THE LIBERALS AND THE NEW CULT OF POWER

...What Walter Lippmann has called the "acids of modernity" have long been at work on the generation now in charge of the White House...

...The real peril of Castroism is less in Cuba than elsewhere in Latin America— but this is an area where we can act affirmatively with law and our best traditions on our side...

...it is an attitude, he says, which strips us of choice...

...Fidel Castro began his guerrilla war in the Sierra Maestra with only twelve followers and yet he was able to humble a modern, well equipped army that was properly trained (in part by a U.S...

...Organizing foreign invasions, breaking laws, and telling lies are not activities that come easily to a country with the principles we profess...

...Both before and after the invasion, what are termed "moral" considerations have been swept, for the most part, to the periphery of the debate...

...Yet the genius of our system is based on the assumption that criticism is the best curative for governmental error...

...Out of the recent disaster perhaps the liberals in Washington may acquire a new skepticism about the realism of "realists" who deduce all policy from the axioms of power...

...Given the pull of economic self-interest and the insurrectionary temper of the Cuban people, it is difficult to believe that Castroism in its present form can represent a permanent solution for the island...

...Moreover, is it not arguable that the very amoral assumptions of the Cuban venture predestined its failure...

...In a brilliantly argued and written series of works, Richard Hof-stadter reasoned that the pretensions of the reformer often shielded the itch of status seeking...

...This is that a soldier must know what he is fighting for and all the reasons behind it...

...Nor am I implying that pessimists like Carr, Kissinger, and Kahn perform a disservice...

...But who would know better if the planes were in fact defecting craft or whether they were flown from foreign bases...

...It does not startle the world when the Soviet Ambassador tells an outrageous lie and when Moscow violates international law...

...Eisenhower—if these officials themselves lose their perspective and succumb to the cult of toughness, then the republic may lose its hold on those moorings which have tied it to principle...

...Their arguments assuredly need to be heard...

...We have seen presumably civilized nations such as Germany descend into a primal slime, and this shock was compounded by Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

...As a satellite, Cuba could at best become only a precarious outpost in Khrushchev's empire...

...Who was really being "naive" in the Cuban affair...

...But then Castro did not have the invaluable counsel of both the CIA and the Pentagon when he was combating Batista...

...The Cuban invasion should have taught us that we are poor disciples of Machiavelli...

...It is a reasonable hypothesis that among the first acts of Miro Car-dona's regime would have been the restoration of American property seized by Castro...

...To the "toughs," one supposes, question like this are just matters for airy speculation among theological seminarians...

...Thomas Jefferson may still have more to say to us in our present predicament than the Latin American desk of the CIA...

...Carr contended that the doctrines of international law were a form of humbug concocted by nations benefiting from the status quo and used to repress the rivals who wanted a change in the power balance...

...A series of iconoclastic books has, like a chain of firecrackers, exploded belief in the simpler ideals of the past...

...That he has not done so seems to bear out the contention that Cuba is a thorn in the flesh but not a dagger in the heart—at least not yet...

...But there is a worrisome imbalance suggested by the unanimity...

...In Great Britain, a similar attitude was applied to foreign relations by E. H. Carr in his influential The 20 Years' Crisis...

...This criticism, in turn, is dependent on a press that at least makes an effort to report what is really going on...

...Only those who themselves had ceased to believe in the efficacy or Tightness of world law could have gone along with so little evident protest in accepting a proposal which meant that the United States would violate national, hemispheric, and international laws...

...To the "toughs," one assumes, this is not a matter of great moment...

...Max Lerner, one of the doyens of liberal journalism, said in the New York Post that he felt the invasion was ill-timed but that nonetheless, "There is no suicide imperative which comes built-in with the process of democracy"—that is, a little dirty work is justified in wiping out a regime that menaces our security...

...When James MacGregor Burns, later the biographer of President Kennedy, wrote a book about Franklin D. Roosevelt, the title characteristically was taken from Machiavelli, The Lion and the Fox, and an appendix was added which discussed the secrets of leadership with approved clinical coldness...

...But when Adlai Stevenson is caught in a fib, and when the champion of world morality is found flouting the law, it is fair to ask who has lost more— the Communists or ourselves...

...Beneath the velvet glove of international law, in short, there was the iron fist of national interest...

