Galbraith Attacks Pressure - Group Control of Policy

United States foreign policy is determined, not by what is sound, but by what will least offend our own special-interest groups. John Kenneth Galbraith, Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics has charged in an article in the February Atlantic.

"Most conferences in the State Department are not devoted to assessing the wisdom of a particular policy," Galbraith said. "They are concerned with what will be said on Capitol Hill. Everyone vastly prefers a foreign enemy to a domestic one."

Galbraith called for an immediate effort to begin travel and trade between China and the U.S.

Slogans Don't Work

He called American's present China policy a series of slogans designed to explain our own inaction and to convince other countries to ignore China. He cited slogans such as "they can't shoot their way into the UN," and "admission to the UN doesn't guarantee good behavior."

"Unfortunately," he said, "everyone between here and Napal knows that the real reason [for our China policy] is domestic politics."

State Department officials, he said, ignore reality by following present policies, whether right, wrong, or potentially disastrous. Americans want imaginative efforts to reduce our foreign problems, he asserted, rather than vague assurances that a special committee is studying the problem.

Split With Reality

As an example of the split between foreign policy and reality, Galbraith noted that our foreign aid policy is professedly designed to enable poor countries to become economically independent.

Galbraith charged that government officials now know that this is not possible in the near future. Moreover, he predicted, in some countries we will not be able to prevent further deterioration.

"But we cannot abandon [our] efforts," he said. "Our only course is to abandon the facile promises and face the facts."