Dollars and Sons

What is the cost of modern war? What is the cost of preparation? How can one feel that his country is getting his money’s worth? Is there such a thing as a bargain in the national security of the United States?

Over the years, I have enjoyed many a passage written by Walter Lippmann, and I feel that I have often profited by being made privy to his point of view. But in a recent fugue played on his powerful organ of balanced argument, a single word used by the famous columnist short-circuited the music. This is the passage:

In the West . . . there is no prospect that the democracies will support a combined military establishment comparable with that of the Soviet Union—except for one possibility. This is the development of cheap nuclear weapons to replace massive armies. (Today and Tomorrow, April 10, 1958, quoted in Washington Post & Times Herald).

Cheap? one asks. Cheap? one explodes! If you are not on suicide bent but are offered a vial of cyanide for a dime, is the adjective “cheap” sensibly applied to the offer? If a scarred and evil thug offers to murder your mother for a song, is it a bargain? Or, to put it another way, if your son is dying, and you can get an ineffective quack for $5,000 or a specialist who will cure your son for $10,000, which one is cheap?

It may be agreed that to be really cheap, an item should be for sale at a price well below its real cost, and it must turn out to be usable here on earth. If you can’t use it (such as a “cheap” 3-acre plot on the moon), price is irrelevant and adjectives like “cheap” and “expensive” are meaningless. I wonder if anyone who calls thermonuclear weapons cheap looks behind their ostensible price to grasp their real cost.

Evidently there are two forms of war that are considered in many quarters today to be alternatives: war fought by (so-called expensive) masses of men, and war fought with (so- called cheap) thermonuclear weapons. The first kind of war, with or without “small” nuclear weapons, is most often called limited war, even though it could vary in scope from a small skirmish to hostilities larger than World War II. In a convincing sense, the second kind of war has moved out of the category of war and on to a new category, that of Armageddon. No matter what new diabolical devices are developed, none could bring us closer to Armageddon than a total thermonuclear exchange.

In truth, there are many more than two types of war, and many degrees of each type. Even thermonuclear weapons could be exchanged on a less-than-total scale. For example, the initiator of such an exchange might launch only one many-megaton warhead at the single most crucial location on the other side as an earnest of his willingness or intention; the other side, while still in possession of the capability to retaliate, might be so fearfully impressed with its wound that it might decide not to retaliate, thus ending that war. Or, it might be so damaged that its ability to retaliate was impaired—not eliminated, only impaired, but impaired to such an extent as to keep that nation at a continuous disadvantage if the thermonuclear exchange were to resume immediately. Or, the receiving side might actually retaliate with a single many- megaton warhead, after which a reassessment pause might ensue, while the electronic computers clicked madly through the night in support of human brains in calculating the damage on both sides.

Or, instead of one blast, the initiator might loose five, or eleven, or 66—some number less than the number he could loose if he went all-out, but delivering his fixed number without cessation, no matter what happened. His purpose might be warning, plus enough damage to hurt the nation critically without destroying all of what he would prefer to have intact, or the infliction of “only” enough damage to cripple the other side’s ability to retaliate, or perhaps the infliction of damage calculated to be just enough to warrant an expectation of capitulation. In immediate retaliation, the initiator might be answered in kind, matched blow for blow, or perhaps, regardless of any limitation the initiator may have used, the retaliator might respond without limitation of any kind. In the latter event, of course, the world would have arrived at Armageddon.

Like most dilemmas that are presented as limited to two courses, this one has more than two horns; there are several courses of action that we can take, even assuming undiminished Soviet belligerency in brandishing both conventional and thermonuclear military power:

1. We can give up, directly or subtly, and pass under the influence of the Soviet dynamic. This course is so obviously repugnant to the United States and its allies that it can be dropped forthwith, as a subject of fruitful discussion.

2. Or we can so weaken ourselves that we will inevitably pass under Soviet influence, no matter how much we might desire not to. This, too, we would reject as a conscious course of action; but if our self-delusions were to become so great as to assume that our defenses were adequate, when in fact they were not, we might wake up and find out that we had involuntarily slipped into the Red halter.

3. Or we can put practically all our emphasis on retaliation on a maximum thermonuclear scale and depend on fear of that step to keep the peace and to dissuade the Soviets from executing any kind of belligerency. Insofar as this course may have already been relied on to deter limited wars, it has been, of course, a failure without peer; while our total retaliatory capability has been in existence, some 800,000,000 people have fallen to the Communists, who took over undestroyed areas of millions of undamaged miles and millions of non- radioactive people able to work. How much more successful have the Communists been than if they had engaged in any thermonuclear exchange! They have used war and war threats not as ends in themselves, but as instruments of policy—usable instruments.

