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BETWEEN TWO AGES

America's Role in the Technetronic Era

Zbigniew Brzezinski

THE VIKING PRESS / NEW YORK

First published in 1970 by The Viking Press, Inc. 625 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022

Published simultaneously in Canada by The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited

ISBN670160415

Library of Congress catalog card number: 76104162

Printed in U.S.Aby H. Wolff Book Mfg. Co.

Prepared under the auspices of theResearch Institute on Communist Affairs, Columbia University

Portions of this book appeared in Encounter in different form

For Ian, Mark, and Mika

Acknowledgments

Though this book deals with communism only in part—and then primarily in relation to the broader issues with which I am

concerned—the Research Institute on Communist Affairs of Columbia University provided me with invaluable research

assistance and with a congenial and stimulating setting. My colleagues at the Institute little realize how very helpful they

have been in the gradual process of shaping my ideas, testing my views, and enlarging my perspectives. The manuscript was

read and criticized by a number of friends and colleagues. I am especially grateful to Professor Samuel P. Huntington for his

trenchant criticisms and very helpful recommendations; to Professor Albert A. Mavrinac, who maintained our friendly tradi

tion of his questioning my arguments and of forcing me to rethink some of my propositions; to Mrs. Christine Dodson, the

former Administrative Assistant of the Research Institute, who prepared a very constructive and highly perceptive chapter

length critique of the entire draft; and to Professor Alexander Erlich for steering me away from some economic pitfalls. I am

also mostobliged and grateful to Miss Sophia Sluzar, currently the Administrative Assistant, who very ably supervised the

overall preparation of the manuscript and who earlier was instrumental in preparing the tables and assembling the needed

data. Miss Toby Trister, my research assistant, was indefatigable in exposing my inaccuracies, in filling bibliographic gaps,

and in completing the research. Miss Dorothy Rodnite, Miss Michelle Elwyn, and Mr. Myron Gutmann amiably and

efficiently—even when under great pressures of time—devoted their energies to the completion of the manuscript. To all of

them I owe a debt which I am pleased to acknowledge.

I also wish to note my obligation to Mr. Marshall Best of The Viking Press, on whose experience and wise counsel I often

relied, and to Mr. Stanley Hochman for his sensitive editorial assistance.

A special mention is due to my wife. In all my writing I have never come across a more conscientious reader, a more

ferocious critic, and a more determined—dare I say obstinate?—perfectionist. I have no hesitation in saying, though only

now I say it with relief, that any merit this essay may have is in large measure due to her efforts.

Z.B.October 1969

Contents

CONTENTS....................................................................................................................................................3

THE GLOBAL IMPACT OFTHE................................................................................................................8

TECHNETRONIC REVOLUTION...............................................................................................................8

1.T HE O NSET OF THE T ECHNETRONIC A GE ...................................................................................................10

New Social Patterns................................................................................................................................10

Social Explosion/Implosion.....................................................................................................................11

Global Absorption...................................................................................................................................13

2.T HE A MBIVALENT D ISSEMINATOR ............................................................................................................15

The American Impact..............................................................................................................................15

New Imperialism?...................................................................................................................................18

3.G LOBAL G HETTOS ...................................................................................................................................19

Prospects for Change..............................................................................................................................20

The Subjective Transformation................................................................................................................21

The Political Vacuum..............................................................................................................................25

4.G LOBAL F RAGMENTATION AND U NIFICATION ...........................................................................................26

Fragmented Congestion..........................................................................................................................26

Toward a Planetary Consciousness.........................................................................................................28

THE AGE OF VOLATILEBELIEF............................................................................................................31

1.T HE Q UEST FOR A U NIVERSAL V ISION ......................................................................................................31

The Universal Religions..........................................................................................................................32

The National Identity...............................................................................................................................33

Ideological Universalism.........................................................................................................................34

2.T URBULENCE WITHIN I NSTITUTIONALIZED B ELIEFS ...................................................................................35

Institutional Marxism..............................................................................................................................35

