Kissinger is being portrayed as a historian with a gloomy philosophy. Among the gloomy citations ascribed to him has been the following: "No responsible leader should encourage the illusion that America can ever again re-capture the strategic superiority of the early post-war period". On reflection, it becomes obvious that the essence of Kissingerts problem is not merely psychological ('excessive gloom') but goes much deeper. He sees the reality of the shifting world relationship of class forces. What he is trying to grapple with is the biggest single fact of world politics: the striking decline in American power. This fact is verified anew with the events of every passing month. Most recently, it was symbolised by Angola. Far from inheriting the Portuguese empire, as was projected by American foreign policy, another disaster struck.
The fact that Cuban troops got away with landing in Africa to fight for the 'other side' which won, sent shock waves not only through the American ruling class but also through European imperialist circles who look to and count on the strength of American imperialism to see them through their own coming trials.
There was much comment in the press about the American government's lack of In truth, while American imperialism has definite objectives, it has no clear-cut foreign policy nowadays. It lacks any confident scheme like 'rolling back the Iron Curtain! to assure the century!. Instead there is only a pragmatic adjustment day by day, month by month, overt military power, the threat of military intervention, economic might - to shore up its defences against a deteriorating world situation. The New York Times summed this up with unusual frankness in an editorial (last April): "Many of the international dilemmas confronting the US cannot be solved but only managed. How to manage them in the new, more sober period opening up is the central question that the nation must begin to face - and the candidates have yet to answer".
But they won't.
Whoever occupies the White House, ultimately given to all problems of foreign affairs is to increase the military budget, that monstrous burden on the people.
food, social benefits - that is what is Diplomacy Turning to the diplomatic side of the situation, detente remains a component of American foreign policy, in spite of Ford's electioneering decision to drop the term. Not a single one of the conditions Jack Barnes that gave birth to detente has changed. There is no realistic aliernative course open to the American ruling class for the time being. In fact, detente is central to their efforts to 'muddle through':
Detente was based on the new realities of world politics, not just on ideas in Richard Nixon's head. It grew out of the dead-end in Vietnam, mutual nuclear destructive capacity between the USSR and the US, growing economic pressures and what Kissinger callshis greatest foreign policy problem - the opposition of the American people to the use of American military force in foreign countries.
This created a new situation which precluded a return to the cold-war strategy of rolling back the Iron Curtain. In fact, on Washington's side, detente signified recognising the status quo in Eastern Europe, recognising the borders of the Workers! States as they now exist. Although a little battered, detente has already weathered the oil crisis, the depression of 1974-75, defeat in Vietnam, the crisis in Portugal, and Ford's debacle in Angola.
On the side of the Soviet bureaucracy, detente is based on the need for economic aid, especially advanced technology, and access to grain in the United States. These help cushion domestic tensions arising from the incapacity of Isocialism in one country! to meet the demands of the masses.
In exchange, the American imperialists get some help in policing the world and maintaining as best they can the precarious division into Ispheres of influencel. Both sides, hoisting their nuclear umbrellas, try to freeze the class struggle around In different ways, both the American presidential elections.. and the recent Twenty-Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union have re-affirmed the mutually - agreed upon course of Impediment But there is one great impediment in the way. The very prize that both the American rulers and the Soviet bureaucracy are after - stability, class peace, maintenance of the status quo - is exactly what detente cannot produce for them. Along with the ebbing of American power, the second major factor facing the American rulers is the instability, the challenges to the status quo, the ceaseless turmoil of the world situation, the unpredictability of outbreaks. Who would have said several years ago that Portugal and Angola were next in line?
One example is the Middle East, has been able to stabilise the situation. Despite the collaboration of various Arab regimes from time to time, neither Washington nor Moscow can stop the struggle against the racist, colonial settler state of Israel; they cannot stop the class struggle. That is true throughout the region, not just at the current flash-points of Lebanon and the West Bank....
Another feature of the instability is its pervasiveness in the semi-colonial world, which has been devastated by the world recession. Here there seems to be one - and only stability that the American monopolists feel they can rely on. That is military dictatorships, the more ruthless the better. The most recent example was the Argentinian coup, while the murderous Pinochet regime in Chile remains the model.
not only in Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia but throughout sub-Saharan Africa, one now doubts that new impetus has been given to the struggle for national and social liberation. The American rulers had hoped they could stave it off for years, if not decades.
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An abridged article by Jack Barnes ( National Sec- retary of the Socialist Workers Party, USA) that first appeared in The Militant.