In any event, the more exclusively one would rely on the nuclear retaliation policy, the more exclusively one would be forced—when each crisis inevitably follows another—to do either one of only two things: (a) start the destruction of civilization, or (b) do nothing really effective. One side without any but thermonuclear means to stop less- than-thermonuclear advances can make a lot of noise, but how much is accomplished by huffing and puffing? Moreover, being forced into this real dilemma would weaken alliances, since many allies can readily see that their countries are bound to be destroyed by both sides if Armageddon starts.

4. Or we can put enough of our resources into thermonuclear retaliation to participate significantly in the thermonuclear exchange, thus achieving the maximum benefit (deterrence of the destruction of civilization) we will ever get out of this course. All the rest of our resources, forces that might conceivably be used, we could put into conventional forces, including thorough modernization; tactical atomic weapons (whatever they are), to be used or not when the time comes; close-support aircraft (until missiles absorb this role); airlift; and so on . To do so may require that we and our allies have fewer new cars, less butter, fewer luxury cruises, less whipped cream, fewer Paris fashions, and so on, as we put our wealth into forces that can accomplish two things, one positive and one negative: defeat Soviet power, but not destroy civilization.

5. There are other alternatives. These are the principal ones.

We are continually assured that we cannot match Soviet manpower. We have used this as a prop for our reluctance to build conventional defenses, but it is a weak prop indeed, for it is simply not true. Of course, we can match Soviet manpower, especially Soviet manpower of military age. If we want to, we can. The reason that we don’t is not that we can’t, but that we won’t; we deliberately prefer a different course. Here we meet again the issue of cheapness and expensiveness. Despite our protests that we wouldn’t want them anyway, perhaps we do not support all the forces to flesh out “a combined military establishment comparable with that of the Soviet Union” for the reason that we believe such forces to be more expensive than we care to support. We believe there is a less expensive alternative, one that permits us safety and plenty of luxuries at the same time. As Mr. Lippmann points out, other Western nations feel the same way. They will continue to do so as long as our obviously main reliance is on participation in Armageddon, the thermonuclear exchange.

Among those who consider these questions, there are some who appear to believe that it is somehow a “masculine” position to have no “fear” of the use of nuclear weapons, to seek to use them “like other weapons”; long espousal of such a position seems to me to numb the espouser, who gradually loses the capability to make crucial distinctions— nuclear weapons are not like other weapons.

I take it to be the first task of national planners—military, political, economic, and all—to seek to preserve the nation. The dynamics of life are to live, not to die; the use of nuclear weapons is heavily weighted on the side, not of preservation and growth, but of destruction and death. The purpose of man in society is to make a living, to advance himself and his family, to get along with his fellow men—perhaps to make some contribution to the advancement of civilization—to seek limited objectives and to accept limited achievements. These purposes on the individual level are paralleled by similar purposes on national levels, and woe to the nation that permits paranoiacs to demand more.

Certainly, the purpose of man in society is not to achieve extremes; it is not, for example, to rape every woman he sees, to shoot down every person who disagrees with his ideas, to disembowel every citizen who votes against him. On the personal level, the equivalent of eagerness to use nuclear weapons is the hiring of a guardian for one’s children who is so strong that he cannot touch a child without crushing him to death. It is to pick a man- eating tiger as a pet for one’s infant. It is to limit the penalty a judge may decree for any offense, no matter how trivial, to burning at the stake. It is not to say that man may not be forced, in extremis, to revert to such measures —a rare man, on a rare occasion; but it is to say that man does not begin with extreme measures, nor does he, if sane, limit his responses to them.

To assume that a thermonuclear capability is all a nation needs, or practically all one needs, in the way of military capability is to imagine that man does not live in a world of limited objectives, that he lives in a world of extremes. Nuclear weapons are extremes; their use marks the abandonment of gradualness in human relations on the national level. They overleap, in the first stage, the ultimate results arrived at by other means. Their use misreads the purpose of war as being the killing of people and the destroying of things. A thermonuclear exchange leaps to the extreme as the first step, bringing ultimate degrees of death and destruction, omitting all the intervening steps that would fit the issues involved, and ignoring the use of war as the application of force to further the attainment of attainable political objectives.

