I am certainly not the first traveler in Latin America struck by the diversity of its countries. The cliche has it that so many distinct entities were set up between 1810 and 1825 merely because the peoples of the continent could not comprehend Bolivar's admonitions that strength lies in unity. Whatever the validity of Bolivar's dream for South America, it is quite obvious why there are some twenty countries there instead of one or two, as is the case with the North American part of the liemisphere. Practically everything is a dividing factor south of the Rio Grande: geography and the configuration of the land, the ethnic composition of the populations, the historical antagonisms, the economic jealousies.

If anything has been adopted as the single, most important, immediate objective of the U.S, “Foreign Policy Establishment,” it is the conclusion, with the Soviet Union, of a treaty designed to discourage the spread of nuclear weapons to countries that do not already possess them. I use the word “discourage,” because it seems clear that the treaty itself is not intended to produce anything more than an abstention, on the part of the U.S. and the USSR, from active participation in the act of proliferation. There is to be no commitment, or so it would appear, to joint action (economic, political, or military) to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

In support of its current policies in Vietnam, the American government submits its youthful male citizens to the classic demands of the nation-state at war: it demands that they be prepared to die for their country and that they be prepared to kill for their country. At die same time many of these young men face, in the college classroom, the demand that they analyze critically their nation's policies in Vietnam. How many young men are able to acknowledge the possibility that they may face death in Vietnam and at the same time are able to analyze critically the policies that lead to that possibility?