SCHOLAR ISLAND

"On these slippery and indeed magical terms, I want to be

extremely clear. . I am not against detente, or any other

way or improvement in our relations with the Soviet Union.

No sane person can be against detente. What I am criticizing
here is the political pretense that detente with the

Soviet Union is not something we have sought for more than

forty years, a major goal and aspiration of our policy,

but a political consideration which has somehow been realized

 in recent years. It has not been realized. There has

been no improvement in our relations with the Soviet Union,

we have not succeeded in substituting negotiation for con-

frontation. The Cold War is not over. On the contrary it

is worse than ever. The Soviet threat has increased in re-

cent years, although our perception of it has been dimin-

ished. Soviet policy has not changed and will not change.

What has changed is our way of talking about it to ourselves.

The republic will be in peril until we recover and confront

the fact that Soviet policy today is what it has always been,

and more. The first fact to confront is that Soviet foreign

policy backed by an array of force without precedent in mod-

" ern history, is made by the men who have developed and main-

tained the Gulag archapelago'

Eugene V. Rostow

Professor of Law

Yale Law School

"For detente in this sense is really no different from

peace or security or peaceful coexistence or the relaxation

of tensions, or all the other similarly abstract concepts

which the Soviet Union had floated in order to muddle our

thinking and to gain the reputation of moral superiority

over the United States. The Soviet Union has always posed

as the defender of those concepts, which it launched in the

first place; while under the cover of those rhetorical pro-

nouncements it has pursued the age-old policies of Russia,

which, in the Middle East as elsewhere, have a very respect-

able ancestry under the aegis of Czarism. What we call to-

day the middle Eastern Question one hundred years ago was

called the Eastern Question, and instead of the United States

being pitted against the Soviet Union, Great Britain was pit-

ted against Russia. For there are certain geo-political facts

which are immutable, as immutable as geography itself, and

the fact that the Middle East is a land bridge joining three

continents is one of those facts."

Dr. Hans J. Morgenthau

Professor of Political Science

New School for Social Research

"No, the limitation of armaments quite as much as the

mitigation of warfare is impossible until war has been made

impossible, and then the complete extinction of armaments

follows without discussion; and war can only be made imposs-

ible when the powers of the world have done what the original

States of American Union found they had to do after their in-

dependence was won, and that is set up a common law and rule

over themselves. Such a project is a monstrously difficult

one, no doubt, and it flies in the face of great masses

of patriotic cant and of natural prejudices and natural sus-

picion, but it is a thing that can be done. It is the only

thing that can be done to avert the destruction of civilizat-

ion through war and war preparation. Disarmament and the lim-

itation of warfare without such a merging of sovereignty

look, at the first glance, easier and more modest proposals,

but they suffer from the fatal defect of absolute impract-

ticability. They are things that cannot be made working real

ities. A world that could effectually disarm would be a world

already at one, and disarmament would be of no importance what-

ever. Given stable international relations, the world would put

aside its armaments as naturally as a man takes off his coat

in winter on entering a warm house. "

H.G. Wells

1918

"I wish I could Feel reassured. I keep trying to find an expert on

either side of the Atlantic who will set my mind at rest and convince

me we are not running into the home stretch in negotiable nuclear

disarmament because the next generation of weapons will be non-verifiable

by any means the Russians are likely to accept. I would like to believe

that we have decades ahead of us in which to work it all out, But I

cannot see beyond the end of 1983. 'Spies in the sky' have made veri-

Iication possible (and therefore all the Fourteen arms control agreements

that we have got. ) Thanks to this non-intrusive reciprocal inspection

From above , we have had the Partial Test Ban Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic

Missle Treaty, Salt I and Salt II, because any significant cheating

would be visible Fro the satellites. With the next generation of small

sophisticated weapons and delivery vehicles like Cruise, that will no

longer be the case. Maybe the USSR will concede some on-site inspection,

mostly in the form of a few 'black boxes' to distinguish nuclear test

explosions From earthquakes, if that is all that stands in the way of

a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. but 'black boxes' are not going to

help with Cruise and the Soviet equivalent when it comes along. And

the Russians and East Europeans are not going to risk the erosion of

their whole system by letting hundreds of international inspectors

roam freely around their territories to check out a rigorous dis-

armament agreement. So late 1983 really does look like the end of

that road-an international threshold of ominous significance.

Among the military experts I have consulted, none have disagreed

with this gloomy assessment, including (British) Major General A.%.

Younger, Former Chief of Staff of Allied Forces, Northern Europe,"

James George

One Year to Go?

The Menard Press London

(Ambassador James George represented Canada on the UN

Disarmament Commission...he was Minister Counselor on the

Canadian Delegation to NATO)

THE POLICY OF APPEASEMENT

 

"Persuasion is the resource of the feeble; and the feeble can

seldom persuade.

Edward Gibbon

"But we are acting as though from feebleness, thus endangering

peace by making the Communists underestimate our strength and

luring them, without intending to do so, into the folly of attack. "

Bertram D. Wolfe

'History teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement

but begets new and bloodier war. It points to no single instance

where the end has justified the means-where appeasement has led

to more than a sham peace. Like blackmail, it lays the basis for

new and successively greater demands, until, as in blackmail,

violence becomes the only other alternative."

MacArthur

"Short of a pre-emptive war, a war which contravenes the very

ethos of Western Society, the West has no alternative except

steadfastness, courage, and patience-and the hope that time

will reap what man cannot."

Vladimir Petrov

"The notion that armaments are the cause rather than the reflection

of I conflict is not new. It has been the basis of schemes of dis-

armament throughout history; it was the rationale for all the dis-

armament conferences in the twenties and thirties. Nevertheless,

it is open to serious doubt."

Henry Kissinger

"History's verdict on appeasement is unmistakable: it simply does

not pay. It has been tried many times. It has been the refuge of

the weaker, less virile, less courageous nations in many a struggle

for survival. Inevitably each act of appeasement has m de the ag-

gressor stronger and the appeaser relatively weaker. It usually

Brig Gen Donald Armstrong U.S.A.