The Critical Decision for Moscow

...It does not seem likely that the Soviet Union will be willing to dismantle its present anti-missile installations, in the light of Chinese developments and the dubious sense of comfort these installations seem to afford the Soviet leadership????although the Soviet Union does not yet appear to have moved decisively toward a large-scale anti-missile deployment...

...While it would be vain to expect progress on this front under conditions of extreme tension, it would be equally unproductive to make negotiations on the strategic arms race dependent upon a total cessation of political rivalry...

...In Western Europe, where the stakes are high and where the disintegrating tendencies had already been at work even before the United States began to suffer the effects of its Vietnam involvement, the Soviet Union sensed an opportunity to make decisive gains, as Brezhnev made explicitly clear at the Karlovy Vary conference of Communist leaders in April...

...In the background are the deliberations of the Politburo, 11 men weighing choices that may have fateful consequences for the coming period in international politics...

...The rate at which technological advancements emerge from the research and development stages of course depends upon the level of tension, for large expenditures are involved, but the prospect that such breakthroughs may be around the corner also serves to inhibit any agreement to level off military expenditures...

...By the early months of 1965, though, the Brezhnev-Kosygin team had begun to view United States policy as reflecting both an intention and a mounting capability to intervene with force in any local situation where trends ran counter to its interests...

...The consequences of this heightened political rivalry have been re-enforced by another and even more significant development...

...policy????and of the President in particular????as reflecting a deliberate increase in militancy...

...Another step which would contribute greatly to slowing both the technological race and the spread of nuclear weapons would be for us to pick up where we left off four years ago in our attempts to negotiate a comprehensive test ban...

...The basic factor, however, seems to be the expressed determination of Soviet military leaders to overcome the strategic superiority of the United States as soon as possible...

...Until now, the experience of the present Soviet leadership with the United States has been largely dominated by the Vietnam conflict...

...But the fact is that the barometer began to fall steadily after February 1965, when the bombing of North Vietnam directly????and as it seemed in Moscow, deliberately????engaged Soviet prestige...

...The signs that the U.S...

...Sixth Fleet from the Mediterranean," the Soviet political campaign has sought to enlist a broad mass movement of "all progressive forces" to reduce the United States presence and influence in Western Europe...

...This is the heart of the matter, the key issue which far transcends the events in the Middle East...

...But now, with the further refinement of anti-missile systems and penetration aids, with the prospect for great improvements in missile guidance systems, with unexpected performance from large-megaton warheads, with extraordinary improvements in various kinds of photography from reconnaissance satellites (which is a mixed blessing), and with possibilities at hand for cheaper production of missiles and of fissionable materials????there is a real chance that the degree of partial stability we have enjoyed may soon give way to military doctrines built on nervousness and uncertainty...

...If the Soviet leadership opts for political militancy, and if no agreement is reached between the two super-powers on limiting the further growth of strategic weapons, it is probable that the United States will move toward decisive increases in its strategic capabilities, and that pressures for some level of United States antimissile deployment will become effective...

...It was in this context that the Soviet Union strove for decisive strategic and political gains in the Eastern Mediterranean by building a base in Syria and investing heavily in Gamal Abdel Nasser's bid for leadership of a Pan-Arab drive to exclude the United States from this area...

...because of a Soviet intention to use these generalized tensions to bring pressure upon the United States to desist in Vietnam...

...The Soviet experience in the Cuban missile crisis and the Vietnam conflict appear to have resulted in decisions to accelerate steeply the output of intercontinental missiles, to deploy a limited anti-missile defense, to increase research and development efforts in advanced military technology, and to increase Soviet local war capabilities...

...and we shall have to debate and decide how much and what kind of military preparedness we require, and whether trade and technological cooperation is possible with a political adversary...

...Under the slogans, "Europe for the Europeans," "the dissolution of all military blocs," and "the complete withdrawal of the U.S...

...Can the strategic superiority of the United States be negated by a combination of anti-missile installations and increased icbm capabilities, or will a Soviet effort in this direction set in motion a new round of American military effort comparable to its response to the presumed "missile gap...

