Defense, Disarmament, Diplomacy, Despair:
THOMAS, NORMAN
Defense, Disarmament, Diplomacy and Despair A comment on Klaus Knorr's NL special section By Norman Thomas In our mad world, there have been no more lucid guesses at what adequate defense would...
...It carries a greater threat to our future than any sputnik...
...The only real hope would be that the United States by this frantic total defense would effectively deter any nation from beginning a war...
...Defense, Disarmament, Diplomacy and Despair A comment on Klaus Knorr's NL special section By Norman Thomas In our mad world, there have been no more lucid guesses at what adequate defense would mean and under what conditions the American people would support it than Klaus Knorr's "Crisis in U.S...
...But if the way Mr...
...Knorr allows...
...Defense" (NL, December 30...
...Once such a war began, it is enormously more probable that its end would be total destruction than any victory worth the risk...
...Dulles committed Lebanon to nothing—that the Lebanese loved their Arab brethren and shared their wrath against Israel...
...And don't tell me that failure in this field is all Moscow's fault...
...is regarded with at least as much suspicion as the Soviet Union, and its latent imperialism is suspected in such offers of intervention against aggression as were contained in the Eisenhower Doctrine...
...There are areas and conditions under which one can imagine limited war if it should be scarcely more than a police action— blessed perhaps by the UN—in which neither the Russo-Chinese alliance nor the U.S...
...How much of our wealth, how many of our sons and our hopes for any sort of future, is it worth investing to keep some future Syngman Rhee in power in some relatively small nation...
...But the Korean type of war could not be repeated...
...Who and where are the free peoples who would welcome our support in actual war...
...Would Russia be a stronger or weaker enemy for us if, not by conversion but by military conquest or threat of it, she should acquire the burden of governing the passionate nationalists of industrially backward regions...
...The U.S...
...Indeed, if nations are mad enough to go to war at all in this atomic age, the chances that they will be sane enough to limit nuclear war are exceedingly small...
...The chances for waging successful limited war are rather less than in Mr...
...add to its safety by undertaking limited war...
...and its allies were deeply involved...
...Whichever side might be temporarily superior in missiles, a direct attack by bomb or missile would mean instant retaliation with the deadliest weapons available...
...I have space only to raise these questions, not discuss them...
...itself, vastly outnumbered by Russo-Chinese manpower, would be bound to resort to nuclear war in any sizable contest...
...Knorr expounds is only valuable if it enables us to negotiate controlled disarmament under a strengthened United Nations...
...This danger will increase the more nations and the more individuals in nations have at their disposal atomic weapons...
...But I think the danger that "a limited war may gradually degenerate into a total contest, or a nation may precipitate an all-out attack for fear that its opponent is about to do so: or, at a time of grave crisis, a false alarm may set off a retaliatory mechanism" is even greater than Mr...
...If the struggle for a free world lies in the minds of men, how do we help it by a defense program which compels us actively to support Franco in Spain, France in -Algeria, Saud in the Middle East...
...Except for some of the Lebanese, the only people who welcomed it in the Arab world were the most feudal and socially backward of governing groups...
...Short of a madman in power—by no means an impossible eventuality—we must count on fallible men, subject to enormous tension, having in their hands the instruments of man's collective suicide...
...Nevertheless, as I pondered it, my main emotion was one not far short of despair...
...Moscow may indeed be the chief sinner, but our Secretary of State has never negotiated as a man negotiates who is concerned for the very life of mankind...
...announcement that, while we shall engage in honorable scientific competition in the mastery of space, we shall push no farther the search for the ultimate weapon whose use even in defense can only mean death, and that we shall let UN inspectors judge our conformity to this pledge...
...Knorr's none too optimistic calculation...
...And even Charles Malik of Lebanon had to protest to high heaven that his most recent arrangements with Mr...
...It is, I think, doubtful if it would be begun by a direct act of the Soviet Union against the U.S...
...Might not some such act break through the terrible concentration of men upon annihilation...
...When and under what conditions in Asia or Africa could the U.S...
...Knorr and others point out is the way to save the United States and the world, I doubt if we shall long be saved...
...No defense will save our people if we cannot amend the sins of omission and commission in the Dulles program...
...I accept the immediate necessity of putting our defense in better order and certainly of improving our basic scientific education...
...At this point, isn't it about time for sane champions of the usefulness of limited war, and the necessity of preparation for it, to be more concrete...
...But reflection on them drives me to ask: May not the time have come for a U.S...
...At the least, so parlous and costly a defense as Mr...
...Unpleasant and unfair as the fact may seem, in most of the Asian countries which I have visited the U.S...
Vol. 41 • January 1958 • No. 4
