Concluding a War
AYRES, C. E.
Concluding a War Strategic Surrender. By Paul Kecskemeti. Stanford. 287 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by C. E. Ayres Professor of economics, University of Texas Suppose that a hundred fusion bombs have...
...In June 1940, no government existed in France that was capable of strategic surrender, and nobody had the least idea of the capabilities of a totalitarian conqueror for dominating a prostrate foe...
...The Western Allies could have been expected to respect private property rights, while the Russians would not...
...In short, the effectiveness of strategic surrender is largely contingent on foreknowledge of subsequent events...
...But the Japanese had no knowledge of what was in store for them, and consequently it was not unthinkable that we might tire of the struggle before completing the conquest of Japan...
...Assuming that "Systematic malevolence is alien to the American make-up," Mr...
...What are his long-range intentions with regard to us anyhow...
...it may be that for the foreseeable future our only hope of survival is by persuading him to limit his expectations...
...The author has already told us in his brief (27-page) opening discussion that "highly developed techniques of destruction and capabilities for mobilization tend to make war more total...
...In emphasizing their intention to exact "unconditional" surrender, the Western Allies, of course, proposed to avoid what had come to be considered a mistake of the conclusion of World War I. But, as recent events have clearly exhibited, the total destruction of a vanquished nation's force-in-being does not by any means guarantee that the vanquished nation will continue to be powerless throughout an indefinite future...
...Was it a wise policy...
...But on Mr...
...Kecskemeti is a scholar, an authority on what has come to be known as "the sociology of knowledge," editor of three volumes of essays by the chief exponent of that doctrine, Karl Mannheim, and author of a version of his own, Meaning, Communication and Value...
...Meanwhile, some of us believed the Japanese to be incapable of further serious resistance and so on the point of surrender, while others did not...
...Such a phrase as "unconditional surrender" is virtually meaningless...
...What is the moral of Strategic Surrender...
...Perhaps we should add: Or both...
...Kecske-meti's showing, that is the last thing that could be expected to emerge from the devastation of a major war...
...Kecskemeti's closing admonition is "to revise [our deeply rooted] faith in extreme, ideal solutions...
...But what about the enemy, and his deeply rooted faith...
...Should we try to annihilate the enemy even at the possible cost of our own complete annihilation...
...So long as any possibility existed that vast numbers of Americans might have to be sacrificed in storming the shores of Honshu, it was impossible that the atomic bombs should be withheld...
...Reviewed by C. E. Ayres Professor of economics, University of Texas Suppose that a hundred fusion bombs have been dropped on our principal cities and air bases, and that the devastation they have wrought is so complete as to make prolonged resistance impossible...
...In this respect, Mr...
...But in July 1945, while some Japanese were ready for surrender and actually made some moves in that direction, others were not, and those moves were ineffective...
...Kecskemeti reaches this "solution" in the brief (10-page) chapter with which he concludes the book...
...As Winston Churchill pointed out in a speech in Parliament in February 1944, any victor's behavior toward the vanquished is conditioned by his conception of civilized behavior...
...On his last page Mr...
...In Germany, the disintegration of the Nazi regime and the preference of various units of the German forces for capitulation to the Western Allies rather than to the Russians led to progressive piecemeal surrender...
...Only, it would seem, through clear awareness on both sides of the nature of the situation...
...Because of the moral issues raised by the atomic bombings, the case of Japan has been vigorously discussed ever since the end of the war...
...In Italy, the continued belligerency of the German armies made any sort of surrender by the Italians meaningless...
...Kecskemeti's analysis of the conditions which prevailed in devastated countries toward the end of their participation in World War II is utterly fascinating...
...Theoretically, the Japanese could have avoided the horrors of atomic bombing by strategic surrender, and theoretically we could have avoided committing those atrocities by accepting such a surrender...
...Kecskemeti gives it thus: "The major implications of the new strategic situation brought about by the emergence of nuclear weapons may be formulated as follows: Powers may seek to survive in the nuclear age, either by going to extremes of inhumanity and malevolence never imagined before, or by drastically limiting their expectations of gain from the application of armed power...
...Suppose further that our force-in-being has not been completely destroyed...
...In effect, Petain's capitulation was total defeat, from the consequences of which France was saved only by the eventual victory of the Allies...
...Kecskemeti's book, and is followed by a chapter discussing still another case, that of the Allied policy, especially with regard to Germany, of "unconditional surrender...
...But if nuclear wars tend to be total, and if victory is incompatible with total war, where does strategic surrender come in...
...The author's answer to both of these questions is negative...
...The author's "solution to the problem . of limiting nuclear war when the political stakes are very high is that in high-stake nuclear wars that are non-total the political payoffs must be small, in spite of the high stakes, if the belligerents are rational...
...The central theme of Strategic Surrender is that with the emergence of nuclear weapons the strategic picture has changed so as to render "questionable the compatibility of victory in any meaningful sense with the waging of total war...
...But is "high stake nuclear wars that are non-total" a rational conception...
...Granted that we cannot expect miracles...
...Assuming the existence and potentiality of the atomic bombs, the Japanese situation in July 1945 provided a textbook case for strategic surrender...
...He is a member of the social science staff of the Rand Corporation, under the auspices of which the present study was made...
...What should we do...
...Suppose also that massive retaliation has already occurred and that the enemy likewise has sustained something approaching a mortal blow...
...Will he take our offer as evidence that we are prostrate...
...What will the enemy do if we offer to stop fighting...
...Or did it actually prolong the war unnecessarily...
...This most instructive but not very encouraging analysis of the four major termini of World War II occupies the whole central portion (184 pages) of Mr...
...These questions and many more are insistently suggested by Paul Kecskemeti's fascinating analysis of the surrender of France, Italy, Germany and Japan in World War II, and of the doctrine of "unconditional surrender" which presumably dominated Allied policy in that war...
...and both would interpret any conditions into which they might have entered according to their own conceptions...
Vol. 41 • June 1958 • No. 26
