worldview

A JOURNAL OF ETHICS AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

ALL OR NOTHING AT ALL?

The West’s increasing reliance upon thermo- nuclear weapons was emphasized last year in a historic British White Paper on defense. Stating that it is economically impossible for Britain to be strong in both nuclear and conventional arma- ments, this report announced that over the next few years the British government would radi- cally reduce the size of its conventional arma- ments in order to develop more fully its atomic weapons. In this way, it concluded, Great Britain would make a “modest” contribution toward the security of the West.

When this policy was announced, some serious questions about its implications were raised. The London Economist wondered if it really covered “all the reasonable political and military risks,” and decided it did not. The dilemma it seemed to pose—either atomic war or surrender—was too cruel. No area of maneuver was left for conven- tional response to a local aggression. Because, by making every decision one of all or nothing at all, a policy of total reliance upon total weapons ac- tually increases the chances of “limited” out- rages.

Perhaps it was in answer to such problems that a new Defense White Paper was issued by the British government last month. The new docu- ment has received remarkably little public atten- tion in this country, but it demands most serious

ublic attention because it spells out, with horri- Eine explicitness, the implications of the 1957

Mr. Duncan Sandys, the British Minister of Defense, says in the new Paper that Britain has a growing force of bombers which are now being equipped with megaton bombs and, in addition, will soon have intermediate range missiles. Con- ventional forces, at the same time, are continually being reduced. (All this by way of implementing the 1957 White Paper). And so, Mr. Sandys an- nounces, if the Soviet Union were to launch an attack on any Western nation with conventional forces only, the West would hit back with its strategic nuclear weapons.

Thus, “logically,” almost academically, the doctrine of ultimate deterrence is set forth and adopted by this nation’s major ally. The Russian leaders have been warned: any “major attack” (whatever that may mean) against any “Western nation” (whatever that may include), even with conventional weapons, would mean _ thermo- nuclear reprisal against the Soviet Union. With such a fate in store for them, the White Paper seems to ask, would Russia’s leaders ever dare to attack?

Obviously, the most grave issues, both strate- gic and moral, are involved here. British critics of Mr. Sandys’ document point out that, strate- gically, the doctrine of ultimate deterrence is dangerous bravado.

The Socialist New Statesman, in an editorial titled “The Logic of Annihilation” argues: “If Mr. Sandys’ deterrent is employed, it will in- evitably lead to the extermination of life on these islands . . . No British Prime Minister could pos- sibly take such a decision. The strategy of the deterrent is a purely theoretical concept de- signed to meet a contingency which, the politi- cians believe, will never occur. But if it does, the deterrent will immediately be revealed for what it is: a bluff... And once the monumental bluff of the Great Deterrent were called, the West [lacking sufficient conventional forces] would have no alternatives but to accept a last-minute Munich settlement . . . Hence the political con- sequence of [this] defense policy is a foreign policy based on appeasement.”

The Conservative Spectator makes a similar case: “The threat is empty: everybody, including Mr. Sandys, knows that H-bombs will not be launched from this country if a conventional war begins. But Mr. Khrushchev may not realize this .. « He may conceivably believe . . . that we really intend to hit back with strategic nuclear weapons if, say, war breaks out anywhere along

MaRcH 1958

the Curtain . . . If it should, [he] might feel that it would be wise to obliterate us before we decided whether or not to carry out the White Paper's policy.”

Disturbing as the doctrine of ultimate deter- rence is from the standpoint of strategy, how- ever, it is infinitely more disturbing the standpoint of any recognizable morality. Strate- gically, the doctrine is at least debatable; morally, it is self-evidently pernicious. As baldly stated in the British White Paper, it represents a public abandonment by a Western government of any pretense to ethical sensitivity in defense policy. Here is an official endorsement of power di- vorced from moral concern.

