George Ball's Credo

WITTNER, LAWRENCE S.

George Ball's Credo DIPLOMACY FOR A CROWDED WORLD, by George W. Ball. Atlantic-Little, Brown. 356 pp. $12.95. LAWRENCE S. WITTNER If the Democrats recapture the White House this November, a...

...Why not, asks Ball, use American economic leverage to exact significant concessions from the Russians in world affairs...
...While "it would be folly for us to try to share our resources in an attempt to create equality of condition," writes Ball, it should be possible for the industrial nations to provide development aid equal to about 1 per cent of their annual GNP...
...Europe, together with Japan, must be more closely integrated with the United States "to create a working coalition of the major non-Communist industrialized nations...
...Ball thus comes to the startling conclusion that "the expansion of the bureaucracy in both America and Europe...
...Indeed, Ball asserts that "political will and military strength...
...relations with Western Europe...
...Whereas Kissinger views the rulers of rival nations as cynical power wielders like himself, Ball looks at discord in the international arena and sees...
...if he rejects key aspects of Kissinger's diplomacy, it is only to return to the ideological conceptions of an earlier era...
...LAWRENCE S. WITTNER If the Democrats recapture the White House this November, a leading candidate for the post of Secretary of State will almost certainly be George W. Ball, a former Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and Ambassador to the United Nations...
...our uniqueness as a nation, and in our special mission...
...There is little chance of a Soviet-American war anyway, he confidently assures us, for the Russians, impressed by America's nuclear arsenal, "have no taste for suicide...
...All countries, of course, are unique to some degree...
...Despite Ball's current employment as managing director of Lehman Brothers, a leading international investment banking firm, the timely appearance of Diplomacy for a Crowded World, his new book on U.S...
...Nevertheless, in the last quarter of the Twentieth Century, it is difficult to believe any longer in American excep-tionalism or to accept the "mission" outlined by George Ball...
...Germany alone is "clinging tenaciously to the traditions of liberal capitalism...
...For Russia's rulers, "dedication to the class struggle is a central article of faith...
...Ideology still casts a spell over Soviet policies," he insists...
...Reassessing the CIA, Ball concludes that it should be continued with its full panoply of powers intact...
...foreign policy, appears to indicate that, at the least, he is available for the job...
...Red...
...From the standpoint of those seeking an alternative to current American foreign policy, Ball has a number of things to recommend him...
...But, in Ball's view, Marxist zeal has also created a backward and inefficient Russian economy, "lacking in the automatic regulator of the market...
...And a sense of "mission" in the world may prove beneficial...
...Accordingly, those nations must be persuaded to limit family size if they are not to become crowded, turbulent, and revolutionary...
...However well his program may meet the needs of international banks, it has little to offer the people of the United States and the world...
...He can find only praise for the intelligence agency's operations in Chile, save for his observation that the operations "gave left-wing demagogues and revisionist historians a propaganda theme they will exploit...
...Naturally, it will also be necessary to convince them that "a market economy serves the needs of mankind and is essential to individual freedom...
...Yet Ball's overall approach can provide little encouragement to proponents of a more peaceful world...
...Ball's tendency to look at the world through ideological spectacles is particularly evident in his discussion of U.S...
...In a final admonition, Ball tells his American audience that "we can and must lead," but "to exercise effective leadership, we must once more come to believe in...
...Thus, American policymakers can no longer safely afford to neglect European developments...
...Lawrence S. Winner teaches history at the State University of New York, Albany...
...At no point in Diplomacy for a Crowded World is there any mention of disarmament or of reductions in military spending...
...Moreover, Diplomacy for a Crowded World shows us that Ball can be a vigorous critic of nuclear proliferation, indiscriminate international arms sales, corporate bribery, executive arrogance, mindless interventionism, and, in general, Henry Kissinger's foreign policy...
...His most recent book is "Cold War America...
...Even in America, where the unions are "unburdened by the doctrinal baggage of the class struggle," there are strong pressures from other groups for "equality of 'condition' " through "government interference with market forces...
...In America, "elements of resistance are beginning to consolidate," but even "if the United States should manage to slow down the current trend toward egaiitarianism," Europe might continue on the road to socialism, in which case "the problems of reconciling American and European economic, as well as political, policies will become increasingly difficult...
...United, they will confront the Third World's "windy talk of a 'new social contract' between north -and south...
...This aid program w.oujdx be-supplemented by the operations, of the multinational corporation, which, while "a scapegoat through which poverty-stricken peoples can work off their frustrations," is actually "the best mechanism we have so far developed for spreading private capital and knowhow around the world...
...In Great Britain, France, Italy, Holland, and Scandinavia he finds a dangerous trend toward socialism...
...Indeed, Ball favors a harder line toward the Soviet Union than does Kissinger because of his conviction that it remains a "revolutionary" power...
...are the essential deterrents to major conflict...
...This "inherent flaw in the system itself has led to Soviet efforts to obtain Western trade and technology, and is therefore a major force behind the Soviet move toward detente...
...constitutes a trend toward 'convergence' with the system of Eastern Europe...
...During the mid-1960s, he earned a reputation as one of the cooler heads in the war-feverish Johnson Administration — although hardly (in the words of the dust jacket) as "the foremost outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War...
...In any event, the major problem of impoverished nations is not economic development^ Ball argues, but population control...

Vol. 40 • November 1976 • No. 11


 
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