'Reader’s Digest Illustrated History of South Africa: The Real Story'

This book review was originally published in the New York City Tribune on Wednesday, August 2, 1989.



RICHARD SINCERE
An Outstanding Work Condemned to Obsolescence by Pace of Events

Reader’s Digest Illustrated History of South Africa: The Real Story, The Reader’s Digest Association, $26.95, 512 pp.

The recent tea-time meetings of South African [President] P.W. Botha and imprisoned black activist Nelson Mandela has been called ‘historic” by those who were pleased by news of the meeting and “unimportant” by those who were disturbed by it. The true assessment lies somewhere in the middle. In the wide sweep of South African history, this meeting of two political leaders is neither earth-shattering nor ignorable. It is, however, notable when one considers what came before and what will come after.

Written South African history really begins in 1652, when the Dutch East India Co. established a supply station at the Cape of Good Hope, along the sea route to what is now Indonesia and Malaysia. That supply station became the first permanent European settlement in Southern Africa, and resulted in the only society of white people that consider themselves Africans: today’s Afrikaners.

Elsewhere in Africa, white settlers always felt alien and considered the metropole (England, France, Portugal) to be their true home. For the Afrikaners, there is no other home, only South Africa.

From the beginning, this was a recipe for conflict. The Dutch sailors and tradesmen who made their homes in the cape were met by indigenous people, herdsmen called the San and Khoikhoi. To the east, black tribes of Itantu origin (from central and east Africa), had already begun to displace the natives. The Dutch brought with them Malaysian slaves, as the Dutch East India Co. prohibited the enslavement of local populations.

Under some circumstances, for example in Brazil, such a mix of races and ethnic groups need not develop conflict. However the Europeans asserted their superiority and established republican governments excluding all others.

It has now been nearly 340 years since Jan van Riebeeck first settled South Africa. In that time the country as a colony was passed from Dutch to British hands, back to Dutch and back to the British; two independent republics were established by descendants the Dutch (the Boers) only to be conquered by the British again in the Second Anglo.Boer War (1899-1903). In 1910, autonomy was granted to the four colonies that now make up South Africa: the Cape Colony, Natal, the Transvaal, and the Orange Free State. In a remarkable bit of diplomacy, the Boers, who lost the war, won the peace. Under the leadership of people like Jan Smuts, the then Union of South Africa took its place among the family of democratic nations, fighting with the Allies in both World War I and World War II, and becoming a charter member of both the League of Nations and the United Nations.

That worldwide fraternal acceptance had a break put on it in 1948, when the National Party of Daniel Malan won a narrow victory in parliamentary elections on a platform of apartheid, or separate development. Although under British rule racial restrictions had their place in the law, there had been no systematic effort to exclude black people from society. Under certain conditions, in fact, blacks had the right to vote in the Cape Province and were allowed with limitations to own property. In this, British rule was much like French rule in West Africa and was far more enlightened than Portuguese rule in Angola and Mozambique.

Apartheid, however, was of a different breed. It was a logical, systematized program of racial discrimination designed by Afrikaner intellectuals, philosophers and sociologists, who believed that mixing of the races was wrong. In the grand scheme of apartheid, each ethnic group would have its own land, government and economy and relations between the races would be treated as international relations through diplomacy. What this meant, in theory, was “separate but equal.” In practice, it engendered inequality and poverty.

Under the dynamic leadership of Hendrik Verwoerd, a Dutch-born sociologist who was minister of Bantu (black) affairs under Malan and later prime minister, blacks were relegated to second- and third-class citizenship. Verwoerd decided that for blacks, basic reading and writing would be sufficient and they would perform only menial tasks and manual labor.

As a result, government-run schools for blacks were routinely denied the funding necessary to produce literate and numerate graduates. Later, private and church-run schools were forbidden to teach blacks and whites together in integrated classrooms.

Verwoerd also designed grand apartheid, which established 10 Bantustans (now called “homelands”) for each of 10 ethnic groups. The land in these Bantustans amounted to about 13 percent of South Africa. Most of that land is quite barren, although the Transkei and the Ciskei (“homelands” for the Xhosa people) contain some of the richest and most fertile farmand in the country. It mattered little, though, because South Africa was urbanizing rapidly. Blacks, like rural people everywhere during a time of economic development, migrated to the cities.

Around Johannesburg vast black townships grew up: Soweto, Alexandra, Sophiatown. The mines of South Africa needed workers, an there were not enough whites to do the job. So did the industries.

Black people over the age of 16 were required to carry a passbook that indicated their legal residence and job status. Demeaning as it was, that practice continued until 1986, when the pass laws were repealed.

Through the 1960s and 1970s, economic growth in South Africa provided jobs for many. The whites were comfortable, the blacks were unorganized politically. (Black labor unions were illegal until 1979.) By the end of the 1970s, however, the inequitites of the system began bursting above the surface. Student demonstrations in Soweto in June 1976 led to nationwide unrest. Efforts to combat unrest through propaganda led to the fall of the government of Prime Minister John Vorster in 1978 (the so-called “Muldergate” scandal); Defense Minister P.W. Botha took his place.

[In the 11 years since then, far-reaching] changes have been wrought. A new constitution in 1984 allows non-white people (people of mixed racial heritage, called “coloureds,” and people of Asian background) to vote for parliamentary representatives. Laws forbidding mixed marriages were repealed. The pass laws were ended. Blacks were allowed to collectively bargain with their employers. Black townships were provided with electricity and running water. Blacks were allowed to own land again, and their homes in the townships.

At the same time, since l985, a state of emergency has been in effect. Severe restrictions on the press, on public gatherings, and on speech have curtailed public debate. A war fought by South Africa in Angola and Namibia has wound to a close with great human and material costs. As political ferment has increased, so too has worldwide ostracism of South Africa. The United States imposed major economic sanctions in 1986.

South Africa is changing rapidly. It is enough to make the Reader’s Digest Illustrated History of South Africa obsolete even as it is published. What a pity, too, because this lavishly illustrated book has much to teach. Despite its subtitle (“The Real Story”), which makes it sound like cheap propaganda, this volume from the Reader’s Digest makes worthwhile reading. It is balanced, fair, and debunks much mythology used by the Afrikaners to justify their exclusive rule.

Although written for South Africans, it is clear that South African and U.S. histories have many parallels: a shared history of a frontier, settlement and hardship, a fight for independence from the British and racial strife. We have much to learn from their experience; South Africans can learn much from us. Now is not the time to turn our backs on them, when exchange of cultural and political ideas can help set South Africa on a course toward true democracy and peaceful progress.

