Daily Nebraskan
Page 3
!Debaters disagree on nuclear parity
Friday, November 12, 1982
By Eric Peterson
A debate on solutions to the nuclear arms race featured
agreement on the moral issues involved, but disagree
ment about whether the United States and the Soviet
Union have nuclear parity.
Leo Sartori, UNL physics professor, consultant to
the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
Nuclear Issues
and former senior adviser to the SALT II delegation,
said the time is right for a nuclear freeze when the two
powers are about equal.
Steven Steiner, public affairs adviser on European
Affairs in the United States State Department,
represented the administration's point of view.
About 100 students and some faculty came to hear
the debate in the Nebraska Union main lobby Thursday.
The Rev. Larry Doerr, of Commonplace United Minis
tries, noted the new opposition of many Catholic clergy
to the nuclear arms race.
"Morally, to the extent to which you and I consent
to this situation, we are all engaging in mass suicide."
Administration discredits proponents
Philip Dyer, UNL political science professor, said
administration is trying to discredit the motives and
judgment of nuclear freeze proponents.
"The administration has given the impression that
people opposed to the arms race are conscious or un
conscious dupes of a foreign power," Dyer said. But
the insistence on stopping the arms race now is
completely justifiable, Dyer added.
"It's expected there will be hostility between you
and a government which you perceive to be operating
in an unwise and unjust way."
The present policy of deterrence by infinite contain
ment - a spiral in which each side of the arms race keeps
building in order to equal or pass the other side - must
be replaced by one of finite containment, which Dyer
defined as "the level of destruction beyond which it's
redundant to go."
However, Steiner said, the nuclear freeze movement
may hinder efforts by the administration to reduce,
not freeze, nuclear weapons. "The aim is to reverse the
nuclear arms race, not to cap it."
U.S. strength necessary
Steiner said continued United States nuclear strength
is necessary because of the Soviet Union's history of
aggression in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and more recently
Afghanistan and Poland.
"We have to watch very carefully what could well
be a Soviet race to superiority in certain areas."
Steiner said the Soviets are ahead in the number of
land missiles, while the United States has more missiles
in other modes, such as submarines and bombers.
Disarmament must be mutual and reach a stable and
equal level, Steiner said.
"It's been shown that unilateral steps won't succeed;
we need mutual steps," Steiner said. "We want deep
reductions down to mutual levels. The "mutual and
verifiable" clause in the nuclear weapons freeze proposi
tions shows that most Americans have the same concerns,
Steiner said.
Steiner called the administration's disarmement plans
"ambitious and realistic." He said the plan's basic success
is illustrated by Soviet acceptance of the goal of
reductions in arms levels, an idea Steiner said the Soviets
rejected when it came from the Carter arms negotiators.
Pressure by dissidents
The Soviets may still try to apply pressure on the
United States through dissident American opinion, Steiner
said.
"The Soviets will do everything they can to drive a
wedge between us (the U.S. government) and the
people ..." Steiner said.
Sartori responded with a reference to the gravity of
the arms race. "The present level of armaments on both
sides is so high that no conceivable turn of events . . .
could provide solutions to the danger in which we live,"
Sartori said.
He said survival depends on two possibilities: getting
rid of all nuclear weapons, or changing the climate bet
ween the United States and the Soviet Union to eliminate
the possibilities of panic or accident.
Sartori said Reagan's arms negotiations are ineffective
because neither cruise missiles nor British and French
bombs are included in the weapons totals on America's
side of the balance.
Sartori said he favors the nuclear freeze idea as a
start. "It would certainly be a strong, positive first step,"
he said, adding that such a freeze would not lock the
United States into nuclear inferiority.
Building another generation of weapons before
freezing or reducing arms levels simply will not work.
Satori said.
"If we have to build up to try to get equal." the
Soviets will do the same," Sartori said. "A nuclear res
ponse (other than a freeze and reduction) makes no
sense from any point of view."
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