The Community of Fear

...He argues with depressing persuasiveness that entirely aside from malicious acts, purely accidental war stemming from human, electronic, or mechanical failure is rapidly rising out of the area of possibility into the realm of probability...

...To heighten the danger, the report emphasizes, the military and its lobby have become so powerful that they have removed effective control of the arms race from civilian hands...

...It should be evident by now that the agricultural economy is outmoded...

...There is still time, says Brown, but it is running out rapidly...

...The achievement of its goals would result not only in stabilizing the chaotic farm situation, but would greatly improve farmers' income, and substantially raise the living standards of hundreds of millions of human beings...

...But a report recently published by the Fund for the Republic sounds the somber warning that we may be well into a new phase of the nuclear age, one in which nuclear war is not only no longer considered unthinkable, but may already have become inevitable...

...In the face of this fantastic destructive power, there is a growing drive, particularly among military men, and notably on the part of the Rand Corporation's Herman Kahn, to create a psychology which would accept the idea that a large-scale nuclear war was a distinct possibility, but that the nation could survive and rebuild itself on the ashes of seventy-five to a hundred million dead, and an utterly devastated landscape...

...The 1960 Federal budget allocates less than four and a half per cent of the G.N.P...

...taxpayer of all United Nations programs is sixty-five cents per capita...

...Single copies are available free at the Center's office, Box 4068, Santa Barbara, Calif...

...These comparisons between war and welfare appropriations are striking but essentially quite conservative...

...Health is only one of several areas in which it can be demonstrated that the United States is not making the progress it should—and can afford...

...All exposed living creatures, except those living in the water, would perish...

...Much more likely would be an attack of the size studied last year by the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy...

...For example, the Post Office appropriation of $4 billion—the largest non-military item—includes $3.25 billion in revenue, bringing the amount paid from taxes down to three-quarters of a billion...

...Because of bookkeeping practices, many appropriations to other income-producing agencies—such as the profitable Tennessee Valley Authority—throw the non-military budget still further out of perspective...

...The more realistic result would be twenty million deaths...

...Indeed, the military elite is clearly in a position to assume political command over the United States' striking forces if there are serious signs of weakness in the United States' foreign relations...

...Harrison Brown, the distinguished scientist and author, and James Real, management consultant and adviser to the Fund for the Republic's Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, have outlined, in The Community of Fear, the reasons why the world "balance of terror," which has maintained a sort of peace for the moment, has been outmoded by the accelerating arms race and the proliferation of nuclear weapons among other nations...

...The evidence is mounting that far from over-spending in the interests of the public welfare, the trend has taken us dangerously far in the other direction...

...But perhaps more important for the future of the world is Brown's argument that the political decisions concerning nuclear weapons have already been removed from civilian hands...

...The Community of Fear Ever since the dawn of the nuclear age, the threat of annihilation implicit in the enormous destructive capacity of hydrogen weapons has been mitigated by pronouncements of the world's political and military leaders that the very power of these weapons had made use of them "unthinkable...

...The authors have limited themselves to drawing a vivid picture of the common danger...

...they have purposely not spelled out the details of a fresh approach...

...A good deal of government intervention is involved, but the emphasis is on coordinating a greatly expanded system of voluntary acts and organizations of farmers, and integrating agriculture with American foreign policy...

...There is, as it were," says Rein-hold Niebuhr in a foreword to the study, "a time bomb under our vaunted security...

...The estimates do not include casualties resulting from such secondary effects as the disorganization of society, a disruption of communications, massive fires, extinction of livestock, spread of disease, genetic damage, or the ingestion of radioactive materials...

...On a clear day forests, grasslands, and crops would ignite or wither, as would the flammable structure of the cities, towns, and villages...

...f Only one of every nineteen Federal dollars is used for all the welfare, education, housing, and public health programs taken together...

...A report from the Children's Bureau of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare reveals that in recent years the United States has dropped from sixth to tenth place among the nations in the rate of curtailing infant mortality, an accepted yardstick of medical standards and progress...

...Thirty years ago, the non-military expenditures of the Federal government averaged more than five and a half per cent of the nation's Gross National Product...

...One of the more chilling sections of scientist Brown's analysis of The Community of Fear is the one dealing with "Accidental and Catalytic War...

...The ratio of doctors to population is declining, another sign that we are slipping backward instead of progressing in safeguarding the nation's health...

...But the solution the Conference proposes is far more than a plan to impose a "strait jacket" on the farmer...

...The next step in creating such a psychology would be the building of bomb shelters on a gigantic scale...

...But its recommendations have great appeal, because their goal is the planned utilization of our enormous agricultural capacity to meet not just current effective demand here at home, but the actual need of the world's people, here and in countries all over the globe...

...Food and Freedom Most of the various proposed "solutions" to the farm surplus problem have emphasized a curtailment and control of production to limit the supply to current effective demand, thereby improving the price the farmer receives for his produce and eliminating surpluses...

...In the meantime, state and local expenditures for public welfare have risen so rapidly that many communities and several states have reached the legal or practical limits of their taxing power...