...Parity is an illusory goal, for there are many indices of strategic power...

...and the USSR has been intensified in various parts of the world, and overt relations between the two countries have been held, on Soviet initiative, to a correct but chilly minimum...

...It will also be hard for the Russians to do...

...Unless a deliberate effort on the part of both the United States and the Soviet Union intervenes, it seems likely that the partial equilibrium which has characterized the strategic balance will soon give way to a less stable relationship at considerably higher levels of expenditure...

...The fact that Kosygin came to this country prepared to meet with the President is itself interesting...

...At best, even if behind-the-scenes indications are favorable for restraints in the arms race, the public polemics may be unabated????and as long as the Soviet Union aspires to build selective footholds in Algeria, Syria and the UAR, we may not expect much Soviet cooperation toward a basic settlement in the Middle East...

...involvement in Vietnam, and particularly after the bombing of the North, the Soviet view of the President was all the more jaundiced because of the widespread tendency in Moscow to interpret the Johnson victory over Goldwater as a decisive triumph of the "peace forces" in American politics...

...Meanwhile, by playing upon divisive issues, and by using trade, technological cooperation and cultural contacts with the states of Western Europe (excepting only the Federal Republic of Germany) as well as with Scandinavia, Canada and Japan, the Soviet Union has worked hard to increase its own influence in these areas...

...If so, can the Soviet economy support the extremely high costs involved as well as can the American economy...

...In the latter years of the Khrushchev-Kennedy relationship, there had begun to develop a limited sense of communication and confidence between the adversary leaders, based upon their experience with each other during periods of crisis...

...It may be that those elements of the Soviet leadership which are most concerned with the improvement of the Soviet economy will emerge as the strongest spokesmen for a policy of moderation and restraint abroad...

...President Johnson's speeches expressing a desire for "bridge-building" and negotiations carried little conviction in Moscow in the face of this perception of a militant pattern in American actions...

...They have watched anxiously the increase in United States military expenditures associated with Vietnam, and the development of U.S...

...Much depends upon the Soviet reading of the Johnson Administration, and for this reason the most important aspect of Kosygin's trip to the United States was its sniffing function...

...The Soviet leadership has questioned the emphasis given by Khrushchev to strategic weapons at the expense of forces designed to deal with local conflicts, and it has now greatly increased Soviet "theater forces" as well as naval and air logistical support for these units...

...The Soviet Union has also been intensifying its efforts to rally popular masses and selected governments in Asia, Africa and Latin America into a loose coalition against the West in general and the United States in particular under the slogans of "anti-imperialism" and "anti-colonialism," while fending off Chinese incursions into these areas by asserting its militant support of "national-liberation struggles...

...This has not been thought to be sensitive to inequalities between the two sides, and has not depended upon hair-trigger responses to signs of possible attack...

...Can the drift into a higher and more unstable stage of the arms race be checked...

...Having in hand Premier Aleksei N. Kosygin's reconnaissance of the Johnson Administration and President Nikolai V. Podgorny's assessment of the "morning-after" situation in Cairo, the Politburo has reached a time for decision...

...It is not only the heightened political tension but technological factors that are responsible for stimulating a next round in the arms race...

...If the answers to these questions are guided by logic and reason, a new phase of Soviet policy will emerge, moderating tensions with the United States in order to concentrate resources upon the domestic economy ana counter-attacKing the Chinese with the peace issue...

...and the diplomatic isolation of Washington on the Vietnam issue has tempted Moscow into a more active political offensive...

...Before that time, the new Soviet leadership had begun to assert the Soviet presence in Southeast Asia more firmly, but this was directed mainly at limiting Chinese gains from what appeared to be the failing American position in Vietnam in the fall of 1964...

...the governing concept should be to find the minimum level for a stable equilibrium...

...Whether this was mainly because of a defensive Soviet response to Chinese charges of collusion with the "imperialists...

...and the Soviet Union are moving in these directions would also be an important complement to the non-proliferation treaty...

