Has America lost its will to fight? When two of our nation’s most scholarly statesmen, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, as well as Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn all think so, it is cause for alarm.
In a recent joint interview, Moynihan and Kissinger agreed that the lack of nerve to confront the spread of Communism is mainly in the ranks of officialdom, not the grassroots. “We have a leadership problem,” Kissinger said. “The public has a rather healthy perception.”
Moynihan likewise blamed our political leaders, many of whom, he pointed out, are the same men who started and ran the Vietnam War. Regrettably, he did not identify these leaders, who still hold powerful positions in our government, such as Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Secretary of Defense Harold Brown,
The Soviet Union’s displacement of the United States as the superior military power–a change for which those leaders must answer to history–has sapped the national nerve to a point where “we are continually told today that we have to do this or that, accept this or that unattractive option because if we do not, the Russians will send in the Cubans. And this settles any argument:” Moynihan exclaimed in exasperation.
Kissinger agreed: “If we are forever blackmailed by the Cubans–a country of nine million off our shore–no constructive policy is possible.” He attributed the paralysis of our foreign policy to “the tendency to escape current dilemmas by making favorable assumptions about the future. This temptation is overwhelming in countries on the whole satisfied with their lot, and it is one reason why the Communist challenge has been interpreted in the most benign fashion in every decade in the existence of Communism.”
Right on, Henry. Too bad you didn’t realize that while you were in office. Moynihan called for a much tougher bargaining stance vis-a-vis the Soviet Union in the SALT talks, including threats to quadruple the defense budget.
“But if you have psychologically discarded that bargaining technique, then, in fact, you are disarmed,” he warned.
It is becoming apparent that the Carter Administration, aware (as Kissinger said) that the American people have “a rather healthy perception” of the Communist threat, has determined to try to satisfy the voters with words rather than actions. Vice President Walter Mondale sounded the alarm at the United Nations about the “continuing [Soviet arms] buildup of unprecedented proportions.” President Carter’s Commencement address at Annapolis contained what Pravda blasted as a “cold war” tone.
When it comes to actions to respond to the U.S.S.R. weapons buildup, however, the response of the Carter Administration adds up to concessions and retreat. The Carter Administration has substantially slowed the MX missile program, the plan for a mobile system of 250 to 300 mobile multiple-warhead missiles that would have the survivability that our present Minuteman missiles in fixed silos lack.
Carter cancelled B-1 bomber production without any quid pro quo from the Soviets. Carter is waffling on the neutron bomb and offering concessions to the Soviets by limiting the range of our cruise missile and by not even including their SS-20 missiles and Backfire bombers.
The trouble is that the world, including any potential aggressors, will judge us by our national policies rather than by the courage and will of individual Americans. Would-be aggressors may conclude, as Solzhenitsyn stated in his Cassandra Commencement address at Harvard, that “a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire [American] society.”
