THE COLD WAR AND THE WEST
13
earth forever." What should alarm us in these discussions is the reck–
less optimism on both sides--on one side, the readiness to count the
losses in the tens and hundreds of millions, due in part, perhaps, to
a simple failure of imagination but also in part to the frightful and
frightening increase of population; and on the other side, the readi–
ness to forget the concentration-and extermination-camps and
with them the terrible prospect of freedom vanishing from the earth
forever.
The only consoling aspect of this debate seems to lie in that all
concerned by now are agreed, not only that war as such stands in
need of justification, but that its only possible justification is freedom.
This is not a matter of course for a number of reasons. First, freedom
is implicitly recognized as the very center, the
raison
dJetre J
of politics
by people who fifteen or twenty years ago would have thought this
the utmost of political naivete, if not a prejudice of the lower middle
classes. More importantly, perhaps, justifications of war are at least
as old as Roman antiquity, but, contrary to what we are inclined
to think, it was not freedom but necessity upon which these justifica–
tions usually were based. "Just is a war which is necessary, and
hallowed are the arms where no hope exists but in them," said Livy,
and by necessity he and his successors throughout the centuries
understood all the well-known realities of power politics-such as
conquest and expansion, defense of vested interests and preservation
of power or conservation of a power equilibrium, etc.-which we
today would find quite sufficient to dub a war unjust rather than
just, although we know, of course, that they caused the outbreak of
most wars in history. Even our present-day notion that aggression is
a crime has acquired its practical and theoretical significance only
after the First WorId War had demonstrated the horribly destructive
potentialities of warfare under conditions of modem technology.
3. Since the alliance which achieved victory in the Second World
War was not strong enough to achieve peace as well, the whole post–
war period has been spent by the two major powers in defining their
spheres of interest and in jockeying for position in the rapidly chang–
ing power structure of a world in turmoil.
This
period has been called
"cold war," and the term is accurate enough if we recall that fear of
a major war has determined the actual conduct of foreign affairs and
preoccupied public opinion more than any other issue. But in actual
