AMERICA'S GOALS
by Vice Admiral H. G. Rickover, USN
During the past two decades this country has been thrust into the middle of the Scientific Revolution, into leadership of the Free World, and into a race with totalitarianism for survival. In consequence, vast economic, social and political changes have come with dizzying speed, radically altering the world we live in. Certainties of the past are vanishing, leaving us temporarily unsure of ourselves, and worried at the direction we are taking. It is clearly time for us to pause and consider: What are our aims, our ideals, and our basic principles? And how well do our attitudes and institutions promote these aims and ideals?
We must keep in mind the distinction that exists between the aims of the American government in the constitutional sense -- that is, in its relations with the American people -- and the goals of America in its relations with other nations.
As the Declaration of Independence clearly shows, the colonies subscribed to the 18th century concept that governments are instituted solely for the purpose of safeguarding the God-given rights of the people, notably life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The preamble to the Constitution lists among its aims the securing of these "blessings of liberty" to future generations of Americans. And in submitting the draft of the Constitution to "the United States in Congress assembled," Washington explained the drafters had constantly kept in mind that consolidation of the union was a matter of "the greatest interest of every American," since upon it depended "our prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our national existence."
In contrast to the clear statement of the American government's domestic aims, we have only hints as to what role the Founding Fathers intended America to play in world affairs. Of course, they provided machinery to conduct foreign relations, declare and wage war, and make peace. And there is a clue in the Declaration of Independence itself, in which the colonies recognize that "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation" from the mother country. From this one concludes they wished the United States to conform to legal and moral concepts then current in the European family of nations. This has continued to be the precept for America's relations with other states.
We must admit that, until we rounded out our country, war for territorial expansion seemed to us legitimate; indeed, this attitude was shared by all nations. Today, however, we cannot conceive a war to gain more land, nor even a war to help other nations achieve our form of government, as the Hungarian example shows.
Theoretically, of course, every independent nation has a free choice of adopting either peaceful or warlike aims. That is, it may choose to live in neighborliness with other nations, laying claim neither to the land nor the minds of alien peoples, settling disputes by conciliation and arbitration, keeping promises made in treaties, fighting only in self-defense. Or it may choose a policy of conquest. A policy of conquest creates a state of cold war where treaties are honored only when necessary or convenient and the danger is ever present that mistrust and fear will unleash outright war.
Hydrogen bombs are so destructive that a national policy leading to war has become wholly irrational. Since the majority of men are sane, modern democracies cannot make conquest a national goal. It is otherwise when nations are governed by a single absolute ruler or a small all-powerful group. The
spectacle of land-rich totalitarian powers sacrificing generations of their people to the insane objective of world conquest suggests that Acton's famed dictum needs amplification. "All power corrupts," he said, "and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Such power also appears to destroy reason.
Though senseless, the totalitarian nations pursue their aim of world conquest with more forceful action than we pursue our own peace objective. The contrast points up a weakness that often prevents a democratic nation from achieving its aims.
It has been relatively easy for us to agree on peace and neighborliness as America's purpose; we have even come to recognize that we no longer can choose between isolation or involvement in world affairs. Modern technology has changed the seas, once our protective ramparts, into smooth avenues for silent and deadly assault. All nations now share the same vulnerability to surprise attack; no nation pursuing peaceful aims can now remain in isolation. The United States needs friends, allies and bases, and secure lines of supply for essential raw materials. Whether we like it or not, we are at the center of the world stage.
We have been catapulted into this position so quickly that some of our attitudes and ways of thinking lag behind our altered circumstances. We have indeed accepted world involvement, but we do not seem to understand fully that such involvement directly affects our personal lives; that to provide our country with needed strength we must give up some of our individual freedoms, and make other sacrifices as well.
Traditionally, our aim has been to keep government as weak as possible, lest it compel us to surrender individual or group interests when such surrender may not be necessary for the common good. Today we must recognize that in one sphere -- America's relations with the outside world -- we cannot
afford to keep the nation weak; no private or group interest must claim precedence over the need to strengthen the technological, economic, military, and political power of the United States. To keep the nation strong, to make it even stronger than it is now, has become a national interest we all share, for on it depends our survival as a free nation and a free people.
The principal material foundations for a nation's position in the world are three: land and mineral resources, size of population, and levels of technology. In population and natural resources we are slightly poorer than Soviet Russia; consequently, relative levels of technology decisively affect the issue whether Russia's policy of world conquest or our policy of peaceful neighborliness is to prevail.
