Clausewitz: Visions of a Nuclear War

...It is surprising that you have done as well as you have...

...But there is also another phrase that might be used more accurately to describe these heretofore unrevealed revelations...

...The world respects power, and the world will the more respect vast power, especially when in sheer grandiosity it is witness to serious purposes and unrelenting will...

...So as things are going, you Americans are accepting strategic inferiority and probably will be inferior in almost all categories by the mid-1980s...

...I never said that...

...You dislike it, as we do who know it, as most of you do not, from personal experience...

...Okay, Mr...

...Perhaps you've heard the American expression: telling-it-like-it-is...

...You have been very lucky thus far, while most others have been very unlucky...

...Oddly enough, he, as do I, thinks beyond deterrence...

...even though the foe may be respected sometimes, he remains the necessary object of rivalry...

...Osnos...

...I am greatly misunderstood on this subject by liberals and totalitarians both...

...There were more Russian civilians killed just in the siege of Leningrad, in World War II, than Americans killed in all wars since the time your country became independent...

...I sympathize with your fundamental view of a strategic balance...

...You yearn for a stable equilibrium, as a basis for eternal strategic peace, yet you find yourselves caught in a strategic conception of deterrence—mutual assured destruction—so horrible that it has little utility in all the less horrible contingencies where your adversary's forces advance...

...One of your Americans once said that God protects women and children and the United States of America, but he may have been making a joke...

...You think they can be brought around to your way of thinking about the ways the world ought to work...

...But up here, as some of you would say, these are academic concerns...

...Lenin, and his followers since, take my statement to mean that war and politics are one and the same...

...How do they misrepresent me...

...You furthermore seem to be under the impression that your welfare and security are best preserved by making your country the ecologically cleanest and your statesmen the most honest, open, and candid...

...I must go back and join my friends at the long banquet table where we eternally discuss these matters...

...One of these was Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), the brilliant Prussian strategic writer...

...The military at all times should be subject to the constraints of political goals...

...In my copy of Brezhnev: Pages From His Life pages 161-192 were repeated whereas pages 193-224 were missing altogether...

...Osnos, there are Brezhnev's moving and intimately personal views on detente...

...But—and here I come to the essential point of my advice to your President—they know as I know that arms serve not only the strategic purposes of war...

...You Americans easily forget the price of peace...

...For example, did you really know that "a characteristic feature of Soviet reality is that there is no unemployment in the Soviet Union...

...My other colleague up here, de Tocqueville, put it to you bluntly when he said that your kind of government makes it almost impossible to pursue any fixed design in foreign affairs...

...He must avoid the frivolous notion that aggressors always want war, and that they sit around planning to start one at some date...

...Aggressors almost never want war...

...I am informed that this is now the case with your country when your President occasionally objects to the activities of your adversary and his mercenary Cubans in Africa...

...Politics for them is a friend-foe relationship...

...They have a confidence in the future and know that the right to work recorded in the Constitution is a reality" ? Were you truly aware, Mr...

...They tell you that when you oppose what they desire, you heighten tensions, and this gives rise to the danger of war...

...Now as to my views on this subject of war...

...They want peace and they want the political objects which sometimes can only be obtained by fighting...

...Their attitude towards politics was forged in a cauldron which steels the nerves of the hardiest...

...Recall what I said: War is the continuation of politics by an admixture of other means...

...I only wish Paul Seabury is professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley...

...You had one when you had the doctrine of containment...

...and this is necessary...

...But he has a terrible temper, nevertheless...

...It was presented to the symposium, and greeted with general amazement by all...

...What I say is that at all times—both in peace and war—the political object is always the highest, and that wars conducted with no reference to the political are mindless exercises in human destruction...

...You demand that your intelligence services behave like Boy Scouts...

...It was bad enough, he says, when some Russian characters took him for a ride, but then came all those Chinese who completely turned upside down everything he has written...

...Mutual deterrence is the way you organize your thoughts...

...One of your worst traits is that you have encapsulated the idea of strategy within the idea of deterrence, rather than seeing deterrence as one among many aspects of strategy...

