22
SIDNEY HOOK
been. The Western World, unilateralists and all, may end up
both
Red and Dead.
The view that our alternatives are limited to nuclear war or
surrender is patently absurd. Our present condition is proof of the
absurdity. The balance of terror may continue for some time until
controlled multilateral disarmament is introduced. The necessity of
controls in disarmament has been reinforced by recent evidence of
Soviet duplicity-the preparation for tests at a time when the
Kremlin professed to be abiding by its pledge of a moratorium. It
is sometimes said that the Kremlin fears aggression on the part of
the West, especially the United States, just as much as the West
fears Soviet aggression. I do not believe this to be true in the least
although Soviet propaganda may have succeeded in convincing
some that this is so. Every move the West has made vis-a-vis the
Soviet Union since the end of the Second World War has been
defensive, and when it had a monopoly of atomic weapons, instead
of using them as threats to impose its will on the Kremlin, as Bertrand
Russell urged, it offered to surrender this monopoly to an inter–
national organization. The Soviet Union alone among the great
powers rejected the proposal.
It is sometimes said that the West
is
fearful of disarming not
so much because it distrusts Soviet
bona fides
but because it shrinks
from peaceful competition on the ideological, economic, and social
plane. I can find no warrant for this statement. Why should we fear
such competition? Is the level of cultural freedom and social welfare
so high in Communist countries that it would lead the peoples of
the free world voluntarily to abandon their political liberties and
entrust their destinies to a Communist dictatorship? The contrary
seems to me to be true. It is the Kremlin which fears peaceful ideo–
logical, economic and cultural competition. Why otherwise should
it spends such vast sums jamming the radio broadcasts of the free
world? Why should it pen its peoples behind barbed wired walls
as
if
they were so much cattle? Whatever the truth of the charge
either way, I think it would be a blessing if such competition could
be substituted for the present competition in armament either by way
of multilateral disarmament or by stable arms control. The money
spent on armament could go towards removing the pockets of
poverty in our own country, and economic and educational aid to
