RANDOM REFLECTIONS

In crises the most daring course is often the safest. The riskiest course in my experience is gradual escalation that the opponent matches step by step, inevitably reaching a higher level of violence and often an inextricable stalemate.

The key decision for a statesman is whether to commit his nation or not. There is no middle course. Once a great nation commits itself, it must prevail. It will acquire no kudos for translating its inner doubts into hesitation. However ambivalently it has arrived at the point of decision, it must pursue the course on which it is embarked with a determination to succeed. Otherwise, it adds a reputation for incompetence to whatever controversy it is bound to incur on the merits of its decision.

If crisis management requires cold and even brutal measures to show determination, it also imposes the need to show opponents a way out. Grandstanding is good for the ego but bad for foreign policy. Many wars have started because no line of retreat was left open. Superpowers have a special obligation not to humiliate each other.

The period just after any diplomatic victory is frequently the most precarious. The victor is tempted to turn the screw one time too many; the loser, rubbed raw by the humiliation of his defeat, may be so eager to recoup that he suddenly abandons rational calculation.

The stronger one's real position, the less one needs to rub in the other side's discomfiture. It is rarely wise to inflame a set-back with an insult. An important aspect of the art of diplomacy consists of doing what is necessary without producing extraneous motives for retaliation, leaving open the option of later cooperation.

The Soviet Ministry of Defense, according to Anatoli Dobrynin, Moscow's Ambassador to the U.S., did not have much use for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). It consistently put its most unimaginative and unenterprising general on the SALT delegation, he said, with instructions to block any initiative put forward by the Foreign Ministry, which was technically in charge of the negotiations. The Defense Ministry's attitude was allegedly summed up in a remark on SALT by Soviet Defense Minister Marshal Grechko to Dobrynin: "If you want my personal opinion, I'll give it to you. If you want my official opinion, the standard answer is no."

After the debacle of World War II, Japan's economic resurgence was based on a unique set of institutions: a paternalistic labor-management relationship and social structure in which employees are hired in effect for life and are treated as partners cooperating for the common good; a public opinion that is formed by participation in every aspect of decision making through media that philosophically are themselves part of the consensus. When the consensus has formed, for whatever reason, it is implemented with speed, determination and breadth unmatched by any Western country. So many key people have been involved in the decision-making process and they understand the implications of what has been decided so well, that they achieve tremendous momentum. What could be more effective than a society voracious in its collection of information, impervious to pressure and implacable in execution?

One of the premises of the democratic process is that the loser accepts his defeat and in return is given an opportunity to win on another occasion. It depends on a moderate center whose evolution is almost inevitably thwarted in a developing country when a totalitarian element succeeds in organizing a guerrilla war. This impels the government into acts of repression, starting a vicious circle that traps both government and opponents and destroys whatever moderate center exists--fulfilling the central purpose of the insurgency. Moreover, the victims of terrorist attacks are almost invariably the ablest and most dedicated officials, leaving in place the corrupt.

The American response to this historical phenomenon is usually expressed in the conviction that a government under siege can best maintain itself by accelerating democratic reform and by expanding its base of support by sharing power. But the fundamental cause of a civil war (of which guerrilla war is a special category) is the breakdown of domestic consensus. Compromise, the essence of democratic politics, is its first victim. Civil wars almost without exception end in victory or defeat, never in coalition governments--the favorite American recipe. Concessions are ascribed to the weakness of those holding power, not to their magnanimity, and hence, perversely, may accelerate rather than arrest the disintegration of authority. The proper time for reform is before civil wars break out, in order to pre-empt their causes--though this does not always work when the insurrection is inspired, financed, trained and equipped from outside the country.

The mushiness and slow pace of the State Department have driven many outsiders to distraction. Left to its own devices, the State Department machinery tends toward inertia rather than creativity; it is always on the verge of turning itself into an enormous cable machine. If a cable is of special policy importance, it winds up on the desk of the Secretary of State. He does not know which ideas were eliminated by the clearance process, what modifications occurred on the cable's journey to him, or--unless he has studied the subject himself--what long-range purpose is to be served, if any. He can rewrite the cable, though he will rarely have time or the detailed knowledge to do so. He can reject it, though if he is not extremely vigilant the cable is likely to come back to him in only slightly modified form. (In the summer of 1976 I received so many essentially identical cables on one particular subject I did not wish to act upon that only the threat of transferring the entire bureau stopped the pressure.)

The system lends itself to manipulation. A bureau chief who disagrees with the Secretary can exploit it for procrastination. In 1975 the Assistant Secretary in charge of Africa managed to delay my dealing with Angola simply by using the splendid machinery so methodically to "clear" a memorandum I had requested that it took months to reach me. When it arrived it was diluted of all sharpness, and my own staff bounced it back again and again for greater precision--thereby serving the bureau chiefs purposes better than my own. Alternatively, the machinery may permit a strategically placed official's hobbyhorse to gallop through, eliciting an innocent nod from a Secretary unfamiliar with all the code words and implications.

Our ultimate task is to strengthen peace in the world. The American people expect it from their leaders; the nuclear age imposes it as a moral and practical necessity. We can resist aggressive policies best from a platform of peace; men and women of good will and decency can be enlisted only in support of a policy of positive aspirations.

But the responsibility of leaders is not simply to affirm an objective. It is above all to endow it with a meaning compatible with the values of their society. If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, if the yearning for peace is not allied with a sense of justice, it can become an abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless. To build peace on reciprocal restraint; to suffuse our concept of order with our country's commitment to freedom; to strive for peace without abdication and for order without unnecessary confrontation--therein resides the ultimate test of American statesmanship.

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