Worldview 1958-03: Vol 1 Iss 3

worldview

A JOURNAL OF ETHICS AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

ALL OR NOTHING AT ALL?

The West’s increasing reliance upon thermo-
nuclear weapons was emphasized last year in a
historic British White Paper on defense. Stating
that it is economically impossible for Britain to
be strong in both nuclear and conventional arma-
ments, this report announced that over the next
few years the British government would radi-
cally reduce the size of its conventional arma-
ments in order to develop more fully its atomic
weapons. In this way, it concluded, Great Britain
would make a “modest” contribution toward the
security of the West.

When this policy was announced, some serious
questions about its implications were raised. The
London Economist wondered if it really covered
“all the reasonable political and military risks,”
and decided it did not. The dilemma it seemed
to pose—either atomic war or surrender—was too
cruel. No area of maneuver was left for conven-
tional response to a local aggression. Because, by
making every decision one of all or nothing at all,
a policy of total reliance upon total weapons ac-
tually increases the chances of “limited” out-
rages.

Perhaps it was in answer to such problems that
a new Defense White Paper was issued by the
British government last month. The new docu-
ment has received remarkably little public atten-
tion in this country, but it demands most serious

ublic attention because it spells out, with horri-
Eine explicitness, the implications of the 1957

Mr. Duncan Sandys, the British Minister of
Defense, says in the new Paper that Britain has
a growing force of bombers which are now being
equipped with megaton bombs and, in addition,
will soon have intermediate range missiles. Con-
ventional forces, at the same time, are continually
being reduced. (All this by way of implementing
the 1957 White Paper). And so, Mr. Sandys an-
nounces, if the Soviet Union were to launch an
attack on any Western nation with conventional
forces only, the West would hit back with its
strategic nuclear weapons.

Thus, “logically,” almost academically, the
doctrine of ultimate deterrence is set forth and
adopted by this nation’s major ally. The Russian
leaders have been warned: any “major attack”
(whatever that may mean) against any “Western
nation” (whatever that may include), even with
conventional weapons, would mean _ thermo-
nuclear reprisal against the Soviet Union. With
such a fate in store for them, the White Paper
seems to ask, would Russia’s leaders ever dare
to attack?

Obviously, the most grave issues, both strate-
gic and moral, are involved here. British critics
of Mr. Sandys’ document point out that, strate-
gically, the doctrine of ultimate deterrence is
dangerous bravado.

The Socialist New Statesman, in an editorial
titled “The Logic of Annihilation” argues: “If
Mr. Sandys’ deterrent is employed, it will in-
evitably lead to the extermination of life on these
islands . . . No British Prime Minister could pos-
sibly take such a decision. The strategy of the
deterrent is a purely theoretical concept de-
signed to meet a contingency which, the politi-
cians believe, will never occur. But if it does, the
deterrent will immediately be revealed for what
it is: a bluff... And once the monumental bluff
of the Great Deterrent were called, the West
[lacking sufficient conventional forces] would
have no alternatives but to accept a last-minute
Munich settlement . . . Hence the political con-
sequence of [this] defense policy is a foreign
policy based on appeasement.”

The Conservative Spectator makes a similar
case: “The threat is empty: everybody, including
Mr. Sandys, knows that H-bombs will not be
launched from this country if a conventional war
begins. But Mr. Khrushchev may not realize this
.. « He may conceivably believe . . . that we
really intend to hit back with strategic nuclear
weapons if, say, war breaks out anywhere along

MaRcH 1958

the Curtain . . . If it should, [he] might feel
that it would be wise to obliterate us before we
decided whether or not to carry out the White
Paper's policy.”

Disturbing as the doctrine of ultimate deter-
rence is from the standpoint of strategy, how-
ever, it is infinitely more disturbing the
standpoint of any recognizable morality. Strate-
gically, the doctrine is at least debatable; morally,
it is self-evidently pernicious. As baldly stated
in the British White Paper, it represents a public
abandonment by a Western government of any
pretense to ethical sensitivity in defense policy.
Here is an official endorsement of power di-
vorced from moral concern.

Moralists have only begun to reconsider their
traditional teaching on the “just war” in relation
to nuclear weapons of mass-destruction. But it is
doubtful that they could justify the actual use
of these weapons under any circumstances—even
as a last-resort reply to thermonuclear attack.
Because, however irrelevant much of the tradi-

In the Magazines

With the opening of the annual season for debate on
foreign aid come two articles of especial interest, one
by Barbara Ward in The New York Times Magazine
of February 28, the other by Oscar Gass in the Feb-
ruary issue of Commentary. Both writers marshall the
impressive evidence of figures and statistics to sup-
port their conviction that the U.S. record for foreign
aid expenditures is far from what it should be, and
that, unless there is immediate and total revision of
our now short-sighted policy along the lines of some
major, long-term effort, we shall fail to meet the de-
mands of the present world crisis.

In her article, “The Great Challenge Is Not the
Sputniks,” Miss Ward sees the new situation as re-
sulting from “the falling away of world trade in the
wake of American business stagnation”—a situation
further aggravated by Soviet initiative. “. . . The
new conditions of 1958 might best be summed up by
saying that, while the Russians have evolved a long-
term economic strategy for the Asian fringe (and be-
yond it, for the underdeveloped areas everywhere)
the Western powers appear to have no general policy
of any sort.”

Mr. Gass’s report, “The United States and the
Poorest Peoples,” is a closer look at the mismanage-
ment, delusion and apathy that lie behind Washing-

tional “just war” teaching may now be, one of
its principles remains luminously clear, from the
standpoint, even, of common sense. The princi-
ple is this: even a defensive action, to be morally
justifiable, must hold more promise of good than
of evil. But what promise, except universal sui-
cide, does any war fought with massive nuclear
weapons hold?

