THE UNNECESSARY WAR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83M00914R002100110079-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 30
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 1, 2007
• Sequence Number: 79
• Publication Date: November 30, 1981
• Content Type: REPORT

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The Unnecessary War
The Winston Churchill Lecture
of the English Speaking Union
by
Eugene V. Rostow
Director
United States Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency
London
November 30, 1981
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This ceremony gives me pleasure at many levels. I
believe in the English-Speaking Union and value the
compliment of your invitation to speak tonight.
What makes this evening singular, however, is that I
have. been asked to give a lecture in honor of Winston
Churchill. The only occasion.in my life which made my skin
tingle with comparable feeling was the challenge.of.writing
and delivering a Fourth of July oration in honor of Thomas
Jefferson from the steps.of Monticello. .
Both Churchill and Jefferson are heroes in the
Pantheon of the English speaking peoples. The heroism
of these giants is not simply that they had the courage
to fight against odds in times of trouble. There are
many heroes of whom.that could be said. Their special
quality is that they had the gift of words as well as
the gift of action. What they.did and.what-they.said
are woven. together into an epic whole. Like the other
great-.epics of our tradition, Churchill and. Jefferson.
will remain part of the . living. faith not only of the
English speaking peoples but of all the peoples in the
world who share the creed of Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity: -- the Rights of Man. .
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That faith is the heart of what I have to say tonight.
it is embodied in many famous slogans -in the motto of the
French Revolution I have just recalled; in Jefferson's
"unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit. of
happiness"; in the Four Freedoms of Churchill and Franklin
Roosevelt; and in the natural human and civil rights men
and women are claiming with increasing vehemence these
days behind the Iron Curtain and in other parts of the
world-ruled by tyrants or oligarchs. The themes which
cluster around the idea of liberty lie just below the
surface of the political and military problems which
preoccupy our foreign offices. And they dominate the
psychological and educational tasks which constitute at
least half the agenda of our governments in the realm
of foreign affairs.
Nominally, my subject tonight, in Churchill's com-
pelling phrase, is "The Unnecessary War" -- the war we
must prevent. Churchill proposed the phrase as the name
for what is generally called "The Second World War." It
commands us to remember that if the United States, Great
Britain, France and the Soviet Union had acted wisely
during the Thirties, the war could never have taken place.
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After'Hitler came to power, Churchill urged such a course with
allh.is magnificent resources of reason, historical knowledge,
experience, eloquence, and wit. He was denounced for his
pains as a senile, drunken war monger who.saw Huns under
every bed. His critics -- they were numerous and influen-
tial -- dismissed him as a romantic who still lived in the
days before 1914, besotted by endless quantities of
champagne or brandy or both. To adapt one of Churchill's
best phrases, "Some champagne; some brandy." Nonetheless,
he was kept in the wilderness until the war had started
and was nearly lost.
Both World Wars did terrible damage to the fabric of our
civilization. The twin evils of Fascism and Communism were
among their progeny. But a Third World War in a nuclear en-
vironment would be far, far worse. We must not fail to pre-
vent.war this time, as Asquith and Grey failed before 1914,
and as Churchill and Roosevelt failed before 1939. President
Reagan made it clear in his speech of November 18 that this
is the dominant idea of American foreign policy today.
The situation we confront resembles that of the Thirties
in many ways. But it is significantly different too, --more
dangerous; more volatile; and far more difficult to control
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by the polite warnings and veiled threats of old-fashioned
European diplomacy.
My thesis tonight is simple: peace has now become
truly indivisible, in the memorable words of a Soviet
Foreign Minister forty five years ago. It is a thesis
entirely appropriate for us to consider on the first
day of a new round of Soviet American talks on the re-
duction of nuclear weapons. The pervasive menace of
the-Soviet nuclear arsenal and the apparently inexorable
spread of nuclear weapons create profound political insta-
bilities. But nuclear weapons are not the only factors of
disequilibrium in the world. Conventional warfare, subversion,
and terrorism have become epidemic and commonplace. Their
influence, added to that of the nuclear arsenals, has trans-
formed world politics into a witches' brew for a reason which
becomes more obvious and more ominous every day: because the
wall between conventional and nuclear war can never be imper-
meable, no matter how high we make it. Small wars can become
big ones at least as readily as in the days when Archdukes
were assassinated at Sarejevo and Danzig was the center of
world concern. It is now apparent that arms control agree-
ments are hardly worth having if they make the world safe for
conventional warfare, terrorism, and the movement of armed
bands across international frontiers.
