LETTERS The arms switch
Sir: Brian Eno does well in his comment on my War Business article (Letters, 9 May) to insist that political dreams of future technology have fuelled the industry. That is why the `trickle-down effect' argument has been so popular over the last few years despite its apparent inefficiency. The politicians and senior bureaucrats are cer- tainly looking around for ways to move their economies towards what they imagine might be the future. Apparently uncon- trollable economic problems and social habits hold them back as much as the unwieldy bureaucratic structure. All of this was central to General de Gaulle's laun- ching of French arms sales and to Robert McNamara — fresh from the Ford Motor Company — when he reorganised the Pentagon. No doubt it is very much present in the minds of those pushing the Star Wars programme.
I would question only Mr Eno's portrait of the politicians consciously setting out to create the current situation. They are far more likely to have fallen upon arms production and sales while flailing about with some desperation in the dark in search of effective economic levers. Arms, like wars, are a relatively simple switch to pull. The cumulative effect a few years later is probably as much a surprise to the politi- cians as it is to us.
John Ralston Saul
Paris
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