...Kahn chillingly reassures us, "objective studies indicate that even though the amount of human tragedy would be greatly increased in the postwar world, the increase would not preclude normal and happy lives for the majority of survivors and their descendants...

...But if the bright young men in the White House—who can speak scornfully of the "naivete" of Mr...

...Even after it was over, there was a widespread conviction here that if the press had played along, the whole venture might have succeeded...

...There could be no better expression of the contempt of the "toughs" for political ideas than the hapless Revolutionary Council put together under CIA auspices and intended to supplant Castro...

...Turned around, the fact that Cuba is only ninety miles away is our ultimate ace card...

...Carrying the point further, it is precisely the impression that there is a difference between Soviet and American methods that constitutes our ultimate resource in the cold war...

...Instead, it can be argued, they have been mesmerized by the cult of "toughness," by a way of looking at power which has become especially fashionable along the New Frontier...

...In The Managerial Revolution (1941) and The Machiavellians (1945), Burnham popularized the views of three Europeans—Mosca, Michels, and Pareto—who contended, at bottom, that politics is invariably a swindle and that professed ideals are more often than not a mask for the interests of a ruling elite...

...What kind of government would the Council have given Cuba...

...Will Allen Dulles go...

...Those who have acquiesced or remained indifferent to violations of principle are not, I think, wicked nor are they fools...

...And perhaps it is understandable that men who were disenchanted about political ideals might underestimate the appeal of Castroism on the Cuban masses...

...He has written for Harper's, The Reporter, Commentary, and the New Republic...

...Our skins, already toughened by the hot war, were further hardened by the cold war...

...This was the assumption that change in Castro's Cuba could be manipulated by guns, money, and press releases with a minimum of attention to the problems of revolutionary ideology...

...The first use of nuclear weapons, we can ill forget, was sanctioned by decent democrats who felt that the ends justified searing two cities with deadly rays...

...As is well known by now, the MRP was shouldered out of the whole enterprise, its advice ignored, and its underground partisans in Cuba uninformed of the attack...

...The best explanation seems to be that the MRP was not docile and pro-American enough...

...Barring a nuclear showdown, the alternative is an uneasy coexistence with a totalitarian adversary that blandly disregards what we feel are the rules of the game...

...In simplified form, these attitudes help to explain the moral climate in the White House when the Cuban decision was discussed...

...One might demur that it does help, a little...

...Here it almost seemed as if it were a contest to see who could be the most cold-blooded, who could best stare Medusa in the face without turning to stone...

...Would Castro have been fooled...

...No assumption could be more "naive" than to have expected that Castro's regime could have been ousted by a small army of invaders whose banner was largely negative, consisting for the most part of anti-Communism...

...And the Harvard dons in the other corner, who might have been expected to resist the counsel of the toughs, were new to power, fearful of seeming "soft," and perhaps shaken in their confidence in principles that were once regarded as "self-evident...

...Who if not the "toughs" with their plausible simplicities based on an ignorance of Cuba, people, and the traditions of free government...

...Liberals thus feel a defensive need to "prove" their anti-Communist credentials, although even the most eloquent philippics are liable to leave the "toughs" unimpressed...

...If indeed Castro posed a mortal threat, President Kennedy would presumably have sent the Marines before a Soviet missile vaporized Miami Beach...

...Despite a widespread belief to the contrary," Dr...

...The tag of "softness" acquired a lethal sting because of its potency during the McCarthy years...

...To begin with, our moral sensibilities as a nation have been blunted by the sheer scale of the horrors we have witnessed during the past generation...

...A comparable skepticism has flavored scores of books in the United States...

...The one group among the opposition factions with any real underground support and popular following was the leftist Peoples Revolutionary Movement led by Manuel Ray...

...It is worth speculating where he might be today if he had had all his decisions made for him in Washington by the hard-boiled realists...

...But the most spectacular application of unsentimental realism has been in discussions of nuclear strategy...

...Yet, although government agencies have blundered before, it is an unpleasant novelty for the United States to be plausibly assailed as a liar, lawbreaker, and imperialist bully...

...Finally, the most politically sophisticated members of the liberal community have been exposed to a literKARL E. MEYER, editorial writer for the Washington Post and a regular contributor to The Progressive, recently wrote a widely praised book, "The New America: Politics and Society in the Age of the Smooth Deal...

