Abstract
While the attention of national leaders in both East and West is focused mainly on the balance of their conventional and nuclear military forces - “star wars”, and military turmoil in the Middle East and Central America - they are allowing the very basis of national security to evaporate. Politicians, from habit and ignorance, view the political and economic differences between American and Soviet societies as of paramount importance. In an historical context, those differences are no greater than those, say, between Romans and barbarians fifteen centuries ago. Yet some American and Soviet politicians apparently are willing to blow up the world over their differences. Fortunately, Roman emperors did not have access to nuclear arms in 376–476 A.D. as the barbarians overran the empire. If they had, the Soviet Union and the United States probably would never have existed.
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© 1989 Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Ehrlich, P., Ehrlich, A. (1989). The Environmental Dimensions of National Security. In: Rotblat, J., Goldanskii, V.I. (eds) Global Problems and Common Security. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-75072-4_24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-75072-4_24
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