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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, NOVEMBER 9, 1984
terrorists to improve their delivery systems. A West German com
pany has already delivered the components of a medium-range mis
sile to the Libyans; only the most cockeyed optimists think that
terror states will not be able to buy intercontinental missiles
on the secret arms market by 1990. Logic suggests that, sooner
or later, the terrorists' bombs will be nuclear...:-Tnrest as
sured that Colonel Qaddafi--or the�cessor to the dying Ayatol
lah, or perhaps some paranoid Sandinista--will one day possess
both an atomic bomb and a missile that can take it across the
ocean.
In some future extremis, a terror-state leader will tell Washing
ton or Moscow that unless some concession is made, a world capi
tal will be destroyed. Retaliation would mean nothing to a sui
cidal bomber; he could not be deterred in any way short of sur
render to his demands. What could civilized leaders, in their
muscle-bound helplessness, do to a canny madman who welcomes mu
tual assured destruction?
We are running away from that question, finding security in our
old thinking that the threat is from a rational superpower and
the greatest worry is an escalation of a conventional war. But
consider the unthinkable: World War III may not be the Soviet
Union versus the Free World, but terrorism versus civilization.
The only serious suggestion put forward so far is that plan so
glibly derided and dismissed by scientific doubters and the
frozen arms-control establishment as "Star Wars," and so hastily
written off by Walter Mondale as "militarizing the heavens." The
derogating knee-jerkers live with today's threat, with which they
are comfortable, but refuse to deal with tomorrow's threat, which
is looming larger. That threat is from superterrorism, armed
with atomic missiles in a defenseless world.
At the least,
superterrorism will be able to hold millions hostage to one bolt
from the blue, and, at the most, be able to trigger accidental or
mistaken war between superpowers.
Space defense would make it possible for the superpowers--the
world's nuclear police--to detect a missile in its booster phase
and shoot it down before it destroyed a city. If an M.P. in the
sky is "militarization of the heavens," make the most of it: Sup
port your celestial sheriff..•. Ronald Reagan's offer to share
space-defense technology is the most daring peace proposal made
by an American President.
It is almost axiomatic that the Soviets will test any new U.S. president.
Even though Mr. Reagan is a returning incumbent, it is perhaps not coinci
dental that the Soviets have chosen the time of the election to ship highly
inflammatory military hardware to Nicaragua. New attack helicopters (to
fight off the contras} arrived a few days ago. Now, as we go to press, a
Soviet freighter may be unloading advanced MiG fighters at the port of
Corinto. Washington has warned Managua that such equipment is "unaccept
able," totally unnecessary for Nicaragua's own defense, and is, in its
view, intended only to extend a threatening military reach toward Nicara
gua's neighbors. Thus, a showdown may be near, perhaps by next week.