Living with Mega-Death

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But blame for the decline in East-West relations does not lie entirely with the Soviets. Congressional meddling in foreign policy and the collapse of presidential authority during Watergate contributed to the breakdown of detente in the mid-'70s. The inconsistency and ineptitude of the Carter Administration made a bad situation worse. Then the Reagan Administration came into office with stubborn, simple-minded prejudices against arms control, unrealistic ambitions for massive rearmament, and a propensity for bellicose rhetoric that has frightened its allies and its own citizens more than it has restrained its adversaries. Administration officials have made numerous statements suggesting a policy shift from the traditional imperative of deterring nuclear war to a new, or at least more explicit, preparedness to wage such a war if necessary.

In an address to the U.S. Civil Defense Council on March 1, Presidential Counsellor Edwin Meese called nuclear war "something that may not be desirable"—a bizarre understatement that contributed to the impression of insouciance bordering on recklessness. There is unquestionably a need to improve the nation's defenses, but some of the weapons programs in Reagan's new military budget suggest that the Administration is on a buying binge. Last month it was disclosed that the President planned to add 17,000 nuclear explosive devices to the existing arsenal of 25,000 (which includes armaments for shorter-range missiles, as well as artillery shells, demolition mines and torpedoes). This kind of warhead inflation, seemingly far in excess of what the U.S. should need to deter the Soviets, tends to justify the question asked by those who want a weapons freeze: "How much is enough?" Too often the Administration's answer seems to be simply: "More, much more, as much as possible."

Coming in the context of increasingly strained American relations with the Soviet Union, the Administration's statements and decisions have fueled a firestorm of protest in Europe against what many there see as the clear and present danger of nuclear war on the Continent. While ostensibly aimed at both superpowers, the political agitation in Western Europe has a distinctly anti-American, naively neutralist, even pacifist flavor. Worries about Reagan's finger on the nuclear trigger have also affected politicians who otherwise are in favor of the alliance and are by no means anti-American. Even so staunch a U.S. friend as Britain's former Prime Minister James Callaghan complained in the Times of London: "There is growing up a basic difference between the way America and Europe view the world . . . Europeans have a better understanding of the complexities of current world difficulties than the United States." Says West Germany's Social Democratic Party leader, Erhard Eppler: "There is the feeling that the U.S. is a greater menace to peace and stability in Europe than the Soviet Union.1'

The West European movement has added to the troubles besetting transatlantic cooperation, and it has greatly assisted the Soviet Union's propaganda offensive aimed at splitting the NATO alliance. Morever, European protests against U.S. defense policies have further undercut what little prospect there is for success in the European missile negotiations in Geneva. The demonstrations