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Rather we−like all other nations in history−must now conduct diplomacy with subtlety, flexibility, persistence and imagination. We must fuse our great national assets of idealism and realism, our moral convictions and our pragmatic bent. We can no longer impose our own solutions; yet our action or inaction will influence events, often decisively. We cannot banish power from international affairs, but we can use our vast power wisely and firmly to deter aggression and encourage restraint and negotiation. We can help construct a wider community of interest among all nations. We must continue to stand for freedom in the world.
These are worthy goals. They can be achieved. But they summon a different dimension of moral conviction than that of a simpler past. They require the stamina to persevere amid ambiguity, and the courage to hold fast to what we believe in while recognizing that at any one time our hopes are likely to be only gradually fulfilled. It is the essence of moral purposes that they appear absolute and universal. It is the essence of foreign policy to take into account the views of others who may also see their values in this manner.
Clearly, we must maintain our purposes and our principles. But we risk disaster unless we relate our moral convictions to concepts of the national interest and international order that are based not on impulse but on a sense of steady purpose that can be maintained by the American people for the long term.
AMERICA'S AGENDA
America−and the community of nations−today faces inescapable tasks:
¶ We must maintain a secure and just peace. ¶ We must create a cooperative and beneficial international order. ¶ We must defend the rights and the dignity of man.
Each of these challenges has both a moral and a practical dimension. Each involves important ends, but ends that are sometimes in conflict. When that is the case, we face the real moral dilemma of foreign policy: the need to choose between valid ends and to relate our ends to means.
Peace is a fundamental moral imperative. Without it, nothing else we do or seek can ultimately have meaning. Averting the danger of nuclear war and limiting and ultimately reducing destructive nuclear arsenals is a moral as well as a political act.
In the nuclear age, power politics, the struggle for marginal advantages, the drive for prestige and unilateral gains must yield to an unprecedented sense of responsibility. History teaches us that balances based on constant tests of strength have always erupted into war. Common sense tells us that in the nuclear age history must not be repeated. Every President, sooner or later, will conclude with President Eisenhower that "there is no alternative to peace." But peace cannot be our only goal. To seek it at any price would render us morally defenseless and place the world at the mercy of the most ruthless. Mankind must do more, as Tacitus said, than "make a desert [and] call it peace."
There will be no security in a world whose obsession with peace leads to appeasement. But neither will there be security in a world in which mock tough rhetoric and the accumulation of arms are the sole measure of competition. We can spare no effort to bequeath to future generations a peace more hopeful than an equilibrium of terror.