Living with Henry

John Osborne

E

THE NEW
REPUBLIC

A Journal of Politics and the Arts — May 19, 1973, 50 cents

Talk with Sihanouk

*Stanley Karnow from Peking*

Vietnam without GIs—Zalin B. Grant

Boob Bumping—Gerald W. Johnson

Nixon Tax Reform—Paul R. McDaniel

COMMENT: Washing Dirty Dollars, The Presidency Myth, Permanent Emergency, John Connally, Cambodian Coverup

MAY 19, 1973

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was not until last year that Fitzsimmons apparently decided to crush the UFW. Addressing the 1972 convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation in Los Angeles, Fitzsimmons called the UFW "a revolutionary movement which is perpetrating a fraud on the American public," and called for an alliance between agribusiness and the Teamsters. The UFW believes that politics was behind that move. The UFW was an early active supporter of George McGovern; the Farm Bureau and Teamster hierarchies backed President Nixon and have not been unkindly treated in return. (The New York Times reported last month that former Attorney General Richard Kleindienst squelched an FBI investigation into possible links between Fitzsimmons and several Mafia figures.)

Early this year the Teamsters sent organizers into the Coachella Valley to collect signatures of farmworkers. They claim to have collected 4158—a figure the UFW says is cockeyed, since there weren't half that many grape workers in the fields. Grami insists all the signatures were valid and voluntary and the result of worker dissatisfaction with the UFW. Whatever the truth of the matter, the Teamsters took their petitions to the growers and after less than two days of negotiations signed four-year contracts that brought back the old labor contracting system. There have been no meetings between Teamsters leaders and farmworkers, no ranch committees established similar to the UFW's, no ratification process offered. When asked by a newsman whether farmworkers ought to vote for the union of their choice, Fitzsimmons replied: "Why should we have an election if we already have the contracts?"

The UFW wants to reform the basic nature of large-scale agriculture; protect its members against pesticides and mechanization; build a political force for Chicano and Filipino farmworkers that can offset the political power of agribusiness; and nurture a sense of solidarity and self-respect among the poorest of American workers. It is a social and political movement as well as a trade union, but its future depends on whether it can survive as a union. At the moment that future is bleak. It must regain the contracts lost to the Teamsters in table grapes as well as lettuce. It can do this only by demonstrating to growers that it's too costly for them to deal with the Teamsters. That means more strikes and another grape boycott, the success of which will depend to a large extent on AFL-CIO, church and liberal support. George Meany, who in the past has made no secret of his dislike for Chavez' style and politics, has condemned the Teamsters raids as "disgraceful" and dispatched 20 top organizers to Coachella; the AFL-CIO executive council last week voted to give UFW a strike fund of $1.6 million.

The UFW's strongest asset is its urban image and boycott apparatus. Chavez has called a new boycott on non-UFW grapes; the effect won't be known until the first grapes go to market in June. As in the past the UFW's major targets will be the Safeway and A&P

chains. Growers are counting on the Teamsters union label, and possibly the Teamsters' ability to slow or stop deliveries to markets that don't handle grapes, to make the second grape boycott less damaging than the first. They're also hoping to get federal legislation, with Nixon administration backing, that would outlaw the secondary boycott.

Chavez is realistic about the UFW's position. "What we accomplished in eight years of organizing is all being wiped out with one stroke of the pen." But, he insists, "we'll break them. Don't ask me how long it will take. Five years, 10 years. We're very patient."

Peter Barnes

## The Nixon Watch

### Living With Henry

Henry Kissinger's return from his latest journey to Moscow was awaited by his staff with an interest that had nothing to do with the delay in arranging a firm date for Leonid Brezhnev's promised visit to Washington. The 132 people who comprise Kissinger's National Security Council establishment assumed that he would soon get around to telling them what some changes in the NSC staff structure that were announced last April 6 and decided upon well before then are going to mean to them and to their relationship with him and the President.

The patient acceptance of Kissinger's failure to tell even the senior members of his staff, including those who are directly affected, what he had in mind with the changes before or when they were announced, is a good indicator of how it is to work and live with Henry in the fifth year of that extraordinary experience. Sadly for reporters and commentators who in the past have made much of the horrors of working for Henry Kissinger, the horror stories are no longer told with horror. His secretive ways, his relentless demands for unattainable perfection, his occasional flashes of cutting anger have come to be taken for granted and dismissed with rather humorous pleas for understanding that it's Henry being Henry and doesn't really matter. Most of his 50 professional assistants are trained specialists with trained minds—career diplomats, economists, systems analysts, political scientists, a few lawyers and generalists. The plain fact, corny when baldly stated but nonetheless a fact, is that they perceive in Kissinger the possessor of a superlative mind who stretches their minds and capabilities to the utmost and, along with the pains and passing resentments, gives them a profound sense of satisfaction and reward when he does it.

The changes in staff structure reflect Kissinger's

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evolution in the job since he became Mr. Nixon's assistant for national security affairs in 1969. It took him 18 months to come around to acceptance of one subordinate with the title and status of deputy assistant to the President. Now he is to have four subordinates with that title and a fifth with the status but not the title. Kissinger's mix of reasons for such a generous expansion of a rank that confers upon the holders, in theory though not necessarily in fact, the prestige of responsibility to the President rather than to him provides an interesting insight into his evolving view of his job and of the NSC function.

The reason of greatest general interest, though not the most immediate and important reason to be stated in forthcoming explanations to the staff, is that Kissinger is preparing the NSC structure for his departure. He is aware that his associates are basing their own plans on the assumption that he will be around for two years and probably no more than two years of the second Nixon term. He neither questions nor discourages the assumption. But his present intention could change for one or more of several reasons. The President could lose confidence in him; he could lose confidence in the President; or an impossible situation for him could be created by the replacement of the docile and cooperative William P. Rogers with a secretary of State, John Connally for instance, who would not tolerate Kissinger's ascendancy in the formulation and execution of foreign policy. One thing that certainly will not happen, I am assured and believe, is Kissinger's departure because of the Watergate scandal and the imputations of involvement that now crowd upon the President. The consensus around Kissinger is that, all other considerations apart, he will not desert the President at a time when his departure would be interpreted as a show of distrust. If it ever comes to a matter of non-confidence on either man's part, it will be over issues of policy principle and that is extremely improbable. Eventual departure is a factor in the structural changes only in the sense that Kissinger wants to leave behind him, when and if he goes, an NSC system and NSC procedures that are not as dependent upon him as they have been and that a successor can operate with until he rearranges the setup to suit himself.

Kissinger's principal purpose, as it will be explained to the staff, is to make it easier to work with him and for him to work with his assistants. As I get the story, he realized many months ago that he had become a bottleneck in the system and that the single deputy assistant, originally General Alexander M. Haig, Jr. and now Brigadier General Brent Scowcroft, had become another bottleneck. In the intensely personalized procedure that Kissinger started with in 1969 and has dominated since then, policy business that he didn't have the time to handle was supposed to be handled by the deputy and neither of them had enough time

to do it. This became acutely obvious at the height of the negotiations for an Indochina and Vietnam settlement last year, when both Kissinger and General Haig were frequently abroad, and Kissinger finally brought himself to do something about it with the designation of a "deputy for operations." His choice for the job is Lawrence S. Eagleburger, aged 43, a career foreign service officer who worked himself into physical breakdown as a personal assistant to Kissinger in 1969 and lately has been acting assistant secretary of Defense for international security affairs. Kissinger's theory is that a few hours a week with Eagleburger, imparting to him Kissinger's and the President's views and wishes, will qualify the new deputy to act for Kissinger on marginal matters and serve as a buffer between him and senior members of the staff. The hope is that this will allow Kissinger ample time, more time than he has had in the past, for personal discussion with his senior associates and their juniors on critical matters. Such is the theory. One of Kissinger's oldest and most loyal associates advised me to assume that the theory won't work out. Henry's insistence upon personal and minute supervision of everything that concerns him and the President will never change, this fellow said, adding that the demands of the staff for personal contact with Henry will never change, either.

The two other new deputies (for "planning" and for international economic affairs) are to be Colonel Richard T. Kennedy, a retired army officer who since 1969 has been the staff planning director, and Charles A. Cooper, a former Rand Corporation economist who since 1970 has been the chief economics officer at the US Embassy in Saigon. The "planning" in Colonel Kennedy's old and new titles is something of a euphemism. A quiet man with a passion for orderly labor, he keeps the otherwise frantic NSC pace and procedure in a condition bearably short of chaos and, in simple justice, had to be accorded the higher title and status if anybody was. Charles Cooper, an eminent economist in his own right, gets the rank because he probably couldn't have been recruited without it. His advent signals Kissinger's determination to have the NSC staff play a larger and more effective role in international economic policy than it previously has. Philip Odeen, the NSC staff's chief systems analyst, gets the status without the title for one of those curious reasons that often operate in officialdom. His opposite number at the Department of Defense was recently downgraded, and Kissinger figured that he couldn't formally upgrade Odeen without offending the powers at DOD.

