National Strategy

Professor Huntington, welcome to Berkeley.

Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here.

I'll begin by asking you what is a national strategy, and how is it distinguished from military strategy?

National strategy, really, is the effort to put together all of the resources that might be available to a government -- economic, political, diplomatic, technological, as well as military -- and direct them to securing the government's objectives in a competition with another government. It differs from military strategy, clearly, in that military strategy is concerned only with the use of military resources.

One of the important other distinctions as far as the United States is concerned is that it is virtually impossible for us, based on our experience so far, to have anything remotely resembling a national strategy. We simply can't put it all together. Whereas I think we can have, in some sense, an overall military strategy.

Now, let me pin you down here. You're saying that we do worse than Marxist-Leninist totalitarian policies in this field, is that correct? We just can't muster it?

I don't think one wants to think that the Soviets have a beautifully worked out, grand, strategic plan of world conquest. They may; conceivably, in some place, in some safe in the Kremlin, there may be a document that says "Plan of World Conquest." But I don't think we have to take that terribly seriously in terms of an overall plan.

But it is quite clear that other types of governments are better able than we are to coordinate the various instruments of national strategy and foreign policy. Certainly, the Soviets are able to put together, because of the nature of their system, what they are doing in the propaganda field, their subversive activities and covert activities, which are very extensive, and put that together with their diplomacy and their military policy. And we've seen several examples of that recently, perhaps most notably in their efforts to influence European public opinion with respect, first of all, to the so-called neutron bomb, and then to the deployment of the intermediate-range missiles, where they had a very well coordinated campaign using all these resources. It would be almost impossible, I think, for us to do something similar.

Do we compare well with other democracies?

Well, not entirely, because if one looks at the British and the French, there, too, they have a long tradition of manipulating and directing and coordinating their activities in foreign affairs. In the Western European countries, as I'm sure Professor Seabury might want to comment on, there is the tradition of the state which pre-existed the development of democracy in those countries, and, hence, the idea that foreign policy, and defense, and military affairs are something apart. Parliamentary control over these activities in the European democracies is very, very slight compared to the way in which Congress and organs of public opinion in this country get involved with our foreign and military activities.

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