TOWARD A SANE DEFENSE POLICY
Denitch, Bogdan
It is essential for people of the democratic left to begin a fundamental examination of the assumptions behind U.S. defense policy—because Reagan continues to follow, in magnified form, a trend...
...This thesis of Professor Pipes of Harvard is at least clear, and if one believes it—as well as the mad notion that a nuclear war between the superpowers is "winnable"— then a vast expansion of the West's military arsenal might indeed make some sense...
...defeat of insurgencies in Malaysia' and a half-dozen other countries...
...Most of these defeats and losses the Soviet Union has suffered are in no way attributable to American skill...
...I also oppose, as do most of our West European allies, the resumed development of nerve and other poison-gas weapons...
...I am arguing, in terms of cutbacks, for a stop to the funding of the MX, a stop to the development and building of cruises, for elimination of the B-1 bomber and its successor, the Stealth...
...Today the two sides have some 16,000 strategic warheads alone...
...On the contrary, most West European countries have armies based on universal service, with little internal opposition, and pro-Soviet illusions today are probably at a historical low point...
...We need to pay the men and women in the armed forces decent wages and probably should restore something like the old GI Bill to make military service more attractive...
...The theories about the graduated use of nuclear weapons, professed by nuclear theorists, assume that one can turn up the scale of nuclear destruction while stopping short of a holocaust...
...The sheer number of nuclear warheads is numbing when one considers that in the 1960s Robert McNamara's analysis assumed that 400 warheads delivered to Soviet targets were enough to assure deterrence...
...The high point of liberalization occurred in the period of detente, not during the old or new Cold War...
...For one thing, the increasing alarm over what I have called the technological fix or "gold-plating" of weapons points to shifts that are not only possible in behalf of large savings but necessary for a more effective defense...
...Here the Reagan insistence that the U.S...
...had absolute military superiority, a near-monopoly of nuclear weapons, and hegemony over the world economy, the Soviet Union consolidated its hold over Eastern Europe and the Communists their power over China...
...crash program and instead for a gradual phasing-out of obsolete systems and the reorientation toward broad-based popular defense—that is, a strong conventional defense based on citizen armies backed up by easily mobilized massive reserves...
...Some relatively clear facts do emerge after a prolonged and depressing immersion in the Doctor Strangelovian language of nuclear weaponry...
...and its major allies, Western Europe and Japan...
...And the Reagan administration might yet succeed in prodding the Chinese government to try to patch up its differences with the U.S.S.R...
...Would Solidarity be unrepressed if the Soviets had not deployed their new SS-20 rockets...
...has tended to produce more complicated and expensive weapons systems as the quality of its maintenance personnel has decreased...
...The Navy, Air Force, and Army needlessly duplicate each other's weapons or—worsesometimes insist on overspecialized systems specific to narrowly defined tasks...
...The two superpowers share the blame...
...Most U.S...
...Without even discussing the miserable performances of the East European and Soviet economies and their increasing dependence on loans, credits, and technology from the "decadent" West, there are political and strategic Soviet defeats for all to see...
...and NATO forces...
...This balance becomes even clearer if we keep in mind that the Soviet Union, facing both the Western alliance and China, has to think in terms of a two-front war...
...In the Manichaean vision of the American right and the Reagan administration, our weakness is always the result of their activities...
...The history of Middle East alliances should by now have prepared both superpowers to be skeptical about just how much they are buying with the billions of dollars worth of arms...
...would accept defeat in a major conflict rather than move up one notch on the scale of nuclear exchange...
...This West European resistance is eminently sensible and almost completely misunderstood in the U.S...
...While the power and influence of the West have been in decline (in the sense of its ability to impose its will on other parts of the world), this decline has not been accompanied by a parallel growth of Soviet influence...
...arms buildup, even if completed, would not have made any difference...
...If, however, it is a mistake to assume—as the major strategic conception behind our current defense policy does—that Western Europe is the most likely theater of war, either short of an all-out nuclear exchange or as a prelude to such an exchange, then certain fairly obvious consequences follow...
...In the terms of this rhetoric, will is the substitute for policy...
...but the answer must be, no, the Soviets do not have a major advantage...
