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Nuclear Insanity

By VVAW

How is it that the leaders of the worlds two great super-powers can consistently declare themselves dedicated to peace and, at the same time, threaten to unleash a nuclear war and spend incredible amounts of money to create and build newer and more deadly nuclear weapons. No one would object should St Ronnie and St Leonid get together in a ring somewhere and duke it out; they could even use conventional weapons. And nuclear hand grenades—some suitable location could be found. And they could take along their respective Congresses if they wished. Unfortunately, that is not what these men with their fingers on the nuclear triggers have in mind. Instead, they will kill off all of us and probably the planet as well.

The following article, written by a member of Chicago VVAW, discusses the reasons behind some of the nuclear insanity and proposes some steps that the U.S. could take to start to slow down this madness which could kill us all.

It is no accident that a million people rallied in New York on June 14th for nuclear disarmament, or that 3 million hit the streets in the same cause in Europe last fall. These demonstrations reflect public concern over the increasingly tense international situation and especially with irresponsible, in fact insane talk by high government officials (Reagan and Bush included) about a "winnable" nuclear war. The talk is accompanied by their wish for new nuclear weapons systems, many with a "first-strike" capability. What's going on here?

The U.S. was the first country to develop and the only country to use nuclear weapons. In the waning days of World War II with the Japanese fleet destroyed, American bombers hitting Japanese cities at will, and the Japanese trying to open surrender negotiations, the U.S. destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki with 800,00 civilians killed. But the U.S. enjoyed its nuclear exclusivity only briefly. Against the advice of J. Robert Oppenheimer (creator of the A-Bomb) the U.S. developed the H-bomb—and the USSR exploded one later in the same year. Each country now had a justification for increasingly huge expenditures to develop new weapons: each had to catch up or stay ahead in the nuclear race. The U.S. developed intercontinental strategic bombers in the mid-'50's; the USSR in the late '50's. the U.S. developed nuclear subs in the mid '50's. The U.S. developed nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in the early '60's; the USSR still has none. The U.S. developed MIRV in the late '60's, the USSR in the mid '70's. And on and on.

In the U.S. the nuclear race has been a popular political scare tactic: out-of-office politicians always seem to manage to find a U.S. weakness. In the fifties there was a "bomber gap" which was discovered to be a hoax after more bombers had been built. John Kennedy used a "missile gap" to help get elected in 1960, but this too was found to be a fraud after more missiles were built. And Reagan used the same tactic to help defeat Carter in the most recent presidential election—it seems to be good politics as well as good business for the defense plants.

In many ways the USSR is a relatively backward country which has been playing nuclear catch-up throughout the nuclear age. The present situation is, according to departing Secretary of State Haig, one of "rough parity" in strategic nuclear weapons. So why the demand for more and more nukes?

There are several forces at work. The nuclear weapons industry wants orders, of course. The Pentagon wants a huge budget, and the administration wants to hold on to the U.S. crumbling authority around the world. What the Administration seems to be doing is using a kind of nuclear blackmail on the American people: unless you finance an enormous increase in conventional forces, we may be forced to use nuclear weapons. And the nuclear threat can be used to terrify the Europeans, the Japanese and the Russians into "behaving." If these countries are convinced that the U.S. is sufficiently insane to use nuclear weapons if provoked, then they won't provoke us. And then there seem to be elements of the Administration who believe that the Book of the Apocalypse is the revealed word of God and that the end is near which makes it a duty to take the godless communists along with all the rest of us into nuclear hell.

The consequences of nuclear war can't be fully evaluated. The destruction of the earth's ozone layer, the presence of enormous levels of radioactive contamination, atmospheric dust interfering with sunlight, massive numbers of deaths and physical destruction—and these are only a few of the possibilities.

And then the nuke warriors of the Reagan Administration seem never to understand the political questions. If merely the threat of nuclear war brings out millions into the streets, what would the first use of a tactical nuclear weapon do? Reagan's nuclear saber-rattling has already accomplished the remarkable task of making the not-too-pacifist Brezhnev look relatively "good" in the eyes of the worlds' people by saying that destruction of the earth would be "irresponsible." The U.S. would not even echo the Soviet pledge (for whatever that's worth) not to be the first to use nuclear weapons! In contrast, the Chinese government has offered to dismantle all of its nuclear weapons if the U.S. and the USSR will dismantle half of theirs.

And there is one more kicker in the whole mess. During the next decade many more countries will join the nuclear "club." And there is no particular need for fancy and expensive delivery systems, either; it would hardly be difficult to disassemble a weapon, smuggle it into another country, put it back together and blow it off. For extra thrills, a terrorist could re-build his bomb and stick it in one of the U.S.'s poorly guarded nuclear power plants and then threaten to set it off. The prospect of this sort of thing, and of nuclear weapons in the hands of the Argentines, the Pakistanis, or the Iranians or Libyans is such that even the likes of ex-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara is freaked out and calling for a nuclear freeze.

What's to be done? Clearly neither the U.S. nor the USSR is about to give up its political aims: the U.S. will continue to meddle in Central America and there's no word about Soviet troops leaving Afghanistan. But there are immediate steps which can be taken: first, and immediate freeze of all nuclear weapons testing, production and emplacement.