OUTSIDER

...These include the U.S...

...Worner said that "options deep in the Warsaw Pact including the territory of the Soviet Union" were to be "maintained through modernizing of air- and sea-based systems...

...More fundamentally, it is between the NATO military-industrial complex—which is structurally condemned to keep up the momentum of "modernization" regardless of the political consequences—and those who want to seize the opportunity provided by Mikhail Gorbachev to shift from an arms economy and the constant threat of war to a peace economy and diplomatic approaches to resolution of conflicts...

...The United States tends to impose strategic concepts that favor American arms projects...

...The outgoing U.S...

...It is a catch designed to catch the Russians...

...It was Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his pro-NATO Christian Democrats who were destabilized by the attacks on German arms exports...

...When the United States and the Soviet Union were winding up the INF treaty negotiations, the Russians gave in to an American demand that the nuclear warheads not be destroyed along with the scrapped missiles, but taken out and saved...

...Such projects are the very opposite of "nonoffensive defense...

...Whereas the U.S...

...Trying to change West German policy by inspiring media attacks on "Genscherism" was a flop...

...Aware of their extreme vulnerability, Germans have turned to seeking "an international system of common security in Europe" and an end to militarization of international relations, the Admiral observed...

...The controversy strengthened the Left's position that Germany is obliged by its past to abandon all military ambitions and take the lead in peaceful reconciliation...

...Perfected long-range weapons are being stationed at sea...

...The vast array of industries that count on Pentagon subsidies to finance their research and ensure their high profits need "modernization" and "competitive strategies" to stay on the gravy train...

...Nevertheless, the basis for a German military-industrial complex still exists...

...Without the Soviet threat, the very purpose of NATO is in doubt...

...Is it to keep West Germany under control...

...The powerful lobbies pressing for the next wave of weaponry probably care little about the global political implications...

...Ambassador Burt, who had been sent to Bonn in September 1985 to further the interests of the missile lobby...

...They will revive fears of sudden surprise attack in case of crisis...

...To a large extent, the NATO debate has been taking the form of a German-U.S...

...These concepts have become overwhelmingly persuasive now that they have been taken up by Gorbachev himself, not only in words but in unilateral-disarmament steps announced at the United Nations...

...This dual- or triple-purpose program should also pose unsolvable problems for arms control, especially as NATO is determined to reject any easily verifiable "zero option" on this category of weapons...

...The German establishment, closely linked to the FDP and not yet tied hand-and-foot by a military-industrial complex, rallied to Genscher's defense...

...The new weapons systems will pump money into high tech...

...The unspoken German purpose was to form the broad Western alliance against the Bolshevik East that the conservative military caste had always wanted, in opposition to Hitler's readiness to take on both East and West...

...The West German population overwhelmingly supports disarmament negotiations with Gorbachev, a sentiment that is reinforced by vigilant specialists with access to the media and spokespeople in the parliamentary opposition, both the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens...

...Is it, on the contrary, a base for Western military intervention and "rollback" in the East...

...The most important of these are sea-based cruise missiles and various air-launched "stand-off' missiles capable of striking targets in Eastern Europe and even in the Soviet Union...

...Admiral Schmaling is no marginal peacenik but the director of the West German armed forces training and education department...

...Without fear of a Soviet threat to provide a unifying fiction, the basic ambiguity of Germany's position in NATO becomes clear...

...In that search, Vernon Walters should be watched closely...

...conflict because of the different relationship of forces between the military-industrial complex and the peace movements in the two countries...

...Admiral Schmaling's criticism was directed at U.S...

...In fact, NATO has been going right ahead with plans for the "modernization" of its nuclear forces regardless of INF...

...The unspoken American purpose was to keep Germany divided and under control...

...As a result, Kohl finally sided with Genscher against the Americans and refused to endorse Lance modernization this year...

...The German Left, stretching from the Greens through the Social Democrats and including sectors of Genscher's own Free Democratic Party and the media close to them, raised a chorus of protest against German military exports of all kinds...

...A number of Bundeswehr officers have brought valuable know-how to the peace movement and helped promote the realization that security can no longer be achieved through military means, but only through political processes...