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Consider, for example, an issue now before our. Govern-
ments. The Soviet Union has revived its old proposal for
a General Assembly declaration banning the first use of
nuclear weapons. The Soviet goal is transparent. They
know as we do that the recovery and renaissance of the.
NATO allies, Japan, and many other countries since 1945
have depended on the credible threat of the United States
to use its full military capability, including 'nuclear
weapons if necessary, in defense of its allies and other
supreme interests against conventional as well as nuclear
attack. That is what nuclear deterrence and the American
nuclear umbrella are about --,the belief throughout the
,world -- and particularly in the higher circles of the
Soviet Union --,that nuclear weapons would be used, however
reluctantly, if they.were needed, for example, to stop
a massive invasion of Western Europe. Until the. Soviet
Union joins us in agreements which.could genuinely-.remove
the menace of nuclear war from world, politics altogether
-- a goal to which the United States has been passionately
committed since we offered the Baruch Plan in 1946 -
there can be no escape from nuclear deterrence when the
supreme 'interests of the United States and the free world
are threatened by aggression.
The sound and reasonable response of the Western
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Allies to the Soviet proposal for a ban on the first use of
nuclear weapons, therefore, should be an appeal for a rededi-
cation of the entire world community to the principles of the
United Nations Charter against any form of aggression,, whether
conducted by nuclear or conventional force or by the movement
of armed bands across international frontiers. This appeal
should be coupled with a corresponding rededication to the
goal. of bringing nuclear energy under more effective interna-
tional control in order to permit the fullest possible use of
nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and end the danger of
nuclear weapons proliferation. The Baruch Plan, you. will re-
call, would have placed what was then an American nuclear
monopoly into the hands of a United Nations Agency. The
means proposed in the Baruch Plan are obsolete now. But
its animating ideas remain important.
No lesser steps could begin the indispensible process
of restoring world public order. The decline of world.
public. order and the specter of nuclear anarchy beyond
it are the greatest of all the threats to the peace. The
best available way to deal with that threat is through
international cooperation in enforcing the rules of peace
embodied in the Charter of the United Nations. They con-
stitute the only available code of detente -- and the only
possible code of detente.
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There is no blinking the fact that the.Soviet.Union
risks war in its campaigns of expansion all over the world.
Those campaigns use aggressive war. as an instrument of
national policy; they are carried on by methods which
violate the rules of the Charter governing the interna-
tional use of force. No one claims that the Soviet Union
initiates. all the trouble in the world. But it does take
advantage of trouble in order to expand its sphere of.in
fluence. The Soviet campaigns of expansion have gone too
far. They now threaten the world balance of power on which
the ultimate safety of the Western nations depends, and
therefore they touch nerves of immense sensitivity.
The men and women on the Clapham omnibus know this
in their bones. That is why there is so much concern about
war in Western public opinion. The current wave of
anxiety about the possibility of war is natural and
reasonable. We-all share it. But we cannot allow it.to
paralyze us. The pervasiveness of anxiety is not a sign
of cowardice or pacifism, but a normal symptom of the
fact that public opinion has reluctantly begun to acknow-
ledge the true condition of world p9litics.
The turbulence of our.public opinion does not prove
.that there is'something wrong with the younger generation;
that our moral fiber has been ruined by the welfare state;
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or that the leaders of our churches and peace movements
are all Communists or fellow travelers.or their innocent
dupes. Of course the Communists are trying to manipulate
the feelings of people about war and to harness them to a
political movement that would serve the ends.of the Soviet
Union.
But Communists have never controlled our politics'in
.the West, and they will not succeed now. We cannot ignore
their activities. But we should not be unduly agitated
about them, either.
After all, the anxiety of public opinion about war
is not manifested only in demonstrations against the
presence of troops and weapons and in.expressions of'the
perfectly correct view that there is insanity in the con-
tinued accumulation of weapons, especially nuclear' weapons.