...There are areas where I, for one, would be more generous than this Administration where defense is concerned...
...We must strengthen our military, but of course universal military service is out of the question...
...More fruitful still would be some version of the Kennan proposal for a mutual 50 percent reduction across the board of the nuclear arsenals...
...There is even less debate on assumptions and comparisons regarding the two superpowers' military and political capabilities...
...must be Number One, not only visavis the Soviets but also in dealing with the restive West European allies...
...with over 9,000 strategically deliverable warheads: surely, by any criteria, a massive nuclear overcapacity...
...But there are major difficulties with the current U.S...
...Thus presumably modest and continual improvements in the triad should create a "safe" defense capacity...
...For every Western "defeat" in the Third World one can find an equivalent for the Soviet bloc...
...Such a "downscaling" of nuclear weapons sharply increases the probability that they might be used...
...In the course of this long-overdue process, the Soviet Union played only a small role...
...Grim Concepts—"First-Strike" & "Counterforce" Capacity...
...The MX, even without the Rube Goldberg delivery system proposed by the Carter administration, is also an unnecessary addition to our arsenal and makes no sense whatsoever if it is to be placed, as now proposed, in existing silos...
...Third World insurgencies are approached simply in terms of U.S./Soviet confrontation...
...Here the Soviet Union has a major disadvantage, which facilitates a popular nonnuclear defense of Western Europe...
...Little of it is based on pacifism or pro-Soviet illusions...
...The disadvantage lies in the rarely examined nature of the Warsaw Pact armies—the reliability of 60 East European divisions that are counted as part of the Soviet military force in Europe...
...The technical advances making a counterforce weapon possible are accompanied by two shifts in doctrine...
...The best examples are probably the duplication of complex fighter aircraft and the creation of a completely unnecessary, and very expensive, Rapid Deployment Force...
...has succeeded in shifting the balance of power in its favor, which gives urgency to the demand for greater military expenditures...
...Not only is it assumed that a major military shift has occurred in that balance—a halftruth at best—but also that the West is increasingly at a political disadvantage...
...SECOND, the French deterrent is no longer negligible—which means that France, not a superpower, must now be included in any negotiations for the reduction of nuclear arms...
...Only NATO Total Ratio Warsaw Pact Total U.S.S.R...
...directly...
...It is playing with fire to develop satellite killers that would endanger inspection and lasers that can be turned into antiballistic missile weapons (again, the first-strike problem...
...I would argue that those armies may well be reliable in the first sense of the word, that is, for internal purposes...
...It is simply impossible to believe that either the U.S.S.R...
...ones are sea- or air-based and thus all but indestructible, if a "window of vulnerability" can be said to exist at all, it exists for the Soviet Union...
...or the U.S...
...But in both these examples, the current U.S...
...Surely, the dependency on Middle East oil should be broken, but this is largely a matter of a responsible energy policy...
...must regain the lead in nuclear weaponry is a prescription for disaster...
...While I do not favor the draft right now, at some future time a military based on universal male and female service, with generous exemptions for conscientious objectors, would be appropriate for a democratic polity...
...defense planning has been based on the scenario that a major war in Europe could occur short of a massive nuclear exchange between the superpowers...
...We are for symmetrical cutbacks because they are beneficial to us, whether or not there remain other disputes with the Soviets...
...arsenal, such as the Rapid Deployment Force, constitute invitations to disaster...
...The United States will now have to learn how to deal with allies rather than dependents, and in this regard two central factors must be noted...
...The only major defeat—Korea was a stalemate—suffered by the Russians in that period was the successful breakaway of Communist Yugoslavia...
...prohibitive for its adversary...
...interests in a way that ties us to unpopular and repressive regimes, a vicious circle is created...
...And as I will try to show, it also presumes a first strike, as a stepping stone to the more explicit theories of graduated use of nuclear weapons (nuclear use theory—NUTs...
...That is why we cannot have a sane defense policy without a democratic foreign policy...
...Since much of the conventional Soviet military force has to be deployed on the Chinese frontier, there is a rough equivalence in Europe—despite the fact that the Soviets traditionally have stressed land forces far more than the West...
...In considering defense, however, particularly when dealing with conventional forces, the troops' reliability becomes a major factor...
