The threat of peace

...If dealt with decisively then the rest can be addressed...

...At a recent forum on Long Island, where the economy has been severely damaged, a jobless defense worker asked, "How did we get to this point...

...The adjoining former Raritan Arsenal now comprises offices, warehouses, and Middlesex County College...

...The ripples spread...

...The same is true, by and large, for Congress...

...Jobs With Peace, an advocacy group, produces research showing how new jobs in, say, home construction have a multiple job-creating impact 18: 8 May 1992 Commonweal in such fields as wood production, fabricated metal, plastics, cement, home appliances, and furniture...

...and followed up the question with a conversion plan of his own...

...In Groton, Connecticut, production of the Navy's Seawolf submarine will probably be canceled, and its maker, General Dynamics' Electric Boat, is beginning to lay off workers there and in Rhode Island...

...Without taking manufacturing seriously and seeing to its revival, there is no way out...

...Cold warriors have a vested interest in manufacturing new international demons...

...Thousands of people, and it's not just them...

...In his latest book, The Demilitarized Society: Disarmament and Conversion, he writes: "Sustained military spending is, qualitatively, the single most critical factor in the cumulative depletion of the industrial economy...

...At a BENS seminar in late 1990, Robert Gorman of AMI Research, which makes antisubmarine technology for the Navy, warned: "Our technology really isn't transferable to other markets...

...But he knows the political obstacles...

...His reply: "I have no easy answer to it, frankly, for a guy this far along in his career...

...Given this resistance, it may be preferable to stress the nation's own needs rather than its duty to help beleaguered communities and companies...

...In the Twin Cities, where Unisys laid off several thousand workers because of reduced Pentagon spending, Local 2047 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has teamed up with Jobs With Peace to encourage Unisys to diversify into commercial production of such products as high-speed rails and smart irrigation systems...

...There are precedents for corrective governmental action at all levels, instances where careful planning has resurrected communities after military bases have been shut down...

...Without a strong manufacturing base the nation's industrial decline will surely continue and far more jobs will disappear...

...Then [at least pre-recession] they go beyond those recovery levels to attain even larger, more diversified economies"—from pizza parlors, to colleges, to airports, to hightech firms and retailers—proof that it can be done...

...dove, or even party rivalry, "but between those who have military facilities and plants in their districts and those who don't...

...This is a harbinger of many more thousands of pink slips to come in the area as pressures mount to slash the Pentagon's budget over the next five years and because President Bush's budget message recommended that production be suspended on Northrop's Stealth bomber, manufactured in Palmdale and Pico Rivera, California...

...It's not an easy question, and it's a heartbreaking one, too...

...He has also suggested slashing the defense budget $91 billion over five years, with even greater cuts possible if the world remains relatively calm...

...When, for instance, W. H. Tremayne was appointed in 1982 to work on the Defense Department's component of the Grace Commission study on waste in government, he believed "much was to be gained by communities through planned reuse of old bases...

...It could be, however, that the sheer logic of the situation will force decisions...

...Opposition will be automatic...

...Commonweal 8 May 1992: 19...

...A private research group, the Defense Budget Project, estimates that by 1996, and perhaps well before that, Alaska, California,Connecticut, and Hawaii, along with Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia (with their huge Pentagon civilian and military workforce) will feel the shock wave the most...

...history...

...If there is one task that should now command widespread popular and political support, this is surely it...

...His answer is that "the militarization of the economy during the cold war preempted capital and technical resources and landed the United States in industrial decline...

...The national outlook for defense workers and those who depend on them is just as grim...

...Working out of an obscure office in the Pentagon, Robert M. Rauner, who directs the Office of Economic Adjustment (and whom Tremayne credits with first promoting the notion of "planned re-use") points out that planning for the great changes ahead is crucial...

...But they were wrong...

...He contends that a large percentage of the communities that have lost their bases "have replaced lost civilian jobs and incomes within several years...

...What weapons systems do you want to knock off right now...

...An analyst who spoke with me on condition of anonymity described how General Dynamics tried several years ago to establish data processing, telecommunications, asbestos, and ready-mix concrete businesses but failed...

...Though there are dissenting voices—notably Britain's Economist magazine—Ullman and others hold that the key to creating a healthy peacetime economy and making the road less hurtful for people is a deliberate effort to re-industrialize as well as concentrate on still innovative and strong businesses, such as aerospace, biotechnology, computers, and pharmaceuticals...

...chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and Representative Ted Weiss (D-N.Y...

...President George Bush appeared to show some understanding of this when someone asked him during the New Hampshire primary race what he was doing to help retrain middle-aged defense employees...

...Yet another cautionary note was sounded by G. Ronald Hertenstein of Forecast International, a defense and aerospace analyst: Defense businesses have a "culture" grounded on having the government as its sole client...

...Congressman Weiss has addressed the transition problem more directly by introducing the Defense Economic Adjustment Act, which would provide means to help create "alternate use committees at large defense facilities," offer "adjustment assistance" for employees and communities while the transition from military to civilian production is underway, and thus ease the pressure on politicians to rescue weapons' manufacturers in their districts...

...The real division in Congress on this issue, he says, is no longer hawk vs...

