Danger and Survival

...And yet the nuclear competition was still by far our best horse in the race in the entire military arena, and so it behooved us to employ every artifice and ingenuity to make the most of it, even with weapons imperfect, and "use-scenarios" of dubious plausibility...

...Now that the lusty upsurge of the initial Reagan rearmament and SDI have finally forced the Soviet regime off its imperial program and onto a liberalizing path, we can only wonder if the same result might not have been gained sooner by more rather than less arms "racing...

...At no time could the strength of the Soviet army be matched, nor was the tactical-air advantage of the West ever large enough to overcome the huge mass of Soviet anti-aircraft weapons...

...True, a new nuclear weapon would gain only a temporary advantage...

...It is not useless, far from it: all the factual matter is quite reliable and sufficiently comprehensive, the occasional revelations from White House days can be instructive, and so can the author's judicious comments on all manner of detailed and peripheral questions...

...Even more egregious is the case of Edward N Luftwak is the author of The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, The Pentagon and the Art of War, and Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace...

...For the regime did not mind a bit being outclassed in welfare and liberty, and it was only when it found itself outclassed in the new military technologies that the way was opened for Gorbachev reforms...

...As for ABM, and later SDI, it could easily be shown by the usual MIT anti-weaponeers that it was impossible to build an impenetrable astrodome over America...

...even at sea, a vastly greater Western tonnage and carrier airpower provided no secure advantage over the world's largest submarine fleet...

...He too would have left hecatombs of cows, myriads of eggless chickens, and droves of wasted pigs in his wake had he performed with equal effect as a vet...

...Alas, there is no such record-keeping when it comes to claimed expertise in foreign and defense affairs...

...it has had a regime ideally suited to pursue strategic goals with unparalleled tenacity (Hitler's prewar rearmament lasted four years, the Soviet buildup continued for forty years...

...How To 1Vlake The Dollar Stronger Overseas...

...Robert Strange McNamara, whose crude scientism and statistical fixations misdirected the entire defense establishment for years (try computing "morale" in a cost-benefit analysis) and then compounded all the military malpractices of Vietnam, but who is nevertheless continually offered to the nation as a Statesman/Expert of the highest order on the strategic issues of the day...

...and even its deprivation of civilian life served it well for external purposes, by inducing the talented to compete for admission into the islands of privilege of the KGB, the higher military ranks, and the weapon-design laboratories...

...Soviet military technology almost outpaced the hesitant H-bomb effort of the U.S., pioneered ballistic missiles, and led the way with the first gas-turbine warships, along with the first titanium-hulled submarines and many other firsts...

...hence their only possible use is for an all-out attack, itself only conceivable in the actuality or imminence of the other side's all-out attack...

...For the same reasons, Bundy has steadily advocated every form of negotiated limitation that might close possible new avenues of weapon development, especially the ABM limits as well as the SALT process in general (which he only criticized for being too slow...

...On these grounds, Bundy has opposed every weapon program that offered more than "assured destruction" capabilities, notably the MX missile, the B-1 bomber, sea-launched cruise missiles, and, of course, SDI...

...McGeorge Bundy, a decent enough fellow of remarkable personal modesty, of warmly humane disposition (unlike Kennan, whose memoirs reveal a chilling contempt for nine-tenths of humanity), and by no means a cultural illiterate a la McNamara, is nevertheless of the same company as an adviser to the nation...

...It has had a huge geographic advantage in dominating the landmass of which Western Europe is a mere protuberance and Japan an offshore island...

...It suffices to view the question in its proper context, which is not the relationship between two inventories of strategic nuclear weapons but rather between two political systems which have those weapons among many others, nuclear and not, and which have the military power in toto, among many other attributes...

...But that Kennan's central argument now stands wholly refuted is evidently considered a mere bagatelle by those who so greatly appreciated his eloquent insistence on the futility of the strategic competition (as well as his constancy in arguing the general insignificance of whatever part of the world happened to be in contention at the time, and the particular futility of whatever form of Western resistance was then being attempted...

...Once a reputation is made by media-approved soft positions on modish issues, it can triumphantly survive decades of disastrously bad advice to the nation and even direct responsibility for disastrous policies...

...Superior in espionage and covert action (not to speak of security and counter-espionage, a laughable shambles in the West till now), free to employ terrorism when it was deemed worthwhile, long provided with willing and disciplined cohorts of deluded followers throughout the West, the Soviet Union was greatly militarized...

...T he reason why country vets are I such solid characters is that no amount of facile blather will persuade farmers of their competence if the cow dies, chickens stop laying eggs, and pigs lose weight under their ministrations...

...T t is not necessary to engage in a 1 technical discourse to disprove Bundy's chain of reasoning, nor is it necessary to dispute his initial contention that nuclear weapons (implicitly large-yield, "strategic" nuclear weapons) are too catastrophically destructive to be used selectively...

...Inferior in all the other instruments of statecraft except gold, the West had to rely on military power to resist and deter, but in that too it was inferior in all respects except one...

...24.95 Edward N. Luttwak THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1989 47...

...95% of every dollar we receive goes to help impoverished people in the third world...

...Small wonder that we're the best run, best managed charity in America...

...yet ironically it also depended less on military power than did the West (until the post-1967 deconstruction of its ideology...

...He too is on record in print and on videotape with very specific advice, now amply demonstrated to have been wrong...

...Give to CARE...

...The man who missed the point has now given us his own history of the nuclear-weapon era, so far...

...I cum I We're Helping People Leamlb Liw'VVithout Us h900-242-aVE DANGER AND SURVIVAL: CHOICES ABOUT THE BOMB IN THE FIRST FIFTY YEARS McGeorge Bundy/Random House/735 pp...

...Nuclear weapons, Bundy has steadily argued, are so destructive that their use in a U.S.-Soviet war cannot possibly be selective...

...As president of the Ford Foundation after leaving the White House, Bundy waswell placed to evoke well-paid academic enthusiasm for his views...

...true, the advantage would be of vague import, not readily translatable in "usable options...

...Thus nuclear weapons are good for nothing except nuclear deterrence...

...Only that could compensate for the imbalance between Soviet seriousness and Western fecklessness in so many aspects of the overall power competition...

...That left only nuclear weapons and strategic defenses...

...It will not do to speak of "the two superpowers," when the contention has not been between Oceania and Eurasia or other blackboard analogues but rather between the Soviet empire and the United States, the former with its captives in tow, the latter with a congeries of free-will allies large and small...

...It is only on the central question of the central subject that the author fails...

...it follows therefore that only weapons needed for "strike-back" are worthwhile, with any more superfluous at least, and downright dangerous perhaps if they provoke fears that might in turn induce pre-emptive temptations...

...The Soviet Union that was—which Gorbachev's liberalization has yet to change irreversibly—could compete most advantageously...

...Thus George F Kennan's reputation as the wisest man in the universe (briefly earned in full measure by his celebrated "X" article in Foreign Affairs) has only grown with the passing years, even though his sovereign remedy for our confrontation with the Soviet Union has long been to call off the "arms race"—our only strong card, technologically derived, against manifold Soviet advantages in the overall struggle of the post-1945 decades...