The arms race between the USA and the USSR escalated in the 1980s because of Reagan’s “Star wars” programme. Reformist and Stalinist leaders raised concerns of possible nuclear war between the two powers, but all they proposed was to rely on pressure from public opinion, pacifist slogans and the mediating role of the United Nations. Ted Grant outlined the real reasons for the antagonism and the factors that ruled out an open war between US capitalism and the USSR, in spite of the arms race, and explained that only the conscious mobilisation of the working class in the USSR and the West could put an end to this criminal “Cannons instead of butter” policy.
Read the full article in the Ted Grant Archive.