0 lb OPINION Thursday, October 1, 1981 Poj~ea Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Canada seeks a : ,, Vol. XCHi, No. 19 420 Moynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board a . , - Pakistan adthe bm HERE WERE more indications reactor-extra fuel that could, in time, this week that Pakistan is using be the ingredients of an atomic bomb. As uclarreactor to develop an Pakistan has not signed the Nuclear stomic bomb. Proliferation Treaty, and although it The developments cast serious doubt has publicly pledged to not develop dn the wisdom of some of the nuclear weapons, it has not ruled out provisions of President Reagan's the development of a "peaceful proposed military aid package to nuclear device" similar to the Pakistan. "peaceful" nuclear bomb India has : Experts have long suspected that exploded. Pakistan wanted to develop a nuclear Part of President Reagan's recent weapon-especially after India ex- aid program for Pakistan was a ploded an atomic bomb several years request to exclude Pakistan from a law ego. But there has remained some that forbids giving military aid to doubt in the past about whether countries that have a nuclear weapons Pakistan would be able to acquire the program. The President argued that vital components to build a bomb. In the exemption was necessary to main- addition, at least under the Carter ad- tain Pakistan's strength in the wake of ministration, there was some question the Soviet takeover of Afghanistan. whether Pakistani strongman But United States concerns in the Mohammad Zia ul-Haq might be per- area should go far beyond trying to suaded through threatened cutbacks in keep General Zia in power in Pakistan. U.S. military aid to scrap his plans for Nuclear weapons in atomic weaponry. Pakistan-especially nuclear weapons Reports this week, however, seem to in the hands of the Zia regime-can suggest that Pakistan is going full only serve to further destabilize an steam ahead with the project. already unstable area. -If the ad- Some officials in Congress and the ministration is seeking to create administration said on Tuesday that stability in the region,. removing the the International Atomic Energy incentive for Pakistan to junk its Agency, which 'is charged with nuclear program is not the way to do it. monitorying Pakistan's reactor near The "irregularities" that have oc- Karachi, has detected several curred at the Pakistani reactor are "anamolies" in the operation of the just further indications of Pakistan's plant. intent to acquire nuclear weaponry. Among the "irregularities'' at the The administration should realize that plant have been an exceptionally large America's interest goes beyond: number of failures in the surveillance bolstering the friendly regimes in the equipment installed by the IAEA. area; one of our highest priorities What is feared is that Pakistan is should be to do all we can to halt the sneeking extra nuclear fuel into the spread of nuclear bombs. Letters and columns represent the opinions of the individual author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the attitudes or beliefs of the Daily. Ask any American who has recently arrived back from a vacation in Canada about what differences they found there, and you'll hear replies such as: "They like vinegar on their fren- ch fries." "Toronto is so safe and clean." "Even the cereal box is in French and English." Hardly ever will someone note, "Canada doesn't have a constitution." IN FACT, Canada is the only independent country in the world that doesn't have a constitution. Instead, its foundation rests on the British North American Act of 1867, which can only be amen- ded by act of the British Parliament. So why not bring the BNA Act home to Canada? Obviously, the Queen of England is just a figure- head in the Canadian political structure, so what's the problem? The problem is that there has never been a consensus between the Federal and Provincial governments. And even with the historic Supreme Court ruling this past Monday, it still appears that no consensus is in sight. IN THE CASE it decided this week, the Supreme Court was supposed to determine whether the Federal government needed the consentgof the individual provinces to go ahead with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's plan to bring the constitution to Canada. But instead of giving a precise -ruling in the case, the ruling was ambigious. On the one hand, the court said, tradition dictates that consent be obtained from the provinces, but on the other hand, Trudeau legally can proceed with his plan to London. As a result, both sides are claiming victory. , One can argue for hours legality versus tradition in Canada, but the future of a Canadian constitution, as always, will be laced with politics. A look at three of the groups involved in the dispute explains why this is so. FIRST, THERE are Trudeau's forces. A columnist for the Toron- to Star once noted that Trudeau has never lost a battle in his lifetime, and the closest anyone came in doing so was