RICHARD LOWENTHAL
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Perhaps the standard example of the kind of official "rhetoric" I
have in mind is President Reagan's speech about the Soviet regime
representing the "powers of evil." Of course it is legitimate and in–
deed necessary for a democratic leader to tell his people again and
again that the Soviet leaders do not share our humane values, and
that every expansion of their power reduces the area within which
those values are recognized (if not always observed). But while it is
credible that in our divided world one is often forced to negotiate
with regimes that do not share our Western values, it is not credible
evidence of a serious willingness to negotiate if one describes one's
opponent as the representative of the devil. And the lack of credibil–
ity is bound to affect both the attitude of the country with whom we
have to negotiate and the trust of friendly nations whose fate may de–
pend on their outcome. Reported unofficial statements from the
same highly-placed source about the approach of Armageddon make
a similar impact. But even highly official forecasts that can hardly be
classified as rhetoric, such as the repeated warnings that the Soviets
were not likely to negotiate seriously before the American missiles
had been actually stationed, while intended to reduce the public's
trust in the proposals made by the Soviets, have in many minds un–
dermined the trust in the seriousness of the men in Washington.
Even more effective in causing fear and distrust of United
States policy among Europeans, and more particularly among Ger–
mans in their exposed geographical position, have been the numer–
ous leaks about bright strategic ideas under discussion within the
American administration - for example, about plans for making a
"limited nuclear war" winnable, or about reacting to Soviet or
Soviet-directed attacks in other parts of the world by striking back
from NATO-territory in Europe, in contrast to the explicit limita–
tions of the NATO alliance. In all such cases, it has been denied that
such "plans" constitute United States policy, and I am convinced
that the denials are true. But it could not be denied that such ideas
had been discussed in high places - and for Europeans with more
limited knowledge of the United States, the distinction between ten–
tative discussions and officially adopted plans was naturally less con–
vincing. Those stories have become not only standard ammunition
of Communist anti-American propaganda in Europe, but also stan–
dard arguments of the peace movement, nourishing the fears of hun–
dreds of thousands, or even millions of people. On a lower, but not
unimportant level, the report of the popularity in America of the
