ABSTRACT
If General Twining has little patience with ‘containment’, he has still less with the sophisticated doctrines of limited war, stable balance and damage limitation which now rule in the Pentagon, or for the ‘transient non-professionals’ who devise and implement them. ‘In the old days’ he recalls nostalgically, ‘war was war and peace peace.. When the nation was at war, Americans were at war, and Americans did what was necessary to win’. If, on the other hand, the United States were to decide that the Communist objectives were no longer ‘as stated by that conspiracy’, it should, concludes the General rather surprisingly, ‘disarm at once’. General Twining dodges argument. He confesses indeed that ‘it is difficult to find specific fault’ with the objectives of the Kennedy Administration. He complains only that ‘the sum total adds up to a defence of mediocrity and passiveness’; which does not get us much further.
