Volume 28, Number 6 · April 16, 1981
The New Orthodoxy
By Stanley Hoffmann
American foreign policy since the end of the Second World War has gone through two full cycles—that of the cold war and that of détente—and three strategies, those of containment, Kissinger, and Carter. Today we are apparently back at square one. But the similarities between our immediate postwar predicament and our present situation are misleading. America's condition at home and abroad is troubled. We face a difficult choice in trying to devise a new foreign policy. We can either rely on the magic of old formulas and act as if a return to the policies that worked in the days of American supremacy would ensure success, or attempt to tailor our diplomacy to the requirements and dangers of the very different world of the 1980s. The mood of the country seems to favor the first alternative. This makes it only more necessary to explain why the second one should prevail, and what its main features ought to be.
Feature, 6606 words
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