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University Daily Kansan
Monday. Dec. 4, 1961
The Economics of Peace
Now that the nuclear test ban talks between the United States and Russia have resumed the possibility of complete disarmament again becomes a topic of conversation. Most people in the Western world continue to cling to the hope that peace will someday become a reality. The United States has fostered this hope and declared that peace and freedom are the ultimate goals it is attempting to achieve.
BUT, CAN THE UNITED STATES actually afford peace? How would this nation react to a valid Russian proposal to end the Cold War and the military buildups that have characterized it?
The fact is that the long sought goal of the United States could, if suddenly realized, plunge this country into a disastrous economic situation. Disarmament would mean the liquidation of a large sector of the American economy. At the present time between six and seven million Americans are employed in the defense industry They produce about 10 per cent of the annual gross national product of the United States.
IT WOULD BE ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE for the United States to undergo such a major change in its economy without some negative reaction in the level of economic activity. It is extremely possible that this negative reaction could be something on the order of a serious depression.
It is not probable that such disarmament, if it should ever occur, could be effected overnight. It would have to be a gradual process. But even if disarmament should be accomplished step-by-step the planning and timing must be perfect to avoid economic disaster.
THE ELIMINATION OF THE MILITARY
sector of the U.S. economy would not mean that government spending could be reduced by the amount previously spent on defense items. It is an elementary economic fact that the amount of government spending cannot generally be reduced without causing a decrease in the level of economic activity.
It would be easy to find other areas in which to spend the portion of the budget previously devoted to defense. The areas of conservation, transportation, health and welfare are always in need of another government dollar.
The difficulty would not be finding new needs for federal funds but would be the problem of placing former defense workers in jobs created by federal funds working in other areas.
PART OF THE PROBLEM would be geographical. The plan would have to be devised so that an employment balance could be maintained and unemployment controlled in all the urban areas of the country. This balance would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to attain. If disarmament should cause 7,000 workers in a certain city to lose their jobs, 7,000 new jobs will have to be created. If only 3,000 new jobs can be created 4,000 workers will have to leave the area in search of new jobs. This would result in lower real estate values and a business recession in that community.
The business of redirecting the American economy, if a disarmament agreement is ever reached, will be complicated and complex. Unless the United States is well prepared Khrushchev's best weapon could be the peace this country has so long desired.
—Ron Gallagher
Encouraging Excellence
(This is the second in a series of articles taken from the article in *The Journal of Academic Performance on the Admissions Process* which appeared in the *Dudratus*, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.)
If we restrict ourselves to the better colleges, or what are called more euphemistically the "preferred" colleges, the debit side of the merit system is also impressive though less obvious. Consider the extreme case: suppose the better colleges should admit only the academically talented — those whose grades and scores in scholastic aptitude tests are high. The supposition is not unreal for many of them; the Directors of Admissions can proudly report annually that a higher and higher proportion of the freshmen are from the top quarter of their secondary-school classes. What is wrong with such a method of encouraging or rewarding excellence?
The core of the problem lies in ti. definition of excellence implicit in our current nation-wide attempts to recognize and encourage talent. Ability means, for the purposes of these tests, academic excellence, skill in taking examinations, in following instructions and finding solutions to problems set by others. This is an extraordinarily important type of excellence. It can be discovered by techniques already well developed. It is related to success in many different types of occupations. It deserves and needs encouragement, particularly in lower-class areas as yet untouched by the general American recognition of the importance of academic achievement. But it is not the only type of excellence. It just happens to be the only one that we psychologists can measure at the present time with any degree of certainty, and, therefore, it tends to get more than its share of attention.
IF THE BETTER COLLEGE go on admitting solely or primarily on this basis, everyone will lose in the long run. The better colleges will lose because they are excluding students whose, excellence, though not so obvious, can contribute much to making a college experience more educational for all concerned. Society will lose because young people with very important nonacademic talents will
not be exposed to the most liberalizing kind of education. Most importantly, the students themselves will lose — both those admitted and those not admitted— because the system tells them that there is "only one kind of excellence that really counts"; the ability to take examinations and get good grades in school. A single standard of success is being promoted, which, in Riesman's telling phrase, tends to homogenize our cultural value system. Americans all too often, anyway, end up wanting exactly the same thing: the same car, the same standard of living, the same toothpaste, the same wife — all as promoted on television or in the newspapers. Now they must all want the same education — so long as it is the "best" (like the best toothpaste, which is like every other toothpaste only more so) and so long as they can demonstrate what they got out of it, all in exactly the same way, by getting good grades and on the identical ladder of success in the system. So the boy who does not "make" it, who does not get good grades, or get into the "best" college, may well define himself as a failure in terms of the only norm that seems to count. What satisfaction can he get out of alternative paths of life, even out of an alternative kind of education, particularly when he knows that education at a "good" college is increasingly a necessity for leadership in our society? If he is a boy with political talents, and mediocre academic ones, is it likely any more that he can be President of the United States like Harry Truman without a college degree? How can he feel that he can contribute importantly to society if he does not make the academic grade? Or if, on the other side of the picture, a girl happens to have excellent academic talent, how can she feel that she can contribute to society if she marries and has a family, which prevents her from following the professional career that the merit system tells her is one thing she is ideally suited for? Overstressing academic merit can discourage young people with types of talent that are very important for our society and can create in them a discontent and sense of frustration that lasts a
lifetime. Must we not encourage other varieties of excellence along with the ability to do well in course work?
