Before the attacks on September 11, 2001, one of the major news magazines detailed a story which stated that the Bush Administration was considering dismantling the USA's nuclear arsenal. In the post September 11 world no one wants to admit that such an article exist. It is possible that admitting to such an article would make the USA look weak and vulnerable to the terrorist. I am sure is is still in the archives of Time or Newsweek. Calling them, however, does not produce results.
Truth be told, today's US military does not like babysitting a weapons system which is inaccurate, dirty, and limits their ability to respond in the battlefield. That is why the USA has spent so much money on deploying systems which are highly accurate conventional weapons. They prefer to take out one wedding party at a time.
The cost of such system is detailed in this chapter. So too is the observable social response to the lingering death threat produced by being on the brink of nuclear war for more than a generation.
There is little doubt that this is part of how we became an "idiot culture," as denounced in 1992 by Carl
Bernstein.
Truth be told, today's US military does not like babysitting a weapons system which is inaccurate, dirty, and limits their ability to respond in the battlefield. That is why the USA has spent so much money on deploying systems which are highly accurate conventional weapons. They prefer to take out one wedding party at a time.
The cost of such system is detailed in this chapter. So too is the observable social response to the lingering death threat produced by being on the brink of nuclear war for more than a generation.
There is little doubt that this is part of how we became an "idiot culture," as denounced in 1992 by Carl
Bernstein.
The idiot culture of 1992 grew up, and produced Occupy and Anonymous. Read on.
Cliff Potts
September 30, 2014
In a statement released by the Medical Society of the State ofNew York on May 19, 1983, echoing the
reply of the American Medical Association to a query posed by Ronald Reagan
concerning the medical response to a full scale nuclear war with the Soviet Union , MSSNY posted the following:
Gotta Love that Bomb
The United States
won the enduring gratitude of Europe and Japan during the Cold War, or so we
would like to think. It’s not true. What is true is that the U.S. spent billions on offensive nuclear
capabilities to protect Western Europe and Asia
against Soviet and Sino aggression. It can be argued that the arms buildup was
unnecessary based on data now being mined from old KGB archives.
Just to look at some of the facts and figures one can
extrapolate what this meant to the U.S. economy. It is somewhat
difficult to acquire timely information about the cost of the deployment of
these weapons. According to nuclearweaponarchive.org, “The cost of procuring a
Minuteman missile (the "flyaway" cost) was $4.84 million (FY 77) or
$7.88 million if other program costs are pro-rated ($2.63 million per deployed
warhead, not counting the actual warhead cost).”[1]
The number of weapons deployed during the Reagan era
can be found in political book from 1982 published by Simon and Schuster
written by a nonpartisan group referring to itself as the Ground Zero Fund,
Inc. entitled Nuclear War, What’s in it FOR YOU?: Why do you feel scared with
10,000 Nuclear Weapons Protecting You?
In 1982, the U.S. had 1,052 ICBMs, 632 SLBMs,
and 348 Strategic Bombers for a total of 11,000 Nuclear Warheads with a
combined yield of 4,100 Megatons.[2]
In 1977 dollars, based on the figures provided by nuclearweaponarchive.org, the
cost of deployment exceeded $8,150,560,000.00 or $13,269,920,000.00 if
pro-rated. These numbers do not include the cost of the support and maintenance
of these weapons systems over time.
According to What Price Defense? by Robert Foelber
from October 6, 1982 in the Heritage Foundation Archives, the Reagan administration
requested “… $490 billion for FY 1982 and FY 1983. Actual 1982-1983 funding,
however, will amount to at least $20 billion less than originally requested in
the Administration's March 1981 defense plan ….”[3]
The overall defense request for “FY 1982-FY 1986 [was] $1.36 trillion (FY 1983
dollars).”[4]
Our defense of our friends around the world was expensive.
For the sake of clarification for those who did not
grow up in the shadow of the Bomb, some terms need definition.
