OTAR WA

By FRED WEIR

Pix Minister Brian Mulroney indicated last week

that he intends to ignore the views of the many
Canadian groups and individuals who testified be-

‘| fore the Parliamentary Committee on Star Wars, and will
| go ahead and make up his mind about Canadian

involvement in the project by September 9.
Star Wars — which Ronald Reagan and almost no one

] else calls the Strategic Defence Initiative — was the
} subject of three weeks of intensive hearings held across

Canada last month. Dozens of witnesses representing a
wide spectrum of Canadian society presented evidence
on the social, economic and geostrategic implications of
Canadian participation in the U.S. military initiative.

Last week, the Tory majority on the committee pre-'

sented its final report to Cabinet. On the crucial issue of
Canadian involvement in Star Wars, it was inconclusive,
claiming that the committee lacked sufficient informa-

| tion to render a decision. However, it did recommend

stepped-up participation in various projects of “‘passive
defence’’ and ‘‘non-military development” in space.
The danger of this, as the committee itself noted, is that
“‘the distinction between military and civilian applica-
tions (in space) is becoming increasingly blurred’.

The five Liberal and two NDP members of the com-
mittee have issued dissenting reports noting that the
‘‘overwhelming evidence’’ heard by the committee leads
to only one conclusion: that Canada should reject any
part in Star Wars research.

NDP members noted that the Tory majority’s em-
phasis on stepped-up Canadian activity in such “‘peace-
ful’? space projects as Ronald Reagan’s manned space
station could be a trojan horse for future Star Wars
involvement.

In fact, it is extremely unlikely that anything short of a
decisive ‘‘No”’ from the Mulroney government will stop
Canada’s drift toward involvement in space militariza-
tion. Star Wars is fast becoming the centerpiece of U.S.
strategic doctrine for the next decade, and the next
century. The American corporate, scientific and intel-
lectual establishments are being mobilized in support of
it, and U.S. allies around the world are under intense
pressure to fall into line. Canada has already given-in to
U.S. demands to expand and upgrade NORAD facilities,
particularly the North Warning System, which U.S. Sec-
retary of Defence Caspar Weinberger has admitted will
‘inevitably be linked to the Strategic Defence Initia-
tive’’.

During its three weeks of public hearings, the Parlia-
mentary committee was given more than enough evi-
dence that involvement in Star Wars would be a threat to
Canadian sovereignty, an economic catastrophe and a
blow to world peace. Any Tory decision that fails to
acknowledge these realities is sure to be deeply regretted
by future generations of Canadians — if any.

e Star Wars is intended to develop a first-strike capabil-
ity against the USSR, not to defend North American
people and cities. Although President Reagan has always
cast Star Wars as a ‘‘defensive shield’ that would
“‘make nuclear weapons obsolete”’ and ‘‘free the world
from the threat of nuclear war’, he is apparently the only
person in the U.S. government and military establish-
ments who truly believes this.

A Pentagon report to Congress earlier this year ad-
mitted that the goal of Star Wars is “enhanced de-
terrence’? — that is, to protect missiles and military
bases, not people and cities.

“It is not a protection of the people,”’ writes Herbert
Scoville, president of the Arms Control Association and
a former deputy director of the CIA. ‘‘What it is doing is
essentially defending missiles and command-and-
control centres. That is lesson number one.”’

This is precisely what President Reagan promised the
American people that Star Wars would not be. In his
famous Star Wars speech of March 1983, the President
made one of the most accurate and prophetic ob-
servations of his career — now conveniently forgotten.

“I clearly recognize,’ said Reagan, “‘that defensive
Systems have limitations and raise certain problems and
ambiguities. If paired with offensive systems they can be

sbi as fostering an aggressive policy and no one wants
that.”

The Reagan administration has gone full tilt on
development and introduction of new offensive nuclear
systems, even as it has begun a major effort to develop
“defensive” Star Wars weapons. It has deployed first-
strike capable Pershing II missiles in Western Europe,

begun outfitting U.S. forces with what will eventually be
a total of 10,000 radar-evading Cruise missiles, acceler-
ated development of the superaccurate MX missile and
the first submarine-based missile capable of launching a
first-strike, The Trident II.

‘‘ Although the American people are led to believe that
Star Wars is defensive, that is far from the case,”’ writes
Robert Aldridge, a former nuclear weapons designer and
one of the foremost U.S. experts on military strategy.
“If Soviet missiles which survive a first-strike attack
could be intercepted in flight, that would remove any
threat of retaliation and there would be no restraining
force on U.S. aggressive behaviour.”

This is the strategic reality of Star Wars. Canada is
being ‘“‘invited’’ to surrender its security and its
sovereignty to become a forward base for a U.S.-
launched nuclear war against the Soviet Union.

e Star Wars will be an economic disaster. Even the
Tory report notes that Canadian participation in Star
Wars would probably create fewer than 8,000 jobs — and
those among highly-skilled engineers and technicians
who are unlikely to ever be unemployed in the first place.
Commercial spinoffs from Star Wars technology, the
report admits, will be unimpressive.

A study completed earlier this year for the Wash-
ington-based Centre for Defence Information concluded
that ‘‘benefits of military research and development to
the civilian economy have been small and are declining
as military technology becomes increasingly specialized
and exotic’’. Space wars technology will be the most
exotic ever developed by the Pentagon.

