Our foreign policy will not undergo major changes from the Eisenhower to the Kennedy Administration. I contend that it is handicapped by what might be called the “American dilemma.” This dilemma is deeply stamped on the American mind and does not substantially vary whether an Eisenhower or a Kennedy is in command. It is this dilemma which, manifesting itself on several levels, makes our policy hesitant, at once brutal and sentimental, pragmatic and Utopian.

This country cannot make up its mind whether it is still the young Republic of 1776, idealistic, revolutionary, and hardly a middling in size and power among the world's nations, or the strongest imperial power of 1961, with vast involvements and precise interests everywhere in the world, and thus conservative, a guardian of a free way of life. The two images are incompatible, especially as seen by others; but inside America, we still cherish the ideal that we have established the best of possible worlds in terms of goodness and power, the home of a permanent revolution that others do not have to fear but rather trust and imitate.