Reagan's 'zero option' fraud fraudulent imperialist 'peace talks, few of the matter is...that SS-20 merely con-
John ROSS The imperialist ruling classes have confronted opposition to their nuclear missiles programme in Western Europe on a scale far exceeding that they anticipated. For that reason they have been forced to engage in increasing manoeuvres to attempt to divert and derail that movement. The most important of these, reaffirmed at the November 1982 NATO defence ministers meeting, is the so-called "zero option'. This is a ploy advanced by Reagan in November 1981 television broadcast, coinciding with the initiation of 'Strategic Arms Reduction Talks' (START) with the Soviet Union. It is crucial, therefore, that the anti-missiles movement have a clear position on this. It has been reaffirmed as the position of U.S. imperialism following the announce. ment of new nuclear arms proposals by Andropov.
THE REAL NATURE OF THE 'ZERO OPTION'
What Reagan actually proposing is clear. The Soviet Union must dismantle all its nuclear weapons in Europe - that is the SS-4, SS-5 and SS-20. In return the United States will not deploy the Pershing II and Cruise missiles, but will retain in place every single one of its existing nuclear weapons, as well as the entire missile submarine force in the seas that surround the USSR. Britain and France will continue to possess all their nuclear weapons and to modernise them. This is supposedly a 'zero option' which the 'aggressive' Soviet Union is turning down.
In reality, in the whole history of
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more groteque proposals than this have ever been put forward. It more or less ranks with Johnson's claim that the North Vietnamese navy was carrying out an offensive against the U.S. fleet in the Gulf of Tonkin, or President Carter's assertion that Cuba was posing a military threat to the United States by having a few hundred Soviet troops stationed there.
Let us take first the SS-20 - which the Soviet Union is using to replace its more than twenty-year-old SS-4 and SS-5. Both are liquid propelled rockets. The SS-4 takes hours to prepare for firing Above all, both are fixed-site missiles that cannot be made mobile. Since the United States is now developing and deploying nuclear missiles that are accurate to a few hundred meters or even less, the SS-4 and SS-5 are completely useless to defend the Soviet Union against an American 'first strike'. This would be roughly the equivalent of attempting to repel a modern tank attack using weapons from the first world war.
The SS-20 is a modern accurate weapon. Above all it is mobile - which means that it is far less vulnerable to an attack by a system such as the American MX, or any more accurate American submarine-launched weapon - or of course the Cruise and Pershing II
However, the SS-20 has far too short a range to hit the United States. Whereas the American MA, Trident, Pershing are quite capable of striking the USSR. Professor Carl G Jacobsen, professor and director of Soviet Studies at the University of Miami, explained the situation clearly in the January 1982 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, "The point
Cruise Missile-aggressiveness emphasised (DR) firm and guarantee long established Soviet strike potentials against America's allies. The Cruise and Pershing II missiles, however, threaten not just reciprocal destruction of Soviet allies; they threaten the Soviet heartland instead, just as effectively as do inter-continental range missiles based on US soil For there to be a true analogy Moscow would have to deploy the SS-20s in Cuba. The fact (is) that Washington feels that MoscOW will be forced to swallow Cruise and Pershing missiles in NATO Europe, when it is quite clear that the United States would not tolerate SS-20s outside Havana."
Professor Jacobsen could have gone even further. Washington made it quite clear in 1962 in the Cuban 'missile crisis' that it would fight a world war to prevent the Soviet Union having any bases near the United States in any way equivalent to those with which the U.S. surrounds the USSR.
A NUCLEAR FREE EUROPE
In fact the Soviet Union has made it repeatedly clear that it is prepared to give up both the SS-20 and all the nuclear weapons that it has in Europe, or aimed against it, on one simple condition: that the imperialists do likewise - namely the United States, Britain and France remove their nuclear weapons.
But this proposal, A Nuclear Free Europe from Poland to Portugal' is totally rejected by imperialism because the Soviet Union can only be attacked with nuclear weapons. To remove all the American, British, French nuclear weapons from Europe would precisely make it impossible to attack the USSR. Imperi-
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alism, however, is absolutely determined icy of the Soviet Union, for reasons we be attacked only by such means, under to have that potential — now as a threat have already discussed, ports the demand for a nuclear-free Eu- World War II has been based on its nucrope. But while this is the official pol- lear weapons, and the Soviet Union can and at some future date to actually use. It totally refuses the Soviet proposal to remove all nuclear weapons from Europe.
Reagan's proposal is absurd. It demanded that the Soviet Union give up all its nuclear defences in Europe, while the United States can maintain all its existing forces, the British and French modernise it is completely unacceptable to imperialism. You therefore have to chose either to break with imperialism or to give up the demand in practice.
Thompson indicated exactly what the 'two-super-powers' orientation meant in practice when he came out favourno circumstances is the United States going to agree to give up nuclear wea-
This, however, is something that must demonstrated the eyes of the working class of the world - starting with the imperialist countries.
There is an immediate way to remove
Reagan's "zero option'. the threat of nuclear destruction from the theirs, and the US deploy its new submarine forces. On that basis Reagan might as well propose that the USSR simply open up its borders, haul up the white flag, and allow the U.S. tanks to roll in. The Soviet Union rightly rejected this unserious suggestion of the United States - as Reagan knew they would.
was purely political - a pure propaganda ploy. The 'zero option' was directly suggested by the then West German Chancellor Schmidt as the best way of demobilising the European anti-missiles movement. The option-plus-negotiations' formula, therefore, was and is given maximum propaganda projection by the West European governments. The Italian foreign minister Emilio Colombo praised the 'decisiveness of the Reagan proposals. French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson declared it to be 'the desirable solution'. Thatcher called it, *a most important initiative,' and stated, I believe it will receive a warm welcome not only in political circles, but in the hearts and minds of people across Europe'. Schmidt stated that he was 'very grateful that Reagan had awakened to the 'strategic and psychological situation in Europe'.
