Rethinking National Security

The touchstone for our nation's security concept-the containment of Soviet military and ideological power-is gone. The primary threat cited over forty years in justification for most of our military budget, bases and overseas assistance is gone. The principal prism through which we viewed most of our worldwide diplomatic activities and alliances is gone. That they are gone is cause for rejoicing in celebration of peace and freedom. The search for a new national security focus has begun, but if the president cannot soon lead the way to a consensus among our national security decision-makers on credible new goals to guide our basic foreign policy and military planning for the long term, the current strategic vacuum is likely to be filled not only haphazardly but unwisely as well.

II

Unfortunately neither the leadership nor the consensus has emerged thus far in this country, even on the need for a new national thesis, much less on its content. Warnings that the Soviet Union remains the foremost threat to our national way of life continue to emanate from high places in Washington, particularly in the Department of Defense. This is not wholly surprising. The Soviets remain the only nation on earth capable of bringing about our physical destruction. Soviet military weapons and advisers can still be found in trouble spots from Cuba to Vietnam. The size and irreversibility of current Soviet arms reductions have been questioned. The Soviets have been known in the past to alter course unpredictably and to try deceiving, dividing and lulling the West by putting on a temporarily peaceful face.

Moreover, it is argued, the recent Soviet change of position has been led by one mortal human being whose continuation in power cannot be guaranteed. Growing instability and separatist tendencies in a vast nation planted thick with nuclear missiles and armed forces are surely not cause for Western complacency. No one knows whether there is a limit to the number of defections, desertions, demonstrations and setbacks that the Kremlin can stand before a violent reaction would be triggered. Nor does anyone know whether some future turmoil in the Baltic republics, border conflict in the Balkans or ethnic violence in the newly liberated but still wobbly nations of Eastern and central Europe could escalate to a point where both Soviet and Western forces would feel obligated to intervene, not necessarily on the same side.