John Strachey
COMMUNIST INTENTIONS
It is a military maxim that in framing a country's 'defence
policy, the capabilities alone, never the intentions, of other nations
must be taken into account. But
this
is one of those maxims which,
however dutifully they are preached in the Staff Colleges, can never
be adhered to in the Cabinet rooms.
Both we in Britain and the Western Alliance as a whole evidently
worry about Russian intentions.
If
we did not, we should be un–
concerned with Russian capabilities.
There exists a school of thought in British public life which
frequently expresses the belief that all these fears of Russian inten–
tions are quite ill-founded. Adherents of this school of thought might
even go so far as to say that if there actually was any danger of Russia
attempting to attack us then indeed the whole chain of consequences
which we have considered might follow. But, they would add, there
is no such danger. Russia, they conclude,
is
a completely pacific state,
armed only in self defence and as a precaution against the armaments
of her potential opponents: we could scrap our own armaments with–
out fear or hesitation, secure in the knowledge that Russia would
take no advantage of our impotence.
This view of Russian intentions is at the one pole of political
opinion. At the other pole there are those who suppose that Russia
is
a state dedicated to the military conquest of the world for com–
munism: a crusading state, much more .aggressive even, than most
of the nation-states of history, because driven by "a sacred mission"
to impose her way of life upon the world wherever and however she
can; a state restrained by fear of the military strength of the Western
alliance alone. In the face of such disagreement, it is evidently in–
dispensable to arrive at some appreciation, or estimate, of Russian
