NEITHER BELLICOSE NOR HELPLESS: A DEMOCRATIC LEFT PROPOSAL FOR DEFENSE POLICY
Denitch, Bogdan
It is impossible to discuss U.S. defense policy without locating it within an examination of foreign policy in all its ramifications. A discussion that limits itself to questions of...
...The Chinese and Yugoslav governments have been more than willing to assert their independence from the Soviet bloc...
...That's a tricky set of propositions...
...A side benefit would be the cutting off of financial aid to the various thugs sponsored by this administration in those two countries...
...The two alliances are asymmetrical in that NATO represents an alliance of major industrial powers with major 216 capacity to produce and sustain advanced military technology, whereas the Warsaw Pact depends almost entirely on the USSR...
...And that could lead to the most radical of all demands: the withdrawal of both U.S...
...They are a permanent part of the political scene...
...And a European conflict that could be localized lies in the realm of fantasy...
...In both cases the mountain labored but produced a mouse...
...The needed transformation of Soviet society and American society so as to assure a peaceful world is a long-range project...
...And that, in turn, requires the politically all-but-impossible notion of conscription—universal military training—with allowance made for broad alternative service...
...Unless we understand that no disarmament treaty, no arms control agreement that is not to the mutual benefit of both superpowers, is worth the paper it is written on, we will continue to be trapped within the hazards of Cold War Two...
...standing in the Third World...
...Whatever interests the U.S...
...To elaborate slightly...
...There is in fact no such advantage...
...Most of the battle carriers should be honorably retired, perhaps turned over to a world organization for emergency rescue and relief missions, since they could serve little other useful purpose...
...This administration's recklessness and insistence on the Star Wars strategy, even at the expense of potential major breakthroughs in disarmament as the aborted conference in Iceland showed, surely has gone a long way toward convincing the Europeans that their security cannot depend solely on the Alliance's U.S...
...And that one—main battle field tanks—matters less and less, given modern weapons technology...
...Universal military service for males and females would provide more than sufficient resources for any reasonable defense policy...
...That aside, it is clear that Britain, with its more modest forces, intervened more successfully against a more powerful foe...
...The Navy refused to refuel Army helicopters carrying wounded Marines since there were no budgetary provisions for that contingency...
...If that is so, then really major cutbacks in the military forces of both alliances are obviously possible and consonant with the security needs of both sides...
...Therefore, relatively short terms of service would be possible and such a citizens' army would go a long way toward demythologizing the entire subject of defense, especially if accompanied by the broadest policy of alternate service...
...What remains is a triad: strategic nuclear forces, an enormously expensive Star Wars dream, and a Navy with more admirals in it than at the height of the Second World War...
...Therefore, an indispensible part of any security policy has to be an egalitarian full-employment policy, above all for the young entering the work force, since they are the very people expected to defend the society from external aggression...
...a military edge, but would create intolerable pressures on the Soviet regime that would bring that regime to the brink of collapse...
...The Dangers We Face FOLLOWING THESE ASSUMPTIONS let US look at both the real and fictitious dangers that the United States faces—any United States, not only Reagan's...
...Doubters are advised to reflect on the slaughter of the U.S...
...The "freedom fighters" who are trying to topple the Angolan regime are hardly devoted to a pluralist parliamentary democracy...
...In whatever version, Star Wars is conceived as a defense of the U.S...
...A nonprofessional military force would also tend to break down the caste divisions that are inconsistent with a democratic society...
...For example, what is the "legitimate U.S...
...Flipping the coin, the presumably Marxist-Leninist government of Angola is more than anxious to trade with the U.S...
...and Western Europe, risking the clutches of the capitalist world market...
...Those who pay attention to mass culture will have noticed an almost endless series of films and television shows that repeat the theme of the betrayal of our boys in uniform by wimpy civilians...
...Such a usable advantage presumes that the weapons are indeed to be used...
...and the USSR would remain competitive...
...Almost single-handedly the Reagan administration has managed to shake the previous consensus around Atlanticism and NATO...