REFORMISM AND THE 'ZERO OPTION'
While Reagan's 'zero option' made no sense militarily it did, however, neatly hook some of the reformist forces in the *European Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament' (END). This organisation, whose best known spokesperson is the British historian E.P. Thompson, has done valuable work in getting out factual material. But, ignoring not merely the different class nature of states concerned but all elementary factual evidence, that the United States and the Soviet Union equally responsible for the military buildup - a version of the 'two superpowers' argument.
This in practice leads the forces of the END to line up with the right wing of the anti-missiles movement on key questions. For example the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has a clear position demanding Britain withdraw from NATO. At the November 1982 CND conference, Thompson opposed this because he said it did not also condemn the Warsaw Pact.
ably towards This means, however, accepting every single one of the present U.S. atomic weapons in Europe and the entire nuclear armament of much for a nuclear-free Europe!
On this particular issue of nuclear weapons in other politics, the position of the Soviet leadership states that it will agree to the withdrawal of all nuclear weapons from Europe at any time. It says that it will unconditionally renounce the use of nuclear weapons in any circumstances against any country that refuses to have nuclear weapons on its soil. It applied this correctly during the last Greek elections when Papandreou pledged he would
Greece from remove the U.S. bases from the country. The Soviet leadership stated that if this renounce the use of nuclear weapons against Greece in any circumstances and create a nuclear-free zone in the entire Balkans.
Such a position was, however, totally unacceptable to imperialism. After its electoral victory the Papandreou govenment dropped its pledge to withdraw from NATO. All the American bases and their nuclear weapons remain in Greece. The Soviet Union has since the election proposed that Papandreou implement his election pledge, reiterating that if he did so, it would take all steps it has outlined. This has been turned down flat by
What the Soviet Union says it will not do, however, is unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons when the imperialists do not. On this, one can hardly blame it. If the Soviet Union ever unilaterally gave up its nuclear weapons that would mean the certainty of nuclear war. U.S. imperialism and its allies would not hesitate to use their nuclear weapons under those circumstances — they already considered doing so in Korea, during the Vietnamese war of independence from French, and during the American war in Vietnam from the 1960s to 1975. If the Soviet Union had not had nuclear weapons, the United States undoubtedly would have used them.
Furthermore, while the Soviet Union has pledged it will never be the first country to use nuclear weapons, the United States has always refused to make a corresponding commitment. Evidently, if working class of Europe. This is to accept without delay the Soviet Union's proposals for a nuclear free Europe. But this means for forces such as END, abandoning all the equal-blame slogans. The fact that the imperialists refuse to do this is a sure sign that it is they, and not the Soviet Union, who threaten peace. It is they, not the Soviet Union, who threaten the working class with nuclear destruc-
The Greek worker should demand, as those in recent demonstrations done, that Papandreou fulfill his election pledge, get out of NATO, get the American bases out of Greece.
WHAT ATTITUDE TO THE NEW SOVIET PROPOSALS?
It is in this political framework that the working class in Western Europe should consider the new Soviet proposals to limit the number of SS-20s to the number of nuclear weapons possessed by France, and Britain, in return for NATO not deploying Cruise and Pershing II.
There can be no objection in principle to the Soviet Union proposing reduction of its armaments in order to help extract concessions from imperialism. But what the movement in Western Europe cannot and should not do is to limit itself to the proposals which are now put forward by the Soviet bureaucracy. In particular, these accept possession of nuclear weapons by British and French imperialism -something the working class of these countries should reject. The Soviet proposals would also leave all existing U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe in place. The elimination not the limitation' of these weapons should be the goal of the workers movement in Europe. Particularly disgraceful was the reaction of the government - containing CP Foreign minister Cheysson declared himself 'shocked' by any proposal that French nuclear weapons should
There is no reason to campaign against the Soviet proposals, but the demands of the workers and anti-missiles movement in Europe should be clear, and independent of any negotiation at Geneva. They should not accept any imperialist power possessing nuclear demands - the demands must be clear and simple:
- No Cruise, no Pershing, no neutron
- Unilateral nuclear disarmament by
He was defeated.
This orientation also forces the European Campaign for Nuclear Disarma- to get the idea that neither really needed ment to give up the struggle even for its own alleged demands. Officially it supboth countries were pledged never to use nuclear weapons first, people would tend them, therefore, they should be abolished. As all U.S. military strategy since
Britain and France!
That is the way to fight now against nuclear war. That is the way to start the fight to withdraw all European countries from NATO. It means total and complete rejection of the zero option fraud of Reagan.
of the anti-missiles movement
John ROSS The anti-missiles and anti-nuclear weapons movement is the largest international movement on any political question in the imperialist countries since the second world war. Three million people participated in its demonstrations in the summer of 1982, exceeding even the numbers of the anti-Vietnam War movement. The polarization that has developed in ressponse to this question in the organised labour movement, in Western Europe especially, is also even greater than on Vietnam. Together with austerity, the issue of the Pershing II and Cruise Missiles will dominate the political situation in Western Europe in 1983. This combination has the potential to create real political turmoil in the West European countries.
As was pointed out in the first article on this issue - "The Stakes in the AntiMissile Movement' - this is a struggle whose outcome will affect every dimension of world politics.
Where did this vast movement come from? What propelled it? Why did it erupt when it did? What is the historical significance? These are the fundamental questions to which the labour movement and socialists must address themselves. We will consider them briefly in this article.