A victim and beneficiary of the same sort of official quirkery is Helmut Sonnenfeldt, who since 1969 has been Kissinger's senior specialist on Soviet and East European affairs. Sonnenfeldt, a foreign service officer, is credited with immense contributions to the President's Moscow summit, strategic arms negotiations, the whole range of widening accommodation with the Soviet Union. By acknowledged right, he should have

MAY 19, 1973

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been designated Kissinger's senior deputy. But — and here I repeat what I'm told — many of Hal Sonnenfeldt's associates find him impossibly difficult to work for. Kissinger concluded that he would have a staff revolt and unmanageable chaos on his hands if he gave Sonnenfeldt the promotion he had earned. The department of State didn't want him back. Elliot Richardson, who thought he was staying at the Defense Department and instead has been named attorney general in the forlorn hope that he can clear up and sanitize the Watergate scandal, rejected Kissinger's urgent recommendation that Sonnenfeldt be appointed assistant secretary for international security affairs. Ostensibly Richardson refused on the mentioned personality grounds. Actually, as Richardson saw it, the issue was whether the White House should or shouldn't dictate DOD appointments. So Kissinger worked the prob-

lem out with Treasury Secretary George Shultz and Hal Sonnenfeldt is to be an under secretary of the Treasury, specializing in international economic affairs. He's happy and Kissinger is happy.

This is one of the few occasions for happiness at the beleaguered White House. Another one, in NSC quarters, is the fact that General Haig has temporarily replaced H. R. Haldeman as Mr. Nixon's chief of staff. Haldeman detested Kissinger and Kissinger detested Haldeman. Grave and growing concern that Watergate is eroding the President's authority abroad as well as at home outweighs all other considerations in Henry Kissinger's vicinity. But one hears it said in that vicinity, though not by Kissinger, that if any good could come of Watergate it was the removal of Bob Haldeman and his California crowd from power at the White House.

John Osborne

## A Talk with Sihanouk
# Count Him In

by Stanley Karnow

*Peking*

When Prince Norodom Sihanouk was overthrown as Cambodian chief of state three years ago, it was generally assumed that he would soon join the assortment of deposed monarchs who live out their lives on the French Riviera. But Sihanouk has proved to be a different species. He has managed to win the backing of the Chinese, who were initially doubtful about his future, and he has also gained the support of the North Vietnamese, whom he has long distrusted. He recently undertook a dangerous trip into the so-called "liberated areas" of Cambodia in order to reinforce his alliance with the insurgents fighting against the tottering Pnompenh regime headed by Lon Nol and, at the same time, to demonstrate that he represents something more significant than a government in exile. Most important perhaps, Sihanouk has succeeded in acquiring a measure of begrudging recognition from the Nixon administration. In contrast to a few months ago when they dismissed him as "all washed up," administration officials now concede that Sihanouk will probably play some kind of role in a future Cambodian settlement.

So the "Pink Prince," as he laughingly calls himself, cannot be counted out of the Cambodian equation.

On the contrary he may well hold the key to a solution of the war—even if his part in achieving a cease-fire is only temporary.

When I talked with Sihanouk here in Peking last week, he displayed his characteristic ebullience and an extraordinary degree of self-confidence. He and his entourage occupy the former French embassy, a compound of drab buildings located on what was formerly called Legation Street and is now known as Anti-imperialist Street. We sat in a salon decorated with a huge photograph of Sihanouk and Mao Tse-tung and such objets d'art as soapstone carvings and embroidery landscapes. I began by asking Sihanouk why he chose after his ouster to continue fighting rather than retire comfortably to France. He replied with an anecdote: "A month before the coup against me I was in southern France, in Nice, strolling along the Promenade des Anglais, and some French mistook me for Bao Dai, the former emperor of Vietnam. 'He is so fat and his pockets are filled with money, our money,' I heard them say. I turned to them and said that I was not Bao Dai. I serve my country and I do not depend on the French people, I told them. So you see, my temperament is different from that of other kings

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who have been deposed. It is my duty to fight."

Sihanouk then went on to explain the purpose of his recent trip back to Cambodia. His enemies alleged that he was in exile in Peking and had no connection with the internal resistance forces, he said. Moreover, he added, his foes contended that the insurgents did not consider him their leader. These charges were not entirely unfounded, since Sihanouk himself had disclosed as recently as January that he might not be welcomed by the insurgents. But some kind of understanding was reached and, as he put it last week, "I proved to the world and to my enemies that the national resistance inside Cambodia regards Sihanouk as the only legal head of state ... and the father of the Cambodian patriots." In addition, he insisted, the leftist insurgents known as Khmers Rouges are "legitimists" who are loyal to his royal government. In other words, Sihanouk argues, his government exists inside Cambodia as an alternative establishment to the Lon Nol regime—very much the way the Vietcong's provisional revolutionary government challenges the legality of the Saigon administration. Sihanouk asserts, incidentally, that the term Khmer Rouge is ideologically ambiguous. He says: "They are leftists but they refused to be considered Communists. They are Buddhists, they are very Cambodian and they are very independent-minded. They are not puppets of China, not puppets of Russia, not puppets of Hanoi ... Their program is progressive, leftist, but it suits royalists, nationalists, and Buddhists—and it suits me too."

I reminded Sihanouk that in October 1967, when he was in power in Pnompenh, he had accused the present insurgent leaders of treason and ordered them to be tried by a military court. It was assumed at the time that they were secretly executed. Sihanouk now claims rather lamely that he was tricked into cracking down on the leftists by Lon Nol. But he denies that they are dead, pointing out that he saw and filmed them during his recent journey to Cambodia. "I could not have invented them," he says, "I mean, they are really alive."

Sihanouk seems to me to be on somewhat shaky ground when he contends, as he did, that the Central Intelligence Agency was involved in the coup against him. He cites newspaper reports as evidence for the charge. He also revealed to me that Chinese Premier Chou En-lai told President Nixon during their meeting here last year that "the coup d'état was your coup, an American coup." According to Sihanouk, Nixon replied that the coup was staged strictly by Lon Nol and "not even the CIA was involved." Sihanouk remains unconvinced. "If what President Nixon said is true," he argued, "why did he invade Cambodia at the end of April in order to defend Lon Nol? Since then he has done his best to help Lon Nol to survive. That is the proof that he was involved." Looking back on that

period it is interesting to speculate on whether the domestic Cambodian tangle might have been unravelling if Nixon had not invaded the country. Sihanouk rules out that possibility. "I would not have compromised with the traitors because they were my ministers and officers, and they betrayed me during my absence from Cambodia. Nor will we compromise with Pnompenh in the future. We do not plan to negotiate with anybody in Pnompenh. We plan to liberate the city and to establish the royal government there."

Sihanouk is willing to open discussions with the United States, however, but told me that his offers to talk with Henry Kissinger, made through Chou En-lai and North Vietnamese Premier Pham Van Dong, were rejected last year and again this February. Sihanouk said that Kissinger told the two intermediaries that he was "not permitted by President Nixon" to deal with the prince.

It may hearten the Pentagon to know that Sihanouk confesses quite candidly that American bombing affects his forces "very significantly." He told me that the air strikes by B-52s and F-111s are "the main factor, the main reason why we cannot take Pnompenh." He also admitted that the US bombings and strafings are effective in preventing his followers from blocking the Mekong River, along which supplies are moved to Pnompenh. But he contends that the American aircraft cannot defeat his forces, even if his forces cannot defeat the Lon Nol regime as long as it has US air support. "So the war may continue for some time to come," he says. How long? "Well, at least until President Nixon retires from office in 1976."

In contrast to his Chinese hosts, who are reticent to comment on Watergate as they improve their relations with the administration, Sihanouk is delighted by the scandal. "I must confess that it pleases me," he said, "because it may cause President Nixon so much trouble that he will not be able to continue the war against us. I hope so."

The Pentagon may also be heartened by Sihanouk's admission that the North Vietnamese and Vietcong use Cambodia as a route to transport equipment down to South Vietnam. "We allow them this because they are allies," he said, but he denies that the Communists have "fixed permanent bases" inside Cambodia. He admits as well that Hanoi provided his forces with advisers and instructors in 1970 and 1971. He denies, however, that North Vietnamese troops are now fighting alongside his insurgents. "If they were, we would have beaten Lon Nol a long time ago," he said.

Sihanouk does not attempt to deny that he relies on North Vietnamese and Chinese 'military aid. The Chinese aid, which he claims is sufficient to equip an army of 100,000 men, is moved down the Ho Chi Minh trail by North Vietnamese "because we fight the same enemy." He says that his forces also have captured weapons, among them 100 five-millimeter howitzers, from the government army. I can add from recent ex-

WASHINGTON CLOSE-UP

# Mentality of Irresponsibility

By GEORGE SHERMAN

If any further proof were needed, the Water-gate investigation has provided dramatic evidence of the demise of the State Department under the Nixon White House.

