The Deadly Enemy We Face

...We have failed to leam from a monotonous multitude of repetitions...

...Not understanding that our ally of the moment had been, was then, and at the War's end would be also our enemy, we did not plan the peace during the War...

...We even withdrew our troops and made the fatuous and inviting statement that Korea was not part of our "essential defense perimeter...

...When they are ready to make peace with their own people, then we will know—and only then—that they are ready for real peace with their neighbors and with us...

...I remember when Franklin Roosevelt said to Frances Perkins: "I really believe that I can get Uncle Joe to go along with me...

...But our vision is faltering, our understanding blurred: we are too easily deceived and too ready to deceive ourselves, to the world's detriment...

...in winning the secret support of the Russian people...

...What could be expected from such a foe under such circumstances...

...Every country in the East is in mortal danger from China, with its huge population...

...We tried it with the two Koreas, and we also see how that worked out...

...A power which wishes to preserve peace and prevent an upsetting of the status quo by force is always at a disadvantage when dealing with a revolutionary power...

...Of course, they do not want all-out peace, for their two fundamental aims do not permit them to be at peace either with their own people or with the rest of the world...

...However, if every time they speak of "easing of tensions" you would substitute for the word "tension" the word "concern" (which is a more neutrally or differently colored word), you would see that what they are asking us to do is to stop concerning ourselves with the freedom of the world and with our oivn freedom...

...Always I must answer, "Much worse, man...

...Unification consists, as they have made abundantly clear, in having the two Germanys linked together and then in seeing how Communist Germany can gradually take possession of West Germany as well...

...and, in the end, they took the country, by what former Hungarian Commimist boss Mathias Rakosi called "salami tactics," in which you slice off one slice, then another slice, and then another slice, until you have the whole salami sliced up...

...We have tried not to believe their statement of their aims...

...We did not pick the men in the Kremlin as enemies...

...Secondly, it has a great state machine which is in a condition of permanent semi-mobilization, and which attempts to keep its people mobilized...

...But the difference is in the winning of allies, not alienating them...

...It is a deadly enemy...

...The real reason for the Kremlin's endless hostility toward the United States, regardless of what we do, is that they regard us, and rightly, as the inain obstacle to their underlying plan...

...We have failed in understanding...

...And the more dangerous of the two is the set with which he smiles...

...It regards the strength and the way of life of the United States as the chief obstacle to its plan to remake its own people and to remake the world in the image of its blueprint...

...as our acceptance of the poison semantics of "peaceful coexistence" and the propaganda circus of "summit conferences" has given us neither genuine conferences for agreement on anything, nor peace, nor "co-existence...

...These have been noble moments, and there have been others like them...

...If the experience of those three types of occupation does not teach us not to play this costly game of seeing if we cannot hynotize the men in the Kremlin into abandoning their blueprint or into just being nice, then nothing will ever teach us...

...No matter what Eisenhower says or does, no matter whether Dulles conducts himself with tact or tactlessness, no matter how well the tourist behaves when he goes to the Soviet Union for his three weeks—we will still be Enemy Number One...

...The Russian people are not and have never been our enemies...

...If we keep that in mind, we will have a general notion of what they mean by "peaceful coexistence...

...They do not covet for a moment the risks of all-out war with us...

...I recognize that...

...There are two things that they are determined with all of their might to avoid: one is all-out war, the other is all-out peace...

...If we forget that for a moment, in any one of their maneuvers, we fail in leadership...

...it is a self-conserving society, in that any changes that occur are within-system changes that leave the basic structure of power untouched...

...Some poor fellows tried earnestly to cooperate with them in Eastern Europe...

...In the end we will perish, and deserve to perish, for being fools incapable of learning...

...They have picked us as the enemy of the things they are trying to do to their people and to their neighbors...

...They will keep us in between as long as they have the power to do so...

...Again came the failure of vision and understanding...

...No mere "maturing" of the Russian people will change their system, nor does their system allow them the organizational scope and independent activity, the genuine information and the right to judge which alone permit of "maturing...

...And those who tell us that "when the Russian people mature" they will be able to control their government and its policies, are deceiving themselves and us...