...You may recall that Lenin only got round to reading me in 1914 or so...

...Up here in Valhalla we were all under the impression that tapes were something which only your President had, so you may imagine how flattered I am to make use of them also...

...These pressures take the forms of psychological warfare, propaganda, military threats, KGB operations, and an activist diplomacy...

...This has been going on for more than half a century, since Lenin first preempted my work and made me into a Bolshevik...

...But now even the inventor of containment, George Kennan, has repudiated himself...

...your former Secretary of State once sighed...

...There are many, many other revelations in this book about which I would be extremely surprised to hear you say honestly: "Oh, I already knew that...

...Right now, as you turn away from any serious projects which might help constrain the Soviet Union's relentless expansion, you approve your President's style of preaching loudly on human rights all over the world while carrying no stick, except a tiny one which he uses to slap at your less-than-perfect allies and friends...

...He finds unacceptable the idea that war is unacceptable...

...They can behave prudently because of this, and typically do so...

...When he is hampered and checked, as he is now, you wonder why your government is indecisive...

...a wise statesman does not squander limited resources on foolish dreams, as Hitler did, to bring ruin on his country...

...A preacher's life is not a happy one...

...In peacetime, you want your leaders to be held to the highest puristic standards of ethics in an otherwise very impure world, while in wartime you impatiently demand them either to deliver the goods immediately or get out...

...Because you hate arms races you think you can persuade your adversaries to accept projects to bring them to a halt...

...At all times struggle goes on between the "camps," as they call them...

...when they are resisted, they-feel justified in their own terms in considering those who resist them to be warmongers...

...Détente means readiness to settle differences and disputes not by force, not by threats and saber rattling, but by peaceful means, at the negotiating table...

...Your adversary views the strategic balance as a correlation of forces, regional and global, political and military, and as always changing...

...You Americans The American Spectator August/ September 1978 15 through all your history have had a very odd view of it...

...The only physical damage your nation has suffered directly on account of foreign wars in the twentieth century, on your mainland, was a fire-bomb attack by the Japanese which burned up a few trees...

...I say that the statesman at all times must strive to reconcile means and ends, and must not set ends higher than those which his means can obtain...

...Liberals took what I said and dropped the clause "by an admixture of other means," and thus made me appear as ridiculous, as an advocate of pure war...

...You think of yourselves as dedicated tutors of backward, if teachable, students...

...He goes on and on like that, and I try to calm him down...

...It is simply a way of behaving in a world which is viewed as a battleground where differing social systems coexist, and where "scientific socialism" is deemed to represent the triumphalist consummation of history...

...you let lapse your own forces to give them a spell to catch up, and when they pass you by in all sorts of categories of weaponry, as they already have, you sigh deep missionary sighs...

...What on earth would you use it for...

...and in so doing comes upon the question of war very differently than you...

...you want their files to be an open book so that the whole world, and your adversaries, can read them...

...Your adversary once was just a regional power, in Stalin's time...

...For you, they are not...

...They also prefer to get what they want unopposed...

...The American Spectator August/September 1978 17...

...First of all, let me say that it is a unique honor to be asked to make some words of advice for your President...

...An "interesting" table in one of the displays in the Museum of History of the Moldavian Communist Party contains the following figures: In 1949 there were 375,000 collective farmers who made 110 million rubles in cash and kind for their work...

...Your adversary does not want a war with you...

...In war, you dress up your national interests in fancy clothes and think of yourselves as world saviours, rather than as prudential advocates of basic national interests...

...You punish your wartime leaders for not having made a perfect peace, and you often chain your peacetime leaders in such ways that they cannot by strong and cautious statesmanship preserve what peace you have...

...When he actually has power you accuse him of conducting an Imperial Presidency...

...By coincidence and by a stroke of luck I was personally able to persuade Clausewitz to tape-record a brief message...

...All of us up here always worry about our reputations and about the ways people misrepresent us and what we have written...

...The last of the unemployed got a job back in the early 1930s...

