SCOOP & HENRY - THE ARMS DEBATE

...The U.S...

...These fears ignore several realities: (1) Soviet leaders, on the short end of "strategic superiority" for so many years, also have long had legitimate cause to fear an American first strike...

...If he preferred applying the available overkill more equitably to both civilian and military targets, he could dispatch three Hbombs each to the 219 large cities and to 1,500 separate military objectives in the Soviet Union, and still have almost 14 times the "adequate nuclear deterrent" level left over...

...Factors as irrelevant to national security as personal careers, profits, and jobs generated—and continue to generate—massive pressure on Congress and the executive branch to keep producing more sophisticated weaponry...

...in South Korea, nor the nuclear-tipped intermediate-range Soviet missiles trained on Western Europe...

...His proposal, however, would require the Soviets to cut more launchers than the Americans and would maintain the American lead in MIRVs...

...One part of Senator Jackson's proposals, contained in a speech of December 4, 1973, points toward a solution...

...As a presidential hopeful, Jackson is smart enough to moderate his promilitary stance in public...

...known to the experts as the "action-reaction cycle...

...Another ingredient is a much larger, more tenacious constituency of citizens working on behalf of disarmament...

...The U.S...

...A stable strategic balance is unlikely to be reached as the arms race moves upward and aggravates the fears of surprise attack...

...More aggressive and harder working than the others in the promilitary bloc of Congress, Jackson assumed the unofficial leadership of this group in 1972 and never let go...

...He fought against SALT I and helped intimidate the Administration into its current paralysis in negotiations...

...IN SHORT, the road away from the precipice is real disarmament, based on common interest in avoiding war, halting the spread of nuclear weapons, and lifting the economic burdens of modern military establishments...

...To understand what one does with "strategic superiority," we have to look at the military and political dimensions of the nuclear arms race...

...Each passenger is an H-bomb that can be guided to a separate destination with considerable accuracy...

...Far less visible, Soviet infighting occasionally surfaces into public view...

...A MIRV is a missile resembling a space bus with up to 10 passengers...

...The record of the Big Two in this respect has not been encouraging...

...Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara pinpointed, in 1967, the number of separate nuclear warheads (H-bombs) as "the most meaningful and realistic measure of nuclear capability...

...H enry Kissinger posed these questions at a press conference in Moscow at the end of the 1974 Summit meeting...

...He has advocated a reduction in missile forces, which sounds good to the unsuspecting...

...The Senator and his allies respond to this challenge by pressing on the one hand for military coun ters to the Russians, and on the other hand for negotiating positions that would get the Rus sians to surrender their recently acquired ad vantages...

...These fears were fueled, on both sides, by exaggerated reports of the adversary's prowess...

...But what is the alternative...

...As McGeorge Bundy wrote in 1969, In the real world of real political leaders— whether here or in the Soviet Union—a decision that would bring even one hydrogen bomb on one city of one's own country would be recognized in advance as a catastrophic blunder...

...The number of strategic warheads determines the number of separate major targets that can be destroyed...

...has fewer larger warheads, the Pentagon tends to magnify the Soviet threat by stressing a different measurement: megatonnage or "payload," the explosive power of these weapons of mass destruction...

...and a hundred bombs on a hundred cities are unthinkable...

...disarmament talks, observes: The so-called "disarmament agreements" that we have obtained are either non-armament agreements or mere cosmetic devices...

...One of the most important by-products of real disarmament between the superpowers would be a decrease in the current incentives to smaller countries to "go nuclear...

...The superpowers must reduce their nuclear arsenals...

...Given the destructiveness of the superpowers' arsenals, a confidence-building parity can only emerge as the armaments levels go down...

...Several months before Kennedy became president, his science adviser Jerome Wiesner wrote: "Studies made independently by the U.S...

...Jackson and the Pentagon point to the current Soviet arms mo mentum as capable of producing in coming years a force of large, powerful MIRVs that could overwhelm the Minuteman missiles...

...First, mutual cold-war fears and suspicions generating an international game of "Can You Top This...

...Armaments policy is basically a political question resolved at least as much by internal power struggles as by international security considerations...

...should continue its research and development programs for new weapons to be used as bargaining chips for a wider accord later...

...The world has entered a much more dangerous period, despite detente and the rhetorical "structures of peace" that are being fabricated all around us...

...Once they perfect the technology, the Soviets will try to COMMENTS AND OPINIONS marry MIRVs to bigger missiles...

...Yet, in the first year of the Kennedy administration the American nuclear arsenal had already reached nine times the level of "adequale nuclear deterrent" recommended by the Army-Navy studies...

...He is impressed by the Chinese Communists, perhaps because they are the enemy of his enemy...

...Because they can reach so many different targets, MIRVs have vastly escalated the destructive range of strategic weapons...

...There is even reason to wonder how far Kissinger, recent convert to the cause of arms control, would be prepared to press for the bolder measures that are required...

...AT PRESENT an American president could, if he wished, allocate 36 H-bombs to each of the U.S.S.R.'s 219 cities of 100,000 population or more...

...Since one nuclear-tipped missile can destroy a city, the military planners calculated— with the awesome logic of the nuclear age— that the Russians would be deterred if threatened with the annihilation of their population centers...

...The basic fear of the military-minded is the specter of a Soviet first strike against American land-based weapons...

...Not a single weapon has been scrapped as a result of negotiations during the nuclear age...

...But there are few targets, whether cities or missiles, that require a blitz by a brute of 20 million tons of TNT equivalent, when an H-bomb of a "mere" 1 million tons can demolish them just as well...

...Jackson's phobia with regard to the Russians is buttressed by the true believer's faith in unlimited military power...

...Since the U.S...

...Jackson's power flows from a political and a congressional base...

...has enjoyed strategic superiority since Hiroshima...

...It is one of the ironies of the Nixon administration that Henry Kissinger, former academic spokesman for "limited" nuclear war and skeptic about arms control, now advocates positions more advanced than anyone in official Washington...

...The meeting failed to fulfill the commitment made a year earlier by President Nixon and General Secretary Brezhnev that they would reach agreement in 1974 on a permanent treaty limiting offensive missiles...

...have gone on not only piling up more arms but also improving the weapons they have...

...Following the lead of the U.S...

...Similar pressures on Soviet decision-makers are undoubtedly exercised by the chiefs of their Strategic Rocket Forces and their Military-Industrial Commission...

...intelligence community, has admitted that military intelligence badly overestimated Soviet military threats, resulting in the fictitious "bomber gap" and "missile gap...

...APPEASEMENT, however, has not pacified Scoop Jackson...

...Jackson's goals, like those of his civilian and military allies in the Pentagon, are shaped by his fears...

...The former will cost $13 billion, the latter $15 billion, according to highly conserva tive estimates...

...But the arms race has persisted so long that even the runner-up has become muscle-bound with overkill, achieving in recent years a rough parity of destructiveness with the U.S...

...A technologically superior U.S...

...Moreover, as the cold war continued, vested interests became institutionalized within the American military-industrial complex...

...government often surpasses in ferocity the differences between American and Soviet delegates...

...The Soviets' more numerous missiles with bigger payloads now compensate (at least in the view of those who believe this calculus still has some meaning) for the American advantage in numbers of H-bombs, an advantage maintained through a six-year lead - in Multiple Independentlytargetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs...

...U.S.S.R...

...The following comparison of strategic warheads since 1961 shows the steady upward thrust of the nuclear arms race: 474 U.S...

...President Nixon was determined to appease the promilitary conservatives in Congress whose votes he courted to stave off impeachment and conviction...

...After more than a generation of superpower competition in A-bombs, H-bombs, strategic bombers, missiles, antimissiles, and submarines, the nuclear arms race is spiraling upward to still more dizzying heights...

...Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were more interested in protecting their big weapons programs than in taking the risks of a compromise agreement.* And the Administration had already purged two years earlier, with Kissinger's acquiescence, most of its able proarms control officials...

...It can only be paid for...

...The purge was the price paid to pacify Senator Jackson and the Joint Chiefs, after the SALT I accord curbed defensive missiles (ABMs) and placed a temporary limit on offensive missiles...

...troops abroad, Jackson even suggested that we should not remove any troops from Europe because the Chinese want us to keep them there...

...military budget is ex pected to reach $130 billion within a few years...

...The first is a president who is fully committed to the proces, and that is highly improbable until January 1977, at the earliest...

...They have been used to stall for time, and to make people believe that somthing is being achieved . . . We are pessimistic about achieving any real disarmament because we must blame the two superpowers who...

...Army and the U.S...

...The Central Committee's decision to demote hardliner Pyotr Shelest three days before Nixon arrived in Moscow for summit talks in 1972 was clearly a victory for Brezhnev's pro-detente policies and a green light for SALT I, despite the U.S...

...The figure of 200 missiles was undoubtedly chosen by the Army and the Navy because it corresponded to the number of major Soviet cities...

...and the U.S.S.R., more countries are joining and thinking of joining the nuclear club...

...has more smaller warheads, and the U.S.S.R...

...With a smaller surplus, the Soviets could similarly annihilate any combination of American targets...

...Alva Myrdal, who served until recently as Sweden's representative to U.N...

...mining of Haiphong harbor...

...Kissinger's questions...

...What is the significance of it, politically, militarily, operationally, at these levels of numbers...

...Major General Daniel Graham, a top man in the U.S...

...Unless this momentum is checked within the next few years, says Dr...

...At the time of the disappointing 1974 Summit, Kissinger stood virtually alone in the Washington bureaucracy as an advocate of restraint...

...3) even if Soviet leaders were so insane as to attack U.S...

...Schlesinger did not believe, according to Gelb, that a comprehensive agreement could be reached in Moscow...

...Again, this is unlikely at least until the country is able to focus on problems other than antidotes to Watergate...

...Given the asymmetry in these two arsenals, the task would be difficult even with good will on both sides...

...Even a powerful secretary of state cannot be expected to move the military-industrial-congressional bureaucracy by himself without the full support of the president...

...As if these developments weren't sufficient evidence of reciprocal madness, each side is still vigorously seeking better ways to heap incalculable destruction on the other...

...Kissinger, "we will be living in a world which will be extraordinarily complex, in which opportunities for nuclear warfare exist that were unimaginable 15 years ago....,, What forces made this world...

...ten bombs on ten cities would be a disaster beyond history...

...Politically, he is backed by defense firms, conservative labor unionists, Democratic party officials, and part of the Jewish community...

...1961 1968 1972 (SALT I) 1974 1,830 4,200 5,900 7,940 210 1,200 2,200 2,600 1977 (estimated) 9,800 3,950 These figures do not include the thousands of tactical (battlefield) nuclear weapons deployed by both sides in Central Europe and by the U.S...

...he thus maintained that the U.S...

...During debate on Senator Mansfield's amendment * Leslie Gelb of the New York Times, however, reported June 29 that Schlesinger had proposed a comprehensive agreement with the U.S.S.R., while Kissinger favored a limited accord...

...Finally, bomb-rattling and missile-making have been used by the political leaders of the superpowers for purposes of national prestige and machismo...

...This is reflected in arms control negotiations, where the infighting between different parts of the U.S...

...In our own country, this has been most apparent in Kennedy's big missile buildup (and dispatch of advisers to Vietnam) in response to his bullying by Khrushchev in Vienna, and in Nixon's insistence on being "Number One" (in weapons, not health care...

...2) escalation in weapons breeds escalation in counterweapons...

...Its total cost since fiscal 1946: $1.5 trillion...

...By championing the cause of Soviet Jews, Jackson has also managed to maneuver himself into position as the Administration's intermediary with the Soviet Union on the paired issues of Jewish emigration and SovietAmerican trade...

...It is very late to be pondering Dr...

...Navy have indicated that, even in the absence of agreements limiting force size and permitting inspection, 200 relatively secure missiles would provide an adequate nuclear deterrent" (Daedalus, Fall 1960...

...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS to reduce the number of U.S...

...After all, "strategic supremacy" cannot be employed...

...will build a new submarine (Trident) and a new strategic bomber (B-1) to carry additional MIRVs...

...land-based missiles—and succeeded in destroy ing all of them—a single Poseidon submarine 476 could destroy 160 major targets in the U.S.S.R...

...What do you do with it...

...In Congress, he can count on the ideological agreement of the promilitary clique, which, in the 93rd Congress, represents about 40 percent of each House...

...War/Peace Report, June 1974] Several key ingredients are needed to overcome the domestic obstacles to a policy of disCOMMENTS AND OPINIONS armament...

...The least difficult approach would be to phase out the land-based missiles, about whose vulnerability the military strategists worry so much, then reduce the number of bombers and submarines, all the while balancing such factors as warheads and payload...

...MIRVs are the focus of the currently expanding phase of the arms race...

...Despite a moderately liberal domestic record, Jackson has strained relations with Senate liberals because of his personal vindictiveness during legislative combat...