THE COLD WAR AND THE WEST
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(and I must emphasize that I am by no means sure that he is), would
the West be ready to accept it? Would we, who are still unwilling or
unable even to recognize East Germany and Red China, agree to
ratifying the status quo in a treaty? Would we balk at nuclear dis–
armament, even with fairly adequate inspection, because- given Rus–
sian superiority in conventional forces-it would leave us at a great
military disadvantage? Would we be afraid of losing out altogether
in a disarmed world? I myself would happily take all these risks in
preference to the dangers we are presently living with, and I would
press for an unremitting effort to negotiate with that end in view.
If
it were to turn out that the Russians have no intention of limiting
their objectives, we would at least have learned something. But we
can never know without trying, and I doubt that we have so far
tried very hard.
What I am saying, in effect, is that I am optimistic about the
West's prospects in a disarmed world and altogether pessimistic
about everyone's prospects under the policy of deterrence. Nuclear
weapons have proved to be less than completely effectual in halting
the advance of Communism (they have not even been able to keep
it out of the Western hemisphere ) , and what frightens me most is
that we might be pushed into a nuclear war as the inevitable frustra–
tions of the next decade mount. First Cuba, then Laos, then Berlin,
and soon, it seems, South Vietnam, and the Right cries Defeat and
Humiliation at every turn, while Kennedy makes himself more and
more vulnerable by pretending that he is indomitably holding the
line instead of explaining that he is trying to effect a series of neces–
sary strategic retreats. Thus the war party in this country (and I
am convinced that that is what the radical Right is) moves from
strength to strength, finding more and more arguments to bolster its
belief (still not admitted) that a preventive war aimed at destroying
Communism is the only answer. Certain other schools of anti-Com–
munist thinking in this country suffer from what I would call inverse
Bolshevism- that is, the secret belief that Communism really does
represent the wave of the future and therefore can only be stopped
by a forceful interference
with
the laws of history. I find the idea
that Communism represents the wave of the future altogether in–
credible; the appeal of Communism, in my opinion, rests on its ap–
parent ability to foster the rapid industrialization of backward coun-
