The European Missile Crisis

Though only two years old, the story is already a classic. It took place in Bonn, West Germany, shortly before the huge march on October 10, 1981, the first of the series of mass demonstrations against the new missiles in Europe in the "hot autumn" of 1981. The two West German church-related peace organizations responsible for the demonstration held a press conference to announce the program.

When it was announced in the overcrowded pressroom that one of the main speakers would be a representative of the American peace movement, a reporter jumped up and shouted: "Nonsense! There is no such thing as an American peace movement!"

The comment, from John Vinocur, the influential New York Times correspondent in West Germany, embarrassed his colleagues. And it took a while to calm Vinocur down while Randall Forsberg, one of the leaders of the nuclear freeze campaign, addressed the demonstration as the U.S. representative.

This story provides just one example of how the peace movements in Western Europe and the United States had linked up with each other long before most politicians and the media had any idea what was happening. We had been attending each other's meetings since the summer of 1981. In November, 1981, a large delegation of U.S. peace groups attended the World Council of Churches (WCC) hearing on nuclear weapons in Amsterdam, and there at a joint press conference we announced our further cooperation. Most of the Americans present had just participated in the huge march of 400,000 people in Amsterdam on November 21.

It soon became clear that European peace groups were much better informed about what was growing at the U.S. grassroots than many U.S. officials. Early in 1982 a group of U.S. experts, mostly Reaganites, visited the office of the Interchurch Peace Council (IKV) in The Hague. We asked them about the influence of the freeze campaign, and they said it was insignificant. They asked us for some names of leaders. "Who?" they responded. "Never heard of them."

Shortly afterwards I had lunch with two U.S. diplomats, both perceptive and well-informed. Again I asked about the freeze. "That's just a few intellectuals," they said. "Just one of those East Coast things. It won't get much farther than the Boston area. A mass movement in the U.S. like in Europe? Impossible."

Even more recently, at the invitation of Clergy and Laity Concerned and the American Friends Service Committee, I was touring the United States to raise interest for the Euro-missile issue. I visited nine states, speaking at many church meetings, and everywhere I saw a tremendous, growing peace movement, strongly rooted in local church communities and involving many who had just become aware of the evil spiritual dimensions of the arms race. They were very determined to resist its madness. And they were a reality already very different from that presented by the mainstream press with its op-ed pages now suddenly filled by politicians and experts writing about the verifiability of a freeze. It was March, 1982.

Just as our demonstrations in Europe had helped to speed up the movement in the United States, the emergence of this new U.S. movement was now badly needed in Europe. We needed new hope.

An upsurge of hope had come in Europe when three million people marched in the streets of various cities in the fall of 1981. But this hope was killed by two events. One was the beginning of the Geneva talks, on November 30, 1981. This was not at all a victory. The tremendous energy generated by so many people demonstrating their deep longing for a new policy of detente and disarmament received the old political response of arming and negotiating at the same time.

The other hurtful event was the declaration of martial law in Poland, two weeks later. Many of us had received much hope from this new massive social process in Poland called Solidarnosc. We saw it as a natural ally to the peace movement, and we thought that finally something could change in Europe.

These two mechanisms, the Geneva talks and martial law in Poland, however different in many ways, had in common that they were both essentially disciplining actions, to get the two blocs in Europe back in line. After the "hot autumn" of 1981 and the sobering weeks following it, we knew that a lot would depend on this new movement growing in the United States.

On December 12, 1979, NATO made the decision to deploy 572 U.S. Pershing II and ground-launched cruise missiles in Western Europe beginning in December, 1983. To many people in the United States, the 572 nuclear missiles initially looked only marginal compared to the thousands of new weapons being developed (air- and sea-launched cruise missiles, MX, Trident II, B-l, and the stealth bomber). But this view has now changed. The U.S. peace movement is increasingly aware that it is essential to prevent deployment of the Pershing II and cruise missiles in Europe.

