44 !mac witary2i,719867.7 7..*E' DETROIrJEWIStr NEWS! 111?!.1 eseseuvaxweeeveriaseaseessueseen .1,16601111111111111111 V Q!' nfl 4 COMMENT . •■•••■•■• Transarmament Continued from Page 39 Avoiding Probate You'll find out about: • Joint tenancies • • Insurance • Trusts • Pensions • Deferred compensation plans FISCAL' FITNESS Fridays 5PM on WTVS/Channel 56 Underwritten in part by Sinai Hospital Medical Endowment Fund. SINAI OF DETROtt Medical Endowment Fund Advertising in The Jewish News Gets Results Place Your Ad Today. Call 354-6060 WHEN YOU THINK AUDI, THINK BILL COOK Volume Selling Means... VOLUME SAVINGS! PORSCHE 471 .0044 +AUDI 37911 GRAND RIVER AVE., FARMINGTON HILLS 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