Agonizing problems are involved here, both
for the moralist and the statesman. For both of
them, the modern situation poses dilemmas that
resist clear-cut answers. Given the fact of Soviet
power, no responsible moralist can easily move
from the summit of principle to the ground of
practice and advocate that, here and now, the
Western powers should unilaterally disarm. The
practical consequences of this would likely be
the world dominance of the Soviet Union. But
no Western statesman, either, can responsibly
embrace a strategy of naked power completely
sundered from the moral imperatives of the civi-
lized tradition. And this is what the doctrine of
ultimate deterrence, now so casually but so omi-
nously set forth in the 1958 British White Paper,
seems to do.

ton’s lack of policy. As an economic consultant to
several of the needy countries, the author is in a posi-
tion to lay open the entire record—of their side as
well as ours—and his view is a realistic one. “With the
best will in the world,” he writes, “a society like ours
can effectively assist only countries with a national
leadership which desires assistance and is prepared
to bear the first responsibility for thinking, planning
and organization. An underdeveloped country has to
give its best to the task of its own development; then
we can be helpful in a supporting role, and more in
resources than personnel.”

Kenneth Thompson, writing on “Moral and Politi-
cal Aspects of the Present Crisis” in the February 17
issue of Christianity and Crisis, explores our mood in
the current phase of the Cold War, along with some
of its causes and implications. He insists that we find
some approach to policy which is neither “a severely
military view of power” nor “a utopian moralism that
offers few criteria for measuring the moral aspects of
any problem,” and he calls for a revival of “the art of
diplomatic conversations.”

PAMPHILUS

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CRITICISMS OF U.S. POLICY

An Age of Enthusiasm Seems to Have Passed

William Pfaff

It is difficult not to see elements of desperation and
despair in much that is being said about the interna-
tional situation. This is a time when events seem in
the saddle; when attempts to control the technology
of destruction seem all but hopeless; when American
policies founded largely upon good will seem failing,
and a major part of the world turns from us in dis-
illusionment and often in hatred.

The debate over our policy has deepened in recent
months; and in what has been said it is possible to
distinguish two kinds of comment. There is the evalu-
ation of specific policies, often including remarks on
our national temper and the fundamentals of our
policy, but focussed upon issues, The Rockefeller and
Gaither reports (the latter so far as it has been made
known) deal with measures to be taken, rather than
with the meaning of our policy itself. Then there
have been statements which implicitly question our
policy itself in its conception, style and execution.

The most spectacular of the latter were the Reith
Lectures, delivered over the BBC by George F. Ken-
nan and published this month in this country by
Harper's. These talks by the former American am-
bassador to Moscow had an entirely unexpected im-
pact on European opinion, and the positions argued
by Mr. Kennan have found substantial support in this
country as well as abroad. Much that he said has
had currency before this, but it has not been given
such an eloquent and comprehensive statement.

At about the same time that Mr. Kennan was speak-
ing to the British public, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer
was publishing in Foreign Affairs (January) what he
called “An Inward Look.” This was an analysis—not
a very optimistic analysis—of the condition of our
culture and the standards of our education.

Dr. Oppenheimer wrote in the context of the inter-
national crisis and his remarks raised very serious
questions about the meaning of our policy, and par-
ticularly about the quality of our government's intel-
lectual response to a profoundly changing situation.
In a way, Dr. Oppenheimer went more deeply than
Mr. Kennan, for he defined a cultural problem to

Mr. Pfaff is an American journalist who has reported
frequently from Asia and the Middle East.

which Kennan, in his lectures on the political state
of the world, was implicitly responding.

Mr. Kennan’s talks were quite specific. In addition
to Soviet affairs, he dealt with Eastern Europe, the
non-European world, the military situation, and
NATO, and with general issues in the context of these
concrete situations. But his proposals were tentative
(“what I have tried to suggest here is not what gov-
ernments should do, but what they should think
about”) and the weight of his comment (and the
reason for its reception) was a general critique.

The interdependence of peoples—fostered by mod-
ern communications—was once regarded as a hopeful
thing, but is proving rather to be a very dangerous
one. Little can happen in the relations of two states
without the world feeling some repercussions.
Weapons technology has so enlarged the disasters
within our power to create that no one in the world
can feel altogether secure. It has been argued that
nuclear weapons have created a situation new in
kind: “there is no alternative to peace” is the facile
statement of it.

Similarly, the development of communications has
created an unprecedented political situation. There
are new political and intellectual as well as military
dimensions. Dr. Oppenheimer says, “It seems to me
that both the variety and rate of change in our lives
are likely to increase, that our knowledge will keep
on growing, perhaps at a faster and faster rate, and
that change itself will tend to be accelerated. In de-
scribing this world, there will probably be no syn-
opses to spare us the effort of detailed learning. I
do not think it likely that we are in a brief interval
of change and apparent disorder which will soon be
ended. The cognitive problem seems to me unprece-
dented in scope, one not put in this vast form to any
earlier society, and one for which only the most
general rules of behavior can be found in the past.”

Mr. Kennan, in his lectures, makes an instinctually
conservative response: in recommending a very wide
political “disengagement” he would resist a trend that
tends to drive political affairs beyond rational control.

The second problem he raises is not unrelated. It
is the place of non-rational elements in the creation
and execution of foreign policy. “Non-rational ele-
ments” is a heavy way to put it, but I mean to include
ideology, morality and sentiment. Kennan’s strictures
on morality in foreign policy were widely discussed
at the time his Realities of American Foreign Policy
was published. He has insisted that when he says
“morality,” he means precisely that; that while he
is no enemy of ethics, he has the gravest doubts about
founding foreign policies on anything other than the
pragmatic considerations of a nation’s self-interest.

Sentiment and emotion have always had a role in
policy, but the size of the role has been swollen by
modern communications and, of course, by democ-
racy. Toward totalitarian ideology, which has so
corrupted modern politics, we can do little other than
attempt to blunt and contain its irrationality. But to
have irrational, or non-rational, elements playing a
very large part in our own policy formulations is dis-
turbing to a man like Kennan, who regards reason
and pragmatism as the only safe foundation for a
foreign policy.
®

It was in the 1940s and ‘50s that the role of senti-
ment in American foreign policy reached full-tide.
Those were the days of the Atlantic Charter and the
creation of the United Nations; of unconditional sur-
render; of the liberal ascendancy in American politics.

