Talk for the Asbury Park Rotary Club
Asbury Park, New Jersey
December 8, 1982

 

As a writer, I’m a lot more comfortable looking at a blank piece of paper than a room full of people. On the other hand, writers are famous–some would say notorious–for their willingness to do almost anything for a good meal, good conversation, and a couple of drinks. In coming here today, I’m doing my best to uphold this time-honored literary tradition. What I may lack in ability or experience as a public speaker, I hope to make up for in the substance of what I’ll say.

I mention substance because I think that substance is the one thing that much of the debate about the nuclear arms `freeze’ has lacked. On one extreme, both sides speak in jargon–megatonnage, preemptive strikes, and ladles of military alphabet soup (ICBMs, MRVs, B-1s, and on and on). On the other extreme, both sides engage in rhetorical overkill, the one shouting `Warmongers!’ while the other hints of communist plots. Each freely accuses the other of cowardice.

While this sort of thing adds color to our political landscape, I’ve never found it very informative. We could use, think, a bit less color and a lot more clarity. I will argue against the `freeze,’ but whether you agree with my conclusions or not, I hope that you’ll find my reasons clear.

The military arguments in favor of the `freeze’ are easy to understand and quite attractive, at least on the surface. `Freeze’ proponents say that both the United States and the Soviet Union have more than enough nuclear weapons to destroy each other. More important, both sides now have the capability of responding to a surprise attack with a devastating retaliatory strike. For that reason, each side deters the other from attacking.

That being the case, why not sign a treaty whereby both sides simply stop building nuclear weapons? that would seem to perpetuate mutual deterrence, which would give us time to make negotiated, mutual arms reductions later on.

`Freeze’ proponents also warn that the United States is about to begin a new and more dangerous kind of arms buildup. The MX missile, the B-1B bomber, and the Trident D-5 submarine-based missile, now being developed, are so fast, powerful, and accurate that their deployment might induce the Soviets to put their forces on a hair-trigger alert. Inevitably, `freeze’ proponents say, a computer error will lead to catastrophe.

This latter argument, although dramatic, is easy to refute. Even the most massive United States buildup could do nothing new except to threaten the Soviets’ land-based missiles, even as the Soviets now threaten ours. If we were so foolish as to launch a surprise attack, they would still retain enough bombs on aircraft and enough submarine-launched missiles to destroy us. They would therefore have no need whatever to put their forces on a dangerous hair-trigger alert. To imagine that the would do so is to believe that would, in effect, choose to commit suicide in order to avoid the risk of being killed. Whatever else the Soviets are, they are very far from being suicidal.

The argument that an immediate `freeze’ would perpetuate mutual deterrence and lead to eventual reductions ignores three problems: the nuclear imbalance in Europe, the disparity in age between American and Soviet arsenals, and the difference in types of weapons the two sides have.

In Europe, the Soviets have built a clear advantage. The London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies finds the correlation of forces “distinctly unfavorable to NATO,” owing to Soviet deployments of its new, mobile missile, the SS-20. A `freeze’ would prevent us from correcting this imbalance, which has led to increasing Soviet use of intimidation against our allies.

As for our own defense, a total `freeze’ on the development, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons would not perpetuate mutual deterrence because our nuclear arsenal is significantly older than theirs. Eighty-five percent of their warheads are on bombers and missiles built after 1970. Less than half of ours are. Moreover, the Soviets’ major offensive threat to us consists of the three kinds of big, land-based missiles that they first deployed in 1974 and 1975–the SS-17s, SS-18s, and SS-19s. There are now over 800 of them, equipped with thousands of powerful warheads; they can destroy most of not all of our land-based missiles and about one-half of our bombers and submarines. Our bombers and submarines, with only a few exceptions, are five, ten, and in some cases fifteen years older than the Soviets’ new land-based missiles.

The lifetime of a bomber or submarine is twenty to twenty-five years. Under a total `freeze,’ the Soviets would have no reason to reduce their arms. They would simply wit for our older systems to deteriorate. They are already deteriorating; in the last three years, we have deactivated ten Polaris submarines (with a total of 160 missiles and hundreds of warheads) because they were too old. We have replaced some of them with four new Trident submarines, with a total of 96 missiles.

Some `freeze’ proponents reply by offering to replace old weapons with new ones of the same kind–new Polaris submarines for old Polaris submarines, for example, They concede the existence of the disparity in age but say that they only want a `freeze’ on new kinds of weapons–no replacing Polaris submarines with Tridents.

This argument overlooks two facts. First, although `freeze’ proponents say that they only want a `freeze’ on new kinds of weapons, in fact they never push for the replacement of the old ones. Their inaction speaks louder than their words.

Second, `freeze’ proponents overlook the differences in the types of weapons the two countries have. Bombers can be shot down. Techniques are now being developed that will enable both countries to track and destroy submarines. But there seems to be no feasible non-nuclear defense against land-based missiles. Under a `freeze,’ anti-aircraft and anti-submarine weapons would not be outlawed because they are not nuclear weapons. The Soviets could put the money they would save on building nuclear weapons into weapons to use against our missiles and bombers. Meanwhile, we would still need to worry about their land-based missiles, against which we apparently will have no defense. Land-based missiles constitute seventy percent of their stockpile.

Could we tie a `freeze’ treaty to a treaty prohibiting anti-aircraft and anti-submarine weapons? Probably not: Anti-aircraft weapons could be monitored, but a `freeze’ on anti-submarine technology, particularly any kind based on satellites, almost surely would be unverifiable.

As you know, America has offered to cut our number of strategic missiles and bombers from 2,000 to 850 if the Soviets will cut theirs from 2,500 to 850. The Soviets have replied by offering a mutual reduction to 1,800 coupled with a `freeze’ at current levels in Europe. That’s not acceptable to us, not only because I leaves their European theater advantage intact, but because it also fails to solve he problem caused by their new, land-based missiles. But it is better than the `freeze.’ And it shows that a `freeze’ now would be a totally gratuitous concession–a ratification of the Soviet superiority in numbers of missiles and bombers, a superiority that the Soviets themselves are willing to bargain away.

Militarily, then, an immediate nuclear `freeze’ might easily cause more problems than it would solve. Still, we have yet to examine another major practical argument: the economic argument.

