When Do We Seize the Initiative?

It is symptomatic of the illness of Western civilization that these two significant volumes, which by contemporary standards must be classified as aggressive, share a total lack of offensive strategy. Western thought has only two branches: one which by accommodation and coexistence seeks escape from the reality of Communist aggression, and one which is determined to resist that aggression. These modes of thought prepare us for surrender or for a passive defense. But a passive defense is a form of slow surrender. By conceding to the Communist ideology a monopoly of offensive strategy, the Western mind assures its own extinction.

This condition is illustrated in Power’s “design for survival.” His dispassionate discussion of the strategy of nuclear deterrence, and of possible nuclear warfare, will repel in horror those impassioned peace-seekers who have already banned the bomb without any concurrence from the Soviet Union. Yet, the entire Power study treats the defensive problem of deterrence. We have reached the point where it is aggressive to think defensively.

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Thomas A. Lane

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It is symptomatic of the illness of Western civilization that these two significant volumes, which by contemporary standards must be classified as aggressive, share a total lack of offensive strategy. Western thought has only two branches: one which by accommodation and coexistence seeks escape from the reality of Communist aggression, and one which is determined to resist that aggression. These modes of thought prepare us for surrender or for a passive defense. But a passive defense is a form of slow surrender. By conceding to the Communist ideology a monopoly of offensive strategy, the Western mind assures its own extinction.

This condition is illustrated in Power’s “design for survival.” His dispassionate discussion of the strategy of nuclear deterrence, and of possible nuclear warfare, will repel in horror those impassioned peace-seekers who have already banned the bomb without any concurrence from the Soviet Union. Yet, the entire Power study treats the defensive problem of deterrence. We have reached the point where it is aggressive to think defensively.