However, the astronomical cost of Star Wars will have
to be borne by the civilian economy, and Canada —
should we agree to participate — will undoubtedly be
expected to ‘‘pay our share’’. The five year ‘‘research”’
program to develop Star Wars is now costed at over
$32-billion. Estimates for deployment of a complete sys-
tem are upwards of $1-trillion.

Economically, Star Wars is a vast corporate welfare
program which will drain the wealth, resources and
energies of the civilian sector into capital-intensive,

. socially-useless military endeavour. “

In Europe, Star Wars has already been dubbed
“*brains for crumbs’’ — because it is seen as an effort to
attract the finest minds of the western world into U.S.
sponsored military research, in exchange for insignificant
financial ‘‘benefits”’.

e Star Wars will lead to a runaway arms race on Earth
and in space. This is the most self-evident proposition in
the entire debate about Star Wars. Reagan and his sup-
porters have depicted space defences as a kind of ‘‘final
move’”’ that will end the arms race. In fact, deployment
of such weapons will be only the first move in a new,
more complex, dangerous and exhorbitantly expensive
arms race that will encompass both the Earth and outer
space.

In the forty year history of the arms race, each initia-
tive — almost always launched by the U.S. — has led to
a firm and energetic Soviet response. The result has been
not more security, but a higher, more dangerous level of
confrontation.

Last June, in conversation with the Tribune, leading
Soviet scientist Lev Voronkov spoke about Star Wars,
noting that while the USSR may not build a Star Wars
system of its own, there is a vast constellation of
countermeasures that can be implemented to com-

. an attack
" on Canada

plicate, baffle and counteract U.S. space weapons.

‘‘What we are interested in,’’ said Voronkov, “‘is
equality of security. This does not mean just copying
what the U.S. does. Countermeasures to a Star Wars
system can be as much as 20 times cheaper. The Soviet
Union will do whatever is necessary to maintain our
security, but we may find much less expensive, and less
destabilizing ways of doing it than building space
weapons of our own’’.

e Star Wars will destroy arms control. The legacy of
detente and arms control, as limited as it is, is the last
hope of humankind for a peaceful solution to the nuclear
war danger. Star Wars, as it matures, will forever wipe
out that legacy:

— Testing of Star Wars weapons on Earth or in space
will hopelessly compromise the ABM Treaty of 1972,
one of the last arms control agreements between the
U.S. and the USSR that is still considered to be intact.

— Deployment of space weapons will obliterate the

United Nations Outer Space Treaty (1967), which was
signed by over 100 nations and expressly forbids
‘“‘weapons or fortifications’ in earth orbit or in outer
space.
—The oldest and most durable. agreement, The
Partial Test Ban Treaty (1963), is also considered to be
gravely at risk. Signed more than 20 years ago by Ken-
nedy and Khrushchev, this treaty prohibits nuclear ex-
plosions in the atmosphere, underwater, and in outer
space. Although President Reagan claims that Star Wars
will be ‘‘non-nuclear’’, it is a fact that the most “‘prom-
ising’’ Star Wars technology now under development at
Lawrence Livermore Laboratories in California is a
hydrogen bomb-powered X-ray laser weapon. The first
‘‘realistic’’ tests of this device will end forever the era of
arms control.

e Star Wars will perpetuate the Cold War and lead to a
‘“‘Star Wars Society’’. Inevitably, Star Wars carries with
it the political corollary of Cold War. Global military
confrontation produces domestic political freeze:
censorship, government secrecy, suppression of dis-
sent.

Star Wars will so seriously warp the U.S. economy, so
greatly increase the influence of the Pentagon and
strengthen the hand of the National Security State, that
American sociologist Michael T. Klare has suggested
that it will lead to a ‘‘Star Wars Society’’.

There is already substantial evidence that secrecy and
censorship have increased as a result of the growing
dependence of the U.S. academic and scientific com-
munities upon military funding, and the Reagan ad-
ministration is on the offensive against its critics.

‘Star Wars has become a test of loyalty to the
Government,” writes Klare. ‘‘Those who criticize Star
Wars are themselves the target of criticism. If you resist,
you’re going to be attacked’.

The outlook for Canada is bleak indeed if we continue
our drift into the deadly, Orwellian embrace of Star Wars.
The hope of maintaining our political independence,
while we are increasingly implicated in a continental
military machine dominated by the U.S., is slim. The
chances of preserving our economic integrity, in the |
shadow of the American permanent war economy, are
few. The possibility of making a positive contribution to
the cause of world peace, when we are little more than a
military reflex of the Pentagon, is nonexistent.

Version of “Nation-wide” ABM System
as Part of Nuclear

Electromagnetic
gun

Satellite with compact hom-
ing missiles

Homing interceptor
projectile

~~ Zone of destruction of werheads and re-entry
vehicles in mid-course phase, H=500 - 1,200 km

Aa J Zone of destruction with anti-missiles of re-entry
1/1 vehicles in terminal phase (exo-atmospheric,
‘‘)/ #100 -800 km; low-sltitude endo-atmospher-
ic, H=9-15 km)
dd ie)
f ¢ 1 Long: and short-range anti-
i! missiles

é ~=/ kOe
' =, ™~ aes:
yess 2 ay

Now Being Developed by USA
First-Strike Capability

Particle accelerator

\
.

X-ray laser with nuclear

blast_radiation pumping

title? Se

~~
~

oe = *

=e ~ ae :

ie ae :

Zone of destruction of ICBMs in active phase ~~. ee
. . y =<

“

(prior to deployment of re-entry vehicles, >:
=
\ <
a@ ‘ \ .
. x
‘ oe

H=10-500 km)
5