At this point the United States continues to manufacture nuclear weapons at an average rate of three warheads per day--not for military purposes but for their political utility. The most obvious use of nuclear weapons for political purposes consists in threatening their use in order to achieve political objectives. This type of coercion was employed during the years when the United States held a monopoly on nuclear weapons (until 1949) and then a virtual monopoly on intercontinental delivery systems (until late in the 1950s). Truman threatened to use nuclear weapons in both Iran and Korea, and Eisenhower again threatened in Korea. During the era of clear United States superiority in nuclear weapons, Kennedy was able to use their coercive effects to force show-downs in crises over Berlin and Cuba.
Today, with a relative nuclear "parity" established between the United States and the Soviet Union, such blatant uses of nuclear weapons as threats are not longer credible. Instead, the concept of nuclear superiority is important only in the sphere of perceptions, and any new weapons programs are used to enhance the United States' image of international strength. It should go without saying, however, that his pursuit of a fictitious superiority is an extremely expensive and dangerous substitute for diplomacy and is a poor rationale for increased military spending.
Every election year, with surprising regularity, the "Soviet threat" is evoked and America's military capabilities are denigrated. This is a political ploy used alternately by Republican challenger to discredit the defense policies of a Democratic incumbent, or by a Democratic challenger trying to appeal to more traditionally-Republican constituencies.
Such was the case in 1960 when presidential contenders John Kennedy and Stuart Symington proclaimed a "missile gap" with the Soviet Union and criticized the Eisenhower-Nixon administration's lack of vigilance. Less than three weeks after Kennedy took office, Secretary of Defense McNamara admitted that the "missile gap" was indeed a fictitious one. The New York Times of February 7, 1961 reported that "Kennedy Defense Study Finds No Evidence of 'Missile Gap.'" During the next several years it became clear that there was in fact a gap, but that it was--and always had been--in the United States' favor.
The most striking example of evoking the "Soviet threat" for political purposes is the most recent presidential election, when all three major candidates claimed greater U.S. military spending was necessary. This put Secretary of Defense Harold Brown in the ironic election-year position of having to defend the Carter administration's defense record while at the same time demanding new programs. In February 1980 Brown stated that "by all relevant measures, we remain the military equal or superior to the Soviet Union," while in his annual report to Congress he requested new funds for such programs as the MX missiles, cruise and Pershing II missiles for Europe, Trident submarine missile systems, and an extremely accurate new warhead for the Minuteman III missiles.
The most recent strategic products of military-academic collaboration are the notions of a new "need" for a U.S. "conterforce capability"--the ability to destroy Soviet missiles in their underground hardened-concrete silos--and of a "limited nuclear-war-fighting capability."
As one RAND analyst has observed, however, the counterforce strategy is severely flawed, because it ignores both Soviet perceptions of these U.S. innovations and the fact that the "counterforce balance" is, and will remain, in the United States' favor. The most frightening aspect of the U.S. pursuit of a counterforce capability is the possible Soviet reaction. The deployment of faster, more accurate counterforce weapons may serve only to increase Soviet reliance on a launch on warning concept. Under such a policy, the Soviets would launch their land-based ICBMs at the slightest hint of a U.S. attack for fear of having them destroyed on the ground.
The Soviets have made clear that they do not share the notion of a limited nuclear war. As president Brezhnev has many times reiterated, "Any attempt to launch a nuclear missile attack on our country would be met by devastating retaliation."
With every new nuclear weapons program, whether intended to implement a limited-war policy or a counterforce strategy, our security is actually diminished. No Pentagon official could claim that 35 years of nuclear weapons programs have made us any more secure than we were after the world's only two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The nuclear arms race and the destabilizing nature of the latest generation of nuclear weapons has only brought us closer to disaster.
The arms race and excessive military spending threaten our security in ways that even those who are more concerned with the struggle for daily survival than the risk of nuclear war can understand. Military spending shares the responsibility for our most serious economic problems--inflation and unemployment. Economists recognize that arms spending is the most inflationary form of government spending, sapping resources without providing goods for the marketplace. As our sophisticated weapons continue to technologically lead the world, our civilian industries are faltering in their competition with West Germany and Japan, which have renounced high military spending in favor of supporting civilian industry--resulting in high productivity and low inflation rates.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has found that $1 billion in federal funds spent on the military creates over 100,000 fewer jobs than the same amount spent on education, over 60,000 fewer than that amount spent on health care, fewer jobs still than the same amount spent on construction or mass transit. Partly due to the boom-and-bust nature of defense contracting, military spending is a much less effective tool for stimulating economic growth than that government spending which provides steady jobs.
Faced with the dangerous effects of excessive military spending on our economy and our security, the United States must seek a definition of national security in term others than those of force. With the realities of modern weaponry, war can no longer be considered a panacea for political problems. True national security is determined not by numbers of tanks or missiles, but by a strong and healthy economy which provides adequate employment; a sane energy policy which emphasizes self-sufficiency; a just and equitable approach to dealing with Third World countries; and a diplomacy based on cooperation and consultation, not intimidation and threats. At this point, the greatest threat to American national security is posed, not by the Russians, the Salvadorans. The Chinese, the Cubans, or the Iranians, but by our own excessive military spending, its deleterious effect on our economy, and the new weapons programs which ultimately threaten our own destruction.
Matthew Evangelista '80-4, Murray Gold '80-4, and Tim Gardner '84 and writing a pamphlet dealing with Harvard's relation to the military.