Spectrum; Lecture by George McGovern on "Hope in the Nuclear Age" (Part 2)

In. A production of w o f c r Amherst. This is spectrum. Good afternoon. I'm currently jury with the conclusion of an address by George McGovern former senator from South Dakota who spoke at Smith College this past February a three term senator who lost his re-election bid in 1980. McGovern is probably best known for his winning the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 1992. However then President Richard Nixon won re-election in a landslide victory in 1904. McGovern again ran for his party's nomination for president campaigning on among other issues a decrease in defense spending and military troop withdrawal from Lebanon and Central America. On last week's program McGovern commented on what he believed was a shortsighted foreign policy in regards to Latin America and predicted that the eventual outcome of current policy

will be the deployment of U.S. troops. He also spoke on the history of the current arms buildup between the US and the Soviet Union. On today's program George McGovern continues his talk by criticizing the president's strategic defense initiative. Otherwise call the Star Wars proposal in his address recorded on February 27 1985 McGeorge Bundy George Cannon Robert McNamara and here are a Republican incidentally. These four men who were given a lifetime to the study of strategic and security issues. They quoted Senator Arthur Vandenberg some words to describe. How they reacted to the Star Wars proposal and this is what Senator Vandenberg said about a similar scheme 40 years ago the end is unattainable. That means harebrained and the cost

staggering. Now the four authors conclude and I want to quote them to be precise on this. There is simply no escape from the reality that Star Wars offers not the promise of greater safety but the absolute certainty of a large scale expansion of both ostensive and defensive systems on both sides and I think that's clear. If you're sitting on the other side it doesn't make much difference which one starts this business. If you're sitting on the other side. And you see your potential enemy begin to build a net. That's supposed to intercept. Incoming missiles and you know that that enemy still has his off fancy plans he still has the capacity to destroy you. And he's building to the day when you can't. Presumably hit him what are you going to do. You're either going to try to build a defensive shield like that of your own which means

in the normal use. The expansion of the arms race on both sides or you're going to try to overwhelm it with more authenticity. Weapons and I think the latter course is probably the more likely one to it to expect. But in any event these four men representing both parties former Cabinet officers say it is possible to reach arms control agreements with the Soviet Union. Or it is possible to insist on Star Wars but it's wholly impossible to do both. And I think it's as simple as that we can either halt this arms race at this time and begin to pursue. A freeze on both sides or we can launch off on some new de-stabilizing trillion dollar operation of this kind and that means the end of any real hope for Arms Control or the peace of the

world. Now these four authors quote the late president replied Four days after Mr. Reagan made that so-called Star Wars speech and here is what the late president said. Which is which is an indication I think of what Soviet reaction he said on the face of that. A layman may find it attractive as the president speaks about what seems to be defensive measures. But this may seem to be so only on the face of it and only to those who are not conversant with the facts. In fact he says the strategic ostensive forces of the United States will continue to be developed and upgraded and along that line there we will be attempting to acquire a first strike capability under these conditions he said.

The intention to secure itself to. The possibility of destroying with the help of the AVM defenses the corresponding strategic systems that the other side is a bid to disarm the Soviet Union in the face of the U.S. nuclear threat. Now that is precisely the way we reacted 20 years ago when the Soviets set out to build a defensive anti ballistic missile system and our policy makers worked diligently. And the candidate IAN JOHNSON years to convince them that it was destabilizing to try to threaten deterrence by building that kind of a defensive shield and after years of work and persuasion the Soviets abandoned it and now we are apparently bent on pursuing the same course that we once saw so destabilizing. It's my own view that we've been living on borrowed time for quite a while and the nuclear

age on numerous occasions our own nuclear alert system has gone into Step 1 sometimes to step 2 sometimes step 3 on the basis of what we believed were incoming Soviet missiles or bombers. Each time. Those fears proved to be mistaken and progression towards a nuclear retaliation on our part was halted. I think it's fair to assume that the same kind of nerve shattering misjudgements have been made by the Soviets there is no reason to think that their detection system. Is any more reliable. Or full proof than ours indeed the best evidence is. That the Soviet air defense commander shot down that Korean jetliner

a year and a half or so ago on the mistaken judgment that what they were shooting down was an American intelligence plant and. Pliant. Now the point I would like to make if they made that kind of a misjudgment and our best intelligence is now conclude that it was a mistake in judgment they didn't really think they were knocking down an innocent civilian airliner if they made that kind of misjudgment After tracking that airplane for two hours. How much safer are we against that kind of misjudgment. Now that we have moved missiles up to within six minutes of the Soviet command and control centers where an incoming missile has to be identified. As a legitimate attack within six minutes and the response planned and projected in that period of time.

