Making Europe Unconquerable

...Note how prominently conquest of physical space, the nation to say, the dancer's all-consuming daily Baryshnikov was displayed - both as whose manifest destiny extends all the routine is no picnic...

...lent role of the Polish Army, first government study...

...Where everything was turning to Nothing tests the morale of a nation as words...

...cumstances when the country's military strategy, civilian-based defense would With advance preparations, Sharp ar- forces either have already suffered defeat eliminate the two most dangerous fea- gues, civilian-based defense can do even or have themselves seized power in a tures of nuclear deterrence, the risk of better...

...In so do- support and military strategy applies as posing an alternative that cannot be dis- ing, it is useful for deterring and defend- much to alliances as it does to individual missed out of hand...

...We find in this lence was latent rather than entirely 1946-64 (1974), Kinnell has a lovely latest volume a preoccupation with what forsworn and where the oppressor regime poem for Robert Frost which contains Coleridge cared about in his finest "con- or its military and popular supporters certain lines that seem a fit epigraph for versation" poems...

...the sacrifices demanded by what passes Like "no first use," civilian-based de- further effect of subverting the loyalty of for strategy are potentially enormous...

...Love, ture whole, on making words that reveal regime in the Philippines is a recent Love' of things, duty, he said that wholeness, and on using those words example: it would not have succeeded And made his way back to the shel- to burn some kind of purification into us without, in effect, a slow-moving mili- ter all...

...Social advancement in America is embodiment of Narcissus...

...If allies, because that attack invites retalia- instead allied themselves with Aquino...

...Attacking forms: symbolic protests, civil disobedi- the nature of power: all political power is the Soviet Union itself would pose the ence, social boycotts, strikes and eco- rooted in and continually dependent upon dilemma of extended deterrence in its nomic boycotts, and other, more extreme the cooperation and obedience of the sub- sharpest form for the United States bemethods of noncompliance, defiance, jects and institutions of the society...

...Talleyrand put it no less bluntly launched (Europe), but against the timately by making a conquered country when he said it was possible to do every- source of the attack, the United States or politically indigestible and its people un- thing with the point of a sword except sit its military forces and installations...

...Of course, from the corpo- upward, then at least horizontal...

...the battlefield is likely to be the Federal of the Ruhr in 1923, Czechoslovak resis- Some proponents of civilian-based deRepublic itself...

...It can take many based defense taps a crucial insight into those weapons for security...

...Worse yet, nothing so departure, which it is...

...To the extent that seizure of power...

...Adand calling for further study...

...Thus, in the Dance, the art of bodies filling space and than the neighborhood bar...

...In fact, it's an ordeal dancer and as freshly-minted U.S...

...current circumstances civilian-based dealternative strategy...

...We find a poet intent - shared important norms with the op- his own work in the mid-eighties: on making himself and children and napressed...

...That is a point worth serious such proposals by simply ignoring them...

...mark - is of someone who spends all of view, it doesn't hurt one bit that the Our sprawling national geography beckday perfecting his or her image in a mir- best known names in American dance - ons us to assert our freedom by asserting ror...

...The strategy may have the on it...

...Nonviolent re- words about the days of a child, about the sistance has obviously enjoyed some N an earlier collection of his verse, many relationships of love in our lives (or success in this century, but mostly in A The Avenue Bearing the Initial of lives in our love), and about how time circumstances where the threat of vio- Christ into the New World: Poems rewrites all relationships...

...years of Polish resistance to the imposi- substitute for those means in special cirAs an alternative to current NATO tion of martial law under Soviet pressure...

...So far, however, ing not only against military invasion and states...

...that the deeper link between the dance there's no denying that it appeals to Ultimately, dance thrives in this counboom and the popularity of jogging and people with a strong, solipsistic urge to try because it provides such concrete, but exercise more generally is not their retreat from the outside world...

...15 August 1986: 441...

...The overthrow of the Marcos He turned...

...Even Sharp, whose Sharp tries to make a case for the fense would make the most sense as parlifelong work on the strategy of non- Soviet Union's ` special vulnerability to tial supplement, an insurance policy violence makes him ideally suited to civilian-based defense...

...tacking Warsaw Pact forces in Eastern Commonweal: 440 Europe would pose the same dilemma, if tary coup, in which the armed forces re- threatening to resist a Soviet invasion and not for the United States, then for its fused to turn their guns on the people and then carrying out internal repression...

...ballet barre is infinitely more successful belong to Russian defectors...

...in Sharp's words, "Civilian- a strategy that contemplates relying on nonviolent resistance...

...undidactic metaphors for the American mutual physicality, but the relative ease The widespread perception of dance as conception of freedom, a yearning that with which both promote a turning in- an apolitical, narcissistic art form ac- manifests itself primarily in the pursuit of ward, a retreat from the world-at-large...

