Analyses of the U.S.-Soviet balance of power usually focus on relative military strength—the number of tanks, planes, nuclear warheads, and other items in the so-called strategic balance. But many other factors determine a country's overall power and influence. Among the most basic is a country's capacity to feed its people. By this measure the Soviet Union appears to be in deep trouble.

This year the USSR will try to import 46 million tons of grain, more than any country in history (source, here and elsewhere: U.S. Department of Agriculture). Nearly a fourth of all Soviet grain for feeding both people and livestock will come from the North American breadbasket, most of it from the United States.

It is, of course, trivial to say that the foreign policy of the United States is not only in a political and military crisis — and financial crisis you might add — but also in a moral crisis. This moral crisis has particular significance for the United States. Take, by way of contrast, the moral crises through which Soviet foreign policy has passed since the end of the second world war. Take, for instance, the moral crisis which it faced in consequence of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and the moral crisis it is still facing by virtue of its invasion of Czechoslovakia last year. Obviously those crises considerably decreased the prestige and influence of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union has emerged from tbose crises as something different from what it was before. For the Soviet Union today can no longer claim to be the fatherland of socialism, the disinterested vanguard of the international proletariat.

Our story-book concept of Africa as the “dark continent” is no longer valid. Nor is that other storybook notion, “man against wild beasts.” The sad fact is that Africa today is, and will probably be even more in the future, the scene of savage conflicts between black men and black men, Arabs and other Arabs, Moslems and Animists, Christianity and Islam. For a while the race issue in South Africa obscured the fact of antagonisms and hostilities elsewhere; since the horrible acts of torture and cannibalism occurred in the Congo, the world can no longer ignore the eruption of multi-layered hatred, motivated by race, religion, and ideology, in practically every corner of Africa.

A society's culture is a compound of many expressions of value. Each one is an argument, a “position paper” of sorts, or a liturgy to be recited; most of them are subjected to scrutiny and susceptible to change. We are, I hope, changing our American arguments about defending freedom around the world and, closer to home, about the place of the woman, the black, the Chicano or the Indian in our social structures and behaviors.

There is one such expression of value—I call it the Liturgy of the Environment—that is only rarely scrutinized. That means it is rarely criticized, and that means it does not change much.

The words are those of Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger as they confront North Vietnam. Does North Vietnam resist our will? We will bomb their missiles, their trails and bases. Do they attack again? Do they punish the South Vietnamese? Interfere with our plan to win victory while withdrawing? We will do such things. …

Yet we know not what they are. Our bombers make cautionary raids across the border. We feint with naval forces along the North Vietnamese coast. We avow to the North that we will no longer be bound by the conventions of the past. We make vague threats of invasion, deny them, disclaim the denials. Our officials call attention to President Eisenhower's warning, twenty years ago, that he might use nuclear weapons in Korea; then we deny that we would use such weapons—in foreseeable circumstances.

History rarely gives civilizations a second chance. The record of Egypt, Greece, Rome, Mohenjo-Daro, the Incas, the Khmers, Spain, Turkey, Britain, and many other nations suggests that civilizational excellence is impermanent and, once lost, remains beyond resurrection. Of all these great societies China appeared the most enduring. For close to two thousand years, from the Han Dynasty at the turn of the Christian era to the early Ch'ing Dynasty about two hundred years ago, the Middle Kingdom was one of the best governed and most advanced countries on earth. Cultural and technological achievements combined to make China a superpower among states for a longer period than that experienced by any other major nation. Eventually, however, the norms of history prevailed. Foreign intrusion and internal confusion brought decline throughout the nineteenth century. By the time China entered the twentieth century the Confucian order had collapsed—its greatness an historic memory, its claim to empire a semantic fiction.

On May 22 the University of Chicago named Robert S. McNamara winner of the first Albert Pick, Jr., Award for International Understanding. Under the terms of the award the sum of $25,000 and a sculpture will be presented to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to international peace and understanding. The citation recognizes McNamara's contribution as president of the World Bank for the last decade and pointedly ignores his seven-year service as secretary of defense during the escalation of the Vietnam war. Implicit in the university's choice and its defense of that choice is the assumption that McNamara has paid his dues and made up for Vietnam.

The award matters because it is part of a groping for a national recollection of Vietnam. We congratulate ourselves on our ability to make movies like The Deer Hunter or novels like Dispatches. A reception by President Carter for veterans and Congress's belated passage of Vietnam Veterans’ Counseling legislation also contribute to our self-satisfied awakening.

When Tunisian Prime Minister Hedi Nouira visits Washington in the final days of November, issues of human rights, American aid, and evolution toward a multiparty democracy are sure to arise.

Both constitutionally and politically Nouira is Tunisia's crown prince—the designated successor of ailing Habib Bourguiba, "president for life" of this Mediterranean country of six million.

But the events of last January, which saw more than a hundred deaths and brought the imprisonment of Tunisia's powerful trade union movement leadership, have left a certain tension in their wake. Unemployment, rising expectations, and a growing alienation from the single-party regime—the Parti Socialiste Destourien (PSD)—are contributing to destabilization in Tunisia.

My task is to comment on the political, strategic, and moral implications of P.D. 59, the presidential directive on U.S. nuclear strategy and targeting policy revealed in the media in August. The commentary is of necessity preliminary and tentative, since no document or position paper has been made available to the public to spell out the contents of P.D. 59. The most authoritative text we have is a major speech by Secretary of Defense Harold Brown on August 20 explaining the rationale of the new directive.

I am aware that a short visit to any country allows for only the most superficial kinds of observations. For a Western visitor, conclusions about the Soviet Union, after short visits to the major cities of western Russia, must be highly tentative, since little in our cultural, ideological and political experiences prepares us for an objective assessment of the Soviet Union. But even if personal objectivity were possible, adequate data is impossible to acquire. I found that the constant efforts of Intourist and others to provide an “official” view, an “official” explanation, an “official” insight into the Soviet people, their motivations and desires, compounded the difficulties. The visitor sees and hears what “they” want you to; exceptions to this, the most fruitful part of my trip, were hard to come by.