z
S3.50
Gregory Baum French-Canadians Secularize
Reginald Fuller Popes, Bishops, Academic Freedom
Swami Yogeshananda: Hindu Caring· James A. Pollock.
Charles Pinches: Meanings in Morals and Ethics
The Feminine in American Philosophy
Marv Mahowald
Peter d'Ernco: Living Water, Dead Law
Gustave-Pierre Leonard: Moltmann on Creation
The Future of Altruism
Marie Augusta Neal Carolyn Craft: Symbols and Models· William Burrows: Christendom's End • Ron Marstin: Community S1ructure Chile's Army SeeksIts God
Kenneat Aman
Frank McCluskey: PhysIcs and MystiCism • Mark V n ,an. Jewish Meditation· Tom Gornell : Forest s Day AQUARTERLY REVIEW to explore the implications of Christianity for our times
flo urished in judaism. J ewish med itation was not onfined to one type or style;
there wer arious kinds of concentrations, visualizations, physical postures and
devotion I practices .
T he weak nes of these books is that th y d o. not sho w sufficient sensitivity to the
needs o f th ose iIlt r sted in experientiall confronting the sources and practising
the technique. Kaplan him e1 f ad dresses th u problem in the introduction toJewish
Meditation: A P mctical Guide. He rejldily acknowled ges that nei ther of his pn;vious
works "was meant to be a prac ~caI guide," and that th re was still need fo r)! prepar­
at ry text.
/,
./
True to itS ti tl • this b ok constitu tes a basic imrod uction to I1lea itation fro m a
Jewish perspective.
cidly written, it is a useful handbo000mewhat surpris­
ingly, however , it
er ver), few of the actual te chniq u~esented in th earlier
works. Accord' gly. to develop a full appr d ation a d u nderstanding of Jewish
meditation e would have to read it in OI'Uunctiqll vith Kaplan's earlier writings,
preferab M editation and Kabbalah.
M RK YER MAN
I
THE DANGEROUS FANTASY OF STAR WARS -
Iq<;{b/ '(7
T he Union of Concerned Scientists, John Tirman, ed., Empty Prom.ise: The Growing
Case Against Star Wars. Boston : Beacon Press, 1986. 238 pp. $7.95.
As a follow-up to its more tech nical book on tar Wars. The Fallacy oj Star Wars
(1 984), this latest collection of essays by the nion of Concerned Scientists (the
MIT-connected public policy organization which researches nuclear arms control
and general energ , maLLers) is a compre hensive a nalysis of the political and ·trate­
gic, as well as tech nical, implications of Star Wars, or SDl , the Strategic De fense
Initiative, as it is called by the Reagan administration. Written by ni ne specialists in
arms control and computer science, Empty Promise illuminates our understanding
of the gTowing debate over strategic defenses .
Since President Reagan's sp cch J\lfarch 1983, in which he suddenly announced
a reversal o f the 40-yeaJ' nuclear policy of dete.ITence to one of defense (dramati­
cally couched in his vision of a defensive shield with which to protect the populace
from all Soviet missile th reats), the ad min istration has sue es fully instiru tionaliLed
that concept in its Strategic Defense Initiative O rganizat.ion and managed to give it
life with billions of fundin g dollars from Congress. Along with these succes:;c' has
been an acti ve campaign to woo the scientific com munity. from which the concept's
most vocal critics have largely been d rawn. 0 er thest: pa~ r three years, their criti­
cisms represent a rising tide of skepticism, first about the fea sibility f a defensive
shield for populations and, second , abollt the assumption that d efe nses in pa e
would mean a decrease in hostilities between the superpowers. T he feasibili ry ques­
tion was largely answered by The Fallac)' oj Star Wars and similar slUdJes : no seriolls
arms analyst can DOW maintain, as the Presid en t still does, that SDI will perfectly
protect the meri - n p u blic from any nuclear attack. The technical COu nler­
measur the SbvietS would be sure to [mild; the fact that SDI does not address the
threat posed by non-ballistic nuclear attack , such as those from low-flying cruise
missiles or low-trajeaory submarine-launched mis iles, or bomb-calTying terror­
494
CROSS CURRENTS
/
·.,ts; and lheenormous proje led cost o[ the pr gram- in lhearea $llrillion-aJl
of these fa ctors have caused a reappraisal by e en i most optimistic apologists.
