[LC]

the transfer of a reserve of armaments to U.N. authorities would further impair
the decisive importance of any secreted armaments which might escape detection
... Law enforcement in the international field, like law enforcement in the domestic field, depends not on a vast accumulation of arms in the possession of the peace officers, but on a rigid limitation of arms in the possession of organized groups not responsible or responsive to the peace officer."

Cohen supported the State Department position that one of the chief sanctions in any disarmament treaty should be the right to withdraw from a disarmament agreement. Such a right, Cohen thought, might encourage progress which would otherwise be impossible.

While advocating a complete and comprehensive plan, Cohen also supported immediate proposals for partial disarmament. He said there are two areas in which proposals could be made which would contribute significantly toward progress in disarmament. The first area covers measures which would tend to arrest or slow down the armaments race without materially affecting the present balance of power, and the breach of which measures would be self-detectable. The second area is the combining of political settlement and disarmament for reasons about which international conflict and tension center.

Specifically, Cohen urged certain immediate steps: (1) The reporting of all or defined nuclear tests and of all or defined ballistic missile tests to the extent necessary to insure minimum safety and health; (2) the banning of nuclear tests with defined widespread radioactive effects and of tests of long-range ballistic missiles; (3) the control of future production of fissionable materials; (4) aerial inspection and exchange of blueprints of military installations; (5) ground inspection control posts at designated points; (6) the establishment of a world network of radar and other monitoring devices.

Many other witnesses made notable impressions. At Cambridge, Massachusetts, a group of university scholars presented fascinating discussions of major problems. This tour de force, which was arranged by Associate Dean David Cavers of the Harvard Law School, was, in some respects, the outstanding congressional hearing of the year, and the chairman alluded to it frequently in later months. An idea presented in the hearing by Duncan MacDonald, dean of the Graduate School of Boston University, received particularly close attention: that the effectiveness of inspection measures be tested by aerial inspection conducted between friendly powers.

David Inglis, of the Argonne National Laboratory, made a particularly strong impression on some members of the Committee when he stressed the need for a

vii

[LC]

vastly increased budget for a government agency working on peace problems.
Considerable emphasis was also placed by several witnesses upon the need for
preparation for the economic reconversion which would be necessitated by se-
rious efforts in the direction of arms cuts.

### III

As this is written, the Humphrey Subcommittee has not finished its work.
Two major questions remain unanswered:

**What will it say in its final report?** One speculates that it will not be controversial in character because of its generally understood determination on the part of the chairman that the report be unanimously adopted. This means, in effect, that the report will be the least common denominator of the opinions of the Committee members. This is not necessarily to be regretted-- it would be difficult for the Committee to take original and creative positions on matters which involve so many complex and technical factors. But one also suspects that if the Committee members fail to agree on some basic assumptions, such as the urgency of disarmament and the inadequacy of mutual deterrents as a permanent safeguard to security, there will be majority and minority reports.

**Will there be a permanent unit working in this field?** Scholars and commentators who take the disarmament problem seriously feel that the Subcommittee has accomplished a great deal, and hope to see its life extended. If this is impossible, they would like to see a special committee established to continue its work.

The major contribution of the Subcommittee is that it has taken disarmament down from the pie-in-the-sky category and made it a matter of current legislative business. It has made newspapers, magazines, radio and TV commentators, legislators and bureaucrats, take seriously the problem of control and reduction of armaments. It has forced some consideration of long-range policy upon a capital which is enormously preoccupied with this morning's crisis and tonight's deadline. Such interest and concern in arms control is vital if intelligent and successful policies are to be evolved.

It would be tragic if this effort is not permitted to continue, whether through an extension of the life of the Subcommittee or through the creation of a new special committee which could take up where the Humphrey Subcommittee leaves off.

***

viii

APPENDIX IV: EVALUATION OF THE STASSEN MISSION

This article, also by Jerome H. Spingarn, appeared in The Washington Star, 23 February 1958.

With the departure of Harold Stassen, the White House Disarmament Staff is scheduled to be dismantled and a chapter in the long effort to negotiate peace is closed.

From the point of view of the spectator of the popular sport of bureaucratic pugilism, the challenger from Minnesota was carried out of the ring on a stretcher after a bout with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that went more rounds than any fight since the Sullivan-Kilrain match. But it is much too early to say that the entire Stassen mission was a failure.

In many ways, the conflict between Secretary Dulles and Mr. Stassen was the product of a basic difference of opinion between White House and State Department that existed even before the Eisenhower administration came to power.

Presidents see foreign policy problems in a broader context than their secretaries of state. They sense the urgency of the times, they reflect the concerns of the electorate and they hope to write history. In making stirring speeches about disarmament, both Presidents Truman and Eisenhower had some difficulty in finding words that could inspire the public without offending the State Department.

Secretaries of State, on the other hand, soon become absorbed by their department, which tends to see diplomacy as a long unhurried process. They have learned that it is dangerous to seek perfection, and they recoil from acts of dramatic leadership. To the diplomat there abideth these three: Patience, power and professionalism, and the greatest of these is professionalism.

[LC]

IV-2

The appointment of Harold Stassen as Special Assistant to the President for Disarmament, in 1955, tended to give institutional form to this basic split. When he took the job, Washington wiseacres pointed out that the White House corridors ran deep in the gore of special assistants who came to "co-ordinate" the policies of major departments.

But there were two reasons why Harold Stassen seemed to have a chance to win despite the tradition: (1) The multi-national capability to wage nuclear warfare created a situation new to history, which called for new solutions; (2) President Eisenhower had exhibited a strong interest in disarmament, and was willing to exhibit a greater personal leadership on this issue.

For a brief period, it looked as if the new alignment would work. On at least one occasion, in the spring of 1955, President Eisenhower called in the heads of the defense establishment, and decisively over-ruled their objections to a disarmament move. It looked at last as though arms control planning was finding a central authority.

The turning point for the Stassen mission was September 24, 1955, when the President was stricken with his heart attack.

From that moment on, Mr. Stassen was on his own in the bureaucratic jungle.

In spite of the loss of active presidential support, he continued to take his job seriously. He assembled an able staff of experts in the field. And he addressed himself to three basic tasks: To get the department of the United States Government to agree on a disarmament policy; to get the NATO allies to agree on a policy; and to get Russia to agree on a policy. He had made substantial progress on the first two, and was getting ready to begin to negotiate seriously with the Russians when his mission ended.

11.

[LC]

IV-3

Nothing better illustrates the stumbling blocks that lay in Mr. Stassen's path than the matter of controlling weapons which travel through outer space, such as the intercontinental ballistic missile.

The ICBM is headline stuff today, and the Western powers, aware of current Russian superiority in this field, are quite unanimous in their desire to bring these missiles under control. But back in 1955, when the initials ICBM were meaningful only to engineers and military men, Mr. Stassen was peddling to all Government agencies who would listen a plan which offered a method of arresting the development and manufacture of these weapons before any nation could acquire them. Enforcement of his plan was based on the fact that these weapons must have many flight tests before they can become dependably operational, and that the flight tests can easily be detected.

But the control plan never won approval, until January, 1957, when Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge made the very general assertion that the United States, at the forthcoming London disarmament conference, would try to win approval in principle of a proposal to control outer space vehicles. When Mr. Stassen went to London he was unable to make a concrete proposal along this line until late summer, and then all he could say was that the matter should be referred to a committee for study. A very short time later, the USSR announced that it had operational ICBMs.

When Mr. Stassen went to London, he thought his primary job would be to extract an agreement from the Russians. Firm in matters of substance, he was courteous and considerate in manner, because he had evolved a theory in previous negotiations that the Russians had a national inferiority complex, and that courtesy and consideration might go a long way with them. Throughout his tour of duty he refrained from public condemnation.

Soon after the London conference, he paid a call on the Russian

111.

[LC]
IV-4

delegation, accompanied by members of his mission, representing all of the agencies of the government concerned with arms control. In an off-the-record session he showed the Russians a "talking paper" -- a preliminary description of the proposals he expected to make more formally later. Observers at the conference agree that this gesture, more than any other, earned the gratitude of the Russians, and resulted in a more flexible attitude than they had ever exhibited before.

However, the direct approach to Russia caused consternation in England and France, whose leaders had momentary fears of being caught between two giants. And it was sternly disapproved in Washington.

Most of the rest of the five and a half months at London were spent in a long series of private consultations with the NATO powers, while the United States position was recast into a new position which could receive unanimous Western support.

According to observers, when Mr. Stassen was at last ready to present the Western package at one of the final meetings of the conference, he read a set of proposals which did not go as far as the "talking paper." The Russians rejected them with the first harsh words of the conference.

But it is authoritatively reported that they took the trouble to seek Mr. Stassen out privately to extend a friendly personal greeting and to say something like this: "We could embarass your Government by publishing your 'talking paper' and showing how you withdrew from it. But we never will. We want to keep open the channels for informal, off-the-record conversation on disarmament. We appreciated your courtesy."

At London, Mr. Stassen had no way of knowing how far the Russians would go toward signing a genuine disarmament agreement with real enforcement provisions. There is still no way of knowing. But he wanted to put them to the test, and the fact that he never had an opportunity to do so was a source of great frustration.

IV.

[LC]
IV-5

What he did have an opportunity to do was to obtain from the various departments of Government here at home a set of basic proposals which now comprise the Western package.

He also managed to achieve some degree of unity among the Western powers on basic principles of disarmament.

Most impressive, however, has been Mr. Stassen's achievement with the Russians. He moved them along to the point where they were willing to talk, for the first time, about international inspection of the interior of Russia. This important concession was made twice, once in connection with zones of aerial inspection (but the two sides never agreed on what zones would be inspected) and once in connection with enforcement of a plan for cessation of bomb tests. He also won Russian acceptance of United States figures for force levels, and of United States suggestions for deposition of agreed lists of excess armaments in arms control depots. And he persuaded them to drop their demand that "Ban the Bomb" must be a prerequisite to first steps toward arms control.

Finally, his dogged persistence, his refusal to recriminate, his sincere desire to lift the threat of thermonuclear war helped to offset a growing anti-American feeling in many parts of the world.

V.

[LC]

NOTES

1. One vulgar error of the "balance of terror" theory which has been so pervasively fashionable is the tendency to compare it, an essentially military-strategic concept, with political "balance of power" arrangements of the past, particularly the last century. In any case, the *pax Britannica* depended in great measure on Britain's position as a flexible *tertium quid vis-à-vis* competing continental powers. Who is today the *tertium quid* and what, furthermore, takes the place of the British navy?

2. The prospect of the damage of nuclear war is bad enough; we all know that the most lurid results are well within the limits of possibility. But it is sometimes further suggested that the Soviet Union, if it were able to conquer and occupy America, would indulge in mass extermination and/or deportation, even perhaps opening up the territory to Chinese colonization. Cf. Oskar J. Morgenstern, *The Question of National Defense*, Princeton, 1959, pp. 184-291. One suspects rather that a severely damaged Soviet Union, victorious in war, would find the single burden of coping with the "backward areas" of the world onerous and distasteful.

3. Vichy France, most conspicuously, where internal interference with the Petainist state organization was held to a minimum until the Allied landings in North Africa in 1943. Hitler's most significant economic interference with the French society was the increasingly heavy demand for forced labor, a fiat which he imposed on his Italian ally as well. It was especially this pressure which widened the base of the Résistance.

4. See Alan Bullock, *Hitler, A Study in Tyranny*, London, 1952, p. 707:
"Sending for Speer, he told him: 'If the war is to be lost, the nation also will perish. This fate is inevitable. There is no need to consider the basis even of a most primitive existence any longer. On the contrary, it is better to destroy even that, and to destroy it ourselves. The nation has proved itself weak, and the future belongs solely to the stronger Eastern nation. Besides, those who remain after the battle are of little value; for the good have fallen.' "

5. On this point, see Kecskemeti, *Strategic Surrender*, Stanford, 1959. But, it may be argued, the existence of resources always presupposes a bargaining power which the capitulating country may use to gain better peace terms. However, in total nuclear war it is not certain that the principle would apply.

6. See Raymond L. Garthoff, *Soviet Strategy in the Nuclear Age*, New York, 1958, p. 73.

7. See "U.S. Now Facing Its Greatest Danger," excerpts from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Study No. 8, quoted in *U.S. News and World Report*, XLVII, December 21, 1959, pp. 112-113.

8. Robert Strausz-Hupé, William R. Kintner, James E. Dougherty, Alvin J. Cottrell, *Protracted Conflict*, New York, 1959.