It is now clear that these missiles will change the strategic position of Western Europe. For the first time in history, Western Europe will become a launching platform for extremely accurate U.S. strategic missiles targeted at the Soviet Union. The Pershing II, once deployed, will be the fastest and most accurate ballistic missile in the world. To deploy it in West Germany is the 1962 Cuban missile crisis in reverse.

Secondly, U.S. peace activists have realized that these missiles are the first of the new generation of first-strike weapons to be deployed. And it is clear that once deployment has begun, a freeze will be much more difficult to achieve. Cruise missiles are difficult to count, thereby causing serious verification problems. To suggest that after deployment has started arms control will be easier to achieve is dangerous nonsense.

The story of this risky and unnecessary crisis began with the NATO deployment decision four years ago. For public relations purposes, it has become known as the "double track" decision. Formally the decision did consist of two tracks: to deploy the 572 missiles and to offer negotiations. However, the second track (negotiations) was never intended as an alternative for the first track (deployment). Both tracks have been directed to the same station: deployment. Only the eventual numbers at the end of the road are negotiable.

The history of the NATO decision shows that the negotiating track was added at a late stage to make the deployment track acceptable for public opinion in Western Europe. More importantly, the contents of the negotiation framework agreed to by NATO show that it represented an even tougher approach than the deployment track.

The irony is that from the beginning in 1979, NATO's negotiation track has been to pursue precisely the kind of separate Eurostrategic balance which many proponents of the deployment track have opposed. The key phrase in the NATO approach is the demand for equality in land-based intermediate range missiles between the United States and the Soviet Union. In other words, to develop a Eurostrategic balance. Eventually this can only lead to a separate Western European nuclear force.

The word "equality," focusing on this category of weapons only, also made clear from the beginning that deployment of at least a certain number of new missiles was considered unavoidable. NATO called for equality in the only category of missiles in Europe in which the United States has had none since 1963, and in which the Soviet Union had enjoyed a virtual monopoly for more than 15 years.

After the Cuban missile crisis, in 1963, U.S. land-based missiles were withdrawn from Europe, and their role was taken over by missiles on submarines and by bombers which, since then, have been steadily modernized and expanded. France and Britain have built sizable nuclear forces of their own, which they are now drastically modernizing. In the 1990s these missiles will carry even more warheads than the total current Soviet SS-4, SS-5, and SS-20 force. Moscow was certain not to dismantle everything it had built since 1959 if NATO's position remained untouched.

But if calling for equality in NATO's negotiation track of 1979 was tough, President Reagan's "zero option" of November, 1981, was even tougher. It was the toughest stand possible. "Zero" on the NATO side, meaning no deployment of the 572 new U.S. missiles, was only possible in the case of "zero" on the Soviet side, now meaning the dismantling of all Soviet SS-4s, SS-5s, and SS-20s. The Soviet missiles targeted at China had now been added to the equation, while the British and French missiles targeted at the Soviet Union continued to be left out. This approach effectively guaranteed deployment of all 572 missiles.

Even before Reagan made the offer, Brezhnev had already gone on record rejecting it as a demand for unilateral disarmament. A 1981 NATO assembly report published by the U.S. Senate described this zero option accurately, just prior to Reagan's formal proposal, by saying: "The objective of recognizing the 'zero option' as a desirable but implausible goal is to place the responsibility for NATO modernization on the Soviet Union."

The Soviet response came in the form of Brezhnev's "unilateral moratorium" offer of March, 1982. According to Western experts, this came at the moment the SS-20 program was virtually completed. Later in December, 1982, Andropov announced "a really honest zero option": zero U.S. missiles in Europe and zero Soviet missiles to counter them, except for 162 SS-20s to match the 162 French and British missiles.

This proposal was not new, however, compared to the earlier one of February, 1982, when Moscow proposed 300 "systems" (both aircraft and missiles) on both sides by 1990. It was just more explicit. And because of its explicit call for this kind of a Eurostrategic balance, it was politically tougher.