...For you to think that the grandiose panoply of weapons which your adversaries yearly augment is merely a ridiculous waste of resources, energy, and talents is a fundamental mistake when seen in the light of ordinary Soviet behavior...

...Isometimes think your President, and some of his advisors, and many of your liberals, tirelessly reconstruct the Soviet Union with hypotheses which fit your own aspirations for a better world...

...Since then the Soviet people have completely forgotten the labor exchange and what it means to be dismissed...

...I were able to be with you personally on this occasion, but in any event Professor Seabury has kindly made available to me the opportunity to record my remarks on what he calls tapes...

...As I see it now, you have no strategy...

...The text which follows is a faithful transcription of his remarks and is published with his permission...

...They know enough of the facts of life to know that recklessness in the use of military power can bring a train of horrible consequences...

...My country in World War I went down to shameful defeat in part because of this...

...Détente means definite trust and the ability to reckon with one another's legitimate interests" ? This may all be boiler-plate to you, Mr...

...my countryman Ludendorff didn't...

...Let me now turn to the ways in which the totalitarians misread me...

...Arms, and even nuclear ones, are in the first instance political resources...

...I have been asked, by Professor Seabury, to join in giving some advice to your President...

...But, if you're saying this, you're wrong—w-r-o-n-g...

...He does not yearn, as you do, for a golden era of strategic equality and balance, wherein each shall equally constrain the other...

...I tell him that, although eternity is not fair to him, it is unfair to me also...

...them in your conviction that down deep they harbor the same humanitarian instincts and goals that you do...

...That meant in World War II you strained every muscle and used every bit of technological equipment to subdue completely your enemy, and you laid aside every other consideration, including highly important strategic-political ones, in favor of the single aim of unconditional surrender...

...Osnos, that "as a result of the complete triumph of the socialist social relations, the Soviet state, which arose as a dictatorship of the proletariat, has developed into a state of the whole people" ? Did you know that Brezhnev himself emphasizes that "Communists have no privileges save the one privilege of giving more of themselves than others to the common cause and of fighting andworking better than others for its triumph...

...They say that the principles of war apply in peacetime as they apply in times of armed conflict, and that therefore there is never peace...

...When you get into a war you want it over fast so that you can turn to other affairs...

...by 1951 there were 3,388,000 collective farmers who earned 567 million rubles...

...but ever afterward I have been a household name in the Soviet Union, particularly in the military academies...

...arms control and disarmament policy...

...I say he must control his means when these threaten to overwhelm the political objective...

...Your leaders often appease your desires by concocting bold new programs of such conceptual gigantism as to preclude realization...

...Your adversary, more prudent, collects his power in all categories, envisaging less apocalyptic circumstances where force could be brought into play...

...My friend Karl Marx is always upset...

...They are a medium of exchange in the marketplace of world politics...

...Thus, in 1949 the average collective farmer was paid less than 300 rubles a year, but in 1951 under Brezhnev's reign, when the Moldavian countryside "took a big stride along the road of socialist reorganization," the average collective farmer was earning less than 200 rubles a year...

...Osnos, you're probably saying that this is a big book and you missed this one revelation...

...Communists have no special rights, save the one right of always being in the forefront, of being where things are the hardest" ? Were you fully conscious of the fact, Mr...

...You thrive on moralizations both in peace and war...

...What in heaven's name is strategic superiority...

...You "mirror-image...

...Good luck...

...My main point is about the problem of war...

...He should not cut down his nation's international security requirements to a level corresponding to the facile and simplistic judgments of those who see arms and arms races merely as the cause of war...

...This achievement in agriculture in the republic, we are told, "vividly demonstrated the vitality of the collective-farm system and the advantages of large-scale socialist agriculture, which made the use of machinery and intensive diversified farming possible...

...I will be sharp...

...A word is in order about the origins of the following, astonishing piece...

...But their way of looking at the world, tell your President, is very different from yours...

...You are ambivalent about the kinds of powers your President should have in dealing with enemies and friends...

...Footnote: I hate to end on a sour note, but I do have a small complaint about this book...

