ECOSCIENCE:

POPULATION,
RESOURCES,
ENVIRONMENT

PAUL R. EHRLICH
STANFORD UNIVERSITY

ANNE H. EHRLICH
STANFORD UNIVERSITY

JOHN P. HOLDREN
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

W. H. FREEMAN AND COMPANY

San Francisco
 RICH NATIONS, POOR NATIONS, AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT /
In our view, the most serious risk associated with
nuclear power is the attendant increase in the number
of countries that have access to technology, materials,
and facilities leading to a nuclear weapons capabil-
ity. ... If widespread proliferation actually occurs,
it will prove an extremely serious danger to U.S.
security and to world peace and stability in general.86c
The Ford group recommended that the U.S. defer the
recycle of plutonium and the commercialization of the
breeder reactor and that it seek "common supplier action
to ban the export of such technology." It recommended
also that the U.S. and other supplier nations provide
assured supplies of slightly enriched uranium to other
countries at favorable prices, a plan whose drawbacks we
have already mentioned above. In April 1977, President
Carter announced a nuclear policy for his administration
essentially congruent with the Ford Study's recommen-
dation.
While we applaud the progress represented by the
positions taken by the Flowers, Ranger, and Ford reports
and by the Carter administration's position, our own
preference is for a stronger stance. We believe there
should be an absolute embargo on the export of enrich-
ment and reprocessing technology by any nation.86d The
United States should cajole and, if necessary, coerce its
allies into compliance, using every incentive and/or
peaceful sanction at its disposal. (The possibilities are
considerable, not least of which is the fact that West
Germany and France will be dependent on U.S. enriched
uranium for their own nuclear power programs into the
1980s.) Since the Soviets are also intensely concerned
about proliferation, there is a chance that they would
cooperate. Countries that have power reactors but no
enrichment or reprocessing capability could be supplied
with low-enriched uranium by the sort of consortium
mentioned above, but there is reason to question whether
any additional power reactors should be exported by
anyone. A universal embargo on reactor exports may
seem a drastic measure—certainly drastic enough to
require rewriting the NPT—but lowering the probability
of a nuclear holocaust is a desperately important task.
S61
'Spurgeon Kceny et al., Nuclear power issues and choices.
8<rd
See also the chapter on proliferation in A. Lovins, Soft energy paths:
Toward a durable peace.
91 7
The sort of pussyfooting that characterized attempts to
stem proliferation before 1977 was not merely a scandal
but a threat to the survival of civilization.
Chemical, biological, and environmental weap-
ons. Even if humanity does manage to stop the proli-
feration of nuclear weapons, it still must deal with the
ever-increasing deadliness of conventional weapons and
the prospective horrors of chemical and biological war-
fare (CBW) and environmental warfare. Biological and
chemical weapons, which could be nearly as destructive
o£ lives as nuclear arms, seem to have some prospects of
being eventually considered "conventional."87 Environ-
mental warfare is newer and potentially perhaps even
more threatening.88
Achieving disarmament.\ The third element of
difficulty in changing the rules of international relations
is uncertainty about the best way to achieve disarmament
and security in a world where in the past security has_
usually been provided by brute force,, either threatened
or overtly exercised. Unfortunately, the effort going into
the study of peaceful means to world security has been
infinitesimal compared with that going into military
research, although almost no area needs greater immedi-
ate attention. The basic requirement is evident: once
again it is a change in human attitudes so that the
in-group against which aggression is forbidden expands
to include all human beings.
If this could be accomplished, jigf-iin'ty might he
provided by an armed international organization, a
global analogue of a police force. Many people have
recognized this as a goal, but the way to reach it remains
obscure
- '— in a world where factionalism
, seems,
——•* if anything
TO be increasing. The nrststep necessarily invn1'"''
Tganization.J?ut it seems probable that, as long as
people fail to comprehend the magnitude of the danger,'
that step will be impossible. At the very least, societies
87
J. P. Perry Robinson, The special case of chemical and biological
weapons; see also Bo Holmberg, Biological aspects of chemical and
biological weapons.
88
For example, see Chapter 11 and Frank Barnaby, The spread of the
capability to do violence: An introduction to environmental warfare;
