Word: piel
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...possibilities "inherent in the expenditure of Pentagon-sized sums on these [peace] objectives stagger the imagination," Piel declared. He pictured the lesson which the prospect of disarmament teaches us--"that the public sector must continue directly and indirectly to certify a major and a growing percentage of our consumers with purchasing power...
...Piel pointed out that military expenditure, accounting for more than half the federal budget, "has been playing the same role as public works in the first two administrations of Franklin D. Roose- yelt. After ten years of this kind of pump-priming, is it any wonder that our magnificent industrial establishment should have burdened us with such as enormous surplus of weapons...
...ironically, said Piel, no such over whelming nuclear strike forces is necessary for deterrance, since the civilian population of a country is highly vulnerable to attack--for example, an attack with a total weight of about 1000 megatons directed against the 111 largest metropolitan regions in the country could yield up to 100 million casualties...
...Piel also discounted the pre-emptive strike, or "retaliate in advance," as an irrational strategy. Despite our over-whelming nuclear superiority, "counterforece" attacks on hardened targets--aimed at knocking out the enemy's deterrent--"are of little avail." They would require pin-point location of the target, a continent away; fantastically accurate guidance of missiles; and a strike capacity with "the astronomical dimension of 20,00 megatons...
...official justification for our present military posture, Piel stressed, is not based on this pre-emptive strike strategy, which requires a "huge preponderance of striking power, "but takes another line. Thanks, to our superiority in nuclear strike power, it is said, the second-strike capability that would remain to us after a first strike by the enemy would be varsity greater than his first strike. But there is a contradiction buried in this line of logic that makes nonsense of this statement: an enemy so heavily outgunned could not conceivably be contemplating a first strike...