The Danger of Detente

...The Soviet Union, moreover, has added to the traditional practices of Tsarist despotism the devices of modern totalitarianism...

...It may be noted in passing that Bismarck thought one could not do business with England because the foreign policy of a parliamentary government was inherently unreliable...

...It is this approximate, tenuous equilibrium that provides whatever peace and order exists in the world of nation-states...

...For it is a compendium of every nonsense ever uttered by Soviet propaganda about the United States...

...What makes the character and domestic policies of the Soviet government of vital concern to the outside world is its refusal to become part of a "system of arts, and laws, and manners" that is the lifeblood for the balance of power, and would make genuine detente not only possible but well-nigh inevitable...

...Consequently, it is the mission of the United States to support democratic and oppose and reform autocratic governments throughout the world...

...in war, the European forces are exercised by temperate and undecisive contests...

...The practical question demanding an answer today is: Does a common morality, similar to the one Gibbon detected in the 18th century, unite the nations of the world-or at least the United States and the Soviet Union...

...Thus one can not do business with dictators, but one can deal with democracies...

...Underlying this view is the philosophic assumption, advanced most effectively by Rousseau, that the people are good and peaceful by nature, so democratic control of foreign policy tends toward decent and peaceful international relations...

...MISSING A MORAL CONSENSUS The Danger of Detente by hANS J.MORGENTHAU The policy of detente with the Soviet Union, especially in the light of the official campaign recently mounted there against such dissidents as Andrei D. Sakharov and Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, has given acute importance to an issue that has been debated in the United States at least since Woodrow Wilson's time: How relevant is the domestic politics of a nation, particularly the character of its government, to the kind of foreign policy it is pursuing and is likely to pursue in the future...

...These devices keep virtually the whole population in ignorance about what is happening in their own country and the rest of the world, and reduce to a minimum physical and intellectual contacts with the outside world...

...I have no doubt this is the correct answer and, having argued the case at length elsewhere, I will merely note here that nations have in fact consistently taken this position, a rational foreign policy being impossible otherwise...

...But as long as the Soviet Union remains outside suoh a system, at best indifferent and at worst hostile to it, the rest of the world has a vital interest in the character of the Soviet government and of its domestic policies...

...Foremost, it is at the service of that basic interest which the United States and the Soviet Union have in common: survival in the nuclear age through a viable balance of power and genuine detente...

...Were the Soviet Union part of such a system, one would indeed not need to care on political grounds about how autocratic and despotic its government might be...

...In peace, the progress of knowledge and industry is accelerated by the emulation of so many active rivals...

...Nor does it solely express a humanitarian concern or serve to placate public opinion at home...

...Hence, a democratic country like the United States has to deal with all kinds of governments, even those whose character and policies it morally condemns, and must take as the yardstick for its policies the interests and power of the nations concerned...

...They substitute for reality a patchwork of fictions derived from certain metaphysical notions called-quite unfairly to Marx and Lenin-marxism-Leninism...

...They not only shut off the mind of the man in the street from reality, they do the same for the man in power...

...If the Kremlin abated its present totalitarian practices by allowing its people a modicum of freedom of expression and movement, it would be taking the first step toward joining and in a sense re-creating a system that would itself be a manifestation of detente and provide the moral framework for the balance of power...

...The pervasiveness of these fictions and of isolation in the USSR is of crucial importance to the conduct of U.S...

...It should make a pact with the devil himself, to paraphrase Churchill, if it is in the national interest to do so...

...Two different answers have been given to this question...

...The second answer holds that, regardless of their domestic politics or the character of their governments, nations try to pursue their interests in a rational manner, and in any event foreign policy has its own laws that are essentially unaffected by domestic circumstances...

...The balance of power will continue to fluctuate, and the prosperity of our own or the neighboring kingdoms may be alternately exalted or depressed...

...It is at this point that the character of the Soviet government and its domestic policies become matters of vital relevance for the outside world and, more particularly, for the U.S...

...The 18th century was one of the classic balance of power periods precisely because a strong moral consensus supported the concept as a political mechanism...

...In other words, the dynamics of the arrangement are embedded in a moral framework without which, in the long run, it cannot operate...