...Marines in Lebanon and the huffing and puffing, with a hefty dose of terrorism thrown in, in the case of Libya...
...The third element is the relationship of the U.S...
...I share the biases (however recent) of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops: nuclear weapons directed at civilian population centers are intrinsically illegitimate...
...Egalitarian full employment is not merely "full employment," which dooms blacks, women, and other minorities to unemployment or underemployment at miserable jobs...
...Whatever the ideological claims of such governments, they have proven more than willing to maintain friendly economic relations with any U.S...
...A POLICY OF DETENTE not only maximizes the security of both the U.S...
...An industrial infrastructure would also be good for the country since a transition from one type of economy to another serving only the appetite for profit has had enormous human costs, some of which are visible in the changing character of the volunteer army we now have...
...The Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the government of Angola, despite their political stance, have repeatedly stated their desire for normal relations with Washington...
...Any attempt to service the debt requires draconian cutbacks in social spending in already poor and fragile societies as well as rollbacks in low living standards...
...One is that socialist, labor, and social democratic parties are the only viable alternative governments in Western Europe...
...When one speaks of balance of forces we too often forget that both alliances deploy the bulk of their forces in Europe...
...It surely should not require something as improbable as the advent of a democratic socialist government to realign U.S...
...All of this leads to the possibility of pressing for a radical lowering of the military posture by both superpowers in Europe...
...Is that interest best represented by the oil rigs guarded by Cuban troops and by other U.S...
...that is, in those wars where the guerrillas, or the opposition, appear to be winning against U.S...
...Full employment, properly understood, should serve a society which is, and is seen to be by its members, just and fair...
...Today, in the high-unemployment era of this administration, we are presumably reassured that whatever else happens it has had an excellent effect on improving the quality of the recruits who are now high school graduates or better...
...The Hungarians would probably be delighted to fight the Rumanians, the Rumanians the Hungarians, the Poles the East Germans and the Russians, and the Czechs no one at all—which might be a mark of that nation's higher cultural level...
...a major advantage in the nuclear rivalry...
...credibility as a superpower...
...The French nuclear deterrent (or, as they call it, the Force of Dissuasion) clearly dictates that such a war could not be contained within a conventional framework...
...One cannot attempt to service debts in the Third World without smashing trade unions, lowering living standards of the professional middle classes, and squeezing the peasants into monocultures that can generate some hard currency in a world market which has been bleak at best for most of the present decade...
...This is one of the prices we pay for having a military that serves society but is not a part of it...
...Most of these "interests" are illegitimate and, in any case, not militarily defensible...
...What is an appropriate defense establishment for a democratic world power...
...Is is reasonable for a democracy to have a defense establishment staffed by the poor, the unemployed, and minorities...
...For one thing, it might concentrate their attention on foreign policy and peace issues in a way that the trivialization of defense issues by this administration has not...
...I work here with certain assumptions...
...The present proposals of the German Social Democrats for a nuclear-free belt in Central Europe would create a nuclear-free zone from Sweden through Central Europe, Austria, and Yugoslavia to the Mediterranean, physically separating the two superpowers and lowering the possibility of military confrontation and escalation...
...It has convinced the majority of the European social democrats and democratic socialists to radically rethink their relation to NATO and the United States and to begin pursuing alternate, and, in my view, far more appropriate foreign and defense policies...
...The problem with Star Wars is not merely that it would profoundly alter the balance of power between the U.S...
...Strangeloves: the fear of mutual suicide...
...Steps to a Democratic Foreign Policy THERE ARE AT LEAST FOUR sets of issues involving security and defense that have nothing to do with weapons systems yet are crucial to any genuine security...
...They haven't fallen in love with capitalism as a 220 system or with the U.S...
...And even if there were, the way to overcome it would be to 218 increase the conventional forces of NATO and the U.S...
...It is true that the hundreds of communities that depend on Navy procurement orders will be hard hit, to which we can only say that we need a full employment policy that does not depend on building useless weapons...
...Quite simply, there is no legitimate "defense" interest that requires interventions in the smaller colonial and ex-colonial nations of the Third World, above all in Latin America and the Caribbean...
