LOS ANGELES TIMES 21 MAY 1971 (2J)

191

Agreed: We Will Agree on Arms

It is by no means clear from the joint statement issued yesterday in both Washington and Moscow just how close to a real agreement the United States and the Soviet Union may be in their extremely complicated and important talks to limit the deployment of strategic weapons. What does emerge from the statement read to the nation by Mr. Nixon is that a political decision has been reached that there should be an agreement, and that on the basis of this the SALT negotiations have been given new vitality.

The first priority in the talks, it has now been decided, will be on limiting the deployment of antimissile systems, something the Russians have long pressed for. But beyond this the two sides "will agree on certain measures with respect to the limitation of offensive strategic weapons." This is a point the United States has been insisting upon. Moreover, as Administration officials stress, the agreements on offensive and defensive weapons will become operative simultaneously. In other words, a package deal.

It may be that enough preliminary progress has in fact already been made in private discussions so that a firm basis of confidence for full agreement exists. The peculiar wording of the joint statement hints at this. The two sides, says the announcement, will concentrate in their talks this year on working out ABM limitations. It then says that "together with concluding" an ABM agreement, "they will agree" on some steps to limit offensive strategic weapons.

This is pretty positive stuff, as are the further references to an "understanding" and a "commitment" to agreement. So what we plainly have is a decision and a mutual wish "at the highest levels" to resolve some very sticky problems, with the hard details to be left to the technicians involved in the negotiations. That in itself doesn't add up to an agreement, but it does stand as the most encouraging development since the SALT negotiations began 18 months ago.

There are good reasons for movement now. Whatever international considerations may have influenced the mutually felt need to make some progress, there is no question that strong internal pressures on both sides have also played a key part. The Russians have their own serious eco-

nomic problems, and they are no more eager than is the United States to make the vast investment required in an ABM system. Further, there seems at long last to be a realization that simply adding more and more costly weapons won't really alter the existing military balance of power.

It is a welcome breakthrough certainly, and possibly one with useful implications for areas beyond the immediate field of arms limitations.

One of these areas could be a mutual reduction of forces in Europe. The possibility of a reciprocal thinning out of troops at some point in the near future was, we now know, very much in the Nixon Administration's mind as it waned its belated but vi-

gorous campaign to defeat Sen. Mike Mansfield's amendment, which would have cut in half, by the end of the year the U.S. commitment of men to NATO.

The Administration won its fight hands down. For his victory Mr. Nixon largely has to thank the Senate's sensible reluctance to solve with a single stroke of a hatchet the complex problems of European defense, and he has also to thank the timely proposal from the Soviet leadership to enter into talks on mutual force reductions. The Senate wisely decided the United States should not give away something it could in fact trade to its own advantage.

But the Mansfield amendment served a positive purpose. It has drawn attention to the too-long neglected fact of an overly large and expensive American contribution to NATO, and it has drawn support, even from many of those who voted against the amendment, to the need to do something about all this and soon. In this sense Mansfield can claim a victory, too.

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

21 MAY 1971 (28)

# 'Beginning Of A New Era'

The joint Washington-Moscow announcement that the United States and the Soviet Union have found a way out of the impasse over negotiating procedures for limiting offensive and defensive nuclear weapons is good news, and somewhat unexpected. Recent reports from Vienna, where the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks have been taking place, have been full of gloom.

Whether the announced breakthrough means that the SALT conferences, in progress for 18 months, can now proceed to a beneficial conclusion is far from certain. But we hope President Nixon is right in hailing the procedural agreement as perhaps "the beginning of a new era" in which the nations will devote more of their energies to the pursuit of peace rather than to preparations for war. At the very least, SALT has been rescued from possible failure.

The issue which has caused a deadlock for a year or more has to do with negotiating positions. The Russians have insisted on first negotiating an agreement limiting deployment of defensive antiballistic missile systems. The United States has maintained agreement must also include limitations on offensive weapons. In the phrasing of the new accord, both sides won. They agreed both to concentrate this year on limiting ABMs and, apparently, to conduct negotiations on offensive strategic weapons at the same time.

In the delicate jockeying for advantage, the U.S. rejected the ABM-first argument as depriving it of a bargaining lever. The Safeguard ABM system, narrowly approved by Congress in 1969, is being deployed in three states, includ-

ing Missouri. Existence of Safeguard, which is supposed to protect American intercontinental ballistic missiles, has been considered by some as advantageous in persuading Russia to limit its SS-9, a giant ICBM thought capable of destroying U.S. ICBMs even in hardened silos.

Washington was well-advised to effect a diplomatic compromise, as its case against the Russian ABM-only position has not been very strong and has led to doubts about its overall intentions toward SALT. Regardless of whether the Soviet Union is in fact seeking a first-strike capability (meaning the capacity to destroy U.S. ability to retali ate), the United States would seem to be secure at least for some years. Even if land-based ICBMs could be knocked out, there would remain a massive U.S. deterrent in submarine-launched missiles, not to speak of bombers.

Considering the vast overkill capacity of the superpowers there is not likely to be a time at which offensive and deterrent capability is more evenly shared. The United States and the Soviet Union are reasonably equal in overall nuclear capacity, and so long as each fears the other may be seeking first-strike capability, and so long as building and deployment of weapons continues, the burdensome costs and the ultimate risks will continue to mount.

The SALT conferences had reached a point at which almost any movement could be regarded as favorable. Let the negotiators now bend every effort to reach substantive agreements before another round of escalation in the arms race sets in. In short, let the "new era" begin.

192

DENVER POST

21 MAY 1971 (28)

# U.S.-Moscow Arms Talk Accord
A Small Step in Right Direction

THE JOINT ANNOUNCEMENT Thursday in Washington and Moscow that the United States and the Soviet Union had reached a compromise in defining the scope of a possible agreement on the nuclear arms limitation issues is encouraging.

For more than a year, a stalemate has persisted at the nuclear arms limitation (SALT) talks in Helsinki and Vienna because of the differing initial policy positions of the two big powers.

The Russians, who have concentrated on developing advanced intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) systems—the SS9s and the SS11s—have favored limiting the first agreements to defensive ABM systems. The United States has remained firm in its insistence that offensive ICBMs be included in any agreement.

In the new approach announced Thursday by President Nixon, Moscow, in effect, softened its stand for an initial limitation on defenses only, while Washington softened its initial limitation on all major strategic systems.

The new accord—as Mr. Nixon pointed

out in his brief televised announcement— does not mean that agreement has been reached on the limits to be established on specific weapon systems. Such an agreement remains to be worked out, the President emphasized, through "intensive negotiations."

But small as the new step may be, it is nonetheless important.

ITS IMPORTANCE lies first in the fact that it represents progress toward the mutually beneficial goal of curbing the costly and dangerous nuclear arms race.

It is also significant, however, in offering clues on the current state of U.S.-Soviet relations. An improved diplomatic atmosphere in the SALT negotiations could also enhance the possibility of accord on other key issues—for example, on such matters as the mutual reduction of armed forces and armaments in Europe.

President Nixon spoke of the possibility of a "new era" as a result of the joint statement by the United States and the Soviet Union. Hopefully, the reality of the forthcoming negotiations will fulfill this wish.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - 22 MAY 1971

# Big Two tailor missile strategies

By George W. Ashworth
Staff correspondent of
The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

As the United States and the Soviet Union move into the next, crucial, phase of their talks on limiting strategic arms, each faces different, yet equally complex, issues.

The Soviet Union has indicated all along a profound concern over development of the American Safeguard antiballistic system. From all indications, the American ABM surpasses other Soviet concerns by a tremendous margin.

So far as the Americans are concerned, Soviet deployment of the huge 25-megaton SS-9 missiles and new large missiles is an extremely worrisome matter.

Now the prospect has been raised that early understandings can take into account these major superpower concerns. The ABM agreement may be hammered out first, with some understandings on limitation of offensive systems to follow. Sources say that limitations of offensive systems would be expected if the ABM agreement were to be carried out.

If agreement can be reached, Washington and Moscow will have bought time in which more comprehensive results might emerge.

[President Nixon voiced hope May 21 for a U.S.-Soviet agreement "sometime this year" to curb offensive and defensive nuclear weapons, adding, "some very intensive negotiations will have to take place to achieve our goal."]

At present, the administration is planning to build four ABM complexes to protect Minuteman missile bases. The work on the complex at Grand Forks Air Force Base, N.D., is about halfway done, and construction has started at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont. It is likely that the agreement would limit work to these two bases, cutting out of the system the complexes at the other two bases as well as any further expansion to the originally envisioned 12-complex system.

If only two complexes were built instead of four, the administration would save roughly half of the present expenditure of $10 billion presently envisioned.

The Soviets could expand their present four-complex system with its 54 launchers to a total of six complexes. The expansion already has started. Some of the system is designed, however, not so much to cope with the Americans as with the Chinese Communists.

The Soviets have made it very clear that they wanted some protection against the Chinese. Thus it was unthinkable to them to abandon the ABM altogether.

The Soviets earlier had expressed an interest in limiting ABM systems to Washington and Moscow. While this would have given the Soviet Union some protection against strikes by both the Chinese and the Americans, it would have done little to help the U.S. strategic position, and that concept apparently has been put aside.

The strategic problems of the Soviet Union are somewhat different. The U.S. is emphasizing a second-strike capability. Thus it wants to assure the ability of its strategic forces to strike back following a Soviet first strike. The ABM around the land-based missile sites has been set up as a counter to the Soviet deployments of huge land-based missiles, not as a counter to the Soviet ABM.

The Soviets are using their ABM as a guardian of the seat of government and for general population protection in the broad surrounding region. The missile complexes are not guarded by ABMs. Deployment indicates that the Soviets fear a second strike more than a first.

Given these facts, the President believes that the U.S. cannot afford just to discuss the ABM, that the negotiations must deal with strategic attack weapons.

The Soviets could have nearly 300 SS-9 missiles operational by the end of the year. In addition, they could deploy as many as perhaps 60 of the new type of missile, which may well be an improved version of the SS-9. The administration is quite concerned about the new missile and the SS-9, largely because of the extremely high yield, which, when coupled with better accuracy, could threaten the survivability of at least a portion of the Minuteman fleet.

If, through agreement, the Soviets were to stop at about the 300 level in huge missile deployments and the U.S. could keep a certain level of ABM protection for the Minutemen, many of the administration's current concerns of the deepest nature about the arms race would be eased.

But the very uncertainties raised in the American and Russian announcements tend to indicate that the movement toward agreement will not be particularly easy.

Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird said at the Pentagon, "We must be prepared, of course, for the realistic fact that negotiations in such a complex area as strategic arms limitations are going to be extremely complicated. We cannot afford to be impatient and we cannot afford to disarm unilaterally before these talks prove to be successful. We should not anticipate any sudden successes."

Although success may not be sudden, it appears more possible now that it did just a few days ago. If agreement can be hampered out, at least on the issues about which the superpowers care most, the pressure for large new arms spending may be averted.

194

LOS ANGELES TIMES

22 MAY 1971

# Russia Seeks Arms
## 'Straitjacket' on U.S., Jackson Says

BY RICHARD BERGHOLZ

Times Political Writer

Current Russian strategy calls for the development of a nuclear force which will put the United States at a bargaining disadvantage, Sen. Henry Jackson (D-Wash.) said Friday.

"What the Soviets are designing," the senator told the Los Angeles World Affairs Council at the Biltmore. "is a nuclear straitjacket in which our hands are tied while they are free to twist arms elsewhere in the world."

Jackson said this conclusion is based on the relentless buildup of Soviet military might at a time when many in America are talking disarmament.

### Soviet Arms Buildup

"The central fact is that the Soviet Union has continued to support, at great cost, a comprehensive, forward-moving program of strategic and conventional weapons procurement that is not slowing down."

He said those who continue to hope for a relaxation in the Soviet arms buildup have been disappointed in the past and will continue to be disappointed.

Jackson said he found no comfort in the announcement this week that the United States and Russia have agreed on priorities for discussion in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.

He told newsmen that "I know of no country more disposed towards euphoria than the United States," referring to rash of optimistic appraisals following President Nixon's announcement of the continued negotiations with Russia.

Jackson said, "I am canτiously optimistic," and willing to explore every possible area of agreement but said he is not willing to accept this week's development as a major breakthrough in U.S.-Soviet negotiations.

195

BOSTON HERALD TRAVELER

22 MAY 1971 (26)

## SALT Yields Sweet Fruit

For more than a year and a half, the United States and the Soviet Union have talked about the limitation of strategic nuclear arms. On Thursday, Moscow and Washington announced that they have agreed to talk about offensive and defensive missiles simultaneously.

This, in the slow and circumspect process of diplomacy, is regarded as a milestone. In President Nixon's words, "it may be remembered as the beginning of a new era in which all nations may devote more of their energies not to war but to the works of peace."

Until yesterday, Russia had insisted that the first round of SALT accomplishments, if any, be

restricted to the limitation of defensive weapons such as the ABM. But the argument that offensive and defensive weapons are inter-related prevailed.

The talks can now proceed with the goal of limiting both Russian and U.S. anti-ballistic missile systems and some offensive weapons systems as well. If, as the White House cautiously hopes, there is an agreement by Christmas, the accomplishment could be by far the most substantive in the field of foreign policy since Richard Nixon took office. It would further defuse the argument that our decision to go ahead with ABM construction would torpedo any hope for success at SALT. If anything, that decision provided us with the leverage we needed to bargain for a successful agreement.

The White House may be too optimistic in predicting another breakthrough by December. But the momentous agreement must come eventually, if not this year, for there is a mutuality of interest involved. As Secretary of State Rogers has pointed out, "the United States and the Soviet Union are entirely capable of protecting their vital interests and can be counted upon to do so." It is in the interest of both great powers now to stop, talk, agree and limit.

The timing is right because a sufficient confidence-building period has elapsed between the other nuclear arms agreements and SALT. So far, both sides have demonstrated reasonably good faith in carrying out the ban on nuclear tests in the atmosphere and the ban on supplying nuclear arms to other nations. Moreover, no negative results have emanated from treaties to prohibit military activities in Antarctica and the installation of nuclear weapons in outer space and on the ocean floor.

SALT is next.

136

OMAHA WORLD-HERALD

22 MAY 1971 (28)

## 'Breakthrough'

As Richard Nixon has discovered before in his long career, tenacity pays off.

His critics had been berating him for refusing to accept the Soviet offer of talking about cutting back strategic weapons — but defensive weapons only.

President Nixon said limitation would have to include both offensive and defensive weapons. He held fast. On Thursday Washington and Moscow announced that any such talks would cover both offensive and defensive weapons.

In his short announcement, Nixon said that the move is "a major step in breaking the stalemate" that has locked the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.

The President may have been more optimistic about progress in the talks than this "breakthrough" warrants. But no one could deny that the President had scored a diplomatic success. There is now some reason to believe that Moscow wants an arms cutback enough to make some concessions to get it.

But the arms announcement is not the whole of the story. Russia's Brezhnev has said he is ready to cut back Warsaw Pact troop strength in Europe if NATC is ready to do so.

In the light of the concession on strategic weapons talks, the President's concern over Sen. Mansfield's proposal to cut back United States military strength in Europe unilaterally was thoroughly justified.

Mansfield's timing couldn't have been worse. It was necessary for the President to beat down the Mansfield amendment decisively so as to impress the Kremlin that America is not about to cut and run in Europe.

If there is to be a reduction in U.S. forces in Germany, it will now come only when the Soviets agree to cut also. Brezhnev has said the right words, and a partial withdrawal by both sides can at least be talked about.

But talk of withdrawal in Europe does not mean withdrawal is coming soon or that it will come at all.

Soviet actions resound like thunder and the words about reduction of forces or of arms do not fit the actions.

In the Mediterranean, the Soviets are clearly trying to surpass the strength of the United States Sixth Fleet.

In the Middle East, where they may have suffered a temporary setback of their plans because of Egypt's Sadat, the long-term goals are what they have always been — dominant Russian influence and access to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Nothing the Soviets have done gives the United States the slightest excuse for dropping its guard in Europe or the Middle East, or to believe that a willingness to negotiate is a willingness to make the compromises that can bring stability in the areas where Soviet and American interests conflict.

The net result of the week's maneuvering is that there is hope because there has been talk.

And the President's hand has been strengthened by the decisive vote against slashing American strength in Europe.

197

NEW YORK TIMES

23 MAY 1971

# A Step Toward Solving the 'Mad Math' Of Missiles

WASHINGTON—"The statement that I shall now read is being issued simultaneously in Moscow," said President Nixon 'in his surprise television and radio broadcast at noon last Thursday. There followed the four-sentence announcement that, deliberately vague though it was, gave hope that the missile race might be brought under control.

President Nixon described the agreement to concentrate this year on curbing antiballistic missiles (ABM) and to "agree on certain measures" to limit offensive strategic weapons as "a major step in breaking the stalemate on nuclear arms talks." These strategic arms limitation (SALT) talks have dragged on for 19 months, marked by little sign of harmony and punctuated by frequent Pentagon revelations of new Soviet weapon deployments. The Pentagon's opposition was not unexpected, since any substantive SALT agreement would be the first real weapon cutback in a decade.

## Problem Is Simplified

The new SALT development is obviously not an arms agreement but a definition of a negotiating stance. Both sides have jockeyed to secure advantage in the talks. The weapons systems involve both offensive and defensive missiles, and there has been dispute over including NATO and carrier-based aircraft in the discussions. Each side has its own diverse family of missiles, and there is little one-to-one correspondence or matching of these missiles. Thus there can be no simple trade-off of one United States missile for one Soviet missile.

The agreement to concentrate negotiations on defensive arms simplifies the SALT talks since there are fewer and less diverse missiles in the ABM category. However, the ABM situation is by no means simple since Soviet ABM's defend the Moscow area while United States interceptory missiles will defend bases for

offensive Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM's).

A Soviet ABM defense of Moscow has been in place for three years and it is now being expanded. Known as the ABM-1 network, it consists of 64 Galosh ABM's and a set of huge radars; some 32 more Galoshes are expected to be added.

The United States ABM effort focuses on Project Safeguard which the Nixon Administration proposed over two years ago as a means of protecting Minuteman ICBM's against a first-strike by Soviet ICBM's. Construction work is well under way at two Minuteman fields in Montana and North Dakota. Expansion of Safeguard to include two more sites in Missouri and Wyoming has not yet reached the construction stage. The United States ABM's include hundreds of long-range ICBM's, in the Galosh-family, and short-range Sprints, which have no Soviet kin.

Given what arms controllers call the "asymmetry of the systems," what shape will an agreement take? There are three options available to the SALT talkers:

[1] A zero ABM deployment. This would mean scrapping the Safeguard system in exchange for decommissioning the Moscow ABM ring.

(2) An equal ABM deployment. The Soviet ABM defense of Moscow would be matched by a similar missile defense of Washington, D. C., and Safeguard, would be eliminated.

[3] An ABM freeze. The Moscow net might be limited to under 100 Galoshes while the Safeguard deployment is confined to two sites.

There are difficulties with all three options, but it appears that an ABM freeze, preserving the present asymmetry of the missile systems is the most negotiable, since it involves the least tearing up of the existing systems. A major sticking point could be the number of missiles allowed for the Montana and North Dakota sites.

The language of the tersely worded SALT communiqué makes it clear that the United States will not be satisfied with an "ABM-only" agreement. It wants an "ABM-plus" understanding with the Russians that clamps a limit on the number of Soviet SS-9 ICBM's which can be adapted to hurl three and perhaps six individual warheads at the silos that protect the Minuteman missiles. Thus the hoped-for year-end agreement would be tantamount to a twin missile freeze, limiting ABM's and imposing a ceiling on the number of SS-9's as well.

Weapons technology is the ultimate energy of arms control. MIRV (multipole, independently targetable, re-entry vehicles) warheads illustrate the point. Specifying the number of missiles does not define the number of warheads unless some inspection system ferrets out how many MIRV's are aboard each Minuteman or SS-9. This ambiguity introduces a kind of mad math into the missile race. The complexity is skirted, but not resolved, by concentrating on ABM's which have only a single warhead and can be counted one-for-one.

Holding the Safeguard system to a partial deployment can save the United States $5-billion. If the Soviets limit their ABM's and freeze the SS-9 deployment to 300 missiles, then there is less urgency for installing MIRV warheads in the Minuteman system, which would cost $20-billion in all.

Whether or not the SALT development represents a turning point in the arms race remains to be seen; but if the two nuclear giants do agree to curtail defensive arms and to freeze some of their strategic attack weapons, it will be a breakthrough in the missile contest. Each side will move back a bit from the edge of the nuclear abyss, and in the political year 1972, the rewards for President Nixon could be substantial.

—RALPH E. LAPP

Mr. Lapp is an atomic scientist and author of several books on national security.

1971

199

# EDITORIALS

WASHINGTON POST

23 MAY 1971 (24)

## The Joint Statement on SALT

We must suppose that there was good reason for the Delphic ambiguity of Mr. Nixon's statement on Thursday (simultaneously made in Moscow concerning the broad outlines of a possible SALT agreement. That ambiguity, powerfully reinforced in a number of administration background sessions on the subject, centers on the relationship between a prospective limitation on anti-ballistic missile systems deployment and an agreement "on certain measures"-as the statement put it--"with respect to the limitation of offensive strategic weapons." The statement seemed to give a priority in time and immediate importance to an ABM limitation, although the degree to which any such limitation would be conditional upon a *simultaneous* accord to limit offensive weapons-and the nature of any such potential accord-are far from clear. Presumably that is why, on the home front, both those who have urged acceptance of the Soviet offer of an agreement on ABMs only and those who have insisted on linking any ABM agreement with a simultaneous limitation on offensive weapons as well have been able to take comfort in the Washington-Moscow statement and to claim something just this side of victory.

One thing this ambiguity and the multiple interpretations of it have managed to conceal is which side may have yielded most. Apparently, the Soviets have agreed to discuss limitations on offensive strategic weapons at SALT without demanding inclusion in that category our so-called Forward Based Systems-the fighter-bombers in Europe and on carriers at sea which are capable of delivering nuclear strikes on the U.S.S.R. Apparently, too, they have acquiesced in the American insistence on some linkage between limitations

on defensive and offensive systems. For our part, we appear to have considerably relaxed and narrowed our demands concerning the offensive weapons systems to be brought under the terms of agreement, setting aside our total approach and concentrating-as it seems-on those land-based missiles which are a primary source of concern. We seem also to have yielded on the point of priorities in our agreement to take up the ABM limitation in a far more urgent and less encumbered way than we have previously insisted upon.

If these inferences are correct, then what the joint statement indicated was an important, high level political decision in both countries to move ahead for a first step, limited SALT agreement, one that has a more realistic chance of being negotiated than those each side had been putting forth, and one that would rest on at least some trimming and compromising of positions taken up till now. This is commendable. And so is the fact that President Nixon personally and publicly committed himself to the success of the project: strictly in terms of our own bureaucracy and its titanic infighting over matters such as these, benefits must flow from a President's putting his government on the line to produce and invoking his prestige in the process. How much may or may not already have been worked out between the two governments-at least in a broad, informal way-is not known. Nor can anyone predict the course of the talks that will now take place. So it would be premature to give the talk of "breakthrough" a larger meaning than it has. But there is no question that the accord on the scope of a possible agreement represents a positive development and an admirable achievement.

200

DETROIT NEWS

23 MAY 1971 (26)

# Is it just euphoria?

Spring is "bustin' out all over," as Rodgers and Hammerstein said, on the international scene. While past experience warns us not to get too euphoric, it can be said that the month of May is living up to its merry reputation in diplomacy after a long, cold winter.

