New York, Feb. 26—It is correct that two estimates of the current threat posed by the Soviet Union are at war with each other. They are, however, reconcilable, if only one would take the trouble. One school says the Soviet Union’s might is decisive. The other says the Soviet Union is falling apart.
Years ago James Burnham, the retired strategist and philosopher, said about the Soviet Union that we chronically overestimate its strength and underestimate its menace. Those were the days when the Soviet Union was not strong in international missilery, and now of course it is. But its weakness as a thermonuclear superpower in the Fifties is replaced now by a weakness of a different order. The Soviet Union is on its knees economically. And just as, in the Fifties, by reason of a failure of resolution, we stood by while the Soviet Union acquired its massive nuclear artillery, so now we are standing by while it wrestles with its economic weaknesses. In the Fifties, Soviet sympathizers in America dispatched to Russia the secrets necessary to get on with its nuclear development. Today, American businessmen and a Republican Administration stand by passively while the Soviet Union takes such measures as are necessary to survive its economic ordeal.
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