The original military reason for the 1979 NATO deployment decision was not the growing offensive potential of the Soviet Union as seen in the SS-20, but its growing defensive potential, in particular air defense. NATO said: Our aging aircraft is losing its capability to penetrate, so we need the new program as "just a modernization" of this aging capability. One Dutch peace researcher commented that that is like saying "I modernize my bicycle by buying a car."

The SS-20 as an argument for deployment was a latecomer. In 1977 the Soviet Union started its long expected replacement of the then 20-year-old SS-4 and SS-5 missiles targeted at Western Europe. The irony is that most Europeans had never heard of these missiles, hundreds of which had been targeted at all major Western European cities and military targets for many years, until their replacement began.

The SS-20 is certainly a drastic improvement. It is mobile, with a wider range and greater accuracy than the older missiles. It has three warheads of 150 kilotons each, instead of the one megaton warheads of the SS-4 and SS-5.

But NATO had been expecting such a replacement for some 10 years. After all, to have nuclear weapons is to modernize them. The United States does it, Britain does it, France does it, China does it, and the Soviet Union is no exception. When I now re-read U.S. government reports before 1979 about the SS-20, they sound surprisingly unalarming.

And I recall heated discussions in 1979 among defense experts and officials, who were very concerned about the linkage NATO was making between its own modernization plans and the SS-20. One high British official told me shortly before December, 1979, that NATO needs modernization activity regardless of the SS-20. Until recently, nothing worried NATO as much as the possibility that the Soviet Union would take a real disarmament step. But so far NATO has been lucky.

More important than the military rationale for the NATO deployment decision was its political and psychological rationale. At all costs, NATO wanted a show of unity and firmness, especially after the messy conflicts between President Carter and Chancellor Schmidt about the neutron bomb and West Germany's sale of nuclear installations to Brazil, known as the "sale of the century."

Ironically it was arms control (SALT II) that provided the main impetus for the new missiles in Europe. The United States and the USSR were going to codify parity in the SALT II treaty, and conservative Europeans were afraid that the Carter administration did not take European security interests fully into account. They were most afraid that the cruise missile technology (which looked like a cheap alternative to the too-expensive aircraft) would be negotiated away.

Then West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt gave a major address in London in October, 1977. This is often quoted as the moment when Europe asked for new missiles. But Schmidt did not ask for new missiles; instead he questioned the U.S. strategic guarantee for Europe. In fact, Schmidt implied that SALT II would mean no first use of strategic systems, and then the U.S. strategic guarantee for Western Europe would cease to exist. This is an age-old problem in NATO. France under De Gaulle left the military structure of NATO because of it. De Gaulle did not believe that any U.S. president would risk Chicago for Paris. The code is, however, that one shouldn't say this aloud.

At the political level in the United States, Schmidt's concern was immediately denied. The Carter administration did not want new missiles in Europe. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance simply confirmed that the U. S. guarantee still existed that the United States had recently doubled to 400 the number of Poseidon nuclear warheads allocated to NATO, and the 300,000 troops in Europe were sufficient as a visible sign of the U.S. commitment.

But Schmidt's speech was immediately used by two other forces at a different level. One was the U.S. air force, which in 1976 (before the SS-20) was already planning three main operating bases for ground-launched cruise missiles in Europe. Up to the present, this is hardly known even among experts.

The other force was a group of conservative senators who then started to use presumed European concerns to fight SALT II. And that seems to have made Carter turn around. He offered new missiles for Europe. Just like his exotic MX deployment scheme, this was one of his many concessions to appease the hawks in the Senate. Never did an arms control agreement carry a larger arms race price tag than SALT II.

Did Western Europe indeed want new missiles? Out of the five NATO countries where the new missiles were to be deployed, only one country discussed the possibility in parliament prior to the NATO decision of December 12, 1979, and that was the Netherlands. In West Germany, Schmidt managed to get a reluctant party congress to support the decision by threatening to resign otherwise. In England and Italy the matter was only discussed afterwards, when it was too late. In Belgium the government informed parliament on the day of the decision itself when the ministers were already on their way to the NATO meeting.

