The Use of Power

In the early days of the New Frontier, it was the Administration's censorship of a tough anti-Communist speech by Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh A. Burke that set off the whole dispute about the "muzzled military." Last week, now retired and thoroughly unmuzzled, Admiral Burke appeared before the Daughters of the American Revolution and delivered a speech that would have had the Pentagon's censors desperately clawing for their blue pencils. Burke's theme: "America and the West in general have a guilt complex about power." The complex, said Burke, derives from the "fundamental unreality" of seeking peace without being willing to use power: "It frustrates our every use of power. In Cuba, in Suez, in Korea, currently in Laos, we half use it in a compromise between dream and reality . . . The first signs of a refurbished wisdom will be found in a frank, conscious and determined use of our power--in all its forms --to determine the course of international events in the modern world." The U.S., Burke continued, is wallowing about in high policy seas. "In a schizoid manner we have balanced a Department of Defense with a Committee on Disarmament, ballistic missiles with the position that war is unthinkable. Basically, we oscillate between an unpalatable reality and an act of faith. Consequently, we have become dangerous to the world.

No one really knows what we will do because we ourselves do not know."

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