There are other expressions of that anxiety and concern,
equally significant, and much more realistic. Throughout
the West, people'are coming to the conclusion that-their
governments. must stop the. process of Soviet expansion be-
fore it explodes into general war. They know that peace
cannot be achieved by unilateral disarmament. And they
recognize the wisdom of the old Russian proverb, "If you
make yourself into a sheep, you will find a wolf nearby."
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Sadly and without jingoism, our people support their
governments in policies which seek to prevent war while
there is still time to do so by peaceful means.
As a result, the North Atlantic allies and many other
nations are following the broad lines of policy Churchill,
counselled in vain before the Second World War. They are
restoring the military balance which has eroded. during the.
last decade. And they are resuming the quest for peace
through negotiation with the SovietUnion.'.They realize
how little has been accomplished by arms control and
disarmament treaties in the past. Nonetheless, without
illusion or euphoria, they wish to be certain that no
conceivable opportunity for peace is ignored. Therefore
they welcome President Reagans' effort to persuade the
leaders of the Soviet Union that it is in the highest
interest of..the Soviet state and of all other states and indeed in the highest interest of humanity itself to accept the obligation which history has thrust upon
the Soviet Union and the United States.
If we are to retreat, step by cautious step, from
the brink of the abyss, the United States and the Soviet
Union must lead the way, together. This duty can be
translated into two simple axioms: First the United.
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States and the Soviet Union should reach verifiable arms
reduction agreements which give each side an equal deterrent
capacity; and second, world public order should be restored
in conformity with the rules upon which the United Nations
agreed in San Francisco at the end of a terrible war they
had barely won. These two propositions are closely related.
Together they define. the objectives of the United States as
we approach these nuclear arms negotiations. We hope .the
Soviet Union will come to agree with us, and to accept
these principles as major premises for a process of Soviet-
American cooperation which has now become imperative.
The two principles I have tried to formulate are the
essence of President Reagan's methodical approach to the
task of preparing for the nuclear arms control negotiations.
If the Soviet Union accepts the principle of equal deter-
rence, it should be possible for carefully worked out and
verifiable agreements to improve the security position of
the West-as a whole., By allowing each side to maintain equal.
deterrence, nuclear arms, agreements should prevent any form
of coercive predominance. They could therefore result in a
somewhat more stable environment, at least in' restraining
the potential escalation of conventional-force conflicts.
Under contemporary circumstances, however, this is an
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.insufficient goal, and probably an illusory one. But it
Should give diplomacy an opportunity to press for the
ultimate fulfillment of agreement on the second principle,
that of mutual and reciprocal respect for the rules of
the Charter regarding the international use of force.
As President Reagan has pointed out, a, double standard
in this regard is simply not viable.
Sometimes the Soviet spokesmen say that the American
position would require the Soviet Union to give up a for-
eign policy rooted in its nature as a society and a state.
This. is not the case. So far as the United States is con-
cerned, the Soviet Union is.free to preach the gospel of
Communism throughout the world. But we cannot accept its
claim of a right to propagate its faith with a sword. All
the United States urges is that with regard to . the interna-
tional use of force the Soviet Union follows the same rules
which all states accepted when they became signatories of the
UN Charter . There can.be no peace until those rules are
equally and reciprocally obeyed.
Thus far, there have been no signs of progress in
that effort. Soviet behavior, diplomacy, and propaganda
remain what they have been for a long generation. The
Soviet submarine caught in the approaches to a Swedish
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naval-base is hardly an encouraging omen. we-have no
choice.but to persevere, however, in seeking to reach
the Russian people and the other peoples of the Soviet
Union with every resource of our intelligence and ima-
gination while the expansionist policies of the Soviet
Government are restrained by the calm deployment of
deterrent force. We know that more than sixty years
of Soviet rule have not destroyed the love of liberty
and justice in Russia, and that the peoples of Eastern
Europe, who have always been of the West, remain an in-
tegral part of the European culture and polity. So long
as we in the West are strong, confident, and determined,
the forces of hope in the East will not sink back into
despair.