When P.W. Botha and Nelson Mandela next take tea together, it may indeed be an historic occasion. The meeting might be the beginning of negotiations for an end to apartheid, for power-sharing without domination, and for the extension of democracy. To Mandela’s friends in the South African Communist Party, that may be a frightening possibility, but to us in the free world, it is the only possibility worth hoping for.

Richard Sincere is a Washington-based policy analyst who writes frequently on African affairs.

Alan Paton Shed Light on the Darkness of South Africa

This article is not properly characterized as a “book review.” It is, rather, a tribute to an internationally renowned African author in the days after his death. The article appeared in the New York City Tribune on April 26, 1988.



RICHARD SINCERE
A Soldier for Freedom, Alan Paton Shed Light on the Darkness of South Africa

Alan Paton, whose first novel, Cry, the Beloved Country, thrust him onto the world stage as a literary and social leader, died on April 12 at the age of 85. In his lifetime -- which spanned the history of South Africa from just after the end of the Second Anglo-Boer War through two world wars to the present day -- Paton was a teacher, an advocate for prison reform, a liberal political leader, a world-renowned novelist and a humanitarian. His death diminishes the world.

Cry, the Beloved Country brought worldwide attention to South Africa’s racial strife. It was transformed into a movie and later into a musical play by Maxwell Anderson and Kurt Weill, Lost in the Stars.

Paton’s penetrating look into the dehumanizing aspects of South Africa’s society on the brink of change from a (for that era) liberal regime to the racist regime of Daniel Malan and Hendrik Verwoerd’s National Party gave Westerners their first (and, perhaps, most lasting) impression of apartheid.

Paton proved a puzzle to many in the United States who oppose apartheid, the system of racial classification and segregation that has characterized South Africa for most of the past 40 years. In the United States, opposition to the South African system seems inevitably to go hand in glove with support for sanctions against that country. Paton challenged this notion from the start.

In 1984, Paton wrote an open letter to Bishop Desmond Tutu, who had just won the Nobel Peace Prize. Responding to calls for sanctions, Paton said:

“I do not understand how your Christian conscience allows you to advocate disinvestment. I do not understand how you can put a man out of work for a high moral principle.

“It would go against my own deepest principles to advocate anything that would put a man — and especially a black man -- out of a job.

“I think your morality is confused just as was the morality of the church in the Inquisition, or the morality of Dr. Verwoerd in his utopian dreams. You come near to saying that the end justifies the means, which is a thing no Christian can do” (Johannesburg Sunday Times, Oct. 21, 1984).

Paton was nothing if not consistent in his disapproval of sanctions. Like his liberal colleague, Helen Suzman, who for many years was the sole voice in parliament representing the anti-apartheid, pro-free enterprise Progressive Federal Party, Paton argued that it was the expansion of the economy and the growth of a substantial black middle class that would be the engine of change.

Experience has proved him correct. As blacks gained in economic power in the 1970s, the government was forced to grant them more political and civil rights. Black trade unions were legalized, job restrictions were ended, the infamous pass laws were repealed.

In the second and final volume of his autobiography, Journey Continued, scheduled to be published in South Africa on April 29 and later this year in the United States, Paton wrote passionately of his hope for positive social change. He argued for the release of Nelson Mandela and the need to include Mandela and his associates in the negotiations for post-apartheid South Africa. But he also reiterated his belief that sanctions are counterproductive, that they will achieve little in the way of reform or broader political participation.

In the final chapter of Journey Continued, Paton noted that “our future has become the concern of many of the governments and the ordinary people of the world. They have every right to concern themselves and to bring pressure to bear upon us. I believe they are utterly mistaken to think that sanctions and disinvestment will bring beneficial change. You cannot change a society for the better by damaging or destroying its economy. Sanctions are intended to be punitive, and punishment is not the way to make people behave better.”

It has been a cruel mistake for the U.S. Congress to impose sanctions against South Africa. American sanctions have created more than 100 white millionaires in South Africa while creating substantial black unemployment. The inflation caused by sanctions affects the poor most harshly, while rich whites -- the intended targets of sanctions -- are insulated by affluence. White families may have to give up their Mercedes or their beach bungalows; black families may have to go without food or clothing. Alan Paton, compassionate observer of political realities, knew this would happen. His words, informed by 85 years of living in South Africa, go unheeded by the U.S. Congress. Why?

Richard Sincere is a research associate at the Ethics and Public Policy center in Washington D.C. He writes frequently on U.S.-South African relations.

'Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery'

This book review appeared in The Washington Times on Monday, November 13, 1989. Historical note: Four years after this review was published, the book’s author, Robert Fogel, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Science.


An honest examination of the slave economy 

WITHOUT CONSENT OR CONTRACT: THE RISE AND FALL OF AMERICAN SLAVERY
By Robert William Fogel
Norton. $22.50, 502 pages
REVIEWED BY RICHARD SINCERE JR.

"Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery” is a remarkable book that sheds new light on a historical topic that until now has been characterized by exaggerated mythology and moral grandstanding.

Robert William Fogel, director of the Center for Population Economics at the University of Chicago, does not shy away from facts that will leave people aghast. At the same time, however, in an afterword, he provides a moral critique of slavery that is fitting for the latter 20th century and, in retrospect, superior to that relied upon by the various groups and individuals who opposed slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War.

The book is the result of nearly a quarter-century’s worth of research by a team of historians, demographers and economists at the University of Chicago. It is, in fact, the third of three volumes by the same title, the first two consisting of technical papers. This primary volume condenses those findings into a readable whole.

That is not to say the book is an easy read — far from it. It would be more correct to say, however, that it is two books, one difficult and one not. The difficult part is the first half, which takes an unprecedented, in-depth look at the economics and culture of slavery in the New World. To readers who are not comfortable with numbers, this lengthy section is rough going.

The second part, which traces the rise of the anti-slavery movement in Britain and the United States, is a tour de force of historical writing. It flows smoothly, yet incorporates disparate elements of antebellum history that, on the surface, seem unrelated, and Mr. Fogel deftly draws these elements together.

Mr. Fogel will no doubt initiate controversy with his firm assertion that, far from being a primitive and decaying economy, the South was at its most prosperous on the eve of the Civil War and that slavery was in- deed an efficient and productive way to organize that economy. Moreover, he argues — and offers more than enough evidence to prove it — that slaves were better fed, clothed and housed than free laborers in the North.

