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this country-and a growing one I fear-which is fully prepared
to
reject in its entirety the experience and judgement of all of us who have
had to deal responsibly with the problem of Communist power over
these last thirty years." And he concludes, "so strong is now their
prevalence in Congress and certain other segments of government in
Washington that it is not an exaggeration to say that we have today
two wholly different and mutually contradictory foreign policies be–
ing pursued simultaneously in that city, and you can find whichever
of them you want, depending on which door you want to put your
head in."
Goldwater's candidacy has taught me that what I dismissed as
Mr. Kennan's timidity was really caution. All the constructive parts of
his lectures are dominated by the consideration that proposals for
improving American-Russian relations must be considered in this new
and increasingly hostile climate of public opinion. On East-West trade,
for example, he tells us bluntly that no sane or consistent American
attitude is possible. And he takes the example of the wheat deal to
show how little business interests weigh in the balance against Con–
gressional prejudice. "The Russians .of course have a great shortage
of it," he writes,
and the United States a great surplus. Both shortage and
surplus are the effect of irrational agricultural policies pur–
sued by the two governments for ideological reasons. . . . In
these circumstances, the basis for a deal, or a series of deals,
would seem on the face of it to be very much present. The
United States, by selling its wheat, would make it possible
for the Russians to go on giving their farmers inadequate
incentive for the production of grain; they,
by
purchasing it,
would make it possible for the United States to go on giving
its own farmers too much.... American statesmen of earlier
decades would have been amazed to learn that there could be
any hesitation about so obviously advantageous a proposition.
But in 1964, trade with the Soviet Union and even with such anti–
Soviet Communists as the Yugoslavs has become "a focal point for
political and emotional hesitations." The best that Mr. Kennan can
hope is that Congress will be persuaded not to sabotage the efforts
to expand East-West trade of those European countries, including
Britain, whose economic policies are conducted in terms not of ideology
but of business interests.
In his proposals for disarmament and disengagement, Mr. Kennan
is still more cautious because he realizes that here American anti-