American problem: cold war in perspective

Humans have a wonderful capacity for believing what they like. If individuals enjoy this vice, still more are nations disposed to re inforce the agreeable view and patriotically shut out what does not suit. But, as Molière said, "the more we love our friends the less we Blatter them." To preach complacency is a disservice to America, how ever profitable and popular. Fears for what she can give the world, if not for physical survival, should impel us to examine our times with utmost cold objectivity. When ideals, prosperity and life itself are in peril, only by dispassionate vision can we hope to find the way ahead and muster the will for necessary sacrifices.

There are threatening problems around the globe. The natural response is to tackle one and another as they arise. This is often successful, and the menace to American interests is tolerably met or at least postponed. It is bence assumed that we need only continue to stand up to the challenge and sharpen our responses. Yet the very multiplicity of troubles suggests that they are but aspects of a single trouble, symptoms of a disease, as it were. The present study con siders no specific problem but the basic ill; not Berlin, Indonesia, Cuba, Viet Nam, or any of the exotic spots which become familiar to headline readers, but the disability of American foreign policy. This is deeper and harder to face than the multiple outbreaks of trouble. Pacifying any of the disturbances for the moment (most of them are probably incapable of permanent settlement) would be excellent, but disposing of them all would fail to cure the disease. Others, as bad or worse, are sure to erupt.