Bertrand Russell and Preventive War

any commentators have claimed that Bertrand Russell advocated preventive war against the Soviet Union in the 1945-48 period in order to force the Soviets into world government and thus prevent a future war of total nuclear annihilation.Russell has been faulted not only for advocating an inherently morally repugnant policy but, also, for a time denying that he ever held such a view.In what follows I wish to examine the record in order to determine just what Russell did advocate with regard to Russia during the period in question.We shall find that the record is reasonably clear: Russell did publicly espouse a form of preventive war in the early post-World War II years, although it was a policy rather less bellicose than what is usually attributed to him.As regards Russell's denials, we shall see that they were not the distortions of the record that his critics have claimed.But his later avowals are inaccurate regarding important details and invite speculation that Russell may have wanted to disguise a portion of the record despite his claim in his autobiography to have finally set it straighL A. THE POLICY Let us distingui.shseveral senses in which one could be said to advocate a preventive war against Russia.In the simplest, most straightforward sense, there is the unconditional advocation of preventive war: PWu: We (the West) ought to wage war against the Soviets (now or in the immediate future).But there is also a conditional advocation in which the waging of war is