Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR AUTHOR AND REVIEWER Kennett Love's review of my study, The Egyptian Army in Politics (NL, January 22), heaps abundant abuse on both the book and its author. Your reviewer, of...
...Though I agree with Levine that arms control is more feasible than disarmament, I'm not afraid to disagree with both President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev on total disarmament...
...Your reviewer, of course, is free— indeed, it is his duty—to criticize the book...
...It was difficult to see where such attack stopped and where an actual review of the book's contents began...
...No, the time has not come for a moratorium on exposures of the John Birch Society and the right-wing conspiracy, as John P. Roche suggests in "'Menace from the Right'" (NL, March 5...
...One has the horrid suspicion that the thunder on the right has sounded so loud because of the comparative silence on the left...
...But I was amused by his impassioned and personal attack upon the author...
...But his criticism becomes suspect when he begins to derogate the author's character, especially if the latter is unknown to him personally...
...Few sensible people, including Roche, think a right-wing junta is about to take over in Washington, but many do think the resurgence of the right is a deadly serious issue which cannot be wished away by remembering that Senator Joseph McCarthy was a nihilist and had no party organization...
...Arlington, Va...
...Columbia, S.C...
...It aims at (1) the imposition by one party against all comers of a ceiling upon the escalation of offensive weapons capabilities, (2) the dismantling or destroying of equal numbers of offensive weapons on all sides, (3) insuring continuing security to all countries by shifting the main weight of their arms budgets from attack systems to anti-weapons systems...
...When a reviewer does not think well of a book, he can very well say so...
...A NATO member would first announce that it was dismantling one of its ICBM bases and would invite inspectors from rival powers to verify this...
...But among liberals there is a great absence of bold and thoughtful effort to cope with either the new problems of our society or the old ones...
...Anne Ceutcher...
...All nations capable of participating in a space program would have to cooperate internationally...
...Switzerland, second only to the U.S...
...This accelerates the arms race and adds yet another destabilizing counterweight to mutual deterrence...
...Moreover, civil defense increases the likelihood of a nuclear holocaust by stimulating the enemy to develop more super-weapons...
...True, there are plenty of foreign policy issues to talk about, and there is a certain amount of unfinished New Deal business on the agenda...
...Sweden, according to Robert E. Riggs' study, Politics in the United Nations, voted with the United States on more than two-thirds of the political questions that came up before the UN from 1946-54, and voted with the Soviets on less than 10 per cent of the proposals...
...Both Sweden and Switzerland are staunchly anti-Communist societies...
...In fact, one of the most distressing things about the far righters is that so many of their heroes really believe in the cause...
...I will merely restate my central point: that Vatikiotis' book "promises much and delivers nothing...
...Civil defense represents, certainly, a way of shifting military budgets from weapons that kill to measures that prevent killing...
...The third and final phase of WINDOW embraces the destruction of equal numbers of offensive missile bases...
...One of the happy differences this time round is that, besides having a President who does not "believe in the withering away of the State," influential segments of the mass media are exposing the revolt of the Yahoos rather than contributing to its power by taking their absurdities seriously...
...It is my impression that today's radical righters are much better organized, especially on the precinct level, than their predecessors of a decade ago, and that their political "beau ideals" are not all nihilist by any means...
...Without unanimous decisions, no Iaunchings would be allowed...
...New York City William James Hall J. Hirshleifer replies: William James Hall's positive suggestions are interesting and worthy of study...
...Perhaps if Roche were on an island of liberalism in a sea of conservatism, the "Menace from the Right" would appear menacing enough to dispense with Arthur Krock's favorite typographical device...
...The fact that all other reviewers so far, have published some very complimentary remarks about the work in certain leading newspapers and magazines might come as a shock to Love...
...what weight as they have applies to any measure tending to mitigate the horrors of atomic war, whether the measure in question is civil defense, antimissile defense, or limitations on numbers of bases or of weapons...
...ARMS AND THE MAN' Your February 19 issue, featuring four articles on the theme of "Arms and the Man," prompts the following comments: 1. Although Lawrence S. Finkelstein's piece on "Testing in the Atmosphere" establishes the case for further nuclear experiments in the atmosphere whenever technical advances are strategically determinative, it was disappointing in its repetition of the official cant which declares that it was the Soviets who "broke" the test moratorium...
...If staged controls toward total disarmament are impractical, this is scarcely a criticism of the end itself but rather of the means of getting there...
...Clearly, Knauth's propaganda exercise would be even less useful than any of the other various UN peace force schemes in which the NATO countries would continue to control most of the votes...
