odom@uiucuxc.UUCP (11/17/83)
#N:uiucuxc:21200024:000:655
uiucuxc!odom Nov 16 10:29:00 1983
Knowing that I'm going to draw a lot of fire on this
questions, I'm posing it anyway: why doesn't the US
simply, unilaterally disarm all nuclear weapons?
What do all of you hackers in netland see as the outcome
of this action? Do you believe that the USSR would invade
the continental US? Or would they just launch their missiles
immediately? Would world opinion be pro or con? Would we
scare the hell out of Margaret or Mitterand? Would the U.N.
see this as a bold move toward World Peace or an American
Trick??
Honest, folks. What do you think would happen?
susan odom
bloomqui@uiucuxc.UUCP (11/17/83)
#R:uiucuxc:21200024:uiucuxc:21200025:000:942 uiucuxc!bloomqui Nov 16 18:02:00 1983 The first thing that comes to mind, susan, is that a unilateral withdrawal and destruction of U.S. nuclear weapons would leave our allies in europe and the far east effectively defenseless against Soviet nuclear blackmail. No matter how vocal the protest from Western Europe becomes, the plain fact is that without a credible U.S. nuclear deterrent our allies have no effective defense against Soviet expansionism. I believe that the Soviets, given their historical fear of invasion from Western Europe and Japan and other strategic interests (e.g. warm-water ports, positioning of *buffer* nations around the "Motherland") would make life difficult for, if not outright invade, our allies. The question should not be whether we (the U.S.) should unilaterally disarm, but how might we reduce the threat of a nuclear holocast without surrendering our fragilly maintained freedoms to an authoritarian-militaristic state such as the USSR.
brp@ihuxm.UUCP (B.R. Priest) (11/17/83)
I know what would happen. The Soviets would begin to push us and everybody else in the world around. The remaining pockets of freedom in the world would disappear. Anybody who doesn't think so is naive, idealistic, or probably both. Ben Priest Bell Labs, Npaerville -- !ihuxm!brp
mjk@tty3b.UUCP (11/18/83)
Susan Odom (or, if she prefers, susan odom) asks why the U.S. doesn't just disarm unilaterally. I think the reasons are primarily U.S. domestic politics: they've scared people so much that they can't admit it was all for nothing. But there is an idea within unilateralism that could play well. This is the idea of unilateral STEPS. That is, what grave danger would come to our national security if we were to announce, "We are stopping all testing, deployment and manufacture of nuclear weapons, effective January 1, for a period of one year. All countries are welcome to send delegations to monitor our own voluntary compliance with this edict. If the Soviets join us in this action, we will continue it as long as they do." This cuts through all the B.S. about arms talks (which are really just an extension of the arms race -- neither side is interested in real reductions, simply reductions which hurt the other side). It challenges them to put up or shut up. If they don't follow, we resume production and all. If they join us, we make the next move. We're supposed to be so much more enlightened and caring than the Soviets. So let's show it. Let's take a small chance. Let's put up or shut up. Mike Kelly ..!ihnp4!tty3b!mjk
eich@uiucdcs.UUCP (11/18/83)
#R:uiucuxc:21200024:uiucdcs:29200041:000:1042 uiucdcs!eich Nov 17 19:55:00 1983 huh? Afghanistan?? Well why not Czechoslovakia or Hungary? US nuclear weapons couldn't possibly deter the Soviets from invading Afghanistan, which lies on the east end of the Asian Tier -- their "soft underbelly", though nobody's poked at it, and nobody's in the position to do so, and the Russians know this, so be a little less credulous about overstated (and often projected) Russian "fears". And they had already installed one unreliable puppet (Karmal). Besides, earlier in 1979 Jimmy Carter had within the space of a week gone from the position that a Soviet Combat Brigade in Cuba was an intolerable status quo, to acceptance of it as the status quo. Hedrick Smith of the New York Times has observed that this almost certainly led the Soviets to conclude that they could do as they pleased in the Asian Tier. Perhaps in the days of Massive Retaliation, when the USSR had no nuclear weapons to speak of, such deterrence was possible. Nowadays, the object is to deter invasion of Western Europe and, ultimately, this hemisphere.
odom@uiucuxc.UUCP (11/18/83)
#R:uiucuxc:21200024:uiucuxc:21200026:000:239
uiucuxc!odom Nov 17 10:52:00 1983
It's not that I disagree with much of this, Kim,
but if nuclear weapons are a deterrent to Soviet
Invasion how come the Russians are in Afghanistan?