Moralists have only begun to reconsider their traditional teaching on the “just war” in relation to nuclear weapons of mass-destruction. But it is doubtful that they could justify the actual use of these weapons under any circumstances—even as a last-resort reply to thermonuclear attack. Because, however irrelevant much of the tradi-

In the Magazines

With the opening of the annual season for debate on foreign aid come two articles of especial interest, one by Barbara Ward in The New York Times Magazine of February 28, the other by Oscar Gass in the Feb- ruary issue of Commentary. Both writers marshall the impressive evidence of figures and statistics to sup- port their conviction that the U.S. record for foreign aid expenditures is far from what it should be, and that, unless there is immediate and total revision of our now short-sighted policy along the lines of some major, long-term effort, we shall fail to meet the de- mands of the present world crisis.

In her article, “The Great Challenge Is Not the Sputniks,” Miss Ward sees the new situation as re- sulting from “the falling away of world trade in the wake of American business stagnation”—a situation further aggravated by Soviet initiative. “. . . The new conditions of 1958 might best be summed up by saying that, while the Russians have evolved a long- term economic strategy for the Asian fringe (and be- yond it, for the underdeveloped areas everywhere) the Western powers appear to have no general policy of any sort.”

Mr. Gass’s report, “The United States and the Poorest Peoples,” is a closer look at the mismanage- ment, delusion and apathy that lie behind Washing-

tional “just war” teaching may now be, one of its principles remains luminously clear, from the standpoint, even, of common sense. The princi- ple is this: even a defensive action, to be morally justifiable, must hold more promise of good than of evil. But what promise, except universal sui- cide, does any war fought with massive nuclear weapons hold?

Agonizing problems are involved here, both for the moralist and the statesman. For both of them, the modern situation poses dilemmas that resist clear-cut answers. Given the fact of Soviet power, no responsible moralist can easily move from the summit of principle to the ground of practice and advocate that, here and now, the Western powers should unilaterally disarm. The practical consequences of this would likely be the world dominance of the Soviet Union. But no Western statesman, either, can responsibly embrace a strategy of naked power completely sundered from the moral imperatives of the civi- lized tradition. And this is what the doctrine of ultimate deterrence, now so casually but so omi- nously set forth in the 1958 British White Paper, seems to do.

ton’s lack of policy. As an economic consultant to several of the needy countries, the author is in a posi- tion to lay open the entire record—of their side as well as ours—and his view is a realistic one. “With the best will in the world,” he writes, “a society like ours can effectively assist only countries with a national leadership which desires assistance and is prepared to bear the first responsibility for thinking, planning and organization. An underdeveloped country has to give its best to the task of its own development; then we can be helpful in a supporting role, and more in resources than personnel.”

Kenneth Thompson, writing on “Moral and Politi- cal Aspects of the Present Crisis” in the February 17 issue of Christianity and Crisis, explores our mood in the current phase of the Cold War, along with some of its causes and implications. He insists that we find some approach to policy which is neither “a severely military view of power” nor “a utopian moralism that offers few criteria for measuring the moral aspects of any problem,” and he calls for a revival of “the art of diplomatic conversations.”

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CRITICISMS OF U.S. POLICY

An Age of Enthusiasm Seems to Have Passed

William Pfaff

It is difficult not to see elements of desperation and despair in much that is being said about the interna- tional situation. This is a time when events seem in the saddle; when attempts to control the technology of destruction seem all but hopeless; when American policies founded largely upon good will seem failing, and a major part of the world turns from us in dis- illusionment and often in hatred.

The debate over our policy has deepened in recent months; and in what has been said it is possible to distinguish two kinds of comment. There is the evalu- ation of specific policies, often including remarks on our national temper and the fundamentals of our policy, but focussed upon issues, The Rockefeller and Gaither reports (the latter so far as it has been made known) deal with measures to be taken, rather than with the meaning of our policy itself. Then there have been statements which implicitly question our policy itself in its conception, style and execution.

The most spectacular of the latter were the Reith Lectures, delivered over the BBC by George F. Ken- nan and published this month in this country by Harper's. These talks by the former American am- bassador to Moscow had an entirely unexpected im- pact on European opinion, and the positions argued by Mr. Kennan have found substantial support in this country as well as abroad. Much that he said has had currency before this, but it has not been given such an eloquent and comprehensive statement.

At about the same time that Mr. Kennan was speak- ing to the British public, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer was publishing in Foreign Affairs (January) what he called “An Inward Look.” This was an analysis—not a very optimistic analysis—of the condition of our culture and the standards of our education.

