Pacific Ocean imperiled by U.S. weapons build-up

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Travel posters of the Pacific Islands paint sun-drenched beaches of white sands, sparkling waters, and pink sunsets. Beneath this glossy picture, however, lies the brutal reality—malformed plant and animal life, nuclear killers, and a cancer called U.S. imperialism.

World power, both economic and military, has shifted toward the West-and specifically toward the Pacific region.

No longer is Wall Street the center of world finance. Asian banks, especially Japanese, control more than a third of all financial assets in the world. The United States controls only 19 percent. Since 1983, the United States has been trading more in the Pacific than in the Atlantic by about 30 percent.

In 1985, the U.S. military budget in the Pacific was over $47 billion. The largest American military command post in the world, Mandarin Chief Pacific, is located in Honolulu. It controls some 630 bases and 320,000 military personnel over nearly half of the earth's surface-from the coast of Alaska to China and the Soviet Far East.

After a limited withdrawal in the wake of the Vietnam war, the U.S. government is seeking military supremacy in the Pacific region. Plans have been made to increase the U.S. naval fleet to 660 warships and 15 aircraft carriers.

The administration is also raising the number of nuclear-powered attack subs from 74 in 1981 to 117 by 1989. One Navy report summarized U.S. objectives as, "to be able to sail into Vladivostok [a major Soviet coastal city] within the first five minutes of a war."

Nuclear-missile buildup

A recent best-seller in Australia, "The American Lake"

describes in clear detail Washington's plans to increase its nuclear weapons and political control in the Pacific. The most significant nuclear weapons are the Trident I missile and the Tomahawk Cruise missile.

The Trident I missile is deployed aboard Ohio-class submarines. Each sub can fire 24 of these missiles over 7700 km. to rain 240 warheads within 500 meters of targets in the Soviet Union. The plan is to increase these subs by one a year until there are 10 in the Pacific.

These new subs, which cost about $1 billion each, are very quiet and very hard to detect. They have nearly doubled the operating range of the old Polaris submarines. gets to shoot first will have more to do with who wins than any other factor."

U.S. military forces have already considered the first use of nuclear weapons in at least a half-dozen instances—including in the Korean War and the Vietnam conflict. In 1958, the United States came close to launching a nuclear missile at China during the Taiwan Straits crisis.

U.S. Commander-in-Chief Pacific Harry Felt recalled in 1974, "It's true that at that time [in 1958] we had plans for use of tactical nuclear weapons. Most of us believed in those days that the use of tactical nuclear weapons wouldn't key off the big war, and we didn't have any plan to do it any other way."

Nevertheless, the notion of a "limited-nuclear war" remains in the designs of military strategists today. In his 1980 campaign, President Reagan said, "I can see a situation where you can have a nuclear exchange without it necessarily turning into a bigger war."

"Nuclear tripwire" in Korea According to "The American Lake" co-author Peter Hayes, the "first-strike" doctrine provides a particularly nightmarish scenario in Korea. In a recent issue of the Oakland, Calif., The Tribune, Hayes emphasized, "Korea is the only place in the world, besides Germany, where nuclear war could conceivably erupt with little or no notice."

In Korea, on each side of the so-called demilitarized zone, there are half-a-million troops on full alert. Some 41,000 U.S. troops are included in the number. The American forces are reportedly armed with 150 nuclear weapons.

The U.S. military has a "nuclear tripwire" in this zone, Hayes pointed out. As soon as South Korea is fired upon, the U.S. is authorized to wage war immediately-without consultation with Congress.

In June, the United States and South Korea conducted joint war games. The operation was a dry run of an "airland" battle in which both nuclear and conventional weapons would be used to strike deep inside North Korea.

Those of us living on the West Coast of the United States have recently been dramatically reminded of the perils of the government's nuclear threat in the Pacific. The Navy plans to homeport the USS Missouri-which is equipped to carry 32 Tomahawk nuclear missiles-and its accompanying fleet of 10 cruiser-destroyers in San Francisco Bay.

Additional plans envision the berthing of nuclear carriers in every major West Coast port city capable of accommodations. Thousands of Americans are protesting this project; we don't want to be a part of the American Lake.