...The outcome was a bit different...

...The MBB missile would reportedly use the ultraprecise Pershing guidance system...

...Last December, Fleet Admiral Elmar Schmaling wrote in a popular magazine that the "desire to appear as a reliable, friendly and even grateful partner of the United States has hidden many elementary differences...

...But the Germans, who are closer and more sensitive to developments in Eastern Europe, are alarmed by the political consequences...

...interest...

...that the military bureaucracy and arms industry are reacting skeptically to this development and putting on the brakes...

...Aware of the dangerous ambitions of the German Right to recover the East by force, Social Democrats initially opposed German rearmament but finally accepted NATO mainly as an instrument for keeping such ambitions in check...

...As top American military spook and "troubleshooter," the General is famed for leaving right-wing coups in his wake...

...ambassador to Bonn will be scouting for local right-wing talent that can serve U.S...

...Meanwhile, there are plans to replace Lance, whose range is only 120 kilometers, with missiles whose range comes right up to the INF 500-kilometer limit...

...If Washington is not happy with the policies of the democratically elected government of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), not even Vernon Walters will be able to find some friendly general to overthrow it, as he did in Brazil back in 1964...

...Her new column, Outsider, will appear in The Progressive four times a year...

...The shift from nuclear terror to mutual security is enthusiastically welcomed in most of Europe, and especially in Germany, the designated battlefield for the European war that NATO keeps practicing by flying its war-planes over the roofs of German schools and driving its tanks through German villages...

...Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci later assured the Senate that keeping the nuclear warheads was in the U.S...

...intent was clearly to use the scandal to discredit liberal foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, a persistent and effective champion of pursuing disarmament negotiations with Gorbachev...

...In the United States, with the Reagan and Bush Administrations, the military-industrial complex is in power, and the opposition to it is weak, sporadic, and unfocused...

...The first purpose finds support in the German Left...

...That could have been a subtle way of recalling that Burt had neither...

...The second purpose traditionally belongs to such conservatives as Christian Democratic Bundestag leader Alfred Dregger, who objects to short-range nuclear missiles on the grounds that they are> above all, a "self-deterrent" for the Germans...

...policy aims...

...Even so, the number of draft-age youth opting for conscientious objection keeps growing, and German militarism seems to be a thing of the past...

...The muted rivalry between the various national branches of the NATO military-industrial complex adds an obscure but important dimension to the "modernization" controversy...

...land-based missiles with a range of more than 500 kilometers (300 miles...

...Or is it, as Manfred Worner maintains, a political alliance based on common values and interests that can survive the death of the Soviet threat by protecting those values and interests throughout the world...

...The Social Democrats have historically taken the lead in developing the major concepts of "common security" and "non-offensive defense"—a defense structured so that neither side is capable of surprise invasion and neither side feels threatened...

...Sea-launching was the original plan for cruise missiles anyway, and they were stuck in Europe only, as John Tower noted back when he was in the Senate, to save the technology from arms control...

...NATO always had a tacit American purpose that went contrary to the tacit purpose of the Wehrmacht officers who wanted to rearm West Germany within the framework of NATO...

...The French are building their aptly named "Hades" missile, suitable for neutron-bomb (enhanced-radiation) warheads...

...The Munich-based German aerospace giant, Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm (MBB), has been developing its own KOLAS missile with a range just under 500 kilometers...

...But West Germans seemed to take the news in stride...

...The NATO modernization may be primarily a pretext for handing out industrial subsidies, but it also corresponds to a military strategy for waging war against the Soviet Union...

...With Eastern Europe in the throes of change, a revived arms race and military tensions could mean catastrophe for Europe...

...In the Federal Republic of Germany, the military-industrial complex is relatively weak, although growing, and influences only a part of the conservative coalition government of Christian Democrats and Liberals...

...The third is the growing position of "Atlanticists" who are ready to switch to war against the Third World—a stance vastly more popular in the old imperialist powers, Britain and France, than in Germany...

...But the disarmament process that seemed to be set in motion with the December 1987 INF Treaty is in danger of being turned into a swindle by the stubborn insistence of the NATO establishment on continuing with its "modernization...

