WHATIS STRENGTHIN THE NUCLEAR AGE? U.S. Representative from Oakland, CA, Ronald V. Dellums, a former contributor to the CSQ, has just completed a book, DEFENSE SENSE The Search For A Rational Military Policy. It offers a glimmer of hope and intelligence on the long-discouraging military front. Since assuming office, Dellums has been a thorn in the side of the Pentagon. A member of the House Armed Services Committee, he last year conducted a series of hearings to determine the costs and consequences of a greatly reduced military budget. Richard J. Barnet was one of 40 expert witnesses to appear, and his testimony, which became a chapter in the book, is printed below. The upshot of those hearings was an unprecedented decision by the powerful House Rules Committee to designate the Dellums’ alternative budget the “official substitute" for the Pentagon’s budget request. His proposal would have reduced the Pentagon’s budget authority by more than $50 billion in the first year alone. In Dellums’ words, the proposal “set the stage for continued cuts in nuclear and conventional weapon systems and in personnel, while establishing oversight controls for waste, fraud and abuse. Within three years, such cuts and controls could reduce the annual federal deficit by more than 60 percent, without any lessening of America’s national security.” Though defeted, the proposal was treated seriously by the Pentagon, and Dellums vows to continue updating it each year “until the madness of the arms race is halted and then reversed.” DEFENSE SENSE has just been published by Ballinger Publishing Company (in paperback) and is DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF THE LATE REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. AND TO ALL OUR CHILDREN — IN THE EFFORT TO FULFILL OUR DREAMS AND TO GIVE THEM A BETTER AND MORE PEACEFUL WORLD. I he danger of nuclear war in the 1980s is awesome. Not only are inherently more dangerous weapons being built — vulnerable missiles with built-in pressures to “use them or lose them” — but nuclear weapons are being inevitably drawn into life-and-death struggles around the world. The first Cold War, we can see in retrospect, was a relatively peaceful affair. Despite the cosmic ideological issues over which the United States and the Soviets occasionally threatened to blow up the world, the half-dozen men or so in Russia and America with a finger on the button never had any compelling reason to push it. The perceived need to avoid nuclear war was greater than either side’s concern over the outcome of any particular confrontation. The list of flashpoints for nuclear war is a long one — a statesman on the order of Idi Amin or some other despot with a ravaged brain; terrorist groups, with or without a cause; sophisticated criminals engaged in private enterprise blackmail. All have plausible reasons to acquire, or to make the world believe they have acquired, nuclear weapons and the will to use them. The materials and technology for creating nuclear weapons are ever more widely available. These developments greatly increase the likelihood of new U.S.-Soviet confrontations. In future confrontations we cannot always count on the Soviets’ backing down; their record of restraint in a crisis (even those they provoke) is a reflection of their relative military weakness in the past. Having achieved rough parity with the United States in military power, their national security managers are now much more likely to think as their U.S. counterparts think: “We can’t afford to back down and be exposed as a pitiful, helpless giant.” Thus, the happy accident that the world has survived the first years of the nuclear era is unimpressive evidence that we can avoid nuclear war in the coming era, for world power relationships are changing faster than we can comprehend and the arms race has become an entirely new game. The impending new stage of the military competition is likely to make the world of the 1970s look in retrospect like a Quaker village. It is evident that, in the present political climate, “zero nuclear weapons” is merely a rhetorical goal, whether the rhetorician is the President of the United States or a spokesperson of the peace movement. With the spread of nuclear weapons and nuclear technology the call for physical abolition of all nuclear weapons — without regard for the political, moral, and psychological changes that must accompany radical disarmament — merely heightens anxiety and breeds cynicism. To avoid an utterly catastrophic holocaust more than 95 percent of present stockpiles would have to be destroyed. Since we have long passed the point at which putting the weapons physically out of reach would make us much safer, most people have lost sight of what disarmament is supposed to achieve. Because we cannot visualize an alternative road to security except through stockpiling arms, we focus on the risks of disarmament rather than the advantages. Even the most minimal arms agreements involve the issue of transferring trust — from weapons we do not understand and cannot see but believe in, to shadowy foreign leaders whom we have been taught to distrust. Since the purposes of disarmament are unclear and the implications uncertain, most people prefer to stay with the world we know or think we know than to enter a world in which we put our trust in the sanity and decency of people rather than in the power of machines. There has been no disarmament because the assumptions of the arms race have been almost universally accepted. Most people, including most people who favor disarmament, accept the premise, that more weapons mean more security, that alternative systems of security not based on making hostages of hundreds of millions of people are utopian, and that the survival of the United States as a sovereign actor in the world justifies mass murder, poisoning of the earth, and hideous mutation of the human species. We do not seem to be able to generate the moral passion to rid the world of arms because we ourselves are psychologically dependent upon them. The standard nightmare for our national security strategy is a Soviet attack of Soviet blackmail. If we fall short of the magic number of nuclear weapons, it is argued, Kremlin leaders may think that they would suffer “only” 10 million or 20 million or 50 million casualties if they push the button; they may then conclude that running the world with the United States out of the way would be worth it. There is nothing in Soviet behavior, history or ideology to suggest that the model of the Soviet leader waiting by the button until the computer predicts an “acceptable” casualty level is anything but a convenient fantasy to support an unending arms race. It is*said that it is a harmless fantasy, a kind of insurance policy against Armageddon. But, unlike an insurance policy, the arms race directly affects the risk. By preparing for an implausible war we make other scenarios for nuclear wars — by accident and miscalculation — far more probable. We have erected an elaborate system of war prevention — people in submarines are submerged for months waiting for the world to destroy 300 cities or more with the touch of a button; banks of computers are expected to behave significantly better in communicating critical information than those that produce the AVAILABLE AT THE SENSORIUM (PORTLAND STORE ONLY) PORTLAND 805 N.W. 21st Ave. 226-7135 SALEM REED OPERA HOUSE 364-8243 2790 NW OUIMBY 222 1172 The StEppiNq STONE CAFE 20 Clinton St. Quarterly
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