By Norman Podhoretz

Commentary, April 1981

Since the Cuban Missile Crisis, America has become naïve and complacent about the power of our military and has not adequately addressed the swift increase in Soviet military capability. We have sat on this past victory, not noticing that the tables are even as we speak turning.

America has not adequately addressed growing Soviet military power during the later Cold war years. The USSR has used the Cuban Missile Crisis to spur a new level of military build-up at a steady and enormous speed. Too, these efforts were hardly concealed. Although the US has also increased its defense spending, it seems to be doing such by comparing defense to health or education spending; Soviet military spending has not often been mentioned or has been explained away as their need to catch up for lost time. It was assumed that the Soviets would be satisfied with defense grand enough to equal that of the US, and would therefore cap spending after that point. The academic claims lay between the camps believing that the Soviet Union is either disinterested in military superiority and expansion or is unable to make it happen. This has been the case until the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which suddenly has brought ideas of the USSR’s military goals to the front of America’s media and mind.

During the last years of the Vietnam War, the United States was in near unanimous consensus that the military budget was bloated. Fueling this mood was the increasing influence of the MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) theory, which claimed that nuclear forces "capable of more than devastating retaliatory strike against the major Soviet population centers…was overkill or provocative or both." This theory also funneled away from strictly nuclear weapons into mainstream defensive thought, and led to the idea that the mere existence of such a defensive force increased the likelihood of their offensive use. The political current changed after 1976 due to the SALT II treaty, the seizure of hostages in Iran, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which respectively turned into a campaign to convince US senators of broadened defensive spending, proved America’s lack of adequate responsive capabilities, and served to defuse ideas that the Soviets were a "status-quo power." All of these events changed public opinion toward increasing preparatory military efforts. Reagan used this change in public opinion to make military expansion a key platform for his first election, as he had long been concerned about the Soviet build-up and American decline.

Earl C. Ravenal argues that it will be necessary for the US to remain uninvolved even in conflict involving resources necessary to maintain the American standard of living. This way, "Americans will live less well, but live" he argues, pointing to possible outcomes and life loss of a nuclear conflict. But, when faced with policy options of isolationism, the outcome is easy to see, argues Podhoretz. Whereas the Soviet Union feels that a nuclear war is winnable and is unwilling to back down from an "eyeball-to-eyeball" confrontation again, the US would surrender, given the idea that a nuclear war would be the end of the world. Of these options, it seems more desirable to build on America’s military power, so that this win-loose situation does not arise, thus "sparing the need to fight or surrender."

Paul H. Nitze advises a crash expansion of US military and a "strategy from relative weakness" for the time that this plan would require for the US to again be on par with the Soviets. This would require recognition of American current disadvantage and "throwing dust in the enemy’s eyes" while discretely acting to secure American power. But will the Soviets hold off an offensive long enough for the US to gain military power, particularly given the climate in the Persian Gulf? The US is risking a Cuban Missile Crisis with the opposite consequences, mainly a forced surrender for America. However, Robert W. Tucker argues that the "balance of interest" is different in Cuba than in the Persian Gulf. Whereas the Soviets had very little vested interest in Cube, the Persian Gulf is key to the US. "By confronting us in the Gulf, the Russians would in effect confront us in Europe…Indeed, by threatening our position in the Gulf, the Russians would in effect threaten our position elsewhere but this hemisphere." So, the assumed willingness or necessity for the US to fight might give the Soviets more reason to not initiate a confrontation.

Tucker argues later that while containment is necessary, it will need to be one willing to make concessions and compromises in the immediate future. This policy will need to be more hands-off and distant in internal disputes, even when involving the raise of a Communist State. He applies this to Central America, explaining that although this region is within our traditional sphere of influence, we should stay out of political affairs due to a lack of material resources and unproven Soviet involvement (necessary qualifications for US action). However, Podhoretz argues that this option is unworkable. It is inherent in America for public opinion to swing from Isolationism to Wilsonianism, given that there is not widespread support for an immense standing army during peacetime and a lack of moral conflict (as most present in the early period of the Cold War). More basically, an extended period of Soviet containment accompanied by ignoring Communist expansion would not be sustainable is based on public opinion, for it is not stable enough on either axiom.