Con equently, the rationale has now been shifted to the positio n that Dl can p ro­
vide a "limited clefen . ," m tly of our harden d silos and com mand and ontrol
centers and, po ibly. of some population centers. HO\\fe er, skepti . m r main ,
despi te the powerful I bbying erfOl of the ae ro pace an electroni 5 indu ·trie ,
lhe primary recipients of a growing nlllnbe of generous Pentagon con tran , T he
kepticis m o f the scientific commu rlit y- best sym boliz.ed by lhe fact that some 6 ,000
scien tists across the naLion have signed a pledge not to solicit or acce pt an DI
contract.s--provides lhe subject malterof the ten essays. their "growing se against
Star War ," The aut h( I' tate ' early in the fa ell'ord thal they understand the aim
ofSD[ now to be the enhancing of ou t· n uclear detenenc '. not i replacement, and
that is their major concern .
F l UT of the te n essays, cb plers 3 th rough 6, are omewhat the [ech nical, and
the reader is caution d lhat they may be difficult for non-speej alin s. Chapte 3, "A
Tallgled Network: Command and Control for SOl ," by Robert Zi rkle is a d iscusion o f the difficulties inherent in the communications baule management of a de­
fensive shield, inv lving h undreds of lhou and of p robable incoming warheads
witutheir de oys, Chapter4 , "Could ,"Ve Trust meSOl S()ftwarc?" by Greg Ne o n
and David Redell, twO c m puter s 'entis t ,deals \ iill lhe "central nen'ou sy te m"
of a defensive hieJd, its com pul r: . T he gl' at complexity of an SOl sy f m can be
seen in the commen ts f some expel-ts that 24.6 1 million lines of com pu ter text
would be reqtlired hou ld Dl be built. The authors concl ude, afte r examinin, the
problem , that the complexities are tOO grea[ to devise a reliable computer software
system. Chapter 5, "Lethal Paradox: T he ASAT-SDI Link" d
ves comment
later. Ch a pler 6, "The Soviet Re po n e : New Mi iles and C unter-Measures," by
the well-known p h, sicisl and IBM fellow, Rich rd Ga rwin , is an assessmem o fthe
numerou. steps the Soviets a re likely to ta ke in order to penetr ate any defensive
system we wo uld bu ild . He d iscusses, among others, such methods as the Soviet5'
expandi ng the size 0 th eir arsenal so as to ovenvhelm the defenses, speed ing li p
the time o f their mis ile boost phase, thereby making them I S5 detectible to sen­
sors, or ha rdening their missiles a to make the m more resistant to the heat of a
lase r beam defense , etc.
Chap te rs I 2, 5, 7 and 9 contain the essence of the scientific community's con­
cern abo ut SDl. T hey contain com pelling argu ments ora political and stJ'a tegic nat­
ure. Chapter I, "T he Politics of Star W r5, " by joh n Ti rm<lfl chronicles three years
of deliberate ambiguity in the ad mi nistration's public explanation of SDJ and its
ac tual goals nd in te nri ns. T irman, the bo k's editor, I elieves what is 'p urring 011
the 51 ift toward n u lear defe nses is our desire to do minate space militarily. re pre­
senting an implicit belief in technolog as a solution to all D reign policy com plex­
ities. H is criticism is particularly poimed \ he n describing he exaggerations and, in
some cases, misrepresentations of the program's scien tific ach ievements to date
wh ich flow from the aura of "technological optimism" surroundi ng it. In "Scie ntists
and Star Wars," Chapter 2, J onathan .8. T ucker, a doctoral candidate at ?vUT,
raises serious qu estions about how SDI is transforming science itself. l'v1illions of
dollar of R&D monie are now being chan neled to the universities for defense­
related projec ,and there are strings attached : ome projects may become clas­
sified at a later date and/or some principal in ve tigators may be requir d to receive
security clearances. Tucker asks if invol vement in SOl research automatically conWINTER 1986-7
495
fen endo r 'ement of its goals, and whether the expanding influence of the Penta:
gon in academic life will c nve rt the campuses into a new "pork-barrel .onstitu­
te ncy of the Pentagon."
Jo hn T irman's second article. co-au tho red with Peter Didisheim, "Lethal Para­
dox; T he A AT -SDr Lin k," chap ter 5 , rai es the importan t question of the vulner­
ability f the defen 'ive weapo ns which will in essence be satellites-orbiting mi r­
ror , platform s, bundles of ensors, and on-boaTd computers. These would be
vulnerable to attack by oviet an ti-satellite weapons (ASAT s) which already xist.
B u t, mor im portamly , th authors point to the irony that the very technology be­
ing rojected as de fensive will, in fact, be ea ily adap table for l e
at llite killers.
