Selling the trillion dollar race to destruction

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THE controversial and highly publicised Tory plan to place a fi million advertising contract to 'sell' the case for Cruise missiles has apparently been quietly ditched. But Ronald Reagan is still intent on a much bigger $65 million 'public diplomacy' campaign to sell his warmongering missiles policy to a scepetical EuroWorking on the scheme will be media consultant Peter Dailey and Reagan's national security adviser, William Clark. Their first enterprise has been the arrangement of a whistle stop tour of Europe by US Bush's mission is to bolster up the NATO heads of state who are visibly wilting in the face of the rapid Bush (left) with US arms negotiator Nice. pean public.

vice-president George Bush.

growth of the peace movement.

But despite the fanfare that greeted Bush's ceremonial reading in West Germany of Reagan's 'Letter to the people of Europe' he has brought no new policies, nor any hope of an easing of the arms race.

Instead all that was on offer from Reagan was a repetition of his 14-month old 'zero option' policy -one that is patently unacceptable to the Moscow bureaucrats.

Dismantle

Under the "zero option' the Soviet Union would be called upon to dismantle all its medium range nuelear missiles in Europe.

In 'exchange' , the US administration would agree not to deploy its stockpilé of 572 Cruise and Pershing missiles in a string of European bases reaching from Greenham Common across to Sicily. range nuclear missiles pag the 162 medium sessed by Britain and France and on 115 submarines assigned to NATO' would remain targeted on the Soviet Union - leaving Moscow at a marked disadvantage at the hands of the anti-Soviet NATO alliance.

Meanwhile Reagan proposes to forge ahead with the new and astronomically expensive MX inter continental missile based in the American mid-west.

And the US is deploying 2,000 to 3,000 additional aircraft-launched cruise missiles carried on B-52 bombers over and above the controversial groundlaunched missiles destined for Europe.

Far from lessening the danger of nuclear war, Reagan's every proposal increases that danger, as part of the biggest arms buildup in recorded history.

In his budget proposals drawn up at the end of January, Reagan has allocated no less than 1.6 trillion dollars - that is, $1,600,000,000,000 - over the next five years to projects including the production of MX and Pershing 2 missiles, the B1 nuclear bomber, and the Trident nuclear submarine programme. The total list of new hardware planned includes F-15 and F-16 fighters, C5 cargo planes, cruisers, aircraft carriers, assault ships and submarines.

Despite talk of cuts in military spending, Reagan has raised the arms budget by $30 billion, while welfare, pensions and social programmes have been viciously cut back.

Opinion poll

A recent CBS-New York Times opinion poll showed that 63 per cent of Americans (as against 48% a year ago) reckon that cutting defence is the best way of cutting the budget deficit.

Reagan's priorities, however, are clear for all to see. And simply to garnish his fraudulent 'zero option' with trumpeted announcements that he is willing at once to sign such an agreement with Soviet leader Andropov does nothing to change these facts.

The Pentagon war chiefs, struggling in Central America to preserve a string of increasingly shaky right wing dictatorships and turn back the new tide of struggle epitomised by the Nicaraguan revolution, are attempting firmly to establish their global military supremacy over the Soviet Having suffered humiliating setbacks to their power in the struggles of the late 1970s; they hope to create conditions in which they can intimidate the Soviet bureaucracy into withholding material support from anti-imperialist struggles and radical regimes, and check its expanding global power and influence.

But in doing so the US 'I don't honestly know. I thi all over the world this is bei and find the defensive weapı weapon that someone hasn't i it could. and the only defer and we'll shoot ours..

"And if you still had that kil where you could have the es against troops in the Seld wit! the major powers to pushing tl Asked whether there could nuclear weapons without an e weapons; President Reagan if they realised that we - agai that staiemate only because our seconds, or our strike at would be so destructive that would hold them off"

Ronald Reagan replying t Quoted in a new Penguin: 'D imperialists are building up the potential for an escalation of tension and the ever-present danger of miscalculations thai could plunge the world into war.

First strike Significantly, US war chiefs have time and again declared that they wish to retain the 'options' of waging a 'first strike' nuclear attack, and using 'tactical' nuclear weapons in central Europe.

This is why NATO leaders have refused to echo Brezhnev's 1981 proposal to forgo any first nuclear strike.

And in reply to the most nk again, until some place... ng research going on, to try on. There never has been a come up with a defence. But ice is, well, you shoot yours nd of a stalemate, I could see xchange of tactical weapons hout it bringing either one of he button" be a battlefield exchange of 'xchange of strategic nuclear replied: 'Well, I would -in if -- if we led them back to that our retaliatory power, them after their first strike, they couldn't afford it, that o reporters, October 16 1981. lefended to Death', edited by Gwyn Prins.' recent proposals from Soviet leader Yuri Andropov for a 370-mile wide nuclear-free zone in central Europe, NATO spokesmen have been quickly dismissive.

