Page 6 RAIN Oct./Nov. 1982 TRUE SECURITY By Tom Bender In the not-too-distant future we are likely to see a worldwide default on U.S. "development aid" loans. All nations hold some concern about their safety and security and seek to avoid being bullied or abused by other nations. But there is much evidence to suggest that our own country is making no serious effort to understand where its true security lies or to act in ways to ensure that security. Our vast military expenditures have very little to do with real security, which must rely more deeply on our social, political, and economic relationships with others. Our defense expenditures, in fact, jeopardize our security more than aid it through genocidal nuclear overkill capabilities, offense-geared structures, and diversion of funds and attention from other important dimensions of our society. It is peculiar, too, that in an era when the only real military threat to our national security has been Soviet nuclear ICBMs (and we have admitted that there is virtually no defense against such weapons) that we have continued to expand our nuclear arsenal and to encourage a policy of centralizing our population, industry and energy systems into gigantic and easily-targeted settlements and installations. And what about energy? The U.S. no longer has the secure energy reserves to fight a prolonged foreign war, yet the ever present danger of import cut-offs has moved some of our national leaders to speak ominously of future (assuredly futile) military action in the Persian Gulf to protect our continued access to oil. One would think that an immediate, massive campaign to eliminate energy waste, increase use efficiency, reduce our energy
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