Guest Column

...and there seems little likelihood of the Russians accepting any inspection system, foolproof or otherwise...

...That dogma, restated in the communique of the NATO conference last December, asserts that the Communists are bent on achieving "world domination" by either subversion or war...

...Both sides also would like to improve their strategic positions if they can—which makes the prospects for disarmament dim...

...Nor have they shown any inclination to modify their old demand that we pull back from our overseas bases...

...Second, such recognition will prepare us to live for decades in a continuation of responsibility, anxiety, tension and frustration, an experience which our young nation has never before faced...

...Hitler might be compared with Napoleon...

...GUEST COLUMN By Reinhold Niebuhr A Predicament We Share With Russia While experts assess the damage to us occasioned by the Soviet suspension of nuclear tests, I would like to hazard one observation and one admonition concerning this long, tortuous dialogue between the two power blocs...

...but this would mean capitulation to Russian power, particularly since they are more advanced in the production of long-range missiles than we are...

...To this contemporary evidence we must add the evidence from history that disarmament has always been consequent upon, not prerequisite to, relaxed tensions...

...At least we should admit that the Russians, like us, do not want to start the ultimate conflict and that, if it does start, it will be by some miscalculation...

...Now the Communists' curious dogma is that the "logic of history" will give them final victory...

...Their system, abhorrent to us, does not seem as abhorrent to the Asian world, where Communism's curious mixture of nationalism and internationalism seems very plausible to former "subject" peoples harboring resentments against "imperialism...

...We are, in short, touching upon another aspect of the common predicament in which the two giant nations find themselves...

...Indeed, with the possibility of exploiting our embarrassment over their abolition of nuclear tests, they will hardly be prepared to come to an agreement with us...

...The Communists are committed to the dogma that capitalism, in the desperation of its decay, will resort to war...

...Yet, it also appears that we have been too slow in acknowledging the common predicament in which we and the Russians stand...

...We must not make the mistake of equating Communist totalitarianism with Nazism...

...Of course, the Communists have proved that they will use military force when it is to their advantage, but the idea that they are plotting world domination, by any means, is rather too simple...

...Therefore, they speak of their side as the "peace camp" and endlessly repeat slogans about the "imperialists" which they must know are untrue—particularly since we gave pathetic evidence in the crises over Hungary and Suez that we would sacrifice almost everything to avoid the ultimate conflict...

...The latter stood on a narrow geographic base, possessed purely military resources, and was in a hurry to enlarge its base by purely military means lest nemesis overtake it...

...We are also committed to the proposition that there can be no agreement without a foolproof inspection system...

...nor should it prompt us to make an agreement with the Russians which tends to weaken our alliance of democracies...

...Djilas's "new class" of Communist oligarchs have at least two good reasons for avoiding catastrophe...

...But Communism is more like the Islamic imperialism of the Middle Ages...

...Neither side can afford to let the other get too far in advance of it...

...Second, they are winning the cold war against the West on both the propaganda front and other fronts...

...The question is whether a dogma has not been gradually hardening on our side which obscures the true situation among the Communists as their dogma obscures our true intent...

...They are interested only in having a summit meeting, and Secretary Dulles is probably right in suggesting that propaganda is their sole purpose...

...The unresolved conflict between France and Algeria makes such issues seem very contemporaneous...

...Both sides now have enough retaliatory power to make the first attack a serious risk...

...he had the same insecurity to prompt him to expansive impulses...

...It will be remembered that Khrushchev assured James Reston of the New York Times that America would become "socialist" in Reston's lifetime...

...The admonition is that we ought to seek to reduce the hazards of the arms race by recognizing that, whatever the weighty differences in political principles between us and the Russians, both sides are involved in a common predicament...

...but a tolerable equilibrium will be enough to guarantee an uneasy peace...

...Recognition of this common predicament should not soften our resolution to counter Communist pressures in the world...

...Furthermore, Khrushchev's reiteration in Hungary that the German problem must be solved by the two German states reveals his continued unwillingness to make German unification part of a general settlement...

...The basis for my observation that there will be no effective disarmament agreement is both the long history of disarmament and the present evidence that the Russians do not reveal the slightest disposition to prepare for substantive talks at the summit meeting...

...We need power to preserve the military equilibrium...

...Recently Khrushchev declared that there was no inconsistency between the idea of peaceful coexistence and his belief in the triumph of Communism, because Communism expected to win by peaceful competitive means...

...Even that analogy is not precise, for Islamic imperialism was compounded of military prowess and religious fanaticism, while Communism is compounded of religious fanaticism and political chicane, with military power taking only a subordinate position...

...Neither of us wants a global holocaust, while neither feels inclined to make any concessions on major problems...

...First, it will tend to mitigate the sharpness of the anxiety about a surprise attack, and consequently the clamor for ever greater military power...

...Finally, both sides still profess to believe that the other side is committed to the ultimate war—despite the fact that since the Geneva summit conference of 1955 each side has acknowledged that it did not believe this seriously...

...We, on the other hand, cannot make an agreement which does not include a solution of the German question...

...The observation is that the possibilities of a disarmament agreement are very slim...

...Thus far, we have found this experience difficult to bear without falling into either hysteria (as in the McCarthy period) or complacency, which is but a screen for despair—a screen in which extravagant living standards are used to hide the frightful dimensions of the historical dilemmas we face...

...But it can contribute to our moral health in two ways...

...These clear prospects have not been widely accepted, it would seem, because the human mind resists drawing dismal conclusions which appear to consign our generation to a precarious future, holding the possibility of the world stumbling into a disaster of unimaginable dimensions...

...If someone replies that military might has a much larger place in Communist strategy than this analysis allows, it is relevant to observe that in our case, too,, military might has achieved a larger proportion in our system than was anticipated in the ideas of liberal democracy on which our nation is founded...

...but the power of each is sufficient, whatever the variations from month to month, to make a surprise attack the beginning of a war of annihilation...

...First, resort to global war would be as suicidal for them as it would be for us, and we must credit them with a reasonable degree of caution...

...This is the very basis of Communist morale, and for all we know the Communist oligarchs believe it...