In other wo rds . when the So vieL~ fa ll w our lead in to outer spa e weaponry, they
loo will develop lasers , kinetic energy wea pons, etc. , all of which can then be u ed
agains t ou r d efens s. Th us the lethal paradox o f missile defense and anti-sa tellite
d evice is inseparably linked . he p rogram is "sowing the seeds of its own destruc­
tio n."
The two ess' ys b} Dr. Pete r A. Clausen. d irector o f res arch for the . nion, are
the most rewarding in the c llectio n. "Li mited Defense: T h lJ nspoken Go al,"
chapter 7, argues that such limited d e enses (and to protect o ur missile ilo , not the
pop ulation, against a So iet fi rst str ike will accelerate the ar ms race and r move the
p otective mam le of the Antiba1listic Missile Treaty. He remind s liS that the
Scowcroft Comm issi rep rt o f 1983 dis pelled the nodon of a "wind ow of vu lner­
abilit " [or our ICBM's in vie\\· o f the fact thaLthe majori ty f AmeTican mis ile
power is on submarines and bomb r. herefore, d o w need SDI LO do whal exist­
ing weap ns can do now? Further, de ~ n s migh t give the impression LO the other
side iliat a fi rst-strike was imminent, since defenses can be an effective back-up in
destro ying a wounded enemy's retaliatory fire. In othe r words, defenses are ag­
essive in a world of superpower mistrust.
In Chapter 9, "Transition Improbable: Arms Control and SDI," Dr. Clausen
tackl ill thorny and often negle ted problem 0 how the transition to defense
wo uld actuaIJ y take place. T he P resid ent announced that negotiations could lead to
a superpower shift to d eten 'es, with arms control r d ucing the o ffenses and with
possible sharing of techn logy. Paul irze, senior arms adv iser to the admi nistra­
tion, envisions three stages in this transition : (1) for 10 years the US and USSR ne­
gotiate deep reductions in offensive weaponry wh ile researching d efenses within
the frame of the ABM reaty; (2) the ABM Treay would be set aside to allow for
staged d eployment o f d femes (which had proved themselves by this time) ; and (3)
deployment of very effecti e d efenses while nuclear weapons are reduced to near
zero. But what Clausen asks, would motivate the Soviets to disarm in the first place
in order to allow for d efenses to be research , especially when the administration
currently is reinterp reting the ABM Treaty to allow for Star Wars type defenses?
T he Soviets kn ow that such d efenses will leave them vulnerable. Would they be
foolish enough to give up thei r offensive power while we abr ogate the only treaty
preventing the militarization of space? Their most prudent response would be to
increase, not decrease, their offensive power. Clausen's analysis of the transitional
phases is incisive; in his opinion, competition, not cooperation, is what lies behind
the SDJ e ffort.
The 8th chapter, "Europe in the Shadow of Star Wars," by Jonathan Dean pre­
dicts a growing alienation between our Allies and the US ifSDI is pursued. Europe­
ans view SDI as of no use to them against the short range missiles the Soviets have
496
CROSS CURRENTS
'.imed against them. T hey fea r they will be left decoupled, if American and Soviet
defen es are de ployed against each other. The fi nal chapter , "Is Star ''''ars Dead ;"
by John Ti rma n cont in propo als for alternatives to what he views as a moribund
n uclear defense poli y: negotiated arms control, a ban on SATs and a compre­
hensive test ban treaty p rovide the basis [or an al te rnative to a defensive or offen­
slve arms race.
J LlA GARGIULO
Reviewers in this issue. Williams R. Burrows has just completed his doctoral disser­
tation in theology at the University of Chicago. Frank Bryce McCluskey is associate
professor of philosophy at Merc), College. Carolyn M. Craft is professor of English
at Longwood CoBege. Framville, Va.
J ames R. Pollock, SJ" teaches moral theology at St. Louis University. Gustave­
Pierre Leonard is a Bdgian-born theologian who has published widely in Europe
and the United States and has been writing for Cross CurrenL5 since 1953. Mark C.
Taylor i professor of religion at Williams College and the author of Erring: A Pas/­
modern A/theology (University of Chicago Press).
Mark Yerman is at the Center or Ecumenical Studies at St. John's University,
Collegeville. Mn . Julia Gargiulo is a social worker and peace activist who lives in
Connecticu t.
Tom CorneU is di rector of peace and justice for the diocese of Bridgeport, Ct.
Charles Pinches teaches philosophy at the University of Central Arkansas. Ron
Marstin, the author of Beyond Our Tribal Gods (Orbis Books), is a journalist and
teacher working in Kel1l ucky.
WINTER 1986-7
497