America's Last Peacenik

By FREDERICK UNGEHEUER William Sloane Coffin

Chaplain at Yale, leader in the civil rights struggle and the anti-Viet Nam War movement, pastor at New York City's Riverside Church, he is now the head of sane/freeze: Campaign for Global Security. Once a cia operative, Coffin has been a political contrarian for 30 years, seeing himself as the voice of moral opposition to much of what he believes is wrong with his country.

Q. At the moment, Moscow seems to be winning the propaganda war on disarmament, both nuclear and conventional. How can the U.S. regain the initiative?

A. I wish we'd drop the notion of propaganda war. It's clear that President Gorbachev has a greater sense of drama than does Secretary Baker. He also has more ideas. It's a pity that we have not analyzed their substance and tested his sincerity earlier. I'm glad that the Administration is finally taking seriously the latest Soviet proposal for sweeping reductions of their conventional forces in Europe. The truth of the matter is that for the same economic reasons as the Soviets, we too need disarmament. Eisenhower was right to say the problem of defense is how far can you go without destroying from within what you're trying to protect from without. Already we've gone too far when, on any given night, 100,000 American children go to sleep homeless. And we house our missiles so much better than we do our homeless.

We have a genuine reformer in the Soviet Union today, and those who know anything about Russian history know that reformers come rarely and rarely last long. And after every reformation comes counterreformation. So to make the most of Gorbachev is exceedingly important.

Q. How should that be done?

A. We now have a new opportunity to end the arms race. But where Gorbachev is bold, Bush is cautious to a fault. I wish he would agree that we have a lot to fear today, but not a Soviet Union prepared to negotiate. So I wish he'd press ahead. What we need is a 50% reduction in the ICBMs. We need a reduction in the conventional forces. We need a comprehensive test ban.

Frankly, I don't understand Bush. If he thinks we are going to get a neo- Stalinist successor to Gorbachev, how much better it would be for that successor to have far fewer weapons. I do not think he is waiting around for Gorbachev to be overthrown by students the way students are doing it in China. So I don't see what's holding Bush back, except that over the past 40 years the U.S. has, narrowly speaking, profited from a divided and armed Europe. It has given us a lot of political and military leverage. It is clear that if Europe is disarmed and united, we will lose that leverage. But the benefits of a united and disarmed Europe are so enormous that it just shows an incredible poverty of politics not to give up this leverage for something that would be better for the whole world.

Q. NATO commander General John Galvin, on the other hand, maintains that nuclear arms are indispensable in keeping peace, especially in Europe.

A. In other words: No nukes, no peace. Well, no nukes, no peace means nukes on both sides, which doubles the already high risk of miscalculation and accident. I do not think we are any more prepared for a nuclear weapons accident than was Exxon for the ecological disaster it produced in Alaska. What the general seems also to forget is that NATO was organized to thwart a perceived Soviet threat, not to keep Europe permanently divided and armed. Germany and France were traditional enemies. Today their border is like Sweden and Norway's. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have similar borders all over Europe. I have yet to meet a Hungarian who does not want the Warsaw Pact dismantled.

There's only one way to do that. And that is to dismantle NATO. I think it can be done. We can dismantle the Warsaw Pact and NATO gradually, responsibly, so that at each step both sides feel militarily far more secure.

Q. Have you any indication that anyone on the Soviet side shares those views?

A. Many indications. Major General Yuri Lebedev was one of a Soviet delegation that was here for ten days at the invitation of our organization. I could not find a single point on which we were not in full agreement. He said to me, "My patriotic military duty is to make sure my country never again engages in any war."

Furthermore, I wrote President Gorbachev last November about my suggestion to shut down nuclear plants for good and finally to end the production of all fissile materials. I got a nice answer from him a couple of months ago. In fact, it was just before he announced in London that he was going to shut down two reactors. That suggestion has since been taken up by eleven very prominent American scientists, who have written a letter to Congress. It still seems to me possible to have a new FREEZE movement to shut down the production of all fissile materials.

Q. Why do you think the old FREEZE movement collapsed?

A. In part, it's a function of its success. What made FREEZE was President Reagan. When he cut off negotiations with the Soviet Union, increased the military budget by 44%, called the Soviets "that evil empire," a lot of Americans got nervous. And anxiety is what creates a protest movement. Then, after 1984, he began to change his rhetoric, finally called Gorbachev his friend and signed the INF agreement. My own feeling is that the FREEZE movement deserves a lot of credit for this.

Now the popular perception in this country is that you don't have to worry about peace anymore. That's something the Government is taking care of. So the average American is more concerned with Japanese cars, let's say, than with Russian tanks and is more concerned with ecological disaster than with nuclear disaster. But what the average American doesn't realize is that the INF agreement in no way slows down the arms race. Until there is a suspension of nuclear testing, research and development on both sides, we will continue to produce ever more lethal, ever more threatening first-strike weapons whose technological sophistication will more than offset any benefit to be derived from simple numerical reductions. Advances in weaponry go much faster than does arms control. And unless we stop research and development, we may end up with a nuclear bomb that's barely larger than a softball. And then where's your arms control?

Q. There is a NATO summit this week to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the alliance. But it too is in disarray. What's your assessment?

A. As these 16 nations prepare for their summit, we've sent out word to all our branches to send a supporting statement for the Bonn position, which we will deliver to the Bonn mission at the United Nations. We're calling for the abolition of all short-range nuclear weapons, East and West, and we're also proposing reduction of Warsaw Pact and NATO forces, both nuclear and conventional, to 50% of NATO's present strength. That is a first step to a united and disarmed Europe. I'll be going to Brussels myself, joining European members of the peace movement.

Q. How much support for that position do you find among Americans you speak to every week?

A. I find enormous support. I would describe the peace movement in America today as the "majority in the periphery." Our voices used to be relegated to the remote periphery of the political discourse. Now I think they are being heard at the center. And I think those farthest from the seats of power tend to be nearer to the heart of things. It was true in the civil rights movement and in the antiwar movement. Now the same thing is true of arms control.

Q. Do the student protests in China remind you of the civil rights movement in the U.S. during the Viet Nam War?

A. To some degree, yes. We never were nearly so successful. We were trying to stop a policy and didn't succeed. We raised consciousness, but we didn't stop the war. We stopped its further escalation. We stopped the further American commitment. Nor did we change sufficient minds and hearts in America so that operations similar to that in Viet Nam could not take place in Central America. These Chinese students seem ready to change very fundamental policies in China. It's something -- I can't get over it.

Q. Over the past 30 years you've established a reputation as an almost professional refusenik yourself, and some would say an anti-American. Why?

A. I have a lovers' quarrel going on with America. If it were a grudge fight, I would go to Canada. But it's a lovers' quarrel. And civil disobedience is very much a part of our religious and historical tradition: the abolitionists, the suffragists, Martin Luther King Jr.

And there are things in us today that we must bury, just as the Soviets are trying to bury Stalinism, and the Chinese Maoism. Probably the hardest thing for us is going to be the understanding and feeling -- because it doesn't live in the American mind so much as it lives under the American skin, deep in the American gut -- that somehow the U.S. is morally superior to every other country in the world. This innocence about our misdeeds, not understanding that we've been accomplices in the very evils we profess to abhor, that's got to be buried.