Morality is played out in a drama of many acts and with many actors: "acts" in the sense that
moral activity takes place in time -- with a plot that is brought forth out of the past and which
extends into the future; with "actors" in the sense that morality arises out of a conflict of claims
and a mutual interest in a peaceful and just resolution of those claims. Although, as an "actor,"
one may have a role in the drama, one will most ably and intelligently conduct that role if he is
also capable of being a spectator of the drama of morality, even though it is a drama of which he
has a part. Thus one must perceive his moral circumstance in terms of time, sequence,
circumstance, role and community.
Even in those rare circumstances where an individual can rightly presume to possess total moral
justification for his claims and complaints against another (say, a prisoner at Auschwitz), he must
take account of his adversary. He must understand what his moral opponent is thinking
(including the other's scheme of self-justification), how he might respond to one's initiatives, how
that response may open or foreclose options, etc.
Viewing the drama of morality -- its acts, plot, setting, props, actors, etc. -- as a spectator
is what
philosophers often call "the moral point of view."
Of course, experienced strategic and foreign policy-makers well understand that they are
engaged in games of "international chess," or better, "poker". Indeed, these game metaphors are
political clichés. And such strategic "games" could not even begin to be played without some
informed expectation of the adversary's response. Still, the game of nuclear strategy, I suggest, is
being played badly, due, primarily, to a failure of historical and moral perspective -- due, that is,
to "moral myopia."
This "myopia" is manifest on our part, first, by a failure to view Russian society as embodying a
rich history and cultural tradition, and second, a failure to acknowledge that the Soviet Union is a
community of persons, and as such due moral respect and consideration.
The temporal myopia of the strategic arms race is typified by the willingness of the participants
to regard their brief and immediate moment on the stage of history as a fit model for all future
time, at the same time risking that they might be final moment of civilized history. Reflecting on
such a prospect, an anonymous staff writer for The New Yorker remarks:
how . . . presumptuous [it is] . . . for a single generation, such as our own, to imagine that
its wants and political causes might conceivably justify our jeopardizing not just our
inheritance, political and otherwise, but our inheritors as well -- our sons and grandsons
and the myriad unborn generations whose hopes and achievements we cannot know. This
takes truly colossal arrogance. Is it possible that our generation thinks its own transient
conflicts more weighty than the infinity of the human future? (2)
Furthermore, as Jonathan Schell has eloquently suggested in the second part of his book,
The
Fate of the Earth, by endangering the future of our civilization and species, we are gravely
impoverishing our present. (3)
"Historical myopia" is also exemplified by the operative presumption that our present foreign
policy concerns, and particularly our current patterns of international alliance and
economic-political rivalry, are somehow written into the fabric of the universe. Believing these
alliances and rivalries to be permanent, the leaders of the great powers seriously entertain the
thought that human civilization might be legitimately imperiled for the sake of maintaining their
"pattern" from the everlasting threat of the opposing "pattern." Yet, our enemies of a generation
ago are now our allies, and vice versa. Consider a startling example of this: The edition of
Newsweek that was on the newsstand December 7, 1981, contained, in the Business section, a
story about a corporate jet aircraft that was being manufactured by the Mitsubishi Corporation of
Japan. No mention was made in that article of the fact that most of the aircraft that bombed Pearl
Harbor exactly forty years earlier to that day "that will live in infamy" were built by the
Mitsubishi Corporation. Today we routinely encounter that name on the tailgate of a superbly
built compact truck. How soon we forget. Fortunately!
Far from being "fixed," the currents of socio-economic history appear to be moving, not as Marx
and Lenin predicted, but more in the direction of the Western powers. Scarcely a decade after the
"cultural revolution," the government of the People's Republic of China (formerly "Red China")
has adopted such radical economic reforms as incentive pay, private ownership of small farms
and businesses, and decentralized economic management. Hungary, in tolerating individual
initiative and entrepreneurship, has become both the most economically progressive and
prosperous nation in Eastern Europe -- a lesson not lost upon other members of the so-called
"Soviet bloc." In the Soviet Union itself, Mr. Gorbachev's reforms toward "glasnost"
("openness") and perestroika" ("restructuring") have outstripped, to the point of threatening, the
regimes in such "satellite" nations as Czechoslovakia and Romania.