Dr. Oppenheimer wrote in the context of the inter- national crisis and his remarks raised very serious questions about the meaning of our policy, and par- ticularly about the quality of our government's intel- lectual response to a profoundly changing situation. In a way, Dr. Oppenheimer went more deeply than Mr. Kennan, for he defined a cultural problem to

Mr. Pfaff is an American journalist who has reported frequently from Asia and the Middle East.

which Kennan, in his lectures on the political state of the world, was implicitly responding.

Mr. Kennan’s talks were quite specific. In addition to Soviet affairs, he dealt with Eastern Europe, the non-European world, the military situation, and NATO, and with general issues in the context of these concrete situations. But his proposals were tentative (“what I have tried to suggest here is not what gov- ernments should do, but what they should think about”) and the weight of his comment (and the reason for its reception) was a general critique.

The interdependence of peoples—fostered by mod- ern communications—was once regarded as a hopeful thing, but is proving rather to be a very dangerous one. Little can happen in the relations of two states without the world feeling some repercussions. Weapons technology has so enlarged the disasters within our power to create that no one in the world can feel altogether secure. It has been argued that nuclear weapons have created a situation new in kind: “there is no alternative to peace” is the facile statement of it.

Similarly, the development of communications has created an unprecedented political situation. There are new political and intellectual as well as military dimensions. Dr. Oppenheimer says, “It seems to me that both the variety and rate of change in our lives are likely to increase, that our knowledge will keep on growing, perhaps at a faster and faster rate, and that change itself will tend to be accelerated. In de- scribing this world, there will probably be no syn- opses to spare us the effort of detailed learning. I do not think it likely that we are in a brief interval of change and apparent disorder which will soon be ended. The cognitive problem seems to me unprece- dented in scope, one not put in this vast form to any earlier society, and one for which only the most general rules of behavior can be found in the past.”

Mr. Kennan, in his lectures, makes an instinctually conservative response: in recommending a very wide political “disengagement” he would resist a trend that tends to drive political affairs beyond rational control.

The second problem he raises is not unrelated. It is the place of non-rational elements in the creation and execution of foreign policy. “Non-rational ele- ments” is a heavy way to put it, but I mean to include ideology, morality and sentiment. Kennan’s strictures on morality in foreign policy were widely discussed at the time his Realities of American Foreign Policy was published. He has insisted that when he says “morality,” he means precisely that; that while he is no enemy of ethics, he has the gravest doubts about founding foreign policies on anything other than the pragmatic considerations of a nation’s self-interest.

Sentiment and emotion have always had a role in policy, but the size of the role has been swollen by modern communications and, of course, by democ- racy. Toward totalitarian ideology, which has so corrupted modern politics, we can do little other than attempt to blunt and contain its irrationality. But to have irrational, or non-rational, elements playing a very large part in our own policy formulations is dis- turbing to a man like Kennan, who regards reason and pragmatism as the only safe foundation for a foreign policy. ®

It was in the 1940s and ‘50s that the role of senti- ment in American foreign policy reached full-tide. Those were the days of the Atlantic Charter and the creation of the United Nations; of unconditional sur- render; of the liberal ascendancy in American politics.

There were many parts to the mood of those times, sober and prudent elements as well as profoundly generous ones, but the dominant note was progres- sivist optimism—a conviction that evil could be lo- calized and stamped out, leaving “the good people” to live in peace.

It was in this mood that contemporary American foreign policy had its origins. The policy was ver- satile. It posed a hard challenge—containment—to Soviet expansionism, and in Asia and the Middle East conducted a policy of deep involvement, of economic, technical and military aid intended to assist nations in constructing or re-constructing their econo- mies and improving the living conditions of their populations.

The policy succeeded in the first of the postwar years, Despite the American failures in dealing with the Chinese Communist revolution and the Palestin- ean dispute, the Asian belief in American good will and disinterestedness prevailed. We made a con- structive contribution to Asian interests, our reputa- tion was good, and our own interest in the stability of these nations was consequently served.

