Looking Back to Look Ahead

By Hugh Sidey

The Presidency

Once again the U.S., confronted by a distant upheaval that is vital to its interests, is trying belatedly to position forces that seem too thin to establish a commanding presence, looking desperately for some diplomatic friends who might help us influence events, groping for words that will describe our concern but not aggravate the problem, and doing it all in a kind of hasty and grumpy fashion because the war between Iraq and Iran is intruding on our presidential political spectacle.

Jimmy Carter, campaigning in California against "Warmonger" Reagan, almost tripped over himself in his eagerness to declare U.S. neutrality and display his own cool, and then talked tastelessly of trading spare military parts for American hostages held by Iran, a statement inspired politically on the spot.

It all demonstrates that we no longer seem sure what our interests in the world are or how to pursue them realistically. There is no overall view of the world and what our role should be that is held by a majority of the men and women in the Federal Government, a theme that gives direction and coherence to the way we build and deploy our military forces, use our Foreign Service and encourage our private traders. The Pentagon has a view that often differs from the State Department's, and both are frequently contradicted by the White House, which from 1976 has never been certain about the place of force in world affairs.

Jimmy Carter is only part of the problem, though the most visible part, and the man who can do most to create a strategic view of the globe. But there is no longer an effective national consensus providing the underlying momentum for defining and implementing U.S. and free world interests.

All through Washington last week people were recalling the age of Roosevelt, Acheson, Truman, Lovett, Forrestal, Kennan, Vandenberg, Eisenhower, Dulles and many more. It was a time when men and women moved in and out of Government, preserving and nurturing an attitude about U.S. participation in international affairs. More often than not they buried partisan feelings, consulted closely and hammered out lasting compromises that were clearly in the national interest. They assumed their responsibility principally out of a sense of obligation, and then because they enjoyed the work.

Many thoughtful observers believe that Viet Nam shattered that aura and dispersed the people. Scholars turned away from the study of diplomatic and military affairs, says Henry Kissinger. Experts stayed out of Government. The past was condemned and obliterated, history and its lessons interrupted. The theory grew, according to New York's Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, that our problems in the world stemmed from being too powerful.

Moynihan believes that we may be groping our way back now. "Realism is making its way in," he says, but acknowledges that it has not yet produced a Government that can respond to crisis quickly and skillfully.

A network of concerned citizens, including Kissinger, are pondering if they should, following the election, launch a national effort to produce a broad national coalition of people to generate a new view of the world that can be infused into Government.

"The real tragedy is that Americans have failed to do their homework in history," claims Washington's Senator Henry Jackson, a man who for 40 years has by himself done much to keep up U.S. power. The trouble we are now encountering, he believes, was predictable, and with minimal effort we could have been better prepared had we simply studied the past and looked ahead.

James Schlesinger, former director of the CIA and former Secretary of both Defense and Energy, agrees. "We lack a sense of history," he declares. "These things do not just happen in the morning and then disappear at night. We cannot continue to live in this world as if there were no yesterday and will be no tomorrow."

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