Since a nation's level of technology is directly related to the educational levels of its people, it follows that having an excellent system of public education has now become a paramount national interest. When the Constitution was framed, none of the Founding Fathers except Jefferson seem to have thought of education as vital; the word is not even mentioned in the Constitution. The altered circumstances of our day now make a good system of public education essential to national survival. Every community where the schools dispense mediocre life-adjustment training, where children are not taught to understand the world they must live in, constitutes a dangerous focus of infection, scattering across the land uneducated citizens who are ill-prepared for their civic duties.
There are other areas where it has become necessary to narrow the scope of individual and group interests, lest this country find itself unable to survive. The world of nation states is no longer the relatively law-abiding family of nations it was when we joined it in the late 18th century. It is a jungle,
where half the world lives under rulers who acknowledge neither international law nor international comity. If we are to achieve our national goals in such a jungle world, we must put as much effort into making this nation militarily strong as do the aggressors -- more, in fact; for we must guard against surprise attack, whereas the aggressors are protected by our peace policy.
In part, uneasiness about our national purpose springs from uncertainty as to what is required to make it prevail. We are uncertain, for example, about the areas in which the national interest must take precedence over any other interest. Some people believe it would be wrong to divest an American of his citizenship because he fled his country to evade the draft. Some would even have us continue military pay for traitors who went over to the other side in Korea. To such people no national interest must ever take precedence over individual liberties and rights, which they interpret in the broadest manner.
I suggest we might have less trouble agreeing on positive action to support America's purpose in the world if we made a clear distinction in every case between these three "interests": national interest in making America strong enough so the United States can have a purpose in the world; community interest, centered on "establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquility, and promoting the general welfare;" and individual interest in the widest possible definition of the guarantees contained in the first Ten Amendments.
Of these interests, the first must always prevail; it is the only one shared by all citizens. In this time of peril we must realize that our private lives are interwoven with national interests. We would all lose our liberties -- and many of us would lose our lives -- if this nation, being denied the strength it needs, lost the race with totalitarianism. Many people foolishly believe that we can survive as a second-rate power. They would rather take a chance on being second rate than make the sacrifices that would keep us ahead. The truth
is we cannot survive unless the United States is at least equal in power to our adversary.
What seems to prevent our seeing clearly where paramount national interest lies is our imperfect self-identification with this country. Sovereignty resides in us, for we are self-governing citizens; obviously then, in all matters affecting the fate of the nation, we are America. Such identification is harder to achieve in a democracy than in an old dynastic state, where a wealth of shared experiences -- good and bad, glorious and humiliating -- tie the people together as in a national family. It also comes harder to nomadic people like ourselves than it does to people who remain for generations in one spot, for close association with a particular locality nourishes the deep love of homeland that underlies true patriotism.
Yet we must develop this close identification with our country if we wish it to achieve its aims in the world. Perhaps we know this subconsciously, as our habit of personalizing nations seems to indicate. We say England agrees, France concedes, the United States proposes. This conveys a picture of millions of people confronting one another and with a single voice agreeing, conceding, or proposing.
This habit originated in Europe at a time when king and country were in fact and in law one and the same; when princes ruled "by the Grace of God," and owned land and people as if these were private possessions. Shakespeare has his royal personages addressing one another by the names of their countries. "Right joyous are we to behold your face, Most worthy Brother England," -- so Charles VI greets Henry V in the great reconciliation scene after the Battle of Agincourt, in 1415. A hundred and fifty years later, king and people were still so closely identified that men were expected to profess the same faith
as their rulers -- cuius regio eius religio was an accepted principle. It seemed a tolerant compromise when the Catholic and Protestant princes temporarily ended their incessant religious war at Augsburg in 1555, by allowing a man to emigrate if he could not bring himself to change his religion with every dynastic upheaval.
The revolutionary ideas that toppled absolutism and brought democracy also led by another road to modern totalitarianism and a return of personal absolutism. Today it would suit political realities if, like the monarchs of old, Khrushchev and Mao addressed one another as "China" and "Russia".
We are fortunate in not being burdened with the class distinctions a feudal past bequeaths, but we lack the strong sense of national unity a dynastic past hands down. History has not prepared us for the close identification of citizen with nation, through which alone America can achieve its aims in the world.
Consider, for example, how different was the origin of the United States from that of England:
Modern England is an Anglo-Norman state that came into being through conquest of its Anglo-Saxon people by a Norman prince. Crossing the Channel at the head of his army, William the Conqueror acquired a kingdom by winning a single battle. Since the defeated outnumbered the invaders and were in all respects equal to them, amalgamation soon began and produced the English people; the conquest thus made no complete break with England's past.
The United States, too, had its origin in conquest by invaders, coming from across the water and appropriating land from people who had lived here for a long time. But few of the natives amalgamated with the invaders. Their Stone Age culture made too great a gap. They were soon outnumbered and in