4 OPINION Page 4 Thursday, October 7, 1982 Sinclair 0,2 Mt dirqau: 4at t Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan The Michigan Dai1X TT -REACTAN THEOLL-Y. A MICjHTY FORTIES5 OUR GOD. t' Vol. XCIII, No. 25 420 Maynara St. Ann Arbor, M' 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board Food f T HAS become fashionable, especially within the ranks of the Reagan ad- riinistration, to speak of food as a weapon. Last week, a study was leased which goes far to proving just ie opposite - that food can be a tool tr peace. t Despite the resumption of grain les to the Soviet Union by the Reagan ministration, Washington officials ntinue to suggest that restrictions on ade - especially in food - is a able, potent weapon in the Cold War. They argue that by restricting sales of g-ain to the Soviets, the United States cn so erode the Soviet standard of ling that they will be forced to submit our wishes. The idea is unworkable. If im- lemented, such a plan would only ser-. , to hurt American farmers by ducing their market and weakening teir credibility as a reliable source of 4jod. The damage to the Soviets would negligible at most, since last year American grain accounted for about 4te-third of what the Soviets imported. 's entirely possible that the U.S.S.R. quld replace the U.S. grain with grain i~om other countries at only slightly A better N A REGION where brutal authori- tarian rule is the norm rather than the exception, democracy has won a s ll vietory. The..people o fBlivia, o4p, of ,..atin America " smost im-y poerished countries, have again won the right to popular government. Two years ago, Bo ivians elected, through their Congress, a popular political leader, Hernan Siles Zuazo, as their president. But the country's military leaders, afraid that Siles Ziazo might notallow them free reign in their control of Bolivia's enormous drug trade, took control in a violent coup before he could take office in La Paz. -Recently, however, two years and tljree military dictators later, the cirrupt junta has come under in- creasing public pressure to step down. Under its leadership, Bolivia's foreign debt has soared, essential food has become increasingly scarce, and con- sqmer prices have skyrocketed by 200 percent. r peace increased cost. But a recent study by the Worldwat- ch Institute goes beyond condemning as unfeasible the notion of "food as a weapon." It says that Soviet depen- dence on American farm products could lessen tensions between the nations or even serve as an additional deterrent against Soviet nuclear attack. The institute report says the Soviet Union's chronic short-falls in agricultural production cannot be eliminated without radically altering the Soviet farm economy. The current leadership in the Soviet Union is un- willing and unable to make those changes, the report argues, so the American grain sales actually serve to improve relations between the two governments. The report makes a valid point. There are arguments - apart from those based on practical or humanitarian grounds - which speak against the notion of using restrictions on food exports as a tool in diplomacy. Such a notion ignores the tremendous potential for peace from unrestricted trade. fA% i ~oOL ~~\JLI CL 4r4 _k l ..> "E 6 . Little by little, the. atomic plague spreads . r . :t :. ?, E ,r ,: ° .,Y } } r'at Bolivia Bolivia's only remarkable achievement is that its military regime has actually yielded to growing popular pressure and agreed to' turn over the ; government to civilian leadership., That new government will almost certainly be headed up by Siles Zuazo, who, after two years in exile in Chile, still has the support of almost all of Bolivia's unions, political parties, and people. Siles Zuazo certainly will face tremendous challenges when he accep- ts the challenge of pulling Bolivia out of record poverty. Sadly, some of the extreme leftist policies he is sure to enact may not be the wisest course for a disunified and desperately poor people. But the fact that rightist military rule has surrendered to the demands for popular government is a significant triumph in Latin America. And the only hope for a solution to Bolivia's many problems can come through democratic means. By Samuel Day The government of South Africa will deny it, but in a safe, secure and secret place somewhere within its borders, a small supply of atomic bombs-probably no more thanhalf a dozen-has been laid away for use if necessary in the final defense of apartheid. The bombs are fueled with uranium enriched in utmost secrecy in a factory built near Pretoria in the early 1970s for the osten- sible purpose of serving South Africa's peaceful nuclear programs. THEY WERE fabricated outside Cape Town in the proving grounds of a company called African Explosives and Chemical In- dustries, Ltd., the