 This is Classics of Liberty from Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute, narrated by Caleb Brown. Today's classic is Barry Goldwater's 1960 book, The Conscience of a Conservative, part 3. In the final portions of Barry Goldwater's movement making 1960 book, he turns his pen from domestic affairs and the philosophy of limited government to the realm of foreign affairs and the supposed Soviet menace. Clarence Mannion, ghostwriter Leo Brent Bozell, Senator Goldwater and the Circle's supporters believed that Communism was in fact an international conspiracy for world domination. The global powers which remained free simply must wage the Cold War toward victory. While New Deal Democrats and liberal internationalist Eisenhower Republicans joined hands to grasp for peace and goodwill, Mannionite conservatives saw all such attempts as concessions to a very real and dangerous enemy. Staking out the road to victory, Goldwater advised Americans to rally behind an offensive and global war against Communism, which would not merely match the Soviets and their cronies, but positively roll back the Communist lines. In their enumerated list of foreign policy musts, the Goldwater clique virtually demanded the very sort of imperialism abroad that they so despised at home. The Cold War specter of Communist imperialism terrified Mannion Goldwater conservatives so thoroughly that they rushed to beat back the shadowy Hydra with a slew of expansionary, imperialistic foreign policy demands. Convinced as they were that the Cold War was an existential crisis like none other Americans had faced, Goldwater's warrior voters built much of the movement with a vigorous, though decidedly anti-libertarian appeal to American nationalism and national power. During the Cold War period, American military power reached heights unknown in world history. With the Soviet Union dissolved in Goldwater's Communist demon long slain, the world's most powerful state remains. The Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater, Part 3, Chapter 10, The Soviet Menace And still the awful truth remains. We can establish the domestic conditions for maximizing freedom along the lines I have indicated and yet become slaves. We can do this by losing the Cold War to the Soviet Union. American freedom has always depended to an extent on what is happening beyond our shores. Even in Ben Franklin's day, Americans had to reckon with foreign threats. Our forebearers knew that keeping a republic meant above all keeping it safe from foreign transgressors. They knew that a people cannot live and work freely and develop national institutions conducive to freedom except in peace and with independence. In those early days, the threat to peace and independence was very real. We were a fledgling nation and the slightest misstep or faint hearts would have laid us open to the ravages of predatory European powers. It was only because wise and courageous men understood that defensive freedom required risks and sacrifice, as well as their belief in it, that we survived the crisis of national infancy. As we grew stronger and as the oceans continued to interpose a physical barrier between ourselves and European militarism, the foreign danger gradually receded. Though we always had to keep a weather eye on would-be conquerors, our independence was acknowledged and peace, unless we chose otherwise, was established. Indeed, after the Second World War, we were not only master of our own destiny, we were master of the world. With a monopoly on atomic weapons and with a conventional military establishment superior to any in the world, America was, in relative and absolute terms, the most powerful nation the world had ever known. American freedom was as secure as at any time in our history. Now, a decade and a half later, we have come full circle and our national existence is once again threatened as it was in the early days of the Republic. Though we are still strong physically, we are in clear and imminent danger of being overwhelmed by alien forces. We are confronted by a revolutionary world movement that possesses not only the will to dominate absolutely every square mile of the globe, but increasingly the capacity to do so. A military power that rivals our own, political warfare and propaganda skills that are superior to ours, an international fifth column that operates conspiratorially in the heart of our defenses, an ideology that imbues its adherence with a sense of historical mission, and all of these resources controlled by a ruthless despotism that brooks no deviation from the revolutionary course. This threat, moreover, is growing day by day, and it has now reached the point where American leaders, both political and intellectual, are searching desperately for means of appeasing or accommodating the Soviet Union as the price of national survival. The American people are being told that, however valuable their freedom may be, it is even more important to live. A craven fear of death is entering the American consciousness. So much so that many recently felt that honoring the chief despot himself was the price we had to pay to avoid nuclear destruction. The temptation is strong to blame the deterioration of America's fortunes on the Soviet Union's acquisition of nuclear weapons. But this is self-delusion. The rot had set in. The crumbling of our position was already observable, long before the communists detonated their first atom bomb. Even in the early 1950s, when America still held unquestioned nuclear superiority, it was clear that we were losing the Cold War. Time and again in my campaign speeches of 1952, I warned my fellow Arizonans that American foreign policy has brought us from a position of undisputed power in seven short years to the brink of possible disaster. And in the succeeding seven years that trend, because its cause remains, has continued. The real cause of the deterioration can be simply stated. Our enemies have understood the nature of the conflict and we have not. They are determined to win the conflict and we are not. I hesitate to restate the obvious, to say again what has been said so many times before by so many others, that the communists' aim is to conquer the world. I repeat it because it is the beginning and the end of our knowledge about the conflict between East and West. I repeat it