Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - June 22, 1981, Winnipeg, Manitoba Boston glob i by Robert Cooke Boston Globe Onald Reagan s administration May see an anti ballistic missile sys Tern As the next logical step in defence but arms control specialists think it is just the opposite an invitation to armageddon. Indeed armaments specialists out Side the government Are convinced that building an anti ballistic missile abm system would violate the Salt i arms agreements seriously escalate the arms race and perhaps set the scene for nuclear War. The argument revolves around the idea of protecting America s proposed my missiles with what is now being called a bad or ballistic missile de Fence system. What disturbs me about much of this said Harvard s prof. Al Bert Carnesale is that so Little Atten Tion is being paid to the fact that if we re permitted to deploy More bad so Are the soviets permitted to deploy bad. The real Choice is Likely to be a world in which neither of us has meaningful missile defence or both of us have bad. It s very unlikely that Well be alone with it. Those Are the realistic alternatives both or Carnesale at Harvard s Kennedy school of government was a member of the team that negotiated Salt i which was signed in 1972. The acronym Salt stands for strategic arms Limi tation treaty. The proposal to build a defence sys tem for my missiles has Arisen be cause the planned race track approach to hiding 200 my missiles will probably be scrapped by the Reagan administration. This idea which would keep the 200 missiles shuttling among several thousand garages along a net work of roads in Utah and Nevada has encountered severe opposition from environmentalists arms control interests and also the mormon Church. Alternate approaches to my Basing include carrying the missiles aboard Small coastal submarines or putting them into Concrete hardened silos like the present minuteman missiles and protecting them with a bad sys tem. Building a missile defence sys tem however would in the View of some experts violate terms of the Salt i agreement. Carnesale and several others of them the same specialists who opposed the abm the first time around said defence Secretary Casper Wein Berger apparently misunderstands that treaty. Weinberger has commented that the treaty comes up for renewal next year but that is not True. People Don t seem to realize that it the treaty is of unlimited Carnesale explained. It does t re quire any kind of renewal and positive action is required if you want to with draw. A review of the treaty is planned every five years but if the two sides Don t meet the treaty just As it stands now he added the treaty prohibits even the testing to mention the deployment of systems. The Only kind you re allowed to test Are fixed land based Only one anti ballistic missile system was brought up to operational status in the United states and funding for that was soon stopped by Congress. In rus Sia a missile defence system is in place guarding Moscow but most experts believe it would be useless against a concerted attack. In fact Carnesale said it seems if you look Back at the abm anti Ballis tics missile debate of the late 1960s, the questions Haven t really changed prof. George Rathjens noted that since the late 1960s it s fair to say that anti missile technology has evolved in essentially predictable ways. The deficiencies that characterized the safeguard anti missile system came to be appreciated by the defence establishment and they be been moving in directions that would make it More feasible to construct defences for hard ened facilities might be better the main difference now Rathjens said is that the radar systems computers and other equipment have been designed specifically for the missile defence task and might thus stand a better Chance of doing the Job. The main Point is they be moved toward systems that Are really optimized for the purpose. But in the safeguard system they were trying to use components designed primarily for the defence of nonetheless Rathjens said i m not at All convinced this defence is Likely to be effective. Certainly its effectiveness will be somewhat unpredictable under wartime conditions and you d never be Able to test it in the environment in which it s supposed to work. I m personally persuaded that it s not at All needed. And when one couples that Lack of need with the virtual Neces sity of abrogating the abm treaty Salt my own feeling is that mov ing toward a hard site defence would be a Brazil s decisions could affect Canadian jobs by Peter Smith special to the free press canadians can no longer afford to ignore Brazil. Indeed the entire world must now pay attention to this emerging giant. In the last decade Brazil took 3 leading role in the world drama to the Surprise of so Many i the audience who had grown used to seeing her buried in the chorus. Decisions taken in Brazil now and in the future will profoundly affect How canadians and the people of Many other nations live and work. For example Brazil s assault on the Amazon rain Forest will deplete the world oxygen Supply. Other third world tropical countries Are following Iee example and for essentially the same reasons to Harvest its eagerly sought Woods to open land for a burgeoning population to exploit Mineral resources and to impose sovereignty on areas Only tenuously held in the past. Lamentable effects we May lament the effects of such a move Only less oxygen but a disastrous confrontation with Jungle life Plant animal and human whose consequences May be equally Calami Tous for the rest of the world but can we criticize it without hypocrisy not Brazil in which Canadian companies have Long been involved has the potential to become one of the major Powers of the 21st Century. Occasional articles on this South american country will be written for the free press by Peter Smith author of Oil and politics in modern Brazil. Or. Smith teaches in the history department of St. Jerome s College University of Waterloo Ontario. When we have done the same in the past. In the area of Industry and Trade Brazil poses serious challenges to can Ada. Indeed those challenges have be come so profound that we must react to them quickly or lose our favored place in the world Economy and comfortable Standard of living. The brazilian Economy has Deve i loped and diversified enormously in the space of one generation the Pace has been particularly impressive in the past ten years in marked contrast to the older industrialized nations whose economies have flirted with recession since the open revolution in 1973. Brazil s achievement it should be stressed has occurred in an Economy whose transportation system is based almost entirely on the truck and which has imported 80 per cent of its Petroleum consumption throughout the period of economic development. That growth has also taken place with inflation rates that have never been reduced to the current level in Canada it was Over 100 per cent in Brazil has not Only industrialized rapidly it has also broadened its Agri cultural production significantly. The old standbys Coffee and sugar have not declined in absolute volume but now share Pride of place with such newcomers As oranges rapeseed and soya. Export drive the new Industrial and agricultural production is no longer intended merely to substitute for imports but is for Export. In 1974, for example Coffee fell to fourth place by value among our imports from Brazil behind Baler twine Iron Ore and motor vehicle engines. In 1975 and 1976, motor vehicle engines ranked first and Coffee second. High prices put Coffee Back in first place for the next year but it soon yielded to a new commodity Orange juice concentrates. We used to sell substantial quantities of our traditional Export wheat to Brazil but now through ambitious expansion into land untouched for Cen Turies Brazil is not Only growing wheat for her own consumption but plans to Export soon. That is but one example of the ways Brazil is moving into our traditional markets one of Many. Some of our industries Are being challenged so effectively in our own Market that they survive Only by. Tariff Protection. Shoes and textiles Spring to mind immediately. Such challenges can Only increase As Brazil diversifies and continues its aggressive Pursuit of Export markets. Ahead of Canada in the area of Energy Brazil will affect Canada. She has made far More dramatic Progress toward Petroleum substitution than we have creating ambitious programs to replace Gaso line with alcohol and diesel fuel with vegetable oils. Coal or electricity will entirely replace fuel Oil in Industry by 1985. An ambitious nuclear program purchased not from us but West Ger Many is under Way it includes not Only several Power stations but a breeder reactor thus giving Brazil the raw material for nuclear weapons. One Way in which canadians Are reacting to the brazilian Challenge is to get a piece of the action. Canadian investment there is increasing moving out of its traditional concentration in Public utilities into raw materials exploitation and Agri business. Canadian Banks moreover eagerly join International consortia lending huge sums to Brazil despite her enormous foreign debt. Such investments certainly Bene fit Canadian shareholders but raise serious questions when they Are in activities that compete with Canadian businesses. Focus one of the arguments raised in favor of building a new missile defence sys tem is the supposed improved accuracy of Russia s missiles. There is however Little hard data available on How accurate the russian missiles might be. Prof. Jeroma Wiesner former presi Dent of the Massachusetts Institute of technology and science adviser to president John f. Kennedy commented that one needs to recognize that the Only Way out of this trap we re in is to freeze things and Cut Down rather than to keep adding to them. If you Start building Abms it s an invitation to build up the attacking Force on the other Side. Wisner who presented detailed arguments against the original abm pro Gram a decade ago said the new proposal build an anti missile Force to protect the my missiles looked interesting on paper but i be convinced myself it s probably not i if such a system is built he said the russians might have to double the number of warheads they use because they d have to get the radar of the defence system the main Point however he said is that it s not necessary. The whole argument for the my missile is based on the supposed vulnerability of the minuteman missiles a vulnerability that does t exist to the degree that some Are if the soviet Union launched a successful attack on the United states minuteman missiles Wiesner said half of the american missiles would Proba Bly survive. In addition America s nuclear weapons aboard submarines air planes and aircraft carriers would be More than sufficient for retaliation. Carnesale noted too that if missile defence systems Are built the value of the French and English nuclear forces would be diminished. Vulnerable Moscow effect of building a soviet ballistic missile defence system is reasonably he explained. Now the soviets Are limited by Salt i to very Little defence at Moscow. So the British and the French who have Small nuclear forces know they can attack that they have a deterrent Force that can hit other cities in the soviet Union. There s pretty Good evidence that the Moscow defence system in t much Good and it Only has 32 intercepting missiles and both the French and the British have More warheads than indeed Carnesale said if the United states fired All the missiles on one Poseidon submarine at Moscow and if the soviet system worked perfectly approximately 128 american warheads would still land on but if a massive new anti missile system is built it would negate the British and French deterrent Force and it would be our fault because we did away with the treaty. So the treaty s constraints on the soviets Are very valuable to our another arms expert or. Richard Garwin of the ism corp., has proposed installing an extremely simple anti ballistics missile system which he says would not