544
DAVID
1.
BAZELON
which nicely indicates the extremity and the originality of our circum–
stances. We are deeply and disastrously involved in this weird event,
the "cold war." I want here to discuss war aims and consequences, be–
cause in this "war", three billion individual lives, civilization, and for
all we know the actual continuation of life on the planet, are at stake.
I submit that a war of this kind cannot be fought, and should not
be
threatened, for merely national interests.
If
Russia and the United
States were identical in their social systems, the cold war would be
pointless-and our reasons for engaging in it compounded of ignorance
and suicidal need. So we must
be
very clear and candid about the
particular differences between Russia and the United States for which
we risk the future of the human race on this planet. As a corollary
proposition, we must own up to the existing and potential similarities
between the two great power blocs.
We must first know exactly why we are engaged in a struggle
with the Soviet Union, and then we must devise limitless means of
pursuing our
aims
in this struggle short of engaging in, or over-risking,
the nuclear holocaust.
To rephrase the proposition: there is no conceivable justification
for engaging in this deadly struggle other than the preservation of
superior elements in our social organization. None of these elements
can be furthered or preserved by nuclear war.
The new end therefore
suggests the new means.
The Soviet-American confrontation is a strug–
gle of social competition and it is not fought militarily. The most that
can be achieved by annament is a standoff-and this is significant only
as it affords
time)
to be used to fight the war of total social competition.
The Communists have challenged us to a war for the planet, and
whether we accept the challenge or not, the planet will be unrecognizably
altered in 50 years.
If
we do not fight a new kind of war, this great
transfonnation will be carried out increasingly under Soviet auspices.
Unfortunately, we cannot engage in this contest as we did in the
Second World War, as a battle of annament production. We have
experience in that, it suits us politically, and we were an unqualified
success at it in the early forties. (The year before the war ended,
American annament production accounted for nearly forty-five per
cent of all such production of all belligerent nations, Allied and
Axis.)
What is required now is quite similar in wealth-effort to what was
required then-full use of our industrial capacity, and free delivery of
the product thereof.
But not ships) planes) tanks) and bombs.
And that
poses the deep political difficulty. We are called upon to give away
useful material instead of destructive hardware. Can we manage the
problem politically?
