And still the awful truth remains: We can establish the domestic
conditions for maximizing freedom, along the lines I have indicated,
and yet become slaves. We can do this by losing the Cold War to the
Soviet Union.
American freedom has always depended, to an extent, on what is
happening beyond our shores. Even in Ben Franklin’s day, Americans had
to reckon with foreign threats. Our forebearers knew that “keeping a
Republic” meant, above all, keeping it safe from foreign transgressors;
they knew that a people cannot live and work freely, and develop
national institutions conducive to freedom, except in peace and with
independence. In those early days the threat to peace and independence
was very real. We were a fledgling-nation and the slightest misstep--or
faint hearts--would have laid us open to the ravages of predatory
European powers. It was only because wise and courageous men understood
that defense of freedom required risks and sacrifice, as well as
their belief in it, that we survived the crisis of national infancy.
As we grew stronger, and as the oceans continued to interpose a
physical barrier between ourselves and European militarism, the
foreign danger gradually receded. Though we always had to keep a
weather eye on would-be conquerors, our independence was acknowledged
and peace, unless we chose otherwise, was established. Indeed, after
the Second World War, we were not only master of our own destiny; we
were master of the world. With a monopoly of atomic weapons, and with
a conventional military establishment superior to any in the world,
America was--in relative and absolute terms--the most powerful nation
the world had ever known. American freedom was as secure as at any time
in our history.
Now, a decade and half later, we have come full circle and our national
existence is once again threatened as it was in the early days of
the Republic. Though we are still strong physically, we are in clear
and imminent danger of being overwhelmed by alien forces. We are
confronted by a revolutionary world movement that possesses not only
the will to dominate absolutely every square mile of the globe, but
increasingly the capacity to do so: a military power that rivals our
own, political warfare and propaganda skills that are superior to ours,
an international fifth column that operates conspiratorially in the
heart of our defenses, an ideology that imbues its adherents with a
sense of historical mission; and all of these resources controlled by
a ruthless despotism that brooks no deviation from the revolutionary
course. This threat, moreover, is growing day by day. And it has
now reached the point where American leaders, both political and
intellectual, are searching desperately for means of “appeasing” or
“accommodating” the Soviet Union as the price of national survival. The
American people are being told that, however valuable their freedom
may be, it is even more important to live. A craven fear of death is
entering the American consciousness; so much so that many recently felt
that honoring the chief despot himself was the price we had to pay to
avoid nuclear destruction.
The temptation is strong to blame the deterioration of America’s
fortunes on the Soviet Union’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. But this
is self-delusion. The rot had set in, the crumbling of our position
was already observable, long before the Communists detonated their
first Atom Bomb. Even in the early 1950s, when America still held
unquestioned nuclear superiority, it was clear that we were losing the
Cold War. Time and again in my campaign speeches of 1952 I warned my
fellow Arizonans that “American Foreign Policy has brought us from a
position of undisputed power, in seven short years, to the brink of
possible disaster.” And in the succeeding seven years, that trend,
because its cause remains, has continued.
The real cause of the deterioration can be simply stated. Our enemies
have understood the nature of the conflict, and we have not. They are
determined to win the conflict, and we are not.
I hesitate to restate the obvious--to say again what has been said so
many times before by so many others: that the Communists’ aim is to
conquer the world. I repeat it because it is the beginning and the end
of our knowledge about the conflict between East and West. I repeat it
because I fear that however often we have given lip-service to this
central political fact of our time, very few of us have _believed_ it.
If we had, our entire approach to foreign policy over the past fourteen
years would have been radically different, and the course of world
events radically changed.
If an enemy power is bent on conquering you, and proposes to turn all
of his resources to that end, he is at war with you; and you--unless
you contemplate surrender--are at war with him. Moreover--unless you
contemplate treason--your objective, like his, will be victory. Not
“peace,” but victory. Now, while traitors (and perhaps cowards) have at
times occupied key positions in our government, it is clear that our
national leadership over the past fourteen years has favored neither
surrender nor treason. It is equally clear, however, that our leaders
have not made _victory_ the goal of American policy. And the reason
that they have not done so, I am saying, is that they have never
believed deeply that the Communists are in earnest.
Our avowed national objective is “peace.” We have, with great
sincerity, “waged” peace, while the Communists wage war. We have sought
“settlements,” while the Communists seek victories. We have tried
to pacify the world. The Communists mean to own it. Here is why the
contest has been an unequal one, and why, essentially, we are losing it.
Peace, to be sure, is a proper goal for American policy--as long as it
is understood that peace is not all we seek. For we do not want the
peace of surrender. We want a peace in which freedom and justice will
prevail, and that--given the nature of Communism--is a peace in which
Soviet power will no longer be in a position to threaten us and the
rest of the world. A tolerable peace, in other words, must _follow_
victory over Communism. We have been fourteen years trying to bury
that unpleasant fact. It cannot be buried and any foreign policy that
ignores it will lead to our extinction as a nation.
We do not, of course, want to achieve victory by force of arms. If
possible, overt hostilities should always be avoided; especially is
this so when a shooting war may cause the death of many millions of
people, including our own. But we cannot, for that reason, make the
avoidance of a shooting war our chief objective. If we do that--if we
tell ourselves that it is more important to avoid shooting than to keep
our freedom--we are committed to a course that has only one terminal
point: surrender. We cannot, by proclamation, make war “unthinkable.”
For it is not unthinkable to the Communists: naturally, they would
prefer to avoid war, but they are prepared to risk it, in the last
analysis, to achieve their objectives. We must, in our hearts, be
equally dedicated to our objectives. If war is unthinkable to us but
not to them, the famous “balance of terror” is not a balance at all,
but an instrument of blackmail. U. S.-Soviet power may be in balance;
but if we, and not they, rule out the possibility of using that power,
the Kremlin can create crisis after crisis, and force the U. S.,
because of our greater fear of war, to back down every time. And it
cannot be long before a universal Communist Empire sits astride the
globe.
The rallying cry of an appeasement organization, portrayed in a recent
novel on American politics, was “I would rather crawl on my knees
to Moscow than die under an Atom bomb.” This sentiment, of course,
repudiates everything that is courageous and honorable and dignified
in the human being. We must--as the first step toward saving American
freedom--affirm the contrary view and make it the cornerstone of our
foreign policy: that we would rather die than lose our freedom. There
are ways which I will suggest later on--not easy ways, to be sure--in
which we may save both our freedom _and_ our lives; but all such
suggestions are meaningless and vain unless we first understand what
the objective is. We want to stay alive, of course; but more than that
we want to be free. We want to have peace; but before that we want to
establish the conditions that will make peace tolerable. “Like it or
not,” Eugene Lyons has written, “the great and inescapable task of our
epoch is not to end the Cold War but to win it.”
I suggest that we look at America’s present foreign policy, and ask
whether it is conducive to victory. There are several aspects of this
policy. Let us measure each of them by the test: Does it help defeat
the enemy?