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PARTISAN REVIEW
Also because there is no court in international relations. Within
nations, there are rights, laws, and there are courts. But there is
no international court.
The projection of "human rights" into foreign policy by President
Carter has shown that welfare state values, appropriate in domestic
affairs, can be disastrous when extended to international affairs. A
welfare state finds it difficult to frame a foreign policy; the Soviet
Union on the other hand finds it difficult to conduct a domestic pol–
icy; it treats internal problems as it treats foreign countries, which
means that the Soviet people are treated as foreigners by their own
government. I'm reminded here of the recent debate between Caspar
Weinberger, our secretary of defense, and E. P. Thompson, the in–
tellectual leader of the British antinuclear movement. The subject of
the debate was the "morality" of American foreign policy as com–
pared with Soviet foreign policy. I thought Caspar Weinberger won
the argument but I do not think he should have accepted the terms of
the argument so uncritically, for he did not distinguish between
domestic and foreign policy. What is objectionable about the Soviet
Union is that it does not restrict the "immoralism" inevitable in
foreign affairs; it extends this "immoralism" to all its domestic af–
fairs, treating all of its people as foreigners. It is in this regard that
the American government may be said to be immensely superior,
morally speaking, to the Soviet state.
The harm done by projecting "human rights" into foreign
policy may be seen in the comparison made by most of the Demo–
cratic candidates of our problems in Central America with the prob–
lems we faced in Vietnam. Let me say at once that Central America
is not and cannot be another Vietnam. Here I would like to recall an
exchange I had with Zbigniew Brzezinski in
The New Leader
during
the sixties. He had written an article in support of our Vietnam War
policy, and I had written a letter to
The New Leader
objecting to his
views. My point was that we could not fight successfully in south–
east Asia while we were at odds with the most powerful country in
Asia, China. His reply was that China was by no means the most
powerful country in Asia. I think events have proved that. he was
wrong on this point, but what concerns me now is not his error at
that time but the present error of the Democratic party's candidates
and of the intellectuals who support them, when they express fear
that Central America may become another Vietnam. It can only be
another Vietnam for a power intruding in the Western hemisphere
