A
NEW
KIND OF
WAR
547
and then sit down to negotiate about their mutual understanding of it.
During this hiatus, they go out into the field and create realities-as
abasis for future negotiation. This is the pattern of the next fifty years.
The United States and the Soviet Union can afford only limited
tests of strength. That is the big difference between their negotiations
and traditional negotiations among other parties. The new war
is
a
largely symbolic struggle for superiority without the advantage of any
actual, sure tests of strength which might facilitate the course of
negotiations.
What will be negotiated? Everything-the whole planet. Berlin,
the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Formosa, and eventually India, Africa,
South America, as well as scores of intermediate situations. The U.S.
and the Soviet Union will negotiate about all possible matters as they
mature for negotiation or are matured by one power or another for
purposes of negotiation. And remember--one cannot negotiate on the
basis of morality, on the basis that I am right and you are wrong.
That is a way of stating a proposition, not of negotiating about it. One
negotiates exactly because one cannot dictate and cannot wait:
because
. the unilateral proposition is inadequate.
Russia and America will ne–
gotiate so long as and to the extent that this is true of each.
In
cer–
tain essential matters, it
is
true of each now.
Negotiation is not preaching, it is not propaganda, and it
is
not the
direct expression of power.
It
is the creation of a universe of discourse
in which a common reality can
be
defined.
It
does not involve a
universe of moral discourse unless there are existing shared moral
factors in the reality being defined and discussed. (Which suggests a
neglected opportunity: where it will not cost us the world, we might
take a few chances and offer them the option of responding in kind
to our voluntarily taken moral position; that is, act as witnesses to
our own morality and thus invite them down the same chancey path.
This is a moral position in addition to the usual table-thumping.)
The dominant popular
idee fixe
about "negotiation" is that it's
practically treasonous even to contemplate doing it except from what
has been called a "position of strength." Unfortunately, there will never
be enough of these to go around. No, one negotiates without the absolute
certainty of victory-the same way all games are played. While ne–
gotiating, however, one certainly bends all effort toward
preservin~
and expanding positions of strength. (The second most unfortunate
popular idea about our fateful negotiations is that only military posi–
tions of strength are taken to be such; this is just a corollary error
generally accompanying the military illusion.)