...Such provisions involve the proper disposition of our military forces to ensure enforcement...

...Our newspapers are not doing a good job...

...We can thank the Freudians for that, I suppose, for they talk of the "age of anxiety" and the "age of tension...

...The Near East, which was the cradle of our faiths, is in mortal danger at the present moment...

...If the gates were opened, they would "vote with their feet" by the millions in favor of our "system...

...They have not chosen and they do not choose their government...

...When Stalin asked Harry Hopkins quite naturally: "What do you want in return for all this...

...All we were interested in was getting them the planes, the guns, the tanks, and the other things they needed...

...they picked us...

...This in itself is enough to give us pause—especially if we remember that there are 125 divisions in being in Russia, while we have approximately 15 and are engaged in cutting our forces further...

...in strengthening our prestige with neutrals...

...Well, we tried it...

...They know, to be sure, that they cannot conquer us...

...Our policy of containment has not contained...

...In fact, wherever they have had a chance to cross the line, they have crossed by the millions...

...Let us not listen to the siren song of those who tell us that we can get a release of tensions and a little peace in our time if we only "disengage" ourselves...

...Yet always, with each maneuver, we are prone to forget afresh...

...During the so-called "intervention...

...We have failed to understand that "agreements" with such an unrelenting and continuing foe are carried out only if there are deliberate provisions to make them self-enforcing...

...In World War II, after they had made their pact with Hitler to divide Europe, and Hitler turned on them, our help was generous and unstinting...

...Finally, a modern totalitarian society, as distinguished even from an old-fashioned despotism, is one in which the state seeks to be co-extensive with the whole of society and the whole of life, a society that is perpetually at war with its own people and with the rest of the world, and which uses modern technology and widespread literacy as weapons in that war...

...I recognize that it is not a nice or a pleasant word...

...We must spell out any agreement on "free elections" so as to include multiple parties, a press owned by individuals, associations and parties not controlled by the government, empty prisons and closed concentration camps, and the like, and joint occupying troops in quantity in all sectors, to enforce the rights and liberties we mean by the thus-defined free elections...

...Above all, we have failed in vision—and here, truly, where there is no vision the people perish...

...They know something about our strength...

...When war and civil war and the follies of their socialization of every grain of wheat and every inkpot brought on universal famine, we helped to save millions of Russians from starvation by our generous famine relief...

...When they say "peaceful unification" arranged between the East and West German "Governments," we must remember that that is what they said of Korea, of Vietnam, of wartime China...

...We have tried many times to show our good will and friendship...

...Since both our political parties must appeal and do appeal recklessly and demagogically to a people to whom they have not given decent leadership and proper political education, each party poses as "the party of peace" while the enemy chooses to continue to make war on us...

...We have tried the gesture of "Let's be friends and see if that won't work"—we have tried it more often than our historical memories permit us to recall...

...We tried it with the two Chinas during World War II, and we see how it turned out...

...In the period of their forced industrialization, we sent them technicians and engineers, whole factories and machinery, and helped them to build dams and power houses...

...We did not make it a self-enforcing peace, which we could only have done by planning our military conduct of the War to ensure a decent peace by the position of our armies at the War's end...

...A closed society is one with built-in staying powers which enable it to endure for a very long period of time...

...If we disengage ourselves, we leave another strip to be occupied, a new place from which battle wiU begin...

...The Russian people are not unfriendly to us, only ill-informed, deeply curious, well-disposed toward us, and a little envious...

...The Russian leaders are ruthlessly friendly...

...I have never believed that the best way to get thieves to reform is to remove the locks from our doors...

...MY NEXT point is that "by the enemy we face," I do not mean the Russian people...

...Whether we treat American Negroes decently, or indecently—or somewhere in between, as we are doing at present—we will still be Enemy Number One...

...We have done many fine things...

...It is particularly our enemy—not because we so choose, but because it has chosen...

...It believes that both types are necessary and that they must be integrated into a single plan...

...We offered to help them with arms in 1918 to reestablish a front against the invading Germans, but all that came of it were the misunderstandings of intervention...

...Moreover, our life in this recent period has had its great moments: the first stage of the Korean War...

