worldview

A JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

THE TWO AMERICAS

In the few weeks since the inauguration of the
new President it has become clear that there are
today really two Americas. There is the America
which refuses to be troubled and views the present
world situation without grave alarm; there is also
the America which sees the present as a time of
mortal danger and thinks great action must be
taken if free institutions are to survive. The first
America finds many spokesmen for it in the United
States Congress; the second America finds its
voice in the administration of John F. Kennedy.

Professor J. Robert Oppenheimer certainly

ke for the second America in his address before

e tenth anniversary conference of the Congress
for Cultural Freedom, excerpts from which are
published elsewhere in these pages. “What some
of us know, and some of our governments have
recognized,” Professor Oppenheimer declared,
“all people should know i: se great govern-
ment understand: if this next great war occurs,
none of us can count on having enough living to
bury our dead.” And Professor Oppenheimer
would have peoples and governments everywhere
recognize, too, that “this situation, quite new in
human history, has from time to time brought
With it a certain grim and ironic community of in-
terest, not only among friends, but between
friends and enemies. This community has nothing
to do with the injunction that we love our enemies,
but is a political and human change not wholly
without opeful portent.”

In “A Christian Approach to Nuclear War,”
published as the lead-article in this issue of
Worldview, a group of distinguished Protestant
theologians takes an even more urgent view of the
world’s situation than does Professor Oppen-
heimer. They state bluntly that “there is no paral-
lel between the wars of the past and the impend-
ing cataclysm brought on by nuclear war . . . In
Christian terms this means that atomic war so
offends against the doctrine of creation that a
Christian rationale for war is no longer tenable.
There is no meaningful way in which one can
speak of a ‘just war’ fought with atomic arms.”

- Whether or not one agrees with the unyield-
ingly pacifist conclusions the Protestant theo-
logians draw, it seems impossible not to share
their profound disquiet over the arms race, and
their conviction that a radical new course must be
found if the final catastrophe is to be averted. A
commitment to pacifism involves the individual
conscience and, clearly, cannot be advanced as a
matter of national policy; but national policy can
be informed, and new directions taken, in light
of the unprecedented dangers which the oo
direction of the world offers. Perhaps, when all
considerations of justice and prudence are weighed
by wise statesmen, the risks of atomic war may
have to taken. But those who may decide to take
these risks surely must ponder the warning of
Professor sc dea If the switches of great
war are thrown, in anger or in error, and if indeed
there are human survivors, there may some day
again be high art, perhaps, and some ennoblin
sense of the place of man and his destiny, an
— great science. There will be no sense of

istory. There will be no sense of ‘progress in
freedom’.”

There seems little doubt that President Ken-
nedy and many of his advisors realize these grim
truths. This realization lies behind and supports
their determination to seek new ways to break
the deadlock on disarmament. It lay behind and
supported the President's eloquent inaugural ad-
dress, with its plea for the nations to concentrate
on those things which unite them (including,
certainly, their mutual interest in survival) and
to cease contention for awhile on those deep issues
which divide. It lies behind and supports Mr.
Kennedy’s evident determination to avoid the pro-
vocative word, the harsh reply, the inflexible pub-
lic stance.

One of the great tasks facing the administration
is to communicate this realization, and its corres-
ponding sense of urgency in seeking new solu-
tions, to that other America which does not seem
to recognize the dangers. This is an area in which

a consensus among our people must be achieved.

Fesruary 196]

in the magazines

As the Kennedy Administration enters its first
month, its chances for accomplishment continue to
be the leading subject of press comment here and
abroad. The New Statesman, in an editorial for Jan-
uary 27, heralds the new team as “a high command
which, in talent and brainpower, measures up to the
professionals in the Kremlin” and recommends “a
modest, but solidly practical program for the next
few months . . . [that] would create a climate of opti-
mism in the world. .. .” In the same issue R. H. S.
Crossman agrees that “the new President has re-
placed the dreariest by the ablest administration
of the century,” at the same time taking note of a
certain skepticism: “The question remains whether
it has not come too late.” In view of America’s weak-
ened position, what gains Kennedy may be able
to achieve do not “add up to anything justifying
the grandiloquent title of a New Frontier.

However, writes Mr. Crossman, if Kennedy “is to
fulfill his ambition and regain the initiative in East-
West competition, [he] must be content to work in
stages. The first stage . . . is the thawing out of that
mood of domestic affluence and nuclear com-
placency which paralyzed all effective Western ac-
tion during the fifties... . But it must be clear to
Kennedy and to some at least of his closest advisers
that this thaw will be followed by another freeze-
up unless the new President, once he has asserted
his leadership, has the courage to act decisively.”

In “Needed—A New Bipartisanship” (The New
Republic, January 23) Senator Jacob K. Javits (R-
N.Y.) maintains that only if the new administration
invites the support of the liberal Republicans in
Congress will it stand any chance of realizing its
anticipated program of liberal legislation. “Despite
recent discouragements,” writes Senator Javits, “I
believe we can cooperate in a truly effective biparti-
san coalition to enact the kind of measures which
the much talked about ‘ultra-conservative’ coalition
has successfully blocked in the past. But whether
this actually happens depends very largely upon the
attitude and policies of the new President and Vice
President. If Senators Kennedy and Johnson learned
the lessons apparent to many of us last August, they
now must recognize that Republican and Demo-
cratic views have to be reflected in legislation be-

it.”

Turning to the most immediate task of the new
administration—ending the recession—Robert Lek-
achman, in The New Leader for January 30, reviews
the variety of proposals that have been submitted to
the President by economic specialists. Which of
these measures will be adopted is uncertain, Mr.
Lekachman writes; no clear policy preference is in-

dicated by Kennedy's chief appointments in the
field of economic affairs. Mr. chman concludes
that “at best the omens are cloudy. What finally
happens probably will be dictated by the events of
the next months. If the economy droops or, worse,
fails to respond to mild medication, there is every
probability that practical politics will demand
strong remedies. If the economy recovers rapidly,
then the real proof of the President’s economic li
eralism will come with his first Economic Message
to Congress in a year of prosperity. The test of
Presidential leadership is not willingness to end a
recession, it is willingness to affront vested economic
interests.”

