Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1961. július-december (10. évfolyam, 28-52. szám)
1961-11-23 / 47. szám
Thursday, Nov. 23, 1961 A MERIK I MAGYAR SZÓ 7 In the following pages, two distinct aspects of the bomb-shelter program are discussed. Mr. Hagan, a teaching fellow at Harvard University and editor of the Committee of Correspondence Newsletter, deals primarily with the program’s political connotations and its practical efficacy in case of nuclear attack. His report was originally prepared for CAMBRIDGE 38, an undergraduate journal at Harvard, whose editors have generously consented to its prior publica- tion in THE NATION. In a second article, John Kay Adams, an assistant city editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, deals primarily with the ethical and moral problems posed by the program and the public’s slow' response to it.—EDITORS. WE HAVE arrived at an ugly moment in our national history. Across the land, as the publicity effort of civil defense gets throngh to more and more people, Americans have begun to arm themselves against their neighbors. The Los/Angeles Times (Aug. 5) reports a speech by the Civil Defense Coordinator of Riverside County to the people of Beaumont, a city standing at the pass between Los Angeles and the Imperial Valley to the southeast. He warned all citizens to arm themselves with guns to repel the hundreds of thousands of refugees who would flee that way if Los Angeles were bombed. Thereupon the citizens of Nevada undertook to see that the northeast route out of Los Angeles through their state should also be sealed by an armed militia. Next the Civil Defense Coordinator of Kern County told the Bakersfield Chamber of Commerce (Bakersfield is on the northern route out of the Los Angeles basin) that fleeing ill and t starving Angelinos w'ould be stopped south of town and diverted into the desert by armed policemen (San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 23). That leaves still open only the route due south, and if the citizens of San Diego are awiare of the trend of events, I imagine that we shall hear from them soon. For a nation that proclaims it wrould rather be dead than red, we seem to turn up an awful lot of people who W'ould rather be alive than humane, and who, when all the blather about values and a way of life is done, are ready to mow down not just abstract institutions, but their friends and neigbors, in order to save their own skins. This is only one facet of the ugliness, however. It is too surprising to hear small-town toughs abusing logic by talking about being ready to die rather than endanger certain values and, in the same breath, advocate this kind of behavior under attack. It is just saddening to find them in the apparent ascendancy. But it is shocking that a similar kind of bad faith is given sanction by the highest voice in the land, and that nearly all the public press rushes forth with its approval. What it that higher bad faith? It is the use of .American civilian lives as counters in the game of credibility. A few years ago, George Kennan implored as to have no part in holding millions of innocent people hostages for the behavior of their governments. He was addressing the proponents of massive retaliation, and the innocent millions lie had in mind wras the enemy population. Since then our policy has moved dowm a few notches. The word “credibility” has become wrhat “faith” and “dogma” were for the Spanish Inquisition, justifying anything, including holding hostage not only the enemy’s population, but our owm as well. Ta prove that we are willing to punish the enemy, it must be shown that we don’t care what he does back to us in retaliation. It must be shown that we have the will to “fight” (an outmoded word for what modern war involves). And to showT it, the American people have to be manipulated into the appropriate mood, if necessary by falsehoods and half-truths, to demonstrate that they are prepared to accept retaliation. That they are and will be utterly unprepared regardless of their basement shelters ,no one tells them. The important question for the gamesters is not the actual survival chances, but their appearance. NOW, although it Is not a heartening prospect, it may bo that we are willing to cooperate in kidding ourselves so that our leaders can kid the enemy. A lot of people are already volunteering for this service. It is even less attractive, however, to look at it from the position of the responsible officials. A truly effective shelter system, good for today and tomorrow, is beyond what we are willing to spend, probably beyond our means, perhaps beyond the endurance cf our social system, and possibly beyond the endurance of human kind. The officials know this, but they have found a cheap alternative, and it is the public-relations man’s way out: to convince the people that they are sheltered even when they are not. That is the greatest ugliness of this moment. These would be harsh words for a policy aimed solely at protecting the lives of innocent non-combatants, even one not entirely effective; and if I believed that that was all it wTas, I would urge full cooperation. Leaving aside for the moment the question of effectiveness, then, cannot a national policy of civil SHELTERS I. WHEN THE HOLOCAUST COMES — Roger Hagan Interlandi in the Des Moines Register “IT’S MINE, MINE, ALL MINE...!” defense be said to be solely protective and in itself innocuoas? I am afraid not. For the Unted States, it has many other implications. In the presence of our missilery, our coünterforce and “long w'ar” strategies, CD is a part of an armory. This need not be merely inferred. The Holifield Committee stressed, as a result of its 1959 hearings, a secondary value of civil defense extending far beyond its essentially protective capacity, namely its value as deterrent. Many contemporary theorists of civil defense stress tliis quality of their efforts. Some, I should say, insist that CD deters simply by reducing the numbers killable, thus making nuclear attack less attractive to an enemy by thwarting his aim. But any theorist worth his salt knows that killing everybody is not the enenijy’s aim at all; rather the threat to kill is his means. His aim is to achieve stability, security or compliance to his wishes by means of the threat. Undoing his means by CD does not alter his aim, but merely throws it up to him to get a better means. In the context of the arms race, the better means will be a more penetrating weaponry which nullifies the1 going