In the present heated debate over the justice and sanity of thermonuclear defense—a debate already well advanced in Great Britain and gaining headway in the United States—it often appears that nuclear realists and nuclear pacifists deliberately misunderstand one another. There is a disturbing tendency to bypass concrete discussion and to scatter energy in personal acrimony and repetition of cliches.

Apparently the problem is simply that each position sees its opposite as an absolute antithesis. The nuclear pacifist tends to regard nuclear realism as a reckless and wanton invitation to the total destruction of civilization. The nuclear realist tends to look upon nuclear pacifism as a sentimental and foolhardy summons to total capitulation to Communism. As a matter of fact, search as we will, there do not seem to be any serious advocates of either extreme. The opponents so conceived are caricatures. No one aspires to total destruction or to total surrender. Each side believes precisely in the feasibility of its strategy for avoiding both catastrophes. There are, of course, important differences in the weight given to the two extreme possibilities and the question as to which is the worse fate, total destruction or total surrender, is an urgent subject for debate.