9. Of which there have been more than is sometimes supposed. Cf., *sub.*, the remarks on the Korean War, p. 17.

10. *Op. cit.*, p. 34.

39

[LC]

11 See V.I. Lenin, "Socialism and War," in *Collected Works*, Vol. XVIII, New York, 1930, p. 224: "Rightly, the Marxists have always considered [the famous axiom of Clausewitz] as the theoretical foundation for their understanding of the meaning of every war. It is from this very standpoint that Marx and Engels regarded war."

12 The works by French military experts on subversive war are too numerous to cite. A wide scattering of articles by such authorities as Maurice Méret, J. Hogard, General Chassin, and others may be found in recent numbers of *Revue des Forces Terrestres* and *Revue Militaire d'Information*. A balanced book on the subject, reflecting the official point of view of the Ministère de la Guerre under the Fourth Republic, is Claude Delmas, *La Guerre Revolutionnaire, Que Sais-je?* series, Paris, 1958. Extremist writers (particularly among the "Algerian ultras" and the "psychologues") have shown a tendency to admire the lessons of subversive war learned principally from Mao Tse-Tung, and a wish to apply some of them sporadically to their own population.

12a Sorel's famous work *Reflexions sur la Violence* cut both ways, and became ultimately part of the intellectual baggage of Fascism. It perhaps did not deserve this fate. Sorel's fear was that if the working class did not employ violence to gain its ends, a stupid and concessive *bourgeoisie* might actually capitulate without the intervening salvation of class struggle.

13 Lenin, op. cit., p. 226.

14 A fascinating and detailed account of the chaos out of which the Bol'shevik supremacy emerged is to be found in N. N. Sukhanov (Himmer), *The Russian Revolution 1917-- A Personal Record*, London, 1955.

15 Cf., for example, the prescience of Alexis de Tocqueville, *Democracy in America*, Vol. I., New York, 1957 (Vintage Reprint), p. 452: "The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of the people; the Russian centers all the authority of society in a single arm. The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting-point is different and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe."

16 See John W. Wheeler-Bennett, "The Meaning of Brest-Litovsk Today," in *Foreign Affairs*, XVII, October 1938, p. 131.

17 For an evaluation, see Fred Warner Neal, *Titoism in Action*, Berkeley, 1959, esp. pp. 1-14.

18 Cf. "Moscow Rejects Mao's Doctrine," [Harry Schwartz], *New York Times*, June 19, 1957.

18a It must be pointed out, nonetheless, that the Soviets have tried to gain advantages from even this fundamental dilemma. Neutralist nations of many shades are offered a sort of junior partnership in the Socialist "peace camp."

19 Cf. "Document: Le Réalisme Socialiste," *Esprit*, February 1959, p. 340: "One has only to ask an Occidental why the great French Revolution was necessary to receive a bevy of different answers. But ask any Soviet schoolboy the same question, not to mention more educated persons, and

40

[LC]

he will answer you precisely and exhaustively: the great French Revolution was needed to clear the path and hasten the coming of communism. It has been a long time since man has had such a neat explanation of the world, perhaps not since the Middle Ages. Our great privilege is to have rediscovered it."

20. D. Maniuksky, professor at the Lenin School of Political War, 1931, quoted in J. Hogard, "Strategie et Tactique du Communisme," in *Revue des Forces Terrestres*, October 1959, p. 51.

21. Acheson has traditionally maintained that the build-up of the Western Alliance (NATO and European supranational entities) would put the United States in a position to bargain from strength; Dulles believed rather that the "internal contradictions" of the Soviet system would ultimately (i.e., in ten or fifteen years) produce a similar result.

22. Especially in *Russia, the Atom, and the West*, New York, 1958, a refinement of the famous Reith Lectures, which, second to sputnik, had most impact on East-West relations in 1957.

23. For a well-balanced, if somewhat dated, expose of the opposite position, see Nathan Leites, *A Study of Bolshevism*, Glencoe (Ill.), 1953. Leites believes that Bolshevism has an inner propensity for dangerous opportunism.

24. *The Listener*, October 29, 1959, p. 713.

25. Oskar J. Morgenstern, *Op. cit.*, pp. 263-264.

26. Cf. also, Kennan, *Russia, etc.*, *op. cit.*, p. 53: "War has always been an uncertain exercise, in which the best-laid plans are frequently confounded. Today the variables and unknowns in these calculations are greater than ever before. I do not believe there is any human mind or group of human minds or any calculating machine anywhere in the world which can predict with accuracy what would happen if these weapons should begin to be used or which, by the same token, could devise realistic defenses against them."

27. V.I. Lenin, *Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism*, Moscow, 1947, p. 152.

28. For contemporary trends, see Richard Lowenthal, "Shifts and Rifts in the Russo-Chinese Alliance," *Problems of Communism*, VIII, Jan-Feb 1959, pp. 14-24.

29. For a detailed description of this type of cadre training, see Wolfgang Leonhard, "The Ideological Functionary," in St. Antony's Papers No. 1, London, 1956, pp. 69-84. Leonhard, an ex-communist, also contributes some discussion concerning the impact of "de-Stalinization" on ideological pre-conceptions of the convinced communist.

30. New York, 1956.

31. *Op. cit.*, *supra*.

32. New York, 1959.

33. Maj. Gen. N.V. Pukhovsky, *O sovietskoi voennoi nauke* (On Soviet Military Science), Moscow, [Nov. 16] 1953, pp. 84-85, quoted in Garthoff, p. 61.

34. Garthoff, p. 68.

35. *Ibid.*, *loc. cit*.

36. *Ibid.*, pp. 76-91, 149-156.

37. *Ibid.*, p. 82.

41

38 "The Speech of Comrade G. M. Malenkov at a Meeting of the Electors of the Leningrad District of the City of Moscow," March 12, 1954, *Pravda*, March 13, 1954, quoted in Dinerstein, *op. cit.*, p. 71.

39 Although Bulganin seemingly endorsed this heresy in a joint statement with Indian Prime Minister Nehru on December 13, 1955, which he was shortly afterward obliged to retract or recant. See Dinerstein, pp. 78-79.

40 Notably the Zhukov-Konev rivalry, waged incessantly since the middle of World War II.

41 Cf., Isaac Deutscher's comment in *The Reporter*, March 10, 1955.

42 Letter to the present writer, October 15, 1959.

43 Cf., Garthoff, *op. cit.*, p. 54ff.

44 The reader will recall the inter-service controversy under the administration of Secretary Charles E. Wilson as to whether missiles should be regarded fundamentally as "long-range artillery" or "pilotless planes." The controversy was finally resolved to the satisfaction of the Air Force, which was probably a logical step, given the historical development of U.S. strategy.

45 See N. Galay, "The Partisan Forces," in Liddell Hart, *op. cit.*, pp. 153-171.

46 Cf. miscellaneous remarks and opinions on the elevation of Zhukov to the Presidium, most of them fatuously optimistic, *U.S. News and World Report*, March 4, 1955.

47 *New York Times*, January 15, 1960.

48 Arnold J. Toynbee, *A Study of History* (Somervell abridgment), London, 1947, p. 400.

49 See Michel Collinet, "The French CP: Signs of Crisis?," in *Problems of Communism*, VIII, May-June 1959, pp. 22-27.

50 *Le Monde*, December 3, 1959.

51 V.I. Lenin, "The United States of Europe Slogan," in *Collected Works*, Vol. XVIII, New York, 1930, pp. 269-272.

52 Cf., "The Task of Waging Peace: Address before the Council on World Affairs, Dallas, October 27, 1956," in Paul E. Zinner [ed.], *Documents on American Foreign Relations 1956*, p. 45: "Imperialist dictatorships often present a formidable exterior. For a time they seem to be hard, glittering, and irresistible. But in reality they turn out to be 'like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.' They have vulnerabilities not easily seen."

53 "Disengagement: Why? How?" in *Foreign Affairs*, July 1958.

54 Leweryn Bialer, "The 21st Congress and Soviet Policy," *Problems of Communism*, VIII, Mar-Apr 1959, p. 5: "With the experience of 1956 still freshly in mind, the present Soviet leadership is trying to rationalize and partially democratize daily life while avoiding changes or shocks in the area of ideology. The rise of intellectual revisionism in 1956 was not occasioned so much by Khrushchev's political-economic reforms as by his ideological 'carelessness' (e.g. the secret speech at the 20th Party

42

[LC]

CHAPTER TWO: PSYCHO-POLITICAL ASPECTS OF SOVIET-AMERICAN RELATIONS

1. Historical Factors in the Nuclear Age.

No political relationship between nations has the character of absolute stability over long periods of time (or, under the impact of modern technology, shorter periods) any more than does the balance of their contrasting strategic positions. Nor are these two factors necessarily synchronous: if they were, then the conduct of international politics might indeed assume near-scientific proportions and admit to solution by calculating machines and the theory of games of strategy.¹ However, the fact remains that, in the last analysis, no country, friendly or enemy, dominates or serves another in any kind of ratio predictable from its relative military position. The margin of discretion in this regard is customarily based on a range of factors, some of them reducible to formula but many of them mathematically inapproachable. Without presuming to make an exhaustive list we might note the following non-military factors that play an historically fundamental role in the relationship of states: industrial plant and potential, access to raw materials, geographic location, cultural prestige, ideology, psychological interpretation of national mission, mercantile and fiscal resources, alliance structure, and internal political conditions.

In pre-atomic times these considerations were not likely to be forgotten
in any assessment of the global political picture. Today, when, intermittently
at least, the destructiveness of commanding military technology and resources
has seemed potentially overwhelming as a regulatory, or rather minatory, device,
the temptation has been great to ignore or underassess the continuity of other
relationships, factors which constantly intervene as they did in the past but
seem now peripheral and whose application is necessarily far short of instan-
taneous or decisive. This does not cause these factors to disappear or cease
to be important, even though it suggests that they need continuous re-interpre-
tation. Did Swedish neutrality mean the same thing as it had fifteen years
earlier? What was the contemporary importance of the Suez Canal? What, if any,
role did French cultural pretensions play in the East-West struggle? What was
the significance of the newly-independent nations of the East Indies in the
light of modern industrial development?

These and multitudinous other questions of the same order fill the lexicon
of what we call diplomacy or international politics much as they did in other

[LC]

times. The emphasis has, to be sure, shifted. But beneath the ominous umbrella of the destructive potentialities of armament the ancient factors survive both as a control mechanism of political action and as a purveyor of exceedingly valuable prizes to the alert, aggressive, or pre-eminently forceful power that can command their use. Dismissed, they could betray; destroyed, they could destroy in their perishing. This suggests that a reliance on total war by any country would assuredly produce unpredictable and Pyrrhic consequences for the future, even in the horror-mitigated flush of total victory. Such a consideration may not be relevant to a victimized country, launching its retaliatory force in the throes of desperate, maternal fury; but it must give unceasing pause to that nation which contemplates massive nuclear attack as the means to some fruitful national and/or ideological goal. The victor, of course, could rebuild, even if it took him many generations to surmount the damage, provided that his faith were pristine and millenial enough for the original sacrifice. Furthermore, he might plunder the terrorized neutrals and seize their resources for himself, leaving the surviving parts of the world in a hideously impoverished condition.² History has had one or two Tamerlanes; enough, at any rate, to prove the point. But the modern economic structure and the habitual forms of contemporary life argue against the commission of such excesses, unless the destroyer is totally demented and supremely powerful. Even Hitler himself recognized strategic advantages in preserving a fair part of the economic sanctity of a number of his conquered nations;³ it was only in the surrealistic twilight of the bunker that he thundered his anathema on the Third Reich: "A people which has failed its mission has no right to survive."⁴ Fortunately, by this time, the factors of survival were out of his hands. Mr. Khrushchev, we think, is mercurial and dangerous; but Marxism professes to be an objective science and not an eschatological drama-turgy to be enacted amid the *flammantia moenia mundi*. Moreover, the communist doctrine admittedly contains certain self-imposed restraints which make for particular caution when the stakes are high.

This is an argument and not a proof. Expanded exegetically to the Nth power of concentration it would remain no more than evidence, analysis, retropection, prediction: an argument, still not a proof. But in the absence of the proof which will never come, however closely we scrutinize, however lucidly we argue, we must be careful to disbelieve in the proof of the opposite, which has itself no stature in science and fact.

