THE U.S. 'ILLUSION OF OMNIPOTENCE'

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP75-00149R000500010016-2
Release Decision: 
RIPPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
1
Document Creation Date: 
December 15, 2016
Document Release Date: 
April 2, 2004
Sequence Number: 
16
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
October 4, 1967
Content Type: 
NSPR
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PDF icon CIA-RDP75-00149R000500010016-2.pdf111.77 KB
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C Approved For Release 20@y4/.. J08 - CIA-RDP75-00149 000500010016-2 WASI-IINGTON CLOSE-UP . The ancient wisdom ex- pressed in the line, "0 that mine enemy would write a book," is not an absolute. It depends entirely on how good your enemy is at writing books. The varied examples of Norman, Mailer and Jim ?, Bishop to the contrary, it is possible to write e good one. Senator Eugene J. McCar- thy, D-Minn., has just written one and it is hard to see how his enemies -- or the enemies of the general position he advocates -- can derive much pleasure or profit from the fact. The book is called "The Limits of Power," and the very title must seem a con- tradiction in terms to such enemies. Yet in lucid Ian guage, in brief compass, the last Stevensonian conducts a brilliant analysis of our pres- ent foreign policy, how we got where we are, why we ought to reconsider our posi- tion and what we really ought to be doing in the world of men and nations. The book is not calcaluted to offend anybody, but it is fairly sure to offend the Republi- cans, the Kennedyites ;and the Johnsonians. Senator Mc- Carthy has thus assured himself of a great future in the Farm-Labor Party of his native upper Midwest, except for the fact that the party doesn't really exist anymore. In the senator's compressed summary of the years since World War II, we have drifted into the illusion of omnipotence in foreign policy, partly by accident, partly by self-right- de. s ign, mostly because we. didn't know what we were doing and&still don't. The last, good times, in this anertia, the dead weight of view pf our history in the : 'vested interest that keeps policy going in all areas long after its original purpose in one area has been fulfilled or abandoned. The underlying thesis is simply that no nation can run the world singlehandedly and it is high time we stopped, trying. It is an extremely attractive possibility that emerges in the final pages, an America that would base its foreign policy on close examination , and 'constant re-examination of the way things actually are in the numerous parts of the world, an examination steadily illuminated by the knowledge, that there are limits to what power can do, any power. He concludes, "America's contri- bution to world civilization must be more than a continu- ous performance' demon- strating that we can police the planet." Yes, we can all agree, it must be. But will it be? Can it, be? . The melancholy answer is probably in Senator McCar- thy's note that the personal mark of his book, if any, is "that which I believe Adlai Stevenson would have made on American foreign policy, had his ideas and his attitudes been translated into political reality." We all know what hzppened to those ideas and attitudes, first at the hands of the electo- rate and second at the hands of his own party in victory. But even beyond that ques. tion of whether, there is the question of how.' As others have so often in history, we are finding in Vietnam that the only hard part about going for a ride on a tiger is getting 'off. p Approved For Release 2004/04/08 : CIA-RDP75-00149R000500010016-2 3y FRANK G::TLEIN ' world for the last two decades, were with Truman and Ache- son, the latter a classical, therefore corservatve, shaper of foreign policy. They were, succeeded by Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles, the latter a stern and rockbound moral- ist and fighter. of Communist devils. Dulles did two things that still take their toll. He estab- lished a worldwide system of treaties that gives us the theoretical justification to do anything, anywhere, anytime, to anyone that pleases us. And he allowed the CIA, under his brother Allen, to become the quasi-independent, policymak- ing, operation-mounting entity that it is. The author doesn't say so, but the account is clear that John F. Kennedy was simply too dumb to realize what was going on and allowed it to continue. Obviously, you aren't supposed to imply that kind of thing about saints and martyrs. Perhaps the most damning judgment in the book is the judgment that no judg- ment is yet possible on Rusk: after six years in office he remains an unknown. Yet the policy set by the Dulles broth., ers continues to shape our ends, rough hew them as we will. It is a policy based on the belief that communism is. always evil and always the same and always to be op- posed or "contained" by us in any way necessary. Senator McCarthy is keenly aware of the inertia factor in government at 'large and in foreign policy in particular. He feels that much of our present trouble comes from