as does the United States—then a mutually symmetrical behavior in matters of armaments would follow as a matter of course...

...In particular, an Atlantic community must not be built at the expense of weakening the bonds which the United States has forged with the free nations of Asia...

...The new Administration will continue on this path and, specifically, will seek to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and the vertiginous escalation of defense technology...

...Conversely, the United States needs to reciprocate such contributions by sharing with its allies the determination of common strategies, not to speak of desisting from policies that restrict its allies' freedom in certain fields of advanced technology...

...The alliance and the American national defense establishment were designed to deter Soviet aggression—and to buy time for Soviet expansionism to subside...

...From statements made by members of the Johnson Administration, it is not clear whether the goal of the United States defense effort has been to maintain strategic superiority to, or accept strategic parity with, the Soviet Union...

...foreign policy must carry on its step-by-step, piecemeal search for solutions to vast problems, nearly all of which are rooted in mankind's titanic struggle for new political and social forms and for the place of individual man in the scientific, technological age...

...liberalization in Eastern Europe...

...One specter no longer haunts them, though, that of the "West United...

...They could not help noting how meager has been the past decade's harvest from efforts at reaching substantive agreements with the Soviets, and how many tensions still remain unrelaxed...

...It was the hope that the military alliance would evolve into the political union of the West which buoyed the idealism of the postwar generation...

...The United States has wisely refrained from reciprocating the invectives the Soviet Union's official mass media have hurled, day in and day out, against all things American, including the President...

...This is not a proposal for creating a monolithic front of the "haves" against the "have-nots...

...The United States, beholding the "economic miracle" of Western Europe, has a good case for urging its major allies to contribute a large share to what should be a common budget of defense...

...and its allies to launch themselves with a will upon the buildup of their military capabilities rather than upon the speculative exploration of the Soviet Union's social psychology...

...If this equation should turn out to have been false, then the era of strategic parity will be an era of increasing worldwide instability...

...Only profound changes in the value system of Soviet society and its dominant elite could plausibly resolve the glaring contradiction between capability for aggression and commitment to "peaceful coexistence," let alone detente...

...meaningful arms control agreements...

...The Atlantic idea enjoyed the acclaim of American and European statesmen and intellectuals...

...Strausz-Hupe Replies: Is the cold war off or is it still on...

...In fact, over the last 10 years the share of Gross National Product (gnp) spent on defense in each of the major nato nations, the United States included, has gradually declined...

...The one and only valid reason for deliberately dispensing with this tried and proven lever would be incontestable evidence of irreversible change in Soviet intentions...

...Since the military capabilities of the Soviet Union have increased, the hypothesis that it will not use military means to break the West's containment must be based upon considerations other than those of Soviet capabilities...

...Yet, the Western alliance seems to have survived both the crisis sparked by the withdrawal of French forces and the ambiguities of United States policy, caught as it is between bilateral U.S.-Soviet diplomacy and the exigencies of alliance cohesiveness...

...by Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara on the wisdom of accepting nuclear parity and desisting from the deployment of an Antiballistic Missile (abm) system matching the Soviet Union's...

...Who knows...

...Despite the widely held misconceptions about the sacrifices the West in general and the United States in particular are making for the containment of Soviet power, these sacrifices are a good deal less onerous today than they were throughout the first 10 years of the Western alliance...

...The available data have, thus far, failed to support this hypothesis: There is not a single country in which Communist rule, once established, has given way to representative political institutions and individual civic freedoms...

...Communism can neither be contained, nor can the political and economic conditions for the development throughout the world of free institutions be created, without cooperation of the great Western democracies...

...increased economic cooperation between the developed nations and modernization of the developing nations...

...After the Cuban crisis, there may have been good reasons, especially strategic ones, for seeking to dampen that crusading fervor of anti-Communism, which, in the early years of the cold war, buoyed American public attitudes and official declaratory policies...

...no one can now say whether it will ever be attained...

