A New Consensus for the Nuclear Age

The following excerpts are from the advance text for the third and final Godkin lecture, delivered Thursday night by Chester Bowles. Reprinted by permission of the publishers from Chester Bowles, American Politics in a Revolutionary World, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Copyright, 1956, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

III

The Fourth Consensus?

I have sketched a general view of American political growth, and examined in some detail the application of that view to the most recent period of our history. Let us now consider its implications for the future.

Let me emphasize again that I make no claim for the exclusive truth of this approach. Yet it seems to me especially useful for the light it throws on the problems and frustrations of the intelligent citizen in contemporary politics, whether he is a Democrat or a Republican and whether he considers himself a liberal or a conservative.

Spread of Apathy

To note the spread of political apathy and to lament it has become commonplace. This lack of deeply felt political commitment reflects to a large degree, I believe, the broad areas of agreement on major issues, which we have just examined. The more fully we recognize and accept that consensus, the more difficult it is to tackle the remaining differences with the zeal and the energy which our democratic tradition seems to demand.

During the presidential campaign of 1956, in the area of domestic policy both parties will undoubtedly support with every evidence of enthusiasm a federal school aid program, a federal highway program, expended social security, further slum clearance, a balanced budget, adequate military defense, the wise development of our natural resources, civil rights, and improved assistance for our farmers. They will disagree at least, only on the magnitude of these programs, the speed with which they are implemented, and the manner of their administration.

Strange Preoccupation

Some highly important questions will be involved here on which many of us hold strong opinions. But in the large prespective of history, our preoccupation with these issues in the crucial year 1956 may seem even more strange than the forgotten arguments that divided us in the election of 1928, when the nation was balanced unwrittingly on the verge of economic collapse and the parties stood on the brink of a political revolution.

There is little doubt that lurking some-where outside the present area of political consensus are perhaps the most formidable questions in the history of man, questions involving not only the nature of life on this earth, but even its continued existence. A brief review of the forces which are now formulating these questions suggests the scope of the challenge:

In a single decade the nationalist wave in Asia and Africa has created sixteen newly independent nations, with a total population of more than 700 million people, one third of mankind.

In Africa, the last colonial areas under European control are sorely troubled with political unrest and racial tension.

China, with its population of 580 million and its long and friendly tradition towards America, has emerged under a communist government from generations of apathy and impotence to become the primary political and military force in Asia.

The Soviet Union has emerged as the world's second industrial power, the originator of a new concept of rapid capital formation which may be ideally suited to the underdeveloped two thirds of the earth, and the generation and directing force in a powerful politico-military combination which looks on the United States as its adversary.

Through the development of nuclear weapons, both the United States and Russia have achieved the power largely to destroy each other and indeed much of life upon this earth in a matter of weeks.

Following Stalin's death and the development of the nuclear stalemate, new Soviet leaders have seized the political, economic, and ideological initiative by launching a program to isolate us from the peoples and natural wealth of Asia and Africa, and ultimately from South America and even Europe, and thereby to strangle our military and economic capacity.

Liberal democracy, the ultimate triumph of which Western leaders since the seventeenth century have taken for granted, is thus mortally challenged by a new social and political order that bids persuasively for the favor of mankind with dynamic new techniques of education, ideology, and technology.

Calcutta's Reaction

Our reaction to this global challenge has been such that 38 per cent of the people questioned in a recent Calcutta poll selected the United States as the nation most likely to start World War III, while only 2 per cent selected the Soviet Union and 1 per cent the Peoples Republic of China.

There is irony, if not yet tragedy, in the contrast between the issues which these interrelated forces are creating--questions involving no less than the survival or destruction of our Western society--and those which are likely to engage our principal political energies in the election of 1956.

This does not mean that an effective new majority consensus cannot be developed that is competent to cope with these questions. It simply means that they have not yet been brought within the range where the political processes which create such an agreement are operating. The attention of the political parties has remained focused, in a manner I have already described, upon diminishing areas of disagreement within the broad political consensus that emerged in response to the domestic crisis of the 1930's. Because of this failure to grasp the significance of the newer and infinitely more momentous challenge, the power and influence of America and its Atlantic allies is now in jeopardy....

Future Directions

I started this discussion with a disclaimer of any prophetic gifts, and I shall not attempt to divine the makeup of the new majority and its time of appearance, much less the precise content of its base of agreement. It may be possible, however, to suggest some directions in which we might search for a political consensus appropriate to the challenge which we face, and some of the shifts in the present majority-minority alignment which may be required to produce it...

We may expect, then, that any new majority-minority political grouping will develop around a different interpretation of America's relations with the rest of the world. In this sense it is likely to depart even more sharply from its immediate predecessor than the three which we have already examined.

For, as we have seen, each of these three major groupings has been primarily concerned with domestic affairs. This is true even of the present alignment, although our discussion in the second lecture showed that agreement on certain lines of action abroad was a substantial component of that alignment...

