Foreign Relations of the United States, 1917–1972, Volume VIII, Public Diplomacy, 1969-1972

116. Address by the Counselor of the Department of State (Pedersen)¹

Washington, November 12, 1970

Youth, Change, and Foreign Policy

I would like to talk to you today about a factor in the conduct of foreign affairs that we are taking into greater account in our operations both in the Department of State and in our missions around the world.

That factor is the present or potential power of students and youth, here and abroad, and their role as generators and reflectors of social and political change. Here, at a conference of voluntary agencies to which young people have been particularly invited, it is appropriate to consider that impact and how we are incorporating it into the planning of our foreign policy.

Around the globe a wave of activism on the part of young people has unsettled political developments in country after country. At its crest in 1968 youth sparked major outbreaks in more than 30 countries. That this broad movement surprised most governments and most foreign offices has been a spur to closer attention to the views and activities of younger people.

The significance for policymakers does not, however, rest only in the immediate effect of these eruptions on governments in being. Significance also resides in what lies behind them.

Today’s youth are the product of fundamental changes that have swept the world in the quarter century since World War II. An age of science and technology, of exploding population, of instant communication, of rising demands for higher standards of life, has produced a cultural revolution and with it a political ferment.

Everywhere—more than when we were young—youth are questioning, challenging, and doubting—everything.

Both here and abroad, many young people are approaching national and world issues, ideologies and priorities, institutions and authority, in a substantially different way from that of the generation that preceded them.

Many also are not, but clearly something new is going on, something significant, something that forces us to focus on the nature of our era.

We must seek first to understand what is happening. Then we must ask what are its implications.

That today’s youth represent a new kind of generation is hardly to be wondered at.

—Well over half of the world’s expanding population has been born since World War II; that is, they are under 25. They have no direct knowledge of that war, no direct knowledge of the Korean war, no direct knowledge of the more dangerous periods of the cold war.

—More and more of these young people are better and better educated. Across the world rapid gains have been made in primary and secondary education and in eliminating illiteracy. The 11 million who were in universities or other schools of higher education in 1960 had swelled just 5 years later by 60 percent, to 18 million. In the United States the number doubled between 1960 and 1969. Better informed, better educated, they are more conscious socially and politically as well.

—And those who enter university stay there much longer than formerly. They have to. The knowledge they need in order to cope in this technological age has exploded. So at a time when young people are apparently maturing physically earlier than before, their active participation in society is postponed. Added to this, in developed countries, is a new affluence, releasing many students from the economic cares that kept their parent’s generation preoccupied.

—Everywhere, also, modern communications are making young people vividly aware of their world, and ours, and of how others elsewhere are reacting to it. Tantalizing, broadening, stimulating, disillusioning word comes early and graphically, prepackaged and instantly transmitted. Instead of making society uniform, as most of us once expected, this vast flow of information has encouraged the formation of subcultures such as that of “youth” and has done so without regard to national or ideological lines.

—The rush to the cities characteristic of the age is creating its own influences. All over the world, people are discarding the old traditions and the old restraints of village or town to seek new opportunities in an urban setting. There they form a critical mass, swollen in numbers, newly free to question and to probe. There their children pass formative years amid vastly new and untraditional influences.

—And in much of the world the exhilaration of newly found independence has come face to face with the hard realities of underdevelopment, producing at one time progress, hope, frustration, and despair.

Who can wonder that youth formed under the pressure of these circumstances see the world in a different light?

Some believe that the youth phenomenon will pass, that youth will settle into “normalcy.” No doubt this will be so in societies, such as our own, with healthy economies and established means of popular change; no doubt so if we mean that the outrages of violence must be ended and that the appeals of extremist ideology will abate; no doubt so if “normalcy” includes the process of peaceful change. But in other circumstances the phenomenon is likely to persist, and everywhere the factors that brought the phenomenon into being are far from disappearing.

Impact of Youth Upon Developments Abroad

Those of us who are responsible for the country’s foreign affairs must face the implications of this phenomenon both abroad and at home. Let us look at foreign matters first.

For a number of years the Department of State has recognized that foreign policy must take into account the substantial impact of young people—radical, liberal, moderate, conservative, or reactionary—upon developments abroad.

In many countries youth have commanded our attention as a political factor now.

Youth abroad also bear on U.S. long-term foreign relations. They may be said, for instance, to provide a “distant early warning” of the problems of a society and the directions it might take. They carry with them a core of attitudes and values that will influence, though with modification of perspective and greater nuance, the decades to come. From them, though not necessarily nor even probably from those who loom largest for the moment, inevitably must come the leadership of tomorrow.