...The United States, having boldly placed its wager 20 years ago upon the Atlantic alliance, has set in motion a development which, lest failure undo all that American power has wrought, must culminate one day in the unity of the Atlantic peoples...

...A consortium of this kind could enable the United States to discharge its unique responsibilities toward the Alliance for Progress more effectively than has so far been the case...

...The United States was confident of the ability of modern democratic societies to outdo the Communist system in the very sphere in which Communism had staked its claim to superiority over any and all other doctrines, namely the satisfaction of human wants...

...Although professional views on the very meaning of strategic superiority and strategic parity diverge, it is possible to predict some of the political consequences of strategic parity, real or perceived...

...Yet, cynicism cannot give ethical direction to policy...

...The West's enemies have much to fear, for they are feared by their peoples...

...The unity of the West is needed to deter Communist aggression...

...The will to deter and the will to negotiate have always constituted the two prongs of the West's strategy toward the Soviety Union...

...The United States still controls an enormous investment of good will throughout the world, especially in Europe...

...Yet, figures of speech, when they are used often enough, acquire cumulative suggestive power...

...the unification of Germany...

...the American and Soviet systems are incompatible with one another...

...sought to strike that subtle balance between strength and goals, between ethical principle and objective necessity, between aspirations and realities—the balance which lies at the heart of statecraft...

...Notwithstanding these ambiguities, published data point to an unmistakable shift in the strategic balance: Ever since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the Soviet Union has come closer to matching the aggregate strategic posture of the United States in the number and kind of deployed missiles, and also in the quality and quantity of ready conventional land and sea forces...

...It therefore anticipated—quite rightly—the day when the Communist system would be judged by its performance, when it would be found wanting and when the peoples under its rule would reach out for another, a better system...

...I do suggest that we eschew the kind of gross neglect of the interests of some of our most important allies and friends in Europe and the Near East which marred the last Administration's negotiations with the Soviet Union on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and which can only affront our friends and harden the Soviet bargaining position...

...To reconcile the Soviet rulers, the United States would have to do more than stack its arms and nullify its foreign policies: It would have to cease being what it is—the humanist leader of the scientific-technological world revolution...

...The Western alliance has been going nowhere: It is now a makeshift without a purpose—without an idea...

...Under these circumstances, elementary prudence calls for a reappraisal of the Johnson Administration's defense policies, especially as regards strategic offensive, defensive forces and the effort directed toward weapons research and development...

...the myth also beclouds the important, though explicitly limited purposes of the international organization...

...But the political disunity of the West has weakened the pressure that its challenging economic example exercises upon the Communist system...

...and, last but not least, the unceasing denigration of the United States by Soviet propaganda, would have to be taken as affirmations of Communism's irreconcilable antagonism to the United States and the Western alliance, rather than regrettable yet illogical deviations from the Soviet Union's sure progress toward "reconciliation" and "partnership...

...Assuming a Soviet Transformation The hypothesis of a diminished Soviet threat has furnished the necessary premise for a diminished need to contain that threat...

...By contrast, the military contributions exacted by all Communist rulers from their subject peoples have remained, in relation to gnp, at least constant and, in the cast of the Soviet Union, have increased...

...That explains the immense attractiveness of the idea?or rather the myth—of the United Nations as the deus ex machina of international diplomacy...

...Otherwise, "unfriendly acts" like the Soviet support of North Vietnam...

...Some experts have argued that, for some countries, Communism need be only a passing phase of political development—a kind of emetic for flushing out obsolete or oppressive institutions...

...In the past, the Soviet Union has not been above exploiting disarmament negotiations as a means of disrupting the collective defense of its opponents—of seeking to disarm and disunite the Western democracies...

...The outcome suggests that, in crisis situations, the United States strategic edge is the most reliable conditioner of Soviet behavior...

...United States policy, insofar as it has placed the Western alliance beneath other concerns, has lowered the sights of its creative vision...