.The analysis I have just summarized is adequate and
accurate, I believe, so far as it goes. But it does not
go very far. Rationally, it is easy to prescribe the
course the NATO allies and the Soviet Union should follow
now, just as it is easy with the benefit of.hindsight to
agree that Great'Britain, France, the Soviet Union and
the United States could have prevented the Second World
War.. The important question about the Thirties is not
what should have been done -- the answer to that question
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is self-evident -- but why Churchill and Roosevelt, two
towering politicians at the height of their powers,
failed to persuade their countrymen to follow
their lead. That, I believe is the principal question
on the agenda of Western foreign policy today, and it is.
the issue to which I shall devote the remainder of.this
lecture.. What are the limits of reason in dealing with,
the issues before us? Is there any chance that reason
can be made to prevail? How do we persuade the Soviet
Union that it too should obey the rules of the Charter,
give up the dream of empire, and join the Western nations
in seeing to it that the Charter rules are generally
respected throughout the world? Can we hope to persuade
the Soviet Union, or only to contain it,.as George Kennan
has contended, until the benign influenc.e.of Russian high
culture -- and of exposure to the West -- bring about a
mellowing of Soviet policy? And finally,., how can our
efforts of persuasion be organized and carried out by
methods compatible with the rules of our being?
The questions I have posed surely include matters
of diplomacy and strategy which would have been familiar to
Thucydides or Machiavelli. But their implications.
transcend the abstractions of political theory, or the
cool detachment of the cynic. The balance of power
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is not all that is at stake in the world crisis which
has come about through our blindness and negligence.
Churchill commented once that Marlborough and Wellington.
had changed the course of history, permitting two cen-
turies.of British primacy which were hardly compelled
by economics or demography. It is heresy,.I know
ask such a question in a Churchill. lecture, but -- issues.
.of national loyalty and national pride apart -- would
Western civilization have been fundamentally different
if Marlborough had lost at Blenheim and Wellington at
Waterloo? That kind of speculation can hardly arise about
the outcome of the Cold and not-so-Cold War. No one can
contemplate the possibility of nuclear. war with any feel-
ings but those of horror and disgust. And no one could
describe the architects of the Gulag. Archipelago as Saint
Simon and Nancy Mitford describe the'denizens of Versailles
in the day.of the Sun King. With divided and uneasy minds,
the nations of the West have finally embarked on a Churchil-
Tian effort to prevent war. We have taken this step not only
to protect our national independence and avert nuclear devas-
tation but to preserve the. creed and hope of liberty,for.our-
selves and for all who. cherish it., Many people seem to think
that nuclear war could be averted by Western surrender. But
that course is unthinkable.., Moreover,. it would not. work.
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Many believe that the ideal of individual. freedom has
had its run in the bleak chronicle of human history, and that
social'pluralism. will soon be forced to yield to one version
or another of the all-embracing state.
This every child of the Anglo-American culture must deny.
The view that the state exists to protect individual freedom
has always been at war with the ideology of Leviathan; that
war will never end. Man yearns for freedom, but freedom is
lonely. Man also yearns for security and companionship.
Sometimes he seems willing to pay the price of slavery for
them. It may be that even in the West some people are will-
ing to accept such societies, at least for a time.
But there is no reason to lose faith in our humane ideals.
During the last generation, behind the shield of collective
self-defense backed by the American nuclear weapon, democ-
racy has enjoyed a renaissance in Germany, Japan, and many
other countries, and its values are gaining ground throughout
the world. We speak with many voices, as free men and women
always do. But beneath the turbulence of these lively sounds
there is abiding unity and ample strength. In their vast
majorities, the people of the West remain loyal to the
code. of values to which they have been bred. For the,
English speaking peoples, that tradition goes beyond the
Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century to the roots. of
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our political liberty in the common law and the English
constitution, and to the roots of our moral freedom in
the heritage of the Old and New Testaments and the memory
of Greece and Rome. In other parts of the West, of
course, the concordia of the community includes strong
elements of the Roman law and the Roman culture in'.
both its ancient and its modern manifestations.
Today, that tradition faces the challenge of a new
Minotaur. And today, once more, those who love freedom
must rally to its defense.
But the threat we face.is more than the threat
of arms and the challenge of ideology. Sir Isaiah
Berlin uses a simple phrase to sum.up the most funda-
mental difference between societies devoted to the
freedom of the individual and societies in which the
state manipulates the individual in the name of a
greater good: the difference between "Freedom from"
and "Freedom to." We believe with Sir Isaiah in
"Freedom from": -- that is, we, believe in the autonomy
of man as a good in itself and the most important
rightful goal of organized society. It follows that
we must also believe with Jefferson that "the just
powers of.government derive from the consent of the.
governed." If this is so, high principles of ethical
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responsibility should govern the discourse among men., and
women which is the source of public opinion and thus?.the
predicate for their consent. Democracy is impossible
unless'we speak to each other with civility and scrupulous
respect for the truth as best we can perceive the truth.
