In Sweden, many voters from one of the opposition parties – the ‘Center’ Party – have denounced the dictatorship of the peace loving Swedish majority, and declared that they are ready and willing to make common cause with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). At the same time this is happening, a thousand migrants a day are arriving in this country – more than enough to seriously wound the Swedish welfare state.

I know about this urge to “gird one’s loins”. It has to do with a long lasting belief in a number of countries that all civilized human beings should join together and give the Russians the lesson they deserve.

The first time I heard about it was in the U.S., about 3 years after the armed forces of that country and Russia – with important assistance from the U.K., Canada and a few others – defeated Germany. Before the guns cooled, there was a tidal wave of requests by prominent Americans that since Russia did not possess nuclear weapons, the contents of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be dumped on Russian cities before they obtained these assets.

Prominent non-Americans also were giving vent to their feelings in this matter. Those I always discuss are John von Neumann, sometimes called the ‘best brain of the 20th Century’, while the hysterics of Bertrand Russell might be viewed as a preview of his performances during the Vietnam War, when he declared his allegiance to the Red Team.

Many Senators and Generals could hardly make an after dinner speech without unloading a salute to a concept that came to be known as “preventative war¨, with von Neumann saying that if you want to attack Russia tomorrow, then why not today, and if you agree to attack today at dinner time, then what about in an hour. Having failed mathematics and physics, I was expelled from my engineering school about that time and had enlisted in the U.S. Army, and during the first part of my two years in Japan, the young gentlemen in my (infantry) regiment were promised a war with Russia almost every week.