The majority in both parties which has supported our foreign policies over the fifteen years has thus far largely conceived of them as a series of arrangements which will fend off the aggressive and intrusive forces in the world outside and leave us free to work out our own American destiny in our own way. Implicit in such a concept is the persistent conviction that foreign affairs, except when war is imminent, are largely a marginal consideration.

When it becomes evident that this series of political alliances and economic arrangements, which was designed to free us for our proper domestic concerns, is contiuing to take a major and increasing share of our energy and our resources without providing the security which we have presumably bought and paid for, we feel frustrated and cheated and many of us embark on a search for culprits.

Now on this rapidly shrinking planet, which we share with the Russians, Chinese, and others, the traditional quick, total solutions which we Americans have always demanded in foreign affairs are simply not available. Not only is any such narrow objective for American foreign policy impossible of attainment, it is, indeed, self-contradictory. We cannot be in the world and not of it, no matter how great our wealth and power. Inevitably this must become clear to more and more of our people.

A Broader Perspective

If we are to strengthen our national security, expand our influence, and play the role in world affairs for which our history has prepared us, in the face of the political, economic, and ideological challenge which is now being generated by Moscow, we shall need to consider our relations with the world from a far broader perspective. Out of this broader perspective we must hope that a new majority consensus will emerge which recognizes the fact that we live in a world that is a community and which is prepared responsibly to support policies flowing from that premise. If this consensus fails to develop for want of communication, or effective leadership, or inadequate political organization, or for whatever reason, or if it develops too late to be effective, the implications for our own and for future generations of Americans are not pleasant to contemplate...

Yet an increasing group of articulate and thoughtful observers holds that if the adoption of this difficult and more positive approach to our present global dilemma is dependent on the workings of the democratic process in America and elsewhere, we must despair of it. The inherent characteristics of democratic government, they insist, make it impossible for nations so governed to choose the hard course. Those in power, in order to maintain their positions, must continuously cater to the domestic interests and whims of a fragile and shifting numerical majority. Inevitably these interests, even in critical periods such as this, will reflect. short-term needs and desires which cannot be adjusted responhibly to long-term objectives.

With this dark and pessimistic view of the futures of free societies, I must dissent. I do not, of course assume their continued success and growth. But I wholeheartedly deny the inevitability of their failure. I believe that our future now, as in the past, will be largely what we make it. Obviously the forces which now challenge us are far more formidable than any our predecessors knew. Yet this does not alter the basic premise; it simply means that the task ahead is that much harder and the outcome that much more decisive...

It is not the failure of our democratic form of government as such, here or elsewhere in the West, that accounts for the present narrow approach to foreign policy which is at bottom the disease that worries so many observers. It is the failure of our American leadership in political life and out of it to recognize the requirements of our fast changing world, to use our democratic techniques to help form a new consensus appropriate to the new challenge, and to call convincingly on the moral resources of our people...

The American people, I deeply believe, want something more than mere survival or even a quick and easy plan to destroy our adversaries. Indeed, every time they have been offered some national responsible, higher sense of purpose they have grasped it and understood it.

The Marshall Plan, at least when it was first announced, was not proposed to the American people as simply another exercise in Maginot wall-building. On the contrary, it was presented as a genuine attempt to treat the world we live in, or at least the nations of the Atlantic Basin which are historically and culturally closest to us, as a community.

And this program, almost alone among our post-war foreign policy activities, it seems to me, evoked a sense of commitment and excitement in the nation at large. This, I think can be attributed to the fact that it did open up, however briefly, a new view of our relation to and place in the world. Despite the fact that subsequent events obscured this initial conception, and may even be said to have diverted the plan from its original purposes, it has never quite lost in the public mind the sense of satisfaction and even excitement which surrounded its birth.

Whether all this will convince anyone who is unwilling to believe, I do not know. For me it has the effect of profoundly reinforcing the view I would be inclined by nature to take...

In 1947, Henry L. Stinson wrote: "No private program and no public policy, in any section of our national life, can now escape from the compelling fact that if it is not framed with reference to the world, it is framed with perfect ability." This view-point has not been confined to the Atlantic Seaboard and Mr. Stinson, or to such headline names as Paul Hoffman, Henry Ford, and John J. McCloy.

The membership of the local Councils on Foreign Relations and other groups which are seeking to develop fuller and more informed participation among the citizens in foreign policy-making bears no consistent relationship to the present majority-minority alignment in the country or to political party preference. Public opinion polls invariably show that businessmen are now the most internationally-minded economic group.

Indeed, the foreign policy views of many industrialists and bankers whose hatred of Roosevelt is still smoldering are now closer to those of Walter Reuther than to the Republican leadership in the Senate. The new consensus on foreign affairs may include some strange bedfellows!...