But I wonder if the choice we have made so far is based on real understanding of the alternatives? A war fought without an exchange of thermonuclear weapons will inevitably have duration; it will extend in time. Battles and casualties and destruction will occur, but they will accumulate gradually, as in all mankind’s wars up to now. Large chunks of the damage might be done in spurts; but even the most horrendous, savage, and destructive of wars have, up to now, taken years to pass. And all during those years, as fortunes waxed or waned each nation had continuous opportunity to reappraise where they had been and where they were going. Each week and each month they could ask themselves the same question:

“Shall we go on? Despite our latest reverses and losses of life, is it still worth continuing the effort? As our terms for ending the war, should we accept less now than we earlier intended to accept? Are we still determined to continue and willing to accept not only these losses but greater losses?” And as the weeks and months and years of the war pass, the answers to these questions are sure to undergo revision.

In the end, to be sure, and after the end, millions of people on both sides must pay the price of the war. The lucky ones pay it mostly with money, with higher taxes and loans and gifts and subsidies to less fortunate allies and ex-enemies—although, even as “victors,” they are sure to have paid the price of many lives lost or crippled, perhaps as many as 1,000,000. And on the other side, the “losers” pay the price of the war with many times greater and longer-lasting starvation, destitution, destroyed homes, and lost and mangled lives—perhaps as many as 5,000,000 or 6,000,000. Though these casualties are a drop in the thermonuclear bucket, in normal terms these are grave prices indeed and are sure to elicit questions as to who really won the war and was the winning worth it.

Still, the war had lasted for years, and both sides had continued it deliberately, willing to continue to pay whatever price was demanded. Much was damaged, much was destroyed; but at the end, from a national point of view, the majority of people, buildings, and facilities remained intact. The important feature is that they had had a thousand days of opportunity for decision and for changing their minds, as their own fortunes waxed and waned throughout the war.

Totally different would be their opportunity in the other extreme of conflict, the Armageddon of the thermonuclear exchange. Is it sufficiently well realized that whatever course the nation takes in war will have been inexorably decided beforehand by decisions taken in peacetime, years ahead of time? Is it sufficiently well realized that commitment of the nation to the immediate course of thermonuclear participation will have to be undertaken almost instantaneously, and that such a commitment, once made, may be irrevocable until great damage is certain to have been wreaked on both sides? Is it realized that once the all-out course is set in motion, there will be no opportunity for second thoughts, except those in confirmation of first thoughts, and none for changing one’s personal or national mind? There may be time for only one decision: to start the destruction of civilization, or not.

We have said grimly on several occasions that we now have the power to reduce any nation on earth to rubble. This may be true; but as soon as one says it, one must consider three inherent limitations: (1) We may have the power to destroy, but the power itself will not destroy unless it can be applied; opposition may deny our use of the power; (2) we may have the power, but that fact does not establish that we will use it; if we never use it, its destructive level contains a large element of unreality, even a kind of irrelevance; and (3) we may have the power, but the enemy has the same power and hence any rubble reduction that takes place will very likely include our rubble, too.

Mankind has had the opportunity before this to destroy himself, to erase human life. Why has he never before taken advantage of the opportunity that he is apparently expected to take now? Because pure destruction for its own sake has never been, and is not now, a purpose of nations, even in war. The physical clash of forces is undertaken to accomplish some “higher” purpose or reason—perhaps one of low intelligence, perhaps a wrong or unfair purpose, perhaps a purpose entailing great cruelty—but never a purpose of sheer destruction, nor for that matter, for any other purpose which entails wholesale destruction. For wholesale destruction would defeat any purpose of reason.

To be sure, we would be endeavoring to hit “military” targets and to gain therefrom some military advantage if the exchange were to continue, but it may be a delusion to expect that in a thermonuclear exchange one could confine effects to military targets. In connection with failure to confine effects, our Secretary of State as recently as October 29, 1958 forcefully condemned the “promiscuous killing” of civilians in a relatively minor situation compared to a thermonuclear exchange, namely, the conventional artillery shelling of Quemoy by Communist China.

