BOO KS
271
from genuine possibilities, while recognizing the necessity of the former.
He understands disarmament as a negative arms race, and with proper
two-mindedness he does not conceive that it begins with a halt to
armament, but in fact accompanies it in its development. His main
proposition is that the image of a world of disarmed sovereign states is
childish, if not an actual contradiction in terms; that any realistic
disarmament immediately implies some rough form of world govern–
ment; that any such hegemony must be based on the possession and
use of power, and consequently that the hegemony which
is
disarmament
can only be based on Russo-American agreement now or, failing that
and suffering a spread of nuclear capacity, on an agreement a decade
or two hence among the half-dozen or so nuclear powers of that day.
On the second alternative we would need an unconscionable amount
of luck to survive the passage to the bargaining table.
The three big "outs" from this hard line of reasoning are: 1) the
refusal to think; 2) a nuclear war can
be
fought and "won"; and
3) surrender now. At this late date, one can only scream and splutter
about the first two; the third is a great deal more complicated than
the unilateralists seem to feel it is, and much more potential than people
who think with a jutting jaw are able to understand. (It is, in fact, a
second act sequence in the counterforce scenario.) Surrender is no
more "unthinkable" than the unthinkable that Mr. Kahn is so expert
at thinking about. After one or two accidental or intentional firings, it
would clearly be an immediate political possibility-and perhaps an
overwhelming demand. Ask yourself the obvious: After an exchange
of nuclear salvos, would not everyone still "alive"-for himself and all
the dead-wish he had surrendered, if that could have prevented it?
No amount of shoulder-straightening and tummy-tucking can alter the
obvious answer. We are not any longer talking about force on a human
or even an animal scale:
There is nothing worth fighting a nuclear war
for, because nothing we value will survive it.
Yet we continue to threaten
the act, and no one seems
to
know how to stop. The problem of
surrender of this capacity to threaten is not merely or primarily the
political but even more the psychological difficulty of
it.
We might want
to, but we couldn't stand it: that degree of unilateral submission is
highly unstable even in contemplation. (Note that since it is and must
be a "cold" war, involved decisively with the psychology of the threat
of force, psychology is the primary category-including the psychology of
suicide.) In a broad sense, "deterrence" is a very poor term to describe
this situation since, unlike murder-deterrence, for example, nuclear–
deterrence does not contemplate that the deterrent system or the