2

[LC]

Let us first state a postulate, which will perhaps be acceptable to the strategist in his own terms, and then pass on to considerations which should but sometimes do not affect him. If the most successful possible outcome of total nuclear war today is construed as the destruction, after insupportable damage, of the enemy's capacity to resist, and the survival of the attacker with enormous but acceptable injury, then a still more perfect alternative, if it exists, will be to sacrifice time to gain the capitulation of the enemy relatively intact so long as this means complete disposition of his resources.⁵

In examining the scanty fragments of Soviet war planning that are allowed to reach us, we might, in the absence of contrary evidence, adopt the conclusion (itself, of course, not unassailable) that the Soviet Union envisages its total war mission as the utter destruction of the opposing military forces, rather than a concentration of nuclear violence upon centers of population per se.⁶ If this is true, it is in at least superficial contradiction to the most frequently proposed theories of our own strategists, who, partially under the neo-Douhetist influence, have always accorded to the attritional aspects of strategic bombing (or strategic rocketry) a significant role in the collapse of the enemy's will to resist. Genealogical derivations of strategy planning aside, it is fairly clear now that an aggressive power places itself in mortal danger if it does not devote a primary all-out effort toward crippling the enemy's strategic forces before they can launch a massive retaliatory strike. But it appears that the Soviets, unlike ourselves, had, willy-nilly, endorsed a more timeless doctrine in this respect; that doctrine persisted, deeply imbedded in the logic of the defensive wars of attrition which Russia had fought against Napoleon and Hitler, and partially founded on the conviction that a war fought by capitalists was, in reality, a mercenary war which could be advantageously waged through the annihilation of the hireling army.

We shall not pursue this interesting discrepancy between Eastern and Western military doctrines to any ultimate analysis. There is, however, an observation to be elicited from all this which bears directly on the problem we are considering. This is to say that Marxist doctrine and contemporary strategic données seem to combine in the nuclear-missile age to produce a condition where the aggressive strategy will be, paradoxically, on the side of caution, while the defensive strategy, based on the axiom of reprisal in the failure of deterrence, will know no such limits. If it is believed that only a handful of minutes intervene between the chance of taking action and the inevitability of

3

[L.C.]

national cataclysm, caution will become a superfluous virtue. On the other hand, the attacker, working close to the postulate that possessing the enemy country is better than exterminating it, will be constantly seeking to invent ways of limiting the damage, both to himself and to his prize. If his choice is to gamble on total war and he feels confident of ultimate triumph (which is the only valid precondition for launching total war), he will be doubly persuaded to search for solutions favoring this tactic: not only will he wish as much of the booty to remain intact as possible, but he will need to concentrate a massive oversaturation on the military targets that could retaliate against him. He will, in so doing, try to leave nothing to chance. If, however, the retaliatory counter-strike against him succeeds beyond his expectations and flattens the majority of his great cities, he will in all likelihood be driven to reply in kind. His best plans will have gone awry, and all semblance of rational riposte will have vanished from the conduct of the war.

We have already suggested that the "balance of terror" is not a stable one. Either the exploitation of new weapons or the perfection of "passive" defenses could upset it at any time. In strict strategic terms there will always be periods of weeks, months, or perhaps years-- times of crucial danger which challenge the powers of the most competent intelligence to designate-- when a total strike by one of the nuclear giants against the other could produce a victory in war, even a victory in which severe damage to the attacking side might be construed as acceptable.⁷ A discussion in the last chapter attempted to show how such a crucial component of the strategic picture as the diminution of warning time could override the assumption of mutual deterrence if the aggressor power were fortified with a plenitude of delivery devices and willing to take the gamble that his own plans would mesh and not misfire.

Of course, a certain quotient of doubt will always remain in the mind of the attacker and he may always have serious enough reasons for questioning the ultimate reliability of his highly technical and complicated plan of attack. The unlikelihood of the perfect execution of a total surprise nuclear assault suggests that the attacker would wish, in some way, to drill his elite strategic forces intensively, by many simulated exercises, to carry out their vital roles in the overall operation. The detection and prevention of such exercises would seem one of the positively crucial tasks of any kind of inspection and control. The enemy's element of doubt may always be overriding so long as both sides are armed to the teeth, and it is perhaps here that the real

4

[Lc]

"balance of terror" resides, not in the mechanical equilibration of mutually destructive capabilities by the strategists. The Soviets may be more innately provincial of human life than we are, but they are immeasurably proud of their society and its monuments, and probably ultimately unwilling to bet the pot on total war if there remains the chance that this society might never emerge again in its previous form from the rubble and that the admirable monuments might perish. This, we must understand, is in part a military, in part a psychological problem. But it is no less real for being only imperfectly cerebral.

Another simultaneous factor, born out of Marxist doctrinal optimism and its presumed correlation with general trends in international politics, combining with the relative uncertainty of first-strike military success just cited above, might appear virtually decisive. We shall certainly avoid considering it as such, since such a judgment would cast shadows over our convidtion that the changing face of the world may some day adopt the dignified air of democratic sanity. But it is unquestionable that our opponents, particularly since they have themselves attained a quantity and quality in terror weapons compelling respect, believe that time and nature are their steady and sure collaborators. Any doubts they earlier had about this and any that, for different reasons, may germinate today and in the future gnaw away at the primordial bone-structure of their "scientific" analysis of history. As we may surmise, all loosenings and tightenings of the ligatures that bind the aims of the Soviet state ("forty years old in Socialism") to that now quite ambiguous but resourceful and powerful ideology which advances the cause of the nation are certain to have consequences in the modification of strategies, choices of areas of aggression, and, above all, manipulation of the secret (but apparently flexible) time-schedule by which strivings are turned into gains, gains into consolidated acquisitions, and acquisitions into new offensive political weapons. Still, it would be an error to regard the State and the Party, the chauvinism and the ideology, as dissoluble. The interpenetration and interdependence of both elements is so complete as to lead one to conclude that they must stand or fall together. For the present let us simply say that up to now the acquisitive activity of the state has meshed well, in spite of transient contradictions, with the aggressive character of the ideology. We shall return to explore this point more closely.

Dr. Robert Strausz-Hupé and three colleagues have presented what is certainly one of the most lucid, if, in the opinion of some, one-sided, analyses of the simultaneous consequences of Marxist aggressive optimism and Marxist caution.⁸ They have pointed justly to the fact that communism gains its primary strength

5

[LC]

in a world little adapted to many of its archaic assumptions through its uncanny ability to attach itself to and identify itself with the great nationalistic and anti-colonial "systemic" revolution which is presently sweeping three continents. We shall later have occasion to ask whether the political strength of the communist movement (the threat of arms aside) does not promise to reside exclusively in this identification, effectively surrendering by default the ancient Marxist historical claims on the Western proletariat. Strausz-Hupé et al. believe that the communists are intrinsically cautious because they are confident, sure in their moral superiority and in their "realistic" cultivation of the science of politics. Moreover, they are not easily discouraged by temporary setbacks⁹ but try to turn even these to their advantage through some means other than that by which they were fomented. "They remain undaunted in the face of adversity, for they are convinced that their reverses are only partial, or local, or short-lived. If the Communists suffer an acute loss in one area, they can take comfort from the victories wrought in another. All reversals are thus seen as relative; new strength can be drawn from the lessons which they contain."¹⁰ For this constant application of pressure upon the bulwarks of Western "bourgeois" democracy the authors have proposed the term "protracted conflict." Such a conflict is not necessarily pursued by military means; indeed it adapts itself to a theoretically unlimited variety of subversion, psychological warfare, and economic chicanery. Military force is most apt to come into play only (1) where there is no effective defense against it (i.e. Tibet); (2) as a preventive technique, when some vital communist position seems to be threatened (i.e. Hungary); or (3) where some miscalculation involving either of the two previous principles plays a role or where it seems desirable to employ armed action as a type of reconnaissance (i.e. Korea). But generally, in situations of lingering uncertainty, the Communists will prefer to search deeper in their bag of tricks.

War for them is constant, in the Clausewitzian sense;¹¹ its techniques are constantly neither so decisive nor so clear-cut as we would imagine, nor, despite the present Soviet exultation over what they construe to be an important lead in the ballistic missile field, are they as prone as we in the West, who possess a more limited and violent notion of war, to predicate their eventual ascendancy in purely military terms. The French, saturated with the bitterness of their Indo-Chinese and Algerian experiences, which they have studied in great depth, are perhaps more aware than anyone else in the Western camp of the multivalence of the communist threat, even if they have not always drawn the soberest conclusions from their investigations.¹²

6

[Lc]

In short, the same cautiousness of which Sorel accused the Socialist parties in the period prior to the First World War might be alleged against the Soviet leadership of today:¹² they are basically willing to curtail total violence on the assumption that the things they seek may, in time, fall into their laps by concession or default. There is one conspicuous difference, however. The spirit and morale of a class may thrive on the exercise of a violence which unifies it and animates it; but no nation today can be blind enough to "thrive" on a war of mass destruction. Stalinism and the extended experiment of "socialism in one country" led inevitably to a systemic transformation of "classical" class struggle into that condition of chauvinistic aggrandizement against which Lenin, in particular, had so passionately inveighed.¹³ Though the orthodox terminology remains in place and class questions continue to play an important role in Soviet communism, the original version of the doctrine has been blurred quite beyond recognition. Communism is not thereby a mere excuse for a single nation's unceasing efforts to extend its influence, because the acknowledged goals of the proletarian society remain in force and are imposed; but it is, in some senses, a cloak for the historical pretensions of the Great Russian political unit, and as an unquestioned state doctrine it permits these aspirations to have much wider scope than a simple, calculating imperialism would warrant. This mutuality of ideal and ruthless practicality has, on the whole, worked out most conveniently. There is a question, however, as to whether the process does not have real limits.

Of course, it is convenient to say that this is a century of totalitarian ideologies which economic and social strains make unavoidable. But history does not show that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was predestined to occur in its actual form; it indicates, instead, that many chance factors contributed greatly to the outcome.¹⁴ And we may be assured that, Bolshevism or not, twentieth-century Russia was fated to become one of the most powerful states of its time, sprawled strategically over two continents, possessed of great resources and an enviable fund of manpower.¹⁵ The same must be said for China; although in both cases the process may have been greatly accelerated by the totalitarian forced march toward literacy and industrialization. Even defeat in war, under the conditions of yesterday, could not have retarded this development by a great many years. In this respect it is useful to recall that communist Russia, "trading space for time," lost in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk 3¼ per cent of her population, 32 per cent of her arable land, 89 per cent of her coal resources, and 54 per cent of her industrial capacity.¹⁶ The massive relocation of Soviet industry in the Uralic and Siberian regions, which was well under way by the late thirties,

7

[LC]

meant strategically that hereafter the space-time bargain could be struck even more freely, as proved to be the case in the "Patriotic War" of 1941-45. The perpetuation of the might of the state was perhaps also assured in the minds of the planners, since even stunning defeat and the most drastic peace terms could not have detached this "nuclear" territory from the fatherland.

When a country is doomed to be strong, it may willingly annex the complementary strength of a potent and proven ideology, its leaders nominating themselves high priests of that ideology (the parallel with the Byzantine Empire, which has exercised an incessant influence over Russian institutions, is instructive in this regard), but there will be doubt as to whether the ideology itself can remain the final cause its exponents proclaim it to be, or whether it will in fact become only the instrument of change, the efficient cause. Russia, to be sure, is a case where an ideology captured a state, but the result has been parallel. This disparity was not very glaring while socialism remained restricted in "one country," but as soon as the strategic borders of the Soviet Union were effectively expanded to include diverse populations which, whatever their attitude toward "scientific socialism," were not in the least amenable to Great Russian imperialism, the internal contradictions surged forward, only to be muffled partly by recourse to barbaric repression, partly by improbable double-talk. The doctrine of "separate roads to Socialism" neatly designated the limits of the contradiction, and the Soviet leaders justly fear the day when this doctrine might have to become something much more than verbal exercise.

These observations, as has been stated, solve nothing, but they begin to suggest the infinitude of our problem, and they corroborate the fact that close analysis of the contemporary Soviet-American strategic situation is meaningless, and perhaps dangerous, unless a formidable effort is made to unravel the political perplexities surrounding it.

## 2. The Foundation of the Aims of the Soviet State.

Soviet studies, which as late as World War II were generally insignificant, emotionally colored, or guided by superficialities, are today pursued with high competence and great qualitative and quantitative vigor, in universities, in the government, and in a miscellany of other institutions. This, it would seem, still does not suffice to produce a much clearer consensus concerning the life-force of the Soviet society, its strengths, its weaknesses, the points at which it may be legitimately confounded and those at which it may be profitably con-ciliated. Rather, as might be predicted from a pluralistic manner of research,

8

[LC]

the theories touching on the universal mode of behavior of our most serious opponent have betrayed a diversity of conviction as well as of instinct that does not encourage the growth of a unified political response. The present writer merely notes this condition, some of its aspects, and the consequences it implies: he does not see a way out of the dilemma, nor would he be qualified to suggest one.