`Freeze’ proponents say that money spent on nuclear weapons is inflationary because it finances the building of products that are never used. It also diverts technological skills from civilian uses and generates fewer jobs than, for example, mass transit construction.

That’s all quite true. It’s also quite trivial if you take a hard look at the numbers involved. In FY 1983, nuclear weapons will cost the United States approximately $25 billion–roughly eleven percent of the total defense budget. That’s less than one percent of our GNP. In the next five years, nuclear weapons will cost us an average of $30 billion per year. Each $1 billion of this spending generates 30,000 jobs, contrasted with 45,000 generated by transportation spending. This means that if we stopped all nuclear weapons spending, we could, theoretically, generate an extra 450,000 per year.

That would be worthwhile, although at a time of unemployment of about 12 million, it wouldn’t be as impressive as some `freeze’ proponents want us to believe–even if you allow for the multiplier effect of those extra jobs. But wait I said “theoretically.” In practice, the savings would obviously be much less. We would need to retrain defense industry workers. We would need to refit the factories that produce military hardware. We would still need to build nuclear weapons to replace those that deteriorate. According to Randall Forsberg, the author of one of the original `freeze’ proposals, the savings would actually be only about $10 billion per year. That gets the number of new jobs to 150,000 per year.

But wait, again. The United States budget deficit for next year alone will approach $200 billion. at $10 billion saved per year, it would take us ten years to pay the deficit for one year. These monies will most likely go to debt service; if so, we won’t see a dime.

Indeed, wait one more time. All of these projected savings are based on the assumption that the Soviets will spend their own new-found money for peaceful purposes. To say the least, that assumption is unwarranted. They could spend it on the anti-aircraft and anti-submarine weapons I’ve mentioned. Or they could spend it to build their troop strength in Europe, or the Middle East, or in southern Africa. If they do, we will need to respond. Because Europe, the Middle East, and Africa are closer to them than to us, and because we pay our soldiers more than they pay theirs, the chances are good that under a nuclear `freeze’ we will spend more money on defense, not less.

The fact of the matter is that from the mid-1950s through 1978, U. S. defense spending, adjusted for inflation, dropped by four percent. The percentage of our GNP Spent for defense shrank by one-half. Simultaneously, the federal government’s non-defense spending, adjusted for inflation, increased by 822%. To blame defense spending for our economic problems is a smokescreen for what really happened to the federal budget during those years. If we want to enact a nuclear arms treaty because we suppose it will lessen the possibility of war, that is one thing. But we should not believe that any treaty–whether it is an immediate `freeze,’ an arms reduction, or an arms limitation–will save money. It will only redirect it toward whatever other military problems the Soviets decide to cause.

What kind of treaty would work? I think that a fair arms treaty would allow both sides enough survivable weapons to deter any attack. It would allow both sides a mixture of weapons that would be of roughly the same age and of similar capabilities, so that mutual deterrence would last. This could be a strategic arms reduction treaty or a strategic arms limitation treaty. It cannot be an immediate `freeze’–which, as I’ve attempted to show, wouldn’t be a real freeze at all.

A fair arms treaty won’t be easy to get. But I think we may be able to get one, if the Soviets really want one. There’s no substitute for the courage and hard work that would  need to go into devising, negotiating, and ratifying such a treaty. But it would be a real treaty. The `freeze’ looks too simple to be true, and it is too simple to be true.

Report prepared for New Jersey State Legislators
1982

In 1982, several anti-war and anti-nuclear groups proposed a nuclear arms moratorium or `freeze’ resolution for placement on the November ballots as a referendum. My home state of New Jersey was one of the states in which the `freeze’ advocates were most active. The following report was prepared for New Jersey Senate and Assembly members, who were scheduled to vote on whether or not to approve the measure for ballot placement. `Freeze’ referenda proved popular that year for several reasons: in the 1980 presidential election campaign, Ronald Reagan was painted as a warmonger, and a certain percentage of those who made that claim believed their own polemics; there had also been several books and one televised film depicting the devastation that a large-scale nuclear war would cause; finally, in an off-year Congressional election, left-of-center political operatives saw advantage in placing such a measure on the ballot, as it would increase the numbers of voters sympathetic to their candidates.  

 

INTRODUCTION
According to representatives of the New Jersey Coalition for a Nuclear Arms Freeze, United States Senator Mark O. Hatfield stated “most eloquently the basis of the concerns and convictions that motivate us.” In a letter written in March of 1981, Senator Hatfield wrote, in part, “It is only on the basis of a nuclear moratorium that we can begin to reduce the arsenals of both sides and to convince other nations of the world to adopt a moratorium on nuclear proliferation.”

Perhaps because it is clear that the likes of Colonel Khaddafi and the Ayatollah Khomeini would not necessarily agree to forego nuclear arms merely because the superpowers agree to restrain themselves, the nuclear non-proliferation aspect of the argument has not received much play. The principal rationale is the hope of ending the U. S.-Soviet nuclear arms race.

In New Jersey, the campaign has focused on S-1080 and A-799, bills that would place the issue of a nuclear arms moratorium on the November ballot as a public question. This report analyzes the language of these identical bills, concluding that the proposal as it stands is unworkable and misleading to the public. The report includes a proposal for an alternative bill.

PARAGRAPHS 1 AND 2
“WHEREAS, The continued escalation of the nuclear arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States exacerbates the ominous threat of nuclear war between those nations; and
“WHEREAS, Our national security is thereby reduced, not increased;”

The language is imprecise. The acceleration of an arms race in and of itself neither “exacerbates” nor lessens the possibility of war. War usually occurs after one adversary calculated that he has achieved militarily significant advantage. The Soviet Union is rarely at a loss for reasons to exploit an advantage, military or otherwise. But it has to achieve a militarily significant advantage over the United States in nuclear arms.

