Two lessons: public opinion & technology
Hehir, J. Bryan
Church/worldwatch Mobilizing opinion, curbing technology J. Bryan Hehir BY THE TIME this column appears, the May 2-3 meeting of the Catholic bishops will have taken place, and the bishops will...
...The lesson of MIRV is that concern for reversing the arms race must be not only vigorous and broad-based but specific and selective...
...The one point to be made here is that the Kissinger essay highlights the (Continued on page 319) Church/world watch (Continued from page 298) dangerous turn the arms race took when it moved toward MIRVing...
...J. BRYAN HEHIRre...
...The full scope of the Kissinger proposal and the Snowcroft Commission report requires more comment in a later column...
...J. BRYAN HEHIR...
...We can't afford other slips in the future...
...Third, he seeks to counter the advocates of a nuclear freeze...
...First, the relationship of public opinion and public policy...
...Specifically, he calls for the U.S...
...arms-control policy...
...Thus both sides may possess a roughly equal number of launchers (missiles) but the side that fires first suddenly translates its equal number of launchers into, say, three times or even ten times as many "bullets" - warheads - as the adversary has targets-the still unlaunched missiles...
...these need to be given priority in our concern to control the technological dynamic of the nuclear race...
...The pope has consistently couched his discussion of the nuclear question in the broader terms of the relationship between technology and ethics...
...Some decisions are sys-temically hazardous for arms control...
...While this statement finds much support, the more difficult question has always been one of determining precisely the potential of public opinion to influence foreign policy decisions...
...A second element in the public debate which ought to concern us was developed in the recent essay in Time by Henry Kissinger...
...The pastoral letter seeks to contribute to the wider debate and to learn from it...
...A more specific indication of the effect of public opinion on policy is visible in the defense posture statement presented to the Congress by Secretary Weinberger on February 1, 1983...
...strategic and foreign policy is always a benchmark, for assessing an administration's strategic intentions...
...Kissinger was associated with that move, but now sees its consequences as so detrimental that he urges quite drastic remedial steps...
...Kissinger's concern is the way technology has outrun both strategic policy and ideas for arms control...
...Two aspects of that wider debate provide lessons to be learned...
...Church/worldwatch Mobilizing opinion, curbing technology J. Bryan Hehir BY THE TIME this column appears, the May 2-3 meeting of the Catholic bishops will have taken place, and the bishops will have acted, one way or another on the pastoral letter...
...The pastoral letter has been guided by the spirit of Vatican II's "Constitution on the Church in the World...
...The MIRV decision escaped adequate analysis in the public sector...
...Second, Mr...
...to move in the 1990s toward a mobile land-based system of single warhead missiles...
...this document calls us to be attentive to the church's relationship to the world and to what the church can learn from the world...
...In his 1982 World Day of Peace message John Paul II identified the role of public opinion as crucial for arms control and as an arena particularly open to the church: "Rulers must be supported and enlightened by a public opinion which encourages them or, where necessary, expresses disapproval...
...Moreover, the arms-control paradox is that reducing the numbers of launchers without significant reductions in warheads (a la SALT II) could reinforce this instability by increasing the ratio of warheads over targets that would be enjoyed by the power that struck first...
...The principal arms-control problem today is the disparity between numbers of warheads and launchers, a disparity-produced by the decision both the U.S...
...In explaining why a new conceptual approach is needed, Kissinger touches on a favorite topic of John Paul II...
...Bundy, Kennan, McNamara, and Smith that NATO adopt a no-first-use pledge...
...While positively supporting the role of science, John Paul II has repeatedly raised concern about how to establish moral limits for technological development...
...Much the same point is suggested by the report of the Snowcroft Commission, which was established by President Reagan to find a home for the MX but ended up making a thorough reassessment of U.S...
...strategic arms policy...
...Weinberger uses much of the nuclear section of his testimony to address three issues, all of them raised by groups in the public-opinion sector of society...
...Nonetheless, a broad consensus exists today that President Reagan's successive proposals on arms control-from the "zero option" of November 1981 through the START proposals of May 1982 to the recent "interim proposal" for the Geneva negotiations on intermediate-range weapons-have all been generated partially in response to strong public calls for a serious U.S...
...Weinberger seeks to deflect the proposal of Messrs...
...Kissinger's proposal amounts to a call to repeal the MIR V decision of the 1970s, preferably on a bilateral basis but unilaterally if necessary...
...This annual review of U.S...
...and the Soviets took in the 1970s to' deploy "MIRVed" missiles, i.e., to fit each missile with more than one warhead...
...Yet even as so much of our attention is given, quite rightly, to the letter, it is still very important to resist isolation of intramural Catholic debate from the wider public concern about the nuclear arms race...
...First, as both the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post noted, he addressed the opposition of the bishops' second draft to any strategic policy which targets civilians directly...
...My point in mentioning these examples is not to debate any of the proposals or the secretary's response to them, but to highlight the need he felt to address them in his major presentation to the Congress...
...The thesis of Kissinger's intricate and important article is that the key challenge to arms control today is a conceptual one...
...Since the-likelihood of eliminating the opposing missiles is obviously much increased by this kind of ratio, in a crisis there would be a strong incentive to strike first...
...The interplay between policy-making and public attitudes in a large democracy is complex enough in itself but analysts going back to Walter Lippmann have seen special problems when public opinion tries to influence foreign policy...
Vol. 110 • May 1983 • No. 10
