ABSTRACT: Non-military threats - from the under-estimation of the threat represented by totalitarian regimes, to that of the human holocaust and the ecological disaster in the Third World - represent the true danger of our epoch. Today then, at a moment in which the prospectives of disarmament seem more favourable, it is necessary to ask oneself for which disarmament and for which society we should fight for.

(Irdisp - Which disarmament - Franco Angeli edition - Milan - October 1988)

The question is to agree on the meaning of peace and security. The meaning of the two words changes radically if referred to allied or enemy states. In the first case, peace is a synonym of mutual confidence, and the security measures are basically aimed at the phenomena of criminality or to interests of an economic nature. In the second case, peace means not only temporary absence of conflict, and security is conceived mainly as a balance of the respective capacities of inflicting one another unbearable damages.

The first is a stable balance; the second instead does not guarantee that war, possibly conducted at the periphery, can at all times be prevented. Until the reasons for conflict are not solved, one part will always attempt to prevail on the other part, or, if this attempt is unsuccessful, to maintain the status quo. In the North-South relationship and in the East-West one, peace and security have this last meaning.

Western countries and 'socialist' countries are enemies because the two economic and social systems are incompatible and irreconcilable. For the Soviet systems the danger is entirely a political one, and is represented by the very existence of democratic regimes. The latter, imperfect as they may be, risk contaminating the socialist countries, threatening the very mechanism of power on which the Soviet regime is based. It is precisely the new minimal margins of democracy granted by Gorbachev which enable the great bureaucratic opposition of striking him, thanks to its own strengths and mass adhesion. The fact is that Gorbachev is fully experiencing the contradiction of perestroika: he cannot neutralize his enemies with the traditional, violent systems which have always distinguished the clashes of power inside the nomenclature, and at the same time he he cannot fully grant the democratic guarantees which are typical of the power groups of the democracies.

Western countries on the other hand consider the Soviet regime as a structurally and historically expansionist one, basically unreliable because of its centralized political structure and because of the absence of debate in the decisional process.

Both blocks have reached the conviction that it is impossible to win a conventional or nuclear war, but will not relinquish the possibility of acquiring a military superiority to be used on a political level, or to compete, directly or on behalf of other countries, for the protection or the conquering of areas of reciprocal economic and political control.

Between North and South there is an even more structural contrast which sustains, in the South, cultural models and totalitarian regimes, with a very high degree of danger. It is the contrast with the wealthy North which feels encircled by the hungry masses of the South of the world, incapable of conceiving - because its set of values and its political culture do not allow it - the objective inter-dependence between the destinies of the South and the North of the world in a creative and open way, but only in terms of exploitation or restraint.

Whenever dealing with the problem of peace and security, it is necessary, beforehand, to define whose side one is on. Neutrality in a conflict is never conceivable, if not when it is "courteously" granted by the two parts out of proper interest. In the East-West conflict the problem is that of choosing, obviously at a theoretical level, which goal to pursue: the minimal strife - - with the necessary compromises as regards the set of democratic values - to freeze or hope to partly reduce the reasons for the conflict; or else maximum strife, in order to attempt to overcome the serious threats to security and the very reasons for the separation of the two blocks;

Up to this day both goals have been pursued at alternate phases. The failure of the détente is all rooted in this duplicity: mutual acceptance of the respective regimes and political and economical interests, parallel to the attempt of making one's supremacy prevail, with different means.

The debate, which is only apparently moralistic, on Reagan's category of "empire of evil", in fact hides the difficulty of the US administration to choose between the full-blown legitimatizing of Gorbachev's new Russia and the maintenance of strife.

If the Soviet Union - in spite of Gorbachev - is and remains the "empire of evil", the disarmament process cannot but hinder the political and economic conflict. On the other hand, the so-called "doves" are striving to achieve full acceptance of the status quo, without however succeeding in explaining at what stage it is necessary to freeze the status quo - and with what ideal compromises - in order to ensure acceptable levels of security. At times however they can be extremely clear, as certain German Greens assert, when they state that confronted with the risk of a nuclear holocaust it is preferable to give in completely as regards the ideal and political contents of democracy. The hypothesis of overcoming historical and political strife between the two blocks is not even considered, as the majority believes that a prevailing of the democratic system over the Soviet one could only be achieved by means of a military victory.

The research we are presenting in this volume is in a certain sense propaedeutical for the choice of the above mentioned strategy. It attempts to prove the limitations of the military question as regards the conflict between the two blocks and the security problems.

The issue of the military balances belongs, as a matter of fact, mainly to the economic science, rather than to the military science. The reasons for the choice of a strategy, and the relative arms systems is ever more conditioned, in the East as in the West, by interests which are only partly connected to security. To hide them to the public opinion it is necessary to invent the theory of the shields or of the impenetrability of one's defensive systems. Except being put into ridicule by a young German who, with his own Chessna, proves that which history has not been able to teach our generals: that the Maginot lines, the space shields or the insane concept of "guarantied mutual destruction" are simply magic words hiding real complete swindles, useful only to reassure and bleed tax-payers, but which have never

been able to avert a war. With such premises it is therefore conceivable to think of acts of unilateral disarmament which, without reducing the margins of military security in the least - in itself limited as compared to real security - enable to engage with no self-limitations and fears, that historical conflict opposing political democracy to the totalitarian concept of the State, the principles of a state based on democratic assent and of the political and civil freedoms to those of the prevailing of the interests of the States on the interests of the individual. And besides: does anyone know of historical conflicts between states being definitely overcome if not by means of democracy or absolute dictatorship? Europe is a demonstration of all this. For centuries its peoples have fought one another in the most fierce way. Up to fifty years ago it seemed simply absurd that all this could stop in the course of a few years. With a manifesto from Ventotene only a couple of enlightened men have been able to con

ceive it and therefore foresee it. Today the united and democratic Europe is an irreversible reality.

In the East only violence has put an end to national conflicts. Only violence can prevent them from exploding. When margins of greater freedom are granted in a deeply illiberal and socially unfair system are granted, the conflict explodes again: in Armenia for example, or in Croatia.

Therefore, I believe that it is the non-military threats which represent the true danger for our epoch. From the under-estimation of the threat represented by totalitarian regimes to the terrible threat of a human holocaust and an ecological disaster in the Third World, new political categories must be entered in the lexicon of peace and security. It is over these boundaries that wars shall be won. It won't be the armies that will win them or lose them.

Precisely at a moment in which the prospectives for a disarmament appear more favourable that it is necessary to ask oneself for which disarmament and which society to fight for. A disarmament capable only of freezing the present disorder would be precarious and even counter-productive, because it would claim to freeze the legitimate aspirations for democracy and social justice of an immense number of people who are presently deprived of them as well.

Courageous acts of unilateral military disarmament accompanied by policies of political and theoretical rearmament can be proposed on a military level, and are essential on a strategic level. They are, as the different voices collected in this volume prove, reasonably possible.