Reflections

...The current freeze petitions, resolutions, and referendums refer to a "mutual, verifiable freeze," but Wiesner notes that his proposal for a unilateral moratorium would be a call "to action, not to negotiations...

...Once both superpowers had agreed to a moratorium, for example, Washington might announce a 10 per cent reduction of its nuclear stockpile, and propose the same to the Soviets...

...Once the United States declared such a unilateral moratorium, the Russians would undoubtedly follow suit—at least they have said on any number of occasions that they would do so...

...It makes it clear that if we were to rid ourselves of 98 per cent of our 9,400 strategic weapons (and all 22,000 tactical weapons), we would still have enough nuclear bombs to "deter" a Soviet attack...

...In the August-September issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Wiesner issued an appeal for "an openended unilateral moratorium" on "the production, testing, and deployment of new nuclear weapons and delivery systems...

...Calling for a freeze won't make it happen...

...effort...

...Instead, he would have us move toward disarmament by a series of unilateral initiatives—each of them accompanied by an invitation to the Soviets to match the U.S...

...It was the threat to withhold military appropriations that compelled President Polk to end the Mexican War, and a similar threat loomed large in Nixon's ultimate decision to cut U.S...

...But whether they would join us or not, whether we could or couldn't "trust the Russians," there would be no threat to the national security of the United States...

...they are purely advisory...

...It is a moderate proposal, but combined with a drive to have Congress turn off the tap of nuclear weapons appropriations, it has practical political potential...

...Jerome B. Wiesner, former president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of John Kennedy's National Security Council two decades ago, has pointed the way toward making the nuclear freeze a reality...

...At the very least, it would give Americans an opportunity to identify those Representatives and Senators who share the commitment to a world liberated from the nuclear menace—and those who must be removed from office if we are to attain peace...

...I saw this first-hand a few months ago when I addressed a peace group in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and then marched with its members to present freeze petitions to their representative in Congress...

...At that point, the nuclear freeze movement will have to take a hard look at reality...

...It demolishes the folly of worrying about which superpower is "ahead" of the other...

...He had no trouble dismissing the freeze idea as "impractical...

...losses in Vietnam...

...It has impressive precedent...

...P. Dutton...

...Actually, of course, today's technology of satellite surveillance makes verification wholly superfluous...

...The idea is neither foolish nor farfetched...

...But the Wiesner plan seems, at this time, to hold out the only hope of achieving the goal sought by the freeze campaign...

...Wiesner's plan renders the notion of mutuality equally redundant...

...At this time, Wiesner points out, "there is no way to prevent 200 bombs (and doubtless many more) from destroying the social fabric of either or both continents...

...Just as Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon stubbornly kept American forces in Vietnam long after most Americans had made it clear they were weary of the war, so Ronald Reagan intends to keep right on developing, testing, producing, and deploying nuclear weapons and launchers, regardless of the manifest public sentiment in favor of a freeze...

...All either superpower needs, then, is the "certain ability to deliver" 200 bombs...

...The United States would risk nothing, therefore, by subjecting itself to a unilateral moratorium—and by inviting the Soviets to do likewise...

...There is a way to achieve a freeze: Congress can simply refuse to appropriate funds for nuclear weapons...

...arsenal by about 10,000 in the next few years, and to begin assembling some 8,000 land-, sea-, and air-based cruise missiles...

...Sidney Lens is The Progressive's Senior Editor...

...Weapons agreements, with their inevitable protracted bargaining, take longer than mankind can afford...

...To be sure, the unilateral moratorium would pose a problem to those members of Congress who want to pay lip-service to the idea of the freeze while continuing to vote funds for nuclear weapons...

...As Wiesner notes, each of the two superpowers has only about 200 "focal points"—large cities that sustain such "lifesupporting systems" as electricity, communication, fuel, medicine, transportation, and food...

...By putting the onus on the legislative branch, where there is at least a possibility of success, it turns the symbolic effort of the freeze campaign into a movement that may, indeed, affect the grim reality of an arms race without end...

...Wiesner's moratorium plan has the added virtue of facing head-on the fiction that our strength as a nation is in direct proportion to the size of our nuclear arsenal...

...When Representative John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat, recently introduced legislation to bar funds for nuclear weapons and launchers, it received only twenty-six votes in the House...

...On the other hand, says Wiesner, "a negotiated, balanced, verifiable freeze" of the kind currently being promoted by the peace movement "may, like all previous treaty attempts, take an unacceptably long time to negotiate...

...His latest book, "The Bomb," has just been published by Lodestar!E...

...They might well balk at a plan that put their rhetoric to the test...

...Such Democratic stalwarts as House Speaker Tip O'Neill and Senator Edward Kennedy have voted all their political lives for full military appropriations, even while talking peace...

...Fortunately, Reagan and the likes of Eugene Rostow, Paul Nitze, and their comrades-in-arms in the Committee for the Present Danger need not have the last word...

...Congress can put that kind of moratorium into effect simply by turning off the tap—cutting nuclear weapons money out of the Federal budget...

...When the freeze movement circumscribes its efforts with such words as mutual and verifiable, it provides politicians (and, ultimately, the Reagan Administration) with an easy cop-out...

...When such focal points are destroyed, a modern nation is left helpless...

...And a half dozen states, including California, are sure to follow Wisconsin's lead by endorsing the freeze in referendums...

...Thus, Wiesner writes, "without sacrificing national security, the arms race will be on a decided downward trend...

...In fact, Reagan plans to boost the number of nuclear warheads in the U.S...

...it would take years, he said, to negotiate a system of verification...

...Neither Congressional resolutions nor state referendums are binding on the executive branch...

...In the new Senate, too, a freeze resolution may pass, or at least come respectably close...

...REFLECTIONS Sidney Lens Turning Off the Tap Judging from the polls and the primaries, Americans who vote in November will certainly send to the House of Representatives enough new members to approve a resolution calling for a nuclear weapons freeze...