...Would Poland be independent if the MX, the B-1 bomber, the 640– ship navy, and the new Mark Abrams tank were on hand...
...At some point it will become necessary to reexamine the assumption behind the "triad," even as an intermediary stage to a more general nuclear disarmament...
...I am arguing that our first priority has to focus on eliminating counterforce weapons and on rejecting the doctrine of first-strike capability by both sides...
...Some Conclusions THE DEMOCRATIC LEFT must take defense issues seriously...
...What we often forget in comparing the relative strengths of the two superpowers is that this is an area where the U.S...
...WHILE CONVENTIONAL FORCES are often discussed when comparing the U.S...
...West European labor and socialist parties (to which we may now also add the Italian Communists) also see themselves as part of "the West," but their West did not judge the anticolonial revolts as a "defeat...
...2) for defensive purposes against an external enemy...
...The absence of a major Soviet advantage argues against a U.S...
...and its allies have an air277 borne deterrent...
...influence, it is remarkable how little the present administration, and even many of its mainline critics, have learned from the past...
...In the case of both mainland China and the Communist party of Italy, the U.S...
...This policy must be linked to clearly understood objectives of defending the United States and helping its allies against possible aggression...
...While democrats must condemn the dirty colonial war in Afghanistan and the military repression of Solidarity, it is clear that both are signs not of Soviet strength but of Soviet weakness...
...As the case of Iran will show all too clearly, modern arms and military establishments do not provide political or social stability...
...The problem is basically simple: there's a conflict between the most sophisticated technology and the technology most appropriate for a given task...
...This is why it is essential to move toward cutbacks that would limit both sides to no more than some 400 delivery vehicles including all their systems, on land, sea, and in the air...
...Only Manpower (total): 2,049,000 4,933,000 1.03:1 4,788,000 3,673,000 Forces in Europe (total): 221,000 2,123,000 1.26:1 1,669,000 881,000 Equipment: Main Battle Tanks 3,000 17,000 1:1.54 26,300 13,300 Antitank Ground Launchers 640 5,784 4.03:1 1,437 1,150 Submarines (attack) 52 191 1.2:1 158 8 Carriers 6 12 3:1 4 4 Destroyers 43 128 5.57:1 23 1 Frigates 34 178 1.63:1 109 4 Naval Air: Attack Fights 194 413 2.47:1 127 42 Fighters 144 159 0 0 Helicopters 48 321 1.87:1 172 12 Landbased Air: Bombers 0 81 1.4:51 365 0 Attack Fighters 492 2,293 1.31:1 1,755 585 Interceptors 0 572 1.2:61 1,490 1,490 Helicopters (armed) 330 733 4.70:1 156 56 278 Nuclear Weapons—Strategic Forces WHEN THINKING about the nuclear weapons systems (strategic, tactical, and intermediary), there is always a danger that one will get lost in the sheer technical complexities...
...Brush-Fire Wars and Rapid Deployment IF WESTERN EUROPE 1S not the place where a conflict is likely to erupt, the next most often mentioned spots are the Persian Gulf, or the Middle East in general, and the countries that are candidates for what is covered by the generic term "brush-fire wars," which are presumably those fought in the Third World...
...loss and subsequent enmity of China...
...The question of cost, however, is more than offset by the fact that the costs of a conventional West European defense must be borne primarily by the West Europeans...
...In the absence of even a modest political understanding, the more "imaginative" additions recently proposed for the U.S...
...Inevitable defeats arouse more and more sentiment at home for military solutions to what are essentially political problems...
...This is an area where Sweden and Switzerland have pioneered, and without going into detail, all one need say is that such defense systems do not necessarily come cheap...
...Neither the Soviets' military superiority nor their clever political maneuvering in the Third World has been the major cause for the decline of the United States as a world power...
...All three are inherently destabilizing in an already tense nuclear balance, not only because they guarantee a new turn upward in the arms race but because the very nature of these systems permits changes in our strategic doctrine...
...The Decline of the West" THE POSTURE OF the Reagan administration on defense and foreign policy has struck many U.S...
...But then we are told by at least one major adviser and Soviet expert of this Administration that war is inevitable unless the Soviet regime changes...
