American Diplomatic Leadership in the West

Abstract

Our foreign policy over the past ten years has been no success: Communist expansion has not been halted, the non-Communist world is not united, and peace is no closer. Why? We are ill prepared for world leader ship by our ignorance of geography, languages, and history, that is, by a parochial world view borne out of indifference produced by a feeling of impotence and frustration. Having power we have little notion of how to use it. We moralize too much, confuse legalism with morality, and often exhibit self-righteousness obnoxious to other peoples. Our leaders, unwilling to risk unpopularity by adopt ing a flexible and imaginative foreign policy, have become prisoners of a public state of mind, created largely by their own propaganda.—Ed.