There were many parts to the mood of those times,
sober and prudent elements as well as profoundly
generous ones, but the dominant note was progres-
sivist optimism—a conviction that evil could be lo-
calized and stamped out, leaving “the good people”
to live in peace.

It was in this mood that contemporary American
foreign policy had its origins. The policy was ver-
satile. It posed a hard challenge—containment—to
Soviet expansionism, and in Asia and the Middle
East conducted a policy of deep involvement, of
economic, technical and military aid intended to assist
nations in constructing or re-constructing their econo-
mies and improving the living conditions of their
populations.

The policy succeeded in the first of the postwar
years, Despite the American failures in dealing with
the Chinese Communist revolution and the Palestin-
ean dispute, the Asian belief in American good will
and disinterestedness prevailed. We made a con-
structive contribution to Asian interests, our reputa-
tion was good, and our own interest in the stability
of these nations was consequently served.

Trouble, of course, was inevitable. Involvement
cannot but carry with it rather serious frictions. But

4

the trouble did not assume serious proportions until
the 1950s. Since then it has multiplied until today
the American situation in Asia and the Middle East is
one which must dismay any American who visits the
area.

Generalizations are always vulnerable, but they can
be suggestive, and I would propose these: The liberal
Asian policy of the United States succeeded in the
"40s because the optimistic vision of the policy was
in large measure shared by the leaders and intellec-
tuals of Asia, and the policy was confidently executed
by the United States. There was a belief in the policy,
its assumptions had the sympathy of influential
Asians, and in practice it met the self-interest of
Asian nations. Events, however, shake any system.
The primary reason for the loss of efficacy of Ameri-
can policy was an American loss of confidence in that
policy. The critical event was the presidential elec-
tion of 1952.

James Reston once remarked that the postwar
American alliance with Europe was in fact an alliance
between European governments and the Democratic
party. The Republican party, out of office for twenty
years, assumed national power with no clearly formu-
lated alternative to existing foreign policy, but with
a distrust of the assumptions of that existing policy.
The party had devoted a major part of its energy for
two decades to criticism of the Democratic conduct
of foreign affairs. It had a profound distrust of pro-
gressivism, even though its own programs leaned
heavily upon what was, in fact, the dominant Ameri-
can mood.

Those Republicans who enthusiastically supported
international involvements made up a minority of the
party, and while they sponsored and elected an “in-
ternationalist” President, they did so only through a
short-lived alliance with the remainder of the party.
There is little point in reviewing the battles over the
Korean truce, Senator McCarthy, foreign aid and the
balanced budget. The result was that a visionary
policy lost its élan.

Mr. Dulles himself came from a background pro-
foundly different from those of his Democratic prede-
cessors. A religious man, he had little use for the
clichés of progressivist optimism. A man whose life
had been spent in international law and diplomacy,
one of a family with a strong diplomatic tradition,
he had a deep respect for the element of power in
international affairs, and a distrust of programs which
did not have their roots in the realities of power. A
man with the sense to recognize the risks of domestic
politics, he intended to maintain good relations with
Congress and the public, even if, at times, this had to
be done at the expense of policy. In place of the
liberal vision, Mr. Dulles had a religiously-inspired

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confidence in the success of the right and the true.
This seems not unlike the liberal conviction, but it is
not at all the same thing.

The change in the management—and in the confi-
dence—of our policy coincided with an inevitable
loss of momentum in the policy’s workings. Interna-
tional relationships were changing, and American
policy, operating within the terms established in the
1940s, failed to change with events.

The most critical changes—influencing Asia—came
in East Europe and the Soviet Union. Events un-
settled the pattern which had been imposed upon
Europe by Stalinism and the Western response to it.
With the pattern disturbed, it became possible to
speculate about fundamental change. The Soviet
Union gave some encouragement to this speculation
while, in its actions, it attempted to control if not to
suppress change. Mr. Dulles would have had an easier
career had developments in the East not made libera-
tion a real issue.

Stalin’s death, followed by a limited relaxation of
terror throughout the bloc, the Twentieth Congress
of the Soviet Communist Party and the signing of the
Austrian treaty set off an intellectual and political
ferment which climaxed in the 1956 “October events”
in Poland and the Hungarian Revolution. The satel-
lite peoples had regained the national consciousness
and confidence which had been drained from them
by the war and by Stalinist terror. They reasserted
their identities against the alien forms and policies
imposed by the Soviet occupation.

American policy was unprepared for this. Some
rapid adjustments were made to help the Poles ($193
million in credits and loans and a relaxation of re-
strictions on travel and trade). But for the Hun-
garians, there was nothing beyond words.

Discussion had, however, earlier begun in some
Western circles of the possibility of exploiting the
new situation in Eastern Europe. The principal con-
tention was that the satellites had become, militarily
and economically, more liability than advantage to
the Soviet Union. Hence if the Soviet Union could
be assured of their “friendly” neutrality—a territorial
cushion against foreign land attack—the USSR might
be willing to negotiate a kind of Finnish status for
them and withdraw the Red Army. Military with-
drawal is the essential first step in any kind of sig-
nificant change for East Europe, and now—the pro-
ponents of this argument said—there was at least
some possibility that it might be negotiated.

The plan was not given serious public recognition
in Washington. The official position was that any

Western military concession in Europe would have
incalculable consequences upon the security of the
West. Unspoken until late 1957 was the missile argu-
ment: Soviet intercontinental missiles promised to
bring the United States under danger of attack at a
time when the West still would have only intermedi-
ate range missiles requiring European or African
bases.

(There is, of course, a more general argument
against military disengagement, voiced mainly in
Great Britain—most recently by Air Marshal Sir John
Slessor and G. H. Hudson. It is that the stability of
the world situation depends upon clearly-drawn
frontiers, The examples of Korea and Berlin are
mentioned as instances of trouble beginning in places
where the interests of the two great powers were not
explicitly defined. This argument contends that with-
drawal from Eastern and Central Europe would bring
a time of instability and rivalry that easily could in-
volve the prestige of the major powers.)

These are substantial arguments, but they failed
to prove conclusive; limited military withdrawal
which did not involve a complete American evacua-
tion of the European continent, North Africa and
Great Britain, remained within the area of specula-
tion, but the United States refused to discuss it.

