Word: haig
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Nuclear war strategy has received much attention as of late because of contradictory remarks made by Secretary of State Alexander Haig and Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger over whether NATO has plans to fire a nuclear warning shot if the Soviet Union were to overrun Wester Europe. A reporter asked Reagan whether there should be a nuclear warning shot...
...LEAST AS Secretary of State Alexander Haig reads it, NATO policy in the event of a Soviet conventional attack on Western Europe might go something like this: Soviet tanks begin to roll across the continent, overrunning weaker NATO conventional forces. The allies, unsure how else to react, turn quickly to the nuclear arsenal. From it they select a single bomb and explode it somewhere in the sky over Europe, demonstrating our readiness to fight a nuclear...
...Caspar W. Weinberger '38 insists, that NATO plans no longer call for a demonstration explosion. But even if it's only a fantasy of our nation's chief foreign policy administrator (and one should notice that the White House did not disavow his statement), that is scary enough. For Haig's scenario demonstrates the ultimate idiocy of any nuclear deterrent: what happens when your bluff is finally called...
...Haig's plan--and any like it--are the recipes for that nuclear disaster. Our defense is currently based on a credible nuclear deterrent. The arsenal needed to make good that threat implies, and certainly allows, a nuclear response if the deterrent fails. The "demonstration" explosion scenario merely carries the threat closer to the actual; in case anyone has forgotten Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the reasoning goes, this will prove our willingness to use such weapons. And what if the tanks keep rolling? Certainly the chances are good that such weapons will be used and Armageddon will be triggered. The trouble...
...despair about the chances for real reductions. But much of that failure is due to the idea that nuclear arms reductions can be pursued in the same manner and with the same urgency as other diplomatic goals. They can't. We must cease the games of atomic chicken that Haig has played in recent days. And then we must make disarmament our top priority, even if it means the sacrifice of some short-term hopes for a better world...