Seventy-Second Year EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN . UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS Where Opinions Are Free STUDENT PUBLICATIONS BLDG. * ANN ARBOR, MICH. * Phone NO 2-3241 Truth Will Prevail" . Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. Clouded Crystal ECONOMIC QUESTION: Can U.S. Afford To Disarm Now?, Y, JANUARY 19, 1962 NIGHT EDITOR: JUDITH BLEIER I 4ieannantt ETWEENTHE FOR1CES of terror and the forces of dialogue a great unequal battle has begun. I have nothing but reasonable illu- sions as to the outcome of that battle, but I believe it must be fought and I know that certain men, at least, have resolved to do so. I merely fear that they will occasionally feel somewhat alone, that they are in fact alone, and that after an interval of 2,000 years we may see the sacrifice of Socrates repeated several Today, the unequal battle described by Albert Camus is evidenced in the international arms race. This time the forces of philosophical rea- son must triumph or Socrates will be sacrificed for the last time. For the past 15 years there has been a fun- damental conflict of interests between the United States and the Soviet Union resulting In an increase of tension. This has engendered an increasingly dangerous spiral of weapons development, threat and counter-threat; bluff and counter bluff. One nation's actions to pre- serve the peace are seen by the other as bellig- erent and threatening. Fear is heightening the pattern of action and response has become self- perpetuating. The West has responded to the challenge of the Soviet Union's dynamic ideology and ex- pansionist foreign policy by fighting a rear- guard action around the world; by merely op- posing Communism and desperately attempt- ing to maintain the status quo to the extent of appeasing governments and. tolerating situa- tions completely repugnant to the principles it is trying to defend. I N DEFENSE of what is construed as their national interests, the two nations have sum- moned the maximum weapons at their disposal. Each is now capable of destroying the other and war has become a matter of mutual sui- cide. Both parties have therefore come to rely on the threat of war, rather than war itself, as a means of defending their national inter- ests This, is the strategy of deterrence. It depends on maintaining a "delicate balance of terror" In which any faltering or any unbalanced ad- vance by either side can topple the whole struc- ture. Deterrence can fail. With the decentraliza- tion of weapons control, it becomes increasing- ly possible for human or mechanical failure to result in disaster. As more and more countries tacqure nuclear arms the probability increases. For as Todd Gitlin of Harvard says, "If the nuclear sword of Damocles is now suspended over our heads by the most tenuous of threads, the presence of more swords, each hanging by its own thread, makes it more and more likely that, sooner or later, one thread will break." Indeed, the United States is not satisfied with deterrence alone. We have decided to incorpor- ate first strike capability into our "defense" .structure under the name of "specialized deter- rene.n" The government plans to build 800-1,200 Minuteman missiles and 40 Polaris submarines with funds to be provided by this year's Con- gress. THE ORCES OF TERROR are therefore in- creasingly evident. No longer do we arm for cause; rather we 'arm because the other is in arms. Our foreign policy has been changed from one of opposition on an ideological basis to one of opposition because we are being op- posed. Just as the Soviet Union refers to the dictatorships of Eastern Europe as "people's democracies," the United States ref'ers to the governments of Spain, Portugal, Taiwan, South Viet Nam and Guatelama as part of the "free world." It is in this respect that we are already bar- baric; mutual destruction by nuclear war would leave us unchanged. It is therefore apparent that even if by some miracle, (and contrary to every lesson history teaches) we continue the arms race and avoid war, the arms race itself will destroy our so- ciety and all that we believe in. For if the only basis of our actions is a de- sire to "prove" our moral and ideological "strength" through the forces of armed per- suasian, we will crumble at the base. If we are to survive as men, we must return to the real strength of our ideological heritage. It is in this respect that we must forego persuasion and invoke reason. It is in this re- spect that we must disarm. For as E. B. White once said, "It might be advisable to compromise with the Russians, Editorial Staff JOHN ROBERTS, Editor PHILIP SHERMAN N FAITH WEINSTEIN City Editor Editorial Director SUSAN FARRELL..... .......Personnel Director PETER STUART... . ......Magazine Editor MICHAEL BURNS'... ..............Sports Editor PAT GOLDEN..... ....Associate City Editor RICHARD OSTLING...Associate Editorial Director DAVID ANDREWS.........Associate Sports Editor CLIFF MARKS ...............Associate Sports Editor but it is not advisable to compromise with the truth." A DECISION to seek disarmament, however, is far