The AMS Campaign

We are presently being subjected to an aggressive propaganda campaign aiming to persuade us that survival demands an immediate crash program to deploy an anti-missile system. The campaign pattern is familiar from analogues spread over the years— concerning big bombers, ground divisions, satellites, carriers, nuclear submarines, missiles, etc., not to speak of battleships, machine guns and sloops in a more distant past. From the standpoint of the nation’s security, some of these campaigns have made sense, and some haven’t. There is no way of telling from the heat of the rhetoric. It is relevant in these cases, though certainly not conclusive, to note the interests and attitudes involved. An anti-missile system must, for example, be of acute concern to the Army. The Navy has Polaris-Poseidon; the Air Force has the intercontinental missiles as well as bombers and most of the defense against bomber assault. The Army is thus out in the cold strategically, and there is a feeling that this is not fair. It is generally assumed that a deployed AMS, at any rate of the sort at present envisaged, will be the Army’s show. It is also obvious enough—as Wall Street investment letters have lately been stressing—how much an AMS would mean to many up-and-coming corporations. As for popular attitudes, to go ahead with AMS seems emotionally almost self-evident. What possible reason can there be for not setting up a shield against the catastrophic threat of nuclear missiles?

Well, among possible reasons are the fact that no AMS available either to us or to the enemy would make a satisfactory shield, and the further fact that there is a better method of achieving the defensive purpose.

JB

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James Burnham

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We are presently being subjected to an aggressive propaganda campaign aiming to persuade us that survival demands an immediate crash program to deploy an anti-missile system. The campaign pattern is familiar from analogues spread over the years— concerning big bombers, ground divisions, satellites, carriers, nuclear submarines, missiles, etc., not to speak of battleships, machine guns and sloops in a more distant past. From the standpoint of the nation’s security, some of these campaigns have made sense, and some haven’t. There is no way of telling from the heat of the rhetoric. It is relevant in these cases, though certainly not conclusive, to note the interests and attitudes involved. An anti-missile system must, for example, be of acute concern to the Army. The Navy has Polaris-Poseidon; the Air Force has the intercontinental missiles as well as bombers and most of the defense against bomber assault. The Army is thus out in the cold strategically, and there is a feeling that this is not fair. It is generally assumed that a deployed AMS, at any rate of the sort at present envisaged, will be the Army’s show. It is also obvious enough—as Wall Street investment letters have lately been stressing—how much an AMS would mean to many up-and-coming corporations. As for popular attitudes, to go ahead with AMS seems emotionally almost self-evident. What possible reason can there be for not setting up a shield against the catastrophic threat of nuclear missiles?

Well, among possible reasons are the fact that no AMS available either to us or to the enemy would make a satisfactory shield, and the further fact that there is a better method of achieving the defensive purpose.