This may be why opponents of slavery waited until the 1850s before they attempted to use economic arguments to bolster their case; they knew that, empirically, the slave economy was sound. Only moral arguments — whether based in religion or secular philosophy — provided the foundation for an effective case against slavery.

What makes this book most interesting is its tendency to give greater emphasis to those elements of antebellum politics that have been given short shrift by other historians, particularly those popularizing historians who write our high-school and college textbooks. For example, most political trivia buffs recognize in the Know-Nothing Party just one notable fact — that the Know-Nothings held the first political convention for purposes of nominating a presidential candidate. Other people might remember that the Know-Nothings were anti-Catholic nativists who stole the stone contributed by the pope to the building of the Washington Monument.

Mr. Fogel, however, makes it clear that the Know-Nothings were a force to be reckoned with in U.S. politics throughout the 1850s and made a major contribution to the realignment of party allegiances that made the Republican victory of 1860 possible, and thus the end of slavery.

Know-Nothings sent more than 70 representatives to Congress, for instance, and controlled the state government of Massachusetts. Their ability to organize the working classes who felt threatened by immigrant labor fertilized the soil for the anti-slavery parties seeking to seed their ideas among new constituencies. Mr. Fogel writes: “It is ironic that so ignoble a movement as anti-Catholic nativism should have played so large a role in the ultimate victory of the crusade to abolish slavery.”

The role of religion in the end of slavery also cannot be ignored. In Britain and the United States, Quakers, Methodists and evangelicals (in particular, not to exclude others) paved the intellectual highway for others to dispose of the idea — which had lasted at least 3,000 years — that slavery was acceptable and a normal part of the nature of human society.

On both sides of the Atlantic, religious thinkers became prolific pamphleteers and letter-writers, trying to change the minds of so many others for whom slavery was not yet a moral issue. At the end of the 17th century, when almost all others rejected anti-slavery sentiments, one small religious group, the Quakers, maintained that slavery was unmitigated evil. It is a true testament to the power of religious faith that by the 1880s, that position was held almost universally by believers in the Western world.

In both Britain and America, the anti-slavery campaign intersected with other important political developments. Most people would think that anti-slavery politics was set apart because of its moral importance. This was not the case. In Britain, anti-slavery issues were tied up with Catholic emancipation, the extension of suffrage to the lower classes, parliamentary reform and the fear of radicalism in the aftermath of the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars.

In the United States, the antislavery movement faced great hurdles, not the least of which was that of the first nine presidents, seven were slaveholders. Moreover, the South was overrepresented in Congress because three-fifths of the slaves were counted in the census to determine representation.

Mr. Fogel writes: “Southerners also were installed as Speaker of the House in 28 of the preceding 35 years (up to 1850); they were a majority of the Supreme Court and of the Cabinet; and every Senate president pro tern since the ratification of the Constitution had been a slaveholder.” These facts were cited by anti-slavery activists as evidence of the political conspiracy of “Slave Power”: Slavery’s mere existence in the South meant the political enslavement of all Americans.

By the mid-1850s, opponents of slavery also claimed “Slave Power” was an economic conspiracy. Mr. Fogel says such arguments were wrong, in light of recent cliometric research on mid-l9th century economic conditions, but they were convincing at the time.

Though leaders of the movement such as William Lloyd Garrison opposed changing their fundamental case against slavery from moral to economic grounds, “the principal basis of the antislavery appeal did suddenly shift from ‘Christian duty’ to ‘the pocketbook.’ The shift took place between 1854 and 1856 and the political success was immediate and spectacular. The new approach transformed the antislavery movement from a minor political factor into a powerful political force that could control the national agenda.”

Mr. Fogel admits there is still much to learn about the slavery era, many more texts to examine, more artifacts to unearth. Until that time, however, his recent book likely will serve as the definitive report on slave economy and slave culture, and his interpretation of the anti-slavery movement should have few detractors.

Richard Sincere Jr. is a Washington-based issues analyst and writer.

'A Law Unto Itself: Power, Politics, and the IRS'

This book review was originally published on Wednesday, March 28, 1990, in the New York City Tribune.



RICHARD SINCERE
Fanaticism of IRS Seen as Proof That Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely


A Law Unto Itself: Power, Politics, and the IRS, by David Burnham, Random House, $22.50, 420 pp.

Investigative reporter David Burnham is worried about cynicism in America. He worries, he told a gathering at the Cato Institute in Washington, because cynicism is destructive and it leads to corruption. Cynicism, he said, is particularly destructive of the Congress, the Internal Revenue Service, and the American taxpayer.

During this tax-paying season, it is obvious that Americans direct an enormous amount of cynicism toward the IRS. Burnham’s complaint is that there is too much cynicism and not enough skepticism. Webster’s defines a “cynic” as “one who believes that human conduct is motivated wholly by self-interest” and a “skeptic” as one who has “an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object.”

If too many people believe that human activity is fundamentally selfish, few are willing to act selflessly; leading inexorably to corruption. Healthy skepticism, on the other hand, leads to the questioning of corruption and corrupt institutions.

Burnham has found that even among the media, there is not enough skepticism regarding the Internal Revenue Service, which as an investigative bureaucracy is five times bigger than the FBI and twice as large as the CIA. The IRS, Burnham warns, is hugely powerful and its power is hugely corrupting.

The institutions that should be watchdogs of the IRS -— the press, the courts, and the Congress — simply do not do the jobs. No major newspaper, Burnham says, has assigned a reporter to a full-time IRS beat. Ne notes that when the Washington Post asked a reporter to cover one of the rare IRS oversight hearings on Capitol Hill, she decided not to go simply because the IRS commissioner himself was not testifying. If the information does not come from the top, her inaction seemed to say, it is not worth pursuing.

Judging from Burnham’s new book, A Law Unto Itself: Power, Politics, and the IRS, there is a lot worth pursuing. The book is a catalogue of abuses, corruption, attacks on average citizens and prominent politicians, and simple incompetence that seems endemic in a government agency that touches the lives of everyone. The IRS has powers that no other police agency in the country can claim. And hardly anyone is willing to stand up to the IRS.

IRS agents distrust the American people. Burnham writes that one of the fundamental attitudes that motivates IRS agents is this: “Taxpayers suspected of not complying with the tax laws are considered guilty until they, the taxpayers, prove themselves innocent.”