Hans J. Morgenthau, writing in the February issue
of Commentary, appraises the political realities with
which an improved foreign policy must deal, noting
that the demands made upon the new administration
are “superhuman, in view of which, the prospects
for a wholly successful American foreign policy are
of necessity less bright than is suggested by the con-
trast between the personal and intellectual qualities
of the new team and its
ever expects spectacular es is likely to
appointed. We others will oye to the Ken-
nedy Administration if it can give American foreign
policy a new spirit and awareness, and a consistent
movement in the right direction.”

Berliner Illustrirte, the famous and long-defunct
German illustrated weekly, has been revived for one
ial issue. “It is our message of friendship,” write
in the American edition, “a renewed
Berlin pledge in the cause of liberty.” As a side-
light of their ial edition, the editors point out
that the missing “e” of Illustrierte in the magazine's
name is once a missing. “For fifty-one years,”
runs an editorial note, “the Berliner Illustrirte ap-
without “e,” an early spelling mistake that
me a fine tradition. Then in 1941 the Nazis
got the bright idea of doing at least one thing right
and changed to IIlustrierte. We have the
“e” again, for we prefer the old tradition to the
new order of the Nazis.”

Number 145 (January-February) of Headline
Series is “The Future of Nuclear Tests” by Hans A.
Bethe and Edward Teller, a debate in which Dr.
Bethe argues the case for ending nuclear tests, while
Dr. Teller presents the case for continuing them.
There is a section in which each scientist comments
on the other’s views, and the issue ends with a
glossary of technical terms.

PAMPHILUS

In 1958 the World Council of Churches published its widely-noted “Provisional
“ Study Document” entitled Christians poe yo Prevention of War in an Atomic
» Age. In response to the World Council's request for comments on this document,
y a large committee of theological professors was assembled to collaborate on pro-
of prosals for its revision. These proposals form the basis of the present statement,
e, which has been prepared and published by The Church Peace Mission in order
Y to “make generally available for study a document embodying essentially the
d same ideas as the [original] paper.” Among those who have endorsed A Christian
2 Approach to Nuclear War are George A. Buttrick of Harvard University; Herbert
Gezork and Norman K. Gottwald of Andover-Newton Theological Seminary;
e Walter G. Muelder, Paul Deats, Jr., and I. Harold De Wolf of Boston University
of School of Theology; Arthur C. Cochrane of the Theological Seminary of Dubuque
. University; John K. Hick, Otto A. Piper and D. Campbell Wyckoff of Princeton
ic Theological Seminary. Inquiries should be directed to the offices of The Church
Peace Mission, Room 249, Interchurch Center, 475 Riverside Drive, New York
h 27, New York.
ts There is no parallel between the wars of the past and _— may survive, this does not alter the fact that each in
- the impending cataclysm brought on by nuclear _ its own way lays claim to ultimate if not divine right
od war. This is evidenced in the contamination of the _ over all mankind. Thus the Creator of the world is
ed earth and its atmosphere, the entirely practical de- _ replaced by tribal gods which are personifications ot
€ struction of civilization, the genetic distortion of the _ the national interest.
s race, and the possible extinction of human life and Moreover, the enormous investments of material
m of earth’s life-sustaining resources. It is clear that no and human resources necessary for modern arma-
nt beneficial results could follow from the employment _ments constitute a violation of man’s obligation to
of such brute force. In Christian terms this means __ be a good steward of the created world over which
that atomic war so offends against the doctrine of he has been given control. He betrays his role as
creation that a Christian rationale for war is no creature in dissipating his best gifts in preparation
8 longer tenable. for the destruction of the very conditions that make
“ There is no meaningful way in which one can _his creaturely life possible and in diverting his God-
d speak of a “just war” fought with atomic arms. given powers from developing the creative uses of
e- Since no theoretical limits can be placed upon the —_ new discoveries which the Creator has now opened
at invoking of destructive atomic power, those who _ before mankind.
's employ or plan to employ such power come danger- Love is the distinctly Christian way of dealing with
ously close to usurping the sole prerogative of the _—evil-doers and overcoming injustice and violence.
D- Creator, even to the point of upsetting the balances This love must embrace enemy as well as friend,
at of nature which make human life possible. the attacker as well as his victim. We are bidden to
om In our day this usurpation of divine power is un- —_ be “not overcome of evil but to overcome evil with
ht dertaken by competing and contradictory national good.” In so far, therefore, as resort to force can be
¥ wills, each claiming that it sees the real or ultimate _justified on Christian grounds, it must aim to restrain
good of the world and has the right to use whatever _— evil and redeem the evil-doer rather than destroy
force is necessary to secure its ends. They take it him. In relations between nations the great majority
upon themselves to make this decision not only on _of Christians throughout history have held that un-
* behalf of their own nationals but on behalf of non- _der certain conditions war might be justified, if not
‘ combatant peoples, multitudes of whom will certain- _ on distinctively Christian grounds, as a tragic neces-
le ly perish in a nuclear war, if indeed there are any _ sity in a sinful world. But such tolerance cannot pos-
a survivors at all. Even if one or both combatants in- _sibly extend to the indiscriminate and unlimited use
ts voke God and deliberately risk their life in the ex- of force which nuclear war among modern powers
a pectation that a better life will result for those who _ entails. Nor can traditional Christian doctrine re-
US 8

A CHRISTIAN APPROACH TO NUCLEAR WAR

garding the providential role of government or the
state be used to justify the pretension to absolute
sovereignty of the nuclear armed powers of our time.
This tradition points rather to the need of surrender

of some measure of sovereignty by modern nations

and the establishment of international law by con-
sent backed by discriminate use of police force un-
der the direction of the United Nations or some form
of world government.