removed from a practical plan to im- plement it. Idealistic conceptions, such as im- mediate unilateral disarmament, are clearly ridiculous and are, perhaps, motivated by un- reasoned despair. Also, short-term actions such as attempts to forestall atmospheric testing or to curtail fallout shelter programs (for as the level of Civil Defense preparations goes up, so does the level of offensive preparation by the opponent) are peripheral actions aimed at the symptoms of the trouble, rather than the causes. A possible first step has been suggested by Prof. Leo Szilard of the University of Chicago. He says that "if we intend to drop our bombs on Russia in case of war, and expect Russia to drop her bombs on us, so that both countries would be wholly devastated, then our threat to drop bombs on Russia is tantamount to a threat of murder and suicide. "A threat of murder and suicide is not a be- lievable threat, in the context of the Berlin conflict, and it would not be a believable threat in the context of any similar conflict." It would be a believable threat only of Amer- ica's strategic striking forces were able to crip- ple most, if not all, of Russia's rocket and bomber bases by one sudden single blow, and if it were America's intention to strike first, in case of war. "If America renounces the 'strike first if necessary' policy, she loses the deterrent effect of her strategic striking forces. For, clearly, if the forces are not capable of a first strike against Russian bases, then any threat, in case of war, would be tantamount to a threat of murder and suicide and would therefore be not believable. "If America renounces the first strike policy, then the strategic striking forces of America could thereafter function only as an insurance. If these forcesare arranged in such a manner that a sudden attack on them could not sub- stantially reduce their capability to strike a major counterblow, then they could be looked upon as an insurance against the possibility that Russia might attack America with bombs." A CLEAR POLICY DECISION to the effect that America is going to maintain an in- vulnerable second strike (but would not try to maintain force at a level where they could knock ot in a first strike most of Russia's bases) would open the door to an agreement on arms cotrol.. This is a reasonable approach to the dis- armament problem. Thousands of students and professors will travel to Washington next month in hopes of offering a program of ini- tiative based on Prof. Szilard's suggestion. They will confront senators and congressmen, in small groups, in hopes of bringing about a basic change in our policy, unilaterally, through reason, in a program they title "Turn Towards Peace." Basically, the initiatives are as /ollows: 1) Public announcement of the United States decision not to resume atmospheric testing as a measure designed to limit the arms race; that it will not give nuclear weapons to any nation or alliance which does not possess them; and that it will establish within the United States a United Nations-inspected test monitorig system as a precedent for future inspected dis- armament agreements. 2) Withdrawal of missile bases, such as those in Turkey and Italy, whose vulnerability to attack makes them useless except for the pur- pose of a first strike against the Soviet Union; and an attempt to use this withdrawal as a basis for negotiating agreements with the So- viet Union on comparable steps to be undertak- en in reciprocation. 3) Recognition that a settlement of the Ber- lin crisis can only be obtained within the con- text of the problems of Germany and Central Europe. The United States should seriously discuss and explore proposals toward a solu- tion of these problems on the basis of demili- tarization, troop withdrawal, and neutraliza- tion of East and West Germany within the context of general disengagement in Central Europe. Disagreement in Central Europe should be viewed as the beginning of a serious attempt to negotiate controlled disarmament on an in- ternational scale. 4) The United States must commit itself fully to the struggle against poverty, hunger and disease throughout the world. This massive economic aid should be channeled through the United Nations both in order to take econom- ic aid out of the context of the Cold War and also to strengthen the United Nations. Having taken this initiative the United States should then call upon the Soviet Union to join us in channeling its economic aid through the United Nations. In this way the United States will not only take the initiative in disarmament by abandon- ing first strike capability, it will have taken a reasoned initiative in the positive "fight" for a better world. By JAMES NICHOLS Daily Staff Writer IF ALL the world's philosophers agree on the moral necessity of beating swords into plowshares and ICBMs into mechanical mail- men; if the governments of all the world's countries decide to disband their armies and convert their productive capacity to peace- ful pursuits; if flawless policing systems are devised to detect a lethal weapon from a thousand miles away; man's dreams of dis- armament