A Dangerous Illusion

A prominent Swedish diplomat and a U.S. Congressman yesterday attacked the Reagan Administration's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and instead called for nuclear arms control, in a symposium entitled "International Relations in an Interdependent World: A Look at Ends and Means."

"Invulnerability is a dangerous illusion. SDI may accelerate the arms race," said Maj Britt Theorin, Swedish ambassador to the Disarmament Conference in Geneva. "Technological advantage in any weapons system can only be temporary and can never lead to permanent security," she said in a panel moderated by Radcliffe president Matina S. Horner and Naomi Chazan.

Congressman Patricia N. Schroeder (D-Colo.), who described her district as "Marlboro Country," agreed. "Space must not be militarized; instead we must peacefully use space for monitoring, watching and verification," the member of the House Armed Services Committee told 400 listeners in Agassiz Theatre.

Arms control agreements, followed by mutual reductions in both superpowers' nuclear arsenals and finally nuclear disarmament, are the only practical ways to defuse the threat of nuclear war, both panelists agreed.

"The nuclear arms race is an unacceptable pursuit of folly that holds all of humanity hostage," said Theorin. "The only safe [alternative] is to build down the arsenals through disarmament measures either unilaterally or bilaterally."

Schroeder, who graduated from the Law School in 1964, declared that the most imperative goal was the need to bring the message of the dangers of the nuclear arms race to the average man on the street.

"We've got to explain what we mean to the average Joe Six-pack," she said. "We've got to move from the scholars to people whose lives are actually threatened."