...IN ADDITION TO FORGIVING the loans, the U.S...
...Most of the Third World nations simply do not accept the U.S...
...The extra carriers have not added to U.S...
...Finally, a systematic set of agreements between the USSR and the U.S...
...222...
...in the areas of greatest world tension would permit both sides to build down from their present military postures and make the world safer...
...The inclusion of women is particularly important, since veteran privileges and benefits have been one of the major weapons for maintaining gender discrimination in government employment...
...policy makers about whether or not it is time to begin thinking of a more autonomous and independent Europe that is outside the confrontation between the superpowers...
...The whole idea of a system that could defend "substantial parts" of the United States (shorthand for the command and control centers, i.e., Washington) is truly frightening...
...Presumably we want security for a decent, humane, and democratic society...
...Conversely, it should at least raise certain questions among the more serious U.S...
...The West German army, for example, fields more than half of the effective manpower of the alliance in Europe...
...foreign policy so that it contributes positively to what the Third World needs...
...public be a great deal more sensitive about how and where troops are deployed if those troops included the sons and daughters of the middle classes...
...In short, the present military build-up has exacerbated precisely those aspects of Soviet society that make it most threatening...
...It follows that major cutbacks in the military theater will have a substantial impact on military budgets...
...The waste of power and money in the Grenada episode is sharply illustrated by comparing it with the British intervention in the Falklands...
...In the short term, the urgent task is to undo the damage caused by the bellicosity of this administration and to move toward a decent noninterventionist democratic foreign policy...
...to its allies...
...So too Mozambique and most Third World regimes that use Marxist-Leninist oratory as the language of nationalism and modernization...
...the only conceivable source of technological aid and industrial goods has been the West...
...Therefore, their move toward unilateral initiatives in promoting a nuclear-free zone in Central Europe and a nuclear-free Britain is an enormous step forward...
...2) The U.S...
...And so on...
...It is not only more reasonable, but would indirectly help the overall U.S...
...3) A multipolar rather than a bipolar world is not only a safer place but serves U.S...
...All that we can hope for is to channel that competition in such ways as to lower the pressures for military buildup and decrease the danger of conflict...
...Can such a defense establishment be left to the professional military and to a volunteer force, the quality of which depends on maintaining high unemployment among eighteen to twentyfour year olds...
...Realism and Detente...
...Nuclear weapons can be justified only to the extent that they lead to their own demise: that is, nuclear weapons should serve as leverage for negotiations combined with unilateral initiatives that lead to the abolition of nuclear weapons...
...If the nuclear rockets should be used as weapons instead of instruments of deterrence, which is bad enough, the prospect is truly terrifying...
...The morale of the population is a major factor in any conception of security...
...I can think of no legitimate goals that would be advanced by mass nuclear destruction...
...If NATO does not need building up and if a Rapid Deployment Force (which would utilize 217 units from all the services) would be a blundering liability in the Third World, where does that leave a U.S...
...With the relative capacities of both superpowers, anyone who proposes such a policy is certifiably insane...
...In a genuine emergency no one will cavil at the cost of legitimate defense...
...troops on the white side in a conflict in South Africa...
...Too much would be at stake...
...A discussion that limits itself to questions of technology and hardware on the one hand, or grotesque costs on the other, misses the point...
...Centralized economic planning, the second item of Soviet export, has proved a disaster in those economies...
...In the good times, or not so bad times, of the early Carter era what was wrong with the army was that it was recruited out of the slums and Appalachia and reflected the problems of those two areas: low literacy, and a high affinity for liquor, drugs, and violence...
...Surely, the Western industrial democracies are stable enough not to require U.S...
...The second general area to explore would turn on radically altering the U.S...
...What would have happened had anybody actually wanted to defend Grenada...
...We have to think of the benefits we can derive from negotiations rather than look at them, as this administration has done almost exclusively, as a propaganda exercise...
...The political debate on U.S...
...Star Wars involves so many problems that it is hard to know where to begin...
