mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (02/04/84)
The current issue of Science has a long (for Science) article on the
history of the Pershing/cruise installation in Europe. It is the first
of four. It's worth reading, if only to show that malicious intent can
be seen where there is none, even in matters so important as nuclear
missiles.
A lot of us here and in Europe have been maligning Reagan for installing
the Pershings, as a stupid dangerous act. Well, I still think the act
was dangerous and stupid, but apparently Reagan shares only a small part
of the blame. According to the article, it was the result of a grand
joint blindness among the US and European politicians and military on
the one side, and their Soviet counterparts on the other. In the beginning,
both the Soviet military and the Western perceived their missiles to
be getting old and worthless (SS 4 and SS 5 on the one side, Pershing 1
on the other). So they set about replacing them, with no special
"political" intent (SS-20 and, at first, cruise). But the politicians
are so eager to see "signals" that each considered the other to be
escalating the situation, and started using their "replacement" missiles
as warnings and bargaining counters to stop the other doing what came
(militarily) naturally. The Pershing 2 missiles came along later,
and no-one noticed that the Russians might care that the West was
replacing missiles with a 400-mile range with ones that could hit Moscow.
The whole thing is mad, but Schmidt, Thatcher, Carter, Mitterand and
our military share the blame equally with Brezhnev, Andropov and their
military. Reagan just kept the whole thing going the way it had been.
Apparently a lot of the people that made the decisions along the way
are now saying they would not do it that way again, if they had the
chance. Let's hope they aren't saying that when the missiles fly.
--
Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt