FOUNDATIONS OF NATIONAL POWER

Why is the world environment changing so rapidly and what factors influence these environmental changes? The world environment, as it applies to national power, involves the political (to include the military), economic, cultural and physical points of view.

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In a world of 150 sovereign states or regimes in de facto control of specific territory; some 300 international boundaries compartmentizing national aspirations; and an indeterminate number of political ideologies tearing nations into different camps, there is need greater than ever for geopolitical guidance. Those individuals most remote from the physical make-up of the world in the last analysis we must depend--are quite often the ones that make the most momentous decisions. An appreciation of geopolitics in many instances provides the rational for major policies and through this medium one may stabilize his own viewpoint with respect to environmental controls over government action.

Any evaluation of the dynamics of global power and national power should give prominent attention to geopolitical consideration-yesterday's and today's. The old geopoliticians have faded into the past and no new leaders in the field have appeared to take their place. Kjellan, Mahan, MacKinder, Haushofer, and others, rightly or wrongly, gave strong theories with which we could work in evaluating the broad global power struggle in relation to the physical, economic and social environments at hand. Power centers on their way up, brash government policies on their way out, or military strategies in their cycles of popular acceptance could all, to a point, be explained as geographic responses. Also, limitations of power surges could be conjectured.

Geopolitics was described in 1948 by Colonel S. F. Clabaugh, of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, as a "science which combines geography, history and politics for the purpose of explaining and predicting the behavior of nations. The name "goepolitics" was coined by Rudolph Kjellen, a Swedish political scientist, around the turn of the century.

However, the subject matter is not that new. Some historians point to Napoleon's disaster in Russia in 1812 as the result of overlooking geopolitical factors. And twentieth century German Nazi geopoliticians looked back with admiration at the geopolitical wisdom of the Monroe Doctrine and Jefferson's purchase of the Louisiana territory.

Before World War I, Sir Halford J. MacKinder, a Scot, advanced his theories of the Eurasian "Heartland" and the "World Island. Along with Kjellen, he was primarily an advocate of land power.

The American naval officer, Alfred Thayer Mahan, is identified with sea-power, as is indicated by his most famous work, "The Influence of Sea-power on History," published in 1890. The theories of another American, Dr. Nicholas J. Spykman, of Yale University, who died in 1944, have been identified with the post World War II American policy of "containment, which has been so ably described by George F. Kennan, at least as regarded post World War II Europe and the Middle East.

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However, it was the German Nazis who, between World War I and World War II, brought the Nazi version of "geopolitics" into prominence and notoriety. The teacher was Major General Doktor Karl Haushofer. Adolph Hitler was the disciple. Haushofer is credited with the material for those sections of Mein Kampf which disclosed the defenselessness of the little countries destined to be swept into the Nazi fold after 1938. "Small states, wrote Haushofer, "no longer have a right to exist." Hitler regarded Haushofer so highly that he conferred Aryan status upon his Jewish wife.

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Nazi propaganda, based on Haushofer's theories, helped Hitler develop a fanatical response on the part of many Germans and even on the part of many in other countries. But Haushofer did not agree with Hitler's attack on Russia; he fell from his high position and ultimately died a suicide.

Although the Nazi version of geopolitics as a rationalization for German conquest has been discredited, it aroused world interest in geopolitics, which has since been taught as a subject in leading universities and colleges. Today, such things as high speed

communications and transportation, the submarine, and air and space vehicles, have added new dimensions to the study of man's physical environment in relation to his political life.

Today, in the age of nuclear weapons and missiles, an understanding of the interaction of geography and politics appears as necessary as ever to the study of national security. Events have made global thinking essential as one basis for understanding the behavior of nations.

There are many complex situations occurring throughout the world today - situations that may be solved by elements of national power. Some of these situations or problems are described by Secretary of State Kissinger in his address before Los Angeles World Affairs Council, Los Angeles, California, January 24, 1975, He stated in part:

"We are at the end of three decades of a foreign policy which on the whole brought peace and prosperity to the world and which was conducted by administrations of both our major parties. Inevitably there were failures, but they were dwarfed by the longterm accomplishments.

"Now we are entering a new era.

