That Time of Year Again

...The facts bear only a peripheral relationship to these apocalyptic predictions...

...The Very First Axiom' "War does not always give democratic societies over to military government, but it must invariably and immeasurably increase the powers of civil government...

...They are timed more to protect the Pentagon's budget requests than to alert the American people against any new and dangerous threat...

...it must almost automatically concentrate the direction of all men and the control of all things in the hands of the government...

...In a mid-April speech to Associated Press editors in New York City, Mr...

...It would all be most amusing if it were not for the fact that there is, indeed, something to be scared of...

...Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835...

...because it is urgent to reassert Congressional control over a runaway defense establishment and a recklessly adventurous Administration...

...It is, Senator Proxmire adds, "fiscal massive retaliation against the American taxpayer...

...We are, in short, in a position of massive overkill...

...when normally strong and self-confident men in the Pentagon suddenly take to trembling for the benefit of the television cameras...

...In the mass media, the President and his spokesmen will continue to play on the apprehensions accumulated in two and one-half decades of Cold War...

...A few days later it was President Nixon's turn...

...He also cautioned that it would be "destructive" to halt expansion of the ABM or deployment of MIRV—though each of these directly and seriously jeopardizes the prospects for agreement at the SALT talks...

...If we lose this leadership, we will lose the protection we now have against Soviet secrecy and Soviet surprises...

...That Time of Year Again It is that time of year again—the time when mysterious Soviet submarines are sighted off American shores...

...A former official familiar with disarmament policy summed it up this way: "Laird expressed a very faint hope of success in the SALT talks and then proceeded to demolish any chance that it would come about...

...Laird asserted that "we are literally at the edge of prudent risk...

...John S. Foster Jr., head of research and development at the Pentagon, who solemnly warns that "the Soviet Union is now about to seize world technological leadership from the United States...

...Behind the scenes, Administration lobbyists will be wheeling and dealing for the votes of wavering legislators...

...And the inescapable conclusion will be that if the Soviet strategic offensive build-up continues, the risk to our nation will become too great to sustain without major offsetting actions...

...The American intercontinental bomber force is several times the size of the Soviet Union's, and the number of American submarine ballistic missile launchers is six times as great as the Russians...

...Third, both the Administration and the military chiefs share an insatiable longing—as deep-rooted as it is irrational—for a "perfect defense" that will allow the United States to pursue its global objectives without fear of retaliation...

...because some of us, outside the White House and Pentagon at least, have no particular desire to plunge the world into the ultimate nuclear holocaust...

...There is nothing new or more threatening than before in these Pentagon revelations," Proxmire emphasized from his strategic vantage post...

...Several reasons suggest themselves...

...Finally, the President recognizes that the scare campaign must be a "now" thing because he is confronted by a changing mood in both the Congress and the country—a new attitude of skepticism toward the military that has been enhanced by the latest expansion of the war in Indochina...

...If that does not lead to despotism by sudden violence, it leads men gently in that direction by their habits...

...because a victory over the military would be of immense psychological and political value at this decisive moment in history...

...All those who seek to destroy the freedom of the democratic nations must know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish this...

...First, there's gold in them thar appropriations bills for the major defense contractors...

...That is the very first axiom of their science...

...Therefore, the Secretary said, the United States is compelled to push forward with the expansion of the Safeguard antiballis-tic missile system and the deployment of multiple independently targetable warheads...

...In brief, it is military appropriations time on Capitol Hill, and the Defense Department is using what Senator William Proxmire, Wisconsin Democrat, calls "the old 'scare hell out of them' technique...

...the new Soviet radar is above ground and like our own proposed ABM radar is completely vulnerable to attack, and Soviet submarines with nuclear warheads have been sitting off our coast for years...

...But the SS-9 tests have been known for months and discussed in the Pentagon's annual posture statement...

...Frustrated in their attempts to recapture a role in policy formation many members of Congress are looking, quite properly, to critical analysis of the Pentagon budget as a vehicle for the reassertion of Congressional rights...

...Rather, the danger is that the Administration's requests for new, costly, and redundant additions to the nation's bulging arsenal would impose further drains on national resources, add to the distortion of American priorities, trigger a new round in the international arms race, and undermine the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks now under way in Vienna...

...According to The New York Times, he used a private meeting with Republican Congressional leaders to issue a "stern warning . . . that the United States is in danger of becoming militarily inferior to the Soviet Union...

...Second, the military brass is avid, as always, for shiny new toys...

...The Administration can be expected to use every available technique of public and private persuasion to win full funding for its bloated military budget...

...The Senate, where disenchantment with the nation's arms-centered policies is at a much more advanced stage, is likely to mount a serious and potentially successful challenge to the Pentagon's spending requests—and particularly to the ABM, which won approval last year by the narrowest of margins...

...Secretary Laird's own reports to Congress indicate that American strategic stockpiles now contain more than 4,000 nuclear missiles—ten times the number required to devastate the Soviet Union...

...Another contributor to the great scare is Dr...

...Why, then, is the Administration pulling out all the stops in its scare campaign...

...Senator Proxmire, who has become the Senate's foremost authority on wasteful weaponry, puts it this way: "In deploying its new propaganda barrage, the Pentagon has published pictures of Soviet tests of the SS-9 missile, disclosed a new radar installation, and said that a Soviet ballistic missile submarine is patrolling the Atlantic...

...For a variety of reasons, it is important to resist these efforts to the fullest extent—because a reordering of national priorities is long overdue...

...As John Kenneth Galbraith pointed out a year ago, Defense Secretary Mel-vin R. Laird is particularly adept at the business of scaring people...

...Even the House, which normally bends to every Pentagon whim, faced the beginnings of a revolt last month...

...The danger is posed not by the Soviet Union's military might, which continues to be overshadowed by that of the United States and which is, in any event, almost irrelevant when both superpowers possess the means of instant retaliation and total annihilation...

...Another 7,000 nuclear warheads are available for delivery by planes, short-range missiles, or other means...

...The old game is being played this year for deadly stakes...

...when Russian missiles multiply as if by mitosis and grow as if they had been sprinkled with elixir from Alice's "Drink Me" bottle...