ARMS-D-Request@MIT-MC.ARPA (Moderator) (01/05/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Saturday, January 4, 1986 4:03PM Volume 6, Issue 6 Today's Topics: Subject headers included in the last digest, but not here. Sorry. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 3 Jan 86 12:32:07 PST From: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ at Forsythe> To: LIN at MIT-MC.ARPA Re: Rejoinders, mostly re LOWC A collection of rejoinders to recent digest comments. 1. LINCOLN'S 1000-YEAR LAW: "... not all the armies of Asia, Europe, and Africa combined could by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track in the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years". Is this a "gross error" because "the Ohio river [could] be rendered unpotable long before 1000 years had passed", as claimed by Robert Maas? Of course not. The point, most pertinent today, is that a foreign power could not take for its own use the American homeland. Again this wisdom is evident in the Blue Ridge quote, and is not contradicted by the fact that missiles could make the mountains altogether trackless. 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. (As for strange hardware, how about ERCS for an illegitimate defense need? As for C3I, is preprogrammed battle management that escalates conflict legitimate?) 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. 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. 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. Yet, as sadly evident from Reagan's autocratic reneging of World Court jurisdiction on South America matters, the Executive has the authority both to make and break international agreements. Thus international law is a slim reed on which to lean in arguing against executive action. The best one can usually do, as I have done in the LOWC case, is to ask the court to point out an inconsistency between treaties constitutionally in effect and executive action. Then the executive has the option of refuting the treaty. My cause of action based on international law has, significantly, received virtually no attention; it is the constitutional argument that has weight. 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. The West German Pershing IIs are conceived of as nuclear needles, embodying the damage-limiting nuclear strike option. US limited nuclear war policy is as actual as the Pershing IIs, at least. 5. REQUEST FOR LOW POLICY STATEMENTS: Finally, are there any more citations re LOW policies/procedures that anyone knows of? I'm attempting to get as extensive a set as I can. Also, the computer error-checking routines applied re NORAD warnings would be of great interest, though this is presumably classified and unobtainable? ------------------------------ Date: 23 Dec 85 17:20:39 PST (Mon) From: "Tim Shimeall" <tim@icsd.uci.edu> Subject: Better dead... [I don't know if this made it into the digest. Sorry. Herb] There is one point that the people who would rather see the free world lost than fight back with all means possible are missing. If we permit the loss of free societies, we end all freedom in any meaningful sense. Note carefully the wording of the previous two sentences: "loss of free societies" -- I think that we can all agree that this can occur in two ways: a) we blow the earth back into the stone age or before, so ALL effective societies are lost or b) we permit our freedoms to be lost to internal or external totalitarianism. The problem is that we currently threaten the one to prevent the other. Why do we do this? Because any power with nuclear weapons and the will to use them can easily overcome any power without nuclear weapons or without the will to use them. This includes, by the way, an entrenched government fighting against partisans. If matters become "bad" enough, the government can always quell a rebellion by nuclear means, either by using nukes to destroy a rebel army, or by a "demonstration" against a city held by the rebels. AS MATTERS NOW STAND, the only way to defend against a nuclear-armed-and-ready foe is to threaten mass destruction in case of attack. Attempts to defend against such a foe with conventional forces alone are doomed to loss, since the foe will eventually use nuclear weapons in a series of small, controlled "force reduction" strikes. MAD is a very VERY VERY poor strategy, whose only defense is that it works MUCH better than anything else proposed thus far. >Mills: >If we keep trying to defend ourselves by >threatining to end the world, eventually someone is going to call our >bluff. Agreed. But how do we stop and still retain our society? Note again that the purpose in all of this is to preserve free societies. This means we THREATEN mass destruction, not that we CAUSE mass destruction. What we do when someone calls this bluff, by launching nuclear weapons, is a question to which I have no answers, if indeed there exist "good" answers to such a ghastly question. All of this leads me to a VERY strong desire to support multilateral arms reductions. But they MUST be reductions by ALL of the worlds nuclear forces or it simply won't work. (i.e. welcome back to status quo -- unsatisfying) Tim ------- End of Forwarded Message ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 4 Jan 86 12:38:12 EST From: Herb Lin <LIN@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU> Subject: [wolit%mhuxd.UUCP: Aircraft Carriers] Date: Fri, 3 Jan 86 10:50:02 EST From: wolit%mhuxd.UUCP at harvard.HARVARD.EDU To: harvard!arms-d-request at mit-mc.arpa Re: Aircraft Carriers > I can think of several reasons for Aircraft Carriers. First is fleet > defense. A carrier can provide several hundred miles of extension to > the "umbrella" of defense afforded by ship-board radar and missile systems. You've got it backwards. The fleet, it's radar and missile systems, including a couple of attack subs, are all there to defend the carrier. So, in fact, are most of the planes and systems on the carrier itself. Everything in a surface action group -- figure roughly a billion dollars worth of flattop, a billion in support vessels (more, if you through in an Aegis cruiser or two), and a billion in air superiority, ECM, and ASW aircraft -- is all there pretty much solely to support a handful of attack aircraft (mostly A-6's), which are the only weapons systems that actually "project power." It's a mission that could be accomplished at a small fraction of the cost by a few fighter-bomber and tanker aircraft, if it weren't for inter-service rivalry. > When we had battleships off the coast of Lebanon shelling the coast, > Carrier based aircraft provided both radar and fighter cover to those > gunships. I wasn't aware that the PLO had much of an air force to defend against. And I believe that the New Jersey has its own fire-finding radar. Not that flattening residential areas requires much accuracy. > (Remember the Libyan fighters shot down by Navy F-14's ? ? ) Yes. An action necessitated by the extreme vulnerability of aircraft carriers. > Also the Falklands Britan's effective use of air cover afforded by her > carriers was a significant point in the battles there. Britain doesn't have what we consider to be true aircraft carriers, just "ski-jump" carriers for the V/STOL Harriers. Not much more than a freighter and a ramp. And recall the heavy losses among the support vessels required by even this ship (e.g., HMS Sheffield). Recall, too, that the Argentine cruiser Belgrano was sunk by a sub, not by carrier-based aircraft, and the long-range air raid by refuelled land-based British bombers. Besides, the Harrier (the only fixed-wing plane on British carriers) was not there for "air cover," but for close support of ground troops, who found themselves plenty harried by Argentine aircraft anyway. Jan Wolitzky, AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ; 201 582-2998; mhuxd!wolit (Affiliation given for identification purposes only) ------------------------------ End of Arms-Discussion Digest *****************************