...as an international banker, is profoundly anti-Soviet in outlook and would be equally unacceptable to the Russians...
...WINDOW (West Initiated Neutralization and Dismantling of Offensive Weaponry) would assume a NATO initiative based on the rapid development of a 75-90 per cent effective anti-ICBM and anti-aircraft capability, supplemented by an' anti-satellite weapons system...
...Unfortunately, the explanation that comes most readily to mind is unflattering to liberals...
...My own frankly unabashed and entirely feasible proposal to end the dangerously offensive character of the present arms race is framed so that both the Soviets and the West may preserve their respective ways of life without destroying each other in the process...
...While I do not assign such objections too much weight (e.g., would it be logical for us to respond to Soviet civil defenses by shifting from 25-megaton to 100megaton weapons...
...At the same time it would give the coordinates of a rival power's ICBM base and request that it be dismantled and evacuated within a stated period or face destruction by the declarer's highly selective nuclear weapons...
...Moreover, provision of shelters would help cut down offensive weapon capabilities, as far as destruction of life is concerned...
...a sophistry detectable by any literate schoolboy...
...It is important that all future satellites be jointly launched and that any international control system admit every eligible power to full equality, with the right of veto reserved to each...
...This brings into play, through miscalculations generated by mingled fear and bravado, the well-known social mechanism of the self-fulfilling prophecy which leads people to behave so that they bring about the very situation they seek to avoid...
...This would at once make it more difficult for hostile powers to launch an anonymous attack or sneak missiles through radar defenses...
...MENACE FROM THE RIGHT...
...Knauth lets the cat out of the bag when he confesses that "if the Russians rejected [his] plan, their professions of peace would be dealt a serious blow...
...To set the record straight, it was the French who broke the moratorium by testing on the NATO side while the Communists refrained...
...Should NATO warheads strike them, I doubt that the Russian people would be able to appreciate any nice discriminations as to whether these were made in Britain, France or the United States...
...On the other hand, NATO would voluntarily restrict its submarines to its bases and invite the stationing of surface craft of rival blocs to see that none sneak out...
...I am sure, that a press, especially a reputable university press, does not publish a book at the request of its author, or because he thinks it should be published...
...Any majority rule system would probably encourage a preemptive strike by a nuclear power against a perceived threat...
...Civil defense may be negated by compensating escalation of enemy weapons, or they may tend to be destabilizing by making war less "unthinkable...
...This is much like saying that if two rivals agree that peace is their object, they have thereby made it much more difficult to come to terms...
...any national space program would be blocked by NATO's destruction of any satellite that was launched outside international auspices...
...This would be done until the number of ICBM bases on all sides had been reduced to tolerable levels so that no nation's offensive weapons system would be capable of saturating its rival's defenses...
...2. J. Hirshleifer's discussion of "The Civil Defense Debate," though better balanced than most, forgets that civil defense conditions people to accept the inevitability of a nuclear conflict even if nobody will win it...
...4. Robert A. Levine's piece on "Disarmament and Arms Control" implicitly counters arms control to disarmament, though he hesitates to bring this out in the open by curiously arguing that to aim at total disarmament is to interfere with the achievement of any disarmament...
...WINDOW'S second phase would involve the effective neutralization of all submarines by NATO's destruction of any submarine that ventured into international waters...
...But the question is there, and it needs answering: Why have the fulminations of a disorganized and out-of-power minority been taken so seriously by liberals at a time when there is an intelligent and vigorous Democrat in the White House and there is every opportunity for the attainment of liberal goals...
...I am surprised that he does not notice that civil defenses harmonize with his own objectives and proposals...
...3. Oliver Dixwell Knauth's scheme for "A Neutral Deterrent," in which Swiss and Swedish technicians would man a third nuclear force, strikes me as more playful than serious...
...Hertfordshire, England P. J. Vatikiotis Kennett Love replies: Since P. J. Vatikiotis does not dispute specific criticisms, I need repeat neither them nor the citations from the book that substantiated them...
...Raymond A. Moore Everything lohn P. Roche has to say about the insubstantiality of the "Menace from the Right" is so pertinent and persuasive that it would be ungrateful to chide him for not tackling the question implicit in his message...
...Your reviewer is aware...
...Perhaps, then, the real "Menace from the Right" is not that the opponents of fluoridated water and UNICEF Christmas cards constitute a mortal danger, but that we pretend they do—in order to shirk what we can and should be doing to build a sound society...
Vol. 45 • April 1962 • No. 7
