Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR AUSTRALIAN VIEW I find The New Leader especially informative. I am a free-lance journalist, my special interests being politics and Southeast Asia, and I find most of your...
...NL, January 23) rejects the author's argument for disarmament by maintaining that deterrence has worked and can continue to do so...
...Australians, living close to Asia, are often the least conscious of it and its problems...
...There are eminent scientists like C. P. Snow, however, who believe that the ever-increasing likelihood of accident, new and larger "limited wars" or the spread of nuclear weapons will inevitably prove Huntington woefully wrong...
...By the same token, he must "doublethink" our allies (however shabby and totalitarian) into bulwarks of the "free world," and our own policies and leaders into the sole defenses of democracy...
...Jerome Frank's idea), to help turn the enemy into precisely what you fear he is—vide Cuba...
...He may be right, although it has certainly not "worked" to prevent deterioration of America's world-wide position...
...will "massive retaliation" then prove the defender of democracy...
...Indeed, Henry Kissinger, leader of the school of "realism" in strategy to which Huntington evidently subscribes, insists that enormous increases in both conventional and nuclear capability are necessary merely to stay even in a cold war...
...How can you really negotiate anything essential with such an enemy...
...It is an admirable feature that you devote so much space to Asia, where democracy is a plant of such stunted growth and where it has never found footing or has disappeared in so many places...
...But the militarization of our society, the development of a power elite, has gone so far already that President Eisenhower wisely thought it necessary to warn against this threat to our democracy in his farewell address...
...You must assume that however conditions might change in a world of enforceable international law and order, the enemy would always be plotting to cheat on treaties, to annihilate you whenever opportunity presents...
...I hope that you have many readers here...
...Can anyone doubt that protracted, spiralling arms race will accelerate the presently dangerous ascendency of the military in our industry, our science, our education—in everything that has made us what we are...
...And does anyone imagine that democracy—which depends upon free choice between real alternatives—can long survive the domination of the military, which permits discussion and "positive thinking" only on methods for carrying out goals unquestionably established by highest authority...
...But what if Huntington is right in claiming that deterrence can in some sense continue to work...
...an incinerated and radioactive world leaves little soil for democracy or for life itself to flourish...
...Such assumptions and such stereotypes seem to me far more dangerous and immediate threats to peace and democracy than any of the admitted pitfalls of disarmament...
...if he did not see the enemy in some such terms, how could he seriously train himself and his men to annihilate hundreds of millions of enemy citizens...
...For life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—in short, democracy—are probably the very last considerations in post-nuclear-war situations like those pictured in Herman Kahn's On Thermonuclear War...
...The advocate of "massive retaliation" must see his opponent as an iniquitous enemy whose triumph would mean the end of all of value...
...Paul Lauteb...
...Geneva, N.Y...
...In particular, I feel that some of your contributors are not quite fair to Indonesia, although I am quite conscious of the weaknesses in that large and populous republic...
...Predicated on such assumptions, your conduct is likely to help fulfill your prophecies (to borrow Dr...
...For even if disarmament fails, there is recourse to the mind and spirit of man...
...And if Huntington is wrong, it means the end of everything for which he would claim to be fighting...
...Queenscliff, Australia Charles Meeking ON DETERRENCE Samuel P. Huntington's review of Richard J. Barnet's Who Wants Disarmament...
...This kind of stereotyped thinking is precisely what inhibits such militarists both from serious negotiations toward relaxation of tensions and from thinking beyond their strategic doubts over disarmament...
...The normal autocracy of the military is further exaggerated by the psychology of a nuclear arms race...
...I am a free-lance journalist, my special interests being politics and Southeast Asia, and I find most of your articles valuable as background, even if I do not agree with some of them...
...No responsible advocate of deterrence has suggested that we can remain militarily where we are...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 5
