I begin, with apologies, by mentioning two of my own books; Can American Democracy Survive Cold War? (1963) and The Intelligence Establishment (1970). The titles say much about the development of a debate that promises to be with us for some time.

The first title/question posed the dilemma of an American democracy facing a perceived threat (perceived at least by the foreign policy elite) to national security. An assumed monolithic “world communism” provoked the creation of a vast arsenal of foreign policy instruments, including espionage and covert political operations overseas. Managing mis mammoth security apparatus required highly centralized control. Indeed, at times it required deception, lying, and deep secrecy.

In the reprisals following Idi Amin's 1971 coup in Uganda the mayor of Masaka, a town in West Buganda, was dragged from his house by Nubians paid by the General. A crowd gathered. The mayor asked to speak to the new chief of state by telephone. Amin's killers—“soldiers” is too good a word for them—stripped him, bound his hands, and tied a rope around his neck. The chief killer drew a knife, cut off the mayor's penis, and, holding it in front of the screaming man, told him he could call Kampala through the severed organ.

Shed a tear, fellow backsliders! What promised to be a good old raucous theological scopes tnai has already fizzled into a nonevent. The great Hartford heresy hunt has labored mightily and brought forth nothing more than a limp list of thirteen “themes” no sane theologian would want to defend, plus an equal number of refutations, which (except for the closing quotation from St. Paul) sound nearly as flaccid as the themes themselves. The latter-day defenders of the Faith have succeeded where Torquemada failed; they have made even polemics dull. In the halcyon days of old the guardians of orthodoxy at least stuck live villains in the stocks and consigned real books to the Index.

I cannot deny that I was surprised and confused when I first read the Hartford Appeal. It seemed to me that every Christian theologian would reject the theses proscribed in this document. But then, why was the affirmation made? And why was it made at this time? In this year, dedicated by Pope Paul VI to reconciliation, I would have expected Christian theologians in the USA to make an appeal for amnesty. This topic is of special interest to Canadians, since we are acquainted with many draft resistors who have come to live among us. I cannot imagine who the theologians indicated in the Hartford Appeal are. Who holds these views?

In the closing pages of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904) Max Weber mused on the shape of things to come: No one knows who wilt live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of self-importance. For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might be said: “Specialists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.”

The Turks have few claims on Western sympathies. They did not build the Parthenon, nor did they invent the word democracy (although in the last generation they have been more expert than the Greeks in operating one).

But about Cyprus they are right. The only workable solution is partition of the island between Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot entities with a loose confederal linkage. Efforts to force the Turks into other solutions, by such means as Congressional insistence that military aid to Turkey be cut off, are counterproductive. On the one hand, U.S. pressure on Turkey resulted in a tougher Turkish stand. The Turkish-Cypriots have, at Ankara's suggestion, proclaimed their own autonomous state in the 40 per cent of the island held by the Turkish Army.

It is, of course, a matter of judgment whether or not one believes the current international situation is, as the Chinese put it, one characterized by a great disorder on earth—“the wind sweeping through the tower heralds a rising storm in the mountains.” But the general trends seem to be quite clear: a disintegration of the cold war coalitions, the emergence of nonsecurity issues as die essence of international politics, and a change toward new power configurations. In such a transitional context the current Chinese posture in international politics seems to be based on one of self-assured “providential statesmanship” exploiting all the possibilities in the “great disorder under heaven.”