This can be an expensive proposition. One Pennsylvania businessman who was unjustly accused of owing back taxes paid $75,000 in legal fees to prove his innocence; his girlfriend, whose assets were wrongly seized by the IRS during the course of the investigation, paid an additional $30,000. Because of the energy and expense used in proving his case, the businessman told the Senate Finance Committee, “I am now broke, I have no job, no insurance policies, and no car. We did nothing wrong, nothing illegal. We are the victims of an IRS mentality that believes all taxpayers are criminals who should be punished.”

This is no isolated incident. An IRS collections agent in a southwestern state told Burnham “the single word we often use when referring to the public. That word is ‘slime.’”

The IRS has also been used as a political tool. Although the political use of the IRS is most often associated with the Watergate scandal during the Nixon Administration, Burnham argues that every president has used it. Franklin Roosevelt was worse than Nixon, he says, but abuses came about during the Kennedy and Johnson Administration as well.

For instance, the Johnson IRS began a 10-year, time-consuming and expensive investigation into the National Council of Churches because of the ecumenical organization’s “open political involvement in the battles to end racial segregation and the Vietnam War.” During the 1950s, the IRS seized the assets of the Communist Party of the USA, forcing that party — which was and is a perfectly legal political party — to operate on a cash basis. The IRS’s argument was that the Communist Party had not paid taxes in a number of years, even though the Republicans and Democrats had also paid no taxes during the same period of time, and were not required to do so.

Conservative groups have also been targets of IRS attempts to curb unwanted political beliefs. President Kennedy himself ordered investigations of mainstream conservative and far-right groups, including the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, the Conservative Society of America, and the John Birch Society. Burnham writes: “According to a 1963 report by [IRS Commissioner Mortimer Caplin], the agency recommended revoking the exempt status of H.L. Hunt’s LifeLine Foundation and of Dr. Fred Schwarz’s Christian Anti-Communist Crusade. Similar action was not recommended for the John Birch Society because it did not claim tax exemption. But Caplin informed the White House that the IRS investigations had discovered that some taxpayers contributing to the John Birch Society had improperly claimed business deductions for their subscriptions to American Opinion magazine, the society’s publication.”

Given the IRS’s power, it is easy to understand why politicians would be shy about criticizing the agency. Burnham gives three basic reasons: (1) Congressmen want to send money to their districts, and they worry that if they try to mess with the IRS, they might upset the money machine; (2) Congressmen personally fear the IRS; through public audits and false accusations, the IRS can and does destroy political careers; (3) Burnham calls this “subtle and infuriating.” Every tax reform measure brings in campaign contributions for congressmen and senators — after all, businesses benefit from such reform — but each tax reform increases the power of the IRS, which alone can interpret the new rules without fear of retribution or oversight.

It seems clear that more investigative reporters like David Burnham should be piercing the IRS, looking for corruption and abuse. Any American can be the target of misplaced IRS ire. All Americans should be concerned about this “law unto itself.”

Richard Sincere is a Washington-based issues analyst and writer.

'Lost Victory: A Firsthand Account of America’s Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam'

This book review was originally published in the New York City Tribune on Wednesday, January 17, 1990.


RICHARD SINCERE
Colby Makes Late But Stylish Entrance With Vietnam History

Lost Victory: A Firsthand Account of America’s Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam, by William Colby with James McCargar, Contemporary Books, $22.95, 448 pp.

In the nearly 15 years since the war in Vietnam ended with a communist victory, innumerable books have been written to describe the conflict, its origins, and its aftermath. These have ranged from the theoretical (On Strategy by Col. Harry Summers Jr.) to the epic (A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan) to the microcosmic (The Prestige Press and the Christmas Bombing, 1972 by Amb. Martin F. Herz).

Now we have the personal Vietnam memoir of William Colby, whose first official visit to the country was in 1959, under President Dwight Eisenhower, long before the first U.S. combat troops arrived. Colby’s service in Vietnam spanned the terms of five presidents; during that time he moved up the ranks to become President Ford’s director of Central Intelligence.

Such attention was not paid to these matters when the war had just ended. Colby notes that the reaction in April 1975 to Hanoi’s conquest of Saigon was one of relief that “avoided a repetition of the 1950s dispute over ‘Who lost China?’ Politically, the subject of Vietnam quickly dropped into oblivion,” he writes. Strangely, it was that same year the ‘the Vietnam Syndrome” affected American judgment so severely that the United States allowed the communists to take over Angola, even though pro-Western forces were within easy reach of victory, and communist governments also took over Guinea-Bissau, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Benin — to look just at Africa.

Colby points out that there are lessons to be learned from the “lost victory” of Vietnam that are applicable today. He examines the two fatal errors of U.S. involvement in the conflict that in retrospect seem like bookends of a shelf-full of history books marked “Vietnam, Republic of — Lingering Death, 1963-75.”

The first was Washington’s willful participation in the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem, South Vietnam’s president, in 1963. The overthrow, argues Colby, “left a legacy of anarchy in South Vietnam to [President Lyndon] Johnson.” America’s role in the coup “clearly was crucial,” yet, Colby adds, “the basis for that role seems almost incomprehensible.”

Somehow, American policymakers believed that getting rid of the stable, if troubled, Diem, would lead to greater “democratization and effectiveness,” even though the new Vietnamese leadership would be assumed by “an unidentified general or generals.”

The second fatal error — not to say that there were not other errors along the way — was the abandonment of the Vietnamese people by the U.S. Congress in March and April 1975, when North Vietnam launched its final military assault against the South. When a similar North Vietnamese offensive had occurred in 1972, “the Americans provided massive logistical support” and U.S. forces deployed “American air power directly against North Vietnamese military targets in massive and effective doses.” Three years later, these elements were missing. “The difference,” Colby says, “was the major factor producing the collapse of morale and discipline that led to the end.”

Colby attributes this undermining of the free people of South Vietnam to Congress, although others have argued that the weakened presidency in the wake of Watergate was the major factor. “The cause [of the fall] is more clearly identifiable in the Congress’ refusal of the monetary and material components of American assistance, reflected in its sharp reductions in appropriations for the military aid South Vietnam needed and in the adoption of the 1973 War Powers Act limiting the authority of the president to employ American military force abroad.”

