THE AFTERMATH OF WAR
97
flict had given rise to the employment of what are known as "tactical
atomic weapons." By what logic
is
it supposed that their use would
"automatically" have led, through various undefined intermediate
stages, to a total world conflagration? That, in other words, the
major powers would have become involved in the kind of war
which, by general consent, can only end (or rather, begin) with the
destruction of the great urban centers of America, Russia, and
Europe? It may indeed be "logical," but it is not in the least likely,
that this would have happened. The mere availability of "absolute"
weapons and other means of "total" destruction is no guarantee that
they will be used-unless each side is secretly convinced that their
use is planned by the other. On any realistic calculation of the prob–
able effects of such a conflict, it
is
far more likely that "total" de–
struction would have been confined to the smallest possible area–
just as, in the past, wars were fought on the tacit understanding that
ordinary life was not to be disrupted. The lapse from these civilized
standards, during the confused period of the first and second world
wars, is no proof that the process must be carried to its final con–
clusion. It merely suggests that society has not yet adapted itself to
the new technological level; in other words, that the game requires
a new set of rules.
What these rules are likely to be emerges much more clearly
from the actual course of events since 1945 than from the voluminous
discussion about universal disarmament and/ or international control
of atomic weapons-a discussion whose futility should by now have
become evident. Everything that has happened since the last world
war suggests that the typical present-day conflict
is
one in which
the belligerents stop short of going to the final extreme suggested by
military logic in its purest, i.e., most abstract form. Precisely because
it has now become possible to destroy civilization itself, the actual
conduct of war tends to become once again a matter over which
statesmanship exerts some control. The belligerents are groping to–
ward new forms of limited warfare; and since it is impossible, or
at any rate impracticable, to limit annaments in type or in quantity,
the need to limit the scope of destruction territorially asserts itself
instead.
If
"total" war cannot be altogether prevented, statesmanship
can at least make sure that it is confined to areas where no funda–
mental issues are involved. Thus the balance of power in Asia has