The American refusal to explore the idea of dis-
engagement has fed the restlessness of West Euro-
peans and the disillusionment of the people of the
East. That there are substantial arguments against the
plan is irrelevant so long as the world is given the
impression that American policy is not open to argu-
ment. Appearance can be almost as damaging as
reality. The silence on this issue has permitted the
Soviet Union to reap very great propaganda advan-
tages by ceaselessly advocating a plan that it may
never have intended to fulfill.

More general questions are suggested by the
American policy failures in Asia and the Middle East.
It would be foolish to argue that any policy could
have given us a completely satisfactory relationship
with the new Asian and Middle Eastern nations. The
kind of nationalism found, for example, in Egypt, is
almost surely too extravagant for any real accommo-
dation to be possible. The factors of hysteria, dema-
gogy and ambition are too strong here—as in the
politics of some other Asian and Middle Eastern
states—for anything but an uncertain and uneasy
relationship, even if Communism did not complicate
matters.

America’s Asian policy under Mr. Dulles has been
to provide military assistance and alliance against
Communist military aggression. It has proved an un-

5

satisfactory program because Soviet, Chinese or satel-
lite invasion is regarded as a threat only in Turkey,
Iran, Formosa, South Korea and South Viet Nam.
A somewhat larger number of Asian states have had
experience with Communist subversion, supported
from abroad, but few of these have thought it ad-
vantageous to ally themselves with the United States.
I do not think that it is unfair to say that a number
of those Asian and African states which are allied
with us have signed primarily because economic and
military air was available for the signature, and be-
cause the American link could be useful in disputes
which were essentially unrelated to the Communist
issue.

There is a serious question—raised by Mr. Kennan
among others—as to how deeply we prudently can
involve ourselves in the affairs of Asia. However, if
we are to involve ourselves at all, we must, to be
effective, deal with the real concerns of these govern-
ments. Soviet invasion is not such a concern for most
of the non-European world. If we define our interest
in Asia as the stability of the area, we must concern
ourselves with the regional and national causes of in-
stability. An insistence upon defining problems in
Cold War terms serves only to inflate problems to
Cold War size, to the advantage, perhaps, of the
governments involved, but to the disadvantage of
the United States.

The policy of alliances has been an expression of
something more general—of a tendency to insist that
nations declare themselves either for us or against us,
an impatience expressed in Mr. Dulles’ remarks on
the morality of neutralism. It has been paralleled by
an exercise of power: we have made use of a policy
of economic sanctions coupled with diplomatic rela-
tions of bare politeness to pressure neutrals whose
neutralism inclines Eastward. This use of power has
much precedent. But to work it must be consistent,
and Mr. Dulles has not been able to afford con-
sistency. While he has disapproved of neutralism, he
has cared very much about what happens to the
neutrals.

I think it is true to say that the instinct that ani-
mates Mr. Dulles’ policy is one of moral outrage at
Communism and its works, and the essence of the
policy itself has been to mobilize the world against
Communism. There is little room in this scheme for
those who do not wish to commit themselves. The
effect is to enlarge the power division of the world.

It is in this that we reach the central difference
between Mr. Dulles’ policy and the criticism put for-
ward by Mr. Kennan. It is a matter of the scope of
the undertaking. Mr. Dulles shares the enthusiasm

and confidence of the liberal ascendancy, and it is
because he too is attempting to shape something—
to make the world into something that today it is not.
Mr. Kennan—the conservative—shrinks from such an
undertaking, as he shrank from the liberal zeal for
creating a world government a decade ago. He sees
us as engaging ourselves in affairs which we cannot
possibly control, at a time when the momentum of
technology and propaganda works to drive events
away from the rational control of governments.

Kennan’s counsel, then, is disengagement: disen-
gagement in Europe in the hope that the East Euro-
peans will thus have some opportunity to work out
their fate in an area where neither of the great powers
is so significantly committed as to be compelled to
interfere with force. He wants disengagement in
Asia on grounds that our involvement is excessive,
and is often undignified and unhelpful. He sees our
engagement in Asia and the Middle East as inflaming
and enlarging rather than limiting local troubles.
Fundamentally, he asks a reduction of the present
political polarization of the world. He would see the
power blocs separated by many smaller powers, free
to pursue their own interests without engaging the
United States or Russia. He sees the world as a safer
place when the two great powers will not be com-
mitted by prestige or alliance to a role in virtually
every dispute in the political world.

This has been called neo-isolationism and it un-
questionably has roots in the same instinctive distrust
of visionary politics and in the same skepticism about
an American ability to improve the world, that ani-
mated some of the isolationism of the ’30s. To the
degree that the American isolationist movement was
a protest against enthusiasm in policy, it resembles
the Kennan position; he wants no part of enthusiasm,
whether it be liberal, reform or moral. But to call Mr.
Kennan isolationist in any real definition is nonsense.
If any name is to be pinned on his recommendations,
it ought to be quietism, and that is, of course, a
glancing definition. Mr. Kennan can be accused of
the mood of quietism, not of the heresy.

The mood corresponds to a significant element in
the national temper today. There is a widespread
sense both of frustration at what actually is happen-
ing in the world and of disillusion with the failure
of two decades of American enthusiasm to make the
world measurably better than it was. This mood,
however, has genuinely isolationist characteristics.
Mr. Kennan makes a rationalist protest against action
taken without a clear understanding of goals and
implications. It would be irony indeed if his remarks
were to encourage a withdrawal, a disengagement,
equally innocent of understanding and comprehended
goals,

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EUROPE BETWEEN TWO GIANTS

This is a Time for Choices to be Made

James T. Farrell

In the 1980s, it was predicted that in modern war-
fare there would be no victor. The prediction was
not really vindicated by the second World War.
There were two major victors in that war, the United
States and the Soviet Union. They won, not only at
the expense of their enemies, but also of their allies
and of neutrals. Alexis de Tocqueville’s great proph-
ecy, that Russia and America seem “marked out by
the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the
globe,” was over-fulfilled. The world, for most prac-
tical purposes, is divided into two opposed systems.

