Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR PEACE AND WAR I am bemused by Michael Harrington's sentence, in his article on "The New Peace Movement" (NL, August 20): "Occasionally, though-e.g., the General Strike for Peace in...
...invited Russian observers to a weapons test...
...Nor is there any reason to believe that this does not apply to the concessions which are now being proposed...
...A recent invitation to 15 peace organizations and six Congressional candidates to a joint meeting, however, brought full attendance-each side responding out of its own normal self-interest-to a session which lasted five hours and proved mutually profitable...
...and the more the Powers have aggrandized themselves, the more crashing the destruction...
...I agree...
...Probably the most important question of all is: How can the various groups which now make up the peace movement find agreement on a common set of priorities, and translate these priorities into effective action by joining forces in promoting them...
...yet more than one fifth of the huge territory of the USSR is still inaccessible to every foreigner as well as to most Russians...
...C. P. Snow gives us 10 years to "ban the Bomb...
...national security...
...Any intelligent approach to peace must contain three ingredients, mixed in equal proportions: independent initiatives...
...In November, the General Strike will ask people actively and explicitly to refuse to vote, except for the handful of candidates in the country who are unambiguously committed to immediate action towards peace...
...to mention my own field, even our State-subsidized higher education is becoming increasingly apprentice-training for war-making...
...Nobody knows how many "peace" organizations are now in existence...
...The book should also bring Harrington's story up to date with an account of the many new "functional" peace organizations which have blossomed during the past year, chiefly as a result of the Berlin crisis (the 1961 one) and the murky fallout shelter discussion which followed...
...but the common areas of agreement had a significant impact...
...Some unilateralists object that none of the U.S...
...New York City Paul Goodman It seems to me that the chief mistake of the unilateralists is that they came too late...
...From my own experience, it appears that the confusion referred to by Harrington is not limited to the outsiders, but is shared by the insiders as well...
...the USSR did not respond in kind...
...But I suspect that Americans will do their share-once the peace movement has done its homework...
...We are in the midst of the campaign season, and word has apparently gone out to all peace workers to buttonhole as many candidates as they can...
...withdrawal from our provocative "First-strike" bases...
...We shall probably be standing firm when we go...
...Compared to the enormous amounts of money fed into RAND and other cold war think factories, this is merely a drop in the bucket...
...But, by the same token, the variety of their purposes and their varying degrees of sophistication represent the movement's chief weaknesses...
...True, it is the very richness in numbers of the current peace organizations which, as Harrington implies, constitute the strength of the new movement...
...The UN could be strengthened by several moves: repeal of the Connally Amendment, offering to put the Telstar satellites under international control...
...But this is anarchism...
...Unless it finds solutions to these problems, the peace movement cannot expect the public, the candidates or the policy leaders-to say nothing of those to whom it looks for financial support-to respond to the myriad voices, each offering its own road to salvation...
...New York City Raymond S. Rubinow Your August 20 issue on "Peace and War -1962" might better have been entitled "The Professor's Guide to Intellectual CounterForce...
...This will not be easy...
...Plymouth, Mass...
...A few examples: conversion of the Fort Detrick CBR center into a health research center under UN administration...
...I wonder how long it will be before Morton H. Halperin, Samuel P. Huntington and William Henry Chamberlin (not a contributor to this issue, but consistently critical of disarmament) realize that the central issue today is not merely how to rid the world of the cross-bow menace...
...The U.S...
...concessions altered the balance of power in a final and decisive way...
...They started to advocate unilateral steps on the part of the U.S., with the hope that these would be reciprocated by the USSR, long after several such steps had been taken without leading to any reciprocation...
...divulged many of its (up to 1945) carefully guarded secrets about nuclear weapons...
...A compilation currently in progress estimates some 200...
...It is a "hard way to peace" for all of us...
...As a Socialist, Harrington must somewhere have heard of the connection between War and the State...
...So little has been done in the field of peace research that the boundaries have not yet been set...