The Americans and Russians, after 18 months of probing each other's intentions at the SALT talks, have now agreed on what to aim for and argue about in curbing the nuclear arms race. The mad momentum of the weaponry hasn't yet been stalled but, to the credit of both sides, by keeping the SALT talks secret and quibbling in private until a mutual tradeoff was possible, they've established ground rules for a possible pact.

In the same week, the Americans and Russians find themselves agreeing about exploring the possibility of reducing armed manpower in confrontation across the heart of Europe from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. That provided the stimulus for overwhelming Senate rejection of Senator Mansfield's demand to slash American forces in NATO without any quid pro quo.

The Middle East is still a sticky problem but again during the week President Sadat of Egypt, who so often talks like an Arab hawk but in practice hangs in there supporting the cease-fire arranged by Secretary of State Rogers, has consolidated his power. The pro-Soviet or anti-American proponents — some were both — in the government and party have been weeded out and jailed.

President Pompidou and British Prime Minister Heath have been smiling, dining and wining together in Paris about Britain's entry into the Common Market. A De Gaulle-style blackball is now out of the question.

And in Moscow, Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau has signed a pact with the Soviet Union. Both nations are going to do something about preserving the ecology of the Arctic. That's a pretty far cry from SALT but it indicates the breadth and scope of this spring fever.

What brought it all about? One clue could be Ping-Pong and the slight break in the deadlock between the United States and Red China. Moscow wouldn't be feting Trudeau if Canada had not recognized China. The Kremlin doesn't intend to be shunted to the sidelines.

Similarly with Moscow's apparent letup on the United States in the SALT talks and the impasse over troop reduction. It wants to demonstrate that two can play China's game. It isn't going to be any Communist Cinderella and miss the ball.

It's a strange sort of spring. Here have the Soviet Union and China been spitting and clawing at each other for a decade and then it needs only half a Chinese purr in our direction to make the Kremlin instantly more amenable.

The meaning of all these moves is not yet clear but they do raise hopes for peace on many fronts. Even if these hopes are later dashed on the rocks of reality, perhaps this spring we deserve a moment or two of euphoria.

NEW YORK TIMES 24 MAY 1971

SALT at the Summit

By ROBERT KLEIMAN

President Nixon's effort starting in
January to break the impasse in the
strategic arms limitation talks (SALT)
by direct correspondence with the
Kremlin, a channel his predecessors
used but he had neglected for two
years, has led to a more hopeful phase
in Soviet-American relations.

The five months of Summit ex-
changes ended with agreement to con-
centrate this year on completing a
treaty limiting defensive antiballistic
missile (ABM) systems. This was the
original American proposal in 1967,
which the Soviet Union finally put
forward itself last December.

But the Nixon Administration, mean-
while, had gyrate into the 1967 So-
viet position, insisting on simultaneous
restraints on offensive nuclear weap-
ons, especially the big Soviet SS-9
ICBM's. While Moscow refused to
make this commitment in advance,
face was saved all around by agreeing
to negotiate concurrent restrictions on
some offensive weapons in this year's
interim accord — which will probably
end up with a numberical ceiling on
land-based ICBM's as a whole.

That would not halt the nuclear arms
race in MIRV multiple warheads, sub-
marine-launched missiles and qualita-
tive improvements. But with antisim-
sile missiles held to token numbers
and mutual deterrence assured, neither
side would have great incentive to
waste vast sums on the further build-
up of offensive missiles, which would
just add to overkill.

There were some rocky moments
before this compromise. Mr. Nixon's
first message reached Premier Kosygin
shortly before a visit from the leading
Democratic candidate, Sen. Edmund
Muskie. This circumstance may have
had something to do with Communist
party chief Brezhnev's skeptical com-
ment later that Mr. Nixon followed a
zig-zag course abroad influenced by
domestic politics.

Another complication was the dis-
covery by U.S. reconnaissance satel-
lites in February that the Soviet Union
was digging big new holes for ICBM
silos different from those for the giant
SS-9.

By April, 40 holes had been discov-
ered, presumably for a new missile or
an improved SS-9 to carry MIRV mul-
tiple warheads that could threaten the
U.S. Minuteman force. By early May,
when Mr. Nixon had to make his deci-
sion on the new SALT work plan, there
appeared to be more than 60 big holes.
Two were at a test site where, the
Pentagon predicted, the new mystery
missile would soon be given its first
trials.

But a few days after Mr. Nixon de-
cided to go ahead with the SALT plan,
risking the discontent of his Congres-
sional-military-industrial constituency,
new intelligence arrived. Two-thirds of
the strange new holes turned out to be
for small ICBM's of the SS-11 dimen-
sion. There was a growing concern that
the big holes themselves were for re-
inforced SS-9 silos, a stabilizing factor,
and that what was to be tested soon
was the new silo not a new missile.

Mr. Nixon's decision to give priority
to an ABM agreement was encouraged
by Soviet concessions at the fourth
round of the SALT talks, which had
resumed in Vienna March 15. The So-
viet negotiators had indicated a willing-
ness for the first time to consider re-
stricting ABM radars in the Moscow
area as well as to limit antimissiles
to 100. They also apperaed to acqience
to a new American proposal to con-
tinue with Safeguard ABM defense of
one or two Minuteman sites in Mon-
tana and North Dakota, instead of
scrapping those sites to defend Wash-
ington.

Meanwhile, Soviet and American
experts in Vienna had reached agree-
ment to improve the Moscow-Wash-
ington teletype "hot line" by using
two communications satellites, one
American and one Russian. There was
joint planning for how to avoid the
triggering of World War III by an ac-
cidental missile launch by the U.S., the
U.S.S.R. or a third country — such as
China. Data on American electronic
locks and fail-safe systems are being
passed on to the Russians to enable
them to improve their less advanced
command and control safeguards for
nuclear weapons.

None of this means that a first-stage
SALT agreement will be easily reached
this year. The Soviet ABM proposal
simply restricts ABM installations to
a circle of 125-mile radius around
Moscow. The United States proposes
a circle one-fourth that area, which
would take in all existing sites. More
important, it would restrict the num-
ber, size and location elsewhere in the
U.S.S.R of new early-warning, space-
track and other large non-ABM radar
— which might be surreptitiously "in-
ternetted" with the Moscow system
or otherwise converted to ABM use.
These collateral restrictions, which also
would be applied to the United States,
are opposed by the Soviet Union.

Limitation of offensive land-based
ICBM's to existing numbers also in-
volves problems. The fact that it would
leave the Soviet Union with about
1,500 ICBM's to America's 1,054 poses

no immediate difficulty; the United
States is ahead in MIRV multiple war-
heads, long-range bombers and sub-
marine-launched missiles, which would
be limited only in a second-stage nego-
tiation. But the Soviet Union insists
on a right to "modernize" its decade-
old SS-7 and SS-8. ICBM's by replace-
ment with SS-9's or other new missiles
that are much larger and may be able
ultimately to carry many more multi-
ple warheads. The American Minute-
man II is about the same size as the
Minuteman I and II it will replace.

More difficult problems lie ahead for
a second-stage SALT agreement—
which would seek to limit MIRV, mis-
sile subs and bombers and, perhaps,
reduce missile numbers. But there is
no technical reason why the first-stage
SALT accord now outlined should not
be concluded this year or early next.
if the political will exists at the top
to achieve it. That it does exist in the
Kremlin as well as the White House
is Mr. Nixon's conviction now. And he
reportedly is prepared to go to Mos-
cow, not to negotiate it, but to sign
it once the draft is ready.

Robert Kleiman is a member of the
editorial board of The Times.

201

WALL STREET JOURNAL

24 MAY 1971

SALT and Reason

To be workable, or even possible, treaties need to be founded on an overriding common interest.

The United States and the Soviet Union have a common interest in calling a halt to the strategic arms race. Whether it is strong enough to override their fears and suspicions of each other still is in doubt. However, some grounds for cautious optimism were offered by last week's simultaneous announcement from Washington and Moscow of a new top-level initiative in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT).

It should be stressed at the outset that there would not be such an arms race if the Soviet Union were not an aggressive dictatorship.

In any event, President Nixon said the U.S. and Soviet governments had made a commitment "at the highest levels" to achieve a concrete agreement that would limit the deployment of both offensive and defensive nuclear weapons by the two countries. He called the commitment a "major step" in breaking a deadlock in the SALT talks.

The mutual interest of the two countries in arms limitation can be expressed partly in concrete terms, but only partly. The race is wasteful of the resources of both nations and if it could be ended, those resources could be used for constructive purposes. But more important—although less probable—is the possibility that the race eventually will lead both countries to moral and physical destruction.

Up to now, these considerations have not been strong enough to overcome the national-security fears of the two countries, since security against nuclear attack is an interest that overrides all else. Fears of that kind can only begin to subside at a point where both sides are convinced that nuclear power is in balance, that a continued race offers little hope of gain and especially that an attack by the Soviet Union can only result in mutual destruction. The possibility that such a crucial point has been reached — and that the leaders of both sides are aware it has been reached—is implicit in the new SALT initiative.

The talks, which will continue in Helsinki this month and move to Helsinki in July, began in November 1969 and have been stalled for over a year on several points of mutual distrust. The U.S., which feared the new SS-9 missiles now being deployed by the Russians might be able to wipe out American ICBM's in their protective silos, wanted to stress offensive-power limitations. Because the U.S. wants to strengthen defenses of its missile silos it has been cool to Soviet proposals to concentrate first on limiting missile defenses. The Russians also wanted American tactical fighters in Europe, which can carry nuclear weapons, included in the talks.

In the compromise, President Nixon made a concession by agreeing to work towards an agreement on defensive weapons first. The Russians have ground by agreeing that limits on offensive weapons also would be negotiated as part of the total package and apparently, set aside their demand, at least temporarily, that American tactical planes be discussed.

This, of course, is only a new beginning. For a meaningful agreement to be reached, both sides will have to feel assured that if the race ends now neither will have the power to conduct a "first strike" that would cripple the other beyond the possibility of effective retaliation. The present situation offers some assurance of that since both sides have mobile submarine and airborne missiles-launching capabilities that would be extremely hard to destroy in a first strike.

Each side also needs some effective assurance that the other will not change the status quo by secretly developing and deploying some new strategic weapon. As it happens, technology, in the form of surveillance satellites and high-resolution cameras, seems to offer very good possibilities for self-assurance here, too.

Still another threat to the success of the talks is that one side might assume that the other is more strongly motivated to reach an agreement and thus willing to make more concessions. Bargaining of any kind has to involve an assessment of the other side's motivations, but it would be a mistake for either the United States or the Soviet Union to assume that the other suffers from any pressures strong enough to prompt it to risk its national security.

The United States certainly is not under that kind of pressure. According to an estimate by the Brookings Institution, the strategic forces component of the 1972 American defense budget is only $20 billion, or less than one-third of the total defense budget and only about 10% of the total federal budget. The startegic component of the Soviet budget is probably higher, but the Soviet Union is no more likely than the United States to give any other need higher priority than national security.

If the security fears are to be overridden, both sides—but particularly the Soviet Union—must recognize that there can be no real security for either in the continuation of the strategic arms race; as long as it continues there will always be the possibility that Russia will gain a clear advantage, or think it has gained one, and, as a result of political pressures, or miscalculation, press the fateful button.

Both must really believe that the path to real security lies with halting

the race, maintaining a nuclear balance and beginning a long series of peaceful contacts that will reduce tensions, hostilities and suspicions that afflict the Soviet-American relationship. If they are willing to accept that position and can agree on what level of offensive and defensive capability has achieved a balance, it may indeed be cause for optimism.

There is little question that the arms race can be sustained, but it is not leading anywhere we want to go. With their new beginning, the SALT talks over the next several months will reveal whether the time has arrived when the world's two most powerful nations can travel a more peaceful road.

262

203

NATIONAL OBSERVER 24 MAY 1971

# White House Confident Major Accords Can Take Solid Shape by Year's End

By Jude Wanniski

FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.

With Soviet Communist Party chief Leonid Brezhnev supplying the adrenalin, President Nixon's anemic "era of negotiations" has suddenly revived. In the past several days, Mr. Brezhnev twice pumped life into U.S.-Soviet relations, indicating the Russians have decided to do some serious bargaining on critical issues.

There may have been some question of Soviet intentions regarding the first gesture, when Mr. Brezhnev invited the Western powers to start exploratory talks on reductions of troops and armaments in Central Europe. But there were few doubts last week at the White House that the Russians have now entered into the spirit of negotiations in a big way. Mr. Nixon's three-minute address to the nation — revealing, simultaneously with a similar announcement in Moscow, a break in the long-stalled nuclear-arms talks with the Soviets — was purposely vague and restrained. Yet because of the nature and timing of the break, the White House is confident the Russians mean business, and that major agreements may be taking solid shape before the end of the year.

Later last week, Mr. Nixon talked almost casually about the two governments working "toward agreement in this field to be implemented sometime this year," although "some very intensive negotiations will have to take place to achieve our goal."

The prospect of such agreements will have an immediate effect on Washington politics. The developments came at a time when Mr. Nixon's global strategy was undergoing serious attack in the U.S. Senate precisely because it did not seem to be getting any place. Now Mr. Nixon should have clearer sailing in Congress for his foreign and defense policies, at least for the rest of the year. And at the same time, the political seers will bid up his re-election stock for 1972. One reason: If there is a major agreement with the Russians, chances of an election-year summit meeting increase.

## Resisting Temptation

Mr. Nixon already owes the Kremlin a thank-you, the Brezhnev invitation to the Western powers helped the President beat off a wave of Senate attacks last week against his strategy in Europe. The Administration expected to narrowly beat Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's proposal to cut the U.S. troop level in Europe by 50 per cent, to 150,000 from 300,000. But after the Brezhnev offer to negotiate mutual withdrawals, senators otherwise tempted by the idea of unilateral U.S. troop withdrawals edged away from the Mansfield amendment. It lost, 61 to 36.

The break-through in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), which began in November 1969, was of course a bigger plum for the Administration. For a year, the talks had been deadlocked. The Russians insisted on limiting a first agreement to antiballistic missiles (ABM) and other defensive weapons—those that cannot strike the adversary: the United States insisted that any agreement cover some offensive weapons, that the talks cover a "mix" of offensive and defensive weapons.

The Administration's reasoning is that only a mixed agreement would assure the United States that the Soviet Union has no intentions of seeking a clear nuclear supe-

riority. If defenses alone were fixed by agreement, the Administration reasoned, the Soviets could continue their rapid expansion of offensive weaponry with their planning no longer complicated by U.S. defensive tactics.

In the agreement announced by Washington and Moscow, the Russians have now concurred in principle that an agreement will contain a mix. Now that this framework has been established, the White House expects that negotiations will accelerate.

The belief here is that the Soviets may now agree to place limits on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles. Their 276 SS-9 missiles, plus 60 SS-9 sites under construction, have been the basis for U.S. fears that the Russians may be thrusting toward clear nuclear superiority. Presumably the United States will be willing to deal on the short-range tactical weapons in Europe, which have been the Soviets' chief concern. This dealing would take place as part of the NATO-Warsaw Pact talks that Mr. Brezhnev is anxious to get going.

Mr. Nixon's televised statement was clearly designed to make it appear that he and the Kremlin met halfway: The two governments, he said, "have agreed to concentrate this year on working out an agreement for the limitation of the deployment of antiballistic missiles systems (ABMs). They have also agreed that, together with concluding an agreement to limit ABMs, they will agree on certain measures with respect to the limitation of offensive strategic weapons."

## Orders to Get Serious

This, though, is precisely the framework that Mr. Nixon has insisted upon. Though this agreement is still a long way from an arms-control pact, it is still the first concrete indication that Mr. Brezhnev's recent peace offensive is genuine. Beginning at the 24th Soviet Party Con-

gress in March, Mr. Brezhnev has been conciliatory both to the United States and the other Western powers. Last month, senior Soviet officials reported privately that they had been ordered to negotiate seriously on outstanding differences with the West. In his invitation to negotiate on Central Europe, Mr. Brezhnev said the Soviet Union would do everything it can "to achieve the strengthening of the peaceful coexistence of states, regardless of their social system."

Among both supporters and critics of Mr. Nixon's approach to the Soviets, the speculation in the Capital is that the Brezhnev peace offensive is an outgrowth of two Soviet problems: internal economic difficulties and the nagging threat along its 4,000-mile border with China. The Soviets would like to divert some defense spending to the domestic sector, and since they cannot risk weakening their eastern defenses, a mutual and balanced force reduction in Europe is the answer.

The speculation may be imprecise, but as long as it is part of the working assumption here it is important. The differences occur over how this situation should be exploited. The Administration counsels firmness, patience, and the promise of generous, good-faith arrangements with the Soviets; when the fruit ripens, it will fall from the tree.

Nixon critics argue that the fruit is already ripe, but because of White House stubbornness it is withering. They counsel unilateral concessions to show U.S. good faith. And at least until last week they had

urged Mr. Nixon to take a SALT agreement covering only defensive weapons.

In the Senate attack on Mr. Nixon's policy in Europe, Idaho Democrat Frank Church and Mr. Mansfield were most explicit in making this argument. "For those who say that we must take no unilateral step," declared Mr. Church, "I suggest that the record shows that unilateral action prudently taken has led to successful negotiations with the Soviet Union." He pointed to President Kennedy's initiative in ceasing atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, a step that led to the limited test-ban treaty.

## 'Linkage' Strategy

Senator Mansfield maintained that the Soviets are so eager to pull troops out of Europe and station them on their frontier with China that they would do just that if the United States unilaterally withdrew 150,000 troops from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). "I suggest: such a cut in our part would act as effectively to obtain this end as would any force reductions reached mutually through long drawn-out negotiations."

Administration strategists grant that Mr. Mansfield may be exactly right, but that it is not the objective of U.S. policy to find the quickest way to relieve the Soviet Union's internal problems.

CONTINUED NEXT PAGE

204

The objective is to bring about Soviet pacifism along a broad front, including not only the NATO-Warsaw pact face-off in Europe, but also in the SALT talks, the four-power Berlin talks, and in the Middle East. The White House does not go so far as to say there can be no agreement on European force reduction unless there is also a SALT agreement, but it makes it clear enough that a SALT pact would put the NATO alliance in a much more relaxed and forthcoming frame of mind regarding Central Europe. This, more or less, is the rub of the President's "linkage" strategy, a policy that encourages this broad-front negotiation.

It was because the White House saw the Mansfield amendment as a potentially crippling blow at its linkage strategy that Mr. Nixon pulled all the stops in defeating it. Former Presidents Truman and Johnson issued statements inveighing against the amendments. U.S. ambassadors all over Europe lobbied senators by transatlantic telephone. Mr. Truman's Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, roused himself to denounce the move. So, too, did President Kennedy's Undersecretary of State, George W. Ball, who was all over Capitol Hill fighting the Mansfield measure.

Not that all the Democrats who supported Mr. Nixon did so as a testimonial to his linkage strategy. On the contrary, most were concerned only that passage of the Mansfield amendment would cripple NATO and encourage the European allies to turn away from the United States toward accommodations with the Soviets. Two Democratic Presidential hopefuls, Edmund Muskie of Maine and Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, have steadfastly urged the President to accept a defense-only agreement at SALT. Yet last week they were in the Administration's corner in opposing the Mansfield move. Senator Muskie said almost nothing during the debate. But Mr. Humphrey pitched in with enthusiasm, and in warming to the debate appeared to become a full-fledged advocate of linkage:

> "I do not believe in unilateral disarmament, not if it means disarming at the risk of our security and the security of our allies," he said. It was a comment that brought a wan smile to the face of Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, a Mansfield supporter. Continued Mr. Humphrey: "I am not here pleading for President Nixon. On the contrary, I am pleading for a foreign policy of the United States that will preserve peace, that will arrive at negotiated settlements, that will reduce nuclear armaments..."

After the Nixon announcement on the SALT talks, Mr. Humphrey issued glowing statements of "a major breakthrough." Supporters of Sen. Herry Jackson of Washington, the only Democratic Presidential hopeful who had defended the Nixon position on the SALT talks, fumed that Senator Humphrey "is trying to make believe he never pushed the other way."

Though this kind of Presidential polling played a small role in the Senate debate last week, the most important factor that saved Mr. Nixon from any troublesome votes was this: Although most senators were eager to show annoyance with the NATO allies for not paying more of the NATO costs, a majority could not agree on the degree of indignation appropriate.

Indeed, practically the entire Senate feels this indignation, and only the broader foreign-policy considerations kept senators from expressing it. The argu-

ment is that while the United States pays $14 billion to maintain its NATO commitments, including a net loss of $1.8 billion in the balance of payments on these commitments alone, the other 14 NATO allies skimp on their commitments, and at the same time blame the United States for causing their monetary problems.

Ohio Republican William Saxbe put forth the most colorful version of this argument: "We were the No. 1 country to emerge from World War II. We had money sticking out of all our pockets. Japan and Germany were completely financially broken. We had ideas that we could afford to do all these things, anywhere in the world. So we were the big spender that picked up the check every time it came around. Now, he says, employment is so high in Germany that they have to import 3,000,000 workers. And in Japan, there are several jobs for every high-school graduate. Yet in the United States there is unemployment, distress, poverty. "What we are still doing, though, is walking around Europe with the 'my-spender' sign in front and I don't think we should on the back."

This message came through loud and clear, both to the European press corps and European diplomatic corps in the Capital. They know that Mr. Nixon restrained the Senate last week, but he will not be able to do it a year from now. Whether or not there are successful negotiations with the Warsaw Pact nations, Western Europe is aware that Washington has grabbed for the last check. That's all Senator Mansfield was trying to do, and though his amendment lost, his purpose was served.

For Mr. Nixon, this was the added fillip to a week of immensely satisfying developments. He got his initial SALT understanding out of the Russians. His foreign policy survived a week of Senate attacks, and as a result is firmer than ever. The Democratic Presidential hopefuls divided a half-dozen ways. And the NATO allies had an earful of overdue invective. This is the President can publicly disavow—but if the wishes can privately applaud.

205

Strategic Alternatives: I

NEW YORK TIMES 24 MAY 1971 (25)

By DONALD G. BRENNAN

American strategic nuclear policy has been dominated in recent years by an idea called "assured destruction." This concept is that the dominant task of the U.S. strategic forces is to be able to mount a nuclear attack that would reliably destroy a substantial fraction of the Soviet society, even after a major Soviet strike on American forces. Recent public statements of the Nixon Administration have emphasized a doctrine called "strategic sufficiency." Although published formulations of this doctrine are ambiguous, it is clear that something like the concept of "assured destruction" still dominates American strategic policy, even if the terminology itself is no longer used in official statements.

This domination extends to strategic arms-control matters. It is widely argued that the most peaceful, stable, secure, cheap, and generally desirable arrangement is one in which we and the Soviets maintain a "mutual assured destruction" posture, in which no serious effort is made by either side to limit the civilian damage that could be inflicted by the other. Most of the opposition in the West to substantial systems of missile defense for cities and some of the opposition to the Safeguard ABM system derives from the alleged benefits of such a posture. This is pertinent to the forthcoming Soviet-American negotiations on offensive and defensive forces announced by President Nixon last Thursday.

I believe that the concept of mutual assured destruction provides one of the few instances in which the obvious acronym for something yields at once the appropriate description for it; that is, a Mutual Assured Destruction posture as a goal is, almost literally, mad. MAD.

If the forces of technology and international politics provided absolutely no alternative, one might reluctantly accept a MAD posture. But to think

of it as desirable—for instance, as a clearly preferred goal of our arms-control negotiations, as many current proposals automatically assume—is bizarre. This can be made very clear by considering the simplest and most effective means of realizing it.

