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Dr. Pinderhughes' paper raises for me the question whether nations need enemies. Is it somehow essential to their national identity? As Dr. Mack has pointed out, in a war, of course, we tend to dehumanize the enemy. It makes it easier to kill them and easier to run the risk of being killed yourself. Even in peacetime, you may remember that Senator Vandenburg told President Truman that he could not get the Marshall Plan through Congress unless he built up the Red menace. So there is always this incentive to find an outside enemy. And, of course, one is very handy when you are trying to get through a several-billion-dollar defense budget. In the absence of a bogey man the budget might have far tougher sledding.
Our problem today is that we are running out of acceptable enemies. At one point we could count on Red China, and Dean Rusk could talk about the specter of a billion Chinese armed with nuclear weapons. Today we have a billion Chinese and they are armed with nuclear weapons, but they scare nobody but the Russians. Similarly, we have the task of trying to rationalize the use of force in our foreign policy. We have to find a foe worthy of our steel. Clearly it was not Vietnam, nor was it Grenada. It is not Nicaragua. We have to find a worthy enemy. So the entire burden has now fallen on the Soviets. I do not know what we would do without them.