Real War (42 page)

Many Third World countries are governed by authoritarian regimes run by dictators, often military men. The Shah's father was a military man who seized power and made himself the new Shah; Franco was a general who prevailed in the Spanish Civil War; the Greek colonels ran an authoritarian regime; so does the Chilean junta.

One thing we should recognize about these and similar regimes is that they are not run by zealots determined to impose their iron will on every aspect of their citizens' personal lives. For these authoritarian rulers, political repression is an expedient to enable them to hold power and maintain order. By contrast, the Cambodian bloodbath was a brutal effort to transform a society and to destroy everyone who resisted change. In this it differed only in degree, not in kind, from other communist regimes.

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We must also grasp the distinction between those regimes that threaten their neighbors and those that do not. As one British writer put it, “We should distinguish between those systems, usually totalitarian, that wish to
export
their repression and those, usually authoritarian, that don't. Even the simpleton understands that no matter how obnoxious they may be, neither Chile nor South Africa has submarines lurking around the oil fields in the North Sea.” He might have added that unlike Cuba, they are not exporting communist subversion to their neighbors in Latin America, or sending their troups to serve as Soviet Hessians in wars of “liberation” in Africa.

Exerting more pressure on friendly regimes that provide some rights and do not threaten their neighbors than we exert
on hostile regimes that provide no rights and do threaten their neighbors is not only hypocritical, it is stupid. Alliances are arrangements of convenience. Allies do not have to love one another or even admire one another; it is enough that they need one another. Being joined in an alliance neither obliges nor entitles us to deliver condescending lectures in political morality to our partners. The “moral imperialists” who insist that other nations be re-created in our image as the price of our friendship do freedom no favor.

I do not suggest that we abandon our committment to “human rights” in our relations with our friends. But to be effective, we need to adopt a policy of realism. And to do this we must make a simple but crucial differentiation in our minds between the long view and the short view, between the ideal goal and what is immediately feasible.

In the long term we should hold high the banner of the American Revolution as the standard to which man aspires. But in the short term—in the immediate, real world we must deal with—we must recognize that for much of the world this is still a distant dream. It took centuries for Western Europe, with its relatively advanced civilization, to evolve democratic forms, and even some of these countries have at times lapsed back into authoritarian rule. American-style democracy is simply not suited for many countries, and if they tried it, it would not work. Democracy is like heady wine—some can handle it and some cannot, at least not right away.

In the world contest one of the West's most powerful weapons is the idea of freedom. The communist nations have proved that they can equal us militarily. Economically, they will continue to try to match us. But in terms of human aspirations, it is no contest—the West wins hands down.

As the free world's leader, the President must use that weapon—the idea of freedom—to the hilt. But he must use it precisely and effectively. It would be tragic if we misused this powerful weapon, flaying about with it at random, hitting our friends and foes alike and ultimately injuring ourselves. The “bully pulpit” is a place for moral leadership, not for moral imperialism.

Russia fears our friendship more than our enmity. The Soviet dictatorship could not stand free intercourse with the West. We must make Moscow fear our enmity more than our friendship.

—
Winston Churchill

The object in war is to attain a better peace. . . . Victory in the true sense implies that the state of peace, and of one's people, is better after the war than before.

—
B.H. Liddell Hart

Nearly thirty years ago as a junior senator from California I heard General Douglas MacArthur tell a joint session of Congress that “in war, there is no substitute for victory.” The members rose to their feet. They cheered. Grown men cried. The nation was then mired in a war in Korea. MacArthur, the hero of the Pacific in World War II, had been fired by President Truman from his command in Korea. MacArthur had wanted to carry the war to the enemy. Truman was determined to contain the war and to achieve a negotiated truce.

Historians and strategists will argue over which was right in the circumstances of that time. But as we look across the balance of this century and beyond, as we think of the stakes involved, we must conclude that in World War III there
is
no substitute for victory.

Victory requires knowing when to use power, how, and where—not just military power, but all the different kinds of power at our disposal.

History tells us that time and again nations that were stronger militarily, stronger economically, even nations that had the edge in will and courage, were defeated because their enemies used power more effectively. In World War III the Soviets have both a goal and a strategy for victory. Their goal is total, unconditional victory, and unconditional surrender for the West, and their strategy involves the use and orchestration of all means as prudently as possible toward that end.

The nations of the world want to be on the winning side. Most of them have lost wars. Most—and this especially includes Japan and Germany—do not want to be on the losing side again. The American people want to win. This is why MacArthur struck such a responsive chord, why he drew such a gut-level response. One of the most devastating results of the outcome in Vietnam was that America felt that for the first time it had lost a war.

In World War III, in the long run the alternative to victory is not an uneasy truce, but defeat in war or surrender without war. This is not acceptable.

Americans are unaccustomed to thinking in global terms, and uncomfortable with the exercise of power unless directly provoked, as we were at Pearl Harbor. It should be clear by now, however, that the Soviet challenge is such a provocation on a global scale.

A somewhat oversimplified but useful way of looking at the evolution of America's response to that challenge during the thirty-five years from the end of World War II through the 1970s is to view it as a progress from confusion to containment to détente. In the wake of the Soviet move into Afghanistan, the 1980s began with a rash of hasty obituaries for détente. Most missed the point of détente, of how and why it worked when it did. Afghanistan interrupted détente. But looking to the future, we need a steady policy that will again make it in the Soviet Union's interest to negotiate with the United States on a realistic quid pro quo basis. A successful détente can help make victory for the West possible—without war. But first we must
recognize that containment is an essential element of détente. It is, in fact, what makes a successful détente possible.