...The owners of the bowling alleys and bars servicing offduty soldiers, says Tremayne, "thought their world had ended...

...During the New York primary his wife Hillary Clinton said a Clinton administration would initiate planning and research to promote conversion...

...His own comment: "We seem to react instead of plan...

...Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga...

...Fears of "big government" and distrust of "planning" will be exploited...

...Gone with the troops...

...What is at stake in conversion is nothing less than the nation's economic future," says Ullmann...

...A halfmillion will be discharged from the military by 1996, including many blacks and members of other minority groups who view military service as a source of stable employment and secure futures...

...At a recent Conference on Base Closures, sponsored by Business Executives for National Security (BENS), Tremayne offered an example: Camp Kilmer in Piscataway, New Jersey, abandoned in 1960, today accommodates a busy industrial park and part of Rutgers University...

...The first group wants to keep what they have, and the others want to take the money and spend it on something else...

...Romer might have put a query of his own—"Are we going to keep making tanks and bombs and ships just to keep people working?—as though they were Tinkertoys...

...Even now, should the federal government decide to rebuild our transit systems, says John Ullmann, "the equipment has to be imported in the country where electric traction was invented...

...Ideas on how to do more are not lacking...

...The birthplace of solid state technology can't produce more than a fraction of the products that use it...

...John E. Ullmann, an industrial engineer and professor of management and quantitative methods at Hofstra University, has been studying the problem for decades...

...Defense contractors will use their massive funds and influence to keep their business on permanent welfare, free of the competitive risks of private enterprise...

...But for this and other administrations, to speak of active federal intervention to help businesses, towns, and workers make the transition—or horror of horrors, veer off into new national priorities designed to reinvigorate the economy has been anathema...

...But we've got to cope with it...

...In his Connecticut primary campaign Bill Clinton gave a dubious answer to Bush's question when he proposed building at least one more submarine to keep the Seawolf shipyard going...

...United Technologies' Sikorsky Helicopter division in Stratford, Connecticut, will have its Comanche Helicopter contract terminated before too long and predictions are that UT will soon begin massive cuts in its workforce...

...For defense contractors, the end of the cold war will in time bring an end to a system under which, operating with almost no market competition, with guaranteed proflts and little concern for cost-containment, manufacturing products with little or no economic utility that have seldom been put to use, they earned fabulous sums—and created a million jobs...

...For if no workable national response is forthcoming, the consequence of discarding so many Americans could prove to be continued economic decline and social dynamite over the next decade...

...But how...

...Generally, however, no presidential candidate of either party has offered a substantial program for such conversion...

...Karen Pennar told readers of Business Week three years ago: "Defense spending diverts precious resources from the private economy, as well as from other forms of government spending that might enhance the productivity of the workforce...

...What areas do you want to shut down...

...Despite some success stories, however, many observers of the conversion process believe that most defense companies lack the flexibility, skills, and perhaps even the will to make a turnaround and compete in the private sector...

...In recent years and decades, however, there have been voices warning of the moment that is now arriving and of the effects of militarization on the economy...

...thinks that by 1996 the number of defense-related jobs lost could go as high as 2 million...

...Diversifying," he said, "is easier said than done...

...spring to mind—not much attention has been paid...

...Too true...

...In these circumstances some contend that the federal government has an obligation to assist these corporations, their employees, the towns losing nearby bases, and the coming generation of involuntary military veterans as part of the price of converting to a more peaceful world...

...Failure to take action now would be one of the most portentous blunders in U.S...

...Or do you want to lay off the people...

...Seymour Melman of Columbia University is perhaps preeminent among the prophets who have urged attention to planning for the outbreak of peace...

...But, he warns, "if that factor is unattended, then the rest is rendered unmanageable, and a process of continued decline is locked in place...

...He didn't...

...Aspin, who has taken the lead on this issue, has urged that some defense production lines be maintained, though at reduced levels, to allow the improvement of a few existing weapons and thereby keep some skilled workers on the job...

...In Southern California, where prosperity was fueled for decades by weapons manufacturing, Douglas Aircraft announced in January that 3,000 more people would be fired, bringing the total number of jobs lost since July 1990 to 15,000 in Long Beach and Torrance...

...Our aerospace business is going down the hill...

...Employees and communities are understandably fearful of change and their politicians will cater to those fears...

...Apart from a handful—Les Aspin (D-Wis...

...Apart from weapons plants, there are lots more layoffs ahead: Many more military bases and airfields will be shut down over the next five or six years, and communities conditioned to living off military paychecks may find themselves in trouble...

...General Dynamics is a defense contractor from top to bottom but had no sense of what it takes to be successful in commercial work...

...It must involve local groups "articulating community goals" and developing workable strategies, in his view...

...Hard questions...

...It's all the businesses in Long Beach," said a tavern employee in that coastal city, long heavily dependent on federal expenditures...

...it smacks of the 16: 8 May 1992 Commonweal dreaded "industrial policy," with the government picking winners and losers—even though that is precisely what government has done and still does on a massive scale in military contracting...

...At the governors' conference last February, Bush angrily responded to Colorado Governor Roy Romer's public criticism that his proposed $43 billion defense cut over the next five years was far too small: "What bases do you want to close...