Gorbachev's reforms have their limits, to be sure -- at least for the short term. Within this bloc,
and especially the Soviet Union, private publication and dissemination of information is still
suppressed through the regulation and restriction of duplicating and photo-copying machines, and
of personal computers. It is a policy which is fated to fail, since no industrial nation can compete
in the modern world economy without these essential instruments of data management. In short,
as Gorbachev acknowledges, if the Soviet Union is to have a viable world economy, it must
necessarily be a more open society. He may yet be astonished, as will the rest of us, at what
comes out of the Pandora's box that he has just opened. Marx and Lenin never thought of
microprocessors.
And yet, despite this incredible and unpredictable flux of socio-political-economic change, we
still characterize our global adversaries as "the evil empire," adopting a fixed policy of threat, and
hostility, refusing to communicate, and "digging in" for a long siege of more of the same --
aiming nine-thousand strategic warheads at this opponent, and preparing to add several thousand
more to that number. (4)
Just what is this "Soviet Union" which we thus threaten to obliterate? We mean, variably, a land
mass, the political leadership thereof, and the military and strategic forces under the control of
that leadership. What we tend to forget is that the "Soviet Union" also refers to a society of two
hundred and seventy million human beings, with a history, with traditions, with a rich culture,
and anticipating a future -- in short, a society of persons with both private and public lives. And
what is our government's posture toward this community of human persons? George Kennan's
indictment is scathing and eloquent:
This endless series of distortions and oversimplifications; this systematic dehumanization of the leadership of another great country; this routine exaggeration of Moscow's
military capabilities and of the supposed iniquity of Soviet intentions this monotonous
misrepresentation of the nature and the attitudes of another great people -- and a
long-suffering people at that, sorely tried by the vicissitudes of this past century; this
ignoring of their pride, their hopes, yes, even of their illusions (for they have their
illusions, just as we have ours; and illusions, too, deserve respect); this reckless
application of the double standard to the judgment of Soviet conduct and our own; this
failure to recognize, finally, the commonality of many of their problems and ours as we
both move inexorably into the modern technological age; and this corresponding
tendency to view all aspects of the relationship in terms of a supposed total and irreconcilable conflict of concerns and of aims: these, believe me, are not the marks of the
maturity and discrimination one expects of the diplomacy of a great power; they are the
marks of an intellectual primitivism and naivete unpardonable in a great government. (5)
While a moral perspective might permit one side to be morally indignant at the other, it does not
allow one to lose sight of the humanity of the adversary. Yet, over the years, strategic nuclear
policy has tended to forget that, in "resisting Soviet aggression," we are threatening the lives and
welfare of two-hundred and seventy million human beings, not to mention the lives and welfare
of two-hundred and twenty million of our fellow citizens. A respect for the lives, welfare and
liberties of persons is essential to the moral point of view. But not, apparently, to "strategic
thinking."
The moral point of view is inherently systemic and rule oriented. As any student who has
encountered such moral puzzles as "the prisoner's dilemma" and "the tragedy of the commons"
can attest, the "moral whole" is more than the aggregate sum of its individual ego-parts. A few
years ago, President Reagan seemed, for a moment, to sense this when asked about his intentions
to resume arms reductions talks. He replied, "it takes two to tango." True enough! And yet, we
appear to have become so engrossed in our own "steps" that we have lost sight of the "tango."
For instance, we insist, in effect, that we must first "overtake the [alleged] Soviet lead" before we
engage in arms limitation talks, so that we may "bargain from strength." Removed from it's
context, that position has the minimal merit of being logically coherent. But once we return to
the "stage" of conflict, we find that the Soviets make the same demand. In fact, on virtually the
same day (June 16, 1983), Secretary of State Schultz, and his counterpart, Andrei Gromyko, gave
"mirror image" demands of each other. (6) Once we step outside our own role, and view the
conflict as a whole (i.e., the "tango"), we encounter a simultaneous insistence of "no advantage,
no negotiations," and that collective stance
is logically inconsistent with negotiations. So long as
both sides hold to that position, they are locked in a "tragedy" in a classical sense; described by
Whitehead as a "solemnity of the remorseless working of things." (7)
This tragedy follows
inexorably from a failure of both sides to "take a moral point of view" -- their failure to view the
problem from the perspective, not of an interested participant of the contest (the "agent"), but of a
disinterested spectator viewing the systemic whole. This failure -- this adoption of a reductive
"agent perspective" -- is but another aspect of "moral myopia."