Colby argues that the lessons of Vietnam have been both absorbed and ignored. He says that for American diplomatic and military efforts in support of a beleaguered ally to succeed, the support of the American people is necessary. “To be willing to give their support,” he argues, “Americans must be confident that the results are commensurate with the involvement,” In other words, the government must make clear to the electorate what precisely is at stake, what will be the cost, and how long will the effort take (approximately).

In El Salvador, Colby asserts, the lessons of Vietnam are being heeded. “The American military presence has been limited to 55 advisors, quite unlike the 550,000 American soldiers who went to Vietnam. In an effort to win the hearts and minds of the people (as the infamous phrase goes), “assistance to the security forces has been matched by programs to strengthen economic development and social growth for the population.” President Bush’s recent firm support or the government of President Cristiani in the face of massive urban guerrilla assaults on the Salvadoran people should, in these terms, be commended.

In Nicaragua, however, Colby argues that the “lessons of Vietnam have been ignored or not learned.” He says the Reagan Administration “put the cart before the horse” by relying on the military force of the contras rather than engaging in fundamental political organizing to create internal, popular opposition to Sandinista tyranny. He believes that “impatience with this long and difficult process led the administration to seek the seemingly quicker solution of direct military action. In so doing, it condemned its efforts to futility and to the loss of the American people’s support.”

To an extent, Colby is correct. However, the constant pressure of the contras has forced the Sandinista junta to call for elections next February. Moral and financial assistance to the political opposition. led by Violeta Chamorro, is coming from the United States. If, as several observers on both right and left have said, the Nicaraguan elections are free and fair, there is a better than.average chance that Chamorro’s democratic opposition will win.

Colby recognizes this (although clearly this book was drafted before current events had run so far along their course) when he singles out for praise the National Endowment for Democracy, which he says is “able to focus on those political forces and institutions on whose success or failure rest the hopes of democratic rather than totalitarian solutions of the serious economic and social challenges so many nations face.”

As examples of success of this approach, he cites our assistance to Corazon Aquino in the Philippines, and our help in the plebiscite that led to the peaceful exit of Gen. Pinochet as head of Chile’s military regime.

We`will probably be debating the “lessons of Vietnam” in classrooms and the Capitol Chambers for generations to come. There will also be the ‘‘lessons of’’ Nicaragua, El Salvador, Iran, Angola, South Africa, Poland, Hungary… the list goes on.

Colby’s years of experience lend a special perspective on America’s wrenching national trauma in Vietnam. Lost Victory will take its place alongside many other worthy and not so worthy works that attempt to explore what happened and why — and if it will happen again,



Richard Sincere is a Washington-based policy analyst who writes frequently on African affairs.

'And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic'

This book review first appeared in The Washington Times on Wednesday, November 18, 1987.  A slightly different version was published in the New York City Tribune on Wednesday, November 25, 1987.


BOOK REVIEW / Richard Sincere
Uncertain war against a deadly virus


And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
By Randy Shilts
St. Martin’s Press
$24.95, 630 pages

Considering the age of most victims of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, the only possible analogy is with war — a generation decimated, felled not by bullets but by an insidious virus.

AIDS was a political hot potato even before the disease had a name. In “And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic,” a gripping account of the known history of the virus, veteran journalist Randy Shilts demonstrates how political interest groups fumbled with the issue. Whether this led to the needless deaths of some 21,000 people by 1987 remains to be proven. It is clear, however, that playing politics with human lives can be devastating.

More than any number of back- alley pummelings, the AIDS epidemic has made palpable the deep-seated American animosity toward homosexuals. The evidence is in the response to the epidemic:

In the early ‘80s the National Institutes of Health spent $36,100 of research money per Toxic Shock fatality (it was no longer a mystery disease by then) and $34,841 per Legionnaire’s fatality. In contrast, it spent $3,225 per AIDS death in fiscal 1981 and $8,991 in fiscal 1982.

As a University of California dean remarked early in the epidemic, “at least with AIDS, a lot of undesirable people will be eliminated.”

This blatant bigotry was matched by more subtle remarks. When pressed about AIDS research, former Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler noted her concern that it would break out into the “general population” — as though gay men, drug addicts, and poor blacks and Hispanics were an alien population or from another planet.

By May 1987, when President Reagan made his first public speech about AIDS, 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed as having the disease, 20,849 had died and between 1 million and 2 million had been infected. The United States is today the only Western industrialized democracy without a coordinated program to combat AIDS.

It is far too easy to parcel out blame during a crisis. Only historical perspective will verify the accuracy of the charges. Few actors in the AIDS drama escape Mr. Shilts’ scrutiny. He identifies heroes, villains and victims.

The heroes include playwright Larry Kramer and political activist Bill Kraus, who early warned of the dangers of promiscuous behavior and who were ostracized b’ their colleagues for their efforts. They also include the tireless researchers at the national Centers for Disease Control, the Pasteur Institute in Paris and various hospitals around the country.

The political heroes were Democratic Rep. Phillip Burton of California, Republican Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Health Edward Brandt. As Mr. Shilts writes, these men took the commonsense approach “that attentiveness to the AIDS issue was not determined by whether one was liberal or conservative but by whether one did or didn’t care about the public health.”

Sadly, the villains outnumbered the heroes. Government officials head the list: HHS Secretary Margaret M. Heckler and her spokesmen insisted that AIDS researchers had all the money they needed, even as scientists were sending her detailed memoranda outlining the specific shortfalls in funds, equipment and personnel amounting to tens of millions of dollars; Mr. Shilts presents a convincing case that Mrs. Heckler and the administration lied to the Congress, the press and the public about AIDS research.

Likewise he documents that New York Mayor Edward Koch, his health commissioner David Sencer and Gov. Mario Cuomo refused to support AIDS research or treatment for more than five years into the epidemic, though New York City had more than half the AIDS cases. They, too, lied to the public about their concern, he writes.

The media, particularly the TV networks and the prestige press, deserve even more censure. They simply refused to cover the crisis unless it involved someone other than homosexuals. The big papers ignored shocking reports from the Centers for Disease Control, the Government Accounting Office and the Congressional Research Service. Besides the gay press, only the San Francisco Chronicle covered the epidemic in any depth.

Other villains were the bathhouse owners and paranoid gay political leaders who felt that promiscuous sex was a right to be vigorously defended. Blood banks would not acknowledge the danger AIDS posed to the blood supply. The infamous “Patient Zero,” a French-Canadian flight attendant, was linked with many early AIDS cases, yet continued to have sex with unwitting partners well after he had been diagnosed. And his irresponsible behavior was not unique.

