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As if the approach of the presidential election year were not depressing enough, we have as well the (related) approach of yet another era of detente: a renewal of the “spirit of Geneva” and the gigantic fraud called “arms control.” Yet the tragic fact is that the West—as always—has nothing to gain, and everything to lose. “It is the Soviets,” Vladimir Bukovsky writes, “who need détente most desperately. Yet it is the West who is going to pay for it, saving in the process the bankrupt Communist system. We are going to witness a repetition of the same mistakes a second time within a single decade . . . only because the West has no defense against Soviet psychological warfare. . . . What is the difference, then, between Reagan and Carter?”

Mesmerized by the Bear: The Soviet Strategy of Deception (Dodd, Mead, $22.95), edited by Raymond S. Sleeper and in which the above-quoted remarks by Mr. Bukovsky appear, is a trenchant, admirably unrestrained critique of the current Western appeasement, by a roster of distinguished writers including David S. Sullivan, Sam Cohen, William R. Van Cleave, William R. Kintner, Ambassador Paul H. Nitze, James E. Oberg, and William Fletcher; Congressman Jack Kemp provides the introduction:

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Chilton Williamson Jr.

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As if the approach of the presidential election year were not depressing enough, we have as well the (related) approach of yet another era of detente: a renewal of the “spirit of Geneva” and the gigantic fraud called “arms control.” Yet the tragic fact is that the West—as always—has nothing to gain, and everything to lose. “It is the Soviets,” Vladimir Bukovsky writes, “who need détente most desperately. Yet it is the West who is going to pay for it, saving in the process the bankrupt Communist system. We are going to witness a repetition of the same mistakes a second time within a single decade . . . only because the West has no defense against Soviet psychological warfare. . . . What is the difference, then, between Reagan and Carter?”

Mesmerized by the Bear: The Soviet Strategy of Deception (Dodd, Mead, $22.95), edited by Raymond S. Sleeper and in which the above-quoted remarks by Mr. Bukovsky appear, is a trenchant, admirably unrestrained critique of the current Western appeasement, by a roster of distinguished writers including David S. Sullivan, Sam Cohen, William R. Van Cleave, William R. Kintner, Ambassador Paul H. Nitze, James E. Oberg, and William Fletcher; Congressman Jack Kemp provides the introduction: