charlie (04/06/83)
I question the assumption that an arms freeze or arms reduction has much to do with preventing nuclear war. And there are so many nuclear weapons now in existence that even a large percentage reduction would not substantially reduce the devastation of a nuclear encounter. In my mind, a freeze or reduction should not be thought of as the first step toward the elimination of nuclear weapons. By itself, that goal is not only not attainable, it is not even clearly desirable. If we were going to fight an all out war, nuclear is probably the way to go. Being vaporized at ground zero is a much nicer way to go than the chemical, toxin, and nerve gas based weapons which would replace it. Our goal must be to reduce the probability of war rather than the magnitude of it. It's far too late to do much about the magnitude. There are several sound reasons for mutual arms reductions other than making war more tolerable: 1) Weapons systems which give a first strike advantage are destabilizing so it would be nice to minimize them. MIRVs and ABMs together are the classic and we have done a surprizing job of keeping these down. 2) The fewer weapons around, the less chance one will slip into "the wrong hands". This argument is weak if the level of security on the weapons which do exist is uniform, but there it is. 3) It saves money on both sides. Since both sides care only about relative strength, mutual cutbacks would maintain the status quo and allow more consumer spending in both countries. There is no evidence that this goal has ever actually worked, but it's a good idea. 4) It is a symbolic gesture that the super-powers can agree on something. Mutual dependence and trust are the real key to peace. Given the accusations of cheating and such which usually accompany these agreements, we might be better off with another symbol. None of these purposes has the punch of saying we're taking the first step toward eliminating the nuclear threat, but they are not necessarily worthless either. Where should this leave the peace movement? I see no reason why they should be interested in arms reductions talks one way or the other except to label the hypocracy when negotiators claim goals beyond the above four. What should you do to increase the chances of peace? I have given it much thought and come up with very little. My thoughts lead toward increasing international interdependence through increased trade and such. Boring stuff. What do others think?
soreff (04/06/83)
There have been a number of suggestions on non-arms-limitations approaches to increasing the chances of peace. I've heard of suggestions to have the children/grandchildren of government officials on both sides living in the opponent's country. This has the natural effect of giving both governments personal reasons to avoid war (or at least such forms of war as would threaten civilian populations, which includes almost all current forms). Alternatively, some fraction of the government officials of each nation could reside in the other and tele-commute (since most of what they generate is text). Other suggestions that I've heard include *joint* US/USSR work on defensive weapons, which can be arranged to eliminate some of the destabilizing effects of ABMs and the like (eg. simultaneous activation of both systems to avoid a situation where one defense system is substantially more complete than the other). Some of these may be easier to implement than they at first appear. Exchange of relatives of government officials, for instance, can be partially handled by systems for exchange students of universities, which already exist for other uses. Comments? -Jeffrey Soreff (hplabs!hplabsb!soreff)