More ambiguous is the case of Dr. Robert Gallo, credited for discovering the AIDS virus, which he dubbed HTLV-III. In this account Dr. Gallo is portrayed as childish and egotistical, refusing to cooperate with fellow scientists and setting back the search for a cure, treatment and a vaccine. The book also says there is substantial evidence that he might not have discovered the AIDS virus at all, but took his specimens from the French researchers who actually did.

The list of victims grows each day and includes Rock Hudson, Liberace, Michael Bennett, Perry Ellis, Willi Smith, Stewart McKinney, Terry Dolan, Roy Cohn and Michel Foucault. Regrettably, Bill Kraus, who fought for AIDS funding and against sexual promiscuity succumbed in early 1986.

Mr. Shilts makes no recommendations and offers no conclusions, but several can be inferred. One is that al if the AIDS crisis demonstrates anything, it is the need for a substantial public health emergency fund. AIDS caught everyone by surprise — scientists, doctors, public officials — and it can happen again. Research scientists and physicians should not have to fight tooth and nail for basic equipment in the early stages of a medical crisis. The Capitol Hill appropriations process must respond expeditiously or see thousands die.

The current government response shows no sign of improvement. The conflict between the stolid pragmatism of Surgeon General Koop and the naivete of Education Secretary William Bennett, whose solution seems to extend no further than advocating chastity, continues. And the petty squabbling within the Presidential AIDS Commission promises to destroy that body before its work begins. The band still plays on.

Richard Sincere Jr. is a Washington-based policy analyst and writer.

'The War Powers Resolution: Its Implementation in Theory and Practice'

This book review appeared initially in the New York Tribune on Monday, September 3, 1983.

BOOK / RICHARD E. SINCERE JR.
The War Powers Resolution: a siege on presidential power
 
The War Powers Resolution: Its Implementation in Theory and Practice by Robert F. Turner, Philadelphia: Foreign Policy Research Institute, 1983, 147 pages, $4.95.

Clement J. Zablocki, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Milwaukee Journal on July 3: “The Wars Powers Resolution is uniquely crafted in that it accommodates to the reality of our modern, nuclear world. . . However, the distinctive virtue of the resolution is that it reserves to the Congress its constitutionally mandated responsibility of ultimately deciding the full legality of a presidential action. “In short,” said Zablocki, author of the 1973 law, “the War Powers Resolution is too fundamental in both its constitutional anchorage and its practical benefit to be dismantled” by the recent Supreme Court ruling that the so-called legislative veto is unconstitutional.


Inaccurate optimism
Zablocki’s assertions are wrong, according to attorney Robert F. Turner, formerly a legislative assistant to a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  Turner argues in “The War Powers Resolution: Its Implementation in Theory and Practice” that the law “is — in essence — unconstitutional, ineffective and unwise.”

Experience of the past decade demonstrates that the War Powers Resolution is not only ineffective, it is probably harmful. “Rather than fostering an atmosphere of cooperation partnership in decisions to commit U.S. forces to hostile situations, the War Powers Resolution has had the opposite effect: it pits the two branches against each other on essentially procedural grounds at the precise time that national unity is needed to deal with a potential crisis.”

The War Powers Resolution was doomed from its beginning. It was passed by a Congress that refused to acknowledge the congressional role in the conduct of the Vietnam War. Pretending that the near- unanimous vote in 1964 for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution (which granted sweeping discretionary powers to the president for prosecuting the war) never occurred, Congress gave the false impression that its constitutional responsibilities had been usurped by the president. So the law’s purpose was grounded in a historical fiction.

Nixon’s veto
Furthermore, the law’s effectiveness was immediately cast into doubt because it had to be passed over President Nixon’s veto. Sen. Jacob Javits, who co-sponsored the resolution, had hoped that Congress would work out a “methodology’’ for join presidential-congressional action in committing American troops abroad and that the president would then sign it — essentially making a compact between the president and Congress. That hope was not realized when the resolution was, for good reason, vetoed.

The War Powers Resolution requires, among other things, that 60 days after American forces are introduced into “situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances,” the president must terminate American involvement unless Congress explicity acts to continue it. Thus, vital American military aid to a nation under siege could legally be ended simply because the Congress cannot make up its mind! More important, an enemy aware of the president’s time limits could easily delay an offensive or refuse to negotiate peace terms until the 60 days of American military presence had ended.

Turner shows that the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional for several independent reasons, including those cited by the Supreme Court in its recent Chadha decision. Among the others, Turner says, are the resolution’s provisions limiting the power of the Commander-in-Chief to “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces” [Section 2 (c)]. ‘Turner argues: “Any attempt to give legal effect to this provision would be patently unconstitutional.”

Critical omissions
The resolution fails to make the crucial distinction between the Congress’s constitutional power to declare war and the president’s powers to make war. Since after 60 days Congress must affirmatively act to authorize use of U.S. armed forces, the resolution deprives the president of "a fundamental expressed constitutional power,” something “incompatible with our system of separation of powers.”

Turner’s work is a valuable lesson in history and government. It will increase in value as President Reagan and Congress continue to dispute the presence of U.S. forces abroad, particularly in Central America, where fears of “another Vietnam” obscure the realities of the situation.

Congress and the public should take heed of Turner’s analysis, as Sen. John Tower already has, calling the War Powers Resolution “probably the most potentially damaging of the 1970s legislation” that altered the relationship between Congress and president. Tower most surely agrees with Robert Turner’s concluding recommendation:

“Now that its failure has been demonstrated and the acrimony resulting from Vietnam has receded, Congress should take a valuable first step in the direction of improved legislative-executive cooperation in this vital area — and in the process reaffirm its commitment to constitutional government — by repealing the War Powers Resolution.”

Richard E. Sincere, Jr., serves on the board of directors of the American Civil Defense Association and on the staff of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

'Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years'

This book review was first published in the monthly Journal of Civil Defense in June 1989.


DANGER AND SURVIVAL: CHOICES ABOUT THE BOMB IN THE FIRST FIFTY YEARS by McGeorge Bundy. New York: Random House. Publication Date: December 12, 1988. Pages: xiii + 735 (including bibliography, notes and index). Price: $24.95 (hardcover).

— Reviewed by Richard Sincere.