Organized Christianity............................................................................................................................38

Privatization of Belief..............................................................................................................................40

3.H ISTRIONICS AS H ISTORY IN T RANSITION .................................................................................................41

Escape from Reason................................................................................................................................42

The Political Dimension..........................................................................................................................43

Historical Discontinuity..........................................................................................................................45

4.I DEAS AND I DEALS BEYOND I DEOLOGY .....................................................................................................47

The Quest for Equality.............................................................................................................................47

Syncretic Belief.......................................................................................................................................48

COMMUNISM: THE PROBLEM OF RELEVANCE................................................................................52

1.T HE S TALINIST P ARADOX .........................................................................................................................52

The Necessity of Stalinism.......................................................................................................................53

Imperial Pacification...............................................................................................................................55

2.T HE B UREAUCRATIZATION OF B OREDOM ..................................................................................................57

The Innovative Relationship....................................................................................................................57

Defensive Orthodoxy...............................................................................................................................58

Perspective on Tomorrow........................................................................................................................61

3.T HE S OVIET F UTURE ................................................................................................................................62

Internal Dilemmas...................................................................................................................................62

Alternative Paths.....................................................................................................................................66

The Problem of Vitality............................................................................................................................69

4.S ECTARIAN C OMMUNISM .........................................................................................................................70

Phases....................................................................................................................................................70

Assimilated Communisms........................................................................................................................71

China and Global Revolution..................................................................................................................73

THE AMERICAN TRANSITION................................................................................................................77

1.T HE T HIRD A MERICAN R EVOLUTION ........................................................................................................78

The Pace and Thrust of Progress.............................................................................................................79

The Uncertainty of Progress....................................................................................................................81

The Futility of Politics.............................................................................................................................83

2.T HE N EW L EFT R EACTION ........................................................................................................................86

Infantile Ideology....................................................................................................................................86

Revolutionaries in Search of Revolution...................................................................................................88

The Historic Function of the Militant Left................................................................................................90

3.T HE C RISIS OF L IBERALISM ......................................................................................................................91

T HE L IBERAL J ANUS ....................................................................................................................................92

T HE P RICE OF V ICTORIOUS S KEPTICISM ........................................................................................................92

The End of Liberal Democracy?..............................................................................................................95

AMERICA AND THE WORLD..................................................................................................................98

1.T HE A MERICAN F UTURE ...........................................................................................................................98

Participatory Pluralism...........................................................................................................................99

Change in Cultural Formation...............................................................................................................101

Rational Humanism...............................................................................................................................103

2.I NTERNATIONAL P ROSPECTS ...................................................................................................................104

The Revolutionary Process....................................................................................................................105

USA/USSR: Less Intensive, More Extensive Rivalry...............................................................................107

Policy Implications................................................................................................................................108

3.AC OMMUNITY OF THE D EVELOPED N ATIONS .........................................................................................111

Western Europe and Japan....................................................................................................................111

Structure and Focus..............................................................................................................................112

The Communist States...........................................................................................................................113

Risks and Advantages............................................................................................................................114

REFERENCE NOTES................................................................................................................................117

INDEX.........................................................................................................................................................123

Introduction

Perhaps the time is past for the comprehensive "grand" vision. In some ways, it was a necessary

substitute for ignorance, a compensation in breadth for the lack of depth in man's understanding ofhis world. But

even if this is so, the result of more knowledge may be greater ignorance—or, at least, the feeling of ignorance—

about where we are and where we are heading, and particularly where we should head, than was true when in

fact we knew less but thought we knew more.

I am not sure that this need be so. In any case, I am not satisfied with the fragmented, microscopic

understanding of the parts, and I feel the need for some—even if crude—approximation of a larger perspective.

This book is an effort to provide such a perspective. It is an attempt to define the meaning—within a dynamic

framework—of a major aspect of our contemporary reality: the emerging global political process which

increasingly blurs the traditional distinctions between domesticand international politics. In working toward that

definition, I shall focus particularly on the meaning for the United States of the emergence of this process,

seeking to draw implications from an examination of the forces that are molding it.

