NATIONS: COMMENTS ON THE ORIGINS OF THE SITUATION by Robert Gray
As Dave Windsor aptly points out, it is useless for C.N.D. to condemn the cold war's effects without attacking its causes, These are, however, somewhat more complex than the wickedness of imperialism. A long-tern, world-historical perspective may well see the basicconflict as being between the developing nations' aspirations towards “social progress" and the "rich" nations! entrenched international power, But a striking feature of the cold war is the immediacy of the threat: witness all those funny, and notso-funny jokes about the four-minute warning,
Once a squabble reaches a “you-started-it" level, an agreed solution is extremely difficult. Regardless of who "started" the cold war = and it is arguable that Stalin was as guilty of provocative imperialism as any Western leader - the urgent task is to stop it. Then we can fight our political battles for socialism in a saner, more constructive atmosphere. In the words of Ernst Fischer, the distinguished Austrian Marxist, "Human consciousness has lagged far behind technical progresSee...eHven if there were life after an atomic war, this life,eessco., would have nothing whatever to do with the vision of a socialist world....To prevent war is therefore the duty of all reasonable men under all social systems." 'The Necessity of Art, pe 215.)!
Whatever leaders' motives in forming alliances, once these exist, they become motivating factors in their own right, operating with their ow inner machine-logic. 1914 was a grim warnings political choice abdicated to the military machines. If this happens again, there will be no return from the trenches, no chance to build a better world. Unless popular protest can change the whole pattern into which world affairs are frozen, no amount of condemation of imperialiam will help the world's underprivileged masses. The removal of the constricting threat of nuclear war which emanates from the Soviet bloc, as well as from the West - will liberate human energies, to be more fully applied to the tasks of building a socialist world.