The Cavalier daily :: Monday February 5, 1973 :: University of Virginia Library

President Kennedy raised
the vision of a global
partnership between a uniting
Western Europe and the United
States in the struggle to win
the underdeveloped world. A
policy of development aid and
"nation-building" would create
the foundations for democratic
order and the forging of a
military instrument flexible in
its response would contain
"liberation" communism
around the world.

Two of the major important
casualties in the
nineteen-sixties were,
therefore, first, the American
assumption that underlying
historical differences and elitist
perversion there was a
fundamental and universal
political consensus and,
secondly, the confident belief
that political problems could
be reduced to technical and
economic requisites.

If it was clear that American
will and wealth could make a
successful contribution to the
restoration of a fundamentally
viable political and economic
structure, it was no less clear
that the construction of new
democratic structures or even
self-sustaining economies
required more than the
application of external
resources and technical
know-how. And, indeed,
engagement in Third World
areas involved the United
States in an unexpected degree
of moral-political ambiguity
and in an increasingly
militarized commitment in
which nation-building was
reduced to primitive
unification or centralization.

If the early confidence in
the application of American
technique and will to such
regions of high instability gave
way to pessimistic reflections,
so economic pressures and
social-political divisions at
home seemed to establish the
general limit of American
capabilities. The prospect was
raised that the extension of
American political and
military commitments to areas
of high political instability
would increasingly give rise to
costs out of proportion to the
value of the area and,
ironically, devalue America's
political commitment
generally.

Worst of all, the
nineteen-sixties saw an
enormous increase in Soviet
strategic capabilities and in its
political influence in the
Mediterranean and South Asian
areas. The global commitments
with which President Kennedy
had charged the American
people had in fact contributed
to divisions at home and
diminished credibility abroad
– and during a period in which
the Soviet Union assumed a
genuine world role.

'Nixon Doctrine'

The "Nixon Doctrine"
must fruitfully be viewed as an
attempt to limit direct
American commitments in
areas of high political stability.
Vietnam in the perspective of
the Nixon administration must
not become the occasion for
the dismantling of American
positions generally throughout
the third world, still less
Western Europe. The thrust of
the Nixon Doctrine is,
however, probably in the
direction of greater reliance on
those instruments of
political-military assistance and
economic aid which will lessen
negative economic and social
effects within the United
States and minimize the
political impact internationally
of reversals and setbacks.

In effect, there will be an
effort to limit domestic costs
and to decouple dominoes.
More fundamentally, there will
be an attempt to incorporate
more adequately in policy the
fact of divisions within the
Communist world itself.

Frustrations

And, one must assume that
the latter two states will suffer
equal frustrations and reversals
in areas of long term political
instability and economic
backwardness. The operational
meaning of such a general
perspective is not immediately
apparent and is certain to
depend on concrete challenges,
but it seems likely that
crusades cannot be sustained in
the face of such complex
calculations and long term
situations.

And, lastly, the strategic
parity and even global role of
the Soviet Union have been in
fact accepted. SALT both
reflects that acceptance and a
desire, at least on the part of
the United States, to guarantee
that parity can be confidently
maintained. A modicum of
international order and a
reduction in internal costs

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