...The point is to get away from the danger of nuclear or all-out conventional conflict...
...And only very recently has the debate on this matter broadened to include questions traditionally left to the Pentagon and military experts: what kind of defense establishment is appropriate for a democracy...
...I can conceive of a prolonged period of time during which the two blocs live with a nuclear deterrent on a far lower level than the present one while continuing to negotiate for further reductions in all weapons...
...loss of influence in Algeria, Sudan, Somalia...
...This, in turn, means that NATO at least has to be redefined as a genuine alliance for mutual protection limited to that region...
...For that matter—since the overwhelming majority of Soviet missiles (there are no non-Soviet, Warsaw Pact nuclear forces) are land-based, while 80 percent of the U.S...
...For it was not a lack of weapons that caused the defeat of U.S...
...major military and political investments written off in Iraq, Uganda, Guinea...
...proposals: (a) An intermediate rocket that can hit Moscow is not regarded as "intermediate" by the Soviets...
...Whatever else these figures project, they do not show an overwhelming Soviet–Warsaw Pact superiority in conventional forces in the European theater...
...The following figures are given in Military Balance 1981-1982 (pp...
...No expert dove or hawk has ever claimed that the West does not have the edge in naval and submarine forces...
...They also still leave the U.S...
...But if the grand sweep of the Warsaw Pact armies recedes in probability, we are still left with the huge nuclear arsenals of the two superpowers...
...Such a policy does not require military superiority in numbers, in view of the advantages that defense has been given by the present military technologies...
...is clearly superior, with some 120,000-plus men and women in the marines—versus some 12,000 in the naval infantry of the Soviet Union...
...We must therefore insist upon substantial negotiations with the Soviets toward a drastic scaling-back of existing nuclear systems...
...That contingency is well covered by what is probably the most efficient branch of our military—the Marine Corps...
...and in buying weapons, high technology also is better...
...It, too, is accurate enough to be a "counterforce" rather than a "countercity" weapon and therefore could be used in a first strike...
...Their tanks are less fancy, but they work and are easier to maintain...
...We need to keep skilled technicians to maintain planes and complex weapons...
...in land forces—is how to introduce "cheap" atomic weapons that (a) do not threaten to escalate into a general nuclear exchange, (b) do not involve a German finger on the nuclear trigger (something that would frighten other West Europeans), and (c) assure that the U.S...
...troop reinforcements to Western Europe...
...While the "mix" of weapons clearly is a reflection of the differing doctrines of the two alliances, on balance, the West does not seem to be in trouble...
...forces in Europe and the French forces, but not the Spanish forces, while the Warsaw Pact figures include Romania...
...This is important, since the United States' refusal to state that it would refrain from first use of nuclear weapons in Europe is based on an assumption of gross Soviet and Warsaw Pact superiority over the U.S...
...And insofar as these anticolonial upheavals signified a "defeat" for the West, it was clearly the political bankruptcy of Western colonialism, not Soviet power, that was the crucial factor...
...And no expert claims that the U.S.S.R...
...with the triad, and it makes arms inspection much more difficult...
...This means that one must scale down quite sharply the estimates of effective Warsaw Pact troops in Europe—an additional argument for believing that a conflict between the two blocs in Europe is unlikely...
...In the case of the U.S., each "leg" of the strategic triad—the strategic missiles, airborne and submarine-launched missiles—meets the full deterrence capacity...
...the nation must make sacrifices to pay for a strong defense, but of course Reagan goes ahead with income-tax cutbacks for the well off...
...Mary Kaldor, in her excellent book Baroque Weapons, beautifully 276 makes the point that ever more elaborate weapons get in the way of imaginative innovations, since too much is invested in the existing systems, which turn out to be designed for former wars...
...Major changes in the Third World did indeed weaken the Western alliance, at least insofar as its condition is defined by its major partner...
...defense policy—because Reagan continues to follow, in magnified form, a trend that began under the Carter administration...
...Unless the new weapons are also coupled with the long-defunct Dulles doctrine of "rolling back" the Iron Curtain, they can hardly help liberalize the regimes in Eastern Europe...
...3) for offensive purposes...
...At this point, an additional issue needs to be addressed...
