To the Brink

Back in the 1950s it was called "brinkmanship." In a 1955 Life interview, then Secretary of State John Foster Dulles described brinkmanship as "the ability to get to the verge [of war] without getting into the war." He called it the "necessary art" and boasted of his artistry in crises with Korea, Formosa, and Indochina. In those cases and others, Dulles had heightened tensions with the Soviet Union to a frightening pitch, with confidence that the Soviets would capitulate in the face of our overwhelming nuclear superiority.

Other U.S. leaders have rarely spoken of "going to the brink" with such obvious pride. But brinkmanship has been practiced with disturbing regularity since the dawn of the nuclear era. In addition to the three incidents cited by Dulles, there were trips to the brink over Iran in 1950 and during the Berlin and Cuba crises under President John Kennedy. Nuclear threats, veiled and otherwise, were made at several crucial points during the U.S. war in Vietnam, and there have been several brushes with nuclear war in the Middle East.

Starting this December the United States may be going to the brink of war again as a result of the deployment of Pershing II and cruise missiles in Europe. Since the end of World War II, Europe has been an armed camp, with the two hostile military blocs faced off head to head. The landscape of Europe has become littered with nuclear weapons, with as many as 15,000 U.S., British, French, and Soviet nuclear weapons deployed on its soil. Now the United States is planning to put 572 of the most deadly and accurate weapons ever devised at the Soviet Union's very doorstep. These weapons could become the spark that finally ignites the European tinderbox.

The U.S. planners behind this reckless move are betting that once again the Soviets will be intimidated. But some things have changed since the days of Dulles. As late as the 1961 Berlin crisis, the Soviet Union had only four intercontinental ballistic missiles. But today it has about 8,000 strategic warheads, and Soviet leaders have stated their intention to respond in kind if the Euromissiles are deployed. This, combined with the most belligerent U.S. administration in years, could make for a situation of unprecedented volatility.

The potential crisis over Euromissiles has complex military and political roots going back at least to the Carter administration, but probably the most significant factor in the situation is the nature and purpose of the weapons systems themselves. This is especially true of the 108 Pershing II missiles slated for West Germany. The Pershing II is planned to replace the Pershing 1a missiles currently in Germany, as part of what NATO calls a "modernization of theater nuclear forces." But a great deal more than modernization is involved.

The Pershing 1a is genuinely a theater weapon with a range of 440 miles. It would be used if a conventional war in Europe went nuclear. But the Pershing II will have a range of 1,100 miles, enabling it to reach targets in the Soviet Union. The difference is important because the United States has not had land-based missiles in Europe capable of striking the USSR since the Thor and Jupiter systems were withdrawn in 1963. They were removed as part of the settlement of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

In addition to its superior range, the Pershing II will come equipped with the latest in computer guidance systems, making it one of the most accurate missiles in the U.S. arsenal. It is designed to hit Soviet military communications centers or other strategic targets.

It is estimated that Pershing II missiles will be able to reach targets in the Soviet Union within six minutes of their launch from West Germany. Ground-based missiles now deployed in the United States would take about 30 minutes to reach Soviet targets. Existing submarine-based missiles can reach the USSR in about 15 minutes but are not always accurate enough to be a threat to military targets.

The Pershing II will make it possible for the U. S. to destroy targets in the Soviet Union before the Soviets even know an attack is under way. Many observers have noted that the deployment of the Pershing II amounts to a Cuban missile crisis in reverse. In 1962 the Soviets placed nuclear missiles in Cuba just 90 miles off U.S. shores. President Kennedy considered those missiles such an intolerable threat that he promised total war if they weren't removed. And now the United States plans to deploy missiles that, given the accuracy and short flight time of the Pershing II, are even more dangerous to the Soviets than the missiles in Cuba were to the United States.

