To the Editor:

After reading “Appeasement By Any Other Name” [July], I only wish that Woody Allen would cast Norman Podhoretz in his next movie. Podhoretz as Dr. Strange-love! Podhoretz defoliating the greenery in Vietnam—whoops, I mean Central America! Podhoretz dropping nuclear weapons over Central America!

It is beyond credulity that a social scientist of Mr. Podhoretz’s perspicacity can believe what he writes. Reverse the totalitarian drift in Central America short of occupation by American forces? Mandate democratic government on regimes that have for so long resisted such efforts? Larger defense budgets to protect us against Cuba and Nicaragua? Deter a war with the Soviet Union by being “prepared and willing if necessary to fight,” as if we are not now so prepared? It’s Star Wars and Return of the Jedi, except Mr. Podhoretz wants to play fatal games with those of us, and the next generation, who inhabit this planet.

Alan D. Kandel
Detroit, Michigan

_____________

To the Editor:

The concluding paragraphs of “Appeasement By Any Other Name” urge that “the United States . . . do whatever may be required, up to and including the dispatch of troops, to stop and then reverse the totalitarian drift in Central America.” Two ideas are working here: cold war and hot war. The cold war is waged against Communism; the hot war is waged against people. In a cold war we shoot baloney; in a hot war we shoot bullets. . . . Fallen cold warriors rise again; fallen hot warriors do not. A cold war makes careers; a hot war makes pain.

A good example of a cold-war skirmish is the job Norman Podhoretz did on Anthony Lewis; a good example of a hot-war skirmish is the job that was done on Marty Budack. . . . Marty had been dead for several hours when I found him—wan, dirty, disheveled. . . . The inscription on his grave reads: “Killed in Action . . . Korea . . . June 25th, 1953 . . . 279th Inf. Regt.”. . . .

That’s just one hot-war story; there have been 112,000 stories like Marty’s since 1945, the beginning of the cold war. . . . All of the cold-war casualties but two—the Rosenbergs—rose again; the hot war maimed and dead remain so. And the pain endures.

If my two Marine sons are sent to Central America, . . . they’ll be shooting bullets. And the dead will stay that way. . . .

Robert P. Helman
San Francisco, California

_____________

To the Editor:

. . . Norman Podhoretz’s “Appeasement By Any Other Name” is remarkable for its utter want of humanity. The soldiers of the army of El Salvador, with considerable assistance from sundry right-wing death squads, have murdered tens of thousands of their fellow citizens. These are crimes attested to and condemned by our last two ambassadors to El Salvador. To judge from his article, such atrocities fail to wring even the tiniest shudder of disgust from Mr. Podhoretz.

Does it become a great nation to indulge in such viciousness? Must this administration assuage its ideological dementia over mutilated corpses? Is our government eager to bestride an abattoir?

If Mr. Podhoretz believes that torture and mass murder are incidental to the task of checking the spread of Communism in El Salvador, he ought to summon the courage to state this forthrightly.

Timothy Jay DuBois
Phoenix, Arizona

_____________

To the Editor:

. . . If “appeasement by any other name” is to be condemned, then we must also reject the appeasement policy of “the lesser evil” which Norman Podhoretz and Jeane Kirkpatrick advocate in combating Soviet subversion not only in Central America but all over the globe. This sterile philosophy goes against everything America stands for and has a negative influence on our image abroad.

Present American foreign policy seems to be based on some form of computerized body count which weighs the tens of millions killed by the various types of Communist regimes against the many thousands murdered by the governments Washington supports; this policy goes under the insidious label of “supporting the lesser evil.” How absurd this policy has become is evident in relation to El Salvador where the American people have been told by their government that if we give the Salvador regime military and economic support it may be induced to bring to justice the murderers of our compatriots who innocently became targets of government-controlled forces. In this connection it is totally irrelevant whether or not the government of El Salvador was democratically elected. To anyone in his right mind the priorities should be reversed; logic would demand that the administration ask Congress to hold up additional aid to El Salvador until that government has brought the murderers to justice. This example alone shows how Mr. Podhoretz and Ambassador Kirkpatrick have lost touch with what ordinary Americans would consider simple morality. They are on a downhill track which slowly but steadily will bring us on a par with the concepts of the various Marxist regimes guided solely by the end-justifies-the-means ideology. . . .