"Subservient" is perhaps the most charitable adjective being thrown around these days among the professionals in Foggy Bottom about how their superiors behaved during the 1971 escapade with the man who was later to become a key Watergate conspirator — E. Howard Hunt.

No. 3 and No. 4 ranking officers of the department — U. Alexis Johnson and William Macomber — opened the files of top secret Vietnam telegrams at the request of two junior members of the White House staff. So far as is known, Secretary of State William P. Rogers was not even consulted, nor was a question put to the higher echelon of the White House.

The net result — 240 highly sensitive messages were copied and taken from the State Department by Hunt without written permission of Rogers or anyone else.

To compound the embarrassment, the Pentagon quickly made known that it had turned down similar requests. Former Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird has told *The Washington Star-News* that he himself knew of the request within 14 minutes and personally turned it down.

People who have watched Rogers' handling of the State Department over the past four years are not much surprised at the contrast. Whatever his personal relations with the President — and they remain excellent — the secretary has handed de-

tailed direction of American foreign policy to Henry A. Kissinger in the White House.

No shred of evidence exists to link Kissinger to the Hunt caper. Quite the contrary, the two junior staff people at the White House easing the way for Hunt — Egil Krogh and David Young — were working for John D. Ehrlichman in what was called the "plumbing" operation to plug national security leaks.

But critics charge that the easy State Department acquiescence reflects the mentality of irresponsibility produced in Foggy Bottom by the Nixon era. The White House will decide, the White House will do, and what the White House wants, the White House gets — these are the maxims raised to the pedestal of bureaucratic duty.

In August 1971, Hunt had a singular asset in exploiting this frame of mind. David Young, though working then for Ehrlichman, had been the personal appointments secretary for Kissinger until that July — a position sufficiently close to the font of foreign policy power to give his request an added tinge of authority.

Serious thinkers now question whether the model of all power to the White House, which produced the Watergate syndrome at home, fits the needs of American foreign policy for the rest of the 1970s.

It is a fact that not only decision-making, but also the collection of facts fathering those decisions, rests now in the office of Kissinger. At the same time, the President has given his key aide the mandate to do major negotiations abroad — witness the frequent trips to Moscow and the endless dia-

logue with Hanoi envoy Le Duc Tho in Paris.

Critics charge, and Kissinger privately admits, that no one man can do all these tasks well. He dwells more on the "big problems" or crises concerning the President, while those around Kissinger become master lieutenants insulating their boss from the bureaucracy and enjoying greater authority for handling "less urgent" problems.

State Department officers cannot get action on policy recommendations for Japan, for the Middle East; they do not know what is being planned about Cambodia — all because Kissinger is too busy.

In a word, Kissinger's vaunted national security system is becoming no system at all. And, of course, a repeat of the fraudulent use of authority for Hunt in 1971 from the White House fortress remains a nightmare.

Few experts dispute that the Nixinger operation has produced great success with the Russians and the Chinese. A new framework of relaxation between the great powers has been put in place. Professionals even acknowledge that tight centralization may have been necessary to break the bureaucratic inertia of the Cold War.

But the very success of the White House operation may now prove its undoing. For in a relaxed world, other more complicated issues like economics and the triangle of U.S.-West Europe-Japan relations are moving front and center.

To cope, the professionals want the sick and harassed White House to return some power to the talent and expertise of the State Department.

ARTHUR HOPPE

FEATURES COLUMNISTS

THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE MAY 1973 (3)

ANNALS OF DIPLOMACY

SALT

I—THE LABYRINTH

SOMETIME between the great world wars, a Whitehall civil servant hung on the wall behind his desk the framed admonition "If you know what you think, you don't understand the problem." Beleaguered though this forgotten professional skeptical may have been, one doubts whether he and his contemporaries grappled with problems as labyrinthine or as treacherous or as rich in paradox, contradiction, and abstraction as those covered by SALT—the strategic-arms-limitation talks. Though the United States and the Soviet Union have been engaged in the talks since November of 1969, and "SALT" itself is by now among the world's best-known acronyms, the substance of the talks is available only to initiates—the bureaucrats and scientists who are professionally involved. And even many of them are confused; their thinking shifts and oscillates, because the analysis flowing from SALT mocks, if it doesn't overwhelm, tidy, clear-cut points of view. Politicians and editorialists tell us that SALT is the most fateful negotiation in human history, although they are hard pressed to explain exactly what is at issue and why. The arms-limitation agreements reached in Moscow last May—possibly the first in a series—drew a nearly unanimous congressional endorsement, and it is difficult to imagine a SALT agreement's being rejected, any more than the limited-test-ban treaty of 1963 or the nuclear-nonproliferation treaty of 1968 was rejected. Yet the concerned public and its elected representatives can gain much less insight into SALT than they could into these other agreements. SALT, then, is perverse; it enlists our curiosity yet discourages comprehension. Even so, thinking about SALT—understanding what is involved and what is happening—can be rewarding, less because of its self-evident importance than because it is probably the most fascinating episodic negotiation since 1815 and the Congress of Vienna. SALT is likely to go on indefinitely. Thus, even though progress may be slow, and the talks are likely to bog down occasionally, SALT may develop a cumulative impact on world politics comparable to that of the Congress of Vienna, whose achievement was to spare Europe any major bloodletting for a hundred years.

Piercing the veil of SALT means understanding three questions: why the United States and the Soviet Union are engaged in this unique enterprise, why SALT is opaque, and what the essence of SALT really is. The answer to the first

should determine whether SALT will produce further agreement and actually stabilize the power balance—that is blunt the incentive for strategic advance in nuclear arms. The complexity of SALT is so great that no two senior officials involved in the process—and no two middle-level bureaucrats, for that matter—appear to agree on why the two superpowers are engaged in such talks; indeed, opinions clash on whether SALT is desirable. In any event, governments, like people, rarely make their major decisions for a single, obvious reason, or even for two reasons. Furthermore, the motives animating official actions may be obscured by the actions themselves or by the rhetoric clothing the actions. Nevertheless, there is a kind of standard rationale for SALT. A senior official who was asked why the United States should bother with SALT might answer like this: "The talks were launched not from a common impulse to reduce armaments but from a desire to solemnize the parity principle—to establish an acceptance by each side of the other's ability to inflict intolerable retribution in response to a nuclear attack. Each may recognize that an unlimited arms race could undermine deterrence—hence stability—by allowing one or the other to acquire a margin of superiority that would create risks of a first strike. Also, failure to set limits could mean indefinitely sustaining the push for more and better arms, with costs driven constantly upward, at the expense of other things." Each side, this senior official might say, makes coldly analytical assumptions about the other's purposes and goals. Each assumes that the other is negotiating because parity has been achieved, but each also suspects that the other may be trying to buy time in order to catch up or jump ahead, either in the number of weapons or in the destructive potential of existing and future systems.

The Russians, our senior American official might add, are in the talks partly because they have overtaken the United States in strategic weapons. Their effort—begun after the Cuban missile crisis—to match the Americans by achieving a balanced second-strike force has succeeded; that is to say, they have a missile force that can survive a first strike and retaliate. Now their leaders, like America's, hope to head off another offensive-weapons cycle. They know that to succeed in this both sides

must inhibit defensive weapons—an insight they have acquired from the Americans. Defending people, they now see, is the most troublesome of all strategic options, for the parity principle, or stability, or stable deterrence, demands that each of the two societies stand exposed to the destructive power of the other. In other words, once either side undertook to defend its population there could be no end to the cycle of designing new offenses to penetrate new defenses, and still newer defenses to frustrate the new offenses. Acceptance of this severe doctrine—a relatively new one, seeded by the McNamara Pentagon in the mid-sixties—illustrates the growing sophistication of Soviet thinking and some willingness to break with fixed attitudes, including an old Russian habit of equating security with territorial defense. The acceptance also points up the American interest in getting the Russians to change some of their thinking—in creating a situation that will bring about, however gradually, a convergence of American and Russian thinking on stable deterrence.

Thinking about deterrence is mind-bending, even for those who make it their job. It takes time and some knowledge of the weapons as well as of the issues; hence the gap not just between the United States strategic community and that of the Russians, whose concern with these concepts is more recent, but also between the Americans and their allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and between those Americans directly involved and those observing from academe. Both sides are in the SALT negotiations partly to get a better grip on internal-polycy issues. SALT forces decisions up through the two bureaucracies; under the American system, the negotiations oblige competing elements to settle their differences and take what might become self-limiting steps in the arms race. Briefly, then, SALT offers a way for both sides to do some things that each may want to do anyway, because doing them as part of a bilateral agreement is easier than doing them unilaterally. Our senior official, especially if he were representing the State Department or the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency—an autonomous government agency established in 1961—might conclude his answer to the question "Why SALT?" with a word on parity. The alternative to parity, he could say, is a quest for superiority—a goal robbed of its strategic value by the undoubted continuing ability of

(CONTINUED NEXT PAGE)

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ANNALS OF DIPLOMACY -- CONTINUED

each side to destroy most of the other's society. Parity, as such, may have more significance for the Russians than for the Americans. It represents a cherished Soviet objective—the ability to claim power that is the equal of America's and, as a result of that power, to expand their political horizons. Europe and other parts of the world can be put on notice that as Soviet nuclear might increases, Soviet non-nuclear forces can back a venturesome, possibly aggressive foreign policy and incur minimal risk of a nuclear confrontation with Washington. Parity, then, is as much a political as a strategic value.

