Blasting Into a New Age

THE coincidence of two events often reveals connections usually hidden. At the same time Gorbachev was visiting the country, the space shuttle Atlantis secretly deployed a spy satellite that can practically pick out his birthmark from orbit.

The new Soviet regime has generated increasing hope (and hype) about reduction in military forces and superpower tension. Gorbachev offered new, "unilateral" troop and hardware cuts during his visit this week. In a century rife with devastating wars, the world's euphoria at the prospect of peace, even watchful peace, is not surprising. Armed conflict--preparing for it, waging it, and recovering from it--has been our chief preoccupation for a long time.

But perhaps we are getting the first glimpses of the end of the Age of Warfare, a time when it has it has become both avoidable and unprofitable. Conservatives will scoff and claim that war is forever and we must be ever vigilant. Liberals will applaud the new era, believing the Elysium will come with the cessation of national violence.

The future may prove both sides wrong; whether or not war is an eternal part of the human condition, the struggle for dominance will always continue. But the focus has shifted. In a world growing ever more complex and interdependent, it has become the control of information, expertise, and technology, rather than military power, that is the index of true power. As the Industrial Revolution ended the ancient, "eternal," institution of slavery, so too the information age may be the start of a world beyond war. Yet as industry found new ways to control labor, nations and individuals will continue to compete, but in the economic and technological spheres.

LEST we believe that a post-military era will be safe and relaxing, it should be noted that economic or technological dominance by a foreign power will as surely corrupt our culture and ideals as any invasion. Over the last two decades, we have been a helpless giant in Vietnam, in Lebanon, in Iran, in Nicaragua, in Panama. Our impotence has been manifest all over the world.

We, like the Soviet Union, possess a war economy, centered on a military-industrial complex, with a variety of inefficient producers protected by their cozy relations with the armed forces. Yet war as we understand it is becoming obsolete. Clearly, much of Gorbachev's foreign and domestic policies are designed to reform the Soviet economy into a more rational and competitive one. His challenge is also ours. The question we must ask ourselves is this: can America survive in the world after war?

Our current science and space policy is a prime example of our failure to anticipate the massive global changes that are occuring. There is a schizophrenic air about the American attitude to government research. We seem to recognize only two areas of legitimate inquiry, military research and "pure" science.

The space shuttle reflects these tendencies; of the next seven missions, three are secret military shots and two are for the investigation of Jupiter and Venus. One cannot deny the prudence of orbital reconnaissance or the nobility of interplanetary research, but our recent record in putting up communication satellites is not a good one, nor has our progress toward performing significant technological research in orbit been very swift. The shuttle itself may not be the optimal vehicle when war is no longer a significant threat. As James Bamford, author of "The Puzzle Palace" noted in Monday's Christian Science Monitor, "Nobody seems to understand that the principle reason for the shuttle program was servicing and repairing spy satellites." Even now, it might pay to begin concentrating on single-launch rockets coupled to a space laboratory, as the Soviets have done.

Our program in space exploration is scientifically valuable, but the propaganda value of Americans boldly going forth in the service of all mankind is no longer really necessary, since the ideological failings of communism now seem obvious to even the Chinese and Soviets themselves. Pure research, "for all people" is best conducted together with as many nations as have the resources to participate. Our allies are ideal partners in this effort, and larger missions like a Mars landing--if they are attempted at all--naturally suggest cooperation with the Soviet Union.

Similarly, the most notable research project now being planned is the billiondollar Superconducting Super Collider to be built in Texas. This will no doubt be an impressive piece of equipment, of considerable value to American and world particle physicists. But extremely large projects like this eat up tremendous amounts of the budget for basic and applied research. By spreading our money around to a variety of potentially fruitful areas, we will be hedging our bets for technical breakthroughs, and likely get a larger amount of information for our expense.

ARGUMENTS often heard from the government, such as that military and pure research often produce "spin-off" applications possessing great value, are not very convincing claims. A science policy based on the expectation of serendipity is not terribly rational. We would be better served by aiming at practical technologies from the start.

The future will be based on economic and technical competition rather than military struggle. We need to maintain our scientific edge, and to restore our ability to swiftly to turn discoveries into products. Considering this new kind of threat, our "national defense" will be enhanced by directly encouraging innovation and efficiency in the private domestic sector, and by refocusing our research policy on the prosperity and technological advance of the nation.