ARMS-D-Request@MIT-MC.ARPA (Moderator) (01/05/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Saturday, January 4, 1986 11:08PM
Volume 6, Issue 8.1
Today's Topics:
Administrivia
Warfare "obsolete"?
Soviet forces in Europe
MAD and meaningless
Rejoinders, mostly re LOWC
Putting the Man in the Loop
Testing SDI
Beyond War
Rejoinders
conflict resolution
Independent Battlestations
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From: Herb Lin
Subject: new digests..
As many of you will note from this weekend's activity, Arms-d has been
busy. That poses a problem for me, since the mailer at MC will handle
files that are only less than about 9 K long.
This should be fixed soon, but the temporary solution that makes less
work for me is to simply renumber the digests, and forget the headers.
Thus, this issue is #8.1, and the other later issues that go along
with the headers listed above will be #8.2, #8.3,and so on.
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Date: Sat 4 Jan 1986 16:08:01 EST
From: Paul Dietz <dietz%slb-doll.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Subject: Warfare "obsolete"?
I'm not sure what it means to say that war is obsolete as a means of
resolving conflict. Given the number of wars that have broken out since
WW-2 it seems very much in fashion.
What you probably mean is that the cost of war has risen to the point
where it is not a viable mechanism for attaining certain goals that
conflict with goals of rulers of other nations. What will happen next,
I suspect, is that other destructive mechanisms (such as terrorism) will
be evolved that resolve conflict short of war at a lower cost.
Consider: if Khaddafi had 100 nuclear weapons, would Reagan risk war over
19 terrorist victims? Assassination, sabotage and use of proxies might
become the conflict resolution mechanisms of choice.
If some way can be found to use nuclear weapons at acceptable cost to
the aggressor, I expect they will be used promptly (cost would include
retaliatory damage and long-term ill-will). On earth this is not
likely, since the biosphere is too fragile, but once sufficient people
move off into space earth is a sitting duck (you see, they're sitting
on all this nickel iron, and its SO inefficient to use it to make
gravity...). This is a very long term concern, of course.
It is IRRELEVANT whether most people don't want to fight a
war, or fire a shot in anger. In WW-II 9 out of 10 soldiers were
in support roles behind the lines (airbase crews, logistics, etc.).
Also, governments coerce their citizens into performing these duties.
This is less true in the democracies than in the communist countries,
but most voters are too old to fight and have in the past gladly sent
young men off to die. The cost to the voters is perceived as low, while
the soldiers being killed are a tiny voting block. This is no longer
true if there is no obvious benefit to fighting (Vietnam, for example)
or if the cost to civilians is nonnegligible (nuclear war).
The cybernetic stuff strikes me as a lot of sociobabble.
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Date: Sat, 4 Jan 86 14:13:46 pst
From: Gary Chapman <PARC-CSLI!chapman@glacier>
Subject: Soviet forces in Europe
Herb Lin correctly takes me to task for "bean counting" of force composition,
which can be misleading. On the other hand, tanks are tanks. It is a funda-
mental assumption of military planning today, within the military and even
among DoD critics, that NATO forces are ridiculously outgunned and outnumbered
in Europe. With all due respect a few writers who appear in *International
Security,* my take on the issue is that there is a near consensus on Soviet
superiority. This is why we have moved to the dangerous doctrine of deep
strike, "follow-on-forces-attack," and an increased offensive capability.
What would the Soviets say to our assessment that they've gone over the edge of
irrationality in building conventional (and some would also say nuclear)
weapons? My short answer would be that it would hardly seem to matter to me
what they would say. I am convinced that much of the deployment of troops and
material in Eastern Europe is designed to keep those countries in the Soviet
sphere of dominance, and of course this is a subject that makes the Soviets
simply incredulous. Officially they would never acknowledge that the loyalty
of the people of Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary might be in
doubt. Privately I'm sure it worries them a lot. So I would expect the Soviets
to once again recall the devastation of World War II, and how they will never
allow this to happen again, no matter how many weapons they have to build, and
son. In the meantime, they will secretly worry about Poland's Solidarity,
about the appearance of another Prague Spring, and about the apparently
indestructible cohesion of the Western Alliance.
Gary Chapman
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Date: 4 Jan 1986 15:41-EST
From: Nicholas.Spies@H.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: MAD and meaningless
Jim MacGrath says "Then you must be strongly in favor of
increasing conventional arms ... and SDI."
No, I am in favor of more efforts to encourage both US and
Soviet citizens and their governments to emphasize their
common interests rather than carping on our all-too-obvious
differences. Perhaps if we entered an agreement to trade
millions of blue jeans for tons of caviar we would form a
better opinion of one another...
SDI's dubious protection will introduce more uncertainties
than it is supposed to reduce, at great cost. Perhaps SDI
should be discussed on its merits as a welfare scheme for
defense contractors, as its implications for strategic defense
are obviously negative...
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Date: Sat, 4 Jan 86 18:45:45 EST
From: Herb Lin <LIN@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Rejoinders, mostly re LOWC
From: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ at Forsythe>
2. LEGITIMATE DEFENSE NEEDS: I think it dangerous, and erroneous,
to restrict the analysis of "legitimate defense needs" to categories
of hardware such as subs, carriers, .... The command and control
capabilities themselves may be characterized as "illegitimate", as I
allege with LOWC.
You have it wrong. The problem is not with the hardware, but rather
with the missions they are supposed to perform. We may argue about
whether LOW is the right way to insure missile invulnerability, but we
agree that the mission of protecting our retaliatory force is
legitimate.
(As for strange hardware, how about ERCS for an
illegitimate defense need? As for C3I, is preprogrammed battle
management that escalates conflict legitimate?)
ERCS is hardly illegitimate. It may be dumb, but that isn't the same
thing. As for C3I, there is *no such thing* as preprogrammed battle
management that escalates conflict. We have had many interchanges
over this point, and I don't wish to re-hash them, but when you leave
out important qualifiers in your descriptions, that's not really
playing the game fair.
Re the general
concept of "legitimate defense needs", these, according to recurrent
DOD annual reports, require the maintenance of SUPERIORITY over
Soviet forces in several arenas, e.g. at sea. Think about that.
So what? Why is that such a bad thing?
3. THE WEAKNESS OF INTERNATIONAL TREATIES: (Response to Richard
Foy's alleged violation of Limited Test Ban Treaty.) Related to the
above is the simple fact that the very possession of nuclear weapons
has been declared illegal by the United Nations. This declaration
is, however, not construed as BINDING on U.N. members.
If it's not binding, there are no laws to be violated, and nothing is
illegal.
My LOWC suit
alleges that a BINDING U.N. Charter provision is violated, namely
the obligation to settle peacetime disputes "in such a manner that
international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered"
(Article 2, Part 3). Article 51 provides the only exception - after
armed attack on territory has occurred.
I regard nuclear missiles already in flight to the US as an armed
attack in the past tense.
4. LIMITED NUCLEAR WAR: Robert Maas suggests this is not *actual*
U.S. policy. It was in 1945, and first-use is the foundation of
NATO's present defense plans.
First use is NOT the same thing as limited nuclear war. Ike's massive
retaliation was also "first use", and it has nothing to do with
limited war.
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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