It may be a realistic expectation that, once a thermonuclear exchange is started, the retaliation soon arrives at such a situation that there would then be only one real purpose of continuing the large-scale retaliation: revenge. Revenge is a human failing, but on the national level, would the satisfaction of revenge be worth the annihilation of reason? In a radioactive world, will one last long enough to savor either choice? Would a survivor even care about the opinion of the mayor of Hiroshima, who after pondering the effects of a “small” nuclear weapon for thirteen years, has recently been quoted as follows, “We now view the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, no matter for what purpose, as a crime against mankind”?¹

The destruction that is available for use in future wars is of such types and scale that we should arrive at certain conclusions ahead of time as to how much and what kind of destruction we are willing to apply. For example, how much destruction occurs depends largely on the type of weapons that are used. An example is the difference in the effects of artillery rounds and bombs. The big missiles will for some years be even less precise than bombs; but even now the bomb, as it is dropped from higher and faster vehicles, is not, and never will be, a competitor with artillery for precision, the ability to select and damage or destroy only a single appropriate target amid a community of possible targets.

This is not to disparage the bomb. It, too, is a perfectly legitimate weapon is its own right; and it is an accurate enough weapon when the target is an area, and when one’s desired method of destruction is not destruction of some selected targets but saturation, as much destruction as possible. A bomb can kill a mouse, to be sure; but to do so, it has to destroy the section of the city containing the house in which the mouse resides. It can execute a killer; but it carries 10,000 (or, if nuclear, 100,000 or a million) of his neighbors —probably precious few known to him or to each other—to their deaths along with him. For some time, missiles will be no more precise. Considering the factors involved, including the imprecision of the earth’s maps, the great missiles will probably never match even the accuracy of bombs.

Another fallacy that confuses us about power and destruction is one that is repeated over and over again, as in the Lippmann quotation, to the effect that machines can be substituted for men. National strengths are compared again and again on the basis of machines alone, which, God knows, and columnists should know by now, is a hollow basis. At their peak of influence, machines, indispensably tended and operated by man, only extend and intensify man’s own capabilities.

To a limited extent, the use of machines reduces the number of men needed to do the same job; this is possible and is done on a limited scale all the time. On the other hand, sometimes they require more man power, as in supporting complexes. In any event, the possible reduction, while accomplishing the same job, reaches an irreducible minimum sooner rather than later.

If one took certain arguments seriously over the past ten years, he might actually come to believe that the necessary number of men to fight a modern war might be reduced to, say, 5,000 men and still defeat, say, 500,000 men of the enemy, if only one were to give enough machines to the 5,000. However, to informed strategists, no such outcome is possible. Some 5,000 men may defeat 500,000 sheep, yes; but 500,000 men, no. At least they will not, so long as the normal proportion of brains, courage, energy resides in the 500,000 men. Nor can one man, armed with any machine or airplane or tank or anything short of a monopoly of nuclear weapons, overcome 10,000 men, or 1,000, or 100, or even ten.

I am aware of incidents in history that might argue with this position, such as that involving Cortez in Mexico, in which a tiny force with guns (machines) subjugated a primitive nation. But the Aztecs were victims of their own superstitions; by a dozen devices, not excluding sheer weight of numbers, they could readily have obliterated Cortez and his little band of cutthroats, guns notwithstanding. I wonder if anyone seriously thinks that Cortez and his band, guns and all, would have lasted very long had history permitted them to invade a primitive but tough domain—say, the domain of Genghis Khan? What the Aztecs lacked was “the normal proportion of brains, courage, and energy.”

Leaving nuclear weapons outside for a moment, if I were forced to choose between 5,000 men, 1,000 airplanes, and 1,000 tanks, on the one hand, and, on the other 500,000 men with pitchforks, I believe I would settle for the latter. Effectively organized, motivated, and led, even if armed initially only with the pitchforks, they will inevitably crush the others—tanks, airplanes, and all. And if nuclear weapons are available to both sides, the same relationship holds true as existed beforehand; there is just greater weight on both sides of the relationship.

In any event, regardless of one’s view on the foregoing speculation, it would be insane for any nation or coalition with a greatly inferior number of armed men to go up against a power like the Russians, manned as they are with 5,000,000 armed men and equipped as they are with all the latest machines. I am not making an analyzed comparison, but merely indicating that it would be inviting disastrous results if we were to try it short- handed, no matter how many B-52s, El- bombs, atomic submarines, carriers, or Jupiters we had.

Despite the predictions of some prophets, delivered with great assurance, no one really knows what will be the relative importance of any particular weapon or weapons systems in “the next war”—infantry or armored or airborne divisions, manned aircraft, ICBMs, submarines, sub-launched missiles, or what you will. It may be that surface-to-air missiles will make the skies uninhabitable, thus returning all manned conflict to the earth’s surface.