...vance preparations for civilian-based deappear to leave him in the tactically ad- And lack of advanced preparation is not fense could reinforce increased reliance vantageous position of responding to likely to explain away the limited and on non-nuclear means for European decriticism of civilian-based deterrence and short-lived success that the strategy has fense...

...Atgovernable...

...NATO is prepared to respond to conventhey have paid any attention at all to the As a critical tool, civilian-based de- tional attack by initiating the use of nuidea, they have denounced it as a radical fense underscores the necessity of public clear weapons...

...The purpose is to deny cooperation and obedience can be with- against the site from which the attack was any would-be attacker his objectives, ul- drawn...

...Battlefield use of nu- cesses of improvised civilian-based de- They may, but Poland is not evidence in clear weapons would pose that dilemma fense against invaders: German resis- point, because Moscow had an alternamost acutely for West Germany because tance to French and Belgian occupation tive to invasion...

...Yet even the against catastrophic failure of military make the case for civilian-based defense, most ardent anti-Communist might not means, not as a way-station to renunciawavers between calling for its adoption want to put his or her belief in Soviet tion of military means altogether...

...egy, states may well lack the means to fined largely to opponents of current sustain it and the will to carry it out...

...Western Europe...

...And when it comes to shutting out the household names like Nureyev, our mobility, by indulging our fear of the rest of the world beyond the self, the Makarova, Baryshnikov - invariably stillness and our mania for motion...

...Yet, even though civilian- tack from within...

...Yet attention has thus far been con- Ballinger, $14.95, 250 pp...

...Our stereotyp- lavish so many of their tax-deductible invariably a matter of "mobility" (if not ical image of the ballet dancer - which, dollars on it...

...Further study, moreover, is not likely to prove conclusive enough to still the two critical doubts about civilian-based Speaking with tongues of memory defense: whether or not Western polities can sustain it for long and whether or not THE PAST No longer sheltering him, the it can sucessfully deter and defend Galway Kimell house against Soviet attack...

...Without wideobject of more and more serious atten- Gene Sharp spread public acceptance of their strattion...

...counts in large part for the willingness of (bodily) happiness and in physical mobilThe dancer is in many ways the very Exxon and other major corporations to ity...

...In so doing, it would bolster the defense by calling for further study, by had against the Soviet Union in the past...

...political underpinning of NATO stratgovernments as well as outsiders...

...severely as prolonged occupation...

...This would internal weakness to such a stern test...

...Sharp seems to favor all pre-emptive war and the possibility of empower its people in advance of an at- three possibilities, depending on the exescalation...

...Needless freedom...

...fense provides a critical tool for pointing the attacker's troops and functionaries, The relationship between political up the flaws in current NATO strategy by even inducing them to mutiny...

...civilian-based defense is to deter Soviet tion in kind against NATO forces in Sharp cites other, at least partial, suc- leaders, they must believe it is effective...

...Precisely at the point of tance to Russian control and ouster of the fense see it as a supplement to military utmost peril, therefore, the unity of Dubcek government for eight months means, others as a total replacement for NATO might be most threatened - and after the 1968 invasion, and the five military means, still others as a partial by a choice of its own devising...

...That cause it risks Soviet retaliation, not and disruption...

...Yet a state may be reluctant to coup d'etat...

...Yet under tool, it is unlikely to muster support as an cieties, like Northern Ireland...

...Yet Even in Poland, where civilian-based de- egy, especially when an attack is imthis stance is unlikely to move govern- fense did enjoy some temporary success, minent and alliance unity is most ments, who are inclined to respond to the key factor may have been the ambiva- threatened...

...Nothing so threatens the unity of governments have confined themselves occupation, but also against an internal NATO as its doctrine of first use - that to trying to do just that...

...Few David Lee Garrison Everything, in a gentle, graceful, unaspeoples have been able to withstand the suming way, is turning into words: temptation to collaborate...

...Books: OBSTRUCTING AGGRESSION C IVILIAN-BASED deterrence and de- MA11I EUROPE UNCONQUERABLE Civilian-based defense also underfense is an idea whose time has come, THE POTENTIAL OF CIVILIAN-BASED scores the necessity of political support at least in Europe, where it has been the DETERRENCE AND DEFENSE for military strategy...

...That NATO strategy, much as the idea of "no Leon V. 8lgal is especially so in the nuclear age when first use" has on this side of the Atlantic...

...If one drinks public mind at least, American dance be- time, has found its happiest home in the to forget, might one dance to avoid comes associated with the flight toward nation that equates freedom with the "knowing" in the first place...

...acquiescence for the success of military undermines public support for NATO as Civilian-based defense is, in a phrase, conquest...

...citi- way to the moon...

...That reluctance would tent of the society's advance preparations based defense may be useful as a critical be especially pronounced in divided so- for waging such a defense...

...We feel as it turns out, is not all that wide off the rations' not-entirely-disinterested point most free when we're "on the move...

...Houghton Mifflin, $5.95, 57 pp...