Editorials
commonweal GOOD INTENTIONS, DANGEROUS RESULTS IN reviewing the year 1985, perhaps the most significant date was March 23, 1983. At least in terms of the world's strategic stability — a matter...
...Ionson, "virtually everyone, on every campus, wants to get involved...
...According to Smith, the present strict policy could be reversed "by a stroke of Mr...
...Gorbachev, the president told four Soviet reporters, "We won't put this weapon — or this system — in place, this defense system, until we do away with our nuclear missiles, our offensive missiles...
...SDI can't come close to being a shield for total populations...
...Mr...
...But this is fundamentally unrealistic, as the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment made clear in its report this year, "Ballistic Missile Defense Technologies...
...Finally, the big companies desperately want a piece of SDI...
...It relies on a nuclear explosion for its power...
...has maintained a strict interpretation of the treaty, it could legitimately interpret it far less rigorously...
...Yet the growing role of the Pentagon in national economic development cannot be minimized...
...According to the Congressional Office on Technology Assessment, SDI "might make nuclear war between the U.S...
...What of human error in the programming process...
...Reagan has also said repeatedly that SDI will be non-nuclear...
...This, of course, stands normal business practice on its head...
...The prospect is so inviting, says Mr...
...and the USSR are confident enough about their deterrent capabilities to be talking about 50 percent reductions in offensive nuclear weapons...
...Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, its aim is to improve deterrence, strengthen stability, and reduce the risk of war...
...A corollary to this massive seduction by research dollars has occurred in the federal government's own laboratory system...
...now it is 70 percent...
...While it is troubling to see valuable treaties compromised to accommodate changed strategic policy, it would not do well to miss the pressures being brought to bear on other segments of our society (as well as abroad) to garner endorsement for SDI...
...Both sides have been developing ABM technologies within the bounds of the existing treaty...
...Is that what is happening...
...Reagan told the same journalists that the U.S...
...It should reduce present appropriations to what has been adequate in recent years to keep the U.S...
...That policy should be a continuing hedge to keep both sides alert to what its opposition might be doing...
...Reagan's pen...
...would make SDI "available to other countries, including the Soviet Union...
...At any time, one side or the other might be tempted to take advantage of a supposed vulnerability...
...that nuclear weapons will most likely never entirely be done away with...
...ahead in all areas of defense research: about $1 billion a year...
...The administrator of NASA, James M. Beggs, recently took a leave of absence to defend himself against charges of illegally billing the army when he was with the General Dynamics Corporation...
...This is evident because both the U.S...
...If these suggestions were to be pursued in 1986, the world would likely be a safer place next Christmas...
...Then March 23, 1983 would be seen in proper perspective: the day a speech was given which, when later turned on its head, produced enough wisdom for the remainder of a decade...
...According to James A. Ionson, the administration's official in charge of organizing universities to tackle specific SDI projects, "There will be many, many Manhattan projects in this...
...It has argued that while the U.S...
...Yet one of the chief elements now proposed for SDI is the so-called x-ray laser...
...Congress should maintain scrupulous oversight of all SDI programs and funding...
...Furthermore, the untested nature of SDI raises serious questions — can we presume the remarkably complex computer systems that will have to be developed will work flawlessly...
...At the present time, there exists both a relative nuclear symmetry and parity...
...At least in terms of the world's strategic stability — a matter that affects all life on this planet — President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) speech of March 1983 was a remarkable turning point...
...and its allies from a strategic attack...
...What, then, to do...
...The 1972 ABM Treaty should be reaffirmed and clarified...
...The problem exposed by the Sergeant York fiasco is that the defense system relies on itself, and those who have just passed through its revolving door to the defense contractors establishment, to make disinterested judgments about billion-dollar military projects...
...It becomes an active element in combat and planning...
...Switching to defense would prove to be, in Paul Nitze's phrase, "a tricky transition...
...The president does not always admit what he knows very well: that this country cannot rely on defenses alone...
...They know that's where the action is going to be because, in the near term, defense dollars will have to remain relatively fixed...