As George Orwell saw so clearly, the most important
distinction between free societies and modern tyranny is
a totally different attitude towards the problem of truth.
This difference is why our efforts at propaganda, even
in wartime, are so diffident, defensive, and ineffective.
Everyday we read and hear propositions as bizarre as those
of Orwell's Newspeak. We find it almost impossible,to off-
set their impact on our own minds, or to explain to others
why those propositions are wrong. We are simply not equipped
to contest the propaganda of Newspeak. In'the end, we deal
with it as if it were the argument of a parliamentary oppo-
sition. That is all we know how. to do.
Let me give you an example of central importance to
.my thesis tonight. We are being bombarded at the moment
by the breathtaking claim that the NATO allies and the
United States in particular are seeking to disturb astable
equilibrium of world power, gain military superiority ,over
the Soviet Union, and start a nuclear war to destroy. the
Soviet,regime. Sometimes an additional detail is added
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for European consumption -- that the United States is
planning to fight the nuclear war entirely in Europe and to
its last ally. Soviet spokesmen addressing the United States
say the opposite -- that if the Soviet Union is hit by a
nuclear missile, it will pay no attention to the calling
card attached to the weapon, but respond at once with all:
its missiles against the continental United States.
How can these contentions be answered?..Can anyone
really believe that the American people miss Vietnam,
and are looking for an excuse to start another such cam-
paign, this time with nuclear weapons, or even a Third
World War on a much larger and more exciting scale than
.Vietnam? Can anyone suppose we are bored because our
universities are quiet and busy, preoccupied with educa-
tion rather than with anti-war protests? Can anyone
imagine that an American President could contemplate the
use of force for any reason except the most austere.
sense of duty and obligation, knowing that. President
Truman's political career was ruined by the Korean War
as President Johnson's was destroyed?by Vietnam, and
indeed that every major war and most minor wars in
American history became politically unpopular in the end?
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Or let us look at another aspect of the.Soviet
thesis -- the actual state of the military balance, and
especially the balance in intermediate range nuclear
weapons in and near Europe. Year after year, the Soviet
Union tells us that there are roughly 1,000 weapons of
this-kind on each side, and that the NATO decision to
deploy modern nuclear weapons in Europe is a destabilizing
quest for nuclear superiority in preparation for nuclear
war. There, is irony in this claim. The magic figure remains
near 1,000 although the Soviet Union deploys a new SS-20
every 5 days. And the Soviet Union has not yet offered
a detailed statistical table to support its charges,.
although its most recent effort, a pamphlet called "The
Threat to Europe," begins to approach that point.
But Soviet spokesmen have said enough to make the
statistical fallacies of their argument apparent.. For
example, they count only SS-20 missiles deployed. in
European Russia, although many of these missiles located
beyond the Urals can reach targets in Western Europe
without difficulty. And they count certain American
planes in. making their calculations, but exclude
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Soviet planes of the same type. Mr. Brezhnev's proposal,
made at Bonn last week, simply.offers to move some SS-20
missiles from European Russia to Siberia -- a proposal
without. substance, or interest to the West. It would
hardly increase the security of NATO to transfer these
missiles to locations from which they could threaten
Japan or the Middle East or be returned to their original
positions. All the studies I have seen confirm the
judgment of the International Institute of Strategic..,...
Studies that Soviet superiority in this particularly
threatening category of nuclear weapons is more than 3
to 1, so that even the full deployment of the American
weapons scheduled for Europe could not produce anything
like equality, to say nothing of "superiority."
The record is not notably different in the field of
intercontinental nuclear weapons. There too the. Soviet
Union claims that parity exists, and that American plans
to restore its deterrent capacity are "destabilizing.."
.There too the Soviet Union is engaged in an active pro-
gram of.improvement and expansion while the United.States
has until recently been passive. The United States may
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still have a slight lead in the total number of warheads,
but the Soviet Union has moved ahead in every other meas-
ure of the destructive power of nuclear weapons, and is
adding to its arsenal at a rapid rate. Unless the United
States does add to its forces, the balance will shift
irrevocably against the West.