The shallowness of the Podhoretz/Kirkpatrick policy advice is even further exposed by Mr. Podhoretz’s self-congratulatory mention of “the simple fact that the United States . . . helped in the end to topple the Somoza regime in Nicaragua . . .” (emphasis added). These three little words—“in the end”—are most revealing. . . . After first rationalizing the lesser evil and doing our utmost to maintain the status quo, we then—“in the end”—when it is too late, switch sides, trying to recoup the ground lost by our sterile appeasement of dishonorable and oppressive regimes. It should surprise no one when such opportunism is recognized for what it is and rebuffed.

We will remain on the losing side of all these confrontations and actually further the Communist scenario unless we develop a clear American policy based on the great institutions bequeathed to us by the founders of this country: our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and our Bill of Rights. These documents, incorporating universally admired and envied progressive and moral principles, will prove superior to anything the Communists can offer. They should be the cornerstone of a non-appeasement policy which every American can proudly support.

Walter A. Sheldon
New York City

_____________

To the Editor:

Norman Podhoretz makes an un-persuasive argument in his discussion of Central America. He quotes the coordinator of the American Friends Service Committee’s Human Rights Program as saying about the Sandinista government: “In many aspects of Nicaraguan life—nutrition, education, health care, and land reform—there have been tremendous improvements.” His response is a mixture of evasion and sarcasm: “Having sung this old familiar song whose strains have echoed in countless reports from Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, Ho’s North Vietnam, and Castro’s Cuba, this Quaker guardian of human rights acknowledges that there have been a few violations [of human rights] in Nicaragua.”

Mr. Podhoretz evidently feels that the claims for improvements under Sandinista rule can be dismissed because they are an “old song.” But how would he feel if someone dismissed claims that capitalist incentive improved economic efficiency in, say, Taiwan, with the remark that it is an old song whose strains have been heard in South Korea, Chile, Guatemala, etc.? I suggest he would be annoyed by the lack of logic and the evasion of the main issue: did this particular form of rule bring benefits in this particular case? And how are those benefits to be weighed against the debits of the government in power, including human-rights violations? Here, rather than examining the situation on its merits, Mr. Podhoretz is content to deduce conclusions from his own preconceptions: i.e., that revolutionary movements against right-wing dictatorships are always and everywhere and in all respects pernicious.

The impression I have from consulting as wide a variety of sources as I can find is that at least some of the Sandinista claims for progress in health care, literacy, nutrition, and land reform are true. The impression I have from careful reading of a wide variety of human-rights reports is that the violations in Nicaragua now are fewer and less severe than they were under the Somoza regime, and than they are under the present government in El Salvador. The Sandinistas’ brutal treatment of the Miskitos, which stirred a very sudden concern with the rights of Latin American Indians in General Haig, Ambassador Kirkpatrick, and President Reagan, is a kind of behavior so common in the Salvadoran military (not to mention that of Guatemala) that it doesn’t even make the news. The continuous accounts of atrocities are noted in bulging human-rights reports and filed away. Mr. Podhoretz’s article has done nothing to persuade me that my impressions. are wrong.

Michael A. Sells
Stanford University
Stanford, California

_____________

To the Editor:

I found “Appeasement By Any Other Name” substantive and thought-provoking. I agree with its major thesis that there is a widespread and serious myopia concerning the dangers of totalitarian expansionism. There certainly does exist in the U.S. a pacifist current which makes the conduct of a foreign policy actively pursuing national goals difficult, if not impossible. . . .

Mr. Podhoretz may be accurate in saying that the general current results in de-facto appeasement, but he has failed to articulate an alternative policy which makes sense to the millions who support the freeze and are suspicious of U.S. intervention in Latin America. . . . I would argue that American foreign policy will be ineffectual as long as public opinion is sharply divided. . . .

At the conceptual level, I most disagree with the article’s total dismissal of “isolationism.” The concept of an independent, nonaligned foreign policy was the key to American foreign policy until the 20th century. The founding fathers believed that Europe was undemocratic, corrupt, and prone to nationalistic conflicts which resulted in destructive wars. Does our 20th-century experience with Communism, Nazism, and two world wars suggest they were wrong?

The isolationism of the 20’s was a direct reaction to President Wilson’s ill-advised internationalism (and Anglophilia) which drew the U.S. into the world war and gave the Allies such a total victory that they were able to impose conditions which led directly to the rise of Hitler and World War II. Isolationism may have led the U.S. to ignore Hitler for too long, but interventionism helped to generate the threat in the first place.

