ABSTRACT
"Critical" is one of those adjectives whose value has been severely depreciated by overuse, yet in speaking of the importance of future developments in American foreign policy no other word will do. The world, however, has not been able to wait patiently for the United States to sort out its domestic difficulties. Leadership does not mean hegemony or "indiscriminate interventionism"; there is something farcical in the current invocation of these perils in view of the weakness of the American position. Zbigniew Brzezinski has for many years been a leading student of world affairs, his writings over the last decade or two will be scrutinized as closely as those of Henry Kissinger once were. Since most countries are ruled by dictators, a confrontation between freedom and despotism is to be avoided in favor of an attempt to accommodate the pressures for reform of existing international arrangements, in the hope that this will lessen radical passions.
