OPINION
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Thursday, October 2, 1980
i he Michigan ucalty
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Bobtheengineer
by David Kirby
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Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
Vol. XCI, No. 25
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Editorials represent a majority opinion of The Daily's Editorial Board
Fun in the armed forces
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0 H, THOSE WILD, wacky U.S.
armed forces.
First it was that silly socket wrench
dropped down a missile shaft that
could have blown Arkansas clear over
to California.
Then a six-man army team on a
secret training exercise in Texas got
lost and wound up at a rural far-
mhouse.
And yesterday, an Army ROTC
commander (also in Texas) was
arrested for allegedly operating a sex
service in his spare time.
Just picture those six Army joes,
"armed to the teeth with machine guns
and other military weapons, landing in
a farmyard somewhere near Brown-
field, Texas. They were supposed to
get to an Air Force base nine miles
north of the town without being
U.S. interv
THEBRZEZINSKIS and Buckleys
among us must be rubbing their
hands in glee. The lessons of the Viet-
nam war seem to recede farther and
farther into the past as America's
military once again gears up to play
the hero in the eyes of misguided
Americans-arid the villain in the eyes
of the rest of the world.
The military establishment, the
State Department, and the White
House all mistakenly believe they have
found a way to protect American in-
terests in the Mideast without taking
either Iran's or Iraq's side in the
current conflict. They have decided to
send four radar-equipped planes to
Saudi Arabia along with 300 military
personnel.
In this way, Washington hopes to
help keep oil supplies flowing to the
West without risking the wrath of
either the Iraquis, their Soviet suppor-
ters, or the men in Tehran who control
the fate of the American hostages.
But in its haste to brandish its
military might, the administration has
failed to consider the possible im-
plications of its actions. Whatever the
American intent, the troops and planes
that are on the way to Saudi Arabia
could and probably will be taken by at
least one of the warring nations as a
move of hostility.
The vicious fighting between the two
nations is not an isolated occurrence. It
is only the latest outburst in a long
series of skirmishes both on the bat-
tlefield and in the diplomatic arena.
The sources of the two nation's enmity
lie in various economic, political,
noticed, according to a Pentagon
spokesman.
The owner of the farm, in the best
American "no trespassing" tradition,
refused to let the soldiers use his
telephone, but did offer to let them stay
in his barn.
And just imagine that ROTC com-
mander, finishing a hard day teaching
students how to penetrate the enemy's
defenses, running home to fix up some
businessman with a $400 (yes, that's
what he sometimes charged)
prostitute.
Kind of all makes you wonder
whether the military will be able to
keep track of those little MX warheads
scurring beneath the earth's crust. We
can hear it now. "Sorry to report, Mr.
President, but we seem to have
misplaced one.''
,ening again
religious, and ethnic disputes, some of
which the president has clearly not
adequately considered before making
the commitment to Saudi Arabia.
Contrary to an unfortunate miscon-
ception on the part of many
Americans, the Muslim nations of the
Mideast do not see themselves as being
composed of one unified people. They
are divided along lines of custom,
language, and the particular sect
within Islam to which the majority of
each nation belongs.
Though the countries are neighbors,
the rift between Iran and Iraq is
deeper than most. Iraqis are Arabs;
Iranians are not. Iraqis speak Arabic;
many Iranians do not. The importance
of these differences is lost on many
Americans (and evidently, on
President Carter), but to the countries
concerned it is quite important.
President Saddam Hussein of Iraq
puts it this way: "The Koran was writ-
ten in Arabic and God destined the
Arabs to play a vanguard role in
Islam."
With such feelings of nationalism
and ethnic superiority at work in the
current situation, the reaction Iran will
have to the Saudi deal ought to have
been obvious. Saudi Arabia is an Arab,
Arabic-speaking country. It is possible
that the Iranian people and leaders
already view the oil-rich kingdom as
an established Iraqi ally.
In effect, the U.S. is not living up to
its promise of neutrality in the Mideast
conflict. The president's brand of non-
interference will make the U.S. look
like a villain once again.
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Nuclear war
One issue we must debate
The Iraqi-Iranian war, and its potential for
sparking a super power conflict, comes as a
timely reminder that on the political issue
that overshadows all the others, there is no
debate in the 1980 presidential campaign.
That issue, quite simply, is how do we avoid
nuclear war?
The two major candidates are sparring
with each other on a host of rhetorical or
speculative issues related to national
security:
DID PRESIDENT Carter, who came into
office promising a $5-$7 billion cut in the Pen-
tagon budget, and who is running for re-
election on a five percent increase in military
spending, make a shambles of the nation's
defense?
Will Reagan, who has'mentioned at least
ten countries as candidates for possible U.S.
invasion, prove to be as trigger-happy in deed
as in his words?
