Reason and unreason in Civil Defense

Abstract

The Imaginary War is an interesting, and sometimes illuminating, study of one of the odd phenomena of the Cold War, or of what may be called the Second Red Scare in American history, involving government policy, public opinion, and popular sentiments. The Second Red Scare differed from the First Red Scare, since while during the latter (approximately 1919 1923) the national preoccupation was principally addressed to internal Communist and Communistic dangers, during the 1950s the main dangers to the Republic were seen as consisting of the presence of a foreign su? perpower, the Soviet Union (even as many people found it politic to em? phasize the danger of domestic Communists too). We ought to admit (and perhaps Guy Oakes may not agree with the validity of such a recognition) that to some extent these preoccupations were warranted. He is, for instance, extremely critical of George Kennan, as if Kennan had been an architect of the Cold War?whereas Kennan's famous "X" article in 1947 was but the last one of his series of warnings about the Soviet Union, whereafter Kennan, more than often, criticized the very same exaggerations of Cold War policies and propaganda with which Oakes is concerned. And the Soviet Union was a Superpower, sus? picious of and often hostile to the United States, a one-party dictatorship and, since 1949, a possessor of nuclear weapons and of the instruments of their eventual delivery. At the same time the ambitions and the purposes attributed to the Russian leaders?and, consequently, the prospects of a Russian nuclear attack on the United States?were exaggerated, and un? realistic. There are two main reasons for such a statement, of which Guy Oakes is mainly concerned with the second. The first is that there is (and, perhaps more significantly, there was at the time) no evidence that the leaders of the Soviet Union (Stalin included?he died in 1953) ever wished, or contemplated, a nuclear Third World War with the United States. Mod? est they were not, but cautious they were, more than often, aggressively