Growing Pains

The two foreign policy issues that have aroused most attention and most controversy since Jimmy Carter took office have been the Panama Canal treaties and the Israel- Egypt-Saudi Arabia aircraft package deal. Zbigniew Brzezinski’s recent voyage to Peking suggests that before long an Administration proposal on “normalization” of relations with Communist China will be running a similar public and congressional gauntlet.

Thinking about this trio, I have more and more come to feel that there is a basic resemblance among them, not only in their ability to trigger controversy but in their strategic and political content. In each case the Administration (bringing to the decision point a process initiated by its predecessors) is seeking a major change in a geopolitical relationship that was brought about a good many years ago and then frozen.

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James Burnham

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The two foreign policy issues that have aroused most attention and most controversy since Jimmy Carter took office have been the Panama Canal treaties and the Israel- Egypt-Saudi Arabia aircraft package deal. Zbigniew Brzezinski’s recent voyage to Peking suggests that before long an Administration proposal on “normalization” of relations with Communist China will be running a similar public and congressional gauntlet.

Thinking about this trio, I have more and more come to feel that there is a basic resemblance among them, not only in their ability to trigger controversy but in their strategic and political content. In each case the Administration (bringing to the decision point a process initiated by its predecessors) is seeking a major change in a geopolitical relationship that was brought about a good many years ago and then frozen.