10
HANNAH ARENDT
3. Does the position of democratic socialism have any relevance,
in the short or long run, to the cold war (not only in Europe and
in the underdeveloped areas but in America as well) ?
4. What are we defending in the West? Are the intellectual
values and freedoms and the political and civil liberties we
all
affirm
inseparable from the West's existing political and social institutions?
5. What has been the effect of the cold war on political thought
and speculation in the Western world?
6. What are the objectives of the East and West? Are they
ultimately negotiable?
If
the answer is yes, what are the chances of
nuclear disarmament? And if some form of such disarmament were
achieved, what would the West's prospects be in the ensuing political,
economic and ideological competition?
If
the answer is no, do you
think the advance of Communism can be stopped without nuclear
conflict?
7. Do you think the issues at stake
in
the cold war so decisive as
to be worth a nuclear war?
HANNAH ARENDT
Wars and revolutions have thus far determined the phys–
iognomy of the twentieth century; and
in
contrast to the ideologies
which in the last twenty years have more and more degenerated into
empty talk, war and revolution still constitute the two major political
issues with which we are confronted. In actual fact, the two are
interrelated in many ways, and yet for a clarification of these matters
they must be kept apart. Historically, wars are among the oldest
phenomena of recorded history while revolutions in the modern
sense of the word probably did not exist prior to the end of the
eighteenth century; they are the most recent of all major political
data. Moreover, revolutions are very likely to stay with us into the
foreseeable future whereas wars, if they should continue to threaten
the existence of mankind and hence remain unjustifiable on rational
grounds, might disappear, at least in their present form, even without
a concomitant radical transformation of international relations. Hence