In the immediate aftermath of World War II the West, weary of war, disarmed and turned its attention to rebuilding from the ashes of conflict. Europe lay devastated and powerless. The Soviets moved into the vacuum, cementing their hold on Eastern Europe. With Soviet support, the communists swept to power in China and fastened their hold on North Korea.

In responding to the Soviet moves after World War II the United States evolved what came to be known as the policy of containment. On the European front the Truman Doctrine in 1947 and the establishment of NATO in 1949 checked further Soviet advance. Then, in 1950, with both Soviet and Chinese support, North Korea invaded South Korea. A swift military response by the United Nations, with the United States taking the lead, checked communist aggression there, and the American policy of containment was visibly in place.

George F. Kennan, then the director of the Policy Planning Staff at the State Department, set forth the principles of the policy in an article he wrote anonymously—under the pseudonym “Mr. X”—for the magazine
Foreign Affairs
in 1947. In it he urged “a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counter-force at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world.”

Kennan argued that by keeping the contradictions within communism confined to the communist bloc and preventing their escape via expansion, this policy would “promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the break-up or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power.” In effect, he reflected the insights of that adviser to Catherine the Great two centuries earlier, who had counseled that what ceased to grow would begin to rot.

Kennan was wise enough to know that military prowess
alone would not carry the day for a democracy. He said the United States would have to create “among the peoples of the world generally the impression of a country which knows what it wants, which is coping successfully with the problems of its internal life and with the responsibilities of a World Power, and which has a spiritual vitality capable of holding its own among the major ideological currents of the time.”

He warned that if instead of firm containment and an attitude of self-confidence and strength, the United States were to exhibit “indecision, disunity, and internal disintegration,” this would have an “exhilarating effect on the whole Communist movement.” These tendencies would cause “a new jauntiness . . . in the Moscow tread”; new groups of foreign supporters would climb onto what they would see as the “band wagon of international politics”; and, instead of a “break-up or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power,” “Russian pressure” would increase “all along the line in international affairs.”

Looking back over the thirty years since Kennan's words were written, it is clear that his analyses were prophetic. Eight countries in Europe and two in Asia became communist between 1945 and 1949. But in the twenty-five years from 1949 to 1974, with the policies of containment fully in place, only two—North Vietnam and Cuba—turned communist. Few foreign policies have been followed so effectively.

During this period the only action the Red Army saw was against the Soviet Union's own allies in Eastern Europe. In East Germany in 1953, in Hungary in 1956, and in Czechoslovakia in 1968 rebellions were put down and liberalization strangled. The Sino-Soviet bloc became the Sino-Soviet split, the fissure growing so wide that the two former allies came to the brink of war in 1969.

Containment was well suited to the realities it was designed to address. It utilized our great economic and military strengths, and it took advantage of the internal weaknesses of the enemy. But by the time my administration took office in 1969 containment alone was not enough. Conditions had changed, partly as a result of the success of containment. There were new opportunities. There were also new dangers. The Soviets had grown much stronger militarily, but they had serious economic difficulties. They were worried about nationalistic
and democratic ferment in their Eastern European satellites, and they faced an angry and bitterly resentful potential superpower on their eastern flank.

We saw that the nations of Eastern Europe were quietly and steadily pushing to expand their freedom of action. China was beginning to perceive the U.S.S.R. rather than the United States as its principal enemy. The policy of containment had been designed to deal with a monolithic communist world. Now there were deep divisions within that world that we could exploit to our benefit. Our policies needed an added dimension.

Militarily, as we had gone from nuclear monopoly to superiority to parity, the deterrent effect of our nuclear advantage was no longer decisive. At the same time the dangers of miscalculation were increasing to a very high level. The tremendous destructive force of the new weapons presented new and chillingly clear dangers to both superpowers. The constant jockeying for position, the unending moves and countermoves of the cold war, had become ominous. There was a real and ever-increasing danger that nuclear war could be set off by an unintended and unwanted escalation.

Around the world the bipolar system of the postwar world had given way to a more amorphous and complex international structure. Fifty-one nations joined the United Nations at its founding in 1945; twenty-five years later there were 127 members and their numbers have kept increasing. A bloc of “non-aligned” nations emerged, and most nations now categorize themselves as belonging to this group.

Finally, the burdens that America had been carrying for the rest of the world for twenty-five years had begun to take their toll. Long before 1950 we had the great-power responsibility for keeping the peace in Central and South America, assumed under the Monroe Doctrine. When Japan attacked China and the balance of power in Northeast Asia collapsed in the 1930s, it was eventually the United States that restored it in the 1940s and pledged to maintain it, especially after the Korean invasion in 1950. In 1947 we took over the job that the British had been doing in Greece and Turkey, and in 1948 we committed ourselves both to the defense and to the rebuilding of Europe. After the Suez crisis in 1956 the credibility of Britain
and France as peacekeepers in the Middle East evaporated. We assumed that responsibility as well, codified in the Eisenhower Doctrine in 1957. As the power and peacekeeping abilities of the former colonial powers shrank, the United States stepped forward to fill the gap, replacing the power of Britain, France, Japan, Germany, and others in Europe, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Even for us, this was becoming too much.

Just as the military balance of power began to shift to our disadvantage, we committed ourselves to the most extensive and most expensive military undertaking in the era of containment—the war in Vietnam. At the very same time the Johnson administration launched a massive “war on poverty” at home. This enormous double burden on the social and economic structure of our society came at a time of supreme self-confidence, but also at a time when the power advantage that underlay that self-confidence was being eroded. The double maximum commitment overloaded our systems, and we short-circuited.