Has the United States Overextended Its Commitments to Resist Communism?

Abstract

The United States, given the present world situation, is undercommitted, not overcommitted, in foreign affairs. The United States has entered the twentieth century. With the help of the United States, West Europe has, also. Africa, Asia, China, Latin America remain in the nineteenth century, some areas in the eighteenth century. Japan is industrially and technologically in the twentieth century and socially in the nineteenth or an earlier century. There are in the United States, to be sure, vestiges of earlier ages. The present world conflict arises from disparities in development between camps. In terms of relations between the major camps, the major crises since World War II offer a formula: Where either the United States or the Soviet Union was so committed in a given situation that the entry of the other would have resulted in a third world war, the other did not enter. The United States and the Soviet Union would both be well advised to commit themselves to working out a single standard of international morality. By banning imperialism, by what ever name it is called, an eventual banning of the bomb could be effected. By stopping Communist incendiarism in the less- developed regions of the world, more imagination and sub stance could be directed toward raising living standards for all. By this course, the United States could safely reduce its com mitments and, at the same time, do yet more good.—Ed.