The current American arms buildup aims at assuring that the Soviets fail to achieve any such advantage. In FY 1964, we spent $25.6 billion on strategic forces; in FY 1983, the Reagan Administration plans to spend $23.1 billion–less than half of the 1964 amount, as measured in constant dollars. While our real spending on strategic forces has declined in the last decade-and-a-half, Soviet spending has increased. In the period 1976-1980 alone, the Soviets deployed four new intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Backfire bomber, and the SS-20 missile; they developed four more ICBMs and a missile-carrying submarine. In 1956, the Soviets had 625 land-based and submarine-based missiles. By 1980, they had 1,398 land-based missiles and 1,003 submarine-based missiles. Today, they have a total of 2,2798 to our 1,944. Although the United States retained the lead in nuclear warheads during this period, we went from a 2-1 advantage in missile “payload” to a disadvantage of 3.385 million pounds to the Soviets’ 11.75 million pounds. Fortunately, our superior technology enables us to build more accurate missiles, which decreases the disadvantage in firepower. The extent to which it decreases that disadvantage is a matter of controversy among technical experts.

The point of citing these facts is not revive the perennial question, “Who’s ahead?” but to show that our security was not threatened by our strategic arms buildup–which, in practical terms, barely existed in the last decade–but in the Soviet buildup. Not an arms race but Soviet power threatens the peace of the world.

PARAGRAPH 3
“WHEREAS, nuclear arms escalation imposes a tremendous strain upon the human and financial resources of the United States government, lessening the availability of those resources to meet domestic social goals;”

While the cost of strategic nuclear arms is substantial, it does not impose “a tremendous burden” upon our resources. According to figures published recently in the New York Times, the Reagan Administration proposes an FY 1983 defense budge of $257.5 billion; of this, we would spend $23.1 billion for strategic forces. In FY 1984, we are scheduled to spend $30.3 of $284.7 billion; in FY 1985, $33.2 of $330.9 billion. The bulk of U. S. defense funding goes to general purpose forces, personnel, and maintenance.

Inasmuch as the federal budget deficit for FY 1983 is estimated to be in the neighborhood of $100 billion, the elimination of all strategic spending for the next three years would not even cover the deficit for one year. To tell our people that these savings could be used for social programs is to make them a promise we simply cannot keep.

Nor do we have any guarantee that we could use any of this money for relief of budget deficits. If the Soviets halt nuclear weapons production, testing, and deployment, they might very well increase other military spending by an equal amount. This would require us to spend more money on so-called conventional forces–a more expensive proposition for us than for them because we pay our troops far more than they pay theirs (this, even allowing for the fact that their troop strength considerably exceeds ours.)

As for the human resources expended in developing, deploying, and maintaining our nuclear arms, the same argument holds. We have no guarantee that Soviet cutbacks in one area would not yield Soviet increases in other areas. This would mean greater manpower requirements for the United States, not lesser ones.

PARAGRAPH 4
“WHEREAS, A mutual United States-Soviet `freeze’ on further testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons has been advanced by prominent political, scientific and religious leaders as an effective method of arresting the continued development of the nuclear danger;”

The overwhelming majority of these “prominent leaders” are longtime advocates of a minimalist U. S. defense strategy. Such men as Richard Barnet, Harvey Cox, Richard Falk, and John Kenneth Galbraith are well known to academic specialists in the field. This is not an ideologically balanced mixture, by any means.

An immediate nuclear arms moratorium, called for in the proposed public question, is not an effective way to arrest the nuclear danger because it has no basis in the economic or political reality of the Soviet Union.

According to the Carter Administration’s Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, William R. Perry, the Soviets outspent us by $240 billion on military items during the 1970s. Yet the total output of the Soviet economy remained much smaller than ours. The percentage of their GNP spent on the military rose from an estimated 11-13% in the period 1965-1978, when their economy was doing relatively well, to 12-14% in 1979, to 13-15% in today’s hard times. American military spending fell from 8% of the GNP in 1956, a time of prosperity, to 5.&% in 1981. This is the reverse of the Soviet sacrifice. The Reagan Administration proposes to raise the percentage closer to the 1964 level over the next five years.

For this reason, halting any aspect of the military buildup, including the buildup in strategic nuclear arms, would force the Soviets to throw the economy into far severer dislocations than we would have to do. What appears as a perfectly symmetrical proposal actually demands far more of them for the balance of the decade.

Proponents of the moratorium will reply that this would improve their economic strength in the long run. This is true, insofar as Soviet rulers conceive of their country’s economic interests as consumer-oriented. But they do not.

The Soviet rulers view consumer economics with distaste. As the Polish crisis reminds us, they quite reasonably regard an economic system that exalts the desires of the people over the military and political aims of the Communist Party as a threat to their power. Once the consumer becomes sovereign, the government hears no end of grumbling–as Americans know. Repeated Soviet fulminations against `bourgeois life’ and `Western decadence’ hardly spring from a sense of morality outraged; `President’ Brezhnev and his comrades enjoy the use of country dachas, caviar, Robert Trent Jones golf courses, and numerous other oligarchic amenities. Such pronouncements issue from Politburo recognition that money is power, and that money in the hands of the people is power in the hands of the people. Safer to let them eat cabbage.

It is also well worth noting that an immediate `freeze’ would leave the Soviets unable to respond to any future nuclear arms buildup by the Communist Chinese. The latter have never even consented to halt above-ground testing of nuclear weapons; they are highly unlikely to `freeze’ their stockpiles at current levels merely because the Soviets and the Americans agree to do so. Indeed, they might well regard this as an excellent opportunity to catch up.

In sum, this paragraph fails to consider the proposal from the Soviet point of view. It is unrealistic for that reason.

PARAGRAPH 5
“WHEREAS, There is an urgent need to create broader public awareness of the specter of nuclear holocaust and to provide a means whereby the concerns of New Jersey’s citizens may be communicated to our national policymakers:”

This final “Whereas” clause is perhaps the most disturbing of all. If we are to put a matter of national defense on the New Jersey ballot as a public question, the last thing we need is a campaign of scare tactics. Yet that is exactly what the bill invites. Instead of an appeal to fear, we need an appeal to courage. For the fact is that “the specter of nuclear holocaust” cannot loom very large as long as the Soviets have no reason to suppose that they could gain anything by initiating one. This has been true throughout the last three decades and remains true today.

Vivid and grisly descriptions of the effects of nuclear radiation do not help us to maintain the kind of calm and rational public mood that gives our arms negotiators the backing they need. Panic and hysteria do not conduce to the sober conduct of foreign policy–particularly when Soviet negotiators feel no similar pressures.

