Tom Lowe
June 20, 2000
I remember listening about twenty years ago to a retired colonel speaking to my civic club on behalf of the Committee on the Present Danger, a small circle of nationally-recognized cold warriors who professed to be concerned about our nation's precarious defense posture with respect to the Soviet Union. The presentation included a short movie illustrating the massive buildup in Soviet military strength and how it represented an intolerable danger to the freedom and prosperity of the U.S.
It was all lies. The advanced weapons the Soviets were supposed to be developing never came into existence. The Soviet Union was a mess, economically and politically, and was about to experience in Afganistan the equivalent of our Vietnamese experience, only worse. In retrospect, it is obvious that the "present danger" was nothing more than the danger to the defense industry's profits.
The Committee on the Present Danger succeeded magnificently in its primary object. The Reagan administration, which threw sixty billion of the taxpayers' dollars at the Strategic Defense Initiative, otherwise known as "Star Wars," might as well have thrown it down a rat hole for all it accomplished on behalf of our security. But the primary object of the Committee wasn't national security, but the economic security of the defense industry.
Now that the Kosovo conflict is over, the defense industry is looking forward to hard times. Small wars, like Desert Storm and Kosovo, can rejuvenate the arms business for only a short while. For it to thrive, it needs the large, continuous injections of cash provided by weapon systems like the B-1 bomber, the MX missile system and the Strategic Defense Initiative.
The ABM Treaty forbids the deployment of ABM systems beyond certain narrow exceptions of which the U.S. never took advantage. Now, under the guise of protecting the U.S. from "rogue states" like North Korea, Iraq and Iran, however, the defense industry is pressing hard for adoption of an ABM system capable of such pinpoint accuracy as to be able to physically intercept and destroy incoming nuclear missiles by the force of its impact, rather than with conventional or nuclear warheads. In order to destroy a missile by impact, the interceptor missile must behave like a bullet hitting another bullet. This must be done, of course, over thousands of miles against incoming missiles travelling thousands of miles per hour. Since a potential enemy will be aware of the existence of the ABM system, it will undoubtedly launch decoys or provide for them to be released along with the warhead, requiring the ABM system to distinguish with nearly perfect accuracy between decoys and the real warhead.
Up to now, the interceptor system has been tested four times, and the next one is planned for this summer. Depending upon the results of that test, the administration will decide whether or not to deploy the system. Dr. Theodore A Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an expert on missile defense systems in the Reagan administration, has declared the previous tests fraudulent, based on documents that he recently obtained from the military. According to the New York Times on June 9, Dr. Postol stated that Pentagon officials "are systematically lying about the performance of a weapon system that is supposed to defend the people of the United States from nuclear attack." Previous tests, declared successful, were rigged with fewer decoys and other simplifications of incoming missile attacks that were far removed from realistic wartime scenarios. Further, Postol stated that the upcoming test is rigged to succeed.
If the system is deployed, we can be virtually certain that it will not intercept incoming missiles launched by enemies because it cannot distinguish between incoming missile warheads and decoys. That has always been the problem. None of the Star Wars proposals could get around that problem without requiring unacceptable expenditures on technology not yet in existence. Further, it doesn't take a lot of expertise to comprehend that the additional cost of spooking an ABM system is a small fraction of what it would cost to get around the spooking. In other words, a dollar spent by a potential enemy on decoys or other countermeasures could easily cost us $40 or even $100.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has become the sole superpower, bestriding the entire world like a colossus. Our conventional and nuclear firepower is overwhelming; no other country or alliance could hope to oppose the U.S., either on the battlefield, on the seas or in space. The only remaining significant nuclear power, Russia, is a third-world country, riven by corruption and desperately attempting to arrest its fall into abject poverty. Justification for building an ABM system rests on the assumption that several "rogue" states, such as Iran, Iraq, or North Korea, might be able within the next few year to acquire missiles capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. They would pose a greater threat than Russia or China because of their rogue status. They don't necessarily have those weapons now -- the danger is that they might get them in the future.