At present, we and the Soviets achieve a MAD posture by means of long-range missiles and bombers armed with thermonuclear weapons. There are, however, many problems associated with these forces; missiles and bombers may be attacked before they are launched, they may fail to perform properly, or they may fail to penetrate enemy defenses. Concern about such vulnerabilities in our posture helps drive the arms race. These forces are also expensive; the U.S. alone spends about $8 billion a year on them.

Now, if it were genuinely desirable to have a MAD posture, we could achieve it far more effectively, reliably and cheaply than at present. As Leo Szilard remarked ten years ago, we and the Soviets could have an arms-control agreement to mine each other's cities. We could install very large thermonuclear weapons with secure firing arrangements in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, and so on, while the Soviets could install similar weapons and arrangements in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and so on. It is technically feasible to make such a system very secure, and the vulnerabilities mentioned above could be eliminated, which would reduce arms-race pressures. While such a system would have its own technical problems, analysis indicates they would be far simpler to solve than those of the present system. It would also be much cheaper than the current system; it could save billions.

Yet almost everyone will judge it starkly absurd, even after consideration. And, since a mined-city system is clearly the best way of realizing a MAD posture, it follows that a MAD posture as a goal is itself fundamentally absurd—it is, indeed, mad.

This reduction-to-absurdity argument is useful for sharply drawing attention to the fact that something must be wrong with MAD as a way of life. However, one can discuss the problems of MAD directly. There are at least three interrelated problems.

The first is that, in spite of our best efforts, a major nuclear war could happen. An institutionalized MAD posture is a way of insuring, now and forever, that the outcome of such a war would be a nearly unlimited disaster for everybody. While technology and politics may conspire for a time to leave us temporarily in such a posture, we should not welcome it—we should rather be looking for ways out of it. And they can be found.

The second fundamental difficulty is, in essence, political: The body politic of the United States did not create a Department of Defense for the purpose of deliberately making us all hostages to enemy weapons. The Government is supposed, according to the Constitution, to "provide for the common defense," and plainly most Americans would revolt at the idea that a mined-city system is a sensible way to do this. They would be quite right. The Defense Department should be more concerned with assuring live Americans than dead Russians.

The third fundamental difficulty is moral. We should not deliberately create a system in which millions of innocent civilians would, by intention, be exterminated in a failure of the system. The system is not that reliable. If we accept a MAD posture as an interim solution, we should be seeking ways out of it, not ways to enshrine it.

Tomorrow I shall discuss alternative directions for strategic policy and arms control.

This is the first of two articles by Donald G. Brennan, member and former president of Hudson Institute. He edited "Arms Control Disarmament, and National Security."

206

TUESDAY MORNING, 25 MAY 1971

WASHINGTON POST - 25 MAY 1971 P-19

William S. White

ABM Played Role
In Arms Accord

THERE IS BOTH a good deal less and a good deal more than meets the eye in President Nixon's widely trumpeted announcement of a "major step in breaking the stalemate on nuclear arms talks" with the Soviet Union.

As to the first point, what has really been agreed to is only a somewhat ambiguous beginning of negotiations toward a possible end that can have no effect on the existing reality that the Russians may well have already outstripped us in the weapons of ultimate horror and are still working at the job.

Putting the thing in its most rosy possible light, the President's statement — which concedes that any concrete deal actually limiting strategic arms is a very long way down the road—should be read by the country and its allies with the greatest of reserve.

Thus proclamations such as that of the House Republican leader, Rep. Gerald Ford of Michigan, that all this is clearly one of the most significant breakthroughs for peace in modern times, are, to put it char-

itably, among the overstatements of modern times.

Still, even a creeping progress toward honest disarmament is not to be sneered at by rational men. And this the administration can rightly claim.

FOR WHAT is much more significant than the somewhat debatable substantive value of the achievement of an understanding with the Russians to begin to talk seriously upon SALT (strategic arms limitation) is, simply, the flat vindication here offered of the essential wisdom of the administration's long-term general strategy in this affair.

The heart of that strategy has been to present the Soviet Union with proof positive, in advance, that we did not and do not intend to talk from any position of deliberate weakness. The tangible token of this strategy, in turn, has been the President's resolute and finally successful demand for the creation of an antiballistic missile system.

This system he was at last able to bring through a reluctant Senate only last summer—and only by a

margin of two votes. The long and short of it is that without having ABM in his pocket, he could never have got the Russians to the point of agreeing to talk of anything beyond sheer gobbledygook.

It is instructive to recall that Mr. Nixon Himself made precisely this point again and again in the long Senate debate over ABM. Give me ABM, he said to the doves in substance, and I shall have some bargaining chip for the great disarmament for which all of you are so loudly crying out.

The doves retorted that this was nonsense; that the only possible way to get going was for the United States to begin to disarm itself unilaterally, whatever the Russians might do, and then the Russians would see that we were good fellows and would immediately follow suit.

So it is that however modest may be the forward step now taken there would have been no step at all without ABM.

THE BIPARTISAN Senate supporters of the President will not miss the meaning of this reality when they begin the debate upon the military budget, which is likely to occupy many weeks. For it is perfectly obvious that a certain euphoria helpful to the budget-slashers is going to be at work in the country generally, following upon the

new agreement with the Russians. And this can be fought successfully only if the pro-preparedness Senators go back to the record to show who was right and who was wrong last year on ABM.

In this, they ought not to have much trouble. They will only have to quote such Democratic presidential aspirants and vehemently anti-ABM men as Sens. Hubert H. Humphrey, George McGovern and Edmund Muskie. They might also cite the apparently noncandidate who is Sen. Edward Kennedy and the nonstop pacifist who is Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas.

"As a bargaining lever for disarmament," said Fulbright, "The ABM is likely to be as effective as gasoline shot through a fire hose.

© 1971, United Feature Syndicate

NEW YORK TIMES 25 MAY 1971

Strategic Alternatives: II

By DONALD G. BRENNAN

Yesterday I explained that many people regard a posture of Mutual Assured Destruction—MAD—as a desirable objective of our arms-control policy. I also explained that a mined-city system was obviously the most efficient way of achieving a MAD posture, and, since the mined-city system was clearly absurd, it followed that a MAD posture itself must be absurd.

Why, then, do some Americans advocate a MAD posture? The advocates involved are, in the main, technical or technically oriented people accustomed to theoretical models, and the arguments involve appeals to “stability” of various kinds and reference to other sophisticated jargon-jargon that I understand very well, having helped to articulate it a decade and more ago. For instance, one argument sometimes heard is that this posture will best protect against nuclear war altogether, but this proposition is very dubious indeed.

While these advocates are undoubtedly sincere, and many of them are even intelligent, I believe they have been bemused by theoretical models of strategic interactions, models which seem sophisticated and intellectually appealing but which are in fact much oversimplified descriptions of reality. Indeed, some few technical people, who have at least had the integrity to follow the logic of their analysis to its conclusion, have been so bemused by these models that they have seriously advocated the actual deployment of a mined-city system.

Well, if an institutionalized MAD posture is not desirable as a permanent way of life, and it is not, what alternative is available? The answer is to provide increasing emphasis on defense, and corresponding reduction in the relative effort devoted to strategic offensive forces.

There is much controversy about just how effective defense (such as ABM) can be made against current offensive forces, or against further enlarged offensive forces. I cannot discuss this controversy here. However, there is very little controversy over the fact that defense can be made quite effective if the opposing offense is held down or actually reduced, while allowed defense is built up. This is precisely the direction that negotiations in the Strategic

Arms Limitation Talks should be taking, but, so far as I can see have not yet been taking. The forthcoming negotiation on offensive and defensive forces will provide both Governments with a good opportunity to pursue this possibility.

Even if it were held that currently achievable defense is too ineffective to be useful against even a suitably reduced offensive threat (a position that few informed persons would believe), it makes little sense to preclude the possibility of a more effective defense being found in the future. Most of the current approaches to these matters would do so.

It might be possible to achieve similar effects simply by sharply reducing offensive forces, without any defense, if it were not for two factors: (a) there are other countries in the world besides the United States and the Soviet Union, and (b) perfect inspection of sharply reduced offensive forces probably cannot be achieved, and defense can provide protection against clandestine weapons.

The most desirable postures providing increased defensive emphasis would be those achievable through negotiations with the Soviets. If such negotiations should fail, other alternatives, though less desirable, are available. I believe a sensible unilateral American strategic program would be governed by the following three rules:

* The Budget Rule. We should spend about as much money on strategic offensive and defensive forces combined as the Soviets do, neither greatly more, which might stimulate arms-face effects, nor greatly less, which would leave us in a position of increasing risk.

* I shall, for obvious reasons, call this the Brass Rule. In terms of possible strategic nuclear wars, we should be able to do about as badly unto the Soviets as they can do unto us. This makes it unlikely that the Soviets could “dictate” terms to the United States in a crisis. Note that this formulation—in contrast to the McNamara formulation of “assured destruction”—leaves open the possibility of reducing our threat to the Soviets, if their threat to us can be reduced by whatever means.

* The Defense Rule. Of the money provided by the Budget Rule, spend as much on defense as is compatible with the Brass Rule. For the foreseeable future, this would require major continued expenditures on offense.

We should not be busily engaged in forging a permanent Sword of Damocles, to hang forever over our heads, by our own design and efforts. It is too likely to fall. We should rather devote our best efforts to escaping from this MAD posture. The alternatives are available.

This is the second of two articles by Mr. Brennan, who is a member of the Hudson Institute. He edits the journal "Arms Control and National Security."

207

WALL STREET JOURNAL

27 MAY 1971

The Budding of Hope

Last week's encouragement over
the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
proved what has already proved a
promising spring in foreign affairs.
Hope is once again budding in the
world, and it is a sign that despite all
the criticism American policymakers
have done pretty well.

The signs of hope are many: The
Soviet Union is not only agreeing to get
the arms talks off dead center, but is
dropping hints about the long-sought
mutual reduction of forces in Europe.
China has suddenly opened to Ameri-
an Ping-Pong players, scientists and
journalists. Great Britain apparently
will enter the Common Market after
all. The Middle East problem seems
far less intractable than it did a few
months ago.

All of these hopes could come crash-
ing down, of course. The arms talks
continue to face difficult issues, partic-
ularly with regard to a limit on the So-
viets' huge SS-9 missiles. That individ-
al Americans are being received is
far from a guarantee that the People's
Republic of China is ready to deal with
the U.S. Government. The Middle
Eastern hates and distrusts remain, as
does the throbbing pain of Vietnam.

Still, any ray of hope is a welcome
change from the unalloyed gloom we
have become accustomed to on the
world scene over the past decade. Nat-
urally, this fresh hope was not created
solely by the United States. Britain and
the Common Market are obviously
working out their own problems, and
the Russian and Chinese leaders are
turning less disagreeable for reasons
of their own.

Yet American initiatives have
played their part in the SALT move-
ment, the Ping-Pong diplomacy and the
Middle Eastern cooling. More impor-
tantly, despite the difficulty of proving
relationships in the complex interac-
tions of world diplomacy, it seems logi-
cal to speculate that American policy-
makers have struck a general posture
with about the right mixture of initia-
tive and steadfastness.

The strategic arms development is
very much a case in point. Until now,
the Soviets had been insisting on either
including American planes in Europe
as strategic weapons or limiting an
arms pact to defensive missiles only.
Because the Soviet SS-9s are a poten-
tial threat to the U.S. deterrent and the
American ABM a protection against
that threat, American negotiators have
insisted on a pact including both offen-
sive and defensive missile...

President Nixon's critics, notably
most of the Democratic presidential
contenders, have been urging him to
drop this position and take the Soviet
defensive-only offer as a "first step"
toward some unspecified destination).
And indeed, the official American posi-
tion moved toward this in compromis-
ing with the Russians, for the joint an-
nouncement says they will concentrate
this year" on limiting defensive mis-
siles.

The announcement also says, how-
ever, that any ultimate pact will in-
clude offensive missiles as well, and
apparently the issue of U.S. planes in
Europe will be put aside. In other
words, by refusing to totally abandon
its position as its critics urged, the ad-
ministration has won an agenda point-
ing toward a more comprehensive
SALT agreement, and not so incid-
tially, one less risky for American in-
terests.

More broadly, the Russians would
have had little incentive to compro-
mise at all if they had concluded that
the Americans lacked the will to match
strategic advances beyond rough par-
ity. The Middle East would not be cool-
ing if anyone doubted the United
States' commitment to Israel. This is
the issue of American credibility that
policy-makers stress in defending the
gradual withdrawal from Vietnam and
the case in pruning the American pres-
ence abroad.

Even where there has been no di-
rect American initiative, the recent en-
couraging developments are pro-
foundly influenced by the conclusions
other nations reach about the will of
the United States and its future posi-
tion in the world. The drift of events
suggests that these conclusions reflect
a good measure of success in the
American attempt to pull back from
overextension without creating an
image of collapse.

In that sense, and it is no small one,
the budding of hope results from the
administration's careful cultivation.

208

209

NEW YORK TIMES 27 MAY 1971

# Harvard-M.I.T. Arms Experts Pleased by on Talks

By JOHN W. FINNEY

Special to The New York Times

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 28—The "Charles River Gang"—a disarming band of Harvard and M.I.T. professors who run an arms-control operation that stretches right into the White House—have found themselves pleasantly disarmed by President Nixon.

To a man, they approve of the President's decision to press ahead for an initial agreement with the Soviet Union limiting defensive antiballistic missile systems with the somewhat vague condition that there also must be measures to limit offensive weapons.

If they have dropped their normally critical stance toward the Administration's arms-control policies, it is largely because that is precisely the step they have been urging on the White House and Democratic politicians in Congress for some months.

With their approval, however, goes a varying degree of skepticism about the President's motivations and intentions in now seeking a strategic-arms agreement with the Soviet Union. Some of them believe that with the Presidential commitment, an agreement is now possible this year.

## Some Are Septical

Others of the group are more skeptical about the President's willingness to break the link between defensive and offensive weapons, which they regard as the essential compromise that must be made for an initial agreement. And the more cynical believe that the President, with his announcement last week, took a politically motivated step aimed more at the Democrats and the electorate in 1972 than at the Kremlin.

This cross-section of views emerged from conversations with leading members of the

Cambridge arms-control group, such as Dr. Jerome B. Wiesner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dr. George B. Kistiakowsky of Harvard, both former Presidential Science Advisers; Dr. Paul M. Doty Jr. of Harvard, an academic confidante of Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, the President's national security adviser; Dr. George W. Rathjens and Dr. Jack Ruina, two former Pentagon officials now at M.I.T., and Mr. Abram Chayes, formerly of the State Department and now of the Harvard Law School.

## Played Influential Role

Over the years the group, both within and without the Government, has played an influential role on arms-control policy. Its members, for example, provided the academic ammunition for the Senate assault on the Administration's Safeguard anti-missile system.

They were helpful in bringing the Russians around to acceptance of the desirability of including defensive weapons in a strategic-arms control agreement. And now they would like to believe they were influential in bringing around the White House to acceptance of a defensive-weapons agreement.

Dr. Doty, the group's unofficial ambassador to the White House, was probably the most enthusiastic about the President's decision and the most optimistic about chances of an agreement.

"For the most part," he saw the Administration "committed philosophically and politically to an agreement" and was willing to bet "even money" that an agreement could be reached this year.

## Announcement Was Vague

If only because of his close association with Mr. Kissinger, Dr. Doty provided a possible insight into the type of agreement contemplated by the Administration, something left deliber-

ately vague in the Presidential announcement that the two sides had agreed that "together with concluding an agreement to limit ABM's, they will agree on certain measures with respect to limitation of offensive strategic weapons."

As the "most likely formula," he foresaw the two sides reaching a treaty limiting the Soviet Union to an antimissile system around Moscow and the United States to "as much of Safeguard as we can negotiate." state would enter into some form of executive agreement or understanding—not subject to Senate approval — limiting the number of offensive weapons on each side.

Dr. Wiesner, who is president-elect of M.I.T., said Mr. Nixon had made "a good move to the extent I understand it." If he is now more optimistic, he said, it is because "the Russians seem forthcoming again" and Mr. Nixon seems to have become convinced "as has every President since World War II, that we can't buy security through an arms race."

If Dr. Wiesner was still cautious, it was because he, along with others in the group, was still doubtful that the President had in fact broken his coupling of defensive and offensive weapons as a requirement for any agreement or that he philosophically had abandoned the concept of nuclear superiority for one of parity or sufficiency.

Along this line of doubt, Dr. Rathjens expressed a concern that the President, because of his previous commitment that any agreement must include offensive as well as defensive weapons, would make compromises "where he shouldn't" on defensive weapons in order to get Soviet concessions on offensive weapons.

A common theme to emerge from the conversations was the

## Nixon's Move

teeling that the President had given notice to his administration, particularly to the Pentagon, that he wanted an agreement, thus telling the technicians not to get bogged down in details.

There was, however, division within the group over the President's motivation for making his move.

Dr. Chayes saw the prospects for success of the negotiations "more closely related to the President's domestic political requirements than to the technical and strategic issues involved."

In Dr. Chayes's opinion, the President had taken "essentially a procedural step to clear away some of the obstacles that were of his own making" in coupling offensive and defensive weapons.

Dr. Kistiakowsky, who served as science adviser to President Eisenhower and is the group's "Republican-in-residence," has become the one most critical of the Nixon Administration.

He saw the President "trying to save his political skin" in 1972 by "attempting to move into the middle" without at the same time "antagonizing the right."

The President, Dr. Kistiakowsky contended, saw the whole negotiations "collapsing just around election time." So, he continued, the President took the "gambit" of breaking the offensive-defensive linkage, thus pleasing the "doves."

But at the same time, he said "to please the hawks," the President left open the possibility of ordering all kinds of qualitative improvements in offensive weapons, such as multiple warheads.

"I am not ruling out an agreement and I think the President has moved in the right direction," he said, "but I don't think it is going to be a helluva big agreement."

210

**Congressional Reaction.** Congressional response to the President's May 20 announcement generally was positive, although Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. W. Fulbright (D) Ark. initially said he did not completely understand its significance and would reserve judgment.

Fulbright: "...I hope the details of today's 'agreement to agree' can be negotiated promptly so that the increased expenditures and dangers inherent in the competition for qualitative improvements in strategic weapons can be avoided." (Statement, May 20)

Jackson: "It is essential that we spare no effort to obtain agreement with the Soviets to limit both offensive and defensive strategic weapons. I am persuaded that our persistence in endeavoring to limit Soviet offenses while discussing limitations on defensive systems is crucial to a sound national security policy." (Statement, May 20)

Sen. Robert Taft Jr. (R Ohio): "What it means is that the Russians are willing to talk about defensive weapons, the ABM, as well as offensive strategic weapons. This, I think, does indicate that we have a much better chance of making some meaningful progress...." (Statement, May 20)

Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D) Mont.: "I think that now there is some light at the end of the tunnel, to use a time worn phrase, in these negotiations which have been going on for so long in both Helsinki and Vienna.

"I think much credit should go to the chiefs of state of both nations for their being able to reach an accommodation in this area." (Senate speech, May 20)

CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY INC.
In press except by authorized channels

May 28, 1974 PAGE 1155

NEW REPUBLIC

29 MAY 1971

SALT Seasoning

Nobody knows whether Mr. Nixon's brief, Aesopian announcement last week on "breaking the deadlock" in the 18-month-old SALT talks was worth the ringing fanfare he gave it. (The President in person on all networks, seven different White House briefings, all the trappings of an historic event.) We don't know, because we aren't sure what it means, and perhaps aren't meant to know. It seems to mean that the Americans and the Russians are now sure progress can be made somewhere and have agreed to agree sometime about something in the area of arms limitations, which may not be news but is a hope worth embracing. It may also mean that when the arms talks resume in Helsinki in June or July, the first item on the agenda will be defensive antiballistic missile systems. But is that all? And is this a departure from past Administration objections to an "ABM-only" agreement? In his report to the Congress on February 25, the President, noting a difference of opinion with the Russians "over whether a separate agreement limiting ABMs alone would be in our mutual interest," concluded that "to be stable and satisfactory, an agreement should include limitations on both offensive and defensive systems." In a press conference on March 5, Mr. Nixon again rejected the idea put forward by many serious students of arms control that "we might negotiate a separate agreement on defensive weapons alone"; an agreement "must include offensive as well as defensive weapons, some mix."

The new statement pledges the two nations "to concentrate this year on working out an agreement for the limitation of the deployment of antiballistic missiles (ABMs)." That's plain; ABMs first. But ABMs only? Probably not, for there follows a perplexing second sentence: "They [the US and the USSR] have also agreed that, together with concluding an agreement to limit ABMs, they will agree on certain measures with re respect to the limitation of offensive strategic weap ons." This can be read to mean that no agreement on ABMs will be binding, if it is not accompanied by some agreement, however minor, on offensive weap ons. That is the way we do read it.

But however it is read, an underlying reality is that America's security would not be impaired by our putting a lid on ABM construction, now, or even eliminating the $50 billion program (Senator Mike Mansfield's estimate of the final cost), regardless of whether agreement is reached on other weapons systems. Fortunately, neither we nor the Russians have gone so far down the ABM road that we could not easily turn back. Only two ABM sites are under construction in this country – in North Dakota and Montana; work has just started on a third site in Missouri; and a fourth site, either at the Warren Air Force Base or near Washington, DC, is not much beyond the stage of contemplation. If Mr. Nixon's announcement is a prelude to their abandonment – and on the Soviet side, too – he did say something worth a fanfare on May 20.

211

WASHINGTON POST 29 MAY 1971

MAY 29 1971

212

# The ABC's of FBS and SALT and MBFR and CES (or ESC)

By Chalmers M. Roberts

THIS IS the story of FBS and its relationship to SALT and to MBFR and how they all relate to ESC which some call CES.

It is all as complex as the abbreviations make it sound. But it is a vital, live subject because it is about the new Soviet and American initiatives to reduce the troop and arms levels of the two most powerful alliances in the world today, NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

One has to begin at the beginning and that means with SALT, the strategic arms limitation talks between the United States and the Soviet Union which have just wound up their fourth round. One of the conundrums of the months of SALT talks has been how FBS, as it is known, fits in.

FBS is an American acronym for forward-based systems, meaning those U.S. aircraft based outside the United States capable of carrying nuclear weapons to Soviet soil. But that is only the quick definition.

What Moscow is talking about is several hundred U.S. planes, their crews, maintenance and support facilities, based in Western Europe, principally in West Germany, and several hundred more aboard Navy carriers with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. But that is not all; the Soviets at SALT have included U.S. carriers in the Pacific whose planes can reach Siberia.

The Soviet logic about FBS is impeccable, as American officials concede: any American nuclear weapon that can reach Soviet soil is "strategic" and the SALT talks were designed to "curb" strategic weapons; therefore they must be included in any overall agreement.

The FBS issue provided the sticking point in the SALT negotiations until Moscow last December suggested skirting it by proposing a limited agreement confined to the control of only one phase of strategic arms, the rival anti-missile (ABM) systems. But President Nixon refused to accept this "ABMs only" proposal, insisting on "some mix" of offensive weapons control in any agreement.

This deadlock was broken with the May 20 Moscow-Washington agreement to negotiate concurrently both an ABM agreement and an agreement "on certain measures with respect to the limitation of strategic offensive weapons." This latter agreement most likely will be a pledge by both super-powers that, as of the date agreed, neither will build any more land-based missile launchers.