...The last does poorly, for more money, what the Marine Corps is designed for...
...possibly in the second...
...By defining U.S...
...Still, we cannot completely write off the possibility that a different administration might move toward a democratic foreign policy and thus have alliances that are not only defensible but worth defending...
...It is essential to show that we do accept the idea that there should be some efficient, effective defense for the United States...
...Clearly, both the superpowers' defeats and losses have had little to do with military hardware as such...
...b) There is a growing West European popular opposition to these proposals, and it seems rather likely that the Pershings will never be installed...
...Here again we have to deal with the political dimension of defense issues...
...If one were to factor in morale—and I do not merely mean the obvious unwillingness of most East Europeans to fight for their Soviet masters—it seems absurd to push alarm buttons about the state of the balance of conventional forces in Europe...
...Many solutions have been proposed, all messy...
...281...
...aid after the Second World War—become major players in the world market...
...whatever the state of nuclear arsenals, more is better...
...Here major savings can be achieved through interchangeability and efficiencies of scale...
...The multipolar world these events opened up have created possibilities for both good and bad—peace and nuclear disarmament can no longer be settled by Moscow and Washington alone...
...The new tank is a monster that may make Chrysler rich, but it has a horrendous breakdown rate and no clear function in any thought-out, probable conflict —unless we believe that we can replay Patton's dash across northern France on the plains of Poland...
...Linkage" in any form is beside the point, since mutual cutbacks are not supposed to reward the Soviets for good behavior but express a joint interest...
...The terrible 279 danger is that, given no agreement to scale back the weapons systems or even a more modest SALT II agreement, both sides will feel forced to develop counterforce capacity...
...For that matter, we should be troubled about the whole idea of a professional army in a democracy...
...Pressure for an acceptable settlement— including reasonable security for Israel and recognition of the Palestinian right to selfdetermination— should therefore be stressed...
...We must insist that we are not opposed to a sane, reasonable defense of legiti280 mate U.S...
...Later, Western aid did help the Yugoslays, but it was their own resolve that made possible this first successful break in Eastern Europe...
...Unfortunately, tough talk seems to be politically useful at home even though it scores no points abroad and does nothing to increase our security...
...These theorists, in other words, treat nuclear weapons as simply more powerful versions of conventional ones...
...This also means that U.S...
...and its allies...
...The reasonable-sounding shift from MAD (an all-or-nothing exchange that is meant not to happen) to a counterforce approach (that would target not the cities bilk the weapons systems, silos, and command centers of the enemy) posits the possibility of actually fighting a nuclear war...
...The U.S...
...If a nuclear conflict becomes less probable in Europe, two things follow: our forward-based nuclear systems can be cut back and conventional conflict possibilities must be reexamined...
...The central problem in the Middle East lies in the intransigent postures of the contending forces...
...The cruise missile is cheap, accurate, and slow, and can be launched from the projected B-1 bomber, from the newer Stealth bomber, from the present planes of the Strategic Air Command or, for that matter, from mobile launchers on land or sea...
...While these measures will result in huge savings, let us emphasize that they still leave in place the essential "deterrent" in the form of the triad...
...Our planes are excellent, but they can stay combat-ready for shorter and shorter periods...
...and West European analysts as unbalanced to the point of irrationality...
...There now is, after all, a broad agreement that the U.S.S.R...
...but these changes were not primarily or merely the consequence of Soviet actions...
...I am not arguing that such hardware is unimportant, merely that it has played much less of a role than we are accustomed to think...
...Defense is too important an issue to leave to the military...
...The High-Technology Fix & Gold-Plating IT IS A NOTORIOUS FACT that the U.S...
...Reliability, of course, is not a fixed category...
...The acceptance of this view surely is the major reason for greater defense spending— neither the Soviet adventure in Afghanistan nor the repression of Solidarity in Poland has changed the balance of power...
...124-25), the yearly study of the Institute for Strategic Studies in London, issued by Facts on File publications...
...It thus opens the possibility of a "first strike," which could knock out Soviet rockets while still leaving the U.S...
...FIRST, there is the shift in relative economic weight between the U.S...
...Armies can be reliable— (1) for internal purposes, as in the case of the Polish troops versus Solidarity...
