Nowadays, a philosopher is not supposed to discuss problems of military strategy. This is the preserve of a very special kind of technician. But in the discussion of all kinds of technical problems—whether they be military or medical or political—there often emerges a point in the discussion where people say, “Well, these issues are too philosophical for us to waste our time with.” And it seems to me that, at just this juncture, the philosopher has not only the right but also the duty to intervene.

It’s being said over and over again (so much so that it’s simply a warm platitude) that man’s power has, through technological development, gone far beyond his moral ability to control it. This is a platitude. It’s perfectly true, but it’s one of those irritating things that people can say—irritating because there’s absolutely nothing one can do about it; not at any rate in any immediate or foreseeable future.

We are confronted in a very, very immediate way with the whole question of whether we are going to engage in a kind of war which will destroy all of us. We see in ordinary discussion absolutely no way out of this situation, because we realize that the human passions, the human selfishness that is involved, is unchangeable except in the long run. And it looks as if there is no long run in which to change it. And therefore I would like to consider the whole problem of the immediate hostile confrontation of the United States and Russia from an entirely different point of view, where we can look upon the threat of co-annihilation not as a moral problem—it is a moral problem, but it can’t immediately be dealt with as a moral problem—let’s look at it instead as a technical, military, and strategic problem.

Because I think it can be said that the situation in which we find ourselves sitting on this incredible powder keg is not only a moral blunder, but also a military and technical blunder. Supposing we say, just for the sake of argument, that in any foreseeable future, some kind of war, some kind of conflict, is a necessary reality of the human situation; something you just can’t do without. You may say, “We ought to do without it, and all right-thinking people should bend their energies to dispensing with conflict.” That’s perfectly true. But supposing just for the sake of argument that it can’t be done; that we are faced with a problem that there must be some kind of violent conflict between human beings.

If this is the case, let’s ask another question. If there is to be war, what are the objectives of war? It seems to me there are two. You can say on one hand there’s the bad objective and there’s the good objective. The bad objective of war is to acquire power, to acquire property, to acquire the possession of other people’s lives and goods. The so-called good objective of war is the contrary: to restrain the abuse of power, to overthrow tyranny. Now, as things stand, the kind of tactics, the kind of weapons, and the kind of strategy that our military and war technology has developed, is something that fulfills neither of these objectives. All the instruments and weapons of war that we have thus far thought out are based upon the idea and the principle of destroying the enemy’s property and killing his personnel. And it seems to me that this is a technical measure that simply does not in any way fulfill the objectives of military strategy and political strategy. And that, insofar as we have developed the most enormously powerful methods of pure destruction and annihilation, we have committed not simply a moral blunder, but a military blunder.

Because, as I have suggested, to annihilate the enemy does not fulfill the objectives of war. The objective of war, the objective of politics in the most Realpolitik sense, in the most cynical way of looking at it, is to attain power, is to attain control. By using such methods as the H-bomb, one does not contain control of anything. One can perhaps justify the H-bomb as a deterrent, but it is not a means of control. Because if you use it at all, you don’t have anything left to control. You’re simply saying, “All right, you and I, United States and Russia, we can’t agree. And therefore, because we can’t get on together, the only solution to our problem is to do something that will blow both of us up.”

Now, I do think it’s much easier to overcome stupidity than to overcome selfishness. It may indeed take a very, very long time—thousands of years, perhaps—to make any radical change in man’s moral character by and large. And very many people who are deeply concerned about political issues today are trying to work on the assumption that there can be made an effective appeal to human beings’ moral sensibility. Perhaps, in the long run, this can be done, but in any foreseeable immediate future I think we should realistically admit that it can’t be done.

On the other hand, I do think that, in some immediate and foreseeable future, it is possible to make an appeal to the human sense of what is merely expedient and tactically clever. And it isn’t here a question of making both sides see what is expedient and what is simply sensible as distinct from stupid, it’s a question that only one side to the conflict shall understand and see this problem. And this is a much easier situation than a kind of moral conversion of mankind.

I’m saying, therefore, that we have made a technical and strategic blunder in investing so much scientific research, so much intellectual energy, in the creation of instruments of war that are merely destructive, blunderingly destructive, boomerang weapons that can simply turn back upon and destroy those who use them. And that, without any alteration in our motivation, in our nature, that the problem itself should be attacked still in terms of the facts of human nature as they are—still in terms of the fact, say, that the powers that be in the United States want to control the powers that be in Russia. All right, if they really want to control them; if—to put the thing in a kind of crude way—if we truly represent some kind of capitalist, imperialist world organization that wants to dominate everything, all right. But let not this imperialistic effort be stupid. If this is what it is, let it actually use the full force of scientific and technical skill, veritably to achieve the object of world domination. Because in so doing it will be far more merciful to human beings than to stand for some sort of abstract righteousness, and to defend this righteousness with weapons of pure destruction and violence, which will do nothing but destroy the whole world.

Now, what I’m suggesting, then, is therefore this: that our technology be directed not to military weapons that are purely and blindly destructive, but on the other hand to military weapons that will restrain an enemy and enable us to control him. You know, of course, that H. G. Wells, in that fantasy of the future that he wrote called The Shape of Things to Come, had the idea of a peace gas—that is to say, simply: a gas that immobilizes everybody and puts them to sleep for maybe three or four days. And in the meantime, the invading force comes in and removes and imprisons dictatorial powers, undesirable elements, and simply takes over control. I’m perfectly sure that there are all kinds of possibilities, chemically, to develop peace gases of this kind that are exceedingly virulent and effective. But we are not investing our efforts and our research in that sort of direction. Instead, we are considering, for example, all kinds of horrendous forms of biological warfare, directed to a large extent to the destruction of the human nervous system.

