198
PARTISAN REVIEW
Bonn, he told them that he was against the missiles, but for the
NATO alliance and for the Bundeswehr. And both commitments
were repeated in the same party congress resolution of last Novem–
ber which rejected stationing, with an explicit reminder that the
alliance was necessary because of the basic conflict between Western
democracy and the Soviet system.
All this does not mean, of course, that the Social Democrats are
making a second tu rnabout and backing the policies they have criti–
cized in rejecting stationing.
It
does mean, however, that they wish
to get away from a purely negative pacifism; that they have over–
whelmingly decided to reject neu tralism; and that they wish instead
to prepare constructive initiatives for making Western, and Ger–
man, security less dependent on an increasingly doubtful nuclear
deterrence. The various American initiatives in that direction, from
the proposals for abandoning "first use," now under an agreement
with the Soviets, to the suggestions of General Rogers for strength–
ening and modernizing conventional defense in Europe, so as to
make the abandoning of "first use" eventually feasible, have been
carefully studied by the Social Democratic defense experts - pre–
cisely with a view to preparing a future Western defense less depen–
dent on nuclear weapons, without any disloyalty to the common
cau se. If such ideas should gain sufficient ground in Western
Eu rope, including Western Germany, to make the conventional de–
fense politically and financially possible, they might eventually also
make possible a greater role of Europe in its own defense - and a cor–
respondingly greater influence in the alliance. And that , I believe , is
the only way to avoid future crises in the alliance, such as the recent
"missile crisis."
Diana Pinto
II. LETTER FROM PARIS:
ON RAYMOND ARON
R aymond Aron died at the apogee of a public success
wh ich he received late in life. His memoirs, an often complex and
academic eight- hundred page volume, which detail at length his