It is irrelevant here whether the cause of the divi-
sion is a law of history, the correctness of Marx’s
eschatology, the revolutionary intentions of Lenin,
or the simple realities of power. The world is divided.
And no matter how benevolently we interpret Soviet
proposals for “peaceful co-existence,” this division of
the world into competitive systems is accepted by
the Kremlin as part of its long-range strategy.

“The Soviet leaders,” Milovan Dijilas writes in
The New Class, “were fully aware of this process.”
He once heard Stalin, “at an intimate party in 1945,”
say that “in modern war, the victor will impose his
system, which was not the case in past wars.” In the
presence of Djjilas, in 1948, Stalin told Yugoslav and
Bulgarian Communist leaders: “The Western powers
will make a country of their own out of West Ger-
many and we will make one of our own out of East
Germany—this is inevitable.”

In 1917, Lenin and Trotsky had foreseen this polar-
ization of the world, but on the basis of Trotsky’s
“theory of permanent revolution,” a theory consistent
with orthodox Marxism. They were convinced that,
if the revolution were to succeed in Russia, it would
have to spread to the advanced countries where there
was a “ripened” proletariat. Both men counted on,
hoped for, and attempted to stimulate a revolution
in Germany, because Germany was the key to Eu-
rope. A successful German revolution, they believed,
would result in a Communist Euro

The early expectations of Lenin and Trotsky were
not fulfilled. The Stalinist system soon began to
evolve in the Soviet Union. In Germany, Hitler came
to power, and his defeat was accomplished only
through an alliance of the Soviet Union with the

Mr. Farrell, the novelist and essayist, is former chair-
man of The American Committee for Cultural Freedom.

United States. The division of the world into the
camps of two giant powers was thus achieved.

Germany, the “key to Europe,” was broken. The
Germans knew that they had been crushed, The
bombed-out ruins of German cities, the snows of
Russia, the awful concentration of American fire
power, the memories of flaming houses, burning flesh
in the night, the division and occupation of Germany
—all this was different from the aftermath of the
first World War. Just as France, after the Napoleonic
defeat, could not regain the necessary élan and force
to become master of Europe, neither could Germany
now restore herself to repeat Hitler’s venture. The
world balance of power had been irreversibly shifted.
Western Europe was no longer a power center. It
would, in fact, have disintegrated and, in one way or
another, fallen into Communist hands, except for
the Marshall Plan and the fact of American wealth
and power behind the North Atlantic Treaty Organi-
zation.

NATO, it is true, has not achieved any real Euro-
pean unity. Without either the power of the United
States as its guarantor or the collapse of Communism
and the escape to freedom of the satellites, West
European unity probably never can be achieved.

But the road to the unification of Europe by the
Soviet Union would be opened if NATO finally dis-
integrated. Because NATO is more than a military
shield and would be, even if its defensive capability
were far greater than is now the case. The people
of Western Europe grope for a greater community.
Their need for unity is profoundly psychological,
and not merely dictated by economic, political and

The German problem is still the key to Europe—
but now in the context of a struggle between the
United States and the Soviet Union which is of
cosmic proportions and drama.

Germany, however, is not the cause of tension; it
is a symptom. The Kremlin needs and wants Western
Europe and, today, it is as yet incapable of ruling
Western Europe and of winning decisively in the
under-industrialized world. If the future were to be
one of “competitive coexistence,” then Moscow
would almost certainly lose without Western Europe,
and especially West Germany. And even if Russia
could make a Carthage of America, it would then
need Western Europe all the more. Remove Ameri-
can production from the world and humanity would
fall back a century or more. In any competition be-
tween Russia and the West, the Soviet Union seems
doomed to defeat if the intellectual, scientific, tech-
nological and economic capacity of the United States
and Western Europe are pooled.

The Soviets know this. According to Richard Hot-
telet, Khrushchev told Guy Mollet that he prefers
17 million East Germans under his thumb to 70 mil-
lion of them neutral. When he says that he seeks a
competition of the two systems, he really means a
competition between the Soviet Union and an iso-

7

lated United States, with the remainder of the world
subject to increasing Soviet pressure and blackmail.
These are the only terms of victory, at least of easy
victory, for the Soviets. Because, in spite of its scien-
tific achievements, Russia cannot supply China, serve
as big brother to Asia and Africa, and remain ahead
in the military race if West Europe and the United
States are allied and if, along with sufficient military
capability to make war as horrible a death sentence
for the Soviet Union and China as it would be for the
United States and West Europe, the West, through
NATO, organizes its competitive answer. The odds
then would be too heavy for Khrushchev who, unlike
Stalin, cannot afford a defeat. His continued leader-
ship depends on continuing success.

The failure to understand this situation is a major
failure of Western leadership today. At its roots, this
failure is the result of an incapacity to understand
the real struggle, its scope and terms and its evolving
strategy. Many Western leaders, especially in Eu-
rope, misconceive the whole nature of the German
question. They are still busily solving the problem
of Hitler, and re-living their ideological youth, like
old football players trying to play as they once did
when they have loose tendons in their knees and
their reflexes are going.

Neutralize Germany and tensions would remain,
with the United States facing virtual isolation, and
with Western Europe, minus Germany, like a Euro-
pean Israel, but without Israel’s vigor. The risk of
war would remain for America and for Western Eu-
rope. The choice for West European nations and
Great Britain then would be between becoming a
Finland, or, even worse, submitting to Communist
servitude—or else the total annihilation of war. The
danger of war is not based on a common border in
Germany. Indonesia is potentially as major a source
of tension as Germany. The entire world is now a
source of tension. Khrushchev’s gamble is on the
stupidity, inability to understand, fear of Communist
blackmail, and lack of vision in the West.

We all dread war, and with reason. But dread is
not necessarily a sound basis of policy, and often
it results in paralysis. Communism, evolving out of
a movement to eradicate human misery and to lift
mankind to a higher level of freedom, justice and
material prosperity, has become a conspiracy against
humanity, a war against mankind. The Kremlin has
turned Clausevitz’s famous slogan upside down and
practices peace as a continuation of war by another
means, And as Karl von Clausevitz said, “Politics is
the womb in which war is developed, in which its
outlines lie hidden in a rudimentary state, like the
qualities of living creatures in their embryos.”