...Mutual cutbacks are required, but a great deal of room exists for unilateral initiatives...
...cannot have a legitimate defense policy if its purpose is to use force, implicit or actual, in order to maintain an unjust and unequal relationship between the Third World and the industrialized world...
...The professional military conspiracy to overthrow de Gaulle for making peace in Algiers was broken by these same reservists in uniform, while the elite units proved disloyal...
...might have in the Third World are almost totally irrelevant to a military buildup...
...naval power of the early Nixon, Ford, and Carter years...
...posture toward the developing countries, particularly those of Latin America and Africa...
...When Henry Kissinger still had sensible things to say, he asked "What on earth does one do with superiority...
...The relationship between the U.S...
...The sole recent U.S...
...That makes the idea of a civilian army all the more attractive: It is worth remembering that the Algerian war ended very soon after the conscripts and reserve officers started to be used in it...
...defense posture...
...As it happens, it is also in the best interests of the United States...
...Whether under Carter or Reagan, we hardly needed to prove that the United States could intervene in Grenada...
...As a pessimist, I will assume that at monstrous cost, some Rube Goldberg contraption called Star Wars can be gotten off the drawing board...
...The situation calls for major pressure on the Democratic House and Senate to alter present policy, if only for symbolic value...
...Briefly: The U.S...
...Grenada is thus a textbook illustration of what is wrong with the U.S...
...Put another way, the U.S...
...A whole range of outstanding problems would remain...
...interests...
...A cynical observer might say that nuclear weapons, particularly intermediate-range nuclear weapons, are a cheap alternative (financially and politically) to the advantage that the Warsaw Pact has over NATO in conventional forces...
...should move toward "forgiving" the bulk of the Third World debt since it is not only uncollectible but any serious attempts to service that debt by Third World countries imperils democratic stability far more than any combination of pro-Moscow guerrillas or right-wing military hoodlums...
...That requires an industrial policy that would maintain manufacturing capacity in steel, shipbuilding, and general tool manufacturing and slow the tendency to a "service society" which trades skilled and unionized jobs in basic industry for jobs in hamburger stands...
...defense policy proceeds in a minefield of implicit assumptions...
...If peace is too important to be left to the peace movement, national defense is too important to be left to the military...
...Both episodes originated in scandalous policies...
...Ludicrous but true: the Army communicated with the Navy by using a pay phone in Grenada, since the radios were on different wave-lengths...
...NATO was conceived of as a defense against a probable Soviet sweep to the Atlantic in the late 1940s and early 1950s...
...The reason is quite simple...
...It is hard to imagine a case for the administration's apparent belief that an arms race, which began in what can be called Cold War Two, would not only give the U.S...
...Nuclear weapons as an "acceptable" element of a defense policy are already shrouded in the tatters of mutual deterrence policy...
...Only in the Ramboesque fantasies of the 011ie Norths can a lightly armed Rapid Deployment Force be adequate to face any serious military opponent such as the Soviet Union, Cuba, or the Vietnamese...
...The balance of forces between the USSR and its alliance on the one hand and the United States and NATO on the other, is either even or tilted grossly in favor of the U.S.NATO alliance in all significant weapons systems except one...
...Granted the cutbacks, one major question remains...
...That is, we will be trapped in the idiotic assumption that because the Soviet Union is led by a bunch of authoritarians with a powerful military establishment we should not negotiate with it...
...For instance, one might hesitate to use U.S...
...There may be all kinds of reasonable political, economic or strategic American interests in those areas...
...It might accomplish little in economic terms, but it would most surely improve U.S...
...The only proper army for a democracy is a citizens' army and the only citizens' army worth talking about is one where all citizens share in the obligation of defense...
...There is no more destabilizing development in the competitive relationship of the two superpowers than something that clearly gives the U.S...
...client regimes...
...A defense policy that wastes resources through badly conceived policies that are not in the overall interests of the country is too expensive no matter the actual cost...
...It would have to be truly universal, extended to both sexes...
...That is, it is in the interest of the United States that the pressures of confrontation between the two military blocs in Europe be lowered...