...A substantial fraction of the human beings who were protected from the initial thermal flash would perish in the resultant thermal holocaust...

...It includes the prospect that "optimistically, as few as ten million deaths would result" from the minimum size thermonuclear attack on the United States that would make military sense...

...This means, in real terms, a steady decline, as the value of the dollar has coasted downward and the population of the United States has soared...

...Yet an examination of Congressional appropriations for 1960, prepared by the Friends Committee on National Legislation, strikingly reveals that the level of spending by the national government on domestic welfare programs has remained almost stationary for more than a decade...

...But any attack, the authors contend, is almost certain to be much heavier than a minimum of, say, one hundred bombs pinpointed on specific military targets...

...These are some of the highlights and shadows of the Friends' report: ^ Nearly three-fourths of all Federal spending goes for armaments, veterans, and interest on the war-created public debt...

...f Non-military expenditures on foreign affairs—including economic aid, all Point Four and United Nations programs, the State Department budget, Atoms for Peace, and many others—came to only two and a half per cent of the total budget...

...This one adjustment would reduce the non-military portion of the Federal pie by more than 3.5 per cent...

...War and Welfare Conservative cries for economy in government are invariably raised against the health, education, housing, and similar public welfare "spending" programs proposed by "starry-eyed, impractical" liberals...

...Furthermore, the estimated avoidable waste in the Defense Department's expenditures would, by itself, pay more than half the cost of all welfare programs...

...At this point, the authors state, the acceptance of nuclear war would completely dominate international politics, and the chance of avoiding such a catastrophe would become increasingly remote...

...Keyserling has support for this view from some ultra-conservative sources...

...The Conference proposals are more comprehensive and more radical than anything we have seen...

...f Less than one million dollars is being spent on the all-important problems of disarmament, in contrast to $47 billion on arms, a ratio of one to forty-seven thousand...

...It is already possible, the report points out, for an enemy virtually to annihilate the entire United States population by exploding six hundred ten-megaton bombs more or less uniformly over the land at a height of thirty miles...

...The Conference report, prepared under the direction of economist Leon Keyserling, and appropriately titled "Food and Freedom," is grounded in the recognition that agriculture can no longer survive under the unfettered law of supply and demand, but must be regulated and managed in a more sensible manner...

...A few years ago, in testimony before a Senate committee, the general counsel for the United States Steel Corporation commented that only twelve per cent of the nation's economy was not "administered," and that the bulk of this twelve per cent was agriculture...

...Contrary to popular myth, the Federal government is not spending proportionately more each year for "welfare" programs...

...Ultimately, the ever-accelerated pace of the arms race must lead to disaster, even if neither side consciously desires the ultimate war...

...Copies are available at fifty cents each from the Conference on Economic Progress, 1001 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Washington 6, D.C...

...Others would perish as the result of such secondary effects of the catastrophe as lack of food and adequate medical care...

...It cannot survive in competition with a highly administered economy, and Keyserling proves this point with a wealth of concrete evidence...

...Data presented by experts indicated that a 1500 megaton attack, striking 224 military and industrial centers, would kill twenty-five million immediately, another twenty-five million would die from injuries and radiation, and twenty million more would be crippled...

...The Children's Bureau cites lack of adequate medical care, overcrowded and understaffed hospitals, and slum conditions in large cities as the principal factors in the deterioration of the United States' position in infant mortality...

...And the picture, presented calmly, dispassionately, and with authoritative conviction, is terrifying...

...It should be emphasized, however, that these estimates of casualties are minimal, for they include only the estimates of casualties resulting from blast, direct thermal effects, and radiation...

...to non-military services...

...Unless we are willing in the 1960's to direct at least as large a share of our enormous wealth into preserving and improving the well-being of all our people as we did a generation ago, the nation's standards will continue to slide, its economy stagnate, and its position of world leadership deteriorate...

...A fresh approach is needed, prompted by an awareness of the common danger, rather than by the complacent assumption of either side that they are strong enough to prevent an attack or to win the war if it should come...

...Keyserling has presented a convincing argument that the chronically depressed American farmer offers not a seemingly insoluble economic problem, but one of our greatest tools in forging a world of freedom and equality of opportunity...

...Only a return of military control to civilian hands, he urges, and an all-out drive toward disarmament can save the nation and the world from an almost incomprehensible, holocaust...

...There is little doubt," says the report, "that the armed services exert more control over Congress than that body exerts over the Defense Department...

...f The annual cost to the U.S...

...The one item of foreign military aid in the defense budget exceeds by several hundred million dollars the total non-military foreign budget...

...The Council on Economic Progress recently prepared an analysis of and a proposed solution to the farm problem which, it seems to us, takes a vastly more positive approach...

...That is why the old slogans of 'bargaining from strength' . . . and 'deterring attack by the prospect of massive retaliation' have become irrelevant...

...f The single item of interest on the public debt is almost double all public welfare expenditures...

...The report is much too complex and detailed to cover in a brief editorial note, but we urge anyone interested in or concerned about—or confused by—the current farm situation to read the entire report...