The Triumph & Tragedy Of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years
Califano was President Johnson's special assistant for domestic affairs. This excellent volume combines eyewitness memory with extensive research in the archives of the Johnson Library. It underlines and documents Johnson's passion and skill for achieving
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One of the great problems in arms control is that advances in technology, and their application to military programs, tend to invalidate or render meaningless even the soundest arms-control proposals. Twice in the last decade this has occurred, once when the diffusion of nuclear technology and the production of large numbers of nuclear weapons rendered futile any hope of complete nuclear disarmament, and again when the advent of intercontinental missiles made necessary a rethinking of all the proposals for limiting or abolishing strategic strike forces. It may well be that we are about to witness a similar overtaking of current arms-control proposals because of the possibility of deploying highly effective ballistic missile defenses.
Uncertainty is necessarily the lot of the planner, since the deals with the future. Uncertainty can never be completely removed. However, it can be compensated for, and to do so is a continuing responsibility of those who plan military forces. Primarily this can be done by insuring, in so far as we can, that future weapons and forces will be adaptable to the right range of defense needs or, as defense planners often put it, by insuring flexibility.
For some months, 1966 promised to be a year of significant albeit gradual change in American policy toward Communist China. In a strange and paradoxical fashion, the emotional issues of the Viet Nam War opened the way for the most sober, responsible and even-handed public discussion of China since the Communists came to power. At Congressional hearings and in the mass media, scholars and leaders of opinion have dispassionately calculated the possibilities for change, and Administration leaders have in their customarily guarded language intimated that change was not impossible. Most significant of all, the American public demonstrated a gratifying degree of maturity by forgetting the old passions and asking for only facts and analyses about the new China. Our national mood was increasingly one of believing that with prudence and wisdom it would be possible to work toward gradually incorporating China into responsible world relationships.