This would mean a halt to construction of the giant SS-9 Soviet missiles which have aroused so much concern in Washington. But it also would mean both nations would be free to continue construction of sea-based missiles and of bombers and to "modernize" existing missiles. This latter means there would be no halt to emplacement of multiple warheads (MIRVs) by either nation.

The agreement, aside from its intrinsic worth which is clearly considerable, enabled Moscow and Washington to put aside the FBS issue as far as SALT is currently concerned. The net effect was to transfer the FBS problem to MBFR, or at least to transfer part of the problem.

MBFR is a NATO acronym for "mutual balanced force reductions," a carefully selected term designed to imply that cuts in armed strength in Europe should be "mutual" (i.e., by both NATO and Warsaw Pact members), "balanced" (i.e., in a way that does not upset the balance of power now existing, but reduces the balance to a lower level) and cover "force."

"Force" is used instead of "troops" because in the American and allied view a one-man for one-man cut would give an unfair advantage to the East since U.S. troops would travel thousands of miles to come home whereas Russian troops would move back only a few hundred miles into the Soviet Union. "Force" thus means a combination of men and machines, that is, of integrated units of power. A matching move back of such "force" on each side would be more likely to maintain a balance of power, it is argued, though such "matching" is highly complex because of the differing "force" structures in the two alliances.

The American FBS are a part of that "force" on the allied side. These aircraft however, are often dual purpose in capability, that is they can carry conventional as well as nuclear bombs or missiles. Furthermore, there are such aircraft flown by other NATO nations which can be nuclear armed although they cannot be so armed except by American permission.

IT SHOULD be noted here that former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara on Sept. 23, 1966 disclosed that the United States then had 7,000 tactical nuclear weapons in Western Europe. Most but not all of them are thought to be in West Germany.

That figure, probably somewhat higher today, includes weapons designed for use from projectiles against battlefield targets, as well as nuclear land mines which could be used to impede movement of troops. Yields of these weapons are in the kiloton and sub-kiloton range. The Hiroshima bomb was a 20-kiloton affair. ("Strategic" weapons are monsters in the megaton range.)

There has never been a Soviet disclosure of how many tactical nuclear weapons there are in the Russian arsenal or where they are located. The authoritative London-based Institute for Strategic Studies estimated in its current "military balance" survey that the figure for comparable Soviet warheads is "probably about 3,500, delivered by roughly comparable aircraft and missile systems." Short-range missiles are what is meant in this context. Some of the delivery systems, but not the warheads, are in the hands of non-Soviet Warsaw Pact forces, ISS added.

ON the NATO side, then, the FBS issue concerns only part of the American nuclear arsenal, as far as MBFR is affected. American officials say that in moving the FBS issue from SALT to MBFR probably the bulk of American land-based systems would be covered.

However, the American-NATO contention has always been that the FBS are in Western Europe not only as a counter to comparable Soviet aircraft systems but as a counter to Moscow's intermediate and medium range nuclear missiles targeted on Western Europe. ISS lists their total at 630 such Soviet missiles plus another 70 targeted against China.

When American Ambassador Jacob Beam met on May 17 with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko to seek clarification of Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev's call for "negotiations" on "reduction of armed forces and armaments in Central Europe," he is now said to have been told two things: that Brezhnev was not including nuclear weapons based within the Soviet Union and that FBS could be discussed within the context of such negotiations.

The form and context of such a negotiation is currently far from clear or settled. Brezhnev spoke of "Central Europe" without defining that area. Washington officials believe that at least the initial East-West negotiations would concern only "force" in West Germany, East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

(That limited area would exclude such NATO nuclear "force" as the 18 French intermediate range missiles (IRBMs) being deployed in silos, the 36 French Mirage bombers or Britain's 50 Vulcan bombers, all theoretically capable of hitting the Soviet Union. These also are excluded from SALT, as in the burgeoning Chinese nuclear "force" of uncertain quantity, which may explain why Brezhnev also has renewed the Soviet call for a conference of all five nuclear powers.)

If the limited area of Central Europe should turn out to be what is covered in the forthcoming East - West negotiations, whether they are called MBFR talks or by some other less tongue-twisting acronym, then parts of the FBS problem in SALT quite obviously remain outside. This includes FBS elsewhere than in West Germany and especially the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean.

MOST OF the talk about MBFR has suggested the idea of NATO-Warsaw Pact discussions. But the French, still a member of the North Atlantic Treaty and with two divisions in West Germany though not a participant in the integrated military command, and Romania, the stray in the Warsaw Pact, publicly oppose bloc-to-bloc negotiations.

(CONTINUED)

Quite clearly Washington and Moscow
alone cannot conduct such negotiations, as
they do at SALT, because so many allies are
affected. The probability is that the NATO
ministerial meeting in Lisbon on June 3-4
will call for initial discussions by many
NATO members with Moscow and its allies,
possibly led or directed by NATO Secretary
General Manlio Brosio. The idea would be to
find a mutually acceptable forum. That
forum most likely would be a group from
each alliance.

There are infinite complications in trying
to find matching reductions of "force" in
Central Europe, once that term is defined.
But at least some principles are clearer than
before. By omission from his latest state-
ments, Brezhnev seems to have accepted the
Western demand that not just American and
Soviet troops but also troops of the rival al-
lies be covered as well as their weapons sys-
tems.

But much remains to be disclosed. Brezh-
nev said on May 14 that Western "represent-
atives ask: whose armed forces—foreign or
national, what armaments—nuclear or con-
ventional, are to be reduced? They ask
whether the Soviet proposals concern all
this taken together?" Brezhnev provided no
answer but resorted to an unusual bit of
humor, for him, by way of the Soviet Geor-
gian love of drink (he was speaking in the
Georgian capital of Tbilisi.")

Said Brezhnev: "Don't these curious peo-
ple resemble a person who tried to judge
the flavor of wine without imbibing it? If
anything is not clear to somebody we are
ready to make it clear. But you have to mus-
ter the resolve to try the proposal you are
interested in according to its taste. Trans-
lated into diplomatic language this means—
to start negotiations."

Secretary of State William P. Rogers on
May 16, asked about Brezhnev's proposal
that the West uncork the wine, replied: "He
said we shouldn't ask about the wine, we
should drink it first, and we would like to
know first is it wine, and is it sweet wine or
is it sour. We want to be sure, in other
words, that this has some potential for suc-
cess."

CONTINUED NEXT PAGE

213

BALTIMORE SUN, - 29 MAY 1971

214

Richard Wilson

Soviet Move In Arms Talks
Exposes Senate ABM Critics

Washington.

The Democratic candidates for president have brilliantly succeeded in opening up their own credibility gap on one of the most critical questions of the time, agreement between the United States and Russia on curbing the bomb.

To a man these aspirants have made a political issue of the most serious business afoot in international affairs, and to a man they have been wrong.

They chorused and parroted the idea that to go ahead with the antiballistic missile and the Safeguard system of nuclear defense was a provocative act which would submerge the arms limitation talks. Therefore we must stop this defensive program dead in its tracks to insure that the Russians would be reasonable.

Deployment of Safeguard, proclaimed Senator Edmund Muskie this month "is a provocation we cannot afford."

Moving ahead with ABM, asserted Senator George McGovern in February, "will greatly reduce the likelihood that an arms control agreement which is acceptable to both the United States and the Soviet Union can be found."

Deployment of the ABM would upset the balance of strategic forces between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. "thereby imperiling the arms control talks and triggering another round in the strategic arms race," announced Senatorbert H. Humphrey.

Arguments of supporters of the ABM system that its construction will strengthen the U.S. in bargaining with the Russians are "particularly fallacious," said Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

So we went ahead with the ABM system just as the Russians are going ahead with their nuclear programs and President Nixon was able to announce that we had gotten

off dead center in the talks. The Russians agreed to move toward an agreement on ABM and on offensive weapons deployment, thus breaking through a critical impasse with a secondary effect of exposing the faulty judgment of the prophets on the Senate side of the Capitol.

There is no cause for snickers, political or otherwise, over the collective pratfall of the nuclear strategists on Capitol Hill. They led an editorial chorus which charged that Mr. Nixon did not know what he was doing and in his stubborn obstinacy was discarding man's last best chance to save itself from nuclear destruction. Moreover, this obstinacy grew from Mr. Nixon's blind anti-communism carried over from his days as a red-hunter in Congress.

The Russians, with all their distrust of Mr. Nixon, knew better than that. The chief American negotiator, Gerard C. Smith, is undoubtedly right that the Russians would have regarded with a mixture of disrespect and suspicion American abandonment of its programs out of some illusion that this would soften up the Russians.

It cannot be repeated too often that the Russians are realistic, pragmatic and respect power alone in their relations with the United States. Mr. Nixon, in this case at least, proved that he understood what motivates Soviet leaders. They do not respect weakness or abnegation. They respect adversaries who pursue their own best interests impervious to intimidation, just as the Russians themselves pursue their own interests.

They are undoubtedly aware that the Nixon administration is determined that they shall not gain the advantage from the results of the arms talks, just as they have no thought of handing over the advantage to the United States.

215

WASHINGTON POST

30 MAY 71 (1J)

Negotiations: Now

Surely no one understands better than Richard Nixon that if this era—or to go straight to the point—this administration is to turn from confrontation to negotiation with the Soviet Union, then the pace has got to be picked up sharply. It takes two to negotiate and it also takes time. The issues are tough, the parties are wary, and both sides must slow down to consult allies and build home constituencies. Given these molasses factors, Nov. 7, 1972, is not really that far away. No President concerned with either re-election or posterity can ignore the pressure which that date imposes on his diplomacy.

This is not to say that the widely remarked change in evident Soviet readiness to negotiate—specifically, SALT, forces in Europe, Berlin—is simply a reflection of the American political calendar. It is to say that in Soviet-American dealings there is a continual unavoidable interaction of political and diplomatic signals. A readiness to negotiate can lie in the eye of the beholder. And that eye can be open or closed.

Last winter American officials were muttering that Soviet policy was frozen and would not unlimber until the Soviet party congress. At the congress (March 30), Mr. Brezhnev complained of "frequent zigzags in U.S. foreign policy . . . apparently connected with some kind of domestic political moves." Both complaints had some merit. But the point now is that we are in the post-congress, pre-election period, perhaps the best of all possible times for Soviet-American advance.

Certainly the atmosphere at least, is blooming. Faded from most respectable quarters is the clutching fear rampant last fall and winter that in those new Siberian missile holes, and in Syria, Cuba and Germany, we were seeing evidence of a Soviet determination to achieve strategic superiority and to capitalize on it politically at a moment of American withdrawal from the world power contest. More conspicuous now, on account of the latest swings of American spy satellites, plus various political indicators, is a sense that the United

States and the Soviet Union can perhaps do business after all.

On SALT; for instance, the change has been most notable and, because it has been mutual, most encouraging. Washington agreed to seek an ABM limit first; Moscow agreed to accept some linkage of offensive to defensive limits. What made possible Mr. Nixon's shift was satellite evidence showing that, contrary to earlier fears that holes were being dug for new supermissiles, the holes seem to be for better protection of old missiles (and for not too many of them). What made possible Mr. Brezhnev's shift? For one thing, no doubt, Mr. Nixon's.

On Berlin, the Kremlin evidently has stopped stonewalling and begun waffling on one key point at least enough to permit the long-stalled four power talks to take up the next. Whether this shift answers a past allied move or calls for a future allied move is, of course, a matter to negotiate.

On European force talks, the dynamic is different. For three years NATO had an offer outstanding. Last March 30, Mr. Brezhnev said, rather noncommitally, "we stand for" reductions. NATO dawdled and on May 14 he said, this time somewhat impatiently, "taste the wine . . . start negotiations." Mr. Brezhnev did not change or elucidate substance; he restated his position in terms and at a time of greater appeal.

On the Mideast, meanwhile, it can be said that the process of arranging an interim Suez Canal deal goes on.

Good diplomacy is the antithesis of speculation: time will show, and fairly soon, whether any of these extremely difficult questions can be successfully negotiated. At this time, we would only point out that what is at issue is not a general termination of Soviet-American rivalry but a number of specific agreements on how to conduct that rivalry at lesser mutual risk and cost. Soviet-American confrontation in that sense cannot fail to continue. Negotiation offers a way to ease it, not to put it to an end; but any easing of it would be better than leaving things the way they are.

BALTIMORE SUN - 31 MAY 1971 (1 JUNE)

Marquis Childs

# U.S. Taking Careful Steps Toward An Arms Agreement

Washington.

The date January 9, 1971, is
nit yet ringed in the history
books. But if hopes for an
agreement with Soviet Union
on the limitation of nuclear
arms are realized that will be
a day to remember.

The Soviet ambassador,
Anatoly F. Dobrynin, was
about to return to Moscow for
a session of the Politburo to
review Soviet-American rela-
tions. He was asked to come
to the White House to meet
with President Nixon. The
President gave him a personal
message to be delivered to
Premier Alexei Kosygin.

The message dealt with the
stalemate in the Strategic
Arms Limitation Talks at
Vienna and the urgent need
to break that stalemate to
check still another upward
spiral in the weapons of an-
nihilation. This was the start
of a series of exchanges be-
tween the President and the
Premier preparing the way
for the simultaneous announce-
ment in Moscow and Wash-
ington which Mr. Nixon hailed
as "a significant development
in breaking the deadlock."

High officials in the admin-
istration who have worked so
long and so hard for this
breakthrough have solid hope
for an agreement limiting de-
fensive missiles, with a sup-
plement setting specific num-
bers for offensive missiles, be-
fore the end of the year. The
anti-ballistic missile agree-
ment would be subject to Sen-
ate ratification. The supple-
ment on offensive missiles
would be covered by execu-
tive order.

The talks at Vienna have
just recessed to be resumed in
Helsinki in early July. The
chief U.S. delegate, Gerard C.
Smith, returned here to be
told of the imminent an-

nouncement of the break-
through shortly before Mr.
Nixon went on television to
dramatize it. Until agreement
was reached at the highest
level, the phrase in the Nixon
announcement, Vienna was
shrouded in deepest gloom.

Hope for an agreement is
based on the whole complex
of circumstances that led to
the breakthrough. The techni-
cal details of a potential
agreement were evolved out of
the 15 volumes on SALT and
the balance of strategic nu-
clear weapons compiled by
the staff of the President's ad-
viser on national security af-
fairs, Henry A. Kissinger. Dr.
Kissinger has devoted at least
three times as much thought
and energy in his 16 hour days
to SALT as to Vietnam.

The terms of a potential
agreement were put on the
table at one of the most mo-
mentous meetings in the his-
tory of the National Security
Council. Present were the
joint chiefs of staff. They pre-
viously had an opportunity to
review in detail what might
eventually come out of the
breakthrough. The verdict of
the joint chiefs was that the
contemplated agreement was
an acceptable risk.

This was, of course, of the
first importance since the bal-
ance of nuclear weaponry is
a matter of life and death for
nations and peoples. Further-
more, joint chiefs approval
would be essential for Sen-
ate ratification with both Dem-
ocratic and Republican hawks
certain to cast a cold sus-
picious eye on any agreement.

The technical details having
been spelled out on both sides,
either Washington or Moscow
in order to back out of the
potential break would have to
make a political move. That
would be a conspicuous turn
about after the top men had
gone so far. In the view of

those nursing the whole busi-
ness along for many months,
this is a responsibility that
neither side would want to as-
sume. Therein lies the hope for
what had seemed only a
month ago next to impossible.

Although many comment-
tors read dour and even
ominous meaning into the
speech by the Communist
party first secretary, Leonid I.
Brezhnev, at the party con-
gress at the end of March, this
was not the view of Dr. Kiss-
singer and his staff. They saw
intimations of the several
openings that may now lead
to astand-off-competitive co-
existence-between the two
systems.

Twice before this same hope
was rudely shattered. Once
was when the American U-2
spy plane was downed over
Sverdlovsk on the eve of a
summit meeting in Paris and
a visit by President Eisen-
hower to the Soviet Union in
return for Nikita Khru-
shchev's tour of the United
States. In August, 1968, Pres-
ident Johnson had his bags
packed to fly to a meeting
with Mr. Kosygin that would
formally open arms-control
talks. The Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia put an end to
that. It could happen again.
But those masterminding this
newest exercise are deter-
mined that it will succeed.

216

An *Editorial*

by George Rathjeus

# A BREAKTHROUGH IN ARMS CONTROL?

On March 29 Marvin Kalb of CBS News reported that the Soviet Union had tabled at the Vienna Strategic Arms Limitation Talks a draft treaty to limit ABM systems, and that the Administration intended to reject the offer. The Soviet initiative ought to be warmly welcomed as a basis for negotiation, but the reported negative U.S. response is a cause for concern.

The U.S. Safeguard ABM system squeezed by the Senate last year because many believed the "bargaining chip" argument: Safeguard was needed to strengthen the U.S. hand in its efforts to reach a SALT agreement. Unless the Administration's approach to SALT and the ABM can be changed, the effect could be just the opposite: the approval of Safeguard may not produce a SALT agreement; rather it may develop that SALT will have been used to get an ABM system.

There is a second point about the U.S. attitude that is at least as troublesome. Both those who share the Administration's stated concerns about possible Soviet developments that could imperil our strategic forces and those who more realistically discount the likelihood of erosion of our deterrent will find it hard to reconcile a negative reaction to the Soviet initiative with the United States' own proposals. At least one of these is reported to call for limitations on ABM and ceilings on numbers of offensive missiles *without* requiring limitations on qualitative improvements in the capabilities of the latter. The actual effect of an agreement along these lines and of one that initially would limit ABM alone should be compared.

Those who raise doubts about the viability of our deterrent forces generally cite the following possible developments as the basis for their concern: deployment by the Soviet Union of highly accurate multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs); increase in size of the Soviet ICBM force, particularly in the number of large missiles (SS-9s); breakthroughs by the Soviet Union in anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capability;

and Soviet deployment of a massive nationwide ABM system. It is argued that, assuming some combination of the first three developments, there would be a possibility of a Soviet attack that would destroy a very large fraction of our strategic forces; and, assuming the fourth development, that most of the U.S. missiles that could be launched in retaliation could be intercepted.

A severely restrictive ABM agreement, whether based on the aforementioned U.S. proposal or on the Soviet initiative, could allay the last concern. Neither proposal would deal with the MIRV problem (nor with the far less likely development by the Soviet Union of an effective ASW capability). Thus, the two approaches differ mainly only as regards ceilings on offensive missile levels, and at issue is how important is early agreement on such ceilings. The answer is that, in contrast to the situation as regards ABM, it is unimportant.

If an effective MIRV ban could be realized, it would be some years before we would need to be concerned about the survivability of Minuteman missiles, even if the Soviet Union continued to enlarge its ICBM force at present rates. On the other hand, if the Soviet Union develops and deploys MIRVs, our land-based missile force will be widely regarded as obsolete in a few years, whether or not the growth in the Soviet missile inventory is arrested. Although a severalfold growth in the Soviet missile inventory could be as worrisome as MIRV development and deployment or a massive ABM deployment, a 10 to 20 per cent increase would be of little military utility to the Soviet Union and ought to be of little concern to the United States. Moreover, the magnitude of any change in Soviet missile strength, and consequently its impact on the strategic balance, could be confidently estimated using available intelligence techniques. ABM deployments (or MIRV programs or breakthroughs in ASW capability) would introduce much larger uncertainties into the strategic calculus and so would be much more likely to lead to over-

217

4

218

reaction.

We find ourselves then in a situation where there
ours to be a good chance of coping by mutual
lement with the most serious threat to strategic
stability, ABM; and where the question of modest
increases in Soviet missile inventories is relatively
unimportant in the total scale of things. It is
reminiscent of the negotiations for the comprehen-
sive nuclear test ban, where we failed because we
could not resolve a difference over whether three
or seven on-site inspections would be permitted
— a difference that in retrospect seems trivial.

Clearly now, as then, a compromise is indicated.
One possibility would be an agreement on ABM
that could be terminated after a specified period
unless agreement had been reached on ceilings for
offensive missile forces or unless each side was satis-
fied that the other was not proceeding with further
deployment.

Actually, with the right kind of ABM agreement
incentive for either side to expand its offensive
missile forces or to put MIRVs on them would be
much reduced since, in the absence of concern about
adversary ABM deployment, each side could be
confident that it had an adequate deterrent even
if it believed that a large fraction of its strategic
forces might be destroyed by preemptive attack.
That of course is precisely why an ABM agreement
is so important.

Assuming the question of a linkage between of-
ensive and defensive limitations can be dealt with,
there remains the question of whether or not the
two nations could agree on the details of an ABM
agreement. From the American perspective a dis-
mantling of the Moscow defenses would be pre-
ferable, but with either that or an absolute freeze
on further deployment or modification we could be
confident that the Soviet Union could not suddenly
surprise us with a massive ABM system. If the
Soviets were to retain the Moscow system, the
quid pro quo could be a very limited American
ABM defense around our missile bases or the
Washington area or even no ABM at all. The im-
portant thing is that any agreement *not* permit the
widespread deployment of large phased-array radars
on either side, for in that case there would be
concern on the other side — albeit much of it
probably exaggerated — about possible sudden ex-
pansion through the introduction into the system
of quickly or clandestinely produced ABM inter-
ceptors or possibly surface-to-air missiles.

The opportunity for a breakthrough in arms con-
trol is very great, and the apparent differences
between the two sides seem small by comparison.
It is to be hoped that the political courage to sur-
mount them can be found. If it can not be, then
we ought to write off SALT lest on both sides we
eventually stockpile more expensive "bargaining
chips" such as Safeguard — chips that will serve
more to fuel the arms race than to facilitate reach-
ing agreement.

George W. Rathjens

June 1971 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 5

WASHINGTON POST 2 JUNE 71 P.19

Russian Roulette

Joseph Alsop

YOU MAY PLAY Russian roulette once, or even twice, with the odds against your putting a pistol bullet through your temple. But such successes in folly are very poor arguments for continuing to play Russian roulette.

As indicated in the last report in this space, the real story of the announced "important progress" in the SALT talks is by no means as hopeful as it has been made out. It is, therefore, rather important to note that we are again playing Russian roulette, not with a pistol, but with nuclear-strategic weapons.

Since the first American experiment with international Russian roulette has a role in our present, much bigger experiment, it requires brief notice. In the years before the 1960 election, the national intelligence estimates said two different things.

First, the estimates said that the Soviets were entirely capable of producing a decisive number of their rather primitive first-model intercontinental missiles by sometime in 1961.

Second, with increasing emphasis as the years went by, the estimates said that

the Russians were probably not producing these ICBMs.

The word "probably," too, has to be underlined, because there was no certainty. The U-2 planes then used for reconnaissance had too small a viewing-range.

CERTAINTY that the Soviets were not producing ICBMs in decisive numbers only began to be acquired in late November 1960, when the first reconnaissance satellite brought back its vastly more far-ranging views.

Failing to take any counter-action in the long years before certainty was acquired, was precisely like playing Russian roulette with the national future. This was the essence of President Kennedy's view of the "missile gap" in the election of 1960, and it remained his view after we finally learned that he had won that particular game of Russian roulette.

Yet this past success in Russian roulette is often used as an argument for the far more dangerous game we are now playing. It is more dangerous because a lot more wishfulness has crept into the analytic estimating process, and because the odds against a second success in international Russian roulette appear considerably poorer.

Here consider, once again, the still-unfolding story of the Soviet SS-9 missiles. When these huge brutes first began to be deployed in 1965, it was already part of the fairly idiotic American strategic doctrine that "counter-force" weapons were useless. Hence, the analysts at first flatly denied that the SS-9s could possibly be designed to destroy the backbone of U.S. nuclear power, the Minuteman missile system.