...Of late, centrifugal forces have assailed the Western alliance...

...The fallacy of its basic assumption has eroded the morale of the alliance: The policies of our major European allies toward the Soviet Union have turned into replicas of our own...

...it will continue for many more years...

...The Soviet rulers have every reason to fear the United States revolutionary thrust against a system reared in the name of a hidebound, unworkable doctrine...

...Federalism has always pointed the way to the political union of like-minded states...

...They, no less than we, must fear the indiscriminate proliferation of nuclear weapons...

...Politically, to embrace the concept of strategic parity is to equate the Soviet Union's purpose in world affairs with ours...

...Since the end of World War II, the purpose of American foreign policy has been to insure the peaceful development of our own country and of mankind...

...The United States purpose has been to prevent this repetition by the containment of Communism and the defense of national freedom of choice...

...It remains to be seen whether they will lead to an improvement of the psychological atmosphere that could, in turn, ease the way for negotiaitons on substantive political issues...

...Under conditions of rationality, one must presume that Soviet conduct in Eastern Europe in the summer of 1968 should have furnished an acid corrective for the basic assumptions dominating United States foreign policy...

...A process that was to bring about a fundamental alteration in a society so tightly governed as the Soviet Union and in a ruling elite so powerful and dogmatic as Soviet leadership, could not but require, for decades to come, patience and watchfulness...

...Glossing Over Contradictions In the course of the last decade, American diplomacy has sought to "de-demonize" the United States-Soviet relationship so as not to impair the prospects for negotiated settlements...

...That the West has not chosen to do so is of tremendous advantage to Soviet policy...

...That we can cooperate and, indeed, have cooperated, with the Soviet Union on other specific issues, this neither I—nor even observers more cynical than I—have cared to deny...

...This contention is borne out by the Western public's pained surprise at Soviet behavior in Czechoslovakia, which was thoroughly consistent with Soviet principle and practice, and by the heavy involvement of the Soviet Union in the Vietnamese conflict, long known to all Western officials concerned, though not to the uninformed Russians...

...This is why Europe is a United States priority...

...It is idle to speculate what would have happened had the Soviets not recognized this...

...But I doubt new life can be infused into it by either pursuing goals of Atlantic federalism which neither Europeans nor Americans seem to desire and which, if ever effective, would perpetuate the division of Europe...

...the ready forces of nato, far from needing strengthening, could be thinned out or redeployed to their respective national territories...

...the other was to challenge the Soviet Union to meet the free world in peaceful competition...

...now it points the way to the world's economic development...

...Virtually everything in the world that need be done and, thanks to available scientific-technological resources, today can be done, calls for the establishment of supranational organizations...

...The weight of their counter-offensive fell upon the most vulnerable target offered by their opponents: the West's impatience with policies requiring sustained effort over a long time...

...They were based on an astute diagnosis of Communism's "inherent contradictions"—its inability to square its political-ethical claims with its economic-social performance, and its consequent reliance upon force...

...Nonetheless, ethical standards for evaluating the real life performance of political systems do exist...

...The immense success of the European Economic Community (eec)—the "show-window effect" of free enterprise—has so clearly exposed the fallacy of Communist doctrine as to force upon the Communist rulers "reforms" which, though meager, whetted the rebellious appetites of their peoples...

...On the contrary, they rest upon the assumption that the Soviet Union wants to keep its empire intact but has shown no intention of expanding it through direct aggression...

...Priorities for the New Administration Ibelieve that the new Administration, following the path hewn by its predecessors of the '40s and '50s, will seek to carry forward the work of regional integration—of forging political, military and economic links between like-minded states...

...But any future arms control agreements must be scrutinized for their possible disruptive effects upon alliance solidarity...

...The Western alliance was created as an instrument of collective defense against the threat of Soviet expansionism, not as a tool of aggression...

...the problem of armament was no longer how to produce more of it and how to pay for its improvement, but how to reduce and control it...