Moreover, as Mr. George Kennan has shown us in his book, The Realities of American Foreign Policy, a healthy understanding with other people abroad may indeed depend to a considerable degree upon our continuing energetic efforts to put our own house in even better order and to keep it that way. Hence, to promote a viable free world with freedom having the breadth of definition which it rightfully deserves, we must renew our efforts to make that definition a reality at home. A new consensus based on world recruits for this concept who in a different period clung to a laissez-faire aproach.

Yet with all this, one may expect some of the groups as yet "underprivilleged" economically or in terms of social status to dissent from an increasing national emphasis on economic and political concerns abroad. There may also be resistance from some people of old American stock and of moderate means whose sense of economic and social security has been challenged by the rise of vigorous newcomers whose families came more recently from Europe; similarly, from those who maintain unreasoning resistance to the ideal of equal rights for all, regardless of race or color...

This sketch of the social and economic groups which may merge into a new majority alignment or dissent from it is necessarily brief, incomplete, and tentative. It is clear in any event that neither of the two political parties can in itself provide the completely effective political instrument for such a majority. As with the earlier shifts in basic alignment we have discussed, a new grouping that is really adequate to the world challenge is almost certain at many points to cut across existing party lines and the narrower interests now reflected in them.

Because of deep-seated political habits, organization, and laws, which protect the position of the two established parties against newcomers, the emergence of a new political party as the Republican party developed in 1856 seems out of the question, except perhaps in the spiritual as well as material upheaval that might develop out of a nuclear war. Therefore, the new majority will almost certainly be based on one of the existing parties, as on two of the three previous occasions in our history when a new consensus was forged from established political groups...

What this new consensus will support and eventually demand is informed, conscientious, positive action over a long period of time and on many fronts in the direction pointed by the conception of the world as an organic community, divided though it may now be by Soviet ambitions. This effort will call for the full use of our material, physical, and moral resources on a scale which the American people have not yet contemplated in times of peace. Working politicians and students of government both agree that the initiative for such a national commitment must come primarily from the executive.

But the President's capacity to act is, if not paralyzed, at least drastically limited when he knows in advance that proposals which are fully adequate to the evolving world situation are likely to precipitate not only a difficult public debate but a costly, deeprooted, bitter division within his own party in Congress. The fact that he can count on a bipartisan majority will be scant consolation if the biggest part of that majority is provided by his pilitical opponents....

Critical Difference

There is a critical difference between this and any similar period in our history: in today's world, as I have already suggested, we cannot wait until disaster overtakes us to forge a new political answer.

This hard fact adds a formidable new dimension to the political challenge which confronts our generation. In other periods we could wait until a developing crisis created a light so brilliant that the new or broader truths were no longer obscured. Our slowness in achieving the necessary new perspective was costly. But it was not catastrophic. In the Nuclear Age our problem is to achieve the essential clarification before our democratic society is overtaken by total disaster from which there may be no recovery....

A new consensus will necessarily accept and vigorously continue the struggle to create rising standards of living and opportunity here in America. Yet the factor which will distinguish it from its predecessors is its realization that freedom in this tightly inter-related world is becoming indivisible.

The influence of free institutions, revitalized and newly focussed on current world problems, will either resume its historic evolutionary growth throughout South America, Africa, and Asia, or it will expire everywhere, including its birthplace, the nations of the Atlantic Basic. Whether the demise of liberty as an important political and economic force occurs gradually, through communist strangulation combined with hardening of the political arteries, or suddenly in the aftermath of nuclear war is, for the long haul, beside the point.

This central fact is now self-evident to many American political leaders of both political parties, to newsmen, government officials, and to a large segment of our people. But will it become self-evident to enough Americans to provide the consensus necessary for a new orientation of our national purpose and policy while there is still time for positive and creative action?...

New Leadership Needed

The adequacy and timeliness of our response will largely depend, I believe, on the development of a new or revamped American leadership that rejects the cynical assumption, which sometimes seems to be held by many American political leaders as well as by the leaders of the USSR, that modern Americans can be interested only in larger paychecks, faster cars, and more garish entertainment....

Demagogic extremes in Washington and elsewhere have emphasized and heightened, I think, a widespread but vague public concern about the health and vigor of our free institutions. It is reassuring that this concern no longer proceeds on the naive assumption that our difficulties may be remedied by passing new laws or by mechanical tinkering with governmental commissions.

Something deeper is involved, which has to do with the quality and substance of the consent of the governed as that consent is registered by the political structure. Here, as on questions of foreign policy, the divisions among us stubbornly refuse to follow the familiar lines which separated "liberal" from "conservative" in economic matters....

Whatever lies ahead will be momentous and will profoundly touch the lives of us all. This survey of American policies has attempted to look beyond this year of partisan encounter and to catch a glimpse of this hazy but crucial tomorrow.

In the din of the current campaign most of the questions and possibilities I have raised will be forgotten. Yet in the vision of a world of expanding hope and opportunity for all peoples, in which America will serve as a partner and even as an architect, lies the only salvation of a free people and a free society. Without such a vision in this Nuclear Age the people perish