Focusing upon their respective roles in the strategic drama, each side confines its attention to its
own interests, and to the threats of the "opponent" to those interests. They view each other as
"competitors" in a contest -- a "tug of war" conflict, whereby every gain for one side is a loss for
the other. But, as Richard Barnett asks, do we really make ourselves more secure by making our
adversary less secure? Is this the only way for the great powers to deal with each other?
Well-ordered societies and systems of morality are devised to replace competition with
cooperation -- zero- and minus-sum games with plus sum games. (8)
If, by viewing the global
struggle from the point of view of a detached observer, we find over-reaching common problems
that overwhelm the subsidiary disputes -- problems that might best be faced, perhaps
only be
faced, through negotiation and cooperation, our perspective may change radically, and we will
regard the "zero-sum" assessment to be wildly inappropriate. Well, we have that common
problem: survival -- a point made even more conspicuous by the emergence of the prospect of
"nuclear winter." And we have a common enemies: our mutual distrust, technological
imperatives, and entropy -- the constant tendency for complex systems (e.g., high-technology
communications systems and weapons) to unravel.
V
MORAL DOGMATISM AND SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS
|
The view of the Soviet Union that prevails today in large portions of our
government and journalistic establishments [is] so extreme, so subjective,
so far removed from what any sober scrutiny of external reality would
reveal, that it is not only ineffective but dangerous as a guide to political
action.
George Kennan (9)
|
"The greatest of faults," it has been said, "is to be conscious of none." Are the strategic planners
of this Administration guilty of such a fault? Consider the following exchange, at a recent Senate
Foreign Relations Committee hearing, between Senator Alan Cranston and Secretary of State,
George Schultz:
Cranston: Can you tell us what the United States, for its part, has done to contribute
to the tension that exists between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Schultz: Nothing! [The complete response]. (10)
And there is more. Consider also Robert Scheer's report of a conversation with Eugene Rostow:
"When I . . . asked [Rostow] if he believed that the Soviet Union had any legitimate grievances
against the United States, he replied, 'None whatever.'" (11)
Recall too, President Reagan's
observation that "the Soviet Union underlies all the unrest that is going on" in the world, and his
remark before the evangelical ministers at Disney World, earlier this Spring, that the Soviet
Union is "the focus of evil in the world" and "the Evil Empire." (12)
Perhaps most ominously, we hear from the Secretary of Defense, Casper Weinberger, that:
The Soviets . . . know perfectly well that we will never launch a first strike. And all of
their attacks, and all of their preparations I should say, all of their acquisitions in the
military field in the last few years --have been offensive in character. (13)
But do the Soviets "know perfectly well that we will never launch a first strike"? How does
Weinberger know that they "know" this? Let's try to look at it from their point of view. The US
is introducing, with the MX, a weapon which, due to its vulnerability and accuracy, makes sense
only as a "counterforce" weapon (i.e., targeted against opposing missiles), and "counterforce"
means, virtually by definition, "first strike" (otherwise there is not "force" to strike, only empty
silos). (14) Why, then, the MX? Either we are building it "sensibly" for a first strike, or we are
building it "senselessly" as a result of a "technological-industrial" imperative. I happen to believe
the latter. (Recall what the engineers said about the SST project a decade ago: "But it's the state
of the art," and "you can't stop progress!"). (15)
But should we expect the Soviets literally to stake
their lives on such a belief in our wastefulness and irrationality? In addition to all this, we have a
President and his cabinet (including Weinberger) talking about "survivable," even a "winable"
nuclear warfare. If Weinberger, and his associates, believe that the Soviets "know" that we will
not strike first, and if, in fact, they do not "know" this, then this fundamental misunderstanding
places us all in grave peril.
Try a thought experiment: Imagine the following utterances from the wall of the Kremlin, during
a May Day celebration:
"American leaders. . . have to choose between peacefully changing their capitalist
system . . . or going to war."
