(5 of 5)
A. I think at the superpower level one has to believe and hope that the threat has for various reasons decreased. But I think the situation at the intermediate level requires a great deal of attention. There is an enormous arms flow to the developing world.
Q. When you started out at the U.N., it was considered to be a monument to idealism by many people. Did you get discouraged?
A. I don't think you could say that President Roosevelt, Mr. Churchill and Mr. Stalin were starry-eyed idealists. They had been through the fire of war. Did anybody really think in 1945 that every government would renounce the use of force in its relations with every other government, and agree to settle all disputes with peaceful means, and disarm? This was the aim. The U.N. Charter was a great beacon set on a hill, the great light toward which we were supposed to be working. We haven't had World War III. I don't see any reason to be downhearted. One should be frustrated, and certainly working in the U.N. was a great exercise in that. And one should be more determined than ever to keep after the basic objective.
Q. Your idealism is showing.
A. I am an idealist, I have to admit. I think human nature is self- interested. But there is such a thing as enlightened self-interest. The trick is to engage self-interest at the point where it touches other people's self- interest. Why shouldn't it be done on the international level, particularly when we have invented a way of putting an end to the whole experiment, by nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction. That is what the U.N. should be all about. I maintain that my idealism, which is based on some fairly rough experience, is a great deal more realistic than the totally defeatest notion that human beings are born to suffer and kill each other. If one believes that, one should go dig a deep hole and jump into it.