We are used to considering the threat of the Soviet Union primarily as a military one. Increasingly, however, it appears that the Soviets have been mounting a new threat to our nation and the Western way of life: a psychological, economic, scientific, and ethical offensive that rivals their perennial military threat. It can be argued that this new threat is not new at all, and that the Soviet military danger has not appreciably diminished. What has changed, however, is the importance attached to this new “peaceful” offensive by the Soviet leaders, and the means by which we must seek to meet it.
The Soviet military danger has been addressed by this country for a number of years, and in a variety of ways. It has been the impetus behind most of our foreign policy, the cement for our alliance system, and the incentive for foreign aid. It has also been responsible for 50 per cent of our national budget for the past few years. But there has never been any doubt as to the means of meeting the Soviet military threat. It must be met by opposing it with our own military strength. Admittedly, the balance and scope of this strength is still the subject of a lively debate. But no one argues that a military threat should be met by other than military strength. The means of meeting the Soviet psychological, economic, scientific, and ethical challenge are not so clear cut. In fact, they are little understood at all.
In recent years, a new generation of Soviet leaders has come to power. These new leaders, while still devoted Communists, and still pledged to the triumph of their system throughout the world, seem far less interested in seeing this triumph in the present than were the old Bolsheviks. Their eyes seem to have turned inward to the domestic problems of the Soviet Union, and to a belated recognition that a strong internal economy is necessary for prolonged strength in their world struggle. Someone has called these fellows “technocrats” rather than revolutionaries. Certainly their memories are filled with the destruction wreaked on their factories, farms, and cities by the Germans in World War II. Certainly they see the obvious weaknesses of the Soviet Union of today—still struggling to rebuild from that shattering war. Although to all appearances an industrial and military giant, the Soviet Union has been able to maintain that posture only by the continued heroic exertions of its people for forty years. Still, there are appalling shortages of housing, power, clothing, food, and transportation. Above all, there are shortages of growth capital and labor. The Soviet Union lost between fifteen and twenty million young men in World War II—these men are not available for the labor market today, nor are the children they were unable to sire.
The Soviet military establishment continuously demands three-and-a-half million young men from the present labor pool—and the maintenance of modern arms saps a prodigious share of the Soviet industrial product. It is not surprising that the Soviet leaders look wistfully at and talk seriously about disarmament. To them, given their present reluctance toward war as a means of settling anything, the reduction of armaments becomes imperative to the realization of national aims.
This is admittedly an imperfect view into the Soviet mind. But insofar as America and her allies are concerned, the reduction of armaments is equally seductive. Again, the economic burden of modern arms is crushing; it is inflationary, and it wastes national resources. Moreover, it is obvious to the Soviet and Western mind alike, that, as modern arms become more sophisticated and destructive, as the certainty of mutual annihilation in the event of conflict increases, the likelihood of using these modern arms decreases. The whole arms race then becomes not only wasteful, but tragically farcical.
While thinking seriously about disarmament, the Soviets have not given up their expansionist schemes. It is to these ends that they have given high priority to their considerable talents at subversion and economic and political infiltration. What is more, they have come out in the open. They have won unrigged elections in India. They have borrowed a page from our own foreign policy and gone into the foreign aid business in India, Egypt, Afghanistan, Indonesia, and elsewhere. They have rebuilt rinky-dink armed forces in South Asia and Africa. And, surprisingly, coming out in the open with smiles, technical experts, cheap loans, MIGs, and with relatively few strings attached, they have gained more good will and brighter prospects for their schemes than all the dour subversions Stalin could ever have hoped for.
This is not meant to belabor the obvious. The Soviet military threat is still enormous and meeting it must occupy the talents and energies of the American military man until, if ever, disarmament changes things. Whether or not disarmament occurs, however, it appears likely that the “peaceful” Soviet threat described above will increase in intensity and importance. In fact, this threat shows a likelihood of transcending the military one as a peril to America and the West. The American military man is inherently interested in devising ways of meeting this threat. A thorough examination of this threat is imperative for all Americans.
In looking at the “new” Soviet threat, one must establish a frame of reference. As in a military operation order, designed to meet an enemy threat, we must draw up an estimate of the situation.
Our estimate of the situation establishes as the area of engagement the entire world of man, and all the minds of men. Specifically, however, the Soviets are aiming their propaganda and their talents at the underdeveloped two-thirds of the world’s peoples. These peoples occupy the generally tropical belts of the world in South Asia, Africa, and South America. They range in color from white to black, ethnically from Spanish to Chinese, and religiously from ardently Christian to animistic. In general they have little in common but their misery and their desire to attain independence and shake off this misery. But this latter desire is, as historians have realized for centuries, the strongest will to action that a people can have. Heroic, tragic, but always amazing works are performed by a people desirous of attaining their independence and easing their suffering.
The West has recognized the surgings of these peoples, sometimes belatedly, and in an unprecedented spate of international philanthropy, the colonial empires have vanished. The underdeveloped regions have become independent nations. Moreover, in recent years, the colonial powers generally practiced a kind of benevolent hegemony over their colonies, bringing these peoples as much local administration, education, and industrialization as their backwardness could absorb. But the demand for independence usually cancelled the benefits of being a colony and, for better or worse, these peoples embarked on national careers.
