American Policy towards the Soviet Union in the 1980s: Objectives and Uncertainties
Anyone who is reckless enough to accept as impossible an assignment as to write on the goals and uncertainties of American policy towards the Soviet Union in the 1980s should at least — to use one of Secretary Haig’s contributions to political discourse — caveat his answers in so many ways that the caveats risk filling the whole of the Paper. This is even more so when the writer, aware of his own characteristics, has to top it all with a caveat about his caveats.
The Politburo's Management of Its America Problem.
Abstract : This report draws on the record of Soviet leadership behavior in many areas over the last decade to analyze Soviet assumptions about the relationship with the United States. In most cases the Politburo assumes its interests are incompatible with those of the United States and believes it cannot improve or even defend its geopolitical position unless the American position is further weakened. The Politburo expects lasting struggle with its central antagonist whatever the momentary temperature of the bilateral relationship. It sees itself as defending recent net gains over the United States in the 'correlation of forces,' which the United States is now trying to undo. Present Soviet policy continues a trend of expanding Soviet influence at U.S. expense since the late 1960s not interrupted by the detente. The Politburo is determined to isolate its external ambitions from the effects of serious Soviet and Soviet-bloc internal difficulties. (Author)
The ethics of major American foreign policies
The theologian Reinhold Neibuhr oftentimes warned that moralists who entered the foreign policy sphere were likely to be more destructive of a nation's ideals than were cynical realists. Evidently he feared that those who lacked a sense of the limits of foreign policy would proceed as if the values and goods which were attainable in the more intimate communities of the family, the locality and the nation were attainable in the international community as well. Whatever Neibuhr's quarrels and debates with classical Greek thought, he was at one with Plato and Aristotle and their present day followers in believing that justice could be more effectively pursued by the smaller communities, such as the city states. He insisted on a recognition of the differences between such communities and the major present day world powers. From World War II until his death, he wrote more about foreign policy than any other aspect of public policy. He wrote scores of articles, some published in less prominent journals, about American foreign policy and its moral basis.