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He will not commit the same blunders as Hitler because he knows that through war he can risk all his previous achievements. Moreover, he has no cogent reasons at all to resort to war, for the Soviet Union is economically self-sufficient and is independent of the rest of the world, indeed, she possesses all the raw materials necessary for rearmament. Stalin is too well aware of the existing balance of power between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers, and especially of the technical superiority of the U. S. A., not to realize that the Soviet Union will not yet have won a mar even if the Soviet Army were to reach the Atlantic coast in a relatively short time. Even then the vital points of Soviet territory would remain vulnerable to United States attacks, whereas the territory of the latter would be out of reach of the Soviet Union, at least for the time being. Moreover, the domestic situation in Germany is not such as to ensure the security of the rear of the Soviet Army as it pushes westward. Conditions in the satellite states are also not stabilized enough to meet the demands of a war which the Soviet Union Would have to wage against all the rest of the world. Therefore, it must be assumed that Stalin will try to avoid such a war, at present.
Thus, Stalin rejects war, the only means by which the Soviet regime could be overthrown in a measurable space of time. Nevertheless, there is the prospect that, in the course of time, all the above-mentioned circumstances will weaken the Soviet Union to such a degree that she will cease being an immediate danger to the non-Communist world.
30 December 1948
