Guiding Change

An outline of U.S. goals

Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and White House National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski have frequently offered differing views of U.S. foreign policy. Brzezinski tends to be more combative, Vance more conciliatory. But a few weeks ago, when they discovered that they had independently scheduled May Day speeches in Chicago and New York City, the two top policymakers seized on the chance to get together. They conferred by phone, and each read and approved the other's draft. The result: the most comprehensive outline to date of the principles guiding U.S. foreign policy.

The main theme was that in a world that is becoming ever more diverse and complex, the U.S. cannot achieve its diplomatic goals simply by asserting its military or economic power. Rather, it must seek ways to adapt to and guide revolutionary changes that are probably unstoppable. Said Vance: "There can be no going back to a time when we thought there could be American solutions to every problem." The U.S., he counseled, "must accept the fact that other societies will manage change and build new institutions in patterns that may be different from our own [an obvious allusion to Iran] . . . Our national interest is not in [all countries] becoming like us. It is that they be free of domination by others."

Agreed Brzezinski: "The world is experiencing a global political awakening without precedent in history . . . At the same time, the world is undergoing a significant redistribution of economic and political power . . . Any attempt to create artificial obstacles to change for the sake of the status quo will merely foster U.S. isolation and irrelevance." The task, he said, "is to steer change in positive directions and to identify America with such change."

Well aware of the Senate criticism of the impending SALT agreement, both officials took pains to rebut charges that the U.S. is becoming a second-rate power. Said Vance: "The distorted proposition being advanced by some that America is in a period of decline in the world is not only wrong as a matter of fact but dangerous as a basis for policy." If the U.S. shies away from military intervention abroad, he said, that is a sign not of weakness but of a mature recognition that "our military forces cannot provide a satisfactory answer to the purely internal problems of other nations."

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