From: darsie@eecs.ucdavis.edu (Richard Darsie)
Subject: SANE: Conventional Weapons
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: University of California, Davis
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 19:03:12 GMT

"Conventional" Wisdom on Conventional Weapons
by Caleb Rossiter and Anne Detrick

The Gulf War brought several things into sharp focus.  One of the most
important was the dangers of conventional weapons:  hundreds of 
thousands of Iraqi dead and the devastation of Kuwait and Iraq could not
be ignored.  As a result, the dangers of conventional weapons now seem
higher on the list of people's immediate concerns than nuclear weapons.
  This is not to say that people are cavalier about Hussein's attempts
to produce the bomb.  But the grim cadavers of Iraqi soldiers, gunned
down from above as they retreated across the desert, swept into the
consciousness of our country and brought home this reality:  Conventional
weapons kill as easily as any other.
  Conventional weapons lack the drama of nuclear obliteration, and
talk about the differences between F-15D's and F-15E's seems pallid
and unexciting next to discourse about The Bomb. Yet here's the point:
Conventional arms have been flowing into developing countries at a
dizzying pace since the end of World War II, and the result is 40 million
dead in some 125 wars and conflicts since 1945.
  The developing world needs all the money it can get -- for internal
investment and, more simply, for bread and butter. The U.S. acknowledges
this by giving developing countries $10 billion annually in foreign
aid. This figure is, unfortunately, more than offset by the billions
going out to pay for weapons *purchased from* the U.S.
  Even if the U.S. (and other developing countries) actually just
*gave away* arms to the developing world, thank-you's would hardly be
in order. Environmentally, the world's armed forces are the single
largest polluter on earth, and are responsible for more than two-thirds
of CFC-113 in the ozone layer. The last thing developing countries need,
having already seen their lands ravaged and forests depleted by
slash-and-burn World Bank policies, is yet more U.S.-sponsored
environmental damage.
  For those people left standing once the dust from military conflicts
settles, the human toll remains devastating.  Today, two billion people
(half of those in developing countries) live in military-backed 
dictatorships. Another one billion live in wannabe-dictatorships in
countries whose elected officials have little power to bring their
militaries under control. Law and order takes on a new meaning, and
basic rights are stripped from the people. Attempts to redress the system
are often met with fierce resistance by militaries, less public than but 
just as severe as the military reaction at Tiananmen. From simple
corruption to brutal torture and killings, military forces are the source
of much of the human rights abuses going on in developing countries, as
our own State Department has, at times, been forced to admit.
  Nuclear *and* conventional weapons have always been a bugaboo.
But the numbers of hot wars during and after the Cold War, the numbers
of dead and dying, the numbers of conventional weapons in the developing
world: all these have convinced us that conventional weapons exact a
daily toll in the developing world that must be addressed *now*.  If they
aren't, the time may come when someone is forced to say, "Will the last
one out of the developing world please turn out the lights?"

The Project on Demilitarization and Democracy is an organization founded
to promote demilitarization in the developing world.  For more information
write to:  PPD, 1601 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC
20009.

>From the SANE/FREEZE Newsletter.

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