(Non-i/v talk)

HK: I think the Cold War ended in considerable part because of American foreign policy. American foreign policy rallied the democracies, it created the alliances which contained the Soviet Union, it prevented Soviet expansion, it restored Europe and some countries of Asia; and with all its failings, it was American idealism and American dedication which provided the structure for the specific policies, the composite of which ended the Cold War.

HK: The object of United States foreign policy today is the big issue we are facing. In the Cold War period it was really an application of traditional American convictions; that is to say, it was the application of the New Deal and our experiences in two world wars to a global scene. The New Deal taught us that if you narrow the disparity between social classes, social stability will occur. And at least... particularly the Second World War taught us - "taught" in quotation marks - that resisting aggression was the preeminent goal of American foreign policy, and that more or less was adequate to the conditions of that period. At the present time we have this dilemma: American foreign policy without idealism is inconceivable, because this is what America has represented to itself in that society of people who turned their back on Europe and settled here on the basis of conviction. On the other hand, we do not have a clear-cut ideological enemy, and we are now no longer able to present foreign policy to ourselves as a series of solutions to specific problems. Whether we like it or not - and many don't like it - we are now part of the system, which means there's no exit, that every solution is an admissions ticket to another problem. And it's something that Europeans and Chinese have no difficulty at all - it doesn't even have to explained to them - but for Americans it evokes great rebellion, and it therefore is obviously believed that there is something out there, and now they're sort of looking for an enemy in China or somewhere, a rallying principle of policy that can be given a terminal date. This is our big challenge right now, whether we can marry American idealism to some degree of . We keep talking about "world order" - there is no world order as such now. Any international system represents some system of order in some abstract sense, but the world of the Eighties has been totally transformed in the Nineties, and at the end of it some order will emerge, in the sense of some principles by which disputes get settled - or not settled. But we are not there yet, and we don't have a precise blueprint and we can't have a precise blueprint.

HK: No, no...

HK: I would say... my conviction is that... the tough decisions in foreign policy are all 51-49; they're not self-evident. And the American dream is that they're self-evident and that they can be carried out. When... if you carry out 51-49 decisions, first of all you have to understand what is 49 and what is 51. Secondly, you need, however, a certain degree of strength and moral convictions to guide yourself through these complexities. Franklin Roosevelt got us into war between 1937 and '41 almost alone, in a very complicated situation, because he had the conviction, that he expressed in '37, that aggressors had to be quarantined. So the difference between me and the critics believe that you can use ethics like a sort of set of recipes that give you precise guidance to day-to-day policy. I think morality gives you the inward assurance to act in difficult situations and to give you the ultimate goal. And I believe - not because I think so - that the world into which America has been projected, where we are very powerful but not all-powerful, requires us to have a more modest perception of what we can implement immediately.

(End)