We have already touched on the difficult problem of relating the demands of the Marxist ideology to the geographical and economic irridentism of the ascendant Soviet state, and have observed that whereas the fundamental connection between the two has been very strong, the projection of the state apparatus into spheres essentially hostile to its encroachment (notably the Eastern European satellites) has tended to undermine the unity of the tandem. In like manner, the evident strategic inability of the Soviet Union to funnel its myrmidons of imperialism into China, once that country had been gained for the "Socialist camp," produced a contradiction of potentially grave proportions. "Separate roads to Socialism" was a reality before it became a doctrine, and the historical pre-eminence of the Soviet Union in the Socialist experiment (especially after Stalin's death) has carried great weight in the Orient only when yoked to the more practical known facts about Soviet military power and industrial capacity. "Internal contradictions" have been formally admitted within the "Socialist camp" as well as within the capitalist one. It would have been all very well to maintain, as is frequently done by Khrushchev and other Soviet speakers, that these disparities are a mere consequence of the time factor, accounted for by the fact that different countries find themselves at different stages along the way to the manifest Socialist destiny, if this excuse had not been so often and so indiscreetly applied that it ceased to hold much water. The argument will surely not extend comfortably to Yugoslavia, which, though heretical, is still construed as inhabiting the realm of Socialism, especially when the Yugoslav theoreticians themselves go out of their way to attack the logic on which it rests.¹⁷ Furthermore, it has been said, without much discretion, of both the China of "let a hundred flowers bloom together" and the very different China of the paramilitary communes.¹⁸ If these contradictions are to be explained through tactical justification-- which, in Marxist terms, would be sufficient to reconcile them-- it is still undisputed that such tactics are directed toward other members of the "Socialist camp" and thus reveal the persistence of the dilemma.¹⁸ These doctrinal nervosities can be quieted by appeals to solidarity, statements of common interest, etc., but over a period of time they may be expected to weaken

9

[Lc]

the fabric of millenial optimism that was to lead the proletarians of all countries to a common, joyous destiny. Soviet imperialism, which needs the corrective of ideological control to be utterly useful, unrestrainedly usurps more and more of the spotlight in all cases where the ideology causes strategic embarrassment.

Proceeding from this problem, many commentators in the West have felt obliged to visualize the drastic preponderance of either the state or the ideology in the Soviet system. The *anciens communistes*, coming out of the dark of their guided dialectical thought into the greater luminosity of pluralism, have been naturally predisposed to favor the ideological alternative. They have not escaped the cosmic vision of the struggle for the forces of history, and their arguments tend to reproduce the antithesis of the vast notions to which they were conditioned. Perhaps at the distant perspective of hundreds of years they are not at fault; but the question is whether this majestic eye can see into the limited temporal crevasses that must preoccupy the transient observer. Marxism is, after all, half a history and half a prophecy, in which the prophecy is to be fulfilled in terms of the history and the history is predicated in terms of the prophecy. It is a closed system, either ultimate or absurd.19 It has the appeal of absolute certainty; but once that certainty is undermined, the superstructure does not automatically disintegrate; it survives as an aesthetic. Even those who have broken with communism in the most trying circumstances continue to see a fatal beauty in it which is apt to elude the "bourgeois liberal" observer.. It would be unfair to say that the former communists are influential in determining the course of Western political action; but they write copiously and compulsively on the subject, and inevitably some of their views enter the political bloodstream by osmosis.

A second branch of the *ideologues* consists of those analysts who tend to view the precarious cliff-hanging of world stability in terms of vast social transition or, like Strausz-Hupé, as a continuous and uninterrupted sequence of subversion based on a doctrine so pervasive that it reduces its disciples to minions. In this case, the aims of the Soviet state may receive close attention, but the ultimate emphasis is on the transcendence of the ideology and on its sweeping power to compel a forced march of events toward a predicted destiny. This view would maintain that what has been plotted so religiously for years and years cannot easily be arrested; it must be combatted and contained, and ultimately destroyed. In Western Europe, where the impact over an entire century of the Marxist parties of different shades on political thought has been subtle and profound, the ideological motives of Soviet aggressiveness are apt to assume greater

10

[LC]

validity than in America. Of course, it would be easy to assemble a representative body of quotations from all Soviet leaders, major and minor, from Lenin to Khrushchev, to support this very thesis. Even when not ideologically inclined by temperament, a high communist functionary will spare no pains to develop the theoretical rationale behind Russia's mission, to speak of the "proletariat" and the "Socialist camp," since these arguments are, by all odds, the most virtuous part of his thesis. Moreover, outright threats that go beyond the traditional prerogatives of civilized diplomacy are habitually couched in the ideological frame of reference. The sayings of Mr. Khrushchev are well known; let us seek an example from a more distant time, which, for the very alarming quality of its prophecy, would give many people pause:

> Our time will come in 20 or 30 years. The bourgeoisie will have been put to sleep. Then we shall begin to launch the most spectacular peace campaign imaginable. There will be amazing overtures and unexpected concessions. The stupid and decadent capitalist countries will be overjoyed to co-operate in their own destruction. They will jump at the chance to be friends; as soon as their defenses are down, we will crush them with our clenched fist.²⁰

It is a serious matter to burrow into the reality of this type of statement, whose frequent recurrence would indicate that there is little sense and great danger in bargaining with these people or having any kind of commerce with them. What more is there to expect than the knife in the back? We may be assured that even if our common humanity with the Soviets might be expected to lead us to certain common conclusions, the overriding miracle of the dialectic would perpetually call these areas of agreement in doubt, leaving us holding the bag. This is perhaps so in the rigid theoretical sense; but it does not annul the fact that practicality may on occasion make accommodation possible, even desirable. After all, the Peace of Brest-Litovsk was not, in its time, a monumental Soviet gain. It was an adverse setback, but one which, incidentally, allowed Bolshevism to survive at all. Thus, while recognizing the very practical limits that restrict whatever confidence in Soviet intentions we might muster, negotiation is not eternally out of the question, especially in a world of contradiction and unpredictable event. Actually, both Secretaries Acheson and Dulles endorsed this line of thought; both, however, believed that the favorable factors had to be allowed or influenced to develop,²¹ and they did not perceive, like the Soviets, the virtue of seizing haphazard opportunities, even perhaps ones conditioned by chance

11

or chaos. In this respect, Dr. Strausz-Hupé's description of the multiform character of the communist advance may stand as a very salient warning.

The third school of thought concerning the eventual direction of the Soviet Union is surely the most optimistic, for it tends to deny the ultimate persuasion of the Marxist doctrine and to visualize the present world tension more specifically in terms of national rivalries exacerbated but not governed by ideological prerogatives. This theory takes, paradoxically, under its widespread wings such diverse figures as Dulles, Acheson, Charles de Gaulle, and Aneurin Bevan, a fact which itself strongly suggests that the general position is quite amenable to subdivision and fragmentation. Unquestionably, however, the figure who has made this interpretation most his own and has pondered most deeply upon its consequences is George Frost Kennan.²²

Kennan, a retired diplomat and historian, is not a political scientist; he is not particularly sympathetic to the scientific approach, and he is in many ways a gentleman of the old school. Therefore an utter consistency of thought is not to be expected from his work, nor has he striven for it. In his approach to this topic, however, Kennan operates unceasingly on a dual principle: (1) that Soviet policy is essentially a function of the historical Russian state; and (2) that men, and especially government leaders, are essentially rational, if politically egoistic, and should not be expected voluntarily to undertake the extermination of the human race. Thus, to the strategist, Kennan would seem weak, owing to his conviction that, although force must oppose force, it is so inconceivable not to survive the threat of nuclear war that it is unlikely this will ever take place. Kennan concedes this realization to our opponents as well; he qualifies communism as a twisted condition of the mind but believes its leaders capable of sharing a fundamental horror of the H-bomb. Kennan is likewise no favorite of the ideologue. Even though he attributes great power to Marxist doctrine and has been able to observe its tangible relationship to the Soviet state at remarkably close quarters, he does not believe it paramount. Moreover, he believes that it counsels a certain caution in the actions of the Russian leaders.²³

The following passage is broadly representative of Kennan's views on the problem we have been directly concerned with:

> There are, of course, people who are less worried by the prospect of our own weakness in conventional forces than they are by the prospect of the inadequacy of the inspection facilities which the Russians might be expected to concede, and by the possibility that the Soviet Union might retain concealed stocks of the weapon which they would

12
13

[LC]

some day produce for purposes of aggression or blackmail.

This danger exists; it could never be wholly excluded. But, again, I think people tend to exaggerate its dimensions. The Russians are committed by a public position of long standing to precisely this abolition. They have never considered such weapons essential to the prospering of their own cause in the affairs of the world. They have certain solid reasons of self-interest for wishing that these agencies of destruction, the uncertainties of which fit so poorly with the underlying determinism of Marxist thought, should be removed from the picture. I find it hard to believe that it would be worth Moscow's while to enter into an international agreement of this sort just as a sort of elaborate ruse designed to deceive everyone, including its own allies. The net gain would be too questionable. The conceivable victories would not resemble those which Moscow seeks.²⁴

All very well, one may say, with the echoes of the previously quoted statement by Professor Maniulsky ringing in his ears, but what we require in such a dangerous situation is not the advantage of probability but air-tight insurance: anything less is suicide. Here indeed is the fundamental dilemma between the calculating machine and the well-informed intelligence: the former producing results, the latter only convictions. It is a great drawback in our capacity to form a coherent response to the recurring Soviet challenge. How is any measure of good faith possible toward an opponent who, by his own admission, indulges wherever it suits him in tactical deceit? The question must stand, pristine, rhetorical, unanswered.

At the beginning of this essay we furnished a description of the irrecoverable habits of mind that set the strategists apart from the exponents of arms limitation. We attempted to show how this essential psychological conflict augured against meaningful collaboration. It is perhaps unnecessary to say that a similar chasm exists between the strategist and the political expert, which, the merits of the cases aside, is none too easy to bridge, though of course it is and has to be bridged constantly in official decision-making. That does not mean that the points of view are integrated as completely as they should be in policy matters; more often, they compete directly with one another, and one or the other prevails. If in this case we call Kennan the political expert, here is the logical riposte of the strategist to his way of doing business:

> Political science does not offer a systematic body of... rules applicable to the present circumstances; it is not, as one says, "operational"... It certainly contributes little, if anything, to resolving the problems the world faces now, the most important of

13

which is how to live with the thermonuclear stalemate, how to get stability and safety for all participants in the most fearful struggle the human race has ever been involved in.... What negotiations are possible with the Communistic bloc involve bargaining of the most delicate and difficult nature. As on the military side of the picture, one is here concerned with the problem of decision making under uncertainty, where the uncertainty is not of the simple, well-understood kind to be dealt with by probability theory, but is of the highly complex nature arising from the strategic moves of the opponent, who labors under the same difficulty. This is precisely where political science should make its most significant contributions. Nothing is offered, except the mathematical techniques associated with the theory of games of strategy, but to this theory political scientists, with few exceptions, have paid virtually no attention. So far political science has not even abstracted the counts given by Machiavelli in order to discover whether a consistent system of rules of behavior could be constructed on that basis.²⁵

The present writer cannot commend Professor Morgenstern's rather testy inclination to blame the primitive state of political science for the ills of the world. Perhaps the whole difficulty lies in our ambiguous use of the word "science." But rules of conduct, as the anthropologists have shown, are relative rules, varying greatly according to the society and the image of itself which a society endorses; we can no more, in matters of politics, apply our own rules to the other side and expect them to be followed than we can in matters of military strategy. In his wish for "scientism" and predictability in the behavior of nations we almost suspect that Professor Morgenstern is obliquely taking issue with the trite but still defiant truism that man's capacity for human understanding of his own purpose and condition is rapidly deteriorating in comparison with his extraordinarily proficient technological command. Must the answer to this profound and-- let us admit-- perhaps insoluble dilemma really lie in the usurpation of the areas of conduct and social organization by the troops of the staggering technological advance? Kennan would argue that we must, rather, assert the dignity of what we conceive to be the spiritual mission of the race, retarded and even degenerate as it must seem in some aspects.²⁶ So the implicit conflict rages, unlikely to be settled to the satisfaction of anyone: one the one side, the fear of the pundit who, faithful to the old mode of procedure, takes too many liberties with the mathematics of the situation; on the other, the fear of imprisonment in the scientific strait-jacket, the danger of exercising all too volubly what Bernard Brodie, in another context, aptly calls "the wish for final solutions."

