The Spaceship and the Lifeboat: Metaphors for the 1990s. Detente as Future History

Abstract

The world trends beginning to emerge in the 1960's and '70's are qualitatively new and change fundamentally the traditional concepts of relations among states. There may be, therefore, no proper historical antecedents to the detente developing between the United States and the Soviet Union. Communication, transportation, trade patterns, and mutual dependencies have made the world substantially smaller. Modernization and industrial and commercial development are inexorably drawing the world's people closer. The most telling evidence of fundamental change during this period was the emergence of concern, for the first time in human history, over the survival of the human species. This concern may take the form of some specific questions: Are nations engaged in the creation of a true global interdependence in which all nations are inevitably linked in common need for support and sustenance? Or are such linkages only the creation of men and nations bent on assuring their own survival, designs that bind us enduringly to no nation) no resource, other than those dictated by the shifting requirements of the marketplace and the maintenance of security?

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 1975
Accession Number
ADA509923

Entities

People

  • J. E. Trinnaman
  • J. G. Thompson

Organizations

  • United States Army War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Counter WMD
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Agreements
  • Commerce
  • Developing Nations
  • Economic Systems
  • Europe
  • Geographic Regions
  • International Organizations
  • Lifeboats
  • National Security
  • Operations Research
  • Organizational Structure
  • Security
  • Spacecraft
  • United States
  • Ussr
  • Warfare
  • Western Europe

Readers

  • East Asian Political and Security Studies within the Soviet Union
  • Economics