The story goes that when Jimmy Carter heard that a man named Menachem Begin had won the Israeli elections, he asked: “Menachem who?” Menachem Begin did not come out of nowhere. He directed one of the most stormy chapters of twentieth-, century history: the Jewish underground Irgun's war against British rule in Palestine in the 1940's. Afterwards he was for twenty-six years Israel's most prominent opposition leader and, for three years following the 1967 Six-Day War, a minister in the National Unity government. However, when the stunned world heard the news that Menachem Begin was about to become prime minister of Israel—a critical country in a critical region at a critical time—its governments and media had no idea who this man was. The frightened cry, “God Almighty, who is Begin?” echoed in a hundred languages in editorial offices, in foreign ministries, offices of heads of government, and intelligence headquarters.

When you served in the State Department, did you ever envision that within a few years we would have either Menachem Begin as the Israeli prime minister or an Anwar Sadat recognizing Israel in a dramatic visit to Jerusalem?

I never assumed that the situation would develop in such a way that the Likud party would supplant the Labor party in the leadership of Israel. But I think a more interesting response to your question is that Menachem Begin himself never expected to be prime minister. I spoke with him shortly after he became prime minister and we focused, very briefly, on the matter. He had been in opposition twenty-nine years and now found himself in this very critical position at a very important time.

Believe me,” President Sadat understated recently, “we are in an era of wonders.” Despite all the hopeful allusions to pensive deserts, moody mirages, monumental pyramids, and lifesustaining rivers, it is still hard to express the sheer audacity of President Sadat's pilgrimage to Jerusalem— not primarily a pilgrimage to Al Aksa for Greater Bairam, but one to the Knesset for peace. We will not likely in our lifetime see again an event so Tolstoian; a single man, a single act of will, and a history that, with the unlikely exception of an assassination followed by a complete and immediate reversal, can never be quite the same again.

I would like to indicate some of the things that we have been trying to accomplish in the U.N. and some problems we see on the horizon.

Historically U.S. policy toward Southern Africa has been developed in a multilateral context, and that is appropriate. With the exception of the Republic of South Africa, all southern African territories became a responsibility of the international community under Article 73, Chapter 11 of the U.N. Charter. The exceptions to this multilateral approach for U.S. policy were Angola and Mozambique, where relations with Portugal and NATO tended to determine policy.

I cite the multilateral background to show that we have changed our views of Southern Africa as we have changed our attitudes toward Africa in the U.N. Early in the history of the U.N., the U.S. was an enthusiastic backer of decolonialization. We even risked difficulties with our World War II allies, France and the United Kingdom.

Martin Luther King, Jr., led many of us to recognize that pilgrimages of the mind can take place in turmoil as well as in tranquility. My own journey to understanding the connection between the transcendent and social change was facilitated by King's call to “the Movement.” That journey was shared by countless other churchmen of the 1960's. I have engaged in extended conversations with hundreds of Christian clergy who responded to King's call and were arrested for their nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience. Structured interviews took place in settings as varied as a Selma parsonage, an Atlanta jail cell, a Midwestern farmhouse, a penthouse suite atop the National Council of Churches building in New York City, and a sharecropper's cabin in Philadelphia, Mississippi. What follows is an abridged “profile” of these men of the cloth. The profile sharply challenges some common stereotypes.

Just as American entry into the Vietnam war delayed but did not fundamentally affect its outcome, American withdrawal from Vietnam changed the tactical but not the fundamental environment in which Vietnam's role in Southeast Asia must be seen. Toward its three immediate neighbors, Vietnam remains a rival, distrusted and disliked. Its position of power in the peninsula, which has been growing over the last four hundred years, continues to grow at the expense of neighbors who resist as best they can.

Vietnam's actions have always been constrained by the overall domination of the area by China. Vietnam's desire has been and remains primarily to protect its own independence vis-a-vis China while maintaining the necessary friendly relations, given the reality of China's dominant power in the region. This explains Vietnam's counterbalance of Chinese influence by drawing on Soviet support and, now that the French and American wars are over, attempting to draw on support from any Western nations willing to respond.

In the course of the last quarter century or so the United States has become a nearly universal scapegoat symbol. The United States has been denounced and blamed in countless speeches and editorials, on posters, in.radio broadcasts, and over television, as well as in private conversations, for the ills of the world, for the problems of particular societies, and even for the myriad unhappiness of individuals. No country has had more hostile demonstrations in front of its embassies around the world, or more of its libraries and cultural missions abroad ransacked, or more of its policies routinely denounced in the United Nations and other international organizations. More American flags have been burned, in and outside the United States, than the flags of any other country.