14

[LC]

What is striking thus far about all three of our approaches to the Marxist-Soviet dichotomy, and in particular the latter two, is that if the question is allowed to remain purely political, without the intervention of military factors, the likelihood of the initiation of total war by the Soviet Union is low--indeed, extremely so. It might be well to review the factors which create this appearance: (1) the possibility that human failure and inadequate synchronization might cause a total war plan to miscarry; (2) the evident conviction that the "objective laws of history" are not unambiguous enough to predict the type of world that might emerge from a nuclear holocaust; (3) the doctrinaire belief that history is marching in the right direction; (4) the wish, and indeed the need, to control the resources of the conquered enemy, rather than destroying them; and (5) miscellaneous pragmatic evidence as to the efficacy of subtler types of subversion and penetration, and the doctrinal insufficiency of the enemy to meet this kind of "warfare." To these five arguments we might add the survival of a pedantic confidence in Lenin's description of how socialism would eventually triumph over capitalism: through the agonies and "internal contradictions" of the latter after it had reached the zenith of the imperial-mono-poly capitalist stage.²⁷

It is comforting to find that the psychology of the present situation, insofar as we are able to penetrate it, does not favor the solution of total war, but it would be still more illuminating to know how much reliance we should place in any or all of the three theories of Soviet motivation just described. Again, we can only observe; we feel unfit to judge.

It will be fairly generally conceded that revolutionary internationalism dwindled as a crucial concern of the Soviet government after the excommunication of Trotsky; at least Trotsky himself had no illusions on this point. It is a case of some dispute, however, as to how much a "nationalist" Stalin was, and how much an unprincipled tactician. Up to the end of the Second World War the feeling was general that he was a "nationalist," the architect of "Socialism in one country." But the intransigent martialling of the European Communist Parties by Zhdanov for the possibilities of seizing power in France and Italy and the resurrection of the Communist International (Cominform) in 1947 raised doubts as to whether the movement was not putting its cosmopolitan clothes back on. One could also have argued, however, that this was for the consolidation and protection of the Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe. The fact remains that "de-Stalinization" has often (and perhaps improperly) carried the surface meaning

15

[Lc]

of greater emphasis on the "mational" qualities of the Soviet state; such is
a consequence of the optimism many people have attached to the term, the un-
tutored feeling being that Russian nationalism was a more familiar and less
terrible foe than global communism.

Actually, for world security, it probably makes little difference which of
these phenomena is uppermost; presumably we could undertake the competition
with either or both in a semi-sanguine frame of mind if nuclear bombs had
never been discovered. It seems evident, however, that both forces exist and
carry conviction, that both aims are being pursued, wherever possible, in a
parallel relationship. If one of them is potentially dominant, it is unques-
tionably the Soviet state aims; we doubt if the rulers of contemporary Russia
would gladly or willingly pass the banner of international communist leader-
ship to a newly ascendant socialist nation such as China and then conveniently
assume a supporting role.²⁸ The precondition of the present tandem of ideology
and chauvinism is clearly the Soviet supremacy among the "peace-loving nations."
This suggests, from the Russian perspective, that future evolution may well
place severe stresses on what has been up to now an optimal relationship. But
this can be only a slow process at best.

In terms of aspiration it is useful to compare the two forces. Of course,
as is well known, the ultimate and well-publicized aim of communism is the
conversion of the entire globe to its policies and practices. In the first
flush of victory in 1918-19, certain Bolsheviks, believing that the capitalist
world was preparing to crumble, foresaw the spontaneous generation of the pro-
letarian revolution in many scattered areas. Trotsky, becoming Minister of
War, imagined that he would need do no more than "issue a few manifestos" to
complete his task. The Bela Kun dictatorship in Hungary rose and fell after a
few months. Then the Russian Civil War proved to the communists that they
would have to fight for their laurels. They have never forgotten that lesson
amid all the seductions of "historical inevitability." It became apparent that
communism, the driving spirit, required a physical habitation in which to re-
cuperate from its illusions, whose muscle could later be put to the job of
building the new order. Conveniently it had chosen a geographically massive
and potentially powerful state.

16

[LC]

Historic Russian aims, on the other hand, have never been quite global, although they have been aggressively ambitious. The Soviet state had, to begin with, inherited (if we include the lost territories of Brest-Litovsk) one sixth of the earth's surface. The close of the Second World War found Red armies repossessing the better part of the lands strategically surrendered in 1917 and in at least three cases making new acquisitions: Northern Bukovina, Carpatho-Ruthenia, and the northern half of East Prussia. Furthermore, the Soviet nation was conveniently buttressed by a deep cushion of satellite dependencies, and Germany was weak and divided. Thus, an optimum expansion in historical terms was achieved in the West. The U.S.S.R. was no less fortunate on its eastern perimeter, winning back its losses from the Russo-Japanese War, including the Manchurian railway rights, the warm-water harbor installation at Port Arthur, and the southern half of Sakhalin, the island covering the approaches to Vladivostok. Additionally, the strategically important cession of the Kurile Islands was made. A power vacuum produced by the voluntary British withdrawal from India in 1948 promised that Russia's aspirations along that country's northwest frontier would be easier to fulfil. Thus, the results of the war left Russia's strategic position much improved.

A glance at the map will show, nevertheless, that the Soviet Union is essentially a mammoth land-locked power inhabiting great tracts of the Eurasian continent. A long northern coastline of (until recently) dubious value in no wise compensated for the dearth of maritime outlets elsewhere. Thus, one of the significant pressures of Russian policy had historically been for the acquisition of these outlets. In this regard, the U.S.S.R. found herself baulked in all directions at the end of World War II. The combined weight of the Anglo-Saxon powers sufficed to stymie Soviet pretensions toward the Dardanelles and Bosphorus; free access from the Baltic (now effectively made a Russian lake) into the North Sea and thence into the North Atlantic depended upon the cultivation or intimidation of the Scandinavian countries; the prompt challenge received in Iranian Azerbaijan hinted that expansion in the direction of the Persian Gulf would not be tolerated; and, even after the triumph of communism in China, Syngman Rhee's obstinate Korean peninsula effectively outflanked the Port Arthur installation. The Korean War was undoubtedly, among other things, a calculated effort to correct this deficiency, although this simple point has been frequently overlooked. Once it became apparent that the conflict could not be solved to the satisfaction of the Soviets, it was perhaps less galling to relinquish the area to the inevitable expansion of the Chinese hegemony.

17

[LC]

It is unnecessary to add to this that Soviet economic imperialism aspires to many other parts of the world where territorial expansion is infeasible.

We can easily see from the foregoing sketch that certain Russian secular aims lack fulfilment, and the Korean experience amply demonstrates which dividends might be achieved by allowing the ideological rather than the irridentist argument to prevail. With historic Russia still basically unsatisfied, it is not illogical to find many mutual benefits persisting in the close liaison between communism and nationalism. Undoubtedly the Soviets' own experience in manipulating these phenomena has taught them that the same combination will have subtle appeal for other nations, particularly the newly independent ones. Thus by design and analogy the chain of subversion is formed link by link. At this stage of the game the Soviet leaders seem less perturbed by the frequent here-tical implications of their broad strategy than by its occasional failure to produce the desired result. Perhaps the fascination of the game by itself is more appealing to the conspirators than the uncertain consequences of the quick strike. As with Dostoievsky's underground man it is possible for a mechanical ideology to become possessed not only with the achievement of its goals but with the very process of their fulfilment. This, however, is more a characteristic of certain Western communists than of the realists who administer Khrushchev's Russia.

None of the above is intended to imply that the Soviet rulers do not consider themselves good Marxists. On the contrary, they are the rightful ( as perhaps opposed to the Chinese) inheritors of the "good news," the contemporary repository of the sacred books of the movement. By the same token, they permit themselves to indulge in the right of "tactical innovation," suppression, and reinterpretation, as it suits their needs. They are jealous of this established privilege. It would likewise be an error to think that Marxism necessarily erects an intellectual "iron curtain" around the minds of its highest exponents. It may condition them to reason in a certain manner, and to regard that manner as uniquely just, but it most certainly does not blind them to the realities of Western culture and Western institutions: they do not sin through ignorance. All Communist higher functionaries are required to read Western newspapers and Western literature as part of their training, and to become conversant with the arguments of alien ideologies so as better to combat them. They are encouraged even to know how to argue well on the other side of the question.²⁹ This teaches them, among other things, how to appease as well as how to oppose; recently they

18

[LC]

have been striving to do both at the same time. Soviet irridentism does not encounter many sympathies outside the national borders, communism has and does; it would therefore be irrational to expect that the latter will be pressed forward with any less vigor than before. The chances are, though, in view of the combined facts of Khrushchev's leadership, the stiffening of the Western working classes, and the immense potential body of adherents in the underdeveloped parts of the world, that it will be given a more homely, a more "peasant" touch.

It is clearly up to the West to exploit more imaginatively the discrepancies that do exist. Nationalism is a two-edged weapon and could be used with greater decision and effect against the Soviet sphere. Time can work toward an imaginable "inevitability" but it can also, and generally does, work toward the unknown, the surprising, the unfathomed. We, too, from more modest hypotheses, could make time work if we give time its due and resist the temptation to push it along with frantic and impatient hands. Moreover, it will be the worst of policies-- deceiving ourselves and stiffening our opponents-- to profess to detect weaknesses and fundamental failures in their system that do not exist. The gravest problem is to insure that the Bomb (or bombs) will permit the natural evolution of these trends. Therefore, although there is some certain risk, there is very great gain in seeking, by the most stringent measures possible, to inhibit its use. We tend, with Kennan, to feel, even though we are not satisfied to stop with the examination of motives, that the other side would not disagree with this argument.

### 3. Implications of Soviet Military Doctrine.

The speech of Nikita S. Khrushchev to the Supreme Soviet on January 14, 1960 dropped like a premeditated bombshell into the laps of the Western strategy experts and gave them much material for serious if not serene contemplation. The results of this contemplation are not yet available, and in their absence it would be incautious to predict what the Western response will be, other than more strenuous efforts to push the missile and missile-defense programs along. From the political comment that we have up to now received, it is apparent that most observers regard the Khrushchev remarks as a kind of carrot-and-stick approach (perhaps Pavlovian in inspiration) designed to parade both the moral and military strength of the Soviet Union in full view of Western populations prior to the opening of the negotiations and meetings in which the world places so much obscure trust. It is felt that the Soviet

19

Union expects, through this approach, to bargain on better terms with the West, to "bleed" us for concessions while giving up very little themselves. This is a most unpromising atmosphere for the beginning of such admittedly crucial talks, and it is probably to be deplored that the West was not immediately equipped to reply with a "strength and sanity" lecture of its own. Prodigal with "good will" and infatuated with the realization that we, too, can score propaganda victories by exhibiting the President of the United States in the international bazaar, we are still desperately short on plans and concrete implementations of the vague aims we from time to time profess.

It would make better chronological sense to begin the discussion of Soviet military doctrine with a consideration of its debt to Marxist science, proceeding from pre-Revolutionary times through the sayings of Trotsky, Budenny, Frunze, Tukhachevsky, and others up to the strategies of the current nuclear age, rather than commencing with Comrade Khrushchev's harangue. However, for this type of material in depth we unhesitatingly recommend the compendium called *The Red Army*, compiled by Captain B.H. Liddell Hart, and the painstaking analysis of trends in Soviet strategic thinking, which carries up to the brink of the ballistic missile era, *Soviet Strategy in the Nuclear Age*, by Raymond L. Garthoff.31 A slightly more recent book, which is more explicit in some regards than Garthoff's though somewhat less comprehensive in scope, is *War and the Soviet Union*, by Herbert Dinerstein.32 It should be stated at this point that the present writer has drawn heavily on the material published in these sources for his selective remarks on Soviet military science. For purposes of analysis we have thought it convenient to divide these remarks into categories which do not presume to be comprehensive or necessarily inclusive of other relevant materials.

