摘要: For almost half a century, America waged the Cold War. It was an ideological struggle of the first order which, finally, freedom won. But a result of that long twilight struggle was an imbalance of resources. Too few dollars fuele... 展开 For almost half a century, America waged the Cold War. It was an ideological struggle of the first order which, finally, freedom won. But a result of that long twilight struggle was an imbalance of resources. Too few dollars fueled the engines of the Department of State. This imbalance was accepted because our survival was at stake. All one needs to do to understand how stunningly valid that proposition was is to study the crisis that occurred in October, 1962 the series of events now referred to as The Cuban Missile Crisis. Looking back almost 40 years, we find it difficult to remember but we were frightened, frightened almost unto death. And well we should have been, for it would have taken only thirty minutes to obliterate our way of life and with missiles in Cuba, that fragile bit of time was cut to nine minutes. So we can understand, indeed we can applaud, the tremendous diversion of dollars that was necessary to safeguard our way of life and to win that twilight struggle. But our very victory changed the world almost overnight. Not only that, our victory coincided with the full force of two world revolutions, in information and in technology. This confluence of forces freedom, democracy, and open markets, alongside the globalizing effects of the information and technology revolutions produced a new age and a new need. The need is for a greater emphasis on fueling the engines of state the diplomatic, economic, and cultural instruments that America must use to map the course ahead, to pursue that path in a stilldangerous world, and eventually to gather all the peoples of the world to freedoms flag and to the bounty and prosperity of open markets from the Yukon to Cape Horn, from Vladivostok to Vancouver. 收起