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From: orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Russian quotes: John Birch Society??
Message-ID: <452@whuts.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 19-Dec-85 17:58:37 EST
Article-I.D.: whuts.452
Posted: Thu Dec 19 17:58:37 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Dec-85 21:55:56 EST
References: <157@vu-vlsi.UUCP> <432@whuts.UUCP> <552@harvard.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
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> A 1972 Soviet book
> on military strategy dismissed the "bourgeois" notion that nuclear war was
> unwinnable, or even unjust, when used for a progressive cause.  I could go
> on and on.
> 
> Jim Matthews
> matthews@harvard

I cannot be sure of the book you are citing.   However it is probably
the same one which the proponents of "protracted nuclear war" have used
to argue that the Soviets have written that they believe a nuclear
war can be "won".  The funny thing about that book as pointed out by
Richard Scheer in "Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War" is that it cites
*American* articles on planning to "win" a nuclear war.
These articles came out some time in the 70's.
There were one or two articles in Soviet strategic journals
which later took up this absurd notion.
This only makes sense: it would be completely ludicrous for any
Soviet military expert to suggest they could somehow "win" a
nuclear war when during the 50's the US could attack the USSR
and the Soviets could not counterattack at all, when during the
Cuban Missile Crisis the Soviets had less than 300 strategic warheads
and the US had thousands.
 
As I have pointed out before the notion of protracted nuclear war
(which implies several beliefs: 1) that somehow there would be
something left after full scale nuclear war that would be
worth "defending" with more nuclear weapons and
2)that being able to continue launching nuclear weapons after
a full-scale nuclear attack is worth spending billions and offers
some sort of strategic advantage implying a "victory" in nuclear war)
is in Pentagon plans for the future.  The project involves digging
tunnels or caves and burying nuclear missiles within them: the
missiles would theoretically be totally bombproof but could
only be used by digging them out for weeks or months.
 
The US has never renounced the first use of nuclear weapons:
therefore it is obvious that our current nuclear strategy
assumes that such *first* use is neither unjust nor unwise.
Defending the cause of Capitalism is therefore seen to be
worth the destruction of the human species.
            tim sevener   whuxn!orb