In April, 1962, President John Kennedy publicly announced a detailed proposal for reversing the arms race, starting with the Soviet Union and the United States, and extending to include all armed states. Given the title Blueprint for the Peace Race, the proposal carried the imprint of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA). This was the last, hence latest, disarmament proposal by the U.S. government.
The comprehensive plan was presented to an international committee on disarmament at Geneva. It provides for a three-stage reversal of the entire arms race, both nuclear and non-nuclear, to be accomplished over a 10-year period. The scheme accommodates the differences in United States-Soviet Union arms and forces and provides for no change in relative military position on the way down. It takes into account inspection requirements and includes all militarily significant states. It also contains provisions for building up international peace-keeping arrangements to improve capability for resolving international conflict by non-military means.
The small team of specialists in the U.S. government who formulated the disarmament plan had the resonance and support of important parts of American society. The Soviets had formulated their proposal for reversing the arms race, also submitting it to the international committee in Geneva. An air of hope prevailed.
But these proposals were never negotiated, because in October, 1962, the Cuban missile crisis occurred. To this day Americans have not been ready to confront the idea that the attempt of the Soviets to place short-range missiles by deception and secrecy in Cuba was the probable response to a series of U.S. weapons and military intelligence coups that gave the U.S. overwhelming superiority and even capability for a devastating first strike that could destroy the USSR.
Those in the Kennedy White House came out of the crisis with the conviction that they had learned how to play "nuclear chicken" and win. It no longer seemed vital to proceed with negotiations about how to reverse an arms race. The Soviets emerged with the determination never to be caught again in a similar condition of gross military inferiority. The negotiations fell into disuse.
For these past 20 years, the "war party" of the United States--the array of private and government persons and institutions oriented toward military power as a main mode of politics--has been winning an immense political victory in this country. It has effectively wiped out from public discussion all reference to reversal of the arms race, not only as a serious political prospect, but even as a problem to be discussed.
Evidence of this void is abundant. For example, no major U.S. publisher has published a book by an American or disarmament for 20 years. When manuscripts are offered, the judgment has characteristically been that the public isn't interested. This notion has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Students in U.S. universities who wish to study how to reverse the arms race may find perhaps seven courses that include the word "disarmament" in their syllabi. Of those seven, only two include some discussion of the subject for at least two weeks. A generation of political scientists, international affairs specialists, historians, and journalists have passed through U.S. colleges without learning that reversing the arms race was ever a serious topic in this country.
The largest foundations in the United States, Ford and Rockefeller, which grant about 85 per cent of all foundation funds used for studies in international affairs, have supported studies on how to operate the arms race. They have also allotted funds for studying regulation of the arms race, which is really another way of continuing it. No studies have been funded to focus on reversing the arms race.
In the federal government, ACDA has set up a series of Hubert Humphrey Fellowships, whose model titles are all for studies on how to regulate the arms race. The section of ACDA that produced the 1962 peace plan has been shut down, as has the section dealing with the economic aspects of a military economy under disarmament. It is now even impossible to get a copy of the 1962 disarmament plan document, because it is out of print.
The whole idea of reversing the arms race has been lost, tossed into the dustbin of history, made into a non-idea, 1984-style, by the lack of discussion, writing, and research. Only a few pacifists are left even mentioning it. Hence, the idea of reversing the arms race has become Utopian--meaning inconceivable and unworkable.
Arms control was once a term applied to the early stage of a process to reverse the arms race, but since 1960 the term has meant merely a set of strategies for regulating the arms race. From the military standpoint, the test ban, for example, was an opportunity for arms regulation: atmospheric testing has stopped, but underground nuclear testing continued and even accelerated.
The same is true of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). For the military-minded, SALT is aimed at regulation of the strategic arms race, not reduction or reversal. SALT II, which took seven years to negotiate, provides for a two-thirds increase in the combined nuclear stocks of the USSR and United States, increasing them by explicit, regulated agreement, from 600,000 Hiroshima equivalents to one million Hiroshima equivalents.
Even the idea of a nuclear freeze has been taken up by the conservative arms controllers, and in their hands has been turned into a device for merely regulating the increase in arms. They would restrict the number of new ICBMs between the United States and the Soviet Union, but they would permit open-ended multiplication and improvement of cruise missiles. And all this would still be called a "freeze."
The idea of arms control as regulation has also been taken up by pro-peace people in the United States. From 1962 to the present, the U.S. peace movement has addressed a series of issues, while hoping, in each case, that success would lead to further moves that would effectively limit or reverse the arms race. The issues included the test ban, the ABM and the B-l bomber, the effort to pass SALT I and then SALT II, the idea of no first use of nuclear weapons, and the nuclear freeze.
The same political pattern was repeated each time: new ad hoc committees and coalitions were formed for each issue; new people were attracted who discovered war and peace issues in terms of the current weapon or arms control step; funds and memberships rose; and large outlays were made for mail, printing, and offices. Then, win or lose, each issue faded, and most people disappeared because no follow-up plan existed.
None of these issues were dealt with as part of a coherent scheme for addressing the arms race as a whole. No single step carried the necessary implications of defined subsequent steps. None of these issues addressed the power and money of U.S. war-making institutions. The B-l bomber funds, for example, were effectively transferred to cruise missiles. Again and again the government successfully manipulated both the issue and the peace movement.