In similar fashion, the isolationism of today (which need not result in policies of appeasement) springs largely from the aggressiveness and interventionism of Lyndon Johnson and, to a lesser extent, Richard Nixon. It is a corrective public response which has now lost its policy focus, and is drifting. Mr. Podhoretz is right to criticize the self-deceptions of the contemporary manifestations of isolationism, but he should also recognize that a dynamic, effective foreign policy can be conducted without intruding upon the sovereignty of other nations, and it is in our long-term interest to do so. Further, since the United States is clearly over-extended, both geographically and economically, isolationism offers us short-term benefits as well.

Nevertheless, as Mr. Podhoretz points out, neither isolationism nor any other American political heritage has been indifferent to the fate of Latin America. The inconsistencies and rationalizations of liberal politicians in this area are alarming. But Mr. Podhoretz does little better. Downplaying or ignoring assassination and torture in El Salvador make no more sense than rationalizing Nicaragua’s violations of democracy. The political polarization among U.S. opinion leaders creates, on both sides, the desire to overlook awkward or unpleasant facts. . . .

Abroad, we concern ourselves with international economic and military competition, but are far less effective in the ideological battle. We continue to support brutal ruling cliques and thereby build deep-seated, long-term resentment toward the U.S. Russia would not have a sliver of ideological credibility left were it not for the counterproductive nature of U.S. foreign policy.

If America doesn’t stand for something, Communism will continue to seem inevitable. We must bring hope, hope for freedom and hope for economic well-being, to the populations of the nations we seek to assist. The 1982 elections in El Salvador were successful because of the promise of freedom which our presence brought.

When America truly projects the principles upon which it was founded, grass-roots support for Communist movements will dry up and blow away. Further, around these principles, the vast majority of Americans can unify. The two essential preconditions for the defeat of international Communism will have been realized.

Mr. Podhoretz is right to “speak plainly” and well. He also needs to speak constructively and politically. America, principled and united, can never be defeated. How do we get that way again, Mr. Podhoretz?

David L. Sallach
Omaha, Nebraska

_____________

To the Editor:

With “The Present Danger” [March 1980] and a persistent drumbeat of other warning articles, Norman Podhoretz and COMMENTARY have made a unique and indispensable contribution to creating “the new consensus” concerning the dangerous growth of Soviet power, the decline of American power, and the urgent need to restore a favorable global balance.

Now, five years after “The Present Danger,” and almost three years after the election of President Reagan which confirmed the new consensus, Mr. Podhoretz, in a brilliant and most timely statement of the case, finds it necessary to warn us that the new consensus is in imminent danger of being overwhelmed from within and without by a rising tide of appeasement, most urgently in the key areas of defense and Central America. . . .

I find . . . a serious flaw in the premises of Mr. Podhoretz’s well-reasoned case. . . . As he repeatedly defines it, the new consensus incorporates not only the determination to resist Soviet expansionism by more forceful policies and a vast program of rearmament, but also opposition in principle to all disarmament negotiations as a trap and a delusion which can only lead to loss of will and appeasement in its various guises.

In my view, however, opposition to negotiation was never a part of the national consensus. When the administration at the outset acted in accordance with this erroneous belief, it found to its consternation that it had allowed the opposition to paint the President as a “warmonger.” The disastrous result was to give renewed impetus to the whole array of pacifists, isolationists, and other opponents of the new consensus. It was only when the President belatedly shifted gears and presented a more forthcoming attitude toward negotiations that the tide was slowed, but the consensus had suffered serious damage. If the administration were perceived as returning to a policy of “no negotiations,” the new consensus would . . . go up in smoke.

I think the fallacy lies in equating negotiations per se with appeasement. Surely, negotiating from a position of weakness is an invitation to disaster; but negotiating from a position of strength is the only road to a stable peace. . . . This calls for a two-track strategy: on the one hand, rearm and forcefully defend our vital interests; on the other hand, be ready to use our renewed strength to conduct negotiations while never lowering our guard. I also seem to recall Paul Nitze arguing that the negotiating process serves us well during the long catch-up period that lies ahead. I do not lightly dismiss Mr. Podhoretz’s fears based on the sad history of earlier negotiations, but in this Kafkaesque century, we have only the choice of nightmares. . . .