Trouble, of course, was inevitable. Involvement cannot but carry with it rather serious frictions. But

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the trouble did not assume serious proportions until the 1950s. Since then it has multiplied until today the American situation in Asia and the Middle East is one which must dismay any American who visits the area.

Generalizations are always vulnerable, but they can be suggestive, and I would propose these: The liberal Asian policy of the United States succeeded in the "40s because the optimistic vision of the policy was in large measure shared by the leaders and intellec- tuals of Asia, and the policy was confidently executed by the United States. There was a belief in the policy, its assumptions had the sympathy of influential Asians, and in practice it met the self-interest of Asian nations. Events, however, shake any system. The primary reason for the loss of efficacy of Ameri- can policy was an American loss of confidence in that policy. The critical event was the presidential elec- tion of 1952.

James Reston once remarked that the postwar American alliance with Europe was in fact an alliance between European governments and the Democratic party. The Republican party, out of office for twenty years, assumed national power with no clearly formu- lated alternative to existing foreign policy, but with a distrust of the assumptions of that existing policy. The party had devoted a major part of its energy for two decades to criticism of the Democratic conduct of foreign affairs. It had a profound distrust of pro- gressivism, even though its own programs leaned heavily upon what was, in fact, the dominant Ameri- can mood.

Those Republicans who enthusiastically supported international involvements made up a minority of the party, and while they sponsored and elected an “in- ternationalist” President, they did so only through a short-lived alliance with the remainder of the party. There is little point in reviewing the battles over the Korean truce, Senator McCarthy, foreign aid and the balanced budget. The result was that a visionary policy lost its élan.

Mr. Dulles himself came from a background pro- foundly different from those of his Democratic prede- cessors. A religious man, he had little use for the clichés of progressivist optimism. A man whose life had been spent in international law and diplomacy, one of a family with a strong diplomatic tradition, he had a deep respect for the element of power in international affairs, and a distrust of programs which did not have their roots in the realities of power. A man with the sense to recognize the risks of domestic politics, he intended to maintain good relations with Congress and the public, even if, at times, this had to be done at the expense of policy. In place of the liberal vision, Mr. Dulles had a religiously-inspired

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confidence in the success of the right and the true. This seems not unlike the liberal conviction, but it is not at all the same thing.

The change in the management—and in the confi- dence—of our policy coincided with an inevitable loss of momentum in the policy’s workings. Interna- tional relationships were changing, and American policy, operating within the terms established in the 1940s, failed to change with events.

The most critical changes—influencing Asia—came in East Europe and the Soviet Union. Events un- settled the pattern which had been imposed upon Europe by Stalinism and the Western response to it. With the pattern disturbed, it became possible to speculate about fundamental change. The Soviet Union gave some encouragement to this speculation while, in its actions, it attempted to control if not to suppress change. Mr. Dulles would have had an easier career had developments in the East not made libera- tion a real issue.

Stalin’s death, followed by a limited relaxation of terror throughout the bloc, the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party and the signing of the Austrian treaty set off an intellectual and political ferment which climaxed in the 1956 “October events” in Poland and the Hungarian Revolution. The satel- lite peoples had regained the national consciousness and confidence which had been drained from them by the war and by Stalinist terror. They reasserted their identities against the alien forms and policies imposed by the Soviet occupation.

American policy was unprepared for this. Some rapid adjustments were made to help the Poles ($193 million in credits and loans and a relaxation of re- strictions on travel and trade). But for the Hun- garians, there was nothing beyond words.

Discussion had, however, earlier begun in some Western circles of the possibility of exploiting the new situation in Eastern Europe. The principal con- tention was that the satellites had become, militarily and economically, more liability than advantage to the Soviet Union. Hence if the Soviet Union could be assured of their “friendly” neutrality—a territorial cushion against foreign land attack—the USSR might be willing to negotiate a kind of Finnish status for them and withdraw the Red Army. Military with- drawal is the essential first step in any kind of sig- nificant change for East Europe, and now—the pro- ponents of this argument said—there was at least some possibility that it might be negotiated.