I think the accumulation of nuclear weapons on both sides is pushing us closer and closer to the kind of hair trigger response that someday if this process is continued is going to result in a tragic miscalculation. We and the Soviets are are building these weapons right now and February of 1985 at a rate of 3 each day. On each side this is the twenty seventh of. February on the twenty seventh of March. There will be another 90 nuclear weapons in the American arsenal and presumably the same on the on the other side. So what then is the basis of hope. In the nuclear age I don't see any clear. Or singular route to nuclear security but I do see a number of hopeful signs. That.

Our salvation from nuclear annihilation is possible. And the most hopeful of these signs is the evidence that the overwhelming majority of the American people and of the Russian people do not want a nuclear war. There are consistent reports. From every thoughtful student I have talked to about the Soviet Union. American students and experts on the Soviet Union that the Russian people and their leaders still live with the Whore of World War 2 in their minds. I know that Americans the older ones remember World War 2 also. But what we remember is a war that we saw. And newsreels in the theaters we saw glimpses of it. We didn't have television in those days but we did see pictures of it in Life magazine. We read the news reports in the press are we here.

Edward R. Murrow broadcasting from London over the radio in the Soviet Union by contrast. 20 million people die and turning that invasion of the Nazi forces it's very hard to find us a Russian family that didn't lose somebody in that in that war. So I believe that it's fair to do assume. That there's a strong. Potential for peace. Inside this totalitarian country. I also believe that for different reasons. The American people have a hoar nuclear war every public opinion poll that I have seen in recent years and a cage that a large majority of Americans support the

concept of a mutual verifiable nuclear free. I think it's possible to negotiate that kind of an agreement with the Soviet Union I might say on that score that when the delegates to the Republican National Convention in Dallas were surveyed on this question in the summer of 1984 62 percent. Of the delegates to that convention said they favor the nuclear freeze notwithstanding the fact the platform went in a different direction. I think there is almost majority support if not a majority support for the nuclear freeze in the Congress of the United States. And this is the battleground where I think you and I should concentrate our efforts in the near term. Not withstanding its its flirtation with the Star Wars illusion and its poor record on arms negotiation in recent years even the

administration seems to be showing some at least a modest effort on the side of restraint in its comments about the Soviet Union. Senator Goldwater of all people is call for a cancellation of the M IX missile and for a freeze on military spending. Now these things are encouraging. Last summer right after the Democratic National Convention I journeyed to the Soviet Union for the second time. In my life and met with Mr. Grimm a feel for a period of some three and a half hours he was at ease home on the Black Sea. Swimming there with with two of his grandsons and he taught. I think with genuine feeling about the possibility of just halting nuclear development on both ends. I realize of course that you know conversation of that kind is

a lot easier in the sunshine along the Black Sea than it is to hammer out the details of a verifiable and workable arms control agreement. But I believe such an agreement is possible. If our leaders and the leaders on the other side are willing to live a little more with common sense and hope and a little less with hysteria and paranoia some years ago. The late President Eisenhower was on a television interview with Mr. McMellon the prime minister of the United Kingdom and he said this. I think the people of the world want peace so badly that some day their leaders better get out of the way and let them have it. And that I believe is the greatest hope for the salvation of our civilization in this nuclear age. That was George McGovern former senator from South Dakota speaking at Smith College this past