...In our society, "tension" is a bad word...

...ABOVE ALL, we are not giving our own people a clear vision of this opponent, and the nature of our struggle...

...THE DEADLY ENEMY WE FACE By Bertram D. Wolfe THE SOVIET system of power, which is the enemy we face, can only be understood properly with the help of certain theoretical criteria of a socio-historical nature...

...Whether we pull out of Berlin or Quemoy or do not pull out of Berlin or Quemoy, we cannot disengage ourselves from this enemy...

...I HAVE used the word "enemy" and I should like to explain my choice of this word...

...We failed to make effective use of our thenmonopoly of atomic weapons in ways which would have furthered a decent peace and effective and controlled disarmament, not because this could not have been done—it probably could—but because we were not sufficiently aware of the need to do so, and too frightened by our awful preponderance of power to make wise and restrained use of it for bringing about genuine peace and genuine liberation of the "liberated" countries...

...Harry Hopkins boasted: "I told him we were not interested in conditions...

...How often have I sat down in taxicab or train and been asked: "What is your racket...

...Nor do I believe with those who think that if we but disarmed everything would be easy (of course that sentence is not complete: it would be easy for the men in the Kremlin...

...So, at the end of the War, it turned out that there were three kinds of occupation zones...

...Very briefly, we may say that the Soviet system is a closed, single-centered, modern totalitarian society, as distinguished from an open, multi-centered society...

...A single-centered society is one in which there is only one focus of power, the state, which does not tolerate the diffusion of power among any other relatively independent social institutions or groups...

...Every country in Western Europe, the cradle of modern thought and liberty, is in mortal danger...

...But we ought not be afraid of it...

...Agreements that are not spelled out and self-enforcing are merely semantic poison to prepare and "justify" conquest...

...They do not wish all-out war because they believe that time and history are on their side...

...There were countries which Russia occupied ("liberated ") exclusively—they lost their freedom and were sucked behind the Iron Curtain...

...they took the Ministry of War, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Propaganda (Education...

...Otherwise, whep they use the word "peace" it is just one of the gimmicks in their waging of war...

...I answer, "Russia...

...To anybody who comes with a panacea for easing tensions, we open our arms and our hearts...

...When they consider how their system has been expanding, I must say it seems to them that they have some empirical confirmation for their belief that time is on their side...

...If we are still tempted by poisoned semantics (one of their deadliest weapons) to believe that the word "peaceful" means "peace," and that "coexistence" means "mutual tolerance" and "live and let live," I don't know at this late date what I can say, except perhaps that I might offer a homely metaphor: The farmer is perfectly willing for the turkey to coexist with him until Thanksgiving Day...

...the Berlin airlift...

...It is well to remember that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev is said to have two sets of teeth, one to smile with and one to bite with...

...At the beginning of the 20th century, one European in four was under Moscow rule...

...and our policy of liberation has not liberated...

...At the middle of the 20th century, approximately one European in two is under Russian rule...

...It is a deadly enemy because never for a moment does it abandon its two basic aims: to remake man, and to conquer the world...

...At the beginning of the 19th century, one European in seven was a Russian, or under Moscow rule...

...But the Communists took the key posts in the cabinets and popular-front governments...

...My purpose in this analysis has been only a single one: to give such awareness of the nature of the Soviet system that the hand can be steadier, the vision clearer and more unflinching, so that each new maneuver of a tactical nature which the Soviet Government undertakes can be appraised in the light of a deeper, overall understanding of the nature of the system that torments its own people and is vowed to our destruction...

...I could illustrate that with errors made throughout the last 41 years, since 1917...

...It has a definite advantage over us at this moment because it is geared to both types of warfare...

...Thus, when we say "free elections" for Germany, and they say "free elections," it behooves us to remember that the "elections" they have in the Soviet Union are what they call "free elections...

...Now, the Soviet Union is truly a great power—great in population, great in resources, great in technology, and great in military strength...

...Every country on the Mediterranean, which was the cradle of Western civilization and culture, is in mortal danger...

...This is the most dangerous feature in our political life...

