moralism in domestic affairs. No Western country equals thenUS in the moralistic approach to human behavior: sex,nliquor, gambling, reproduction, and now, life-threateningly,ndrugs, among others. Characteristically, we employ thenverbiage of war in our domestic encounters with socialnproblems. It’s forever war: against poverty, illiteracy, environmentalnpollution, drugs, abortion. We invoked thensovereign state in our war against alcohol 70 years ago, andnunder the unlamented Eighteenth Amendment we becamenfirst among heavy-drinking peoples. Alcohol does indeednpresent a problem, but nothing like the problem that wasnpresented in the 1920’s by the noxious effluvia of Prohibition:ngang wars and corruption threatening police and otherncivil departments, not to forget the coarsening of those atnthe bottom who, by the tens of millions, bought bootleg.nDrugs are threatening a similar fate at the present time.nCocaine is without doubt a dangerous drug, as is alcohol;nbut it is unlikely that the substance is doing as much damagento America as are the social poisons which attend itsndistribution. Perhaps in a couple more decades we shall benable to look back on drug wars, drug terrorism, and thencorruption of millions of Americans each year as we nownlook back on the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago.nWith domestic moralism we march forth with one handnon the Bible, the other on a legal subpoena, invoking thenalready despotic national state. With foreign policy moralism,nit is one hand on the Bible, the other on an ordering-upnof the Marines. The results have not been pretty. PresidentnCarter ushered out his administration with Desert One innIran; a more appalling instance of unguided bumbling innwar would be hard to think of But Reagan and his chiefsncame close in Grenada, the follow-up report on which is stillna tightly guarded secret in the Pentagon. It’s probably just asnwell. From the unclassified information that came out, thenstory is grim enough, ranging from the inability to getninterservice radio communication all the way to a Navynhospital ship’s refusal to allow an Army helicopter filled withnwounded to land on its helicopter deck. The Marines innLebanon, sent there for the “presence” they could establishnwhere Moslems and Christians intersected; a Navy destitutenof minesweepers in the Persian Gulf and now with the Starknand the Vincennes on its naval conscience; each is antechnological tribute to the immortal military acronym:nKISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid. Awesome was the chairmannof the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Crowley, in his bland insistencenthat there was no fault accruing to the Americans in thenVincennes disaster.nWe boast about the $300 billion a year we put intonnational defense, and not improperly so. National defense isnabsolutely vital in this world. The dangerous Cold War ofnthe past 40 years is by no means over. Whatever glasnostnand perestroika may do for the problems of the civilnbureaucracy, neither can or presumably will much affect thenmilitary bureaucracy. The real power in the Soviet Unionnsince Stalin has been the military. That hasn’t changednsignificantly, if at all, under Gorbachev.nOur relationship with Communist Russia will remainntense, something calling for incessant vigil. But it is importantnto keep in mind that the Soviet Union is a militarized,ntotalitarian national state; it is not well seen as a Vatican inncharge of the morals and faith of proletariats of the world.nThat may be what Trotsky, Bukharin, and others had innmind, but the Moscow Trials and ensuing execution ofnmillions put an end to any possibility of that becoming real.nBack in the 1950’s scores of groups in this country, all fromnthe far right, argued that a seamless web connected thenKremlin with every manifestation of communism or socialismnon the globe. The very real hostility between Yugoslavianand the Soviets, between Albania and the Soviets, shouldnhave prepared our minds for the split between CommunistnChina and Communist Russia. The bitter hatred betweennthe two empires goes back hundreds of years. But in manyncircles years were required before the reality of the deepnchasm between China and Russia was accepted. There wereneven Americans who believed that Doctor Zhivago was anKremlin plant arranged through agent Pasternak. The JohnnBirch Society, or certainly its leader, Robert Welch, declarednthat Eisenhower was a willing front for the Communists,nwho were the actual governors of the United States. And sonon.nWe really can’t afford that kind of lunacy during the restnof this century and into the next. Had Congress and thenWhite House been filled with Robert Welches in then1950’s, the Soviet Union might have struck us with ancorporal’s guard, for American military power would surelynhave been fully occupied in sniffing out Marxist satanism atnhome, in England, in Sweden, in Tierra del Fuego —neverywhere except in the Kremlin. Postmedieval Europenfought many of its political and economic troubles by thenexpedient of discovering and hanging or burning witches.nWe can’t afford that kind of indulgence — which is in anynevent unconstitutional, thank heaven.nThe Cold War is still very far from being a chimera.nStalin commenced that war at Teheran while the war withnGermany was still in progress. We started to demobilize asncompletely as we had in 1919, but were saved from it by thenvery nakedness of Soviet gluttony in Europe. Only ournexclusive possession of the atom bomb at that time preventednStalin from ordering the Red Army into all Germany andnFrance and the Low Countries. What else could havenstopped him? We don’t have the luxury of exclusivenpossession any longer, and it is unrealistic to think thatnanything, whether a thousand-ship navy or SDI, is everngoing to restore that monopoly to us. What remains to us isnfirst a foreign policy that doesn’t go anywhere, pay any price,nbear any burden, etc.; that doesn’t punish, even destroy,nnatural allies by allowing some of our minorities’ moralndudgeon over this or that unpleasantness in the ally to takenover; and that contents itself with the constitutionallynenjoined “common defense”—with unrelaxing attention tonthe Soviet Union, the only nation in the world at this hournthat can conceivably present a threat to the US. Our secondnneed, and it becomes more grievous all the time, is a militarynbureaucracy taken out of its gridlock. Desert One, Grenada,nLebanon, the Persian Gulf, Iran-contra, along with thenshocking revelations about the Sergeant Yorks, the GeneralnBradley troop carriers, the B-1 bomber, and the like, allnattest to the fact that we are still crippled by a militarynseemingly resistant to mere outpourings of money. Thenwarnings that Eisenhower voiced in his famous farewell arenmore pertinent today than they were then.nnnDECEMBER 19881 13n