THE PROBLEM OF VERIFIABILITY
The public question calls for a “verifiable” moratorium. Unfortunately, this is physically impossible. The New York Times editorial of March 21, 1982 notes that “There is no way to verify a ban on missile production without the intrusive on-site inspection that Moscow has always rejected. Nor is there any known way to locate concealed stocks of warheads.” Obviously, the Soviets or the United States could manufacture such warheads and store them in underground shelters near the launching sites without fear of detection. Spy satellites do not have x-ray eyes.

It is impossible to overemphasize the importance of this point. If the bill passes in its present form, the public will be voting on a public question that is worded in a misleading way. If we are to have such referenda, it is the Legislature’s responsibility to frame the questions in such a way that the publican vote for something that is, at least, technologically feasible.

ANOTHER CHOICE
The call for an immediate nuclear arms `freeze’ and a dedication of monies saved to “human needs and services” has no relation to economic, military, or political reality in the contemporary world. This is why we should hesitate to advocate referenda on issues of national defense; a superficially attractive proposal may have serious liabilities that are difficult to communicate effectively in this age of mass electronic information media. A battle of slogans will not do.

As an alternative to the current bill, we respectfully suggest the following language:

WHEREAS, The Carter Administration proposed a mutual reduction in strategic nuclear arms during the course of the SALT II negotiations; and

WHEREAS, the 1980 Republican Platform pledged that “A Republican Administration will continue to seek to negotiate arms reductions in Soviet strategic weapons”; and

WHEREAS, the hope of mutual nuclear arms reductions animates all men and women of good will, regardless of party affiliation; now therefore

BE IT ENACTED by the Senate and the General Assembly of the State of New Jersey that the President of the United States is hereby memorialized to press ahead with negotiation that would gradually, mutually, and verifiably limit and reduce the stockpiles of nuclear launchers in the United States and the Soviet Union.

 

2016 NOTE: The last phrase, calling for the limitation of nuclear “launchers,” addresses the verifiability issue. Nuclear warheads are very hard to track because they are not very large; the strategic launchers–long-range missiles, submarines, and aircraft–are larger and much easier to detect by technological means.

Co-authored with Paul Eidelberg

Published Spring 1981

 

Upon becoming a born-again foreign-policy `realist,’ then President Jimmy Carter confessed his astonishment at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Those who had tried to achieve with words what the Soviets achieved with action–not the conquest of Afghanistan but the arousal of Mr. Carter from his dogmatic slumber–could honestly say they had told him so. Others, long-time proponents of détente with the Soviet Union, disingenuously complained that everyone always knew the Soviets are like this–that they are, as one genteel analyst understated it, “not nice people.” But that knowledge, they usually added, never stopped us from dealing with the Kremlin before, so aren’t we overacting, causing “war hysteria,” now?

It is useless to note that the Soviets do not wax hysterical over war, they make it. Facts leave the faithful undaunted, which leads us to wonder: What is it about some Americans that causes them to believe their enemies may metamorphose into friendly enemies if baptized in the miraculous waters of American good will? The question lingers, for while Mr. Carter has left his high office, his intellectual and moral kin-especially numerous in government, the media, and the academy–remain vociferous and unchanged.

One customarily refers all important questions concerning American politics and society to Tocqueville. For only the obtuse regard Democracy in America as a mere historical document, a portrait of a simpler time and place. We recognize ourselves in Tocqueville’s Americans, despite industrial development and the abolition of slavery.

Still, one does not usually refer questions concerning foreign policy to Tocqueville. Do we not live in a unique `nuclear age,’ a time in which the isolation Tocqueville described as “providential” has disappeared forever? We can no longer say, with Tocqueville, “The foreign policy of the United States is eminently expectant; it consists more in abstaining than in acting.” This notwithstanding, the end of our isolation, while transforming our circumstance, has not significantly transformed our national character. Nor has it entirely transformed our political institutions. We remain democrats and Americans. We can still learn from Tocqueville.

Tocqueville sees equality or “equality of conditions” as the “primary fact” in democratic America, meaning by this that there are no rigid class distinctions here: no one is bound by law or custom to the station of his birth, and all may ascend the social or economic ladder. America is the land of opportunity. This is what gives equality its power, its “charms,” which “are every instant felt and are within the reach of all; the noblest hearts are not insensible to them, and the most vulgar souls exult in them.” So pervasive is the power of this equality that it affects the mentality of Americans, the educated no less than the uneducated. Tocqueville, then, regards democracy as inevitable not because `History’ makes it so, but because it appeals to human nature.

With democratic egalitarianism come two principal characteristics–one moral, the other intellectual. Morally, egalitarianism emancipates the individual so that, thrust upon himself, he becomes animated not by class interests–class affiliation having lost its compelling character given America’s lack of a strong hereditary European-style aristocracy–so much as by self-interest. At the same time, however, his very independence renders him virtually powerless. Accordingly, he must combine with others, moderate his egoism, and learn the give-and-take of democratic life if he is to pursue his interests intelligently. Democracy thus cultivates what Tocqueville calls, famously, “self-interest rightly understood,” a middling or mediocre virtue which, like the charms of equality, “lies within the reach of all capacities.” Unlike virtue pursued spontaneously and for its own sake, self-interest rightly understood consists of thing that one serves one’s own material interests by practicing such modest virtues as self-restraint, honesty, and regularity. The pursuit of this kind of self-interest serves the community, if indirectly. And the community takes note of it, deploying such slogans as “Drive safely, the life you save may be your own.” Indeed, as we shall see in a moment, self-preservation, along with comfort, is at the heart of American foreign policy.

Intellectually, democracy cultivates what Tocqueville calls the “philosophical method” of Cartesian skepticism, which moves the individual “to evade the bondage of system and habit, of family maxims, class opinions, and, in some degree, of national prejudices; to accept tradition only as a means of information, and existing facts only as a lesson to be used in doing otherwise and better; to seek the reason of things for oneself, and in oneself along; to tend to results without being bound to means.” Of these characteristics–and note how they describe contemporary pragmatism–Tocqueville points to one “which includes almost all the rest,” namely, that in which most of the operations of the mind each American appeals only to the individual effect of his own understanding.” “Think for yourself” is indeed a democratic-American imperative. It correlates with, and is essential to, the morality of restrained self-interest for the pursuit of which democracy cultivates that “homely species of practical wisdom… that science of the petty occurrences of life which is called good sense.” This, too, les within the reach of all, or almost all capacities.

