Treading Lightly

THE POST-WORLD WAR TWO period has been one of radical change in the international system. The liberation of peoples from colonial rule has ushered dozens of new states onto a stage previously occupied by only a handful. Concurrently, the advent and proliferation of nuclear weapons has given a new and possibly incomprehensible meaning to the concept of force.

Despite these dramatic alterations in the international arena, the ways in which nations interact with each other, the basic methods of intercourse, have remained surprisingly constant. As former Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban argues convincingly in his book The New Diplomacy, the only true novelty in international relations is the increase in number of nations involved.

The basic role of diplomacy today, therefore, is as it has always been, is the control of conflict. Imbedded in Eban's argument is the assumptions that nations more often than not will have competing interests and it is the goal of statesmen to keep these rivalries at manageable levels. Progress he warns, will most often be unspectacular and painfully slow and actions may very well offend the public conception's of morality, especially in democracies. What The New Diplomacy evolves into, then is an eloquent defense of the traditional realist approach to international relations.

Time and again, Eban shows, the age old tools of diplomacy are the most efficacious. Concepts as the balance of power, spheres of influence and reliance on the historical record have contributed more than anything else to global peace. Such innovations as international organizations and human rights crusades have had limited success in a world where nations continue to tenaciously guard their sovereignity and freedom of action.

The pacification of Europe, a continent plagued for centuries with war, is according to the author, a perfect example of what a realist approach to diplomacy can do. The foundation of the post-war order consists of a balance of power and an amalgam of economic and security treaties, all the 3 products of years of labor and negotiations. After all, it took fifteen years for the Soviet Union to accept the permanence of Western interests in Berlin.

Likewise, deterrence, to which Eban sees no other alternative of comparable effectiveness, has solidified over four decades through snail's pace progress. Observers criticizing achievements such as test ban treaties and miniscule reductions of warheads because of the distance still remaining towards the goal of a nuclear-free world overlook, in Eban's eyes, the positive aspect of any prize on this most difficult issue. He writes, "The task of statesmen is to understand what is real and concrete in the international environment and to seek the maximal chance of peace within that context."

In the way of East-West relations, detente or its equivalent represent the best we can hope for says Eban. Such an agreement among the Superpowers to cooperate where they can and keep differences towards tolerable and non-lethal proportions with the faint hope that the goodwill from the former occasionally seeps into the latter. It is foolish, Eban warns, to imagine Soviet designs for global hegemony. It wants to be treated like a superpower but is governed by a self-interest that will induce it to caution in world affairs. What really went wrong with detente in the 1970's was not the unsoundness of the idea but the (mis)calculation by the Soviets that adventurism among nations such as Angola, Ethiopia and Afghanistan outweighed better ties with the U.S.

Even in the volatile Mideast, Eban asserts, the realist approach has brought about a modicum of progress. The shuttle diplomacy of Henry Kissinger and later the Camp David accords are examples of he incomplete but crucial progress towards peace that one should expect in that region. Eban remains optimistic about the future of peace in the Mideast as long as the U.S. remains committed to bringing the rival sides together. The Soviet Union, lacking any influence with Israel, will serve as little else in the area than as an arms supplier.

On the other hand, the major diplomatic failures of the last half-century occurred when statesmen deviated from a pragmatic approach, like in the Cold War for example. In perhaps the best part of the book, Eban shows how the East-West conflict grew out of U.S. misperceptions of Soviet intentions based on a misreading of history. Roosevelt, his aides and successors erred in thinking that the Soviets would share the U.S. enthusiasm for the infant U.N. and the idea of self-determination for nations. Any realistic examination of history would have led Americans to conclude that the Russians would resume their traditional security anxieties and territorial expansion. In Eban's view, the Cold War was initially a reaction to the dashing of U.S. hopes for world peace, not anti-Soviet strategy.

Unfortunately, Eban later commits the same error he ascribes to U.S. diplomats. In discussing the scheduled deployment of Pershing missiles in Europe, Eban argues that this will give the U.S. a better bargaining position with the Soviets and catalyze a real reduction of missiles. Governments, he writes, can better negotiate when they have something tangible, not just planned. This is all true. But Eban fails to take into account Russian perceptions of such a move and its past reactions to similar deployments. The Russians were bound to and gave evidence that they react to such a deployment as pushing the nuclear stakes higher and therefore respond with their own deployment. Sovietologists have been predicting such a Soviet reaction since last winter and recent events affirm this.

The one major change in international relations Eban does observe is the decreasing effectiveness of force as another form of diplomacy. The use of the military has been reduced from its Clausewitzian role to that of a primarily defensive one. Eban observes that since 1945 no nation has won a war it has initiated (excluding preemptive strikes against inevitable aggressors) although unexplainably he omits North Vietnam's attack on South Vietnam from the list. The causes of this change are numerous. The nuclear threat lurks ominously over many conflicts and world opinion and support has often come to the side of the victim.

The most recent bloody example of the impotence of force in diplomacy is the present situation in Lebanon. For the first time in its history Israel began a primarily offensive war with the twin hopes of ending Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) killings of its citizens in the Galilee and evicting Syria from Lebanon. The outcome has been 500 Israeli soldiers dead, a toll far higher than any conceivable PLO infliction, and Syria's further entrenchment in Lebanon.

As fine a history of International Relations in the modern age The New Diplomacy is, it has a larger purpose, that of the defninition of diplomacy. Eban puts it besat himself, "Diplomacy is not theology; there is no salvation in it. The best hope is that tensions can be held short of explosions that some to the slower, unobtrusive currents flowing toward stability will be allowed to take their patent course." Sobering as this may sound, it is the best we can hope for.