Nevertheless, the charges continue to be made. The
problems the NATO allies face together at this juncture
have nothing to do with the fantasies of Soviet propaganda.
We do not have to choose between protecting our interests
and fighting a nuclear war or any other kind of war, in
Europe or elsewhere. That is a false dichotomy. The
sole object of United States and NATO policy is to protect
our common interests by restoring. stability without war.
There. is no reason to doubt our capacity to.protect the
future of liberty in peace, by the methods of alliance
diplomacy backed by deterrent military power. The NATO
allies, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, China, and other
countries which oppose Soviet hegemony have ample power
and potential power to stop the process of Soviet expan-
sion. With Poland in the process of undergoing profound
social changes, this is hardly the time to. bend our knees
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to the power and ideology of the Soviet Union as the
wave of the future.
The highest objective of Soviet strategy is to sepa-
rate Western Europe from the United States. If Western
Europe could be brought within the Soviet domain, the
geopolitical theorists of the. Soviet Union believe,
Japan, China, and many other nations would draw the neces-
sary conclusions, and the United States would be left..
isolated and impotent. The enormous Soviet effort in the
field of intermediate range missiles is.intelligible only
in the perspective of this Soviet doctrine.; In 'that per-
spective, it is all too intelligible. The objective, as
..always, is decouple the United States from Europe. The
scenario would follow these lines: the subliminal radia-
tions of the Soviet intermediate range nuclear arsenal
would induce panic In Europe while the growing Soviet
long range arsenal would paralyze any possibility of an
American strategic response. Presto and checkmate.. The
Japanese, Chinese, and many other nations would follow
suit.
This was the nightmare which started to provoke deep
European and American concern five or six years ago. The
Soviet SS-20s had begun to impinge upon our consciousness.
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Henry Kissinger's Brussels warning in 1977 dramatized
the issue. But the anxiety would have been the same if
Mr. Kissinger had never spoken. The danger of decoupling
Europe from the United States is implicit in the changing
overall intercontinental nuclear balance between the
Soviet Union.and the United States,. weakening the counter-
weight which has kept superior Soviet conventional forces
at bay since 1945. After a year or two of discussion,
NATO decided that the United States should deploy American
intermediate range land-based missiles in Europe and at
the same time negotiate with the Soviet Union about re-
moving the threat to Europe arising-from the existences
of these first strike and particularly devastating
missiles.
The reasoning behind the NATO decision parallels the
argument which has persuaded the United States to keep large
American conventional forces in or near Europe. There has
been periodic political agitation in the United States.
for a reduction of our conventional forces in Europe,
and for exclusive reliance on intercontinental nuclear
weapons to protect Europe against Soviet pressures. But
proposals of this kind have been firmly and repeatedly
rejected. The United States wishes not only to make.the
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nuclear guaranty clear and credible, but to be in a
position to respond appropriately to threats. across the
entire spectrum of threat or attack. To remove American
forces from Europe would escalate every conflict.there
instantly to the nuclear level. As President Reagan
pointed out on November 18, the purpose.of deploying
American intermediate range nuclear weapons on,"European
soil. is to remove all doubt about the credibility of. the
American intercontinental nuclear guaranty to Europe both
in Europe and in the Soviet Union. As a result, the risk
of war by miscalculation would be reduced..
The problem of the intermediate range nuclear weapons
must be examined in the SALT context, as the North."Atlantic
Council has declared, because the line between intermediate
range and intercontinental nuclear forces is not clear cut.
Intercontinental weapons can also be aimed at.targets in
Europe,. Japan, or the Middle East. And some weapons.normally
classified as theatre weapons can.be used under certain
circumstances on intercontinental missions. While much
could be accomplished by successful.INF talks, both in
reducing weapons and contributing to crisis stability, the
ultimate security of the NATO allies will continue to rest
on the reliability of the United States strategic guaranty.
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When I was a student at King's, the great Alfred
Marshall had gone, but the young dons still faithfully
took their texts from his books and lectures. One. of-
their favorites, Irecall, is appropriate to our problem
tonight. Marshall liked to say, "Trees do not grow to
the sky." He was talking about firms and trade unions,
and the checks and balances of economic life. 'But his..
observation applies also to empires.
