‘Peace: Challenge and Opportunity’

In pointing out that the swiftly changing European political situation and the resulting decline in defense spending will inevitably affect the Southern California economy (Dec. 12) The Times sounds a warning that needs to be heard. Still, it will not be a simple transition from war to peacetime economies, and it is dangerously shortsighted to think it so.

True, the Pentagon will be given less to spend. True as well, California industries that previously counted the Defense Department as their major customer had better accept the challenge and develop a less exclusive product line. But if the prospects for a European “peace dividend” are fairly good, the prospects for world peace in general, especially over the next 50 years, are less optimistic.

Particularly ominous is the continuing competitiveness and violence of Third World nationalism. In our world, peace is a luxury enjoyed exclusively by the economically developed and politically stable (the two, in fact, seem mutually dependent). As the Khomeinis, Kadafis and Assads of the world consolidate power and create nations, the strange domestic politics of those nations seem increasingly to include a taste for war and adventurism.

Clearly, the growing pains of these emerging nations, as inevitable as they are, pose the most serious threat to world security in the post-containment years. To meet this threat and to secure a world safe for development, the United States will undoubtedly form new alliances, rethink military doctrine and create new strategies. In this context, the question is not how many troops, ships, tanks and planes the nation really needs, but what kind of weaponry will fit the new strategic realities. The new military may indeed be leaner and more efficient than the present one. But if it is composed, as is likely, of a new generation of small, high-tech tactical weapons, local industry would be well advised to avoid a total commitment to plowshares.

STEPHEN MACK

Los Angeles