One declared that:

''Total elimination of short range nuclear weapons from the crucial area of central Europe would go against the Western Alliance's doctrine of flexible response"

Flexible response.

- By 'flexible response' the generals plainly mean the ability to unleash nuclear weapons at will. Another stated this even more bluntly, •The core of NATO's deterrence policy is aimed at keeping the enemy guess ing at the level of likely response, while NATO doctrine is that the West could even use nuclear weapons first"

This attitude on the part of the imperialist powers is nothing new. It was firmly the position of NATO's former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Alexander. Haig, who declared in a letter to the NATO secretary general in 1979 that:

"One of our presuppositions in nuclear planning is that, under certain circumstances likely to develop in Europe, we may be forced to make first use of nuclear weapons"

This tude on behalf of the US leaders whose fingers will be on the control buttons of the new missiles has helped to build the massive peace movements that have emerged across the continent of Europe.

And it this peace movement which has piled increasing pressure on the leaders of the 'socialist' parties, o the extent thai the social-democratic governments of France Sweden, Greece, Spain and Aus tria recently jointly appealea to reagan to negotiate with the Soviet leadership rather than pursue the next stage of the arms race Even Britain's Dennis Healev wel-known for his pro-NATO stance, has wel comed Andropov's latest proposals and criticised Thatcher and Reagan for rejecting them out of hand.

In West Germany, the coming general election already features the missiles issue at the centre of the campaign, with the right wing Christian Democrat government • of Helmut Kohl upholding Reagan's line while the Social Democratic opposition headed by Hans-Jochen Vogel presses tor acceptance of the Soviet proposals.

It is plain that the missiles will also be at the centre of the stage in the next election in Britain. With MORI polls showing 54%, and Marplan 60%, against Cruise missiles, the Marplan figures also show that a staggering 40% of Tory voters are against the missiles.

No wonder Thatcher -whose own election campaign relied so heavily on the slick salescraft of Saatchi and Saatchi - has begun to contemplate desperate advertising measures to stem the tide of CND.

Such problems have long been anticipated by the US war chiefs. Haig in the same 1979 letter pointed out that:

'We will never be able to put into effect our joint plans in this vital area unless quite exceptional efforts are made to check European tendencies towards neutralism, pacifism and unilateralism"

To conduct this propaganda war, he argues:

'We should constantly bear in mind the necessity of. further activising our collaboration with the mass media"

After exposing the myth of the 'free press' ', Haig speculates on the next step if people are still not convinced:

'If argument, persuasion and impacting the media fail, we are left with no alternative but to jolt the faint-hearted in Europe through the creation of situations country-by-country, as deemed necessary, to convince them where their interests lie"

Ominously, he adds: • •This would call for appropriate and effective action of a sensitive nature"

Perhaps we have yet to see Haig's suggested 'situations" created, and the fruits of his "sensitive' interventions. What is certain is that the increasingly energetic efforts of the imperialist leaders to promote their nuclear arms race have failed to check the growth of the antiwar movement.

But it is important that the movement against the missiles does not get derailed into acceptance of compensating increases in 'conventional'. •armaments (as now proposed by NATO's current Supreme Commander), or into demands for 'dual key' control over the new missiles (which according to MORI is supported by 93% of British voters).

• To have Thatcher's hand move jointly with Reagan's in launching the missiles is no safeguard to the people of Europe.

Moreover, all experience shows that negotiations between the imperialists who devastated Vietnam, and the bureaucrats who sent tanks against the Hungarian and Czechoslovakian workers, will produce not disarmament but meaningless gestures.

The fact is that the root cause of the arms race is the national antagonisms arising from the capitalist system, coupled with the economic and political antagonisms between the nationalised economies of the Stalinist states on the one hand, and the exploitative, aggressive imperialist nations on the other.

It is in the struggle to weaken, disarm and overthrow capitalist governments and the capitalist class in the imperialist countries that we can put a stop to the nuclear war drive, and create more favourable conditions for the workers in the Stalinist states to wage their fight for the revolutionary overthrow of their ruling bureaucracies.

Many of those drawn into active support for CND do not agree with us on these implications: many seriously believe that pressure and public opinion can persuade the Thatcher government to change course on Cruise missiles. Others believe we can and should aim as a first step to stop the new missiles, but for British imperialism to remain part of the aggressive NATO alliance.

Yet the groundswell of support for unilateral disarmament in the British trade union and labour movement, and the growing body of rank and file opinion in the Labour Party opposing the NATO alliance as well as its barbaric weaponry, show that these questions can be must be raised within the anti-war movement.

Opposition to war can and must be developed into opposition to imperialism and the capitalist system which constantly drives towards war; and this means that the struggle against the missiles must be linked up with the other struggles against the Thatcher gorernment.

A valuable step in this could be the campaign now floated by the Greenham Common women for a one-day national strike by momen workers against the missiles. Such a move onto the industrial front would be a major advance for the and war movement.

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Socialist Organiser no.119 February 10 1983 Page "South London is open - and will stay open"

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by Harry Sloan