...But if the battles to support such a step can be won within each country, the negotiations between the two countries might be easier than they were four years ago, because technical improvements in the interval have simplified the problem of verification...

...it suggests that the Soviet leadership is at least entertaining the idea of reversing the political tide...

...Another factor leading to these decisions may have been the continuing evidence of Chinese effort to develop a strategic nuclear and thermonuclear force, of which the most recent indications are the test last October of a missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and the recent test of a hydrogen warhead...

...In the icbm field, the Soviet Union is not receptive to moratorium proposals which, in its view, would have the effect of perpetuating its inferiority...

...What is now needed is effort on both sides to work out the complex details of a verifiable freeze across the board on strategic weapons, anti-missile systems and the production of fissionable material for nuclear weapons, while formulas are being worked out for balanced reductions in the various categories...

...After the enlargement of the U.S...

...This will be very hard for us to do, domestically, since we have put great weight on the acceptance of underground testing...

...If steps are taken to damp down the arms race with the U.S., can Chinese charges of collusion with the "imperialists" be more effectively countered by a frontal use of the peace issue by the Soviet Union than by defensive protestations of militancy...

...If so, about all we can do to encourage them is to let it be understood that this course will find us responsive...

...The treaty would then become part of a general effort to check the arms race rather than an isolated restraint upon the non-nuclear powers...

...If, however, dogmatic ideas and military interests prevail, or if deadlock or weakness prevents a clear decision, the drift of events seems likely to carry us all toward higher levels of tension and military expenditures, for reasons both political and technological...

...We shall have to renew our efforts to encourage an end to the fighting in Vietnam (perhaps now with the advantage of better private understanding in Moscow...

...In the foreground, the shock of violence is subsiding in the Middle East, leaving the diplomatic battlefield strewn with tangled and spitting animosities...

...If this contact goes beyond atmospherics and leads to substantive negotiations on the arms race, then this country will also have some critical decisions to make, and they will not be easy in the present climate...

...At the heart of the discussion, it may be surmised, will be the central matter of priorities between the military and the civilian sectors of the economy...

...It would not, however, be unreasonable to expect that its general interests will dictate restraint in the flow of Soviet arms into the area...

...As of this writing, there has not been more than desultory progress toward U.S.-Soviet discussions of a moratorium on anti-missile deployments and limitations on strategic forces...

...In the past decade, technological developments have worked in the direction of stability in the military confrontation...

...But the determination of these priorities depends upon how the following questions are answered: Would the gains from a heightened political rivalry with the United States outweigh the costs and risks of a new spiral in the arms race...

...or because the dominant elements in the Party leadership after Khrushchev were inclined toward a dogmatic view of the world as a militant encounter between "imperialism" and the "progressive, national-liberation forces"????or whether all of these elements may have been involved ????is a matter for conjecture...

...In the absence of agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union on effective international machinery to contain or pacify local conflict situations, the prospect is for an enlargement of the arms race at this end of the spectrum too...

...At the other end of the military spectrum, the Soviet Union has shown a preoccupation with that part of the arms race which bears upon local conflicts...

...This effort reflects the conviction that Vietnam and the Middle East conflicts may be followed by many other local flare-ups growing out of the unsettled conditions throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America, and that forces other than strategic may be required to aid Soviet friends in these areas if the doctrine of support for "national liberation struggles" is to have practical meaning...

...Since then, the political rivalry between the U.S...

...because of the desire to make gains in Europe and elsewhere as a result of the decline of American prestige...

...Questions which even before this convulsive event were under examination by the Soviet leadership are now posed with climactic insistence...

...From the Soviet point of view, Vietnam has been regarded as our "Spain...

...The main point is that common action by the Soviet Union and the United States to limit the risks of general war does not necessarily connote a "condominium" or a harmony of political interests between the two powers...

...This has had two marked effects: It has built up a Soviet perception of U.S...

...local war capabilities as a consequence of this experience...

...they have made it possible for the United States and the Soviet Union to develop a gross equilibrium based upon relatively invulnerable retaliatory forces...