...They said "world revolution," but we preferred not to believe they meant it...

...Instantly, not after Pearl Harbor, but as early as June 1941, Harry Hopkins flew to Stalin to offer planes and tanks and trucks and guns, and wool and meat and fuel and bread...

...we helped them to get back Siberia after they had lost it, and we forced the Japanese by our pressure to give up their occupation of Siberia...

...Therefore there has been no peace...

...When I say that nothing we can do will change this, I do not mean to say that it makes no difference whether our workingmen are prosperous and employed or not, or that it makes no difference how we treat our colored population, for it does make a difference...

...Whether our working class is prosperous, or hungry and jobless, or jobless and not hungry, we wiU still be Enemy Number One...

...But let us start with World War H and the "Grand Alliance...

...But under such self-imposed limitations that it was easy for Communist China to reconquer the northern half of the country, and restore the same impossible conditions that had brought us into war...

...There were the countries which were jointly occupied—all of those except one have been partitioned, and the Soviet-occupied half of each is behind the Iron Curtain (North Korea, East Germany, and so on...

...THE WORLD is in serious and even mortal danger now, X as it was in Hitler's day...

...That depressing and forever recurring question shows how our leaders have failed to make our people understand—because they do not really understand themselves—the nature of our self-appointed opponent...

...One coimtry was occupied exclusively by us, Japan, and there the occupied country is free to criticize and disagree with its occupiers and liberators...

...All these errors—and, alas, I could enumerate many more like them—come from a failure to understand the difficulties and intricacies of the problems, because of a failure to understand the nature of our enemy, his system, his power, his ruthlessness and unscrupulousness in negotiation and action, his aims, his determination, and the role of his ideology in his efforts to conquer the world and remake man...

...When we finally had to fight to save Korea, we did an inspiring job...

...They are now proposing (and have been proposing for some time) a "unification" of Germany...

...Then you would realize that we must hug our "tensions" to our breasts as long as the dangers exist which have caused the concern...

...Finally, it is an enemy which is resourceful enough, wealthy enough, and determined enough to do what we have not had the determination to do (although we have had the resources in the West in much greater abundance): namely, to keep simultaneously an atomic striking power and a massive conventional striking power in being...

...At the War's end, we demobilized our troops too soon, because we had not prepared our own minds or our people to remain mobilized until a decent peace was assured...

...We have failed in leadership and enlightenment of our own people and other peoples...

...The mistakes which our public figures have made, our statesmen, experts, journalists, diplomats—and our military men as well when we were in a joint military effort with Russia—have all sprung from the same thing: the virtual incapacity of a people brought up in an open society to understand the nature of the system we have been examining, and the aims and plans of its rulers...

...We have been picked as Enemy Number One...

...However, we will not disarm or change the philosophy or the goals of a mortal enemy...

...If our statesmen and experts wish to make a test of any fresh proposal of theirs to see whether it really intends peace, there is a simple test...

...I do not count generosity among our errors, only the generosity which defeats and undoes itself...

...This failure of vision or understanding is at the root of our failures in action and omission and negotiation...

...I would not have you understand that we have done nothing right in these 40 years, or recently...

...Invariably the taxi driver or traveling companion follows up with: "Tell me, is Russia really as bad as our newspapers say it is...

...We left Korea without adequate defenses because we were afraid that the Koreans might use our arms to unify their country, and we did not have the understanding to realize that the puppet Government of North Korea would surely use Russian and Chinese Communist arms and forces for the "peaceful unification" of Korea, and the "liberation" of Korea from its independence...

...Twothirds of all the Chinese "volunteers" whom we took as prisoners during the Korean War refused to return to theii native scenes, families and lands, preferring the half-world of barbed-wire camps to returning to a country where their government makes unending war upon them...

...They do not control its policies—except by their mute and silent pressure...

...the Marshall Plan—in which we even offered to include Russia if she would use it for genuine healing of the wounds of war...

...They talk of "easing of tensions...

...We have failed in political courage...

...This wiU not be changed if Khrushchev should come to New York and "see our skyscrapers," or if he should then go to Detroit and see how many automobiles our workingmen have...

...We tried that before, too...