...There are a number of reasons, not least of which is a shifting military technology that has permitted such massive destruction of tank armies that Egypt and Israel were capable of losing more tanks in the Sinai War than Germany and the Soviet Union did in the greatest tank battle of World War II...
...How does it translate into leverage for negotiations...
...It should not be difficult to negotiate mutual cutbacks given the deepening Soviet shortages in skilled manpower...
...Together these propositions offer an outline of an alternative: a democratic foreign policy that democratic socialists can propose...
...defense policy best...
...senior partner...
...The real problem is what it tells us about what the decision-making elites in Washington think of the alliance called NATO...
...What it comes down to is that the only aid the Soviets have been willing to provide consistently to Third World regimes has been weapons...
...Such policies already exist in a number of European countries...
...It would make it safer not because the superpowers endanger it by the mere fact of having arms but because it would sharply limit the ability of the U.S...
...has worldwide interests which require a worldwide projection of force and that it is precisely in the Third World that the West, however one defines it, is militarily weak...
...Dwell for a 221 moment on this mind-boggling fact and think about what it implies about the probability of tank armies sweeping across the North German plains...
...more bluntly, cutbacks on the part of the United States...
...As to the first, it is clear that under this administration, and with the tacit blessing of most Democrats in Congress, the U.S...
...and Soviet troops from European soil...
...military success suggests a second point...
...The issue here is solely the relationship of such societies to the legitimate defense needs of the United States...
...The Rapid Deployment Force, one of the keystones of defense thinking of both the administration and congressional Democrats, is intended to intervene in so-called brush wars in the Third World...
...To begin with, the invasion was unnecessary...
...and the USSR but has historically proven to be the ideal backdrop for liberalization and reform in the authoritarian societies of Eastern Europe...
...ground forces and equally clearly the withdrawal of Soviet military forces from Eastern Europe should be a major negotiating goal...
...The last point to be made here is that détente through negotiation is not a reward for Soviet good behavior but a good in and of itself and consonant with U.S...
...No matter how profitable for private capital it might be to export basic industries to where labor is 219 cheaper, no serious world power can think of itself as secure if the fundamental instruments of production, essential to maintaining a major industrial power, are no longer at home...
...Interservice rivalries that require a triple threat of land, airborne, and naval strategic missiles serve no purpose...
...The Army, the Navy, the Marines and the Air Force could not even communicate with each other...
...Preventing situations that lead to such breakdowns is a far more reasonable way to proceed...
...However, to maintain a conventional balance that is credible even with drastic cutbacks on both sides, a viable reserve system is required...
...THE NEWLY BORN HAWKS, in the Democratic party and among some writers in the New Republic, argue that the U.S...
...The proper thing to do with Star Wars is get rid of it, just as the proper thing to do with nuclear weapons is to begin with drastic cutbacks leading to their abolition...
...For example, it is not at all clear that thirteen, fourteen, or sixteen aircraft carrier battle groups are in practice a useful projection of military power in ways that were available to the very substantial U.S...
...There is a further dimension to the question of full employment within the framework of security and defense policy...
...Any decoupling of sections of Europe from the cold war is, in and of itself, a good thing...
...The primary alliance is in Western Europe, where the damage done to the United States by the Reagan administration has been clearest...
...has a legitimate interest in lowering the tensions between the two military alliances, NATO and Warsaw Pact, encouraging the independence of both Eastern and Western Europe...
...has abandoned even the pretense of seeking parity with the USSR...
...What could be more frightening to West Europeans, already shaken by this administration's tendency toward unilateral adventurism...
...It would remove one of the minimal factors that has so far constrained our Dr...
...The gruesome, if tacit, agreement by the superpowers to hold each other's civilian populations as hostage for good behavior, or mutual assured destruction (MAD), was less insane than a policy directed toward a usable edge in a nuclear arms race...
...What the Soviet Union needs from Western Europe is technology, and the West European economies need trade...
...Would not the U.S...
...With respect to military hardware, the question is not whether superbomb "x" is umpteen megatons more powerful than superbomb "y," but what is its purpose and how is it to be used to further a legitimate policy...