...Such defeats would continue to occur even if by some miracle the Soviet Union ceased to exist...
...In turn, this leads to consideration of a general U.S...
...Given this historical backdrop to the decline of U.S...
...There has been broad bipartisan agreement that a major increase in military spending is necessary for the U.S...
...A sane defense policy is considerably more feasible if coupled with substantial negotiations with the Soviets and with moves both through some unilateral initiatives and mutual agreements to cut back nuclear arsenals...
...forces...
...A successful mutual scaling back to this, still very high, level can shape the backdrop for further arms reductions by both sides...
...cannot "manage" its alliance as it used to do is that Western Europe and Japan have—in good measure thanks to U.S...
...interests...
...Both the U.S...
...policy—justified in terms of strategic, that is, defense needs—in Southern Africa, Angola, Nicaragua, and El Salvador can only guarantee further and perhaps even deeper defeats...
...In manpower, the figures are close...
...As for the decolonization of the Third World, that took place through a series of wars 273 of liberation or as the result of more-or-less orderly Western withdrawals...
...Do the Soviet armed forces have a major advantage in the European theater...
...It is reasonably clear that a major trend toward "destabilization" of the traditional deterrence system—or mutual, assured destruction (MAD)—has been under way for a decade...
...This may be appropriate for pacifists, but not for those of us who want to develop an alternate politics for a democratic majority...
...will not abandon Western Europe...
...A beginning could be the ratification of SALT II...
...The Soviets are less prone to overrefinements, and it is no accident that the most successful general weapon used throughout the Third World is their AK semiautomatic rifle...
...More funds are needed for maintenance and upkeep of existing weapons...
...It is also too vital a question to leave in the hands of the right and the hawks— just as peace is too important an issue to leave to the peace movement...
...it must also be uncoupled from adventures in the Third World...
...Nevertheless, it is true that this more complex multipolar world does represent a weakening of the traditional Western alliance...
...The present Reserve system is clearly inadequate, and we should favor more emphasis on studying broad-based citizenarmy defense systems and on developing military technologies that are appropriate...
...Put another way, each leg of the triad assures enough massive destruction by itself (even if the other two are destroyed) to make the cost of any attack on the U.S...
...interests or perceived interests are no longer automatically the same as those of the alliance...
...This is the acknowledged, objective though somewhat pro-Western, source for most of such unclassified information...
...weakness in weapons procurements: our fix on high technology...
...The administration puts forward a parochial argument that is almost entirely geared to domestic American politics: • The U.S...
...What Is the Balance of Conventional Forces...
...and what sort of technology and weapons systems do we need...
...I would argue that there is a rough balance in conventional weapons and armies, if we consider the nature of the Western alliance on the one hand, and that of the Soviet alliance on the other...
...On the part of the United States, I would favor moving unilaterally toward elimination of all ground-based missile launchers, and to move whatever remains out to sea...
...The Trident II system increases the accuracy of submarine-based missiles to a point where it becomes a counterforce weapon as well...
...What these theorists are playing with, therefore, is something far beyond any reasonable assumption of security or defense: in question is, at that point, the existence of humanity itself...
...One might add to this list the loss of the largest Communist party in Western Europe, that of Italy...
...the Soviets must be made to pay for the repression in Poland, but of course no grain embargo is to be imposed...
...More to the point, a nonnuclear defense policy for Western Europe raises questions about a popular, broadly based armed resistance...
...plans to add three new items to its nuclear arsenal: the cruise missile, the MX missile, and the new Trident II system...
...MUCH NONSENSE has been written about the East/West power balance of the conventional forces...
...These consequences pertain to both the quantities and kinds of weapons systems that should be provided for by a sane defense budget...
...Let me mention just a few: Loss of Yugoslavia and Albania...
...There are at least two other items in the Reagan "defense" budget that should be eliminated...
...intervention in a "brush-fire war" could be anything but a political, military, and moral disaster...
...These figures include, for the NATO side, the U.S...
...The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that we have not one but three and a-half military bureaucracies, all mutually competitive when it comes to the budget and "ownership" of major weapons systems...
