II

These burdens and frustrations are accepted by most Americans with maturity and understanding. They may long for the days when war meant charging up San Juan Hill, or when our isolation was guarded by two oceans, or when the atomic bomb was ours alone, or when much of the industrialized world depended upon our resources and our aid. But they now know that those days are gone and that gone with them are the old policies and the old complacencies. And they know, too, that we must make the best of our new problems and our new opportunities, whatever the risk and the cost.

But there are others who cannot bear the burden of a long twilight struggle. They lack confidence in our longrun capacity to survive and succeed. Hating communism, yet they see communism in the long run, perhaps, as the wave of the future. And they want some quick and easy and final and cheap solution-now.

There are two groups of these frustrated citizens, far apart in their views yet very much alike in their approach. On the one hand are those who urge upon us what I regard to be the pathway of surrenderappeasing our enemies, compromising our commitments, purchasing peace at any price, disavowing our arms, our friends, our obligations. If their view had prevailed the world of free choice would be smaller today.

On the other hand are those who urge upon us what I regard to be the pathway of war: equating negotiations with appeasement and substituting rigidity for firmness. If their view had prevailed we would be at war today, and in more than one place.

It is a curious fact that each of these extreme opposites resembles the other. Each believes that we have only two choices: appeasement or war, suicide or surrender, humiliation or holocaust, to be either Red or dead. Each side sees only "hard" and "soft" nations, hard and soft policies, hard and soft men. Each believes that any departure from its own course inevitably leads to the other: one group believes that any peaceful solution means appeasement; the other believes that any arms buildup means war. One group regards everyone else as warmongers; the other regards everyone else as appeasers. Neither side admits its path will lead to disaster, but neither can tell us how or where to draw the line once we descend the slippery slopes of appeasement or constant intervention.

In short, while both extremes profess to be the true realists of our time, neither could be more unrealistic. While both claim to be doing the Nation a service, they could do it no greater disservice. For this kind of talk and easy solution to difficult problems, if believed, could inspire a lack of confidence among our people when they must allabove all else be united in recognizing the long and difficult days that lie ahead. It could inspire uncertainty among our allies when above all else they must be confident in us. And even more dangerously, it could, if believed, inspire doubt among our adversaries when they must above all be convinced that we will defend our vital interests. The essential fact that both of these groups fail to grasp is that di

plomacy and defense are not substitutes for one another. Either alone would fail. A willingness to resist force, unaccompanied by a willingness to talk, could provoke belligerence-while a willingness to talk, unaccompanied by a willingness to resist force, could invite disaster.

III

But as long as we know what comprises our vital interests and our long-range goals, we have nothing to fear from negotiations at the appropriate time and nothing to gain by refusing to play a part in them. At a time when a single clash could escalate overnight into a holocaust of mushroom clouds, a great power does not prove its firmness by leaving the task of exploring the other's intentions to sentries or those without full responsibility. Nor can ultimate weapons rightfully be employed, or the ultimate sacrifice rightfully demanded of our citizens, until every reasonable solution has been explored. "How many wars," Winston Churchill has written, "have been averted by patience and persisting good will! . . . How many wars have been precipitated by firebrands!" 94

If vital interests under duress can be preserved by peaceful means, negotiations will find that out. If our adversary will accept nothing less than a concession of our rights, negotiations will find that out. And if negotiations are to take place, this nation cannot abdicate to its adversaries the task of choosing the forum and the framework and the time.

For there are carefully defined limits within which any serious negotiations must take place. With respect to any future talks on Germany and Berlin, for example, we cannot, on the one hand, confine our proposals to a list of concessions we are willing to make, nor can we, on the other hand, advance any proposals which compromise the security of free Germans and West Berliners or endanger their ties with the West.

No one should be under the illusion that negotiations for the sake of negotiations always advance the cause of peace. If for lack of preparation they break up in bitterness, the prospects of peace have been endangered. If they are made a forum for propaganda or a cover for aggression, the processes of peace have been abused.

But it is a test of our national maturity to accept the fact that negotiations are not a contest spelling victory or defeat. They may succeed; they may fail. They are likely to be successful only if both sides reach an agreement which both regard as preferable to the status quo-an agreement in which each side can consider its own situation can be improved. And this is most difficult to obtain.

IV

But, while we shall negotiate freely, we shall not negotiate freedom. Our answer to the classic question of Patrick Henry is still "No." Life is not so dear and peace is not so precious ". . . as to be purchased at

"The Second World War The Gathering Storm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), p. 320.

the price of chains and slavery." And that is our answer even though, for the first time since the ancient battles between Greek city-states, war entails the threat of total annihilation, of everything we know, of society itself. For to save mankind's future freedom we must face up to any risk that is necessary. We will always seek peace-but we will never surrender.

In short, we are neither "warmongers" nor "appeasers," neither "hard" nor "soft." We are Americans, determined to defend the frontiers of freedom by an honorable peace if peace is possible, but by arms if arms are used against us.

And if we are to move forward in that spirit, we shall need all the calm and thoughtful citizens that this great university can produce, all the light they can shed, all the wisdom they can bring to bear. It is customary, both here and around the world, to regard life in the United States as easy. Our advantages are many. But more than any other people on earth, we bear burdens and accept risks unprecedented in their size and their duration, not for ourselves alone but for all who wish to be free. No other generation of free men in any country has ever faced so many and such difficult challenges-not even those who lived in the days when this university was founded in 1861.

This nation was then torn by war. This territory had only the simplest elements of civilization. And this city had barely begun to function. But a university was one of their earliest thoughts, and they summed it up in the motto that they adopted: "Let there be light." What more can be said today regarding all the dark and tangled problems we face than: Let there be light. And to accomplish that illumination the University of Washington shall still hold high the

torch.

