Workers World Vol. 17, No. 44
New York, Nov. 7 – “The night of the long knives,” in which Schlesinger and Colby were dismissed and Rockefeller withdrew, continues to haunt all sections of the ruling class. It was only a beginning – more is sure to follow.
In the meantime, endless confusion and deception are bound to affect all sections of the working class – in particular the propaganda that the dismissal of Schlesinger is a victory for détente and the “peace forces.”
Although probably not intended, the U.S. ruling class has, as a result of the wholesale dismissals, realized a highly desirable (for them) effect: a heightening of the tensions between the USSR and People’s China. Because Schlesinger’s dismissal was immediately passed off as a favorable augury for détente with the USSR, it aroused the suspicions of the People’s Republic of China.
Predictably, the Daily World here, paper of the revisionist CPUSA, pulled out all stops in declaring Schlesinger’s ouster a great victory for détente. But the Soviet press itself, after a few days of reflection, and after hearing Ford’s speech in Boston in which he resorted to his old line of jingoist and militarist rhetoric, pulled back and took a much more cautious approach. Brezhnev’s visit to the United States seems all but off now and the SALT talks delayed.
A few facts from recent history should put into perspective the present speculation and misinformation on the meaning of Schlesinger’s dismissal.
In 1963 the United States and the Soviet Union signed a nuclear test-ban treaty, prohibiting nuclear testing in the atmosphere. At that time a great hue and cry was raised by all sorts of righting elements. Were the U.S. to commit itself to signing the treaty, they said, nothing less than surrender to Khrushchev and the Soviet Union would follow. Needless to say, the Goldwater right-wing and the Pentagon opposed the treaty.
However, no sooner was it signed than it became clear that the opposition had really been of a formal and perfunctory character. By the time Goldwater got the GOP nomination for President (barely a year later in 1964), the test-ban treaty issue was as dead as a doornail.
It has remained so ever since. The reasons which motivated the U.S. to sign the treaty had nothing to do with such lofty sentiments as peace. It was a simple expedient based on the conclusion that there was no longer any need for nuclear testing in the atmosphere.
Both the Soviet Union and the U.S. had arrived at a certain balance or parity with regard to atmospheric testing. Economically and militarily it was no longer useful. There was not a shred of concern for humanity involved in this decision on the part of Washington. It was a hard-headed military appraisal.
The nuclear arms race, of course, continued to proceed through other avenues, alongside the development at an ever more rapid rate of conventional weapons systems. The arms budget in virtually all countries, and most particularly in the U.S. and other imperialist countries, has continued to soar.
(It should be interjected here that ever since the Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviet Union has pursued a defensive military strategy. This has been true, despite grave political shifts, from Lenin’s time, to the very oppressive period of Stalin, to Khrushchev’s day, and up to the present. This flows from the social character of the Soviet Union as a workers’ state, which is not driven organically to expand in the interest of profits.)
The effort to paint up the signing of the test-ban treaty as a peaceful effort by the U.S. was a fraud. The “ban the bomb” movement of the 1950s was based on an unfortunate pacifist illusion and served only to screen U.S. militarism. Underground nuclear testing continues to this day, not because it is not dangerous, but because the U.S. and the USSR have not reached parity on underground testing. They have not reached a point where each feels as well prepared as the other.
Military arms agreements have existed side by side with military war preparations all during the imperialist epoch.
In the late 1920s a naval arms agreement was a subject of continuous discussion among the imperialism powers for several years. Washington proposed a naval agreement between the U.S., Britain and Japan where each could possess capital ships in the ration of 5:5:3. This gave parity to the U.S. and Britain and left Japan at a disadvantage. Japan rejected the agreement for substantially the same reason that France has rejected the test-ban treaty: because it left them in a subordinate position.
In the years prior to the Second World War, both the Axis powers and the Allies fully prepared for the use of poison gas. But because they felt that the advantages in using poison gas would be cancelled out and self-destructive, poison gas was not resorted to during that great holocaust which took so many millions of lives.
These historical precedents, one would think, ought to demonstrate that military-technological agreements are in no way to be regarded as steps toward peace on behalf of the military powers. If the U.S. and the USSR agreed on the first stage of SALT (the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty), it is because they found it mutually advantageous both on economic and military grounds, and not because the U.S. is seeking to promote peace in the world or is lessening its military aggressiveness.
If and when the SALT agreement is signed it will be because both the U.S. and the USSR have found it to be beneficial for each on military and economic grounds. The long delay in signing the Vladivostok agreement (which was an agreement to agree on strategic arms limitation) lies in the difficulty for the U.S. in ascertaining whether it would indeed be beneficial from an imperialist military point of view, and whether it would indeed strengthen the U.S. military establishment. It has nothing to do with promoting peace.
To believe that the disagreement between Ford and Schlesinger is based on anything but narrow military-technological estimates and evaluations regarding SALT is an illusion, and will result in the crassest sort of deception of the masses.
The jubilant response of the Daily World to Schlesinger’s dismissal as a victory for the peace forces is the kind of revisionist propaganda which does nothing but disarm the masses in the face of the growing armament of the military establishment.
The New York Times’ belated discovery (Nov. 7, 1975) that “Mr. Schlesinger believes that this country needed the option of actually fighting a limited nuclear war” is hardly exciting. Indeed Schlesinger believes that. But he’s not the only one. Who among the Pentagon brass does not? Schlesinger was only their spokesman.
But that’s not why Schlesinger was dismissed. He was dismissed for saying it out loud, too often, and at an inconvenient time for the Ford administration – an election year. The Times earlier seemed to be deaf to all Schlesinger’s nuclear saber-rattling and its ratification by Ford (in more moderate terms).
The Times prefers Mr. Kissinger, who “seems to harbor growing doubts that limited war could be a viable option. He favors development of sophisticated new weapons systems mainly as a bargaining chip to help in his negotiations in new arms limitations agreements.”
So there you have it. The difference between Schlesinger and Kissinger is this: both favor development of the same horrendous sophisticated new weapons systems. But, says the Times, Kissinger wants to use them only “as bargaining chips.”
This should tax the credibility of even the most naïve observers of Kissinger in his long tenure as Secretary of State. His credibility gap is as wide as an ocean, and at least as deep. The truth of the matter is that the classic relation between the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, as established since the Second World War, calls for tough talk by the Defense Secretary to facilitate the soft-spoken, adroit diplomacy of the Secretary of State.
Schlesinger went somewhat beyond the limits, and found that he was not indispensable. Moreover, Ford needed at least one top-ranking cabinet member who was solidly in his own (anti-Rockefeller) faction. And Schlesinger decidedly was not, having been a neutral, although in the general camp of the right-wing.
Secretaries of Defense and State come and go. But the weapons systems remain, grown larger and larger, become more expensive and more threatening. This is the point that has to be kept in mind.
The differences between Kissinger and Schlesinger are not of a fundamental, but more of a fictional character, and putting one in the role of a mere bargainer and the other of a warmonger serves merely to disarm and confuse the masses.
Last updated: 11 May 2026