The Soviet Union is still in the imperial mood which
the other imperial powers have long since given'up with
relief and conviction. Those nations have discovered
what Bentham pointed out long ago -- that the imperial
powers had no right to govern the peoples they had con-
quered; that they gained nothing from their efforts; and,
as Sir Norman Angell concluded much later, that imperialism
is extremely expensive. An Italian minister summed up the.
problem of costs in the'late Forties. "Italy has lost the
war,"'he said, "but in compensation it has lost its Empire."
The former imperial powers have learned that it is more
profitable and more satisfactory all around to make..
money, not war.
If we take the Soviet drive to be the Hegelian thesis,
it has. already stimulated a normal antithesis -- a coali-
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tion of nations determined to retain their independence.
In the nature of things, the forces of the antithesis
are bound to prevail. Can the Soviet Union acknowledge
that fact, and accept the inevitable gracefully -- as
gracefully as Great Britain or the Netherlands welcomed
the end of empire after World War I.I? Will the last sur-
viving traditional empire join the other nations in seek-
ing the world order anticipated by the Charter of the
United Nations -- a world order based on the equality.of
states large and. small; and on the rule.that.no state use
force to attack the territorial integrity and political
independence of any.other state; and on respect . for. the
principle of the self-determination of peoples?
In our view, those are the ultimate questions:of
world politics today. The answers to those. questions are
in the mist. All I can tell you tonight is that the
United ' States. and its allies view the process of arms
control negotiations as a possible key to the riddle of
the future. Arms control negotiations have no magic in
themselves. Negotiating with the Soviet Union is a
rough sport, and a satisfactory outcome is hardly guaran-
teed. But we cannot ignore what may be an opportunity
for progress toward peace. The Soviet policy-of expan-
sion., fuelled by the extraordinary growth of the Soviet
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27.
armed forces, and particularly of its nuclear forces, has
produced a situation of growing tension and instability.
The efforts of the Soviet Union to split the West and to
prevent Western modernization of its defenses will surely
fail. Ever since 1945, the United States has appealed to
the.Soviet Union for cooperation between, us -- in making the
offer of the Marshall Plan and the Baruch Plan, and on many
other occasions, too. President Reagan renewed that appeal
on November 18 with great force, as the only rational way
out of the nuclear dilemma both camps now confront. The
fruits of SALT I and SALT II have turned to ashes in our
mouths. The decade which began ten years ago with the
high hopes of detente became the, worst decade of the en-
tire.Cold War. The Cold War is no longer a peripheral
matter of border skirmishes,a cloud no larger than.a
man's hand', but the dominant problem of world politics.
We approach the task of negotiation determined',not.
to confuse our hopes with reality. We know that the
Soviet Union, like most other countries, has at least
two cultures -- the culture of Catherine the Great and
the culture of Ivan the Terrible; the Russian culture
of inspiring intellectual quality and moral distinction,-
the culture of Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov and their modern
successors, as well as the culture of Oriental despotism
now in the ascendant. From long experience we know
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that a Soviet spokesman was right when he said, "we are
neither pacifists nor philanthropists."
But there are positive elements in the situation
which ought to lead the Soviet leaders to choose a policy
of stability in their relationship with the West: the
.situation in Poland, and the apparently insoluble problems
of the Soviet economy, to mention only two. In part,
Soviet economic problems are the result of. difficulties
which all modern economies share: the insatiable and.
astronomic claims of science against the defense budget.
In part, however, they represent factors peculiar-to the
system of Soviet planning.
I can~sum up all I have tried to say tonight in
four simple propositions. They were put very well,
.early in the nuclear age, by a distinguished English
social scientist. First, the secret is out of the
laboratory, and can never be returned. Any industrial
country.can make nuclear weapons. Secondly, it.follows
for obvious reasons of prudence that the Western
nations cannot give up nuclear weapons. Third, nuclear
war is unthinkably destructive, and the West must find
ways to protect its freedom and security and at the same-
time prevent nuclear war.
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From these three propositions we draw a conclusion
we regard as inescapable, because small wars sometimes
become big: the goal of policy must be not simply the
avoidance of nuclear war, but the elimination of all
international war.