THE ONLY PROTECTION
Part VII The Only Protection Acivil defense program, whether its rationale is based on the moderate and superficially reasonable "insurance" argument or the harsher insistence on "making the...
...We are in a new era...
...The first, and, as Dr...
...The traditional answer, military might, proved adequate in the past to secure America's position in the world...
...Another manifestation of man's present frustration is his quest for elusive panaceas, such as civil defense...
...There may even be some cheating and "brush-fire" wars...
...Walter Lippmann summed it all up with brilliant clarity when he told his fellow Americans recently: "There is no protection against nuclear war except to prevent it...
...The arms race only makes more difficult the task of negotiating every problem, whether it be Formosa, Vietnam, the Congo, Berlin, or Cuba—for each source of tension intensifies the arms race itself...
...In the course of time—it took centuries—we have been able to eliminate human sacrifice, slavery, and other forms of brutality...
...Frank points out, "the most primitive way," is simply to disregard the existence of the danger...
...Part VII The Only Protection Acivil defense program, whether its rationale is based on the moderate and superficially reasonable "insurance" argument or the harsher insistence on "making the deterrent credible," sharpens the dilemma facing America...
...They merely build the fire higher, leading inexorably to the final cataclysm...
...I am not suggesting that we have only to say yes to disarmament and no to civil defense to achieve the first and destroy the need for the second...
...and the end of the human adventure is in sight...
...The first step in solving a problem," says Dr...
...But since, as a nation, we regress to former solutions, the arms race continues, and the ordinary citizen faces a painful dilemma: how to plan survival when there seems little prospect for survival...
...For the present and the immediate future, the evidence is overwhelming, as I have sought to show in this study, that civil defense creates a treacherous sense of security...
...As General Douglas MacArthur put it in a speech to the Congress of the Republic of the Philippines, in Manila, July 5, 1961: "Many will tell you with mockery and ridicule that the abolition of war can be only a dream—that it is but the vague imagining of a visionary...
...Even the victor loses...
...Peterman, "to stop short of extinction...
...Writers and scientists who spoke yesterday of total destruction in modern war gradually accustom themselves to believe it "thinkable," even "tolerable...
...It was almost inevitable, then, that although Hiroshima opened a new era in warfare and cancelled out the axioms of thousands of years, we still cling to the concept of yesterday— that power rests'on military might...
...Jack N. Peterman, of the Chicago Psychological Club, tells us that when two wolves fight each other, the one who is near defeat bares his jugular vein as an invitation to the victor for the coup de grace...
...More than this, it magnifies the prospect of nuclear war because it makes us more willing to "go to the brink" and because we are far less likely to pursue a creative policy capable of easing tensions and securing the peace if we think our own survival is possible...
...Much of the daily press and magazines like Time and Life reduce the danger through "fraud by computer" to a mere three per cent dead as a result of nuclear attack, and Colonel Mawrence concludes that with proper measures only 900,000 (one-half of one per cent) of our people would perish...
...The man on the street says, "There have always been wars and always will be...
...Yet there are rational solutions if we will only face up honestly to the totally new dimensions of war that arrived with the nuclear age...
...We learn to speak of "overkill"—we have enough weapons to kill the Russians many times over...
...We try to "solve" these problems in a number of unrealistic ways...
...The tense climate today makes the achievement of these goals difficult, for the world's energies are channeled into the primary emphasis on a "defense" that cannot defend...
...But we must go on or we will go under...
...And the great criticism that can be made is that the world lacks a plan that will enable us to go on...
...If the "big one" drops, he tells the pollsters, "we're going to die anyway...
...Yet, which risk is preferable: the one which virtually assures annihilation, or the one which offers time to work out world difficulties...
...As a nation we want to cling to the power and security our strength has given us...
...We cannot yet grasp the vital fact that while armaments may have secured power yesterday, they are not equal to the task today or in the future...
...The winner, however, backs off at this point and refuses to kill his opponent...
...Yet in a disarmed world the risk to life itself would not be nearly so great...
...Another internal emotional defense is fatalism...
...War, in the past, was the ultimate act in defending national policy...
...How do we defend our power in a situation that seems to be disintegrating all around us...
...In their concern about the present anci future of human existence, many thoughtful Americans cling to this tiny hope and blind themselves from an objective examination of the totality of the problem...