"The USSR should plan to defeat the US and to do so at a cost that would not
prohibit our recovery. . . Victory or defeat in nuclear war is possible, and such a
war may have to be waged to that point. . ." [We can survive a nuclear war], "Japan, after all, not only survived but flourished
after a nuclear attack."
Had we heard such things, we would have been justly alarmed. But these words, with the name
and reference to the powers reversed, were uttered by senior officials in the Reagan
Administration. (16)
Another quiz: who said this?
Our land-based missiles are becoming vulnerable to attack. The other side is
seeking to obtain an increase in its strategic nuclear arsenal relative to our own. If
they should start a nuclear war, we would be forced to retaliate in kind. (17)
The allegation of a 'lag" which [our adversaries claim they] must close is a
deliberate untruth... We will be compelled to counter [their] challenge by
deploying corresponding weapons systems of our own. . . (18)
The remarks, respectively by Marshal Ogarkov and President Andropov, are identical in form, if
opposite in reference, to remarks by Secretary Weinberger and President Reagan. It is difficult,
at times, to tell the players without a scorecard.
It is, of course, the business of the strategic planners, to understand just what is on the minds of
the Soviet leaders. However, the pronouncements of Schultz and Weinberger, quoted above, give
us little confidence to believe that our planners are minding their business. Believing, as they
apparently do, that they have made no moral errors, that they are in no way responsible for
international tension, and that the Soviets act out of ruthless guile and villainy, but never out of a
sense of "legitimate grievance" or misapprehension of our motives, they are quite unable to
understand the thought processes of their adversaries. Moreover, this moral self-absolution and concomitant attribute of total blame upon the other side, provides unpromising prospects for
fruitful negotiation and accommodation. In short, the Administration seems to perceive the
global strategic encounter between the great powers, not as a contest between competing political
alliances and economic interests, but as a holy war.
Of this list of myths and fallacies of strategic thinking that we have reviewed, perhaps the
psychologically governing error is that of self-righteousness, for that failing closes off the
possibility of finding error in one's own point of view, or of recognizing justification or common
interest in the adversary's position. Self-righteousness excuses the enlistment of fallacy in
defense of the dominating mythologies and dogmas from rival ideas, rational challenge and
review, and from revision and alteration. For all that it is, unfortunately, a politically formidable
posture, in that it lends uncritical legitimacy to the government in power and stifles critical
dissent by directing public energy and attention toward the presumed "threat" from the "other
side."
The "self righteousness" and "moral dogmatism" that we have just examined exemplifies what
some philosophers characterize as "bewitchment" (19)
-- a confinement of the mind by means of
such conceptual apparatus as myths, paradigms, "frames of reference," or "language games."
Such "bewitchment" constrains and confines the conceptual viewpoint, the options and the
judgment of an individual or community by rendering them unwilling, even incapable, of
acknowledging (much less analyzing) the presuppositions of their thought, their vocabulary of
concepts, the structure of their thinking, or the fundamental frames of reference from which they
"reach out" to encounter and evaluate the world of their experience and activity. "Moral
dogmatism," in other words, is a "fixation of belief" in the realm of morality.
IV
A TURN TOWARD SURVIVAL
For nearly forty years, both contestants in the global arena have persisted in their arms race and
their escalating belligerence, apparently oblivious to the fact that this behavior has utterly failed
to bring about the desired result of capitulation of the adversary at best, or at the very least,
mutual security. Persistence in these policies has only compounded the failure thereof -- a
response known to abnormal psychology as "compulsion neurosis." Surely it is past time to try a
new direction.
Gregory Kavka has clearly indicated this direction: "a solution to the balance of terror," he
writes, "must be achieved by . . . changing U.S. and Soviet perceptions of each other and
gradually building mutual trust between the two nations and their governments." (20)
How are we
to do this? First, we take deliberate steps to avoid even the appearance of aggressive intent, all
the while keeping our defensive powder dry. Recently, we have done just the opposite. For
instance, both sides have managed to excite mutual suspicions and to tighten the trip wires to
disaster by (a) multiplying warheads on single missiles ("MIRVing"), (b) increasing the accuracy
of the missiles, and (c) decreasing warning time by moving intermediate missiles "up front."
