Peace is the only

(Last in a Series)

“Don’t forget, there are two hundred million of us in a
world of three billion. They want what we’ ve got — and we’re
not going to give it to them!”’

— President L.B. Johnson, to Gls in Korea, 1966

By FRED WEIR

Many people, viewing our global confrontation with
all of the natural horror of sane human beings, believe
that they see no rational dynamic whatsoever behind it.
Ata loss for a deeper explanation, they ascribe the arms
race to a kind of ‘‘arms race mentality”’ in which the
actions of each side reinforce the neurosis of the other.
As Carl Sagan puts it, ** ... with the hostile military
establishments beholden to each other in some ghastly
mutual embrace, the world discovers itself drifting to-
ward the ultimate undoing of the human enterprise.”’

While there is poignance in these observations, there
is little fundamental truth. The arms race is rooted
deeply in economic and political realities. It lives in our
daily lives and steals the bread from our tables. Although
it certainly takes two to tango, the cold war is not a dance
but a deadly confrontation. It is possible to discern the
aggressor, and the one who responds defensively. A
hard look at the facts, as we have seen, reveals that it was
one contender that initiated the process, leads it still, and
continues to reject alternative forms of competition.
Only one side needs the arms race.

Since the end of World War Two, the United States
has resisted every effort toward controlled disarma-
ment, refused to accept military parity with the USSR,
and has contributed the technology and resources be-
hind every major upsurge in the arms race spiral. In fact,
the United States has chosen the arms race as the most
effective way of dealing with, not a military challenge,
but an ideological one, posed by socialism.

“‘Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear
— kept us in a continual stampede of patriotic fervor — with
the cry of a grave national emergency. Always there has been
some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power
that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally
behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. ¥ et,
in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened,
seem never to have been quite real.”’

— General Douglas MacArthur, 1957

The U.S. presides over the largest and richest empire
in human history. Its economic tentacles are every-
where; some 60 nations are bound to it through military
alliances and bilateral treaties. The pax americana is
maintained by a huge network of 2,500 military bases,
stations and installations in 114 countries; more than half
a million U.S. servicemen are permanently stationed
overseas.

Ultimately, the security of the empire rests upon raw
military might. A recent study by the Brookings Institute
shows that under the umbrella of American strategic
superiority, U.S. forces have undertaken 215 incursions,
interventions, and destabilizations since 1945, in order to
maintain the status quo. And it has been very much an
American status quo.

The socialist alternative has been combatted with
directly-applied military force throughout the Third
_ World. A very different approach has been required to
_ deal with existing socialism, however, particularly since
the acquisition ot nuclear weapons by the USSR.

National Security Council Paper #68, adopted as pol-
icy by President Truman in April 1950 first articulated
this new strategy:

‘(We advocate) an immediate and large-scale build- -up
in our military and general strength and that of our allies
with the intention of righting the power balance and in
the hope that through means other than all-out war we
could induce a change in the nature of the Soviet sys-
tem.”"*

“The U.S. Defence Department is the world’s largest
organization .. . Military assets in the U.S. are three times
as great as the combined assets of the great monopolies,
greater than the assets of U.S. Steel, Metropolitan Life
Insurance, American Telephone and Telegraph, General
Motors and Standard Oil. The Defence Department employs
three times the number of all these great world corporations.
This immense world concentration of power and wealth is
_ directly linked to large scale capitalism in America.’’

— Bertrand Russell, Peace Through Resistance to U.S.
Imperialism, 1965

Forced to match a superior effort, the USSR has had
to allocate a greater portion of its GNP, and a critical
PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 9, 1982— Page 8

FEATURE

margin of its human and physical resources to defence.
Soviet spokesmen frequently complain that recovery
after WW II was severely hampered by military exigen-
cies, and that they must still divert wealth and resources
important to their national growth and economic
development.

“The assumption that an arms race is necessary to get the
Soviets to be serious about arms control is unsupported by
the history of the SALT negotiations. Those familiar with the
facts recognize that the Soviet Government has always
treated these negotiations seriously and has made important
accommodations to meet U.S. positions and requirements. It
is the inability of the U.S. government to get the SALT II
treaty ratified and get on with the process that has stalled
arms-control efforts.’’

— Paul C. Warnke, chief U.S. negotiator at SALT II, 1980

Some American presidents have seen the folly, not to
mention the ultimate danger of trying to defeat the Soviet
Union in this way. The current Reagan administration,
however, represents an enthusiastic reversion of U.S.
policy to cold war form. Ronald Reagan has launched a
quantitative and qualitative military escalation of stag-
gering proportions: he has reaffirmed the ‘‘big stick’’
approach toward recalcitrant Third World nations, and
he has embraced all-out economic warfare against the
socialist bloc. Aid to Afghan rebels, planned blockades
of Cuba and Nicaragua, sanctions against Poland and
newly-devised missile systems have this element in
common: to increase pressure upon the Soviet Union
and its allies, to create or exploit strains in the hope that
something will break.

