Showing papers in "Foreign Affairs in 1968"

The Bases of Accommodation

Abstract: A VIABLE political settlement in South Viet Nam will re flect and give some legitimacy to the balance of political, ' military and social forces produced by a decade of internal conflict and five years of large-scale warfare. A successful settle ment can also inaugurate a process of political accommodation through which the various elements of Vietnamese society may eventually be brought together into a functioning polity. Amer ican objectives and American expectations of what can be achieved at the conference table and on the battlefield should, correspondingly, be based on the realities of power and the oppor tunities for accommodation. Much of the discussion of Viet Nam in the United States, how ever, has been couched in terms of stereotypes and slogans which have little relation to the political forces and social trends in Vietnamese society. Critics of the Administration often tend to glorify the Viet Cong and the National Liberation Front and to magnify the extent of their support. They see the war as a popular uprising against a military-landlord oligarchy dependent upon foreign military support. Hence they see little need for, or basis for, accommodation: if the United States withdrew, it is held, the Saigon r?gime would quickly collapse, and a new, broadly representative government would come to power under the lead ership of the NLF but drawing support from Buddhists, workers, students and other groups. Spokesmen for the Administration, on the other hand, have in the past underrated the strength of the Viet Cong and have as cribed to the Saigon Government a popularity which had as little basis in fact as that which the critics attributed to the NLF. They have bolstered their case with statistics on kill rates, infiltration rates, chieu hoi (defection) rates, hamlet pacification categories and voting turnouts. These figures may be reasonably accurate but they are also often irrelevant to the conclusions which they are adduced to support. At times key figures in the Administra tion have made statements which at least seemed to predict the imminent collapse of the Viet Cong. The misplaced moralism of the critics has thus confronted the unwarranted optimism of the advocates.

The Arab-Israeli War

Abstract: THE recent Six Day War in the Middle East grew out of the sterile confrontation to which the peoples of the region had committed themselves over the past twenty years. Both parties had frequently proclaimed their intention to go to war under certain circumstances. It seems unlikely, however, that any of them plotted and planned war for 1967. It seems more likely that they blundered into it. Both sides might on many occasions have moved to end their confrontation by compromise, but this neither side showed the slightest willingness to do. The Israelis, feeling themselves be leaguered by fifty million hostile neighbors, acutely conscious of the recent fate of six million Jews in Europe, believed any signifi cant concession would merely whet insatiable Arab appetites and start Israel down the slippery slope to extinction. The Arabs, looking upon the establishment of Israel as the latest in a series of imperialist occupations of their homeland, of which the presence of a million Palestine refugees was a constant reminder, found it emotionally and politically impossible to accept Israel as a perma nent fact of life or to forego harassing it and conspiring against it. This common intolerance and mutual harassment had brought on war in 1956. It is pertinent to note that, in his "Diary of the Sinai Campaign" published in 1966, General Dayan wrote that the three major objects of that campaign from the Israeli point of view were "freedom of shipping for Israeli vessels in the Gulf of Aqaba; an end to the Feydayen terrorism; and a neutraliza tion of the threat of attack on Israel by the joint Egypt-Syria Jordan military command." With slight variations, these were the issues that brought on war again eleven years later.

Friends and neighbors

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The Political Economics of International Money

Abstract: ISS Prism, instructing Cecily Cardew to read her Politi cal Economy, added a warning to omit the chapter on the Fall of the Rupee: "It is somewhat too sensational. Even these metallic problems have their melodramatic side." And so they do; but my story will not do it justice. I believe that the story of international money, and of our own balance of pay ments, allows no place for villains and little, even, for fools. To be specific: my contention is that the difficulties which we have faced in international finance have not been the result of American wickedness or irresponsibility or foolishness, or, indeed, of the wickedness of mythical short men in Zurich or mystical tall men in Paris.