American culture has shied away from using the word "Communism" for fear of being seen as a throwback from McCarthy. This has had the consequence of adding difficulty to explaining and maintaining a moral dimension of the Cold War. In this sense, the military side to the conflict seems out of place. Through forgetting the ideological warfare, Podhoretz explains, new utopian views of Communism have surfaced. Ideas that Communist citizens do not believe in the rhetoric of their leaders or even Marx himself, that Communism is becoming less expansionist, or that Communism is being reformed (in the case of China) lead to a dangerous complacency: we forget the "barbaric" nature of Communist societies. If Americans forget that Communism is a threat to liberty, freedom and democracy, the war will be lost. Claims that these countries are in search of "Communism with a human face" are merely "shift(ing) their utopian claims from the Soviet present to a thus-far nonexistent future." One of the worst Communist threats is actually coming from civil conflict within Third World countries. What is important to note here is that human rights standards have been worse under Communist regimes than the previous authoritarian governments that were overthrown, by its vary nature of totalitarianism and its inherent lack of freedom. Podhoretz further adds, "anyone who fails to oppose Communism forfeits the intellectual and moral right to speak in the name of human rights." So how do we support Third World countries that may or may not be on the road to forming liberal democracies? The answer is that we must do what we can under the rule of prudence and taking a stronger stance in the ideological warfare.

Three main attacks against Anti-Communist policy are cited and answered by Podhoretz. The first involves a key lesson from Vietnam: "never undertake a military operation without the will and means to win." This raises a fundamental question toward Anti-Communist strategy: how do we know that we will be able to implement it with more prudence in the future? Podhoretz’s answers that this is not a real concern, for we are so far on the other side of the spectrum of action that such a role reversal seems unlikely. Another concern with this policy is that it will rule out cooperation and influence with other key Communist countries, such as China. Podhoretz cites that this would no more be the case than was cooperation with Russia impossible in the fight against Hitler. In a sense, it is a prioritization of evils. Thus, we would be able to ally with China if it were to help rid the world of the ultimate bad guy: the USSR. A third concern is that this action would place America on the "wrong side of history." However, this is based upon the assumptions that Communism is on the "right side of history", as was theorized. However, as of 1981, none of Marx’s theories had come into existence, so it is assumed here that this theory is also irrelevant.

Is supporting an Anti-Communist policy merely advocating a never-ending stalemate? This is possible, but what if the alternative is a never ending Gulag?

This eternal question may not be necessary to answer however, for the Soviet State will eventually erode, Podhoretz believes. The USSR is dependent on the West in many ways, including economically and agriculturally, and there is a rumored health crisis, which is taking its toll on life expectancy, as theorized George F Kennan. And finally, the USSR may have committed beyond their means to imperialism. He continues, "Soviet power, like the capitalist world of its conception, bears within it the seeds of decay, and that the sprouting of these seeds is well advanced."

McCarthyism is being used as an alarmist response to Anti-Communist policy, but as Podhoretz explains, "This fear of overreaching easily transfers into an argument for a
"restraint" indistinguishable in practice from supine passivity." And this, he argues, "is not a mandate for "counterrevolution" and "witch-hunts." It is an aggressive policy to correct for America’s decline in military might and curb the "Soviet drive for imperial hegemony." While Reagan appears to be taking these policy initiatives to heart, he so far has gone no further than Tucker’s "limited containment". It is vital that America takes a more aggressive stance. Whereas the Soviets have made it clear that they will not "bind themselves to the rules of any game which would prevent them from intervening to consolidate socialism where it already exists or from helping to establish it wherever the opportunity arises." The US however, has not made similar promises to protect freedom and liberty.

Summary done by Cheryl Chancey