Document created: 5 December 03
Air University Review, March-April
1973
The Thomas D. White
Lectures at Air University continued on 15 November 1972 when The Honorable
Curtis W. Tarr, Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance, presented an
address. Air University Review gladly includes an adapted version of Dr. Tarr’s
lecture in this issue.
THE EDITOR
May I begin by taking you to another place and another time, to Austria in 1945? There I was, a soldier awaiting transfer to the Pacific and reflecting upon the combat recently ended in Europe. The Army was sponsoring a tour to the Ice Caves south of Salzburg, so I decided to join friends and see some of Austria’s natural beauty.
We had Fritz for our guide, a young Austrian who recently had been discharged from an elite mountain unit of the Wehrmacht. Fritz, in another day, might have been a model for Michelangelo’s “David,” so perfectly proportioned was his powerful body. That night, after we had explored the Ice Caves, we talked until midnight in the nearby hostel. I will never forget one of Fritz’s puzzling statements.
“I don’t understand the foolishness of your government, scattering the proud German Army.”
I was surprised. To me, the German Army had been a determined and sometimes ruthless foe. “Why?” I asked.
“Because your real enemy is not Germany but Russia. Inevitably you must fight them.”
We Americans during the war had considered the Soviet Union a formidable ally and her people courageous friends. Obviously our naïveté prepared us poorly for the Cold War that soon began. Many times later I recalled how much better Fritz foresaw problems of the future than did I.
But fortunately we avoided the open conflict that Fritz considered inevitable. We have gone through the dark uneasiness of the Cold War. Now a new pattern of political relationships is developing among the community of nations, a new pattern that calls for fresh thoughts and imaginative programs during the decade of the seventies. Let us consider some of the conditions that will influence those policies.
First, the bipolar pattern of relationships among blocs of nations, dominant since World War II, is attenuating.
Soviet hegemony over the Communist world has diminished. Not only has the People’s Republic of China grown to be a major disputant to Soviet leadership but also other Communist nations have become more independent. Despite the Soviet use of troops to repress the peoples of East Germany, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, the desire for a somewhat more independent foreign policy grows among Warsaw Pact nations and other Communist powers.
During the same period, American influence over non-Communist nations also has waned. This decline is linked, at least in part, to diminished Soviet influence, but it results from other factors as well. The Common Market has gained strength unevenly but increasingly since its founding in 1957. The European Community nations now have a total gross national product approaching that of the United States. The success of the recent summit talks of European Community nations, with a pledge to work for a common currency and further political bonds by 1980, is the latest in a series of encouraging milestones.
At the same time, the Japanese people have emerged from the ashes of war to build one of the strongest economies of the world, a miracle of economic growth. With a population about half of ours, the Japanese already have a gross national product more than one-fourth that of the United States, and their economy is growing more rapidly than our own.
Furthermore, the nations of the third world have adopted independent positions in world politics, not subject to the beck and call of either the Soviet Union or ourselves. This has taken place despite generous assistance from the major powers. American problems with India and the Soviet rebuff in Egypt both reflect the self-determination of developing nations.
In many respects America has encouraged progress that has eroded bipolarity. We have given both political and economic encouragement to nations in Europe and the Orient. Much of the one hundred billion dollars of aid sent abroad from America since World War II went to Europe for reconstruction and to stimulate industry. We have been vocal proponents of the Common Market. Aid and technical advice have helped the industrious Japanese, the Chinese on Taiwan, and the Koreans. Following colonialism, doomed by World War II, many new nations have taken their place in the United Nations; most of these, in one way or another, have received United States assistance.
These factors have changed world politics so that the old bipolar pattern no longer represents the true condition of the political world. It is not likely to do so ever again. In its place, we find a community of independent nations, sometimes acting in concert, sometimes alone. In this community a nation no longer can assume the undivided friendship of another nation, despite tradition, when the course of friendship runs counter to the course of national interest.
Second, we have entered an era of negotiation.
For nearly a quarter of a century, the uneasy peace of mankind has been preserved partly by strategic forces, forces that each of the major powers has improved and augmented to prevent a successful “first strike” by the other. Now the Soviets and ourselves seek to stop the upward spiral of a nuclear arms race, first by consolidating a fair status quo and later, hopefully, by scaling down the size of strategic forces.
Negotiation has not yet replaced our dependence upon strategic forces, and probably it will not do so for many years to come. Both the United States and the Soviet Union are building and improving some systems as permitted under the first SALT agreement. Other nuclear powers, thus far, have not joined the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. Likewise, any advanced industrial society now can build its own nuclear weapons or soon will be able to do so, because the technology is widely understood and materials are becoming more available. Thus we have much work yet to do, to reduce the possibility of nuclear war. But a start has been made.
