Khrushehev's Visit 'Art of the Possible'
NIEBUHR, REINHOLD
Khrvshchev's Visit - Two Articles 'Art of the Possible' By Reinhold Niebuhr THE CURRENT exchange of ceremonial visits between President Eisenhower and the Soviet Union's Premier Nikita...
...We are locked in a tremendous struggle with a resourceful and ruthless adversary...
...It is understandable that those who oppose the exchange should call attention to various historical analogies to prove either the danger, the futility or the "immortality" of the gestures...
...The Russian distortions of the American scene are even graver...
...Ceremonial visits, intended to cool off the temperature of the cold war, which is "cold" only in the sense that there are no overt hostilities, are not only unprecedented in the history of diplomacy but they are fraught with some danger...
...No historical analogy is ever exact...
...Thus a U.S...
...The primary reason is the absolutely unprecedented situation of the nuclear dilemma...
...But the defect of analogies is not the primary reason for discounting the apprehensions of the fearful about the exchange of visits between the U.S...
...Even if he wanted to rule by terror, he obviously could not under the rapidly changing conditions of a very dynamic and quickly changing society...
...We must be satisfied with small favors...
...Khrushchev is reported to believe that the "workers" of America are ready to revolt against their "masters," and that there is no solid support for the foreign policy of what Communist jargon defines as the "ruling cliques...
...The distortions of the Russian picture by Americans are due mainly to the stereotype of Stalinist despotism, through which we look at the Russian scene...
...Why aren't these arguments and warnings cogent...
...The President is only practicing politics as "the art of the possible" in one of the most critical situations in which mankind has ever been placed...
...We are wrestling with this formidable adversary on the edge of the terrible abyss of nuclear annihilation...
...Events, characters and policies in history are always so similar and yet so different...
...But the danger of a conflict starting by miscalculation is still tremendous...
...The obvious analogue at present is Hungary...
...but we cannot carry the analogy too far lest we define everything but a completely democratic society as unhealthy...
...What, after all, is the criterion of political health in this curious world which has known every combination of wisdom and folly in its political history...
...This is something quite different from the Nazi corruption, which was completely uncreative and more like a boil on the body politic...
...and we both have enough nuclear weapons not only to destroy each other but to destroy our whole civilization...
...Two reasons can be used in refuting the warnings...
...There are similarities between Khrushchev and Stalin, and the former is certainly not a democratic politician...
...That is why the President's policy has gained such wide support, both here and in Europe and Asia, though the visits will obviously not result in any agreements on the disputed points between the two sides...
...Such misconceptions are extremely dangerous: and if the exchange of visits will eliminate some of them on both sides, the hazards of wrestling on the abyss will be appreciably diminished...
...This is the absolutely unprecedented situation in which modern diplomacy moves...
...We Americans, and indeed all nations of Western European heritage, could not possibly live happily under a dictatorship...
...But we are slowly recognizing that we are dealing with a political force which many people on the dark continents regard as more relevant to their problems than our "open" society...
...but we are dealing with different political forces than those symbolized by Hitler, or even by Stalin...
...The gain may not be very great, but we are not in a position to ask big favors of historical destiny...
...Hitler's crimes were similar to those of Stalin and Nazi tyranny was similar to Communist tyranny...
...Communism too may be a boil...
...Two sources of such miscalculations are the dated picture which each side has of the other...
...President and Russia's Premier...
...All analogies of history are too inexact to be good interpreters of the changing present...
...Senator from Connecticut asks whether we would have invited Hitler to our country after his rape of Poland and Czechoslovakia...
...Furthermore, the analogy between Stalin's despotism and the totalitarianism under the post-Stalin oligarchy is as misleading as the Nazi analogy...
...We must learn from the past, but we had better not judge the present in a rapidly changing world too much by the analogies of the past...
...One is the danger of all historical analogies...
...Khrvshchev's Visit - Two Articles 'Art of the Possible' By Reinhold Niebuhr THE CURRENT exchange of ceremonial visits between President Eisenhower and the Soviet Union's Premier Nikita Khrushchev, after the complete impasse on both the Berlin-Germany issue and on disarmament, is a new departure in diplomacy...
...for the Communists look at us through the spectacle of a dogma which had its inception in the injustices of early 19th century industrialism, to which no immediate and contemporary facts correspond...
...Fortunately, both sides are now convinced that the other does not intend to begin the conflict, though the propaganda of both sides still repeats ancient charges...
...We may record Khrushchev's personal crimes and call attention to the official crime in Hungary...
...The various abortive conferences have proved that we are indeed in a cold war with our adversary and there are few points at which we reach an agreement...
...A committee of anxious citizens takes a full page ad in the New York Times, to warn against the visit of the Russian boss and to recount his crimes in the Ukraine, where he was undoubtedly Stalin's hatchet man...
...Incidentally, his de-Stalinization maneuver has not really absolved him of complicity with Stalin's crimes...
...Khrushchev is a politician, which Stalin was not...
...But the differences are also striking...
...Yet one was a purely military dictatorship, resting on terror, while the other is literally a new civilization evolved out of a fantastic Utopian creed but possessing creative factors which we are just recognizing...
Vol. 42 • September 1959 • No. 34
