Domestic Tensions Research Articles

The Relevance of Great Debates: An Analysis of the Discussion Over Vietnam

However the Vietnam war finally resolves itself, and whatever may be its eventual effect on the patterns of international politics, one consequence of that conflict has been obvious since the early days of American involvement. The war has been the occasion for another of those Great Debates that have, from time to time, loomed so large in the course of American foreign policy. In this sense the Vietnam debate has only been the to previous intellectual confrontations such as those surrounding the Spanish-American war, the ratification of the Versailles treaty, the neutrality acts of the 1930s and the dispatch of American troops to Europe in 1951. The statement that the discussion over Vietnam has been the successor to previous debates is not to deny that it displays several unique factors. The most obvious of these is perhaps the very volume and heat of the debate itself, which has quite likely exceeded anything in the American diplomatic experience. This factor may possibly be ascribed to the general tendency toward violent political rhetoric and social polarization that characterized American life during the latter 1960s, a development whose roots lay as much in unresolved domestic tensions as in the dilemmas of foreign policy. Yet the intensity of the debate over Vietnam was at least in part connected with another unique aspect of the discussion: the widespread conviction that the war was essentially a moral problem. The tendency to view the conflict in these terms-in striking contrast to, say, the Korean War-not only accounted for much of the emotional intensity of the dialogue but was also a prime factor in the evident unwillingness of many of the debaters to concede the sincerity of the Administration or the nature of the policy dilemmas confronting it. There were of course other elements involved, in particular resentment at the tortuous and perhaps even devious manner in which American participation in the war developed. In any case the deep-rooted distrust ex-

Some Sources of American Hostility to Russia

There may be sociological as well as economic and political factors in American hostility toward Russia. Some limited aspects of the American social system are considered as contributory elements in Soviet-American antagonism under three headings: institutional ethnocentrism, institutional rivalry, and scapegoating. Institutional differences tend to arouse moral indignation. Certain similarities between the two societies may evoke rivalry and competitive anxiety. Russia seems a suitable scapegoat for several major domestic tensions. Anti-Soviet sentiment may function as a compensating mechanism for American malintegration.