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C00002 00002	dyson[s84,jmc]		Review of "Weapons and Hope" by Freeman Dyson
C00011 00003		It's better to be safe than sorry, and we should be willing
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dyson[s84,jmc]		Review of "Weapons and Hope" by Freeman Dyson

	Well here's another book on the danger of nuclear annihilation.
We are told of the dangers and the various proposals for avoiding them.
Unfortunately, the prospect of nuclear war is like the prospect of getting
cancer.  It's very bad, but none of the recipes for prevention inspire
much confidence.  Maybe there are a few actions that will reduce the
risk, but mostly one just hopes.  At least with cancer there are
statistics; one can't even know
the odds of getting into nuclear war or of surviving it.

	Freeman Dyson is a well known physicist.  In the late forties,
he was one of the founders of quantum electrodynamics, a subject that
gives numerical answers that agree with experiment to eleven decimal
places in the domain of its applicability.  He has also written extensively,
sensibly
and imaginatively on the future human expansion into the universe
and other futurist topics.

	Dyson discusses about seven proposed strategies for reducing
the danger of nuclear war.  He doesn't guarantee
any of them, but he has some new things to say.  One of his main
goals 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 those of {\it victims}.  His characterization
of warriors with their calmness and analytic aspirations and fascination
with the tools of war is clear enough.  He has many illustrations from
World Wars I and II.

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

	The seven strategies are

1. Unilateral disarmament.  Dyson was a pacifist as a schoolboy until
World War II was well begun in England.  He is inclined to be
believe that unilateral disarmament would be good if everyone were a Ghandi, but
reluctantly gives it up, because nowhere near enough people are.

He doesn't think the Soviets could occupy us successfully even
if we were disarmed, but he doesn't discuss how a disarmed U.S.
might deal with the methods the Soviets have
actually used 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 only
end up as expendable cannon fodder in a nuclear war among communist
powers.

2. Assured destruction.  Peace is to be assured by each side being
able to inflict "unacceptable damage" on the other, i.e. destroy
the other's society.  According to the doctrine, defense capability
and ability to destroy the other side's military capability are
irrelevant and even harmful, because destabilizing.
This has been a major component of American
policy since the 1960s.

It 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 mutually assured destruction.
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 than mutually
assured destruction.  Our own military seem to prefer counterforce, and
our actual military posture has alway 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 by both
sides.  For this reason any doctrine that holds nuclear war to be survivable
is unrealistic.  However, he doesn't advance the usual 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 prepared to survive a nuclear war, the Europeans
would feel left out.

4. Limited nuclear war.  This deals with the perceived Soviet conventional
superiority in Europe and the inability of Western European countries
to use their greater population and industry to match it by planning
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 to be unrealistic because of this Soviet
doctrine.

5. Non-nuclear resistance.  

	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