OLD MATH AND NEW REALITIES

...The claim is disputed, and the truth is probably not knowable by anybody...

...But everyone who has spoken on the subject with any authority agrees that U.S...

...The clearest statement of this position was President Reagan's last March 31: "On balance the Soviet Union does have a definite margin of superiority—enough so that there is risk and there is what I have called, as you all know many times, a window of vulnerability...

...opposition to the proposed bilateral nuclear weapons freeze has taken the form of a declaration of American inferiority...

...But the Reagan Administration prefers to follow the program of nuclear force modernization started under President Carter, which seeks to restore U.S...

...This understanding has not been officially acknowledged, but the fact that nuclear bombs have not been used since 1945 speaks for itself...

...Last April 8, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNa-mara speculated to The Los Angeles Times that Soviet fears of a U.S...

...It also has the advantage of being morally defensible...

...Emphasis added...

...American submarines are well hidden, and thus invulnerable, but if theoretical calculations about missile accuracy are correct, American land-based missiles may be vulnerable...

...In defending America's first-use policy, former Secretary of State Alexander Haig said on April 6, "Let us remember first and foremost that we are trying to deter the Soviet Union, not ourselves...

...We are trying to patch the holes in the nuclear umbrella, to make it less likely that the Soviets could absorb our nuclear attack and strike back...

...We could threaten to start a nuclear war only if we could threaten to finish it the same day...

...The rules of nuclear warfare bear no resemblance to the rules of the Olympic Games, where sports writers count gold and silver medals and declare a winner...

...As International Security reported last winter, General Curtis LeMay asserted in 1954 that SAC bombers could reduce the Soviet Union to a "smoking, radiating ruin at the end of two hours...

...America's capacity to deliver a disarming first-strike prevented Soviet leaders from assuming that the fear of retaliation would deter American leaders from using the American arsenal...

...In a nuclear conflict only the nation that starts the war can hope to limit the damage it sustains...

...Second, by a vast American superiority in so-called theater nuclear forces...

...Are the Russians really ahead in a militarily meaningful way...

...But the Soviet build-up of the late 1960s gave the Soviet Union the ability to absorb a U.S...

...The truth of this contention is probably known to both the U.S...

...McNamara denies that America actually possessed a "preponderance in strategic nuclear striking power" during the 1960s, as Kissinger believes, but Soviet perceptions and fears are all that matter in the bluffing game of nuclear strategy...

...And what did he mean when he said they could "absorb our retaliatory blow and hit us again...

...The obvious escape from this dilemma is the renunciation of first use, a plan now favored by McNamara...

...We are in the fix of a poker player who hopes to avoid bankruptcy by playing all night to recover lost chips...

...We are told that in an uncontrolled arms race we can catch up and force the Soviets to cut back...

...A few moments later he added, "The Soviets' great edge is one in which they could absorb our retaliatory blow and hit us again...

...That is why all the new ballistic missiles now on order are designed to dig Soviet missiles out of their silos before they are launched...

...The age of nuclear threats began with an American threat to attack Russia if the Soviet army were to invade Western Europe...

...If the Soviets believed we had it, we had it...

...first strike and retaliate...

...Throughout the 1950s this capacity was unchallenged...

...And third, in Europe, by substantial American and allied ground forces that posed at least a major probability that Soviet ground attack could trigger the nuclear retaliation of the United States...

...In a showdown, Soviet leaders might be tempted to call the U.S...

...We have approximately equal numbers of strategic warheads, but their warheads, too, are bigger than ours...

...Defense analysts fear that if the United States cannot dominate the escalation process on every rung of the ladder, the U.S...

...The self-appointed scorekeepers of the arms race know this, and know that nuclear strategy is, therefore, a bluffing game...

...ability to threaten the Soviet nuclear arsenal with a disarming first strike...

...Such facts are bandied about as if they were deciding factors in the who's-ahead debate, but they are virtually meaningless...

...The Reagan Administration claims Soviet ICBMs would be more effective in destroying American ICBMs in a first strike than vice versa...

...Is Reagan right...

