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Deterrence
Policy
- The accumulation of nuclear arsenals, the threat of accidental war, the
possibility of limited war becoming illimitable holocaust, the impossibility
of achieving final arms superiority or invulnerability, the approaching nativity
of a cluster of infant atomic powers; all of these events are tending to undermine
traditional concepts of power relations among nations. War can no longer be
considered as an effective instrument of foreign policy, a means of strengthening
alliances, adjusting the balance of power, maintaining national sovereignty,
or preserving human values. War is no longer simply a forceful extension of
foreign policy; it can obtain no constructive ends in the modern world. Soviet
or American "megatonnage" is sufficient to destroy all existing social structures
as well as value systems. Missiles have (figuratively) thumbed their nosecones
at national boundaries. But America, like other countries, still operates
by means of national defense and deterrence systems. These are seen to be
useful so long as they are never fully used: unless we as a national entity
can convince Russia that we are willing to commit the most heinous action
in human history, we will be forced to commit it.
- Deterrence advocates, all of them prepared at least to threaten mass extermination,
advance arguments of several kinds. At one pole are the minority of open partisans
of preventive war -- who falsely assume the inevitability of violent conflict
and assert the lunatic efficacy of striking the first blow, assuming that
it will be easier to "recover" after thermonuclear war than to recover now
from the grip of the Cold War. Somewhat more reluctant to advocate initiating
a war, but perhaps more disturbing for their numbers within the Kennedy Administration,
are the many advocates of the "counterforce" theory of aiming strategic nuclear
weapons at military installations -- though this might "save" more lives than
a preventive war, it would require drastic, provocative and perhaps impossible
social change to separate many cities from weapons sites, it would be impossible
to ensure the immunity of cities after one or two counterforce nuclear "exchanges",
it would generate a perpetual arms race for less vulnerability and greater
weapons power and mobility, it would make outer space a region subject to
militarization, and accelerate the suspicions and arms build-ups which are
incentives to precipitate nuclear action. Others would support fighting "limited
wars" which use conventional (all but atomic) weapons, backed by deterrents
so mighty that both sides would fear to use them -- although underestimating
the implications of numerous new atomic powers on the world stage, the extreme
difficulty of anchoring international order with weapons of only transient
invulnerability, the potential tendency for a "losing side" to push limited
protracted fighting on the soil of underdeveloped countries. Still other deterrence
artists propose limited, clearly defensive and retaliatory, nuclear capacity,
always potent enough to deter an opponent's aggressive designs -- the best
of deterrence stratagems, but inadequate when it rests on the equation of
an arms "stalemate" with international stability.
- All the deterrence theories suffer in several common ways. They allow insufficient
attention to preserving, extending, and enriching democratic values, such
matters being subordinate rather than governing in the process of conducting
foreign policy. Second, they inadequately realize the inherent instabilities
of the continuing arms race and balance of fear. Third, they operationally
tend to eclipse interest and action towards disarmament by solidifying economic,
political and even moral investments in continuation of tensions. Fourth,
they offer a disinterested and even patriotic rationale for the boondoggling,
belligerence, and privilege of military and economic elites. Finally, deterrence
stratagems invariably understate or dismiss the relatedness of various dangers;
they inevitably lend tolerability to the idea of war by neglecting the dynamic
interaction of problems -- such as the menace of accidental war, the probable
future tensions surrounding the emergence of ex-colonial nations, the imminence
of several new nations joining the "Nuclear Club," the destabilizing potential
of technological breakthrough by either arms race contestant, the threat of
Chinese atomic might, the fact that "recovery" after World War III would involve
not only human survivors but, as well, a huge and fragile social structure
and culture which would be decimated perhaps irreparably by total war.
- Such a harsh critique of what we are doing as a nation by no means implies
that sole blame for the Cold War rests on the United States. Both sides have
behaved irresponsibly -- the Russians by an exaggerated lack of trust, and
by much dependence on aggressive military strategists rather than on proponents
of nonviolent conflict and coexistence. But we do contend, as Americans concerned
with the conduct of our representative institutions, that our government has
blamed the Cold War stalemate on nearly everything but its own hesitations,
its own anachronistic dependence on weapons. To be sure, there is more to
disarmament than wishing for it. There are inadequacies in international rule-making
institutions -- which could be corrected. There are faulty inspection mechanisms
-- which could be perfected by disinterested scientists. There is Russian
intransigency and evasiveness -- which do not erase the fact that the Soviet
Union, because of a strained economy, an expectant population, fears of Chinese
potential, and interest in the colonial revolution, is increasingly disposed
to real disarmament with real controls. But there is, too, our own reluctance
to face the uncertain world beyond the Cold War, our own shocking assumption
that the risks of the present are fewer than the risks of a policy re-orientation
to disarmament, our own unwillingness to face the implementation of our rhetorical
commitments to peace and freedom.
- Today the world alternatively drifts and plunges towards a terrible war
- when vision and change are required, our government pursues a policy of
macabre dead-end dimensions -- conditioned, but not justified, by actions
of the Soviet bloc. Ironically, the war which seems to close will not be fought
between the United States and Russia, not externally between two national
entities, but as an international civil war throughout the unrespected and
unprotected human civitas which spans the world.
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