This much having been said, the question remains whether we have the resources for the job we have to do -- defeat Communism -- and, if so, how those resources ought to be used. This brings us squarely to the problem of power, and the uses a nation makes of power. I submit that this is the key problem of international relations, that it always has been, that it always will be. And I suggest further that the main cause of the trouble we are in has been the failure of American policy-makers, ever since we assumed free world leadership in 1945, to deal with this problem realistically and seriously.

In the recent political campaign two charges were leveled affecting the question of power, and I think we might begin by trying to put them into proper focus. One was demonstrably false; the other, for the most part, true.

The first was that America had become -- or was in danger of becoming -- a second-rate military power. I know I do not have to dwell here on the absurdity of that contention. You may have misgivings about certain aspects of our military establishment -- I certainly do -- but you know any comparison of over-all American strength with over-all Soviet strength finds the United States not only superior, but so superior both in present weapons and in the development of new ones that our advantage promises to be a permanent feature of U. S. -- Soviet relations for the foreseeable future.