Advancing American Interests Through Soviet Control: A Modest Proposal

Abstract

There is a zany logic about Roy Licklider's argument that while morality may lead the United States to favor the removal of Soviet control over Eastern Europe, realpolitik-American national interest-requires us to support continued tight Soviet domination. Licklider contends that since nothing in Eastern Europe seems likely to threaten our territorial integrity, economic prosperity, or social unity, the major American national interest in the area is to prevent thermonuclear war. Removal, or even a weakening, of Soviet control would create a danger of such war; therefore, United States national interest dictates more and better Soviet control. Let us push this argument one step further. If it is valid in Eastern Europe, why not elsewhere? Would it not be in the American national interest to encourage tight Soviet control of other areas which have yet to experience the full blessings of the Brezhnev doctrine, such as Africa, South Asia, the Far East, Latin America? We may just have stumbled on the universal remedy for the ills of this troubled world.