Speculation about the future, particularly about the nature and character of the problems which Americans may have to face in foreign policy, is admittedly risky. It is particularly so at a time when international society is far from static and domestic policy in a score of states may at any moment directly influence and even fundamentally change the balance of power as it now exists. Nevertheless, such speculation can be justified. However effective present policy may be judged to be, few would be brash enough to assert that “we planned it that way.” Postwar American policy, in the main, has not been planned: it has consisted until very recently of a series of reactions to the diplomatic and military initiative exercised by the Soviet Union and its satellites. These reactions have created a current pattern of policy for the United States which contains more long-range commitments for this country than at any previous time in American history. Future policy obviously must operate within the limits established by these commitments. Yet these are fairly broad in character in many areas of the world and any one of a number of policies might be chosen. It is not too soon to begin to plan now for some of the problems the United States will face in the very near future.

The mainsprings of Soviet action, expressed locally and generally, are a theme which has confounded scholars and journalists for more than three decades. A lack of adequate documentation has contributed to the dilemma of those seeking to resolve the enigma that is Russia. One obvious consequence has been to rely heavily upon the doctrinal premises in an abundant Marxist literature. This is understandable, but it is also an invitation to innumerable pitfalls because of the variety of ways in which Soviet society and Soviet policies can be conceptualized. A further danger is the loss of perspective. One cannot lightly ignore the factor of a people's historical experience, conditioned as it is, in part, by persistent geographic and economic forces. The culminating error is to overlook the frequent gaps which exist between professed aims and Soviet capacity to achieve them. Considering Soviet foreign policy as a whole, one is impressed with the fact that it has been pursued with a realistic evaluation of the consequences. Not since the early years of the revolutionary era has there been any reckless pursuit of ideological ends without a careful inventory of the available resources of power.

Foreign policy, the very existence of which Soviet leaders admitted only hesitatingly during the green years of the Revolution—although they availed themselves of it as an indispensable tool from the moment they gained power—has become a primary weapon in safeguarding the interests of the “Socialist Fatherland” and propagating the struggle against “world capitalism.”

In a previous article we attempted to examine the intricate net in which geography and the study of international relations are interwoven. The basic problem with which we dealt was the partitioning of the space available to men. Our conclusion was that this partitioned, differentiated space is organized: by studying its organization, geography can describe and analyze a network of relations in space which is both useful and at times indispensable to an understanding of international relations.

The idea of “policy science” is not a new one. In fact, it is organic to the Western tradition. Its first, incomparable formulation is found in Plato's Republic; policy, the Platonic Socrates says, can be reasonable and sound only if it is based upon the fullness of scientific insight and knowledge. According to the Platonic conception, it is not even enough to apply scientific knowledge, gathered by specialists, to practical policy problems which the rulers are to decide. Rather, the rulers themselves must acquire all the scientific knowledge needed to frame reasonable policy. The duality of the “expert adviser” and of the “decision-maker” who merely listens to him is implicitly rejected in the Republic. The ruler himself must be the knower. For the decisive thing is not knowledge in the abstract, knowledge as something impersonally available and ready to be picked up; it is knowledge conceived as the quality of a soul. According to the Platonic (and Aristotelian) view, knowledge is not an alien material “contained” in the mind, but the “form,” the ideal essence of the mind itself, so that a mind that knows belongs to a different species than the mind that lacks knowledge. In acquiring knowledge, the mind becomes essentially transformed, it acquires a new form; this is the original meaning of the term “information.” In its Platonic sense, then, the idea of “policy science” refers to the soul of the ruler, which must be the highest species of soul.

We rarely have an opportunity to study the intimate reactions of two members of the President's cabinet to a series of very recent and very important events. Both Speaking Frankly and The Forrestal Diaries cover about the same period—the period when the United States was slowly awakening to the realities of the postwar world—but they are very different in other respects. Secretary Byrnes' book was written to give a picture of the problems that he encountered during his tenure as Secretary of State and to express his considered views about policy for the future. The Diaries, on the other hand, were never intended for publication, and without connective matter supplied by the editor they would be merely a collection of memoranda of meetings and conversations, copies or summaries of documents prepared by other people, personal letters, and less frequent entries in which Mr. Forrestal recorded his own opinions or impressions.

The term “statecraft” is used here in a sense which is stronger than that of “diplomacy” as used, for example, by Harold Nicolson. In its present meaning it includes the construction of strategies for securing the national interest in the international arena, as well as the execution of these strategies by diplomats. In a day when the world is being divided between two great power blocs, when neutrality is becoming increasingly more difficult to maintain, when statecraft is invading the economic and cultural aspects of social existence, as well as the political and military, when most great problems of domestic life must be reconsidered with regard to their bearing on the international situation, few, if any, can doubt its importance. The successful or unsuccessful conduct of statecraft may settle the fate of our way of life; and, given the possibilities of modern war, it may, in a deeper sense, settle the question of whether any type of civilized life, ours or the Soviets', can survive.