Christians who take the stand, as an increasing
number do, that the use of nuclear weapons in an
all-out or general war is forbidden as irreconcilable
with Christian faith and the precepts of the Gospel,
cannot consistently support the manufacturing and
stockpiling of nuclear weapons for purposes of “de-
terrence.” Weapons which may be intended to deter
also create suspicion and fear, and therefore inev-
itably provoke. Moreover, the continuance of the
arms race daily heightens the risk that through ac-
cident or otherwise the precarious “balance of ter-
ror” will collapse into war. Those who advance the
formula that we should have weapons which we may
under no circumstances use cannot entertain a rea-
sonable hope that the determination to use is in their
control, or even in the control of the central civil
and military agencies of their government, since the
decision may actually be made by a bomber pilot, a
submarine commander or other subaltern or may
actually be the result of a defect in a calculating ma-
chine. This approach amounts, therefore, to advocat-
ing a misleading gesture. It also leaves the way
open for the acquisition of nuclear capability by
more nations.

The position that the use of a nation’s stockpile
is forbidden to Christians and that they must seek
to persuade the nation not to commit this heinous
crime is certainly sterile and misleading unless
Christians and citizens generally are taught this
truth in advance and are somehow trained to make
the right moral decision at the very moment of ulti-
mate crises when “deterrence” has failed. But if the
adversary is virtually assured, as would be the case
if this course were followed, that nuclear weapons
would never be used against him, such weapons
lose their deterrent efficacy. The political decision
to use nuclear weapons is therefore implicit in the
fact of having them. If the threat of use, i. e., of mas-
sive retaliation, is actually removed, there is no point
in the possession of nuclear arms.

Beyond all this is the specifically moral dilemma
ot Christians who oppose use but not possession of
atomic weapons. For if foreign policy is not based

4

on pure bluff, the nation which stockpiles weapons,
i. e., uses massive retaliation as a threat, ‘and Chris-
tians who condone or justify this policy are now
morally committed to massive retaliation. The fact
that by some chance they may not be drawn into
actual nuclear war, does not affect the moral posi-
tion. They are involved in the hopeless contradiction
of saying that they will under certain circumstances
use the diabolical weapons which they must not use
because God forbids it! It is an impossible position
from which Christians and the Christian churches
must extricate themselves.

Save perhaps in a peripheral situation in no way
involving any of the great powers, limited war in
the nuclear age cannot be equated with wars of the
past. Resort to the concept of limited war and em-
phasis on conventional or “tactical” atomic weapons
does not, therefore, provide an escape from the
problems which nuclear war poses for the Christian
conscience. The limited war proposals advanced by
the military and the theoreticians of the power pol-
itics school assume that nuclear weapons are re-
tained for deterrent purposes, not abolished. Con-
sequently the basic moral problem presented by the
use or threat to use these diabolical weapons re-
mains. The hope that in practice better equipment
for conventional war would stave off the need to
resort to atomic weapons is extremely precarious. As
Hanson Baldwin points out, “the first requirement
for keeping a limited war limited is, ironically, the
capability of extending it.” The threat of nuclear re-
taliation is at least implicit under the concept of
limited war as before. In the absence of the advance
decision, discipline and training already referred to,
nuclear weapons would be used if impending loss
of a limited war seemed to jeopardize a nation’s
giobal power position. The latter is the real stake in
the East-West conflict. The idea that big powers to-
day would completely abandon their nuclear arsenals
but plan to be prepared only for the kind of limited
wars known in the past is thoroughly utopian. So-
cieties do not deliberately wage wars on a lower
technological level than that on which they operate
in other fields. As is generally recognized, therefore,
by national leaders and competent analysts of world
problems, consideration of conventional and nuclear
weapons cannot be separated if a serious effort to
achieve disarmament is in question. To remove the
threat of nuclear war nations must find a way to
get rid of war.

Christian leaders have been deeply concerned as
the nations have fought two World Wars in a gen-
eration, only to be plunged into the era of nuclear
war—war, geared not so much to the influencing of

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history as to its mad and meaningless conclusion, in
a blasphemy against the Creator Himself. For the
most part, however, they have sought to pull man-
kind back from the brink by infusing the power
politics of the nations with some measure of Chris-
tian humility, restraint, concern for others, and con-
fidence in such constructive measures of good will
as could be coupled with large-scale nuclear arms
programs. It is now evident that such measures are
totally inadequate to the climactic need of the pres-
ent hour.

We must go back to the basic certainties of the
Christian faith and the stern and revolutionary de-
mands of the Gospel and see whether they can
furnish us a new insight into the human predica-
ment, new ways of dealing with the problems of
our age, and power greater than our own to help
us translate into reality the ancient prophetic dream
of peoples who learn to walk in the way of the Lord.

The Christian has a mandate to regard his dis-
cipleship as relevant to his role as a political being.
The Christian ethic is certainly incumbent on men
in political relationships and institutions fully as
much as in their personal relationships. Admittedly,
the way of discipleship is not possible for nations in
the way open for individuals. Apart from Jesus
Christ no person or group has ever fully lived out
the task of the Servant; but the commtission of the
Servant is addressed to nations as well as individuals,
and more emphatically and urgently now than ever
before.

Reconciliation in every age entails the Cross and
means surrender of pride and readiness to accept
sacrifice, for nations as well as individuals.

From the Christian perspective forces inimical to
righteousness and freedom have to be met with
counter forces, that is to say, with justice, steadfast
love and sacrifice. Sacrifice means willingness to per-
severe in doing right and seeking to establish it by
means of love and against the disapproval or oppo-
sition of others, if necessary to the point of death.
The preservation of physical life and the survival of
particular political forms is not the supreme end of
human life, and men organized in political institu-
tions have no reason to believe that they are exempt
from the obligation of sacrifice.

Accordingly, it is a specious notion that willing-
ness to fight an atomic war in the defense of free-
dom is a form of Christian sacrifice. Atomic warfare
is meaningless and futile. It cannot be justified by
the resolve, “Give me liberty or give me death,”
since it holds no promise that many may live in

freedom because some have voluntarily sacrificed
their lives; but means the end of freedom in mass
annihilation and suicide. Such conceptions cannot be
equated with the sacrifice of Christ which was a dis-
ciplined self-giving that refused to injure any other
human being and had in mind the building up rather
than the annihilation and distortion of life.

