This is the Friends of History Debating Society. I'm John Batcher with the Generous H.J. Mackinder, International Relations,

Six Capital Six Points of View. DC is last because there's very little to say. Between

Thanksgiving and the State of the Union on an ordinary year, nothing happens.

Parties, explanations, money, but nothing.

However, it's an election year coming, and much is happening. It's all domestic, all of it.

This is not isolationism, this is politics.

Professor, DC's point of view, we're in an election year.

Well, D.C. point of view, it would be desirable if we had a coherent point of view.

We haven't had one for a long time and this is a bipartisan

issue, it's not a one party or the other, but I would point out that the issues that are now, there are really two sets of issues that are ripening or three sets that are ripening.

One is the whole issue of Middle East peace.

And we're involved in that for various reasons.

But remember that Mr. Clinton, I believe,

got the Nobel Prize for the Camp David Accords and there's no piece since so much to the

Nobel Prize. The Middle East, the basic issues in the Middle East have been

known since the 1940s or 1950s.

Likewise, with Asia, the situation we now face of unbalanced power in the Pacific was created by

Mr. Nixon and Mr. K. Kissinger in their overhasty and

overhasty and ill-considered

drafting China policies.

As I've said before, there was no need to proceed as fast as we did.

Nixon wanted to, but remember France had already recognized China in 1964, and if we had a little bit more sense, I think we could have just let the French relationship with China play itself out and see what we learned.

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