TIME ERODED this position. But it was repeatedly, and once again erroneously, predicted that no more SS-9s would be deployed. Now SS-9 deployment really has ceased after about four false prophecies. But now we have the problem of the out-sized new holes for missile silos that the Soviets are digging in great numbers.

There is no doubt at all that about a score of the new holes are for an even bigger brute than the SS-9 missile. Test facilities for such a missile have, in fact, been observed at the Soviet testing base at Tyuratam.

Currently, all sorts of wishful deductions are being made, however, from the fact that about two score of the new holes now appear to be intended for superhardened missiles of the SS-11 type. These have not been considered "counterforce" weapons to date, because the SS-11 warhead is only one and a half megatons, against 25 megatons

for the SS-9.

But in the first place, a quité modest increase in guidance-accuracy would make the SS-11 a perfectly good, though somewhat limited counter-force weapon. In the second place, the most likely bet is that the entirely new, far bigger Soviet missile, yet to be tested, will turn out to be a considerably stronger version of the SS-9, carrying up to 10 separately guidable warheads apiece. And finally, there is clear evidence that the SS-9s already in place are now being provided with multiple warheads.

IF ANY of the wishfully assessed "probabilities" turns out to be incorrect, the Soviets will, therefore, have in hand the means to break the backbone of our nuclear power, the Minuteman system. The same rules apply to the official argument that the very dense Soviet system of Tallinn missiles—1,200 launchers in all, with three missiles per launcher—is not, in fact, a concealed ABM system.

Here, almost the entire argument rests on the fact that the Tallinn sites show no signs of the usual Soviet methods of storing nuclear warheads! Here, in truth, we are risking our future on the particular meaning of the absence of sheds of a particular shape, so we are indeed playing Russian roulette.

© 1971. Los Angeles Times

219

WALL STREET JOURNAL 11 JUNE 1971

# What Does Russia Have in Mind?

221

By ROBERT L. BARTLEY

WASHINGTON — The poor souls charged with worrying about nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union have spent a breathless year on a roller-coaster.

Their spirits sagged as the Soviets built up their force of huge and dangerous SS-9 missiles, soared when SS-9 deployments suddenly stopped, plunged when satellite photographs showed a new speckling of huge missile silos and soared again when President Nixon and the Soviet leaders agreed to agree on the limitation of strategic arms.

The record is perhaps a caveat against the optimism that has prevailed since the President's May 20 SALT announcement. More importantly, this volatility is a sign of large things in the balance. We have arrived at a pregnant moment both in the strategic arms race and in Soviet-American relations generally.

In the past few years the Soviets, by building missiles at an astounding pace, have for the first time overcome the 25-year-old American superiority and achieved a rough parity in strategic weapons. At the same time they have been pressing boldly into the world with sharp initiatives in the Middle East and continuous probes elsewhere, just when the United States has been pulling back from the role of world dominance it assumed at the end of World War II.

## An Answer in July

The next round of strategic weapons talks, to resume July 8 in Helsinki, should answer the weighty question of whether the Soviets will stop their missile buildup with parity, and are willing to sign a pact giving up any notion of striking for a superiority of their own.

The answer to this immediate strategic question should also give some new hints about a second and even more basic one: What kind of people are the Russians anyway? Are they a dynamic and confident new nation bidding to supplant a fading United States? Or are they just as insecure as the Americans are, and just as eager to calm international tensions to deal with vexing problems at home? For these opposing viewpoints still stir a lively debate between men who have spent their lives studying the Russians.

Each hill and valley in the last year's roll-on-coaster ride has been used as fresh evidence in the debate, and there should be much more important indications when we learn what does happen at Helsinki and whether the Soviets continue their rapid missile deployments. That is not to say that all of the questions will be answered even by a successful arms pact, for no agreement now in sight would end the nuclear arms competition, and the kind of arrangements most likely to emerge would leave plenty of room for argument here at home.

Still, the May 20 joint statement does point to a willingness to come to at least some agreement. After the announcement, White House sources stressed that the basic political decisions had been made on both sides, and they predicted faster progress as soon as the talks resume. They declined to go into detail on the type of pact expected, however, except to point to the joint announcement itself—that negotiators would concentrate on limiting defensive weapons, but that “together with” this agreement they would take “certain measures” limiting offensive weapons as well.

From the American viewpoint, the key issue in the strategic balance is the SS-9, which can carry a warhead of 25 megatons, compared to 1 to 2 megatons for the U.S. Minuteman. This also means that if both eventually were equipped with multiple warheads, the SS-9 could carry many times more. Thus even if the number of missile launchers on

each side were equal, the Soviets could theoretically achieve a considerable advantage. This would be especially true if a pact limited defensive missiles, since the American ABM is designed to protect the Minuteman missiles against a first strike by a multiple-warhead SS-9.

Thus American negotiators have pressed for a separate limit on SS-9 sized launchers

within a numerical limit on total missiles. Informed speculation suggests, however, that a pact might simply limit defensive missiles and total offensive land-based launchers, with the SS-9 sub-limit issue resolved by little more than a unilateral United States declaration that it would consider the agreement undetermined if the Soviets started to replace their older missiles with SS-9s. Those suspicious of the Soviets are likely to regard this as cool comfort, and in any event some strategic specialists are gloomy about the long-range implications of any pact that limits defense more sharply than offense.

All the same even so limited an agreement would mean the Soviets were willing to accommodate American views at least 16 some extent. In particular, they have plausibly argued that European-based American aircraft should be considered strategic weapons because they could reach the Soviet Union, and this argument would not be reflected in the type of pact now in sight. If such a pact can in fact be consummated, the world outlook would be quite different from the prospect if no pact results and the Soviets continue to expand their SS-9 force at the rate they have maintained over the past several years.

## The Experts' View

How a SALT agreement would reflect on Soviet ambitions in the world can perhaps best be seen by looking at the views of American experts on Russia. The experts come up with quite a range of ultimate conclusions about Soviet motives, even though they agree on most of the underlying particulars.

Those relatively relaxed about the Soviets nevertheless agree, for example, that there is a basic hostility between the Soviet system and the American one. Those uneasy, about the Soviets will nevertheless agree that the USSR has been showing a new interest in diplomatic initiatives, especially since the 24th Soviet Communist Party Congress this spring. Since then the Soviets have not only agreed to the joint SALT announcement, but have expressed new interest in an agreement on Berlin and in talks about a mutual reduction of forces in Europe.

The experts uniformly agree that the Soviets probably have not reached any crisp decisions about either their strategic posture or their exact global aims. Such things are decided less by conscious decisions than by changing moods and nuances. One analyst remarks, "They probably have some problem articulating to themselves what their role should be in the world 10 years from now or 15 years from now."

Observers also agree that there is a complete consensus among Soviet leaders on the need for at least parity with the United States in nuclear weapons. They agree that some Soviet leaders also see psychological and diplomatic advantages in nuclear superiority that would tip the balance of power in the Soviet direction, and assume that other Soviet leaders are more interested in concentrating efforts instead on domestic problems.

The Soviet economy is by far the most important of these problems, it's further agreed. Economic growth seemed to be recovering in the years immediately after the Khrushchev overthrow, but has run into new trouble since 1968. The growth rate in the industrial sector sagged to 7% in 1969 from 8.1% in 1968 and 10% in 1967, for example. In 1968 agricultural production actually declined 3% from a year earlier.

Over the long run the Soviets must demonstrate that their economic system can compete successfully with Western ones, and they must also somehow deal with rising demands for consumer goods. Both of these requirements compete for resources with high military spending, and this creates important pressure toward constraining nuclear weapons.

There is also a long list of other problems that the Kremlin might conceivably feel more comfortable about if arms competition were restrained—the Chinese threat, potentially explosive discontent in Eastern Europe, a technological lag behind the West, dissent by Rus-

sian intellectuals, the chance of inducing Western Europe to put less emphasis on defense. These items are commonly cited by American analysts, but no one seems confident about their weight in the Soviet mind.

Finally, the Soviet Union may see the possibility of a SALT pact that gives them some advantage or another, such as curbing an American technical lead in ABMs. Or the Soviets may merely be satisfied with a treaty guaranteeing them equality with the United States, which despite rising sentiment against defense expenditures still represents an economy twice the size of the Soviet one. One observer notes, "They are still very much impressed by the American production line and American technology."

Where the experts start to disagree sharply is on the weight of all these influences relative to that of Communist ideology and Russian nationalism. "The doctrinaire nature of Soviet communism boils out of every pore," someone tells you. A few days later and a few floors away, someone else reports, "I don't think they think about us in ideological terms very much."

Most close observers agree that the ideological component in Soviet thought has declined over the years, but a typical remark cites "strong lingering ideological impulses." These impulses may even be on the upswing as cultural divisions in Western nations and Communist gains in Chile appear to make long-standing Marxist-Leninist dogma once again credible.

Still other observers say that Communist ideology isn't that important, that with or without communism the Russians are starting a phase of "great power dynamism." They are coming to feel they have a right to throw their weight around in the world, and are exhibiting "a strong streak of self-righteousness." Particularly against the American mood of retrenchment, such feelings are likely to lead the world into difficult times.

These viewpoints are equally diverse when applied to SALT and the May 20 agreement to agree. One expert believes the Soviets have for sometime been trying to improve relations with the West, and that the key SALT movement was the American decision to allow some slight separation between the issues of defensive and offensive weapons.

(CONTINUED)

Others believe that the Soviets want to guarantee parity with the U.S. and save a few billions to invest in their economy, and have accordingly decided to negotiate a strategic arms pact so long as they aren't forced to make any really important concessions.

## Merely a 'Cosmetic'?

Yet another observes that the May 20 announcement was not substantive but "cosmetic." Because everyone agreed that SALT couldn't go on much longer without some signs of progress, the two sides had to come out of the latest round with a little something. And while the Soviet pressures toward agreement are strong enough to prevent the collapse of the talks, it remains to be seen whether they are strong enough to lead to any agreement except one that gives them clear advantages.

When a pretty-much-agreed set of facts produces this range of views among experts, the poor layman can be excused almost any bewilderment. But in the next six months the confusion may start to clear a bit, as we find out what actually does result from the Helsinki talks, and as we learn what missiles the Russians test to put in that latest sprinkling of holes.

Even then we will by no means have all the answers, of course, but we ought to know a good deal more than we do now not only about the strategic outlook, portentous enough in itself, but about such questions as the ideological content of Soviet thought, the Russian ambitions in the world and the shape of the era that succeeds that of American dominance.

Mr. Bartley, a member of the Journal's Washington bureau, contributes editorials and other commentary. This is the first of four articles discussing strategic weapons and the U.S.-Soviet arms talks.

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WALL STREET JOURNAL 21 JUNE 1971

2

# How Much Money Will SALT Save?

By RICHARD J. LEVINE

WASHINGTON The recent U.S.-Soviet announcement of progress in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, or SALT, has prompted considerable optimism and discussion. But one harsh possibility has generally escaped public notice: An initial agreement slowing the nuclear arms race would shrink the Pentagon's budget requests very little, if at all.

If, as is widely anticipated here, a SALT agreement does emerge later this year, congressional critics will certainly cite it as support for their argument that the defense budget be cut so that domestic spending may increase. But many Pentagon planners, even now, disagree with that prospect. And significantly, a recent analysis of the military budget by a prestigious independent research organization notes that any immediate savings from SALT are likely to be slim.

Though there haven't been any Pentagon pronouncements on the likely budget implications of SALT, defense officials caution privately against expectations of "dramatic" cutbacks in defense spending. The most probable result of a SALT accord, they stress, would be avoidance of major increases in future budgets. A damper on some phases of the arms race, they say, could allow them to safely slow development programs for such new strategic weapons as the B1 bomber and the Undersea Long-range Missile System, known as ULMS, a new missile-firing submarine.

## Analyzing the Budget

Much the same points are made in a detailed analysis of President Nixon's new budget, "Setting National Priorities: The 1972 Budget," written by former Budget Director Charles L. Schultze and three other staff members of the Brookings Institution.

"The possibility of a decline in the strategic budget looms dim," the study found. "A SALT agreement of the type that now seems most likely wouldn't have much effect in reducing U.S. strategic spending over the next three or four years ... but an agreement could keep the (strategic) budget from rising much above (the current level)."

The reason the budget for strategic forces (bombers, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, missile-firing submarines, bomber and missile defenses) might not shrink much lies in the probable shape of any initial arms pact hammered out when negotiators resume in Helsinki next month. Moreover, even if strategic spending decreased, the impact on the overall Pentagon budget wouldn't be as great as is generally assumed. "Our big costs aren't in the strategic area any more," explains a Pentagon official. "They're in people."

Indeed, strategic forces consume a relatively small portion of the $71.2 billion defense budget for fiscal 1972, which starts July 1. The Pentagon estimates their direct cost at $7.6 billion.

When such indirect costs as research and development, training, administration, intelligence supply and maintenance are included, the Brookings Study figures, the total cost goes to $19.7 billion—still orly about 25% of the budget. Moreover, the Brookings analysis concludes that many of these indirect costs "would change very little in response to changes in either the number of strategic systems or their composition."

By contrast, the direct cost of general-purpose, or conventional, forces is estimated at $24.3 billion for the coming fiscal year. This is up almost $8 billion from eight years ago, when the force was slightly larger, mainly because of pay raises and inflation. In fact, one of the Pentagon's most pressing problems is the rapidly rising cost of civilian and military manpower. Today, personnel costs make up 52% of the defense budget, compared with 31% in 1964, and they are expected to climb to more than 60% by the mid-1970s.

In a sense, defense officials feel they are caught in a vicious circle. With manpower costs escalating, they keep searching for

ways to cut manpower; by mid-1973, the armed forces will probably be down to 2.3 million men from 2.8 million today and 3.5 million at the Vietnam war peak. But if this smaller force is to be effective, defense planners insist, it must pack a bigger punch. Therefore, they must request expensive modernization of planes, tanks, tactical missiles and ships.

Even with an arms accord, many Pentagon officials anticipate rising defense budgets in the decade ahead, as payrolls go up to attract and hold volunteers and as increasingly complicated and expensive weapons are built. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird has indicated that the Pentagon would be doing well to hold its budget to a fixed percentage (about 7%) of a rising Gross National Product.

A key point about SALT is that any initial accord surely won't ban "qualitative" improvements and the substitution of more modern weapons systems in the U.S. and Soviet arsenals. Indications here are that the best that can be expected is a ceiling on the number of defensive missiles in rival antiballistic missile systems, or ABMs, and on the number of offensive land-based missiles. It is unclear whether a first-step agreement would place limits on strategic bombers and submarine-launched missiles; these are questions the negotiators will perhaps leave for later. Thus, under an initial agreement the arms race would continue—though at a somewhat slower pace—as the suspicious superpowers upgraded the quality of their weaponry.

Still, a limit on ABMS would produce some real savings. The current four-site Safeguard system for which the administration has requested approval and partial funding would cost $7.1 billion, and their full 12-site system currently carries a $14.8 billion price tag. But when one attempts to measure the impact of a SALT agreement on the rest of the strategic budget, things get a bit fuzzy.

## Increased Intelligence Spending?

Indeed, the Brookings Institution study predicts that, in the event of an arms pact, "the U.S. probably would increase spending on intelligence collection and research and development as a hedge against Soviet cheating or a possible breakdown of the agreement." A SALT accord, the study somberly notes, "could be as much an argument for spending on permitted activities as an argument against such spending, depending on the kind of technical problems that arose as well as on the overall state of East-West relations."

Pentagon observers believe it's likely that development work would go forward on such programs as advanced warheads for ICBMs and a new ABM defense that features more numerous radars, as well as on the B1 and ULMS submarine. Furthermore, it's expected that new strategic weapons just beginning to enter the operational inventory would continue to be added to it.

In the latter category are the fearsome multiple independently targetable warheads known as MIRVs. The U.S. is in the midst of equipping some 500 of its 1,000 land-based Minuteman missiles and 31 of the 41 Polaris subs with MIRVs. The two conversion programs will cost almost $13 billion, and since the Russians are building an MIRV capability there is little chance that the U.S. programs will be halted.

The futures of the B1 and the ULMS, in much earlier stages than MIRV, are a little more difficult to divine.

The Air Force is pressing hard for a fleet of some 200 B1 bombers, conservatively estimated to cost $10.5 billion, as a badly needed replacement for the aging B52 fleet. But this program has a host of critics in and out of Congress who think it folly to build a new bomber in an age of sophisticated missiles. And the administration has loosely linked a decision on whether to produce the B1 to the outcome of the SALT talks.

For now, the bomber project is drawing

most of its strength from the administration's continuing commitment to maintaining three separate strategic weapons systems—land-based missiles, bombers and missile submarines. In his foreign policy report earlier this year, President Nixon reiterated the familiar rationale for this "triad" concept, asserting that it "provides insurance against surprise enemy technological breakthroughs or unforeseen operational failures and complicates the task of planning attacks on us."

An initial SALT pact, Pentagon insiders concede, could slow development of the ULMS submarine—potentially the most costly procurement program in Pentagon history—but there are few experts who believe it won't be built eventually.

Navy officers indicate that Polaris submarine hulls have a safe and useful life of 25 to 30 years. And they view ULMS, which would be able to hurl missiles at least 5,000 miles, as a necessary and logical replacement for Polaris. Like Polaris, the giant ULMS submarines will be virtually impossible to detect and destroy—an invulnerability that bombers and land-based missiles clearly lack.

Perhaps most significant for the fate of ULMS, however, is the program's strong backing in Congress, especially among dovish lawmakers who favor moving the nation's entire nuclear deterrent to sea. Even at $15 billion or more, they believe ULMS would save money if the Pentagon could be convinced to abandon the land-based missile and bomber in favor of a "blue water" strategy.

(CONTINUED)

There are of course many defense critics,
in and out of Congress, who advocate deep
cutbacks in Pentagon budgets regardless of
the outcome of the SALT negotiations.

Consider, for example, the position of the
National Urban Coalition, which is dedicated
to revitalizing the nation's cities. It recently
published a lengthy paper on military spend-
ing as part of its proposed "counterbudget"
for the federal government. The report, writ-
ten by former Pentagon employe Robert S.
Benson, argues that the $7.6 billion strategic
budget for fiscal 1972 could be cut to $5.3 bil-
lion and to $3.1 billion by fiscal 1976.

No matter what happens at SALT, the co-
alition believes the Pentagon should, among
other things, scrap its 54 land-based Titan
missiles, halt immediately efforts to put
MIRV warheads on Minuteman, stop "alto-
gether" the Safeguard ABM program and
phase out by the middle of 1973 two-thirds of
the bomber force.

"The foundation of our strategic deter-
rence in the 1970s should be a Polaris-Pose-
idon fleet," the coalition asserts. Along this
line, it recommends heavy funding for ULMS
development but delay of a production de-
cision until it becomes clear that the Soviets
are making significant strides in antisubma-
rine warfare techniques.

A Pentagon Argument

Such radical surgery on the strategic
forces, the Pentagon would argue, amounts to
unilateral disarmament that could danger-
ously weaken national security. And even in
the current antimilitary atmosphere on Capi-
tol Hill, the National Urban Coalition pro-
gram seems likely to attract scant support.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon might find it a
bit difficult to convince Congress, in the
warm afterglow of a SALT pact, that the de-
fense budget shouldn't shrink a little—if only
to symbolize the "new era" devoted to the
"works of peace" of which President Nixon
has spoken.

But it's a good bet that the Pentagon,
which never seems to have quite enough
money for men or machines, would try. And
given the arithmetic and structure of the de-
fense budget, the Pentagon might well suc-
ceed.

Mr. Levine, a member of the Journal's
Washington bureau, covers military af-
fairs. This is the third of four articles dis-
cussing strategic weapons and the U.S.
Soviet armes talks.

225

226

IV

Progress in these directions is not likely, however, if we neglect
the present relationship between force and politics. Much cur-
rent discussion on this point appears to be polarized between
preserving the faith in military superiority as the guarantor of
our security, and a strong tide of indiscriminate antimilitarism.
What is needed—although admittedly difficult in the present
acerbic climate—is a more measured judgment of our military
needs, both nuclear and conventional, in the light of a broader
conception of our true security interests.

For more than a year and a half, the Soviet Union and the
United States have been engaged in Strategic Arms Limitation
Talks—but meanwhile, the nuclear arms competition has con-
tinued to spiral upward, into new and more unstable weapons
systems. The fault lies in the absence of an effective political
leadership in either Russia or America capable of presiding with
common sense over the pressures of military services and new war
technologies. In the absence of a political judgment to cry
enough, military procurement in both countries tends to be de-
termined by interservice competition, compounded by misplaced
prudence and bargaining zeal on the part of civilian planners.
A continuation of the nuclear competition means less security for
both nations, since many of the weapons now coming into sight
are less stable, more costly and more tension-producing.

One barrier to a leveling off and reduction in the strategic
competition is the argument—perhaps rationalization would be
more accurate—that further strengthening of our military posi-
tion improves our bargaining position, increasing the incentive
for the adversary to negotiate an agreement. The effect, on the
contrary, has been to provide dynamism for the military compe-
tition.

It has been psychologically difficult for the United States to
accept the loss of its accustomed nuclear superiority, and its
West European allies wonder aloud whether the American
guarantee will be effective under conditions of parity. The
mythology of nuclear weapons has not yet absorbed the realiza-
tion that superiority has no practical meaning in any real
context. The argument that parity would increase the Soviet
propensity to take additional risks, or diminish the American
resolution in responding, ignores the fundamental inhibitions of
mutual deterrence, which are not substantially changed by dis-
parities in the respective arsenals. The technical advantages of

(CONTINUED)

227

one system against another can be argued, but to allow these tech-
nical arguments to dominate policy-making in this field is to lose
a sense of proportion about the limited usefulness of nuclear
arsenals, however sophisticated.

In any rational perspective, security in the realm of strategic
weapons would be best served by a stable equilibrium at as
moderate a level as can be managed through explicit or tacit
agreement with our adversaries. On this point, the interests of
the two countries are not opposed, but on neither side is this fact
yet fully appreciated.

Because conventional weapons are more closely related to
political effects, the competition in this field is even more diffi-
cult to regulate. The hard question posed by the growth and
global deployment of Soviet conventional forces, particularly
at a time when the British military presence in Asia and in the
Indian Ocean is being contracted, is whether an imbalance may
develop in the next few years which will tempt the Soviet Union
to use its forces in unstable and conflicted parts of the world
to influence the outcome of political processes, whether by in-
direct pressure, military assistance or direct involvement.

If there is to be any possibility of moving toward moderating
rules of engagement in the intermediate zones, rather than toward
international anarchy and unbridled competition, as suggested
earlier, it is evident that sanctions must be present in the form of
military equilibrium in the regions involved. Only if the forces
in the area are reasonably in balance, preferably at the lowest
levels possible, are they likely to perform the function of
negating each other—an extension to the conventional field of
the balance of mutual deterrence.

What this implies is a more differentiated approach to the
problem of conventional military capabilities than is now
represented in the domestic debates. Military means cannot be
our main reliance in seeking to maintain the non-hostile world
environment necessary to our own security; other forms of
power—diplomatic, cultural, political, economic, the successful
resolution of our domestic problems—are more effective means
of creating a favorable world environment. But in the present
international system, military equilibrium, both general and
local, is a necessary condition for the free and non-violent un-
folding of processes of change. If we wish to move toward a
world in which force does not dominate politics, a world of free
access and nonintervention, we cannot escape the painful con-
clusion that a balance of conventional forces is needed.