Time and space shape our perception of reality. The specific moment and the particular setting dictate

the way international estimates and priorities are defined. Sometimes, when the moment is historically "ripe," the

setting and the time may coalesce to provide a special insight. A perceptive formula is easier to articulate in a

moment of special stress. Conditions of war, crisis, tension are in that sense particularly fertile. The situation of

crisis permitssharper value judgments, in keeping with man's ancient proclivity for dividing his reality into good

and evil. (Marxist dialectic is clearly in this tradition, and it infuses moral dichotomy into every assessment.) But

short of that critical condition—which in its most extreme form involves the alternatives of war or peace—

global politics do not lend themselves to pat formulations and clearcut predictions, even in a setting of extensive

change. As a result—in most times—it is extraordinarily difficult to liberate oneself from the confining influence

of the immediate and to perceive—from a detached perspective—the broader sweep of events.

Any abstract attempt to arrive at a capsule formula is bound to contain a measure of distortion. The

influences that condition relations among states and the broad evolution ofinternational affairs are too various.

Nonetheless, as long as we are aware that any such formulation inescapably contains a germ of falsehood— and

hence must be tentative—the attempt represents an advance toward at least a partial understanding. The

alternative is capitulation to complexity: the admission that no sense can be extracted from what is happening.

The consequent triumph of ignorance exacts its own tribute in the form of unstable and reactive policies, the

substitution of slogans for thought,the rigid adherence to generalized formulas made in another age and in

response to circumstances that are different in essence from our own, even if superficially similar.

Today, the most industrially advanced countries (in the first instance, the United States) are beginning

to emerge from the industrial stage of their development. They are entering an age in which technology and

especially electronics—hence my neologism "technetronic" *—are increasingly becoming the principal

determinants of social change, altering the mores, the social structure, the values, and the global outlook of

society. And precisely because today change is so rapid and so complex, it is perhaps more important than ever

before that our conduct of foreign affairs be guided by a sense of history—and to speak of history in this

context is to speak simultaneously of the past and of the future.

Since it focuses on international affairs, this book is at most only a very partial response to the need for

a more comprehensive assessment. Itis not an attempt to sum up the human condition, to combine philosophy

and science, to provide answers to more perplexing questions concerning our reality. It is much more modest

than that, and yet I am uneasily aware that it is already much too ambitious, because it unavoidably touches on

all these issues.

The book is divided into five major parts. The first deals with the impact of the scientifictechnological

revolution on world affairs in general, discussing more specifically the ambiguous position ofthe principal

disseminator of that revolution—the United States—and analyzing the effects of the revolution on the socalled

Third World. The second part examines how the foregoing considerations have affected the content, style, and

format of man's political outlook on his global reality, with particular reference to the changing role of ideology.

The third part assesses the contemporary relevance of communism to problems of modernity, looking first at the

experience of the Soviet Union and then examining the overall condition of international communism as a

movement that once sought to combine internationalism and humanism. The fourth part focuses on the United

States, a society that is both a social pioneer and a guinea pig for mankind; it seeks todefine the thrust of change

and the historical meaning of the current American transition. The fifth part outlines in very broad terms the

general directions that America might take in order to make an effective response to the previously discussed

foreign and domestic dilemmas.

Having said what the book does attempt, it might be helpful to the reader also to indicate what it does

not attempt. First of all, it is not an exercise in "futurology"; it is an effort to make sense of present trends, to

develop a dynamic perspective on what is happening. Secondly, it is not a policy book, in the sense that its object

is not to develop systematically a coherent series of prescriptions and programs. In Part V, however, it does try

to indicate the general directions toward which America should and, in some respects, may head.

In the course of developing these theses, I have expanded on some of the ideas initially advanced in my

article "America in the Technetronic Age," publishedin Encounter, January 1968, which gave rise to

considerable controversy. I should add that not only have I tried to amplify and clarify some of the rather

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