ONE wonders how Talleyrand, Europe's consummate diplomat, would have reacted to SALT. Like the Congress of Vienna, SALT is a political negotiation concerned with finding an equilibrium 'in which the great powers feel secure. Unlike the Congress of Vienna, whose pivotal issue was purely political—the control of Poland and Saxony—SALT is an anarchy of technical issues and asymmetries, and these are frequently so complex as to frustrate efforts to agree on definitions and terms of reference. The essence of SALT is political, but technical issues are used by both sides to shore up political and strategic biases. Understanding SALT means surmounting this barrier and others: the secrecy of the over-all process; the theological approach that has overtaken the Americans, or many of them; the mythology of SALT; and the ambiguities arising from the savagely conflicting attitudes within the defense and arms-control communities, and the deeper ambiguities emerging from the Russian performance in negotiating matters related to SALT.

The security surrounding the talks is remarkable. Rarely, if ever, have negotiations so prominent been so secret. At the outset, the two delegations agreed to forbear seeking propaganda advantage that might accrue from leaking news of the proceedings, and the members of both delegations have faithfully observed the rule of secrecy. Some of their colleagues in Washington do lift the curtain on some part of the talks from time to time—derelictions that often lead to a tie for tat, with the Soviet Embassy in Washington offering its version in response to an Administration-inspired account of the American position, or vice versa. Both delegations deplore leaks, whatever the source. On this issue, as on others, the active negotiators for the two sides have acquired a common view arising from their proprietary attitude toward SALT.

On the American side, the negotiations are directed by a small group of senior officials called the Verification Panel, which was created and is chaired by Henry Kissinger, the President's as-

stant for national security affairs. The Panel deals with broad policy options, and these options are shaped by what is called the Verification Panel Working Group, whose members are six senior bureaucrats drawn from the National Security Council staff, the State Department, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. The members of the Working Group focus on SALT the analytical talents of hundreds of specialists from the agencies they represent and from outside institutions. They are to the metaphysics of nuclear deterrence what the post-Nicene fathers of the Roman Catholic Church—the Scholastics, say—were to Christian theology. The Greek term "homoiouson," or "consubstantial," when it emerged from the First Council of Nicaea, in 325, and finally established the divinity of the Son in the Trinity, must have befuddled the far-flung clergy and the faithful just as the acronym "MIRV" (for "multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle") befuddled even knowledgeable Washingtonians, for whose eyes the then classified term was first insinuated into the Washington Post on January 29, 1967.

As was the case in the early Church, contending schools involved with SALT form around opposing strategic concepts. The most important of these are known as "assured destruction" and "damage limitation." Both can claim broad support and intellectual respectability. For the moment, though, the concept claiming the broader support is that of assured destruction, whose proponents assert, among other principles, that defending a country's population with ballistic missiles is immoral, because it might diminish an adversary's ability to destroy the defended cities in a second, or retaliatory, nuclear strike, and, by thus undermining his confidence, tempt him, in a crisis, to strike first. Stability, a truly divine goal in the nuclear age, thus becomes linked to secure second-strike offenses on both sides—that is, to assured destruction. This is the supreme dogma of the ascendant branch of the defense and arms-control communities. Those who oppose this theory believe, in greater or lesser degree, that to renounce the means of limiting damage to one's own society is heresy; in other words, the damage-limitation school would deploy offensive forces capable of measurably reducing an adversary's offensive weapons or would defend metropolitan areas with anti-ballistic-missile missiles (ABMs), or both.

The abstractions of Church doctrine are matched, if not exceeded, by the abstractions of Washington's internal SALT debate. Soviet tests of multiple warheads for the SS-9—a land-based missile of stu-

pendous destructive power—generated a long epistomological debate within the upper reaches of the Nixon Administration about what is and what is not a MIRVed missile. The issue turns on the distinction between MRVS (for "multiple reentry vehicles") and MIRVS. MRVS, like pellets from a shotgun, follow a single ballistic path and cannot be aimed at separate targets. The MIRVS, which are more advanced, release individual warheads at varying times, and these can be aimed at separate targets. Establishing this distinction is far from simple, and for sheer arcana, for level of abstraction, for depth of passion, the debate on the implications of the Soviet tests recalls nothing so much as the querulous hairsplitting out of which Church dogma emerged.

Hereesis have a long half-life; most of those that have split the Church, like the simple Latin word "flioque" ("and from the Son"), which continues to separate the Eastern and Western Churches, persist in one form or another. Strategic heresy is no exception. If the Nixon Administration is measured by what it does, it appears to have accepted parity and so to have acquiesced in assured destruction—a more modest concept than damage limitation. Yet if it is

measured by what the President says, it appears to have specifically rejected parity in favor of "sufficiency"—a less confining term—and, just a week after his first inauguration, Nixon suggested, in his first press conference, that the difference between superiority and sufficiency was largely semantic. The President is not alone in his position. The concept of assured destruction may be the current fashion, but one finds throughout the government people for whom it represents only a temporary constraint—dictated chiefly by limits on spending—which will yield sooner or later to the politically and strategically more congenial concept of limiting damage. In brief, assured destruction is for some Scholastics of strategy a facade. For others, like Robert S. McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense, assured destruction is the only rational option; the superiority on which any significant damage-limiting capability must rest has become, in their view, chimerical.

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ALL issues related to SALT arise from instabilities, real or potential. Some instabilities are no less real for being rooted in suspicion and fear rather than hard fact. What one side regards as stabilizing may seem wildly destabilizing to the other. Neither side is willing to achieve stability by accepting what seems to be a heavier weight of insecurity than the other bears by accepting a sense of strategic inferiority.

Stability's handmaiden is MAD; the acronym is for "mutual assured destruction," and it was coined by enemies of the concept. SALT, then, is supposed to persuade each side to abandon steps that might weaken or jeopardize the other's ability to inflict assured destruction. That is what SALT is all about, in the eyes of many arms Scholastics.

Washington's assured destruction criteria are arbitrary and conservative. Back in the mid-nineteen-sixties, the Pentagon hit on roughly twenty-five per cent of the Soviet population and forty-five per cent of Soviet industry as a cut-off point in targeting weapons. Beyond that point, defense planners reckoned, more than double the number of weapons would be needed to gain even small increases in the level of destruction. The amount of second-strike power needed for such destruction was worked out as about four hundred one-megaton weapons, or the equivalent.

America now has three strategic forces—the Minuteman missile force, the Polaris submarines, and the B-52 bombers—and each of them can supposedly meet the criteria of assured destruction. The first thing to be said about this triad of forces is that it came about more by accident than by design; the second is that it is useful; and the third

is that its popularity in Washington is declining. A Washington compromise has it that the triad is the product of struggle between the armed services, each of which is determined to have a role in strategic military policy—but that is just part of the explanation. America relied on bombers in the nineteen-fifties. For insurance, the defense planners decided to build intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMS). Uncertain of being able to build into them the qualities of reliability, high accuracy,

and quick reaction time, Washington developed several, placing some on the ground, some in underground silos, and some in submarines, and by the early nineteen-sixties America had its triad of forces. In time, Washington grew to admire this triad. Political and military leaders like the overlap (or redundancy), thinking of it as a clear gain for stability. America's most secure—hence most stable—system, quite obviously, is the submarine. Yet communicating with the boats when they are submerged is something of a problem. According to one expert, it is not one that is "really serious." Still, it does encourage sentiment for having at least one additional strategic system. There is another argument in favor of diversity. If all United States strategic weapons were put in submarines, for example, the Russians would expend far greater resources on anti-submarine techniques. Thus, a gesture aimed at stability might cause instability. Some people argue that it was a mistake to retain the bombers, which are expensive to operate and maintain. Undeniably, bombers are slower to react than missiles, and their ability to penetrate Soviet defenses is less certain. But precisely the great advantage of bombers is their slowness; in the event of a mistake, they can be recalled. In other words, the bomber, which makes a virtue of a flaw, and which is not menacing as a first-strike weapon, is stable.

What, then, is unstable, or least stable? A stable strategic weapon should be capable of a delayed response. It should be invulnerable (because if it can't withstand an attack, the other side may reason that it is designed not to respond to aggression but to initiate it!) And it should be unambiguously deprived of what is called a first-strike, or damage-limiting, capability; put differently, it should not have that blend of accuracy and power that would enable it to destroy a large portion of the other side's weapons, as opposed to its population. Measured by these standards, the least stable element of America's triad is the Minuteman force. Although the fixed land-based ICBM was looked upon not long ago as the backbone of the American nuclear deterrent, it, and not the bomber, now seems likely to go the way of the cavalry. The Minuteman force has been compromised; it is unstable, or will be, because its invulnerability is in doubt.