because I fear that however often we have given lip service to this central political fact of our time, very few of us have believed it. If we had, our entire approach to foreign policy over the past 14 years would have been radically different and the course of world events radically changed. If an enemy power is bent on conquering you and proposes to turn all his resources to that end, he is at war with you. And you, unless you contemplate surrender, are at war with him. Moreover, unless you contemplate treason, your objective, like his, will be victory. Not peace, but victory. Now, while traders and perhaps cowards have at times occupied key positions in our government, it is clear that our national leadership over the past 14 years has favored neither surrender nor treason. It is equally clear, however, that our leaders have not made victory the goal of American policy. And the reason that they have not done so, I am saying, is that they have never believed deeply that the communists are in earnest. Our avowed national objective is peace. We have, with great sincerity, waged peace while the communists wage war. We have sought settlements while the communists seek victories. We have tried to pacify the world. The communists mean to own it. Here is why the contest has been an unequal one and why, essentially, we are losing it. Peace, to be sure, is a proper goal for American policy, as long as it is understood that peace is not all we seek. For we do not want the peace of surrender. We want a peace in which freedom and justice will prevail, and that, given the nature of communism, is a peace in which Soviet power will no longer be in a position to threaten us and the rest of the world. A tolerable peace, in other words, must follow victory over communism. We have been 14 years trying to bury that unpleasant fact. It cannot be buried, and any foreign policy that ignores it will lead to our extinction as a nation. We do not, of course, want to achieve victory by force of arms. If possible, overt hostilities should always be avoided. Especially is this so when a shooting war may cause the death of many millions of people, including our own. But we cannot, for that reason, make the avoidance of a shooting war our chief objective. If we do that, if we tell ourselves that it is more important to avoid shooting than to keep our freedom, we are committed to a course that has only one terminal point—surrender. We cannot, by proclamation, make war unthinkable, for it is not unthinkable to the communists. Naturally, they would prefer to avoid war, but they are prepared to risk it in the last analysis to achieve their objectives. We must, in our hearts, be equally dedicated to our objectives. If war is unthinkable to us, but not to them, the famous balance of terror is not a balance at all, but an instrument of blackmail. U.S.-Soviet power may be in balance, but if we and not they rule out the possibility of using that power, the Kremlin can create crisis after crisis and force the U.S., because of our greater fear of war, to back down every time. And it cannot be long before a universal communist empire sits astride the globe. The rallying cry of an appeasement organization portrayed in a recent novel on American politics was, I would rather crawl on my knees to Moscow than die under an atom bomb. This sentiment, of course, repudiates everything that is courageous and honorable and dignified in the human being. We must, as the first step towards saving American freedom, affirm the contrary view and make it the cornerstone of our foreign policy, that we would rather die than lose our freedom. There are ways which I will suggest later on, not easy ways to be sure, in which we may save both our freedom and our lives. But all such suggestions are meaningless and vain unless we first understand what the objective is. We want to stay alive, of course, but more than that we want to be free. We want to have peace, but before that we want to establish the conditions that will make peace tolerable. Like it or not, Eugene Lyons has written, the great and inescapable task of our epoch is not to end the Cold War but to win it. I suggest that we look at America's present foreign policy and ask whether it is conducive to victory. There are several aspects of this policy. Let me measure each of them by the test. Does it help defeat the enemy? Toward victory. By measuring each aspect of our foreign policy against this standard, is it helpful in defeating the enemy? We can understand why the past 14 years have been marked by frustration and failure. We have not gotten ahead because we have been traveling the wrong road. It is less easy to stake out the right road. For in terms of our own experience it is a new road we seek, and one therefore that will hold challenges and perils that are different, though hardly graver, from those with which we are now familiar. Actually the new road is as old as human history. It is the one that successful political and military leaders, having arrived at a dispassionate estimate of the situation, always follow when they are in a war that they mean to win. From our own estimate of the situation, we know the direction we must take, and our standard, is it helpful in defeating communism, will provide guideposts all along the way. There are some that can be observed even now. One, the key guidepost is the objective, and we must never lose sight of it. It is not to wage a struggle against communism, but to win it. Two, our strategy must be primarily offensive in nature. Given the dynamic, revolutionary character of the enemy's challenge, we cannot win merely by trying to hold our own. In addition to paring his blows, we must strike our own. In addition to guarding our frontiers, we must try to puncture his. In addition to keeping the free world free, we must try to make the communist world free. To these ends, we must always try to engage the enemy at times and places and with weapons of our own choosing. Three, we must strive to achieve and maintain military superiority. Mere parity will not do. Since we can never match the communists in manpower, our equipment and weapons must more than offset his advantage in numbers. We must also develop a limited war capacity. For this latter purpose, we should make every effort to achieve decisive superiority in small, clean nuclear