Sanders, Jerry W. Peddlers of Crisis: The Committee on the Present Danger
and the Politics of Containment. Boston MA: South End Press, 1983. 371 pages.
In April 1982 Ronald Reagan claimed that the Soviet Union had achieved
a margin of strategic superiority over the U.S. (not true), and the Pentagon
began planning for a protracted nuclear war. Thomas K. Jones, whom Reagan
had appointed Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering,
Strategic and Theater Nuclear Forces, told Robert Scheer in 1981 that the
U.S. could fully recover from a full-scale war with the Soviets in just two
to four years. "Dig a hole, cover it with a couple of doors and then throw
three feet of dirt on top.... It's the dirt that does it.... If there are
enough shovels to go around, everybody's going to make it."
Thinking like this doesn't emerge spontaneously. The Committee on the
Present Danger began in 1950 as a bipartisan collection of U.S. elitists
organized to promote containment. In 1976 they reorganized in the wake of
the "Vietnam syndrome" to promote a strategic build-up. By the end of his
presidency, Carter had lost control of foreign policy and had to go along;
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was merely a convenient excuse for a
policy that was already in place. This book lists over 200 members of CPD
and gives a one-line description of who they are.
ISBN 0-89608-181-8
Extract the names from this source
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