There are three ideas that BENS would like to see succeed: reducing the danger of nuclear war; promoting a "strong, effective, and affordable defense"; and working for a more productive relationship with the Soviet Union. Weiss felt from the start that although the implications of a nuclear war must transcend all other issues, it wouldn't make good business sense to concentrate on nuclear arms control exclusively. For one thing, nuclear weapons account for only 15% to 20% of all weapons expenditures. For another, he felt, focusing on nuclear arms control alone would obscure the importance of a greatly expanded definition of national security. "National security is always thought of in one-dimensional terms, as military might," Weiss says, "when it really rests on three legs: military, economic, and the condition of the country's physical and human infrastructure." Fat military budgets, financed as they are at the expense of private sector investment funds, actually hurt business, he believes; American corporations have trouble competing with their counterparts in Japan and West Germany precisely because those countries have military budgets much smaller than our own, and can thus invest heavily in the private sector.
So far, BENS has gotten itself involved in most of the activities one ordinarily associates with a trade association.It publishes a newsletter, Trend Line, which informs members about relevant news on Capitol Hill, and it sends out periodic "Action Alerts" on important congressional votes. Its educational fund conducts studies of such issues as the relationship between defense spending and the economy, and it runs a speakers' bureau. As to whether it will win a more widespread following, either among members of the business community or among Capitol Hill policymakers, most observers agree it is too early to tell. But BENS has already secured a reputation as an important resource for representatives, senators, and trade associations looking for factual and intellectual support as they frame their positions on defense policies. John Motley, director of federal legislation for the 570,000-member National Federation of Independent Business, who worked with BENS in fashioning his association's position on the Bipartisan Budget Freeze Proposal, says BENS "provided good information and valuable arguments which could be used to convince senators that a one-year freeze on defense spending wouldn't be a disaster."
Weiss, for his part, is modest about the organization's accomplishments. "We're not exactly a household name," he says. "But then again, we're barely two years old."
"Like every important social and political change in this country," Harold Willens says, "the desire to end the arms race must start at the bottom. I always tell people: 'If the people lead, in time, the leaders will follow.' This is what has to happen on the nuclear arms race issue so we can end this insanity before it puts an end to us." But whether business, which Willens sees as the trimtab of America, cares enough to shoulder its presumed responsibilities is open to question. Rear Admiral Gene LaRocque, USN. Ret., a founder and now director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Defense Information, goes so far as to suggest that if business doesn't break its silence, it will be guilty of a grave sin of omission. "Businessmen alone can't do it," he says, "but in my view businessmen are perhaps the most important group, if they get their act organized better than they have. Businessmen are very slow in coordinating on this issue. If the business level of interest stays the way it is today, they will -- also in my view -- be largely responsible for our failure to move away from this arms race, because they are potentially the most influential."
Meanwhile, in the basement of his house in Norwell, in the small bomb shelter he built after being recalled to active duty in 1961, Douglas Marshall also wonders if anybody out there is listening. Marshall rummages through the shelter's sparse contents, annotating them with a certain bemused nostalgia. There is the chemical toilet. A sheet of plywood lies on the struts that once supported the bunk beds. The air-intake pump still works. There is a bookshelf in one corner; next to it is a short two-by-four that would have slipped between two steel hooks and closed the door against intruders. A child's drawing easel is leaning against the wall. On the top of the easel, one of Doug's children, now grown, had once written the word "peace" in yellow paint.
"It's been kind of a storeroom for a long time now," he says, closing the door. "Only good for growing mushrooms really." Then, as an unexpected afterthought recalling an earlier conversation, he says: "You know, only one person ever did write back to me about that letter. No one else even mentioned it."
