orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER) (02/21/85)
> From plunkett: > There is no experience, other than the one-sided and very limited > examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of nuclear warfare. Whereas > the great debate in the Democracies seems to be (as G. Bush would > have it) on "how high the rubble will bounce," the Soviet regime > has always planned for survival; i.e., it intends to use them if > and when necessary, and if tactically prudent. What is the evidence for this remark? Do the Soviets "plan for survival"? Why? Because they had a limited Civil Defense Program which their own experts admitted on Soviet TV would be ineffective in the event of Nuclear War? "In June of 1982 some of these same physicians met at an international cardiology conference in Moscow. Six of them, 3 Americans, and 3 Russians held a televised discussion on the dangers of nuclear war that included a straightforward and impassioned denial, by Bernard Lown of Harvard, of the utility of shelters in a full nuclear exchange.....This discussion was shown in prime time, more than once, on the principal television channel in the Soviet Union." Carl Sagan, To Preserve a World Graced by Life Richard Pipes has been a major proponent of this view. What is his evidence that the Soviets believe they might survive a nuclear war or might conceivably plan a limited nuclear war? One article in a Soviet defense policy journal which mentioned the possibility of limited nuclear war as a strategy. And what did this article cite as a reference? Several articles in AMERICAN defense journals. It was Nikita Kruschev who said "In a nuclear war, the living will envy the dead." Just recently we have seen the release of Arkady Chevschenko's Memoirs, a Soviet diplomat to the UN who worked for the CIA for 5 years. He has stated that the Soviet leadership is as afraid of the consequences of nuclear war as we are. This idea that somehow the Soviets are willing to start a nuclear war while we are not is not tenable. tim sevener whuxl!orb