The question that the United States faces is not whether to
be a presence in the world but what kind of a presence. The
values we wish to realize in our society will not maintain their
vitality if we allow ourselves to become isolated in a hostile
world. This can result as much from the neglect as from the
abuse of power. What is required is restraint and wisdom in
the use of power, toward ends consistent with the international
order toward which we would like to see the world evolve.

WASHINGTON POST 4 JULY 1971

228

ABM Pact
Is Better
Than None

By Peter J. Ognibene

Ognibene, a freelance writer on military and political affairs, was formerly on the political science faculty at the Air Force Academy.

THE FOURTH ROUND of the strategic arms limitation talks begins in Helsinki next Thursday, with its ultimate goal a comprehensive agreement limiting offensive as well as defensive nuclear weapons.

But that goal does not—nor should it—preclude American acceptance of one part of that desired two-pronged accord: an unconditional agreement on the limitation of antiballistic missiles (ABM).

The public statements of the Nixon administration, however, indicate that it will not accept an ABM limitation unless it is linked with "certain measures with respect to the limitation of offensive strategic weapons." There is nothing on the record to indicate that the administration has backed away from its hard-shell opposition to an ABM-only agreement. But continuing that opposition makes no sense.

The technology used by the Soviet Union to build its ABM system is more than a decade old. That system has become obsolete. American nuclear strategists, in and out of government, appear to be unanimous in their judgment that the Soviet ABM system could be penetrated or overwhelmed with ease.

Indeed, the very first Polaris/ Poseidon submarine, the James Madison, which went on station in April, carries 16 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Each of these can carry 10 nuclear warheads which can be independently targeted. These 160 warheads on just one ship—the first of 31 existing Polaris submarines planned for conversion during the next five years—are obviously more than enough to exhaust the entire Soviet ABM system of 64 Galosh missiles, even if one makes the extravagant assumption that each Russian ABM will destroy one warhead.

A second Polaris/Poseidon submarine joined the fleet in May and the first 90 of 550 Minuteman ICBMs were converted to carry three nuclear warheads, each of which can be aimed at a separate target. Thus in the space of two months, the United States in-

creased its nuclear delivery capability through the addition of enough multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) to overwhelm, by attrition alone, the present Soviet ABM system as well as any other that could reasonably be expected in the near future.

In last year's ABM debate the Nixon administration claimed that the Safeguard ABM system was needed as a "bargaining chip" at SALT. That claim has little basis in fact because the United States has no ABM system in being to bargain against the Soviet Union's: What it does have is the potential to build an ABM system. That potential can be maintained by continuing funds for research and development alone. It is not necessary to deploy the so-called "bargaining chip."

The administration has asked Congress for $1.28 billion for the continuation of Safeguard deployment in fiscal 1972. That is a quarter of a billion dollars more than Congress authorized last year. The principal justification for Safeguard, according to Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, is "protection of our land-based retaliatory forces against a direct attack by the Soviet Union." Specifically, this means protecting a portion of the 1,000 Minuteman and 54 Titan ICBMs in hardened silos dispersed throughout the interior of the United States. Yet the only Soviet weapon which might conceivably become a threat to the survival of these missiles is some future version of the Soviet SS-9 ICBM or a newer, large-payload missile equipped with MIRV warheads.

Secretary Laird has pointed out that "although the Soviets probably have no MIRVed missiles operational at the present time, MRVs have been tested many times on the SS-9 since August, 1968." In other words, there is no present threat to America's Minuteman ICBMs, but there might be in the future if the Soviet Union deploys a larger ICBM force equipped with MIRV warheads.

## MRV and MIRV

THE ARCANE LANGUAGE of the Pentagon has succeeded in blurring the significant differences between MIRV and MRV and what each implies with respect to the strategic nuclear balance. MRVs cannot be precisely aimed, and hence, they are not a threat to hardened targets such as Minuteman ICBMs. MRVs are definitely more dangerous to cities than are single warheads, but this is entirely a consequence of nuclear physics. For example, an SS-9 with three 5-megaton warheads reasonably, but not precisely, dispersed across a large urban-industrial area (such as New York or Los

(CONTINUED)

Angeles) would wreak more extensive destruction on that area than would the so-called "monster missile" (an SS-9 with one 25-megaton warhead) in spite of an actual 40 per cent reduction in megatonnage.

MRVs also complicate the ABM-intercept problem, and it should be remembered that when the Soviet Union first tested MRVs in 1968, the United States was planning to build the Sentinel ABM system to provide limited ballistic missile defense for some cities. When the Nixon administration in 1969 switched to the Safeguard concept (protecting ICBMs), the Pentagon abruptly changed its interpretation of the SS-9 with MRVs. Instead of regarding it as the "city-buster" it actually is, the Pentagon began insisting it had become a "silo-buster."

While this new interpretation clearly was used to bolster the case for Safeguard, there seems to be no objective basis for it. Unless multiple warheads can be independently targeted with precision—the SS-9 with MRVs cannot—they cannot be reliably used against hardened targets such as underground Minuteman missile silos. Thus, a competent strategist must consider the SS-9 with MRVs to be a second-strike weapon and not a first-strike weapon. (Additional support for this view appears in a Pentagon-sponsored study by the TRW Corp., according to a Washington Post article on June 17.)

## A Weighty Assumption

THUS, THE SS-9/MIRV threat which was used two years ago to sell Congress on the Safeguard program has failed to materialize. What, then, is the justification for continuing deployment of Safeguard? It certainly cannot be rationalized on current or imminent Soviet capabilities. It can only be based upon the extreme assumption that the Soviet Union intends to make massive increases in her nuclear arsenal so that she will attain the capability to destroy virtually all American ICBMs on a first strike. The process by which the Pentagon has arrived at such an assumption is not at all clear.

Secretary of Defense Laird has said that the Soviet Union could have "more than 1,900 re-entry vehicles in its ICBM force by the mid-1970s," and that "this force, alone, would be more than enough to destroy all U.S. cities of any substantial size." One can only speculate about why Laird chose to use such scare talk. The Soviet Union has now, has had for a considerable time, and will continue to have in the future the nuclear firepower to obliterate all major American population centers.

As for that speculative figure of 1,900 Soviet re-entry vehicles, it is not terribly impressive in comparison to the administration's actual plans for a five-year MIRV build-up. The planned Polaris-to-Poseidon conversion will result in 4,960 MIRV warheads in addition to a remaining 160 Polaris SLBMs. After the five-year buildup, the Minuteman ICBM force with MIRV will account for 2,100 MIRV and single warheads. Thus, on the basis of the Pentagon's publicly announced plans and its estimates of Soviet intentions, the United States is headed for an almost 4-to-1 advantage in deliverable missile warheads. Knowing this, the Soviet Union has an incentive to try to offset her future disadvantage through more extensive arms increases. She may already have begun.

Earlier this year, Secretary Laird issued ominous reports of new Soviet missile silos under construction. At latest public count there were some 60 under construction, but not all of them were sufficient in diameter to accommodate an SS-9, as Pentagon reports had implied early on. Approximately half of the new holes appear to be designed to contain the SS-11, a missile similar to Minuteman which has a warhead in the neighborhood of one megaton. While any increase in nuclear weapons by either side must be considered, a fortiori, as undesirable, the dimensions of the apparent Soviet buildup are relatively modest compared to American MIRV deployments already undertaken.

## Superiority Unattainable

THERE IS A central reality to the nuclear era that cannot be obscured by exercises in warhead numbers. Simply stated, no matter who strikes first, the other side will still possess enough nuclear power to destroy the other. This is the "balance of terror." It is the basis of mutual deterrence, and it cannot be upset by small shifts in the force structure of either side. As a result, no rational man would ever launch a nuclear war because he could not possibly "win" anything worth his country's destruction in return.

Nuclear superiority—that mythic quality of being able to strike first in such overwhelming force that the enemy is incapable of dealing you "unacceptable damage" in return—may have been attainable in the early 1950s, but it has long since become a chimera. The Soviet Union has proven repeatedly in the past that she can and will match any American increase in nuclear weapons, and there is no reason to assume she will not try to offset the increases resulting from the two American MIRV programs.

Poseidon and Minuteman 2 are provocative in the extreme because they will vastly increase American targeting and retargeting capabilities and make it appear that the United States is trying to acquire a first-strike posture. Yet, in the long run more nuclear weapons will not contribute to either nation's security. They will only produce a senseless doubling, tripling, or quadrupling of nuclear arms levels on both sides.

The best hope to get us out of the all-too-familiar arms race spiral is SALT. The most promising path at SALT is to agree first on an unconditional ABM accord.

The administration has apparently rejected this strategy, claiming that the interrelationship of offensive and defensive nuclear weapons dictates that only a comprehensive pact be accepted. Yet, it is precisely this interrelationship which makes it possible to limit nuclear weapons in separate and (one hopes) consecutive agreements. This reasoning holds true even for the case where an ABM-only agreement is not followed by one limiting offensive nuclear weapons.

If an initial ABM-only agreement were not followed by one limiting ICBM and MIRV weapons, each side could offset any ICBM or MIRV increase with similar increases of its own. This is possible because the Safeguard ABM, like MIRV, is a counterforce weapon. (Counterforce is simply defined as anything which either eliminates or reduces the effectiveness of an adversary's weapons.) MIRV warheads are designed to destroy missiles before they leave their silos; Safeguard is designed to destroy those that have been launched. The end result in both cases is identical: the destruction of a Soviet ICBM. No matter where that destruction occurs, it is counterforce.

Also, Safeguard, like MIRV, is supposed to increase the number of American missiles or warheads which will survive a first strike so that more will be left to fire in retaliation. Both of these functions (counterforce and warhead survival) can be maintained by adjustments in offensive force levels (ICBM and MIRV) if an ABM-only agreement is not later followed by one limiting offensive arms.

The Safeguard ABM system fulfills no strategic purpose that could not be fulfilled by changes in offensive weapons. Consequently, it is impossible to understand why the administration has not relented on its demand that an ABM agreement must be linked in some fashion with one on offensive weapons. Such a link is devoid of military purpose, and it might well prove to be an insurmountable political barrier to concluding the comprehensive arms agreement that Mr. Nixon and his countrymen desire.

NEW YORK TIMES 4 JULY 1971 (7)

The Amchitka Affair...

Amchitka is a remote, uninhabited island more than a thousand miles west of Anchorage, Alaska. It is the site chosen by the Atomic Energy Commission for this country's biggest underground nuclear test. Intended to be the warhead for the Spartan antiballistic missile, the nuclear device when detonated will set off an explosion with the force of five million tons of TNT. That is approximately 250 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

This explosion, now scheduled for October, is potentially an ecological catastrophe. During the underground testing which the A. E. C. has conducted since the partial nuclear test ban treaty of 1963, about one in every dozen explosions accidentally produces some radioactivity which is detectable in the air away from the test site. Although the Amchitka device is to be exploded in rock at a depth of nearly 6,000 feet, there is a small but unavoidable risk that accidental venting may occur.

There is a larger and more ominous risk that radioactivity may seep through rock beneath the island's surface and reach the Bering Sea. Since the fear of mercury poisoning has already driven swordfish off the market, it would be a devastating blow to the nation's seafood industry if Alaska salmon were to become contaminated with radioactivity.

Amchitka lies in an area of the North Pacific where earthquakes frequently occur, as Alaska and Japan have learned to their sorrow. Senator Gravel of Alaska has articulated the widespread concern in his state that the nuclear explosion, which in itself will have the force equivalent to a major earthquake, will in turn "trigger" a natural earthquake with incalculable consequences.

It is not easy for laymen to weigh the ecological risks against the contention of the A. E. C. and the Defense Department that the nuclear test is necessary for national security. But there are scientific developments which argue strongly that the Amchitka tests should at least be postponed.

...and Arms Control

The consensus of scientists at a conference on test detection at Woods Hole, Mass., a year ago was that improved scientific methods now make it possible to distinguish all but the smallest underground explosions from natural earthquake activity. If that is true, the United States no longer has to insist upon on-site inspections and the way is open for a treaty banning underground nuclear tests. That would make the Amchitka test unnecessary and would close the major gap in the partial nuclear test ban treaty of 1963.

However, the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Defense Department, which sponsored the Woods Hole conference, is reluctant to agree with this scientific judgment. The agency withdrew from publication the original summary of this meeting and subsequently issued a much more negative summary of its own which concluded that "much research has yet to be done to resolve the discrimination problems" between explosions and earthquakes.

Senator Case of New Jersey has now released letters from six leading seismologists who participated in the conference asserting that the original summary was accurate and rebutting the Defense Department's interpretation. Senator Case accuses the Pentagon bureaucracy of trying to manage and censor scientific opinion which goes counter to existing policy.

The critically important Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) with the Soviet Union are designed to bring a halt to the expensive and dangerous nuclear arms race, specifically with regard to antiballistic missiles. It would be irresponsible to run the ecological risks involved in the Amchitka test if improved scientific methods of detection put an enforceable ban on underground explosions within reach of the SALT negotiators. Such a ban would contribute far more to the security of all mankind than any successful weapons test. A decision by President Nixon to defer the Amchitka test pending the outcome of the SALT talk would be an act of environmental as well as diplomatic prudence.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR 8 JULY 1971

231

Arms talks
resume with
'morale boost'

By a staff correspondent of
The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

U.S. and Soviet delegates to the strategic-arms-limitation talks (SALT) start their fifth session in Helsinki Thursday (July 8) with more governmental support than they have been accustomed to in the past.

Confidence that progress may yet come in the often snail-like pace and results of the talks, going on since November, 1969, in Helsinki and Vienna, received a major boost May 20 in the form of the joint U.S.-Soviet communiqué on this year's SALT agreement.

Terming it a "significant development in breaking the deadlock," President Nixon announced from this side of the world that the two powers had agreed to concentrate discussion in 1971 on limitation of antiballistic-missile systems (ABM) and, with conclusion of such an agreement, to take up limitation of offensive strategic weapons.

The United States had recently been insisting that there be no agreement without inclusion of offensive weapons, while the Soviets had been insisting that ABMs be limited or abolished first.

Agency estimates cost

Hopes are high among all those interested in world disarmament that the SALT forum now may allow zeroing in on the important specifics. The U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency estimates that $204 billion was spent worldwide last year on arms.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union since early

spring has been talking about another discussion strategy for a nuclear-arms curb. The Soviets distributed official notes in June to the five atomic powers (the United States, Soviet Union, France, Britain, and Communist China) suggesting that all convene to discuss nuclear disarmament. Presumably nuclear testing and bomb production would be included. The Soviets, urging essentially "the sooner the better," say they are open to site suggestions.

The U.S. response has been cautious. James Leonard, the U.S. delegate to the Geneva disarmament conference, said the United States would welcome disarmament talks in which all nuclear powers took part "in a manner satisfactory to all of those states and in a manner reflecting the interests and concerns as well of nonnuclear-weapon states." Presumably, before full endorsement of the idea, the United States seeks to satisfy itself that the proposal is a serious one and not just a forum for propaganda efforts.

Position unjelled

The Communist Chinese position on the proposal is similarly unjelled. Traditionally, the Chinese have argued that any such conference should be participated in by every nation in the world.

Neither the Chinese nor the French take part in the Geneva disarmament conference, now 26 members strong, which has been meeting since 1962. China is not a member, while France has opted simply not to attend.

At the moment the Geneva conference, which succeeded in concluding the nuclear nonproliferation treaty of 1968, is wrestling with a draft treaty to outlaw biological weapons. Although year after year a ban on nuclear testing is discussed in Geneva, the issue is stymied on the point of verification.

The U.S. argues that on-site inspection is necessary since underground tests and earthquakes are indistinguishable on the Richter scale if below No. 4 in intensity. The Soviets counter that national means of inspection are quite sufficient.

233

Soviets ahead, says SAC chief

WASHINGTON NEWS 8 JULY 1971 PAGE 3

# SALT 'vital for mankind'

NEW YORK (UPI)—The SALT talks, which resume in Helsinki today, are the single most important factor in mankind's future, says Gen. Bruce Holloway, commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command.

He added that the world strategic arms balance has tipped in favor of the Soviet Union.

"They have more than we do," he said, "and their momentum is very worrisome."

Gen. Holloway made his remarks in an interview which coincided with the opening of the fifth round of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.

Gen. Holloway said that in referring to the arms balance he was evaluating the number of delivery vehicles and warheads and megatonnage.

## 'THEY'RE AHEAD'

"When you crank 'em all in, I can't come to any conclusion except that they're ahead. I've seen nothing that the Russians intend to do but build up," he said. "This is a matter of absolute national concern to us. Why would they be building up if they didn't want to use the strength to take over the world?

"What's out of joint is that the American people think what we are trying to deter is a massive attack by the Russians. What we are trying to deter is the loss of our way of life.

"The communists are dedicated to providing communism for the whole world. This is the reason we must maintain our forces strong. We've got to have a position of strength from which to negotiate."

## CONCRETE RESULTS

In the Finnish capital, heads of the U.S. and Soviet delegations said on arrival that they came with instructions from their governments to work for concrete results.

Gerard Smith and Vladimir Semenov met informally yesterday to discuss procedural matters.

Diplomatic sources term the fifth round the most crucial since the talks began in November, 1969.

The negotiators will be guided by summit directives agreed in May by President Nixon and the Kremlin leaders to "concentrate this year on working out an agreement for the limitation of the deployment of Anti-Ballistic Missile systems."

The directive also call for Russo-American agreement "on certain measures with respect to the limitation of offensive strategic weapons."

Diplomatic sources said "an immense task of great complexity" faces the two sides. While much groundwork has been done, detailed decisions still remain to be taken.

A marriag note came from Moscow on the eve of the meeting. A Pravda commentator underscored the urgency of curbing ABM developments, but kept quiet on limitations on offensive weapons.

The United States, compromising with Moscow over priority for ABM curbs, has let it be known that it will insist on parallel commitments for some limitations on strategic offen-

sive weapons as well as ABM systems.

The Soviets have shown little inclination to enter into commitments for a freeze on offensive rockets.

In Tokyo, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird is said to have expressed confidence to the Japanese that the Helsinki talks would come to a successful conclusion. He told Tokyo leaders, sources said, that such an outcome could change the balance of power in the world and cause Japan to reassess its own defensive policy, including its dependence on the American nuclear umbrella.

Mr. Laird was reported telling the Japanese that the United States needs help in defending the free world and in that area Japan is the key to the Far East in the next decade.

NEW YORK TIMES 9 JULY 1971

235

SALT—With a Dash Of

By BERNARD T. FELD

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Spring arrived late this year in New England but it was accompanied by a whole series of thaws on the international front. We and the Russians have finally concurred on a course in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) that could lead to an agreement this year, first to limit ABM defenses and then offensive nuclear weapons. We've also agreed to start talking seriously about mutual troop reductions in Europe. France has unlocked the door through which England could enter Europe. Seymour Topping has been in China and Scotty Reston is there now. Even in the Middle East, the level of verbal belligerency is down several decibels.

So many logjams seem to be breaking up, and all at once, it is difficult to stay off the euphoric band wagon—especially if, like me, you are a congenital optimist. Nevertheless, I believe a few words of caution are in order.

The loudly heralded SALT breakthrough could have been arrived at any time during the last six months. What stood in the way was our insistence that the entire strategic offensive-defensive build-up be tied into one package, and the Russian insistence that any such package had to include either the thousands of our European and carrier-based "tactical" nuclear weapons or no offensive weapons at all.

One can only guess at Russian motives for agreeing now to consider only ICBM's in a first-stage offensive limitation; perhaps, having obtained numerical parity, economic factors are now being given greater weight. On our side, with the swollen military budget under serious attack, can it be that the Administration is preparing to dust off the "bargaining chip" argument that, last year, saved the ABM? (You don't need bargaining chips if you're not bargaining.) Furthermore, the image of peacemaker never did any Presidential candidate any harm.

In any case, a nuclear arms limitation agreement is so long overdue that almost any start must be welcomed. A freeze or ceiling on ABM's represents the easiest, and therefore the most natural starting point. And if it could be accompanied by some limitation on the new offensive systems that have been spurred by the threat of ABM deployment—the large Russian SS-9 missile and our (and soon their) MIRV—so much the better. But such an ABM-only or ABM-plus-partial-missile-freeze agreement could be a trap if it were to leave the door open to a technological race in improvement of ABM and MIRV.

The danger is that U.S. and Soviet leaders may decide, for internal political reasons, that the agreement shall permit the deployment and continued

development of large ABM radars and further testing and deployment of MIRV systems. Such an agreement appears to be favored at this time by both governments, probably because assurances of continuing, vigorous military research, development and deployment are needed to win the support of militarists to any proposed treaty. But it would be tragic if the benefits of a SALT agreement were diluted by provisions encouraging the continuation or intensification of the race in military technology.

The partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963 illustrates this danger. An ecological blessing, because it put an end to large-scale radioactive contamination of the atmosphere, the treaty's arms-control benefits have been nullified, over the years, by progress in utilizing permitted underground explosions to test new nuclear weapons. (In retrospect, disappointment is heightened by the realization that the obvious compromise, between the three annual on-site inspections offered by the Russians and the seven insisted upon by us, which would have made the test-ban universal, might have been possible if public pressures for such a compromise had been as persuasive as the prevailing military pressures on President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev to retain the underground testing loophole.) Yet in 1963, as may again be the case in 1919, public sentiment in favor of a meaningful step to limit nuclear arms was so strong that, again in retrospect, it was a tragic mistake to settle for less.

What most people have failed to understand is that arms control is largely an internal problem, both here and in the Soviet Union. In both countries, insistence on "bargaining from a position of strength" has, until

now, outweighed arguments in favor of bold initiatives to reduce the nuclear danger. Russian generals, writing about tactical nuclear weapons doctrine, are distinguishable from their American mirror-images mainly through the differences between Anglo-Saxon and Slavic names. When American hard-liners, in the name of arms control, propose agreements that insist on the complete opening-up of the Soviet Union in exchange for minor arms limitations, they are acting in unintended alliance with Soviet hard-liners who insist that vague pledges of good intentions are sufficient to verify drastic arms reduction measures.

A major difficulty comes from the closed nature of Soviet society as compared to ours. The U.S. internal hawk-dove struggle is ostentatiously aired. In Russia the conflict is more silent, only infrequently becoming visible through the heroic acts of a Sakharov or a Solzhenitsyn.

But there has been a great deal of change in Russia since Stalin, and enough of what goes on inside can be seen to make it clear that the struggle is being waged with vigor on both sides, and that what happens in the United States has a strong influence on this struggle. Defeat of American anti-ABM forces makes it more difficult for the Russian anti-ABM scientists to maintain the containment of their military expansionists; victory of the U.S. anti-SST lobby strengthens the hand of the Russian ecologists in their struggle to save Lake Baikal.

What happens this year at SALT will represent the outcome of these internal tug-o-wars in both countries. We have an unparalleled opportunity—perhaps a last chance—really to bring the nuclear menace under control. Or we can settle for small, weak, or useless public relations stunts.

Bernard T. Feld is professor of physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Friday, July 9, 1971

ABC EVENING NEWS ABC-TV 6:30 PM

Good Start At Salt Talk Resumption

REASONER: In Finland the US and the Soviet Union got to off to what was described as a good start in the fifth round of their SALT talks.

GEORGE WATSON: SALT was back on the negotiating table here at Helsinki this morning in an atmosphere of hope and optimism.

In fact, for the first time
since the dawn of the nuclear age,
the prospects for arms control
looked bright and promising.

This was the diplomatic drill
at the Soviet Embassy where nego-
tiations resumed.

The American negotiators arrived
precisely at eleven o'clock and
filed in amid much small talk.

