Suchergebnisse

The policy of the Carter administration is to increase substantially civil defense expenditures. In terms of moiney it is not a "majority priority," since the administration plans to lock us into overall military expenditures on the order of $1.8 trillion in 1977 dollars by 1988. The justification for the increased civil defense expenditure' is that it is a "modest" increase in response to demands for a much bigger program and a counter to the Soviet program. There is a strong pork barrel element in the program too. Just as civil defense was the justification for building the nation's highway, system, it is now being quietly presented to local officials as a way to get some money into local communities in a time of austerity. It is also a way to buy off opposition to a SALT treaty, or so it is thought.All such justifications for the program are utterly irresponsible. To spend billions on civil defense when crucial programs essential to the strength of the nation are being slashed is pathological. Appeasing critics of the SALT treaty by throwing them a "harmless" bone is self-defeating, for the program lends credibility to their view of reality, not that of the treaty advocates, and creates a climate in which it is easier to defeat the treaty.

The political scientist and the politician of our day both tend to be skeptical of international law. The political scientist, who is interested in studying the distribution of power, sees in the classic rules of international law neither an adequate description of the conduct of states nor an effective prescription for ordering national conduct. The politician, who is interested in the exercise of power, finds it difficult to realize what he considers vital national interests within the traditional legal framework. Both scholars and practitioners apparently feel that the older rhetoric of international law—nonintervention, peaceful settlement of disputes, the law of war—is to a great extent irrelevant to a world in turmoil. Bombings without declaration of war, illegal reprisals, campaigns of political assassination, and military intervention to crush internal revolt are accepted as part of the backdrop of world conflict. It seems increasingly clear that the classic rules of international law and the basic political and moral principles on which they rest are now used less and less by the great powers even as points of reference. Nothing sounds more old-fashioned than Secretary Stimson's remarks of less than forty years ago, in advising against the establishment of a national intelligence service, that "gentlemen don't read each other's mail."