Collective Insecurity

The newest wrinkle in anti-Communist studies is the intellectual popular front—embracing not divergent sectors of the Left, but yoking elements of Left and Right. The participants are cerebral conservatives and unsentimental Liberals who believe domestic issues will mean little if the world should be engulfed by Communism. Some excellent preliminary results have rewarded this unusual communion. The general program of the Foreign Policy Research Institute is an outstanding example, as are the Institute-sponsored books Protracted Conflict and A Forward Strategy for America. The paperback American Strategy in the Nuclear Age and the recently published National Security (assembled by the Georgetown Center for Strategic Studies) are other instances of successful collaboration.

Such undertakings serve several useful purposes. They stress the common interest of all Americans in throwing back the menace of Communism; they give credit where due to those Liberals who dissent from prevailing lunacies; and they give the “hard” view an entree into Establishment circles which it otherwise might not receive. The United Nations Reconsidered demonstrates all of these advantages. Raymond A. Moore Jr. has gathered together a collection of speeches and articles, primarily from Establishment sources, pointing up the severe limitations of the UN. The book includes informative statements by Max Ascoli, Senators George Aiken and Henry Jackson, James Byrnes, the Earl of Home, and Charles de Gaulle. Also reproduced are essays by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, Senator J. William Fulbright, Harold Macmillan and Hamilton Fish Armstrong, worth reading for occasional cautionary insights. Although nothing in the volume will come as news to informed conservatives, it is a convenient source for such important documents as the Jackson and Home speeches and the Advisory Opinion of the World Court concerning the UN “bond issue.” And Liberals who would automatically dismiss a critique of the UN by Barry Goldwater will no doubt be more receptive to similar counsel from their own favorites.

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M. Stanton Evans

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The newest wrinkle in anti-Communist studies is the intellectual popular front—embracing not divergent sectors of the Left, but yoking elements of Left and Right. The participants are cerebral conservatives and unsentimental Liberals who believe domestic issues will mean little if the world should be engulfed by Communism. Some excellent preliminary results have rewarded this unusual communion. The general program of the Foreign Policy Research Institute is an outstanding example, as are the Institute-sponsored books Protracted Conflict and A Forward Strategy for America. The paperback American Strategy in the Nuclear Age and the recently published National Security (assembled by the Georgetown Center for Strategic Studies) are other instances of successful collaboration.

Such undertakings serve several useful purposes. They stress the common interest of all Americans in throwing back the menace of Communism; they give credit where due to those Liberals who dissent from prevailing lunacies; and they give the “hard” view an entree into Establishment circles which it otherwise might not receive. The United Nations Reconsidered demonstrates all of these advantages. Raymond A. Moore Jr. has gathered together a collection of speeches and articles, primarily from Establishment sources, pointing up the severe limitations of the UN. The book includes informative statements by Max Ascoli, Senators George Aiken and Henry Jackson, James Byrnes, the Earl of Home, and Charles de Gaulle. Also reproduced are essays by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, Senator J. William Fulbright, Harold Macmillan and Hamilton Fish Armstrong, worth reading for occasional cautionary insights. Although nothing in the volume will come as news to informed conservatives, it is a convenient source for such important documents as the Jackson and Home speeches and the Advisory Opinion of the World Court concerning the UN “bond issue.” And Liberals who would automatically dismiss a critique of the UN by Barry Goldwater will no doubt be more receptive to similar counsel from their own favorites.