February. During the question and answer period I found his address. McGovern was asked about his position during the election campaign that the U.S. should not withdraw some forms of aid to countries that are considered to be totalitarian. McGovern agreed that the U.S. should be more selective in the way assistance should be given out. I think with reference to food assistance and medical care I would be very tolerant even of authoritarian regimes and making that kind of aid available I realize that some of it's going to be stolen. Some is going to end up on the black market some is going to be a bootleg. But in terms of humanitarian assistance I think you can let down the standards a little on the theory that at least some of it gets through. To the most vulnerable elements in the country. So I would favor the food and medical assistance to El Salvador to Nicaragua

to Ethiopia to the Philippines even where you have regimes that are personally noxious to me where I would where I would draw they where I would draw the line very severely as on any kind of military assistance to a regime of that kind order a broad scale economic aid that can be used for budget support which as your question implies is a way of diverting money to pay for those things that frees up local resources for military purposes so I think I think we have to monitor our aid very carefully. I also think that we'd be more effective if we funneled more of it through multilateral. Agencies because they can set these top standards easier than we can when we attempt to be too discriminating and rigid in the guidelines we lay down as a condition of American aid we get accused of economic imperialism and sometimes there's some validity to it. And you

remove that danger and so far as you funnel aid through multilateral Chalons agencies such as these specialized agencies of the United Nations. McGovern was then asked what should the U.S. do to peacefully battle the ideological war between Washington and Moscow. He argued that the U.S. should always advance the view of how society should be organized. We tend to view a freer approach to the economy it isn't always as free as we advertised and we haven't always the last. We haven't always been that careful about backing away from the tower Tarion systems but I do think it's legitimate in American foreign policy to try to reinforce our our way of life and so far as we as we can. But what I would argue is that I think will be more successful in doing that. If we don't view the world as essentially a contest between ourselves and the Soviet Union it's really not that and that's not the

way most people see it. I would say fully two thirds of the people on this planet really don't give a hang about the Soviet American. Of the. Of the day. They realize these big Giants are going to be sparring with each other but that's not their game. What they're it what they're concerned about is the fact that a high percentage of their populations are up against starvation or rampant disease bad housing the absence of roads and that kind of things and to whatever extent we can reinforce those concerns I think we'll do better in terms of the way we're perceived and that's that's the kind of competition that we probably can do very well with in terms of the Soviet Union. I don't think we can beat them militarily. I think they'll match US bomb for plane for plane tank for tank and that on that score they're probably as good as we are. They're pretty effective in

terms of military operation and they're willing to ship it around the world as generously as we are so that what I'm pleading for here is a different view of how we strengthen America's interests and American concerns around the world I think we do it better in terms of an intelligent policy of diplomacy and use of our economic resources I mean if I can just take one more minute on that. You know right now we've got a really tragic agricultural crisis. In the United States our so-called family farmers are going broke. From coast to coast. And one of the reasons is that the mastic farm prices are so depressed. We're finding it difficult to export because of the overvaluation of the dollar. And so that there's a there's a virtual depression I don't think that's too strong a word in agricultural America. And yet at the same time we read where there are 20 million

Americans who are hungry. This report came out this week and 500 million people worldwide. Who are suffering from acute hunger. Now why wouldn't it be an intelligent policy both domestically and in terms of foreign policy for us to help these American farmers and at the same time do something useful by taking these surpluses. Out of the storage bands and off the market and doing what we can and the hunger both in this country and around the world I think that's the best argument against whatever appeal. Marxist-Leninism has that if you can show that we've had a system that. Can do more than just send our farmers into bankruptcy that we have work to figure out how to save these farmers and at the same time use that abundance as a constructive foreign

policy instrument I think that's the kind of thing we ought to be doing. McGovern also criticized U.S. policy towards Chile which supports the regime of General aloose to change on the grounds that his government is the best hope against communism. I don't think Pinochet is a very good check against communist appealed and Shelley. I think he probably creates more communist then he then he checks. He's the kind of leader who drives people to desperation measures. If I really wanted to devise a strategy to get communism to look at track the people I'd given Pinochet. For a while as the representative of capitalism and a friend of the United States and we'd lose every friend we had and surely in time if we keep our arms around Pinochet long enough because he obviously is not the wave of the future.

He's he's a decadent reactionary tyrant. Who has offended the most sensitive elements in his own country. And this is the way he's always operating. That is not the kind of regime that the United States ought to hold up as a model of either capitalism or freedom. I was appalled to hear Jeane Kirkpatrick ambassador Ambassador Kirkpatrick as she was then doing an interview on television after being wined and dined by Pinochet and the American reporter who was interviewing her said if you had to describe in one word what Pinochet is like what you would say and she thought for a while and she said Well I would say that he's a very nice man. Well he is not a very nice man and he's a miserable tyrant. Or. Jane Kirkpatrick standards were with her bias and the direction our