Andrei Sakharov, in his “Open Letter to Dr. Sidney Drell” (Foreign Affairs, Summer 1983), made the point that the U.S. should negotiate from strength and urged the U.S. to proceed with the MX as the reply to the Soviet SS-18 and SS-19 and, implicitly, to go forward with the Euromissiles in response to Russia’s SS-20. Sakharov went even farther in rejecting as inadequate Drell’s criterion that all the West needs is a “reliable deterrent.” Sakharov’s criterion for successful negotiations is a favorable global political and military “correlation of forces,” which includes conventional as well as nuclear arms.

My letter is already long enough without commenting on the subject of European appeasement and refusal to assume global responsibilities, but this issue will soon enough require increasing attention. I regard the placement of the Euromissiles in December (absent an agreement) as the litmus test of European will and shared responsibility. If the Europeans reject the missiles, then Europe, in my view, is indefensible and we must draw the necessary conclusions: withdraw our troops and cancel our unilateral nuclear commitment.

I look forward to Mr. Podhoretz clarifying his views on the aspects I have discussed, while once again expressing my gratitude to COMMENTARY and its editor for invaluable contributions to the awakening of America to our present and future danger.

Elias M. Schwarzbart
New York City

_____________

To the Editor:

Thank you for “Appeasement By Any Other Name.” I wish Mr. Podhoretz success in this call to vigilance and hope it will make converts to his views.

There are two minor points I would like to make. Mr. Podhoretz’s analysis of the advocates of appeasement fails to consider that they are motivated by anti-Americanism. Joseph Epstein in his “The Education of an Anti-Capitalist” [August] made this concept real through painful self-analysis.

The other point is that we continue to refer to the Russian empire as the Soviet Union. Such niceties may be proper for the State Department, but for those who deal in truth, the beast should be called by its proper name. Such usage may catch on, and certainly will strip the Russian empire of its false banner: under the Czar it was the Orthodox religion and Pan-Slavism, now the camouflage is Communism.

Menahem Steinberg
Chicago, Illinois

_____________

To the Editor:

I would like to add a few comments to Norman Podhoretz’s excellent analysis of the current spirit of appeasement in American foreign policy.

He is of course right in designating pacifism and isolationism as the most immediate and clearly identifiable sources of the attitudes and policies he examines. I suggest that underlying these “twins” there is a combination of attitudes one would not readily associate with one another. One of them is, needless to say, alienation, or the rejection of American society; the other a sense of security, excessive, unrealistic, “surplus security” one might call it. Both have been with us for a long time, but of late—since Reagan was voted into office—they have intensified. In the early 1980’s we have witnessed a resurgence of attitudes and beliefs more often linked with the 1960’s. They include the further decline in levels of collective self-esteem among elite groups and segments of the population influenced by them.

Thus beneath pacifism and isolationism is the belief—articulated or not—that this society is not worth defending and certainly not worth any strenuous effort or expenditure of resources. It follows from the unwillingness to defend this society (and the values it represents) that the nature of the threat has to be redefined. Ever since Vietnam, and especially in the last few years, there has been in many circles a gradual though cumulatively dramatic change in what might be called the threshold of threat perception. Thus the expansion of Soviet influence—or that of its proxies and client states—no longer matters. To be sure, the expansion of such influence and power is denied or minimized as long as possible; if and when it is finally acknowledged, it is deemed trivial or irrelevant. Surely, the proponents of this view argue, we have nothing to fear from tiny Nicaragua (earlier tiny Cuba or distant Vietnam). And if the Soviet Union acquires more client states in Africa, that will just be a burden, not a gain. And if it subdues the Afghans that will be a great moral defeat. In any event, the Soviet Union is a status-quo power (occasionally unable to overcome temptations when opportunities are particularly attractive). . . .

The second major factor in the redefinition of the Soviet threat is a residual (if unconscious) sense of security, noted above, that leads to delusions about American power, which is often seen by critics of society as excessive, overwhelming, and malevolent. By contrast, many still see the Soviet Union as a poor, mismanaged country (which it may well be), unable to harm us. It is inconceivable to these people that a country which cannot produce a steady supply of onions or carrots or windshield wipers, and is lacking in video games and good plumbing, is capable of menacing the West.