will remain only empty dreams unless one remaining question can be affirmatively an- swered. The question is this. "Is dis- armament economically feasible?" And the answer, say men who are studying the problem with me- ticulous care, is yes. * * * THIS YEAR the taxpayers of the United States will give the Pentagon about $45 billion. The Soviet Union will devote only a little less to its team in the arms race, and the other nations of the world will contribute about $40 billion, collectively. Sums like these, if spent for mankind's betterment and not for its destruction, would produce fantastic results. Horrible diseases would be cured, literacy and edu- cation would spread from Angola to the Andes, and the fine line be- tween starvation and man would become a broad margin of salva- tion. * * * LEADING economists say it can be done. According to economics Prof. Kenneth E. Boulding, the problem of converting swords into plow- shares - military spending into peaceful spending--is "perfectly solvable." In fact, there are so many ways of doing it that there will be difficulty in choosing one. It is a complete misconception that this country cannot afford to disarm. Each year we spend about 10 per cent of our gross na- tional product (GNP) for defense. Each year our GNP grows about 2.5 per cent. This means that our present GNP, minus defense spending, is roughly equal to the total GNP of four years ago. "In other words," says Boulding, "if we were to stop all military spend- ing today, it would suddenly be 1966." ECONOMICALLY, disarmament is not an enormous problem. The United States underwent a much more drastic conversion from war- to-peacetime footing in the single year 1945-46. Our nation, over the past 200 years, has seen a conver- sion of a huge magnitude, during which the per cent of the labor force engaged in agriculture has shriveled from 90 to 10. Another change on the same' scale occurred when U.S. military thinking changed over to elec- tronic weapons more sophisticated than those used in World War II. The dreaded changeover to non- defense industries has already oc- curred in Detroit, Boulding said. There will be difficulties, of course, and these may be divided Into three major problems. , * * THE FIRST of these is Con- version, according to Dr. Boul- ding. It involves the actual change- over of production facilities from sword factories to plowshare plants. From this point of view, the U.S. economy is highly flex- ible, he asserts. Some areas, such as Seattle, Wichita, and especially Los Angeles, would suffer more than others. Boulding says "there is a strong case for more positive social organization" to deal with areas that would be temporarily depressed. The second problem, actually an integral part of the first, is stabilization. Popular fears of a serious depression resulting from the termination of present defense contracts are unfounded. "If we take 40 billion dollars of defense production out of the gross national product," said Boulding, "where can we find an- other 40 billion dollars' worth of goods and services which can be absorbed without causing defla- tion?" This new spending can be done in four areas, he said. Household spending, which can be encour- aged by tax decreases; business in- vestments; expenditures by local governments, on schools, for ex- ample, and mental hospitals; and foreign investment and aid. THIRD among the problems to be faced if the arms raceends and disarmament begins is maintain- ing economic growth. This should not be at all difficult. Some-although very little-of the research and development now being done under the American defense program leads to non- military growth. The development of the jet plane, for instance, was advanced years by work inspired by World War II, and the nation's space program is probably much farther along than it would be if Russia were a fifth-rate power. If the United States were to abandon its various "crash" pro- grams aimed at speeding up man- kind in its race toward destruc- tion, other-more beneficial-pro- grams for research and develop- ment would have to be arranged. This could be done by enlarging existing government agencies or by creating new ones. Although problems do exist, and although more study is needed on some of the details of their solu- tion, there is no doubt that the United States would be perfectly able to make the adjustment from a nation virtually at war to a na- tion economically geared for peace, Lo~ -~ -. 6TDIJ pti'*r'~. CIVIL DEFENSE: No Deterrent, No Defense By JEAN TENANDER Daily Staff Writer WHEN THE WAR is over, the remnants of civilization hud- dling in fallout shelters will dig their way through the ashes into an uncertain radioactive world, full of disease and genetic dis- turbances. They will face prob- lems of not knowing what food and water is safe to be con- sumed or how to go about pre- venting uncontaminated seeds from contamination. The gov- ernment will have been destroyed and there will be no law. There will be few if any doctors. The present program of civil defense in the United States is based upon two premises: it will save the lives of American citi- zens, and it will act as a deter- rent to a nuclear attack by an enemy nation. Both of these func- tions are not and cannot be ful- filled by the program as it now exists. Nor can they be fulfilled by any future program, however competent. The goals of civil de- fense are inconsistent with its philosophy. THE INHERENT difficulty pro- ponents of civil defense face in defending their position is that of persuading people that redu- cing casualties in a nuclear war to only 20 million is something good. In the words of Herman Kahn: "Unless we recognize that it is a success, we cannot expect people to build such a system. Few if any people will work hard for goals which are defined as being fail- ures right from the beginning." Few people will agree with Kahn that it is a good or moral thing to work for the survival of Just a fraction of the human race either. Those who feel civil defense is beneficial to the country are forc- ed to make statements about fall- out shelters which offer "almost absolute protection," shelters which will save 90 per cent of the population, and fallout that will not harm food or people-very much. In reality these are blatant falsehoods and obscure the real issues from public view. ** * THE MOST GLARING defi- ciency in our civil defense pro- gram is that we have practically no warning system. Our only adequate warning de- vice is the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line. It will give reliable warnings of aproaching Russian bombers, but missiles are very rapidly superceding bombers, and the DEW line is unable to detect ICBM's. The United States does hope to complete a three-base Ballistic Missile Early Warning System by 1963. Even with the BMEWS, the maximum warning of 15 minutes would only allow SAC to get one third of its planes off the ground. * * * WARNING TIME is measured from the moment of detection of possible attack to the explosion of the first warhead. Before the I nfnr -1,4+ me h earpnder warning signal and their range is obviously limited. * * * REGARDING the prospects of America's shelter program, Ad- miral Burke said, ". . , the im- mediate effectiveness of any shelter system is basically de- pendent on warning time Because of the improbability of having enough warning time for the major proportion of our popu- lation t attain shelter, I am not in favor of the Federal Govern- ment spending large sums of money on a full-blown shelter program." Assuming some adequate warn- ing system is installed, the devas- tating results of a nuclear war could still not be overcome by any known measures. * * * DR. LINUS PAULING, Nobel prize winner, estimated the bio- logical and gentic consequences of the new Soviet shots totaling 200 megatons: "The damage to human germ plasm would be such that in the next few generations 160,- 000 children around the world would be born with gross physical or mental defects. Long-lived carbon 14 from the fusion process would cause four million embryonic, neonatal or childhood deaths and stillbirths over the next twenty generations, and between 200,000 and one mil- lion human beings now living would have their lives cut short by radiation-produced diseases such as leukemia." Although all scientists do not agree in their estimates, none of them are op- timistic. * * * ONCE THE BOMB has been dropped and the family is cower- ing some three or four feet below the ground, they will be unaware of what is going on above them. They should not be. If a bomb is exploded from a high altitude, there will be little fallout. Instead, there would be fire storms which will generate so much heat that the flames will suck in oxygen from far into space as well'as from the fallout shelters. Those inside may have their lungs collapse from the pres- sure and die of suffocation. There are other horrors - too--- radial burns, instant blindness from the brightness of the fire- ball, and the powerful pressure generated from shock waves. All this evidence indicates that civil defense is not a solution to the problem of nuclear war. OUR CLAIM that establishing a strong civil -defense system will deter the Soviet Union in any way from an attack, should she decide to attack, is also invalid. The enemy's aim in the Cold War is not to kill but to use the threat of killing as a means of achieving compliance. Shelters, saving lives, would not mean the enemy would alter its desire for compliance but merely her means of achieving it. To offset the lives that might be preserved in shelters, the So- viet Union would be forced to in- crease the size and destructive the United States except Ameri- cans. Civil defense does not protect the country nor act as a deterent against aggression. It increases the furor of the munitions race and deludes the populace into a false sense of security. It is very sig- nificant that neither Japan, still remembering Hiroshima, nor the Soviet Union, nor Great Britain, nor France, have any civil de- fense program. These nations do not believe that nuclear war has any preventive measures. Each individual has the right to know how to act to protect his children, himself, and his