Exactly what may be the long-range influence of current youth unrest is necessarily speculative, as all future estimates must be. But what is clear is this: No Embassy effort at political analysis is complete unless it takes into account the shifts in values, norms, and beliefs and the actual political impact of the various and often divergent forces of a politically aware generation.

Since 1962 the Government has sought to assure attention to such developments through an Inter-Agency Youth Committee and through the stimulus of a special Youth Adviser responsible to the Secretary of State. Programs of Government agencies with foreign young people—especially in the Defense Department, USIA, and AID—have been operated under general coordination through the Committee. And our Embassies have been encouraged by the Committee to observe and report on youth developments, just as they do on commercial, labor, political, economic, or other matters.

After assuming office in 1969, Secretary of State Rogers decided that a new impetus needed to be given to Department and Embassy efforts to take account of continued youth activities around the world.² He instructed all American Ambassadors abroad to reexamine the priority they were giving to this aspect of their work. They were requested to assure that their Embassies were according not special weight but realistic weight to the new political impact of youth on society, to the societal changes youth were reflecting, and to the changes they were generating. They were asked to take advantage of the interests and energies of younger Embassy officers by giving them opportunities to develop such work. And they were asked to examine their use of available funds for exchanges, assistance, and other purposes to insure that youth factors were being taken into account.

To reinforce the point the Youth Adviser was sent to regional meetings of American Ambassadors throughout the world. He found our Ambassadors receptive, prepared to cooperate, and in many cases more conscious than the Department of the youthfulness of particular societies (17 heads of states or government are 40 or under). Systematic incorporation of youth developments is now an established part of the political and economic analysis of most Embassies.

Conveying an undistorted understanding of American life and of American objectives to those who will be the carriers of new values and new attitudes is also of importance to our long-term foreign policy objectives. So also is the contribution we are uniquely able to make to young people in underdeveloped countries in acquiring the skills and knowledge necessary for economic and social progress in a modern world. Government-wide programs involving exchange activities, the principal means through which we seek these objectives, reach the surprisingly large figure of $400 million.

Two such programs are operated directly by the State Department—one by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and one by the Agency for International Development. Together they bring some 7,000 people to the United States annually, about half of whom are under 30. I am pleased to say that several years of budget cuts in the educational and cultural programs were reversed last year under the new Assistant Secretary, John Richardson, when we received a $5 million increase.

We must recognize, of course, that of 130,000 foreign university students in the United States, 90 percent are here without U.S. Government sponsorship, support, or scarcely encouragement. It may well be that there is more we could do to help contribute to the success of their sojourn in the United States.

Greater Exchange With American Young People

If our custody of America’s welfare abroad includes a responsibility to comprehend the impact of foreign youth on American interests, so also do we have a responsibility to consider the views of American young people in determining what those interests are.

I do not mean to suggest that American youth stand as a monolithic force presenting a single view. The spectrum is broad, the political persuasions varied. In large measure we do not even accurately know the balance of their views. And it is too early to tell what trends will be lasting. But running through all and affecting all are the currents of the times. New forces are stirring all youth, and the drive to make their views heard is compelling.

One need not concur in these views to conclude that they should be given a hearing. At a time when American foreign policy is shifting from preoccupation with the problems bestowed on the world by World War II toward preoccupation with the opportunities of the last quarter of the 20th century, a readjustment of our role and involvement abroad has indeed become both desirable and necessary. That adjustment has been set underway by the President. It embraces a continued involvement, a continued expression of leadership, and a continued concern for our security; but it does so in the context of greater responsibility by others and in the conviction that no nation should play too predominant a role.

In any case youth’s active participation in the conduct of public affairs is to be vigorously encouraged. The opening of our councils to the best that American youth today offer will give us the advantage of new conceptions of our problems and an opportunity to engage in a fruitful exchange of views where perspectives or conclusions differ.

In his first statement to the Department after assuming office Secretary Rogers stated that he hoped to lead a “receptive and open establishment where men speak their minds and are listened to on merit, and where divergent views are fully and promptly passed on for decision.”³ And he called upon senior officers to encourage the participation of our young people. That statement was directed to the stimulation of young people within the Department, but it applies as well to the greater exchange which the Department desires with American young people.

On both sides there is much to gain from an increased dialogue.

We in Government will have to avoid a temptation to think we have “communicated” with youth simply when we have informed them of the details of our policies. We will have to be ready to face and deal not only with specific discussions of specific policies but also with fundamental challenges to values and assumptions. We will have not just to listen but really to hear.

So on their side will youth have to show their own readiness to listen, to deal with facts, and to consider the complexities and specifications of decisionmaking as it actually happens.

