THE COLD WAR AND THE WEST
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like "better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees" is terrify–
ingly inappropriate when applied to nuclear war. Past communities
which chose to fight even when defeat and death seemed certain
were .at least implicated in a human encounter in which the bravery
of the victim responded to the cruelty of the slaughterer. But the
rhetoric of courage and cowardice, steadfastness and defeatism, has
no relevance to the mechanical obliteration of millions in a few
seconds. To believe that it does, leads to an acceptance of the pos–
sibility of nuclear war that can only make it more probable.
But to say that nothing would justify a nuclear war is to say
less than meets the eye. Except for ruling out a first strike, such a
statement has little political meaning. In practice, which is to say in
politics, the abstract declaration "better red than dead" is likely to
mean choosing the near-certainty of Communist world domination
over the probability that nuclear war would cease to be a threat
for a few decades, at least until divisions among the Communist
powers fully developed. Short of technical amnesia or world govern–
ment with a nuclear arms monopoly, mankind is going to have to
live with some degree of risk of nuclear destruction from now on.
The present problem is what sort of balance to strike between the risk
of nuclear war and the risk of Communist expansion, for to give top
priority to reducing the former is not to nullify the latter.
General disarmament is obviously the best solution. We must
never stop trying to negotiate
it
since we have every reason to believe
that avoidance of nuclear war ranks first in the Communists' scale
of priorities as well as in ours. Their ultimate political aims, how–
ever, are non-negotiable and as long as they think they can advance
these aims by arousing a greater fear of nuclear war in others than
they themselves feel, disarmament will be hard to achieve. On our
side the point may soon be reached- we may have reached it now–
where the armaments race so increases the risk of nuclear war that
we can only reduce it by increasing the risk of Communist expansion.
I do not believe that politicians can go on acting as if nuclear war
were a possible means to our objectives and remain firm in the
determination to avoid it, particularly when they are not insulated
from irresponsibly belligerent popular pressures which they cannot
help feeding themselves in order to convince the enemy of our will
to resist. The recent frightening nonsense about fall-out shelters is a