McGeorge Bundy, who gained national prominence as President John F. Kennedy’s national security advisor more than twenty-five years ago, now is a professor of history at New York University. As a historian, he has produced a readable if lengthy chronicle of the nuclear age, Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years.

Because of the book’s sheer length — over 600 pages of text alone — it is difficult in a short review like this to do it justice. For that reason, let us look at just two topics that Bundy handles that have special interest for readers in 1989: civil defense and the Strategic Defense Initiative.

For a Kennedy administration alumnus, Bundy’s discussion of civil defense is surprisingly spare. After all, in real dollar terms, federal spending on efforts to protect civilians against enemy attack reached its peak in the Kennedy years and has steadily fallen since. President Kennedy had a genuine commitment to civil defense, as he noted in several public statements. “To recognize the possibilities of nuclear war in the missile age,” Kennedy said in June 1961, ‘without our citizens knowing what they should do or where they should go if bombs fall, would be a failure of responsibility.”

Bundy notes that he agreed with Kennedy on the need for civil defense as a sort of “insurance policy” against the dangers of nuclear war. He also says that both he and Kennedy underestimated the political realities of trying to get an effective civil defense program off the ground. Kennedy was troubled by his failure to establish a good program, and Bundy reports the president attributed this failure to the ebbs and flows of politics: “These matters have some rhythm,” said Kennedy in a 1962 press conference. “When the skies are clear, no one is interested. Suddenly then, when the clouds come. . . then everyone wants to find out why more hasn’t been done about it . . I think the time to do it is now.”

Similar views have been expressed from time to time by other national leaders: Nelson Rockefeller, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan. For some reason (sociological? political?), their opinions in favor of civil defense have not influenced national policy. Bundy notes — although some strategic thinkers, including myself, might disagree with him — that “civil defense is not a reinforcement of deterrence; it is not a tool of crisis management; it certainly does not demonstrate will or confer superiority. But” — and here I do agree with Bundy — “neither is it belligerent or provocative.”

Bundy’s discussion of civil defense ends with the Kennedy administration, despite the fact that civil defense became a controversial national issue during both the Carter and Reagan presidencies. He neglects the creation (under Carter) of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the sometimes comic events under Reagan that led to a diminished commitment to civil defense in spite of repeated promises of support from the White House. Perhaps Bundy has fallen prey to his own assessment of why civil defense lacks public support: “The subject may be too dreadful for rational discussion.”

Professor Bundy compares Ronald Reagan’s March 1983 decision to announce the Strategic Defense Initiative with Franklin Roosevelt’s October 1941 decision to embark on the atom bomb research program. Yet, advancing from the historic nature of these decisions, Bundy remains skeptical. “What is clear,” he writes, “is that any limited defense will leave essentially unchanged the strategic stalemate we now have — one that rests in the end on mutual vulnerability. The leakproof space shield that is Ronald Reagan’s dream will not become real for decades, if ever.”

Bundy’s skepticism is based on the testimony of technological and scientific experts who downplay the possibilities of SDI and emphasize its shortcomings. Although he discusses extensively the political play that has accompanied the strategic debate since 1983, he seems to ignore certain implications of the evidence that he brings up himself. The conclusion I draw — and others, too — from such evidence is that the practicability of strategic defense is more a function of political will than of technical advance.

I expect that McGeorge Bundy’s Danger and Survival will find its way into many college classrooms as a basic text on the history of nuclear weapons. An interesting and enjoyable work, it will probably be very useful to students of diplomatic history, the Cold War, and strategic thinking. It does not, however, tell the whole story. No single book could.

'South Africa: Revolution or Reconciliation?'

This book review first appeared in the New York City Tribune on August 10, 1988.  Historical note:  Walter Kansteiner later became Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the administration of George W. Bush (2001-05).


RICHARD SINCERE
Reconciliation the Key Word In Hopeful Book On Troubled South Africa

South Africa: Revolution or Reconciliation?, by Walter H. Kansteiner, Washington: Institute on Religion and Democracy, 1988, 175 pp., $8 paperback (foreword by Richard John Neuhaus).

Contrary to popular perceptions, the troubles in South Africa will continue to haunt us beyond the turn of the century. This is despite the dire warnings (or hopeful announcements) that “revolution is just around the corner.” There is little possibility that satisfaction for all will come to South Africa within this generation.

Leon Louw, a South African lawyer and advocate for a free market economy, told me recently that when he was a boy, he persistently heard the news that “the revolution is less than five years away.” That was more than 30 years ago, and the revolution has not yet come. Yet each succeeding political generation — both here and in South Africa — has viewed revolution there as both inevitable and imminent. On both counts, the would-be prophets and seers are wrong.

Walter Kansteiner, trained in economics and theology, has written a useful overview of the “revolutionary” situation in South Africa. Beginning with a thorough review of the traditional just war/just revolution doctrine that was formulated through the ages by such thinkers as St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther and John Calvin, he continues with a particular examination of current conditions in South Africa and asks whether the criteria for just revolution are met there.

The answer is no, primarily for two reasons. One of the major just revolution standards is that violent revolution must be initiated as a last resort. In the South African case, where the ferment of reform and nonviolent political change characterizes the present moment, violent revolution is clearly not the last resort. Advocates of change can still participate in party politics. The press, though circumscribed by emergency regulations, can freely criticize apartheid policies and call for reform. Even the most strident opponents of the government, such as Desmond Tutu, are free to leave South Africa and return without fear of arrest.

Let me give an example of this ferment, if a minor one. During a visit to Johannesburg in July, I observed the debate in the newspapers about the recent desegregation of railroad cars. Conservative Party members decried the reform as a further step away from rigid apartheid, liberals praised it as a step forward, and pragmatic black leaders complained that most of their constituents still cannot afford the price of anything better than a third- class ticket. Political cartoonists portrayed opponents of the reform as buffoons; the government’s response to white complaints was, basically, “either accept the change or stop riding the trains.”

A second reason Kansteiner says no to just revolution is that, according to just war doctrine, those who initiate revolution must have a reasonable chance of success. Given the size and degree of training of the South African Defense Forces, no revolutionary movement can hope to meet that criterion. Since the state of emergency was first declared by the South African government in 1985, the level of violence in the townships violence that was primarily black-on-black and not directed at either the white-controlled government or white citizens — has been reduced to near nothing. The South African police and military have a firm grip that will be nearly impossible to dislodge. Combined with an extensive, regionwide intelligence operation that allows them to stop terrorist incidents before they can occur and with the perception that the South African military possesses “last resort” nuclear weapons, there is little possibility that revolutionaries can succeed in the near term or ultimately.

