University of Virginia Library

Third World

seem dependent on such
stabilization. The maintenance
of such agreements in turn
depends, it is felt, on a certain
detachment from third world
quarrels

In effect, the United States
still assumes a considerable
identity of interest between
itself and the Western
European states.

It is probably reasonable to
give qualified agreement to
those commentators who
would argue that many of the
habits of mind which
characterized the post-World
War II period are indeed
coming to an end. The present
period is pre-eminently, indeed
exasperatingly, "political." If
"technical" problems of
reconstruction and
containment were pre-eminent
in much of the post-war
period, an incredible diversity
in moral and social outlook
and state policy increasingly
seems to predominate.

Ironically, the legacies of
history, ethnocentricity, and
geopolitics, which seemed
submerged in the immediate
challenges after World War II,
are re-emerging. In such a
context, a foreign policy
largely consensual,
technocratic, and destinarian in
approach obviously faces
important problems of
adjustment, perhaps even more
important than those sustained
in the last twenty years.

Henry Kissinger's
observation that, with the
conclusion of direct, American
involvement in Vietnam, 1973
is to be the year of Europe is
very likely to be borne out.
The "return" of the United
States to Europe comes
however, at a time when both
the confident assumptions of
the past and the character of
European relations themselves
seem more fluid. The
Vietnamese "interlude" of the
sixties may indeed prove to
have been critical in the
structure and process of
international politics and the
global role of the United
States.