What Future Lies Ahead?

THOMAS J. WATSON JR.

Our second Speak Out selection on peace/war is by Thomas H. Watson, Jr., who succeeded his father as President of IBM and who championed the switch from cog-and-gear office machines to the field of electronic computers, in which IBM rapidly became an international pace-setter. This non-Utopian executive warns us of the illusion that one side can start a nuclear war and win it. Watson delivered his words at the 1981 Harvard Commencement after serving as ambassador to Moscow. Since then his warning also applies to threats of biochemical warfare. In 1992 Brown University dedicated the Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Institute for International Studies to provide innovative analysis of war/peace issues.

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This article is abridged from Speak Out Against the New Right edited by Herbert F. Vetter (Boston: Beacon Press, 1982)

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An anthropologist writing the history of the years since the first atomic explosion might well conclude that we human beings have been preparing for our own demise. Like many extinct species we have had a massive change in our environment. We have finally invented the ultimate weapon, and in a mad technological race have connected thousands of them to two buttons—one in Washington and one in Moscow. With two very slight pressures we can literally do away with the world's two most powerful nations, and leave much of the rest of our planet unfit for human habitation.

Make no mistake:

By overwhelming odds, the result of any use of nuclear weapons would not be victory. It would be all out war and total destruction. And in the words of President Kennedy, "The living would envy the dead."

Beyond a certain point, the prospect is not the result of relative strengths of the two opposing forces. It is the absolute power in the hands of each . . .

Think of it this way: Would you, if you sat in the Kremlin, attack the United States, even knowing that you could knock out 95 percent of our weapons, but realizing that the remaining five percent could destroy literally the whole Soviet Union?

Would you, sitting in Washington, attack even a smaller country which had only a thousand warheads knowing that if you missed only ten percent they could wipe out a hundred American cities?

You know the answer: There is no safety in numbers. The war planning process of the past has become totally obsolete. Attack is now suicide. Yet the pursuit of the mirage of superiority persists. And over the years the two superpowers have piled weapon upon useless weapon.

In 1945, when we exploded our first atomic bomb at Hiroshima, we had a four-year lead over the Russians. In 1952, when we exploded our first H-bomb, we had a ten-month lead. The Soviet Union closed the gap despite having a country severely torn by the ravages of a war of a ferocity never visited on our country. It has kept up in the race, despite the burden of a hopelessly inefficient economy, by ruthlessly channeling its resources, and by calling upon the Soviet people for an endless acceptance of sacrifice.

Between us, our two countries now have explosive power equal to a million Hiroshima A-bombs. We have between us some 15 thousand "city killing" weapons—one bomb, one city. Bigger stockpiles do not mean nore security. Enough is enough. And we are far beyond that point now.

Look for example at the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Interim Agreement—the two parts of SALT I. The Soviet Union has violated neither. These treaties do not depend on trust or good will. They depend on cold self-interest and unilateral verifiability.

Against all illusions, what is the reality? The reality is that thermonuclear war in any form is suicide.
Our imperative is to change our course—to take the only road which offers a viable hope for the future: not a road to unilateral action of any kind, but a road toward the joint continuation of the SALT process; a road to a long series of mutually verifiable treaties.

The Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University

I know from experience how maddening protracted negotiations with the Russians can be. I know what these negotiations will demand of us: in the words of St. Francis of Sales, "A cup of science, a barrel of wisdom, and an ocean of patience." But we have no choice. The longer we drift on without firmly capping the arms race, the graver the dangers we create:

• the danger that a suspected violation, some unforeseen new technology or a sudden quantitative surge will trigger a desperate response;

• the danger that we may further split ourselves from Western allies who fear we lack seriousness about negotiation, whether on SALT or on European Theater Nuclear Forces;

• the danger that each new warhead we or the Russians build inevitably increases the possibility of a thermonuclear accident;

• the danger that a growing dependence on nuclear weapons to defend our interests major and minor all over the globe will someday trap us in a choice between Armageddon and surrender;

• the danger that if we don't act now, we shall lose forever the chance to limit future new devices of unimaginable complexity.

In response to George Kennan's recent drastic yet creative disarmament proposal, the designated head of the Administration's Arms Control Agency, Eugene Rostow, said not only that the Administration was "taking a serious look" at this proposal but added that "the whole miserable business is mad. We must find a way out."

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