A Turning-Point in the Cold War?

Abstract

A TURNING-POINT in the cold war? You will have noticed, from the way I have spoken the words, that I am putting them as a question, and not as a statement of a fact that can be taken for granted. Nobody can tell for certain that the cold war is going to continue. (Events in Korea, since this address was delivered, illustrate this point.) If you look, though, at the policies that are being pursued by the principal countries now engaged in waging the cold war, it is fairly clear-at least, so it looks to me-that these policies are all based on an expectation that two things are not in sight above the international horizon today: the end of the present world-wide cold war is not in sight; and the outbreak of another general military war, like the two world wars that we have lived through in our time, is not in sight either. This outlook is certainly one of the fundamental assumptions of our Western countries' policy, and I fancy it is a view that is shared with them by the Russians. Why does it seem probable that the cold war is going to continue for as long as we can see ahead? Well, on the Western side obviously there is no Power except the United States that is capable of pulling it up short by launching a preventive military war against Russia; and every Westerner knows that it is quite out of the question for the United States even to think of doing such a thing. It is entirely ruled out of her agenda by her own traditions, principles, and ideals; and, even if there had been some Americans-and I have never heard of any-who were wicked enough to want to let fly-the checks and balances which the Founding Fathers built into the American Constitution would bring any such mischievous project to a dead halt before it had been able to gather any momentum. We Westerners know this about the United States for a fact. But we also know that the Russians will never believe that the Western countries' present measures of collective and co-ordinated rearmament and defence by force of arms, when and where required, are not preparations for an aggressive attack on Russia. On this point, Russian minds are, I fear, closed to facts because they are obsessed by a myth. It is a myth which Communism has taken from Christianity, and which Christianity originally took from Judaism. The Chosen People is always expecting to see Zion attacked by the heathen raging furiously together against her. And the present Communist Holy Russia, like the former Orthodox Holy Russia, is the True Jerusalem, the Third Rome, in Russian eyes. In this mythical situation, how are the Russians going to react? Will they launch a preventive military war? Or will they still go on with the cold war? My own guess is that they will go on with the cold war (which 457