End

Gentlemen: I do not know--none of us can know--whether our involvement in Vietnam is going to end in such a way as to permit us to have another chance to construct foreign policy on the basis of concept. It is difficult to conceive, personally, of any outcome of our present efforts and approaches that would be less than disastrous.

But I have seen too much of international affairs to suppose that just because no favorable solution to a problem is visible or conceivable at a given moment, none will ever be found; and I am too well aware of my own tendency to pessimism to place full trust in my poor powers of analysis.

It remains my hope that if the Vietnam situation takes a turn that permits us once again to conduct our affairs on the basis of deliberate intention, rather than just yielding ourselves to be ship-sawed by the dynamics of a situation beyond our control, we will take up once more the quest for concept as a basis for national policy.

And I hope that when we do, what we will try to evolve is concept based on a modest unsparing view of ourselves; on a careful examination of our national interest, devoid of all utopian and universalistic pretentions; and on a sober, discriminating view of the world beyond our borders--a view that takes account of the element of relativity in all antagonisms and friendships, that sees in others neither angels nor devils--neither heroes nor blackguards; a concept, finally, which accepts it as our purpose not to abolish all violence and injustice from the workings of international society but to confine those inevitable concommitants of the human predicament to levels of intensity that do not threaten the very existence of civilization.

Resources

If concept could be based on these principles, if we could apply to its creation that enormous resources of intelligence and sincerity that do exist in this country, and if we could refine it and popularize it through the processes of rational discussion and debate on the efficacy of which, in reality, our whole political tradition is predicated, then I could see this country some day making, as it has never made to date, a contribution to world stability and to human progress commensurate with its commanding physical power. To one who has given a good part of his life to the problems of American foreign policy that, my friends, would be a wonderful day