SINCE the USA destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atom bombs in 1945 it has set the pace in the nuclear arms race. Its clear object has been to maintain a decisive military and nuclear superiority over the USSR.
By 1945 Japan had lost control of the Pacific Ocean and was already a defeated power. There was no military reason for the use of the A-bomb by the USA. In fact 250,000 people died when the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima wereydestroyed simply to show the world that the United States' rulers not only possessed the most terrifying weapon in human history, but that they were also prepared to use it. demonstration was directed in particular at the USSR. Since then almost every major step in accelerating the arms race has been taken by the USA.
At no time has this been more true than today. The USA has almost twice as many nuclear warheads stockpiled as the USSR, and the combined missile systems of the USA, Britain and France easily outnumber those of the Soviet Union. The aim of the US in developing a new generation of nuclear weapons is not to 'deter' the growing Soviet military threat. deterrent force is already more than sufficient, as President Carter explained in a recent speech:
'Our deterrent is overwhelming, just one of our relatively invulnerable Poseidon submarines — comprising less than two per cent of our total nuclear force - carries enough warheads to destroy every large and medium-size city in the Soviet Union.' The American government plans to spend 100 billion dollars building the new MX missile system precisely in order to break out of the logic of deterrence (you destroy us - we'!! destroy you). The aim is to achieve a 'first strike capacity" the ability to destroy the Soviet missiles before they leave the ground. 460 new Cruise missiles are to be sited in Europe. They are not covered by the arms limitation treaties because they do not have the range to hit the USSR from the USA. However, whereas the Soyiet equivalent, the SS20, cannot reach the USA from its bases in Southern Russia, Cruise will be able to destroy much of Russia from its European base.
The American objective in developing the Cruise and MX systems was summed up by the head of the National Security Agency of the US, Brzezinski:
I am saying that the United States, in order to maintain effective deterrence, has choices that give us a wider range of options than either a spasmodic nuclear exchange or limited conventional warfare.' In other words deterrence no longer means. preventing nuclear war, but rather winning a 'limited nuclear war', quite possibly in the European 'theatre'.
SINCE it cannot be seriously maintained that the USA is in danger of lagging behind the USSR in nuclear weaponry, perhaps there is more truth in the claim that "soviet expansionism' threatens 'Western interests'.
When American defence strategists speak of expansionism they generally refer to the threat to Middle East oil, to America's 'vital interests' in Central America, or to 'the advance of communism in South East Asia'.
Undoubtedly the Vietnamese revolution has shaken Américan control of the Pacific Ocean. Certainly the fall of the Shah, who was armed to the teeth by America and Britain, has introduced increasing 'instability' in the oil-rich Middle East.
No objective observer can deny that South Africa - that bulwark of anti-communism and 'the West' — is today increasingly threatened by the struggle of black people from Zimbabwe to Namibia against their racist oppressors. And it is certainly true that on America's very doorstep, in Central America, every right-wing military dictatorship fears that their own workers and peasants wil draw encouragement from the That Nicaraguan revolution and Cuba's aid to it.
If these revolutions were the result of the activity of 'Russian spies' diplomacy, then we would have to admit that the Soviet rulers do indeed have powers of thought control far military might. But for our part we see both these and the hostility American and British ruling classes towards them, as explicable in much more mundane terms - in a word 'money'!
The US In the world today 65 per cent of the popula. tion live in underdeveloped countries, yet these to have countries account for no more than two per cent of the world's industrial production. 450 million people in the underdeveloped world suffer from malnutrition. 900 million people were illiterate in 1979. Per capita income in the advanced capitalist countries, like the USA and Britain, is, average, fourteen times underdeveloped world.
These facts are a thousand times more convincing as explanations of the wave of revolutions in the Third World since 1945 than any 'Soviet They also reasons for America's alarm. This massive inequality in the world's wealth and resources is the product of economic domination and exploitation of the Third World - as a source of cheap tain and the USA - at Yalta, or even Soviet elsewhere in the world.
However, despite exceeding 'America's nam and Korea.
- that only by that in the from poverty -revolution, of the aggression'.
indicate the countries.
The USA emerged from the Second World War as the most powerful imperialist power on earth. But the war at the same time weakened imperialism as a whole and unleashed a wave of revolutions in the colonial countries. These revolutions were not fomented by Stalin and the Soviet rulers. In fact the opposite is true.
On the basis of the nationalistic theory of 'socialism in one country', Stalin entered into agreements with the imperialists of France, BriPotsdam and Teheran — to divide the world into 'spheres of influence. In exchange for guarantees that the imperialists would not launch a new war to restore capitalism in the Soviet Union, Stalin agreed to oppose revolutionary developments Stalin's instructions, in 1949 the Chinese Communist Party led an almighty revolution which overturned capitalism in the world's most populous nation. The same happened in Yugoslavia and later in North VietThe lesson of the 1917 revolution in Russia freeing themselves borders. sion':
capitalism and from imperialist domination can The new campaigns a and the threat of nuc different interpretatio both superpowers ec United States prepari Should we be neutral United States and the reproduce an excer pamphlet, 'Don't Die most brutal dictators in history from the Shah of Iran to Somoza in Nicaragua It is only in this light that the renewe American war drive can be understood. Afte the USA had lost the war in Vietnam - despi dropping more bombs there than were used the whole of the Second World War American working class and youth called a h They made it clear that their taxes and their lis were no longer available for adventures to fend the profits of oil companies and banks a result the Pentagon had to watch impoter while the revolutions in Iran, Nicaragua, At and the Caribbean unfolded. They had to w impotently when the USSR sent troops Afghanistan to prevent a right-wing imperi backed regime from coming to power The new war drive and rearmament is ab all about launching a counter-offensive agai these developments. That is why 25 billio dollars is to be spent on developing the Rapi Deployment Force (RDF). The RDF is a force o 200,000 American soldiers specially trained an equipped for mobility and available for im mediate use anywhere in the world especially in the Middle East and Centra America. Its commander, General Paul Kelley recently explained quite openly that the RDF i not designed simply to counter 'Soviet aggres
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Behind the Arms Race: A War Drive