The plan was not given serious public recognition in Washington. The official position was that any

Western military concession in Europe would have incalculable consequences upon the security of the West. Unspoken until late 1957 was the missile argu- ment: Soviet intercontinental missiles promised to bring the United States under danger of attack at a time when the West still would have only intermedi- ate range missiles requiring European or African bases.

(There is, of course, a more general argument against military disengagement, voiced mainly in Great Britain—most recently by Air Marshal Sir John Slessor and G. H. Hudson. It is that the stability of the world situation depends upon clearly-drawn frontiers, The examples of Korea and Berlin are mentioned as instances of trouble beginning in places where the interests of the two great powers were not explicitly defined. This argument contends that with- drawal from Eastern and Central Europe would bring a time of instability and rivalry that easily could in- volve the prestige of the major powers.)

These are substantial arguments, but they failed to prove conclusive; limited military withdrawal which did not involve a complete American evacua- tion of the European continent, North Africa and Great Britain, remained within the area of specula- tion, but the United States refused to discuss it.

The American refusal to explore the idea of dis- engagement has fed the restlessness of West Euro- peans and the disillusionment of the people of the East. That there are substantial arguments against the plan is irrelevant so long as the world is given the impression that American policy is not open to argu- ment. Appearance can be almost as damaging as reality. The silence on this issue has permitted the Soviet Union to reap very great propaganda advan- tages by ceaselessly advocating a plan that it may never have intended to fulfill.

More general questions are suggested by the American policy failures in Asia and the Middle East. It would be foolish to argue that any policy could have given us a completely satisfactory relationship with the new Asian and Middle Eastern nations. The kind of nationalism found, for example, in Egypt, is almost surely too extravagant for any real accommo- dation to be possible. The factors of hysteria, dema- gogy and ambition are too strong here—as in the politics of some other Asian and Middle Eastern states—for anything but an uncertain and uneasy relationship, even if Communism did not complicate matters.

America’s Asian policy under Mr. Dulles has been to provide military assistance and alliance against Communist military aggression. It has proved an un-

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satisfactory program because Soviet, Chinese or satel- lite invasion is regarded as a threat only in Turkey, Iran, Formosa, South Korea and South Viet Nam. A somewhat larger number of Asian states have had experience with Communist subversion, supported from abroad, but few of these have thought it ad- vantageous to ally themselves with the United States. I do not think that it is unfair to say that a number of those Asian and African states which are allied with us have signed primarily because economic and military air was available for the signature, and be- cause the American link could be useful in disputes which were essentially unrelated to the Communist issue.

There is a serious question—raised by Mr. Kennan among others—as to how deeply we prudently can involve ourselves in the affairs of Asia. However, if we are to involve ourselves at all, we must, to be effective, deal with the real concerns of these govern- ments. Soviet invasion is not such a concern for most of the non-European world. If we define our interest in Asia as the stability of the area, we must concern ourselves with the regional and national causes of in- stability. An insistence upon defining problems in Cold War terms serves only to inflate problems to Cold War size, to the advantage, perhaps, of the governments involved, but to the disadvantage of the United States.

The policy of alliances has been an expression of something more general—of a tendency to insist that nations declare themselves either for us or against us, an impatience expressed in Mr. Dulles’ remarks on the morality of neutralism. It has been paralleled by an exercise of power: we have made use of a policy of economic sanctions coupled with diplomatic rela- tions of bare politeness to pressure neutrals whose neutralism inclines Eastward. This use of power has much precedent. But to work it must be consistent, and Mr. Dulles has not been able to afford con- sistency. While he has disapproved of neutralism, he has cared very much about what happens to the neutrals.

I think it is true to say that the instinct that ani- mates Mr. Dulles’ policy is one of moral outrage at Communism and its works, and the essence of the policy itself has been to mobilize the world against Communism. There is little room in this scheme for those who do not wish to commit themselves. The effect is to enlarge the power division of the world.

It is in this that we reach the central difference between Mr. Dulles’ policy and the criticism put for- ward by Mr. Kennan. It is a matter of the scope of the undertaking. Mr. Dulles shares the enthusiasm

and confidence of the liberal ascendancy, and it is because he too is attempting to shape something— to make the world into something that today it is not. Mr. Kennan—the conservative—shrinks from such an undertaking, as he shrank from the liberal zeal for creating a world government a decade ago. He sees us as engaging ourselves in affairs which we cannot possibly control, at a time when the momentum of technology and propaganda works to drive events away from the rational control of governments.