...That scenario of a mass sweep by Russian tank armies is today probably the least likely of all scenarios in the foreseeable future...
...as an impartial policeman, and rightly so...
...This administration has succeeded where generations of left-wing activists have failed...
...Second, with respect to the Navy, we can dispense with admirals fantasizing a replay of the Battle of Midway...
...administration that makes the least effort to do so...
...This is an intriguing and promising fact since at the present time the least likely place for a conflict to break out is in Europe...
...This much can be said: the fundamental problems are conceptual and political rather than technological...
...or Soviet allies to engage in the sort of provocative behavior that would trigger off a local conflict that could then expand...
...But what would it achieve...
...and the USSR, and create an unholy temptation for a quick Soviet first strike...
...business interests, or by the U.S.armed Savimbi guerrillas who are trying to blow up the same oil rigs...
...Whatever U.S.-USSR confrontation may be good for, it has proven terrible for dissidents and reformers in those societies...
...This is not exactly reassuring...
...Some might object that such a civilianized military establishment would be more difficult to deploy in a number of situations...
...An adventure, which is what an invasion of Western Europe would be, is not in the cards...
...Forgiveness of Third World debts will surely do more to shore up democratic and reform regimes than any projected Rapid Deployment Force...
...A convincing case can be made that it is in the genuine interests of the United States and the world that these societies be reformed and modernized rather than pushed against the wall...
...All this could be supplemented by civilian officers modeled on the Swedish, Swiss, and Israeli reserve systems...
...Some Modest Proposals A REASONABLE PROPOSAL in this area would call for a drastic cutback, beginning with the complete elimination of the MX, Pershing and Cruise missile programs, and a voluntary rollback of strategic missiles by at least 50 percent, with an invitation to the other side to do likewise...
...Saying this in no way implies that these societies are awash with human rights, democracy, and harmony...
...However, armed force has proven to be a singularly blunt instrument for any decent policy...
...The Warsaw Pact alliance is based on grudging, reluctant partners whose troops are probably unreliable for anything but internal repression, with the exception of the Soviet and, perhaps, Bulgarian troops...
...More generally, the times call for a policy of detente rather than confrontation in Europe...
...To the contrary, precisely because the Soviet Union is a dangerous world power we must negotiate with it...
...More likely, these pressures would increase the weight of the authoritarian and military factions within Soviet society...
...The governments of Angola, Mozambique, GuineaBissau, and Guinea have discovered that ideological affinity for Soviet authoritarianism is of little use when it comes to economic development...
...economy, since regimes freed of the burden of unrealistic interest might start purchasing badly needed industrial goods from this and other countries...
...France, while not formally in NATO, is obviously a part of the Western alliance...
...Allies...
...as a world power...
...The Rapid Deployment Force is supposed to deal with the consequences of the collapse of friendly and democratic regimes in the Third World...
...Full employment...
...Nor does the possibility of a limited war in Europe make political or military sense...
...Second, it was carried out clumsily, in the most bureaucratic manner...
...After all, the Soviets and the United States account for the bulk of the military resources in the European theater...
...To the extent that we maintain a strategic nuclear capacity at all, and for the foreseeable future it clearly will be maintained, a desirable goal would be to put it all on submarines—and out at sea...
...What on earth can you do with the ability to destroy Russia fifteen times rather than merely five...
...It wants superiority...
...interest" in Angola...
...The third specific defense problem is Star Wars...
...Third World Needs...
...These cutbacks are not a "reward" for Soviet good behavior but are in the best interests of the U.S...
...I begin with three: (1) Defense policy should be designed to create a situation in which mutual cutbacks in armaments will not so endanger either partner (in the present relationship between the two superpowers) that it becomes politically impossible to proceed...
...has to redefine its relationship toward regimes which call themselves socialist, Marxist-Leninist, or revolutionary in the Third World...
...And aid and trade with the West have widened the gap between these governments and Soviet policies...
Vol. 34 • April 1987 • No. 2
