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COMMENT .
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Transarmament
Continued from Page 39
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Second issue: does counter-
force strategy make us safer?
Counterforce strategy forces
both sides toward a first
strike, even if each side
knows that a first strike will
leave retaliatory forces un-
touched on the other side. For
the whole point of a counter-
force attack is to weaken the
other side's forces. Waiting
to be struck makes no sense,
especially now that missiles
have MIRVs (multiple war-
heads).
And suppose that one side
(or both) does not initiate a
counterforce nuclear war? We
have never had such a war.
No one knows how to deal
, with the electromagnetic
pulse that knocks out all elec-
tronic communication for
3,000 miles — or whether the
earth's magnetic field over
the North Pole (where no
missiles have been tested) is
enough to deflect a "counter-
force" missile into annihilat-
ing New York — or for that
matter whether New York ,
Harbor would seem to the
Soviets like a "force" target,
once a nuclear-armed fleet is
based there.
No matter how strongly
both sides in advance say
that they are aiming only at
forces, the chances are high
that in fact they will lose con-
trol, will destroy many cities,
and possibly bring on nuclear
winter — the death of all life.
Is there any good equip-
ment for counterforce? Some
argue that the threat of using
it would make the Soviet
Union back down in a crisis.
But look at history:
Did the Cuban missile
crisis show that weapon
superiority can make the
Soviets back down? What the
Soviets did then was a mini-
mal back-down. They agreed
not to put missiles in Cuba,
for which they were assured
U.S. missiles would be re-
moved from Turkey. They ac-
cepted no change in Cuba's
social system or international
posture; indeed, the U.S.
reduced its efforts to topple
Castro: And all this when the
U.S. had an enormous nu-
clear superiority — so big
that some strategists told
President Kennedy that a
U.S. first strike might wipe
out all Soviet nuclear forces
and at worst would result
only in ten million (oh, only
•ten million) or so dead Amer-
icans, with Soviet. power
totally and permanently
shattered.
Or take the 1973 Sinai
nuclear alert. Some strat-
egists cite this as evidence
that the Soviets backed off
their threat to land troops to
protect the Egyptian Third
• Army in the Sinai, because
the U.S. by calling a nuclear
alert threatened to use its
superiority. But the Soviets
had demanded that the U.S.
restrain Israel from destroy-
ing that Egyptian Army —
and Israel did refrain. Who
"backed down"? Anyone? —
or did all concerned strike a
bargain? Moreover, this too
was still in a period of enor-
mous U.S. nuclear superiority.
Today the U.S. is still
"superior," if one counts ac-
curacy, numbers, and invul-
nerability of its warheads and
if one treats all three ele-
ments of the "Triad"-bomb-
ers, land-based missiles, and
submarine-based missiles —
as belonging to one country
rather than three different
So the counterforce
threat — which was
not very credible in
1962 — will never be
credible again.
super-powers. But the U.S.
does not, and never again will
have, the degree of superior-
ity that it had in 1962 and
1973. So the counterforce
threat — which was not very
credible in 1962 — will never
be credible again.
Where does this leave us?
With the responsibility to
say, like grown-ups, that as
much • as we wish it were
otherwise, • as long as there
are nuclear weapons in the
hands of two super-powers,
there is a high-lprobability
that if they are used at all the
result will be a world-wide
holocaust --and quite pos-
sibly nuclear winter.
Suppose either one of the
super-powers accepted that
truth and limited its own
stock of "portable Ausch-
witzes" to what would inex-
orably bring that about? Sup-
pose at the same time it put
all the money, brains, and
emotion now invested in the
nuclear arms race into pro-
ducing for export as sales,
loans, gifts, and bribes the
food, the enersor, the housing,
the propaganda, the access to
fame and power, the: guer-
rillas, the "peace" corps, that
could really change the world
in accordance with its own
world-vision?
Suppose either one of the
super-powers did this not all
at once, but one step at a time
—running the arms race in
reverse by not building the
next system — and chal-
lenged the other side to
follow suit? Would it become
subject to nuclear blackmail
—or if blackmain were tried,
would it just shrug, knowing
its deterrent was invulner-
able, and keep on changing
the world under its oppo-
nent's very feet?. Until the
opponent also changed?
This is not unilateral disar-
mament. No nation that has
enough weapons to blow up
the world has been disarmed.
It is aggressive "transarma-
inent" — choosing weapons