Their national experience usually has not been good. They have been caught in the web of a world convulsion without the bases on which to stand. They are agricultural or mining nations, quite often at the mercy of the world market for one or two products. They have little or no capital with which to build an industrial base, or no mother country to supply it. They often have no tradition of democracy or law in the Western sense to balance their politics, and find themselves in the hands of a strongman. They have to struggle with illiteracy, disease, and climates that sap their people’s energy. Arbitrary boundaries often destroy their ethnic and economic kinship with other peoples. But above all things, they have had to struggle against the birth rate.
In the long run, the birth rate is destroying their progress faster than all the other factors put together. As a legacy of colonialism or American foreign aid, medicine and science have drastically lowered the death rate in these countries and permitted the birth rate to rise. As these nations progress, as their industrialization, land reform, and trade policies bear fruit, their exploding populations cancel their gains. In the countries of Europe and North America (and even the Soviet Union) in the meantime, a truly remarkable industrial and social revolution is continuously producing significant per capita income increase. The poor nations can only look on enviously and see themselves slip farther back, while these rich nations grow richer.
It is into this morass of national ambition, frustration, and misery that the Communists step. It is to these unfortunate, hungry, and diseased folk that the Communists sing their siren song: “Look at the Soviet Union—how it has raised itself by its bootstraps in 40 years from an illiterate, starving, agricultural nation to an industrial giant. And look how Communism has brought the Soviet people stability, opportunity, education, and security. This is the best way. This should be your way.” It is no matter that each of these statements is debatable, or even an outright lie—they are listened to.
The appeal of the Communists to these peoples is emphasized by deliberate Soviet efforts to propagandize on their technical and scientific achievements. The poor peoples are impressed. Not only is the Soviet Union a giant, and its scientific works impressive testimony to how far it has come, but the appeal is exactly what these people want to hear. They want to hear how a nation has been able to pull itself up to world eminence in less than a half a century. They want to hear how a people can achieve stability and opportunity. They want to hear about this far more than they want to hear about justice and liberty. Liberty doesn’t bring them industry, and justice doesn’t feed them.
We answer the Soviet propaganda forthrightly. We say it is not that way at all. Then we give our version and tell how our system is better for a people. Thus, we and the Soviets find ourselves in the roles of rival salesmen, each trying to sell his product to the neutral nations.
The analogy of the salesman is interesting and directly to the point of this essay. If the Soviets are indeed rival salesmen, how do we deal with them? It is significant that the one thing that a salesman does not do is shoot his competitor. This solves nothing in the long run, because the customer still hasn’t bought his product. He could do without, try to make it himself, or wait for another salesman to come along. In the international sales game, the same thing is true. We must sell our system to the underdeveloped nations and we must sell it in competition with the Communists. To do this we must fit our product to the needs of the consumer.
The needs of the consumer then become the crucial issue. Going back to the analogy of the military operation order, when we come to filling out the space labeled “enemy forces,” what do we write? If we are tempted to write “Communist agents,” “trade commissars,” or “technical experts,” let us pause, for we are wrong. These are rivals in the sales game. If Communism did not exist, we would still have rivals. If Communism did not exist, these underdeveloped nations would still have their miseries and would still be looking for a gospel to lead them. We would still have to sell our product.
The Communists are not the enemy. The enemy is the thousand miseries which beset these people. The enemy is hunger, poverty, want of shelter, want of dignity, slavery, disease, injustice, want of opportunity or hope. These are the evils on which Communism feeds. It is no accident that the richer nations are the very ones which are in least danger of Communism. If we expect to best Communism in the competition for men’s minds, it is to the eradication of these ills that we must address our efforts. Only if we can satisfy the misery-ridden peoples of the world in meeting their basic needs can we hope to have them listen to us.
The message contained here is worthy of some elaboration. We have been too used to thinking of the world as a battleground neatly divided between two hostile camps where we are the source of all good and the Communists the source of all evil. The world of 1960 does not fit that neat picture. The problems related to population explosion and dwindling resources transcend the boundaries of the ideological conflict between Communism and the West. These problems would be with the world if there were neither Communists nor Americans. These problems beset Americans, Russians, and Chinese as well as all other peoples. They will have to be met by all peoples in one way or another, with or without international co-operation, regardless of the state of the cold war. Malthus waits for no man, nor for any ideology. We cannot blame this on the Soviets, nor they blame it on us, because neither side anticipated it.
If we conclude that Communist expansion will feed on this problem and ruthlessly exploit it, this does not alter the problem in any way; it only makes the problem that much more serious. Let us quit hoping or praying for some deus ex machina to snatch the Communists away—for even if that happened our major problems would still be with us.