Who will control the seabed

Abstract: the middle of the last century when the first scientific deep-sea surveys were undertaken. The Challenger expedition nearly a hundred years ago discovered the existence of phosphorite and manganese dioxide concretions on the ocean floor, but these remained of purely scientific interest for many years. Although offshore mining of petroleum dates from 1899 and although un dersea deposits of hard minerals, such as iron or coal, were mined even before the turn of the century by driving shafts and tunnels from the adjoining land, the seabed and its subsoil did not ac quire much economic significance until after the Second World War. Even then, political, economic and legal interest was con fined to the land underlying the shallow waters of the continental shelf; virtually the only practical use of the land underlying deeper waters was considered to be as a support for submarine pipes and cables. As late as 1956 it was possible for the Inter national Law Commission to state with regard to the ocean floor that "apart from the case of the exploitation or exploration of the soil or subsoil of a continental shelf .. . such exploitation had not yet assumed sufficient practical importance to justify special regulation." The last few years, however, have witnessed a spectacular change in attitudes. On the one hand, there has been an increas ing realization of the importance of ocean resources to man's future; and on the other, rapid technological progress has re sulted in the discovery of vast mineral resources on and under the ocean floor and has made these resources accessible and ex ploitable for a variety of purposes. Until comparatively recently man relied on the weighted line and laborious dredging for his knowledge of the seabed. We now have underwater photography and television, the echo-sounder and a variety of sophisticated seismic and other devices, such as scanning sonar, which can conveniently provide us with a precise image of the ocean floor and some indication of its geological structure. Thus man has probably been able to acquire more knowledge about the deep

Taking the Monetary Initiative

Abstract: A WORLD economy must be managed (de facto or de jure) by a mix of national dominance and international policy L coordination. As the dominance of the United States shrank over the past decade?in fact if not in the consciousness of all U.S. policy-makers?some degree of integration of policy became necessary, at least among the major nations. The alterna tive was to risk the benefits of international intercourse by revert ing to uncoordinated exercise of autonomous national policies. The realization of this need, however, was fostered only by crises, such as the London gold flurry in i960, the convulsions surrounding exchange-rate changes of major currencies in 1961 and 1967, increasing concern about the gold convertibility of the dollar, and most recently by the gold rushes of late 1967 and early 1968. Despite the successive deepening of these perturbations, policy integration progressed far enough each time only to satisfy the decision-makers that they could now avoid repetition of the previous outburst. The plans of the central bankers, like those of the generals, were usually directed to the last battle. It is the thesis of this article that fundamental decisions are needed to

How India Is Tackling Her Population Problem

Abstract: The Health Minister of India discusses the status of family planning in his country The 1968 birth and death rates were 41/1000 per year and 16/1000 per year respectively Life expectancy increased from 32 years in 1950 to 51 years in 1968 The governments objective is to reduce the birth rate to 25/1000 per year as soon as possible 90 million couples in the reproductive age group are the target couples The 4 methods of contraception advocated and made available for mass consumption are sterilization (vasectomy or tubectomy) IUD condom and pill Factors favoring family planning efforts include the support of Mrs Indira Gandhi operation of Primary Health Centers lack of objection from Indian religions and international assistance Unfavorable factors include complaints that religion ratios are altering; bureaucracy; cultural resistance; and the weight of tradition apathy and inertia Proposals which will go before Parliament include efforts to raise the age of marriage consent for girls (presently 15) and abortion liberalization

The Coalescing Problem of Southern Africa

Abstract: THE southern segment of the African continent includes: Angola and Mozambique, two vast Portuguese colonies whose peoples are in revolt; Rhodesia, a British possession whose government is in rebellion; the Republic of South Africa, officially committed to a racist ideology; and the international Territory of South West Africa, illegally occupied by the neigh boring Republic. These diverse lands share a common attribute, which is both unique and menacing: domination by white mi norities of black populations many times their number. To the north, newly liberated nations are groping toward a ful filment of freedom which they regard as the promise of history. The southern area, however, is besieged from within and without by demands for an equal chance and a free choice, conditions ac cepted everywhere else in the world as normal objectives of the social order. Southern Africa sometimes is depicted as a bastion of culture and progress. It is, to the contrary, the last refuge of a twisted concept of the relationship between the individual and society, one which allots opportunities and burdens according to the accident of race. When demands for equality are pressed by those who are of the same race as their rulers, the consequences can be violent enough, as the colonial revolutions in our own hemisphere made clear. But the use of discrimination and colonial exploitation to further the interests of a dominant racial group multiplies the dangers, both to the area of repression and to the wider community of nations. Enforcement of a deeply resented status quo of racial or colonial privilege undermines the processes by which societies normally effect just change. When aspiration and dissent are denied a peaceful outlet, they generate volcanic forces which erupt into brutal and protracted struggles. In such societies, time runs toward chaos. Racial discrimination, moreover, arouses emotions of anxiety and involvement on the part of all those, everywhere, who have known, or who fear, a similar experience. Combined with a uni versal tendency to correlate color with poverty, racial tensions infect the open wounds of a world divided between the many