yours in doubt,
susan odomjsanders@aecom.UUCP (Jeremy Sanders) (11/18/83)
The US has not, I hope will not, unitlateraly disarm itself because a great number of her people highly value their freedom. No, I don't think that the Soviets would either immediatly invade the US or launch a nuclear strike against us. It would be difficult for them to invade the US without first defeating our allied in Europe. While I don't think the USSR would immediatly attack Western Europe, our disarmament would make the loss of W.E. inevitable: either thru invasion (The USSR has a strong lead on us in conventional weaponry or by W.E.'s neutalization by Soviet threats of nuclear attack (and don't think they won't - we did in the Cuban Missle crisis). The USSR would probably not use their nuclear force so long as their conventional forces would suffice, but I doubt that the US would fall to an attack of only conventional weapons. I don't know if our diarmament would 'scare the hell out of Margaret or Mitterand' but it sure would scare the pants off of me. As far as how this would affect world opinion or be seen by the UN - that question is would become completely meaningless. Why would the Soviets care about world opinion when they hold all the trumps ? Jeremy Sanders
jsanders@aecom.UUCP (Jeremy Sanders) (11/20/83)
> .... they've scared people so > much that they can't admit it was all for nothing. Who is this mysterious "they" ? The government perhaps? Which administration? (or all of them)? The dark & dangerous military commanders? Mike - get specific. No-one can accept as legitmate a response that puts the blame on some nebulous & unspecified "they". There are some problems with the concept of "STEPS". First, if we stop (even if only for a limited time) maintaining our "position" in the arms race, we may fall far enough behind to preclude catching up. Second, if we do stop, we may not psychologicaly be able to start up again. Third, is the way that the Russians would view this. The Russian psychology is different than ours, and they would see a move like STEPS as a demonstration of American weakness. Never the less, so long as we do not halt research (taking care of problem one), I would support such a measure because I feel that we *will* be able to start up again, and, because even though I don't think the Soviets would respond the way we want them to, its worth the chance when you consider the risks. We should not, however, stop already planned deployments (i.e. cruise & pershing II in europe); we said we'd send deploy those and breaking our commitment on it would send exactly the wrong signal to the Kremlin. Jeremy Sanders
eich@uiuccsb.UUCP (11/20/83)
#R:uiucuxc:21200024:uiuccsb:11000060:000:5333 uiuccsb!eich Nov 17 10:40:00 1983 History shows that the weak cannot count on the kindness of the strong. Ukrainians, Poles, and Afghans know this quite well. The Russians also know this, hence their different interpretation of the word `Freeze'. When Lenin swept to power on the wave of the Great Russian Peace Movement of 1917, a policy of unilateral pacifism was put into effect (quite bloodily). Soldiers and sailors, encouraged by the Bolsheviks, mutinied by the thousands. The Admiral of the navy was dragged into the street and shot. Everywhere, people tortured by war and famine cried out "Peace!" Lenin's addresses to the newly formed Bolshevik government left grown men sobbing that "peace had come at last." It availed Russia nothing: Trotsky went to the German Army's East Command at Brest-Litovsk and made a *Unilateral Declaration of Peace*; the Germans, bemused, paused for two days and then started the invasion. They met almost total surrender. Mutinies and desertions had rendered Russia defenseless. For instance, A railroad flat-car with a machine-gun mounted on it was sufficient to capture all towns along the line. In the end, the revolution that shook the world was saved from the tender mercies of the Germans (and even given the Ukraine), by the actions of a Protestant American moralist named Woodrew Wilson -- such are the ironies of the dialectic. The Great Russian Peace Movement was the closest any nation has come to unilateral disarmament in this Century, and the results were calamatous. Of course, Lenin's subsequent liquidation of all opposition, starting with the students, wasn't so nice either. But I'm glad you said the magic words `unilateral disarmament', because up till now most members of the latest peace movement have included deadwood like `mutual' and `verifiable' in their proposals (although lately these tags have been disappearing). Lest you think I imagine Russians wading ashore at Cape Cod on the day after unilateral disarmament, I'll tell you what would likely happen. Soviet adventurism would step up to the degree that the Russian economy could bear. That degree, needless to say, would be raised by an invasion of the Persian Gulf, or by at least the overthrow of the Saudi royal family and the installation (from South Yemen) of a `progressive' regime (remember the cigarette butts in the 1979 Mosque raid). Africa, coveted for its minerals, would be there for the taking; Asia would be unmolested, except perhaps for Japan, and South Korea if the North got the go-ahead. Europe is problematic: although the Soviets, mustering an opportunistic, deep-penetration armored attack, could easily overcome current European conventional defenses, the (relatively old and few) French and British nuclear weapons would have to considered. Who knows? The French would probably try to cut a deal. The eventual situation, however, would be a Finlandized continent. Of course almost all of the above military action on the part of the USSR is unnecessary; the simple fact of supreme Soviet military might would suffice in most cases to secure political surrender. Finlandization is less of an administrative bother, too. Deterrence by American conventional weapons does not promise to be very effective, except against a direct North American invasion (which, again, would not be worth mustering). But appeasement would be the order of the day. No more Reagans, or anyone else to the right of, say, Alan Cranston. In short order the Soviets could work their political will anywhere they pleased. The author/film critic Richard Grenier tells of an acquaintance of his, a person employed in the movie industry, who espoused the current pacifism without the bilateral disingenuousness. What, asked Grenier, would she do if the Soviets did eventually take control of America? Oh, she replied, she would go about her business. But suppose, perchance, Grenier continued, they happened to look disfavorably upon her business, indeed upon her whole lifestyle, and flung her into a Gulag? "Oh", she replied bravely, "then I'd fight!" "Yes, indeed", said Grenier, "I'm sure it would be one of the nobler battles." So if you consider the condition of captive peoples in the East, along with quite a bit of blood shed from those of us who would oppose such conditions, to be one of `peace' (and further, if you think that you could *honestly* live with this), AND if you believe that the possession of nuclear weapons is unjustifiable, then support for unilateral disarmament is the logical course, far preferable to a freeze. Oh, yes, Thatcher and Mitterand would be quite upset. I don't understand your question about `world opinion' or that obscure den of iniquity called the `United Nations'. Since most of the member nations routinely condone totalist imperialism and human rights violations by Leninists (who go by tweedsy, academic-sounding misnomers like `Marxist' and `Socialist', but don't let that fool you), while heroically and hypocritically kicking Israel and South Africa, there is no doubt that nary a peep of concern from that quarter would accompany Soviet domination. The Chinese would, barring rapprochement, be hysterical. And we would probably still pay for most of the U.N. Why in the world would they "just launch their missiles"? Brendan Eich uiucdcs!uiuccsb!eich
grunwald@uiuccsb.UUCP (11/20/83)
#R:uiucuxc:21200024:uiuccsb:11000065:000:352 uiuccsb!grunwald Nov 18 02:12:00 1983 I tend to agree with uiucdcs!eich. Unilateral disarmiment would be a mistake. While I would like to believe that the U.S.S.R. would throw down its arms and join us in peace, I'm no dummy. The main problem with a unilateral disarmiment is that it is too sudden a change. A gradual build-down might work, if the action is recipriocated by the Soviets.
andree@uokvax.UUCP (11/21/83)
#R:uiucuxc:21200024:uokvax:5000025:000:492 uokvax!andree Nov 18 09:11:00 1983 What would happen if the US unilaterally disarmed? I see the following scenario: Day 1: Reagan (or whoever is president) gets a note from the kremlin: `Please turn over the keys to the US, or the enclosed list of cities will be obliterated at the rate of one a day.' Day 2: First city goes away. (I nominate Chicage :-)) Day 3 to n: Further cities go away, while the public outcry for surrender increases. Day n+1: Russian is added as a mandatory language in grade school. <mike
andree@uokvax.UUCP (11/24/83)
#R:tty3b:-25000:uokvax:5000028:000:583 uokvax!andree Nov 22 20:38:00 1983 Hurray! Mike, I LIKE the way you think. Please keep doing it! Your suggestion of `one year of unilateral shutdown' is a nearly perfect solution to the current deadlock. We risk very little - I don't think one year now would make a great deal of difference (actually, I would prefer it be scheduled for the late '80s, say 1988. What a political ploy that would be!), and have a lot to gain. We show the world that we are seriously interested in stopping this silliness. Of course, I seriously doubt that the people in the Kremlin would take us up on it, but it's worth a try. <mike
notes@pur-ee.UUCP (11/29/83)
#R:uiucuxc:21200024:isrnix:11700007:000:1456
isrnix!tim Nov 28 20:30:00 1983
I always wonder at people who think any moves towards peace will lead
to invasion as a matter of course. I also wonder at how "weak" we must be
to be unable to defend ourselves against an immediate invasion when a little
nation like Yugoslavia has successfully avoided a Soviet invasion for
almost 30 years. Why do countries wish to invade each other in the first
place? We say that we have to defend our "vital national interests"
(read that as $$$$$$!)in the rest of the world by spending $1.6 trillion
over the next few years?? Seems to me that this course of "defending national
interests" presents very few benefits compared to the costs--what if we
invested a like amount in solar energy, or trying to feed the hungry, in
medical care, in improving technology for the benefit of ALL mankind?
Then rather than have such enormous resources sitting idly in missiles and
bombs waiting to destroy the world and our fellow human beings, what if we
distributed the fruits of such investments to everybody in the world?
Would the rest of the world be itching to invade us ? Why?
Is the Soviet Union really so eager to cut off a major source of grain?
I think redirecting our resources to PRODUCTIVE purposes will do more
to prevent invasions and wars then piling up missiles in silos awaiting
Armageddon (which ,incidentally is NOT good for business or the economy either!)
tim sevener
Indiana University, Bloomington
pur-ee!iuvax!isrnix!timwetcw@pyuxa.UUCP (T C Wheeler) (11/29/83)
I would invite the person who is worried about all "those resources" being tied up in silos to go back to Economics 101. If all that money is tied up in silos, then I had better get out my pickaxe and go digging. Dummies, the money spent on ANY project, be it military, Social, or Private goes out to the working stiffs. For instance, for the sake of argument, let us imagine that I am a salesman for the XYZ Widget Company. My company makes a Widget that is used in a rocket. I hear that the rocket maker needs some good widgets at a good price. Me, being a good salesman, get on a plane and fly to the rocket makers plant (cost for planefare, parking, car rental, meals, motel, and tips say $489.00). I get the contract to provide the widgets. OK, where does the $489.00 come from to pay for my trip? From the profits of the contract. Now, where did the 489.00 go? To airline workers, car rental workers, resturant workers, motel workers, and others. Multiply this scenario by the number of salesmen alone and you see that a lot of what is called "tied up money" is not that at all. Again, multiply the wages received by the workers at the Widget plant by the number of workers receiving a wage and the money from the contract spreads even further. Now throw in the use of those wages to purchase goods and services, and the wave of money spreads even further afield. Large sums of money spent on huge programs probably benefit more people than a direct payment to an individual. The cost of doing something is not lost. We may have spent a billion dollars to send a man to the moon, but did we send the money too? Of course not. It was spent right here in the economy through the purchase of goods and services down to the lowest level. As another example, look at Huntsville, Alabama. Since the slowdown in the space program, the town has shrunk. Businesses have closed, people have moved away, and the economics of the area have slowed. I am talking about everything that was even slightly associated with the area, such as, resturants, car dealerships, motels, real estate, and on and on. Tax revenues dropped, city services cut back, schools suffered, and too many things to list. All of this because a few knot-headed politicians had it in their heads that the money actually went to the moon and not to the people. Even the profits made by the companies involved in the space program was sent out to their shareholders who, in turn, bought goods and services with that money. Some of the largest shareholders in these corporations were colleges and universities. Please don't cry about the money being spent and sitting in the ground. Whatever is in those silos represents literally hundreds of thousands of jobs. Jobs from waitresses to airline pilots, janitors to computer scientists, hotel maids to bartenders. The projects this country undertakes are the mainstream of our economy. And, don't bring up the morality of what is in those silos. That's for religion 101, a different net group.