It is also true, as Mr. Podhoretz notes, that the Soviet Union is no longer an object of admiration by estranged Westerners as had been the case decades earlier. At the same time, being an adversary of the United States still holds some appeal for the critics; after all, Soviet spokesmen are also denouncing capitalism, racism, the arms race, the multinationals, etc. The barrage of peace propaganda has its effects, too, being exactly what the Western champions of disarmament (often unilateral) wish to hear. And if the Soviet Union is no longer admired for its domestic policies and institutions, estranged Americans have succeeded in finding surrogates and substitutes not only for the USSR, but also for China, Vietnam, or Cuba; the new, no doubt temporary, subjects of veneration are the guerrillas in El Salvador and the regime in Nicaragua. These attitudes also influence foreign policy so far as Central America is concerned.

Perhaps it is not so much that the appeasement-minded look at Communism in general as the wave of the future; rather, they look at the United States (and the West) as doomed, declining, and flawed, undeserving of support and loyalty.

Thus in the final analysis pacifism and isolationism may be the products of seemingly contradictory attitudes. There is on the one hand the desire—prompted by alienation—to see the U.S. go to “the dustbin of history,” to be replaced by some new, undefined social-political formation. On the other hand, there is also wishful thinking about external threats and the attendant illusion about the invulnerability of the U.S. (and, one might add, the irrelevance of events abroad to the personal lives of the isolationists and pacifists).

One final paradox. While the pacifists and isolationists excel in conjuring up the most elaborate apocalyptic scenarios of a global nuclear holocaust, their imagination is curiously hamstrung when it comes to envisioning the more proximate and plausible threats and the political-economic privations which the continued decline of American power abroad portends for the U.S. and for the West in general.

Paul Hollander
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, Massachusetts

_____________

To the Editor:

Norman Podhoretz is undoubtedly correct in ascribing to liberal opinion a tendency to see in Communist insurgencies both the inevitable tide of historical change and an impassioned protest against social inequities and exploitation. Concerned as he is, however, with the consequences of these attitudes for American foreign policy, he does not address the question of the origin of such perplexing views. On this subject I would like to add some thoughts of my own.

Superficially, these liberal attitudes might be attributed either to “the lessons of Vietnam” or to liberal compassion for the victims of injustice. But neither of these explanations can on close inspection be urged with much conviction. The swing of liberal opinion against the American effort in Vietnam came before, not after, its manifest failure, and was at least one of the principal causes of that failure. Moreover, as a rule, liberals have been remarkably less compassionate about inequities produced by revolutions than they are about those which putatively cause them.

For a better understanding of the difficulties liberals find in recognizing the threat to the United States inherent in the advance of Communist movements, I would suggest a consideration of the very nature of the political vocation of the liberal Left, and the tactical imperatives and self-justifying myths which this vocation tends to confer on its practitioners.

The basis of liberal politics, and the key to its success, lie in the mobilization of social resentments. The politics of liberalism proceeds by identifying or creating feelings of disaffection with established institutions and practices, and then channelling this animus into claims for the political power allegedly needed to redress the grievances. Discord, alienation, and an entrenched suspicion about the worthiness of the prevailing order all facilitate the advance of such politics. In contrast, a nation which perceives a grave external threat is apt to draw together, the authority of its leading institutions generally becomes strengthened, and strong pressure builds to shelve outstanding differences, at least temporarily, in a common effort. In short, a climate comes into existence in which the cultivation of solidarity rather than contention is placed at a premium, putting liberalism politically at a disadvantage. Sensing this, many liberals stubbornly deny, or attempt to argue away, the reality of external threats even when, as in Central America, these are quite palpable and close at hand.

The concept of political selfhood possessed by most liberals also impedes their capacity to assess threat, at least when the peril comes from the Left. In his own eyes, and in his public claims, the liberal characteristically identifies himself as a “good” person. His quest for power finds its ultimate justification in his superior and disinterested benevolence, and in his sympathy for the victimized of the world. To make these claims credible, he must convince himself that selflessness can be, and indeed is, a widespread and sufficient spur to political activity; any other assumption would inevitably lead to doubting the viability of the welfare state he so assiduously promotes.

Revolutionaries, of course, make quite similar motivational claims for themselves, citing a sense of outrage provoked by evils similar in kind to, if different in degree from, those inflaming the liberal conscience. Thus while the liberal may fault the revolutionary on his resort to violence and contempt for civil liberties, he finds it difficult to withhold recognition for noble intentions. If sanctity can prevail in the halls of Congress, why doubt its presence in the hills of El Salvador? The inevitable result is to dull the edge of any apprehensions about the nature of revolutionary objectives that liberals might initially possess. Convinced as he is that revolutionaries are basically, like himself, decent fellows, the liberal reasons that given good will some sort of mutual accommodation can ultimately be worked out.

