Word: blackmail
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...generally invited public discussion only after policy decisions have been made. Nonetheless, some environmentalists viewed the new approach as the kind of morbid cost-benefit analysis they have long opposed. Western Washington University Professor Ruth Weiner said that asking the community to determine what is best is "economic blackmail. People will vote for jobs and cancer." Warned Richard Ayres, head of the National Clean Air Coalition: "You're balancing money and lives, and they just don't balance...
...particular, Sakharov insists that nuclear arms reductions, which he considers supremely important, should be used to preserve or restore "parity" at all levels of nuclear weaponry: tactical, "regional" and intercontinental. The reason: an aggressor who had an advantage in one category of weapons might be tempted to try nuclear blackmail, and "there would be little cause for joy if, ultimately, the aggressor's hopes proved false and the aggressor country perished along with the rest of mankind." Thus, Sakharov regretfully rejects the idea of a nuclear freeze because it would leave the Soviet Union with a huge lead...
...that would detach itself from the U.S., it would help them impose a solution in Eastern Europe." He wondered if the SS-20 program was simply the mechanistic reflex of the Soviet military establishment or part of a longer-term political strategy. If Moscow's aim is political blackmail, he said, then Western Europe should begin to brace for a period of high East-West tension after the deployment of NATO's own intermediate-range missiles...
...Louis' other main point is that America is just as willing to resort to nuclear blackmail as the Soviets, and will often lie to the public to achieve its aims. It is true that the U.S. has threatened the use of nuclear missiles before (and has even used two atomic bombs), but such threats have ended two bloody wars and kept the Soviets at bay in Iran (1946) and Cuba...
...only is this untrue, but a brief survey of past nuclear blackmail shows much of it used in response to confrontation sites outside of Europe. First came Japan, where the U.S. first made vague threats, then initiated the world's only distance of nuclear warfare. Against noncombatants, including American citizens Twice...