Word: rearmaments
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Norbert Rissling, 25, is a conscientious objector to West Germany's military draft who opposes nuclear power and rearmament. He sits in a café in Bonn and probes the motivations underlying the discontent of young people. "We want what our parents have," he says with feeling, "and we don't see how to get it. Now it seems we will not be able to realize certain expectations, so we rebel against parents and against the state. 'They' say they rebuilt society and ask us how 'we' can dare to destroy what they built...
...gasoline. Carter's aides have admitted to reporters that the country would undoubtedly be better off in a few years if the president imposed a hefty gasoline tax; however, they say he can't because of "political" considerations. Carter has opted for a World War II-style rearmament drive that will only accelerate inflation. He could just as easily have channeled the spasm of popular support that started with the taking of the American hostages in Tehran and has continued through the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan into a crash conservation program...
There is a gut feeling in many Americans-and many Senators-that now is not a time for the U.S. to be making deals with the Soviets. Now is a tune not for disarmament, but for rearmament. There is in this feeling a new manifestation of an old fallacy, the fallacy that SALT does the U.S.S.R. more good than the U.S., and that scuttling SALT will therefore do the Soviets more harm. As Henry Kissinger often said, SALT is not a reward for Soviet good behavior; treaties between adversaries can be more useful than treaties between friends; especially in periods...
Nitpicking aside, flaws like these cast doubt on the most basic premise of his book. The Third World War is a call to rearmament, a shrill blast of the trumpet for Western governments to boost their military expenditures now, before it's too late and the crawling armies of Bolshevism engulf what Hackett calls "the free nations of the Western world." He believes the advent of "flexible response" military policies in the sixties--abandoning automatic massive nuclear retaliation in favor of both conventional and nuclear forces--makes land war in Europe a distinct possibility over the next decade...
Hackett should have tried writing a straight-forward account of the strengths and weaknesses of opposing forces in Europe, something he is probably competent to handle. Instead, he has coated his diatribe for rearmament with a nauseating layer of future history, complete with fake footnoting and eyewitness accounts. But then, the derision Hackett opens himself to makes it less likely anyone will listen to his argument--which is just as well...