Unreliable observer
Sir: A search of the Commentary files has failed to uncover a single article by a 'New Right Cold War warrior' urging the West to push the nuclear button, as Peregrine Worsthorne fancies (`The unasked question about the Cold War', 14 September). Sir Peregrine is now embarrassed to admit that he himself once endorsed the mad logic of Mutual Assured Destruction; had he actu- ally been consulting Commentary at the time, any number of articles in its pages would have enlightened him to his folly, and spared us his preening regrets (`It makes me quite sick to think about the hawkish leading article I would have writ- ten,' etc.). The authors of those articles argued the utter bankruptcy of a doctrine which presented the West with an impossi- ble choice between, on the one hand, sur- render to Soviet nuclear blackmail and, on the other, mutual incineration (Sir Pere- grine's term) — and went on to propose politically and morally superior alterna- tives. As for what was exercising the mind of America's adversary in the same period, Richard Pipes's 'Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Can Fight and Win a Nuclear War' (Commentary, July 1977) is the classic source. But why should anyone expect mere evidence, then or now, to sway an observer who also seems prepared to believe that Russian 'literature, art, music, theatre, opera, and ballet' were 'amazingly healthy' after 70 years of communism?
Brenda Brown
Commentary, 165 East 56 Street, New York 10022
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