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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: can.ai,net.politics
Subject: Re: Star Wars (following a discussion on can.ai)
Message-ID: <1505@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 2-Apr-85 18:51:02 EST
Article-I.D.: dciem.1505
Posted: Tue Apr  2 18:51:02 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 2-Apr-85 22:12:11 EST
References: <ubc-visi.900>
Reply-To: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 34
Summary: 


>Regarding "peace through strength" versus "peace through goodwill":
>
>There is another alternative; peace through fear.  Fear of self
>annihilation.  The use of "superordinate goals" for conflict resolution has
>been well demonstrated (see "Reducing Intergroup Conflict", pages 454 to 474
>in B.H. Raven and J.Z. Rubin (1976), "Social Psychology: People in Groups"
>published by Wiley & Sons, New York...don't mistake me...I am NOT a
>psychologist, but what they had to say made sense to me).  Fear of
>extinction could be used as a superordinate goal...it is a threat to all and
>it is in the mutual interest to cooperate to do something about it.  The
>point of superordinate goals is that "peace through fear" would encourage
>the *gradual* development of "peace through goodwill".  I think that SDI is
>evidence of the fear.  We need to convince people that "peace through
>strength" will not work indefinitely ON A GLOBAL SCALE.

Let us imagine that we knew that there were unfriendly aliens in the
neighbourhood, who had the power to erase life from this planet UNLESS
we found a way to avoid, quasi-permanently, the threat of internal war.
Do you not think that we all (US, USSR, China, Chad etc.) would be
working strenuously together to thwart this *external* threat?  The
US, UK and USSR put aside strong animosities in 1939-45 to deal with
an external threat, and I see no reason to believe that they would
not do it again in the face of a threat external to the planet.

If this assumption is so, then what prevents us from working strenuously
together to avoid self-annihilation?  Is it that we don't all agree
that the threat exists?  I find that hard to believe, but I cannot
come up with another explanation.
-- 

Martin Taylor
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