...Interested and powerful, the large defense contractors are nonetheless vulnerable...
...This raises a variety of concerns, not the least of which are the aims and purposes of universities in democratic societies...
...In the late 1970s, only about half of federally sponsored research was defense related...
...The treaty bans all space-based ABM systems, both their development and testing...
...Mr...
...Employees are now allowed to use inventions devised on public time and with public funds and to parlay them into personally enriching inventions for public consumption...
...Reagan referred to SDI as a weapon...
...This is highly improbable...
...In October of this year the Pentagon disclosed its most recent plan for the SDI missile shield, composed of a system of seven layers of defense weapons and over a thousand space satellites...
...It stood American deterrent policy on its head: from one built on parity in offensive strategic nuclear forces, to one predicated on almost flawless defense...
...And the SDI office alone has budgeted $600 million for university research over the next five years...
...The great turnabout represented by SDI is clearly evident in measuring SDI against the ABM treaty of 1972...
...SDI could become the single biggest weapons program in the nation's history...
...What it becomes instead is simply a BMD — Ballistic Missile Defense, heightening Soviet apprehensions and decreasing stability...
...And what of maintaining the programs' total secrecy...
...Pentagon spending on campuses has increased 89 percent in the last five years...
...But that's impossible...
...Ideologically speaking, however, individual entrepreneurship has won a significant boost — at the expense of the public...
...In 1980, two laws were passed encouraging the transfer of government technology into the private sector by allowing federal laboratories and individual employees to retain title to inventions...
...Finally, we should agree to a moratorium on all nuclear testing, and begin work on a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty...
...Did he say the dismantling of our total offensive strategic missile force...
...tanks...
...SDI is the president's darling...
...The Sergeant York's problem was that (after $1.8 billion had been spent) the gun's 2.5-mile range was short of the 3.25 miles needed to hit a Soviet helicopter...
...As this November's summit in Geneva made clear, 1985 was but a continuing response to the aftershocks of March 1983...
...Commonweal: 692...
...At the least, it should provide a lesson about auditing the vast sums planned for SDI...
...A shield is 20 December 1985: 691 never simply a shield...
...That is an overstatement, as protests from a number of universities, their faculties, and students have made honorably clear...
...At this historic moment, 45 of the nation's top 100 military contractors are under criminal investigation for a variety of charges...
...Perhaps burdened with the recent spate of espionage leaks, the president was merely anticipating that he ought to offer foreign governments what they would be getting soon enough on their own...
...According to Kenneth L. Adelman, director of the U.S...
...Reagan has proposed to date is in violation of that treaty, after several more years of continuing research, that will no longer be the case...
...Last August, in another turn of events, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger was forced to cancel the Sergeant York program, a gun project being developed to protect U.S...
...The first, most challenging determination to make about SDI is to separate fact from sentiment...
...Reagan's dream of SDI may be rooted in good intentions, but it is riddled with inconsistencies...
...Look at the record: # In November, prior to his meeting with Mr...
...0Mr...
...While it is true that nothing Mr...
...Will SDI improve deterrence, strengthen stability, and reduce the risk of war...
...and the USSR more likely...
...In the last six months, as Gerard C. Smith has pointed out, the Reagan administration has introduced a new element of uncertainty in international affairs by questioning the ABM treaty...
...Reagan has said that his dream is to protect the populations of the U.S...
...It doesn't take a weather satellite to know which way the bucks are blowing...
...His slip disclosed something about SDI's inherent offensive character...
...Finally, in an unguarded moment, Mr...
...To accomplish such reductions should be the first order of business in the coming year...
...But not so reasonable was the Pentagon's inability to devise suitable testing for its weapons designs long before papering the field with $1.8 billion...
...Reasonable enough...
...that to share a defensive strategy with one's adversary who holds a relative offensive advantage is to invite blackmail...
...It would seem that the admirable dream of SDI neither strengthens stability, reduces the riskof war, nor improves deterrence...
Vol. 112 • December 1985 • No. 22
