CDIW00476. 23 May 1950. "Political Factors in the Likelihood of the Outbreak of War with the Soviet Union"

This draft produced on May 23, 1950 applies the suggested edits/revisions from the previous draft (See CDIW00474). Sections examining communist ideology and theory have been streamlined and expanded on. Pointing to recent successes in Czechoslovakia, the draft detailed the use of communist theory as an offensive and defensive weapon for the Soviets. So long as these means are effective, the draft opined that the Soviet Union was unlikely to go to war. However, the paper cautioned that this could not continue indefinitely without precipitating war. The draft identifies the “danger point” as being the time “at which Soviet preparations are such that the Soviet Union could contemplate war with a hope of maintaining preponderance in military effort… to overcome the resistance of non-communist powers.”