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but since, as he admits, there is no possibility of exerting the same
pressure on the Russian government that is being directed toward
the West, he joins those who end up by saying that the West should
take the lead in disarming no matter what the Soviets do . Thus,
while denying that he is against unilateral disarmament, he actually
comes out in favor of it. In fact, the fundamental logic of his position
leads one to unilateral disarmament, for he insists that since nuclear
war is unthinkable, we must do anything to prevent it - including
the total disarmament of the West. In short, if any kind of surrender
is preferable to war, we are left with no choice but to give up in ad–
vance.
It
does not seem to have occurred to Thompson or to his
dedicated followers that one way to prevent nuclear war and to pre–
serve the freedom of the West is to make sure that the Soviet Union
is not tempted by the weakness of the West to start a war.
This constitutes the pattern of Thompson's reasoning. But he
does not rest on this kind oflogic, and he bolsters it with a number of
one-sided observations. For example, he equates the Soviet occupa–
tion of Eastern Europe with the American troops in Western Europe;
he asserts that deterrence is useless; he says that the peace movement
will grow in Russia again, despite the outlawing of it; he rebukes
Solidarity and distorts its views by claiming it is a tool of Reagan; he
says that America is worse than the Soviet Union and that NATO is
worse than Russian missiles; he dismisses the French intellectuals
because they have not been taken in by the peace movement; he calls
for the "Swedenization" of Western Europe and insists that "Finland–
ization" is not such a bad situation to be in. And so on. He has his
own interpretation of detente; he thinks it is a process whereby
America and Russia get closer together. On the whole, he paints a
rather more sympathetic picture of the nature and aims of the Soviet
Union than its history warrants; he keeps repeating the disingenuous
explanation of Soviet behavior- that it is paranoid and feels threat–
ened by the West. One is led to wonder whether all aggressive and
expansive regimes have been paranoid; but surely it is going too far
to invoke a psychoanalytic concept that is applicable only to individ–
uals to describe a totalitarian country.
It need hardly be pointed out that behind Thompson's rather
arbitrary views is a systematic bias, for despite his seeming show of
objectivity his conclusions tend to be on one side of the political
fence. Nor is this surprising when one considers his political history,
recently pointed out by Gertrude Himmelfarb in a striking piece in
The New Republic
(February 10). Thompson is no longer a member of
