The Carolinian [October 18, 1984]

              Durham novrliit, poet and ihort «tory
writer Klnhrth Cox will gne a public reading
on Tnuraday. October 18. at 4 p m. m Alder
man Loung*. Elliott I'mveraity Center.
UNC^reenaboro
Coi'aflrsl novelFamtiuir Ground, will be
published later this month by Atheneum.
Cox is a graduate of I'NC-Green.born i
MFA writing profram. which n .ponmnng
the reading
Cox to
Read
Congratulations to
Mike Foust
He will represent the US in Moscow
in the World Championship Freestyle
Wrestling Competition in March.
The Carolinian WEEKLY EDITION
Nun I'rolil
IS. I'mtarr
PAID
(■rrrniboro, NX
Permit No. in
Volume 64 Number 7 Tkc I'nivrrailv of Nortk Carolina at Greeaiboro Thursday Ortobtr 18. 1)84
Forsberg Lectures
BY LORRIE CAREY
SUM Writer
Randall Forsberg, a leading oppo-nent
of the nuclear arms race, spoke
on "The Alternatives to a Perma-nent
Arms Rare" to a group of
about 200 people on Monday night,
October 8, in Aycock Auditorium.
During her speech she explained
why the United States has nuclear
weapons and why the arms race is
escalating. She stated that the
bilateral U.S./U.S.S.R. arms halt
hasn't received much support
among politicians because they
"can't see beyond the freeze."
Ms. Forsberg is the founder and
director of the Institute for Defense
and Disarmament Studies in
Brookline, Massachusetts, and is
the author of "Call to Halt the
Nuclear Arms Race."
Her presentation at UNC-G was
cosponsored by the University Con-cert
and Lecture Series and the
iV.C. Independent of Durham.
Ms. Forsberg stated that people
oppose the arms freeze because
they want to maintain the military
the United States currently has.
They are afraid to change. People
are afraid that if the U.S. Stops
building new weapons by par-ticipating
in a nuclear freeze,
America will lose its expertise in
weaponry. No one wants to "dull
the edge of deterence."
The American public believes that
nuclear weapons are used for
deterence, for protection against an
out-of-the-blue attack. Because we
have these weapons, Forsberg
maintains, we can threaten
retalitory, genocidal stikes on
"their" cities. Supposedly, thiB
threat will keep "them" from at-tacking
us. As Forsberg pointed
out, one doesn't need 25,000
nuclear weapons to deter an attack.
If we were to use that many
weapons to attack the U.S.S.R., we
means to an end because they are
not afraid of total obliteration.
Is the fear of a suprise attack the
real reason we have nuclear
weapons? According to Ms.
Forsberg, no. Nuclear weapons,
which account for only twenty per-cent
of our military arsenal, are not
used to deter an attack on us, but
are used to make nuclear war more
likely and conventional war less
likely. People are most afraid of, not
of a nuclear war, but of a conven-tional
war fought on their own soil,
says Forsberg.
She cited the fact that the United
States, the Soviet Union, England,
France, West Germany, China and
Japan have warred with each other
time and time again. The general
public believes that if nuclear
arsenals were reduced, these coun-tries
would go back to fighting with
each other again. After all, if we
threatened to disarm a country with
nuclear weapons, they will not at-tack
us. If we have only conven-tional
weapons, however, they
might attack us.
Forsberg continued by saying
that the nuclear issue is seen as
"politically insoluble" by the
general public. They would rather
thake the risk of nuclear warfare
than to take the certainty of "unac-ceptable,
terrible conventional
warfare."
"We don't have to live out our
lives under the threat of being
oblitereated," said M*. Forsberg.
There is a process she outlined to
achieve a nuclear freeze. First, she
explained, we must remove the
obstacles in the way of a freeze.
These are the same factors which
can lead to an escalation of the arms
race, and include the interven-tionary
use of forces in third world
countries; the size of the conven-tional
forces of NATO and the War-saw
Pact; constant technological in
novation _in weaponry which
would only be digging deeper and
deeper craters in target areas which
had already been hit.
The targets that our weapons are
aimed at inclide military targets
such as air fields, power plants,
tranportation networks, missile
silos, and Command, Control, and
Interpretation Centers,
"The military isn't interested in
obliterating cities," stated Ms.