condict@csd1.UUCP (Michael Condict) (11/30/83)
It always befuddles me how people who know a little (or even a lot) of economics can let it lead them into gross violations of common sense. It seems that talking about M1 vs. M2 money, reinvestment of deferred income and all sorts of abstract financial concepts makes one forget a very basic fact: money is not wealth, it is just a rather bizarre and complicated symbolic representation of wealth which people manipulate and abuse in order to attempt to acquire real wealth, which is of course measured by standard of living and the ownership of luxurious possessions. Now to the point. The claim seems to be that it doesn't matter what we spend our money on, for instance missle silos and all the other nuclear crap, because the money isn't really in the silos -- it got respent and reinvested by all the lucky beneficiaries of the original funds. By this reasoning we can afford to buy or build anything whatsoever, because the money is never used up! How can any reasonably sane person entertain any such notion! When dealing with such reasoning I find it best to take the discussion outside of the realm of economics (and thus back to the real world) by pointing out that: (1) it takes materials and labor to build things, (2) both of these are available at limited rates, whether or not they are inexhaustible in the long run, (3) things like homes, cars, tvs, and movies that you enjoy did not grow on a tree, their production consumed some part of the available labor and materials. There is an obvious sort of conservation law in operation here: output=input. From this, without knowing whether the economy functions by money or by barter or by theft and coersion we can all the same quite easily conclude that (4) the higher the percentage of our available materials and labor we spend on sending somebody to the moon or on putting missiles in a silo, the less is available for building cars, tvs and all the things we the common people actually use. This logic is irrefutable, yet apparently impenetrable to many economists. In order to help them understand it a little better let us just carry their view of the world to its logical extreme. What would happen if suddenly (or even gradually) we shift the economy to a state where every available material and every working body is being used in the production and maintenence of nuclear weapons? Obviously we would all starve and freeze to death rather quickly. What is wrong then with your inexhaustibly reusable money argument? Isn't it obvious? Of course money is reusable and never goes to the moon. But that is because it is only a measure of the exchange and ownership of wealth, not the wealth itself. Saying that it is reused is just like saying that the number 43 can be reused again and again no matter how many times it is obtained by others as the result of a computation. Now it is true that certain activities, like developing technology for space, can produce, as side effects, an increase in the efficiency by which materials and labor are converted into things (for example, by improving the state of automation technology). This will increase the standard of living without any need to increase labor. Fine, wonderful, but this is not the argument that was put forth. That argument, as with most widely held fallacies, has some basis in fact. It is certainly true that if someone (the govt. or a big business) spends a huge amount of money on a totally useless project that is concentrated in one geographical location, the sudden demand for products and services in that location can boost the standard of living there. But this is at the expense of the standard of living averaged over all the people who are paying for the useless project. Furthermore, it is certainly true that the availability of materials and labor changes over time (both usually increasing). This does not magically refute the argument that right now, today, there is only a certain amount available, and we have to choose amoung the options for using it -- there is not enough materials and labor to do or build everything that we want to do or build, and probably never will be. We can and should choose what to build based on long term expectations like the survival of the free world or the side effects that a particular technology may have, but I worry greatly about the future prospects for our economy when people in power think that somehow the standard of living can be raised by building something that is totally useless (as are nuclear weapons until they are used). M. Condict ...!cmcl2!csd1!condict New York Univ.
tbray@mprvaxa (12/02/83)
x <-- USENET insecticide
pyuxa!wetcw argues that all those billions being spent on the military
are providing jobs jobs jobs and not doing the economy any harm.
Unfortunately, he is wrong wrong wrong.
It can be shown by simple quantitative macroeconomic analysis that:
1. The performance of the economies of industrialized nations
since WWII has exhibited a clear inverse relationship to the
proportion of GNP spent on military spending - this is true
both sides of the curtain. Some economic theorists have a
fancy explanation in terms of "production that is never consumed"
(thank God). Dunno about that, but the figures are there.
2. Defense manufacturing and R&D is in the lowest few percentiles
in terms of jobs produced per buck invested.
M. wetcw concludes with:
"And, don't bring up the morality of what is in those silos. That's
for religion 101, a different net group."
If politics is not to concern itself with morality, we've all had it.
Tim Bray ...decvax!microsoft!ubc-vision!mprvaxa!tbrayrigney@uokvax.UUCP (12/05/83)
#R:csd1:-13500:uokvax:5000035:000:665 uokvax!rigney Dec 3 10:10:00 1983 /***** uokvax:net.politics / csd1!condict / 7:14 pm Nov 30, 1983 */ building something that is totally useless (as are nuclear weapons until they are used). /* ---------- */ Actually, nuclear weapons are only useless when the time comes to use them. If they perform their function correctly, they'll never be used. As long as they're not used, they're working. To say they are therefore worthless is to miss the point. I agree that it would certainly be better to expend the resources on something else, if we can. Especially the space program - the only thing the government has ever done that has returned more than it cost. Carl ..!ctvax!uokvax!rigney