It has been said that conventional forces, particularly armies, will be superfluous in future war. What could an army do in a totally destructive thermonuclear war? The answer, especially applicable to the early stages, is, of course, “not very much.” But that answer applies to all forms of military force. Air forces, for example, need enormous, vulnerable airfields, refueling furnished from tremendously complex establishments at distant points, elaborately organized maintenance, and so on. Where will such things be found in a world in which a thermonuclear exchange is taking place?

The form of force that appears most likely to be able to mount a concerted military operation soon after a thermonuclear exchange is a naval force, which perhaps can retire to an area of relative safety during the exchange, and which can carry great amounts of its own sustenance and maintenance, self- contained and protected for extended periods, The earliest significant land-force role would appear to occur in the reorganizing after- math of such an exchange, after both sides have exchanged all the thermonuclear damage they can launch or are willing to launch, without—for some unpredictable reason— coming to a conclusion. Provided any concerted operations are possible at all, it would appear reasonable to expect surface forces to be indispensable—hence, decisive—in reaching a conclusion, should some further conclusion still be desired.

In current discussions of this topic, it is at about this point that someone blurts out the question, “You don’t think any nation which realized that it was going down to defeat would fail to use every weapon it had, do you?” But that is exactly what I do mean. What he is saying is: “If my enemy has the upper hand in an argument, I will never stop until I have used all the knives, guns, meat axes, and all other lethal devices I have in my possession. I don’t care how I fare. In fact, if he has dealt me a mortal blow but has not yet harmed my children, I will throw a nuclear grenade at him, although I know his wife will throw one back and kill my children, too.”

Regarding non-total-war forces as too expensive is to suggest again the question, “Which is cheaper, the $10,000 surgeon who can cure or the $5,000 one who can’t?” Is it cheaper to pay $5 a year for twenty years, or to pay $1 a year for twenty years and then get a bill for a million dollars?

The more we concentrate on preparations for Armageddon, the more we do two things: we increase the attractiveness to ourselves of recourse to thermonuclear war, because we have tied up so much of our resources in it; and we increase the attractiveness to the Soviets of other courses of action. Thus, the more we prepare for Armageddon, the more we ignore the near-certainty that it will never happen. Can non-happening be guaranteed? Of course not. But the probability of nonhappening increases relentlessly, up to the point at which human action can be reasonably predicted. Beyond that point, whether we increase our thermonuclear power by two, twenty, or 2,000 times, we do not increase the chances of non-happening. That kind of probability has already gone as far as it can go. As a matter of fact, the greatest deterrent to total war is not any machine or force or theory; the greatest deterrent is simply common sense.

Let me cite one more factor that weighs heavily in the scale of post-thermonuclear balance—or, ought to weigh heavily, as soon as one passes beyond the illusion that a thermonuclear exchange will leave a world in which some form of status quo will be maintained while the United States and USSR endeavor to re-establish their respective forces, political entities, and hegemonies. It is said, in concession, that it may take a year, or perhaps years, for one or both to climb back into a saddle and take up the reins again. But one may ask, who will wait for them?

This eventuality should give both sides additional reason to pause. Suppose a thermonuclear exchange destroys an intolerable fraction of not world civilization, but only Western civilization? Suppose it drives both the United States and the USSR even temporarily to their knees? Suppose one emerges relatively stronger than the other, but both emerge inferior to one or more other states? Suppose both find themselves subordinated in a power vacuum that can be filled by other states before either of the two antagonists is able to do so? On the fringes of such a vacuum looms Communist China, and there are other understudies in the wings who might well be rubbing their hands in anticipation.

And of what earthly positive value would it be to amass a capability to destroy two billion people if the only enemy in sight has a total population of 200 million, or 800 million? In careful reason, there is adequate basis for judgment that one side need not even equal the other in thermonuclear capability, let alone exceed it. It will probably be more than sufficient to possess the thermonuclear capability to wreak significant devastation on the other side, that is, merely to participate substantially in the thermonuclear exchange. If one side has the ability to kill fifty million people on the other side, any points it wants to make can be made with the maximum effect needed; it need not be able to kill any more, for the ability to kill more will not increase the maximum results it is going to get.

To put it another way, all one side may need in the form of thermonuclear preparation, in order to get out of it maximum return in deterrence of thermonuclear war or in the thermonuclear destruction of enemies, is a capability to destroy “merely” an intolerable fraction of the enemy’s population and facilities. The debate may well continue that the fraction is 20%, or 10%, or 33%; but it may already be beyond debate that it is totally unnecessary to maintain a thermonuclear capability to destroy as much as 50%. Probably much less will be quite sufficient.