right wing dictators he may be. Right. He's not nice in any real sense of the word. McGovern wasn't asked how it was possible to achieve a mutually verifiable nuclear weapons freeze with the Soviet Union. A concept which he endorses. Well we have technical means for doing that. I don't think any arms control agreement that we have yet negotiated depended on trust. As a matter of fact you really wouldn't need an arms control agreement. If the Soviet Union and the United States trusted each other. We don't require an arms control treaty with Canada. Or war with Mexico. But because we don't trust the Russians and they don't trust us you have to have some kind of technically verifiable way of controlling this arms race and that is the purpose of these satellites. And other technical means that we have that enabled us to identify everything they're

doing. On the nuclear front I'm told and I've seen some of the evidence of this that this photographic intelligence that we have attached to our satellites enables us to actually read the numbers on a license plate in downtown Moscow. You can easily identify an object the size of this podium. And there's no way they could devise an additional strategic missile. Without us knowing about it and they know the same thing about us. So I don't think the verification problem. Is the key thing whether Sharon Yanko is sick or not is irrelevant to the technical capacity we have to know what they're doing. Also you have to assume that if if either side enters into a nuclear freeze they do it for selfish reasons. That being the case what is the incentive to violate it. If it's in your

self-interest to call a halt to this continued terribly expensive and dangerous arms race what is the selfish incentive in violating something you've just said was in your interest enough to sign the treaty. And obviously no country's going to sign a treaty that's not in their selfish interest. McGovern was also asked to comment on the lawsuit against CBS by General Westmoreland and whether he believed Westmoreland was guilty of deliberately misquoting enemy strength. I think that there was a lot of misleading going on in that period. General Westmoreland is far from being the most guilty a person on that score What do you say about a president who for 14 months ran aerial bombardment operations against Cambodia while denying it to the Congress of the United States and to the American people. I've always thought that one of the mistakes the House Judiciary Committee made in the

Watergate impeachment proceeding was dropping the article of impeachment on the Cambodian bombing because this is one of the most flagrant violations of constitutional and legal authority that I know of. Under oath administration witnesses telling the Congress of the United States there were no American missions going into Cambodia telling the press this. So General Westmoreland didn't invent deception. And he was he was really following the lead of the commander in chief and of others who deliberately misled the Congress and misled the American public I suppose of General Westmoreland. Sen was a little more sharp in some respects than others is the fact that he misled the president. The president was doing his share of the misleading too but at least he would like to think the commander in chief has reliable reports on enemy strength.

And not have them underestimated deliberately by a couple of hundred thousand. People we might never of had a terrible trauma a Tet Offensive. If we had known how many Vietcong were actually there. I have to tell you an interesting thing about that I went to Vietnam and several times during the war and one time when I was there. We had gone through a number of briefings including one by General Westmoreland in which he was telling the troop strength of our side. How many of the South Vietnamese government had how many militia forces they had how many backup forces and there was an American journalist with me. Kind of a gruff television executive in my state. And he said after one of these briefings Colonel did you say that the South Vietnamese army with the help of the South Vietnamese militia actually has eight hundred thousand

soldiers in the field. The Colonel said That's right. And my friend said Well Colonel I've been in this country now for two weeks where in the hell are they. And this is the answer we got from American troops. That was way back and that was way back in early in the late 1960s and early 70s that we were getting these estimates that turned out to be exaggerated on the side of our strength and underestimated apparently deliberately on the side of what the enemy forces were. So there was a lot of mis reading going on and efforts to put the best face on a failing enterprise and I suppose people did that in some kind of misguided patriotism they probably really thought I'm sure general moral was moral and thought he was really serving the national interest by withholding certain information that he thought would demoralize.

The war effort and probably result in a decision to pull out which he didn't think was in the national and I don't think you saw him self as a traitor I think you saw him self as a patriot. That had the kind of spoon feed these politicians so they'd stay with it. That was George McGovern former senator from South Dakota addressing audience questions at Smith College in North Hampton this past February twenty seven thousand nine hundred eighty five. Earlier we heard his address called Hope in the nuclear age often referred to as the conscience of the Democratic Party. McGovern has returned to academic life where he started his political career and teaches Foreign Policy at Duke University. George McGovern's appearance at Smith College was sponsored by the smith student committee and his talk was recorded for double EFCA by Charles Sennott. I'm Cari Jiri for spectrum.