For some years now—and particularly since the Reagan administration came to power—politicians and pundits have been bewailing what they view as a precarious decline of American power. President Reagan has discovered a "window of vulnerability" through which the Soviets may launch their nuclear missiles on this country, and he has advocated the most expensive defense program in U. S. history. Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig has found danger to our national security threatening "everywhere," and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger has proved to be even more hawkish toward the Soviets than Haig. Small wonder, then, that in this summer of 1982 we can paraphrase the title of the famous historical novel about Nero's Rome and ask, "Where are we going?" Still, even as Reagan, Haig, and Weinberger cry havoc, voices of dissent have risen throughout the land, particularly against the continuing nuclear arms race that now threatens man not with mere destruction and death but with total extinction. In order to gain some sense of where we may be heading, it is necessary to examine where we have been in recent history, and that is the subject of Norman Graebner's essay. In order to avoid plunging over the abyss of annihilation, it is necessary to present some alternatives to our present policy of spending ever more billions for defense, and those are what Robert J. Brugger offers in his article. As Mr. Graebner notes, it is not so much that American power has declined as it is that America's successful postwar economic policies have restored war-wrecked Europe and Japan. As Mr. Bruggeh points out, the more sophisticated and expensive our weaponry has become, the more it has tended to be error-prone and difficult to operate effectively.