...the gross vituperation by Soviet leaders of nato in general, and West Germany in particular...

...This might explain the growing differences between United States civilian policy-makers and their military advisers, differences even the censored texts of Congressional closed hearings have not been able to conceal...

...Should the Soviet Union have launched a military buildup because President Johnson sent the Marines to the Dominican Republic...

...In this sense, every successive Administration has tried to carry forward the policies of its predecessor...

...For Professor Strausz-Hupe the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 "should have persuaded the United States and its allies to launch themselves with a will upon the buildup of their military capabilities . . ." But while the Soviet action was disgraceful, was Russia really behaving much differently from the United States in the Dominican Republic in 1965—i.e., maintaining a friendly regime in its sphere of influence...

...Not only is this idea belied by the routine of the UN whenever it has been confronted by gritty issues of international conflict...

...In Berlin, Paris and Rome, students marched under the banners of Atlantic and European unity...

...Certainly, no American statesman of this epoch has acclaimed force as the proper means of effecting change in international relationships, let alone as an end in itself...

...But the limits which constrain efforts to create a more benign climate of United States-Soviet relationships should be clearly perceived...

...Wanted: Western Unity The alliance was created to serve the self-interest of its members...

...Finally, I would agree with Professor Strausz-Hupe that "The Western alliance has been going nowhere: It is now a makeshift without a purpose—without an idea...

...Nothing less can warrant policies aimed at achieving—step by step—first, a modus vivendi and then, ever closer cooperation with the Soviet Union...

...But the alternative to this danger is not necessarily a freeze on the present constellation of nuclear powers...

...In brief, Communist leaders would discard obsolete doctrines and become true revolutionaries—revolutionaries under the banner of scientific-technological progress?like ourselves...

...Indeed, perceived change in Soviet intentions has supplied the rationale for increased trade and cultural exchanges between East and West, and for the conclusion of arms control agreements which, since they defer to the Soviet Union's aversion to international inspection and verification, must rely mainly on its good faith...

...There is, however, hardly any major item on the agenda of United States foreign policy for which, within the foreseeable future, a complete solution is in sight...

...It will be the task of American statesmanship to find the middle ground between these two equally distasteful alternatives...

...Thus, American foreign policy can be viewed as a wager on Western solidarity-in-defense and Western capacity for social and economic progress: The one was to deter Soviet aggression...

...The Group of Ten (the United States, Britain, Canada, Sweden, France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and Japan) needs to devise a given charter that insures not only the free flow of money and goods among the 10 richest trading nations but also their teamwork in the development of the Third World...

...strengthened ties between the United States and Western Europe as well as Latin America...

...These were reasonable expectations...

...The U.S...

...On the contrary, the recognition of the very real antagonism in motivation and goals must be an integral part of our bargaining strategy...

...Not having been happy with the term cold war when it was first coined, I tried to find a better definition for our adversary relationships with the Soviet Union and came up with "protracted conflict...

...There has never been a historical political system that stood for either absolute good or absolute evil...

...The relaxation of the Western allies' cohesiveness and military stance has been due, at least in part, to the public relations phraseology employed by some of the West's political leaders in their quest for understanding with the Soviets...

...And the assumption of such a beneficent transformation of Soviet values underlay the concepts which, prior to the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia, were adopted explicitly by nato's major members: nato could serve as a "bridge" for negotiating peaceful accommodations with the Soviet Union...

...In all cases, that sway has been permanent and, thus, permanently damaging...

...I venture to infer that the experiment always resulted in lasting damage to the subject organism, and that we, a humane people, should frown upon the experiment being repeated...

...Steel Replies: Professor Strausz-Hupe argues that such concepts as "bridge-building," "reconciliation" and acceptance of nuclear parity "would be incomprehensible if it were not for the underlying assumption of fundamental change in Soviet aspiration and purpose...

...Civility in human intercourse, diplomatic and private, needs neither praise nor apology...