...Princeton, N. J. Eugene P. Wigner Michael Harrington's article is a good introduction to the book it is to be hoped either he or someone else may soon write, analyzing in depth the strengths and weaknesses of "The New Peace Movement...
...The U.S...
...It means that the new peace movement will have to learn to consolidate its appeal, rationalize its organization, and arduously self-discipline its many activities...
...A recent occurrence in New York suggests one road to greater political effectiveness...
...To persuade an increasing number of Americans and their elected representatives to share the goals and values of the new peace movement, the movement itself obviously must speak with much greater clarity and unity than at present to all whom it wishes to reach: potential participants, prospective contributors, public opinion, political candidates, policy makers...
...Such a book would do well to give attention to the lessons to be learned from the historical antecedent of Turn Toward Peace, known as the National Peace Conference (1931-52...
...In his article, Harrington concludes that the new peace movement will achieve a breakthrough to the extent it becomes politically effective-either within or outside the present political framework...
...But Halperin and Huntington offer no hope...
...announces its nuclear weapons tests...
...Bertrand Russell puts the odds at 6-4 against survival...
...The possible combinations and permutations of hundreds of peace workers pursuing dozens of candidates are frightening to contemplate...
...Douglas Ireland...
...Arms Control Agency recently awarded a $20,000 contract to the Peace Research Institute...
...But it is my contention that setting its own house in order is a necessary pre-condition...
...Therefore, whether one knows it or not, any acts for peace, or even for the remission of war, are in fact proposing a radical relaxing of centralized sovereignty and power as a way of organizing society...
...peace research...
...its history, to my knowledge, has never been written...
...Presumably, it is the people "outside" whom the peace movement wishes to influence-otherwise it would be talking to itself...
...The U.S...
...Hence, one can say that the unilateral path has been tired and failed...
...The present economy of the United States could not be described without the military-industrial complex as a crucial factor...
...The U.S...
...Last and most important, the Allies gave up valuable land east of the present West German boundaries in order to establish a cooperative government with the USSR in Berlinwith results which are only too well known...
...The most significant lesson of this joint meeting escaped neither the candidates nor the organizations: The ideological "nationalisms" which separated the various peace organizations had little or no influence on the candidates...
...the USSR does not...
...It will have to determine what are its objectives, who are its targets, which are its strategies, and where it can obtain financial support...
...As a sponsor of GSP-and I should be willing to be labeled as a community anarchist-may I comment...
...Independent initiatives along the lines of the Osgood-Sibley-Council for Correspondence proposals offer a wide range of choices for decreasing tensions in the arms race and increasing East-West confidence, without any weakening of U.S...
...they are content to criticize the new thinking on the problem of disarmament...
...And if to the outsiders the movement "must appear chaotic," it is small consolation to learn that to the "insider" it may have meaning...
...they can only advise us to "stand firm...
...The advantage of being conscious about it is that one can then explore the functional regional arrangements, rather than power arrangements, that might make sense...
...Certainly the evidence of history must convince us that centralized sovereignty and power have lived and grown by war readiness and war waging...
...To those who wish to find it, there is in this experiment in political dialogue a highly important moral for the future success of "the new peace movement...
...It is the possibility of incineration at the flick of a button...
...DEAR EDITOR PEACE AND WAR I am bemused by Michael Harrington's sentence, in his article on "The New Peace Movement" (NL, August 20): "Occasionally, though-e.g., the General Strike for Peace in New York last January-the inspiration for these actions suffers from an anarchist tinge...
...Many of us are glad that this is true...
...Aside from the naive failure to grasp the logistics of a candidate-i.e., one who is literally "running"-it is an inefficient procedure...
...the USSR never did so...
...American foreign relations are entirely in terms of bellicose power blocs and spheres of influence...
...The U.S...
...It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that every intentional weakening of our defense structure is taken as a new point of departure, both by the USSR and by the unilateralists, and leads to a demand for new concessions which would further weaken our defenses...
...and measures to strengthen the United Nations...
...disbanded most of its conventional forces after the war...
Vol. 45 • September 1962 • No. 19
