I think that Dr. Rostow imposes upon the present situation a mistaken view of “dangers and challenges and possibilities.” As I understand him, he thinks of the war in Vietnam as a war against aggression or against “wars of national liberation” which, if successful, will help humanity to turn a corner and to enter upon a more stable and peaceful stage of history. On the contrary, this war causes us to miss opportunities to create some conditions for peace through agreements with the Soviet Union as the other major nuclear power, to improve through cooperation with the Soviet Union the actual institutions of world order represented primarily by the United Nations.

Are we in a watershed period in the world community today? It is impossible to say. In polities, particularly in international relations, there is a general tendency to speak of turning points, basic shifts, or watersheds. This is understandable. Of all forms of politics, foreign affairs is most fraught with danger and frustration. Affairs stumble from crisis to crisis; tension is the common element. Thus concerned men are constantly searching the signs of the times for a genuine turning point in foreign affairs.

The basic problem in locating and defining such a turning point is the lack of perspective. It is easier to look backward and to note the fundamental shifts that occurred in foreign affairs than it is to mark a contemporary watershed. The problem is how far back one must look before there is sufficient perspective to analyze both the emergence and the consequence of a basic change in the world situation. A man who can do that in contemporary affairs is a political prophet, but there are few such prophets.

Even today, politics is based on power relationships and the kind of calculations that have been canonized since the rise of the nation-state. Get a group of Washington practitioners together and you will still hear echoes of the old saw that “politics is the art of the possible.”

But this kind of thinking, in our new situation, has already brought mankind to the brink of disaster and promises to destroy political life altogether. It is so clearly anachronistic, at least to the young, that the newest postwar generation to come to maturity simply refuses to play the game. To their ears, even the soaring political rhetoric of John F. Kennedy sounds hollow and unconvincing. I recently heard a brilliant college student charge that the President's famous “Ask not what your country can do for you …” smacked of fascism. Taken literally that, of course, was nonsense; yet I think I know what the young man was trying to get at.

I welcome an opportunity to briefly examine Walt Rostow's contention that we are at a watershed. I am inclined to accept the generic proposition, although it will become apparent that the premises with which we support the conclusion differ.

Vietnam can well be the last great confrontation of the postwar era if we learn the lessons of Vietnam as well as others of recent years. Vietnam is providing an excellent modern example of the limitations of enormous military power. In another area, the Kennedy round, which was completed some months ago, there is also provided a classic example of the limitations of enormous economic power. If the people of the United States and especially its leadership can profit from the experiences of recent months on the military and economic fronts, then Mr. Rostow's thesis that we are at a watershed should prove valid. If we fail to understand or misinterpret what is happening, then it is possible that Mr. Washburn and the new generation are in for the kind of difficulties that could arise from a major decline in the affluence and influence of the United States. Naturally, every American might selfishly view such a prospect with great concern; I am sufficiently chauvinistic about our nation's potential for good that I view it with alarm for the world as a whole.

Three historic patterns can be discerned in the relations America has established with the outside world. America has offered itself as a model to the world, it has entered the world as a missionary, and it has confronted the world as a crusader. In recent years a fourth pattern has been added: America bestrides the world as an imperial power with global responsibilities. In the Spring of 1965, when I endeavored to define this new pattern of American foreign policy under the heading of “globalism,” a national newspaper refused to print my article with the explanation that there was no such tiling. In the meantime the ideologues of the Johnson Administration, such as Professors Brzezinski and Rostow, have confirmed my view. They have proclaimed “the American decade,” “a decade of opportunity and responsibility for the United States.”

It is always unnerving when someone announces that mankind is just now going through “a true watershed period”—that one generation has an essentially different vocation from that of any other. When this verdict is delivered by a leading contemporary intelligence and policy adyisor such as W. W. Rostow, one's only protection from psychological disaster is to recall Eve's remark to Adam that their's was a time of “great transition.”

This is not to deny that we can and must try to “make some shape out of the major experiences through which we have all passed since 1945” — or since some other date. If reason is to rule in any measure, we can and must impose some shape upon the political experiences and problems into which we seem likely to be moving for the next decades.

No task in political science or diplomatic analysis is more baffling and uncertain than that of political prediction. To say that we are at a watershed in the unfolding of contemporary international relations is to postulate the existence of deep running social and political forces so powerful that they will carry international society into a new era. That important forces exist affecting international politics is beyond dispute; that these aspects of the present day world are capable of transforming the relations among men and nations is far less susceptible of proof.

It is sobering to look back to the dominant views concerning international society which were prevalent two decades ago. First, many saw in the establishment of the United Nations the possibility of removing power politics and rivalries among states from the international scene.