We can learn certain things from the Communist system, and one of the most important of these is the dependence of successful practice on theory. Theory serves to guide, integrate, and rationalize a series of actions, and without it those actions tend to be atomistic and fruitless.

Indeed, the classic failures of our confrontations with Communist countries can be traced at least in part fo a theoretical misperception of what the Communists were, and the lack of a guiding theory on our part. It is possible, for example, to interpret the unhappy decisions of the World War II period as resulting from a mismatch of opponents: the Soviet Union's inferior power position was more than compensated for by a relatively coherent and creative theory of the world, while the superior strength of the United States was substantially negated because this country followed a policy path that may be described as a kind of political existentialism.