It is these structural features of the contemporary liberal enterprise more than any reactions to events of recent history which form the major obstacles to a clear-sighted appreciation of the dangers with which our country is now faced.

Stephen H. Balch
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
New York City

_____________

To the Editor:

. . . I would like to add two main points to Norman Podhoretz’s analysis. The first is that the appeasement movement exists not only here, but even more intensely in Europe. European anti-Americanism is a counterpart to American isolationism. The second, perhaps more important, point is that the Soviet people and the Soviet government are just as afraid of an atomic war as those in the free world. The Soviet military buildup is meant to deter such a war. . . .

While the U.S. speaks of deterrence as if it were the absolute weapon against war, the Soviets are aware that deterrence will work only if it is coupled with an adequate foreign policy. Soviet foreign policy is geared toward dividing and demobilizing not only the Atlantic Alliance but the consensus within each of the countries in the alliance. The Soviets make use of internal and international contradictions, they help to build mass movements, they infiltrate even anti-Soviet institutions and organizations, and thus make politicians in the West bend. . . .

Why hasn’t the West developed a policy that would . . . force the Soviets into a defensive posture, a policy that would create a consensus within each allied nation and within the Western Alliance as a whole, a policy that would divide the East? Such a policy does in fact exist. Only a year ago Strategic Review published a manifesto by Franz-Josef Strauss, chairman of the German Christian Social Union [CSU]. This program was adopted by the CDU/CSU in its election platform and was accepted by a remarkable majority of the West German electorate in the recent German elections.

The main idea of this policy is as follows: there is a tension in the world situation today which could lead to war. If we wish to eliminate this tension, with all its consequences, we must first understand why it occurred. After World War II the Soviet Union brought Central and Eastern Europe under its control; the West perceived this area as a Soviet corridor of aggression, and responded by forming NATO. The Soviets denied that they had any aggressive intentions, declared that NATO was an aggressive alliance, and formed the Warsaw Pact. These two powerful military blocs now threaten to destroy each other. It is obvious that but for the situation in Central and Eastern Europe neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact would have been established. . . . Consequently, if the nations of Central and Eastern Europe were granted the right of self-determination—i.e., the right of free elections in which they could elect either Communist or non-Communist governments—both NATO and the Warsaw Pact could be dissolved, all atomic weapons could be destroyed, and the greatest danger mankind has to face could be eliminated.

It should be clear that neither Franz-Josef Strauss nor West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl is a naive political dreamer. They know the Soviet system, what it stands for, and how it works, better than any American politician. After all, more than twenty million of their fellow Germans are deprived of all human rights under Soviet occupation. . . . Probably neither Strauss nor Kohl expected the Soviets to accept their proposals, but they might well have expected them to appeal to the U.S., where ideas of freedom and peace have such a long tradition.

This strategy for freedom and peace could in fact bring about a real political consensus in the U.S. So long as the Soviet Union refused to accept it, Americans would see the necessity . . . of deterrence. It would then also be possible to prove to the peace movement and to the Catholic bishops that it is the U.S. which stands for peace and the Soviet Union which opposes it, since this policy is connected not to a nuclear freeze or a reduction in armaments but to the destruction of all atomic weapons and massive disarmament. And since Germany has already accepted it—at least as a commitment—we could expect a consensus within the Atlantic Alliance as well. The majority of the Third World nations would also welcome such a policy, first because these nations are opposed to war, but mainly because if it were adopted, tremendous means would be freed which could then be used for badly needed aid to the Third World.

A new international political climate would thus be created, the Soviets would be put on the defensive and would be forced to admit that their real aim is not peace but the expansion of their imperial power. It would then be the Andropovs, Jaruzelskis, Husáks, Castros, Assads, et al. who would be forced to bend. . . .

Eugen Loebl
New York City

_____________

To the Editor:

Before we contemplate the dispatch of the U.S. forces “to stop and then to reverse the totalitarian drift in Central America,” a clear statement of goals and objectives must be set forth by the government. There must be no halfhearted, piecemeal commitment of small detachments, sent to bleed a little, while Congress and public opinion sit on the fence.

During Vietnam, members of the uniformed services and their families bore the sacrifices; most other Americans sat it out as spectators. (I served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam from 1967 to 1969.)

