Volume 18, Number 12 · June 29, 1972
The New Shape of Nixon's World
By I.F. Stone
In his newly published memoirs[1] General Taylor says that 'deterrence depends upon a belief approaching certainty that our leaders and our people will risk war and even survival to aid an ally who is the victim of attack.' This one sentence, from his penultimate chapter 'Lessons From Vietnam,' lights up a landscape of military thinking and planning which is usually kept murkily hidden from public view. That one quiet phrase 'and even survival' reveals how much our military—and political—leadership may be prepared to gamble in order to enforce the Pax Americana. It suggests how little difference the apocalyptic dimensions of thermonuclear weapons have made in their traditional conception of machismo.
Feature, 4347 words
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