The nuclear freeze campaign began less than two years ago as an attempt to give the peace movement a concrete, attainable political goal that would also be a genuine first step toward the abolition of nuclear weapons. The people who conceived the freeze campaign hoped that in the vacuum created by the failure of SALT II and the Reagan administration's total disinterest in arms control a popular initiative backed by solid local organizing could emerge that would change the whole framework of the nuclear weapons debate. A timeline and general strategy was developed that called for beginning the freeze campaign locally and taking it to Congress only after hometown support had been organized and sufficient national momentum generated.
As the headlines of the last two months attest, the strategy is working. The freeze campaign has, at least for now, set the terms for public discussion of nuclear disarmament. And rather than the freeze campaign going to Congress, Congress has come to the freeze campaign.
The momentum in Congress began after the February holiday recess when many congresspeople found themselves bombarded with questions from their constituents about nuclear arms control and the freeze. In Massachusetts pressure was so great that Edward Kennedy saw a bandwagon in the making and jumped on board by introducing, with Mark Hatfield of Oregon, a non-binding resolution that incorporated the language of the freeze campaign's "Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race." The resolution has already enlisted 19 co-sponsors in the Senate and 150 in the House.
The freeze campaign has made nuclear weapons a front-burner political issue that the Reagan administration cannot ignore. The response of Reagan and his allies has proceeded on two simultaneous though contradictory tracks.
On one hand they maintain that the freeze goes too far. They say the U.S. is far behind the USSR in nuclear weapons, and we have to catch up before there can be talk of a freeze. But at the same time, they say the freeze is not enough. The administration claims it wants to negotiate actual reductions of the nuclear arsenals. This approach has been embodied in a competing "freeze" resolution introduced by Senators Henry Jackson and John Warner and endorsed by the president.
In claiming that the freeze goes too far, the administration is assuming an imbalance that doesn't exist. The reality is that the U.S. leads in some areas, such as total number of warheads and missile accuracy, while the Soviet Union leads in others, like total megatonnage. When all factors are considered, there is a rough parity between the two arsenals.
Reagan's claims of a U.S. disadvantage are further proof that a dramatic step like a total freeze is needed to break the circular logic of the arms race. At some point we must simply say, "Stop!"
The Reagan proposals for "arms reduction" are still in formation, but preliminary reports say that they will call for equal limits on the number of warheads and the throw-weight, or total explosive capacity, of the two arsenals. The throw-weight yardstick is utterly irrelevant to any strategy of nuclear deterrence or warfighting, much less arms control. It is only being raised because it is one of the few measures by which the U.S. is behind. A demand for throw-weight parity would require the Soviets to make drastic one-sided cuts that they would almost certainly reject.
It appears that Reagan's plan will call for an equal ceiling of about 8,000 on the number of strategic warheads on each side. But the plan also involves a "sub-ceiling" of 4,000 on the land-based ICBMs that make up a disproportionate share of the Soviet arsenal. The ICBM sub-ceiling would require the USSR to dismantle as much as a quarter of its land-based missiles while allowing the U.S. to deploy the MX system that is a qualitative escalation over any existing Soviet missile.
There can be little doubt that the Reagan administration's arms control strategy, like that of his predecessors, will be one of pursuing arms control as a means to strategic superiority. While the talks drag on for years, new and more dangerous weapons will be built daily by both sides.
We at Sojourners have supported the freeze campaign from its inception, both with staff time and resources and by making it a component of the faith-based approach to the arms race that we offer to churches. But, like most freeze proponents, we realize that it is not a panacea. It is only a minimal first step toward real disarmament.
As encouraging as the growing popularity of the freeze is, already visible on the horizon is the danger that politicians may co-opt the language of the freeze movement while little by little subverting its intent to be a first step toward the abolition of nuclear weapons. The threat of co-optation will undoubtedly become more real in the months ahead as Reagan refines his rhetoric. The freeze proposal could also lose its impact as a break with the psychology of the arms race if it becomes too bogged down in technical questions like verification.
Though the freeze initiative has its own limitations, its greatest potential lies in the direction it suggests of taking the nuclear arms race out of the hands of Pentagon experts and corporate technicians and placing the initiative and responsibility with the people who pay the bills and would become the victims. But so far freeze activity, even in the churches, has been cast mostly in terms of what the government should do. The integrity of a Christian witness against the arms race requires that we tell the government what we intend to do as well.
For Christians, unilateral steps toward disarmament have to begin in our own lives with concrete acts of non-cooperation with the arms race. Movement is taking place in this direction with the increasing practice of war tax resistance, with churchpeople raising the issue of employment in nuclear facilities with their parishioners, and with Christians becoming involved in direct action at those facilities. But courageous as these beginnings are, much more will be required.
The present widespread outcry for disarmament in large part had its seeds in small groups of committed, mostly Christian, people who kept raising the issue of nuclear weapons, often at great risk, for years before it was front-page news. Without such a faithful core, a broad and diverse movement like the one growing around the nuclear freeze can easily become diffused and compromised. People of faith can make a special contribution to such a movement by keeping it true to its own best ideals and by bringing to it the spiritual force that springs from lives of sacrificial peacemaking.
Danny Collum was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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