In the Netherlands, parliament at first voted not to allow deployment. Later, however, the Christian Democrats, who constituted the key votes, changed their view. This debate was broadcast live on television—highly unusual in the Netherlands—and it continued the full day and part of the night. I know people who that night were crying in front of their television sets. Parliament had spoken out against the NATO decision two weeks earlier, the churches were against it, public opinion was against it. Yet why couldn't this majority be shown in politics at the moment when it really counted?

The Dutch government voted to support the NATO decision. It only made an exception regarding the deployment of the new missiles in the Netherlands itself, planning to make this decision later. At present, the decision has been postponed again; but in the meantime the Dutch government is doing everything necessary for the eventual deployment. After this shameful debate in parliament, one Christian Democrat publicly admitted: "We have clouded this issue in fog."

More crises have arisen in NATO during the Geneva negotiations, but mostly such crises have occurred among the elite. In spite of all the vague references to progress at Geneva, which have been used by politicians and the media alike to describe the various non-events since 1979, basically nothing has happened. The three constants in the negotiation position of the West continue to be: a) to guarantee deployment of a new generation of U.S. missiles in Europe (the numbers are negotiable); b) to restore superiority, which is a typical Reagan constant, as reflected in his "zero option," which indeed called for unilateral Soviet reductions; and c) to preserve the unity of NATO.

This last point is today the big reason left for going ahead with deployment in December, 1983, despite the huge cost overruns and insufficient testing of the missiles which normally would have slowed down the program; despite the tremendous public opposition in Europe; and despite the diminished value of the original military arguments. The only reason to go ahead now is political—prestige and a show of unity and firmness.

The negotiation position of the Soviet Union has been equally inflexible. Here the constants since 1979 are: a) to replace the old SS-4 and SS-5 with the new generation of SS-20s (the numbers are negotiable); b) to prevent deployment of U. S. strategic missiles in Europe; and c) to weaken the link between Western Europe and the United States.

Given its current framework, there seems to be no way the Geneva negotiations can prevent the deployment of new missiles. The negotiation positions of East and West have not moved one bit closer to one another since 1979, and they cannot do so because the two sets of constants are mutually exclusive.

In response to this concern, the European peace movement and the U.S. freeze campaign have joined forces in advocating a delay in the implementation of the NATO decision. The groups still maintain their unconditional opposition to new deployments and to the Soviet Union's existing and new missiles, regardless of the Geneva talks. This is not to say that the peace movement supports the current "zero option" proposed by Reagan, which was designed precisely to make any "zero" outcome impossible and to thereby guarantee new deployments.

The only real "zero option" (meaning zero on both sides, in other words, "zero-zero") is a nuclear-free Europe, and the terms of NATO's negotiation approach make this goal impossible. An interim step that would bring this goal closer would be a solution in which no new missiles were deployed and current Soviet missiles, both old and new, were drastically reduced: "zero-plus." But in NATO's current negotiation framework only "plus-plus" is possible.

The official position of the freeze campaign continues to be that the outcome of Geneva should be no U. S. deployments and substantial reductions of Soviet missiles, including the SS-20. This is the only realistic approach if one still wants to take Geneva seriously. However, such a solution can only come about if the framework in Geneva is changed, and this needs time. Many creative alternative proposals already exist which so far cannot be discussed at government level because, as the argument goes, doing so would undermine the U.S. negotiation position. The big demonstrations in October, 1983, now being coordinated among the movements in Europe, Canada, and the United States will focus on these concerns.

Many people in the United States believe that the 1979 NATO decision created the peace movement. I believe the opposite: the already emerging peace movement turned the NATO decision into a crisis. In so doing, the peace movement in Europe was certainly helped by the Reagan administration and its loose talk about limited nuclear war in Europe. Actually the idea of attempting to limit nuclear war to Europe has been official U.S. policy for many years; it is just not talked about.

While originally in NATO's double-track decision the negotiation track had been added to the deployment track to heighten public opinion, the situation has now reversed: Deployment is deemed necessary for the success of the negotiations.

