What We're Fighting For

And What We've Lost

I was reading an old essay by physicist Hans Bethe on the hydrogen bomb (1950) that made me nostalgic for a time when the U.S. stood for something more than naked power. Here’s part of what Bethe wrote in his essay:

What do we stand for in our conflict with Russia? We believe in personal liberty and human dignity, the value and importance of the individual, sincerity and openness in the dealings between men and between nations, prosperity for all, and peace based on mutual trust. Many of these values are denied and suppressed by the dictatorship of the Kremlin, and others, as far as we can see, are given only lip service.

What we deeply disagree with are the methods which the Russian Government uses in pursuing its aims and which it believes to be necessary in the “initial phase” of communism which by now has lasted thirty-three years. The regimentation of the private lives of all citizens, the systematic education toward spying upon one’s friends, the ruthless shifting of populations, regardless of their personal ties and preferences, the labor camps with their inhuman treatment, the suppression of free speech, the falsification of history in dealing both with its own citizens and with other nations, the violation of promises and treaties and the distorted interpretations of these violations which are offered in excuse—these are some of the Soviet methods which are hateful to the people of the Western World. But they are methods, not aims, and if we wish to fight against them, our methods must be clean.

Imagine that. A desire for “peace based on mutual trust.” The idea that “our methods must be clean” in the fight against totalitarianism. A commitment to “prosperity for all” and the “value and importance of the individual.” Nobly said.

Hans Bethe in 1996. (AP Photo, Michael Okoniewski)

Yet, as I read Bethe’s words from 1950, it made me reflect on how far the USA has fallen into the trap of “might makes right” and the cult of the leader. Think about some of the methods Bethe accuses Stalin’s regime of using, and what the Trump administration is up to today. Today we’re told to say something (to the authorities) if we see something. In short, spying is almost a patriotic duty. In World War II, of course, America had its own “shifting of populations,” allegedly justified by wartime exigency (and let’s not forget everything that happened to Native Americans). Today, we’re witnessing anew the demonization of immigrants and the opening of detention camps as ICE rapidly expands its dragnet across America. Free speech is suppressed, and not for the first time, e.g. labeling speech that’s critical of the Israeli government as “anti-Semitic” and therefore racist and subject to possible prosecution. This is true even if the speaker is an American Jew!

I could go on, but many of the methods assigned to the USSR and deplored by Bethe in 1950 are increasingly features of the Trump administration today. Again, there was no magical time in America’s past when we lived up to our high ideals—but at least we used to have high ideals.

There’s a scene in “Three Days of the Condor” where Cliff Robertson’s CIA deputy director talks to John Houseman’s character, whose experience dates to World War II and the OSS days. Robertson asks Houseman if he misses the action of that war. Houseman replies: Not the action but the moral clarity of those days.

I miss the moral clarity of a time when the USA could plausibly see itself as a defender of the free world against a far darker alternative. Far too often today, we are the darker alternative.