COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00004 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002	%dyson[s84,jmc]		Review of "Weapons and Hope" by Freeman Dyson
C00018 00003		It's better to be safe than sorry, and we should be willing
C00020 00004	xxx
C00021 ENDMK
C⊗;
%dyson[s84,jmc]		Review of "Weapons and Hope" by Freeman Dyson
\baselineskip=24pt
\noindent{\bf Weapons and Hope} by Freeman Dyson, Harper \& Row 1984.

	Nuclear war is like cancer.  It's very bad, but none of the
recipes for prevention inspire confidence.  Maybe there are a few
actions that will reduce the risk, but mostly one just hopes.  At least
with cancer there are statistics, but one can't even know the odds of
getting into nuclear war or of surviving it.

	Freeman Dyson is a well known theoretical physicist.  In the
forties, he helped found quantum electrodynamics, a theory
whose numerical answers agree with experiment
to eleven decimals.  Dyson has written extensively, sensibly and
imaginatively on human expansion into the universe and other
futurist topics.

	Dyson discusses seven approaches to reducing the danger
of nuclear war.  He doesn't guarantee any, but he has something new
to say.  His main goal is that the adherents of the two
main tendencies --- rearmament and unilateral disarmament --- should
understand one another.  He classifies attitudes into those of {\it
warriors} and of {\it victims}.  His characterizes warriors a valuing
coolness, accurate analysis and as fascinated with the
tools of war.  He has many illustrations from World Wars I
and II.

	However, his characterization of the ideology of victims, even
apart from the tendentiousness of the term, is murky.  The only
example given is Helen Caldicott, characterized by moral force accompanied
by fuzzy numbers.  She has always struck me as a kind of warrior.

	An important merit is his emphasis on irreducible uncertainties.
We can't know how much of our society could survive nuclear war.  We can't
know how effective various weapons would be.

	The seven strategies are

1. Unilateral disarmament.  Dyson was a pacifist until
World War II began in England.  He inclines to
believe that unilateral disarmament would be good if everyone were a
Gandhi, but reluctantly gives it up, because nowhere near enough people
are.

	He thinks the Soviets couldn't occupy us successfully even if
we were disarmed, but he doesn't discuss how a disarmed U.S.  might deal
with methods the Soviets have actually used when needed to get in control of
recalcitrant populations --- massive forced exchanges of population, the
taking and killing of large numbers of hostages and the destruction of
villages where resistance was strong.  He also neglects the fact that
surrender wouldn't assure even peace, since communists are just as
quarrelsome among themselves as with others.  We might finish as
expendable cannon fodder in a nuclear war among communist powers.

2. Mutually assured destruction (MAD).  Peace is to be assured by each
side being able to inflict ``unacceptable damage'' on the other, i.e.
destroy the other's society.  MAD advocates consider defense
capability and ability to destroy the other side's military capability as
irrelevant and even harmful, because destabilizing.  MAD has been a major
component of American policy since the 1960s.

MAD appeals to the mathematical game theorist, because it treats the West
and the Soviet Union symmetrically and requires no analysis of the actual
characteristics of either society.

Dyson points out that the Soviets don't accept MAD.
Their doctrine is that if war is inevitable, they will attack the opposing
military capability in order to protect themselves.  He considers this
more conventional military attitude to be morally less evil.
Our own military men also seem to prefer counterforce, and our actual
posture has always included some counterforce capability.

3. Nuclear war fighting.  This is the view that nuclear war is like other
war only worse.  If one has to fight, one strives to knock out the enemy
armed forces, minimize damage to one's own forces and society and force
a surrender.  It is the Soviet doctrine.  Dyson points out the enormous
uncertainty involved in a major war with weapons that have never been used.
For this reason any doctrine that holds nuclear war to be
survivable is unrealistic.  However, he doesn't advance the common ``peace
movement'' argument that the doctrine makes nuclear war more likely by
encouraging the U.S. leaders to start one.

Emphasizing the uncertainty, Dyson suggest that civil defense measures
would be good but can't be counted on.  He admires the Swiss nuclear
civil defense measures but suggests that they would be unacceptable in
the U.S., because if we prepar to survive nuclear war, the Europeans
will feel left out.

4. Limited nuclear war.  This deals with the Soviet conventional
superiority in Europe and the unwillingness of Western Europe
to use its greater population and industry to match it.  NATO therefore
plans to meet a Soviet tank led assault with tactical nuclear weapons.  It
has been part of Western preparations since the 1950s, but the Soviets
have often able to deter preparations by their threat that any use of
nuclear weapons would be met by a massive nuclear attack on all their
enemies including the U.S.  Their ability to make good on this threat has
greatly increased in recent years.  Dyson considers limited nuclear war
unrealistic because of this Soviet doctrine.