- Ballistic Missile: A missile that consist of a rocket booster and a payload (one or more warheads) where the missile follows an arch-like flight path (like the Saint Louis arch) to its target. The rocket booster operates for about the first 10 to 15 percent of the time the missile is in flight. After the desired velocity and flight direction have been achieved, the rocket booster shuts off and Usually separates from the payload.Thereafter, the payload continues on the arched flight path and is acted upon predominantly by gravity – which is the meaning of the term ballistic.[5]
- Warhead: The part of a missile or other munitions which contains the nuclear or other explosive system.[6]
- Yield: The energy released in a nuclear explosion. The energy released in a nuclear weapon is measured in terms of Kilotons (KT) or Megatons (MT) of TNT required to produce the same energy released.[7]
- Megaton: A million tons of TNT – a measure of the explosive power of nuclear weapons.[8]
- ICBM: (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) a ballistic missile capable of reaching targets at intercontinental distances – normally defined as a range in excess of 5,000 kilometers.[9]
- SLBM: (Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile) a ballisticmissile carried and launched from a Submarine.[10]
In a statement released by the Medical Society of the State of
It is the position of MSSNY that no adequate
medical response to nuclear war is possible, and the ultimate decision
regarding a response to the implications of nuclear weapons and nuclear war is
up to each individual physician’s conscience. (Council 5/19/83)
It has to be noted that neither the AMA, and the MSSNY
based their statements on their medical research and not on the politics of the
era.
Most scenarios depicting a full exchange with the
Soviet Union (and currently China )
put the loss of life in the United
States at something around the 120 million
dead (roughly half of the population) within the first 30 minutes of a nuclear
war. It takes about 30 minutes for an ICBM to reach its target. The reason
there is no medical response to nuclear war is that most of the advanced
hospital facilities which could respond to one lethal dose of radiation
poisoning and the severe trauma associated with a nuclear detonation are
located in the various major metropolitan areas of the nation. Those cities would
be bombarded by multiple nuclear warheads.
As illustrated in Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon and the CBS series Jericho (which
aired from September 20, 2006 and was canceled on May 16, 2007[11]),
the rural United States
may fare a bit better than many of the population centers. However, rural areas
are inadequately supplied to address the survival of the local community let
alone the mass influx of casualties from the outlying areas of the major
cities. This was illustrated in ABC’s TV movie, The Day After which aired on November 20, 1983 as part of the
on-going national debate of the time.
Alas, Babylon,
still in print today, was eventually distributed by the United States Civil
Defense authority as recommended reading in the 1960s. Jericho is an overly optimistic
and somewhat simplistic portrayal of life following a limited nuclear exchange
borrowing from Alas, Babylon U.S.
by the old U.S.S.R.[12]
With the possible exception of the Mad
Max series of movies, also a post-nuclear war scenario, none of these
fictional renditions adequately portray the social chaos which would follow a
nuclear war.
The one question which remains an issue is: how did
the prolonged exposure to the threat of nuclear annihilation affect the people
born from 1949 to 1991?
In the late ‘50s when Franks was writing Alas, Babylon ,
individual citizens were building home fallout shelters to survive the
inevitable war with the Soviet Union . This is
illustrated in Robert A. Heinlein’s Fernham’s
Freehold and more recently in the 1999 movie Blast from the Past.
At the same time (1951) the Civil Defense branch of
the U.S.
government introduced Bert the Turtle to teach children on the east coast how
to survive a nuclear attack. This, of course, was in the education and training
film Duck and Cover. According to
critics, the film did little except to produce “unease and paranoia.”
We went so far in our obsession over the bomb to
produce Dr. Strangelove, or: How I
Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb in 1964.[13]
In the same year Sidney Lumet brought
forth Fail-Safe, staring Henry Fonda, and Walter Matthau, about a
nuclear crisis brought about by the Cold War. A more bizarre depiction of the aftermath of a
nuclear war was Planet of the Apes in 1968 staring Charlton Heston. We
obviously were obsessed with the threat of nuclear war.
While relations between the United States
and the Soviet Union thawed in the 1970s under
Nixon, Ford, and Carter, by the time Ronald Reagan took office these relations
had grown cold. In part this was due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
during the Carter term. These events led to another round of publications and
warnings about nuclear war. These include Nuclear War: What’s in it FOR YOU?
by Ground Zero, and The Final Epidemic by Physicians for Social
Responsibility published by University
of Chicago Press United States
and the Soviet Union were locked in a death
struggle due to mutual distrust which could result in 170 million dead by design,
accident, or miscalculation.[14]
Can we apply Mark Colvin’s Crime Coercion Theory[15] to the current sociological situation
in the United States
to gain some insight as to what is occurring?
There can be little doubt that the counter culture
movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s was due in part to living in the
shadow of the bomb. It was also in part a rejection of a culture that was so
dependent on militarization. And it was definitely a response to the fear of
instant annihilation.
By the late 1960s, the idea of evacuating the cities
had been abandoned. The government of the United
States would survive, but what kind of government and
what remained of the United
States was highly questionable. In a sense,
the counter culture was also a surrender to the fears of this time. The free
love movement, from which we now have a pandemic of sexually transmitted
disease, was as much an expression of “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow
we may [will] die” as it was “make love, not war!”
