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The So-Whatness of Nuclear Winter
APRIL 18, 1985
I wish Home Box Office or one of those cable birdies would undertake to show the viewing public a tape of the testimony, on March 14, of Carl Sagan, who tends increasingly to view himself as The World’s Foremost Authority, and Richard Perle, assistant secretary of defense. Carl Sagan was the first witness, Richard Perle the second. Carl Sagan is henceforward qualified to testify on what cruel and unusual punishment feels like.
The forum was a joint meeting between two congressional subcommittees with names so cumbersome one begrudges them the space they take up. But, for the record, they were: the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment of the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, chaired by Representative Morris Udall, D-Ariz.; and the Subcommittee on Natural Resources, Agricultural Research and Environment of the House Committee on Science and Technology, chaired by Representative James Scheuer, D-N.Y.
The question being probed is the policy implications of nuclear winter. Nuclear winter—the thesis that the detonation of XYZ plus one nuclear bomb will freeze all growth for six months, bringing on the probable extermination of all human and vegetable life—is the favorite adopted son of Carl Sagan, among other reasons because it permits him to engage in the kind of eschatological melodrama that brings orgasmic delight to those who want to tell us how awful a nuclear war would be (as if we didn’t know). In any event, the congressional committees wanted to know what should we do, now that we know about nuclear winter.
Carl Sagan gave a half hour’s performance so arrogant he might have been confused with, well, me. He graded such reports as he had seen on the subject of how should our policies adapt to nuclear winter as warranting “a grade of D” if submitted to him as a functioning professor. He said that we were going to get nowhere in Geneva because we are sending people over there who don’t believe in disarmament. He suggested that Ronald Reagan and his team at the Department of Defense were concealing two reports that were politically embarrassing (the so-called Cadre Report and the Palomar Report). He suggested that Soviet officials and U.S. officials should meet in a single barn and hand over the atomic fission devices that set off hydrogen bombs to an agent who would then send them for detoxification to nuclear energy plants. He brushed off his single critic on the panel, Representative John McCain, R-Ariz., by saying that McCain couldn’t point to one disarmament treaty Reagan had favored.
Along came Richard Perle, who delivered about six haymakers, one after the other. He said that for all Sagan’s talk about the United States wanting more and more weapons, we had reduced our stockpile during the past fifteen years by 8,000 warheads, while the Soviet Union had increased its stockpile by more than 8,000 warheads. Our megatonnage today, compared to then, is 25 percent less. We have outstanding two proposals for sharp reductions of arms, to which the Soviet Union has not responded. We have suggested the elimination of all intermediate-range missiles. The idea that a Soviet official will turn over triggering devices on a one-for-one basis is one of those academic fantasies that should stay in the academy or go to Disneyland.
But—most important—Richard Perle said that in fact nuclear winter doesn’t have any policy implications not already dominant in our strategic policy, because it is the objective of that policy to avoid nuclear war. And if nuclear war is avoided, then the danger of detonating XYZ plus one missiles reduces. Moreover, since it is known that nuclear winter would come more quickly if explosions took place over cities, then isn’t it wise to continue research into Star Wars? Our strategic policy, said Perle, is to concentrate on military targets, not cities—and this is so not because of nuclear winter, but because of people. We have no appetite, in our deterrent strategy, to hit people rather than military targets, for reasons unrelated to nuclear winter.
And then, finally, a dazzling challenge: Was Carl Sagan saying that in the event Star Wars proved feasible, we should not deploy it?
The logic of Carl Sagan’s position is that we should engage in unilateral nuclear disarmament. He doesn’t come out and say this —indeed, he dodges questions on the matter—but that is the subtle hierarchy being insinuated by the unilateralists: namely, that nuclear winter is more to be feared than Soviet hegemony, and therefore we must give up our arsenal. Richard Perle—and Ronald Reagan—tell us we can do better. We can avoid both Soviet hegemony and nuclear winter, as we have done for forty years now.