How, then, do we get the genie back into the bottle? The moral philosopher, following Rawls,
might urge that both parties move deliberately toward a "well-ordered" framework for
communication and accommodation. The ordered strategy is first to convince ourselves of the
seemingly obvious truth that a successful surprise first strike is insane to attempt, virtually
impossible to accomplish, (21) and, in view of the "nuclear winter," quite possibly suicidal, even if
"totally successful." Accordingly, we must stop talking and acting as if we thought otherwise.
Second, the Soviets must be similarly convinced (if they are not already). But this is just the
beginning, for now, and thirdly, each must know that the other knows of the insanity and
impossibly of an attempted surprise first strike, and finally, in both cases, X must know that Y
knows that X has this crucial understanding. (Lest we get lost in these proliferating logical
orders, it simply amounts to this: mutual knowledge of innocent intent, and the mutual
acknowledgment of that knowledge, is the basis of a well-ordered, and therefore secure
association. Because such a condition exists between ourselves and the British, we are quite
unperturbed by the thought that just one of their nuclear submarines could conceivably kill
millions of our citizens).
This "defusing" of the "first-strike threat" is but a stark example of a general path that may be
taken toward a civil, even amicable, association. This hopeful resolution of our deadly encounter
must be pursued through communication, gestures of mutual respect, and an innumerable series
of small transactions (economic, scholarly, scientific, and so forth) leading to a "habit of trust."
This may seem visionary, even utopian. But is it? International alliances and enmities are
written in sand. In forty years, our "valiant allies" have become "the Soviet menace," against
which we and our former enemies have formed an alliance. Within this alliance against the
"despotic communists" we have welcomed the support of the Somozas, Pinochets, Marcoses and
Bothas and have justified this policy with Jesuitical distinctions between "totalitarianism"
(unacceptable) and "authoritarianism" (tolerable). Alliances, of course, are born of perceived
necessity. But what greater necessity faces us than that of avoiding the final holocaust? A
policy of accommodation such as I have suggested here will, of course, be burdened with
uncertainty and risk. But that risk can not begin to compare with risk we face today: twenty
thousand strategic nuclear warheads poised and ready for firing, restrained only by the presumed
sanity of several hundred military officers and by the quality control and redundant "fail safe"
mechanisms of a few giant computers.
While wars are waged with weapons, peace is secured through communication, patience and
wisdom. And while our arsenals are overstocked, our supply of insights and wisdom is pitiably
small. Thus we are far more likely to be destroyed, not by one side's misperception of the other's
military strength and will, but by the inflation by each side of its own moral status, and by the
devaluation by each side of the other's moral worth. Why don't the leaders of the Great Powers
acknowledge this? Because, perhaps, they are incapable of exercising the moral courage and
will necessary to acknowledge fallibility and error on their own part, and to concede at least some
merit and value in their adversaries.
This failure of will, insight and candor, rests, I suspect, upon deep psychological and historical
roots. Thus we find in history a virtually instinctive and automatic preference for force and
violence over conciliation and accommodation -- even when the price of accommodation may
be minuscule compared to the cost of confrontation. Why is this? Perhaps, in part, because force
may be prompted by a desire to obliterate the perceived evil in others -- a desire which overrides
a willingness to adopt a posture of accommodation and conciliation, whereby one might be
obliged to examine and perhaps acknowledge the evil and error within oneself. Quite possibly
governments, as well as individuals, often prefer to risk annihilation rather than admit fault,
ignorance and error.
Such reluctance displays a lesser courage and a diminutive intelligence. On the other hand,
applied virtue, in this case humility, can display both good politics and sound reasoning. An
admission of error and a concession to one's adversary, presents an invitation and an opportunity
for a response in kind (not unknown in the history of Soviet-American relations). (22)
Thus
humility and the admission of error and ignorance by one contestant may be literally "disarming"
-- a unilateral act that makes way for bilateral accommodation and cooperation. By this means,
confession may not only be good for the soul, it may also be the means for preserving one's skin.