In South Africa: Revolution or Reconciliation?, Kansteiner concludes that just revolution is not currently an option in South Africa; that peaceful progress toward the end of apartheid is both necessary and possible. He thus focuses on the last word in his title — reconciliation — and urges Americans to aid South Africans in their process of reconciliation and nation-building.

As part of this process, release of this book by the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) coincided with the initiation of a new IRD program called BANSA — Building a New South Africa. The program enables Americans to support financially South African organizations helping to strengthen economic opportunities for blacks, improving education and health care, and building democratic institutions. (For more information on this innovative program, readers of the New York City Tribune may write to IRD (BANSA), 725 Fifteenth Street, N.W. Suite 900, Washington, D.C. 20005, or telephone 202-393-3200.)

South Africa’s problems are often too complex for Americans to grasp. Our American culture believes that problems always have solutions. This is not the case elsewhere in the world, where “quick fixes” are disdained. To those who hope for revolution, and to those who encourage it through economic sanctions, Kansteiner warns:

“Disaster for South Africa is the easy way out. Joining or encouraging an armed revolution is deceptively simple. So too is acquiescing in apartheid. The hard challenges, the tough tasks, are for those who have enough faith and hope and patience and optimism that South Africa’s future is not the future of a tragedy, but rather the future of a bright, prosperous, and free nation.”

These are not the words of an unguarded optimist, but the judgments of one who has studied the South African situation in detail. Kansteiner mixes his hard-headed reflections on South Africa with compassion. The prescriptions in his book deserve further examination by policymakers in Washington and the constituents they serve throughout the United States.

Richard Sincere is a research associate at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and a frequent commentator on African affairs.

'With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War'

This book review appeared originally in The Washington Times on Friday, February 4, 1983.  It was also published in The News World (a New York City newspaper) on Tuesday, February 15, 1983.


RICHARD SINCERE / BOOK REVIEW
Shoveling appeasement

With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War.
By Robert Scheer, Random House, $14.95, 124 pages + 155 pages of 
notes and appendices.

Eugene Rostow’s resignation from his post as head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency underlines the pressures inherent in the arms-control process. Battered by both the right and the left, the Reagan administration has spent the past two years trying to bring order out of chaos, attempting to achieve sensible balance in the competition between the superpowers.


In “With Enough Shovels,” Los Angeles Times correspondent Robert Scheer shamelessly accuses Reagan and his advisers of wild (just stopping short of insane) views of nuclear war. Resting his accusations on unproven assumptions, Scheer pulls no punches in advancing his theory that the present administration is the puppet of a conspiracy called the Committee on the Present Danger.

Scheer is disturbed, and sometimes amused, at Reagan’s determination to stem the threat of communism. Scheer considers the Soviet threat a hallucination — or more accurately, he finds it a puzzling anachronism that lives on only in Reagan’s memories of Communist subversion of Hollywood trade unions. The few readers who could share Scheer’s conclusions are those who share his fundamental and wrongheaded assumption: The Soviet Union is a benign and defensive superpower.

Despite the many hours of extensive interviews with nuclear weapons specialists and civil defense experts, Scheer closes his eyes in this book to the possibility that there is a defense against nuclear weapons. T.K. Jones, deputy undersecretary of defense for strategic and theater nuclear forces, is portrayed as a wild- eyed maniac, a man with no human sensibilities. Scheer ignores the extensive empirical data gathered by Jones which demonstrate that, with proper preparations, the devastation from nuclear weapons can be significantly mitigated. He brushes it off with mockery rather than criticism of Jones’s case.

Clearly Scheer has fallen into the trap of believing in the apocalyptic premise preached by Jonathan Schell in “The Fate of the Earth” and by other doomsayers. Nothing will alter his assumptions. All challengers are dismissed as madmen, no matter what their qualifications.

In his criticism of the Committee on the Present Danger, Scheer carefully documents how this group of intellectuals — established in 1976 to study American defense needs and promulgate their findings that a dangerous imbalance in military preparedness exists — has moved its members into influential government off ices. Scheer calls it their “seizure of state power.” He reserves special disdain for committee members because so many of them are former (or present) Democrats from the Hubert Humphrey wing of the party. Scheer argues that they have betrayed their roots.

Yet it is no accident that people like Max Kampelman, Jeane Kirkpatrick and Michael Novak support U.S. military strength. They have observed firsthand the usurpation of political and social influence by muddle-headed utopians. They remember the lessons of Munich and are willing to take risks to prevent another global conflagration. A commitment to the liberal values of the Democratic Party — even to the values of Norman Thomas and Eugene V. Debs — requires a commitment to preserve those values against totalitarianism.

Thus the founders of the Committee on the Present Danger were willing to face public criticism when they rebutted CIA studies on Soviet military power. In asking, “Is the United States No. 2?” they answer an emphatic yes; their purpose was to influence the public debate on how to rectify that dangerous situation.

By concentrating exclusively on how members of the Committee on the Present Danger now are influencing the U.S. government, Scheer begs the question as to whether there is some sort of conspiracy at work. Since committee members helped to get Ronald Reagan elected, have advised him for many years, and since he agrees with most of their views, it is hardly surprising they are now in positions of influence. But to read that as a conspiracy is equivalent to saying that the Brookings Institution exercised conspiratorial control over the American economy during the Johnson and Carter administrations. It smacks of political naivete and fundamental distrust of American democracy.

And that is the root of Scheer’s attack on the Reagan administration’s nuclear weapons policy. A policy designed to fight and survive a nuclear war, even one designed primarily to deter war (as the Reagan policy clearly is), must — in Scheer’s view — be misguided, because there is nothing worth fighting for. American institutions are not superior to Soviet institutions. American government is as corrupt as Soviet government. Freedom is not preferable to slavery. Scheer’s repugnant view is not unique — it has been expressed in the recent appeasement demonstrations in both Europe and America.

On balance, “With Enough Shovels” presents a strikingly biased, negative view of the Reagan administration. Its only positive value is documentary: Scheer prints informative interviews with several present and former government officials. Unfortunately, Scheer is incapable of interpreting that information in a manner conducive to rational discourse. That would make a worthy addition to the literature of nuclear policy.

Richard E. Sincere Jr. is president of the Washington chapter of the American Civil Defense Association, a nationwide public education group.