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From International Socialist Review, Vol.26 No.2, Spring 1965, p.63.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The War-Peace Establishment
by Arthur Herzog
Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1965. 271 pp. $4.95.
“Establishment,” as Arthur Herzog uses it in the title of this book, does not refer to an economic or political institution, but rather to a conglomeration of ideas on military and peace tactics which have emerged in this country during the Cold War. From the opinions of Dr. Teller on one side of the spectrum, all the way over to those of A.J. Muste on the other, Herzog presents an easily readable account of many divergent ideas.
Unfortunately only for Mr. Herzog, one imagines, the period of transcendence for the “war-peace” controversy described in this book is over, and argument over more concrete issues, like the war in Vietnam, posing clearer alternatives, has replaced it.
Going back a few years, one has to forget that the people Herzog describes as “analysts,” “realists,” “government idealists,” and “experimentalists,” are almost unanimously lined up in support of the flagrant US aggression against North Vietnam. Otherwise, it would be hard to take their ideas on the tactics for disarmament as seriously as Mr. Herzog demands.
In the long run, it turned out that this argument was fierce but futile. The US government could build more and greater weapons of destruction, expand its arenas of aggression, and offer less and less excuse.
The peace movement could offer more and more elaborate schemes for resolution of the cold war, but the basic questions turned out to be principled, not tactical: for or against self-determination for the Vietnamese.
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