According to a senior Reagan administration official, the Pershing II will have among its targets command and control centers for the Soviet strategic arsenal. This means the United States would be able to launch a surprise first strike that would substantially cripple the Soviet Union's ability to retaliate. The ability of either side to launch or threaten such a successful first strike is inherently destabilizing. It means that in a crisis situation the other side has an incentive to fire its missiles first, before its arsenal is incapacitated.

The Soviets' response to Pershing II has so far been predictable. They have warned that if the missiles are deployed they may shift their missiles to a launch-on warning posture. This would put the decision to use nuclear weapons in the hands of computers which would give the signal to launch at the first sign of an attack. Obviously this multiplies the possibility of an accidental war. We know that U.S. computers have issued numerous false warnings in recent years, and we also know that the Soviet computer system is not nearly as sophisticated as our own.

Soviet officials have also responded to the Pershing II with vague statements about finding ways to place U.S. territory under an equivalent threat. But no plausible scenario for this has yet surfaced.

The other 464 missiles slated for December deployment are ground-launched cruise missiles. They will be placed in Great Britain, Sicily, and possibly Belgium and Holland. Cruise missiles are essentially unpiloted aircraft equipped with a nuclear warhead. They are the technological descendants of the "buzz bombs" used by Nazi Germany during World War II. Each cruise missile is only 20 feet long. A few of them could easily be hidden in most American living rooms.

The cruise missile is relatively slow-moving, but it is designed to be extremely accurate. It has a computerized radar system that reads the terrain beneath it, periodically compares it to a topographical map in its memory, and charts course corrections accordingly. Cruise missiles can also fly at such low altitudes as to be virtually undetectable by existing radar systems. The missile's guidance system is supposed to chart evasive maneuvers to avoid obstacles such as unexpected hillsides.

Like the Pershing II, the cruise missile is a strategic weapon. It has a range of 1,500 miles, enabling it to reach into the Soviet Union from all of the proposed bases in Europe. And despite its longer flight time, the cruise also raises the specter of a U.S. sneak attack because of its supposed ability to escape radar detection. It too is a destabilizing escalation of the arms race. And because it is so small, the cruise missile could sabotage any future attempts at arms control. It is so easily hidden that reliable verification of the numbers deployed would be very difficult.

The danger of the NATO cruise missiles is not limited to Europe. There are 112 missiles to be stationed at Comiso, Sicily, placed within easy range of much of Northern Africa and the Middle East. Their potential targets could include Soviet-allied Syria or Reagan's archenemy, Libya. This aspect of the Euromissile deployment has unfortunately received only scant public attention, even though it represents a disturbing new element in the already over-armed and hypertense Middle East.

Over the last four years the official justifications for Euromissile deployment have varied depending upon who was addressing whom. The military reasoning has been that the missiles are needed to counter the Soviet buildup of SS-20 missiles aimed at Western Europe. But this argument comes down to a numbers game that can be played several ways. As British author and activist E. P. Thompson has pointed out, it all depends on what you hold your hand over while you're counting.

The Reagan administration's Euromissile Scoreboard has the USSR with more than 1,000 warheads compared to NATO's zero. But this calculation conveniently ignores the existence of 400 U.S. submarine-based warheads assigned to NATO and 64 British and 98 French warheads all aimed at the Soviet Union. When everything is counted, including forward-based aircraft capable of delivering nuclear weapons, there is a rough parity between the European arsenals of the East and West, with both sides possessing an absurd capacity for overkill.

This was pointed out recently by Canadian Admiral Robert Falls who until this July was chair of NATO's military committee. Falls said in an interview that NATO could easily stand to withdraw some of its existing nuclear weapons without harming its ability to respond to a Soviet attack. He went on to say, "If we did that, I think we'd find we could demonstrate to the Soviets that both sides could stop the proliferation of nuclear arms."

A plausible military rationale for the new missiles does exist. But it is an argument that the U.S. administration has been understandably reluctant to use in public debate. The Pershing II and cruise missiles in Europe would help move the U.S. beyond parity and back into a position of unquestioned nuclear superiority.

