The memorandum which follows is an attempt to define your four-year foreign
policy goals. It is not meant to be a public statement—and its publication
or revelation would be counterproductive. It would provide your critics with
ammunition (both now and four years hence) and public disclosure would also
make it more difficult to attain many of your goals. Moreover, in some ways
any such statement is bound to be arbitrary and even simplistic—but
otherwise it would have to be a book, with all the explanations,
elaborations, and nuances included.
The document is not an interagency consensus statement. It was prepared, on
the basis of the conceptual framework which you and I have often discussed,
by Sam Huntington and myself, with
NSC staff inputs. (Sam is also
coordinating the PRM 102 effort.)
I believe the four year objectives—though ambitious—are realistic. In any
event, they provide both stimulus and discipline for the development of
specific policy choices for your decision. I should note that the second of
these central objectives—that we cultivate the new “regional
influentials”—is likely to be both controversial and possibly even
occasionally in conflict with some of the other goals. Yet I believe that
American interests and global stability require that we nourish a better
relationship with these key states. Not to do so is to deprive ourselves of
potentially very constructive relationships. Given the importance and
sensitivity of this proposal, I attach a special annex (Tab IV),3 pertaining to these states.
These ten central objectives are derived from a basic concept of what U.S.
foreign policy should be at this historical stage. I want
to stress to you the importance of that concept. A foreign policy
to be effective must rest on a reasonably accurate assessment of the basic
historical need. The Soviets periodically undertake a very deliberate
reappraisal of their foreign policy based on the question: what is the
nature of our historical phase? Has that phase changed, and—if so—what are
the implications for the Soviet foreign policy? We should be similarly alert
to the meaning of historical change. U.S. foreign policy in the past was
relatively successful because the notions of Atlanticism and containment did
correspond to the major needs of the late 40’s and early 50’s. Accordingly,
this document is based on a unifying theme and you have to decide whether
the definition of that theme—in the section called “Overall Concept”—is
congenial to you.
Accordingly, I would recommend: (1) that you review the document, make
whatever changes you deem necessary, and give me further guidance; (2) that
following further revisions in the light of your directives, the document be
used as the basis for discussion with your principal advisers (such as the
Secretary of State), and possibly even with top Congressional leaders
(though perhaps without actual distribution); (3) that you give a
comprehensive speech, maybe after the
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summit, using largely the conceptual part in order to
educate the public and to convey to all concerned that your various actions
are part of an overall scheme (contrary to some criticisms that are now
being voiced).
Even then, the document should not be distributed except perhaps at a
restricted NSC meeting itself.
Let me also raise here the possibility that you consider using your Notre
Dame University Address5 to develop the above approach. You might
remember that I proposed a few days ago that you give a conceptual speech,
attempting to integrate your overall policy, and follow it shortly
thereafter by a town hall meeting specifically on foreign policy. The Notre
Dame date comes roughly two weeks after the summit, and it might be a good
place to summarize your basic conclusions, and then go on to deliver a more
far-reaching and essentially conceptual statement on your foreign
policy.6
Attachment
Paper Prepared by the National Security Council
Staff7
[Omitted here is the Table of Contents.]
Four-Year Foreign Policy Objectives
I. OVERALL CONCEPT
U.S. foreign policy can be expressed in terms of several broad purposes.
Though interrelated, these purposes imply, though not rigidly, a
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basic hierarchy. (At a
specific level, choices are often necessary—as in the exemption of South
Korea on security grounds from aid cutoff on human rights grounds).
These broad purposes are:
1. To assure the security of the United States;
2. To enhance peace by reducing international tensions and the
probability of war;
3. To promote the prosperity of the United States;
4. To advance global wellbeing by creating an open, cooperative and
equitable international economic order;
5. To expand fundamental human rights.
The document which follows is designed to promote all of these broad
purposes, and it attempts to translate them into more specific goals in
the political, economic and defense areas.
The basic conceptual frame of reference for the more specific goals is a
historical perspective, which sees the United States as having to play a
creative role in world affairs, in some ways similar to the role that
the United States played following 1945. At that time, the United States
in effect shaped a new international system, replacing the one that had
collapsed during World War II. That new system then endured and worked
reasonably well for the next quarter of a century or so. During much of
that time, the basic concept that guided U.S. foreign policy was a
combination of Atlanticism (primacy of the US-European link) and containment of the Soviet Union.
Faced in the early 70’s with major world changes, the previous Republican
Administration then developed a foreign policy focused primarily on a
flexible balance of power, and on maneuver. It was also very pessimistic
foreign policy, based on the notion that America had no permanent
friends nor institutions on which it could rely, and that deeprooted
trends were against us.
Your policy, as recommended here, is different. It places emphasis not so
much on maneuver, but on building new structures—new relationships with
friends, with adversaries, with the developing world, even with the
whole world—that we hope will have a measure of permanence. It is,
therefore, an optimistic policy—we hope to build a better world—not
simply survive in a hostile one. It is a policy of
constructive global engagement.
Its fundamental premise is that the U.S. needs to play today a role as
constructive as the one it played after World War II, but in a vastly
changed context.
The U.S. has to help in the shaping of a new international system that
cannot be confined to the developed countries but must involve
increasingly the entire international community of more than 150 nation
states. Unlike the years 1945–50, this calls not for American dictation
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but for more subtle
inspiration and cooperative leadership on a much wider front. The
international community, in addition to the traditional dilemmas of war
and peace, now confronts global problems never before faced by
mankind.