This morality has somewhat contradictory results. Tocqueville foresees that enlightened self-interest can yield “virtuous materialism,” the gratification of petty desires if not of extreme passions. Virtuous materialism “would not corrupt, but enervate, the soul and noiselessly unbend its springs of action.” He also sees that the democrat’s restrained selfishness coexists with compassion, as egalitarianism causes the extension of one’s sensibility to all men, who, by the grace of democracy, “think and feel in nearly the same manner.” These tendencies toward selfish-but-restrained materialism and compassion persist in America today.

Intellectually, common sense combines with moral egalitarianism to produce superficiality. In day-to-day affairs, common sense is enough; we readily learn to be smart `consumers.’ Because most of the people we meet resemble us, we habitually consult our own thoughts and feelings as reliable guides to those of others. Transposed to the domain foreign policy, common sense, suffused with moral egalitarianism, yields what is known as `mirror-imaging.’ Disastrous consequences follow.

Mr. Carter came into office repeating the oft-heard anti-anticommunist refrain that the `Cold War’ is over. Exuding moral egalitarianism, he told the American people, most of whom dislike and distrust the Soviets, that “in every person there is something fine and pure and noble;” that “the great challenge we Americans confront is to demonstrate to the Soviet Union that our good will is as great as our strength, until, despite all obstacles, our two nations could achieve new attitudes and new trust.” The first of these statements could lead to the comforting conclusion that the Soviets are at heart decent folk, like Americans in general; the second to the self-deprecating conclusion that they have as much reason to distrust us as we have to distrust them. This democratic leveling of distinctions between an imperialistic oligarchy with global ambitions, one based on the primacy of force ad fraud and a regime inclined toward peaceableness if only because it is based on the primacy of consent rather than conquest makes it easier for the latter, especially when given to virtuous materialism, to pursue a policy of phased unilateral disarmament. And so Mr. Carter cancelled the B-1 bomber, shelved the MX mobile ICBM system and the neutron bomb, drastically reduced the range of the cruise missile, and postponed the production of other weapons systems, all in the hope that such demonstrations of American good will (however influenced by economic factors) would induce the Soviets to reciprocate. They didn’t.

The Soviets are not motivated by virtuous materialism. They are motivated by dialectical materialism, which puts class conflict ahead of feeling good about oneself. The Kremlin preens itself in claiming that they are the vanguard of the vanguard class, internationally, that the Soviet Union must impose sacrifices on its peoples in order to defeat the reactionary forces of capitalist America. With less than half of America’s GNP, the Soviet Union has continued to outspend the U. S. on strategic and conventional arms.

Mr. Carter’s mirror-imaging mindset toward the Soviet Union did not begin, nor can it be expected to end, with him. It may be traced back to 1946, to a most influential book sponsored by the Yale Institute of International Affairs under the title The Absolute Weapon. Written by academic strategic theorists, the book maintains that nuclear weapons have an “absolute” character in that there is no defense against their utterly destructive power. In nuclear war, we are given to believe, there can be no victor and no survivors. Hence war is no longer a “rational” policy. Moreover, in an era of absolute weapons, military superiority ceases to be meaningful. All one needs is enough missiles to be able to threaten a potential aggressor with unacceptable levels of destruction. Thus was born the American doctrine of mutual–actually minimum–deterrence, or what has come to be known as Mutual Assured Destruction. This doctrine, it should be noted, was concocted without reference to the character of the Soviet Union then ruled by Stalin. It was merely assumed that Russian Communists would think and feel like American democrats about nuclear war. As one contributor put it: “Neither we nor the Russians can expect to feel even reasonably safe unless an atomic attack by one were certain to unleash a devastating attack on the other.”

The conclusion of the Yale study eventually became official American policy. In 1965, when the United States had roughly four times as many ICBM launchers as the Soviet Union, it decided to stop their production and allow he Soviets to achieve parity so as to encourage them to engage in strategic arms limitations talks. The Soviets caught up in 1969, the talks began, and, three years later, SALT I was produced-by which time, however, the Soviets had 1,618 ICBMs while the United States had 1,054. Henry Kissinger, the chief architect of SALT I, was merely translating into policy the mirror-imaging and non-ideological mentality  of the authors of The Absolute Weapon. As he said iat a news conference, “What in God’s  name is strategic superiority? What do you do with it?” Or as he explained while still an academic: “The traditional mode of military analysis which saw in war a continuation of politics but with its own appropriate means is no logner applicable.” Exit Clausewitz.

But not from the Soviet Union. This may be seen in the November 1975 issue of Communist of the Armed Forces, the USSR’s foremost military journal: “The premise of Marxism-Leninism on war as a continuation of policy by military means remains true in an atmosphere of fundamental changes in military matters. The attempt of certain bourgeois ideologists to prove that nuclear missile weapons lead war outside the framework of policy, and that nuclear war ceases to be an instrument of policy, and does not constitute its continuation is theoretically incorrect and politically reactionary…. The description of the correlation between war and policy is fully valid for the use of weapon of mass destruction.” Unlike mirror-imaging American strategists, Soviet strategists do not consider nuclear war as `unthinkable’ or as `unwinnable.’ In the words of Colonel A. Sidorenko, one of the Red Army’s leading theoreticians, “Pre-emption in launching a nuclear strike is expected to be the decisive condition for the attainment of superiority over [the enemy] and the seizure and retention of the initiative.” The Soviets regard the doctrine of mutual deterrence as “bourgeois pacifism.” The aim of Soviet military is to win by means of a first strike on the United States, a strike that would preclude the United States from launching a retaliatory strike.

They are working hard to achieve this outcome. The vast sums of money they devote to research and development in strategic arms confirms this. So does their billion-dollar-a-year civil defense program, which includes the dispersal and bomb-resistant construction of industries, the stockpiling of food and fuel, civil defense training for all Soviet subjects, and the organization of cadres for evacuating key urban centers within 24 hours. None of this means that, once such a capacity for a preclusive strike were achieved, the Soviets would necessarily launch their missiles, but what they would “do with it,” in Mr. Kissinger’s phrase, could easily be to tell the United States to jump, and to expect a docile response of `How high?’ Or else. Moral egalitarians given to mirror-imaging might be reminded that those who rule the land of the Gulag Archipelago do not have the same regard for human life as, for example, George F. Kennan, the scholar-diplomat whose influence on academic thinking and official attitudes toward the Soviet Union is second to none–Kennan, who could say that statements about communist brutality and aggressiveness “impute to Soviet leaders a total inhumanity not plausible in nature.”