At some point—nobody can say when—the Soviet Union should be able to wipe out the Minuteman force, or most of it, in a first strike. The weapons for this are the SS-9—a fixed land-based ICBM, whose deployment began in the late nineteen-sixties—and an improved version of it that is now in the testing phase. At first, the SS-9 made no strategic sense—at least, not to American arms Scholastics—for

with it Moscow seemed to be rejecting the American experience. Instead of moving, as the United States had, away from awkward, slow-reacting, liquid-fuelled missiles, such as the old Atlases and Titans, the Russians began deploying them. Instead of moving, as the United States had, toward smaller and more accurate warheads, they did the opposite, arming the SS-9 with a single warhead of imagined power—up to twenty-five megatons. (A one-megaton bomb is equal to a million tons of TNT, or is fifty times as powerful as the announced yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.) Instead of deploying cheaper, more reliable, quick-reacting, solid-fuelled missiles, like America's Minuteman, the Russians, it seemed, had opted for a white elephant that probably cost them about twice as much as the Minuteman. Washington was persuaded that Moscow had been taken in by some part of its military bureaucracy. Even today, American experts regard the SS-9 as technologically regressive, feeling that its destructive power is out of proportion to any rational strategic mission. But not for some time now has Washington viewed the SS-9 as it once did. When it occurred to American planners that the SS-9 might someday be armed with MIRVs, they began to see the missile in a different light. It became startlingly clear that, say, four hundred and twenty SS-9s with three five-megaton warheads as accurate as the Minuteman warheads could virtually destroy the Minuteman system. About three hundred SS-9s with six smaller warheads each would achieve the same result. In August, 1968, when the Russians began testing MRVs (the less sophisticated multiple reentry vehicles), their intention was obvious. It would not be long before they had a MIRV program. It would be quite a while—several years, perhaps—before they had the actual weapon, and still longer, probably, before their weapon was as accurate as the American version. But few, if any, experts now doubt the Soviet Union's ability to make a first-strike (and thus destabilizing) force of its super-brutes, of which there are now two hundred and eighty-eight, with silos under construction for twenty-five more. This perception gave a great boost to SALT, especially since the large-scale deployment of the SS-9 roughly coincided with the election of Mr. Nixon in 1968.

A FINE irony runs through this interaction between the SS-9 and the Minuteman. It is that the threat of the aesthetically contemptible Russian missile to Minuteman, probably the most proficient offensive weapon ever built, shapes, in greater or lesser degree, the thematic elements of SALT. These elements are, first, parity (or

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3-F

about what one side might do during
an international political crisis if it
had the means of limiting damage to
itself by destroying a major part of the
other's strategic forces. The nightmare
proceeds somethin' like this: During
the crisis, Moscow wipes out all or most
Minuteman missiles in a surprise at-
tack. America's submarine missiles and
bombers remain available to destroy
most of urban Russia, but the ques-
tion is: Would Washington retaliat?
Moscow would be betting against
America's willingness to commit na-
tional suicide by avenging the loss of a
thousand missiles (and several million
lives) scattered around the middle and
northwestern, United States and thus
inviting the destruction of metropolitan
America. The presumed alternative
would be to settle the crisis on Soviet
terms and keep the larger part of
American society intact. Calculations
of this sort seem grotesque, of course,
to all but those who have the responsi-
bility for deterrence. Those in positions
of responsibility are pressed, especially
by the military, to hedge against the
possibility of nuclear war by insuring
that their side would emerge less sorely
crippled than the other. The higher and
more realistic duty, however, is to ex-
cuse the source of instability.

With that in mind, what, if any-
thing, should the United States do
about its relatively unstable Minuteman
force? Four options exist: dismantling
all or part of the system; super-harden-
ing the missile silos—that is, sinking
them in natural layers of hard rock—
to make them less vulnerable to attack
by enemy missiles; defending the sys-
tem with anti-ballistic-missile missiles;
and putting the missiles on mobile
launchers, which would make them far
less vulnerable. Abandoning Minute-
man is the least feasible short-term
course: Washington would require
some reciprocity from Moscow, and
Moscow would say no. In theory,
Washington could dismantle the system
and compensate for its loss by building
a great many more submarines and
bombers. That may be done one day,
but not now, because neither the new
submarine-missile system nor a new
bomber, the B-1, is out of the develop-
ment stage, and neither can be deployed
much before the end of the decade.
There is another reason the United
States cannot now build more subma-
rines: current capacity is devoted en-
tirely to the program of shifting over
from Polaris to Poseidon missiles. Su-
per-hardening the silos would be an
enormously expensive hedge, and could
be rather easily overcome.

The Air Force could, say,
quadruple the hardness of
the silos; Moscow, in
turn, could improve the
accuracy of the SS-9, and
the Minuteman would be

just as vulnerable to a
direct, or nearly direct,
hit as before. Until last
year, defending the Min-
uteman was for many
arms Scholastics the most
attractive option of the
four available. It would
have meant deploying de-
fensive missiles around
Minuteman bases—a step
virtually ruled out by the

SALT agreements signed in May, 1972.

The last option, mobility, is yet anoth-
er thematic element of SALT. A missile
force with no fixed launching points
would be more secure than even a heavi-
ly defended one, but a mobile force
would also be destabilizing if the missiles
could not be counted by the other side,
for stability relies in part on each side's
knowing what the other has. To date,
SALT has failed to ban mobile ICBMS.
The United States did press for such
a ban during the talks leading up to
the May agreements, but the Soviet
Union turned it down. Neither side
has yet deployed mobile ICBMS, al-
though the Russians do have some
short-range missiles mounted on trucks
in eastern Russia. The option of mobility
is one that they will forgo reluctantly, if
at all, because land-based systems allow
them to exploit their natural geographi-
cal advantages. The United States could
deploy mobile missiles, but only with far
greater effort. A version of Minuteman
was designed to be moved by rail, but
it was decided that the force should re-
main in silos, partly because fixed mis-
siles are more accurate than mobile
ones. The Washington bureaucracy
has been split on the mobility issue, with
the weight of opinion opposed. Some of
Kissinger's staff members have raised
two stringent nontechnical objections
that conservationists and others would
be appalled by mobile missiles' rolling
through national parks, where at least
some of them would probably be de-
ployed, and that some extremist group
might hijack a mobile missile.

THE dramatic main theme of SALT,
so far, has been the interplay of
anti-ballistic-missile missiles and missiles
with multiple independently target-
able warheads. In the defense of cities
against incoming missiles and in the
proliferation of reentry vehicles lie the
true enemies of stable deterrence. Each
of the two systems can sap the oppo-
nent's confidence in its own forces; the
first does it by diminishing the oppo-
nent's ability to strike the other's cities,
the second by menacing, or seeming
to menace, the forces themselves. The
logic of deterrence is bizarre; it argues
for targeting weapons "counter-value"
(that is, against people) rather than
"counter-force" (against other weap-
ons). Metaphorically, ABM and MIRV
may be seen as two sides of a coin, each

complementing the other; or as the
chicken and the egg, each justifying the
existence of the other; or as two mole-
cules in the chemistry of deterrence,
where they agitate the entire SALT proc-
ess. A former White House Scholastic
says that the interplay of the two sys-
tems "leaves you with four basic SALT
options." As he puts it, "First, you can
have a lot of ABMs and a lot of MIRVs.
Or you can have a few ABMs—or even
none—and a lot of MIRVs. Or you can
ban MIRVs but not ban ABMs. And,
fourth, you can ban both." Washing-
ton and Moscow decided on the second
option by agreeing to limit the num-
ber of ABMs and refusing to limit the
number of MIRVs. In that choice,
which was perhaps the inevitable one,
lie the significance of SALT to date
and the problem facing the talks in the
future.

There are, in theory, good and bad
ABMs, good and bad MIRVs. Good
ABMs defend only missile sites. Bad
ABMs defend cities, and so are de-
stabilizing. Good MIRVs are those de-
prived of the accuracy and destructive
power that impart first-strike capabili-
ty, while bad ones have that capability.
Most, though not all, arms Scholastics
think that ABMs are much more of a
threat to stability than MIRVs are. De-
fending cities, they feel, is not just un-
workable but truly dangerous: defend
your cities and you arouse fears on the
other side that you seek the option of
striking first. Thus, all
means of defending cities
must be eliminated; accom-
plish that and both sides are
deprived of the incentive to
strike first, since neither can
defend itself against the
other's forces. In two and
a half years, SALT's essen-
tial accomplishment has
been to get agreement
along these lines. Not the
least of the ironies of SALT
is that defending cities
against missiles really isn't
feasible, yet both sides fear
it, whereas MIRVs do
work—just as well as sin-
gle warheads—and yet
rouse fewer anxieties. A MIRV sys-
tem, some argue, is not per se a source
of instability, since its first-strike po-
tential can threaten the other side's
land-based missiles but not its subma-
rines or its bombers. So it would
seem—and so everyone would agree—
if deterrence were less metaphysical.
The fact is that a MIRV system capable
of knocking out hardened targets is de-
stabilizing, simply because governments
think it is.

