From
Paranoia to Arrogance:
Our New Nuclear Policy
by
Ryan McMaken
On
May 1, 1960, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet
Union. Fortunately, the pilot survived and eventually returned home
to the United States, but his mission went unfinished. Originally,
the U-2 mission had begun to confirm the "missile gap"
that so many in the Pentagon were sure existed between the allegedly
gargantuan missile stockpile the Soviets possessed and the tiny
missile force sported by the Pentagon. At the time, lawmakers estimated
that the Soviets possessed about 500 ICBM’s. It turns out that they
had exactly four. In 1960, the United States was the country with
the advantage in the missile gap, and it would continue to have
the advantage through the end of the Cold War thirty years later.
Then as now, however, lawmakers driven by ignorance and the grim
political necessities of mass democracy promised to build thousands
of bigger and better missiles to deter the enemy. Estimates were
made of how many Russians and Chinese we would be able to take out
with such an arsenal. Estimates hovered around 350 million Europeans
and Asians, but unfortunately, the price of success was about 100
million Americans. Freedom would win the day in the end, though.
The
willingness in Washington to gamble with so many lives prompted
many to be rather skeptical about the wisdom of the entire exercise.
In 1963, while the Soviets were desperately cranking out missiles
to keep up with Kennedy’s plan for 1,000 ICBM’s, Pope John XXIII
issued the enclyclical Pacem
in Terris in which he examined the dynamics of the arms
race, its disregard for human dignity, and the likelihood that,
if war should come, it would undoubtedly be touched off by some
inexplicable and unpredictable accident of history: There
is a common belief that under modern conditions peace cannot
be assured except on the basis of an equal balance of armaments
and that this factor is the probable cause of this stockpiling
of armaments. Thus, if one country increases its military strength,
others are immediately roused by a competitive spirit to augment
their own supply of armaments. And if one country is equipped
with atomic weapons, others consider themselves justified in
producing such weapons themselves, equal in destructive force.
Consequently
people are living in the grip of constant fear. They are afraid
that at any moment the impending storm may break upon them with
horrific violence. And they have good reasons for their fear,
for there is certainly no lack of such weapons. While it is
difficult to believe that anyone would dare to assume responsibility
for initiating the appalling slaughter and destruction that
war would bring in its wake, there is no denying that the conflagration
could be started by some chance and unforeseen circumstance.
Back
in New York, Murray Rothbard was more blunt:
Some
people may prefer death to communism; and this is perfectly legitimate
for them – although death may not often be a solution to
any problem. But suppose they also try to impose their will on
other people who might prefer life under communism to death in
a "free world" cemetery. Is not forcing them into mortal
combat a pure and simple case of murder? And is not anti-Communist
murder as evil as murder committed by Communists?
Rothbard
considered the Soviet nuclear threat to be a political myth, convenient
for inflating government budgets, and he was right. He was not alone
in such criticism either. Dwight Eisenhower had warned against unwarranted
hysteria and paranoia over the alleged missile gap, and in his famous
"military-industrial complex" speech urged caution against
a foreign policy formulated by weapons contractors.
The
prescience of men like Rothbard and Eisenhower does not necessarily
mean that those who pressed for the arms race were fools. Given
the perennial incompetence of the CIA, the paranoia in retrospect
seems somewhat understandable. It is more difficult to see, however,
how John XXIII’s logic on proliferation was so easily dismissed
and the fact that nuclear proliferation by one government cries
out for others to proliferate as well was so steadfastly ignored.
If one compares the nuclear policy of the Cold War to the policies
of lawmakers today, though, the old Cold Warriors come off as almost
noble.
Only
the most bloodthirsty hawks of the Cold War ever planned to establish
nuclear arsenals as anything other than a deterrent, and it was
never an option to use nuclear weapons on a country that did not
possess its own nuclear weapons. The "first strike" option
was never really considered a viable option by any American president,
and nuclear weapons were only to be used if it was clear that millions
of American deaths were an inevitability. Such was the noble insanity
of the Cold War.
Fast
forward to 2002, and we find that things have changed considerably.
In February, someone at the Pentagon who had not yet completed the
transformation into a complete sociopath leaked the "Nuclear
Posture Review" which outlined plans for a nuclear "end
game" with Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, and Syria, none
of which possess nuclear weapons. The report also outlined plans
to let the missiles fly on Russia and China as well, even though
virtually everyone on the face of the Earth thought we had actually
normalized relations with them. It turns out, much to the surprise
of the Chinese and the Russians, that they are still potential enemies
in a nuclear holocaust.
The
biggest change in nuclear policy however, has been the movement
away from a "last resort" mentality on nuclear weapons
to a "first strike" mentality. The neo-conservative hawks
and their allies in Washington have been pushing for years to develop
low yield nuclear weapons. The idea behind the low-yield arsenal
is that, since everyone pretty much accepts that it is insanity
to kill millions of civilians in a 50 megaton blast, it is therefore
more threatening to possess a 10 megaton device that might actually
be used, and would thus only kill about 100,000 civilians. One can
claim to be slightly less loony to use such small time weapons,
and thus their deterrence power is increased. As one might expect,
The American Conference of Catholic Bishops and many in Congress
have criticized the plan for "blurring" the line between
conventional and nuclear war. As it has become more and more clear
in recent years that some in the Pentagon are willing to use low-yield
nuclear weapons on non-nuclear countries, it appears that the line
has been blurred indeed.
The
latest rationale behind the development of these new semi-conventional
nuclear weapons has been the hysteria over "bunkers" in
so-called rogue nations. According to National Review’s Rich
Lowry, these new bunker busting nuclear weapons are absolutely
essential to ensure that no one, anywhere, will be out of reach
of the American arsenal. It’s nice to think that we could develop
weapons that can destroy military targets with pinpoint accuracy,
but if there’s anything we have learned time and time again in the
day of smart weapons, it’s that the weapons may be smart, but the
people dropping them make mistakes, as when we mistakenly bombed
the Chinese embassy in Serbia. The question we must ask ourselves,
then, is even if we have low-yield, bunker busting, super accurate,
nuclear weapons (a pretty bad assumption), will there ever be a
situation where they can pass moral muster? Assuming that these
bunkers are somewhere other than the middle of nowhere (a pretty
good assumption) are we willing to drop nuclear bombs (with all
their accompanying radiation, fallout, and lung-busting shock waves)
and then claim it was worth the lives of some 50,000 impoverished
peasants living nearby?
American
nuclear policy has come a long way since the days of the Cold War.
In 1960’s we felt threatened, paranoid, and backed into a corner.
At times it seemed that our only option was to be prepared to let
loose the end of the world if it allowed us to make our enemies
feel even more threatened and paranoid than we were. Today, without
any military rival, and with no nuclear power making professions
of ill will toward the United States, we have developed plans for
the utter destruction of friends and enemies alike, and have developed
weapons for use in first strike nuclear attacks in case they prove
necessary as a "pre-emptive" measure, or if some adversary
threatens our "National Interest" as defined by Donald
Rumsfeld. The moral bankruptcy here ought to astound all who confront
it, but then, the United States government abandoned the moral high
ground a long time ago.
August
7, 2002
Ryan
McMaken [send him mail]
is editor of the Western
Mercury.
Copyright
© 2002 LewRockwell.com
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