And the remarkable thing about this process is that neither side need look to the other before
putting the right foot forward. The "game" proceeds, tit-for-tat, with alternating gestures and acts
of accommodation and conciliation, so long as each step is met with reciprocating concession
and good faith. If both parties genuinely desire disarmament and accommodation, this process
of reciprocating concession is not only effective it is demonstrably rational -- according to the
mathematics of game theory. (23)
In the course of this paper, I have argued that the grave danger facing human civilization is, to a
large extent, the result of a failure of reason, and of a lack of moral perspective among the
leadership of the great powers. That failure of reason is manifest in conceptual confusion and
equivocation, inappropriate action under uncertainty, bewitchment by fallacy and myth,
unquestioning acceptance of dubious and unanalyzed presuppositions, and plain invalid
inference. The shortcoming of moral perspective is displayed in historical myopia (i.e., a failure
to view political and strategic problems in the context of continuing processes through time and
generations), in ethnic myopia (a failure to consider the rights and interests of the members of
our common species, much less of those residing in the adversary nations), and in a grounding of
policy upon threat, conflict and ideological difference, rather than the contestants' broader arena
of common purpose, common interest, and common humanity.
Have we a chance? Given the stakes, there is neither epistemological warrant nor moral excuse
to abandon hope and a determined effort to avoid apocalypse. Human history displays a series of
improbable yet timely responses to grave peril. Communal and eventually national experience
bespeaks a universal human progress toward Hobbesian accommodation. Outside of prisons
and asylums, there are few individuals in the state of nature. From families, to clans, to villages,
cities, to nations, Hobbesian accommodation has grown concomitantly with
communication, commerce and power. There remains one final state of nature: that which now
exists among nations. We must work diligently to bring that final anarchy under the rule of law,
and the perspective of moral community. We must do so as if our very lives depended on it -- for
surely they do.
(For the First half of
"Nuclear Doctrine...," Click the link below, "Part
I...")
Copyright 1986, by Ernest Partridge
(Abstract)
(Part I: Rationality)
NOTES
1. Quoted in "Nuclear Winter," Calypso Log, March, 1984.
2. "The Talk of the Town," The New Yorker, May 13, 1972. As with all such columns, the
name of the author was not disclosed (notwithstanding my written request to the
publishers for that name). However, the content and style strongly suggest the work of
Jonathan Schell, then, as now, a member of the New Yorker staff.
3. New York: A. Knopf, 1982. This conclusion is also argued in my "Why Care About the
Future," in Partridge (ed), Responsibilities to Future Generations, Buffalo: Prometheus
Books, 1981.
4. As of April, 1982, the exact number was 9,552. Soviet Warheads totaled 7800. (The
New York Times, April 2, 1982). These numbers were confirmed by the Stockholm Peace
Research Institute report, The Arms Race and Arms Control, 1982, and The Center for
Defense Information, "U.S. - USSR Strategic Nuclear Forces," 1982.
5. "On Nuclear War," New York Review of Books, January 21, 1982.
6. New York Times Moscow Correspondent, John F. Burns, used that very term "mirror
image." Reporting on Mr. Gromyko's speech before the Supreme Soviet, Burns writes:
"In substance the address seemed in many ways like a mirror image of Secretary
of State George P Schultz's statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Wednesday, with Mr. Gromyko depicting Washington as the cause of the impasse
in arms control. . ." Continuing, Burns reported that [Premier Yuri Andropov]
"hinted that the Kremlin was ready to increase arms expenditures still higher if the
Reagan Administration continued to shun "peaceful coexistence." (New York
Times, June 16, 1983).
7. Science in the Modern World, New York: Mentor, 1948, p 17. Cf., Garrett Hardin, "The
Tragedy of the Commons," Science, Vol. 162, (13 December, 1968), p. 1244.
8. The philosophical literature devoted to these ideas is enormous, extending through Locke,
Rousseau and Hobbes back to Aristotle. The most influential modern statements are by
John Rawls (A Theory of Justice) and Kurt Baier (The Moral Point of View). The best
brief statement of the systemic-contextualist approach to morality that I have encountered
is by Michael Scriven, in the final chapter of his Primary Philosophy, New York:
McGraw Hill, 1966.
9. In an address to the Naval War College (June 25, 1982), Weinberger admits only one
possible source of a war: i.e., war "forced on us by an aggressor." He does not include a
large number of other possible causes. Jerrold R. Zacharias, Myles Gordon, Saville R.
Davis, "Common Sense and Nuclear Peace," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 39:4
(April, 1983), pp 5-6.
10. This excerpt broadcast on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" (and recorded
by the author), June 16, 1983, the day of the hearing.
