COMMENT
WORLD WAR III:
THE IDEOLOGICAL CONFLICT
The Korean war has at least cleared the air here in Amer–
ica. Truman's prompt decision to send American troops carne as a
surprise to most people, and almost overnight a lot of political dis–
cussions became obsolete. ( A few days before the North Korean
attack a lady editor was still telling us "America must learn to get
along with Russia.") More important than Truman's action itself
was the immediate and almost universal popular approval of it. It
looks as if isolationism as a stage in American history has definitely
been passed: in their own way and in their own terms the American
people know they cannot avoid the international role to which their
national existence commits them. Mter the new Draft went into effect,
I heard one teenager, due to be inducted the next day, tell a friend at
a dance: "And we have to leave all this to go fight those Russians." In
a political sense these words are more accurate than the evasive and
complicated analyses put forward by some journalists: the people
know, if their political commentators do not, that Russia and the
United States are now locked in a struggle for the world. However,
this world conflict is not yet world war. The third world war
will
not
have begun until Russian soldiers, rather than the satellite shock
troops, have been committed. Thus the Korean affair, while banish–
ing much confusion, still leaves the world in an ambiguous No Man's
Land between peace and war. Of course, by the time these words
come off the press, this further uncertainty too may have been clari–
fied: the Americans in Korea may have been thrust into the sea, and
the third world war may have started in some other place. Nobody
can predict exactly what is going to happen next, nor where.
At the moment, however, Russia enjoys too many advantages in