Forsberg. However, there are
muclear weapons targeted on cities
because they encompass military
targets. She cited Cambridge,
Massachusetts, as an example of a
Soviet target due to M.l.T. and Har-vard
being located there.
Currently, nuclear weapons are
seen as a means to a political and
economic end. Countries have not
renounced the UK of force as a
perpetuates animosity and fear; the
Soviet Union's sense of control and
stability, or lack of it, in Eastern
Europe. By addressing each of
these factors, Forsberg believes we
can enstate a nuclear freeze.
The first three steps could radical-ly
change relations between the
East and the West. Step two should
be one of the easiest to follow
because of Americ'a democratic
philosophy of "self-determination"
for all countries. Once America
begins to floow Nixon's doctrine
(which suggests that we can give
other countries weapons but we
should let them fight their own
wars), perhaps the Soviet Union will
feel less insecure in Eastern
Europe. When this happens, the
cceiliniW on pa*-* *
Meisner Speaks Out On
the Nuclear Arms Race
BY GREG GUNN
Stiff "Ml.,
Dr. Jerry Meisner joined the
faculty of the Physics Department
here at UNC-G in 1970. He receiv-ed
a B.A. in physics at Hamilton
College and got his Ph.D. at
Berkley where he did elementary
particle research from 1962-1966.
From 1966-1970, he did research at
the University of Massachusetts in
Amherst. Since his arrival at UNC-G,
Dr. Meisner has taught several
courses on the arms race and the ef-fects
of nuclear warfare and has
been active in the nuclear freeze
movement. Recently, 7V Caroli-nian
stole some time from his busy
schedule to find some answers to
half a dozen questions on the freeze
issue.
Carolinian When did you first
become concerned with the nuclear
arms issue?
Dr. Meianer: When I was a
graduate student I worked with a
group of physicists headed by Luis
Alvarez, a Nobel Laureate. Dr.
Alvarez worked on the Manhatten
Project and was one of the first
ones to view the destruction at
Hiroshima. He was on an observa-tion
plane that came after the Enola
Gay [the plane that dropped the
first atomic bomb on Japan) to
analyze the damage. So it was my
contact with Dr. Alvarez that pro-mpted
my original studies on the
arms race.
Carolinian: When did you get in-volved
with the nuclear freeze
movement?
Dr. Meisner: 1 came to UNC-G in
1970. By that time a number of peo-ple
had become concerned by the
massive nuclear arms buildup that
had been going on for over two
decades. In 1971,1 taught a course
in the Residential College on the
arms race and the idea of a nuclear
freeze, first proposed by Randall
Forsberg. It's not the best way to
handle the problem, but it is the
best place to start. Before we can
negotiate arms reductions we need
to stop the buildup... stop produc-tion
and testing, then reduce.
Carolinian: Opponents of a nuclear
freeze maintain that the adoption of
a freeze would be like "baring our
throats," that the Soviets can't be
trusted. How do you respond to
that? Can the Soviets be trusted?
How would we verify a bilateral
freeze agreement?
Dr. Meianer: Well, first we don't
have to trust the Soviets. There is
essentially no way they could get
away with testing... detonating a
bomb big enough to have any
military significance without our
detecting it, underground or
aboveground. The threshold of
detectability if a few kilotons, less
than half the size of the Hiroshima
bomb. Moreover, the political risks
they would entail would be an enor-mous
risk to them for a test of such
dubious military significance. By
violating a freeze agreement they
would be subject to tremendous
worldwide derision and political
pressures.
The technology for making the
bombs is relatively simple and
straightforward by now. The real
action is in the delivery systems, the
missiles. Missile tests would be even
harder to conceal. With our satellite
surveillance, infrared and optical
scanners, our seismological
surveillance, getting away with
testng new weapons systems would
be virtually impossible. And without
testing there can be no production.
Carolinian: What's the next step
after a freeze?
Dr. Meianer: In the early '60s
Secretary of Defense McNamara
produced a study on how many
nuclear weapons would be required
to destroy the USSR's military-industrial
complex. He came up
with between one hundred and two
hundred one-megaton bombs.