As Senator Alan Simpson has noted, a fundamental (because geographical) difference between Vietnam 1975 and Central America 1983 is that for the refugees from newly-established totalitarian regimes, a boat is not the only way out. It’s a long walk to the U.S. from Central America, but it’s still only a walk. . . .

[Major] Robert P. Fairchild
Fort Monroe, Virginia

_____________

To the Editor:

I would like to thank Norman Podhoretz for a timely and powerfully written article. . . . I totally agree with his analysis and his solution to the problem of Communist hegemony. It all goes back to the age-old adage, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” to which I would add, “Better than the appeaser’s solution of no cure at all.” The consequences of surrender are without a doubt worse than the consequences of all-out nuclear war. And only a sensible policy of peace through strength can prevent the latter.

Russell L. Blaylock
High Point, North Carolina

_____________

To the Editor:

I read Norman Podhoretz’s article and was amazed and delighted by its clarity of argument and depth of insight. . . . Unfortunately, I do not share his optimism. The history of mankind does not seem to leave us with much hope that truth will win out in this quagmire of lies and deceit. . . .

Mike D’Virgilio
Los Angeles, California

_____________

To the Editor:

I applaud Norman Podhoretz’s article in which he correctly points out that the nuclear-freeze movement and the pacifists play directly into the hands of the Soviet Union.

I am a great believer in looking at the past in order to learn from it. It is my contention that the Soviets today are copying the Nazis of fifty years ago. The Nazis threatened their neighbors who were militarily weak, suffered from the Depression, remembered World War I, and were not willing to go to war to protect their freedom. The result was weakness and defeat for the democracies. England and France finally stood up but the damage had been done. Czechoslovakia was lost at Munich and it took World War II to defeat the Nazis. Are we going in the same direction again? Certainly, many Democrats in Congress sound the way the British did before World War II. Appeasement did not pay off then and it should not pay off now. . . .

Walter J. Schloss
New Canaan, Connecticut

_____________

To the Editor:

I would like to congratulate Norman Podhoretz for writing a brilliant political essay. . . . He has hit the nail on the head again and I earnestly hope the press will wake up soon.

What troubles me is that most Americans have no idea what is going on and the press continually deceives them on any kind of conflict it may write about. The United States pays a very high price for what the media do and can do by opening up every little conflict to public debate.

What is at work here in all this senseless killing in Central America is not only social repression, but the determination of Cuba to support any dedicated group of Marxists who want power for themselves. Fidel Castro in his demonic way is obsessed with the idea of destroying the United States without firing a shot. I cannot for the life of me understand how the press in the United States can continually avoid the obvious by not telling the Americans what Castro intends to do in this hemisphere. . . .

Foreign policy is too important to be left to journalists like Anthony Lewis, Tom Wicker, Strobe Talbott, and a few others who can’t seem to break through the screen of deceit and report the news (facts) objectively, so the reader will understand the truth. . . .

Victor C. Campo
Montevideo, Uruguay

_____________

To the Editor:

Thank God for Norman Podhoretz! “Appeasement By Any Other Name” is an outstanding article. Sadly, it will have little effect on the accommodationists because they are, to borrow Mr. Podhoretz’s phrase, “. . . so stupid and so ignorant of history . . .” that they make a habit of disregarding the truth. Still, the article will serve to stiffen the resolve of the pro-defense and anti-Communist groups. I hope the members of Congress who read it will come to the realization that we have scant margin for error in Central America.

As to the short memories of the pacifists: one of the bonuses of being a modern American “liberal” is that one does not have to take responsibility for one’s failures or errors of judgment. I long to hear the prominent antiwar activists of the Vietnam era come forth and say, “We were wrong.” I pray it won’t be necessary to hope for the same statement from the El Salvador accommodationists in, say, 1988.

John Shaffer
Canton, Pennsylvania

_____________

Norman Podhoretz writes:

Let me begin by pointing to what does not appear in any of the above letters (or, for that matter, in any of the letters addressed privately to me, or in any of the published comment on “Appeasement By Any Other Name”). No one has said that I misrepresented the ideas of the opposition to the 1980 consensus when I described them as pacifist and isolationist in inspiration. No one has even objected to my use of the term appeasement in summing up the implications for policy of the opposition’s ideas. It is tempting to conclude from this apparent acquiescence that the new pacifists, isolationists, and appeasers are now willing to travel under their true colors and no longer object to being called by their proper names. Unfortunately for honest political discussion, however, several of the above letters indicate that such a conclusion would be overly optimistic.