The Atonement teaches us both the heinousness,
the subtlety and the power of sin, and on the other
hand, the possibility of overcoming sin in union with
Christ. We must therefore shun every tendency to
blame our sorry performance as Christians on a pre-
sumed incapacity to do otherwise, lest we mock the
Incarnation, deny the Atonement, and flout the
ethical mandates of the New Testament. We are not
so free of sin as we are likely to think in our self-
congratulatory moments; but we could become much
freer of it than we usually admit in our moments of
self-defense. This is true of nations as well as indi-
viduals.

At various points, the Bible suggests that God may
not will that the human race continue indefinitely
within the structure of history as we know it. But
there is certainly no Scriptural mandate for man to
precipitate the end of history.

Continuance of the present policy of major na-
tions in ringing large sections of the world with
atomic armed planes and missiles is itself an implicit
usurpation of God's right to end creation. It assumes
that man, acting in the limited interests of one na-
tion or coalition of nations, has the wisdom to apply
unlimited power in the pursuit of his ends, whether
defined as justice or self-defense.

Christians see no resemblance between the end
promised in the Scriptures as the fruition of God’s
purpose and the end that might be precipitated by
the rash acts of man in defiance of the norm of love
revealed in Christ. Men and nations may usurp God’s
exercise of power but Christians cannot join them in
such rebellion against God.

Christians cannot be positive that abandonment
of primary reliance upon atomic arms will avoid a
holocaust or bring righteousness and peace among
nations. The true basis of Christian trust in recon-
ciliation is its consistency with the nature of Chris-
tian hope. Christian hope is sturdy when linked with
acts of faith that grow out of unreserved commit-
ment to the standards and demands of Biblical
teaching. In the final resort Christian ethics requires
that all moral calculation be made instrumental to
obedient faith, never opposed to it or substituted
for it.

We are undeterred by the suggestion that this
hope and the acts of faith derived from it are “ideal-

5

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istic” and “utopian.” They may be such in the sense
that men at large have not responded to them, but
we reject any contention that such hope and faith
are inept substitutes for nuclear armed might. Re-
liance upon such might is certainly not advancing
either security or reconciliation among nations but
tends even more dangerously toward war through
accident or fear. Our hope is born of faith in God
and the knowledge that Christ is the Lord of His-
tory. In this hope and faith, men facing their pol-
litical responsibilities will discover new courage to
refrain from futile and pathetic trust in violence or
the threat of violence to maintain or extend the na-
tional or universal interest.

It is immediately objected that nations which
cease relying on unlimited use of force will incur
the risk of enslavement and individual physical and
mental suffering which might be imposed by a con-
queror. An ordeal of this sort could not be as acute
and meaningless a form of suffering as that bound to
occur in an eruption of atomic warfare. This is not
simply because some life is better than no life. It is
not bare survival that ultimately matters for the
Christian who does not fear death. What matters is
that the survival of life under tyranny could be
creative, being deliberately chosen in consonance
with Christian faith and hope. The risk of enslave-
ment at the hands of another nation is not so fearful
a thing as the risk of effacing the image of God in
man through wholesale adoption of satanic means
to defend national existence or even truth. What
would be the substance of “freedom,” “truth,” “love,”
after we had used atomic weapons in a general war?

On the other hand, we dare not underestimate the
positive effect that a policy of reconciliation might
have upon hostile nations. We do not predicate our
reliance upon love on the assumption that it will
automatically elicit love from other nations, but
Christians in our day tend to place too low an esti-
mate upon the power of redemptive love practiced
by nations, not because they have conclusively
studied human nature and political institutions and
potentialities, but because they have been saturated
with political and military doctrines which engender
cynicism and rob them of the courage to invoke
those deeper realities that cry aloud for opportunity
to work in men and nations today.

Were a nation in response to a prophetic Christian
summons to abandon its reliance on nuclear weap-
ons and massive retaliation and base its policy to-
ward other peoples on resolute good will and mas-
sive reconciliation, the results might not be as great
and swift as we imagine in our most sanguine mo-
ments, but there would doubtless be more signs that

6

policies consonant with Christian faith are “prac-
tical” than our cynicism and disbelief presently en-
courage us to expect.

There is no effort here to present a complete out-
line of a national policy consonant with the convic-
tions expressed above. Formulation of such a pro-
gram must in fact depend chiefly upon the labors of
large numbers of individual Christians and of church
bodies who come to share these convictions. Here,
however, are several concrete proposals which we
are prepared to endorse:

1. Christians should advocate that our govern-
ment commit itself immediately to the most serious
and unremitting effort to achieve controlled multi-
lateral disarmament among nations. The actual dis-
mantling of military establishments and demobiliza-
tion of armed forces necessarily require consider-
able time but it is unlikely that there will even be
any significant reduction of armed forces unless there
is a clear decision that total and general disarma-
ment down to police level is the basis of policy and
that security is henceforth to be sought in interna-
tional agencies and not military establishments.

2. As Christians we affirm that we cannot under
any circumstances sanction the use of nuclear and
other mass-destruction weapons, nor can we sanction
using the threat of massive retaliation by these
weapons for so-called deterrence. We accept the re-
sponsibility of bearing witness clearly and persist-
ently to these convictions among our fellow-Chris-
tians, especially among Christian youth, and also
among our fellow-citizens generally.

3. We plead with the leaders of our government
not to persist in piling up nuclear arms even if other
nations are not prepared to agree to the same course,
but to formulate and call on our people to support
a program of unilateral withdrawal from the nu-
clear arms race. In the absence of agreement to dis-
arm, and faced with increasing danger that a
nuclear holocaust may be accidentally precipitated
as more nations take steps to equip themselves with
nuclear weapons rendering agreement still more pre-
carious, such decisive unilateral action may be the
only way to break the terrible circle of armament
and counterarmament in which the world is trapped.
As an initial step we advocate that the U.S. cease
the testing and further production of atomic weap-
ons, and of chemical, biological and radiological
weapons.

