A Tract For Our Times
Rosenberg, Bernard
In his eloquent address at the United Nations, President Kennedy warned that if a peace race did not supersede the arms race, our globe might be turned into a flaming funeral pyre. He indicated...
...Can anyone else...
...Melman and his associates have for some time been working on disarmament and inspection schemes...
...If the U. S. could be brought to convert its own ailing industries to the manufacture of machines and machine tools needed for a start in underdeveloped areas, and if, as Melman proposes, trade unionism were fostered as a base for rational multilateral decision-making, what a boon it would be for us all...
...Not the least of these is the general sense of powerlessness that afflicts so large a percentage of the population...
...AT LAST a voice has been raised which cannot be called that of a crank, a cry baby or a fellow traveler...
...Wouldn't we rather have our policy makers consider Melman when he writes: The cost of the peace race will amount, at maximum, to about 10% of America's gross national product...
...Could we...
...Indeed, in the teeth of much public and official opinion, he argues persuasively as an industrial engineer, that democratic, socialist and humanist means are more efficient than those offered by Russia and China...
...Could we supply the infrastructure for emerging nations and see to it that their people were decently fed without cutting arms production by one iota...
...Of course not...
...There is no way to nullify the uncertain factor of goodwill except by this kind of pressure...
...A production increase of this size is attainable now, even while carrying the arms burden .. . Already strained, the Soviet economy is incapable of the same feat as that of the United States...
...This is a tract for what remains of our time...
...SUPPOSING that the solvent worked, our Juggernaut (and theirs) would be confronted with massive problems of readjustment...
...It will not do to put him down with cool disdain as August Heckscher and others have already tried to do...
...Can it be said that much of our industrial capacity goes unused...
...Drastic shortages of housing, food and consumer goods are the price of Soviet armaments...
...Every month counts and every year carries us closer to a point where not even Herman Kahn can find statistical consolation in the whimpering remnants of life that might survive an atomic holocaust...
...Just so...
...So we clam up and run scared...
...An audacious plan could now be set in motion which no Great Power would be able to counter except by pursuing similar ends...
...A tall orderl And no one can claim perfection for the recipe...
...The consequences of this fact—that of our still considerable economic ascendancy—are tremendous...
...The book in which Melman unfolds his plan is itself so spare and suggestive that any summary (which we will not undertake) must end with an urgent plea to read the book...
...But, how fine that it should have been concocted at all—when so many "responsible" men turn away in horror or in panic or in resignation...
...Our sophisticated neighbors tend to dismiss any idea for peace as utopian...
...There is an immediate need for action, for pacification, for international agreement to avert race suicide...
...Politicians who flail about for some way to gain the initiative, disregard these propositions at their own, and our, mortal peril...
...And such action as we get drives us faster to our graves, now fashionably designated as "fall-out shelters"—the mere mention of which has so demented our people that many of them have receded from the national consciousness which used to disfigure their imagination to state, local, familial and individual levels of egomania...
...That was some months ago...
...Are we or are we not the only Great Power capable of producing guns and butter...
...The Soviet bloc has no reserves of production capacity...
...To act upon them would require a great wrench, but no more so than to continue reacting tropismatically to Soviet strategy...
...The Soviets will be compelled to seek disarmament in order to compete in a peace race...
...Part II treats brilliantly, though all too briefly and hurriedly of such matters as: World Industrialization with Freedom, Disarmament Without Depression, and How to Have Peaceful Coexistence— And Win...
...It should be inspected with care even by speed-readers who zip through other literature in the White House...
...Yet it will be said that his solutions are naive...
...Since then (at this writing) we have already made preparations for further atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, and Russia has announced an increase in military expenditures—bringing them up to one sixth of the Soviet budget...
...Obviously we have at our disposal more than one means to lose our manhood as well as our civilization...
...He indicated that the events and the decisions of "the next ten months" could determine the fate of mankind for the next 10,000 years...
...It will be hard for you not to be thrilled by the vista...
...This is something Seymour Melman has refused to do—and all honor to him for his courage( Likewise, his passion, his good sense and his integrity...
...Melman does not propose capitulation to the enemy by unilateral disarmament or by surrender to the doctrine that economic development can be achieved only under totalitarianism...
...They sing Que Sera, Sera as if it were news...
...But surely the willingness to grapple with them is overdue, and he offers a useful, if breathless, point of departure...
...This is a link between competition for industrialization, a powerful move in its own right, and cooperation for disarmament . . . The peace race can be started by the United States solely on its own decision...
...Of course...
...Most people who lie awake nights thinking up ways to escape destruction learn not to air their views the next day— for fear of inviting public scorn...
...In his new book Melman recommends phased disarmament beginning now as well as elaborate and expensive inspection to accompany the rational introduction of modern machinery in Asia, Africa and Latin America...
...Or at least Part II of the book, for Part I, while incontrovertible, is also a familiar recitation of our plight...
...Who can say that as the statistical probability of extinction mounts, peace is better served by crippling the British Labor Party or by distributing pamphlets in Red Square...
...Is unemployment a reality in the U.S...
...The current tension is converting us into Hobbesian brutes...
...You must judge the details for yourself...
...Melman may be wrong, but if so, he will have to be refuted...
...And what a solvent of international tension...
...Melman does not dodge these problems...
Vol. 9 • January 1962 • No. 1
