TIME FOR EVOLUTION

...Here the chief danger is Communist economic growth and productivity, not subversion...

...American efforts to encourage the establishment of free, democratic regimes in Eastern Europe (which at that time would have meant anti-Soviet regimes) showed little understanding of the strategic importance of this region to the Soviet Union...

...Her purposes were not the purposes of Western democracy...

...In two concluding chapters, Fleming lists ten reasons why he feels the West has lost the cold war and thirteen future steps which the United States must take if it is to recover an appropriate place of influence and leadership in the world...

...The same vigorous kind of objection permeates these volumes, and they take their place alongside the writings of other liberal critics of American foreign policy like James Warburg and William A. Williams...

...They are "must" reading because they attempt in a documented way to correct some of the popular and official misconceptions that the world crisis is mainly the result of the evil machinations of the Communist powers...

...The chronological coverage extends to about mid-1960, with the final sections devoted to the frustrations surrounding the U-2 incident, the collapse of the Summit Conference, and the cancellation of President Eisenhower's projected visit to Japan...

...Reviewed by Elton Atwater These impressive volumes are "must" reading for all who would pass judgment on current American foreign policy...

...In Communist theory, peace is not simply the condition in which international disputes are adjusted without recourse to war or violence...

...Max Beloff's Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1929-1941 is a more balanced interpretation of this period, while George F. Kennan's recent book, Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin, has this to say: "Anyone who looks deeply at the history of these years cannot, I think, avoid the conclusion that Russia was never really available, in the sense that Western liberals thought she was, as a possible partner of the West in the combatting of Nazism...

...The British and French did pursue some very shortsighted policies in those day, but there were also deep bases of mistrust of the Soviet Union on the part of her neighbors which would have made any policy of extensive cooperation extremely difficult...

...But it has never been abandoned, and, until it is modified, the normal pattern of relations between states which share some degree of consensus will be extremely difficult to achieve...

...Approximately one-half of the first volume deals with Soviet-Western relations from 1917 to 1945...

...This ideological element in Communist thinking has at times been subordinated to the pragmatic needs of Soviet security or obfuscated by repeated calls for peaceful coexistence...

...They attempted to marry the impossible to the inevitable...

...But it is because the books constitute such a strong antidote to the usual explanations of American foreign policy that they deserve careful examination by all students of the subject...

...The damage that had been done with the triumph of Bolshevism in Russia went deeper than people in the West supposed...

...Likewise, Fleming's account of the unsuccessful efforts of the Soviet Union and the Western European powers in the 1930's to create an Eastern European security pact to check Nazi expansion places most of the responsibility for failure on the British and French rather than pointing out more objectively the conflicting concepts of security held by the British, French, Poles, and Russians...

...Communist leaders today, he suggests, envisage a long-term struggle for supremacy by various political, economic, and psychological methods short of major military conflict...

...This continuous theme of American responsibility for the cold war will make many readers of Fleming's volumes uncomfortable...

...How to provide sufficient time for this evolution to take effect is the main problem of our day...

...Every antidote, however, has a tendency to be extreme, and when a final appraisal of this cold war period can be made, it is likely to fall somewhere between Fleming's position and the official government position...

...Anyone familiar with the previous writings of D. F. Fleming will recall that he has never minced words in criticizing what he regarded as the rigidities and inadequacies of American foreign policy since World War II, its over-reliance on military containment, and its reluctance to advance proposals for negotiation which had some chance of being accepted by the other side...

...In his conclusion, he suggests among other things that an essential condition for future peace is for Americans to get rid of the dogma that Communism is out to conquer the world...

...I have sought at every stage," writes Fleming, "to present the other side, how it looks to the 'enemy,' in the belief that this is essential to the avoidance of the final grand smash...

...Fleming's volumes will prod both the contented and the discontented observers of contemporary foreign policy to think more deeply on how this may be achieved...

...It is that the cold war was avoidable, provided the United States and its allies had shown greater understanding of the legitimate security and defense needs of the Soviet Union, and had recognized that Soviet control of Eastern Europe and the triumph of the Communists in China were inescapable consequences of World War II...

...Peace, in the long run, can be assured only when the class struggle has ended—when Communism has been finally established in all or at least a large part of the world...

...Her possibilities were not the possibilities open to democratic states...

...It has two main purposes—first, to record in detail the history of the cold war from 1917 to 1960, and second, by making the viewpoints of our Communist opponents clearer, to try to forestall World War III and its cataclysmic results for all mankind...

...In the long run, the most effective influence to modify Communism as well as Western political systems is the irresistible force of evolution...

...Although the cold war is usually thought of as a post-World War II phenomenon, it had its antecedents in the three previous decades, and the author rightly looks for its origins in the Bolshevik Revolution and its aftermath...

...It would be more accurate to say that the cold war had its origins in the conflicting concepts of security held by the Soviet Union and the Western powers, rather than to try to pin the blame primarily on one side...

...But the Soviet concept of security, involving the control of Eastern Europe and quite possibly of Germany also, actually frightens a great many Europeans as well as many Americans...

...The Soviet concept of security is further complicated by the particular meaning Communist ideology gives to the word "peace...

...Throughout his study, for example, Fleming seems to minimize the long-range objectives of world Communism and to assume that reasonably normal inter-state relations can be expected when dealing with Soviet leaders...

...This deliberate effort to counteract popular impressions and stereotypes is bound to make the volumes both controversial and provocative...

...In this, he feels, the Western democracies should be more than able to hold their own provided they place their main reliance on non-military policies...

...He might well have added that it is equally important for Soviet leaders to take a less dogmatic view of the infallibility of their own interpretation of history...

...While the volumes are heavily documented anil include the viewpoints of a great variety of public figures and writers, a rather consistent theme runs throughout much of the material...

...The other main subdivisions of the study cover the cold war in Europe from 1945 to 1950, the cold war in East Asia from 1945 to 1955, and what is called "the second cold war" from 1955 to 1960...

...This is the most comprehensive study of its kind yet to appear...

...Fleming minimizes the significance of such ideological factors in Soviet foreign policy and suggests that Americans, under the impact of cold war psychology, came to accept uncritically the belief in the Soviet desire for world conquest...

...Security, he feels, is the primary motivation of Soviet officials, and, if properly understood, should provide a basis for mutually advantageous negotiations...