The underlying assumption of our government, that the rulers of "rogue" states would be willing to use weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. in the full knowledge that retaliation would be swift and lethal, is an assumption of such idiocy as to be insulting to persons of ordinary intelligence. The probability that any ruler, no matter how erratic and unpredictable, would risk his own life as well as the existence of his entire nation in order to launch a few unreliable warheads sitting atop unreliable missiles at the U.S. mainland is simply too ludicrous to be seriously considered.
In order to build an ABM system, we must first persuade the other signatory powers to the ABM Treaty to agree to a modification. Up to now, they have unanimously refused any modification that would allow the U.S. to construct the proposed system, so an agreed modification is highly unlikely. If we build it anyway, we will undoubtedly start another arms race, as both Russia and China, feeling threatened, will take appropriate measures to nullify any advantage the ABM system might give the U.S. in the event of general war or a threat of general war.
There are no security benefits to be had from an ABM system, either to the United States or the rest of the world. There are severe drawbacks, however: a renewal of the nuclear arms race with all the economic sacrifice that entails, a heightened atmosphere of distrust among nations, and an increase in the small, but significant, risk of nuclear war, either by accident or design.
The governmental and military officials making the decision to deploy the limited ABM system are certifiably sane and probably of above-average intelligence. There is no doubt that the welfare of the American people is extremely important to them. They are not particularly dishonest or criminal. Yet they are leading us into a military posture that could ultimately spell disaster, for America and perhaps the entire world. Clearly, this behavior on the part of public servants is irrational, dangerous and inexcusable. What goes?
What goes is that we have an institutional problem--not an aggregate of personal problems. Nearly everyone who has worked within a larger institution, whether a private corporation, a nonprofit, or a government agency is familiar with institutional imperatives. The organization takes on a life of its own, completely independent of the personalities and objectives of the persons within it, including the people at the very top of the hierarchy. Often, organizations act contrary to the best intentions of the persons within. The treatment of whistleblowers is a perfect example--they are persecuted for doing what they are supposed to be doing. Even though the persons that make up the organization are decent enough people, whistleblowers threaten the very substance of the organization by peeling back for just a brief moment the corporate persona and exposing the hidden parts of the corporate soul.
Jungian psychology often refers to the "shadow," meaning that part of the personality that is rejected and repressed but which still exists and exerts a deep influence upon the conscious ego. Likewise, organizations may be usefully imagined as casting a corporate shadow--institutional issues and facts that by tacit agreement don't exist in the corporate consciousness. It's easy to ascertain the shadow of your own organization; make a list of issues, events and things that cannot be mentioned, let alone discussed. Often these unmentionables are extremely important to the life of the organization, and ignoring them can spell institutional disaster, either from within or without. Nevertheless, the organization achieves a stable identity, a corporate ego, by denying and refusing to consider issues, events and things that threaten the corporate identity. Like the human ego, the corporate ego perceives the raising of those issues as a threat to its very existence and reacts in ways that from the outside often seem irrational and self-destructive. What is being preserved is not the organization but its ego, which has identified itself with the whole organization.
It logically follows that different types of organization will develop different shadows. Nonprofit corporations, for instance are dedicated to doing good. They want to change the world for the better. Their legally-mandated objectives are not to make a profit or become powerful but to help. Anyone having experience with nonprofits, however, knows that the reality is a far cry from the ideal. Matters of power and money become part of the shadow, things that cannot be mentioned officially, although they are the subject of whisperings in the halls and conversations over quiet lunches.
For-profit corporations have no problem with matters of power and money; they are the reasons for their existence. But corporations have large shadows, most conspicuous among them being issues that stem from the subordination of human values to the profit motive, values like community and family, the environment and economic security. You can be reasonably certain that the devastating effects of a Wal-Mart store on the local economy of small communities is not a subject of discussion among Wal-Mart managers. It's very unlikely that the long-denied but now highly publicized relationship between cigarette-smoking and lung cancer is even today a concern among the executives of large tobacco companies, except as a problem that affects their corporation's bottom line, to be met by corporate lobbying, legal maneuvering and spin.