This is reverberated in Laurence Veysey’s Law and Resistance: American Attitudes
Towards Authority, which states “… a small but highly visible group of
genuine revolutionaries appeared on the scene in the 1960s. Something about the
times made them careless of personal consequences. Many of them feared that
hydrogen [nuclear] warfare would soon destroy civilization in any event.”[16]
Veysey continues to point out, “Other revolutionaries
[of the era]… adopted … the surrealist strategy of immediate shock and
surprise, usually in a context of sexual exhibitionism. For them, the four
letter word and the nude body were weapons …”[17]
Two things become apparent here. One, the counter
culture movement was a direct response by people who could not “learn to love
The Bomb.” Two, the authoritative response of the establishment was equally a
reaction to living under the scourge of imminent annihilation. The events at Kent State
It is worth repeating the quote by Carl Bernstein concerning
the state of the nation today.
"We are in the process of creating what deserves
to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society
has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the
culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are
becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal."[18]
It looks like the idiocy which Mr. Bernstein laments
is a direct result of the integration of shocked social mores into a mainstream
response to living under the constant threat of mutually assured destruction.
The explosion of pornography and its acceptance in the general adult community
is an extension of the radical response to life on a global death row.
The only conceivable parallel to this is Europe following the first outbreak of the Black Death in
the 1340s. Prior to the deaths of approximately one-third of Europe ’s
population, the majority were content to live under the establishment’s edicts.
By 1353 the Decameron by Giovanni
Boccaccio appeared, appealing to the more morbid sense of living for the moment
with its tales of erotic love and tragic lust. This collection of 100 works
published from 1350 to 1353 is a medieval variation on the pornography seen
today. The Decameron also inspired
Voltaire, and Martin Luther, to assail the Catholic Church in later years.
William Shakespeare also liberally used these stories for inspiration. It is
interesting to note that, “Throughout Decameron the mercantile ethic
prevails and predominates. The commercial and urban values of quick wit,
sophistication and intelligence are treasured, while the vices of stupidity and
dullness are cured, or punished.”[19]
Again there is the rise of the corporation as the hero, not unlike the 1980s
and 1990s in the U.S.
Many a baby-boomer can recall an epiphany at some point in life when they
realized that the world had not been blown up.
Some have argued that the possibility of a nuclear
war was low during the Cold War; nuclear weapons were never used. There was a
nuclear war, it ended World War Two. Hiroshima
(bombed on August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki
(bombed on August 9, 1945) were both the initial targets of nuclear warfare.
The conventional warfare of World War Two did turn into nuclear warfare. As
such, it was not, and is not now, outside the scope of history for such an
event to occur again. As the preacher said in Ecclesiastes, “The thing that
hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which
shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”[20]
When Ronald Reagan sat down at the presidential table
he had a sizable stack of chips to draw from. He also had an ace. It was
dubbed, “Star Wars” and was a propaganda coup. The idea of deploying space based,
counter-weapon systems was a monumental bluff. Such bluffing is an acceptable
tactic in warfare. It is a maxim that the first causality of war is truth. The
space based counter-weapons systems were as much a product of the technology of
Industrial Light and Magic as the movie from which it got its name.
Whatever one thinks about the Cold War today, it was
a war. Conservatives such as William F. Buckley, Jr. are on record as referring
to the Cold War as World War Three. Considering the cost of development,
implementation, deployment, and maintenance of these weapons systems in
addition to the conventional forces deployed it may be a fair analogy.
During World War Two an entire fake army was built up
around General George Patton to misdirect the German high command into thinking
that the invasion of Europe was coming from
another direction. In essence this was what “Star Wars” was; a classic example
in misdirection. It worked.
While we spent all this money to make sure the Soviet
Union did not overrun Germany ,
or Western Europe, and to protect ourselves if it did, our Allies in Europe went their own way with a much reduced military
budget. This is still the case today as the combined forces of the E.U. spend
about half of what the U.S.
is spending today for military budgets. The E.U.’s combined military budget
comes in at just under $300 Billion USD, and the U.S. budget runs around $550
Billion UDS. The United
States is still footing the bill for much of
the military work around the globe.
Europe and Japan
recovered from a half century of brutal warfare under the umbrella of protection
of the United States .
They built and refined their industrial capability. They grew strong enough to
play in the international money market. In the end they sit at the table as
equals and negotiate with the United
States in mutual respect. This is not the
sign of colonial domination.
