World Communism and Nuclear War
RUSSELL, BERTRAND
A Debate on the Ultimate Threat World Communism and Nuclear War By Bertrand Russell Dr. Sidney Hook's article, "A Foreign Policy for Survival" (NL, April 71, contains much with which I am in...
...The world is not yet ready for such an institution, but it may be hoped that experience will gradually convince men of its necessity...
...Where he and I disagree is as to the advisability of an ultimate resort to nuclear war if the Communist powers cannot be contained by anything less...
...We are agreed that both these extreme consequences are somewhat hypothetical, and we are also agreed that both of them would be disasters...
...I have tried to keep this discussion on a rational rather than an emotional plane, but I cannot resist giving expression to my final judgment, which is that to risk the end of human life because we regard Communism as evil is fanatical, defeatist and pusillanimous in the highest possible degree...
...It is the second question that I wish to examine, since the first involves difficult political and psychological considerations as to which differences of opinion will inevitably persist...
...I will not dispute this, but is there not also fanaticism in the attitude of Dr...
...We both admit that both would be disasters...
...I cannot applaud the arrogance of those who say: "If the next century or so is to be such as I (if I were alive) would find unpleasant, I shall decide that not only this period but all future time shall be destitute of life...
...He does not seem aware that it would be easy to make a retort in kind and to accuse him of being a super-Caligula...
...Hook and of the powerful men who agree with him...
...Obviously, he does not wish the one and I do not wish the other...
...It must also provide for the removal of all alien troops from agreed territory including, as minimum, East and West Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary—Germany not to remain in NATO or the above satellites in the Warsaw Pact...
...I maintain, on the contrary, that a Communist victory would not be so great a disaster as the extinction of human life...
...At my age, views as to the not immediate future are necessarily impersonal...
...There are here two quite distinct matters to be discussed: First, what is the likelihood that the policy which I advocate would lead to the universal domination of Communism...
...While the human race survives, humaneness, love of liberty, and a civilized way of life will, sooner or later, prove irresistibly attractive...
...It is not by such arguments that difficult issues can be decided...
...and the USSR, not intended to reach binding agreements but to explore the possibility of a compromise which both powers would accept...
...Certain principles should govern such negotiations: (1) Any agreement arrived at should as a whole be not advantageous to either party...
...I have nothing to say against the man who commits suicide rather than live under a regime which he thinks evil, but I do not feel much approval of the man who condemns everybody else to death because he himself does not find life worth living...
...But in the long run the only solution which will make the world safe is the establishment of a World Government with a monopoly of the major weapons of war...
...It will be seen that this statement is very similar to the first part of Dr...
...Hook asserts that "Bolshevism is the greatest movement of secular fanaticism in human history...
...Western Europe in the year 1000 gave no promise of the renaissance that began some centuries later...
...If an agreement is to be successful in averting the risk of nuclear warfare, it must provide for the destruction of nuclear weapons and the cessation of their manufacture under the guarantee of inspection by an agreed neutral authority...
...Human history abounds in great disasters...
...But argumentation in this vein is an obstacle to rationality...
...The procedure I should wish to see adopted would be, first, a meeting at the highest level between the governments of the U.S...
...Sidney Hook's article, "A Foreign Policy for Survival" (NL, April 71, contains much with which I am in agreement—more, I think, than Dr...
...Hook maintains that, even if his policy led to the extinction of human life, it would still be better than a Communist victory...
...I admit that the policy which I advocate might lead to the other disaster, though I, again, do not think that it would do so...
...Hook of wishing to see the human race exterminated...
...Genghis Khan was quite as bad as Stalin at his worst, but his grandson Kublai Khan was a highly civilized monarch under whom Chinese culture flourished...
...One might as well accuse Dr...
...I cannot but deplore the passage in which Dr...
...We differ only, I repeat, as to which would be the greater disaster...
...Before embarking upon controversial matters, I will emphasize the extent of agreement by repeating a statement, the first three paragraphs of which were originally made to the American Nobel Anniversary Committee and subsequently published, with the addition of the last paragraph, in many countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain: "Negotiations between East and West with a view to finding ways of peaceful coexistence are urgently desirable...
...The Minoan-Mycenaean civilization was destroyed by savage warriors whose descendants, after a few centuries, became the Greeks whom we still revere...
...The downs have always seemed final to contemporaries, and the ups have always given rise to unfounded optimism...
...If such a compromise seems feasible, it should be recommended by both parties to the other powers of NATO and the Warsaw Pact...
...I have been dealing with measures that are imminently necessary if the risk of a great war is to be diminished...
...Before arguing this question in impersonal terms, there are some observations of a more personal kind that may help to clear the ground...
...I shall, therefore, abstain from it, and I wish that he would do likewise...
...He admits that his policy might lead to the one disaster, though he does not think that it would...
...And, second, if it did, would this be worse than the ending of human life...
...A moment's reflection would show them that such a supposition is absurd...
...Hook laments my supposed moral downfall...
...Hook realizes...
...Neither universal Communist domination nor the extinction of the human race is likely to occur before I die a natural death...
...Any person who supposes that the evils of Communism, if it achieved a supremacy, would last forever is allowing himself to be so limited by the heat of present controversies as to be unable to see their similarity to equally virulent controversies in the past or to realize that a dark age, if it is upon us, like the dark ages of the past will not last forever...
...I come now to an impersonal consideration of the issue...
...We differ only as to which of them would be the greater disaster...
...I do not, therefore, have to consider whether I should most fear my nuclear disintegration or my slow torture in an Arctic labor camp...
...Those who oppose the policy which I advocate insinuate that it is inspired by personal cowardice...
...A victory of Communism might be as disastrous as the barbarian destruction of the Roman Empire, but there is no reason to think that it would be more disastrous than that event...
...12) it should be such as to diminish causes of friction...
...One civilization after another has been swept away by hordes of barbarians...
...Both Dr...
...Hook does are being un-historical and are displaying a myopic vision to which future centuries are invisible...
...Nor can I wholly admire the kind of "courage" which is advocated by Dr...
...Hook and I are concerned with possibilities which we respectively think improbable...
...The negotiations involved should be secret until the possibility of such compromise had been established...
...3) it should be such as to diminish the danger of a more or less inadvertent outbreak of nuclear warfare...
...The countries in Eastern and Western Europe must be free to adopt whatever form of government and whatever economic system they may prefer...
...The human spirit throughout Western Christendom was as narrowly imprisoned as it was in Russia under Stalin...
...The progress of mankind has always been a matter of ups and downs...
...Another thing which is insinuated is that I am surreptitiously favorable to Communism...
...Hook and others who think like him, which has, in large part, a vicarious character somewhat detracting from its nobility...
...The men who think as Dr...
...It gives, however, the only possibility of any value...
...Hook says quite truly that life, in itself, is not of value...
...When the Mohammedans swept over the greater part of the Eastern Roman Empire, it seemed to Christian contemporaries that the civilization of the regions which they conquered was being destroyed, and yet, before long, it was the Arabs who mainly preserved the heritage of antiquity...
Vol. 41 • May 1958 • No. 21
