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Planning for Peace
| Article
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11280 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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5 / 1986 |
5,699 Words |
| Author
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Morton A. Kaplan
Editor and Publisher |
In 1982 I published a paper in which I argued that discussions of the danger of nuclear war in Europe were afflicted by the same factor that enables magicians to fool their audiences--distraction of attention, however, although the magician's deception is deliberate and its consequence is being entertainment, the deception with respect to nuclear war may be unintentional but it is potentially deadly. The threat of nuclear war in Europe stems from the confrontation of conventional forces and the East-West division of Europe. Even if all nuclear weapons were removed from Europe, it is not unlikely that the losing side in a war in Europe would resort to extra-continental nuclear forces in an effort to avoid defeat. Hence, the first step toward ending the threat of nuclear war in Europe is to end the East-West division of Europe by removing all American and Russian forces, except for limited Russian frontier forces, from the Atlantic to the Urals.
Various versions of the following article published in France and Germany stimulated much discussion. Because I felt it necessary to extend the discussion to Eastern Europe, in March 1985 I arranged an international meeting under the auspices of the Professors World Peace Academy.
Although it took me a year to convince the Soviet Union to send a representative (which indicated that the matter had been considered by the Soviet Secretariat), the U.S. Department of State refused to let Moscow's delegate enter the country. Fortunately, a member of Moscow's institute on the United States was in the country and I secured his participation. But my key proposal--which called for pulling the bulk of Soviet forces behind the Urals--never received any official American consideration. And there
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