There is enough evidence of criminal activity in
regards to our corporations (again defining crime as activity that is harmful
to others), but as an empire the U.S. has maintained a certain
restraint in dealing with the world. As noted, the last cities that fell to
nuclear war were at the end of World War Two. The U.S.
did not use nuclear weapons in Korea
though McArthur argued vehemently that we should use them against China .
We did not use them in Vietnam .
The only reason that the Soviet Union was allowed to grow to the threat it
became is because the U.S.
did not use these weapons in a preemptive strike in 1949. The distain for the U.S.
in the current debate over globalization and world domination is somewhat
disingenuous on this point.
The issue of equality becomes important when one
looks back over the 357 years of the British Empire (an empire which still
exists as far as Scotland , Northern Ireland , Wales
and the Falklands is concerned). Countries
which were dependent upon the British for protection were not considered
equals. They were subject of the King or Queen, subjugated, and taught that
they had better damn will live with it. If they resisted, there were enough
British mercenaries to put down any rebellion. For the record, the French were
no better.
For better or worse, the United States has attempted to
establish nationalist governments in locations where it has exercised military
authority. These governments may be specifically set up as allies to the U.S. ,
however, at least it is an attempt to establish a certain nationalistic
autonomy in what was once occupied territory. Cuba was allowed to go free. The
Philippine Islands were granted their own independence without a war against
the U.S. Puerto Rico is still a territory, but has been given the choice to be
independent or a state. Germany
and Japan
were both allowed to rebuild under their own flags and national identity. North Korea was allowed to govern itself while South Korea was built and turned into a friendly
U.S.
ally. Alaska , once part of Russia , is now a U.S. state. South Vietnam was given the chance at
nationalistic independence but it buckled at the first sign of North Vietnamese
aggression after the U.S.
withdrew troops. We have also sped up the process of nationalistic government
in Afghanistan and Iraq .
When compared to the rule of the British, Dutch,
Spanish, and French in their colonial times, the U.S. has taken a far softer
approach in the world domination game.
Less than twenty full years after the fall of the
Soviet Union, the rebuilt, recovered, genteel, unified Europe is now doing all
it can to take control of the global market place by ousting the nefarious Paul
Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank. The E.U.’s contention is that the World
Bank is still under control of the U.S. and should be democratized.
This is a polite way of saying that they want to run the whole show since the
International Monetary Fund is under E.U. control now. The I.M.F. has not been
enlightened in its dealings with foreign debt.
The important thing is that the E.U. is what it is
because the U.S.
covered them while they recovered from the mayhem of the Second World War.
Their response seems to be an attempt to take control of the money supply of
the world.
[1]
The Minuteman III ICBM (1997, October 7). Retrieved June 17, 2008, from
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Mmiii.html
[3]
Foelber, R. (1982). What Price Defense? Heritage Foundation Archives. Retrieved
June 17, 2008, from http://www.heritage.org/research/nationalsecurity/bg217.cfm
[4]
Foelber, R. (1982). What Price Defense? Heritage Foundation Archives. Retrieved
June 17, 2008, from http://www.heritage.org/research/nationalsecurity/bg217.cfm
[11]
The television series Jericho
[12]
It does, however, have a few points which defy logic (i.e. how did the horses survive
the fallout?)
[13]
Staring Peter
Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens, James Earl Jones,
Keenan Wynn, Peter Bull, Shane Rimmer, and Tracy Reed
[14]
Ground Zero. Nuclear War: What's In It for You? New York : Simon and Schuster , 1982, p. 133, Table 9.3;
it is worth noting that these numbers do “float” since they are based on
educated guess work.
[15]
Cullen, F., & Agnew, R. (2006). Criminological Theory: Past to Present
(2nd ed.). New York :
Roxbury Publishing Company
[16]
Veysey, L. (Ed.). (1970). The Spirit of Revolution. In Law and Resistance: American
Attitudes Towards Authority (pp. 278-286). New York : Harper & Row, Publishers.
[17]
Veysey, L. (Ed.). (1970). The Spirit of Revolution. In Law and Resistance:
American Attitudes Towards Authority (pp. 278-286). New York : Harper & Row, Publishers.
[18]
Bernstein, C. (2000, October 28). An A-Z of cultural terms. The Guardian.
Retrieved June 17, 2008, from
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2000/oct/28/dumb5
[19]
The Decameron. (2007, May 31). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
Retrieved 22:03, May 31, 2007, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Decameron&oldid=134693126
[20]
Ecclesiastes 1:9
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