SocialistAction 1983–88

The paper of the Socialist League, formerly the International Marxist Group, 1983–88

Europe's folly

Socialist Action No. 33, 11 November 1983 · pp. 11-12 of the scan · 243 words

The scan: 033-nov-11-1983-SA-UK.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive, opens at this page)

Uncorrected machine reading. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from a scan of a newspaper page, and the page was cut into articles by machine, at the headlines found by their type size. Nothing has been corrected: expect misread words, text from a neighbouring article, and titles that are the machine reading of the headline, some of them only fragments. Quote from the scan, not from this page.
How this article was cut and titled: headline found by type size in the OCR geometry (split_tabloid.py); 1-2 of 7; machine-segmented newspaper page; uncorrected Vision OCR.

page 11 of the scan

OWEN GREENE has published a useful little handbook full of information and arguments about cruise and Per. shing Il missiles.

Nothing is taken for granted. The book includes chapters on what a cruise missile is, the history of the missile program, the background to the NATO 'modernisation' decision to deploy cruise and Pershing.

Reviewed by A Lenton The author also goes through all of the HUTC arguments used to justify cruise and methodically counters each of them. In so doing the real purpose of the weapons becomes apparent. From being solution in search of a problem has become the first of a generation of nuclear warfighting weapons. The strategy on which cruise is based is that nuclear war can be fought 'won' in Europe.

The book is weakest in the political conclusions at the end when the author's lack of political understanding of the motives of the US as the driving force of the arms race are not taken into account, an elaborate sterile schema for nuclear disarmament is laid out.

At the same time the history of the project almost makes it sound like the whole thing ssae accidents spite this, however, the book is a must for all activists in search coherently organised material about cruise and Pershing II.

Europes folly Owen Greene

page 12 of the scan

Socialist Action 11 November 1983 • Central America:

Nobody's Backyard • Campaign against ihe Police mil natona conference, Sat 19 Nov, Sir &1 RELAND

← The Hongkong crisisTHE CRISIS →

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