So the unthinkable (a nuclear war) has become win-able. Under orders of the Reagan White House, the Pentagon has performed this miracle. Or so at least it has been reported in the respected The Los Angeles Times and The Times, London. If these reports are accurate, the Pentagon has prepared a strategic plan which contemplates a nuclear warfare of up to six months. This proposal appears to be straight out of the world of fantasy but it is fully consistent with the statements that the US defence secretary, Mr. Weinberger, has been making and the views of some other leading lights of the Reagan administration. General James Stansberry, commander of the air force electronic division, and Mr. Golin Gray, who has been appointed on the advisory board of the arms control and disarmament agency, for instance. From the reports which have clearly been leaked of the plan, it is not possible to say how the Pentagon has made the unthinkable winnable. For the reports only refer to plans to destroy the Soviet Union’s “political and command centres while preserving US centres” and the fact that the Reagan administration has budgeted $18 billion for the second purpose. But one does not need access to details to be able to say that the whole effort bears the hallmark of fantasy, if not sheer lunacy. For one thing, the world’s experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki can leave no room for doubt that a limited nuclear war is a contradiction in terms. For another, even if one accepts for the sake of argument the dubious proposition that the increasingly accurate missile technology and sophistication of means of communications have made a limited nuclear war possible, the Americans cannot possibly guarantee that the Soviets will fight in accordance with the US rules.
The consequences of this mad venture can easily be predicted. As the air force general David C Jones, who has served as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under both president Carter and President Reagan has said, the United States will be pouring a lot of money into a “bottomless pit.” And it will stimulate a nuclear arms race between the US and the USSR of unknown proportions. We do not need to rely on past experience in order to be sure that this disastrous consequence follows the American plan as surely as night follows day. As it happens, such an experience is available to us. In a recent interview to The Guardian, London, one of the ablest US defence secretaries, Mr. McNamara, has recalled that during his tenure of office in the ‘sixties the air force believed that it could achieve and retain a first strike capability (the capability to destroy the Soviet nuclear arsenal) and that this spurred the Soviet effort which has gone on ever since. The US then had Mr. McNamara and others to stop the generals. Now their successors can have a field day.