The technology of MIRV is won-
drous. The low-thrust final stage of the
missile is in effect a flying bus. This
bus, pushed along by a single guidance-

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5-F

and propulsion system, carries all the reentry vehicles—the warheads. It releases these one at a time, while changing velocity and direction, and these adjustments define the path of the reentry vehicles to their targets. The bus follows a meandering course, now rolling over and releasing a cloud of chaff to confuse radar, now perhaps rolling again to fire a decoy, now shifting direction and releasing a real warhead. This is America's way of doing it. The Russians may have another. Washington doesn't know—not yet, anyway.

Systems analysts like MIRVs, and not just because the warheads can be separately targeted but because a missile with a number of separately targeted warheads can penetrate defenses more easily than its forerunner, the missile with warheads that are not separately targeted. The multiple warheads in Polaris missiles are released simultaneously and can be picked up by reasonably sophisticated radar in time to be shot down by a single defensive missile. Separately targeted warheads, because they leave the bus sequentially, are more difficult to sort out and destroy. The question is, or should be: Do we need a MIRV system? There are only two reasons for it: to penetrate anti-missile defenses, and to improve, or achieve, the ability to limit the damage that an opponent can inflict. Since the Moscow agreements of last May banned any significant deployment of the ABM, the first reason is presumably obviated. The second is irrelevant if Washington's disavowal of damage limitation is genuine. The President and other leading officials have assured Congress, both by letter to individual members and in testimony before committees, that America will not seek first-strike capability through improved guidance for its MIRV system.

Do the Russians, on the other hand, believe that Washington can or would stifle the MIRV technology? Do they accept assurances that America's program is static? Or could Moscow be worried by statements from other quarters that the American MIRV program does in fact give the United States a counter-force option? General John D. Ryan, Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, has said of Minuteman III, "This missile, with a multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle, will be our best means of destroying time-urgent targets like the long-range weapons of the enemy." A subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs held hearings on MIRVs in the summer of 1969, and a subcommittee document later described the system like this: "Besides being a potentially attractive means of penetrating an adversary's ABM defenses, MIRV, with sufficient accuracy, is well suited to being a 'counter-force' weap-

on; that is, a system capable of destroying the adversary's strategic offensive forces." The Russians know as well as anyone that doubling the accuracy of Minuteman III would give each warhead about a ninety-five-per-cent chance of destroying one of their underground missile silos.

The Administration argues that to halt all or part of the MIRV program, as some propose, would reduce America's bargaining strength vis-à-vis Moscow. As long as the Soviet buildup

proceeds—so the argument continues—Washington needs something to bargain with in the current round of SALT talks, which began last November, were recessed in December, and were resumed this March. And since Russia at present has many more missiles, America's only strategic advantage lies in its superior number of warheads—a dividend of the MIRV. The bargaining-chip argument may be suspect, even though it did promote agreement on limiting ABMs; in that case, though, the Russians wanted to avoid developing modern ABMs themselves, and sought to discourage the American program by making a deal. But they do intend to have a MIRV program. While Washington says its MIRV system will not be a counter-force weapon, Moscow makes no such disavowal. It appears that, unlike ABMs, MIRVs beget other MIRVs—that the surge for qualitative advantage is, or will be, self-

sustaining. The American program may provide an incentive to the Soviet Union to compete more strenuously—possibly even to reject the parity principle, on the ground, however spurious, that Russia hasn't fully achieved parity.

FINALLY, there is the issue that links all the other issues of SALT: verification, or the ability to monitor an agreement. Verification must rely on so-called national means; that is, each side must verify from afar—by satellite photography, for example—what the other side is doing. Neither side can make on-site inspections, because the Soviet Union adamantly rejects such intrusions, and the United States doesn't much like the idea of them, either, even though it once had strong rhetorical backing in Washington. Each side can reliably estimate by national means what the other may

be producing in the case of nuclear submarines, fixed land-based ICBMs, and ABMs, whose construction is readily visible from the air. Various other weapons, once deployed, cannot be verified by national means or, in some cases, even by on-site inspection. MIRV is a conspicuous example; a MIRVed missile need not look different from a single-warhead missile. Only by prying open a missile's nose cone and looking at the interior parts might an inspector be moderately sure of how many and what kind of warheads were there. However, such a procedure would make a mockery of classification; few things are more closely held with warhead technology, and nobody doubts that Washington would resist as stoutly as Moscow so sweeping an invasion of privacy. A ban on testing could be considerably less difficult to verify, since MIRVs of the type most feared by both sides—those of high accuracy and high yield—require extensive testing, which can be monitored.

Perhaps no problem has generated more analysis and internal debate in Washington than this one. The Americans can neither propose nor accept anything that cannot be verified with reasonably high confidence. For the Russians, the problem is less severe. Their detection systems, like ours, are constantly being improved, and may now be comparable to ours. The Russians' advantage is that of a closed society competing against an open society, and it is a major advantage. Their aversion to on-site inspection is doubtless genuine, but, quite apart from a passion for secrecy, their position unquestionably owes something to the fact that they would probably gain only small benefit from having direct access to what America does—not much of which is now concealed. For example, even in the case of America's secret verification techniques, a fair amount of information finds its way into the technical journals. We know that objects only a foot long can be photographed with great clarity from an altitude of almost a hundred miles by reconnaissance satellites. We know that some of

these satellites transmit images to earth by telemetry, while others eject capsules containing film, which are recaptured by specially modified aircraft as they descend by parachute. And we know that Russian weather, with its long periods of cloud cover, presents more of an obstacle to satellite photography than American weather does.

A SALT agreement, as both sides know, may be stabilizing or destabilizing. Much depends on the motives of the parties—whether they seek

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6-F

to observe the agreement and build
upon it or whether they seek to work
around it, and perhaps even cheat.
Verification, former Secretary of State
Dean Rusk has suggested, is more a
political judgment than a technical one.
Verification and stability are sibling
values. And, just as there is no absolute
degree of verification, neither is there
any absolute stability. "What we seek is
metastability," Amrom Katz, a Rand
Corporation expert on verification, told
an acquaintance not long ago. "A sail-
boat that can survive a hard gust of
wind has it. A round stone perched on
a peak is unstable. Put the same stone
in a dimple and it has considerable,
though not complete, stability."

Kissinger, in his first and perhaps
best hook, "A World Restored," pub-
lished in 1957, put his view this way:
"The foundation of a stable order is
the relative security—and therefore the
relative insecurity—of its members."
Further along, Kissinger, almost as if
anticipating his involvement with the is-
sue of verification, warned that "the
danger to the equilibrium is never dem-
onstrated until it is already overturned."

ON the most obvious level, SALT is a negotiation between rival powers. On another level, it is a negotiation between Washington and its chief NATO allies, whose feelings about SALT are mixed. While applauding efforts to stabilize nuclear arms, these allies are wary of the political consequences of formal parity, and frankly express worry that SALT may foreshadow a great-power alliance whose writ would extend far beyond the present talks. On yet another level—so far, the least consequential—SALT is a negotiation between the executive branch and Congress. Key congressional committees and key legislators are occasionally consulted about the talks, but most of the major SALT decisions are taken without reference to Congress. Finally, on perhaps the most interesting level, SALT is an internal negotiation—among the various agencies in Washington, and among their counterparts in Moscow. It is within each of the two national capitals that the critical bargaining—the struggle to grind out positions—lumbers endlessly, episodically on, and the marrow of SALT is formed by the contesting views and the clashing organizational interests of government agencies. These internal struggles, however secret, have at least some visibility—more in Washington than in Moscow. And the two internal struggles are not unrelated, for each side tries to influence the other's debate—by utterance, by example, and, in the case of the Russians, by even more direct means. The large Soviet Embassy staff in Washington, under the direction of Ambassador Anatoly F. Dobyrynin, lobbies strenuously for the So-

viet SALT case on Capitol Hill, and somewhat less strenuously with key members of the press. The Soviet Embassy also keeps up broad contacts with academics especially interested in arms control.

