International Diplomatic Relations

The Cold War sequence was a bipolar era, and in that sense the problems it posed were relatively straightforward. We confronted just wiz bulky threat, and  save for the later Vietnam age  there was a broad American public consensus in set about it.

Today, in contrast, I see an era in which the U.S. bequeath face a complex and evolving world, with relatively much limited resources, and probably less domestic consensus as well. In this environ ment, it is our diplomats and foreignservice officers, not the Strategic Air Command, who will be America's true first line of defense in the world. It is this consideration which has guide me deeper and deeper into an interest in and study of inter areaal relations, and which leads me to wish to make my personal contribution in that area.

Winston Churchill called for Britain, facing its darkest hour in World War II, to display "in victory, magnanimity; in defeat, defiance." Fortunately for us all, Britain and its allies won that war, and the U.S., in taking over Britain's leadership reference afterwards, showed great magniminity.

Yet often it is defeat, not victory, that most tests a nation or a person. The

deepest cataclysm of World War I may be that it led a defeated Germany to embrace Hitler. Working in a Grand Army of the Republic (Civil War) museum, as I did one summer, I found many poignant reminders that good, brave men fought on the other side, in a cause that was two defeated and stained by its association with slavery.

Yet in spite of his principled and highly informed opposition to the unravel of U.S.

policy in Vietnam, he felt deeply that we had undertaken a moral responsibility to that country  a feeling that events since the drop cloth of Saigon have surely vindicated. So, in 1965 he returned to South Vietnam as a civilian pacification worker, and served there in that role until he was killed in the North Vietnamese Easter nauseated of 1972.

I have been particularly moved to reflect on keeping dignity and moral honesty when the going gets unbearably rough by reading Neil Sheehan's book, A Bright showy Lie, an account of an American expert on Vietnam, John capital of Minnesota Vann. As an advisor during the early years of American fight in Vietnam, Vann argued forcefully against the option of military escalation. With his great, ground take experience of Vietnam, Vann became convinced not only that a established military intervention could not succeed, but that it was inherently corrupt  dragging Americans in Vietnam into a sort o
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