But inside the momentous talks
focused on proposals to curtail the
nuclear arms race by limiting the
spread of anti-ballistic missiles.

Today's session lasted less than
two hours and then the two sides
agreed to meet again next week.

Sources say today's session went
very well, but chief negotiator
Gerard SMITH was not telling any
secrets.

REPORTER: Sir, was (?) there
any progress today?

SMITH: The weather is very fine
here.

WATSON: The climate was also
cordial at a diplomatic reception
tonight for the two delegations.

Ambassador SMITH and his Soviet
counterpart, Vladimir SINEONOFF (?)
posed affably together and it all
looked encouraging.

Stern Dissent From Salt Talks

HOWARD K. SMITH: There was a
stern dissent to that hopeful talk
today. General Bruce HOLLOWAY (?)
commander of our strategic air com-
mand said, the Russians recently
passed the US and are now ahead in
nuclear weaponry, in numbers of
missiles and warheads and in total
megatonage.

They now have, General HOLLOWAY
said, a big stick with which to
negotiate coercively.

And the newspaper, the Norfolk
Virginia Ledger Star reports that
the Russians recently held amphi-
bious war games in the Arctic Cir-
cle between Iceland and Norway.

The games, monitored by allied
aircraft simulated the destruction
of a NATO naval force and also sim-
ulated landings in Norway.

The allied observers were im-
pressed.

236

Friday, July 9, 1971

NBC NIGHTLY NEWS NBC-TV 6:30 PM

SALT Talks Resume In Helsinki

JOHN CHANCELLOR: The first formal session of the new round of strategic arms limitation talks - the SALT talks - was held in Helsinki today.

The feeling in that city is that the Russian and American delegates may actually get somewhere. That a preliminary deal may be made on defensive nuclear weapon systems - ABM's.

REPORTER: As if to caution against too much optimism, the Russians arrived in Helsinki with a warning. That efforts in the US to increase military spending and deploy new weapon systems could spoil the atmosphere of these talks.

The warning was delivered in a Pravda article and undoubtedly had the approval of the Soviet delegation chief Vladimir SINEON-OFF.

It also made clear that Russia still views US nuclear bases overseas as a big obstacle to any SALT agreement.

So, the outlook is still bleak, as far as any overall SALT treaty is concerned.

But SINEONOFF pointed out that prospects for a limited first step agreement on defensive weapons are much better and he said he has orders to try to get concrete results during this session.

The American delegation headed by Gerard SMITH, went into the opening meeting today at the Russian Embassy convinced this will be a long session.

Perhaps lasting through the fall with only a brief recess. That is if they are making real progress.

There's even the possibility of a treaty signing ceremony here and

speculation President NIXON might come over for it.

But ratification of a treaty could take some time because the US appears determined to link any curb on its superior defensive missile system, Safeguard, with an equal restriction on the superior Soviet offensive missile, the giant SS-9.

Any discussion of the SS-9 however, would open the door again to arguments about nuclear parity, arguments that so far have been irreconcilable.

But at least, things are off to a good start.

MAN: There is no introduction of any extraneous issues - no polemics. People seem to be anxious to get down to business and see if we can't put into concrete terms the provisions of the May 20 announcement.

REPORTER: Tomorrow, SMITH and SINEONOFF will meet the President of Finland, then they will take a short boat trip and talk privately about the new directions the negotiations have taken.

Hope There Will Be No ABM

CHANCELLOR: The new directions in the talks came a couple months ago when both Washington and Moscow said that they had made a basic political decision to seek some kind of an agreement on defensive nuclear missiles-anti-ballistic missiles-while talking as well about offensive systems.

Which means that the ABM sites the Russians have built around Moscow - the so-called galosh system - will be discussed.

The Russians are not building now any more on that system.

But the American Safeguard System is still being built and our Defense Department correspondent, Robert GORALSKI, has learned that the cost of Safeguard are shooting upward at about the rate of sprint missile.

ROBERT GORALSKI: Defense Department officials fought hard to win Congressional approval of ABM.

Now there is a strong undercurrent here in the hope it won't be needed after all.

The reason is not a change in (CONTINUED)

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defense and strategy, but rather a spiraling cost inflation that make others seem small by comparison.

It was originally estimated that the Safeguard ABM system would cost a little more than 7.5 billion dollars.

Each year, Defense officials have had to revise their estimates steadily upward until final deployment by the end of this decade will represent a cost overrun of more than 9 billion dollars or one hundred twenty-five percent over the original estimate.

And that does not include the cost of the nuclear warheads for the defensive missiles which will cost another billion dollars.

The hope is that the new round of SALT talks in Helsinki will yield some kind of agreement with the Soviets on ABM - perhaps a freeze.

Savings growing out of such an arrangement would be substantial and at this point, most welcome by the Defense Department which doesn't want another fight with a Congress which is becoming more and more cost conscious.

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PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER 9 July 1971 P20

# Soviets Now Have Arms Advantage, U. S. General Says

NEW YORK (UPI). — The world strategic arms balance recently passed parity and tipped in favor of the Soviet Union, the U. S. Strategic Air Command chief said Thursday.

"And their momentum is very worrisome," he added.

In an interview that coincided with the opening of the fifth round of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) in Helsinki, Gen. Bruce K. Holloway, commander in chief of SAC, termed the talks "the most important thing for the future of mankind I know."

U. S. and Soviet negotiators resumed talks in an atmosphere that sources in Helsinki described as "great."

The sources said both delegations appeared anxious to get down to substantial talks immediately in an effort to hammer out at least a limited treaty this year on reducing nuclear armaments on both sides.

U. S. chief negotiator Gerard C. Smith and his Soviet counterpart, Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir S. Semenov, met for one hour and 45 minutes in the Soviet Embassy.

The formal plenary session lasted for 60 minutes. The two delegations, which include large numbers of scientific and military advisers, then continued informal talk: over drinks for 45 minutes.

The two delegations decided to meet again in the U. S. Embassy July 13.

As for the strategic arms balance, Holloway said, "In my opinion we've passed parity in their favor just recently ... they have more than we do."

Holloway said he was evaluating numbers of delivery vehicles, numbers of warheads, and mega-tonnage.

Russians intend to do but build up. Get a Teddy Rooseveltian big stick with which to negotiate coercively.

"Everything the Russians have done indicates this is their main objective. They want a relative advantage from which to negotiate. This is a matter of absolute national concern to us. Why would they be building up if they didn't want to use the strength to take over the world?

"We've got to hang in there, be patient, be suspicious of everything. They're not going to do anything that would not give them an advantage.

"The reason they haven't hit us is that we have a massive force structure.

"The Communists are dedicated to providing Communism for the whole world. This is the reason we must maintain our forces strong. We've got to have a position of strength from which to negotiate."

If denigration of the military continues, the general said, "it's going to be a great disservice to this country."

The Soviet strategic momentum has been building, he said, "for about eight years, and they're bound to get further ahead of us for the next two or three years by virtue of it."

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR 10 JULY 1971 (12)

# New thaw from the Kremlin

By Joseph C. Harsch

American diplomacy is growing increasingly im-
pressed by all the "good" things the Russians are, or
at least seem to be, doing right now. There are so
many areas where the Russians seem to be moving
in right directions that American and other Western
observers think that this year of 1971 may turn out to
be a milestone year.

Obviously, there are all kinds of reservations. It
seems almost too good to be true. And the Kremlin
has often enough started off in constructive directions,
and then turned hard back to usual Russian uncoopera-
tiveness. No one in the United States is going to be
surprised if all of this comes to nothing. However, the
following points can be noted:

1. Moscow appears to have given instructions to its delegates to the strategic-arms-limitation talks (SALT) in Helsinki to go ahead and develop a broad agreement with the United States on limitations of nuclear weapons, with emphasis right now on curbing anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs).

2. Four-power talks over Berlin are beginning to seem promising. There has been enough progress to open up the possibility that by the end of the year life may come back toward something like normal movement between East and West Berlin.

3. Relations between East and West Germany continue to improve, not drastically, but enough to begin to make some sense. Germany seems gradually to be becoming what West German Chancellor Willy Brandt talks about—two states within the German nation, and those states beginning to deal sensibly with each other.

## Security stance modified

Russia's attitude on the so-called "European security" issue has been modified. Previously, Russia seemed to want to talk about some new "security" arrangement merely for propaganda/advantage. Now, the Kremlin seems to be taking up a practical attitude involving enough mutuality to make it interesting to the Western countries.

Taken all together the implication is that Moscow is
明显 seriously and earnestly to settle its old differ-
ences with Western Europe—and the United States.

The earlier purpose in Russia's maneuvers toward
Western Europe seemed to be to separate Europe from
United States. Enough of this has been dropped to

make the new trend in Russian diplomacy at least
tentatively acceptable to Washington. Moscow seems to
have accepted NATO as a continuing fact, and that
makes a big difference in Western reaction.

None of this means an end to all strains
between Moscow and Washington. It is as-
sumed that Moscow's policy toward Western
Europe is a thing by itself, quite separate
from Russian policies toward other parts of
the world. The Kremlin usually does con-
duct its policies like that.

Historians remember that the Russians continued to trade with Western Europe through the Baltic and North Sea ports while waging war against Britain and France in the Crimea. A settlement of outstanding issues between Russia and Western Europe could happen while a state of cold war or worse could apply to the Middle East and other places.

But the trend toward settlement with Western Europe is impressive, and all the more so because it makes a lot of sense for Russia's own national interests. The probable reason behind all this is not any sudden conversion to goodness, but serious economic trouble.

Best information available in Washington is that the Russian economy continues to lag further and further behind Western economies. The old dogmatic Communist ideas about how a country reaches economic prosperity have been increasingly discredited by the glaring contrast between Russia and Western Europe.

The theory among Western observers here is that the Kremlin has at long last recognized that it can get the Russian economy going again only by importing Western techniques.

To get Western techniques there must first be Western technicians. To get Western technicians there must be peace and stability in Russia's relations with Western Europe.

That is precisely what Moscow seems to be aiming at right now. Of course, whether it reaches the target remains to be seen.

10-F

WASHINGTON STAPLE

11 JULY 1971 (1)

Back to SALT

The fifth and probably crucial round of strategic arms limitation talks between the United States and the Soviet Union opened Thursday in Helsinki. When the SALT negotiators met at the Russian embassy in the Finnish capital, they did so against the backdrop of the announcement made simultaneously in Moscow and Washington May 20.

It will be remembered that President Nixon cleared the airways on that day to announce "a major step in breaking the stalemate" which had existed for 26 months. Yet the official communique issued in both capitals was purposefully and masterfully obscure as to the nature of the breakthrough achieved.

The Russians had held that the first order of business ought to be an agreement on limiting deployment of defensive anti-ballistic missiles. The American government's view, to which we subscribe, was that there should be no ABM pact unless and until the Soviets agreed to an accord controlling offensive strategic nuclear weapons (ICBMs). There were other peripheral points of disagreement but the stalemate basically involved the ABM-ICBM controversy.

The May 20 communique stated that the negotiators "have agreed to concentrate this year" on limiting deployment of ABMs. But apparently at the same time an effort will be made to reach an agreement on the limitation of offensive strategic weapons. This may be deduced both from the wording of the May 20 communique and from the fact that Thursday's meeting resulted in an agreement to set up what were described as several technical working groups.

The first session between chief U.S. negotiator Gerald Smith and Vladimir S. Semyonov, head of the Soviet delegation, is reported to have taken place in an atmosphere of optimism devoid of political polemics. So if there is to be a treaty limiting the deployment of strategic weapons, which would free vast sums of dollars and rubles for peaceful purposes, it is likely to be the fruit of the current Helsinki meeting or of its successor in Vienna.

But as we observed on May 21, there must be no freeze or reduction in defensive arms until an agreement limiting offensive weapons has been signed, sealed and delivered. To do otherwise would be to seriously compromise the security of the United States.

VALUE OF CONTINUED ABM DEPLOYMENT QUESTIONED
SEN. COOPER

Now coming to the point of whether under these circumstances of an imminent agreement to limit ABM deployment if it is of any value to continue to deploy ABM, that raises another question. It is my view that the Safeguard ABM is not an effective system. The administration says it has some bargaining power, but in my view the negotiations will result in agreements based upon assured power of what the Soviets have and what we have. That being true, and since we are at parity, why is it necessary to go ahead and spend and authorize additional sites and additional deployments and additional billions when they are now willing to talk about reductions by each side.

Why would it not be just as wise to postpone the expenditure of any additional money, or any further deployments until we see what the success of these talks might be at Helsinki because, as I said, they are bargaining now on the basis of what we have now.

Mr. PACKARD. Well, Senator Cooper, I think that our view on this is that we must continue the program against the possibility that we do not reach an agreement. We have requested authorization of these funds for fiscal year 1972. That money will not be spent for some time, and we are hopeful that there will be some way there which we can come to an agreement. If we do I want to assure you all that we propose to modify the program in whatever way is necessary to meet the terms of any agreement. I address these questions in those terms. If we simply stop now with what the Soviets may be willing to live with, what incentive would they have to do any further bargaining? They will have gotten what they wanted without giving anything in return. I think that is what it really gets down to as the issue. I am very hopeful, and I think there is reason to be hopeful, that we can make some progress and have some agreement here before we spend all the money we have asked for in 1972. We cannot be sure, however, and against that possibility, I think it is only prudent to proceed with the program we have requested from the Congress.

Mr. PACKARD. Thank you, Senator Case. Perhaps I could put it in this way, I am not from New England but I sort of have the view this is a very important negotiation and we ought to approach it like a hardheaded Yankee trader.

Senator MUSKIE. Sometimes when Yankees trade they are willing to give a little in order to get something in return, and I am a New Englander.

NECESSITY OF MIRV AND ABM TO DETERRENT QUESTIONED

I have, Mr. Chairman, been unpersuaded by the analysis put for-
ward from time to time, that the MIRV and ABM deployment is
necessary to maintain this deterrent. I am persuaded instead by
Secretary Packard's case today, in which he points up that there is
no need to do anything now, that our deterrent meets the test of
nuclear sufficiency. And if there is no need to do anything now, then I
ask the question why we should do anything now? Why should we
spend the approximately $1.6 billion for the MIRVing and moderni-
zation of the missiles and why we should spend over $1.2 billion to
proceed with additional Safeguard expenditures at this time?

I believe that rather than this leading to an effective agreement,
these further deployments can only lessen the chances of getting a
truly effective and truly comprehensive agreement.

MIRVS ARE DESTABILIZING

Now, I believe that the very anxieties which are said to call for a
Safeguard defense of Minuteman establish the fact that, contrary to
the view expressed by Secretary Packard, MIRVs are indeed desta-
bilizing. They are destabilizing because they call for a response, and
anything that calls for a response in the strategic field just means
another round in the arms race and further instability until you get
back to the point of substantial equality, which is the only point at
which bargaining can proceed with any chance of success.

ACTION-REACTION SYNDROME

When we consider the impact of possible U.S. deployments we have,
as I have suggested previously, to recognize that the Soviets can and
will respond to what we do. The case against a large area ABM sys-
tem stated by Secretary of Defense McNamara in 1967 was exactly
this, that the Soviets could and would act completely to nullify the
effects of any ABM system which might be designed to protect our
cities and populations. Similarly, this action-reaction syndrome will
continue as long as negotiations continue and no restraint is exercised
on weapons' deployment.

The Nixon administration has accepted the logic of Mr. McNamara
insofar as it argues against an area ABM system but it has failed to
recognize that the same argument applies to the Minutemen defense
as well. The Soviets could easily nullify the proposed Safeguard sys-
tem by expansion of their offensive forces and similarly if Soviet
leaders came to fear that our MIRV deployment threatened their
land-based missiles they could respond by deploying still further
offensive systems.

I believe that it is important that we avoid deployments which can easily be overcome by the Soviets and which can only serve to motivate them to increase their offensive capability.

## IMPLICATION OF MIRV, ABM DEPLOYMENT FOR SECURING AGREEMENT

Finally, I would like to touch briefly on the implication of MIRV and ABM deployment for securing an early arms control agreement. The experience with SALT to date and with other arms control negotiations suggests how difficult it is to secure agreement which will dismantle any existing system. Because of this fact, any deployments which are not necessary to maintain our deterrent should be avoided in the interests of preserving the chance for effective strategic arms control.

The argument is made that we need to deploy ABM as a bargaining chip. I believe that our present arsenal of weapons provides us with sufficient in the way of bargaining chips. Moreover, this bargaining chip argument insofar as new deployments are concerned seems to me to be self-defeating and totally adverse to any concept of effective arms control. If the existence of the SALT talks is to be used by either side to justify deployments which otherwise might not be made, then the SALT talks simply become an occasion for an expanded arms race.

## WHAT NEGOTIATIONS SHOULD MEAN

For many years the asserted need to negotiate from strength was used as an excuse for not negotiating at all. During the last few years the concept of negotiation from strength has seemed to mean keeping whatever either side has or whatever either side desires to go ahead and acquire. What negotiations should mean, I believe, is not the continued pursuit of the chimera of unilateral superiority but instead the mutual wisdom and mutual restraint that can bring about the control and the end of the strategic arms race.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

## JOINT STATEMENT OF UNITED STATES AND SOVIET UNION FROM VIENNA

Senator COOPER. At the last meeting in Vienna, there was a joint statement issued which in part said that both the U.S.S.R. and the United States, and now I begin to quote accurately: "To concentrate efforts currently in preparing an agreement on the limitation of the deployment of antiballistic missile ABM systems." This is not the exact language now but this statement was from Pravda. "It was also announced that agreement had been reached that with the conclusion of agreement on ABM's certain measures would also be agreed in the sphere of limiting strategic offensive armament.

Would you say that it is correct the administration negotiators have agreed to try to reach agreement on defensive systems just without exact agreement that they would proceed to reach an agreement on offensive weapons?

Mr. WARNKE. Well, as you understand—

## SOVIET UNION'S POSITION ON ORDER OF BUSINESS IN DISCUSSIONS

Senator Cooper. As you know, the Soviet Union has been the one which has said it would not at this time enter into negotiations on offensive weapons. So, would you say that is some advance, this agreement?

Mr. WARNKE. I certainly read the statement as indicating a considerable advance in the position and I found it a very welcome advance. I like to construe it as meaning that we would be prepared to discuss as the first order of business a limitation on defensive systems. Since I think that is the most important first step that could be taken, I would hope that is what the statement means and that is the way in which it would be interpreted.

Senator Cooper. Well, that is what it says and I think that is what it means. With your knowledge in this field and from all the information you have, do you know if it is correct that the Soviet Union would not agree to enter into discussions upon limitation and control of offensive weapons until this matter of defensive weapons had been agreed upon?

Mr. WARNKE. I am afraid, Senator Cooper, I have no sources other than the public sources.

Senator Cooper. Well, just from the newspapers and the communiques.

Mr. WARNKE. The impression I have received is that one of the sticking points was the question of the order in which these matters would be taken up, and I believe that the statement indicates a flexibility in the American position which would permit discussion, first of all, of limits, and hopefully very tight limits, on defensive systems.

## DEPLOYMENT OF ADDITIONAL ABM WEAPONS QUESTIONED

Senator Cooper. But if I understand the force of your argument, and I think it is a very good argument, that while these negotiations are going forward for control of ABM that it would be wise in your view that we do not deploy any additional ABM weapons.

Mr. WARNKE. This is my position, sir, for a couple of reasons. As I say, first of all, I think it is a waste of badly needed resources to go ahead at a time at which these funds do not have to be expended for this purpose and, secondly, I think that the more that we deploy then the more difficult it becomes to have a truly effective strategic arms agreement. The sooner we reach the point at which both sides are exercising real restraint, the closer we are going to be able to come to a situation which is genuine arms control.

Senator Cooper. I agree with you in an objective sense, and from the outside that is the proper position. But, if you were a negotiator and you found a willingness to reach an agreement which, in effect, would deny any future deployment of ABM systems and the Soviet negotiators were willing to go ahead with that then it does become a rather subjective matter, does it not, on the part of the negotiators?

Mr. WARNKE. I think any negotiation necessarily has a very large subjective element in it; yes, Senator.

246

Senator COOPER. You go further, I mean beyond the question of defensive weapons, and in your argument again you think it would be better for the United States not to proceed with the deployment of offensive weapons, particularly MIRV when we are looking ahead to determine if it is possible to reach an agreement upon offensive weapons.

Mr. WARNKE. Yes, sir.

Senator COOPER. That is your position?

Mr. WARNKE. That is, sir.

Senator COOPER. I think you have a good position.

Mr. WARNKE. Might I say, Senator Cooper, that—

Senator COOPER. I think we want an agreement more than anything else, and I think we have to be guided somewhat, Mr. Warnke, by what our negotiators believe, what they believe the situation is themselves.

Mr. WARNKE. That certainly is something that has to be taken into consideration.

REAL RESTRAINT HAS NOT BEEN TRIED, BUT SHOULD BE

What I would like to say, sir, though, is that during the negotiations up to the present time, both sides have proceeded with their arms programs. Neither side has exercised real restraint. We have gone ahead with MIRVing, we have gone ahead with our ABM. They have gone ahead with the deployment of SS-9s, with the construction of additional and somewhat ambiguous silos. We have tried this course. I would like to see us try instead the course of restraint and see if that would be matched by restraint on the other side. It seems to me that is the best and quickest way to put an end to the strategic arms race, and it is worth a try, and we have the leadtime and we have the margin that permits us to try that course, that is why I would like to see it tried.

247

ARMS CONTROL IMPLICATIONS OF CURRENT DEFENSE
BUDGET (MIRV AND ABM SYSTEMS)

WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 1971

UNITED STATES SENATE,
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ARMS CONTROL,
INTERNATIONAL LAW, AND ORGANIZATION,
OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS,

Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in room 4221, New Senate Office Building, Senator Edmund S. Muskie (chairman), presiding.

Present: Senators Muskie, Fulbright, Aiken, Case, Cooper, and Javits.

OPENING STATEMENT

Senator MUSKIE. We will resume today the hearings which we started yesterday to receive testimony on the relations of the deployment of the ABM and MIRV to the arms race.

It is a pleasure to welcome a familiar face here this morning, and resume a familiar posture of listening while he speaks. It is a pleasure, Senator Humphrey, to welcome you back from your travels around the country in order to receive your testimony on this important subject.

STATEMENT OF HON. HUBERT H. HUMPHREY, U.S. SENATOR
FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA

Senator HUMPHREY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your warm welcome and am very happy to be here to testify before a gentleman and to a gentleman for whom I have the highest regard. I appreciate the opportunity to testify concerning the specific question of arms control. My testimony this morning, Mr. Chairman, is based on legislation or proposed legislation which I introduced on March 25 and today, and the report which I prepared with the assistance of Congressmen Harrington and Fraser on the multiple independently targeted reentry vehicle.

I have a copy of that report, and I am going to ask, Mr. Chairman, for the privilege of having it incorporated as a part of your proceedings.

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Senator MUSKIE. It will be included in the record.
(The information referred to follows:)

REPORT ON MULTIPLE INDEPENDENTLY TARGETED REENTRY VEHICLE (MIRV) —
MEMBERS OF CONGRESS FOR PEACE THROUGH LAW

(Presented by Senator Hubert H. Humphrey for himself and Congressmen
Donald M. Fraser and Michael Harrington)

INTRODUCTION

On May 20, the President read a joint Soviet-American statement on the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. The statement read that the governments of both countries had "agreed to concentrate this year on working out an agreement for the limitation of the deployment of antiballistic missiles." There was also an expressed agreement to agree on "certain measures with respect to the limitation of offensive weapons."

