wants the bomb.
AT THE close of 1986, 'the West' is still deep in the aftermath of Reykjavic. For the second time in less than a year the Soviet Union has put forward proposals to scrap the nuclear weapons of the world -and for the second time the United States, backed by Britain, France, West Germany members of the has turned them down.
This sequence of events, more than any other, has exposed the 30-year old myth of 'multilateral' nuclear disarmament. The millions of column inches spewed out by the bourgeois press after the Iceland summit cannot paper over that crack. For the first time, the real position of the. Western been forced out into the open.
Since the rise of the weapons movement in the l9sus, case against unilateralism has argued of multilateralism — as a different means of achieving the same end: the elimination of all nuclear weapons. true content of that debate is shown for what it is. For multilateralists, the issue is not how to get rid of nuclear arsenals, but how to keep them.
To see the way this truth has emerget since Reykjavik, consider coverage Image on Labour's defence po hankering to the empire? WITHIN 24 hours of its launch last week, Labour's new 'defence' campaign had been held up to minute inspection and every inconsistency exposed. The media rubbed its collective hands in glee; Labior's right wing seized the opportunity to begin an open campagn to scrap unilateralism. To know why, you don't need to read a single word of the party's glossy literature — just cast a glimpse at the Modern Britain motif: a globe draped in the Union Jack! But to realise how thoroughly doomed this campaign what the Labour leadership imagines are the exigencies of the forthcoming election in Britain. It is necessary to grasp the real line up of economic, political and military forces in the echoing across the USA and West Europe. In Britain especially, 1986 will close with nuclear weapons at the very top of the political agenda. CAROL TURNER reviews Labour's defence campaign and explains why the West establishment's friend of the tober edition began:
the other NATO alliance, another. powers has anti-nuclear the been fend against. so-called reached spokesman Now une DIODIVID.
October last. campaign with precision. devoted to the summit by the Time Magazine. No anti-nuclear weapons Time has most clearly exposed the fake position of the United States government at the end of the Iceland talks. An article in the 27 Oc*Flying home from Reykjavik at the start of last week, Ronald Reagan appeared to be winging from one debacle The dejection the president's carriage as he walked out of Hofdi house, the disappointment etched into every line of secretary of state Shultz's face as he briefed the press, has flashed an unmistakable message to T! watchers around the world: the summit meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev had ended in failure. Worse, headlines were already spreading the impression that Reagan had thrown away the promise of a nuclear-free world by clinging to his vision of a space-based defence — even if there might be no missiles to de'But even before Air Force Washington, White House (sic) Larry Speakes chief of staff Donald Regan launched a campaign to reverse the downbeat imWith predictable cynicism, the United States has put a huge effort into squaring the Reykjavik circle since Time outlined the US three main points. It was Gorbachey, not Reagan, who had blocked a drastic reduction in nuclear weapons. so by demanding as price he should have known Reagan would never pay: confining all work on the US Strategic Derence Initiative research for 10 years.
"The president had no choice but to reject his demand, which would have killed SDI. Said Reagan at a Baltimore rally for Republican senatorial candidate Linda Chavez:
America's insurance policy that the Soviets will begin living up to the arms control agreements that they've agreed to. SDI is one of the chief reasons the Soviets went to the summit and one of the primary reasons they'll come back again. SDI is the key to a world free of nuclear blackmail"
'Most important, the summit was not a failure but, in its astonishing success It brought world to the brink of a deal that seeme imaginable before Reagan and G achev arrived in Iceland: destructi of all intermediate-range missiles in Europe and a radical reduction of their number in Soviet Asia; a 50 per cent slash in the superpowers long-range ballistic missiles in five years and their total elimination after five more only the elements of the bargain that was almost struck.
That is an accurate description of what Reykjavik could have achieved.
United States menmt has said and done since then has been aimed at fudging the issue. In particular, the USA is determined to conceal the fact that it is Gorbachev who proposed the elimination of all nuclear weapons and it is Reagan and his allies who reject it. As Time itself so coyly put it, the US case 'is not entirely consistent How can Reykjavik simultaneously have 'showed the stopping of SDI to be Gorbachev's goal goals' "brought a comprehensive arms deal much closer'? How can Reagan pro. claim that his is a policy to make the and simultaneously safe from nuclear annihilation?
bachev's, sive, first-strike nuclear complete commitment nuclear weapons.
'multilateralism' — have with their fingers in the till.
proposals.
'hammered at Star Wars.
He did and a host of other West politicians had joined the affray.
laboratory "SDI is president Reagan's conclusion to remarkable, Kohl, Mitterrand to force way, an the on the kind of "non-dea nuclear on the tactical nuclear Europe.
most striking intend keeping their own nuclear weapons.
*telling the Soviet nuclear , governmodern surveillance techniques Plain NATO military strateg turned anti-nuclear United States safe from nuclear attack reject . the Gorbachev policy for the elimination of nuclear weapons — the one policy that would guarantee the US was totally The truth is that Reagan's, not Gorgoals were laid bare in Iceland: building and keeping an offenannualy. to retaining The United States been caught Ronald Reagan was not alone in reacting as he did to the Soviet Union's On behalf of the Tories, Geoffrey Howe denounced as illogica and retrograde' Gorbachev's attemp to tie his proposals to a limitation of By the time that US and Soviet foreign ministers met in Vienna early last November, Kohl, Mitterand 'Have we seen the ultimate in defence politics gymnastics?' the Guardians's John Palmer correctly asked, 'the leaders of the major European NATO states finding space to attack control «rul strategy from the right. This is the only the semi-clandestine cam. Reen kowaged sims Thatar Messieurs Chiracthe American, away from a "zero-zero" deal on Euronuclear missiles. non-Seropean attah superpowers claim they come so close to in Reykjavik, also involves pressure US to increase its short-range Meanwhile the British an held French have as good as made it clear that zero-zero deal or not, deep cuts in US-Soviet strategic missiles or not, the!
"national' Another Guardian report summed up Thatcher's position in a report of her recent Camp David visit. She was that the deterrent, including Britain's step natchers main contribution to Thatcher's main contribution to the attempted rehashing of the postReykjavik multilateralist position was 'you can't disinvent nuclear weapons'. Of course that is true, but not the point:
mean that the possibility of policing a ban on nuclear weapons is within easy reach The real thinking which has always the United States military was admirably rought out in First Strike: The Per tagon's Strategy for Nuclear War, by Robert Aldridge, a Polaris designed writer. troduced his book (Pluto, 1983) with a quote from Tolstoy: Should you read upon an encounter with an elephant a sign saying buffalo, believe not your eyes.' Aldridge systematically expose the US buffalo for the nuclear ag gressor it is Hiroshima and Nagasaki showe 'that when the United States had th ability to launch an unanswer nuclear strike there was no reluct to do so.' Then the Soviet U leveloped nuciear weapons an USA lost its edge. The anno nuclear policy of each country to deterrence - the threat of n has pursued a more aggressive coe force policy since the mid-1950 advertised. What infome advertised available in the public domain se couched in military-scientific and is buried deep in technical jo congressional hearing posture ing the various weapons pro isolated from one another so the more professional critics ! ficult time seeing how they to provide an aggressive
) NEEDS Socialist Action 19 Dec 1986
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really is — and why unilateral nuclear disarmament must still be fought for and applied — it is necessary to go far beyond
post-war world. 1986 is a good time to start. It began with Gorbachev's proposals to eliminate all nuclear weapons from the world, and will end with the ramifications of Reykjavik
government, together with the British government — those arch-advocates of