The era of negotiation has been marked by the initial SALT talks, the further ones soon to begin, the scheduled mutual balanced force reduction negotiations in Europe, and the various treaties signed with the Soviet Union at the time of President Nixon’s visit, including those on environment, medicine, space, and naval incidents at sea. More recently, trade treaties have been concluded between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The President’s trip to China brought about agreements between the two powers for exchanges in science, culture, journalism, technology, and sports. This détente has facilitated moves in many parts of the world to bring mainland China back into normal international relationships.
Furthermore, antagonists elsewhere have begun to discuss their differences. We follow closely the Government-level and Red Cross talks between North and South Korea: it may be many years before substantial achievements are realized, but communication has begun. East and West Germany have made gratifying progress. Throughout the world, national leaders are talking to each other in conversations that promise better understanding, increasing cooperation, and a more stable peace.
What is the reason for this spirit of détente?
Perhaps no answer will be as important as the one we Americans give to that question. I believe that diplomacy, coupled with military strength, has made the era of negotiation possible. Clearly, American military strength assured that, in sensitive areas of East-West confrontation around the world, existing frontiers would be maintained. In time, rival nations came to realize that efforts to change the status quo were not worthwhile, especially in view of the pressing problems at home which each had to face. It was also understood that most local conflicts in the third world involved mainly local or regional interests, which were not of great moment for the major powers. Out of these new perceptions of the world situation grew new opportunities for imaginative diplomacy.
The era of negotiation produces new problems for us, just as it buries some of the old frustrations of the Cold War. If my assumption about the critical role of military force is correct, then we must continue to be vigilant as a people, to maintain essential military forces, or the pattern for our recent successes will collapse. Nevertheless, negotiation itself sets the climate for public relaxation.
I am not sure what might happen to expansionist dreams in the future. I do expect in the years ahead that some of our friends and allies will have greater difficulty guarding themselves against insurgency than they will against out-right invasion. Our assistance to these nations must take this new threat into account. But I believe we are mistaken if we assume that all the Cold War aims of other major powers have changed, even though their tactics may well undergo a major overhaul.
The third condition influencing the pattern of political relationships in the seventies is that it is a time of economic restructuring.
If one considers the economic progress of so many nations since World War II, then one begins to realize the importance of the fundamental decisions made at Bretton Woods. Those economic arrangements made possible the reconstruction of old nations and the development of new ones. World trade has expanded in vast proportions.
But now we have come to a time when the community of nations no longer can rely upon an inflexible dollar standard. We have begun a search for a reasonable balance in our international trading relationships that will provide more opportunities for American firms to export their products. We will be able to maintain our economic and military assistance programs—those that go directly from our government to others, those financed partly by our contributions to the multilateral lending agencies, and those financed by private credit from this country—only if economic changes can be accepted by all nations.
Likewise we will depend upon other nations to support progress throughout the world. Probably we will continue to reduce United States aid, both economic and military. Other nations will assume a larger proportion of the total aid given to the developing nations. I expect also that the forms of United States assistance will change. We now provide less grant aid than many Americans assume; we use loans as well as grants for economic and military assistance. But eventually we will complete the shift away from grants to loans. Furthermore, we must search for other stimulants to the development of a nation. Money alone will not guarantee progress.
As we carry out this shift in trading relationships, we become aware of the growing dependence our nation must place upon world trade. There is no way we can avoid doing so.
One reason for dependence upon trade is the crisis that we face in raw materials. We all have talked about the energy shortage that looms in the near future. If we had to rely entirely upon domestic reserves of crude oil, we would deplete them in a very few years and still face critical shortages in the process. Barring utilization of high-cost oil derived from shale, I see no way to provide for our energy needs except looking to the troubled Middle East with its huge oil reserves.
We have encountered other critical needs as well. For instance, the world use of iron and copper has increased four times since 1960, while aluminum use has increased five times in the same period. The major industrial nations more and more face shortages in the materials they need to operate their plants; and more and more they compete against each other to gain what they require from the nations that own resources.
In the nineteenth century, America grew strong economically for many reasons, including our abundance of raw materials. Then we were a “have” nation. We now have become a “have not” nation that must look to the resources of the world to fill some of our needs. Many of our people do not realize how dramatically our requirements have outdistanced our natural wealth.
Another reason for our growing dependence upon world trade is that we have substantial needs for other imports as well. We no longer produce cheaply some of the manufactured products that contribute to our high standard of living. I am sure each of us relies upon the products of other nations to enhance his life style and individuality; e.g., British woolens, Japanese cameras, Thai silks, French antiques—the list is a long one. Likewise, we live richer lives because we travel abroad, and some of our youth study abroad. Both activities, in foreign exchange terms, are the equivalent of importing foreign goods.
We can afford these trading transactions in the world market only if we export sufficient quantities of sophisticated goods, technology, and ideas in order to balance our payments. It is to ensure that we will be able to do so that we continue the economic restructuring of our relationships with other nations.
Fourth, man must control his abuse of the environment or he may destroy his chance for survival. That is a sobering admonition. It involves a matter that few of us understand and none of us has accepted with sufficient concern.