Clearly, the influence of egalitarianism on the intellect and sentiments of Americans extends to `realists’ and `idealists’ alike. the absence of hierarchy in American society inclines us, over time to level or simplify the thinking of intellectuals as well as that of the man on the street. The formulation of foreign policy is simplified if the people on the `other side’ think and feel as we do. In fact, to the extent that most Americans do concern themselves with foreign policy, they usually harbor doubts about foreigners. This common sense, although superficial, may impute to Soviet rulers the inhumanity denied by Kennan, the implacable hostility piously obscured by Carter, and the goal of world conquest ignored by Kissinger.

Nevertheless, common sense will not suffice in the domain of foreign affairs, especially when rendered more superficial by another aspect of democracy revealed by Tocqueville. Because Americans find themselves in an egalitarian but competitive society where everything is in motion, a society that assigns to no one a permanent place but instead requires each to be many things in many places in one lifetime, such persons develop relatively broad but hurried minds, minds which care “more to know a great deal quickly than to know anything well.” “The habit of inattention must be considered as the greatest defect of the democratic character.” Tocqueville thus anticipates the familiar lament that Americans have short political memories, suggesting that we do not remember partly because we do not really pay attention in the first place. In addition, we often refuse to take unpleasant facts seriously–something that requires more than common sense–as this might entail burdens and sacrifices beyond the capacity of virtuous materialism. Common sense, which “suffice[s] to direct the ordinary course of society,” does not always suffice to direct “relations with foreign nations.” Tocqueville continues, “a democracy can only with difficulty regulate the details of an important undertaking, persevere in a fixed design, and work out its execution in spite of serious obstacles. It cannot combine its measures with secrecy or await their consequences with patience.” Despite the homogenization of mankind throughout much of the world, foreigners remain foreigners–peoples not fathomable by simple introspection and common sense.

While dealing with foreign countries, democratic politicians must also deal with three groups in their own country, aside from fellow-politicians and the general public. Corporate business owners, who partake more of virtuous materialism than of compassion, intellectuals (academicians and bureaucrats) who aspire to partake more of compassion than of virtuous materialism, and soldiers, who are expected to partake of neither, all reflect the moral and intellectual habits Tocqueville describes.

Taking the businessmen first, it is fair to say that Armand Hammer’s dealings, beginning in Lenin’s time, have attracted the most comment from critics of American corporate relations with the Soviet Union. But in an interview given to U.S. News and World Report, Mr. J. Paul Lyet, Chairman of Sperry Rand Corporation, revealed the assumptions behind such dealings more openly than Hammer has done. Asked about “proposals that we should use trade generally to weaken the Russians,” Lyet replied, “I’m no politician”–which, we must interject, is a humble-seeming rhetorical self-pat heard all too frequently in business circles. “I’m just a businessman trying to make a living–so you may think this is self-serving–but I would think that trade builds bridges. When you think back to the situation in the `40s and `50s at the height of the Cold War–well, it’s a lot better. I don’t subscribe to the Russian system. But eventually there’s going to be a coming together–peaceful coexistence, if you want to call it that. I think that the more their people see our system and how it works, the more it’s going to moderate their views. There just somehow seems to be more freedom in nations where economic freedom is stressed. I would like to assume that economic growth in the Soviet Union will lead–even if slowly–toward more freedom for the people of that country as well as a more accommodating attitude toward world peace.” As Mr. Lyet tries to make his living, limping along on his six-figure salary, he rightly notices that trade builds bridges; he might add that it also builds trucks with which to invade Afghanistan. Things are indeed a lot better now than they were in the `40s and `50s–for Mr. Lyet, if not for our military planners, Americans generally, and the free world. As for the prediction of increased if gradual Soviet moderation, liberalization, and peaceableness, this hoped-for embourgeoisement of the Kremlin has hit a bit of a snag, lately.

We can’t say Tocqueville doesn’t warn us. He observes that the en who constitute America’s so-called ruling class are, for the most part, the sons of wealthy men born of poor or middle-class origins: “born, it is true, in  a lofty position, but their parents were humble; they have grown up amid feelings and notions which they cannot afterwards easily get rid of.” These feelings and notions are commercial ones, and they remain so even if the manners of commerce are rejected for more elegant customs and more refined tastes: “Commerce is naturally averse to all the violent passions; it loves to temporize, takes delight in compromise, and studiously avoids irritation. It is patient, insinuating, flexible, and never has recourse to extreme measures until oblige by the most obvious necessity.” Tocqueville is thinking of domestic revolution–the unlikelihood of it–but his suggestion applies to foreign policy as well. Tocqueville fears not revolution but stagnation in democracy, the development of a people who “so entirely give way to a cowardly love of preset enjoyment as to lose sight of the interests of their future selves and those of their descendants and prefer to glide along the easy current of life rather than to make, when it is necessary, a strong and sudden effort to a higher purpose.” The average American today, the average businessman, has yet to reach this state of moral torpor, but the tendency persists.

Above all, it is a tendency that brings with it the decline of honor. Tocqueville contrasts the sense of honor cultivated among the feudal aristocracy with democratic honor. Aristocrats honor military courage, loyalty to one’s leaders, the pride that finds satisfaction in vast enterprises, and a liberality based on magnanimity, greatness of soul. Democrats replace military courage with what can only be called commercial or economic courage: risking one’s capital or the brave endurance of financial loss. They replace loyalty to leaders with patriotism and substitute for grand pride the smaller pride in lesser achievements. They base their liberality not on magnanimity but on compassion (at best) or expediency, honoring “all those quiet virtues that tend to give a regular movement to the community and to encourage business.” “The American lauds as a noble and praiseworthy ambition what our own [i. e., European and aristocratic] forefathers in the Middle Ages stigmatized as severe cupidity, just as he treats as a stupid and barbarous frenzy that ardor of conquest and martial temper which bore them to battle.” If that American is a contemporary international businessman, he is less given to patriotism than to insisting that he is just trying to make a living and that trade builds bridges. His sense of honor gradually becomes more obscure because the social distinctions between men which gave rise to aristocratic honor have faded–`ruling class’ or no `ruling class.’ Meanwhile, he real ruling class in the Soviet Union follows the example of the principal secretary of Alexander the Great. Plutarch tells us that Eumenes made it a practice to borrow money from his enemies, because an enemy would then “confide in him and forbear all violence to him for fear of losing his money.” Bridge-building, indeed.

