The Third World War

I think that the Martian scouts, in their dispatches from the saucers, probably reported that the 1960 Summit meeting broke up before it began because neither side had anything to say.

International diplomatic gatherings do not initiate but merely record and formalize changes in the international power equilibrium. How could it be otherwise? Nobody is going to surrender over a green table if he has been victorious on the battlefield. The correspondence between conference rhetoric and power realities may not be quite 100 per cent. Mistakes can be made, and a sly diplomat can put something over on an unwary opponent. But by and large the first reflects the second.

JB

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James Burnham

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I think that the Martian scouts, in their dispatches from the saucers, probably reported that the 1960 Summit meeting broke up before it began because neither side had anything to say.

International diplomatic gatherings do not initiate but merely record and formalize changes in the international power equilibrium. How could it be otherwise? Nobody is going to surrender over a green table if he has been victorious on the battlefield. The correspondence between conference rhetoric and power realities may not be quite 100 per cent. Mistakes can be made, and a sly diplomat can put something over on an unwary opponent. But by and large the first reflects the second.