...There is risk, of course, in every alternative...
...We have not yet learned, like the wolf," says Dr...
...Subconsciously, at least, every thoughtful American knows that victor and vanquished in the next war will both be destroyed...
...This is the challenge we face—to assume world leadership in the quest to banish the assumption that war and preparation for war are inevitable...
...Armaments and civil defense, in the final analysis, neither defend nor even deter...
...Mere disarmament in itself will certainly not resolve the world's political frictions...
...But in the nuclear age war can serve none of these purposes, for, as Air Force General Curtis LeMay points out, "No one can win a modern war...
...We are quick to give our treasure, our energies, and our brains, and, if need be, our lives, to the development of new monsters of war and new gadgets of defense, but we are slow and stingy in exploring new frontiers of peace-making...
...In the heightened tensions that came in the post-World War II world we have responded in a characteristically emotional manner—as Dr...
...There is risk also in disarmament...
...but if it proves to be right, mankind will be freed to achieve its full potentialities...
...As E. B. White said, 'It might be possible to compromise with the Russians, but it is not advisable to compromise with the truth.' " We have reached that point in history beyond which there will be no further history unless we make a magnificent and revolutionary turn toward a new concept of peace...
...When Albert Einstein was asked what weapons would be used in World War III, he said he didn't know, but he was certain that in World War IV they would be "sticks and stones...
...But this is no longer true...
...If it is wrong, humanity is no worse off than before...
...Civil defense and all of its ramifications only emphasize this problem for us...
...What I am suggesting is that we are so wedded to the patterns of the past that we have not truly tried—hard enough—to achieve complete, universal disarmament by negotiated agreement...
...We are groping in the past for parallels with the present...
...In the past," anthropologist Margaret Mead says, "no matter what kingdoms fell or what civilizations crumbled, the march of mankind could continue...
...This denial of reality only adds to the development of a more belligerent foreign policy, makes negotiations that much more difficult, and brings nuclear war that much closer...
...Clinging to concepts like those inherent in the program of civil defense can only divert us from our rightful course for the long haul...
...In our very bone and marrow, most of us are convinced this is true...
...The climate of reduced tension would make it possible for man to concentrate on the peaceful pursuits of conquering hunger, poverty, and ignorance...
...Leo Szilard, one of our most distinguished nuclear scientists, expressed it this way in a recent speech: "It has been apparent since the end of the [last] war that the Bomb would pose a problem to the world for which there is no precedent, and the truth is that it cannot be solved short of abolishing war...
...Through wars it was possible to extend empires or hold onto those already fashioned...
...Jerome Frank, noted psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University, recently pointed out in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists —by regressing "to solutions which worked in the past...
...Certainly there would be conflict— man cannot exist without conflict...
...It is true that wars have been almost ever-present in history, but it is not true that man cannot change his patterns of thinking and living...
...There is risk in the arms race and its theory of deterrence—risk of accidental war, risk, as President Kennedy has pointed out, of ceaseless escalation...
...Frank, "is to assume that it has a solution...
...If we are to avoid it, if we are to rise above this greatest of all hurdles of history, we must accept without reservation President Eisenhower's dictum: "There is now no alternative to peace...
...It was possible, through armed force, to protect trade or sustain or suppress revolutions...
...We must have sufficient imagination and courage to translate the universal wish for peace—which is rapidly becoming a universal necessity—into actuality...
...Of course the pursuit of disarmament will be difficult...
...If political and intellectual leaders continue to operate on the assumption that war cannot be eliminated, then it won't be, even if the assumption is wrong...
...But there is no reason why societies that can send artificial satellites around the earth cannot discover for themselves the values that motivate even wolves...
...But this fatalism is unreal...
...We are challenged now by a hostile ideology in the Soviet world and by a pyramiding revolution in what was once the colonial world...
...There is no reason, given our scientific knowledge, why mankind cannot learn the same primitive lesson in sanity...
...He absolves himself from responsibility in any public decisions...
...The assumption that war can be abolished frees the imagination to try to achieve this goal...
...But disarmament would at the very least gradually evolve a climate of hope, to replace our own suffocating atmosphere of near-certain doom...
...Certainly there would be dispute, argument, harassment...
Vol. 26 • February 1962 • No. 2