### a. "Stalinist conservatism."

Following the end of the Second World War most commentators are agreed that a deadly lull settled down over Soviet military thinking, largely conditioned by the omnipotent egotism of J.V. Stalin and by the fear he was able to inspire in his cohorts. Since official doctrine had it that the masterly conduct of the "Patriotic War" of 1941-45 by Marshal Stalin had been largely responsible for its successful conclusion and for the great ascendance of Soviet power, it became likewise axiomatic that military science could best be advanced by a minute study of the conditions of that war and the lessons which it taught. Furthermore, it was not admitted that any serious mistakes had occurred in these operations; consequently not even the particularities of the campaigns could be

20

[Lc]

seriously challenged unless the errors could be attributed to commanders like Zhukov who were out of favor. We must assume that many of the Russian military theorists endured this strait-jacket with bad humor and were only too ready to break out of the cast when the dictator died. By November 1953 the first rumblings of protest were clearly heard in an article by Major General Pukhovsky which claimed that recourse to authority had "voluntarily or involuntarily hindered the development of military-theoretical thought."³³ Thezenith of the military "de-Stalinization" was unquestionably reached in March 1955 when the semi-restricted journal *Voennaya Mysl*' carried an editorial stating that "Soviet military science is working out [too] slowly many important theoretical problems of the present time."³⁴ Simultaneously, the editorial reported and quoted excerpts from a secret address to "the leading personnel of the armed forces" by Marshal Zhukov, who had spoken of "need for further systematic perfection of... knowledge on the basis of a deep study of contemporary military technology and advanced military theory."³⁵ From 1955 on, there is every indication that the Russians have closely followed these precepts.

In view of the Stalinist restriction on independent military thought, the effects of which had not worn off until 1955, it is surprising to note that the nuclear bomb and missile programs were systematically pushed through at high speed despite the doctrinal doldrums. One answer to this seeming paradox is that, even though the Soviet leaders may not have been fully aware of the implications of these new weapons, they were quite far-sighted enough to wish to duplicate or surpass the progress which the West was making in these fields. They continued to regard these new techniques as merely a phase of armament, but they amply recognized that it was a side they could not afford to neglect. Secondly, the Soviet experience of war had taught that one condition of victory was the ability to meet and join with the enemy, who in this case was regarded as the United States; extremely powerful and precise missiles promised a way out of this dilemma, and the program accordingly received high priority.

### b. The debate over the "objective factors of war."

Inasmuch as Marxist science was officially regarded as a comprehensive and omnipotent technique, it followed that the military art was no more than one branch of that doctrine, deriving from it and subordinate to it. Under the reign of Stalin this led to the strictest possible interpretation of the limits beyond which purely military theoreticians could not go in their endeavor to investigate "the laws of war as an armed conflict." Both professionalism and imagination were stifled by this state of affairs. The "objec-

21

tive" Marxist view led inescapably to such absurdities as the conclusion that similar factors in war would have different effects on capitalist and socialist societies. Finally, in 1953, the breach in the armor was made, with the result that in the following year over forty letters and articles were addressed to *Voennaya Mysl*' on this very subject. Subsequently, under the aegis of "de-Stalinization," it was decided that while the "objective laws of history" as propounded by Marx remained the ultima ratio of all Soviet science, the military historians and strategists could profitably devote their attention to the comprehensive study of warfare without fear of conflict with higher authority. This amounted to a practical compromise between the military and political leadership, by which an autonomy that was within their competence was granted to the former, while it was explicitly understood that the doctrinal decisions of the latter remained supreme and unchallengeable. One factor surrounding the dismissal of Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov in October 1957 may have been his attempt to challenge this tacit agreement by seeking to extend military prerogative to doctrinal questions. That the general issue raised by this controversy rests in uneasy abeyance is made quite clear by the difficulty Marxist science experiences in coping with the imaginable but untested factors of modern war.

### c. The dilemma of nuclear war.

If Soviet technology was able to overcome the American military advance in nuclear armament in an astonishingly short time and to go ahead in the development of delivery systems, this does not mean that their military doctrine evolved with commensurate speed and skill. The Stalinist "freeze" effectively retarded the articulation of nuclear war strategy, while other factors imbedded deeply in both the Russian historical experience of warfare and in the Marxist "objective science" contributed contradictions of their own. To this day, the great majority of Soviet discussions on nuclear war which are available to Western eyes are either repetitions of or ripostes to observations on the subject previously made by U.S. or other NATO strategists. This does not imply, however, that there have not been dominant national trends in Soviet military science which were adaptable to the hypothesized conditions of modern warfare.

The Russians, while on many occasions threatening the West with a total nuclear destruction they claim to be well within their means, have, on the whole, in their theoretical work regarded strategic nuclear exchange as merely one of a number of factors in modern war and never as the decisive factor of victory. The decisive role has usually been assigned to the land army, whose mission is to destroy the opposing force and to conquer, hold, and control the enemy ter-

22

ritory. This peculiar tendency to underrate or underplay nuclear strategic capability has strong roots in the Russian concept of war and in Marxist doctrine for the following reasons: (1) "Scientific" socialism implies the importance of balanced "democratic" forces, in particular "armies of mass," and denies the "ultimate weapon" solution. The United States, it has been claimed, refuses to accept this truth for the simple reason that it cannot place confidence in its "masses." (2) Russian military doctrine has been historically conditioned to the concept of "strategic defense," i.e. "trading space for time," in which massive land armies were a prerequisite. (3) In offensive war the Russians continue to emphasize the control of conquered territory, a mission for which a huge army is, again, indispensable. (4) "Tactical" nuclear war implies to the Soviets, and strategists in the West are beginning to concur, the continued need for great numbers of troops. The idea is not that they will all be deployed on the battlefield at once, but with severe casualty rates anticipated replacements will have to be introduced to the fighting in a steady stream. Furthermore, although much greater importance has now been attached to the concept of "surprise attack,"³⁶ the Soviets still fundamentally believe, as in the time of Stalin, that the decisive factors affecting the outcome of a war are "the basic morale, economic-military, command and military qualitative and quantitative elements,"³⁷ in other words, those things on which, historically and doctrinally, the Soviet state is prone to place the greatest emphasis.

Is it fallacious that the Russians should not put utter confidence in the nuclear *coup de grace*? We continue to believe that if such an event took place they would be the perpetrators of it. It would surely be dangerous to reassure ourselves of this fallibility, regardless of what our own strategists believe. In the first place, in the possible case that a nuclear exchange or series of exchanges were not totally decisive, the Russians would reserve the wherewithal (provided that it, too, were not destroyed) to impose their conditions on the enemy country. Secondly-- and this is the most likely inference to be drawn from the Russian strategy-- the stabilization of mutual nuclear deterrents could easily produce such a positive reluctance on the part of the United States to employ such weapons that the Russian land forces, the "army of mass", could, by virtue of heavy numerical superiority, sweep to their assigned objectives. Soviet Russia, both by its own statements and by NATO estimates of its military capacity, is well prepared to fight wars of different varieties, and this fact surely does not imply the probability of a nuclear strike so long as the Soviets regard their own deterrent as satisfactory. It suggest that a single-option strategy has no more place in enemy planning than a single-weapons system.

23

[LC]

The other side of the coin concerning nuclear war is the theoretical one. A serious reason, among many others, for the ouster and disgrace of Soviet Premier Georgi Malenkov in 1955 was his considered opinion, seconded by material which had appeared in Soviet military sources, that "this policy [of cold war] is a policy for the preparation of a new world holocaust which, with the present means of warfare, means the destruction of world civilization."³⁸ Malenkov's later retraction, under pressure, of the mutual destruction theory did little to mitigate the impression that a certain segment of the Soviet Union's ruling circle (Mikoyan among them) had caught a fleeting glimpse of one fact which might render Marxist science slightly less "inevitable" than had been previously supposed. Since the time of Malenkov's indiscretion it has been heresy to believe that the Soviet Union might not survive a nuclear war and triumph in it,³⁹ a position which Khrushchev himself has so many times reiterated, but it is still certain that the shadow of doubt has crossed the Soviet mind. Of course, we in the West are apt to attach too much importance to this *contretemps*, which is pleasing to our ears though probably not very destructive to the scientific standing of Marxism among its most zealous exponents. The fact remains that the concept was, and hopefully never will be, put to the test. Nevertheless, it is reassuring to hear Khrushchev affirm as often as he does that wars between socialist and capitalist societies are not inevitable. It is still good Leninism, though, to believe that capitalism could, unaided, cut its own throat.

The Russians have many motives for being hesitant about nuclear war, just as we have, and their inclination to hedge on the question should not be construed as an inherent doctrinal weakness. Total surprise attack must always remain a mathematical possibility, a possibility that might increase exceedingly if we should drop our defenses without effective guarantee, but there are good reasons to believe that it is not presently an attractive alternative for the Soviets. They have as much as stated that their attitude toward the question remains open, and have threatened that a first use of nuclear weapons by the United States or the NATO organization might easily persuade them to unload their spectacular arsenal. They appear to be speaking directly; but one wonders if they know themselves.

### d. Military organization and its role in the Soviet state system.

Russia's military forces, which have known their ups and downs and drunk deeply from the cup of bitterness owing to the ideological harrassment inflicted on them by the Party apparatus at various times, are sworn to the support of the Soviet state and the doctrine of communism insofar as it represents the national

24

[LC]

interest. Thus, since their existence is tied up so exclusively with the secu-
rity of the national soil, it is presumed, and probably correctly, that they
constitute a "patriotic" rather than an ideological force in the Russian social
organization. This state of affairs is, of course, perfectly agreeable to the
Party, since it would prefer having the military indifferent about certain doc-
trinal issues than actively intransigent toward them.

Although the fortunes of various high military leaders fluctuate with the
power struggles waged in the Presidium and Central Committee,⁴⁰ the military
organization has itself been largely a silent witness to these disputes, in-
tervening only where questionable of a doctrinal nature touched upon matters of
national or strategic security, as at the time of the Malenkov dismissal.⁴¹
This fact, which is not difficult to document, exposes as shallowly optimistic
numerous Western interpretations of the Soviet armed forces as a leaven in the
democratization process. Actually, the Soviet, like any other army, depends on
caste and hierarchy and has struggled to preserve these distinctions against
outside encroachment. Even if the base and general organization of this struc-
ture are more highly egalitarian than they were in the armies of old, it would
not be amiss to point out, as has the French military reporter Jean Planchais,
than "the most democratized armies run the risk of being the most anti-demo-
cratic."⁴²

Soviet military power has traditionally depended on the concept of "balanced forces." This idea, which lies within the same context as the "no ultimate weapon" theory, alleges that good strategy needs a certain equilibrium of land, air, and sea forces. In practice, over a long period of time, this has meant a crushing preponderance for the Red Army, both in numbers and in accession to the highest ranks of the command.⁴³ As we noted earlier, this attitude is consonant with both the Russian historical experience and Marxist doctrinal requirements. There is no reason to believe, however, that the Soviets would at any point sacrifice strategic flexibility for arid doctrinal reasons. "Balanced forces" may remain a constant concept in Soviet military thinking, but each of these forces will be constituted in such a way as to promise maximum efficiency in the pursuit of national goals. Soviet inter-service rivalry, if it exists, is unknown to the West;⁴⁴ and top military priorities and strategies are clearly dictated by the rulers of the state, who make it a point to understand their consequences, and not by the military leaders themselves. Soviet military power, extraordinarily potent as it is, is regarded as but one of several techniques for promoting the cause of communism and the interests of the nation. The heads

25

of Russia do not stand spellbound before the shrine of Mars, but they know when to invoke him, with thunder, lightning, and all the rest of the pseudo-celestial claptrap.

When we take up the subject of subversive war, which is the primary agent of the "protracted conflict," we leave the military organization entirely and enter the espionage and political agitation schools. This does not mean that extraordinary individual tasks of a subversive nature may not be given to military personnel. But the orientation here is clearly doctrinal and is the responsibility of other tentacles of the state apparatus. A great effort goes into this operation, whose primary mission is perhaps to attract and train foreigners, who, for reasons of ideological sympathy, subsidization, blackmail, or mere curiosity have been induced to come to Russia. The regular military organization, which has for forty years fought a running battle against the political commissars, tends to distrust this brand of ideological warfare, which is mostly separated from its jurisdiction. Likewise, in the past, the Soviet government, contrary to widespread opinion, has not generally sanctioned the use of regular troops for partisan or subversive activities, fearing that the "Cossack" type of lower-echelon initiative might become contagious.⁴⁵ Although the official histories of the "Patriotic War" give the partisan forces their due, the fact remains that the state, and in particular the Party, were always highly suspicious of their activities and only used them because there was no real alternative. Concerted action to utilize the vast numbers of Russian troops bypassed by the German armies in 1941 was not taken until December, and no coherent doctrine for their activity was developed until the following year. Also, political commissars were attached to these bands as quickly as was feasible. It is well known that a systematic purge of the leaders of these forces was undertaken by the Soviet government at the end of the war. Today, however, there is increasing evidence that low- and intermediate-echelon initiative is being more encouraged, because of "de-Stalinization" and the complex requirements of modern warfare.