The main significance of this statement is that it indicates that both sides in the SALT talks are committed to an agreement. It indicates that both the United States and the Soviet Union are willing to negotiate a formula for limiting the deployment of the anti-ballistic missile.

Were this agreement to be put into effect within the next year, the implications for other weapons systems and the entire arms race would be enormous. Specifically with respect to the multiple independently targeted reentry vehicle (MIRV), the original purpose for which this weapons system was conceived would no longer be valid.

Not only would the original purpose be called into question but any future intent in support of a continuation of the MIRV program would be highly tenuous. It would be highly probable that the MIRV program would have to be completely reassessed.

While an agreement on ABM or on offensive weapons has not yet been worked out, there is every assurance that it will. What is necessary, therefore, during the period of negotiations is that both the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union exercise a supreme amount of self-restraint in order to create the climate most conducive to agreement.

MIRV is a highly destabilizing weapons system which may become superfluous if agreements on ABM and offensive weapons ceilings are successfully concluded at SALT. It has been ascertained that the United States has at present a considerable lead time over the Soviet Union in its MIRV program, mainly because it began work on MIRV before the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, could have an advantage if it were to continue to deploy the SS-9 missile installed with a MIRV system comparable to our own.

What can generally be determined through a comparative qualitative analysis of the strategic nuclear position of the United States and the Soviet Union is that the two countries have reached a position of nuclear parity. This situation coincides with what has been accepted as the basic aim of our strategic forces. In order for the United States to observe a policy of nuclear sufficiency, our forces must be able to maintain a second-strike capability and eliminate all incentive for the Soviet Union to strike the United States first. This study will show how continued testing and deployment of MIRV during this year does not contribute significantly to the criteria for a policy of nuclear sufficiency.

Sufficiency, with the rough balance in strategic nuclear weaponry that the word implies has as a result become a measure of safety and should become the prime determinant for our defense needs in the future. Now that sufficiency has been achieved, it would be counter-productive for the United States to try to regain its former position of superiority, considering present Soviet capabilities. It is, therefore, in the interests of the United States and a speedy conclusion of an agreement or agreements on arms control that the United States halt the testing Land deployment of MIRV.

COSTS

The Authorization bill for Military Procurement, Research and Development for FY 1972 calls for approximately $635 million for the Minuteman III MIRV program and $530 million for Poseidon conversion.

These figures do not include some parts of MIRV-related program. The Department of Defense proposed FY 72 budget for "Continued procurement of Minuteman III and Minuteman force modernization is $839 million; for "Conversion of

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SSBN's to Poseidon configuration, continued procurement of Poseidon missiles, and associated effort," the DOD budget proposal is $803 million.

The true figure for MIRV programs, therefore lies somewhere in between. The DOD estimates the total system cost for MIRVing the Minuteman III at $5,997.8 million and the total cost for Poseidon at $6,885.5 million.

These figures by themselves are meaningful in that they show the enormous expenditures involved for a particular weapons systems program.

Even more meaningful is the idea that these expenditures have provided us with little additional security. They have, on the contrary, proven to be considerably destabilizing with respect to our ability to halt the arms race.

This study proposes that funds authorized for MIRV in the proposed DOD budget for FY 1972 be placed in escrow for a given period. Putting funds in trust does not represent an immediate savings but the potential long-term effect could be far more significant.

An escrow arrangement would be a firm indication to the Soviet Union of the United States' willingness to halt its MIRV program. It makes MIRV more negotiable than at present. It, thus, becomes more feasible to end any further expenditures on MIRV.

## THE CASE FOR MIRV

MIRV was originally designed to preserve our assured destruction capability by penetrating any Soviet ABM system. At present the Soviet Union does not seem to be building anything more than a Moscow-ABM defense. Until an agreement is formally worked out, we do not know whether or not through an upgrading of their SAM system, the Soviet Union is planning to change its ABM capability significantly. It is, therefore, assumed that MIRV, as a weapon capable of saturating any Soviet defense, might be necessary as a hedge against this possibility.

MIRV's second function is to guarantee our second-strike capabilities in the face of a Soviet attack. With the development of the SS-9 and the possibility that the SS-9 will be retrofitted with MIRV in the near future, the defense for MIRV would be that our own MIRV program would guarantee the survivability of our Minutemen missiles.

Thirdly, to avoid nuclear blackmail it is assumed that MIRV preserves nuclear parity between the United States and the Soviet Union which would otherwise be lost.

Finally, a continuation of the MIRV program provides a bargaining chip in our negotiations with the Russians. The Russians have not shown a willingness to negotiate an agreement on MIRV and there is no reason that we should behave differently. Both the Soviet Union and the United States recognize the difficulty of identifying MIRVed missiles once MIRVs are installed. Both countries have gone sufficiently far in their MIRV program, so the argument goes, to make an agreement on the regulation of MIRV most impractical.

## THE CASE AGAINST MIRV

What is the Soviet ABM threat? Soviet deployment of a line of air defense missiles and associated radars in the 1960's, the so-called Tallinn lines, was at first believed to be the beginning of a nationwide ABM system. After lengthy debate, the U.S. intelligence community assessment, affirmed by Secretary Laird in 1969, was that the Tallinn system is an advanced bomber defense. Department of Defense officials, most notably research head Dr. John Foster, continue, nevertheless, to spread alarm about the Tallinn line by stating that it might have some ABM capability or could be upgraded to have such capability. The simple rejoinder to this view is to ask why the U.S. is not itself converting our Nike Hercules anti-aircraft defenses (SAM's) to ABM's, instead of dismantling them. If a Russian ABM defense of population is so easy, why have President Nixon and Secretary Laird repeatedly stated that with all U.S. technology we do not know how to build an ABM system which will protect population?

The actual Soviet ABM system consists of 64 Galosh ABM missiles constructed around Moscow between 1964 and 1968. In 1968 the Soviets ceased further ABM deployments, but in April 1971 Secretary Laird announced that the Russians have apparently resumed ABM related construction in the Moscow area. The extent and nature of this new activity is as yet uncertain and may prove to be a false alarm. In any case such new deployment would have to be greatly enlarged and extended to many other areas before it would approach being an effective ballistic missile defense of Soviet urban areas.

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It continues to remain true that the United States could deploy its MIRV more rapidly than the Soviet Union could construct a significant ABM system. It is unnecessary to deploy MIRV before the Soviet ABM is built and the U.S. does have considerable lead time over the Soviet in this regard, particularly because we have already completed development and testing of an effective MIRV system.

The Defense Department this year, however, has argued that "The lead time to convert to a MIRV from a non-MIRV configuration might possibly exceed the intelligence lead time we might have in connection with a Soviet ABM capability." (House Armed Services Committee 1971 hearings, p. 3682). In view of the progress that the U.S. has already made with MIRV and the substantial construction that would be required for the Soviets to deploy a nationwide ABM system, DOD's argument seems implausible. It has, for example, been seven years since the Soviets began deploying the sites that they now have. The U.S., which has spent billions on various ABM concepts and which, according to Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard, has better ABM technology, will not have its first fully complete SAFEGUARD ABM site until October 1974, at the earliest.

If it were really true that the U.S. does not have adequate intelligence to understand and verify Soviet ABM deployments then it would appear impossible for the U.S. to enter into an agreement with the Soviet Union on the limitation of ABM's. It would seem clear that it is not the position of the U.S. at the SALT Talks that we lack sufficient intelligence to maintain whatever lead time of U.S. MIRV over Soviet ABM is considered necessary in the interests of U.S. security.

The argument that MIRV guarantees the survivability of our land based missiles and thus enhances our second-strike capabilities is equally tenuous. In a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Secretary Laird said that the SS-9 program would pose a real threat by 1975-1976 to our Minuteman missiles when the SS-9's accuracy would be considerably improved.

Rather than continue with our MIRV deployment program which depends more on an apparent than a real threat, it is suggested that this program be halted on a provisional basis.

Any discussion of Soviet nuclear blackmail as a justification for MIRV rests on the assumption that the Soviet Union is in a far superior nuclear strategic position to the United States.

No evidence has been found to reach such a conclusion. While the SS-9, if deployed extensively, would give the Soviet Union a higher yield capacity than the United States has, it would not become a serious threat to our second-strike capacity until the Russians installed an accurate MIRV. A recent study by the Department of Defense and the CIA indicated that the multiple warheads which the Soviet Union has tested thus far are not accurate enough to wipe out our Minuteman III missiles in a surprise attack. New estimates indicate that the Soviet Union is even farther behind in its MIRV program than United States officials originally assumed.

Aside from its MIRV position, the United States holds a lead in many other important areas of strategic weapons technology—missile accuracy, reliability and retargetability; solid-fueled rockets, submarine launched missiles and nuclear penetration aids for bombers and missiles.

As long as we have and maintain our deterrent capabilities at the present level, the risk of a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union would be far too costly. There is no need at the moment, however, to expand these capabilities.

The recent SALT announcement by President Nixon confirmed progress at the SALT talks and indicated that a sharp limitation on ABM's in the near future is a reasonable expectation. It demonstrates confidence in the feasibility of a workable ABM agreement inspected by national means. The announcement also strips away whatever vestiges of urgency still cling to the continuation of U.S. MIRV deployment. The question of whether or not MIRV is negotiable has little meaning in the present context. With an ABM agreement and the possibility of placing a ceiling on SS-9 deployments, further deployment of MIRV could be voluntarily abandoned.

Thus, there are no adequate grounds for MIRV in the absence of an uncontrolled Soviet ABM program. The anticipated agreement of SALT will hopefully provide for the necessary limitation on both Soviet and American ABMs. There is no reason to spend billions more on a strategic system that we do not need. Furthermore, some concrete step should be taken to stop MIRV before it is too late. For these reasons this study makes the following recommendations.

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RECOMMENDATIONS

1. All funds approved by Congress for MIRV testing and deployment should be placed in escrow.

2. These funds should not be released unless the President and Congress jointly determine that the USSR's testing and deployment of its own MIRV system and other actions would necessitate further testing and deployment of the United States' MIRV as a guarantee of the United States' retaliatory capability.*

3. In the course of the SALT talks the United States should:

(a) enter into a mutual freeze on the testing and deployment of both offensive and defensive nuclear weapons, including ABM and MIRV, pending the outcome of the talks.

(b) continue to seek by treaty a total ban or a limit to a very low level on ABM deployment.

Senator HUMPHREY. This report puts in succinct form the basic issues of MIRV as they relate to the overall strategic defense posture of the United States and to prospective arms control agreements.

AMENDMENT TO MILITARY PROCUREMENT AUTHORIZATION BILL, S. 939

The recommendations made in the report are incorporated in an amendment which I am introducing today relating to MIRV. The amendment to the Military Procurement Authorization bill, S. 939, reads as follows:

Section 502. The Secretary of the Treasury shall place, in a special account established by him, all funds appropriated pursuant to this or any other law for the further testing or deployment of multiple independently-targeted re-entry vehicles (MIRVs). Such funds may be used for the purposes for which they were originally appropriated only if the President and the Congress jointly determine at any time that the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics testing and deploying of its own MIRV system and other action necessitate the further testing and deployment of the United States MIRV as a guarantee of the United States retaliatory capability. Upon certification of the Secretary of the Treasury by the President that such a determination has been jointly made by the President and the Congress, such funds shall be available immediately for the purposes for which they were appropriated.

In other words, Mr. Chairman, this is what we call an amendment which puts funds in escrow, and those funds, their release would be triggered only on the consent of both the President and the Congress after careful study and analysis of the actions of the Soviet Union, specifically with respect to their deployment of their large SS-9 missiles, and their MIRV program.

Both the amendment and the report are intended to help serve as a constructive evaluation for legislators and government officials. I would hope that they are considered carefully, especially since the reopening of SALT talks at Helsinki has created a most propitious climate for halting the arms race. I will read pertinent excerpts of the report prepared, as I said, under the auspices of Members of Congress for peace through law, and have indicated that I will file the entire report with the committee.

MIRV PROGRAM DESTABILIZING TO ARMS RACE

Aside from costs, there are equally important strategic considerations which argue against the continuation of our MIRV program at this time.

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## LIMITATIONS ON ABMS IN NEAR FUTURE IS REASONABLE EXPECTATION

The recent SALT announcement by President Nixon confirmed progress at the SALT talks and indicated that a sharp limitation on ABMs in the near future is a reasonable expectation, and I might add, Mr. Chairman, I have argued as you have in the Senate that we proceed first with the ABM, and then follow through with the offensive weaponry. Fortunately, after some months of discussion, both at Vienna and here in Washington, D.C., and I imagine in other capitals, that tentative decision has been reached. It demonstrates confidence in the feasibility of a workable ABM agreement inspected by national means. The President's announcement also strips away whatever vestiges of urgency still cling to the continuation of U.S. MIRV deployment. The question of whether or not MIRV is negotiable has little meaning in the present context. With an ABM agreement and the possibility of placing a ceiling on SS-9 deployments on our own ICBMs, further deployment of MIRV could be voluntarily abandoned.

## NO GROUNDS FOR MIRV WITHOUT EXPANDED SOVIET ABM PROGRAM

Thus, there are no adequate grounds for MIRV in the absence of an uncontrolled, greatly expanded Soviet ABM program. The whole argument for MIRV was because of the Soviet ABMs. Now, if you arrive at a position where you get an agreement to limit the ABMs or to do away with them, then the original argument for the MIRVing of our missiles vanishes.

The anticipated agreement at SALT will hopefully provide for the necessary limitation on both Soviet and American ABMs. Therefore, there is no reason to spend billions more on a strategic system that we do not need. Furthermore, some concrete step should be taken to stop MIRV before it is too late, and I mean their MIRVs and our MIRVs. I am very much interested in how some witnesses can interpret that our MIRVs are the good guys and their MIRVs are the bad guys. A MIRV is a MIRV. Whether it is attached to an American missile or a Soviet missile, they are both bad guys.

## RECOMMENDATIONS TO COMMITTEE

For these reasons, the study that I am submitting today makes the following recommendations, and these are my recommendations to this committee:

1. All funds approved by Congress for MIRV testing and development should be placed in escrow.

2. These funds should not be released unless the President and Congress jointly determine that the U.S.S.R.'s testing and deployment of its own MIRV system and other actions would necessitate further testing and deployment of the United States' MIRV as a guarantee of the United States' retaliatory capability.

3. In the course of the SALT talks, the United States should:

(a) Enter into a mutual freeze on the testing and deployment of both offensive and defensive nuclear weapons, including ABM and MIRV, pending the outcome of the talks.

(b) Continue to seek by treaty a total ban or a limit to a very low level on ABM deployment.

While my testimony thus far has concentrated on the question of MIRV, I have also noted the interrelationship of MIRV and the SALT talks. Point 3 of the recommendations, which is based on the amendment I introduced on March 25, draws this connection. To underline this interdependency between MIRV and SALT, I am today introducing a revised version of my original resolution which takes account of the latest developments at SALT. It will be a sense of the Senate resolution which reads as follows:

Senator JAVITS. Will the Chair allow me just to explore this point because I would like the Chair's view on that too. The 6-month freeze and I would like to join both of you in that idea, is in a sense im- pliedly bilateral because if in the 6 months they really have not mea- sured up in fact, if not by signing a piece of paper or making a declara- tion, then we would be free to go ahead ourselves.

## BARGAINING CHIP THEORY

Senator Humphrey, let me say that the issue involved in your pro- posal falls within the context of yesterday's hearings. Secretary Packard used another phrase to describe the balance of nuclear weap- ons as between the Soviet Union and ourselves when he said we were in position of rough equality, and he stated that without this situation of rough quality it would be impossible to develop an agreement. And this implies we must try to work out an agreement while the rough equivalent persists. Now this is where I think there is disagreement at this point, and Senator Case is here and he will correct me if I misstate what I understand to be Secretary Packard's and the administration's position.

Their position is that for bargaining purposes we ought to continue on-going programs of deployment in order to maintain the credibility of our negotiating position. I think they hesitate to use the phrase "bargaining chip." But in any case, Secretary Packard emphasized over and over again that hard, tough negotiating requires that we not do unilaterally what we are trying to achieve by agreement. His view of maintaining a tough bargaining position is to continue on- going programs even though, as in the case of the two new sites for ABM, we may at some point be in a position of having to dismantle what we have erected for the purpose of maintaining a bargaining chip position in Helsinki.

Now, that is the issue.

Senator HUMPHREY. Yes.

## VIEWS OF PRIOR WITNESS, MR. PAUL WARNKE

Senator MUSKIE. Mr. Warnke put it this way, and I was happy to see his statement quoted in at least the Washington Post story this morning because his statement highlights the difference in view of what we do having achieved rough equality, what we do to improve the possibilities for agreement. What Mr. Warnke said is this:

> It is the possibility that the United States might otherwise proceed with a large area ABM system or the deployment of accurate MIRVs that will lead the Soviets to negotiate seriously. The actual deployment of unneeded capabili- ties, which we will then be reluctant to dismantle, will impede rather than advance the prospects for an effective and broad agreement.

Now that is the philosophy to which I subscribe. I think that if we were to suspend deployment, as you recommend in your MIRV pro- posal, the Soviets are not going to be fooled into believing that is an ir- revocable and complete and final discontinuation of a weapons system on our part. All it would mean is that we are exercising restraint, in the hope that, on the basis of that restraint we can build an agreement. But that if that agreement is not reached, we reserve the option to continue development and deployment thereafter. That is how I think the Soviets would interpret such an action on our part.

Now Secretary Packard honestly, and obviously with conviction, holds a different view.

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He says that unless we continue on-going programs, unless we continue their development and deployment in the course of negotiations, that we diminish the prospect of agreement with the Soviet Union. So that seems to be the issue which is developing in the hearings yesterday and today.

Senator HUMPHREY. Can I make a comment upon that. First, Mr. Chairman, I find myself in full accord with your general analysis and your general position.

Second, I think Mr. Warnke has stated, very succinctly, the climate that is necessary for a success in reaching any agreement.

## CONCLUSIONS

Now some conclusions, Mr. Chairman.

1. It is worth noting that in the internal debates on SALT within the Soviet Union, such U.S. efforts to force the pace of the strategic competition as the deployment of Safeguard and MIRV have had the effect of weakening the case of those in the Soviet Union who have argued that arrangements with the United States for the stabilization of the strategic arms competition are possible. It has forced them into elaborate explanations and defenses of their proposed dealings with the so-called imperialists.

2. It is also clear that the effect of the "bargaining chip" rationale for further armament measures by the United States has been the opposite of what was intended. Although it is true that these measures have put before the Soviet leadership the prospect of a further expensive round in the arms competition as the alternative to a SALT agreement, what is more significant is that the Soviet leadership feels itself obliged to match each step with comparable measures, for it cannot allow itself, for both domestic and international reasons, to be pressured into an agreement on unfavorable terms. Perhaps the "bargaining chip" theory may be sound diplomacy under some circumstances, but it is clear that in the strategic weapons field it provides dynamism for the arms race. Moreover, when a measure such as Safeguard or MIRV is defended in this country on the grounds that it is necessary to increase our bargaining pressure, rather than on the intrinsic merits of the measure proposed, the argument is known and discounted on the Soviet side as a transparent device.

I would like to interpolate at this point, Mr. Chairman, that this obviously is in disagreement with the testimony reported to have been given yesterday by Secretary Packard. It seems to me that the argument that the reason that we seem to be making progress now is because we have moved toward the deployment of these systems reminds me a bit of the old man who was dug out of the rubble of a blitz raid in London and as the rescue workers led him away he was shaking his head and said "I don't understand it," I don't understand it. Someone asked him what he meant. He said "I was taking a bath and all I did was pull the plug out of the bathtub and then there the damndest explosion you ever saw."

The obvious point is that causality is not an obvious relationship. I think, in this connection and, in fact, it seems to me to work in the opposite direction.

3. And finally, Mr. Chairman, over the long run, it would seem more effective for the United States to base its negotiating tactics and its military procurements on the principle that security in the realm of strategic weapons is best served by a stable equilibrium at as moderate a level as can be managed through explicit or tacit agreement with our adversaries. To achieve this will require us to break the cycle of interaction between the two countries by the exercise of political leadership, deciding military policies in terms of this conception of security rather than leaving them to be decided by the pressures of the military services, the upward tug of technology, the overreaction of military planners, or the misguided rationalization of self-deceptive bargaining techniques.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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WEDNESDAY MORNING, 14 JULY 1971

WASHINGTON (UPI) -- THE UNITED STATES, IN LINE WITH A WELL-ESTABLISHED POLICY BARRING A FIRST STRIKE NUCLEAR MISSION, DELIBERATELY HAS CHOSEN TO RETARD THE ACCURACY OF A MAJOR NEW STRATEGIC SYSTEM.

DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY DAVID PACKARD SAID WEDNESDAY THE ADMINISTRATION HAD DECIDED TO REFRAIN FROM INCREASING THE ACCURACY OF THE MULTIPLE, INDEPENDENTLY-TARGETED RE-ENTRY VEHICLE (MIRV). HE SAID THE DECISION WAS MADE EVEN THROUGH IT IS "TECHNICALLY POSSIBLE" NOW TO IMPROVE THE WEAPON'S CAPABILITY OF KNOCKING OUT HARDENED ENEMY TARGETS, SUCH AS MISSILE SILOS.

WHILE PACKARD DID NOT SAY SO, THE DECISION APPEARED TO BE A MAJOR GESTURE TOWARD THE SOVIET UNION IN THE MIDST OF ARMS CONTROL TALKS AT HELSINKI -- AN EVIDENT ATTEMPT TO ASSURE MOSCOW MIRV WOULD NOT BE CONVERTED TO A COUNTERFORCE WEAPON THAT COULD DESTROY THE SOVIET ABILITY TO STRIKE BACK.

MIRV, AN EXCLUSIVE U.S. DEVELOPMENT, IS A CLUSTER OF WARHEADS IN A SINGLE NOSE CONE. THEY SEPARATE IN SPACE AND ARE GUIDED TO WIDELY-DISPERSED TARGETS.

CRITICS OF THE WEAPON ARE CONCERNED THAT IT COULD DESTABILIZE THE ARMS RACE. BECAUSE IT POTENTIALLY IS ACCURATE ENOUGH TO KNOCK OUT AN ENEMY'S OFFENSIVE MISSILES. THIS COULD GIVE ONE SIDE A FIRST STRIKE THREAT WHICH THE OTHER WOULD BE FORCED TO MATCH.

BUT PACKARD TOLD THE SENATE ARMS CONTROL SUBCOMMITTEE "THIS ADMINISTRATION MADE A DELIBERATE DECISION NOT TO IMPROVE THE ACCURACY OF OUR MIRV, THEREBY IMPROVING HARDENED TARGET DESTRUCTIVE CAPABILITY, TO WHAT WAS AND IS TECHNICALLY POSSIBLE."

IN FACT, HE CONTENDED, THE USE OF MIRVS INSTEAD OF SINGLE WARHEADS ON MINUTEMAN MISSILES "ACTUALLY REDUCED OUR POTENTIAL COUNTERFORCE CAPABILITY."

ARMS CONTROL ADVOCATES GAVE A MIXED GREETING TO THE NEWS.

"THIS IS A STEP AHEAD," SEN. CLIFFORD P. CASE, R-N.J., TOLD PACKARD. "YOU ARE DELIBERATELY RESTRAINING US FROM DOING WHAT WE COULD DO."

BUT SEN. EDMUND S. MUSKIE, D-MAINE, THE CHAIRMAN OF THE SUBCOMMITTEE, QUESTIONED WHETHER THE SOVIETS WOULD ACCEPT THE U.S. WORD NOT TO INCREASE THE ACCURACY OF MIRV.