By measuring each aspect of our foreign policy against the standard—Is it helpful in defeating the enemy?—we can understand why the past fourteen years have been marked by frustration and failure. We have not gotten ahead because we have been travelling the wrong road.
It is less easy to stake out the right road. For in terms of our own experience it is a new road we seek, and one therefore that will hold challenges and perils that are different (though hardly graver) from those with which we are now familiar. Actually, the “new” road is as old as human history: it is the one that successful political and military leaders, having arrived at a dispassionate “estimate of the situation,” always follow when they are in a war they mean to win. From our own estimate of the situation, we know the direction we must take; and our standard—Is it helpful in defeating Communism?—will provide guideposts all along the way. There are some that can be observed even now:
1. The key guidepost is the Objective, and we must never lose sight of it. It is not to wage a struggle against Communism, but to win it.