...Osnos, that you knew that in the late 1930s, when he was Secretary of the Dneprodzerzhinsk Regional Party Committee, Brezhnev "inquired into everything, even the smallest details, including how many amateur art circles there were at the palaces of culture and clubs...

...However busy he was, he would ask the charwoman at the Regional Committee about the health of her grandson, inquire of an official of the Regional Committee about the news from his son in the armed forces, or congratulate a girl from the typists' pool on her marriage" ? And last, but certainly not least, Mr...

...But he does not starve his armed forces, thinking that by so doing he can set a high example of peaceableness to other nations...

...One of the most important points I made in my book, On War, was thatwar was a continuation of politics, by an admixture of other means...

...They are in no particular hurry in advancing their goals...

...Now he is a global power...

...There must be a proportionality in all things...

...When you do think up ways by which wars may be prevented, you think you can easily convert your adversaries to the logic which led you to your conclusions...

...Osnos, that Brezhnev believes "the Soviet Union stands firmly for non-interference in the internal affairs of all states, for respect of their sovereign rights and of the inviolability of their territory" ? And can you say, Mr...

...Several weeks ago, the World Without War Council of Northern California sponsored a day-long symposium on U.S...

...Robert Pickus, its organizer, decided that one panel should be devoted to the thoughts which several major historical figures might convey to President Carter on this subject...

...Paul Seabury Clausewitz: Visions of a Nuclear War War is still a continuation of politics by other means—even nuclear war...

...My countryman Bismarck knew this...

...It is to them the very coinage of high politics, for, as in the case of gold reserves stored in mountain vaults, it is known to be translatable into means of influence even when it is hoarded...

...During your detente, while you have been negotiating for mutual force reductions in Europe, your adversary has been relentlessly increasing his forces...

...You want your government to conduct its foreign policy in a goldfish bowl, although no one else does, and you report in your papers all the things your intelligence services do, to make it easier for your adversaries and worse for your friends...

...You gave him the chance to demonstrate his acceptance of your view of this and he rejected it...

...You have a democracy, which few other nations do, and you have to know the price you pay for keeping it...

...He is respected for this, and feared, as reallydetermined powers always have been...

...You are an impatient and sporadically idealistic people...

...You look upon the supposed strategic balance in a confined way, as though that balance applied only to specified categories of nuclear weapons with intercontinental targets...

...For them to take this view does not mean at all that they connive at actual war with you...

...Conflict, they say, is the essence of politics...

...In peacetime you despise war and you despise power politics...

...I have spoken too long...

...When you were done with that war, you dismantled your military forces and went back to peace...

...Have another goblet of ambrosia, I say to him...

...Their nation has experienced gigantic catastrophes in war and has survived in the past...

...they prefer to get what they want without it...

...You once prided yourselves on a navy second to none, when your only competitor for that role was a friendly nation, England...

...The pressures are unremitting even if from time to time the active locales of pressure, and the means, change...

...They can be used to obtain political goals...

...He claims his reputation has been hijacked by a bunch of gangsters (as he calls them...

...but I challenge your innocent insouciance about the deterioration of it...

...You think they will learn of the realities you portray, and accept your formula of strategic parity...

...But your adversary nevertheless plans for a war which he could win and survive...

...They have had 16 The American Spectator August/ September 1978 long experience in dealing with grave issues of political and national survival...

...As your General Marshall said during that war, it must be finished quickly because Americans will not stand for long wars...

...When your only competitor now is your sworn adversary, you are by your deeds accepting inferiority...

...It is very important for you to understand, and your President, too, that this disposition to regard politics as always conflictual does not necessarily arise from hatred (although hatred may sometimes enliven it...

...Before reading his book, could you say, without qualification, that you were already fully cognizant of the fact that he believes "the edifice of detente cannot be allowed to collapse under the onslaught of the protagonists of the cold war and the arms race...

...In Europe your forces and those of your allies are well below any capability of stopping a Soviet offensive...

...War, to you, is something which happens somewhere else...