Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Race to Destruction
3. The Lessons to be Drawn
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
280
he case of the nuclear freeze is not unique. “In April 1981, the
Soviet Union renewed efforts to negotiate an end to the arms race
in space, presenting to the United Nations a draft treaty to limit
space-based weapons,” after having suspended testing for two years.
The proposed treaty would have banned the crude Soviet anti-satellite
weapon, and Foreign Minister Gromyko stated that “We are prepared to
go even further—to agree on banning in general the use of force both in
space, and from space against the earth.” The Reagan Administration
strongly opposed this hopeful development. A leaked 1984-88 DOD
directive for national military strategy, “Five Year Defense Guidance,”
states that provisions should be made to “wage war effectively” from
outer space and that the Pentagon will “vigorously pursue” space
systems to “project force in and from space,” adding that the US “must
ensure that treaties and agreement do not foreclose opportunities to
develop these [military space] capabilities.” “The nation that controls
space may control the world,” Under-Secretary of the Air Force Edward
Aldridge stated in 1983, and the US does not want any impediment to
such control, despite the serious threat to survival entailed by extending
the arms race to space. 18
T
The fall 1985 series of arms talks also “resulted from a Soviet
initiative that was accepted almost intact by the United States,
according to administration sources,” the Washington Post reports. The
fact that the Soviet initiative was accepted can be largely credited to the
freeze campaign, while the lack of results again illustrates its failure.
Radio Moscow said the Soviet idea is “to conclude an agreement to
prevent militarization of outer space, to freeze nuclear armaments and to