Peddlers of Crisis: the Committee on the Present Danger and the Politics of Containment

By Jerry W. Sanders (Boston, South End Press, 1983).

 

            In the 1970Us, managerialism became Western EuropeUs politics ofchoice as it began to do business with the East.  No longer would their proximity and close cultural tiesallow them to ignore what they had ! to offer each other:  the USSR and Eastern Europe neededWestern technology and capital; and Western Europe needed the markets,relatively cheap labor, and energy resources of its Eastern neighbors. 

Conflictingideologies manifested in the military alliances of NATO and the Warsaw Pact didnot support such an economic partnership and at the decadeUs endmilitarism on the other side of the Atlantic politically killed détenteand trilateralism, overtook the White House, and put Ronald Reagan incharge.  The Reagan AdministrationdidnUt smile on EuropeUs managerialist ways which they thoughtwould lead only to the strengthening of communism and saw unilateralist actionas a necessary way to right EuropeUs wrongs.  !

Soon afterReaganUs inauguration, he had the opportunity to make good on hismilitarist campaigning.  The Polishmilitary government jailed the leaders of Solidarity and imposed martial lawover the country.  Theadministration answered by banning US companies from selling oil and gasequipment and from participating in the furthering of the Euro-Sovietconstruction of the Siberian natural gas pipe line.  Europeans were asked to do likewise, and were offeredAmerican coal and nuclear power in place of the inexpensive natural gas.  Europe declined.  Militarists called for harshermeasures, including a full-scale grain and credit embargo of Poland and theUSSR in effort to drive Pol! and into bankruptcy or to default on its loans.  Secretary of State Haig, more sensitiveto European interests, counseled against the unilateralist proposals which wereconsequently substituted for less strict measures. 

The measurestaken were weak in comparison--more symbolic than substantive--and brought anuproar from the militarist camps who accused the administration of sellingshort on its Rprincipled anti-communist ideologuesS in favor ofRcommercial and banking interests.S  By not denying RWestern loans, Western grain, andabove all Western technologyS to Poland and the USSR, the US was,according to Richard Allen in a speech to the Heritage Foundation, neglectingto Rcripple and weakenS the Soviet Empire and to Rfurt! her theprocess of disintegration from within that may mark the beginning of the end ofthe Soviet Empire.S 

With suchrhetoric, business interests came under increasing attack.  An Emergency Committee for AmericanTrade was formed by 63 MNCUs to encourage the administrationUs sofar moderate strategy.  But, foreconomic sanctions to be effective, Europe would have to support them and theydidnUt.  Their economies weremuch more dependent on East/West trade than the US.  Reagan, however, ignored the interest of Europe and in Juneof 1982 he began to impose US law over East/West business transactions. 

Next onEuropeUs list of complaints with the US was the USUs nuclear policywhich seemed overtly willing to use nuclear force and continuously doubtedWestern EuropeUs commitment to the destruction of communism due to theiradvocating of arms control.  Theadministration immediately began to push for the deployment of neutron bombs inEurope,  while prophesizing both aneminent strike from the USSR and that a nuclear war would probably be containedwithin Europe.

Demonstrationsagainst nuclear arms broke out across Europe as the threat of war became morereal.  Wary European governmentsbegan to distance themselves from Washington even more to safeguard their ownstability.   In effort toplacate the peace movement and to draw attention away from their incendiarypolicies, the US met with the USSR for arms negotiations but their stances onthe issue were so far apart that the meeting was seen as merely a symbolicgesture.

As the alliancebetween the US and European governments was weakening, one between their peoplegrew as the US citizenry began to develop a peace movement of its own.  The movement started as a reaction toUS involvement in El Salvador but soon spread to rally against nuclearweapons.  Soon, teach-ins werebeing held nation wide and a national week for nuclear war education, GroundZero, was held that proposed a halt in the testing, production and deploymentof nuclear arms followed by arms reductions.  Reagan himself denied the ! plausibility of such actionciting, with much controversy, that the US lagged in strength behind the USSR. 

Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy,Gerard Smith, and George Kennan, known as the Big Four, pleaded that theadministration should reconsider their position and begin by denouncing thefirst-use of nukes, something the USSR did twenty five years ago.

Under pressure,Reagan proposed START on May 9, 1982, a program aimed at reducing nuclearweapons by focusing primarily on the cut back of Soviet arms, leaving Americaat a decided advantage. A Pentagon leak shortly after revealed that as the USpublicly called for a reduction in arms they were privately preparing to fightlimited nuclear wars that called for an expansion of counterforce and covertoperations.  The announce! ment ofSTART thus failed to be the peace movement depressant that the administrationhad hoped for.

Policy makerscontinued to turn deaf ears to citizens opposed to the nuclearproliferation.  On June 17, 1982700,000 demonstrators gathered outside the UN to protest the arms race at theSpecial Session on Disarmament. The administration was unsympathetic as a month later it broke offnegotiations for a comprehensive test ban and called for further testing athigher levels which implied an escalation in weapons technology funded by a 30%increase in the 1983 weapons test budget.

Congress,however, was becoming wary of the huge budgets and of remilitarization aspublic sentiment turned increasingly against administration policies.  The Congress cut a deal that trimmed 30billion from the military budget and raised taxes by 98 billion.  Reagan agreed but after signing latersaid that the deal didnUt confine him beyond 1983.  Congress felt Rbetrayed anddouble-crossedS and to make up for the lost spending in 1983, the budgetin 1984 jumped 17.3% with inflation.

 

Summary by MATTHEW THOMAS REID