THE MILITARIZATION OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS Review

• Published in: The New York times
• Main Authors: war., Martin J. Sherwin, Martin J. Sherwin, the Walter S. Dickson Professor of History at Tufts University, is writing a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer. He is the author of ''A World Destroyed,'' a study of Hiroshima and the origins of the cold
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, N.Y New York Times Company 07.11.1982
• Edition: Late Edition (East Coast)
• Subjects: ARMS CONTROL AND LIMITATION AND DISARMAMENT; BOOKS AND LITERATURE; Kennan, George F; UNITED STATE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
• ISSN: 0362-4331

The assumptions, attitudes and policies that have brought us to this state of affairs is the subject of ''The Nuclear Delusion,'' Mr. [George F. Kennan]'s 16th book, a collection of his elegant speeches, policy papers and essays, composed between 1950 and this year. Dealing with Soviet and American foreign policy in general and with United States nuclear weapons policy in particular, they form a mosaic that depicts our Government's persistent reliance on nuclear weapons as unwise and unconscionable, and the rising din of ''anti-Soviet hysteria'' as unsafe and unfounded. It is a book replete with wisdom, learning and, in its more recently composed essays, uncharacteristically sharp condemnations of the diplomatic uses of American power. ''To read the official statements emanating from Washington,'' Mr. Kennan writes in his introduction, ''one would suppose we were already in a state of undeclared war - an undeclared war pursued in anticipation of an outright one now regarded as inevitable.'' Judgments such as these, from a foreign policy analyst of Mr. Kennan's stature, assure that ''The Nuclear Delusion'' will not be ignored. It will be read with profit by those who seek to understand whether the nuclear arms race is necessary, and it will be criticized with passion by those who are confirmed in their belief that it is. Mr. Kennan's political testament offers an explanation of the purposes of Soviet foreign policy that is diametrically opposed to that of virtually every Administration since World War II. ''The Soviet leadership ... has no intention,'' he believes, ''and has never had any intention, of attacking Western Europe.'' And his fundamental challenge to the assumptions that supported the nuclear weapons program in 1958 applies today: ''The beginning of understanding rests, in this appalling problem, with the recognition that the weapon of mass destruction is a sterile and hopeless weapon ... which cannot in any way serve the purposes of a constructive and hopeful foreign policy.'' Mr. Kennan's fears were realized when the Eisenhower Administration introduced the doctrines of massive retaliation and brinkmanship. Although these concepts have been modified since the heyday of John Foster Dulles, the basic attitude that inspired them has remained fundamentally unchanged. Relying on nuclear weapons to influence a broad range of Soviet policies necessarily directed our policies - as well as theirs - toward a spiraling arms race. The result was as ''tragic'' as it was ''unnecessary,'' Mr. Kennan concludes. It led to a ''steady displacement of political considerations by military ones in the calculations of statesmanship'' - to a veritable abandonment of diplomacy for a ''dreadful militarization of the entire East-West relationship in concept, in rhetoric, and in assumption.''