We Americans, collectively, have suddenly been burdened with a world responsibility for which neither our past experience nor our present values equip us very well. Less than two centuries after our, country was but a collection of remote colonies it has become a superpower upon whom all the old colonial powers depend. Less than twenty years after perhaps a majority of Americans supported the isolationist position against involvement in World War II, the United States is the center of history's most far-reaching peacetime alliance.

This alliance which America leads includes both colonial powers and recently-freed colonies, bitter enemies and close allies from the last war, dictatorships and democracies. It comprises nations upon whose loyalty we know we can depend and others about whose intentions we feel nervous. And since the alliance itself is both complex and ambiguous, America's role in it must be complex and ambiguous too.

Last May George F. Kennan in The Atlantic (“Foreign Policy and Christian Conscience”) had some advice for moralists concerned with nuclear weapons and international politics. Much of his advice is good. He warns against “pouring Christian enthusiasm into unsuitable vessels † designed to contain the earthly calculations of practical politicians.” His lucid statement on the limits of the United Nations and foreign economic aid can help provide the basis for morally responsible support of these widely misunderstood foreign policy instruments. His comments on the moral ambiguities in the colonialism issue are timely.