Foreign Policy & National Defense
Our Nuclear Future: Facts, Dangers and Opportunities.
by Edward Teller and Albert L. Latter.
Criterion. 184 pp. $3.50.
Choice for Survival.
by Louis J. Halle.
Harper. 147 pp. $2.75.
Foreign Policy: The Next Phase.
by Thomas K. Finletter.
Harper, for the Council on Foreign Relations. 208 pp. $3.50.
Dilemmas of Politics.
by Hans J. Morgenthau.
University of Chicago Press. 390 pp. $7.50.
Some time ago a report that government funds had been spent to support certain scientific analyses of national surrender in the nuclear age came to the attention of the U.S. Senate and touched off what can only be described as an orgy of outraged patriotism. For the greater part of two days the Senate chamber rang with impassioned avowals that the American people would never, in any circumstances, capitulate, that they would infinitely prefer—as one senior statesman put it—to “die on their feet rather than to be making plans to live on their knees as . . . vassals of the Communists.” None of the studies that inspired this furor seem to have dealt more than incidentally with the possibility of an American surrender; but even when this was pointed out it did not stop the flow of angry rhetoric.
The Senate was bent on assuring the world that Americans never, never, never would be slaves, and did so. Then it wound up its business and adjourned—without, unfortunately, having done anything very substantial to remedy the deficiencies of American education, the lag in scientific training, the imminent and frightening gap between Soviet missile progress and our own, and all the other perils of which Senators Fulbright, Kennedy, and Symington have been warning us, and which, if not checked in time, may one day make American capitulation a possibility.
This kind of behavior, one must suppose, is a reflection of the times; and it is well described in a passage in Professor Morgenthau’s latest book. “It is naturally shocking,” writes Mr. Morgenthau, “to recognize that a happy chapter in the history of the nation . . . has come to an end. There are those who reconcile themselves to the inevitable . . . and try to apply the lessons of the past to the tasks in hand. There are others who try to escape from a disappointing and threatening reality into the realm of fantasy.” Some of the latter group spend their time arguing that our present troubles are the result of needless involvement in two world wars. Others hunt for traitors who are supposed to have sold the secrets of our power to the enemy. Still others simply deny that the predicament is real or—and this may be true of some members of Congress—that it is serious enough to justify the steps that would have to be taken to remedy it.
No one can accuse the authors of the four books considered here of indulging in any of these fantasies. They neither deny the unpleasant realities of our world nor try to blame them on anyone; even when, in dealing with specific problems, they strike an occasionally optimistic note, their optimism is based on a sober appreciation of the facts of international life. Messrs. Latter and Teller, and Mr. Halle, for instance, who address themselves specifically to problems arising from the atomic revolution in warfare, seem to be far less gloomy than other writers on the subject. But this is not because they think the problems easy of solution, but because they believe that to acknowledge the fact that the nuclear revolution cannot be wished away is to take a long step toward solving the perplexities caused by it. After all, as Mr. Halle says, we are not the first people in history to be confronted with radical and bewildering change. We are not even the first to have a missile problem. Feudal society had to face up to the coming of the long bow and siege artillery; and we should be able to make the kind of adjustment they did—although, it is to be hoped, more quickly.
Certainly it is useless to hope that we can turn the clock back by some expedient such as the banning of nuclear weapons. “Prohibition will not work,” Latter and Teller write; and Mr. Halle agrees, adding that, even if it did, “those who had prayed that this might happen might, too late, wish to change their minds,” since they, and all of us, would be left at the mercy of superior Soviet troop strength. We should count our blessings. Nuclear weapons have given us the deterrent power that has prevented total war in the last twelve years; and now, as the likelihood of limited war increases, the development of tactical nuclear weapons will give us the ability to meet aggressors on equal terms and thus escape the fateful choice between acquiescence in aggression and resort to massive action to prevent it.
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Not everyone will be inclined to agree with Mr. Halle’s enthusiastic support of the use of tactical nuclear weapons in small wars. Surely, until we know more about the uses and effects of these weapons in battle conditions, the safest way to avoid either being nibbled to death or drawn into a nuclear holocaust is to have as many conventional forces as the Russians. (Why do we always assume that the Russians have greater manpower resources than the NATO countries when the opposite is the case?) If, as Clausewitz maintained, war has a tendency to assume its absolute form, one can hardly be confident that a conflict in the highly urbanized European theater, for instance, would remain limited once tactical nuclear weapons were employed. In this connection it may be noted, for what it is worth, that Soviet military commentators have repeatedly denied that there is, or can be, any difference between the tactical and the strategic use of atomic weapons.
Those who are skeptical of the tactical use of nuclear weapons are likely also to have doubts about the validity of Latter’s and Teller’s argument that we must go on with bomb tests in order to develop “clean” nuclear weapons, which will be “the same as conveniently packaged high explosives.” Yet even the most critical readers will have to admit that the Latter-Teller volume—with its methodical discussion of the technique and effects of testing, the radiation hazard to individuals, the question of genetic mutation, and the supposed effects of bomb tests on the weather—may, if widely read, help dispel some of the more unreasoning fears which hamper logical discussion of the nuclear issue. The authors do occasionally come close to arguing that a shot of radiation poisoning is no worse than a bad cold; but only occasionally. For the most part they are willing to admit the extent of our ignorance in the nuclear field, while insisting that it must be reduced. Like Mr. Halle, they argue that we will make no progress in solving the problems of our age “if we consider atomic explosives and radioactivity as the inventions of the devil,” but only if we go on exploring “all the consequences and possibilities that lie in nature, even when these possibilities seem frightening at first.”