The enormity and immediacy of the population problem is so great that we seem to face it blankly, almost unbelievingly. In America alone we have doubled our population in the last 50 years, and demographers believe we will probably double it again in the next 50. The population of the world will undoubtedly pass the four billion mark within 25 years. The combined population of India and China today is over a billion. We are confronted with enormous problems of housing, feeding, transporting, governing, and educating our own population. Yet superimposed on this is the insistent clamoring of the billions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America for their fair share of the world’s wealth. It is not enough to suppose that we must listen to these demands for reasons of philanthropy, or to keep these people from turning Communist. We must listen because of common sense. It is only logical to presume that if we ignore them, these nations will seek the most radical solutions to their problems regardless of the effect on their fellow nations.
In fact, the history of the modern world is largely the history of peoples seeking lebensraum or some other accommodation for their national frustration. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan are recent and obvious examples. But just about every modern dictator has assumed power on a platform of aggressive and radical solution to his nation’s problems. It is interesting to suppose what other radical course the masses of China might have chosen if they had not fallen into the hands of the Communists. In short, it appears that, despite the upheavals of the past quarter-century, the world can look forward to little respite in the future.
What must we do? First, we must believe in the American system. Specifically, we must believe in the American system vis-a-vis the Communist system and thoroughly understand the reasons why. It takes only a few sentences to shatter the Communist ideology, but we must understand them. The Communist system is based on pure materialism, and holds that the perfect Communist man will labor in his perfect Communist world to the best of his abilities and receive according to his needs. The goal of this society is full production. Any means are permitted to achieve this end. The ideology breaks down when full production is reached—for then there is nothing, no higher human goal exists to motivate the society. The American system holds no such final goal, unless it is freedom and justice for all, under law. The American system believes in the dignity and importance of the individual, his freedom, his rights, and the duties which a society of free men imposes on him. It is essentially a way of life, and as such is an end in itself. Thus, where the Communist system subverts everything to the future attainment of a goal which is meaningless, the American system contains its goal in the means for reaching it.
Second, we must recognize that whereas the American precepts of individual dignity, freedom, and justice, under law, are universally applicable, the specific means of attaining them for any one people with their own history, economy, and temperament are not susceptible to prescription by Americans. More than tolerance is asked here—for tolerance implies disbelief or indulgence. We must understand their national personality, and accept as unreservedly valid any solution, however imperfect, they attain which guarantees the ideals we stand for.
Third, we must mobilize the American national will to want to cope with the enormous problems which we will face. This is perhaps the greatest job of all. The enormity of the problems of overpopulation and dwindling resources demands drastic solutions. Without reference to international problems, the effort to feed, clothe, educate, and govern our own burgeoning population is going to require radical and expensive action. That America’s survival depends on America taking comparable action on a world level is going to require a vast re-education of popular attitudes. But it must be done. As the richest of nations, America must, by necessity, take the lead in world redevelopment. The effort may well bleed us white—in any event it will tax the wealth and energies of all Americans. It cannot be argued that we cannot afford it. If we do not make the effort voluntarily, the envious have-not nations will eventually take our wealth forcibly.
Fourth, we must recognize that, thanks to science, the solutions to a great many of the problems posed by overpopulation are in sight—and must bend our efforts to distributing these fruits of science. This is mentioned because there are many who hold that the problem is insoluble. They say we must colonize other planets, or practice universal birth control, or starve. It does not appear that these alternatives are yet the only ones. Advances in mass production, synthetics, medicine, agriculture, oceanography, geology; atomic power, construction, communications, and transportation insure adequate food, shelter, and power for the foreseeable future, if only these advancements can be distributed where they are most needed.
If a moral renaissance is needed in America to achieve these ends, then that is what we must have. Surely, the virtues of thrift, charity, courage, and hard work will be called for as never before. But these are precepts which we should not be ashamed to practice. If the Soviets can mobilize their people for heroic efforts solely in the name of passing us in per capita production, it should be possible to mobilize Americans for nobler work. But the game is afoot and we cannot afford to wallow any longer in national misdirection. We must get to Work. The challenge is enormous—it is nothing short of remaking the world. This is not said in blissful ignorance or platitudinous hope. It is said with the conviction that failure to rise to the challenge will result in national and world disaster.
To summarize: We are wrong to think of the Soviets as the primary enemy in the struggle for men’s minds and allegiance. The enemy is the thousand-fold miseries which degrade mankind and cause peoples to turn to the Communists for relief. It is up to the free, richer nations of the world to provide their poorer brother nations with relief from these miseries. This argument is dictated as much from common sense as from philanthropy. The problems of overpopulation and dwindling resources make the present gap between poor and rich nations grow wider and wider. These problems are technically and politically enormous, but they exist not because of, but in spite of, the Communists. These problems must be attacked by America, in concert with other nations, on the vastest world scale, as a matter of national survival. This attack will call forth a tremendous national effort in terms of time, labor, money, and wisdom. The battle must be joined immediately, with ingenuity and vision. For, where there is no vision, the people perish.
Lieutenant Enos, a graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy in the class of 1952, is a qualified submarine officer. He is currently at the U. S. Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, studying the Ordnance Engineering Curriculum.