Does this mean that we are safe from war from here on out? Probably not. It means “only” that we are safe from thermonuclear war. This is why we are in greater danger each time we step up our thermonuclear preparations, which will probably not be used, but fail to increase our other preparations, which would be used if we had them.

Thus, the possibilities of difference in scale are many and varied up to the complete exchange, to the limit of the strength of both sides, of everything they have. As to the question, “How likely are these variants?” the complicated answer can best be summed up in this evaluation: Any type of war becomes less likely according to the degree to which it is expected to include thermonuclear weapons. Thus, the most likely type of war is that which uses no thermonuclear warheads at all.

As for the likelihood of total thermonuclear destruction, we may well pause to consider. . . .

As the earth stumbles and all standing things fall; as men, mothers, school children, senators, and soldiers are atomized into nothing, burned to a handful of embers, or buried under works of man or nature indiscriminately, truly not a stone will be left upon a stone wherever a community has existed—-not the hospitals, nor the churches, nor the museums, nor the baby nurseries, nor the flower nurseries, nor the town hall, nor the records, nor the hopes and promise of all the generations past and to come—dead, dead, dead— all dead, or dying. What price anything then (including “successful conclusion of the war”) to the father, shepherding the remnant of his family along a radioactive Appian Way, that once had been a super-turnpike, as they breathe radioactivity and certain death? Not in this kind of war any picayune 5,000,000 casualties over five years of war! Here we can get 30,000,000 more assured of death simply by breathing for the next six months! And if you halve or double the figures, what difference will that make to your opinion?

To consider the alternative of war fought preponderantly with weapons which marry the bomb or the missile with the thermonuclear warhead is a simple forecast. The result is simplicity itself to describe; for it is sheer, complete, and extreme saturation of destruction. There exist other forms with which we could readily destroy civilization if we chose. However, it is the capacity to participate overwhelmingly in this form of war that is cited again and again as the invaluable deterrent and winner (!) of war. There is little question that this form, if successful (a tremendous if), can destroy whole regions in a short period of time, leaving neither antagonist any opportunity for second thought or reorientation, no possibility of salvage of anything in the region, and no possibility of rehabilitation— perhaps for centuries, perhaps for millennia.

It locks antagonists into companion percentages of destruction. For example, if one side starts it and the other retaliates, does it matter that side A will have destroyed sixty million people on side B, but that side B will have destroyed only forty million people on side A? Is there a victory for any one here? Someone has won something? What would the prize be? A statue of Ozymandius? Perhaps the ultimate in futility would be for the “winner” to look around for a wall upon which to hang his prize or even to wish that he had eyes with which to look!

What kind of war am I describing? It is, of course, the war that will never happen.

Who or what even made us think it would or could happen?

If it can be said that the foregoing analysis includes many pure guesses, the same can be said of any alternative analysis. The kernel of the whole case is reluctance to believe that the “Things” will ever be used. Admiral Charles R. Brown echoed this thought in a recent prophecy that in a few years the use of nuclear weapons will be unthinkable. “And when they are ruled out,” he said, “they will all be ruled out.”² A possible ban on atomic weapons, as recommended by presidents, premiers, and popes will remain a vivid issue in the world until it is realized. Meanwhile, do we then not need the Things? Of course we do. So long as the relentless Communist stalks the West with the power to exert nuclear blackmail, we need to be able to defend ourselves even from fear of his atomic weapons. And the knowledge that we would use them if he brought about certain, though rare, conditions, will help to keep him from using them. But this is willingness, not likelihood.

If Mr. Lippmann equates cheapness only with money, it might appear that we are making Armageddon available so cheaply as to be practically giving it away. For even greater cheapness, one might recommend damaging the world by igniting the available billions of barrels of petroleum products by the cheapest means imaginable—a common match.

But if “cheapness” includes people, culture, and resources, as well as money, there is nothing cheap about nuclear weapons. Their use would unquestionably tag them as the most expensive means of war ever devised. As matter of hard fact, it is by no means certain that conventional forces are more expensive than nuclear-air delivery systems. Whether or not, compared to nuclear weapons used on any scale, “massive armies” are a real bargain.

And if we are ever involved in the thermonuclear destruction of civilization, I wonder if anyone will reflect that it happened, not because there was no other course, but because it was largely the course we chose. We wanted all or nothing, and we couldn’t have all.