...The nonsense permeates not only factual reporting and political interpretation but also moral judgment: The Soviet Union appears as the champion of all that is good in the world, especially peace, while the United States, bent on war, is the incarnation of evil...

...The participants must give their moral approval, in theory and more importantly in practice, to the principles of the balance of power itself in order to make it work...

...In 1781, Gibbon could propose "to consider Europe as one great republic, whose various inhabitants have attained almost the same level of politeness and cultivation...

...therefore, is qualified by an implicit effort to gain a decisive advantage that would assure one's survival at the expense of the other's demise...

...A government that cuts itself and its people off from objective contact with the outside world, that becomes the prisoner of its own propaganda to the extent demonstrated by Gromyko's book, cannot pursue a foreign policy one can rely on to recognize, let alone respect, those self-imposed moral limitations that are the basis of a viable balance of power policy...

...Yet, while the answer appears to be right and the practice derived from it sound, the story does not end there...

...Reading his book is a frightening experience...

...And it must be observed (in the context of this article, only in passing) that primarily this breathing spell serves the interests of the Soviet Union, whom we are providing with economic and technical potential without any assurance of its ultimate uses...

...That is to say, a government as totalitarian as the present Soviet government has shown itself to be is bound to prove an unreliable partner in detente...

...It does not follow that a relaxation of domestic totalitarianism would automatically call forth a reliable foreign policy...

...These dialogues would at least have a chance to clarify positions and could contribute to the rational resolution of conflicts...

...Even the elemental striving for self-preservation...

...He is the son of the Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union and head of the Foreign Policy Section of the Soviet Academy of Sciences' America Institute, the center of Soviet intelligence on the United States...

...There is no escaping the conclusion that in the Soviet Union, and to a lesser degree in the United States, in place of the common morality that is indispensable for a viable balance of power and genuine detente, we have a national morality resting on the belief that the government has a monopoly of truth and virtue and that the people are children, to quote the President of the United States, who must be guided, if not coerced, to do the government's bidding...

...and the USSR are united only by the fear of a nuclear war that might destroy them both...

...foreign policy...

...but these events cannot essentially injure our general state of happiness, the system of arts, and laws, and manners, which so advantageously distinguish, above the rest of mankind, the Europeans and their colonies...

...It cannot afford to jeopardize its own interests to indulge its domestic political preferences and moral judgments of other nations...

...One can merely assert that this would remove an obstacle to such a policy by making possible the beginnings of a dialogue among different schools of thought within the Soviet Union-after the model of the great debates that preceded and followed the great decisions in American foreign policy-and between the Soviet Union and other nations...

...and some sense of honor and justice is introduced into the most defective constitutions by the general manners of the times...

...Thus our interest in the totalitarian excesses of the Soviet government is not unwarranted meddling in the affairs of another sovereign nation in a misguided spirit of liberal reform...

...If the leaders of the Soviet Union believe the fictions Gromyko presents as facts-and there is no reason to assume that they do not, since the America Institute is their main source of information about the United States-detente can be no more than a breathing spell in an ongoing struggle for total stakes...

...I have just read, and written an epilogue for, a book on the Kennedy years by Anatolii Gromyko, soon to be published in this country...

...And both try to mitigate that fear, if not escape it altogether, by seeking a second strike capability so strong as to approach the level of a first strike...

...republics have acquired order and stability...

...The abuses of tyranny are restrained by the mutual influence of fear and shame...

...Gromyko is not just another Party hack mouthing the official propaganda line...

...I think it is impossible to give a positive response to this question...

...The U.S...

...But, the equilibrium does not operate mechanically, as the "balance" metaphor would seem to indicate...

...international peace and order are a function of the balance of power-that is, of an approximately equal distribution of power among several nations or a combination of nations, preventing any one of them from gaining the upper hand over the others...

...One is the Wilsonian and general liberal assertion that only democracies can be trusted to keep their commitments and pursue peaceful policies, for autocracies are inherently untrustworthy and prone to deflect domestic discontent to foreign adventures and war...

...monarchies have imbibed the principles of freedom, or, at least, of moderation...

...Rather, it requires a consensus among the nations involved in favor of the maintenance-or, if it should be disturbed, of the restoration-of the balance of power...