I agree with the foregoing description of the central international system and the structure of power in it. In military terms it is almost as much conventionally as nuclearly bipolar. Indeed the whole logic of the Nixon Administration’s policy presupposes the stabilization of a bipolar balance as the basis for a more multipolar diplomatic pattern among the five major centers of economic and diplomatic power. It also presupposes that the stabilization of this balance is the condition for a retrenchment by the United States. Such retrenchment is to be manifested in a lower level of effort and a more indirect involvement rather than in a disengagement from our political commitments or previous involvements throughout the globe. Thus, as far as the United States is concerned, the very condition for detente is a more subtle and diversified global engagement by the United States. The center of American foreign policy remains, as it was supposed to be in some previous administrations, the orchestration of a global modus vivendi between the United States and Soviet Union. Now this modus vivendi is supposed to be manifest in a whole network of agreements and understandings linked together in such a way as to reduce room for maneuver and to moderate the behavior of both superpowers. On the basis of tacit agreements between them relating to mutual cutback of intense and often disruptive competition in the Third World, it may be expected that (1) the patterns of diplomatic conflict and alignment among the five major centers of power will become more complicated and diversified and that (2) military security concerns will recede into the background of international politics and a whole set of other issues will come to the front.