Jozef Goldblat, The prohibition of environmental warfare; and Bhupen-
dra M. Jasani, Environmental modification: New weapons of war?
918 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
must learn to weigh the risks inherent in attempting to
achieve controlled disarmament against the risks of
continuing the arms race. An(attemrjt at disarmament^
could lead to a war^W to the destruction or domination of
the United States through Chinese or Soviet "cheating.",
But, if disarmament were successfully carried out, and if
an international police force were established, the reward^
would be a very much safer world in which resources
would be freed for raising the standard of living for all
people.89 No problem deserves more intensive study and
international discussion.
The dynamics of disarmament appear to be even more
complex than those of arms races. Nevertheless, in 1970
the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA),
the only United States agency charged with planning in
this area, had a budget of only a few million dollars
(contrasted with $80 billion for "defense"). Representa-
tive John F. Seiberling of Ohio put it succinctly: "The,
Pentagon has 3000 people working on arms sales to other
countries while the Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency has 12 people monitoring arms sales. That gives
you an idea of where the executive branch priorities
are.'""3 Moreover, the ACDA is heavily influenced by the
Department of State bureaucracy, still a stronghold of
cold-war thinking.
It has been suggested that an important step toward^
disarmament could be taken hy the pgtahli^irpfnt of an
international Disarmament control organization, which
would serve as a clearinghouse forCinformtior) on the
quantity and quality of weapons in various nations and
would thus help to detect cheating on
agreements.91 As a semi-independent UnifH N.arinnc_
agency, such an organization could play a vital role— but-
so far there has been no significant effort to establish one.
(jmlitary-industnal
(Diverting the military to peaceful purposes} Tfrp
fourth element of difficulty involves economics and the
"See, for example, Ronald Huisken, The consumption of raw materials
for military purposes; and Ruth L. Sivard, Let them eat bullets! The
military budgets of the United States and USSR in 1973 were greater than
the combined annual income of more than 1 billion people in thirty-three
has
of the poorest nations and almost 20 times the value of all foreign aid from
all sources.
'"Quoted in San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner, November 9,
1975.
"Alva Myrdal, The international control of disarmament.
military establishment. Although this will be discussed
in terms of the United States, there is every reason to
believe that an analogous situation exists in the Soviet
Union, the other military superpower. Civilians should
realize that peace and freedom from tension are not
viewed as an ideal situation by many members of the ._
military-industrial-government complex. By and large,
professional military officers, especially field grade and
higher, hope for an end to international tensions about as
fervently as farmers hope for drought. When there is an
atmosphere of national security, military budgets are
usually small, military power minimal, and military
promotions slow. The founders of the United States,
recognized that the military services were unlikely to,
work against their own interests, so they carefully
established ultimate civilian control over the army and
navy; It worked rather well for a long time.
But times have changed. Wars are no longer fought
with simple, understandable weapons like axes, swords,
and cannon. Now a nation needs weapons systems with
complex and often arcane components, such as acquisi-
tion radar, VTOL fighters, Doppler navigators, MIRVs,
cruise missiles, and nuclear submarines. Such systems
cannot be produced rapidly, on demand, by a few
government contractors. Long-term planning is re-
quired, involving not only the military services but also a
large number of industrial organizations that supply
various components.
Those organizations, not unnaturally, often hire re-
wed military officers to help them in their negotiations^
with the government; where decisions on appropriations
for armaments are made. The necessary intimacy of the
military and industry in development and procurement
of weapons led Dwight D. Eisenhower to coin the
complex!) The term military-
industrial-labor-government complex sometimes seems
more accurate. In his heavily documented 1970 book.
Pentagon capitalism, industrial engineer Seymour Mel-
man of Columbia University showed that even that term
is inadequate to describe the Frankenstein's monster that
This complex seems to have an aversion to peace, but it
92
See especially Melman's chapter 7.