Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR KENNAN-EMMET The line of reasoning in George F. Kennan's article, "Berlin and the Geneva Meeting" (NL, May 11), presupposes a primarily defensive "stance" in Soviet foreign policy....
...New York City PAUL E. ZINNER CORPORATIONS A. H. Raskin ('Behind the Steel Deadlock," NL, June 15) mentions "an obeisance to the notion that a million-member union and an oligarchic industry can conduct intricate discussions along the lines of a town meeting...
...Has our will power been steeled...
...M. A. Adelman...
...A reduction in tension would not result in greater "normality...
...It merely constitutes recognition of a current reality that is for the time being beyond our capacity to alter...
...The anomaly of the European situation is precisely that a large degree of "normality" is guaranteed by the existing military bipolarity...
...Chief Justice Marshall once called it "an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law...
...He pooh-poohs "industrial statesmanship" in a manner reminiscent of Adam Smith, who said: "I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good...
...This presumably derives from a genuine concern with the threat posed to the USSR's security by a resurgent Germany equipped with nuclear weapons...
...He's got something there...
...This does not mean that negotiation with the Soviet Union should be spurned...
...Would that it were so...
...If anything, it would further expose Western Europe to Soviet nuclear blackmail and promote a mood of appeasement...
...It would only result in our losing another round in the unceasing battle for the support of world public opinion...
...In the absence of such cleavages —and the likelihood of their recurrence elsewhere is slim—the Soviet position in Eastern Europe must be adjudged more stable than we would like it, and virtually invulnerable to external influence...
...It is hard to accept the thesis that they are preoccupied with legitimate defense rather than with expansion of Communist influence, and that they feel themselves sufficiently threatened by the military bipolarity of Europe to make real concessions to end it...
...Generally speaking, in diplomacy as in military combat, there is great virtue in maintaining contact with the enemy...
...There is equally little cause for us to invite a detente that would be to our disadvantage...
...How are we to induce the Russians to retire from Eastern Europe...
...And it is precisely because of the supreme political importance of the Western military posture that disengagement might entail untoward, even disastrous consequences...
...Whatever the degree of popular discontent, events would not have reached their dramatic climax had the Communist parties not been rent internally...
...Samuel Gompers considered the worst sin of business the failure to operate at a profit...
...On the contrary, disengagement of military forces would bring new uncertainty...
...It is because of, and not despite, the presence of the "plate-glass window" represented by Western military power (and the physical evidence of continued U.S...
...But it is difficult to see how Emmet can allow himself, on the basis of this somber, thoroughly realistic appraisal, the blithe expectation that in the face of Western firmness the Soviets will quietly fold up their tents in Eastern Europe...
...Christopher Emmet, in "The Pitfalls of Negotiation" <NL, April 20), takes a position opposed to that of Kennan...
...Conscious of the sorry record of past negotiations and aware of the limitations of negotiability of outstanding issues between East and West, he would just as soon not get in the way of temptation again...
...Emmet fails to confront the unpleasant reality of demonstrated doggedness by the Soviet Union under adverse circumstances...
...Administered Pricing, Economic and Legal Issues (1958), says: "The corporation, and particularly the non-owner-managed corporation where management does not depend on the accident of heredity, is simply the 'economic man' which was an abstraction in the old economic treatises before it became a reality in industry...
...This by no means implies moral sanction of the Communist regimes or acquiescence "forever" in the "finality" of conditions there...
...His assessment of Soviet motives is that they are sinister under any guise...
...Have our military capabilities vis-a-vis Russia increased since then...
...At the present stage of its industrial development, the Soviet Government can afford to step up its military and foreign economic commitments and at the same time sponsor substantial amelioration of its population's material welfare...
...Is it an individual, or is it, if you'll pardon the expression, a "collective...
...While no one would deny some correlation between the USSR's foreign and domestic policies, the fact is that the regime's foreign successes and its domestic stability are quite isolated from each other...
...The implications of this position are that the Soviet leaders, in order to eliminate their concern and to obtain guarantees of general European security, would acquiesce in an improved West European status quo, give up their hold on East Germany and, in the bargain, permit a slow erosion of their position in Eastern Europe through the evolution of the Communist regimes there toward greater freedom...
...There is no reason for the Russians to tn]erate a European detente that is palpably to their disadvantage...
...The combination is hard to beat, and it makes the Soviet Union a more formidable opponent than either Kennan or Emmet would have it...
...A group of "corporations...
...What is wrong with the Kennan thesis is not the suggestion that we negotiate, but the premise on which he would have us negotiate...
...It is not a betrayal of a sacred trust or even of a moral obligation to admit frankly that in the foreseeable future our contribution to a change in the internal structure of the East European political system is likely to be very modest indeed...
...Truculence would be worse than useless...
...But rethinking is required, since there is no such thing as an "economic end" which is not also a human end, and therefore subject to moral law...
...He disregards the fact that we were unable to come to the rescue of the beleaguered Hungarians in 1956, not for want of sympathy, but of power and determination to risk general nuclear war...
...The liberalization evident in Soviet domestic life need in no way be reflected in a softening of the revolutionary impulses of Soviet foreign policy...
...of MIT, in a National Industrial Conference Board booklet...
...commitment) that no one seriously contemplates war on the continent or is especially afraid of it...
...What is a "corporation...
...The fact is that the internal crises in Poland and Hungary, though they followed strikingly different paths, were precipitated by deep cleavages within their Communist parties...
...Emmet does not supply the answers...
...One side is too big a crowd, and the other side is—what...
Vol. 42 • June 1959 • No. 26