The politics surrounding the test ban experience illustrate the manipulation. Proponents did win something. Children's milk became cleaner, and there was less contamination of the air. But the nuclear arms testing and development continued and was in fact accelerated by the U.S. government. President Kennedy, seeking the votes of conservatives in the Senate and the support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, promised and delivered to them two things: first, money and other resources to accelerate an underground nuclear testing program; and second, general acceleration of the arms race on the American side.
The test ban was not a first step. It was in fact a last step. The government deceived and manipulated the peace movement, but peace people also deceived themselves by hoping this would or could be a first step.
The test ban situation can help explain, 20 years later, the limitations of the latest small step sponsored by the U.S. peace movement. Thinking through a scenario for a nuclear freeze proposal is imperative. The freeze idea is already sweeping the country, and any administration that comes into power must be committed to that proposition. The staff of the administration must formulate the text of a proposed international negotiating position. A serious discussion must be started around the country and in Congress to generate consensus around that negotiating position.
Then the Soviets should be called upon to meet and negotiate an international agreement. A series of new and complex matters must be dealt with, the complexity arising especially in the matter of what is called verification or inspection. Since the freeze proposal does not involve destruction of weaponry, but calls for restriction of further production, there must be access to and inspection of places of production. Problems will arise concerning the difference between new weapons production and spare parts production for an existing stockpile of weaponry.
Once agreed upon, the negotiated proposal must come back to the Senate for ratification, because it is an international treaty. The Senate then must determine an implementation date, including when and how the affected industrial facilities will be closed down and employees relocated. Finally, an inspectorate must be recruited and put in place.
All this will take at least five years, and what has happened in the meantime? Military budgets have increased, while new U.S. divisions are created, the Rapid Deployment Forces and rapid-fire nuclear delivery system are put in production. Cruise missiles are being produced in multiples each day.
The U.S. war party has used the elapsed time to convince people that one of the key ways of avoiding the use of nuclear weapons is to build up "conventional" capability. Several arms control centers in American universities will probably take the lead in such advocacy. Attempts will be made to enlarge conventional military budgets, in the name of preventing nuclear war.
The word "conventional" is misleading. The destructive power of non-nuclear weapons and of the lower range of nuclear weapons has come to overlap. On the Golan Heights in 1973, half of the armor engaged was destroyed, and the U.S. army noted this as a rate of destruction hitherto anticipated only in nuclear war.
The peace movement must always be viewed from the vantage point of the National Security Council (NSC). Its members are continually asking the question: What can be done to keep the U.S. peace movement busy, active, and satisfied that they are achieving something, and even scoring certain explicit political wins on particular issues, while keeping them from interfering with the main drift of desirable military development?
One way for the NSC to achieve that objective is to focus the peace movement's attention on a series of particular arms control issues. No first use, SALT II, the freeze, and the whole test ban can each be shown to have merit in its own right. But it is entirely possible for the peace movement to win on several of these issues, without ever interfering with arms development.
Suppose the peace activists win on the issue of declaring no first use of nuclear weapons. What will that mean if the event actually takes place? The history of war in this century shows massive deception about who was an aggressor, including manipulation of data and action. Organizers should be alert to the possibility that the no-first-use policy is little more than a statement of intent, and that enforcement would be fraught with grave difficulty.
The U.S. peace movement should not get snarled up in a coast-to-coast debate and discussion about no first use while the factories continue turning out materiel, recruitment officers recruit more young men and women who can't find jobs elsewhere, and human and capital resources are diverted from life-giving research. In the end, this would not be a win at all.
The politics of peace now require a leap of imagination. We have to take up the one alternative that has been blotted out from public view for more than 20 years and allow it to define the political agenda. With reversal of the arms race as the stated goal, the perspective of political discourse and action changes.
The 1962 plan provides a baseline, and with modifications for the 1980s, a thoughtfully planned, defined succession of steps can be created that is comprehensive with respect to reversing the whole arms race. As a coherent agenda is defined for comprehensive arms race reversal, an array of collateral, supportive measures--like a freeze--can be addressed in an orderly fashion.
While the 1984 national elections will be the next chance to name a new executive and most of Congress, our activities need not wait. Between now and January, 1985, Congress has the formal power to deny funds and thereby stop particular military programs. Remember that this was the means used successfully during the war in Vietnam to stop the U.S. bombing campaign.
President Reagan will continue to function as an unwitting propagandist for the peace movement. His devotion to slogans of nuclear superiority, rearming America, winning nuclear war, and Cubans behind every Latin American rebellion will turn off greater numbers of ordinary Americans, driving them to seek a way out. By such means January, 1985, will be the time, not simply for a freeze proposal, but for serious plans for disarmament that have already been made rallying points for political organization.
We should recall Eisenhower's admonition that people want peace so much that governments will have to "get out of the way and let them have it." Eisenhower may be right, but wanting peace isn't enough. With a coherent mode of political analysis and action, we may be able to reach this vital objective.
Seymour Melman was co-chairman of SANE and professor of industrial engineering at Columbia University when this article appeared.
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