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HUMAN
SURVIVAL
THE GRIM SPECTER OF
,.
"Mankind must put an end to war- or war will put an end to mankind.
Together we sha/1 save our planet- or together
we sha/1 perish in _its llames."
- President John F. Kennedy, 1961
by
Donald D. Schroeder and George Ritter
T
he greatest arms race in history is
spiraling dangerously out of con–
trol. Nations are talking· peace
while sharpening their swords for war.
Since the end of 1973. the Middle
East has become a huge armed camp.
Africa has become an arms dump as
major powers pour modero weapons
into Angola, Somalia and Uganda. The·
superpowers continue lo add both costly
complex conventional hardware and su–
persophisticated nuclear weapons and
delivery systems to their arsenals. What
wonder weapons may be on the drawing
boards is anyone's guess.
Nuclear
Pandpra's Box Opened
Arms control officials decry the fact
that weapons of mass destruction are
about to burst out of the privy posses–
sion of a handful of major powers. Jo
the wake of the oil crisis, nuclear power
plant orders and construction are boom–
ing.
As
a byproduct. twenty to thirty
nations will have the c!lpability of pro–
ducing nuclear booibs in just ten years.
Communist
~hina
sporadicalJy ex–
plodes nuclear devices in its race to
overcome military ioferiority to the So–
viet Union. India has·already detonated
a · Nagasaki-sized
"p~aceful
device."
Israel is thought to possess the com-·
ponents for as many as
a
dozen atom
bombs. Egypt, Argentina, Brazil, and
South Africa are on the nuclear thresh–
old. Spain, Japan, South Korea, Austra–
lia, and other iodustrially advanced
nations could join the nuclear club any
time political leaders decide it is ex–
pedient.
Recently, Brazil's presiden! said.
afler oegotiating for the "complete nu–
clear fue! cycle" from West Germany,
that "lf the explosives are typified as
peaceful,
1
think aH countries should
have the right to make them." Uofortu–
oately, the differeoce between "peace–
ful" nuclear explosions for oational
development and !hose for military ap–
plications is, for practica! purposes, non–
existen!.
Caution and reason are being thrown
to the winds in the race to "go nuclear."
Afler India's home-grown A-bomb had
exploded, the prime minister of neigh–
boring Pakistan vowed: "We wilJ eat
leaves and grass, even go
h~mgry.
but we
will have lo get ·one of our own." The
Shah of lran commented in the wake of
recen! growing fears of nuclear prolif–
eration: . "lf small nations arm them-
•selves with nuclear weaRons, lran ·will
seek possession of them sooner than you
think."
Over 90 nations have signed the Nu–
clear Nonproliferation Treaty. But · it is
rarely reported that any signatory na- ·
tion can withdraw af(er 90 days notifica–
tino. Complicating the situation is that
key nations such .as France, China, and
Israel have never signed the NPT and
are not bound by any-agreement
Hammering Plowshares into Swords
The proliferation of nuclear arms is
b:Y no means the
only
worry
10
arms
control experts. They are also distressed
over · the large volume of conventional
weapons being sold.
Whereas thirty years ago only
five
na–
tions were in the position of being sig–
nifican!. arms sellers, today
over
30
nations are deeply involved in the
highly competitive trade.
Since 1959, more than a dozen multi–
lateral and bilateral arms control agree–
ments have been concluded. In the same
period world arms expenditures have
more than doubled- from $97 billion to
$244 billion· for 1974. (The last figure,
incidentally, is roughly equal to the en–
tire income·of the poorer half of man–
kind.) Fully one· quarter of- the world's
scientific talent is devoted to making the
art of warfare more deadly and sophis-
ticated.
·
In 1952, the nations of the world spent
$300 million on
foreign
purchases of
conventional weapons. In fiscal 1974,
they laid out $18 billion- a staggering
.6,000% increase. The United State$ led
the pace in sales with $8 billion in weap–
ons
(80%
to the Middle East), followed
by the Soviet Union, France, and Brit–
ain, the other three leading arms sellers.
While the U.S. limits its sales 'to na–
tinos approved by the
S
tate 'Departroent
or Congress, many others happily sit on
their polilical polarity and sellto anyone
with cash, regardless of the customer's
ideological stance. The latest figures in–
dicate fiscal 1975-76 will be an even big–
ger boom year for the merchants of
death.