Among us all there will have to be an effort to talk with, not at, each other.

New Measures and New Approaches

To find effective ways to open policymaking mechanisms to these prospects is an important task. We have already taken a number of steps.

An essential move was to release creative energies in the Department itself. To do this we have taken measures such as these:

—Expanded use has been encouraged by the Department’s senior officers of what is known as the Open Forum Panel, an opportunity for junior Foreign Service officers—almost all still in their twenties or early thirties—to convey to the very top of the Department considered views on policy they wish to transmit outside the constraints of bureaucratic channels. They have done so and have utilized the means not only to suggest changes in existing or proposed policies but even, happily, to reinforce policies already underway in which they saw special merit. Two of the Department-wide task forces created to review our entire management and policy structure were charged with mandates to develop greater “creativity” as well as greater “openness” within the Department.⁴

—Each of our Bureaus was asked to make efforts to include young people in the advisory panels they customarily use to bring into the Department informed views from the academic, business, and other communities.

—And participation of American youth has been emphasized in the many multilateral organizations of which we are members. Our delegation to the current U.N. General Assembly, for example, includes a member who, at 30, is the youngest American delegate ever appointed and, for the first time, three young people under 25 serving as youth advisers.

No amount of openness within the Department, however, can substitute for the intellectual stimulation that comes from give-and-take between the Department and the world of the academics, voluntary agencies, and foreign affairs. Here also we are trying new approaches.

When the new Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, Michael Collins, was appointed in January he was given a mandate by the Secretary to place special emphasis upon improving our relations with the public, “particularly the young people.” Mr. Collins responded to that mandate with the appointment of a new youth adviser in his Bureau assigned full time to deal with American youth and by the initiation of a comprehensive youth participation program.

—One aspect, a program to permit young professors to work for a full week side by side and issue by issue with officers in the Department related to their own specialty, was begun early in the year. Thirteen young African experts from as many campuses started the program, followed by groups on the Near East, South Asia, Latin America, and Europe. Seven more such groups of professors will have a chance to exchange views with our officers between now and next spring, this time in functional as well as geographical areas.

—Another aspect, to intensify efforts to get State Department officers, especially young ones, into contact with young people in their own setting, began this fall. Visits to at least 600 campuses are planned during the year, most of which will avoid the customary lecture pattern in preference to small group discussions.

—A doubling within the year of the number of young people who routinely have access to the Department for substantive discussions has been made a third objective, exemplified for instance, by the 200 students we expect to receive in January for weeklong seminars with Foreign Service officers.

—To reach still others a new program of radio and TV discussions on the issues and major assumptions underlying foreign policy among youth and Foreign Service officers is also under preparation.

Meanwhile we are continuing the placement of Foreign Service officers in universities for full academic periods—not only to advance their skills and learning but to expose them to the currents of thought that find expression on campus and to help convey to the campuses some of our knowledge and considerations. Forty-eight FSO’s are currently pursuing college courses across America and six high-level officers are located in universities as “diplomats-in-residence,” visiting professors, in effect, from the world of practice.

These many steps we have already taken may not be well known. But we do want it to be well known that we are committed to maintaining open channels of communication with the forces of youth here and abroad.

We believe that from our Embassies’ efforts abroad will come a surer sense of the tendencies of other societies. And we believe that from our efforts at home should come sounder foundations for future policymaking and bridges to a future governed by new conditions.

Young people, it must be remembered, are more than just another interest group. They are the members of all the interest groups of the future. And the best of them are already concerned not just for their own well-being of today but for that of the whole society of tomorrow.

Often those of us in Government may not be able to do, and often we should not do, what many of the most articulate youth are asking. But we should and we will add their advice, their perceptions, and their interests to those of traditional claimants in the formulation of a foreign policy in the service of our country.

1. Source: Department of State Bulletin, December 14, 1970, pp. 718–722. Pedersen spoke before the Department’s National Foreign Policy Conference for Nongovernmental Organizations.
2. See footnote 2, Document 67.
3. For text, see Bulletin of Feb. 10, 1969, p. 125. [Footnote is in the original. See ibid.]
4. Following an address Macomber made on January 14, 1970, regarding management strategies during the new decade, the Department established 13 task forces to study management issues in the Department and make recommendations for reform. The final reports of the task forces (including recommendations) and a summary report were released in a volume entitled Diplomacy for the 70’s: A Program of Management Reform for the Department of State, which Macomber presented to Rogers on November 20. For additional information, see Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, vol. II, Organization and Management of Foreign Policy, Document 312. It is unclear as to which task forces Pedersen is referring.