4, We advocate serious negotiations for disengage-
ment of troops and military installations from vari-
ous areas, such as Middle and Eastern Europe, the

ut-

Middle East and Far East, followed by neutraliza-
tion of these areas as was done in the case of Aus-
tria, the problem of guarantees against aggression
being placed in the hands of the UN.

5. We urge that the U.S. extricate itself from
military alliances with imperialist and reactionary
regimes which are of dubious value even in a mili-
tary sense, and instead adopt political,’ economic and
cultural policies which will make her the symbol to
the peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and even
of Communist lands, of their hopes for freedom,
equality, and deliverance from the ancient curse of
abject poverty.

6. We urge upon our fellow-Christians and upon
governmental agencies and educational leaders seri-
ous study of the possibilities of nonviolent resistance
to possible aggression and injustice.

7. We call upon the Christian Church to disabuse
the American people of the notion widely held that
Christian values can be defended and our Lord and
his teaching somehow vindicated by the extermina-

tion of Communists. We plead with our fellow-Chris-
tians to help in carrying out our primary Christian
task of winning adherents of Communism to Christ
by the preaching of His Gospel and the daily prac-
tice of the ministry of reconciliation which He has
entrusted to us.

God has not called us to be dragged like slaves in
the wake of history plunging to its doom but to be
the messengers and servants of Christ who is the
Lord of history and the victor over the demonic
forces in it.

It is with a deep sense of our own unworthiness,
our little faith, our halting obedience that we send
this message to the churches and to our fellow-
Christians everywhere. But we believe that in re-
sponse to faith, God will now, as in other times of
man’s sinning and despair, impart new light and
power to His church and His people. The Church
will then be a channel of grace and renewal for the
world, and Christian citizenship will acquire a new

meaning.

“A TIME OF SORROW AND RENEWAL”

The February issue of Encounter publishes the text
of an address delivered by J. Robert Oppenheimer
at the recent tenth anniversary conference of the
Congress for Cultural Freedom in Berlin. Excerpts

follow.

Among all the changes of this [past] decade there are
two to which I would address myself. One is brutal.
Ten years ago my country had barely lost, and still
effectively had, a monopoly of the great new weap-
ons, the atomic weapons; and for their use in
combat our armed forces, and all others, had means
of delivery not essentially different from those of
the Second World War. Yet it was then generally
held, and I believe correctly, that these armaments
constituted for all of us a hideous argument against
the outbreak of general war. Today there can be no
talk of monopoly: we are deeply into the atomic
age, in which many nations will be so armed.

Let me say only this: What some of us know, and
some of our governments have recognized, all peo-
ple should know and every great government under-
stand: if this next great war occurs, none of us can
count on having enough living to bury our dead.

This situation, quite new in human history, has

from time to time brought with it a certain grim
and ironic community of interest, not only among
friends, but between friends and enemies. This com-
munity has nothing to do with the injunction that
we love our enemies, but is a political and human
change not wholly without hopeful portent.

The yas Gita, that beautiful
great Hindu scripture, is a sustained argument on
the nature of human life and its meaning, intro-
duced by Prince Arjuna’s reluctance to engage in
fratricidal combat, and by Vishnu’s clarity that this
combat was a simple and n duty, whose
performance would preserve the way of Arjuna’s
salvation, and whose evils were of no mean-
ing, either for him or for those whom he might kill.
Can we be thus comforted?

Traditionally, the national governments have ac-
cepted as their first and highest duty the defense
and security of their peoples. In today’s world they
are not very good at it. We all know that the steps
which we have taken, alone or in concert, have at
very best an uncertain, contingent, changing, and
above all transitory effectiveness. This is one reason,
important but perhaps not central, for a second
change in this past decade. We have come to doubt
the adequacy of our institutions to the world we

7

ac-
en-
ric-
ro-
of
‘ch
re,
we
Iti-
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Za-
er-
be
re
1a-
nd
1a-
other voices
ler
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on
re-
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is
so
|
er
Se,
ort
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ith
re-
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live in; beyond that, we have come to doubt cer-
tain of the health of our own culture. In
this, I speak with my own country in mind, because
the traits that have given rise to our anxieties are
as marked with us as anywhere. Yet I think I see
that in the older, more traditional societies of Eu-
rope, the same problems are beginning to a 4
pi inevitably grow more grave. T think that 1
see that in the measure in which liberty comes to
the people now largely deprived of it, in the meas-
ure in which productivity, education, and the mod-
ern world come to the peoples that aspire for them,
these problems, in their own form, will come too.

Compared to any high culture of the past, ours
is an enormous society. It is for us an egalitarian
one, in which we hope—and I pray that we may
always hope—that there be no irrelevant exclusive-
ness from participation in its highest works, its pow-
ers, and its discourse. Ours, for special reasons of
history, rendered more and more acute by the na-
ture of the twentieth-cen world, is a fluid so-
ciety, with rapid change its hallmark. Like so many
others, it is, in its politics, and much of its public
life, a largely, even an inherently, secular society.
We live, as we all know, with an expansion of
knowledge overpoweringly beautiful, vast, ramified,
quite unparalleled in the history of men. We live
with a yearly enrichment of our understanding of
nature, and of man as part of nature, that doubles
every decade; and that is in its nature, necessarily,
inevitably, and even in part happily an enrichment
of ialization.

is age of ours is the scientific age, in which
our work, our leisure, our economy, and an increas-
ingly large part of the very quality of our lives, are
based on the application of newly acquired knowl-
edge of nature to practical human problems; in
which size, egalitarianism, flux, are the social hall-
marks of a continuing cognitive revolution.

