by rockets, by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a
spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith."
10
Such a characterization serves several rhetorical functions.
First, this claim justifies greater weapons expenditures not to "deter" a
hostile aggressor (the doctrine behind U. S. nuclear strategy until the
mid-1970s) nor to ensure a superior "bargaining position" in arms
control negotiations (the expressed rationale for the Carter and Reagan
Administration's adoption of the "warfighting" strategy)
11
but rather to
overcome evil itself. By infusing military policy with moral and spiritual
implications, every step in the arms race could be portrayed as another
victory in the battle against evil.
Second, this mythology creates an intractable enemy out of opponents of
the Administration. Nuclear freeze advocates are portrayed not simply as
willing dupes of the KGB, but as traitors in the battle between Heaven and
Hell:
[I]n your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware
the temptation of pride - the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves
above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history
and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a
giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle
between right and wrong and good and evil.
In such a war, there is no middle ground. Those who question American
policy or oppose high defense spending essentially become demonic
agents. Reigning in such agents becomes paramount. Not only do they
10
Ronald Wilson Reagan, "National Association of Evangelicals: Remarks at the Annual
Convention in Orlando, Florida, March 8, 1983,"
Weekly Compilation of Presidential
Documents
19:10 (14 March 1983) 367.
11
In the 1970s, American military strategy began a noticeable shift from a strategy of
"deterrence" to a strategy of "warfighting." Such a strategy involved maintaining the
defense expenditures and capabilities necessary to fight and "win" a nuclear war;
policies in support of this doctrine are aptly detailed in Robert Scheer,
With Enough
Shovels: Reagan, Bush, and Nuclear War
(New York: Vintage, 1983) and Daniel Ford,
The Button: The Pentagon's Strategic Command and Control System
(New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1985). It is worth noting that the massive buildup necessary to this task
was initiated during the Carter administration rather than the Reagan administration, in
spite of the fact that public discourse registered the 1970s as a "decade of neglect" with
regard to military expenditure. See Colin S. Gray and Jeffrey G. Barlow, "Inexcusable
Restraint: The Decline of American Military Power in the 1970s,"
International Security
10:4 (Spring 1985) 27-69, and Robert Komer's excellent response, "What Decade of
Neglect?" in the same issue, 70-83.
Convention