world's largest and most sophisticated manufacturer of conventional high explosives. An early prototype of the bomb was successfully tested in the predawn hours Sept. 22, 1979, by scientists aboard a flotilla of South African naval vessels in the South Atlantic. The purpose of the atomic stockpile is to deter South Africa's neighboring black-ruled states-chiefly Angola, Zimbabwe and Mozambique-from going too far in support of the increasingly serious internal struggle to overturn white minority rule at the southern tip of Africa. Although this picture may differ from reality in a few details, there can be little doubt about the essentials of South Africa's nuclear weapons program, or about its inten- tions. FOR 50 DAYS this summer I roamed the length and breadth of South Africa, visiting nuclear facilities, interviewing people in a position to know, and talking with scores of South Africans about whether and why their government would risk triggering a nuclear holocaust. The picture that materialized merely added to the weight of evidence regarding an "Afrikaner Bomb" that has been accumulating since August 1977, when South Africa was caught red-handed preparing a nuclear weapons test in the Kalahari Desert. Pretoria then was forced to call off the test by diplomatic pressure from the United States and other major powers. What the evidence dramatizes is the emergence of a frightening new phenomenon of the nuclear age: the clandestine proliferator. FOR THE first three decades of the nuclear arms race, beginning with the bombing of Hiroshima Aug. 6, 1945, the entrance of each new nation into the nuclear club was a highly public event, marked with awe and trembling by others, like some monstrous "rite of passage" to superstatehood. First came the United States, then the Soviet Union, Britain, China, and France. Cut conditionscchanged after May 1974, when the explosion of a "nuclear device" by India demonstrated that club membership '. - , \ - j '. _. -_ ___ «: ,. e ,,, . . , ' ;( 1 i ' R.. r J a '4 "How Do You A Stay So Robus Manage To t, Doc?' .a U.: Q S rt KaI was attainable by even the poorest of Third World countries. The sudden realization that the bomb might eventually turn up anywhere and everywhere gave "nuclear proliferation" a bad name and stimulated international efforts to contain it. NEVERTHELESS, today Israel is almost universally believed to have secretly built a supply of nuclear weapons for use in an emergency. Pakistan is known to be well along toward its first atomic bomb. Taiwan and South Korea are said to be next in line, with Argentina and Brazil not far behind. Since 1974, no nation has openly joined the nuclear weapons club, however, even though the spreading technology for peaceful nuclear programs (especially uranium enrichment and plutonium production)ihas put bom- bmaking capability in the hands of an ever- growing number. The difference now is that bombmaking has gone underground. Club membership has become clandestine. Indeed, that's the way South Africa likes it. By creating, the impression that it has built an atomic bomb and is prepared to use it, Pretoria achieves the desired effect of deterring its neighbors from support for the African National Congress, the leading political resistance group in South Africa. A threat to drop atomic bombs on the capitals of the front-line states would have to be taken seriously. AT THE same time, by keeping its nuclear weapons under wraps, South Africa protects its already tarnished political image from further ravages and preserves external economic ties-particularly those with the-' United States and Western Europe-that help sustain the system of white minority rule. Moreover, that is the way the present, openly known club members also like itr Doubtrand confusion about South Africa's nuclear weapons status permit the United' y States and other nuclear weapons powers to keep their comfortable illusion that proliferation is under control. So long as the clandestine proliferators remain discreet, the failure of anti-proliferation policies need not be acknowledged. IN FACT, as nuclear suppliers we have con- tributed to the spread of the bomb. We also have contributed by setting an example as the world's foremost producer of nuclear weapons-its foremost practitioner of the diplomacy of nuclear deterrence. Americans may well worry about the growing problem of worldwide nuclear weapons proliferation. But we are not likely to be able to do much about it -until we have faced up to the problem of our own nuclear weapons excesses. "Who are you to point the finger at us?" I was asked many times in South Africa. It was a question for which I had no adequate an- swer. Day spent his childhood in South Africa. He wrote this article for Pacific News Service. 0 x I~eal r1c4. LETTERS TO THE DAILY: