Disarming the Disarmers
HALPERIN, MORTON H.
Disarming the Disarmers THE HARD WAY TO PEACE By Amitai Etzioni Collier. 285 pp. $.95. THE PEACE RACE By Seymour Melman Braziller. 152 pp. $3.95. THE LIMITS OF DEFENSE By Arthur I....
...119 pp...
...Etzioni, for example, argues that disarmament is the only means of preventing nuclear disaster and is so clearly in the interests of the USSR that the Soviet leaders cannot help but recognize it...
...Of the three, Melman goes the furthest in his attack, questioning the motives of the arms controllers and describing arms control as "part of the continuing effort to treat the international relations of American society as a military-strategy problem...
...But it is clear that they approach the task with the object of proving that these strategies are unacceptable...
...If one believes that central disarmament is unattainable and literally impossible, the task is to design the best military system for preventing war and advancing American objectives...
...He recognizes that both the U.S...
...Never seriously weighing the relative merits of their proposed disarmament schemes against current military strategies, the authors assume and try to demonstrate that the strategies themselves are dangerous...
...Many military strategists who would agree with the authors' non-military proposals are not prepared to await the millennium of general disarmament to begin to implement an effective American policy...
...The second is beyond even the wildest dreams of disarmament advocates...
...Amitai Etzioni, Seymour Melman and Arthur I. Waskow all consider arms control an unacceptable alternative to the arms race and an obstacle to the attainment of essential disarmament...
...military strategies...
...Among other things, it has demonstrated that one can be seriously concerned about the arms race and work toward modifying it in important ways without proposing radical changes which would not be acceptable to either side...
...THE LIMITS OF DEFENSE By Arthur I. Waskow Doubleday...
...To begin with, all find it necessary to discuss arms control and point out its alleged inadequacies...
...If he continues to do so, he may recognize that nuclear deterrence is likely to be with us indefinitely, and that the road to peace involves continuing efforts to improve the way in which we use military force...
...For behind the consideration of alternative strategies in all three books is the assumption, later made explicit, that there is one clear alternative to all strategies—disarmament...
...True, the heart of these books is not their attempt to contribute to an analysis of military strategy, but rather their proposals for doing away with strategy altogether by the negotiation of formal disarmament agreements...
...lacks the resources or the energy to take the necessary steps to defend its military security and at the same time implement a positive foreign policy...
...To anyone looking for such insights into strategic problems, these three books have nothing of value to offer...
...Waskow in particular has done well in presenting the arguments against certain strategies made by critics in the Pentagon...
...Thus, Etzioni has two suggestions for dealing with hidden nuclear stockpiles, a problem which has led many advocates of disarmament to concede that general and complete nuclear disarmament is impractical...
...and their general remarks are so colored by the desire to get on with disarmament that they contribute little to relevant policy debate...
...By implication at least, the authors agree with the central tenet of the arms control approach: One must consider alternative military strategies in detail and not assume that disarmament is, a priori, the best policy to follow...
...Nonetheless, they are far better than similar books of three or four years ago...
...The first ignores the fact that stockpiles may be hidden before an arms control agreement is negotiated or implemented...
...But only if one accepts the viability of general disarmament can he be convinced by the positive alternative offered...
...For Melman, Etzioni and Waskow, then, discussion of arms control and military strategy is a way of clearing away some of the recent confusion surrounding military policy...
...then, steps have to be taken to reduce tension...
...Reviewed by MORTON H. HALPERIN Department of Government, Harvard University...
...All three authors, however, treat their discussions of military strategy as a kind of debate in which one scores points against the different strategies for the purpose of discarding them...
...No one familiar with the issues could take either of these proposals seriously...
...Etzioni and Waskow have made an attempt to absorb and analyze alternative U.S...
...By and large, the authors seem to feel that if the United States would only become sincere about wanting general and complete disarmament, it could successfully negotiate agreements with the Soviets...
...Yet the authors assume rather than demonstrate that disarmament is the only alternative to a nuclear holocaust and that because it is necessary it must be attainable...
...The arms control literature is beginning to have an important impact on both the intellectual and policy-making communities in this country...
...Yet they do their case a grave injustice by pretending that changes in American foreign policy hinge on ending the arms race...
...More important, all three authors—Melman only slightly, Etzioni and Waskow much more extensively—consider the military strategies which have been proposed for the United States...
...And while they note that there is much concern about how the U.S...
...Once he has learned this, he may no longer seek a Utopian escape from the realities of the current world situation...
...Nor are they prepared to concede, as Etzioni, Melman and Waskow apparently are, that the U.S...
...They are much more convincing when they are urging the positive aspects of international politics—what Melman calls the "peace race" and Etzioni the "new political strategy...
...For all three, the problem of arriving at a general disarmament agreement is rather simple: First, the U.S...
...In the past few years, a number of students of military strategy have turned their attention to analyzing the possibility of formally negotiated arms agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union...
...can overcome Soviet unwillingness to accept general and complete disarmament and an international control of force, in the main this problem is met by simply denying its existence...
...co-author, "Strategy and Arms Control" These three books represent attempts by "disarmers" to meet the challenge of the new arms control literature...
...They argue the United States should encourage revolutionary social change in underdeveloped areas as well as rapid economic growth...
...military doctrine in more general terms, make a number of telling criticisms of particular policy alternatives...
...Clearly, all three authors are not at home in discussing military strategy or in dealing with problems of the control of force...
...and last, certain technical problems in the field of inspection and control must be solved...
...must take the problem seriously...
...They tend to caricature the alternative strategies and discuss them in their most extreme form (though far less so than Melman does), but much of what they have to say is valid...
...They show that the disarmer has recognized that he at least must begin to take military strategy seriously...
...The arms control approach has also led to some recent important changes in American military strategy under the Kennedy Administration...
...In seeking what they call "arms control" rather than "disarmament," they have emphasized that limited agreements which alter, without radically changing, the arms race are more likely to reduce the danger of war than the more drastic steps leading to general and complete disarmament...
...Their criticisms of particular strategies are much the same as those of the very arms controllers for whom they express great disdain...
...These three books demonstrate that the disarmer still has far to go before he can make a serious contribution to important policy debates on military strategy in the U.S...
...2.95...
...It is difficult to quarrel with their general goals in non-military fields...
...So he suggests a panel of 18 from which the leadership of the police force would be chosen and rotated by a combination of a jury selection process and roulette...
...While Etzioni, Melman and Waskow reject the arms control approach, each has been influenced by it in important ways...
...and the USSR are not likely to accept a single head for an international police force which would become the dominant military power in the world...
...But in stressing this they propose a number of concrete suggestions for dealing with particularly sticky issues that can best be described as a combination of utter lack of understanding of the real problems involved and a fascination with various kinds of gadgetry...
...To a large extent, they leave unstated their assumption that total disarmament is a safe and desirable state, and one that can be reached without great cost...
...Waskow has an equally ingenious gadget for getting around the problem of the troika and putting inspection in control of an international police force...
...Waskow, in discussing the details of particular strategies, and Etzioni, in investigating U.S...
...He proposes numbering all nuclear weapons so that hidden stocks could be easily identified, and calls for the invention of a gigantic Geiger counter which could circle the earth in a satellite and spot any hidden nuclear stockpiles...
Vol. 45 • July 1962 • No. 14