11. Robert Scheer, With Enough Shovels, Random House, 1982, p. 44.
12. Cf. The Wall Street Journal, June 3, 1980. The "Disney World remark" is recalled from
memory. Such observations did not, however, originate with this administration.
Recently, former President Richard Nixon wrote: "It may seem melodramatic to say that
the US and Russia represent Good an Evil, Light and Darkness, God and the Devil. But
if we think of it that way, it helps to clarify our perspective of the world struggle."[!!]
(Parade, October 5, 1980).
13. On the television interview program, "Meet the Press," March 27, 1983.
14. Herbert Scoville, Jr. writes: "A vulnerable missile which threatens opposing missiles is
only an advertisement of intention to use it in a first strike. thus the MX is only an
invitation engraved in American gold for the Soviets to attack us first." "Confrontation is
Only a Prescription for Nuclear disaster," The Center Magazine, November/December,
1982.
15. See again, the quotation by Ford, Kendall and Nadis, cited in note 10, above.
16. The remarks were made, in turn, by Administration advisors: Richard Pipes (The
Washington Post, March 29, 1981. See also Pipes' article "Soviet Global Strategy,"
Commentary, April, 1980), Colin Gray and Keith Payne ("Victory is Possible,"
Foreign
Policy, Summer, 1980), and Eugene Rostow, formerly the Director of the Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency (Confirmation Hearings, Committee on Foreign Relations,
United States Senate, June 22-23, 1981).
17. Marshall Nikolai V. Ogarkov (then Chief of the Soviet General Staff), paraphrased by
Theodore Draper, in "On Nuclear War: An Exchange with the Secretary of Defense,"
The
New York Review of Books, August 18,1984, p. 32.
18. Quoted in Soviet Military Power, U. S. Department of Defense, Washington, DC: US
Government Printing Office, 1983.
19. Of course, I have Wittgenstein and Kuhn primarily in mind here.
20. "Deterrence, Utility, and Rational Choice," Theory and Decision, 12 (1980), p. 60.
21. And why is this so? Just consider the logistics. Such a strike must involve the utilization
of thousands of individuals, tens of thousands of pieces of equipment, and millions of
working parts, with perfect communication and coordination, split second timing, and
absolute secrecy. For if the other side gained even a partial hint of what was going on,
the attempt would have to be aborted -- or, worse yet, the other side would be tempted to
"pre-empt the pre-emption." (Would none of the thousands involved in the preparations
for the surprise attack be tempted to "blow the cover" if only to avert the pending
catastrophe? Would all be totally committed to the scheme?) The interesting feature of
this speculation is that one need not be an "expert" to come to a realization of the
practical impossibility of a successful pre-emptive attack. Simple common sense
suffices, and technical knowledge about megatonnage and accuracy, about intelligence information, etc., is quite superfluous. And yet, this incredible improbability of a "bolt
from the blue" surprise attach is the spectre which we call "the window of vulnerability"
which has led to our development of missiles with "house address accuracy." For
informed confirmation of this, see A. G. B. Metcalfe, Strategic Review, Spring, 1983.
22. Russell Hardin, "Contracts, Promises and Arms control,"
Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, October, 1984, pp. 14-7. Hardin cites the case of Kennedy's unilateral
cessation of atmospheric tests, followed by Khrushchev's agreement to do likewise and to
cease production of strategic bombers. The Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed later, in
August, 1963. Earlier, the Russian's withdrawal of missiles from Cuba was followed,
after a "discrete interval" by the removal of America missiles from Turkey, though this
was not part of the "Cuba bargain." Finally, the provisions of the SALT I agreement,
formally lapsed in 1977, are still being observed by both sides, as are the provisions of the
unratified SALT II agreement. Hardin suggests that in the context of "cooperative
reciprocating disarmament," format treaties may be unnecessary, and might even be
positive hindrances to the process.
23. According to Axelrod and Hamilton, "Tit-For-Tat" (i.e., reciprocating individual acts of
mutual advantage) is, within certain parameters, the most stable strategy for the evolution
of cooperation and altruism in nature, and the most rational resolution of the classical trap
of "the prisoner's dilemma." Robert Axelrod and William D. Hamilton, "The Evolution of
Cooperation," Science, 211, (27 March, 1981), pp. 1390-6.