coun- try in the most effective way pos- sible. If he is given false informa- tion, he can only act accordingly. No one would deny that it is each father's right to know whether he is saving or burying his son. WHITE'S THEORY: Is Nuclear War Inevitable? By MARTHA MacNEAL Daily Staff Writer THE DIFFERENCES that distin- guish man from the animals have been discussed many times. One of'the most striking cf these differences is the fact that man is the only of earth's creatures which has organized its highest capabili- ties towards self-destruction, with the possible exception of the Nor- thern lemming, a rodent which plunges in great hordes into the sea, offsetting its population ex- plosion. Alarmed by the suicidal tenden- cies of the human race, now cul- minating in The Bomb and a socio-economic system largely geared to war, many individuals and groups are pressing for a redirection towards disarmament and peace. The possibility of suc- cess in this effort is open to ser- ious question. An article by Prof. Leslie White of the anthropology department entitled "Man's control Over Civ- ilization: An Anthropocentric Il- lusion" demonstrates that man "exerts no control over his cul- ture, and theoretically there is no possibility of his ever doing so." * * * CITING fruitless human efforts to change language, standards of weights and measures, fashions, and other non-vital matters, White questions man's ability to control larger issues. "When a baby is born into a cultural mil- ieu . . . his culture will determine how he will think, feel, and act. ... We are beginning to suspect it is not man who controls cul- ture, but the other way around. ... Culture makes man what he is and at the same time makes itself." Nor will education help man to control his culture. "Wars are struggles between social organ- as acting upon culture from the outside.'' However, Prof. White recognizes the fact that human effort is very much an internal part of the cultural process. "Living human beings cannot help but exert themselves, and everything they do counts 'for something in one way or another." But "what one does, how he does it, and the end and purpose for which it is done is culturally determined." AT THIS particular time in the history of the world, when the hugeness of war-oriented society seems its most striking character- istic, the article implies that the war is coming, the war, the bomb, and the utter destruction of ev- ery civilized value. But there may be a few factors that are applic- able within the context of cultur- al determinism that offers a more hopeful view. First of all, the analogy between fashion control and disarmament control may b7 faulty simply be- cause issues of the former class are non-vital. Perhaps people allow themselves to be inexorably led in these areas because it is not worth the strug- gle; fashion, language, and other such trends are easy to go along with, and offer no real threat to anyone. Nuclear war threatens us all, our own lives, the lives of fu- ture generations, our property, our social system ,and every idea ev- er conceived by man. It is possible that this would make a difference. WHITE SAYS that culture 'de- termines the way in which indi- viduals think and act. If this is true, then the individuals and groups working for disarmament and peace are products of real and vital force in culture, and there- fore in cultural determination. In a democratic country, the forces of culture working at the grass--' THE CULTURE of the United States is supposedly based on the right of every individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- ness. All of these rights will be destroyed if war comes. From the culture-determinist viewpoint, the question is whether those rights do actually represent the major force in our society. If they do, and if we understand them correctly, then we will not permit war to de- stroy us. That nuclear war would destroy life is obvious as a fact, but is certainly not fully comprehended. Nuclear war means destruction of life not only in merciful imme- diacy of blast, but in fire, in suf- focation, in the slow wretchedness of radiation sickness, and after- wards, in starvation, and the inevitable murders of kill-or-be killed chaos. Three days without water, ten without food, and man loses the last trappings of his thousands of years of civilization. * * * THE DESTRUCTION of liberty is contained in the destruction of civilization. Man's mind is not "free" when it can see no farther than the next bit of food, the next defense of whatever he may have claimed as his own against an in- terloper, or the next confrontation with a reality so foreign to any- thing he had ever conceived that all rationality is impossible. There will be no pursuit of hap- piness-and no happiness to pur- sue. After the shock there will be either insanity or numbness. There will be no way for a mind accust- omed to a rich and progressive culture to react positively to the antithesis of culture. We have no premises for dealing with universal holocaust-we have no way for finding any sense of happiness in being alive when n. .,lf . A. rivrAQA WPciifp