A Step Back From Idiocy?

Following quickly on the heels of the failed old-guard coup in the Soviet Union in August, President Bush decided it was the right moment to announce a dramatic set of unilateral U.S. nuclear arms control initiatives. Eight days later, President Gorbachev responded with a set of Soviet initiatives and proposals that matched those of the United States and went several steps further. What do we make of these moves, especially those of us who have long advocated total nuclear disarmament?

Clearly, the news from Washington and Moscow is promising. Both sides taking their nuclear facilities off their decades-long "alert" status, and their plans to withdraw and destroy all U.S. and Soviet land-based tactical nuclear weapons certainly reduces the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe by accident or miscalculation (not to mention deliberate use). Yet the sigh of relief I felt upon hearing about these initiatives was partly overshadowed by a reawakened feeling of horror.

I realized I'd forgotten, or stopped thinking about, the fact that hundreds of American and Soviet infantry officers stationed all over Europe and Asia have been capable of launching short-range nuclear explosives at a moment's notice. And I'd forgotten that for the last 42 years squads of young soldiers, day and night, had been obediently loading doomsday devices on and off long-range bombers, and that these bombers continuously cruised the skies, ready to devastate the world on command -- that is, commit what Newsweek appropriately called "the final act in the history of human idiocy."

I was also reawakened to the appalling threats that have not -- or not yet -- been eliminated: the thousands of short-range "nukes" still on ships and fighter aircraft, the thousands of far more powerful long-range nuclear missiles in land silos, on off-alert bombers, and aboard dozens of nuclear submarines.

STILL, THESE "reciprocal unilateral initiatives," long called for by the disarmament movements in the United States and Europe, are hopeful. The hope, of course, lies in the possibility that both countries will continue with what one news analyst called the "new twist on the Cold War pattern of one-upmanship." Moscow has set the stage for the next round by declaring, once again, a temporary unilateral halt to nuclear testing, calling for a permanent multilateral testing ban, and, most significant of all, proposing an end to the production of all fissionable materials used in the production of nuclear weapons.

For the United States, this will be the real test -- stopping production. This was always the sticking point of the nuclear freeze proposal, and the reason why the Reagan and Bush administrations dismissed it out of hand. It's one thing to get rid of existing weapons -- and another thing entirely to stop producing new ones.

Given the enormous political clout of the major weapons manufacturers, the very thought of shutting down production lines and converting to civilian production -- or closing the plants altogether -- has long been totally taboo in Washington, DC, the wishes of the majority of the American people notwithstanding.

The Bush administration's refusal to curtail nuclear production undercuts attempts to convince other countries to end their own nuclear programs -- and makes the recent condemnation of Iraq's nuclear operation appear especially hypocritical.

Though Bush's and Gorbachev's initiatives are surely welcome, our task as peacemakers remains unchanged. We have to keep raising up our vision and keep acting as though we are serious about it. The vision is not just one of total nuclear disarmament, as desirable as that would be.

The wanton slaughter and destruction of the Gulf war was a shocking reminder (lest we had forgotten Vietnam) of the terrible death and suffering that can be wrought with non-nuclear weapons. Our vision must even go beyond the elimination of all weapons of war and encompass the elimination of war itself.

To make such a vision meaningful and credible, we must call for something more than "peace" in some abstract sense. We must call for the creation of a robust, dynamic peace system -- that is, an interlocking, mutually reinforcing set of principles, procedures, and institutions that simultaneously aims to eliminate not just armed warfare, but also the inextricably intertwined issues of environmental pollution, poverty and economic injustice, and racism. For until all of these human scourges are treated as parts of one overall disease, none will disappear.

Randy Kehler was coordinator of the Working Group on Electoral Democracy and former director of the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign when this article appeared. He lived with his wife and daughter in their house in Colrain, Massachusetts under a continuing threat of eviction by the IRS for their war-tax resistance.