62 SOCIAL SCIENTIST emerges that there is a powerful and effective strategy available to this country which does not require us to rely on the nuclear option. Nuclear blackmail can be defeated by subverting the aims that nuclear blackmail intends to accomplish. American nuclear weapons are intended to ensure for the Americans untrammelled interference in the affairs of Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa. American nuclear strategy in recent years has been to bind its allies more tighlty in the web of its nuclear establishment. For example, the introduction of the Pershing 2 missiles in W^st Germany is intended to bind more tightly the fate of West Germany with that of America. This was done partly to counter the strengthening pressures on many West European governments to opt out of the NATO alliance. k The most effective strategy to fight nuclear blackmail is to launch a political counter-attack in a strategy to strengthen the forces of independence and democracy, whether in Europe, the USA or in the Third World. America's military might should not divert attention from its growing political vulnerability internationally. (This vulnerability has a very deep foundation in the economic crisis brewing in the West, with the economic bankruptcy threatening the USA and Britain, which we cannot discuss within the scope of this article). It is this political vulnerability that can be utilised far more effectively as a strategy to defeat nuclear blackmail and compel disarmament, provided the strategy is conducted purposefully, systematically and consistently over a period of several years. The organisation of a broad political alliance of disarmament forces is unlikelv to take place spontaneously. It will require the active intervention of a leadership which must necessarily have great credibility in the eyes of a broad spectrum of the pro-disarmament sections. This leadership will have-to intervene not only in international forums like the U.N. but also take an active interest in the internal politics of the nuclear war-mongering NATO states. Our country is extremely well placed to play a vanguardrole in this international strategy to subvert the war aims of the USA by strengthening and consolidating the pe^ce forces throughout the world. But to be able to play^ this leadership role, our government will have to establish its unquestioned credibility as a disarmament force in the eyes of the world's peace forces. Today it is possible for disarmament pressures to play an equal if not a more important role than nuclear pressures. We believe there is no single step which will confer on our government a greater credibility in the eyes pfthe peace forces than proposing and arriving at an agreement with the countries of the subcontinent, especially Pakisan, to exclude nuclear weapons from the subcontinent and its vicinity. Of course, such a proposal must be consistent with the demands of national security. The proposal must not only preclude the manufacture of nuclear weapons infrastructure like RDF bases and naval facilities of the nuclear powers. The proposal for a nuclear weapons free zone made by Pakistan is seriously lacking in that it does not exclude the nuclear weapons infrastructre of foreign