Kennan’s counsel, then, is disengagement: disen- gagement in Europe in the hope that the East Euro- peans will thus have some opportunity to work out their fate in an area where neither of the great powers is so significantly committed as to be compelled to interfere with force. He wants disengagement in Asia on grounds that our involvement is excessive, and is often undignified and unhelpful. He sees our engagement in Asia and the Middle East as inflaming and enlarging rather than limiting local troubles. Fundamentally, he asks a reduction of the present political polarization of the world. He would see the power blocs separated by many smaller powers, free to pursue their own interests without engaging the United States or Russia. He sees the world as a safer place when the two great powers will not be com- mitted by prestige or alliance to a role in virtually every dispute in the political world.

This has been called neo-isolationism and it un- questionably has roots in the same instinctive distrust of visionary politics and in the same skepticism about an American ability to improve the world, that ani- mated some of the isolationism of the ’30s. To the degree that the American isolationist movement was a protest against enthusiasm in policy, it resembles the Kennan position; he wants no part of enthusiasm, whether it be liberal, reform or moral. But to call Mr. Kennan isolationist in any real definition is nonsense. If any name is to be pinned on his recommendations, it ought to be quietism, and that is, of course, a glancing definition. Mr. Kennan can be accused of the mood of quietism, not of the heresy.

The mood corresponds to a significant element in the national temper today. There is a widespread sense both of frustration at what actually is happen- ing in the world and of disillusion with the failure of two decades of American enthusiasm to make the world measurably better than it was. This mood, however, has genuinely isolationist characteristics. Mr. Kennan makes a rationalist protest against action taken without a clear understanding of goals and implications. It would be irony indeed if his remarks were to encourage a withdrawal, a disengagement, equally innocent of understanding and comprehended goals,

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EUROPE BETWEEN TWO GIANTS

This is a Time for Choices to be Made

James T. Farrell

In the 1980s, it was predicted that in modern war- fare there would be no victor. The prediction was not really vindicated by the second World War. There were two major victors in that war, the United States and the Soviet Union. They won, not only at the expense of their enemies, but also of their allies and of neutrals. Alexis de Tocqueville’s great proph- ecy, that Russia and America seem “marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe,” was over-fulfilled. The world, for most prac- tical purposes, is divided into two opposed systems.

It is irrelevant here whether the cause of the divi- sion is a law of history, the correctness of Marx’s eschatology, the revolutionary intentions of Lenin, or the simple realities of power. The world is divided. And no matter how benevolently we interpret Soviet proposals for “peaceful co-existence,” this division of the world into competitive systems is accepted by the Kremlin as part of its long-range strategy.

“The Soviet leaders,” Milovan Dijilas writes in The New Class, “were fully aware of this process.” He once heard Stalin, “at an intimate party in 1945,” say that “in modern war, the victor will impose his system, which was not the case in past wars.” In the presence of Djjilas, in 1948, Stalin told Yugoslav and Bulgarian Communist leaders: “The Western powers will make a country of their own out of West Ger- many and we will make one of our own out of East Germany—this is inevitable.”

In 1917, Lenin and Trotsky had foreseen this polar- ization of the world, but on the basis of Trotsky’s “theory of permanent revolution,” a theory consistent with orthodox Marxism. They were convinced that, if the revolution were to succeed in Russia, it would have to spread to the advanced countries where there was a “ripened” proletariat. Both men counted on, hoped for, and attempted to stimulate a revolution in Germany, because Germany was the key to Eu- rope. A successful German revolution, they believed, would result in a Communist Euro

The early expectations of Lenin and Trotsky were not fulfilled. The Stalinist system soon began to evolve in the Soviet Union. In Germany, Hitler came to power, and his defeat was accomplished only through an alliance of the Soviet Union with the

Mr. Farrell, the novelist and essayist, is former chair- man of The American Committee for Cultural Freedom.