Not only is this an unlikely fantasy, the effort has
increasingly drained and corrupted American society
itself. George McGovern, 1972 Democratic presidential
nominee writes: ‘‘With our great comparative wealth
and scientific talent, the United States can certainly re-
tain a strategic advantage, no matter how hard the Soviet
Union might try to catch up. But that is an acceptable
course only if one loves these weapons for themselves —
if one actually prefers them over the homes and schools
and transportation systems and medical attention and
energy research and pollution control and other human
programs the same money might otherwise buy.”’

It is the rationale of empire that sustains the arms race .

on the global level, but it is the dynamics of capitalism
that feed it at home. Purely and simply, the arms race is

’ profitable.

answer

When a socialist nation must divert resources to milit-
ary purposes, the cost is borne by the entire people. The
effects can be seen in cancelled programs and fewer
consumer goods. In a capitalist economy, however, a
more complicated transaction takes place. As a whole,
arms build-up.:costs the nation, and the economic ill

effects of the current drive are certainly visible in the —

United States — and Canada — today. Nevertheless, a

certain sector, comprising the military establishment and -
many of the largest corporate interests are positively

enriched by the arms race enterprise. What Dwight
Eisenhower termed “‘the military-industrial complex’’ is
very much alive in the U.S. today. It carries an awesome
political clout, and is certainly the largest single interest
group in the United States.

“What terrifies the arms builders and unreconstructed

Cold Warriors is that there is at least some prospect for
success in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, for the firsi:

time since SALT began in 1969. The arms builders fear they’

will lose business and profits. The Cold Warrios fear the
decline of what they see as the essential American strategy
for dealing with the Soviet Union — the use of our greater’

financial and technical resources to pursue an arms race,
thereby forcing the Soviet Union to divert funds from other’ |

needs of their society.’”

— George McGovern, in.the Progressive, May 1977 7

Finally, the glebal confrontation with socialism main- :

tains a tightly-drawn set of political lines which serve the
preservation of power at home as well as abroad.

Whenever necessary, identification of political dis- 7
sidents with the external ‘‘threat’’ can serve as a pretext —
for repression. ‘*National security’ is the home front of —

the cold’ war.

A growing number of North American intellectuals,
and some political leaders, are becoming increasingly

disenchanted with the policies of cold war and arms race.
In Washington, they are labelled the ‘‘detentist faction’’.
Among their number are many familiar names: George

F. Kennan, John Kenneth Galbraith, Cyrus Vance, —

George McGovern, Carl Sagan, SALT negotiator Paul
Warnke, Senator William Fulbright. We might possibly
include our own prime ee in this diverse group.
These people are not ‘‘reds’’ or ‘‘pinkos”’ as the sinister
rhetoric of the right implies; = fact, they are true be-
lievers in capitalism, who have the faith to suppose that
their system can survive and prosper — even win out —
in peaceful competition with socialism.

Their voices, however, are a distinct minority in
Washington today, where a great nation’s vision of the
future has narrowed into a fleeting image of military
supremacy.

Several years ago, America’s most venerable
sociologist, C. Wright Mills, arrived in his own way at
the heart of the matter:

*‘Many U.S. decision-makers and spokesmen are
‘coming to believe that time is on the side of the Soviet
system; indeed, that ‘history’ itself is going against their
own system. The truth, I believe, is that among some
sections of the U.S. power elite and:some circles of
NATO intellectuals, there is a growing sense that the
Soviet Union has a momentum and a sense of direction
far greater, and more vital than do the United States and
other Western capitalist powers. They are very much
afraid of the outcome of a peaceful competition between
the two systems. Only by an act of military will, some of
them believe, can the U.S. win out in this competition of
the two systems — although what such a ‘victory’ might
mean they do not really know, or at least never say. The
Soviets (on the other hand), believe they can win without

”

war.

MAIN REFERENCES:

Barnet, Richard: The Roots of War
Atheneum Publishers, New York, 1972

Bottome, Edgar: The Balance of Terror
Beacon Press, Boston, 1971

Cox, Arthur Macy: The Dynamics of Detente
W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1976

Fulbright, Senator J.W.: The Pentagon Propaganda Machine
Liveright Publishing Corp., New York, 1970

McGovern, George: ‘The Russians are Coming — Again”
The Progressive Magazine, May 1977 |

Mills, C. Wright: The Causes of World War Three

Dell Publishing Co., New York, 1958

Myerson, Michael et al: Stopping World War Il!

World Peace Council, New Yor, 1981

Sagan, Carl: Cosmos
Random House, New York, 1980

“It is worth mentioning that one of the authors of NSC #68 was the
unremitting Paul Nitze, today a top Reagan adviser and head of the

“U.S. negotiating team at the Geneva Talks.

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