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Coalition for a Democratic Majority

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Deleted under G12:Unambiguous copyright infringement. All of Wikipedia is based on sources, therefore any source that has been copied is a source that can be summarized and used to verify the summary. Easier to hit the Delete button, though. And in the case of material that exposes right-wing and capitalist interests, such as this, ease is not the only possible motivation

The Coalition for a Democratic Majority worked against and succeeded in damaging the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (WP) (SALT) and the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (WP) (MAD).[1] It promoted the concept of "Peace through Strength", which SALT itself had proven unnecessary.

The broad goal of CDM was to reinstate containment militarism as the central theme of U.S. foreign policy. In March 1976, the CDM helped to found the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) (WP), a war lobby for containment militarism.[2]

In order to move the political dialogue, the CPD developed and implemented a new 'Soviet Threat' campaign. Team B Strategic Initiatives Panel (WP) released a report in December 1976 claiming that the USSR had rejected MAD in favor of First strike.[2] The CPD advanced the idea that the US ought therefore to do what they were afraid the USSR was planning.


SALT

SALT had been no great leap forward in comparison with what could have been, but its loss was a great step backward.

SALT proved that each side could obtain sufficient information about the others' nuclear capabilities to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles. Hypothetically speaking, that process could continue until there were none at all. The US would of course never give up its last nuclear weapon, because its agenda has been, since 1945, to hold a superior position over the rest of the world.


MAD

Mutually Assured Destruction (WP) was the idea that global reserves of nuclear weapons were so massive, and the destruction wrought by using even a small part of them so devastating, that neither the US nor the USSR would risk nuclear war. The compelling part of this argument is that part of it is true; only the Peace through Strength advocates had little enough self-preservation to contemplate nuclear war. But it ignores what had proven by SALT; that the preferable alternative of disarmament was possible.

MAD had been anathema to anti-nuclear activists, and criticized by the mainstream for years, but what CDM and other hawks had in mind was even worse. The concept with the Newspeak name of Peace Through Strength was the stated goal, but it was only a step away from First Strike, which was the thought of what had since the start of the Cold War been unthinkable, only in part because it was and always will be impossible: fighting and winning a nuclear war against another nuclear superpower.

Consequently, the term First Strike was not used much before the 1980s.[3][4] The term became widespread in the 1980s, in part due to the 'Peace through Strength' war lobbying of the CDM & related groups.[5][6]


CDM-CPD connections

Members of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority board that are also members of the Committee on the Present Danger and served in the Reagan administration:

Other notables:


See also

SourceWatch

RightWeb


Citations

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "The Holocaust Lobby"-Mother Jones Magazine Sep-Oct 1982, page 25
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "The Holocaust Lobby"-Mother Jones Magazine Sep-Oct 1982, page 47
  3. ↑ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Dec 1968-one of the first times the term First Strike was used, in 1963, in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Link is to 1968 article
  4. ↑ Montreal Gazette - Jun 4, 1966-one of the first times the term First Strike was used in newspapers]
  5. ↑ Google Books search for "First Strike", 1960-1985
  6. ↑ Google News search for "First Strike", 1960-1985
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Peddlers of Crisis: The Committee on the Present Danger and the Politics of Containment, Jerry W. Sanders, (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1983)
  8. ↑ The Defense Democrat, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 1989
  9. ↑ Undated letter from the CDM received in September 1986
  10. ↑ Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix B. , Vol. 12, 1988
  11. ↑ Washington Post, Apr 8, 1987
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