University News (Irving, Tex.), Vol. 7, No. 6, Ed. 1 Wednesday, November 23, 1983 Page: 3 of 8
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Wednesday, November 23, 1983
Page 3
University News
Commentary
3
zzzz-Z'zzzz^^^JS
Polis should not welcome war
i
I
forces to a Soviet first strike.
Even the deterrent strength of the
strategic diad is questionable, owing
■ • o
I SSID LIFT |
-em HiGHen I
John Christopher’s point and mine.
The argument was that such horror
stories were irrelevant to the purpose course to be judged by these things as
of education, which should be what it
has always been—teaching what is
truly important for human beings.
To show violence being done to
people over and over again, the only
purpose of which is to show what
Of course, we have not attempted
to address in such a space all related
security questions of the December
deployment; but this analysis does
inferentially touch upon several of
them. Alliance cohesiveness, to cite
just one, has thus far been remarka-
ble; this we may attribute to the pro-
mise of strategic peace that the
missiles hold out, coupled with the
hope that, when this deployment is
achieved, real reductions will be more
than a possibility.
highly sophisticated Soviet ABM de-
fenses with technologically aged
forces.
However, President Carter’s adop-
tion and President Reagan’s accep-
tance of a counterforce targeting
policy in place of a countervalue
=^1
to whether it is good or bad, decent
or indecent.
To suppose that good citizens
should welcome war is indeed a
monstrous notion. The rhetorical
trick employed here is plain enough.
violence can be done, is surely a terri- The parallel would be if I were to at-
tribute to Levy a slavish desire to
welcome totalitarian rule.
But such terrific accusations are in-
M. LEVY CHOOSES to interpret
me as saying that “courage is what
makes a nation strong.” What I said
was that the virtues make a people
r 1 ’ ' : is the
K5
"There are some things of which we
say that they surpass human endur-
ance. The latter are fearful, at least to
every sensible person." (Nic. Eth.,
1115b7-9)
through millenniarist and apocalyptic strong, of which courage
elementary one.
Levy then attributes to me the
nonsensical and monstrous proposi-
tion that courage is incompatible
• i i i • r o 1_ •
posedly the hidden heart of my argu-
ment. I take it that every sensible
Board of Contributors
5. John Christopher, Dan Berry,
Leo Paul S. de Alvarez, Roy
Jensen, Burgess Laird, Mike Pro-
bus, Robert Reeb.
Commentary
University News is forming a
Board of Contributors composed
of students, faculty, alumni, and
others willing to write thoughtful
commentary on topics ranging
from UD to foreign affairs. In-
terested writers should submit re-
quests for membership to: Editor,
University News, Box 605.
STOP
IN LIGHT OF the foregoing secur-
ity evaluation, however brief, it is not
difficult to see how the deploymet of
quick, low-flying missiles (the Per-
shing Ils and cruise missiles) would
serve as a first step in redressing a
severe strategic imbalance, resulting
in a negotiating partner of necessity
more accomodating to an essential
military equal.
or j
Cambridge teaching and the suicide plexity, however, but
rate.
First, we should recognize that in
Aristotle’s teaching it is not only
bravery in war that counts as courage.
At 1115a3O ff. of the Ethics, Aristotle
emphasizes, as an essential condition
for exercising courage, great danger
that can be faced nobly (thus war is
the pre-eminent, though not the on-
ly, arena for courage); but elsewhere
he stresses endurance as its chief
characteristic, so that courage is
displayed as much in avoiding what is
Soviet military forces, Afghanistan, the U.S.’s coveted equivalence in by the dual problem of penetrating
with its Soviet-funded supporting in- strategic-nuclear and theatre-nuclear ' '' L! - ’ ° ’
frastructures, serves as an ideal axis of weaponry brings the imbalance of
penetration into the Persian Gulf.
The spectre of a rapid concentra-
tion of Soviet mobile forces is not a
situation peculiar to f
ing countries of the Mideast; indeed, missile submarines) must suffice
it is a 1' '' r - ' 1 - ’ •-* - -r
Asian land mass. triad (bombers, ballistic missile sub- Destruction) have provided the U.S.
by Leo Paul S. de Alvarez
N
ficulty with such topics, and it be-
comes worse the more popular they
become, is that they are usually ir-
relevant to the true questions which lear war?
should be asked.
I must add that we are approach-
ing the end of a millenneum and,
once again, I suppose we must suffer
______1_ ___ *11___* _ 1 1 . •
visions. We have been taught well,
however, by St. Augustine that such
visions are irrelevant to human af-
fairs. However that may be, I shall
first reply to M. Levy’s letter and then with the desire for peace. Such is sup-
that of Dr. Dennis Sepper.
The violence which appears on tel-
evision shows is the same violence person understands that the health of
which was done to those children in the polis depends upon as full a
the Cambridge school. That was S. development as is possible in the
T_i__ ■ r > • . i • given circumstances of all the virtues
and of friendship. The polis is of
to avert the employment of a U.S.
. - • - ‘ i a
strategy, nevertheless, may not prove
sufficient to wrest escalation domin-
ance capacity from the U.S.S.R.
On this question, candid students
will say that, as in all relations be-
tween states, an issue is acted upon
not according to reality but according
to appearances; and of this, the
history of Soviet opportunism fur-
nishes us example enough for pru-
dent inference.
TT n the October 26 University
I News Professor de Alvarez cited
JL Aristotle’s doctrine of courage to
explain a connection between the
suicide rate among high-school
students and a television report about
how third-graders through high-
schoolers are being taught about
nuclear war in Cambridge, Mass.