Old international patterns are crumbling; old slogans are uninstructive; old solutions are unavailing. The world has become interdependent in economics, in communications, in human aspirations. No one nation, no one part of the world can prosper or be secure in isolation.

"For America, involvement in world affairs is no longer an act of choice but the expression of a reality. When weapons span continents in minutes, our security is bound up with world security. When our factories and farms and our financial strength are so closely linked with other countries and peoples, our prosperity is tied to world prosperity. The first truly world crisis is that which we face now. It requires the first truly global solutions.

"The world stands uneasily poised between unprecedented chaos and the opportunity for unparalleled creativity. The next few years will determine whether interdependence will foster common progress or common disaster. Our generation has the opportunity to shape a new cooperative international system; if we fail to act with vision we will condemn ourselves to mounting domestic and international crises.

"Had we a choice, America would not have selected this moment to be so challenged. We have endured enough in the past decade to have earned a respite: assassinations, racial and generational turbulence, a divisive war, the fall of one President and the resignation of another.

"Nor are the other great democracies better prepared. Adjusting to a loss of power and influence, assailed by recession and inflation, they too feel their domestic burdens weighing down their capacity to act boldly.

"But no nation can choose the timing of its fate. The tides of history take no account of the fatigue of the helmsman. Posterity will reward not the difficulty of the challenge, only the adequacy of the response.

"For the United States, the present situation is laced with irony. A decade of upheaval has taught us the limitations of our power. Experience and maturity have dispelled any illusion that we could shape events as we pleased. Long after other nations, we have acquired a sense of tragedy. Yet our people and our institutions have emerged from our trials with a resilience that is the envy of other nations, who know even when we forget that America's strength is unique and American leadership indispensable. In the face of all vicissitudes, our nation continues to be standardbearer of political freedom, economic and social progress, and humanitarian concern as it has for 200 years.

"Thirty years ago America, after centuries of isolation, found within itself unimagined capacities of statesmanship and creativity. Men of both parties and many persuasions — like Truman and Eisenhower, Vandenberg and Marshall, Acheson and Dulles built a national consensus for responsible American leadership in the world.

"Their work helped fashion the economic recovery of Europe and Japan and stabilized the post-war world in a period of international tension. These were the indispensable foundations on which, in recent years, we have been able to regularize relations with our adversaries and chart new dimensions of cooperation with our allies.

"To marshal our energies for the challenge of interdependence requires a return to fundamentals. It was a confident

perhaps

even brash

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America that launched its post-war labors. an America essentially united on ultimate goals that took on the task of restoring order from the chaos of war. Three decades of global exertions and the war in Viet-Nam have gravely weakened this sense of commom purpose. We have no more urgent task than

to rediscover it. Only in this way can we give effect to the root reality of our age which President Ford described in his State of the Union address: "At no time in our peacetime history has the state of the nation depended more heavily on the state of the world. And seldom, if ever, has the state of the world depended more heavily on the state of our nation.

"Let me turn, then, to an examination of the issues before us in international affairs: our traditional agenda of peace and war, the new issues of interdependence and the need for a partnership between the Executive and Legislative branches of our Government.

"The traditional issues of peace and war addressed by the post-war generation will require our continuing effort, for we live in a world of political turmoil and proliferating nuclear technology.

"Our foreign policy is built upon the bedrock of solidarity with our allies. Geography, history, economic ties, shared heritage and common political values bind us closely together. The stability of the post-war world and our recent progress in improving our relations with our adversaries have crucially depended on the Today, in a new era of

strength and constancy of our alliances. challenge and opportunity, we naturally turn first to our friends to seek cooperative solutions to new global issues such as energy. This is why we have sought to strengthen our ties with our Atlantic partners and Japan and have begun a new dialogue in the Western Hemisphere.

"The second major traditional effort of our foreign policy has been to fashion more stable relations with our adversaries.

"There can be no peaceful international order without a constructive relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union the two nations with the power to destroy mankind.

The moral antagonism between our two systems cannot be ignored; it is at the heart of the problem. Nevertheless, we have succeeded in reducing tensions and in beginning to lay the basis for a more cooperative future. The agreements limiting strategic arms, the Berlin agreement, the significant easing of tensions across the