United States. The division of the world into the camps of two giant powers was thus achieved.

Germany, the “key to Europe,” was broken. The Germans knew that they had been crushed, The bombed-out ruins of German cities, the snows of Russia, the awful concentration of American fire power, the memories of flaming houses, burning flesh in the night, the division and occupation of Germany —all this was different from the aftermath of the first World War. Just as France, after the Napoleonic defeat, could not regain the necessary élan and force to become master of Europe, neither could Germany now restore herself to repeat Hitler’s venture. The world balance of power had been irreversibly shifted. Western Europe was no longer a power center. It would, in fact, have disintegrated and, in one way or another, fallen into Communist hands, except for the Marshall Plan and the fact of American wealth and power behind the North Atlantic Treaty Organi- zation.

NATO, it is true, has not achieved any real Euro- pean unity. Without either the power of the United States as its guarantor or the collapse of Communism and the escape to freedom of the satellites, West European unity probably never can be achieved.

But the road to the unification of Europe by the Soviet Union would be opened if NATO finally dis- integrated. Because NATO is more than a military shield and would be, even if its defensive capability were far greater than is now the case. The people of Western Europe grope for a greater community. Their need for unity is profoundly psychological, and not merely dictated by economic, political and

The German problem is still the key to Europe— but now in the context of a struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union which is of cosmic proportions and drama.

Germany, however, is not the cause of tension; it is a symptom. The Kremlin needs and wants Western Europe and, today, it is as yet incapable of ruling Western Europe and of winning decisively in the under-industrialized world. If the future were to be one of “competitive coexistence,” then Moscow would almost certainly lose without Western Europe, and especially West Germany. And even if Russia could make a Carthage of America, it would then need Western Europe all the more. Remove Ameri- can production from the world and humanity would fall back a century or more. In any competition be- tween Russia and the West, the Soviet Union seems doomed to defeat if the intellectual, scientific, tech- nological and economic capacity of the United States and Western Europe are pooled.

The Soviets know this. According to Richard Hot- telet, Khrushchev told Guy Mollet that he prefers 17 million East Germans under his thumb to 70 mil- lion of them neutral. When he says that he seeks a competition of the two systems, he really means a competition between the Soviet Union and an iso-

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lated United States, with the remainder of the world subject to increasing Soviet pressure and blackmail. These are the only terms of victory, at least of easy victory, for the Soviets. Because, in spite of its scien- tific achievements, Russia cannot supply China, serve as big brother to Asia and Africa, and remain ahead in the military race if West Europe and the United States are allied and if, along with sufficient military capability to make war as horrible a death sentence for the Soviet Union and China as it would be for the United States and West Europe, the West, through NATO, organizes its competitive answer. The odds then would be too heavy for Khrushchev who, unlike Stalin, cannot afford a defeat. His continued leader- ship depends on continuing success.

The failure to understand this situation is a major failure of Western leadership today. At its roots, this failure is the result of an incapacity to understand the real struggle, its scope and terms and its evolving strategy. Many Western leaders, especially in Eu- rope, misconceive the whole nature of the German question. They are still busily solving the problem of Hitler, and re-living their ideological youth, like old football players trying to play as they once did when they have loose tendons in their knees and their reflexes are going.

Neutralize Germany and tensions would remain, with the United States facing virtual isolation, and with Western Europe, minus Germany, like a Euro- pean Israel, but without Israel’s vigor. The risk of war would remain for America and for Western Eu- rope. The choice for West European nations and Great Britain then would be between becoming a Finland, or, even worse, submitting to Communist servitude—or else the total annihilation of war. The danger of war is not based on a common border in Germany. Indonesia is potentially as major a source of tension as Germany. The entire world is now a source of tension. Khrushchev’s gamble is on the stupidity, inability to understand, fear of Communist blackmail, and lack of vision in the West.

We all dread war, and with reason. But dread is not necessarily a sound basis of policy, and often it results in paralysis. Communism, evolving out of a movement to eradicate human misery and to lift mankind to a higher level of freedom, justice and material prosperity, has become a conspiracy against humanity, a war against mankind. The Kremlin has turned Clausevitz’s famous slogan upside down and practices peace as a continuation of war by another means, And as Karl von Clausevitz said, “Politics is the womb in which war is developed, in which its outlines lie hidden in a rudimentary state, like the qualities of living creatures in their embryos.”