weapons. Four, we must make America economically strong. We have already seen why economic energy must be released from government strangulation if individual freedom is to survive. Economic emancipation is equally imperative if the nation is to survive. America's maximum economic power will be forged not under bureaucratic direction, but in freedom. Five, in all of our dealings with foreign nations, we must behave like a great power. Our national posture must reflect strength and confidence and purpose as well as goodwill. We need not be bellicose, but neither should we encourage others to believe that American rights can be violated with impunity. We must protect American nationals and American property and American honor everywhere. We may not make foreign peoples love us, no nation has ever succeeded in that, but we can make them respect us, and respect is the stuff of which enduring friendships and firm alliances are made. Six, we should adopt a discriminating foreign aid policy. American aid should be furnished only to friendly, anti-communist nations that are willing to join with us in the struggle for freedom. Moreover, our aid should take the form of loans or technical assistance, not gifts. And we should insist moreover that such nations contribute their fair share to the common cause. Seven, we should declare the world communist movement and outlaw in the community of civilized nations. Accordingly, we should withdraw diplomatic recognition from all communist governments, including that of the Soviet Union, thereby serving notice on the world that we regard such governments as neither legitimate nor permanent. Eight, we should encourage the captive peoples to revolt against their communist rulers. This policy must be pursued with caution and prudence as well as courage. For while our enslaved friends must be told we are anxious to help them, we should discourage premature uprisings that have no chance of success. The freedom fighters must understand that the time and place and method of such uprisings will be dictated by the needs of an overall world's strategy. To this end, we should establish close liaison with underground leaders behind the iron curtain, furnishing them with printing presses, radios, weapons, instructors, the paraphernalia of a full-fledged resistance. Nine, we should encourage friendly peoples that have the means and desire to do so to undertake offensive operations for the recovery of their homelands. For example, should a revolt occur inside red China, we should encourage and support guerrilla operations on the mainland by the free Chinese. Should the situation develop favorably, we should encourage the South Koreans and South Vietnamese to join free Chinese forces in a combined effort to liberate the enslaved peoples of Asia. Ten, we must ourselves be prepared to undertake military operations against vulnerable communist regimes. Assume we have developed nuclear weapons that can be used in land warfare and that we have equipped our European divisions accordingly. Assume also a major uprising in Eastern Europe such as occurred in Budapest in 1956. In such a situation we ought to present the Kremlin with an ultimatum forbidding Soviet intervention and be prepared if the ultimatum is rejected to move a highly mobile task force equipped with appropriate nuclear weapons to the scene of the revolt. Our objective would be to confront the Soviet Union with superior force in the immediate vicinity of the uprising and to compel a Soviet withdrawal. An actual clash between American and Soviet armies would be unlikely. A mere threat of American action coupled with the Kremlin's knowledge that the fighting would occur amid a hostile population and could easily spread to other areas would probably result in Soviet acceptance of the ultimatum. The Kremlin would also be put on notice, of course, that resort to long-range bombers and missiles would prompt automatic retaliation in kind. On this level we would invite the communist leaders to choose between total destruction of the Soviet Union and accepting a local defeat. Had we the will and the means for it in 1956, such a policy would have saved the Hungarian Revolution. This is hard counsel, but it is hard, I think, not for what it says, but for saying it openly. Such a policy involves the risk of war? Of course, but any policy short of surrender does that. Any policy that successfully frustrates the communist's aim of world domination runs the risk that the Kremlin will choose to lose in a kamikaze finish. It is hard counsel because it frankly acknowledges that war may be the price of freedom and thus intrudes on our national complacency. But is it really so hard when it goes on to search for the most likely means of safeguarding both our lives and our freedom? Is it so hard when we think of the risks that were taken to create our country, risks on which our ancestors openly and proudly staked their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor? Will we do less to save our country? The risks I speak of are risks on our terms instead of on communist terms. We, not they, would have the opportunity to bring maximum strength to bear on that test. They, not we, would have to decide between fighting for limited objectives under unfavorable circumstances or backing down. And these are immense advantages. The future, as I see it, will unfold along one of two paths. Either the communists will retain the offensive, will lay down one challenge after another, will invite us in local crisis after local crisis to choose between all-out war and limited retreat, and will force us ultimately to surrender or accept war under the most disadvantageous circumstances. Or we will summon the will and the means for taking the initiative and wage a war of attrition against them and hope thereby to bring about the internal disintegration of the communist empire. One course runs the risk of war and leads in any case to probable defeat. The other runs the risk of war and holds forth the promise of victory. For Americans who cherish their lives, but their freedom more, the choice cannot be difficult. That was Barry Goldwater's 1960 book, The Conscience of a Conservative, Part 3. If you like this podcast, please share it and of course rate it at iTunes and, as always, find more classics of liberty at libertarianism.org.