...The survival of our society is threatened by plans to modernize the American nuclear arsenal in ways that may tempt our leaders or frighten the Soviets into starting a nuclear war...

...And I think that a freeze would not only be disadvantageous—in fact even dangerous—to us with them in that position, but I believe that it would militate against any negotiations for reduction...

...Minuteman missiles by surprise attack...

...The Reagan Administration argues that we can't stop the arms race now because the Russians are ahead...

...Weapons are assigned value in the accounting scheme according to their contribution to the credibility of the inherently incredible nuclear threat...

...Henry Kissinger, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 31, 1979, said a Soviet invasion of Western Europe between 1945 and 1970 was prevented by three factors: "First, by the American preponderance in strategic nuclear striking power, capable of disarming the Soviet Union or at least reducing its counterblow to tolerable levels while still retaining large residual forces for attacks on industrial targets...

...Their use anywhere would certainly be condemned by world opinion, and would probably result in the destruction of each combatant power...

...Contrary to popular belief, the Soviet nuclear threat today is not the nonsense scenario in which Soviet missiles destroy U.S...

...Neither side is vulnerable enough to allow the other to strike first with impunity...

...attack submarines, though outnumbered by their Soviet counterparts, are far more effective in locating and following Soviet ballistic missile submarines than vice versa...

...That is why the U.S...

...Neither side could destroy all the missile silos, missile submarines, and air bases of the other side in a surprise attack...

...The real nuclear threat, as Reagan indicated, is the Soviets' ability to retaliate against the United States after we attack Russia with nuclear weapons...

...The time to stop is now, not after another round of the arms race...

...The arms race is a tie, even if one side has two or three times as many weapons of some sort as the other has...

...In sum, what are the rules for keeping score in the arms race...

...A policy of no first use is based on the common-sense rule against starting a fight one cannot finish...

...The proposition cannot be tested...

...There is essential equivalence...

...arsenal contains 25,000 nuclear warheads when 1 per cent of that number could destroy every Soviet city with a population of more than 100,000...

...What we must remember first and foremost is that there is no defense against nuclear weapons, and there will never be one...

...nuclear first strike may have triggered that build-up and started the arms race...

...We have more bombers, but theirs are newer...

...and the Soviet navies...

...It seems, on balance, that all of the Soviet submarine fleet and at least some of their land-based missiles are vulnerable...

...That is why we are building fast attack antisubmarine submarines faster than we are building missile submarines...

...The United States had a world-wide nuclear monopoly when the Strategic Air Command was created for this purpose...

...thirty-seven years ago, it has come to be widely recognized that nuclear weapons are not usable...

...Our ability to retaliate with submarine-launched missiles effectively deters the Soviets from launching such a first strike...

...He wrote "The H-Bomb Secret: To Know How Is to Ask Why" in the November 1979 issue of The Progressive...

...The nuclear freeze movement is based on the assumption that this state of mutual deterrence is desirable, that it should be preserved by an immediate freeze on the development of all new weapons, and that it should be enhanced by mutual reductions...

...That monopoly ended in 1949, but the credibility of the American threat was buttressed for the next decade and more by an overwhelming American nuclear superiority...

...Since the fires died out at Nagasaki Howard Morland is the disarmament coordinator of the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy...

...Thejr missiles are bigger than ours...

...nuclear bluff...

...First-strike superiority in strategic weapons could protect the American homeland (if America struck first), and was thus an essential component of a credible first-use policy for European or Middle Eastern battlefields...

...We have 1,000 ICBMs and the Soviets have 1,500...

...Neither side can make a credible nuclear threat...

...Particle beams and antiballistic missiles will never be able to stop incoming warheads, much less to stop agents carrying H-bombs in the back seats of their cars...

...In other words, our loss of first-strike superiority makes our policy of threatening to start a nuclear war suicidal and therefore not credible...

...nuclear arsenal will be rendered useless by what Colin Gray called, in the summer 1980 issue of Foreign Policy, "the paralyzing impact of self-deterrence...

...That means both sides now suffer the "paralyzing impact of self-deterrence...