Terror of the neutron
Auberon Waugh
When I last discussed the enhanced radiation shell or 'neutron bomb' on this page a few years ago, it was chiefly in terms of the debate itself: how MI5's task of identifying Soviet agents and stooges must have been made easier by the Three-Line Whip from Dzerzhinsky Square which brought the most extraordinary collection of sleepers, moles and wood-boring insects blinking into the sunlight to proclaim that the neutron bomb was either anti-working class or diplomatically imprudent or tactically unsound. It scarcely seemed necessary to spend much time pointing out its advantages over nuclear explosives both as a deterrent and, in the event of war, as a battlefield weapon. The Soviet Union's anxiety to discredit the weapon seemed evidence enough; in any case nobody needs to share my own perception, that as a general rule no Soviet Russian thinks it worth speaking to a foreigner unless he has a lie to tell, to see that there is no rational argument against the neutron bomb which does not apply with greater force against the whole principle of nuclear deterrence.
The idea that a more credible and effective weapon somehow lowers the nuclear threshold, ergo makes war more likely, is an absurdity. If the nuclear deterrent is to have the slightest credibility, the threshold must remain the same: as soon as the first Soviet or East German tank crosses .the border, the balloon goes up. There can be no great mystery about Soviet intentions in Europe through the enormous accumulation of nuclear and conventional weapons on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Although it was fashionable at one time to talk of the Soviet Union's desire to keep its options open, now that the USSR has actually doubled the rate of installing its SS-20 multiple warhead rockets in Europe it becomes plain that one particular option is so heavily subscribed as to be unjustifiable except in terms of a fixed policy.
The Soviet intention is quite plainly to build up nuclear superiority to the point where the Western strategic nuclear deterrent loses whatever is left of its diminishing credibility, then use the threat of its vastly superior conventional resources — or even, in the last resort, to deploy them — to achieve whatever foreign policy objectives it has in mind.
Western democracies cannot, by their nature, match Soviet conventional forces, even if there were not an uneasy suspicion, after Vietnam, that the US army is no longer disciplined enough or 'motivated' enough to make an effective fighting force: follow your spirit and upon this charge they will all turn round and shoot their officers. But nobody doubts their ability to throw lethal pieces of high technology equipment around from a safe distance, and the glory of the enhanced radiation shell is that it counters, at a stroke, the vast Soviet superiority in conventional armour without raising any of the credibility problems posed by reliance on a strategic response.
Having established that the neutron bomb issue is both clear cut and urgent, let us return to the conduct of the Great Debate, which I left in 1978 ('Looking under my bed,' Spectator, 22 April 1978) shortly after Mr Carter's disastrous deci sion, in the face of left-wing pressure, to shelve the issue. My original article, I may as well admit, was intended as much as anything else as a tease on Lord Chalfont, who had just written a long article in The Times arguing against the neutron bomb on diplomatic and detentist grounds. He urged instead the grotesque and impossible suggestion that we should increase our conventional forces to meet the Soviet threat.
It goes without saying that nothing in the world could be more absurd than to suggest that my old friend Alun Chalfont could possibly be a Soviet agent. Nobody could have been more sincere in his championship of the Shah of Persia, even if the results of that policy were not quite what might have been hoped. Apart from anything else, Alun went to the West Monmouth School, served in the South Wales Borderers, worked for The Times, is a member of the Garrick — he is very nearly one of us. We may not be able to speak with quite the same degree of confidence about all the Clives, Joans, Ians, Lens, Johns, Michaels, Mosses and Tonies who have taken or are soon going to take what seems to be the Soviet side in this debate, but that may just be because ?, don't know them so well, or because they speak in strange accents.
Nothing could be more obvious than that there are some Soviet agents at.work in the campaign against the neutron bomb, even if we can't name them with any confidence. What is more interesting, and gives greater cause for concern, is the list of those who unmistakably are not Soviet agents or stooges, and the reception given to both parties by the general public.
For instance, nothing could surprise me less than that the Archbishop of West minster, Cardinal Basil Hume, should make a pronouncement against the neutron bomb in the course of the next few weeks.
The Cardinal's pronouncement would be, in itself, of little in+erest, although if I worked for the Security Services I would be interested to learn who had put him up to it. What is more alarming is the climate of opinion in Britain which would accept that this preposterously wrongheaded judgment was a reasonable one for a Church leader to make, that the Cardinal was on the side of the angels in making it. Many will reckon it a melodramatic claim that without the neutron bomb either war or capitulation would seem inevitable in Europe within the next six years, but there is better reason to believe this than there is to believe that repudiation of the neutron bomb would advance the cause of world peace. Yet the British people seem unable to make the intellectual effort to grasp this.
Those who watched last week's debate on Sir Robin Day's Question Time may have been mildly irritated to hear Clive Jenkins state that the neutron bomb was designed for those who wanted war, to do down the lower classes, that it was a capitalist weapon obscurely made worse, not better, by the fact that it killed tank crews without devastating the countryside. But that is the price of free speech. They may have been angered by the half-witted applause which greeted his remarks.
Yet even he was a model of lucid exposition beside the arguments put for ward by Sir James Goldsmith to the Conservatives' Media Committee. Sir James is plainly obsessed by left-wing infiltration of the media, by conspiracies and the danger of foreign interference in the media — at one time I believe he convinced himself that Private Eye was subsidised by the Libyans. His address, printed and circulated in its thousands by a PR com pany, would make an interesting exhibit in any medical museum. He ends, after warning that foreign agents might be trying to purchase The Times, by accusing all who do not fight back against these conspirators — as well as the four million Britons who have emigrated — of treason: 'All are guilty, guilty of treason by default.'
If! were wearing my Medical Correspondent's hat instead of my Defence Corres pondent's kepi, I would point to this document as a classic, textbook illustration of a well-known medical condition. Howev er, my concern for Sir James's health must limit itself on this occasion to urging him, next time he tours his grocery shops, to pick up a packet of aspirins. The purpose of introducing him was to illustrate the quality of the opposition to Clive Jenkins and how it is inadequate to the task of combating the intellectual wetness and sentimental inertia of the British people.
But the most disturbing feature of the ' Great Debate is the evidence it affords of the Soviet Union's awareness of the intellectual wetness of the West. How otherwise could they hope to persuade us to put our heads on the block? Where Britain is concerned, they have only to read last Thursday's spectacularly wet leader on the neutron bomb in The Times to see exactly what has happened to us. And if the Russians have the measure of our wetness, can they reallY believe the existing nuclear deterrent would ever be used? Thank God for Mr Reagan.
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