The Foreign Service Journal, February 2004

tools which man has in his hands for good and evil; and, third, in the changing relationship bet- ween man and man, that is, in the requirements for the organization of society implicit in the compli- catedness of modern industrial and urban civilization. … As things stand today, I think we must adjust ourselves to the prospect that a large segment of the world’s population, in terms of numbers, is destined to continue to live in a state of bitter competi- tion for possession of inadequate resources; that this is going to continue to produce reactions which will not be happy ones and which are bound to seem unnatur- al to us and to place limitations on the degree of inti- macy that we can hope to achieve between ourselves and themselves. This dilemma is so profound, and exists on so vast a scale, that no one has yet suggested any material answers to it, as far as I know, which are more than the most tentative palliatives. I am not say- ing that there are no answers, or that the peoples themselves will not find them. But it does not seem to me that we have those answers. And not having them, I think we must be very careful what we say and do, and above all not give the impression that we have the answers. This is the essence of one of our great problems of foreign affairs, namely our relations with the peoples whose lives are marked by a technical backwardness and a material poverty as striking as our technical advance and our material abundance. We should be extremely careful what we say to the peoples who are materially less well endowed; and should be careful to talk to them in terms of their problems and aspirations — not our own. The second thing I mentioned as having changed was the nature of the tools in man’s hands. … The most important of these … are the ones we call weapons. And you may be surprised to hear me say that I think the most important change has not been in the tools for international war, where the atomic bomb is involved, but in the tools of internal police power: the weapons by which the authority of government can be enforced over its subjects. … These changes have done things with respect to internation- al warfare which are also highly significant for our international relations. I suspect that they have increased, temporarily at least, the relative independence and effec- tiveness of land power over that of sea power. … Now this fact has a very special importance for the United States. It is not just that it is Russian power which has broken through to the oceans; but it is continental land power, with all that that implies. … To deal with the collective disciplined power made possible by modern technology and inspired by the older land power habits of thought is a new and baf- fling experience for this country. We find our noses being rubbed constantly into the dilemma which rises from the fact that he who would cope effectively with modern land power in its totalitarian form must make himself similar to it in many respects. He must learn to regiment his people, to husband his resources, to guard against hostile agents in his midst, to maintain formidable armed forces in peace time, to preserve secrecy about governmental decisions, to wield the weapons of bluff and to wage war in peacetime — and peace in wartime. Can these things be done without the selling of the national soul? History offers us no answer to this question; for here — in the greater expanse of territory controlled by the grim and sullen forces of modern despotism — we have a problem that is really new. … November 1951 — The National Interest of the United States The second of the two articles written for the FSJ while on leave in Europe. “National interest” is one of those things that you know must exist but it is too vast, too rich in meaning, too many-sided, for any positive definition. And for that reason, I’m going to ask your indulgence if I try to make it clearer by talking — not about what it is — but about what it is not. The first would be this: the interest of the United States in international affairs is not a detached interest F O C U S F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 45 The interest of the United States in international affairs is not a detached interest in our international environment for its own sake.