BETWEEN WAR AND ABUNDANCE 225anti-communism. To renew the fight, he compiled
a volume of essays purporting to expose the Soviet
tendency toward secrecy, indoctrination, and deceit.
As he wrote, the communists used “relentless
psychological, political, economic, sociological and
military strategies.” A failure to retaliate would leave
Americans condemned “to the Arctic hell of Siberian
slave labor camps.”
A number of foreign policy leaders contributed
to Walter’s volume Soviet Total War, including Henry
Kissinger and the Central Intelligence Agency
director, Allen Dulles. But it also included essays by
the nation’s evangelical Christian leaders and other
private citizens. Among the latter was Leo Cherne,
an ardent anti-Soviet whose Research Institute of
America had long advised companies how to navigate
government regulations brought by the New Deal.
In his anti-communist essay, Cherne explained
that the death of Stalin had ushered in a more
aggressive phase of Soviet behavior. Moving forward,
the USSR would resort to economic, political, and
even psychological warfare against the West, as
illustrated by this map. Just as the French Communist
Party (page 222) portrayed the United States as
reaching across the globe with its military might,
here the Soviets are shown penetrating every corner
of the world through political and psychological
manipulation.
For Cherne, it was not just Soviet military
power that threatened the United States but
also subterfuge: guerilla warfare, anti-western
propaganda, political infiltration—all were part of
the communist playbook, especially in the developing
world. And, though Cherne’s prose was especially
virulent, his strategy anticipated the foreign policy
posture of presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and
Johnson. Each of these administrations sought to
undermine leftist and communist movements in
Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. In fact, this
map of 1956 was published at precisely the moment
that the United States increased its commitment to
South Vietnam in the wake of the French departure
from Indochina. Political messages like this, which
regarded Soviet influence anywhere as a threat to
American security, paved the way for the deployment
of armed forces in Vietnam (page 238).