If we no longer have Richard Nixon to kick around, we nonetheless have the former president's advice. On U.S. policy toward China, he states: “China, with its population and resources, is eventually going to be a superpower. It is vital that we help them become a superpower associated with the West rather than one that is against us.”

Sounds reasonable enough, until we consider the options. To announce such a goal might, in the short term, play hob with our diplomatic bargaining positions vis-à-vis Beijing itself or come at the expense of our traditional allies in Asia. And if this is to be the polar star of U.S. foreign policy over the long term, as Nixon suggests, what about other legitimate U.S. interests; what about the notion of the proper play of the international balance of power and America's concern for human rights and democratic values?

The recent growth of concern over the danger of nuclear war has been dramatic and impressive. It is also eminently realistic. Any sane and rational person who considers the scale and character of contemporary military power, the current vast expansion of the military arsenals of the superpowers, and the proliferation of armaments throughout the world would surely have to conclude that the likelihood of a global catastrophe is not small.

One might argue, in fact, that it is a miracle that the catastrophe has not yet occurred. According to a Brookings Institutions study by Barry M. Blechman and Stephen S. Kaplan, from November, 1946, to October, 1973, there were nineteen incidents in which U.S. strategic nuclear forces were involved (we do hot have the record since, nor the record for the USSR and other powers). That means, to put it plainly, that every U.S. president regarded the use of nuclear weapons as a live policy option. The examples are instructive.

When NATO came into being in 1949, not a few believed that before long it would succumb to threats from without. They thought the fledgling organization would prove unequal to the task of keeping Soviet power from spilling over the boundaries of the Alliance. But they were wrong.

Still others believed that NATO would succumb to problems from within. They doubted that Alliance members would be willing to subordinate their own narrowed interests to the interests of the community as a whole. But they too were wrong.

Only a handful of the collective security organizations in history have matched NATO's record of longevity. At the age of thirty-four the Alliance is not just alive—it is flourishing.