Is Jimmy Carter playing politics by adver-
tising supersecret "stealth aircraft?"
Is Carter as likely to stumble into a war as
Reagan is to court war?
Both candidates agree that the military
budget must go up. The differences with
respect to the crisis in U.S.-Soviet relations
are at most a matter of nuances. The Reagan
charge that Carter should have raised the
military budget faster is answered with a
counter-charge that President Ford was the
one who neglected the nation's defense.
MEANWHILE, RELATIONS with
America's most critical allies continue to
deteriorate. The nation's dependence on im-
ported oil, while it has dipped somewhat, con-
tinues at a dangerously high level. And the
response to the serious vulnerability in the
Persian Gulf is the Carter Doctrine, a threat
to use nuclear weapons in the event the
Soviets interfere with the flow of oil.
Presidential Directive 59, which announces
ar new targeting doctrine that has been
evolving over many years, lends credence to
the idea that the United States expects to fight
a nuclear war. The timing of the announ-
cement a few days before the opening of the
Democratic Convention suggests that it was
meant for Reagan as much as for Brezhnev.
The Republicans have been saying for some
time that the Russians had a war-winning
strategy. The most dangerous aspect of the
newly announced strategy, which further
closes the gap between the Carter and
Reagan approaches to national security, is
that it reinforces the idea that the war both
sides are planning for cannot be avoided.
GEORGE KENNAN, who coined the term
"containment" and developed some of the
theoretical ideas on which America's Cold
War Policy has been based, has spoken out
most eloquently about the danger of the
growing perception that war in inevitable. In
such a climate, fear and despair paralyze
constructive steps to prevent it. And both
sides fall into the belief that by expressing
their fears in a huge military build-up they
are doing all they can.
The debate we should be having on national
security is whether this belief is an illusion.
There are many ways war can come about.
But essentially they fall into two distinct
scenarios. The one that has been much
publicized by the advocates of greatly in-
creased military spending is a deliberately
initiated war by the Soviet Union. They are
prepared, so the theory goes, to risk millions
of casualties if they can inflict significantly
greater casualties on the U.S.
THERE IS NOTHING in Soviet history or
ideology to support the theory. Soviet leaders
have committed some monumental crimes in
the name of national security-mostly again-
st their own people. And they have invaded
countries on their borders. But their historic
preoccupation with the defense of their
homeland, their .historic caution, and above
all the uncertainties any leader faces about
limiting the damage in a nuclear war, makes
By Richard Barnet
WE OUGHT TO be having a debate about
this. It is a debate about human nature, the
Soviets' and our own. It is not a debate about
the technical capabilities of weapons
systems, on which there is general
agreement. Nor is it a matter for experts,
because on the critical issue there are no ex-
perts. No one knows what a Soviet leader
would do in an unprecedented crisis. And no
one knows how an American president would
when under even less favorable circumstances if he
thought that these were the only options.
THE GROWING pessimism about war
feeds the very feelings that could make a war
happen. When the two super powers stop
talking, or the talks are nothing more than in-
terminable rituals, both side .,crease the
arms budget and their own sense of insecurity
at the same time. When we spend the $2
trillion dollars or more we are slated to spend*
in the next decade, the Russians will most
likely match it. They are prepared, if history
is any guide, to sacrifice consumer goods and
Of~~4W
THE SOVIET UNION, in its efforts to prepare for the possibility of a nuclear war, published
this civil defense booklet last summer.
respond. But the notion that the president'
would be more resolute in defending
American interests if he knows he can kill 50
million Russians instead of only 30 million
twists the thinking. Yet that is the assumption
on which we are putting our hopes, and tens of
billions of dollars.
The strength of the country to meet a crisis
will come from a strong economy and a social
order to which our people are passionately
committed. The historical example that
should be worrying us is not Munich or
Finland, but France in 1940, when the
reputedly strongest military power in Europe
collapsed and surrendered because it had
already failed its society.
The second scenario for a future nuclear
war is much more plausible: a war into
which we stumble. It will come about because
one side or the other becomes convinced that
it cannot be avoided. In an age when one
shmarine cnmmander can land the
even the growth of their industrial machine to
keeping up or, if possible, keeping ahead.
Their mounting insecurity costs us money.
And in the end it makes us less secure.
The National Security Council has never
conducted a comprehensive study of what
military spending is doing to our economy,
the foundation of our national strength. The
two principal candidates are promising to cut
government spending, which is supposed to
be bad, and to raise the Pentagon budget,
which is supposed to be good. Neither canO
didate is challenging the other on the
dangerously inconsistent policy of fighting in-
flation on one front and courting it on another.
No wonder voters are bored. The life and
death issues on which survival of the United
States hangs are not even being mentioned.
Richard Barnet is a fellow at the
Washington, D. C.,-based Institute for
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