I have been much concerned that in this world
we have so largely lost the ability to talk with one
another. In the great succession of deep discoveries,
we have become removed from one another in tra-
dition, and in a certain measure even in language.
We have had neither the time nor the skill nor the
dedication to tell one another what we have learned,
nor to listen, nor to hear, nor to welcome its en-
richment of the common culture and the common
understanding. Thus the public sector of our lives,
what we have and hold in common, has suffered,
as have the illumination of the arts, the deepening
of justice, and virtue, the ennobling of power and
of our common discourse. We are less men for this.
Our specialized traditions flourish; our private beau-
ties thrive; but in those high undertakings where
man derives strength and insight from the public
excellence, we have been impoverished. We hunger
for nobility: the rare words and acts that harmonize
simplicity and truth. In this I see some connection

with the great unresolved public problems: survival,
liberty, fraternity.

Let me be clear: I do not think that living in to-
day’s world is an easy task, or that any human so-
ciety has ever solved the problems that now con-
front us, or has even lived with them in dignity.
This is for us not so much a time of anger as of
honest sorrow, of renewal, of effort.

Let me be clear also on the great virtues of to-
day’s world: the recession of prejudice, of poverty,
disease and degradation which marks so much of
it; the creative, intimate and lovely communities
which thrive in it; the brilliance and wonder of the
sciences that lie at the root of it.

What is at stake is a view that is not truly a nec-
essary view, but one that has been the phe fi mark,
the cachet specifique of European civilization. If I
cannot be comforted by Vishnu’s argument to
Arjuna, it is because I am too much a Jew, much
too much a Christian, much too much a E
far too much an American. For I believe in the
meaningfulness of human history, and of our role in
it, and above all of our responsibility to it.

Great cultures have flourished without this be-
lief; perhaps they will again. If the switches of great
war are thrown, in anger or in error, and if indeed
there are human survivors, there may some day
again be high art, perhaps, and some ennobling
sense of the place of man and his destiny, and per-
haps great science. There will be no sense of his.
tory. There will be no sense of “progress in free-
dom.”

Indeed, just this belief and this dedication have
brought us where we are. All high civilizations have
had a tradition of learning the truth, of contempla-
tion, of understanding. Since Greek times, many
have understood as well the role of rigor, of proof,
of anchoring consequence to hypothesis. They have
had as well the art of putting questions to nature,
of experiment; they have had forms of communica-
tion, perhaps inadequate, but at once robust and
intimate. It has taken all these, rediscovered and
slowly recaptured in the last millennium, to make
the age of science; but it has taken more. Trans-
fused with these, there has been a special sense of
progress, not merely in man’s understanding, but in
the conditions of man’s life, in his civility, in the
nobility of his institutions and his freedom, a sense
of progress not for the individual soul alone, but of
progress in history, in man’s long story.

We may well have learned that if we of the West
do not look to our own virtue, and that of our insti-
tutions and our life and lives, we shall be ill equipped
to bring liberty to our colleagues now deprived
of it, or to make either our culture or our li
relevant and helpful to the lands newly embarked
on unprecedented change. Let us, in many varied
ways, turn to this, quite without flattery or illusion,
but not quite without hope.

WO

re

The Danger—and Challenge—From the East

Communist China and Asia:
Challenge to American Policy
by A. Doak Barnett. Harper. 575
pp. $6.95.

by Helmut Sonnenfeldt

Of all the grave and complex
problems with which the United
States is confronted in the nine-
teen sixties, the emergence of
Communist China as a powerful,
dynamic and revolutionary force
is in many ways the most threat-
ening. More than eleven years
have elapsed since the Commu-
nists established their authority
over the mainland; in that time
they have consolidated their rule,
embarked upon ambitious eco-
nomic plans and amassed strong
and growing military forces. They
have not, of course, solved all
their problems: the food supply
remains subject to natural disas-
ter, and the agricultural sector in
general has yet to be effectively
organized; economic growth has
only just begun; domestic dis-
sidence has by no means been
eliminated, despite frequently
brutal demands of repression; and
the regime remains dependent
upon Soviet economic and mili-
tary support.

But it is evident beyond doubt
—indeed it is demonstrated daily
—that Communist China has ar-
rived upon the world scene, both
as an independent force exerting
powerful outward pressure in
many directions, and as a mem-
ber of the Communist bloc ded-
icated to the ultimate establish-
ment of a world Communist sys-
tem. Moreover, the rulers in
Peiping are now capable of bring-
ing about a chain of events whi
could culminate in military con-
flicts not only at the local, more
or less limited level, but at the

Mr. Sonnenfeldt lectures in So-
viet Affairs at the School of Ad-
vanced International Studies,
Washington, D. C.

vastly destructive level of a major
nuclear war involving the United
States and the Soviet Union.

American policy faces one of
its gravest long-term challenges in
this Chinese Communist dynam-
ism and in this ability of the
Peiping regime to plunge the
world, or at least large parts of it,
into war. Neither of these dan-
gers shows signs of abating.

A. Doak Barnett, for many
years a knowledgeable and pro-
lific commentator on the Chinese
scene, has rendered a signal serv-
ice in producing, with the col-
laboration of a blue-ribbon Coun-
cil on Foreign Relations study
group, a comprehensive and de-
tailed review of Chinese mainland
developments during the past
decade. It is perhaps a truism to
insist that sound policy must be
based on information.
(Sound information does not per-
force produce sound
many other elements go into mak-
ing and conducting it. Yet knowl-
edge of the facts is a prime pre-
requisite, for whatever strokes of
genius may result from instinct
and the viscera, these are in the
long run dubious guides to action
in international affairs. )

Mr. Barnett goes a long way to-
ward providing an objective pic-
ture of Chinese Communist real-
ity. He does not dwell on the pe-
riod before 1949, though he sug-
gests that an examination of
American policies which might
have led to a different outcome in
1949 might yield important lessons
for current and future American
policy in Asia. His concern is “to
grasp the present and future chal-
lenge which Communist China
poses to the United States and
the non-Communist nations of
Asia.”

It is a measure of the momen-
tum of Chinese developments that
today, a year and a quarter after
Mr. Barnett completed this work,
this definition of his task already

seems somewhat restrictive: over
the past year Peiping has increas-
ingly made its presence and aspi-
rations felt not only in Asia, but
in Africa and Latin America, and,
even more significantly, it has en-
gaged its senior partner in the
Sino-Soviet bloc in a profound
dispute over the nature of Com-
munist policy, if not over the
leadership of the Communist
movement itself.