...It is destabilizing because it is accurate enough to be directed against silos rather than cities, and above all because it can carry either a conventional or a nuclear warhead...
...Army and Navy have developed weapons systems primarily for that contingency— NATO forces to hold off a massive tank assault from the East while the Navy clears the Atlantic in order to rush U.S...
...The present U.S...
...ally...
...But the fundamental questions of defense policy are rarely if ever discussed...
...The shift in doctrine since the early '70s, coupled with new weapons systems, is even more frightening...
...To achieve such stability, however, requires that we move away from confrontational rhetoric with our "competitive-relationship" partner...
...That is as close as we can come to a civil defense policy in the nuclear era...
...Negotiations with the Soviet Union to cut back the arms buildup in that area make far more long-range sense than the present arms race, for which both sides share responsibility...
...The Soviet bloc has a major edge in tanks (11/2 or 2 to 1), but the West has great superiority in antitank weapons, tactical aircraft, radar, and mobility...
...clients and allies in Algeria, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, and Nicaragua...
...Given Reagan's preferences among Latin American, South African, and Asian regimes, I find it almost inconceivable that U.S...
...One clear reason why the U.S...
...It also assumes angelic mutual confidence among the two rival powers and an acceptance, even though hypothetically, of the notion that both would agree to a common definition of what constitutes a tactical or intermediary weapon as against a strategic one...
...Matters of Defense —and Foreign Policy PERHAPS THE MOST remarkable fact about the defense debate is how little attention is paid to the political dimension...
...The numbers game here is difficult to follow since we are comparing two very different defense systems...
...It would be surprising if that period was not marked by superpower rivalry, indirect local conflicts, and maneuvering for unilateral advantage...
...A decidedly undovish Nixon had stopped their manufacture...
...And this is one more reason to try to move as quickly as possible to a nucleararmsfree world...
...The Russians quite reasonably refuse to negotiate 275 reductions in Europe if the French and smaller British nuclear weapons systems are left out of such considerations...
...It is a problem complicated by our system of military procurement (superbly described in Gordon Adams's Iron Triangle), which pushes toward more profitable—that is, more complex—products...
...Precisely at the time when the U.S...
...I repeat, the number of warheads and delivery systems is many times greater than what was projected as adequate for deterrence, on both sides...
...Counterforce relies on surprise and first strike, which makes the United States' repeated refusal to say it will not be the first to use nuclear weapons sound grim indeed...
...All these proposals, like the current proposal to install the Pershings II, had one thing in common: the finger on the trigger of those weapons must be American...
...transformation of Egypt into a 274 U.S...
...may even have delayed what was probably an inevitable process...
...Meanwhile, however, they fuel nationalist sentiments, which find expression in the slogan that the United States must be "Number One...
...COUNTERFORCE ASSUMES that it is possible to destroy all, or nearly all, of the enemy's capacity to retaliate, after which the remaining nuclear weapons of the side initiating such an attack hold the enemy population centers as essentially defenseless hostages...
...Just as the problem of "brush-fire conflicts" is primarily though not always exclusively a political one, so is the problem of the Middle East and its oil supplies...
...This article is based on a chapter that will appear in What Reagan Is Doing to Us, Frank Reissman, ed., to be published by Harper & Row later this year...
...But is that really so...
...and Soviet military establishments, it rarely is argued that the Soviet superiority in this field, real or imagined, threatens the U.S...
...I will further argue that the purpose of a sane defense policy is to buy time for a gradual, negotiated cutback of nuclear arsenals, since ultimately no sane defense policy can be based on the threat of mutual atomic suicide...
...defeat in Indonesia...
...There was an abortive attempt to build a multinational nuclear force, which proved too complicated, as did various combinations of NATO and U.S...
...and almost not at all in the third...
...Put another way, the problem— in light of the perceived superiority of the U.S.S.R...
...Hardly what one would call a "historically inevitable" march toward a Sovietdominated world...
...On the other hand, we ought not to be for cutting everything in the defense budget...
...But that is almost irrelevant, because even if the blame were not symmetrically distributed, both powers clearly now must share in the massive cutbacks that are so urgent, if only to buy time for a general scaling-down of nuclear and conventional arsenals...
Vol. 29 • July 1982 • No. 3