Alan D. Kandel, Robert P. Helman, and Timothy Jay duBois, for example, all inform me that people get killed in war—and Mr. duBois adds a self-righteous lecture on the atrocities of guerrilla war (though the only atrocities that wring a “shudder of disgust” from him are the ones committed by anti-Communist forces). But they seem not to realize that in saying that Soviet power and Communist totalitarianism are not worth fighting against, they are calling for the appeasement, and thereby the spread, of those evils.

Walter A. Sheldon, similarly, seems not to realize that to attack the strategy of the lesser evil is to accept or to promote the victory of the greater. In invoking the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, moreover, he also seems unaware of the fact that the men who wrote those documents entered into an alliance with the France of the Bastille. And finally, he fails to see that a foreign policy based on the principles of the Declaration of Independence would be a foreign policy actively engaged in trying to overthrow totalitarian Communist regimes, not one bound to increase the number of such regimes.

Unlike Mr. Sheldon, Michael A. Sells is all for the strategy of the lesser evil, though to him that means supporting the Sandinistas. He believes that the Sandinistas have made improvements; I am skeptical for the simple reason that exactly the same claims for similar regimes have repeatedly been made in the past only to be proved false (which has not been the case with claims of economic development in Taiwan and South Korea). Moreover, the Sandinistas are still in the process of consolidating their power. What reason is there to believe that if they succeed in turning Nicaragua into a full-fledged Communist state, it will be any less repressive politically or any less miserable economically than any other Communist state in the world?

David L. Sallach’s letter is far more civil than Mr. Sheldon’s, and he is far more forthright than Mr. duBois. But like them he misrepresents the nature and extent of American support for “brutal ruling cliques,” whether in Central America or anywhere else in the world. The truth is that the United States has consistently tried to follow a lesser-evil strategy while at the same time encouraging such democratic forces as might exist in a given situation (if they happened to exist at all).

Liberals used to know this. Thus, in A Thousand Days, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. approvingly quotes President John F. Kennedy on the Dominican Republic in 1961: “There are three possibilities in descending order of preference: a decent democratic regime, a continuation of the Trujillo regime, or a Castro regime. We ought to aim at the first but we really can’t renounce the second until we are sure that we can avoid the third.” Where the United States has violated this rule, as in Iran and Nicaragua (and, at the end, in Vietnam), the result has been not only worse from the point of view of American interests but also worse for the countries in question. If some of the critics get their way, the same thing will happen in El Salvador.

Mr. Sallach asks how we can become “principled and united” again. My answer is that in trying to contain the spread of Soviet power for the past thirty-five years, the United States has been acting in a “principled” way and has been offering hope to countries whose chance for freedom and economic well-being would be entirely wiped out if they were sucked into the system of Communist totalitarianism. If Mr. Sallach wants us to become united again, the best way is for people like him to begin recognizing—or, in some cases, remembering—that fact.

Elias M. Schwarzbart is very generous about my work, but he has me wrong on at least one point. I did not say that the 1980 consensus involved an opposition to negotiations, only that it supported a shift of emphasis from arms control to rearmament. What seems to have happened is that once public opinion felt reassured that a build-up would take place, it began swinging back toward active support for arms control. As a politician, Ronald Reagan has been forced to respond to this change. But those of us who are not politicians are free to say, and have a duty to say, what we really think on such matters. I think the record shows that the great hopes invested in arms-control negotiations with expansionist totalitarian powers are illusory and dangerous, and this is what I was trying to say in my article.

On the question raised by Mr. Schwarzbart of withdrawing from Europe, I can only repeat that doing so would in my judgment lead to the Finlandization of the West, including ultimately the United States itself. But I must also admit that the prospect seems to me increasingly likely—which, alas, is more than I can say for Eugen Loebl’s vision of a mutual withdrawal from Europe by both superpowers.

Finally, I agree with Menahem Steinberg’s point about anti-Americanism, and I find Paul Hollander very illuminating on the same point (as is Stephen H. Balch on the related issue of liberal disaffection). But I disagree with Mr. Steinberg when he says that Communism is merely a “camouflage” for traditional Russian imperialism. As I have argued several times in these pages, I believe that the Soviet threat cannot be fully understood or properly assessed without reference to its ideological component—which is to say, Communism.