THOUGHTS ON THE NEXT WAR

...Even with an effective Sino-Western alliance, there is no guarantee of defeating the Russians, but without it there is hardly the possibility...

...It is the grim specter of race that haunts the EastWest conflict and requires that conflict to be resolved now, in its present form, if it is ever to be resolved at all...

...Given the basic differences in social organization and ideology between Western capitalism and Soviet totalitarianism, given the fact that both are dynamic and expanding systems (each in its own way, of course), and that their post-World War II spheres of influence apparently no longer satisfy either's need for further growth, with the result that each increasingly encroaches on the other's sphere—given these facts, a realistic scenario of the East-West conflict ought to count on a military climax...

...but it falls short of proving that detente will therefore be successfully consummated...

...If the present form of the conflict—between Russia and America—has one redeeming virtue, it is that no racial factor obtrudes...

...The reason that "there is no alternative to detente" is not that "war is unthinkable...

...For the consequences of such a war, even assuming a victory over the Russians, would be as intolerable as the consequences of defeat by the Russians...

...It is difficult to be categorical about such matters, but one feature of any such conflict stands out rather clearly, especially since Brzezinski's recent trip to China: an effective fighting alliance with the People's Republic of China has got to be part of any Western strategy that seriously envisions victory in a war with Russia...

...If a conventional world war between the Soviet bloc and the Western allies is possible, how likely is it...

...But that which is difficult to invoke in the present form of the East-West conflict would be even more difficult to stifle in its future form, when totalitarian leadership will have passed to China...

...A rapprochement between the two systems could conceivably resolve each of their economic problems—but so could a war...

...This is often accompanied by a soundtrack emphasizing the soothing effects of commerce between former enemies...

...For various reasons, the West's capacity to win a conventional war against the Soviet Union is doubtful...

...But at the same time it weakens the ability of deterrence to inhibit all forms of warfare between the superpowers, precisely because it lessens the risk of such wars escalating beyond the conventional level...

...For the Chinese succession will inject a sinister new issue into the East-West conflict, the issue of race...

...to (continued on page 483) 479 COMMUNICATION (continued from p. 479) superpower status...

...Even though the real roots of the conflict will remain what they are today—institutional and historical—their coincidence with the racial factor and its immense demagogic potential would soon transform a conflict between differently organized social systems into an atavistic war between races...

...This unprecedented factor arises out of the role China may be expected to play in a future conflict between Russia and the West...

...Each system is threatened, although neither can afford to admit it, by its own characteristic economic crisis...

...This development strengthens deterrence insofar as it raises the threat of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), and correspondingly reduces the likelihood of a thermonuclear exchange taking place, even in the course of a conventional war between the superpowers...

...The trouble with this show is that someone like Solzhenitsyn is always ruining it by standing up in the audience to ask what it profits us to gain a Pepsi-Cola franchise in Pinsk if it costs us our souls to get it...

...More civilized elements of both countries' elites, which tried to resist a racial definition of the conflict, would be crushed by its elemental force...

...For the threat of MAD removes the incentive to escalate beyond the conventional level...

...Russians are not readily distinguishable as human beings from the arch-fiends of Imperialism, nor are Americans from the Godless red atheists of the Kremlin...

...Similarly, the prospect of a totalitarian China enjoying superpower status—a future danger—would not in itself excuse a defeatist attitude toward the present danger, Russia, if war comes...

...It is quite thinkable, and moreover not at all unlikely, considering the interests at stake, the contradictions between the two sides, and the difficulty of compromise...

...And despotic regimes are usually caught up in one sort of economic crisis or another...

...But it may no longer be regarded as reasonable—not even in the sense that World War II was reasonable...

...A peaceful resolution of the conflict between two powerful social systems as different as the Western and the Soviet would be unprecedented in the annals of international relations...

...It possesses considerable descriptive value, whatever one thinks of its Marxian underpinnings...

...What they lack—modern military hardware—the West has the capacity to provide...

...The Chinese have the manpower, the organization, and the geographical position to open up the necessary second front against the Russians...

...But the Soviet Union is nearing nuclear parity with the United States, and, according to some, may already have achieved it...

...483...

...empirebuilding— war—has always served as one of their most dynamic activities for this very reason...

...The economic justification of detente usually begins with a vision of fabulous profits purportedly awaiting Western business once detente progresses to the point of allowing expanded trade and investment between the two superpowers and their allies...

...The answer is that if it is possible, it is quite likely...

...It follows that economic matrimony is in the interests of both...

...It is a bleak historical fact that never have two dynamic and expanding, but mutually contradictory, social systems impinged on one another as the two superpowers do today without the conflict between them eventuating in a decisive war...