In and out of government, our intellectuals present a different aspect of the same American mindset. Tocqueville correctly predicted that “If the entire existence of the Union where perpetually threatened, if its chief interests were in daily connection with those of other powerful nations”–if America were in Europe–“the executive government would assume increased importance.” With the invention of self-powered ships and aircraft, rapid means of communication, and all the other technological devices that effectively shrink the distance between the United States and foreign powers, we have indeed developed such an executive, aided by a pseudo-aristocracy that deals with foreign policy–one that, if nothing else, rarely stands accused of limiting itself to democratic common sense. Selected, not elected, it thrives in the university and the bureaucracy, protected by that quasi-aristocratic institution, tenure.

Like our corporate `oligarchs,’ our foreign policy `aristocrats’ have democratic origins and tastes, regardless of the invincible snobbishness cultivated by some of them. Historically, they are heirs of Woodrow Wilson’s politics of compassion–Wilson, the eminent political scientist who imbued them with the ideal of “a government rooted… in the pains and sufferings of mankind… a government which is not pitiful but full of human sympathy.” The egalitarian compassion of these `aristocrats’ assures them of their righteousness, which only reinforces their snobbery. Indeed, their snobbery owes much to the feeling that they are plus populaire que la populace, members of ever-progressing `History’s’ enlightened and enlightening vanguard.

This accounts for their mortification in the late 1960s. Ridiculed as hypocrites and timeservers by the New Left, not only did progressives lose their belief in themselves as a vanguard unchallenged by all except `reactionaries’ and communists; they also lost much of their faith in progress itself, the foundation of their legitimacy. Having lost that faith, they could no longer support anything so stern as a war against communists in Vietnam. So, while the progressive-liberals of the 1940s could easily excoriate those who opposed involvement in the world war as cowards and/or fascist sympathizers, they could not bring themselves to charge the moralists of the New Left with cowardice; they ceded that task to the Veterans of Foreign Wars and other groups and persons which the liberals themselves had long dismissed as Neanderthals. In the `60s, those who did not move to the left or the right became self-doubting apologists for a failed dream. By 1968 they were divided against one another, ready to assist their own defeat.

Once again, Tocqueville anticipates this sort of thing. In his time, American universities were church-affiliated, and seriously so. The intellectual class, if not entirely religious, was noticeably shaped by religion; even men like Jefferson, who had died only a decade before Tocqueville’s visit, retained many of the sturdier qualities that religion fosters: discipline, perseverance, wholehearted dedication to a cause. From Puritanism on, Americans had found in their religion means of both spiritual and temporal satisfaction. By “giving men a general habit of conducting themselves with a view to eternity,” religions reveal the great secret of success” in this world; they teach men not to “turn from day to day to chase some novel object or desire,” but to “have settled designs which they are never weary of pursuing.” The social stability provided by the belief in eternity served as ballast for a ship that otherwise would have swayed uncontrollably in the unpredictable gusts of democratic opinion.

For “no sooner do [men] despair of living forever, than they are disposed to act as if they were to exist for a single day.” This is the moral and social dilemma caused by the apparent liberation of what’s come to be called secularism: “In skeptical ages it is always to be feared… that men may perpetually give way to their daily casual desires, and that, wholly renouncing whatever cannot be acquired without protracted effort, they may establish nothing great, permanent, and calm…. In those countries in which, unhappily, irreligion and democracy coexist, philosophers and those in power ought to be always striving to place the objects of human actions far beyond man’s immediate range.” Not for nothing did Charles de Gaulle, more than a century after this, hold before his countrymen the lure of la grandeur–re-founding French republicanism, establishing a foreign policy independent of the two `superpowers.’ Tocqueville would oppose the indulgence of fickle appetites with discipline and spiritedness. He would have democracies “teach the community day by day that wealth, fame, and power are rewards of labor,” and arrange things so that no greatness should be of too easy acquirement.” Tocqueville hoped thus to achieve the effect of religion without the strict rule of religion seen in the aristocratic Europe of the Old Regime; he suggests that these practices might even bring an irreligious people back to religion.

As religious faith declined among the intellectuals in the latter half of the nineteenth century and was replaced by faith in science and social progress, institutional Christianity metamorphosed. It did not disappear but became secular, materialist, with a worldly compassion and a worldly paradise replacing caritas and Heaven. Woodrow Wilson, his father a preacher, was already heading in this direction, and many of his contemporaries (John Dewey the most important) were already there. Still believing in a sort of eternity–the end of `History’–the intellectuals could discipline themselves and find the courage to fight for something.

But simultaneously, other intellectual trends undermined the liberalism of historical progress. Existentialism questioned the grand narrative, and indeed rationalism itself. In recent years there has been an attempt to synthesize Heidegger (after all, a Nazi) with some sort of `Left’ ideology. But the most important intellectual preparation for the weakening of progressive-liberalism and the rise of a new Left was moral relativism. Tocqueville comes very close to anticipating this phenomenon. This may be seen by recalling his description of the “philosophical method” of the Americans. He notes that, under conditions of equality, not only does each individual seek the reason of things by himself alone, but equality tends to invade the intellect in such a way that the individual becomes the “source of truth.” Relativism reflects this form of egalitarianism, for it consists in believing that there are no objective standards for determining whether the way of life of one individual, group, or nation is superior to that of another. To admire a Socrates or a Charles Manson; to condemn PLO terrorists or to call them `freedom fighters’; to prefer liberal America to Soviet Russia–all these so-called value judgments are deemed `subjective.’ Relativism thus regards all moral principles (which it calls `values’ as opposed to `facts’) as theoretically equal. Relativism dovetails with the esteem for science, described by its advertisers as `value-free.’