Corporate executives are not evil people. It is entirely possible for a murderous and destructive organization to be composed of person with the highest personal standards of honesty and morality. The institutional imperative, however, makes it not only possible but actually easy to ignore the human cost of corporate decisions. Economists call these costs "externalities" and they are part of the huge shadow corporations have cast over the past century. They facilitate the flight from personal and corporate responsibility by enabling corporate leaders to say "I had no choice."
The military-industrial complex is not an exception to this principle. The avowed purpose of our armed forces is to preserve the security of the United States. We repose much trust and confidence in the loyalty of our forces to the constitution, to decency, and to justice. Consequently, the shadow of the military is vast. The author had the opportunity to observe that shadow during the four years he spent on active duty in the Air Force ('68-'72) and another seven years in the Air National Guard. He discovered that the environment in which the services immerse their personnel is highly effective in encouraging a certain lack of reflection that career military persons disclose in carrying out their orders. It doesn't pay to think too much on the suffering you're causing when you are bombing civilians from 40,000 feet. Such reflection interferes with carrying out the mission.
The military-industrial complex's mission is national security.
Its shadow is insecurity.
Without insecurity the military-industrial complex could not exist to make us secure. It's the problem with any of the so-called "helping" professions; if poverty vanished overnight, for instance, the vast army of social workers who look after the needs of the poor would become unemployed. If crime were to cease, the police departments of our cities would have little reason for existence, as least as they are now constituted.
At the end of World War II, there was a significant reduction in the military establishment, as millions of servicemen were released to return to civilian life. Within three years, however, we had already began a new military buildup known as the Cold War. We can see now how the military-industrial complex that had risen to power and prospered during WWII became a major political player in national politics, and how the internal imperatives of the military-industrial complex shaped the international situation to suit its own purposes, both in the western and the communist blocs. It is easy to forget the crude anti-communist propaganda of the early 1950s that portrayed our national purposes as pure and demonized the Russians. It is even easier to forget how quickly and completely the American people were duped into supporting a nuclear arms race that placed the entire world in danger of a nuclear holocaust, or how, living in fear created by the national security propaganda machine, the American people nearly handed over their freedom to what in essence was a national defense protection racket posing as anti-communism.
Now there is another generation too young to remember;
too ignorant of what has happened in the past to recognize the folly that is repeating itself
and an elder generation that refuses to learn the lessons of the past, or perhaps conveniently consigns its unpleasant memories to the mental waste can.
Once again, the greatest opportunity for lasting peace in half a century is fading;
What we are being sold as security, an anti-ballistic missile system,
will most certainly bring us insecurity because it will make other nations of the world insecure. We now live in a world in which security is indivisible. As long as one small nation is insecure, then we are all insecure.
The nations we are to be defended against,
The "rogue" states, are the very states we have in the past persecuted, bombed and pillaged to our own advantage: Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya.
Who knows what other nations might eventually join the list? Serbia? Guatemala? Nicaragua? Chile? Why should they forget what our nation has done to them?
What we should really fear is ourselves,
our willingness to be played by well-meaning men
possessed by a dangerous vision of absolute national security,
encouraged in this pursuit by a military-industrial complex,
possessed in turn by a insatiable appetite for unbounded profits,
who would protect us from a hostile and dangerous world that we ourselves are in the process of creating out of our fear and out of our desire for an untroubled life on easy street.
The first step to real security is to peel back just a bit our own persona--our mask--and reflect upon how our own unconscious demons have been manipulated by our leadership and projected upon people and nations that we have been told to hate and fear.
Copyright 2000 by Thomas Lowe. Published in The Jackson Progressive, http://www.jacksonprogressive.com. Noncommercial reproduction is hereby authorized as long as this notice is included.