...There was special annoyance about the exposure of a "cover story" concerning a bombing attack made by B-25s on Cuba just prior to the invasion...

...A Council which was so conservative in coloration and so pliable in exile might be expected to accede to this inevitable demand...

...These are pressures felt by most of us, but in addition, the liberal community has special psychic ailments of its own...

...But the inquest fastens largely on the question of administrative failure...

...If this were to happen, it would be taken in Latin America as a confirmation that our real quarrel with Castro was based on his seizure of U.S...

...Henry Kissinger makes clear his disdain for those who draw back in horror from the prospect of using nuclear weapons...

...The typical military view was stated after the invasion, in another connection, by General Leslie R. Groves...

...This is the bemused refrain, and when a White House official appears at a cocktail party, he is treated somewhat like a prisoner in the dock, badgered by a dozen inquisitors armed with the rectitude of hindsight...

...Destroy credibility in the press and you knock the cotter-pin from the system—and in the process give the world the impression that there is little choice between Pravda and the New York Times...

...In carrying out the operation, the "toughs" were frequently annoyed by the curiosity of the American press...

...After the invasion, the post mor-tems were often symptomatic of the same tendencies...

...ature of corrosive disenchantment...

...The hollowness of the "tough" analysis ought to embolden those who are now intimidated by the cult of power...

...The quarrels between liberals and conservatives, he further argued, were often more rhetorical than real...

...Perhaps, too, there will be a greater confidence in the older American principles that could have saved us from involvement in this wretched affair...

...Yet throughout the whole invasion "episode" it seems to have been the premise of the planners that Cubans were not competent to make decisions for themselves...

...This, too, was consistent with the philosophy of the "toughs"—e.g., all anti-Communists should fight side by side...

...In all this, I speak for myself and make no pretense to moral superiority...

...I should like to take a brief detour in order to explore the general political topography which helps to explain why the failure of sin has become more fascinating to discuss than the fact of sin itself...

...Here we come to the real heart of the "tough" analysis—Cuba is only ninety miles away...

...mission in Havana)—but was not convinced of the righteousness of its cause...

...Since we are not prepared to follow the Communist example to the ultimate conclusion, it is worth wondering how we can profit by emulating them...

...The premise that was most basic to the enterprise was probably the most misguided...

...A properly trained soldier does not have to be convinced of the righteousness of his cause...

...Or the American people...

...As the currency of principle is cheapened, the temptation is strong for us to practice a little political judo too...

...Seen in perspective, therefore, the Cuban invasion poses two related problems, one concerning the event itself and the other the reaction to it...

...In my opinion a most unfortunate philosophy has been advanced in recent years," said General Groves, now retired...

...An extreme example is the approach fostered by James Burnham, an American philosopher whose career has charted an eccentric parabola from Trotskyism to McCarthyism...

...It was consistent with this tradition that the Progressives and Populists were subsequently named as the ultimate culprits responsible for Senator McCarthy...

...If anything, the circumstances of the present struggle are more frustrating than those of an actual shooting conflict...

...Assume that the invasion had succeeded...

...No doubt the problems are difficult, and Castro a vexatious fellow...

...How could it happen...

...Yet, now that it is over, the importance given to the Cuban threat seems slightly hysterical...

...And Herman Kahn has achieved a special status by his forthright contemplation of an atomic war...

...The activists of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency were in one corner, pressing for a plan which would enable the United States to "do something" about Castro...

...A more grotesque mistake involved the entry of Batista followers into the rebel camps...

...The intellectuals seem too often to have accepted the premises of the toughs that power can be divorced from principle, that the exigencies of the cold war justify more and more and more departures from national traditions, and that the processes of democracy are somehow a handicap in the struggle against tyranny...

...The rebuttal, presumably, is that Cuba posed a mortal threat and that the short-cuts were justified, even though they cost us some loss of moral face before the world...

...During the Eisenhower years, the common sense of the President served as a brake against some of the more extravagant proposals of the "toughs...

...property rather than his links with the Communist bloc...

...In other words, an air of disenchantment became de rigeur among the young intellectuals who were determined not to be fooled...

...Thus we see the Communist bloc register one success after another by employing its principles of subversion and ideological warfare, while our principles—so it seems—handcuff us and prevent a response in kind...