NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY


,official establishment. There is no reason why every responsible officer
rof the Department and Foreign Service should not be schooled and
drilled in the handling of the sort of questions concerning our foreign
policy which are raised morning after morning by Lippmann 7 and
Krock1 and others. What we need here is a section of the Department
.charged not only wilth the briefing, but with the training and drilling,
of our official personnel on political matters. And this operation should
ýextend beyond the walls of this Department and into other depart-
ments closely concerned with foreign policy, particularly the armed
services and -the Treasury.
   The elaboration of a body of policy thought and rationale which
can be taught in uhis manner will do more than anything I can think of
not only to improve the quality of political work within the depart-
ment but also to improve our general implact on press land Congress
.and public. Without this type of discipline and singleness of purpose,
I do not think the problem can be mastered. And unless it is mastered,
there seems to me to be serious and urgent danger that our present
policy toward the Soviet Union will founder on the lack of popular
support.

   ' Walter Lippmann, author and syndicated newspaper columnist.
   'Arthur Krock, Washington correspondent of the New York Times.


Policy Planning Staff Files
Memorandum     by the Deputy Under Secretary of State (Ruske) to the
           Director of the Policy Planning Staff (Nitze)

 TOP SECRET                      [WVASHINGTON,] February 23, 1950.
   Here are some superficial comments on the attached paper.'
   I. First paragraph. I doubt that we should confine the revolu-
 tionary process of the past 35 years to t.he Russian and the Chinese
 revolutions. If anything, we have had two broad streams of revolu-
 tion. On the one hand we have had a continuation of a national-
 liberal-democratic revolution which has extended into new areas. On
 the other, we have had communist revolution or counter-revolution in
 certain areas.
   Also in the same paragraph, I doubt that it is accurate to say "the
 complex balance of power" was destroyed. There was never a balance,
 if by balance we mean equilibrium. If by a balance we mean contend-
 ing forces which express themselves at times in war and at times in
 peace, then we have had several basic rearrangements of the-balance
 of power in the span of one generation.

 The attachment does not accompany ithe source ;text and has not been spe-
 cifically identified. It was an early draft or partial draft of the study
on United
 States objectives and programs for national security, being prepared by
the
 Stalte-Defense PolicyReview Group. For the final version of- the study,
NSC-68,
 April 7, see p. 235. The four sections of Rusk's memorandum correspond to
the
 first four secti~ons of NSC-68.


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