Maggie, who only succeeded with a draw. The same is true in the con- stitutional ring: Trudeau plans to slug it out until the end. His sights are aimed at the history books (not People magazine), and he isn't going to let any provincial premiers get in his way of being the Canadian prime minister who brought the constitution home. power o Alberta h Saskatch Newfound have man And the li Langua tor. Some French p bilinguist other extr By Georgs Golubo The Michigan Doily constitution resources. vskis Although tension is mountinigt our northern doorstep, the idea'f ver their resources. separation would be foolhardy i!O as a large oil industry. either Quebec or any of the ewan has potash. Western provinces. Concerning land hopes to one day the latter, there has even been6 y off shore drilling rigs. talk by a small few that these st goes on. provinces should join the United ge rights is another fac- States, thinking they would have provinces with small more provincial autonomy. opulations don't want What madness! Even with ic policies. While at the President Reagan's plan to give eme, Quebec's Premier states more power, the level of autonomy wouldn't be anything close to what exists in Canada today. Still, the situation'in Quebec does warrant our atten- tion. ONE OF THE major reasons that the constitution is an issue today is a promise to start its process again by Trudeau during the 1980 Quebec referendum, which asked Quebec voters whether they wanted to negotiate "Sovereignty-association." That is, a sovereign Quebec that is economically associated with Canada. Thanks to Trudeau, the 777 item went down decisively to defeat among both Frenchand English Quebecois. There is underlying support in Quebec for such a program to be resurrected today, but there is also opposition to it. The question ~~'then is' whether this opposition be used to blunt the support. I would speculate that initially it may be difficult, because the op- position is more latent than the support. But in the long run, the sovereignty-association plan would be defeated, not to mention rudeau the separation. As with a long distance sque wants the French marathon, the last stretch of nore widely used in his creating a Canadian constitution .ntly French speaking is the most difficult. As a O Trudeau's middle Canadian, I hope my country will 't acceptable to either become more than, as some have quipped, "a confederation of ST of the three groups shopping centers." Canadian Prime Minister Pierre T Trudeau punctuated this point in Monday's news conference, by reflecting back to his infamous remark in October 1970 as to what he would' do with the radical Quebec separatists: "You just watch," he said. THE SECOND GROUP is com- posed of those provincial premiers who oppose Trudeau. These premiers are of different political parties than Trudeau but this is only a partial ex- planation for their dissent. The real reason is economic. The provinces want to have Rene Leve language r predomina province. ground isn extreme. THE LA are the provincial premiers who support Trudeau. The most im- portant is Ontario's William Davis, because of Ontario's in- dustrial strength. This is also the reason why Davis decided to. forego partisanship to support Trudeau's plan:sOntario's fac- tories need other province's. Golubovskis is a graduate student at the Institute of Public Policy Studies and recently completed a book en- titled Crazy Dreaming-The Ander- son Campaign 1980. 0 4 A crisis in NA TO? b' 4} Weasel By Robert Lence THIS IS IT. u Rrn MY FIRST V1511 ~ TO-IHE i5 SEATLEIMANIACn ' NOME. S E IT 6oE5 Ot ' J ', I CAN I CONE IN ? MY 'NAME 15 ELMO. WH-ATS YOUR NAME? l t+ U I' , j t i riF-7'nV I WEST BERLIN - For the first time in NATO's 32-year history, the overused word "crisis"' is an appropriate epithet. The traditional, tension-ridden "Atlantic gap" in the alliance is looking more and more like an unbridgeable gap. Even Secretary of State Alexander Haig, the former NATO commander, was forced to acknowledge the "disturbing turn" in "both the substance and tone of our debates of late," during his West Berlin visit. He felt com- pelled to remind West Berliners that "it is Soviet tanks, not NATO's defense against those, that threaten the peace of Europe." The mesage was directed not only at the rioting demonstrators in the streets, but at key political policy-makers throughout Western Europe who have recentlyebegun to talk openly of "alternatives" to the present NATO strategies, ranging from new European power blocks within NATO to separate, independent alliances and nuclear- free zones. While support for NATO membership remains strong in public opinion polls throughout Europe, many other surveys reveal equally strong majority opposition to nearly every current NATO policy, especially those emanating from the United States. Political leaders and security experts throughout northern Europe say they no longer perceive a credible defense concept in NATO, short of nuclear war. The reliability of the alliance's conventional military response is