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ROBERT SCHUETTINGER, F. J. Johnson’s “ No Substitute for Victory ” - Ralph Raico, New Individualist Review [1961]

Edition used:

New Individualist Review, editor-in-chief Ralph Raico, introduction by Milton Friedman (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981).

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F. J. Johnson’s “No Substitute for Victory”

ROBERT SCHUETTINGER*

IN No Substitute for Victory1 Frank J. Johnson, a former naval intelligence specialist on Soviet affairs, proposes what he believes to be the only strategy by which the United States can be certain of maintaining both peace and freedom. He asks us to deliberately adopt a policy of victory over Communism; only such a policy, he holds, can prevent an atomic holocaust.

By using the phrase “victory over Communism,” Mr. Johnson is not suggesting that we conquer the Soviet Union and make it a United States satellite; what he does propose is that we should pursue “creative initiatives” (to borrow a pet Liberal term). These initiatives will be aggressive in character and will be designed to convince the Soviet rulers that it is in their own interest to terminate the Cold War and to dismantle the world-wide Communist conspiracy. Mr. Johnson believes this can be accomplished if we recognize the fact that “peaceful co-existence,” as propounded by Khrushchev, is a fraud, that the Soviets are willing to negotiate and to trade territory back and forth in the “war zone” (the non-Communist world) but not in the “peace zone” (the Communist world). By using paramilitary warfare, subversion, terror, sabotage, strikes, guerilla techniques and other means short of nuclear war, the United States could carry the Cold War to the Soviet Union by invading the “peace zone” and endangering the security of the Communist rule in the mother country. Our object should be to encourage rebellion in the satellites and thus make Eastern Europe a liability and not an asset to the Russian government. The price for ending these pressures on the Communist bloc will be iron-clad guarantees from the Politburo that they, in turn, will abandon their adventurous foreign policy. Our hope will be that the peoples under Communist rule will eventually achieve their own freedom, either through peaceful means or by force.

The alternative to this policy—appeasement—must ultimately lead to a nuclear war since the Soviet Union will not attack the United States until the greater part of the world has been brought under Communist control by paramilitary means. An appeasement policy by the West will allow this timetable to be carried out; a firm counter-offensive, however, will prevent the Soviets from reaching the take-off stage of their plan for world conquest. Readers of this book will understand that we are not left with only two choices (“Red or dead”). There is a third course, one that will enable us to avoid both war and submission, and Mr. Johnson has outlined that course with clarity. It only remains for Mr. Kennedy to follow it.

No Substitute for Victory is aimed directly at the person who must ultimately be convinced in a democracy: the average voter. This is both a strength and a weakness. It is of necessity plainly written and so contains a number of over-simplifications. The emphasis on the essential un-Americanism of Communism—its European origins—could, for instance, have been easily omitted. Although it must be classed as an introduction to its subject2 it is a solid and generally reliable work; it contains almost none of the unfortunate vulgarizations perpetrated by so many of the “authorities” on Communism currently cropping up all over the lecture circuit. These half-educated, unthinking popularizers may be well-meaning, but their wild outcries have the effect of obscuring and even discrediting the serious proposals of reputable spokesmen for an anti-Communist strategy. For this and other reasons, they are doing far more harm than good. It is even more unfortunate, however, that most of the West’s intellectuals (who lack the excuse of ignorance) still believe that “peaceful co-existence,” as defined by Khrushchev, is possible with the present governments of the U.S.S.R. and Communist China.

Although the West is weakened in its struggle by the (let us hope) temporary neutrality of so many of its finest minds, we should probably not be too surprised by this phenomenon. After all, the greatest part of Europe’s intellectuals believed, at one time, in the flatness of the earth, just as they once fervently upheld chattle slavery, blood-letting and leeches, witchcraft and the theory that the sun revolves around the earth. History demonstrates, however, that even intellectuals can learn, so we can hope that hard experience will eventually triumph over wishful thinking and that the myth of “co-existence” will someday go the way of the Ptolemaic theory. Mr. Johnson’s book will do much to hasten this process.

[* ] Robert Schuettinger is an Associate Editor of New Individualist Review.

[1 ]No Substitute for Victory, by Frank J. Johnson, with introduction by Admiral Arleigh Burke, (Regnery: Chicago, 1962), 230 pp.

[2 ] Most readers of this review will be familiar with a more complete work, A Forward Strategy for America, by Strauz-Hupe, Kintner and Possony (Harper, New York, 1961).