272
DAVID
T.
BAZELON
society it
is
supposed to protect will survive
any failure.
Like the sting
of the bee---one attack, one punishment, finis.
What I am suggesting is that this impossible underlying character
of the situation is what has produced the excessive rationality of our
cold-warrior elite. The crazier the situation becomes, the more we
witness their logical aplomb.
This
is
their way of being hysterical.
They are also out of balance because of the institutional commitment
or compulsion growing out of the very bad habits we established during
our period of atomic monopoly. (Strachey is very shrewd on this point.)
Nuclear thought started out on a very simple basis, and is still busy
combating this initial simplicity: All we had to do was have it and not
use it. But since we had it and weren't going to use it anyway, why not
threaten with it every once in a while? That is how we got into this
crazy business of suicide-deterrence. How we get out of it is to become
seriously two-minded, as suggested above, and particularly to begin
balancing the risks-undertaking a more active peace-risk instead of
being "satisfied" with the immense passive war-risk which has haunted
us day by day.
Strachey is firmly despairing that nothing we can count on doing
soon will create a
secure
peace. I think that is clear: we are going
to
have to settle for-and
try
for-something less. Balance is all, and no
balance is adequate. The Soviet-American death-grip has passed the
stage where anyone can contemplate blowing it apart. The only way
out is to strengthen the survival-alliance created by it, to foster the
mutual unilateral disarmament adopted by each and then forced on
the rest of the world. After all, that was the original founding idea
of the United Nations.
In his debate with Bertrand Russell a few years back, Sidney Hook
made a
very
effective point-that without our nuclear threat, the
Russians could demand the delivery
to
them of any individual, even
Sidney Hook. That frightened and affected me at the time; but I have
since thought it over and compared it to other fears and effects, and
am prepared to state now that if he still doesn't want to go, I will.
We need not be so traditional about the heroism of free men. We might
note that we are in fact
not
free-not free of this death system. In a
very basic sense, we are free only to blow up the world.
David
T.
Bazelon