TO BE SURE, there have always been those who have insisted on the importance of musical and artistic talents or athletic prowess. I even know of a case in which a college director of admissions admitted an excellent 'cello player with a "C" average prediction to complete the college string quartet, though nowadays in one of the better colleges he would have been most embarrassed to admit publicly that he had given similar preference to a quarterback. But with all due respect for such visible talents, I should like to focus attention for a moment on less visible, more intangible types of excellence. For the fact of the matter is that Americans are "rating and ranking happy." What they can see and measure on a scale of excellence, they will encourage. They can recognize musical and athletic talent early and, therefore, they find ways of giving youngsters with these talents the encouragement and rewards they deserve. But my concern is with important types of excellence that are not so readily recognizable or so obviously meriting reward.
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LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
"WE APPRECIATE YOUR OFFER TO HELP WITH TH' W.U.S. FUND DRIVE, FLOSS, BUT WE WERE SORTA SAVING YOU FOR 'CAMPUS CHEST.'
From the Magazine Rack
The Control of War
By Thomas C. Schelling
Although the U.S. has been unwilling to admit it officially, perhaps for fear of public opinion at home and abroad, unpremeditated war, inadvertent or accidental war, or war resulting from build-up of tensions in a crisis of some sort is a significant possibility. The recognized importance of striking first makes it likely that such a crisis would develop extremely suddenly.
It is, therefore, worth thinking about discussing with the U.S.S.R. the establishment (for each of us separately, and perhaps for other countries) of a "Special Surveillance Force." Its function would be to observe the enemy's behavior, at the enemy's invitation, and to report home instantly through authentic channels...
The special feature of such a force would be its readiness, through advance preparation, to take advantage of motives and political circumstances as they might be in a sudden crisis, rather than as they are during the normal ups and downs of the Cold War. It should be prepared to do, with the sudden acquiescence of the enemy (host), things that the latter might never dream of permitting except in extraordinary circumstances, when some kind of arms control—even if only a temporary monitoring of some synchronized withdrawal or relaxation—becomes urgently required as an alternative to war or to the rapid deterioration of a strategic crisis. The attributes of the force should be readiness, speed, reliability, self-sufficiency, versatility, and ability to improvise."
Our force, for example, would not be designed to uncover secret Russian war plans, nor to secure information Russia was trying to conceal. It would have a much simpler assignment: to enable the Russians to "prove to our complete satisfaction the truth about something they are doing, when in fact they are doing it and badly want us to know it," so that we will not feel forced to strike first. If we had reason to believe that Russian cities were being evacuated, or that certain Russian submarines had been sent to strategic attack points, or that the Russian Government had gone on a sustained airborne alert, and none of these things were in fact true, our surveillance force would be able to discover and report the truth if the Russians wanted them to. Without such a force, well-trained and properly placed, it might be impossible for the Russians to establish the truth.
Crisises could quite possibly arise in which the only way out would be a crash scheme of mutual disarmament, arms restraint, or withdrawal and tranquilization. "Both sides would require 'positive evidence' of compliance, rather than just an absence of evidence that the other is cheating. In these contingencies the inspectors would not look for evidence about what the other side was not doing; they would demand to see what it 'was' doing." Again, without such a force in being, it might be impossible to give such schemes serious consideration, and a war that neither side desired would be the only possible outcome.
By Thomas K. Finletter
We must not encourage the Russians and the Chinese to think they can safely wage a limited offensive war, either overtly or covertly. They should understand that these views about the acceptability of limited war are far from being official United States Government policy, and that the Communists will do well to continue with what I hope is their present point of view—of being quite unsure what might happen if they were to return to their former policy of war, whether all-out or limited, direct or indirect, overt or covert.