ABSTRACT
Many political problems look at first sight like direct clashes between prudence and principle. We ought, I think, always to suspect them of being more complicated, to assume that elements of both will be found on both sides. The effect of tackling these problems tribally, of signing up exclusively for one ideal or the other, with its corresponding style of dispute, is unlucky. Once this is done, both parties miss much of the force of opposing arguments because they simply do not take seriously what their opponents say. Debates then become alarmingly unreal. The disarmament debate has inevitably always suffered from this bifurcation, because the stakes are so high. Disarmers tend to find it inconceivable that anyone can endorse preparation for war, and sometimes refuse to argue fully against prudential arguments for it. Armers are equally at a loss to see how anyone can fail to grasp that this preparation is necessary and tend to write off disarmers instead as perverse, masochistic, self-deceiving and dangerous. Lately, however, the lines of this confrontation seem to have broken up somewhat, allowing some regrouping. Things are at present so alarming that prudence and principle are seen to converge. Many people who used to find it quite reasonable to rely on all existing armaments, and on those who furnish them, are now growing somewhat uneasy about the current tendencies of both and wondering whether better alternatives cannot be found, And many of those who formerly dwelt chiefly on the moral objections to this reliance are now as much or more impressed by its dangers. It seems possible therefore to avoid the doomed and typecast clash of supposed impractical idealist against supposed practical politician, and to start a more serious discussion of prudence, transcending party lines. Idealists ought not, I think, to resist this as a debasement of the issue. Real corruption and stupidity apart, the difference between those who believe that current arms policies are the best way of keeping the peace and those who do not is a difference about means, not aims. The effectiveness of those means is not the only problem in sight, but it is a prime problem which needs to be discussed. This paper will proceed entirely within it.