nearly nil, they complain, and the past em- phasis on a creative and positive detente policy with the East has been replaced by a loud saber-rattling campaign backed by a massive arms buildup centered around nuclear weapons which has little support here. From the Reagan administration perspec- tive, the Europeans' failure to increase-or even maintain current levels of-defense spending, coupled with their questions over NATO's nuclear strategy, looks like, "pacifism," and "Denmarkization," a term coined to describe the alleged laxity and soft approach to defense issues favored by the weathy, liberal Social Democrats of northern Europe. Denmark's prime minister, Anker Jorgen- son, now has embraced the term to describe By Jon Stewart Such views find little acceptance in the hard-line military approach to security that the Reagan administration has pursued. "I think that if the present American policy continues, it will be extremely difficult for the Western European nations to follow this line," said Gert Peterson, a tough NATO critic and head of Denmark's largest leftist party, the Socialist People's party. "The reason is primarily that if it comes to a cataclysmic situation, we know that Europe will be the victim." This last point tends to overshadow all the older, more traditional tensions within the alliance. Opposition to the growing NATO reliance on nuclear weapons acquires special urgency because it is one issue which massive public opinion already has affected: Key European governments are leaning heavily toward outright refusal to deploy the new U.S. Pershing II and cruise nuclear missiles in 1983-a modernization plan which the United States fought hard for and won in December 1979. The plan required "obligatory unanimity" of all NATO countries in which the new missiles would be deployed. If even one of the five countries selected for the new weapons bows out, the way would be open for others to follow suit. And the pressure to refuse the weapons is growing daily in the Netherlands, Belgium, England, and especially West Germany, which would receive the bulk of the new missiles. Predicts Klaas DeVries, a leading security expert and a NATO supporter in the Dutch parliament: "In December our message will be that we won't deploy yet; we will postpone. Nobody knows how many years, but I guess forever. As DeVries and others see it, Holland's refusal to deploy will influence the Belgians to do likewise. Britain surely would follow suit if the left is returned to power by 1983, since even the moderate David Owen of the Social Democrats favors the nuclear-free-zone con- cept. Italy is unpredictable. But even if only one or two governments refuse to deploy the weapons, the pressure on West Germany's Helmut Schmidt to refuse demnl a mpn wll p ..nmnuag i, o hp Washington, is something very new: A "Europeanized" NATO-an essentially diW ferent alliance in which the long-dominant U.S. influence would be tempered by con- tinental perspectives. Such a realignment is precisely what growing numbers of European politital leaders now are demanding. 'Gert Peterson forsees two possibilities emerging from the' present Reagan policies. One is a "growing isolationism in the United States, even when it acts more inter- ventionist--a mixture of isolationism and ex- treme nationalism. But there is another possibility," he asserted, "and it is that-a stronger, more independent Western European posture inside NATO, in favor of- detente, might persuade the United Startes that this is the only common denominator which could be established for the Western~ world." Both Denmark and Norway are strong ad- vocates, of such a Europeanized NATO, in which the- nuclear option would be pulled far back from the front line of dissent. "For us, the only alternatives in the foreseeable future," said Lasse Budtz, foreign policy spokesman for Denmark's ruling Social Democratic Party, "would be a 0 broad European (defense) system. People are talking about it, and it's understandable when you look at the kind of policy Reagan is following. He is widening the gap between Europe and the United Sates, and that is dangerous." Another more radical but increasingly popular view of alternatives includes the possibility of a Nordic Nuclear-Free Zone leading to a Nordic defense pact. Said a Nor- wegian advocate of the idea: "It is not a question of leading NATO, but a question of putting up some limits inside NATO." As the Dutch observer, DeVries views it: "NATO has to renew itself, and I think you could fine a very strong constituency if NATO would make it clear to the public and to political leaders that it really has a concept, and that the concept is meant to work. "NATO cannot function if it doesn't have enough public support, if people don't believe in the weapons policy: If we can't be credible- to our own people, how can we be credible to j+ IT :JUST UOESN T SE EM FAI R .. JOHN DEAP, ANP ARIY MANILOW LIVES. ~~- Lb N RLR76EFTNG tKINPt Youi .E A Co L, tMM. ".. YvL) MAN OF PEACE . wn4NNA "I ARDA~S ICN3EL You. -j .- I 51 1 I