The Means Short of War

Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.

TWO compelling factors have given decisive impetus to international affairs since the end of World War II: the idea of self-determination and the explosive development of technology. Even the elementary opposition of East and West had to accommodate itself to the world-changing forces set free by the end of colonialism and by the work of the natural scientists. Under other circumstances the antagonism between East and West easily might have led to a wide-open conflagration. Instead, whenever a fire did flare up, it was smothered. The custom became not to solve problems, but rather to put them on ice and not run an unmanageable risk. Korea, Indochina, the 1953 uprising in the Soviet zone of Germany, the Suez crisis and Hungary have been stations on this often bitterly distressing but probably unavoidable road of self-preservation.

In the light of this situation, nations now are seeking new rules for the "game" of international power politics. Yet experience has shown how foolish it is to expect salvation by changing the techniques of negotiation. Disputes over methods--about secret diplomacy, summit conferences or executive tête-à-tête visits--really should be secondary considerations. More than tools are required to shore up the world's damaged power equilibrium.

There are bound to be setbacks in the process of finding rules that will do justice to the new state of affairs. East and West have to learn that even a conference blown up so unceremoniously as the one to have been held in Paris does not stop the world, a few months later, from talking about another climb up to the very same summit. Since war is not to be, what follows miscarried negotiations are new negotiations.

The world thus will have to accustom itself to continue seeking a balance of forces under conditions that mean neither peace nor war in the traditional sense of the terms. This assumes protecting what each side possesses at the moment. The effort to develop new rules of the "game" is based very largely on a policy of seeking to maintain the military status quo...