Tensions exist in politics, not in guns or even in
missiles. And these tensions are world-wide. The
danger of war exists now in world politics. And

8

Khrushchev not only has decreed that these tensions
will continue; he is continuing to foster them. He
has told us his end in many different ways. His most
simple announcement of this end is: “We will bury
you.” It is with this announcement in mind that we
must consider the future of the West.

Many of the current proposals for United States
“disengagement” in Europe through the creation of
neutral zones—especially the creation of a “neutral”
Germany—seem to me therefore an ultimate kind of
utopianism—and, like most utopianisms, ultimately
dangerous. There are no easy alternatives to the
dread with which we have been living. The dread
can be conquered, the final catastrophe averted, only
through the painful recognition and ordering of
power realities.

There can be no “safe” areas in a thermonuclear
world, least of all in Europe. There can be no pain-
less peace made with men who know only the terror
of Stalinist politics. We must negotiate and continue
to negotiate, but in the full knowledge of what the
stakes in Europe really are.

“The triumph of bolshevism,” Lucien Lauriat wrote
in his book From the Comintern to the Cominform,
“will be the entire realization of the horrible and
terrifying nightmare described by George Orwell.”
When the Soviet leaders are convinced that the truth
of this remark is realized both in the United States
and in Europe, then a more realistic basis for nego-
tiations will be possible. It is the failure of many in
Europe to realize this truth—and their consequent
retreat into dreams of “neutralism” between the two
powers—that makes realistic, fruitful negotiation so
difficult at this time.

The best hope for peace and for the world seems
to me, therefore, to continue to lie in the strength of
the Western Alliance, not in the encouragement of
dreams of “disengagement.” Because peace, if there
is to be peace, can be built only upon realities. Our
effort must be to make NATO not merely a military
arm for the West, but the foundation of increasing
unity—cultural, economic, political-among Western
nations. Faced with the continuing power drive from
the East, Western nations must either stand together
or, one by one, fall. Should they fall, they would have
only their own fear to blame.

We must learn to live with a paradox. The awful
truth is that there may be no hope for peace. Khru-
shchev has announced that he will “bury” us, and we
have no reason to doubt that he was here speaking
as a Communist prophet. But if we take into full ac-
count the direness of the world’s situation, if we do
Khrushchev the honor of believing that he means
what he says, then the slow, painful work of proving
the Soviet leader wrong can go forward. Peace can
be secured only by those who know how difficult,
how painful, and how dangerous it is to attain.

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correspondence

‘‘Misplaced Morality’’

Chicago, Illinois
Sir: I am writing to express my reaction to Volume
1, No. 1 of Worldview. There were a good many
good things in the old World Alliance News Letter,
but now and then an article or editorial left me dis-
turbed. I must say that the first issue of Worldview
disturbs me considerably.

To a large extent my uneasiness derives from what
seems to me to be an impossible mixture of ethical
considerations and political considerations in the
magazine. It is not that I doubt that there is some
workable combination of ethics and politics, but
rather that the particular combinations made by your
writers strike me as bad ones. Your writers are not
uncritical of American foreign policy in many of its
details, but they seem to be so basically committed
to the use of force, and to the policy of maintaining
a preponderant force, that their arguments about
ethics are all conditioned by these basic commit-
ments.

An example of this is the article by William Lee
Miller, entitled “Misplaced Morality.” Mr. Miller
seems to argue that there are whole areas of foreign
policy in which it is not appropriate to raise ethical
questions. So he says, “The right thing in politics is
rarely done by the man who tries intentionally to
do ‘right’.”

While I would grant that there is something to his
argument that Americans are too likely to expect
things to be absolutely right, or absolutely wrong,
yet the whole article is such a piece of sophistry
that I get the impression that Mr. Miller could make
the worse appear the better no matter what was the
worse. In the end he seems to think he has made an
ethical case for the “limited war” position of Kiss-
inger, and indicates in his opinion that the real
ethical test of the present will only be passed by
those who will go along with the “unresolved contest,
perhaps including sometimes limited military con-
tests with the Communist world.” In other words, he
appears to argue that the ethical man will work for
little wars and avoid the big wars.

Of course, Mr. Miller is not one of Worldview’s
editors, but it seems to me that he has expressed that
tone in the magazine which makes me uneasy.

Then you print Will Herberg’s long review of
Emest W. Lefever’s Ethics and United States For-
eign Policy, in which Mr. Herberg says that “religious
leaders, especially in America, are particularly prone
to a delusive idealism.” He goes on to claim “that
the best of our statesmen have shown a deeper un-
derstanding of the actual relation of ethics and

religion to politics than have most of the official
spokesmen of religion.” Finally, he says, “It is this
creative combination of religious insight and political
realism that is the best resource in the present hour.”
This may be a valid reflection of your editorial policy,
and you may be right. But I would feel better about
Worldview if at least one of its editors was a religious
pacifist and was allowed to apply his own insight to
some of the tortured arguments for “realism” that
run through the magazine. And would not this be a
fairer policy for The Church Peace Union, the maga-
zine’s publisher?

Basically, my objection to Worldview is that it
seems prepared to espouse only one special theory of
the relation between ethics and world affairs.

ROBERT J. HAVIGHURST
Professor of Education,
The University of Chicago

Daytona Beach, Florida
Sir: I subscribed to Worldview in the hope of
finding a fresh approach to international affairs, par-
ticularly from a religious point of view. To say that
I am disappointed is an understatement.

In your January issue, William Lee Miller begins
his article on “Misplaced Morality” with a superior
dismissal of the priest who spoke on the concept of
“a just war.” But Mr. Miller ends his article with a
suggestion that we may have to follow Kissinger’s
concept of “limited war” with Russia. Limited to
whom?—to the soldiers who fight and not to non-
combatants, women and children? . . . Is it “moral-
ism” to protest brutality and to question whether it
is worth doing to “save America” from Communism?
Mr. Miller writes of “drawing many lines” but gives
no concrete suggestions. I think that for an ethical
approach I shall have to depend on those whom too
many present day theologians deprecatingly refer to
as “secular” thinkers—on the “atheist” Bertrand Rus-
sell and the “humanist” Walter Lippmann .. .