What goes on in the SALT negotiations themselves is conditioned, of course, by the internal conflicts. Probably the most conspicuous but least significant of these conflicts is the one between some parts of the defense bureaucracy and much of the scientific community. Many bureaucrats fear that a lasting Soviet numerical superiority in offensive missiles, even if strategically meaningless, would embolden Moscow to attempt intimidating other governments, especially in Western Europe. In this view, a Russian superiority could be destabilizing; that is, it might make the Russians more inclined to threaten to use nuclear weapons in times of crisis. These bureaucrats, however, find comfort in the idea of American superiority; something a little "better" than absolute parity, they think, is useful both in terms of reassuring the NATO allies and of impressing it on Moscow that America is not to be shoved around. The Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when the United States had overwhelming nuclear superiority and forced the Russians to withdraw offensive missiles from Cuba, remains a vivid example to both American and Russian planners. Such conjectures convince few scientists except those who move into certain parts of the government, such as Defense Department Research and Engineering, where many of them adopt fiercely hawkish attitudes. By and large, their colleagues who work on weapons development outside the government take a different view. Unlike bureaucrats, most of them inhabit a reasonable world, where problems are actually solved, and where issues can be subjected to precise measurement and reliable projection, not just left to fallible judgment. As self-professed muses of Armageddon, most scientists insist on rational standards of political conduct for the nuclear age. They ascribe reasonable intentions to governments, including adversary regimes, in the belief that the responsibility of nuclear weapons is a sobering and moderating one for all leaders. They are concerned less with irrational conduct than with the continuing deployment of weapons of progressively greater destructive power. The bureaucrats, for whom the weapons are a fact of life, are more concerned with building around them a stable equilibrium. Their impulse is to hedge against what they cannot ignore—the possibility of irrational conduct, or the awful prospect of another nuclear face-off, arising out of some unforeseen political crisis. They hedge by using extremely conservative criteria for planning the size and character of strategic forces. So does Russia.

Both tendencies harbor extreme elements, neither of them made up entirely of bureaucrats or scientists. (Each has its own academic consultants, and even its own congressional allies.) At one end are the ritual disarmers, eager to promote, or to acquiesce in, any agreement to reduce nuclear weapons, whose existence they see as a threat to all life. At the other extreme are the "worst case" force planners, equipped with their fantasies and with circular, pocket-size calculators that estimate bomb damage—their working tool. Fearful of what Moscow may be contemplating, or actually doing—clandestinely testing an especially lethal weapon on the far side of the moon, to cite one of the more picturesque anxieties—the super-hawks are convinced that nothing less than absolute superiority in number and quality of American weapons will fully deter a society that was led not long ago by a man who didn't flinch from sending millions of his compatriots to their death. Probably more important, many of the super-hawks have made careers of developing weapons and seeding fresh technological ground. Within both the scientific and the bureaucratic community, many SALT followers cling to fixed notions and points of view. Even though SALT is a study in the infinite variety of truth, these specialists often refuse to concede merit or intellectual respectability to conflicting views. Indeed, though they seem suitably impressed by the gravity of SALT, they are not above rigging the assumptions and judging the data on which their cases rest. Thus they seek to deceive the leadership, Congress, and perhaps themselves. But what of more reasonable men, working within the narrow area bounded by the feasible and the prudent? Their job is to forge links between arms control and security—and at no great cost to either consideration. Here lies the fundamental polarity—the truly significant clash of viewpoint and organizational interest. Here, too, though, strategic options may be framed to fit a point of view, moderates having no monopoly on detachment or intellectual probity. But, whatever their faults, the moderates do dominate the great internal debate on SALT.

People say that SALT, like other negotiations, suffers from too much politics, bureaucratic and otherwise. The answer is that SALT is, after all, a political matter, and only secondarily a technical one. For Moscow and Washington to negotiate may reflect a joint willingness to accept a series of self-limiting steps. If so, their bureaucracies must acquiesce; agreement relies on both political impulsion and a bureaucratic consensus that the effects of agreement are not prejudicial to security. This ex-

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7-F

fared better. On SALT and related issues, a lively competition has developed between Research and Engineering, on the one hand, and Systems Analysis, on the other. Much less than in the past is the question one of doctrinal differences; now it is one of who does the work. Systems Analysis has the nominal job of protecting the Secretary's interests in the SALT Working Group, but Research and Engineering—resourceful, as always—probably has just about as much influence and impact on Pentagon SALT positions. Except to communicate a sometimes suspicious view of the entire affair, Laird himself rarely took direct part in SALT operations.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff hold an uncluttered view of SALT. They don't like it but can live with it—that is, as long as the process limits itself to simple agreement that doesn't alter the status quo by much and might even constrain Moscow. Predictably, they maintain that what kind of strategic systems America deploys, and how many, is America's business and nobody else's—least of all Moscow's. Nonetheless, the performance of the Joint Chiefs in regard to SALT is currently rated good, on balance, by White House arms Scholastics, probably because the Joint Chiefs feel more comfortable with the Nixon Administration than they did with President Johnson's. The services themselves react to SALT strictly in terms of its potential effects on pet projects or on their budgets, or both. The Army now has the least interest in the talks, and it has never really had much. Long ago, it fought and lost a battle with the Air Force for control of medium-range ballistic missiles—which America no longer deploys. The Army's only chance for a major share of the strategic action always seemed to lie in operating a broad ballistic-missile defense of metropolitan America; as the ABM lost its support in Congress and became little more than a bargaining counter in SALT, the Army's expectations fell. The positions of the Air Force and the Navy are remarkably symmetrical and fiercely competitive. Each service deploys a major strategic system that is being modernized with MIRVs. The Navy's modernization program—replacing Polaris missile with the MIRVed Poseidon system in thirty-one of its forty-one missile-firing submarines—is proceeding at a rate of from eighteen months to two years per boat, and should be completed by 1975. Meanwhile, the Air Force is putting MIRVs on more than half of the Minuteman missiles. The cost of five hundred and fifty Minuteman III missiles will be more than six billion dollars; more than ten and a half billion was

authorized for a thousand Minuteman I and II missiles. This conversion program disturbs many Scholastics, who see it as a disproportionately large investment in a questionable system.

Each of the two services seeks to encourage doubts about the strength of the other's chief strategic system. Paradoxically, each will also support many of the other's requests for funds—a kind of logrolling intended to promote the fortunes of major new weapons. Both services are animated by an eternal pressure for a new generation of weapons. In the case of the Air Force, whose institutional heart was never captured by guided missiles, it is the drive for a supersonic strategic bomber—the B-1— to replace the aging B-52 force. And the Navy, of course, is pressing to replace Poseidon—itself barely into the deployment stage—with its undersea long-range missile system. The real gleam in the Navy's eye is Trident—the new submarine, still in planning, that will carry the new long-range Trident missiles. The Navy is not moved by the argument that the existing submarine fleet could accommodate Trident I. They want the option of deploying the even longer-range Trident II, and for this they need the new submarines.

The Trident missiles are embedded in SALT. They disturb the Russians by sharpening their sense of technological lag and of America's striking virtuosity in sea-based strategic weapons. The B-1 is not an issue in the arms negotiations, but the signs are that it could become one. At present, it is controversial in Washington, where opinions normally in conflict on most things agree that the long-range SLBM is the best—that is, the most stable—weapons system an uncertain future can offer. The B-1, for its part, arouses little enthusiasm beyond the Air Force, and arouses open hostility in many parts of town. As airplanes go, the B-1 would indisputably be a great one—the best in the world. It would also be the most expensive. Each plane will probably cost fifty million dollars or more, which suggests that the proposed fleet of two hundred and forty-one B-1s could be a strategic force second in expense only to Trident. With such spending would go undeniable advantages in performance. Here, though, is a case in which numerous systems analysts, other Scholastics, and some scientists believe that the best is the enemy of the good. Supersonic speed is little defense against Soviet surface-to-air missiles. Ivan Seлин, a former acting head of Systems Analysis, feels this keenly. He says that the critical characteristics of a long-range bomber should be its range and its payload, both of which are limited by the dubious virtue of supersonic speed. The Air Force estimates, the

added cost of giving a plane supersonic speed at thirty per cent, he says, but fifty per cent is a more realistic figure—and, he asks, for what? He and numerous other experts would prefer a simpler, cheaper bomber with greater range and payload.

MOST parts of the government have come to favor a SALT agreement of one kind or another, for one reason or another. Each, however, finds its motives questioned by some rival. In general, the State Department, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the C.I.A. would prefer a broad agreement—broader, certainly, than anything acceptable to most of the Pentagon. President Nixon's White House, tugged by numerous considerations, has had the most ambiguous attitude toward SALT. Originally skeptical of the talks, the President and Kissinger eventually decided to pursue an agreement, and now, besides charting the path of the negotiations, they control the SALT process, including the shape and variety of options that the bureaucracy produces. Their methods assure endless skirmishing with the agencies involved and with the SALT delegation. And the skirmishing has been fierce; it has nourished White House suspicions of the bureaucracy, set off personality conflicts, and inspired ad-hoc bureaucratic alignments against the White House. All this has, in turn, reinforced the Administration's wariness.