It took Western European politicians a while to convince the Reagan ideologues that without implementation of the negotiation track, the whole modernization plan would be lost. The Reagan team had come to office with the firm determination to first rebuild U.S. strength, and only then negotiate with Moscow from a position of superiority. The emergence of the peace movement in Europe and North America in no way changed this policy goal, but the tactics have been adjusted, at first reluctantly and then with confidence.

Today arms control is the new label used to sell the arms race. Examples already abound. For many years, successive U.S. administrations have pushed for new chemical weapons for military reasons; now they are suddenly necessary for arms control, and Congress has given the green light. Likewise, the MX missile is supposedly needed for arms control.

In fact, arms control today is the continuation of the status quo by different means. If superiority over the Soviet Union is the goal, arms control should be seen as one of the instruments to achieve this end. If public opinion must be silenced, try arms control. If a new weapons system is in trouble in Congress, call it arms control. If the allies need to be disciplined back in line behind the leader, bring up arms control.

We have seen that this tactic works in many situations. Even though a majority in Spain is against NATO membership, Spain's new socialist Prime Minister Gonzales recently postponed the referendum about membership saying that this was necessary for the success of the Geneva talks. Even though a majority in Canada is against U.S. cruise missile testing, Canada's Prime Minister Trudeau recently agreed to the tests, saying they could benefit the Geneva talks. Even though a majority in the Netherlands is against missile deployment, the Dutch government recently selected a cruise missile deployment site saying otherwise the Geneva talks would be hampered.

This disciplining function of arms control even works in the churches. The statement of the Evangelical church in the Federal Republic of Germany on The Preservation, Promotion and Renewal of Peace (1981) rightfully argued that the nuclear arms race should be seen as a political problem, and it pleaded for detente. But then it carefully neglected to say anything in this context about the most pressing political problem threatening detente—the Euromissiles. It combined a theological affirmation of hope with political hope in the current arms control negotiations without analyzing what is actually going on in Geneva.

Similarly, the recent debate on "The Church and the Bomb" in the synod of the Church of England provided another example. The archbishop of Canterbury warned against unilateral measures, arguing that "the kind of action advocated will actually undermine the negotiations now in progress in Geneva."

If politics is paralyzed by Geneva, it is even more important that the churches do not join in the same paralysis. It is crucial that churches expose the true nature of current arms control. Current arms control proposals, however attractive they may sound, perfectly fit the goals of the arms race itself. The peace movement and the churches must only support a kind of arms control which reflects the desire by millions of people to halt and reverse the arms race. The joint demonstrations this fall are aiming at just that.

What, finally, if we fail this fall? This new round in the arms race, scheduled to start in December of this year, will not be the end of the peace movement, although it will mean a new, very dangerous phase. The facts of the arms race certainly give much more reason for despair than for hope. As Christians, we should not deny the hopelessness of the facts. But we are not a movement based on fear. We are not even a movement based on concern only about nuclear war.

This may have been how many of us began, but we have learned to see the links between the nuclear arms race, the enormous conventional buildup, and interventionism. Nicaragua as a victim of U.S. interventionism has become a big issue in the European peace movement. Through our own experience, we can understand a little better than before how it feels to want to shape your own future and to know that you are part of an overwhelming majority, but not be able to do it. As long as people in Third World countries, in circumstances much more difficult than ours, continue to struggle in hope, how can we despair?

To believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is for me very much also an act of non-believing: We do not believe in the powers of death. We must take them very seriously because they are very real, but we do not believe in them, and we shall not let our lives be ruled by them. They must be resisted. And then, in the context of resistance to all these hopeless facts, I can speak of hope because I experience it.

In the Netherlands on October 29, 1983, we will have a worship service in a town close to the just announced cruise missile site. We are encouraging Dutch congregations to send two people to this service, symbolizing the two disciples of Christ on the road to Emmaus. They had almost given up, until in the breaking of the bread they recognized the presence of the Lord.

Laurens Hogebrink was on the staff of the church and society department of the Netherlands Reformed Church and a board member of the Dutch Interchurch Peace Council (IKV) when this article appeared.