10. "WE ARE TAKING OUR PART IN THE SHAPING OF HISTORY": Address by the Secretary of State (Rusk) Before the American Historical Association, Washington, December 30, 1961 95

I accepted your invitation to speak on this occasion with genuine satisfaction but with an appreciation of the exacting demands imposed by the nature of my audience. Indeed, I find myself with an assignment which you yourselves have set, more particularly in the excellent presidential address delivered by Professor Bemis [Samuel Flagg Bemis, president of the American Historical Association] last evening 96-an address notable both for its lucid review of the course we have traveled and for the sharpness and relevance of the questions it posed for us today.

95

The community of historians and a Secretary of State are linked by

Department of State press release No. 917, Dec. 29, 1961 (text as printed in the Department of State Bulletin, Jan. 15, 1962, pp. 83–88).

96 Text in The American Historical Review, vol. LXVII, No. 2, Jan. 1962, pp. 291-305.

a common task-that of finding and articulating the scarlet threads of meaning and direction in the flow of tumultuous events. Their approach may differ both in time and in purpose because of their differing responsibilities. What to the historian becomes a swirling blizzard of papers is for a Secretary of State an unrelenting parade of precise day-to-day business. The historian has a slight advantage in that he knows a bit more about how the story came out; a Secretary has the stimulation which comes from a commitment, as the President's adviser, to try to shape the story toward a tolerable conclusion.

Both historian and Secretary must wrestle with the problem of complexity, each in his own way. At no point in our history has this been more exigent than now, and it would be naive to hope that we are moving toward simplicity. It was not until 1823 that John Quincy Adams established our tenth diplomatic mission abroad, not until a century later that Charles Evans Hughes established our fiftieth, and only 40 years later that Christian Herter established our hundredth. fore World War II less than 10 capitals disposed of the foreign relations of the vast continent of Africa; today the number is over 30. With 104 members in the United Nations and approximately 100 items on the agenda of the recent General Assembly, some 10,000 primary votes were cast in which the United States had a larger or lesser interest. Our missions in a number of capitals exchange some 10,000 telegrams with the Department in the course of a year. How grateful we become to those capitals which are never responsible for a telephone call past midnight! When Thomas Jefferson or John Marshall bade Godspeed to an American ambassador departing for his post, they knew that it might be months before they would hear from him again. How tempting it now is to say to his modern colleague, "If I don't hear from you for the first year, you would please me very much."

There is a widespread illusion that modern communications have degraded the role of the ambassador-that cable, telephone, and radio have made him merely the messenger boy of impulses from his capital. The trouble with this notion is that it overlooks the breathtaking acceleration of the flow of events, brought about largely by these same communications and the latest modes of travel and transport. The man on the spot is more just exactly that than ever before, and every week brings instances of the critical responsibility of the ambassador abroad.

This question of pace is perhaps more difficult for a Secretary than for the historian, who can make certain choices. For a Secretary lives with the spurs of time upon him. His is not the luxury of a leisurely conclusion but the pressures of inescapable decisions, for he knows that both action and inaction are decisions where the United States is concerned. He is conscious of the decisions made, but he is haunted by the limitless possibilities of the decisions which are taken by not being made the decisions which tantalize and often escape the view of the historian.

It occurred to me that it would be appropriate for me to comment

on the larger issues of contemporary history posed at the close of Professor Bemis's address and to relate these to my daily tasks.

First is this searching question: Does our comfortable democracy have the nerve and will to protect its essential interests and the frontiers of freedom in the face of potential enemies who command nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver them against our homeland?

This is not a rhetorical issue, and we must clearly understand its grim reality. There are several paths to nuclear war. It could happen if one side or the other deliberately sets out to provoke one. I am inclined to believe that the irrationality of such a course makes it relatively unlikely. Another would be a situation in which two sides confront each other, each utterly convinced that under no circumstances would the other resort to nuclear war, each therefore tempted to press its demands across the threshold of disaster. A third path lies in simple confusion about essential interests, misapprehensions about the tolerable limits of conduct.

We confront a direct challenge, in Berlin, to the vital interests of the United States and the West. The challenge takes the form of the assertion that our presence there, on the basis of well-established rights, and access to Berlin from the West, can be radically altered or extinguished by the unilateral act of the other side and that this act would require us to petition the authorities in East Germany for the privilege of maintaining the freedom of West Berlin.

Before the President spoke to the American people on July 25th,97 he and other Western leaders decided that vital interests and commitments in West Berlin, crucial to our own security, must be defended at whatever cost. That decision remains the basis on which we intend to explore the possibilities of a peaceful resolution of the Berlin crisis. If peace depends on clarity, the other side must not be allowed any dangerous illusion.

This clarity is the basis of an assurance to our own and other peoples that the possibilities of patient diplomacy will be exhausted to insure that vital interests are protected and that the other side will not be permitted to make a fatal mistake. We regard it as essential that our negotiators-wherever they may sit-work with measured confidence, knowing that behind them there exist well-balanced, flexible, and highly mobile military strength and a government and people prepared to use that strength if vital interests are threatened. Since George Washington first enjoined the American people to recognize a connection between the maintenance of adequate military strength and the maintenance of the peace, our history has underlined that the danger of war is greatest when potential enemies are in doubt about the capacity of nations to defend their vital interests, about their will to defend them, or about how they define those vital interests. All three of those conditions for a peaceful resolution of differences are heightened in a world where the use of nuclear weapons may quickly come into play once conflict begins at any level.

от See post, doc. 242.