...ambassador to Bonn, Richard Burt, has complained that "the peace movement lost the battle but won the war," since the consensus on NATO policy has been broken...

...If the past is any indication, the new U.S...

...The most profound change, attributable both to Gorbachev and to the greatly improved understanding of security questions gained through the Euromissiles controversy, has been the evaporation of Germans' belief in "the Soviet threat...

...There is real worry that NATO is determined to deliver a slap in the face to Mikhail Gorbachev that could cause his political downfall...

...But, he added, "our citizens have the impression Diana Johnstone is based in Paris as the European editor of In These Times...

...builder of Pershing and Lance missiles, Martin Marietta, for an October 1988 feasibility study for a ballistic missile exclusively aimed at airfields and aircraft, able to knock out 50 per cent of Warsaw Pact air power in twelve hours...

...The Bundes-wehr is, indeed, a vastly more democratic institution than the old Wehrmacht...

...is still stuck in thinking of a political-military competition with the Soviet Union, the Federal Republic is on the right track with its concern for disarmament and political stability between the alliance systems," Schmaling wrote in the weekly Stern...

...The U.S...

...In other words, the German military-industrial complex can find itself squeezed between its American competitors and its German critics, who have most of the German population on their side...

...pressure to get NATO to introduce a new round of nuclear missiles into Germany in the guise of "modernizing" the Lance short-range missile systems, the only land-based missiles left to NATO since the INF treaty banned Soviet and U.S...

...He was criticizing not only the United States, but also his own defense minister, Christian Democrat Rupert Scholz, for going along with the NATO "modernization" project...

...The West German defense ministry secretly granted $23 million to the U.S...

...The warheads taken out of land-based cruise and Pershing II missiles are to be stuck back in other equivalent weapons...

...It gets political support from "steel-helmet" Christian Democrats increasingly critical of the United States...

...The political battle raging inside NATO is not simply a battle between Washington and Bonn...

...policy...

...This is what happened with the big American New Year's campaign against German industrial aid to the alleged "chemical-weapons plant" in Libya...

...Navy's 4,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, 758 with nuclear warheads (sorting out the nuclear from the conventional should successfully stymie arms control) and a range of more than 1,500 miles...

...Despite his sinister past, German press accounts discreetly noted that General Vernon Walters has a lot of experience and a gift for languages...

...His assignment as U.S...

...The Soviet Union has lots of land for basing long-range missiles, but it has only limited access to the sea...

...The U.S...

...This points up the enormous catch in the INF treaty: It got rid of land-based missiles, which have been the focus of public alarm since the uproar over Soviet SS-20s...

...This was explained in July 1987 by Manfred Worner, then the German defense minister and now secretary-general of NATO...

...The merger of Daimler-Benz and MBB is creating a powerful conglomerate that dominates aerospace and other arms manufacture...

...Anti-American resentment on the German Right reached new heights...

...West Germany "is not a banana republic," Chancellor Helmut Kohl irritably reminded the Americans in the midst of the uproar over the Libyan "chemical-weapons plant...

...The Pentagon is going ahead with the multiple-launch rocket system (MLRS, or "Mars") designed to launch the new "Army tactical missile system" (ATACM, or "Attack 'em") which can carry conventional, chemical, or nuclear warheads some 300 miles into Warsaw Pact territory...

...This means the Pentagon can find itself in veiled conflict with the only constituency in Germany supportive of NATO arms modernization...

...American arms manufacturers are not the only ones looking for a piece of the action in the NATO short-range-missile market...

...These days, any discontent in the Bun-deswehr is likely to be directed against the strategy forced on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization by the United States...

...The German Right was able to see in NATO the implicit promise of a "rollback" of Soviet power, enabling West Germany to recover both East Germany and the territories lost to Poland and the Soviet Union in World War II...

...This marked a final failure for outgoing U.S...

...ambassador to Bonn was a tacit admission that the placid capital on the Rhine has become a top trouble spot for U.S...

...Germans now feel more threatened by low-flying NATO training flights than by a Russian invasion...

...gave up land-based missiles the better to move into its own elements: sea and air...

...We have played the role of model child for too long...