Again, is it “realism” for Will Herberg, in his
review of Ethics and U. S. Foreign Policy, to use the
Dulles cliché of “the free world that is confronted . . .
with a totalitarian enemy,” etc., without any analysis
of the constituents of the two groups? “The free
world”—including Spain and Franco, France and Al-
geria, the Turkish dictatorship, King Saud, etc.? “The
totalitarian enemy” without any breakdown of its
constituents—all the people of Russia and China
lumped together as “enemies”? Is this to be World-
view’s “ethical” approach . . .?

GORDON POTEAT

9

Religion and the Marxist Challenge: Two Views

Communism and Christianity by
Martin C. D’Arcy. Devin-Adair.
242 pp. $4.00.

by Quentin Lauer

There can be little doubt that the
majority of Christians in the
world today are opposed to Com-
munism—certainly to its practices,
and for the most part to its
theories, Behind opposition, how-
ever, there must be conviction
based on thought, or the opposi-
tion is meaningless. Nor is the
negativity of mere opposition
sufficient; the Christian must seri-
ously reflect on the positive as-
pects of that which he proposes
as a substitute.

In an effort to remind Chris-
tians once more of what both
Christianity and Communism in-
volve, M. C. D’Arcy, the English
philosopher-theologian, has given
us a very readable book, and in
it he has drawn up an impressive
balance-sheet.

As is to be expected, D’Arcy,
the Jesuit, speaks with the accents
of a Roman Catholic, but there
seems little doubt that in doing
so he speaks in behalf of most
Christians. He accepts the author-
ity of the Roman Catholic Church
to present the authentic teaching
of Christ. For the most part, how-
ever, any Christian will recognize
his own beliefs and convictions,
especially in their opposition to
the salvationism, the creed, and
the morality of the Communist
colossus. We might say, in fact,
that Father D’Arcy is somewhat
more successful in setting forth
the common principles which are
essential to all Christianity than
he is in outlining the principles on
which Communism is based.

One becomes somewhat uneasy
at the facility with which Father
D’Arcy sums up the philosophy of
Marx and Engels—above all, he is
superficial and even inaccurate in

Father Lauer, a priest of the Society
of Jesus, teaches philosophy at Ford-
ham University.

10

presenting the thought of Marx’s
great forerunner, Hegel. Coming
to Lenin and Stalin he is decided-
ly better, but he is unquestionably
at his best in comparing contem-
porary Communist ideology with
the teachings of Christianity. Here
the indictment of Communism
loses nothing of its force nor its

accuracy by being suffused with
Christian charity for those who
hope to create a better world on
the basis of dialectic materialism.

Most important is D’Arcy’s rec-
ognition that Marx evolved more
than a social theory which could
be reconciled even with Christian
thought. “Marx meant his view to
be a complete answer to life and
its problems, to be a philosophy
which was complete in its truth
and the fulcrum to change the
world.”

Because it is this, and because
it is essentially materialist and
atheist in conception, no compro-
mise with Christianity is possible.
It is possible to sympathize with
the over-all social ideals of Marx-
ism; it is even possible to share
its concern with the material
needs of man on earth. But it is
impossible to accept its dogma of
a purely material dynamics of so-
ciety or its studious exclusion of
belief in God as even a tolerable
course for man in his approach to
the problems of life. The only
conclusions which an unpreju-
diced examination of the two po-
sitions will permit is that, despite
superficial similarity of aims,
Christianity and Communism are
diametrically opposed.

The opposition between the two
positions, however, should not be
seen as that between a completely
this-worldly and a completely
other-worldly viewpoint. “Chris-
tianity . . . claims that it can meet
Marx on his own terms and offer
a better program for civil life.”
Christianity is by no means alien
to man’s temporal concerns; rath-
er, it is definitely “committed to
this world, where God became in-

carnate.” The whole of history
since the Incarnation bears the
signature of Christ, and there is
no need that the temporal and the
eternal should conflict.

At the same time, it would be
treason to Christianity to soft-
pedal the supernatural, to ignore
“the folly of the Cross.” The
Christian is well aware of tem-
poral concerns, but for him they
are not ultimate; the finality of
time is in eternity. Here he cannot
agree with the Communist:
“Whereas with Christianity the
end is independent of time, Com-
munism puts it at a future date.”

Nor can he agree with the Com-
munist’s willingness to sacrifice
the present generation for a tem-
poral utopia for some future gen-
erations, precisely because he
“assigns an imperishable reward
to each single individual and gen-
eration.” The Christian, of course,
reco the value and the no-
bility of self-sacrifice, but he sees
it as intelligible only “if the cause
fall within a large philosophy of
life which inculcates other reasons
and motives for living.”

Christianity is not without a
dialectic of history, but it cannot
be a materialistic dialectic nor one
in which the individual is destined
to be swallowed up in the collec-
tivity. Rather, it is a dialectic of
“conscious and unconscious striv-
ing toward a unity and order.” In
such a dialectic, there is not only
room, but a need, for tolerance,
since only thus can both the com-
mon good and individual freedom
be safeguarded.

It is true, of course, that too
many Christians simply use reli-
gion “to oil the machinery of the
State,” to make of it a means to
a temporal end, and an unworthy
one at that. This, however, does
not invalidate the claims of Chris-
tianity. Rather, it puts upon Chris-
tians the responsibility of living
out the principles of charity and
justice, which are not the “inven-
tions of bourgeois capitalism” but
the legacy of Christ, to whom all
look as to their Lord and Master.

——-

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aAarm@OQiv

Theology Between Yesterday and To-
morrow by Joseph L. Hromadka.
The Westminster Press. 106 pp.
$2.75.

