For years the peace movement has pointed out that each federal dollar can only be spent once, and that dollars spent on arms are not available to fulfill human needs. It is a truism that we cannot have guns and butter; textbooks in college economics include graphs that show their inverse ratio. The argument against peace conversion has not been that we could have both; it has been that we needed the guns to defend ourselves against worldwide communism and therefore must do without the butter.
Recent events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have led people in the United States to the obvious conclusion: It's time to spend more on butter, not guns. And there is no lack of ideas on how to spend such a "peace dividend."
The list is familiar--affordable housing, education, job and anti-poverty programs, health care, AIDS research. And it is widely recognized that the nation's infrastructure--roads, railways, waterways--are decaying and in need of immediate repair or replacement.
President Bush, however, is committed to balancing the federal budget and rolling back the $3 trillion national debt before using any peace dividend money to provide goods and services to the nation. "Some people seem to think that if you cut defense spending...we can take that money and spend it on something else," he said recently. "We can't do that. We've got enormous budget problems."
Clearly there is cause for concern about the skyrocketing debt, but there has always been red ink in the federal budget. The present predicament is largely due to the Reagan administration's decision to cut taxes on the rich and, at the same time, drastically increase defense spending to contain the "evil empire." The combination of lower revenues and much higher expenditures has created a situation in which the administration is afraid to tell the people the actual extent of the deficit.
In calculating the red ink for this year, for example, the government left out the Postal Service's $1.7 billion shortfall, didn't count the $20 billion spent bailing out the savings and loan industry, counted unclaimed food stamps as revenue, and shifted the first federal payday for 1990 back to 1989. In addition, Social Security taxes, which have risen by 25 percent since 1980, are no longer kept in a trust fund until needed by retirees. Instead, these funds are quietly applied to the national debt.
If President Bush has his way, any federal funds accruing from decreased arms' spending would also be applied to the national debt.
WHILE MUCH OF THE debate is focused around whether to use the peace dividend for human services, rebuilding the infrastructure, and cleaning up the environment, or using it to retire the debt incurred by too much defense spending, some observers are wondering whether there is in fact a peace dividend at all.
Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney caused excitement last year when he projected a possible savings of $180 billion in the Pentagon budget over the next several years. But the figure cited by Cheney is from a projected Pentagon budget far bigger than any likely to be passed by Congress, not from actual expenditures.
Cheney then presented Congress with a list of military bases to be closed in an attempt to make them bite the bullet on the peace dividend. House Armed Services Committee member Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) put it this way: "The evaluation for possible closure is Secretary Cheney's preemptive strike against Congress' tendency to slash the defense budget. Hopefully, my colleagues who are tempted to view the nation's defenses as any easy mark in the budget will think twice before they take an ax to the Defense Department."
The list of proposed closings no longer targets bases in congressional districts of uncooperative representatives; instead, it includes as wide a selection as possible, so that each member of Congress faces pressure at home to keep the bases open. In the midst of the pressure from constituents as well as advocacy groups, corporate interests, and the administration, Congress is faced with finding a point of balance that appears unlikely to result in a meaningful peace dividend.
Meanwhile, defense contractors are as-sessing their ability to survive defense cutbacks, with some even trumpeting their diversification into peacetime projects. Others are counting on major weapons systems, such as the Trident nuclear submarine, to pull them through a lean time.
The peace dividend debate reveals the poverty of thought and vision of the Bush administration. No doubt some military bases will be closed. And there is the recent agreement to reduce the number of armed forces in Europe. But there are no signs that the U. S. government is creating a new and more peaceful foreign policy.
Small mobile-strike forces will still be trained in guerrilla war, so that they can be shipped anywhere around the globe in lightning time to press U.S. interests. Reliance on low-intensity conflict continues, as well as the commitment to maintain oppressive governments in client states from the Philippines to Central -America. And all the essential components of first-strike nuclear warfare--Trident, MX, Star Wars--are moving ahead, affected only slightly, if at all, by any budget cuts.
President Bush's proposed budget makes clear that the administration's basic priorities have not changed. Instead of the disarmament so many of us have been hoping for, what is taking place is the creation of a more efficient imperial force.
Shelley Douglass, was a Sojourners contributing editor and co-founder of the Ground Zero Community in Poulsbo, Washington when this article appeared. She was living in Birmingham, Alabama.
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