Now, isn’t this simply a misdirection? If we can devise means of destroying the human nervous system, surely it isn’t a very, very far jump from that to thinking of means of destroying electronic systems instead that would break down an enemy’s systems of communication, totally disorganize radio and telephonic communication, or interfere with it, or simply take control of it. If we invested as much money and time and technical thought in addressing ourselves to those problems as we do to the problems of creating vastly destructive bombs, we would, I think, have far more practical military weapons than we have at the present time.

Now, of course, one of the major advantages—indeed the major advantage in any form of warfare at the present time—is to be able to make an absolutely sudden and unforeseen attack. But when this attack is a destructive attack that is going to destroy the lives of millions of people, nobody with even the remotest grains of conscience will make the first move. You’ll solve this conscience, if need be, by maneuvering the enemy into a position where the enemy makes the first move. But what’s the sense of that? On the other hand, if a sudden attack upon an enemy (say by the United States upon Russia) could be made by non-destructive means—if there should be a surprise attack which should put vast centers of population to sleep, paralyze their systems of communication, or whatever the tactic might be—I do not feel that we should feel quite so squeamish, morally, in making such an attack without prior announcement, without a declaration. Because, you see, we are in a situation so desperate and disastrous that somebody has to take control of it. And if it’s not them, then it has to be us. And surely, this is better than a conflict which achieves no advantage to either side—not only no advantage, but the final disadvantage of the total destruction; and not simply a sudden, painless annihilation, but perhaps months, years, of painful cancerous dissolution through radioactive fallout.

There’s another aspect of this problem, which I feel also that tacticians don’t consider sufficiently, and that is an application to warfare of the ancient art of judo. I only know of one major strategic thinker in modern times who really said anything important about this, and that’s the British historian of wars, Commander Stephen King-Hall. Not so long ago, he advocated that the only possible response to conditions of modern warfare by such a small country, geographically, as England was to abandon completely all attempts to compete with the great powers in atomic weapons, to be ready to surrender instantly to any attack, but at the same time to be organized for a very, very thorough program of civil disobedience, guerrilla warfare, sabotage, and in general, underground resistance to an invader.

Now, this seems to me to make an enormous amount of sense, because this is the principle of judo. In other words, if somebody wants to dominate a situation, to dominate the world, instead of resisting him, you immediately let him do it. You say, “Oh yes, by all means, take all the power you want.” Because, by so doing, you enable him to bite off far more than he can possibly chew. But it isn’t a matter simply of yielding. It isn’t a matter simply of saying, “All right, you take over, you govern the situation. If you think you can do it better than we can, you’re welcome to it.” It isn’t a matter of that. Because we’re not in a position, morally, to do that. In other words, I’m simply saying that the majority of people in what is called the free world do not have the moral capacity to be the most idealistic sort of pacifists and to say to the Russians, “All right, if you want to rule the world, take it. We’ll just sit here and let you do it.” That’s never going to happen—at least not, as I say, in any foreseeable future.

I’m not trying to argue, in other words, the rights and wrongs as between which form of government—Russian government, United States government—is preferable. Let’s keep that argument out of the situation. But let us suppose simply that we all agree that our way is preferable. Then the tactics of judo in warfare is not simply to give in passively, but to invite the enemy to take control, having previously organized ourselves in a very thorough and complete way to obstruct the enemy’s control in every possible way—but not on a large-scale military level. As on an irritating, mosquito level, which fouls up all attempts to control people by any other means than direct annihilation.

Now, you see, an enemy such as Russia has no conceivable reason to annihilate by atomic weapons the populations or the properties of another country which does not threaten to do the same thing to them. If the military aggression of such an enemy is simply not resisted on the large-scale level—that is to say, on the level of air warfare, bombing of cities, confrontation of huge armies—if one does not resist on that level, but lets all the armies and all that kind of thing sweep right over you, and carries on resistance on another level altogether, carefully worked out in advance, the level of civil disobedience, sabotage, guerrilla warfare, and so on and so forth. Obviously, to any thinking person, this seems to me to be a form of strategy infinitely preferable to the strategy of mutual co-annihilation.

And let me add this: it isn’t even a question of mutual co-annihilation—in the sense that the moment our bombs, our missiles, start on the way to Russia, or theirs start on the way to us, immediately (through radar and so on), the other side’s missiles go over, too. And so, even if one side or the other were to perpetrate an atomic attack on the other that was successful in the sense of not having any response of, first of all, annihilating the enemy’s centers of resistance. You’re using a weapon which is a boomerang, a weapon which is therefore essentially a military (as distinct from a moral) blunder.

Our problem is therefore not that our politicians, our generals, are corrupt and immoral—whether they be on the American side or the Russian side. Our problem seems to be rather that they are merely inept. And if we look at the problem in that way, it seems to me to be something that is much easier to correct than if we look at it in its moral dimension. I know that many of you who listen to my reflections from time to time are engaged in various kinds of research that have to do with military problems. Couldn’t it be possible that you get this idea across to some of your superiors?