Waging Peace

In a series of speeches and statements last week, the nation's top military men and its top civilian officers set out to reassure Europeans, and anyone else who was listening, that: 1) the U.S. isn't trying to pick a war with Russia but 2) should war come, the West could defend itself without matching Russia man for man and gun for gun.

"We are not engaged in war, but in peace," Secretary of State Acheson told a congressional committee. The cold war "is not a good phrase and might well be dropped." In St. Louis, President Truman declared: "I wish to emphasize that the objective of our efforts is peace, not conflict. What we seek is not domination over any other nation or people, but simply the creation of a just international order." He denounced Russia for "fomenting aggression and preparing for war," but used the word "peace" 29 times in his speech.

Peace Through Strength. What was the reason for all of these avowals of peaceful intentions? U.S. citizens generally knew that the U.S. would never provoke a war, and cheerfully assumed that everybody else knew it too. But did they? Acheson, in London, had discerned a European concern over the way that U.S. military men --arguing before Congress for arms to Europe--had stressed Russian strength, Western weakness and the threat of war. "Neutralism" was spreading in Europe; it was largely an indication that Europe was trying to stand on its own feet and think for itself and that was a good sign; but to the extent that it represented a European desire to find a neutral corner away from two quarreling big powers, it had to be answered. "Peace through strength," and not "cold war," was the new slogan in Washington.

The second reassurance was meant for both European skeptics and American taxpayers. How could the West possibly defend itself against Russia's massed millions? Last week officials spelled out more explicitly the U.S. answer. Western forces, said Secretary of the Army Frank Pace Jr. in a speech at West Point, must "be prepared to meet these masses of heavily mechanized ground forces with smaller numbers of highly scientific ground troops equipped with revolutionary new weapons."

With improvements in recoilless weapons, the bazooka, the shaped charge and "the more recent developments with regard to guided missiles and rockets, target-seeking equipment and the possibilities of tactical use of atomic weapons," said Pace, "it may well be that tank warfare as we have known it will soon be obsolete."

Said J.C.S. Chairman Omar Bradley: "A year ago, the successful defense of Western Europe, in the face of a coordinated enemy attack, was a remote possibility," but now an "optimistic estimate" was possible. Acheson said the West's "real strength . . . lies in its inventiveness, initiative and technology." Defense Secretary Louis Johnson added: "With the strides our military research is making, we don't need to match Russia man for man, division for division."

Pushbutton War. Talk of "revolutionary new weapons" sound uneasily like the old pushbutton warfare pipe dream once charged to the Air Force. It also was likely to give rise to some of the old Maginot Line thinking, of the superiority of the defense, and the delusion of security at cut rates. But the fact was that while the Army still had no atomic artillery under test, it did have some fine new weapons, including some that might spell the doom of the dreaded tank. Beneath all of last week's sales talk, though it was so conceitedly ebullient as to raise suspicions of overselling, the hum of scientific progress in weaponeering was real, and the best news in months.

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