...Even so, the prospect of an aftermath to the next war that features a new bifurcation of the world, in which China succeeds to the role hitherto played by Russia, raises questions extremely pertinent to the debate over detente...

...But the only available markets, complete with built-up economic infrastructures and disciplined working classes, are inaccessible to capitalism so long as the Cold War endures, because they are to be found in the Communist bloc...

...Detente is a policy goal for both sides, an end in itself, and toward its realization certain formerly "unthinkable" compromises are warranted...

...There is enough truth in this prophecy to give it a certain demagogic effectiveness—and enough demagoguery to justify disregarding it...

...To the extent that positive human values are at stake in the East-West conflict today—and there are such values, on both sides—these would evaporate in the conflict to come...

...The whole show seems intended to suggest that the austerities of the Cold War ought to give way to the perhaps less noble but certainly more gratifying process of mutual enrichment...

...In other words, an all-out, conventional-type war, a world war, between the Soviet bloc and the Western allies, being "thinkable" in a way that thermonuclear war is not, invalidates the argument that detente is the only realistic way of resolving the East-West conflict...

...Since such a war is unthinkable, detente is the only realistic way of resolving the East-West conflict...

...478 Indeed, considered dispassionately as a solution to the East-West conflict, war has the distinct advantage over detente of bypassing the difficult task of political compromise between two antagonistic social systems whose normative orders conflict at so many points as to give all efforts at such compromise the appearance of "a covenant with Death and an agreement with Hell...

...BUT THERE is an unprecedented factor to be considered in the event of war between the Soviet bloc and the Western alliance...

...This explanation of detente has the ring of truth...

...Its implications reestablish detente as a mandatory solution of the East-West conflict, even though it will, if achieved, be an unprecedented solution...

...But the two crises complement each other in a peculiar way, so that what looks like a crisis in one system can be regarded as a solution when viewed from the other...

...And that is why detente must not be regarded as a passing diplomatic episode, or a clever strategic ploy aimed at weakening the enemy...

...The audience generally goes away with a highly unflattering impression of the true motive of detente's supporters: sheer greed...

...This crisis reflects capitalism's saturation of available markets in the West and compels the opening of new ones...

...Others question the highly selective reading of history that ignores the numerous wars fought between countries with flourishing commercial relationships...

...It will be recalled that, after years of Keynesean tinkering with a depressed American economy, Roosevelt in the end found it was rearmament and war that revived the economy...

...Neither side can credibly portray the other as a subhuman species worthy of annihilation...

...It corresponds to the economic facts in both the West and the Soviet bloc...

...According to this view, the current Western slump in economic growth, rising unemployment, and rampant inflation signify not a temporary dip in business activity but a long-term decline headed toward genuine economic crisis: a depression...

...It rests on the notion that deterrence can only operate during peacetime, and that once war broke out between the superpowers, it would be bound to escalate to the thermonuclear level...

...This prospect of war between the superpowers constitutes the other main argument used by detente's apologists, who contend that the only real alternative to their policy is the disappearance of the world, or a great portion of it, into a mushroom cloud...

...Chinese totalitarianism will emerge from the war vastly strengthened in power and influence, much as the consequence of the Grand Alliance between Russia and the West to defeat Hitler was to deliver up half of Europe to Stalinist control and raise the U.S.S.R...

...The roots of the East-West conflict are institutional and historical...

...The Communist countries, on the other hand, having completed the first phase of modernization by means of totalitarian mobilization techniques, now find themselves caught up in the economic crisis characteristic of their system—insufficient capital for further economic growth, beyond the first crude stage of industrialization, due to an inability to lower the cost of consumer goods, which in turn would create a mass market based on expanded consumer demand...

...There is a more sophisticated economic argument, actually more of an explanation of detente than an argument for it, that one hears in radical circles...

...Daunting as that consequence was, few would contend that it was worse than the alternative, a Hitler victory...

...ECONOMIC NECESSITY may be the foundation of detente, but upon a given foundation more than one superstructure can be raised...

...It must therefore be presumed as a condition of victory...

...The marriage may not be made in heaven, but then neither were capitalism or Communism in the first place...

...Moreover, it is unlikely that this military imbalance will change in the foreseeable future, except to grow more favorable to the Soviet Union...

...It asserts that much more is at stake in detente than simple greed and shows how much both systems need each other...

...Neither side's propagandists are able to harness the passions of race to the many institutional and historical factors dividing their social systems...

...Victory on such terms, however, will bring with it certain consequences—foremost among them that victory over Russia will not bring an end to the East-West conflict...

...The goal of a Western victory in the next war, therefore, presupposes that the Chinese play a role equivalent to that played by the Russians in the last war...