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469 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 9 (1983)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0469 and id is 1 raw text is: PREFACE Humanity is on the edge of its existence. Never before this half of our century have we been so close to our destruction, and the destruction of all life. We are in the Nuclear Age. During the Commercial Age, or Revolution, of the seventeenth century, there was no turning back. Commerce moved ineluctably ahead. During the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, industry not only forged steel but forged forcibly ahead as a predominance in our culture. Twentieth-century technology now touches us all. Cars, telephones, calculators, computers have become the developed countries' steadfast, stalwart symbols of successful enterprise. No one could have arrested the cumulativity of such knowledge of physical science. And now we have nuclear power. It has positive functions for society if harnessed properly. It was initially hailed for efficiency and economy in serving humanity. But unlike commerce, industry, and computers, nuclear power has the capacity to destroy all of us and all of everything. When this power is mixed with politics and international conflict, it becomes a legal and social menace. Nearly a year ago the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Political and Social Science suggested to us that the major social and political issue facing the world in mid-1983 would be nuclear armament-disarmament. That foresight has been validated by all current events since then. Never before have we witnessed so many conferences, workshops, meetings, seminars on this topic. How are we of the Academy different? Most meetings on the nuclear arms issue have been advocates of nuclear freeze, of control, of conflict between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. They function as if the United States and the USSR are the enemies, and the only enemies, as if each country must arm itself against the other. Why? Because these are the two superpowers who possess the amazing mass of weapons. There is little discussion of cooperation, in the knowledge and accumulation of nuclear arms. Were there an extraterrestrial power threatening the Earth, we might readily collaborate. In the absence of external threat, we have created our own internal threats. The absurdity of nuclear build-up is recognized by all camps of opinion. Yet we continue to build arsenals of incredible destruction. The American Academy of Political and Social Science takes no ideological stance on social-political issues. As the oldest social science organization in America, founded in 1889, we function to disseminate discussion of major social and political issues. Our bimonthly publication, The Annals, performs this function with printed perspicacity. Our meeting this year is part of our history. We stand for wide, multilateral discussion of the issues. Papers during these two days have been presented by some who favor total disarmament, by representatives who express the views of the United States, by those who will dispassionately review the history of nuclear arms control, by those who will present the view of Western Europe and of the critical area of Germany, by one who gives the Russian perspective. 9

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