Editorials
Contents Volume CXl, Number I Cocrespondenoe 2 Editorials 3 A pubfic burning: Robert Hirscl~ld 5 Computer politics': Jeremiah Baruch 5 Gearing up for war:. John Garvey 7 Can we defend Europe...
...Virtually every knowledgeable commentator admits that these missiles are of slight military value...
...doilm3 by International Money Order or by check on a U...
...Moscow has proved it meant what it said about breaking off negotiations and retaliating with its own accelerated deployments...
...In this they have succeeded marvelously -- but only with the help of extraordinary bungling on the part of Western strategists and politicians...
...There was the Reagan adminiswation's confrontational stance toward Moscow, its loose talk about nuclear war, its dismissive attitude toward negotiations, its unhesitating alignment with repressive, "authoritarian" regimes...
...and USSR are at a point of equivalence in developing anti-satellite weaponry...
...THE DAY AFTER THE EURONISSILES I T IS high time to start putting the pieces back together...
...But we're just that much closer, and we've lost just that much more time to do anything about it...
...If there is any difficulty in affixing blame for this sorry state of affairs, it is only because there are so many worthy candidates...
...These steps should not be televised spectaculars but sober Commonweal: 4...
...It is very doubtful that a last-minute suspension of Euromissile deployment would have made things any better, and a good chance it might have made things worse...
...The current disarray in the Western alliance is one of those remarkable cases of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory...
...By replacing older weapons with SS-20s, the Kremlin upped the ante in the late seventies and has stubbornly stuck to its own form of "zero option" ever since, insisting that the West was not justified in countering the SS-20s with as much as a single new missile...
...Why do Washington strategists typically hypothesize long-term risks to "credibility" if the U.S...
...bank...
...In Central America, Washington mirrored Moscow's claim to exercise veto power over the form of governments within its sphere of influence, and an emerging generation of European political actors was vividly reminded of their youthful opposition to America's war in Southeast Asia...
...Telephone: (212) MU 3-2042...
...Furthermore, by combining the talks on European weapons and those on intercontinental weapons, or by devising some other formula, a way should be found to deal with Soviet concerns about French and British forces...
...foreign, $29...
...and NATO have proved they meant what they said about starting deployment of Euromissiles...
...Special two.year rate: U.S., $43...
...At least with hindsight, we can easily recognize that matching the SS-20s with 572 cruise and Pershing I! missiles was one of the more counter-productive schemes ever to spring from the brows of military planners...
...John Garvey 7 Can we defend Europe & the Gulf with conventional arms?: Barry R. Posen & Stephen W. Van Evera 9 Another part of the Forest Hills: J...
...cashed in" for the expenses involved in building a conventional deterrent to replace the "first-use" nuclear one...
...The first is the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a measure close to final agreement when the Reagan administration suspended negotiations...
...232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...shies away from overseas intervention while long-term costs in terms of anti-American sentiment, ranging from distrust to outright hostility, are seldom thrown into the calculus...
...There was Carter administration confusion, on the neutron warhead for example...
...The U.S...
...17 Verse: Larry RsJbin 18 Secular faith of Barbara Pyre: Etmnor B. Wymard Books 19 Without Honor/Vietnam: John Spragens, Jr...
...The unemployed have had to sit by and watch the widening of the gap between what they are equipped to do and what industry demands of its workers...
...13 January 1984:3 It took more than the Euromissiles, however, for the United States to blow its political and ideological advantage...
...What is not moot is that alternatives do exist, other ways of reversing the fearful momentum of an impoveri~ing and destabilizing arms race...
...The first step would be to signal to both allies and adversaries that, despite the belief that the integrity of NATO's decision-making process may have justified going ahead with some Euromissile deployment in the absence of a negotiated agreement, it does not require deployment of the full complement of 572 missiles, a number that never rested on any STAFF OPENING Commonweal will be seeking an addition to its editorial staff sometime in early spring...
...The U.S...
...Applications by mail only...
...Peter Steinfels Assistant Editor...
...What might have been done prudently two years ago was no longer so easy two months ago...
...some editorial experience is preferred...
...F,erst 14 Stage: Gerald Weales 16 Screen: Colin L. Westerbeck...
...Applicants should include full curriculum vitae or resumS, writing samples, and a letter describing themselves and their interest in Commonweal...
...Of possibly even greater importance is to do an end run around the blocked missile negotiations, and open East-West talks on two other essential matters...
...Single copy, $1.25...
...A demonstrated talent for lively, incisive writing is essential...
...All Canadian and foreign subscriptions must be paid in U.S...
...Such a political purpose is of course no less "real" than a directly military one...
...The second myth overlooks the fact that industry's profits have been soaring -- they are up 40 percent since mid-1961 -- while unemployment remains a massive problem...