level of CD to the point where we are worried again. No, an intelligent theorist knows better than to think (whatever he may- say) that CD is in itself a deterrent; it is no more deterrent by itself than it is provocative by itself What the expert means when he says CD contributes to our deterrence is that it makes the use of our own weaponry more credible. The Holifield Committee hearings (and the way the CD effort has grown since our hopes for a new diplomatic deal have gone sour) suggest that Washington sees CD above all in its strategic and not its protective dimension, and this means that our leaders desire its contribution to credibility. Credibility for what? Certainly not for pure retaliation. CD contributes little or nothing to the credibility of our “invulnerable,” or second-strike retaliation system. This can go off after most citizens are dead, and the enemy knows it; CD will not make it any more frightening to him. CD’s likely contribution is to counterforce or pre-emptive strategy. It makes it believable (as long as everyone thinks CD does protect him, so that the enemy sees we think it) that we will smash the enemy for misdemeanors — or even for creating unbearable tensions — without waiting for him to smash us. WHY the recent revival of this kind of bluster and sham? It is apparently the result of the impasse in cur foreign policy. Ever since it became clear what a bad position we occupied in the Berlin crisis, and in the absence of any understanding of what long- range goals we might be seeking to secure in the settlement of that crisis ,the panicky feeling has prevailed that the only way out of this thing is to make the Russians back down somehow. We do not trust nor want to deal with Ulbricht’s East German regime, and at the same time we do not w|ant to bring that regime into the arena of recognition and responsibility where we might, through the U.N., have some recourse by which to make it live up to agreements. The alternative is to hold Russia res- ponsibje for East German behavior in all respects. Zbigniew Brzezinski writes ip the August 14-21 New Leader what must be close' to the official position in the State Department: A response limited merely to re-asserting Western determination to stay in free Berlin would be inadequate. It might well lead to our finding Ourselves badly out-maneuvered come late fall. Th# U.S. should therefore make it clear now that any alteration by the East German regime, gradual or otherwise, of the existing arrangements vith the Sovie ts would lead to measures directed not only at East Germany but at the USSR itself. Brzezinski admits that there is “great danger that the nation may be willing to fight for Berlin but will not understand the importance of backing the Administration over the apparently ‘obscure’ issue of whether or not to deal, and how to deal, with initially polite East German officials controlling Berlin’s access routes.” Somehow, the implication is, we must appear ready to go to war for even as seemingly small a matter as that. Otherwise our bargaining position is destroyed. ARE WE actually to believe that, because of som* East German misbehavior, the President, who Know* ihe; probable level of retaliation, the number of people who could reach effective shelter in a large counterattack, the impossibility of warning them ahead of time for fear of prompting pre-emptive attack, and the kind of world the few who survive would emerge into, will leave the company of his family (for we know him now as a family man) and call for a punitive action against Russia that might provoke such retaliation? The Russians are supposed to believe it, so we must too, because this is the nature of credibility. Deterrence is ultimately a state of mind which, must exist on both side or it will exist on neither The danger Brzezinski mentions, of our people’s not seeing the point of going to war over wha stamp* the papers, is that this lack of resolve will be visible to the enemy. Thus do resolve and its visibility become so important that the nation becomes totally distracted from assessing reality by a ritual process of renewal of faith and exorcism of humane sensibility (a quality hardly consistent with credibility). In this light the Birch Society could be said to play roughly the same cultural role as the Administration spokesmen and that large segment of the press -which seems to consider itse’f the Administration’s credibility task force, when these rushed, forth to assure Senator Margaret Chase Smith who feared that we were beginning to show some scruples (not her word) about using- nuclear weapons, that we would indeed, if provoked Still, it is difficult to retain such a cosmic perspective on the matter. If one need not be surmised at what conservative spokesmen are saying, it is not pleasant to discover the liberal journalists chiming in “We will, indeed,” nor to hear men we have known for their calm reason and liberal humanity, such as Ralph McGill or Eric Sevareid, Max Lerner or the editors of The Reporter, now talk the strutting language of credibility. It seems, indeed, unreal. That, of course will have to change, for to can hardly have incredible liberals serving credibility. Some part of their old selves will have to be submerged and forgotten, and another ugly change will have taken place. Ugly seems to be best word for it. We argue for a national policy of civil defense under the rubric of “protection” when we care most for its contribution to our weaponry — not our purely defensive weaponry, but our offensive and threatening weaponry. Because of confusion and embarrassment and diplomatic isolation, we resort to such weaponry in a program of bluster. Arid to make it look good, we trot out every belligerent remark that every man in the street tells every roving reporter from coast to coast. But what is ugliest is how we prepared that man in the street. It is ugly that it should become national policy, subscribed to by decent men, to develop among the American people a sense of courage based on a false belief in the acceptability of nuclear war, and to use this courage as a bargaining point. Because to accomplish this—to make the American citizen useful as a counter in the game—it is necessary to kid him. The OCDM (Office- of Civilian Defense Mobilization) kids him, Life kids him, Edward Toiler and the papers which carried his articles kid him, and the President — who lias announced that he will bring forth a plan for a fallout shelter costing only $150 or so — kids him. To see this, one need