Tensions exist in politics, not in guns or even in missiles. And these tensions are world-wide. The danger of war exists now in world politics. And

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Khrushchev not only has decreed that these tensions will continue; he is continuing to foster them. He has told us his end in many different ways. His most simple announcement of this end is: “We will bury you.” It is with this announcement in mind that we must consider the future of the West.

Many of the current proposals for United States “disengagement” in Europe through the creation of neutral zones—especially the creation of a “neutral” Germany—seem to me therefore an ultimate kind of utopianism—and, like most utopianisms, ultimately dangerous. There are no easy alternatives to the dread with which we have been living. The dread can be conquered, the final catastrophe averted, only through the painful recognition and ordering of power realities.

There can be no “safe” areas in a thermonuclear world, least of all in Europe. There can be no pain- less peace made with men who know only the terror of Stalinist politics. We must negotiate and continue to negotiate, but in the full knowledge of what the stakes in Europe really are.

“The triumph of bolshevism,” Lucien Lauriat wrote in his book From the Comintern to the Cominform, “will be the entire realization of the horrible and terrifying nightmare described by George Orwell.” When the Soviet leaders are convinced that the truth of this remark is realized both in the United States and in Europe, then a more realistic basis for nego- tiations will be possible. It is the failure of many in Europe to realize this truth—and their consequent retreat into dreams of “neutralism” between the two powers—that makes realistic, fruitful negotiation so difficult at this time.

The best hope for peace and for the world seems to me, therefore, to continue to lie in the strength of the Western Alliance, not in the encouragement of dreams of “disengagement.” Because peace, if there is to be peace, can be built only upon realities. Our effort must be to make NATO not merely a military arm for the West, but the foundation of increasing unity—cultural, economic, political-among Western nations. Faced with the continuing power drive from the East, Western nations must either stand together or, one by one, fall. Should they fall, they would have only their own fear to blame.

We must learn to live with a paradox. The awful truth is that there may be no hope for peace. Khru- shchev has announced that he will “bury” us, and we have no reason to doubt that he was here speaking as a Communist prophet. But if we take into full ac- count the direness of the world’s situation, if we do Khrushchev the honor of believing that he means what he says, then the slow, painful work of proving the Soviet leader wrong can go forward. Peace can be secured only by those who know how difficult, how painful, and how dangerous it is to attain.

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correspondence

‘‘Misplaced Morality’’

Chicago, Illinois Sir: I am writing to express my reaction to Volume 1, No. 1 of Worldview. There were a good many good things in the old World Alliance News Letter, but now and then an article or editorial left me dis- turbed. I must say that the first issue of Worldview disturbs me considerably.

To a large extent my uneasiness derives from what seems to me to be an impossible mixture of ethical considerations and political considerations in the magazine. It is not that I doubt that there is some workable combination of ethics and politics, but rather that the particular combinations made by your writers strike me as bad ones. Your writers are not uncritical of American foreign policy in many of its details, but they seem to be so basically committed to the use of force, and to the policy of maintaining a preponderant force, that their arguments about ethics are all conditioned by these basic commit- ments.

An example of this is the article by William Lee Miller, entitled “Misplaced Morality.” Mr. Miller seems to argue that there are whole areas of foreign policy in which it is not appropriate to raise ethical questions. So he says, “The right thing in politics is rarely done by the man who tries intentionally to do ‘right’.”

While I would grant that there is something to his argument that Americans are too likely to expect things to be absolutely right, or absolutely wrong, yet the whole article is such a piece of sophistry that I get the impression that Mr. Miller could make the worse appear the better no matter what was the worse. In the end he seems to think he has made an ethical case for the “limited war” position of Kiss- inger, and indicates in his opinion that the real ethical test of the present will only be passed by those who will go along with the “unresolved contest, perhaps including sometimes limited military con- tests with the Communist world.” In other words, he appears to argue that the ethical man will work for little wars and avoid the big wars.