''ANOYE SHALL
HEAROFWARS
ANDRUMORS
OFWARS"
"(There '!'ere] 97 wars during the crumbling alliances has inÚeased the
period 1945-69. The total duration of likelihood ofwars in the next 15 years."
l·hese conHicts exceeded 250 years, and
- AP, Aug. 23, 1975'
8
-
Matthew 24:6
. there was not a single day in which one
or severa! wars were not fought some–
where in the world. The number of per–
sons killed in action ·since 1945 ·amounts
to tens ofmillions.."
World Armamentsand Disarmament,
Stockholm. lnternational Peace
Research Institute Yearbook, 1975
"Five panelists at a Harvard-MJT
arms contro.l seminar said they believed
nuclear war in sorne form will erupt
before 1999.''
- UPl, Nov. 2, 1975
"The world's major powers are
techni~
cally at peace. But at least a dozen shoot·
ing wars, large andsmaU, are in progress
around the globe - including sorne that
have been going on since the 1940s. The
battlefields are scattered across Europe,
Asia, Africa, Latin America and the
Middle East, and the death toll is in the
millions."
"A top strategy· expert says the com–
- U
PI,
Feb. 14, 1975 bination of improved weaponry and
"From 1945 to 1970 the number of
nuclear warheads in the U.S. strategic
arsenal went from zero to about 4,000.
From 1970 to mid-1975 .!he number
[has] increase{d]to alm9s1 10,000."
-
Sciemific American,
Nov. .1973
"Retired Adm. Gene R. LaRacque
told the
U
.S. Congress .in September that
the overkill capacity ofthe Soviet Union
and the United States has so increased
that the combined raw megatonnage of
both nations is equal to
1.2
million
bo_mbs of
~~e
type th¡¡t destroyed Hiro–
shtma . ...
- AP, Sept. 11 , 1974
Beyond Normal Comprehension
Living with superweapons of mass de–
struction for over 20 years has changed
us. We ·have lost comprehension, in
human terms, of the dangerous times in
which.we live.
We could comprehend the largest pre–
nuclear bomb of World War 11 , the
blockbuster, that could leve! a whole city
block. lt contained 10 tons ofTNT. But
how does one comprehend the destruc–
tive force of a 1 megaton bomb (1 mil–
lion tons of TNT equivalen!}, or a 20
megaton or 50 megaton \Veapon? How
does one grasp the fact that the power of
all the, conventional bombs exploded in
World
War ll can
be
oontained
in
one wea–
pon carried
in
the bomb bay ofone plane?
lt
is-senseless to debate whetheF man–
kind could be wiped out once, five or a
hundred.times over in an all-out nuclear
war. Vfe know every major city of the
major powers is already targeted with a
weapon or weapons that could wipe it
offthe map.
Gone are the days when it took a
lumbering, four-engined . B-29 bomber
hours to deliver its lethal cargo. Now the
job can be done in minutes by land or
by sea. One U.S. Poseidon submarine
with MJRV missiles can lob
160
war–
heads (each with
2~
times the destruc–
tive power of the Hiroshima bomb) at
targets 3,000 miles away. Soviet land–
based ICBMs, with 250 Hir<>§hima-type
bombs each, can devastate cities one
th.ird ofthe way around the world.
Recently developed U.S. cruise mis·
siles, launched from planes or sub–
marines, can virtually hug the treetops
to avoid deieclion and hit within yards
of their pre-programmed targets.
The stat.istics .on
ov~rkill
aré incom–
prehensible. The United States has
enough military might to deliver the
equivalen! explosive power of 2.400
World War lis or thé equivalent power
of 370,00Ó Hiroshima-sized bor¡tbs. Rus–
sia has the equivalen! power of 4,000
World War lis or the power of 720,000
Hiroshimas at her disposal. The two su–
perpoweci can wipe out.each other's civ–
ilization 100 times over, yet each month
they add a few more weapons of mass
destruction to their arsenals. The key, to
the military men, is not just raw destruc–
tive force but tbe development of more
reliable and accurate weapons and de–
livery systenis.
The world needs more nuclear prolif–
eration as much as it -needs cyanide in
every tea bag. The equivalen! of 6fleen
tons ofTNT for every
~an,
woman, and
child, on the face of the earth
is
quite
enough aiready.
Tbe Uothinkable
Now
Thinkable
During the fifties and sixties, we were
told to console ourselves that nuclear
weapons were so horrible and retaliation
in kind so. certain that no aggressor
would dare start even a limited nuclear
exchange. However, after two decades
of ·nuclea.r refinemen't, military strategy
thinking
is
shifting: the "unthinkable"
may be Lhinlcable - even necessary.
Aocording to this new reasoning,
a
limited nuclear war with tactical nuclear
weapons to stop an overwhelming con–
ventional auack may not necessarily be
JANUARY 1976