THE COLD WAR AND THE WEST
57
the superior appeal of Communist ideology. There was no way, short
of a preventive war while we still held a monopoly over the H-bomb,
of stopping the Soviets from catching up-and surely American
reluctance to wage a preventive nuclear war cannot be taken with–
out further argument as a sign of weakness, structural or otherwise.
Once the Russians caught up, the Western position in various places–
particularly Southeast Asia-was bound to be challenged, for these
positions had been maintained in the first place largely by an un–
ambiguous nuclear superiority. So long as we are unwilling to fight
a nuclear war to protect Laos or South Vietnam or- ultimately–
Formosa (and I personally hope this will be forever ) , we will con–
tinue to have great and perhaps insuperable difficulties in preventing
Communist conquest of the "overextended" Western perimeter by
subversion, infiltration, and guerrilla warfare. (This is not to say, of
course, that the effort being made by the Kennedy administration
to find ways of combatting such techniques is necessarily doomed to
failure. I myself am skeptical, but who knows?) In Europe, the
change in the nuclear balance of power has mainly had the effect
of destroying any remaining Dullesian illusions about roll-back and
liberation. But the brilliantly successful economic recuperation of
Western Europe has also destroyed any hope the Communists may
have had ten or fifteen years ago of making further gains. As for
Mrica, what we have there is,
in
some sense, a totally new cold-war
battleground or perhaps a testing-ground of strictly political and
economic competition between West and East. It is only the end of
the first inning, and so far as I can tell, there is still no score.
This
brings me to your second and third questions. I would
certainly
be
in
favor of a re-orientation of American policy toward
"movements and leaders of change throughout the world." I don't
know how "decisive" the changes that have been made in this
respect under Kennedy are, but I don't think there is any question
that a new attitude exists in Washington. (Witness the stipulation
of the Alliance for Progress that countries receiving aid under the
plan must undertake social reform, and the pressure being put on
Ngo Dinh Diem to democratize his regime.) But anyone who sup–
ports
such a reorientation ought not to deceive himself into think–
ing that it would necessarily strengthen our position in the cold war.
The extent to which Communist subversion of Laos, for example,