Though I applaud Professor de Al-
this important doctrine, I am not at
all sure that his rendition provides an
adequate understanding of courage The doctrine is not always immedi-
supports the connection between ately clear not just because of com-
—----u:----j ------ -j > • ----- l t even more
because these subjects do not lend
themselves to exactness or demon-
strative proof: “We must be satisfied
to indicate the truth with a rough
and general sketch” (1094bl9). In
such matters we must always remem-
ber that we cannot avoid the work of
interpretation and the problem of
application across two millennia.
Professor de Alvarez says that in
Aristotle “courage.. .is the attitude
we take towards pain and therefore
See Children page 8
New missiles: Redressing strategic imbalance
by D. Burgess Laird
ith the scheduled Decem-
ber deployment of U.S.
▼ ▼ Pershings Ils and cruise
missiles in Europe just around the
corner, it is important that concerned
citizens understand why it is im-
perative that NATO fully implement
its double-track decision to deploy
new missiles while negotiating for
future real reductions. To understand
why deployment is a vital security ob-
jective is to understand why the other
half of the NATO decision, namely
the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks
(START) in Geneva, has not yielded
and will not yield any significant pro-
gress until the new missiles have been
deployed.
That the Soviets do not wish to
relinquish the strategic advantages
represented in their 250 East Euro-
pean based SS-20s is just a partial ex-
planation of why President Reagan’s
two forthcoming initiatives, the Zero
Option and the Build Down Plan,
have fallen upon deaf ears.
The strategic dilemma of NATO
and of all Western democracies on
the whole can be located in their
dangerously assymetrical correlation
of forces vis-a-vis the Soviet Empire.
Across a broad range of military scen-
arios, strategic-nuclear, theatre-nuc-
lear, and conventional, the Soviets
clearly maintain predominant force
projection levels.
AS THIS INDICATES, then, Sovi-
et superiority resides not only in over-
whelming firepower but also in fluid
maneuver capability. The mobility of
Soviet forces, including sea lift and
air lift capabilities, has been
demonstrated well in Afghanistan.
Far from a mere testing ground for
De Alvarez________
pain rather than fear
by Dennis L. Sepper
uelear war and its horrors ble thing to do. If that is not what is
have certainly become the being done, then one must assume
topic of the day. The dif- that some principles are being taught
to the children. What are these? Why sufficient for Levy. Levy declares that
are these principles then not at the I argue implicitly that I should wel-
center of the education and not nuc- come nuclear war because the im-
mediacy and greatness of its danger
will truly develop the virtue I wish,
i.e., courage. But that was, of course,
not the point.
See De Alvarez page 8
base as in doing what is noble
(1116alO-12)
UNDER THIS interpretation, the
scope for courage is much wider; it
may be practiced by women in child-
birth or even children in pain. The
more narrowly we interpret courage
as willingness to go to war, however,
the more we diverge from Aristotel-
ian virtue, since courage is a virtue
proper to a lower part of the soul
(1117b23) and since, “as we have
repeatedly argued, peace is the final
end of war” (Politics 1334al5-16).
Indeed, at 1117b7 ff. Aristotle points
out that the best soldiers are not the
most virtuous men.
Aristotle’s doctrine of courage is
varez’s determination to remind us of complex rather than simple, embed-
ded in a much more comprehensive
teaching about ethics and politics.
with its Soviet-funded supporting in- strategic-nuclear and theatre-nuclear
power into even starker relief. Impar-
tial observers must now admit that
until the MX missile is deployed, a
the oil produc- strategic diad (bombers and ballistic
peril facing the entire Euro- the nuclear deterrent in place of the targeting policy (Mutally Assured
______ triad (bombers, ballistic missile sub- Destruction) have provided the U.S.
Soviet forces in Europe are eche- marines, and ICBMs) which has been with the requisite targeting flexibility
lonned in depth across the entire East temporarily nullified because of the
European salient. This broad though vulnerability of our land-based ICBM launch-on-warning policy. Such
concentrated articulation of forces is forces to a Soviet first strike. ——- _. _.i_ ■
to be compared with the shallow cor-
don deployment of NATO.
Not only is the latter distribution to the fact that the U.S.’s Submarine
of forces (though stretching along the Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs),
whole of the defensive perimeter) in- though relatively invulnerable to at-
ferior in large scale warfare against tack, might not be capable of de-
mobile forces, but, more important- stroying the Soviet’s super-hardened
ly, its inferior manpower dictates that force structures.
in the case of an attack upon one sec- THE OTHER LEG of the diad, the
tor, an effective response would be strategic air bomber force, is plagued
bought only at the expense of en-
dangering the other sectors.
THUS, WHEREAS the Soviets
have disposable military strength,
Western defenses face the redeploy-
ment problem of overextended forces
which, when tested, must inevitably
result in the prejudiced security in-
terests of one or more sectors. A re-
cent example of this weakness could
be witnessed in the way American
forces had to be juggled 'across the
oceans from the Mideast to the Carri-
bean basin and back to the Mideast.
The effecability of placing one’s
hopes in a U.S. points-of-leverage
defense scheme is radically vitiated by
the fact that Soviet troops and possib-
ly even Soviet nuclear missiles are
now on Cuban soil.
The muchly documented loss of
stresses
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University News (Irving, Tex.), Vol. 7, No. 6, Ed. 1 Wednesday, November 23, 1983, newspaper, November 23, 1983; Irving, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1218355/m1/3/: accessed May 21, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting University of Dallas.