5. Non-nuclear resistance.  Dyson hopes that conventional weapons,
``precision guided munitions'' might be developed that would make it
possible for us to unilaterally give up nuclear weapons.  He ignores
the possibility that a further technological developments
might restore the advantage to the nuclear side.

6. Defense unlimited.  This doctrine would build shelters as the Swiss
have done and develop means for shooting down missiles including space-borne
and nuclear ABMs.  Its opponents claim it is expensive, ineffective and
destabilizing.  Their worst case scenario is that the Russians suddenly
decide that the defense is just about to become so effective that we
would be able to destroy them with impunity and therefore attack us.
In fact neither we nor they would ever be sure about how effective
defensive measures would be, and this would dilute any impulse towards
desperate measures.  In so far as it turns out to be likely to work
at an affordable cost (ten percent of GNP?), it seems like a good option.

7. Live-and-let-live.  Dyson ascribes this concept to the late Donald
Brennan, who called it ``parity plus damage-limiting'' and put it in
opposition to MAD with the slogan ``We prefer live Americans to dead
Russians''.  Dyson summarises it as ``We maintain the ability to damage you
as badly as you can damage us, but we prefer our own protection to your
destruction''.  He likes it.  Put this way, it's the motherhood of
concepts.  It will be endorsed by the Reagan Administration even with the
corollary
that in so far as we develop the ability to protect ourselves, we can
forego ability to damage the Soviet Union.

	Dyson ignores some important questions.

	1. What is the present military situation?  The Reagan
defense build-up is based on the opinion that recent years have seen
the Soviets acquire a large military advantage and that re-armament
is required to avoid tempting them.  Is that right?  I have no independent
opinion, but I think the people, e.g. Edward Teller, who persuasively
advocated that position, are thinking about the important question.

	2. What characteristics of communism are relevant to living
in the same world with nuclear-armed communist powers?  Dyson
doesn't mention communism in his index, and I could find only one
peripheral reference to it in the whole book.  His chapter on
the Russians attributes their aggressiveness and suspicion
to their occupation by the Mongols from the 12th through the 16th
centuries, a theory he got from his Institute for Advanced Study
colleague George Kennan.  A Russian exile to whom I mentioned this
jeered, ``What?  Did he forget to mention swaddling clothes''?
But then Dyson quotes Kennan approvingly as saying that we pay too
much attention to exiles and dissidents.

	Since World War II a number of communist powers have appeared,
many not under Soviet control.  They share its
unpleasant characteristics --- aggressiveness, secretiveness, suppression
of independent opinion, no orderly way of transferring power,
economic inefficiency, and a low threshold for committing genocide.
It wasn't the Russians who killed a quarter of the population
of Cambodia.  This suggests that it's not the Mongols, it's communism.

	Ignoring such facts leads to error in dealing with
the nuclear war problem.  For example, Dyson thinks that we missed
an opportunity for an agreement with the Russians about nuclear weapons
in the late forties that might have established some measure of trust. 
He doesn't even mention Stalin and deal with the evidence that Stalin
never trusted even his fellow communists and always strove to get them
under his thumb.  Communist doctrine as well as the personal characteristics
of the leaders of these dictatorial regimes plays an important role in
limiting the agreements that are possible.  Most likely we cannot
achieve substantial mutual trust with communist countries until their societies
evolve into more humane forms.  Indeed maybe some of them
will evolve into even more aggressive forms.  Here Dyson should apply
his own doctrine of living with uncertainty.

	A final opinion:  We have avoided nuclear war for forty years
with a wide variety of policies.  We should not let anyone stampede
us into desperate measures of either military action or unilateral
disarmament.  Most likely nuclear peace will continue, but we will
not soon achieve a world in which we will really feel safe.
Dyson's book contributes to the moderation needed to live in this
uncertain world.
%
%\vfill

\bye
	It's better to be safe than sorry, and we should be willing
to take a lot of trouble and go to a lot of expense if this will
make us safe.  We should even be willing to change long held attitudes.
However, what constitutes safety?

	One way of looking at the matter involves noting that we are
38 years into the nuclear weapons age and no-one has been bombed after
the beginning.  Therefore, if we can preserve the present situation
with regard to the forces tendencies toward and away from war, this
might be considered as safe as we can get in the absence of a convincing
proposal for reducing the danger.  In that case we should look for
danger in whatever is new.

	One major novelty is the Soviet preponderance in land based
missiles.  Some say this puts us in enormous danger, and others
say it is unimportant.  Finding the arguments inconclusive, I tend
to favor the proposals for countering the Soviet preponderance on
the grounds that this minimizes novelty.
xxx
a very tactful book
Dyson outlines the various points of view rather well, but he doesn't
attempt to outline the beliefs that underly each of them.  Perhaps this
would be untactful.

quote Daniel Ortega