Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!rutgers!att!cbnews!military From: denbeste@BBN.COM (Steven Den Beste) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Eastern Europe Message-ID: <11431@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 14 Nov 89 23:27:03 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA Lines: 132 Approved: military@att.att.com From: Steven Den Beste Randy Appleton asks for opinions on the changes taking place in Eastern Europe, and our esteemed moderator has asked us to limit our responses to "military" effects. I'll be straying just a little bit outside of that realm, because the military effects won't make any sense otherwise. The traditional definition is that "war is politics by other means". A hopelessly primitive definition is: Wars take place when there are differences between political entities which must be settled, but cannot be settled diplomatically for whatever reason." (This only works if you include insurgencies and terrorists as "political entities", and include insanity as one of the "differences".) Therefore ultimately the future of a military must be considered within the "political ecology" (is that sciencey enough?) in which it evolved. (All of this is straight out of "On War", of course.) Military spending is ultimately parasitic on its parent economy. Whereas workers manufacturing consumer goods are paid for their work (and that money goes to buy other consumer goods and therefore the economy balances), workers manufacturing military goods are also paid (and buy consumer goods out of the pie) but don't contribute consumer goods to the pie. If the money they are paid is simply simply created, there becomes too much money in the economy for the goods available. One of two things happens: inflation (which is what happens in the U.S.) or consumers with money in their pockets but no goods to buy (which is what happens in the U.S.S.R.). In order to keep things balanced, some purchasing power must be taken from those workers creating consumer goods in order to pay those who are creating military goods. This is usually done with taxation. [It is certainly true that occasionally research sponsored by the military develops a technology which has worth in the consumer economy, but this largely irrelevant to the discussion. Most of the tax money used for the military goes to pay for active duty personel, the supplies they consume, the weapons they need, and the infrastructure which supports all of this.] On an economic level this is something like donating blood. Below a certain rate the economic results are insignificant - but above level and bad things happen. After WWII the U.S. economy was intact, but the economy of the USSR was in shambles. In some ways it has never recovered. The GNP of the U.S. has been much larger every year thereafter then that of the U.S.S.R., and this has lead to a novel tactic: "Spend the bastards into the ground." It goes something like this: Begin a military buildup at a level such that it only causes minor harm to your large economy, but which would cause major harm to your opponent's much smaller economy - but do it in a way that he must match the buildup (by deploying most of the military buildup on his border). Voila! "Cold War." This is REALLY what the "Reagan Buildup" was about - and it finally seems to have worked. The political leaders in the Eastern Bloc have finally realized that military strength today translates into economic weakness today, which leads to military weakness tomorrow. One can nonetheless also have military strength tomorrow, but that means you'll have even more economic weakness the day after, and ultimately you'll have to stop. That seems to be what has happened now. One way or another they seem to have realized that they simply cannot afford it any longer. Gorbachev has finally made moves to decrease the size of the military in the U.S.S.R., so as to rebuild their economy. This requires that the political tension for which that military was needed must go away some other way - in this case by diplomacy. So, what happens after that: When their economy is rebuilt, the friendliness could continue, or tension could return and a new military buildup could begin. If their economy at that time finally rivals ours (and our economy has also suffered damage from military buildup - primarily indicated now by perpetual budget and trade deficits, which is a third way of keeping things balanced as long as they match) then this tactic may not work for us any more. In that case, "Cold War" could translate into "Hot War", a catastrophe. How do we then prevent this eventuality in 30 years? I think the best way is economic: Substantial cross-investment. What we now think of as France and what we now think of as Germany have been at war or almost war for most of the last 400 years. Does anyone think that the French army will ever cross the West German border in anger again? Equally, 180 years ago the U.S. and what we know know as Great Britain were at war. Will the U.S. and the Brits ever shoot at each other again? It doesn't seem likely. Such wars in each case would bankrupt both nations because of the extraordinarily large (from a historical perspective) economic ties between them. If we can establish such economic ties between the U.S.S.R./Eastern Europe and the West during that 30-50 years, then by the time that a buildup becomes possible again it won't be desirable any more. In other words, we can use the large-scale ultimate cause of war to actually prevent it. In the movie "Blazing Saddles", the character played by Cleavon Little holds some of his enemies at bay by holding a gun to his own head and threatening to fire if they move. I claim that with sufficient interdependency between two nations a war becomes much less likely because attacking the other would be literal economic suicide. The best news is that if we can also reduce our military, it will release economic assets which can be used for precisely this cross-investment. The biggest danger for us is that we won't realize this danger and opportunity. Once the changes in Eastern Europe seem to be irreversible then we should begin to cut our own defense spending and use the resulting resources to create unbreakable economic bonds between ourselves and the "other side". I think we just passed the point of no-return in Eastern Europe. When the Prussians, for God's sake, the most disciplined and martial cultural group in Europe, begin demonstrating against THEIR own government then you know something dramatic just happened. That's why it took 10 years after largescale unstoppable demonstrations in Poland to finally change the government, but the government in East Germany fell only a week after large scale demonstrations began. They know their own people and how hard they are to stir up. A bear in winter is very hard to wake, but once it is moving it is extremely dangerous. Ultimately this discussion must be political and economic rather than dwelling in the details of military science - because the changes are political and economic, and military changes are a side effect. In the specifics I forsee significant (finally!) disarmament, probably including ultimately the withdrawing of most U.S. surface troups from West Germany. I certainly hope this happens! Steven C. 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