In detailed yet readable fash-
ion Barnett traces the internal
evolution of the mainland regime;
his account of its physical
strengths and weaknesses—its re-
sources, economy and military
strength — is authoritative and
highly informative, almost certain-
ly the best available in English.
Likewise, the discussion of Chi-
nese Communist foreign policy
during the first ten years of the
regime is excellent and compre-
hensive.

Barnett’s probing of the ideo-
logical roots of Mao’s strategy—
a subject in which the reviewer
happens to be especially interest-
ed—is in some respects more sum-
mary than the other sections. But
he arrives at several fundamental
conclusions which are of vital im-
portance in grasping the Chinese
Communist challenge. “Although
nationalism is one of the driving
forces behind the Chinese Com-
munist actions,” he says, “it is
clearly the ideological convictions
of Peiping’s leaders which shape
their present view of the world,
mold their strategy, and provide
the rationale for both the ends
and the means of their policy.”

This is a truth which is all too
often ignored in our judgments
regarding not only the Chinese
Communists but also the Soviet
leadership. We tend at times to
interpret tactical flexibility and
pragmatism and the pursuit of
clearly national goals (such as
Peiping’s claims to Taiwan and
its evident aspirations to the pos-

9

session of nuclear weapons) as
contradicting the powerful role
of ideological convictions. Bar-
nett convincingly shows the inter-
action of the nationalistic or more
traditional elements with the
ideological components of Chi-
nese behavior, and correctly con-
cludes that a “genuine revolution-
ary zeal” motivates it; and he
wisely doubts the possibility of a
“genuine modus vivendi” in Asia
unless, “in time, the Chinese
Communists moderate their rev-
olutionary zeal.” This is a basic

int, which advocates of pat so-
utions for our policy vis-a-vis
the Chinese Communists should
take to heart.

Mr. Barnett believes that Chi-
nese Communist revolutionary
zeal “is probably stronger than
that of the present leaders in the
Soviet Union.” He thus puts his
finger on what is no doubt at the
bottom of much of the deepen-
ing argument between Moscow
and Peiping of the re year. Bar-
nett’s book was of course com-
pleted before the lengthy ex-
changes between the two Commu-
nist partners occurred and be-
came known. His chapter on the
Sino-Soviet alliance, is, however,
a most useful resume of the evo-
lution of that alliance during the
first ten years of its existence.
Again, Barnett’s treatment is
notable for its careful marshalling
of the known facts and, above all,
for its sound judgments. His con-
clusion that the alliance has
grown stronger rather than weak-
er and that “there appears to be
little immediate prospect of an
open split between the two allies”
has withstood the events of the
past year and seems to this ob-
server to remain valid. The forces
making for cohesion, the ae
ideological, political, military an
economic ties that bind Moscow
and Peiping, are persuasively de-
seated! by and his ad-
monition that to base U.S. policy
on an é ation of a split would
be “highly unrealistic” cannot be
successfully challenged.

But, Barnett notes, there are

10

also forces that tend to make the
Moscow-Peiping relationship any-
thing but static and, as noted
above, perhaps the most impor-
tant source of these forces is to
be found in the differing levels
of dynamism or zeal which mo-
tivate the two partners. Thus, the
arguments of the past year have
found the Chinese Communists
generally advocating a greater
militancy in relations with the
outside world than Moscow, with
Peiping somewhat paradoxically
evidencing at once a greater opti-
mism and a greater pessimism
than Moscow in its view of “im-
perialism.” For Peiping seems
even more convinced than Mos-
cow that the “east wind” is now
prevailing over the “west wind.”

Yet where Moscow seems to
conclude that the “favorable shift
in the correlation of forces”
makes recourse to force less nec-
essary for the ultimate victory of
Communism, Peiping appears to
contend that both the risk of “im-
perialism” resorting to force in
desperation, and the desirability
of the bloc’s employing force to
promote the demise of “imperial-
ism” are rising. Barnett has point-
ed out in his recent contribution
to the special issue on arms con-
trol of Daedalus that when they
came to power the Chinese Com-
munists tended to underestimate
the role of weapons of mass de-
struction. Many observers feel,
probably correctly, that even to-
day the Chinese Communists
have considerably less apprecia-
tion of the dangers inherent in
nuclear warfare than do their So-
viet allies and that therefore they
tend to be less cautious in their
behavior. In addition, because of
their view of the relative position
of the bloc vis-a-vis the West, the
Chinese Communists may under-
estimate, at times, the severity of
a Western reaction. These differ-
ing attitudes, with their potential
of involving the bloc in military
conflict, almost certainly strain
the alliance.

Barnett discusses other divi-
sive elements: the Chinese in-

sistence on applying the dictates
of Marxism-Leninism to the pe-
culiar circumstances of China and
the resultant establishment of a
body of experience different from
and competing with that of the
Soviets; the aspirations of the
Chinese Communists to a role of
equality in the leadership of the
world Communist movement;
differing approaches to the prob-
lems of the underdeveloped and
colonial regions. Other com-
mentators have stressed possible
eventual Chinese Communist ter-
ritorial ambitions in the vast
sparsely inhabited regions of Si-
beria. And finally there is the un-
doubted Chinese Communist de-
sire to obtain nuclear weapons
and, through them, the attributes
of a modern great power, a de-
sire which Moscow must view
with misgivings.

Many observers regard this de-
sire as the central issue between
Moscow and Peiping. Barnett,
however, makes the eminently
sound observation (in his Dae-
dalus article) that Moscow in at-
tempting to cope with this prob-
lem is unlikely to be willing to
jeopardize the Sino-Soviet alli-
ance. That is to say, Barnett
argues that if some form of arms
control agreement proved i-
ble between the USSR and the
West, but if at. the same time
Peiping were to refuse to adhere
to it because of its desire to ob-
tain and maintain nuclear weap-
ons, Moscow neither could nor
would force the Chinese Commu-
nists to cooperate. “Preservation
of the Sino-Soviet alliance,” he
says, “is still of primary impor-
tance to both Moscow and Pei-
ping and takes precedence over
esser aims and considerations.”