The essence of nuclear superiority is the ability to credibly threaten a successful first strike. The Pershing II's potential for crippling the Soviet arsenal without warning makes it a crucial component of a first-strike strategy, especially when it is backed by cruise missiles and eventually by the MX and Trident II systems.

It is doubtful, even in the present administration, that our leaders want a first-strike capability because they have a secret desire to start World War III. The function of nuclear superiority today would be the same as it was in the 1950s and '60s. It would give the United States virtually unlimited latitude in working its will in other countries, particularly in the Third World. It would make it much easier to intervene in Central America, Southern Africa, the Middle East, the Philippines, or anywhere else U.S. dominance appears challenged.

The path of nuclear superiority has a catch 22. In order to have the desired intimidating effect, the first-strike threat must be believable. But if it is believable it may inspire Soviet responses, like the launch-on-warning posture, that multiply the risk of total war.

The Soviet SS-20s are horrible weapons. They could wreak devastation throughout Europe and leave millions dead. But by any sane and honest measurement, they do not justify the U.S. introduction of new first-strike weapons that would put nuclear war on a hair trigger.

Political calculations, including erroneous ones, have played a major role in Euromissile deployment from the start. The decision to deploy the new missiles was made in 1979 primarily to assure Western European leaders, especially West Germany's Helmut Schmidt, that the Carter administration was indeed a stable ally committed to the safety of Europe. It was a military move intended to answer the political problem of Carter's bungling of NATO alliance relationships. Even the number of missiles to be deployed was a public relations decision. NATO needed a number that was high enough to sound threatening to the Soviets but low enough to avoid scaring the European public. With 200 considered too low and 600 too high, it settled on 572, expecting to trade some off in arms control talks. It was only later that anybody bothered to think of 572 potential targets.

It wasn't the number of missiles, however, that ultimately sparked the massive rejection of the new weapons by the European public. Europeans realized that having U.S. strategic weapons on their turf meant they would be a target in any exchange between the U.S. and the USSR. The reckless rhetoric of the Reagan administration also gave them reason to fear that the United States hoped to be able to fight a limited nuclear war, with Europe as the battleground. By now the only argument the United States can muster for the deployment is that NATO must make a display of willpower in the face of dangerous "pacifistic" public sentiment in Europe.

But public opposition to the new first-strike weapons is not likely to go away, and it is becoming substantial in the United States as well as Europe. Like any crisis, the one that looms over Europe has opportunities as well as dangers. There is the opportunity for a decisive break in the arms race as well as the danger of a new round of escalation.

But the opportunities for a turn toward peace don't lie in the fakery of the Geneva talks. Rather, they lie in a direction like that suggested by Admiral Falls. One of the parties in the crisis needs to make a bold and imaginative initiative for peace. Such an initiative could come from the NATO governments refusing to accept the new missiles as the European peace movement demands. Or it could come from the U.S. Congress, which can still refuse funds for the deployment. Or the Soviet Union could demonstrate its good faith by actually withdrawing and destroying a symbolic number of its SS-20s.

These possibilities, remote as they are, would not even be thinkable without the unprecedented public mobilization against the arms race on both sides of the Atlantic. Only the peace movements could conceivably force the United States and its allies to delay and ultimately cancel the new missiles. And the peace movements of the West are the only evidence the Soviets have that a peace initiative on their part would be reciprocated rather than perceived as surrender.

Four years of experts' arguments, politicians' debates, and, most recently, diplomats' negotiations about the Pershing II and cruise missiles have only reaffirmed the founding principle of the European and U.S. peace movements: Only people can stop the arms race. There has never been a time when more people were ready to act against the threat of nuclear war, and the stakes may never have been higher. The events in Europe and the United States this fall could set the world's course for the rest of this century. The world is watching and hoping that we will find a way back from the brink.

Danny Collum was an associate editor of Sojourners magazine when this article appeared.