Correspondents' Correspondence

...Indeed, the flaws in the Pentagon's original argument are epitomized by the need to return to Congress for more money just a few months after the initial vote...

...Whatever the case, the Pentagon believes that the increasing Soviet threat to our Minutemen requires their protection by Antiballistics Missiles...

...One has to be quite an optimist to hope that whoever will govern Egypt in the future will resist the temptation to channel this unrest into potentially calamitous foreign adventures...

...It was barely a month ago, after all, that the Pentagon verified Senator Mark Hatfield's report that abm costs were already running over $400 million ahead of previous estimates, suggesting a total-of over $30 billion for even the first Safeguard proposal...

...This is not mere speculation...

...Each of the Russian missiles carries a warhead of over 20 megatons-much larger than is needed to destroy cities-and is accurate enough to incapacitate even the most hardened missile sites...

...The initial Safeguard timetable proposed to the Congress presumed that relatively light and slow deployment would suffice to protect our Minutemen...

...For example, by exploding large and dirty nuclear devices in the ocean off our shores, they could flood most of our coastal cities...

...But this, too, is hard to understand...

...systems-Including Advanced Manned Strategic Aircraft (amsa) and Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles (mirv)-with refined accuracy also appear designed for first-strike counterforce, since in any other role their cost would be exorbitant...

...Peters...

...Contrary to popular belief, the issue is not very complicated...

...Having disconcerted the doves on Vietnam, Nixon wants to press his political advantage by returning to abm...

...This implies huge investments in technology, scientific research and, most important, basic and secondary education...

...Before the play gets under way, it might be useful to examine some of the premises behind the President's initiative...

...Not being inordinately optimistic, Israelis believe that the only way for them to survive in an increasingly populated, belligerent and volatile surrounding is to widen the quality gap that divides them from the Arabs...

...Beyond the Chinese argument, however, there is still a further possible motivation for this early return to the abm controversy...

...the new request...

...The flaws in this argument are too numerous and egregious to be fully recited here...

...In accordance with the loose categories used by strategists, ss-9 does seem to be a first-strike weapon...

...WASHINGTON Shortly after breaking from the huddle in front of the White House tv, Richard Nixon, the nation's improbable first-string quarterback, is expected to announce a sweep right by Melvin Laird directly into the left side of the Senate line...

...Those interested are referred to the voluminous literature on the original proposal...

...As in all countries plagued by a severe job shortage, hordes of unskilled rural unemployed will drift to the cities...

...But beyond these immediate and obvious worries there is grave concern over the possible consequences of an impending population explosion-not in Israel, but in Egypt...

...His proposed expansion of the nation's Antiballistic Missile System (abm) does not appear to be a very imaginative call, but it may well be good for political yardage against the somewhat uncoordinated ranks of Senate doves, who have not often been mistaken for Middle America Chiefs...

...Its important role remains as a political football.-George Hobart TEL AVIV Prospects for the next decade in Israel involve, of course, the continuing problem of military confrontation with the Arab states and its attendant economic burden...

...He can then continue in his role as the first President to reduce defense spending since Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954...

...It is difficult to believe that intelligent men can support the Administration's tissue rationales for abm...

...High officials, including Laird, Richardson and Kissinger, actually seem to believe that even if the United States builds an effective abm, the Chinese would be foolish to base their offense on ballistics missiles...

...According to the Pentagon, the Soviet Union has nullified the original system with just a few months of ss-9 production...

...And having once more displayed his own zeal for national defense, he can proceed to attack his opponents for their irresponsibility on matters of national survival...

...an American commitment to deploy abm thus assures a much cheaper commitment by the Soviet Union or China to countervail it...

...As the United States withdraws from Vietnam-and forswears early entry into another land war in Asia-the Administration apparently hopes to deter Chinese conventional aggression as well as nuclear blackmail by maintaining a first-strike capacity against Peking...

...The accelerated ss-9 production, it is said, necessitates an accelerated response from the United States...

...More than half Egypt's population of some 30 million is below the age of 21...

...and secondly, an irresistible attraction to the rich, underpopulated lands of Sudan, south of Egypt...

...President Nasser's visits to Tripoli and Khartoum, after the abortive Arab Summit Conference in Rabat, were obviously promoted by the idea of some sort of federation of Libya, Sudan and Egypt...

...The earlier initiative, being more modest, was occasionally discussed with an objectivity that will be difficult to maintain in the face of the really awesome impertinence of...

...By solemn invocation of platitudes of martial patriotism and harrowing depictions of a Soviet first strike, he can probably get his Silent Majority to speak up again in all its majestic ignorance...

...Yet even if Nixon manages to win on this issue, the abm in all likelihood still will never be fully deployed...

...The London Economist last month estimated that by the end of the '70s, Cairo's population will reach 6 million...

...These restless, poor and semiliterate or illiterate masses will present a tremendous burden to any Egyptian ruler...

...Many observers at the time concluded that the system would never be built...

...Granted that improved grain seed and better agricultural methods will undoubtedly provide higher yields in the Nile Valley, the upper limit of domestic food production still is finite...

...Yet high-level officials like Elliot Richardson, the undeniably intelligent Undersecretary of State, reiterate them with supreme confidence, while Dean Acheson imperiously assumes that all abm opponents must be soft-headed pacifists...

...Though Egypt still has one of the area's highest infant mortality rates, its medicine is steadily improving...

...The Pentagon purports to assume that the accelerated installation of ss-9 missiles will enable the Soviet Union to destroy our Minutemen in a first strike...

...From the Soviet perspective, however, a great many U.S...

...Clearly, Safeguard costs enormously more to build than it costs the enemy to circumvent or nullify it...

...But even if Egypt should find ways to provide basic nutrition for its exploding millions, it will still have to face the problem of how to assure them more than mere subsistence...

...None of the Administration apologists, it is true, display a hint of strategic imagination...

...Initial indications of these trends are already evident...

...This would create an explosive situation that, by comparison, would make the present Middle East crisis look like a petty local squabble...

...But because the Administration understandably shrinks from public debate of an abm rationale that would enhance Chinese paranoia-and that of our own Asian allies-the anti-China purpose has not been subjected to the scrutiny it deserves...

...Surely an Administration with the services of a Henry Kissinger is really not as stupid on strategic matters as the present White House occupants seem to be...

...Huddled around the tv set, Nixon and his men drew inspiration from the football quarterbacks like Lenny Dawson and James Street who surprised and demoralized their opponents by repeating successful plays against the opposition's strong points...

...As the new decade starts, more and more Israelis are becoming aware of the practical-and financial-challenges facing them.-S...

...there are estimates that within 20 years the number of Egyptian mouths to feed will double...

...Pro-Nasser as the new ruling military juntas in those countries are, observers here in Tel Aviv doubt whether, in the final analysis, their clearly national interests will bow to their brotherly sentiment...

...This dilemma may produce two critical political developments: an intensification of Cairo's efforts to gain a share of the oil revenues of other Arab countries (particularly Libya and Saudi Arabia) to meet the price of constantly greater food importation...

...This, some experts fear, may become the crucial issue in the Middle East of the '70s...

...It would seem far more likely that the Chinese would shift to other delivery systems, or other weapons, such as chemical, biological and radiological warfare...

...Thus the contentions by Administration officials that ss-9 expansion suggests newly aggressive Soviet intentions are no more convincing than any similar Soviet charges...

...The real reason for the determination to expand abm is probably not the Soviet ss-9 at all but the embryonic Chinese nuclear striking force...