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106  Getting Out from Under
     The Shadow of the Bomb
     The Washington Post,  Saturday, July 13, 1968

     President Johnson deserves every accolade of a tormented humanity
for his recent initiatives toward containment of the nuclear terror
that hangs over the world.  If the U.S.-Soviet talks on nuclear
disarmament succeed, his Administration will surely be remembered
above all as the turning point toward world survival, a climax to    
overshadow all the other magnificent blunders and accomplishments of
the most paradoxical President of U.S. history.  The arms race has,
for a generation, robbed an impatient species of the main fruits of
technological progress.  It has blown the minds of our adolescents
who see only "blah" for a future.  It has stolen the bricks and mortar
and know-how from the rebuilding of the cities.

     These costs of terror and depletion are known to all and 
appreciated by few; they have certainly received only an incidental 
priority of national action.  Indeed, we must ask an awkward question:
"Are the American people, or the Russian, really ready to talk peace?"
The President  and the statesmen he can recruit for this noblest and
most difficult mission may have a clear vision of an unshackled world,
and in striving for it they may lead the people--but not too far, and
particularly not in a election year so full of calculated confusion and
evasion.

     Thirty years of enthrallment to military security, major and
minor wars, Redhunts, our own use of nuclear weapons (yes: Hiroshima
and Nagasaki) and unremitting anxiety about Armageddon have left an
indelible mark on the American psyche.  The scars on the other side
run far deeper: besides their history of Stalinist and Hitlerian 
genocide, a nuclear No 2 has to try harder.

     Soviet leaders have been quick to point out the many serious 
conflicts that still rend the world scene--not that we can have 
forgotten.  These issues of political substance resonate with 
ever-hardening psychic attitudes in a self-perpetuating cycle of 
mutual insult and injury.

     The turning point for the Russians may have been Sputnik, which
symbolized their achievement of technical parity with the West in a
major area of national security.  Since then, they could afford to
relax  and begun to do so while the major powers approached a more
stable equilibrium of mutual nuclear deterrence.

     Many psychiatrists have pointed out that hostility, once  
established, is a disease hard to remedy.  Certainly, to berate the 
anxiety and prejudice of the radical right and Red-hating movements does
nothing to alleviate their deep-rooted appeal for fear.  Rational
argument is not necessarily better at alleviating political paranoia.

     The only reliable approach to alleviating group hostility, 
according to the studies of social psychologists, is cooperation in 
reaching superordinate goals.  Most of us already perceive such a goal:
sheer survival, for no one wins a  thermonuclear game.  This may be
too abstract for universal acceptance; the threat had to start speaking
in Chinese to be sufficiently widely understood.

     Arms-control negotiations are a hazardous undertaking in the 
present climate.  They may be far worse than futile if, as may happen, 
the talks themselves generate new confrontations and misunderstandings.
They will go on for a long time, and it is doubtful that major 
fundamental settlements can be reached before the nations become more
accustomed to mutual confidence.  The issue of what to talk about is 
already being exploited as a bargaining point: for our we should try
to focus on irritating and dangerous issues, like "the threat for 
mankind from the use of chemical and biological weapons"--Kosygin--which
are still peripheral to the vital strategic interests of the major
powers.

     This issue, above all, can also be related to another 
superordinate goal, the dedication of biological research to 
global freedom from disease.

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