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From: jim@ISM780.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Orphaned Response
Message-ID: <37400017@ISM780.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 17-Dec-85 01:20:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ISM780.37400017
Posted: Tue Dec 17 01:20:00 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Dec-85 19:16:51 EST
References: <552@harvard.UUCP>
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Nf-ID: #R:harvard:-55200:ISM780:37400017:177600:1232
Nf-From: ISM780!jim    Dec 17 01:20:00 1985


>        You'd be amazed.  Kennan quotes one Soviet statement, "typical of
>thousands of others," which basically calls for all Communists to fight
>to the death with the capitalist system, regardless of any notions of
>law or national sovereignity.  Lenin once said (and I can get the reference)
>that it was ludicrous for the Soviet Union to advocate disarmament, since
>violence was the only refuge of the progressive class.  A 1972 Soviet book
>on military strategy dismissed the "bourgeois" notion that nuclear war was
>unwinnable, or even unjust, when used for a progressive cause.  I could go
>on and on.

Apparently the Committee on the Present Danger, which populates the foreign
policy positions of the Reagan administration, has adopted the positions of
Lenin (with whom they of course are quite familiar).  The published position
of Adelman, the Rostows, Nitze, and the rest of the clan is that arms
reduction and disarmament is a bad idea and that nuclear war is winnable and
just if it leads to the triumph of the "Western world".  George Kennan,
former US ambassador to the USSR, whom you quote, is also very critical of
the Reagan administration for emulating the worst traits of the enemy.

-- Jim Balter (ima!jim)