INTERVENTIONISM AFTER VIETNAM 5 realignments that have taken place during the past decade. Throughout most of the Cold War era, the US faced only one other superpower, the Soviet Union, and most international crises were defined in terms of the great East-West rivalry. Today, most analysts agree that the US is part of a pentapolar power balance composed of five major powers : China, with a significant nuclear capability and a growing array of bombers and missiles; Japan, with the world's third largest industrial capacity; Western Europe, with a combined economic system as powerful as the US; the Soviet Union, with a global navy and growing influence in the Middle East and South Asia; and of course the United States.2 These recent developments add up to the fact that, strategically speaking, the United States is in a new ballgame. Although still stronger militarily than any other single power (or than most combinations of two or three powers), it must be prepared to face a situation in which it could wind up on the weaker side of a world power realignment. Unless America is willing to employ nuclear weapons in defence of any government or territory deemed vital to its interests, it can no longer expect to emerge victorious from every armed encounter in which it might become involved. As noted by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas H Moorer, . . . our relative military power throughout the world has peaked and is declining. We no longer possess that substantial strategic superiority which in the past provided us with such a significant margin of overall military power that we could, with confidence, protect our interests worldwide. Henceforth, we will have to chart our course with much greater precision and calculate our risks much more cautiously.3 Objectives of US Foreign Policy The dilemma facing American strategists is further complicated by the fact that, although the world's power equation has changed drastically, American objectives in the global sweepstakes have remained essentially unchanged over the past three decades. The paramount objectives of United States foreign policy have been, and will continue to be, the containment of Soviet power and influence, the defeat of national liberation movements in the Third World, and the expansion of America's share of world trade. During the Cold War, these objectives were clothed in a rigid anti-Communist ethic which justified American intervention at the slightest sign of communist activity in one of the so-called Free World protectorates. The Sino-Soviet split and Vietnam have changed all this however. On the one hand, the Government no longer has carte blanche to intervene abroad at times and locations of its choosing, while on the other hand the split has provided US policymakers with a much wider range of options—diplomatic, economic and military—than were available to previous administrations for the attainment of US objectives. Thus acquiescence to temporary Communist gains in some area (Chile, for instance)