This conclusion leads to the key
problem of what U.S. policy to-
ward Communist China should
be—not only with respect to the
particular issue of arms control,
but on the whole broad question
of our response to the Chinese
Communist challenge. Barnett
devotes the final chapter of his

t

ill

Ss Tt

“sh

book to a discussion of the al-
ternatives:
He rejects three possible ap-
es: a policy of accommo-
tion and of yielding to Pei-
ping’s pressures, a policy of all-
out pressure and “liberation,” and
a policy of “limited pressure,” by
which he means essentially the
policy pursued by the United
States since 1950. Mr. Barnett’s
preferred course is a “Two China”
policy involving de facto and
eventual de jure recognition of
the mainland regime, but con-
tinued recognition of an inde-
pendent regime for Taiwan and
the Pescadores, though not of the
authority of that regime over the
mainland. Barnett concedes that
such an approach would not
“solve” the basic problems but
he believes it would “reduce the
dangers and liabilities” of Amer-
ican policy and would enlist more
support in the world
than the current U.S. pos-
ture.

Barnett would no doubt be
willing to explain and justify his
proposed approach more fully
than he does in his final chapter.
He does indicate that it should
be part of a broader “Asian” ap-
proach in which, in addition to
maintaining and strengthening ex-

isting security arrangements, the
U.S. would “do it can” to
help the non-Communist states
of the area establish strong and
viable countries, either in
with the West or unaligned.

Barnett’s apparent hope is that,
over the long haul, his approach
would serve to contain Chines
Communist expansion and lead to
a gradual decline in the ambitions
and momentum of the Peiping
leadership, thus making possible
a more stable status quo. In a
sense, he advocates applying the
containment doctrine, which pro-
vided the rationale for U.S. pol-
icy toward the USSR in the late
forties, to Communist China. We
are of course at a stage where
U.S. policies, domestic as well as
foreign, are being subjected to
searching review. Many would
tend to agree with Barnett’s Two
China approach. Yet it would be
a grievous error to expect this or
indeed any conceivable approach
to have the early effect of muting
the Chinese Communist chal-
lenge, just as no conceivable ap-
proach is likely to dampen Soviet
ambitions and aspirations in the
foreseeable future.

The U.S., and with it the
whole free world, is and will re-
main under heavy assault from

the Communist bloc. Presumably
the rulers of that bloc, including’
those in Peiping, will want to
avoid a catastrophic nuclear war.
But the danger is that Moscow
and, even more, Peiping, will ex-
pect the West to flinch at the last
minute in some crisis situation,
and that this tion will turn
out to be a miscalculation. This
is the real problem that the U.S.
must cope with in its relations
with Moscow and Peiping: given
continued and increased outward

ressure from the Communist
Pi how can free countries be
kept free without war?

Mr. Barnett’s great and lasting
contribution toward the quest for
an answer to this problem is that
he has materially advanced our
understanding of the Chinese
Communist part of the forces ar-
rayed against us. He has brought
home forcefully the fact that the
challenge is growing and that it
will endure for a long time. This
at least should prevent us from
seeking easy or immediate “solu-
tions” where none are to be
found; instead it should help us
direct our efforts to steel our own
society and country for a lon

riod of competition, if not o

ostility, from which no region of
the world is likely to be excluded.

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The Rise end Fell of the Third Reich: A Histery ef
Nezi Germany
William L. Shirer. Simon & Schuster. 1245 pp. $10.

The former Berlin correspondent William L. Shirer has compiled
the chronological record of Nazism in a notable triumph of re-
search and documentation. His is a journalist's rather than a his-
torian's point of view, however, and the great questions of cause
and effect which our century must decide remain unexplored.

A History of the Cold War
John Lukacs. Doubleday. 288 pp. $3.95.

A leading historian traces the course of Russian-American rela-
tions from the Yalta summit conference of 1945 to the Paris
debacle of 1960 and analyzes the factors that have shaped Russia
and America into the two dominant spheres of influence on the
world scene.

The United Nations and U, S. Foreign Policy
Lincoln P. Bloomfield. Little, Brown. 276 pp. $4.75.

In an attempt to repair a malfunctioning program of national
strategy, Dr. Bloomfield reviews U. S. foreign policy objectives
and suggests means by which the maximum capacities of the UN
can be utilized in the service of those objectives.

The for Chole: Prospects of American.

Foreign Policy

Henry A. Kissinger. Harper. 370 pp. $5.50.

Dr. Kissinger's new book is a statement of the gravity of our
present condition and an appeal to Americans to abandon the
illusory premises of an outmoded policy and to accept the chal-
lenge of new departures in a revolutionary age. “The question
before America is whether it can muster the dedication and crea-
tivity before the worst has happened.”

Gandhi on World Affairs
Paul F. Power. Public Affairs Press. 128 pp. $3.25.

Gandhi's political thought and its relevance for today's world
are evaluated with an appreciation both of the positive signif-
icance of Gandhism and of its limitations as systematic ideology.

The United Nations and How It Works
David Cushman Coyle. Columbia. 222 pp. $3.75.

The structure, principles and activities of the United Nations and
its related organizations are summarized and described in con-
crete terms of effort and accomplishment in this useful introduc-
tion, now in its second edition.

worldview

A JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
volume 4, no. 2 / February 1961

WORLDVIEW is published monthly by The Church Peace Union.
Subscription: $2.00 per year.

Address: 170 East 64th Street, New York 21, N. Y.

EDITORIAL BOARD
William Clancy, Editor

A. William Loos John R. Inman William J. Cook

Editorial Assistant, Arlene Croce

CONTENTS

Editorial Comment
In the Magazines
A Christian Approach to Nuclear War
Other Voices

BOOKS
Danger from the East by Helmut Sonnenfeldt ....

Current Reading 12

Opinions expressed ian WORLDVIEW represent the views of the
authors, and act necessarily those of The Church Peace Union.

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