...Ruth E. Taylor Publisher...
...David Toolan Editorial Assistant: Anne Rohertson Columnists: John Garvey, J. Bryan Hehir, Abigail McCarthy Poetry: Rosemary Deen, Marie Ponsot Staff: Karen F. Silva, Harrieue Baisky, Sheila Tanksley Advertising Manager...
...21 Pontiff: Desmond O'Grady 22 On Becoming A Novelist/Panic Among the Philistines: William O'Rourke 24 The Call to Conversion: Richard J. Cassidy 26 Staff Editoc James O'Gtm Executive Editoc...
...A Review of Public Affains, Religion, Literature, and the Arts, is published biweekly, except monthly CJmstmns-New Year's and July and August, by Commonweal Pubfishin 8 Co...
...The second is a treaty banning anti-satellite weapons and other space-based weapons...
...defensive systems and to assure the cohesiveness of the Western alliance...
...On the other hand, the political disarray of the West is also very real - - and largely self-inflicted...
...All applications will be considered confidential and given careful attention...
...The first myth ignores the fact that a modern economy produces its own dislocations, and often on a scale that cannot be linked to personal character deficits . . . "'The Horatio Alger vision of economic success awaiting any poor man with sufficient drive is comforting, but irrelevant . . . . Though private industry has made strides in training people for the needs of a high-powered economy, the training has benefited, almost totally, those already employed...
...The world is not exactly on the brink of nuclear Armageddon...
...The position would involve writing, editing, working with authors, and numerous routine production tasks, much of this done under pressure and in a stimulating but spartan environment...
...their real purpose is political -- to represent the link between European and U.S...
...But some consideration is owed the weight that the French and British weapons add to the Western side of the equation -- especially when both nations are on the brink of enlarging their deterrents...
...foreign, $53...
...Then there was the pipeline controversy, European unhappiness over American economic policies, Grenada . . . . As the lead article in this issue argues, NATO's military situation is far better than often publicly portrayed, enough so, in fact, that the movement away from early reliance on nuclear weaponry is by no means the pipedream it has been made out to be...
...The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Kremlin's rejection of Eurocommunism, the lesson of the boat people and Cambodia, the attention redirected to the Gulag by Solzhenitsyn, on the one hand, and by the suppression of Soviet dissidents by Andropov's KGB, on the other, and finally the invasion of Afghanistan served to explode whatever lingering hold the Communist myth retained on the imagination of some Western intellectuals...
...The U.S...
...But it is precisely the cohesiveness of the Western alliance that the Euromissiles have come to threaten...
...From Commonweal twenty years a g o : "According to the lingering nineteenth-century myths, unemployment and poverty are due to a lack of personal initiative or too big a tax bite from industry, which presumably could expand and hire more if government didn't cut so heavily into its earnings...
...The SS-20s may have been partly the unthinking product of the USSR's own version of the military-industrial complex, but they also fit nicely into longstanding Soviet efforts to undermine NATO...
...Canada, $26...
...Never had Soviet stock sunk so low in Europe as it did in the seventies...
...At the same time, Socialist parties, most of them fiercely anti-Communist, achieved leadership on the left even in countries where the Communists were deeply entrenched...
...Four-day work week but modest salary...
...Not only should we indicate willingness to deploy no more Pershing Ils, in particular -- a weapon as destabilizing on our side as the SS-20s were on the Soviets' part -- but we should propose to the West Germans that the already deployed Pershings could be withdrawn unilaterally...
...should respond tc the Soviet draft proposal for banning space weapons offered last August -- and agree to a mutual moratorium on testing anti-satellite weapons in space while negotiations proceed...
...T h e Editors, "Attack on Poverty" January 10, 1964 military necessity...
...it is the divergence, rather than the unity, between European and U.S...
...Applicants should be Roman Catholic lay women or men with wide cultural and political interests and knowledge...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S., $24...
...A justifiable concern for our own government's role ought not to lead us to minimize the Soviets' responsibility...
...Indeed, the manifest ability of the West to resist any Soviet attack -- and therefore to deter one from even taking place -- rests far more critically on NATO's capacity for swift and unified action in a crisis than on any set of weapons...
...Edward S. Skillin Commonweal...
...Canada, $47...
...10016...
...But that point is now moot...
...They are about to be propelled into a dangerous, destabilizing arms race in space, one which it would be enormously difficult to block after a few more developments...
...There is some flexibility in regard to the starting date...
...No one is better off...
...Moscow's suggestion that these weapons be offset by SS-20s is unacceptable as long as it fails to recognize the different numbers of warheads involved as well as the different purposes of the French and British forces...
...concerns that the missiles have come to represent...
Vol. 111 • January 1984 • No. 1
