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Though Japan and China are bound to play a growing role, for a long time to come the position of the U.S. and the Soviet Union as the world's two nuclear supernations will remain intact. Widely held ideas that emergent or neutralist nations can "soften" or replace the two-power role have proved illusory, as even India learned when Peking's 1962 strikes across the northern mountains brought Indian pleas for military aid from any quarter. East-West ideological battles are bound to continue, though perhaps in abated form, and so will jockeying for political and military advantage. But the two superpowers will carry on laborious negotiations: the Berlin meetings, the SALT talks and the anticipated discussions of mutual force reductions in Europe are examples. This delicate diplomatic work is not helped by Senate efforts to mandate U.S. troop reductions in Europe—or by a hard-nosed presidential response that finds "unacceptable" even a congressional request that negotiations be speeded up.
Most Americans, including most Congressmen, want to prevent American entanglement in future Indochinas. To accomplish that, it is not necessary—or wise—to impose overly stringent and sweeping limitations on U.S. influence abroad. But the nature of that influence must evolve in new ways. Viet Nam should teach us—as it did the French —that modern armies and industrial strength are not effective in all regions of the world or the automatic answer to wars of "national liberation" (even those backed by other nations). Both Congress and the President should jointly re-examine the security treaties and agreements that now bind the U.S. to more than 40 countries.
Many of these "commitments" are more apparent than real, since they cannot be carried out without the approval of Congress. The purpose of these agreements, as the late Senator Walter George once noted, was to deter potential aggressors "from reckless conduct by a clear-cut declaration of our intentions." Often it has been shown that intentions cannot be made all that clear—resulting in misunderstanding by friend and foe alike.
Rather than bog the nation down in the cement of firm treaties, President and Congress might explore less formal but more flexible commitments in the form of diplomatic notes or presidential statements.