c—

9
SI Rockefeller

    
  

© THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

m

a University /< 1230 YORK AVENUE NEW YORK, NY 10021
O Igor “4
Sr
JOSHUA LEDERBERG August 9, 1989

PRESIDENT

Dr. H. H. Saunders

The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20036

Dear Dr. Saunders:

I was very much taken with your chapter in "Restructuring
U.S. Foreign Policy" and I hope sometime soon to have a chance
to discuss it with you and John Steinbruner in somewhat greater
depth.

I could not agree with you more that we need to pay far
more attention to the mechanisms and opportunities of re-
structuring the fundamentals of international relationships --
when we spend so much time fighting "the fires in the in-
basket". Am I too far afield in characterizing the desired
process as an ideological shift and indeed (though most
illusions to it are all too trite) as an analog to the
scientific revolutions that Tom Kuhn wrote about?

What would be particularly helpful would be the
collection and analysis of more historical examples and
the role of personal leadership therein. Offhand, none
occur to me that rival what Sadat did in the tempering
of intét-country hostilities. My short list of analogs
does not add much more than FDR's role in bringing the
US into WWII, and Juan Carlos in the transition to Spanish
democracy .* Revolutionary violence, to my dismal reflection,
is the more usual consequence of charisma as reflected in
personalities like Hitler, Stalin and the imperial Napoleon.
(Calculating where to put DeGaulle on such a list betrays
the complexity of this exercise but the bottom line for
him is likely both significant and positive).

But I've only given a few minutes' thought to this
matter and I would very much like to see your annotated |
discussion.

* Fedradher's pereobindin 90 veleans ante ty
Letter to H. H. Saunders
August 9, 1989
-2—

A point of such exercise, is to try to understand a
little better what are the circumstances that promote
or enable such shifts. The revolutionary violent
situations, the coups d'etat aside, they seem to re-
quire a political leader already in fairly confident
command of his own power. For that reason alone, I am
gloomy about the Middle East. Questions human benefit
are all too muddled with the struggle for individual
political power on both sides of the conflict in
Palestine and it is not clear how they will break
through those kinds of parochial interest except out
of the ashes of still greater catastrophe.

Nevertheless, I would like to hear more from you
about the instrumentalities by which greater attention
could be given to these more deep seated issues in
foreign relations. Ronald Reagan displayed an extra-
ordinary shift in his terms of reference about arms
control (but most of the institutional mechanisms
that I can think of were impediments rather than en-
couragements to that process). People like Brzezinski
Kissinger insist that the Soviet Union has an unbreaka-
ble historic tradition of expansionism and exploitation
and in my own discussions with them it has been difficult
to even introduce the hypothesis of possible change.
Reagan nevertheless made that jump and if you know more
than I do about how he came to - Reykjavik - it might
illuminate the process we are discussing.

s sincerely,

Yo
oshua A

Enclosure: re Kuhn

cc: John Steinbruner