Basically, the role of the military in Russia is no puzzle. Despite the occasional allegiances of some of its ranking members, it is politically neutral insofar as political shades may be discerned. Its oath is to the state, and it tends to remember its place and avoid unnecessary intrusions into the sphere of higher policy. It probably makes political combinations only in cases where it feels that the national welfare is jeopardized by the pursuit of a particular program. Its character is therefore conservative and rigorously limited by its

26

[LC]

specific role in the society. In this respect it does not differ vastly from
other armies. If one believes that the threat of war with Russia is promoted
by the predominance of unstable and fanatic persons at the helm of the state,
then the Soviet military is probably a force for stability, and consequently
for peace.⁴⁶ If, on the other hand, war is expected to come through calculated
design and careful planning, the observer may be assured that this action will
have the unqualified assent of the top military leaders.

### e. The Khrushchev Remarks.

It is still to early to tell what future significance the Khrushchev speech
of January 14, 1960 will have upon Soviet strategy, but some effort should be
made to interpret his observations in the light of the preceding summary. When
the first inkling of the new policy was revealed in a New Year's eve address,
certain spokesmen in London took it to mean that Russia had made a certain de-
cision to fight war, if it came, with nuclear weapons and probably ones of in-
discriminate force. Nothing, however, could be less certain. The force totals
which Khrushchev sets as a goal for the future (2,423,000 men), of which ap-
proximately 1,500,000 will be ground forces if the present balance remains
roughly the same, may have been purposely understated. In any case they would
be ample to fight the opening stages of a conventional or limited nuclear war,
and their total could be enormously increased within a week or two by swift mo-
bilization of reserve troops. Furthermore, Russia can dispose of about 500,000
more men for at least garrison duty, these being presently MVD troops or border
guards. Thus, the "army of mass" has not necessarily been eliminated.

Secondly, remarks by Khrushchev to the effect that "almost the whole of
the air force is being replaced by rocket equipment.... It seems [we] will...
even discontinue the manufacture of bombers and other obsolete machinery...
The armed forces have been to a considerable extent transferred to rocket and
nuclear arms"⁴⁷ must be taken as an exaggeration or at least as a projection in
time, since it is both doubtful that the obsolescence of manned bombers has
been demonstrated and that Russia either has plentiful enough nuclear equipment
for all its combat-ready divisions or that she intends to make them completely
reliant on this type of weapon. These trends are both undoubtedly pronounced
in the current rebalancing of Soviet forces, but it would be premature to think
of them as ultimate.

27

[LC]

Khrushchev has always had a propensity to think one or two years in advance, to assume for the purposes of argument a strategic situation whose development he expects. This has been generally true of his "missile-rattling." No one doubts the Russian predominance in this field, but it is highly questionable that they are as yet in a posture to launch an all-out war with ICBM's. Consequently, the Soviet "fantastic weapon," in which there is no reason to disbelieve, is probably short of operational, as the Soviet Premier himself admits, even though there are further reports of its production in the Leningrad area. We are not, for all this, in a position to treat the threat lightly, because, on past performance, if the Russians have exaggerated the time and quantity factors of their weapons development, they have not shown a tendency to bluff about the weapons themselves.

With a "fantastic new weapon," virtual elimination of the air force, and overwhelming reliance on rockets and missiles, have we come to a point where the Soviet adhesion to a plethora of time-honored theories is to be at last ended? Is the "balance of forces" an archaic idea, now consigned to the Marxist boneyard? Has an "ultimate weapon" strategy been evolved? Is the historic mission of the ground forces to be revised? If so, these would be momentous changes in the history of Soviet strategic thinking and would require the gravest scrutiny by our military experts. Taking sides on the question would only be a flying leap into space, with no substantial ground to come down on. It will be more illuminating to examine forthcoming Russian military writings for evidence of a significant revision.

The consequences of what Khrushchev describes would not be favorable to any equilibrated, suitably controlled program of disarmament. The gist of the speech indicates that the Soviet Union intends to try dictating such a program on its own terms. If they can allege that in disarming they are surrendering a more complete and effective military arsenal that the United States, it will seem to many that some of their sensitivities regarding inspection and control should be catered to. The prospect is repellent and dangerous; its possibility suggests that our own people should be better educated to the nature of the disarmament problem and that nervous allies will have to be held in check. Our position in this matter should be fully and forcibly stated through diplomatic channels, and our political planners should set out immediately to devise countermeasures for this challenge.

28

[LC]

### 4. The Soviet Union and the Western Proletariat.

Marxism is a Western-oriented doctrine. Its founder foresaw that its most immediate gains would be won in the more highly industrialized countries, and the burden of his appeal was addressed to the Western working classes. But the true success of Marxism has been a manifestly Eastern phenomenon. In the opinion of some, this transplantation of revolutionary values has resulted in a subordination of those values to the national aims of an ascendant state. Thus, Arnold Toynbee: "We must [perhaps] decide that Communism has forfeited its prospects as a revolutionary proletarian religion: first, by being degraded from being a revolutionary panacea for all mankind into being a mere local variety of nationalism, and secondly by seeing the particular state that has enslaved it assimilate itself to other states of the contemporary world by approximating the latest standard type."⁴⁸ Toynbee, with the long vision of the erudite researcher in civilizations and the contempt for the moment, may be right. But, as we have previously said, it does no positive good to tell Mr. Khrushchev that he is not a real communist; this merely gets his back up. Whether he is a communist or not in reality, he believes that he is; and he has his ballistics missiles and a well-controlled and dynamic society as proof of his version of the answer. Yet the fact remains that the historic condition of Marxism is unfulfilled; furthermore, the Western European nations are becoming steadily more affluent and _embourgeoisés_, while the working classes are showing a definite will to escape from militant politics.

Soviet strategy still gazes on Western Europe as a prime objective. Its industrial plant and technical and cultural sophistication make it a tantalizing prize for any aggressor. But the Russians probably realize that, short of unforeseen cataclysm, it is not going to fall into their laps through any proletarian uprising: it must be won. This realization produces two consequences:

(1) Although the Communist parties of Western Europe are still to be employed for their nuisance value, the Soviet quota of patience with their performance has never been lower. They are indeed no longer partners in a great economic movement, if they ever were; they are generally despised as inferior instruments and snubbed by the present rulers of Russia in a way that would have not been conceivable in the 'thirties. Russia has, to be sure, had a good deal to do with the low performance of her minions; she has charted dazzling political zigzags which left them breathless, bewildered, and absurd. But Russia does not blame herself for the evil consequences of her tactics. And she does not admire

29

[LC]

failure in her subordinates. When more is to be gained by dealing at the heads-of-government level, why observe the amenities of the communist confraternity, which merely make the bourgeois democracies nervous and distrustful? Why bedeck with laurels the managers of the decrepit branch-offices of the corporation, when they have systematically lost the proletariat, not to another political party, but to apolitism-- pursuit of leisure, sport, and worldly indifference? This is not to say that there are not 1,700,000 Communists in Italy and 460,000 in France, together with many more in both countries who vote the Party ticket. There are. But the workers have lost ar are losing the fury of class-consciousness, the ideological germ that conditions absolute fealty to the doctrine of the Revolution.

(2) If total war is to be avoided and Europe is to be gained, a peripheral strategy is unavoidable. "The way to Paris is through Peking," Lenin is alleged to have said, presciently, and contemporary conditions seem to make this a Marxist imperative as well as a sly piece of advice. This order of battle is furthermore commended by the discovery that communism of the type the Soviets export has considerable magnetic attraction for the masses of underprivileged, unlettered, and angry people of the Asian, African, and South American continents. Soviet ideology has known how to ingratiate itself with the powerful currents of nationalism that are sweeping the old colonial areas. Instead of an intelligent, resourceful, and high-principled proletariat as Marx (and Lenin) believed would be in the van of communism, the front ranks are being filled by troops of a different kind. The Soviets are content to make the swap; here they are trading "time for space."

But the Communists of the West are increasingly beleaguered and disheartened. Their strength has fallen away to insignificance in England, Germany, the Low Countries, Austria and Scandinavia. They conserve a certain clientele in Greece and Finland. In France, where dwelt traditionally the most rigid and Stalinist of all the Western parties, the tide is running against the movement; the elite troops, the workers, are deserting.⁴⁹ The Italian party has had better fortune, but only through the cultivation of agrarian strength, the partial embourgeoisement of its directorate, and its uncanny ability to normalize and legitimize its place in the Italian political spectrum, much in the manner of a bourgeois party. Togliatti has, in fact, taken the lead in drawing European communism toward respectibility; he is the principal draftsman of the following manifesto, signed by seventeen communist parties, which clearly evokes the malaise of the Western part of the movement:

30

[Lc]

According to the original conditions of each country, we call our peoples to struggle for the formation of democratic governments based on the laboring masses which will be able to effect a program of democratic renovation. Naturally, a prominent place is reserved in this appeal for Christian workers and also for the socialist and social democratic parties, and for members of trade unions and co-operatives, with whom we have so often made common cause that was crowned with success. The divisive policies injurious to the interests of the workers has not been profitable to these parties. [My italics.]⁵⁰

Popular front: a tactic-- what could be simpler? Of course it is a tactic, but it is a tactic of weakness and not of strength. Moreover, the same Togliatti found it tactical to adopt an extremely *nuance* attitude toward the actions of his Soviet comrades in Hungary in 1956. Although the French and Italian Communist Parties can still cause trouble on a small scale, it is evident that they can no longer command a good street riot or order a crippling strike for purely political reasons. This leaves them two alternatives if they are to protect their political interests, which include the control of several hundred towns in both countries and in Italy whole sections: (1) to assume a militant Trotskyite pose which might reanimate flagging enthusiasms, or (2) to practice *doage* with the socialist and bourgeois parties-- which is the more likely tactic. If the present upward trend of European prosperity continues, they are not apt to be rewarded whatever they do.

The coming into existence of such supra- or extra-national agencies as NATO, Euratom, the Coal and Steel Community, the OEEC, the European Payments Union, and the Common Market has, despite growing pains and ill-concealed conflicts of interest, been a potentially more drastic change for Western Europe that "de-Stalinization" has been for Russia. In general, the working class has been either sympathetic or indifferent to the transformation, regardless of the party line. The lowering of frontiers allows greater freedom to the laborer in seeking a job, and the joint action of several governments is regarded as a more effective guarantee of wages and steady employment, as is the efficiency resulting from an integrated economy. Furthermore, the politically aware European worker is genuinely internationalist-minded and ideologically predisposed toward this kind of solution, even if he is enjoined to oppose it on grounds on tactics.

Moreover, the doctrinal attitude of the Soviet Union toward this developing trend of European supranationalism has always been somewhat confused. The military significance of NATO has been realistically assessed, being of a less ambiguous character, but the economic institutions are seen through a veil of contradiction. Did not Lenin himself write: "... the United States of Europe as the result of an agreement between the European capitalists is possible, but what

31

[L.C.]

kind of an agreement would that be? An agreement jointly to suppress Socialism in Europe, jointly to guard colonial booty against Japan and America, which feel slighted by the present division of colonies, and which, for the last half century, have grown infinitely faster than backward monarchist Europe, beginning to rot with age. In comparison with the United States of America, Europe as a whole signifies economic stagnation. On the present-day economic basis, *i.e.* under capitalism, the United States of Europe would mean an organisation of reaction for thwarting the more rapid development of America. The days when the cause of democracy and Socialism was associated with Europe alone have passed forever.⁵¹ The unravelling of this sacred text and the recovery of its implications would prove a minor miracle for even the most skilled dialectician, in view of the fact that it has been, paradoxically, the United States that wished "Europe" to come into being. It is doubtful that the Soviets really believe the Common Market to be the last frenzied stage of monopoly capitalism before the deluge.

The fact that the Soviets *quä* Communists have seemingly been baulked from their primordial goal cannot help but have vast consequences for their political doctrine, as they find themselves increasingly driven from appeals *to* an industrialized society to appeals *for* an industrialized society, a program revised for their "underdeveloped" audience. Also, as they turn their sights toward a peripheral strategy they collide with the persistent, if friendly, pretensions of the Chinese version of the gospel; for the Chinese were, after all, the original "agrarians" of the communist movement. The pressures of this situation and its numerous contingencies must, over the long run, influence the development of new lines in Soviet strategy, new dangers and new susceptibilities.