Let us first consider pollution. We usually think of pollution in national terms, and indeed we must continue to do so; but it has an international dimension as well, and perhaps that is the more terrifying. The problems of smog and the blight of our cities persist. But if the burning of fossil fuels charges the upper atmosphere with enough carbon dioxide, it will modify the natural shield surrounding the earth and increase surface temperatures. Immediately that would not constitute a major difficulty, especially in winter, except that finally it could cause the polar ice caps to melt, inundating much of the inhabited world and changing the climate of the continents. Apparently the earth has a natural tendency to eliminate its ice caps anyway, since it has had no permanent ice fields during most of geologic time. But if we hasten this thawing by tilting a delicate balance, we would invite cataclysmic problems.
Radioactivity can be harmful to both plant and animal life, the cause for anxious speculation during major weapons tests. Naturally a nuclear war would threaten all people everywhere with a cruel fate. But harmful effects are caused also by radioactive waste, a by-product of the nuclear power stations upon which the industrial nations must increasingly rely for electricity.
Water pollution also poses giant difficulties. In 1970 the beaches near Rome were closed by the threat of hepatitis. What happens to the sea near Rome can soon happen elsewhere in the Mediterranean, and the oceans can be contaminated as surely and not long thereafter. Oceanic pollution would affect every nation beside the sea: food supply, public health, recreation, the quality of the environment—all would suffer. We understand stream and lake pollution through routine observation, but the ocean has a unique quality because it lacks any estuary draining elsewhere to help the process of purification. Pollute the ocean sufficiently and it cannot cleanse itself.
All men everywhere have a vested interest in preventing pollution. Other examples emphasize even further the blight that environmental contamination brings to the quality of life for men everywhere. Only cooperation among nations will insure the required protection.
Pollution relates inevitably to population, and we are not making satisfactory progress toward controlling the numbers of mankind. Without population limitation, pollution cannot possibly be brought under control. Statistics help us to visualize the coming press of humanity.
The population of the developing world now numbers two billion people and is growing at the rate of 2½ percent per year. If that growth rate holds, then the population of the developing world will be 5.5 billion in the year 2000, 28 billion in 2050. Or consider another possibility: if families in developed nations average two children by the year 2020 and families in developing nations do so by 2040, then the world population will stabilize at 16 billion people. Speeding up the process by twenty years will cause the world population to stabilize at eleven billion, three times the present total. Some observers believe that eleven billion may be the absolute limit beyond which the Malthusian controls of war, disease, and famine will reap their grim harvest. But even if this many people survive, what hope would remain for the dignity of the individual?
It seems clear to me that all nations have become dependent upon each other, not only for peace and growing prosperity but for sheer survival. Interdependence requires cooperation.
That requirement comes at a time when many Americans want to withdraw from world problems. If you walk along the main street of America, you hear this desire expressed. Many of us wish to concentrate on our own critical national problems, and of course we must do so with dedication. But in undertaking that, we cannot abandon our role as a leader of the nations of the world without fearful consequences.
Some people seem to be telling me that there is an inevitability about the future, that there is no use trying to solve problems because the worst will happen anyway. In reply and in closing, let me share with you an experience, again from World War II.
After my unit had finished its combat assignment in the Ardennes, during the winter of 1944-45, a few of us lived for several days in the home of a Belgian family. I became well acquainted with little Lea, a twelve-year-old child about half my height. We talked endlessly in French, insofar as I could, about her village, her home, her friends, about war-torn Belgium. On warmer days we roamed the countryside. During storms I read to her while she smiled at my poor pronunciation. Ours was a friendship growing out of vicissitude.
The evening before our departure, I told Lea that we would be leaving early the next morning and that she should not awaken herself to bid us farewell. But she did so at four o’clock, and her large tears were honest ones as she said goodbye. I promised to write to her after the war, but she shook her head, crying all the more. When I asked why she did not believe my promise, she gave a child’s view of war.
“Because all soldiers are killed in war.” To my remonstrance she explained, “All boys from our village who became soldiers now are dead.”
I did write to Lea a year later, and we corresponded for several years. In due time one of her letters brought a picture of a lovely girl of eighteen, the bride of a Belgian soldier who did return. What had appeared likely in days of adversity did not transpire for Lea as the future unfolded.
The only thing that is inevitable about the world’s future is that it will be shaped with American help or without it. It will be a more promising future for us and for all of mankind with the substantial contributions of courage, understanding, and wisdom that we can provide. We have no reasonable choice but to do so.
Washington, D.C.
Dr. Curtis W. Tarr (Ph.D., Stanford University), until his appointment as Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance, served as Director of the Selective Service System. He was Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Manpower and Reserve Affairs) in 1969-70. After combat service in the U.S. Army, European Theater, he earned degrees and filled teaching and dean assignments at Stanford and Harvard. Dr. Tarr was President of Lawrence University, 1963-69, and served as Chairman, Task Force on Local Government Finance and Organization, State of Wisconsin.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression,
academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official
position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air
Force or the Air University.
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