Off to New York City for a couple of meetings around the PREPCOM. Drop me a line if you are around.
In the meantime, here is aother entry from Michael Krepon’s shoebox on an argument that was later reprised to disastrous consequences:
Richard Perle on the lulling effect of arms control:
“Democracies will not sacrifice to protect their security in the absence of a sense of danger. And every time we create the impression that we and the Soviets are cooperating and moderating the competition, we diminish that sense of apprehension.”
Perle, an adept infighter and fierce critic of arms control, learned his trade from a master, Senator “Scoop” Jackson, a Democrat from Washington state. No one was better at framing the terms of debate. Perle left a scant paper trail. This quote comes from an interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Roy Gutman, who wrote for Newsday. This quote appeared in a story Gutman filed in February, 1983, at the height of Perle’s machinations while serving in “Cap” Weinberger’s Pentagon.
More recent users of this particular talking point include Bob Joseph in trashing the BWC verification protocol.
Major Lemon | May 4, 2009
The sense of danger ironically made us all feel safer. The administration within which Perle served knew how to best deal with the Soviets.
FSB | May 4, 2009
“Democracies will not sacrifice to protect their security in the absence of a sense of danger. And every time we create the impression that we and the Soviets are cooperating and moderating the competition, we diminish that sense of apprehension.”
Right on. Nothing like a little threat-mongering to tax tax tax and spend spend spend.
Have a look at today’s post by Prof. Walt of Harvard.
J House | May 4, 2009
It is a mistake to believe we can hold Russia in check because of our nuclear capability, regardless of size.
I have a feeling that when they saw the pentagon burn and part of the lower part of manhattan destroyed, they knew we were in a new ballgame when the U.S. responded a month later with a smattering of conventional forces.
Woe to the Soviet Union had they done the same 30-40-50 yrs ago.
Andrew Tubbiolo | May 4, 2009
Irony probably has nothing to do with it. Rather if an individual likes dealing with disasters and threats or prefers to live their life letting things be. I’d say it has much more to do with human nature than any kind of irony. The anti-nukers, and nuclear-freezers most certainly did not feel safer during the last decade of the Cold War. Their ability to fill the streets is as much a testament to their emotional state as the likes of Richard Pearl were able to raid the public coffers to fund the arms race. It probably has more to do with base human instinct than any real analysis. My base instinct drives me to the conclusion that you cannot support a modern military and survive nuclear standoffs without an arms control regime. Arms control was just as integral to the prevention of WWIII as the Strategic Air Command and SSBN force. I guess it’s just human nature that arms builders will always be in conflict with arms controllers. Such is life….
Josh | May 4, 2009
The administration in which Perle served — entirely to its credit — negotiated and signed the INF and START treaties.
Perle, of course, had left by then.
epaminondas | May 5, 2009
Perle is actually agreeing with FDR, who said almost the exact same thing of the Washington series of treaties, which of course, lulled the democracies.
He is correct about how people behave in a democracy. Perhaps not, democracy, whisky, sexy but at least sunday, baseball, barbecue .. why spoil the party with rational talk about threats?
There has to be balance between using that weakness of open societies to create manufactured fear to achieve political ends, and preventing being lulled into unpreparedness.
AWR | May 5, 2009
But Perle was in Reykjavik when zero-zero was proposed, and he supported it. I was in Europe a lot during that time, including a memorable conference on nuclear weapons in Europe, and was an observer at the UN Special Session on Disarmament in ’82, when there were massive demonstrations in NYC. Nobody believed Reagan would do it, but he did.
Off-topic, Richard brought a couple salamis with him to the summit in a carry-on. They were detected and blown up by the Secret Service. I guess he had to eat fermented shark or whale blubber…
Andrew Tubbiolo | May 6, 2009
— epaminondas · May 5, 03:26 PM · “There has to be balance between using that weakness of open societies to create manufactured fear to achieve political ends, and preventing being lulled into unpreparedness”
How revealing. How can you say that with all the history of the 20th cen showing how the U.S., the biggest group of selfish, lazy, louts kept coming out on top?
Did it matter that we lost Viet-Nam, stalemated Korea, crashed our economy, had every industry and military weapons program throughly compromised by foreign intel agencies? Did it matter that the USSR had massive nuclear superriority from 1977 – ~1985? No it did not matter. Maybe because the religion of ‘national security’ does not reflect the metric that really allows a nation to thrive and survive in the international theater. I’d say it’s just not that important and is vastly overblown.
anon | May 7, 2009
If I remember correctly, Perle supported zero-zero because he was certain the Russians would reject it and that would be the end of that. We, of course, really didn’t know what to do when we got “yes” for an answer….