## 5. Changes in the Soviet State.

The eagerness to see Soviet communism overnight take wings and fly off the planet has been the most persistent siren-song of Western diplomacy. It captivated George Kennan, and became a policy. It captivated John Foster Dulles even more strongly.⁵² Since the Polish *modus vivendi* and the Hungarian uprising it has captivated many more people in official or high places, some of whom have lost the ability to distinguish between Soviet and satellite motives. Thus, Hugh Gaitskell: "It is surely evident that internal changes have taken place within the Soviet Union and that, partly as a result, there has been some change in the Soviet attitude to the outside world. Admittedly, this may be just a change of tactics, but it would be very surprising if, over the years, economic progress in Russia was not accompanied by social change and if these two things

32

[LC]

did not influence the attitude of the government to the outside world.... It will hardly be denied that whatever may be the position within the Soviet Union, there have been quite remarkable developments in the satellite states, particularly in Poland and Hungary."⁵³ Mr. Gaitskell may be permitted to wishdream, but his evidence is frankly not very conclusive and we could urge that his analysis be more specific.

It is perhaps no secret that the majority of people in the satellite countries of Eastern Europe are anxious for a respite from a dismal decade and a half of crude colonial subservience. But let us not make the mistake of confusing Russia with Hungary, as Mr. Gaitskell seems to do. These two states do not share the same reactions. A Hungarian may equate communism to Soviet imperialism and come thereby to hate both, but a Russian cannot be easily persuaded to hate himself. Many people, in their insatiable hunger for a happily fortuitous solution, have taught themselves to avoid this unpleasant fact. But it seems fairly obvious that, whatever the hardships of the first forty years of communism, a substantial majority of Soviet citizens are patriotic supporters of the state, of which they are proud and from which they have come to expect much-- a better life in their old age and a better life for their children. It is not necessary to crack the whip incessantly over such people; words persuade them. "Hooligans" exist; there are those who mock the Party and the state apparatus, those who listen to the foreign radio, those who go to church, even those who dislike communism: but these would be regarded as petty disturbances in practically any other country than Soviet Russia. And Russia is now "mature" enough to tolerate them.

Is there then no change in the country? Is this "liberalism" a façade? Unquestionably there have been changes, some of them significant ones. But one is defied to find any evidence of change great enough to support the conviction that communism is tottering or altering its essential character. Such an event will undoubtedly take place somewhere in the stretches of recorded time. Our own society, too, may have changed by then. Nevertheless, it is extremely unwise to predicate the restoration of world stability on the chance that communism will suddenly lose its claws; it is all too likely that we shall have to find a way to "co-exist" much sooner than that.

What changes, then, can we identify? First of all, there is the much-heralded rise of the Soviet "managerial class" (one graciously refrains from saying "bourgeoisie"), which is seen as the special human objectification of the collapse of Stalinism and is felt to be more "peace-minded" and more "com-

33

modity-minded" than the tribe which came before it. Perhaps this is true; but who is this type, to challenge or even essentially overhaul the system which made him?

Secondly-- although this point is not heard so frequently since the eclipse of Zhukov-- there is the rise of the prestige of the military. This group is seen as an essentially conservative and stabilizing force in the tumultuous Soviet society. Our previous observations have tried to show, however, that the Army is, in a very real sense, the servant of the state.

Thirdly, there are the intellectuals, writers, and artists. Here we are on firmer ground, because the genuine leaven of change customarily proceeds from this group in the majority of societies undergoing transformation. And there are certain rumblings, serious enough to convince Khrushchev that this segment of society should be carefully supervised; this at least is the trend indicated by the Communist Party's 21st Congress.⁵⁴ The Pasternak business is already a cause célèbre; let us instead cite two less well known examples of intellectual ferment.

In the autumn of 1956, shortly after the publication of Dudintsev's *Not By Bread Alone*, the Moscow branch of the Soviet Writers' Union, with a membership of 1200, held a riotous meeting in which the Dudintsev and other "here-tical" works were defended by the rank-and-file membership despite the efforts of the authorities to gain consent for the traditional denunciatory speeches. This news leaked out to the West some months later, although every precaution was taken to keep the incident secret. Recantations were demanded, but most of the "revisionists," at their peril, remained silent.⁵⁵

A still more striking case, because the content is available, was the anonymous essay called "Document," written by "a young Soviet writer" and translated and published in the French left-wing Catholic monthly, *Esprit*, in February 1959. The introduction to the essay emphasizes that the work was written "before the outbreak of the Pasternak affair," which may indicate that it, too, had a connection with the writers' rebellion of 1956. Written in a bitter, sar-donic, mock-dialectical tone, "Document" includes passages such as the following:

> In order that prisons might disappear forever, we built new ones. In order that frontiers between states might fall, we surrounded ourselves with a Wall of China. In order that work might, in the future, become a relaxation and a pleasure, we introduced forced labor camps. In order that no drop of blood would ever again be spilt, we killed, killed, without respite. In the name of the Goal it was necessary to sacrifice everything we held in reserve and resort to the same methods as our enemies employed: proclaim the omnipotence of Russia,

34

[LC]

write lies in Pravda [i.e. "Truth"], put a tsar back on the now empty
throne, bring back officers' epaulets and tortures... Sometimes it
seemed that to triumph completely communism needed only a final holo-
caust: renunciation of itself.⁵⁸

These scarcely sanguine sentiments are probably not unique; we do not know
whether or not they are widespread, either. Nor is it certain that there is
any common ground for these protests besides their opposition to the system.
The Soviet intellectuals, like the Polish, are an increasingly serious problem
for the state. But their influence is mitigated by their isolation, and they
have been told in no uncertain terms to stay in line. It is doubtful that they
can, by their own efforts, particularly since they are not a coherent opposition,
go far toward changing the character of contemporary institutions in a short
while. There is no evidence that they enjoy the sympathy of the "new bureau-
cracy" or of the workers; one would be led to expect the contrary.

We must consequently return a pessimistic verdict concerning any likeli-
hood of earth-shaking changes in the Soviet society. Undoubtedly certain re-
laxations and liberalizations will occur with the full consent of the govern-
ment, and these will serve to justify the system to the people. But in the
dominant realm of ideology it would be dangerous to expect much. Furthermore,
we can surmise that Soviet strategy is anchored on a solid enough national
plane to make its pursuit predictably consistent in spite of internal political
modifications. It would be pleasant to do away with communism, or, better, to
have it vanish; but would any aggressive Russia, armed to the teeth with H-bombs,
make our security that much more substantial? Wars are not limited to the
Age of Socialism alone.

6. Conclusions.

If the current world picture seen politically makes nuclear war unlikely
as a Soviet policy alternative, the very instability and ambiguity of many im-
portant factors works against the likelihood of removing this threat by a ne-
gotiated arms control. If nuclear stalemate temporarily exists, the political
equilibrium is, nonetheless, in violent oscillation, and it is doubtful if
either side can see clearly just what the balance will be in five or ten years.
The other society, it must be admitted, at least has goals and very probably a
timetable. The Soviet Union is not committed to the peripheral strategy by
choice, but by realistic assessment of the liabilities of direct aggression.
If the NATO nucleus of the free world prospers and stands fast and remains
centrally significant in American policy, the peripheral strategy will remain
the primary means of Soviet penetration: controversies that might lead to

35

[LC]

armed conflict will be, in this sense, localized and minimized. At the same
time we must probably look forward to inquisitive probings on the main
front, at such sensitive points as West Berlin: these allow the U.S.S.R.
to test our intentions, assess our strategies, gain, if possible, new con-
cessions, and establish future precedents for promoting its influence. In
this latter sense, the Soviets are rather convinced practitioners of the
Pavlovian psychology; where they profess to be traditionalists, longing wist-
fully for the conditions of the past (e.g. "Yalta spirit": "Geneva spirit":
"Camp David spirit"), they are really attempting to create a psycholgical
echo-pattern by means of false analogy, thereby conditioning Western public
opinion to a catalogue of predictable and concessive response. Evidence
shows that the Kremlin may place too much doctrinaire faith in this method;
but it is up to the Western leaders to show their peoples that the Soviet
analogies are false.

The speech of January 14 evidently indicates that Khrushchev is not ap-
proaching the forthcoming series of talks in a genuinely concessive mood. He
is attempting to establish the psychological foundations of a position of
strength from which the smallest overture toward Western proposals will seem
like significant and earnest conciliation. This does not augur well for the
adoption of any feasible plan of arms limitation and control. It suggests
rather that the West will be placed in the traditional quandary of facing a
Soviet program for modus vivendi that is more liberal than anything that coun-
try has yet proposed, but still far short of acceptable. The Pavlovian "echo"
policy, inspired in this instance by the example of the "uncontrolled" nu-
clear test renunciation, will argue powerfully for other dangerous half-mea-
sures of the same sort, and the Western statesmen will be hard-pressed to
avoid a degree of conciliation. Controls and sanctions will remain unsettled
problems, even if there is any significant meeting of minds on other questions,
and there will probably be some sentiment in Western councils of state to argue
against pressing these matters too forcefully for fear of rocking the boat.

The only action which might arrest this dangerous drift and fortify the
Western position is for the United States to take a positive initiative well
in advance of the negotiations by the proposal of some comprehensive and well-
tailored disarmament plan similar to the one discussed in the first chapter
of this paper. In order to do this, much opposition in our own official cir-
cles would still have to be overcome. Also, as is well known, the Admini-
stration has established no body or commission with the authority and tech-

36

[LC]

nical competence to produce a proposal depending on the best current scientific, military, and political advice. We await the public release of the Coolidge Report with great interest, but must reserve our privilege of doubting its fulfilment of all the above specifications. If all these steps were taken, it is still questionable that the impact would be very great on Russian disarmament strategy; the Soviets do not change their ideas for a fig. This would depend, in part, on the relation of our proposal to the other parts of the negotiations and its degree of acceptance by world opinion. If, for example, Mr. Nehru gave the U.S. plan his interest and support, there would be considerable pressure on Russia to conciliate. A legitimately disinterested program of international inspection would have international appeal. Russia seems anxious, above all, to "bilateralize" the current bargaining into the classical "socialist" and "capitalist" camps, as represented by herself and the United States, and she is not eager to internationalize the situation. Leninism teaches that the true international outlook cannot embrace both doctrines, but may emerge only after the entire world has been socialized. Yet Russia might be susceptible to sustained pressure on this point, if a campaign were to be launched vigorously and early enough.

Still, there is no indication that Washington seriously considers this mode of action. It is not likely that our disarmament proposals, when presented, will be sufficiently concrete and imaginative. Nor will we be anxious to run the risk of putting forward a truly international proposal that would lack political appeal among wide segments of our society and easily be subjected to attack by the campaigning politicians of 1960. Furthermore, the military assumption is that disarmament will crack up on the shoals as it always has before, and that we must continue perfecting new weapons and new defenses in order, according to General Thomas S. Power, to close the phase of "nuclear stalemate" (now, at last, officially admitted to be dangerous and unstable: General Power admitted in the same speech that 300 enemy megaton ICBM's properly placed could destroy our retaliatory forces) and open the era of "nuclear impasse," whatever that means.⁵⁷ We are, in short, still basing our belief in prosperity and survival on the old doctrine of mutual deterrence, and still imagining that, although there is theoretically no upward limit on arms development, this balance can be perpetuated as long and far as the human mind can conceive. This is a ridiculous and short-sighted confidence. It is inconceivable that the world will know any kind of real stability under such circum-

37

[LC]

stances, and we are being progressively endangered by the threat of pure
mathematics in the bargain. But perhaps this interpretation will be attacked
on grounds of "impracticality" and "emotionalism."

It is difficult, likewise, to agree with Kennan's thesis that disarmament
should await and be conditioned by political solutions. The political solu-
tions that we could meaningfully negotiate with the Soviet Union or China at
this time are comparatively few, and they would be, in majority, disadvan-
tageous to us. Perhaps we could also say that it is the nuclear threat which
has, in great measure, suspended the operation of the political mechanism
between the two blocs, and led us systematically to dead center or status quo.
Its effective removal might reanimate the chances for political discussion or
even make certain political discussions unnecessary.

In sum, the prospects for a sensible and controlled disarmament are
slight for the many reasons we have mentioned and need not rehearse here. On
the other hand, it is our conviction that total war is not regarded as a rea-
sonable alternative by either the Soviet Union or the West. It follows that
certain attempts-- some of which have been suggested in this paper-- should be
made to reduce the probability of a consequence which neither side seeks. We
can approach this problem systematically and with a minimum of risk, or has-
tily, haphazardly, and dangerously. Many things that have not been done, or
have been done imperfectly, can still be done to promote the first course of
action.

***

38