In other words, most of the national foreign-policy decisions at the highest level have been dictated in recent years by strategic considerations. They have been National Security Council decisions, not Cabinet-type decisions of the kind which might have been made in the years of William McKinley or Warren G. Harding. Yet, even though the decisions have been strategic in type, the propaganda implementation of these decisions has fallen for the greater part on the State Department and on the economic aid program facilities, not on the military. The military have been pretty strictly confined to those aspects of propaganda which directly pertain to combat areas. By 1953 U.S. leaders had begun to understand the situation with which they had been dealing since 1947 and in light of that necessarily belated but correct appreciation of their own position, the William Jackson Committee began to recommend that propaganda policy be written not as something self-contained, but be considered an integral part of every other U.S. Government decision possessing world situation or news impact.
The Cold War and the Home Front.
If it is true that the United States is engaged in a major struggle, if it is further true that this struggle has no visible end, if this struggle threatens all of us and our children as well with lifetimes of tension and violent deaths under ultra-destructive weapons, one may quite reasonably ask the question, Which is the better reaction for the bulk of the American population: normality, emotional health, mild irresponsibility, and the stockpiling of nervous and physical strength for a time of trial which may lie far ahead; or, alternatively, tension now, worry now, responsibility now, fatigue now, all the way through from the uncertain present across the bitter and perilous future to the months of near-Armageddon which may lie fifteen, twenty, or thirty years ahead?
Sadly and seriously, with no attempt at cleverness or mockery, a staff officer could argue today that the American people should leave their worries to their leaders so as to be strong when the time of trouble comes. In the field of civil defense, for instance, it is grotesque to spend billions on offense and little on the saving of American lives. On second glance, this may not be so grotesque after all. The technological advance of fissionable and thermonuclear weapons is so rapid, the development of guided missiles and other carrying instruments so swift and so unpredictable, that a 1955 model civil-defense system might become a fool's paradise by 1960. If this be true, it is better to live as well as we can to maintain the profession of arms at an adequate level, to hope (quite irrationally) for the best, and to let the dead of the future bury their dead as best they may.[47]
Alternatives to Victory and Defeat.
The alternatives to victory and defeat are forms of survival of the competitors. The entire health of each competing civilization matters. It is obvious enough to Americans that we must remain prosperous, free, constitutional, democratic. It goes without saying that we must, as far as our individual fortunes permit us, retain our belief in God and derive from religious beliefs those spiritual strengths not available to the Communists. What is not often raised is the equally important factor of the conquest of probability.
Wars are much more often won by people who are sure they are going to win than by people who know that they would like to win, but who think at the same time that they will probably be defeated. The over-confidence of a Cortez or a Mao Tse-tung may seem insane to many of us. With the passion for security so prevalent in individual and national lives, both the Western powers and the individuals comprising them grotesquely exaggerate the margin of safety which they need in which to survive.
Part of this springs from the fact that much of our civilization is not forward-looking, that neither young Americans nor old Americans have a clear-cut or hopeful picture of what the world should be, will be, and must be, by A.D. 2055. On the Communist side it is frequent, but not universal, to discover that the best Communist cadres are made up of men who are dead sure that Communism will win, who are equally sure that Communism does not have to be right in order to win, and who are sure that "objectively and scientifically" (whatever that may mean), the Communist system is almost certainly destined to succeed. If Communism cannot get out of succeeding, the responsibility of the individual Communist becomes bearable; he is still seriously and tragically responsible for the expediting or the delaying of the inevitable, but he does not take the mantle of God or Karl Marx and state that this is the world as he wishes it to be and that the world of his desires will come into existence if, and only if, he fulfills his personal responsibilities to the utmost.
In Asia, perhaps more than in Europe, there are many persons who are turning toward Communism, not because they think it is good or just, or even because it is powerful, but simply because it is likely. Every individual in his own life has known that he cannot undo the passage of time, the aging of his body, the death of his loved ones, the loss of opportunities which might have been seized, or even his own death; in their individual lives men of all nations perform the feat, characteristic of the human being and apparently shared by no other species of life, of living from day to day in a constant reconciliation of the past and present with their own estimate of the probable future. At times in history, that which should happen seems to be unleashed like spiritual lightning and men rally in frenzy around causes which for the year or the decade seem inspiring, terrifyingly beautiful, and within human reach; through most of history, that which is apt to occur provides a more sober guide to the future and men prepare to live in accordance with its standards.