A willingness to face the frightening possibilities of our time, in order to find a way of avoiding them, is also characteristic of Mr. Finletter’s thinking; and his book will doubtless shock Senator Capehart of Indiana, who recently argued that to allude to the imminent Soviet lead in armaments is to give aid and comfort to the enemy. Mr. Finletter makes no bones of the fact that unless we do something about it very quickly, the Soviet Union will unquestionably attain a margin of superiority which will enable it to attack the United States without having to pay an unendurable retaliatory price in return. If, at the same time that they are pulling ahead of us in the production of intercontinental and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, the Russians develop their defenses against manned bombers, we shall find ourselves, for a longer or shorter period, dependent for our safety upon Soviet forbearance, and such a situation would be unendurable for a great nation.
This very prospect suggests its own remedy. Certainly it is time we stopped gambling with our future by insisting that we cannot afford to defend ourselves. Walter Lippmann recently wrote of “the human propensity to prefer a disagreeable fact which is still in the future to a disagreeable remedy in the present.” Spending money on armaments is doubtless always unpleasant; but Mr. Finletter is surely right in his belief that it is unreasonable for us to be putting aside a smaller percentage of our gross national product for defense expenditures in 1959 than in any year since 1951; and he cites economic analyses to prove that our resources are more than sufficient to pay for the missiles and the aircraft (to which, as a former Secretary of the Air Force, he gives first priority) and the expanded ground forces which are essential to our safety. He does not, of course, believe that we are going to guarantee our future security, and solve all the foreign policy problems that nag at us daily, simply by spending more money on defense. He calls also for a revision of our diplomatic practices and, specifically, for some recognition of the fact that there are other nations in the world beside the Soviet Union and ourselves. A little less bullying and a little more attention to the sensibilities of others, a little more appreciation of the fact that when one has allies one must occasionally consult them, a greater willingness to cooperate with nations which insist on remaining uncommitted, and to work with regional agencies which are not dominated by us, and, finally, a readiness to reconsider our position with regard to problems like Formosa and the recognition of China, would give our policy a flexibility which it has not had for six years, and bring it into some sensible relationship with contemporary realities.
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Mr. Finletter’s general line of argument would probably receive the approval of Professor Morgenthau, whose Dilemmas of Politics, a collection of essays which have appeared in various journals over the last twenty years, is too varied in subject matter, and too rich in ideas, to receive adequate attention in the present context. But it can be noted that in several of the essays reprinted here, and notably in those entitled “Neutrality and Neutralism,” “The Decline of Democratic Government,” and “The Subversion of Foreign Policy,” Mr. Morgenthau touches on, and carries further, some of the points raised by Mr. Finletter. He too, for example, believes that a more flexible policy is required to meet what appears to be a change in the international atmosphere which took place when the Soviet Union wiped out our atomic advantage. The resultant balance of terror, as it has been called, has led to a breakdown, or at least a weakening, of the bipolar system that came into existence at the end of the war. “Nations of the second and third rank [now] tend to move toward the outer confines of the two spheres of influence dominated by the superpowers, and not only look longingly beyond those confines but also have started to pursue policies without regard to the preferences of the superpowers.” With the value of American military protection diminished in the eyes of our friends and allies, new attitudes are required if we are to maintain our world position. It will serve no purpose for us to employ moral reprobation against these lesser powers or to be “impatient and disappointed with other nations who dare look at the world from the vantage point of their interests and not ours.” To do so would be not only to fail to appreciate changes in the international situation, but also to misunderstand the fundamental nature of politics—the essence of which is self-interest. We would be better advised to define our own national interest in terms compatible with the national interests of others. “In a multinational world this is a requirement of political morality”; it may also be “a condition of survival.”
To redefine and reconcile the seemingly incompatible interests of nations is the task of diplomacy. But the effectiveness of our own diplomacy has been reduced since the war, first, by a tendency to allow military thinking and the gestures of power to displace political persuasion; later, by the systematic hounding of able men out of the foreign service because of a misguided view of security; still later, under Secretary Dulles, by “a propensity . . . to look at foreign policy with a lawyer’s eyes and to manipulate it with a lawyer’s tools,” scorning long-range plans and attempting to deal with problems without considering their history; and finally, as the Eisenhower image has faded, by the atrophy of government, by studied inactivity broken by an occasional grandiose but ill-considered gesture. As a result, “today it is the world that moves ahead and the United States which is being left behind.”.
This is very stern criticism. Yet few people who look back with Mr. Morgenthau to all the pretentious nonsense that was talked about the administration’s “new look” in foreign policy in January 1954, or to the empty threats made later in the same year on the subject of Indo-Çhina, will want to claim that it is unjustified or deny the soundness of Mr. Morgenthau’s suggestion that rationality rather than the techniques of commercial advertising should be made the guiding principle of our foreign policy. Like the other writers considered here, he is asking that we take a good hard look at the facts of our situation and act accordingly. It might be well for some members of the Senate to read this book.
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