Doubling that estimate for safety,
he came up with four hundred as a
better than adequate deterrent. To-day
we have two orders of
magnitude beyond that: over 4000
megatons.
Another study done about two
years ago by the "nuclear winter"
people, including Carl Sagan,
predicted the damaging, long-range
climate and ecological effects of
nuclear warfare. An exchange of as
little as one hundred megatons
would have a devastating effect and
a more likely scenario predicts an
exchange of 3000 to 6000 megatons
in a nuclear war. The nuclear winter
is basically a consequence of the
vast amount of soot and dust in-jected
into the atmosphere by the
destruction and burning of the
world's major cities, industries,
petrochemical plants... Pyrotoxins.
poisonous by-products of all that
burning, would be produced in
massive quantites too. All that junk
in the atmosphere would block out
the sunlight and temperatures
would drop to around -20 degrees
Celcius for up to a year. As if that
weren't bad enough, the ozone in
the upper atmosphere would be
reduced to such low levels that
ultraviolet radiation from the sun
would reach dangerous levels when
the dust finally settled. The combin-ed
results would make life as we
know it impossible, to put it mildly.
And not just for the northern
hemisphere where the exchange
would take place. Climatologists
believe the dust and poisons would
cross the equator and spread out
over the g*obe. So ironically, Neville
Shutes speculations in On The
Beaek may come to pass.
We aew have Stanley Kubrick's
perfect doomsday machine from
Dr. Strangtlove If one side
resorted to the use of their nuclear
arsenal to end acofifrontation, they
wonM be committing suicide, even
if t^nppoeing side chose not to
~ I. So a mutual reduction of
our nuclear stockpiles may be
i ructal to the survival of life on
earth. One hundred megatons is a
strong enough deterrent; 4000
mesjntana it redundant as well as in-sane.
Political solutions are not easy
but they are possible. We have to
try.
"-"-'— Last fall with the air-ing
of 71U Da*i4jUr on ABC there
waa a lot of public debate on the
nuclear arms issues and there seem-
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ed to be a lot of sympathy for the
freeze movement, but things seem
to have died down since then. Why
did that happen? Have people given
up?
Dr. Meisner: My answer to that
kind of question depends on
whether I'm in an optimistic or a
pessimistic mood at the time. Some
people are victims of what
psychologists call "psyche numb-ing.
" "It's so terrible 1 can't do
anything about it. I 'II just put it out
ofmy mind." Others are told by the
media, the politicians, etc., that it
is a technical problem best left to
experts, so they don't bother. Then
there are the ones who just cop-out.
They don't want to take any effort
to use their itelligence and learn
what the issues are really about.
There's also the greed factor-"If
it won't help me get a better job I
won't deal with it." They're juBt too
busy trying to grab the bucks to
think about social or moral issues.
Almost everyone will take action
if they're directly threatened, but
the danger of nuclear warfare
seems remote to most people. Cause
and effect must be transparent for
the average person to take action.
The danger of a nuclear holocaust
is more abstract than a mugger who
pulls a knife on you in an alley.
Photo by Michael Head
However, the dangers of a
nuclear war are becoming more
real. Many people feel that the
situation is such that a few more
weapons, or a few hundred more
weapons won't matter. But the ex-pansion
of the arms race into space
and the change of emphasis is
nuclear doctrine from "mutually
assured destruction*' to "first strike
capability" increases the liklihond of
a nuclear exchange.
In some ways I'm sorry that The
Pay AJter got aired. There was a lot
of media hype around the whole
event. People were caught up in the
fervor and the furor and felt good
about their new-found social con-cern
for a week or two. Then, their
social conscience taken care of, they
forgot all about it.
Carolinian: What ire your rnoon>
mendations for people concerned
about the arms race today"1 What
can we "little people" do in the
shadows of the giant military
machine?
Dr. Meisner: I think it's imp.-riant
to work within the system. We atsOt
officials on the local, state and
federal levels. Our rtfWOM 'natives
should be made aware of our con-
Ctnal ami we, in turn, have a
responsibility to hear their \ ciws on
the issues and to vote aco ■ ngfer.
The UNCG Theatre Department presented Brecht's The Threepenny
Opera. Reviewers give their opinion- on page 8.
-Ui L