World politics today is admittedly bipolar, and it seems destined to remain so within the foreseeable future. Beset by its sustained tension, Americans have been led to debate, sometimes acrimoniously, the proper foundations, scope, and content of an effective foreign policy. Since presumably the central theme and central purpose of this debate is the definition of what constitutes the American national interest, the first objective is to define the idea of national interest. Thereafter it is necessary to draw proper deductions relevant to the total world situation, and in turn to apply these deductions as policy to the forces there at work. These forces—political, economic, ideological, and military—in their interconnectedness collectively constitute the raw materials for assessment, judgment, planning, and action in our policy-making.

Resultant differences of opinion therefore can take place at different levels. Initially there are vastly divergent concepts of the characteristics of a nation, of the role of nations in the world, and of the nature of interests proper to a nation. The scope of these divergencies is often hidden by our tendency to find in the term “national interest” connotations of particularism, of exclusiveness, of the nation as against, or superior to, the rest of the world.