The need thus is not for a new anti-communist coalition, nor for an
updated Atlanticism, nor for a policy focused only on the new nations,
and certainly not for protectionism and isolationism. Rather, it
requires a broad architectural process for an
unstable world organized almost entirely on the principle of national
sovereignty and yet increasingly interdependent socially and
economically. In that process of widening cooperation, our relationships
will have to involve varying degrees of intimacy:
1. With our closest friends in the industrial world—countries which share
our values, have political systems similar to ours, and which because of
their wealth have a special burden of responsibility to the rest of
mankind—we will seek to deepen our collaboration;
2. With the emerging states, we will seek to develop close bilateral
relations in some key cases, and to widen and to institutionalize
arrangements for more genuine global cooperation;
3. With states with which we compete militarily and ideologically, we
will seek through appropriate arrangements to reduce the chances of war
and to codify more precise rules of reciprocal restraint.
II. TEN CENTRAL OBJECTIVES
With that basic concept as our point of departure, and in keeping with
it, it is recommended that your foreign policy seek to attain during the
coming four years these central ten goals
(developed more specifically in the third part of this document):
1. To engage Western Europe, Japan and other advanced democracies in
closer political cooperation through the increasing institutionalization
of consultative relationships, and to promote wider macro-economic
coordination pointing towards a stable and open monetary and trade
system. Genuine collaboration with these states is the foundation stone
of U.S. policy, and we must seek to intensify and to multiply our
consultative links;
2. To weave a worldwide web of bilateral, political and, where
appropriate, economic cooperation with the new emerging regional
“influentials”—thereby widening, in keeping with new historical
circumstances, our earlier reliance on Atlanticism or, more lately, on
trilateralism. These regional influentials include Venezuela, Brazil,
Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, India, Indonesia, in addition to our more
traditional friends;
3. To exploit the foregoing in the development of more accommodating
North-South relations, both political and economic, through
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such devices as the Global
Development Budget, the institutionalization of CIEC, the shaping of links between OECD and OPEC, etc.;
4. To push U.S.-Soviet strategic arms limitation talks into strategic
arms reduction talks, using the foregoing as an entering wedge for a
more stable U.S.-Soviet relationship. At the same time, we should seek
to rebuff Soviet incursions, both by supporting our friends and by
ameliorating the sources of conflict which the Soviets exploit. We
should match Soviet ideological expansion by a more affirmative American
posture on global human rights, while seeking consistently to make
detente both more comprehensive and more reciprocal;
5. To normalize U.S.-Chinese relations in order to preserve the
U.S.-Chinese relationship as a major stabilizing factor in the global
power balance, offsetting Soviet conventional superiority and preventing
the Soviet Union from concentrating its resources on a westward (Europe)
or southward (Middle East, Africa) expansionary drive;
6. To obtain a comprehensive Middle Eastern settlement, without which the
further radicalization of the Arab world and the reentry of the Soviet
Union into the Middle East cannot for long be avoided, generating in
turn serious consequences for Western Europe, Japan, and the United
States;
7. To set in motion a progressive and peaceful transformation of South
Africa towards a biracial democracy and to forge—in connection with this
process—a coalition of moderate black African leaders in order to stem
continental radicalization and to eliminate the Soviet-Cuban presence
from the continent;
8. To restrict the level of global armaments through international
agreements limiting the excessive flow of arms into the Third World
(though with some consideration for goal No. 2), cooperative
international restraints on nuclear proliferation, and a comprehensive
test ban on nuclear testing;
9. To enhance global sensitivity to human rights through actions designed
to highlight U.S. observance of such rights and through multilateral and
bilateral initiatives meant to influence other governments to give
higher priority to such human rights;
10. To maintain a defense posture capable of deterring the Soviet Union
both on the strategic and conventional levels from hostile acts and from
political pressure. This will require the U.S. to modernize,
rationalize, and reconceptualize its defense posture in keeping with the
broad changes in world affairs that have already been noted, to improve
NATO military strength and
readiness, and to develop capabilities to deter or to counter Soviet
military intervention in the Third World.
It should be noted in connection with these broad objectives that the
promotion of human rights is a goal that cross-cuts our relations
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with the Soviet Union, the
developing countries, and particularly the new regional influentials. In
all these cases, our leverage should be used discreetly to advance human
rights but no specific targets can be prescribed precisely.
Moreover, the point to stress is that human rights is a
broad concept. These two words should mean much more than
political liberty, the right to vote, and protection against arbitrary
governmental action. Human rights, and this we should stress, means also
certain basic minimum standards of social and economic existence. In
effect, human rights refers to all three (political, social, and
economic) and this is why these words have such universal appeal.
Such a broader, and more flexible definition would have several
advantages: it would retain for us the desirable identification with a
human cause whose time has come, and yet it would avoid some of the
rigidities that are potential in the narrower political definition. It
would give us the freedom to point at the most glaring abuses (e.g.,
political suppression in some countries, or total social indifference in
others), though leaving us the necessary margin of flexibility in
dealing with most governments. In general, we should stress that
achieving human rights is a process and that we
are watching carefully progress toward greater respect for human rights,
realizing that there is no single standard for all the countries of the
world.
The ten central objectives are refined and time-targeted in the pages
which now follow. If approved by you, all of the specific as well as
broader objectives will become, at appropriate
times, the subject of action directives from you,
requiring the pertinent department to submit more detailed studies and
proposals for implementation.
[Omitted here are Part III: Central Objectives and Specific Steps and
Part IV: Annex on Regional Influentials.]