When Joseph L. Hromadka, the
distinguished theologian of the
Czech Reformed Church, de-
fended the Soviet action in Hun-
gary in 1956, he caused much
anguish among his friends in the
West. Many who earlier had re-
spected the integrity of his efforts
to reach some understanding be-
tween Christianity and Commu-
nism now feared he had sacrificed
his last claim to independence.
By apologizing for one of the
great crimes of modern history,
he seemed to have made an ulti-
mate surrender to the powers of
the Soviet world.

Earlier in 1956, Professor
Hromadka had delivered a series
of lectures in the University of
Toronto. These lectures, now pub-
lished under the title Theology
Between Yesterday and Tomor-
row, do not excuse this theolo-
gian’s defense of the indefensible,
but they explain, perhaps, what
insights and principles, uncriti-
cally applied, have trapped him in
an impossible position.

The basis of this position is
paradoxical. This book makes
clear that it is Hromadka’s con-
cern for the independence of the
Church which has made him an
apologist for totalitarian regimes,
that it is his thirsting after justice
which has brought him to the de-
fense of injustice.

At the beginning of these lec-
tures Professor Hromadka states
convictions that provide the key to
his thought and, one supposes, to
his present career:

“We are standing amidst deep
and unprecedented changes in the
very structure of human society
. . . Our work in theology and
the Church has been shaken to its
very foundation ... We may...
[pretend] that the turbulent up-
heavals and revolutionary changes
of the present humanity do not
affect in any way the substance
and function of theological work
... And yet, it would be a fate-
ful illusion to establish a bar-
rier between theology and the
world and to presume that a real
theologian can possibly protect
himself from the noise, tensions
and peacelessness of the world.”

For Christians, the “agonizing
question of our time” is “what are
we going to offer to the new so-
ciety?” And “the new society,” this
book takes for granted, is the
Marxist society.

“What is needed,” Hromadka
writes, “is a sincere realization
that—humanly speaking—the fu-
ture of the Christian Church and
theology depend on our courage
to take the revolutionary changes
in the east of Europe and in Asia
as an opportunity to make a fresh
beginning . . . [We must take] the
present moment both as divine
judgment and as a time of grace.”

For a moment let us ignore
the application Professor Hro-
madka makes of his insights. The

insights themselves are, in many
instances, profound. Christianity,
as he insists, is not an ideology; it
transcends all ideologies. It is not
committed to any one civilization;
it speaks to every civilization and
knows, essentially, neither time
nor place. The passing of “Chris-
tendom” must not be unduly
mourned because “Christendom”
was in many ways a counterfeit
thing. And the age that is being
born is a revolutionary age in
which the Church must learn a
new language to communicate its
ancient truths. Theology—the
Church—does stand perplexed “be-
tween yesterday and tomorrow.”

But the irony of Hromadka’s
specific recommendations for “the
new age” is suggested in his brief
Preface. Here he quotes the open-
ing line of Christianity’s ageless
hymn: “Vexilla regis prodeunt”—
“The standards of the king go
forth.”

They do indeed go forth—into
new places and new times. But if
the Word has any meaning for the
affairs of men, Christianity’s ban-
ners are not abjectly dipped be-
fore the injustices of the world;
they must not be carried in
demonic crusades of the West or
of the East. In his concern to res-
cue the Church from too close an
alliance with a “bourgeois” order
that is passing, Professor Hro-
madka would enslave it to a “new
order” that negates both God and
man. Whatever may be the future
of Christianity, it cannot be this.

W.Cc.

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The American Earthquake
by Edmund Wlison. Doubleday-Anchor Books. 676 pp.
$6.00.

The crash of '29 is the earthquake of the title, in this col-
lection of easays and occasional pieces written by the
author over the last thirty-three years. The subject is
public life in America, and Mr. Wilson’s treatment of It Is
unfailingly absorbing.

Radicals and Conservatives
by Willlam M. McGovern and David S&S. Collier. Regnery.
174 pp. $4.00.

in a philosophical inquiry into the facets of liberalism, the
authors attempt to identify and reconcile left and right
wing elements within the larger structure of the demo-
cratic tradition.

A Seldier with the Arabs
by Sir John Bagot Glubb. Harper. 458 pp. $6.00.

Glubb Pasha writes of his long service with the Arab Le-
gion In Jordan In a book which aptly conveys the turmoil
of the Arab world, as well as an awareness of its political
destiny.

Reflections on America
by Jacques Maritain. Scribner’s. 205 pp. $3.50.

A warm appraisal of American traits and institutions by

one of our most distinguished visitors, this book dispenses
with the hostile clichés In favor of a balanced and pene-
trating analysis.

The Voyage of the Lucky Dragon
by Ralph E. Lapp. Harper. 200 pp. $3.50

The story of the Ili-fated Japanese fishing boat that suf-
fered the radioactive effects of a U. S. nuclear bomb blast

off Bikini in 1954, this book emerges as an effective Indict-
ment of American top-level security methods.

Vol. Ii: World Pr
By Arthur Walworth. T adeeanlay Green. $15.00.

Weedrew Wilson. Vol. |: ag Prophet. 436 pp.
ophet. 439

The author of this latest blography of Wilson has un-—
earthed much new material. Of particular interest is the
section In the second volume devoted to Wilson’s role in
the Paris Peace Conference.

The Economy of the American People: Progress, Problems, Pros-

by Gerhard Colm and Theodore Geiger. National Plan-
ning Assn. 168 pp. $2.00.

The National Planning Association continues its admir
able publications service with this survey of American
living standards and productivity, which Is especially use- |
ful as a reference guide in the present economic crisis.

worldview

A JOURNAL OF ETHICS AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS
volume 1, no. 3 | March 1958

WORLDVIEW, successor to the World Alliance News
Letter, is published monthly by The Church Peace Union.
Subscription: $2.00 per year.

Address: 170 East 64th Street, New York 21, N. Y.

EDITORIAL BOARD

A. William Loos

William Clancy, Editor
John R. Inman William J. Cook

Editorial Assistant, Arlene Croce
CONTENTS

pak gem | in WORLDVIEW ronresent She views of the authors,
not necessarily the position ef The Church Peace Union.

Worldview

170 East 64th Street
New York 21, N. Y.