Visible not only in the writings of the most ardent proponents of détente, moral relativism appears in writings by men now regarded as `hawks.’ Here are Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel P. Huntington in their 1963 book, Political Power: USA/USSR: “We are students of politics; we write this book in that capacity. And here we are concerned not with vices and virtues but with strengths and weaknesses. Moral judgment have been passed often enough–an with predictable results–on both sides of the Iron Curtain.” Such talk obscures the fact that virtues and vices are strengths and weaknesses, depended upon and routinely exploited by every politician, ever person, who ever lived. It also reflects the partial moral relativism of numerous contemporary intellectuals, `left’ and `right,’ who imagine an `end of ideology’ in what Brzezinski later would call the “technetronic era.” According to his teachings, we must abandon our prejudices about individual, group, or national superiority and enter a period of universal toleration and–no surprise–egalitarianism. Marxism, too–which Brzezinski, reflecting Tocqueville’s observation about the superficiality of the democratic mind, links to a variety of humanitarianism–has contributed and will continue to contribute to the eventual convergence of all nations into–what?

Into, as it turns out, theologian Harvey Cox’s “Secular City,” which “provides a setting in which a hodgepodge of human purposes and projects can thrive because each recognizes itself as provisional and relative.” The secular city is a vaguely and indeed groundlessly humanitarian place which President Carter may have had in mind when he predicted, during his trip to Poland in January 1978, that East and West will someday transcend their ideological differences. After all, any “posture based on ideological considerations” has become passé in the estimation of his National Security Adviser, Dr. Brzezinski. In view of the impossibility of sustaining any humanitarianism, however vague, on terms of moral relativism, this posture will likely consist of bending over backwards.

Tocqueville would understand. Social egalitarianism inclines minds and hearts toward moral egalitarianism, which yields self-interest rightly understood. Self-interest rightly understood, unchecked by discipline and spiritedness, yields virtuous materialism, which yields moral enervation. As long as a strong religious faith (a precious legacy from aristocratic times, Tocqueville calls it) or even a strong secular faith inspires a people, democracy thrives; when the faith declines to the level it reaches in Cox and Brzezinski, discipline and spiritedness will be difficult to arouse. The keepers of a lukewarm faith cannot appeal to positive belief alone, whether it be the deference seen in aristocratic societies, he religious man’s faith in in God, or the democrat’s faith in his country; they must, rather, urge us on by means of the disspiriting lure of moral relativism. We are to pursue, with good will toward friends an adversaries alike, a morally neutral or non-ideological foreign policy, a policy which, by definition, can only be motivated by material interests. How far such `even-handedness’ will take progressive-liberal America vis-à-vis communist Russia is not difficult to see. As a censor at the USSR Press Department confided to Malcolm Muggeridge, “Those who are not against us are with us.”

As Tocqueville would have understood, in America, appeals to moral relativism almost always serve the appellant’s desire for comfortable self-preservation–comfortable self-preservation for all if he is an `idealist.’ Brzezinski himself sees the practical, if not the theoretical problem with this: “subjectivism may not suffice to meet the challenge of subjective activism,” foreign or domestic. Nevertheless, both he and Huntington reject what they derisively refer to as the “black-and-white” image of the Soviet and American political systems. Writing sixteen years after the first edition of their text (and eleven printings later), Huntington began to see that he and his co-author had taught such lessons all too thoroughly. In an article titled “American Foreign Policy,” published in The Washington Quarterly in autumn 1979, Huntington reported that “the more educated people are, the less likely they are to think that communism is the worst form of government, and the less likely they are to see communist governments in Japan, Western Europe, Africa, or Latin  America as threats to the United States.” The same university-educated respondents were also less likely to think that the United States should be stronger than the United  States, and were more favorably disposed to cutting the defense budget. These results may be attributed, in part, to the neo-Marxism infecting American campuses, but more significant is the doctrine of moral relativism which has long dominated higher education in the democratic world, a doctrine which cannot but level moral distinctions and thereby undermine commitment to liberty.

If corporate business owners and intellectuals are susceptible to moral relativism, what about the soldiers? The left points to Tocqueville’s chapter, “Why democratic nations naturally desire peace, and democratic armies, war,” wherein he argues that the same desire for personal advancement which leads the majority of democrats into peaceful commercial pursuits also inclines the minority who are military officers to desire war, which brings their advancement. The left ignores Tocqueville’s prescription, which is not to weaken the army and to make civilians fear it, but to educate citizens to “a manly love of order” that inclines them to “freely submit themselves to discipline.” Such men, “if they follow the profession of arms, bring into it, unconsciously and almost against their will, these same habits and manners…. Teach the citizens to be educated, orderly, firm and free and the soldiers will be disciplined and obedient.” This was George Washington’s course, and in large measure it has worked, although the left has advocated exactly the reverse for decades.

And not only the left ha ignored Tocqueville’s further warning: “If the love of physical gratification and the taste for well-being, which are equally suggested to men by a state of equality, were to possess the mind of a democratic people and to fill it completely, the manners of the nation would be so totally opposed to military pursuits that perhaps even the army would eventually acquire a love of peace.” Contrary to pacifist doctrine, “nothing is more dangerous for the freedom and tranquility of a people than an army afraid of war,” because “such an army no longer seeks to maintain its importance and its influence on the field of battle, [but] seeks to assert it elsewhere.” To prevent this, Tocqueville recommends that the love and habit of liberty combat the love and habit of virtuous materialism. In this he follows Pericles, who praised the non-egalitarian virtues of honor, courage, and glory by invoking the democratic love of liberty. Liberty requires the moderate spiritedness that underlies self-assertion, but does not necessarily contradict discipline freely submitted to.

Confronting a strong and determined Soviet Union, our politicians–no less American, for better and for worse, than our businessmen, intellectuals, and soldiers–must assess democracy’s strengths and vulnerabilities along with the ongoing reassessment of America’s military and economic strengths and vulnerabilities. The ones who conducted the Vietnam War evidently overestimated American capacities, including their own. The ones who conduct détente may well underestimate those capacities by assuming that Americans won’t fight at all. They will fight, politically and economically now, and militarily if needed–but not if their leaders misunderstand their character. That character has changed little since Tocqueville’s day, and politicians will find him a prudent counselor.