IN THEIR EAGERNESS to stop a U.S. invasion of Iraq, antiwar activists have adopted an interesting argument. Containment and deterrence worked against the Soviet Union, they say, and they will work against Saddam Hussein. Now they tell us. The Left's enthusiasm for containment and deterrence was, to put it mildly, a lot harder to detect during the Cold War. To hear born-again cold warriors tell it, everyone agreed in the old days on a get-tough approach to communism. If only.

In point of fact, the U.S. government adopted policies of deterrence and containment in the late 1940s, and kept them in place until 1991, over the vociferous objections of the Left both here and in Europe. It's worth a short trip down Memory Lane to provide some perspective on today's debate over Iraq.

Harry Truman first began drafting a get-tough approach against the Soviet Union in 1946. Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace, the liberal standard-bearer, argued instead for a policy of cooperating with Stalin, even advocating that we share the atomic secret with the Soviet dictator. Truman booted him out of the cabinet, but Wallace and his followers remained firmly opposed to the hard-line policies of the administration and its successors.

In 1958 Bertrand Russell and other peace activists organized the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, calling for unilateral British disarmament. Their Ban the Bomb movement spread across Western Europe, leading to regular protests and marches. In 1961, just after the Berlin Wall had gone up, Russell got himself arrested trying to block the deployment of the first U.S. Polaris submarine to a base in Scotland.

Every major deployment of U.S. weapons systems thereafter prompted protests, many of which make today's anti-American rallies seem tame by comparison. In the late 1970s, NATO decided it had to counter Soviet medium-range SS-20 missiles by fielding Pershing II and cruise missiles in Europe. As the deployment drew near in 1983, millions of Europeans, many wearing ghoulish costumes, took to the streets to protest. In England, which was due to receive the first cruise missiles, protesters pelted the defense minister with eggs and sprayed him with red paint.

Many moderate liberals, including German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, supported the deployment, but nevertheless argued that the primary Western approach should be not to confront the Soviets militarily, but to negotiate arms-reduction agreements with them. Implementing "détente," the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations negotiated ambitious arms control accords with the Soviet Union, notably SALT I and SALT II. The Soviet Union, however, saw détente as an opportunity to build a nuclear missile force capable of carrying out a first strike against the United States. Meanwhile, attempts to strengthen America's nuclear deterrent, by building B-1 bombers or MX missiles, were either blocked or scaled back by Democrats in Congress.

But even this didn't go far enough for some people. Many on the left in the early 1980s, including Ronald Reagan's own daughter, Patti Davis, were beguiled by the prospect of a nuclear freeze, and damn the consequences. A June 1982 nuclear freeze rally in New York's Central Park drew some 700,000 participants, making it the largest political assembly in the nation's history. In West Germany 5million people signed the Krefeld Appeal in favor of unilateral disarmament.
Val:Y