abrogate Salt i. His idea would involve burying a number of atomic bombs in the ground a few Miles North of a Field of my or minuteman missiles. In event of attack these could be detonated and would blast huge amounts of Rock and soil into the sky in the path of the incoming warheads. In a recent Issue of Mit s technology review Magazine Garwin commented that such a cratering defence is both inexpensive and rapidly deploy Able. The weapon and its emplacement can be bought for it is difficult to he said Why this defence has not been sought if we Are seriously concerned with minuteman vulnerability and Early at last unleaded Gas buyers May get a break those split signs that have been outside some Winnipeg ser vice stations Large Fig ures the prices for both regular and unleaded gasoline Are something of a first for Canada. They Herald what is bound to be Good news for the average Motorist Lucky enough to own a newer automobile. The Price War that has been a feature of regular leaded Gaso line May soon be waged on the Price of unleaded fuel As Well. Because of Winnipeg s unique Loca Tion in the business of bulk transportation of gasoline this Means that motorists who use unleaded gasoline May soon get the help they should have received but never did from the government in the form of head to head Competition Over the Price of unleaded fuel. So far they have had to be Content with Riding piggyback on the Price wars fought Over the regular variety. First of All Pierre Trudeau to the contrary there will be continued Price wars Over gasoline. The wars will be fought despite those insane Federal Energy policies that push Canadian Gaso line once kept cheap to win an election up in Price while gasoline elsewhere is dropping because of the world Oil glut the Federal bureaucrats wish would go away. The wars will be fought despite the fact that canadians alone in the world Are not conserving gasoline. Fred Cleverley they will be fought because the world Price which Trudeau and company pay so gladly to the arabs the mexicans and the South americans has actually outstripped the demand and has caused the Market place to intervene in a manner the bureaucrats Only wished they could. The coming Price War on unleaded Gas proves that even the most addle headed policies put in place by the bureaucrats will if matters Are left alone Long enough be resolved by the Market place that location damned by every bureaucrat in his nightly prayers. Unleaded gasoline has been in trouble Ever since it was introduced As an anti pollution measure by govern ments unwilling to put their Money where their Mouths were. When gasoline was first sold it was unleaded during the depression years the Oil companies found that they Cou d produce a higher octane ratio rather cheaply by adding Lead to the unleaded fat they were Selling then. The Price went up of course to reflect the Cost of the Lead. The motorists however were convinced that they were getting a bargain because of the extra zip the leaded fuel produced. When the environmentalists took Over the motorists had become accustomed to the zip. The Oil companies the same ones that had increased the Cost when Lead was added were faced with higher costs if they wanted to produce the same octane without Lead. They did not quite succeed at first and this explains Why lately there have been two qualities and two prices for unleaded fuel. Besides it was a Little awkward for the Oil companies to explain Why they had upped the Price when they added Lead and had upped it again when they took the Lead out. Darned few people saw fit to put the Oil companies on the same intensive Grill where the governments should have been. While paying lip service to the benefits of unleaded gasoline to the environment the governments just As steadily refused to give the new fuel a fighting Chance by cutting Back the taxes levied against it. The net result was twofold. Motorists who had con Cern for the environment were penalized by an initial five cents a gallon while those who in effect told the anti pollution movement to jump in the Lake simply removed the anti pollution de vices from their automobiles there Are no Canadian Laws requiring them and burned the cheaper regular fuel. The gasoline dealers to stay in Busi Ness fought the War on the larger volumes of regular Gas often cutting their own margins to meet the Competition. While gasoline was measured in Gallons it was pretty difficult to in crease the difference Between regular and unleaded Gas beyond five cents. The government came to the Rescue with metric conversion. The latest differential posted on the big signs puts regular gasoline at 36.2 cents a litre and unleaded at 38. Since every two tenths of a cent a litre represents doonesbury roughly one cent a gallon this Means that environment conscious motorists Are now paying close to nine cents a gallon instead of the manufacturing Cost difference which the Oil companies admit is about five cents a gallon. Unleaded Gas is a cleaner burning fuel one that everyone admits returns at least five cents a gallon in reduced maintenance costs and better mileage to the Motorist who uses it. The signs that it is Likely to soon become a fuel Over which Price wars Are fought proves that a Good thing can survive and Prosper in spite of the greed that every True socialist knows lurks in the business mind. Given the relative Power of the mar Ket place there is a Chance that com petition might accomplish what no one else has been Able to that is to get the Price of unleaded gasoline Down below that of the leaded variety. If this happens there will be no need to sell environmental Protection it will sell there will be no need to remove anti pollution devices because it will pay to leave them in place. With just a Smidgen of Luck such a change would prove that even the the stupidity of the bureaucracy can be survived and overcome even though this stupidity has been responsible for killing Many Good ideas. Blurry a the fraud Woff admitting that he and Asher to Johns 5aip a shaken hai6, vis6kace Pikec Thil ;