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C00002 00002	dyson[w84,jmc]		Comments on Dyson's essay in the New Yorker
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dyson[w84,jmc]		Comments on Dyson's essay in the New Yorker

	This is the most comprehensive and fair treatment of the
different points of view I have seen.  However, its effect will
give aid and comfort more to us advocates of a strong national
defense than to the others.  This is because the anti-defense
arguers substantially rely strongly on attributing bad motives
to the defense advocates.  While the defense advocates often
attribute bad motives to the other side, their arguments are
rarely substantially dependent on acceptance of this attribution.
Dyson ascribes some cogency to all the positions that have been
taken, except that he occasionally attributes a few bad motives to the
defense advocates and never to the defense opponents.  Mostly
he assumes everyone's sincerity.  While some people are sometimes
insincere and have hidden agendas, assuming sincerity is always
the best first approximation, since a person's arguments have
to be dealt with regardless of one's opinion of his sincerity.

	I have little quarrel with his main policy conclusions in so far
as he reaches any.  He is skeptical about anti-missile defense but wants
it researched.  However, several substantial points of disagreement about
some certain hypothetical eventualities come to mind.

	1. I believe that if the Soviets had a nuclear monopoly
they could conquer the United States and successfully rule it.
They could use extremely ruthless methods.  First, they could
make examples of two or three recalcitrant cities with nuclear
weapons.  One precedent is that in 1918 a student killed the
head of the Bolshevik secret police.  The Red Terror (of which
Lenin spoke with pride) consisted in taking 2500 hostages from
the class enemy and killing them.  The Germans also used mass
reprisals as a means of preventing a civilian population from
co-operating with the resistance movement, and it was frequently
successful.  Suslov, whose henchman Andropov was, made his reputation
by stabilizing Soviet rule of the Baltic countries after World
War II.  A major method was the mass exchange of population.
Hundreds of thousands of residents of these countries were sent
to Siberia and replaced by Russians.  Another Soviet method
was the mass removal of machinery and other equipment to the
Soviet Union, not only from Germany but also from Manchuria.
They could readily solve their shortage of good computers
by such means.

2. I think Dyson is mistaken in supposing that a complete
elimination of nuclear weapons would be stable in a world
in which sources of conflict remained between the United
States and the Soviet Union.  At any time a race could
start as to who could develop and put to use nuclear
weapons.  Moreover, there would be a temptation to keep,
even informally, a team in being that could be mobilized
and to keep long lead time items.  For example, a chemical
plant might be built in such a way that it could be quickly
converted to separating plutonium, and another might be
built so that it could readily be converted to a plutonium
production reactor.

	In the Soviet Union, ascribing the worst motives to capitalist
countries and their leaders isn't just a psychological phenomenon like
paranoia.  It is a fundamental prop of the legitimacy of the regime and a
justification for its arbitrary rule.  Therefore, the conviction that we
were cheating and the obligation to cheat back would be axiomatic.
This doesn't mean that there couldn't be a large reduction in
nuclear weapons.

3. Dyson doesn't mention the likely scenario of a small nuclear
war in the third world, where most present wars take place, and
its effect on world opinion.  It might make the big powers want
peace, but I fear its effect might be the reverse - getting
people more used to the idea of fighting nuclear wars.  Past
wars have frequently been fought to the point of destruction of
one or both societies.  Massacre of the civilian population of
the losing side was common among the ancient Europeans, Asians
and American Indians.  Therefore, I fear that a nuclear war
wouldn't stop regardless of the fraction of the populations
killed.

Present experience bears this out.  Deaths even 100 miles away
tend to be just news.  Hearing that the entire Eastern part of
the U.S. was wiped out will be only somewhat more impressive
than hearing that a single city was wiped out.  Moreover, we
have examples of a military unit or a village being ninety
percent wiped out and the survivors continuing to fight.
I'll bet that these survivors often suppose that the rest
of the country has suffered comparable destruction to their
own area.