The State Department and the Arms Control agency are close allies on SALT. Each decided long ago that deterrence, not defense, was the only rational strategic policy; that is, that the hazards, the costs, and the impracticability of the damage-limitation policy dictated an acceptance of the assured-destruction concept. Few Presidents, of course, have much admired the State Department, but few, if any, have been as effective as Nixon in diminishing the State Department's role and influence. Still, on the subject of SALT, the White House's differences with the principal military voices—the Joint Chiefs and the Office of the Secretary of Defense—have exceeded its differences with the State Department and the Arms Control agency. In any case, the White House mistrusts the vested interest of both the State Department and the Arms Control agency. SALT is very much a high-water mark for the agency, which has never really been taken seriously in the past; and the State Department, though it may be more dispassionate than the agency, has an obvious institutional preference for talking out differences with an adversary. Both the Department and the agency tend to be more venturesome

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9-F

than the White House, less uneasy
about verification, more confident that
an agreement on SALT will discourage,
rather than encourage, cheating. With
less to lose, they are less reluctant than
the White House to take on the Joint
Chiefs or the Office of the Secretary of
Defense. Finally, just to point up the
onerous nature of the process, it must
be noted that the State Department,
the Arms Control agency, the Penta-
gon, and the SALT delegation occasion-
ally align themselves against the White
House for tactical purposes having lit-
tle, if anything, to do with the sub-
stance of the talks. These moves are
generally gestures of rebellion against
tight White House control. Kissinger
keeps the SALT bureaucracy on a short
leash.

The six-man SALT delegation repli-
cates the SALT bureaucracy, which
means that the delegates are often di-
vided by the same issues that divide
the groups they represent—the Office
of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint
Chiefs, the State Department, the
Arms Control agency, and the scien-
tific community. Until last January,
the leader of the 'delegation was Gerard
C. Smith, who was also the director of
the Arms Control agency; he has been
replaced at the talks by U. Alexis
Johnson, former Under-Secretary of
State for Political Affairs and a ca-
reer Foreign Service officer.
Smith, a competent negoti-
ator with a good grasp of the
issues, was respected in
Washington; however, his
only apparent weakness was
a critical one. To direct both
the Arms Control agency
and the SALT delegation was
compromising, certainly in the view
of the White House or any agency that
takes exception to the Arms Control
agency's position on any SALT issue.
Unfair though it may have been, Smith
was seen as the Arms Control agency's
man at the talks, and so as being con-
cerned chiefly with extending the
range of what was negotiable.

We know little in detail about what
goes on within the 'Soviet system,
but skirmishing over defense policy is
thought to be as intense in Moscow as
it is here. There, too, weapons tech-
nology can establish, instead of serve,
the choices of the leadership. Evidence
of differences between competing in-
terest groups surfaces from time to
time, most often in articles printed in
military journals. The Soviet military is
clearly uneasy about the unnatural con-
cepts, such as parity, that arms-control
buffs play about with. The military
argues effectively that Soviet policies
require the solid authority that only
military power can provide and whose
dimension is best determined by pro-
fessionals.

UNDERSTANDING the strategie-arms-
limitation talks requires skepti-
ism as well as persistence. Besides the
screed and the theology, one must also
penetrate the mythology surrounding
he talks. This means, first, accepting
he possibility that an agreement on
imiting strategic arms may not neces-
sarily be a good thing. A superficial
agreement might be, as the bureaucra-
cy puts it, counter-productive. Such an
agreement could very well breed hos-
ility at home and trouble abroad—
specially with allies who had grown
fearful of the consequences of what they
might see as a spurious great-power al-
liance settling, over their heads, matters
is vital to their security as to America's.
And a superficial agreement would cre-
ate pressure to work around the con-
straints, thus nullifying whatever divi-
lends it had been expected to return.
In other words, we might get a less
stable political environment in return
for an only slightly more stable strate-
gic environment.

Dispassionate insiders understand
that any superficial agreement could be
about as useful as a ban on bows and
arrows, given the technologi-
cal refinements that lie with-
in the research-and-develop-
ment capabilities of both
great powers. Both bureuc-
racies, finding themselves
constrained by an agreement
limiting, for instance, only
the numbers of some weapons
systems, could intensify the impulse,
which is always present anyway, for
big leaps in the quality of weapons. The
individual armed services could be re-
lied on to lobby more vigorously for
new weapons and for improvements of
existing systems not covered by the
agreement, and to argue that failing to
hedge against the agreement would be
mortgaging the future. In short, if
any strategie-arms agreement did not
succeed in constraining the quality of
weapons over a period of time, it might
fuel the race for offensive superiority—
better accuracies, yields, ranges—within
a specified outer limit on numbers of
weapons. Equally, an agreement limit-
ing the known types of defensive sys-
tems—ABMs, say—would be of little
value if the two sides set about develop-
ing more advanced (and proficient)
counterparts based on such things as
laser beams or particle generators. Hap-
pily, the treaty limiting ABMs has vir-
tually closed the door on such novel
weaponry.

Just as misleading as the argument
that any reduction in arms is salutary
is the related notion that strategic
spending follows 'an unbroken upward
spiral, carrying the federal budget aloft
with it. Indeed, the duel for strategic
advantage, along with the Vietnam
war, is widely believed to have put the

American economy in the grip of soaring inflationary costs. Although the war
did help to produce this effect, the
budget for strategic arms has been re-
markably stable. Spending for strategic
weapons attracts much more public
concern and analytical attention than
the far heavier spending for general-
purpose forces, but, in terms of constant
dollars, over the past decade the budget
for strategic arms has declined. This
budget normally constitutes about a
fourth of the total defense budget—or,
at present, eighteen billion dollars a
year.

The Kennedy Administration took
office in 1961 encumbered by the fa-
mous myth of a missile gap, which over
the previous few years had been nour-
ished by a number of leading Demo-
crats, including Lyndon Johnson, who,
besides being Senate Majority Leader,
had presided over the Armed Services
Committee's Preparedness Investigat-
ing Subcommittee. Although President
Kennedy and Secretary of Defense
McNamara swiftly learned that there
was no gap, they yielded to heavy ac-
cumulated pressure to launch a major
buildup of strategic forces, and they
have since been criticized for overreact-
ing. This criticism is partly unjust.
Failure to proceed with the buildup of
the Minuteman and Polaris forces then
already planned would have generated
horrendous difficulties with Congress
and the Washington defense bureauc-
racy. In fairness to Kennedy and Mc-
Namara, they did set limits on the
buildup, and they obliged the armed
services to scale down their expecta-
tions. By the mid-nineteen-sixties, stra-
tegic spending and the size of Ameri-
ca's deterrent forces had levelled off,
and Washington, although it was rhe-
torically committed to the concept of
damage limitation, was tacitly accept-
ing the more modest criteria of assured
destruction. The Minuteman force was
to be restricted to a thousand. The
number of Polaris nuclear submarines
would not exceed forty-one, carrying
a total of six hundred and fifty-six
missiles. The number of B-52s had
reached a peak of six hundred and
thirty-nine in 1962, when it had been
agreed that worn-out planes were there-
after not to be replaced, and it has since
declined to some four hundred. The
rest of the strategic force consisted
of fifty-four Titan missiles, which are
still in service, though obsolete. At this
point, the question became one not of
increasing but of modernizing Amer-
ican forces. The trend to lower lev-
els of strategic spending continued
through the fiscal year 1967, even
though the Soviet Union was then con-
ducting a major strategic buildup.
American strategic spending increased
slightly in the fiscal years 1968 and

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10-F

ANNALS OF DIPLOMACY -- CONT.

1969 as the pace of the modernization program quickened. Yet in fiscal 1970, as a study by the Brookings Institution has pointed out, the Administration "reduced spending on strategic programs by $2 billion, while continuing both the MIRV and ARM programs." Strategic spending is expected to rise in fiscal 1974, by one and four-tenths billion dollars, but most of the increase is going for the development of the Navy's Trident submarine-and-missile program. In short, the United States has not increased the size of any part of its strategic forces in several years. It is continuing to make qualitative improvements, chiefly by putting MIRVs on most of its sea-based and land-based missiles, and by making the missile silos more resistant to damage.

Running through the public and congressional discussions of SALT has been the expectation that an agreement would reduce spending on strategic weaponry, but in reality the SALT agreements signed last May will have little immediate effect on it. Only if a limit on strategic arms begins to hobble "quality" will spending be cut. The cost of the most likely improvements in strategic systems over the next ten years has been calculated by Brookings at thirty-seven billion. This is a crude projection, ignoring the vagaries of world politics and the possible research-and-development costs of innovations now contemplated by relatively few people.

Whether the strategic budget will show a rising or a stable trend in the next few years depends on whether systems that are now under serious study will be produced and deployed; if they are, when; and when they are, whether they will reduce or increase operating costs. In any case, short of a political disaster and the collapse of the arms-limitation talks, strategic spending should not rise sharply. Moderate elements in the government seek to adapt strategic-force budgets, not to expand them; to absorb technological change at current spending levels, not to be victimized by it. Here perform ance with regard to spending on strategic (intercontinental) weapons has been reasonably good—much better than with regard to tactical (shorter-range) ones, where the performance has in some cases been deplorable—probably because the smaller sums spent on America's nuclear deterrent repre sent a far more conspicuous, and hence disturbing, item in the public view.

In time, an informal coalition of Budget and Treasury people, key congressional groups, some parts of the Pentagon's civilian bureaucracy, and elements of the services themselves might be able to moderate the demands of the armed services.

The impact of such a coalition might ultimately depend on whether the White House could overcome its normal reluctance to mix in the internal affairs of the military. However, it is doubtful whether any new coalition could shut off the pressure for qualitative improvements in strategic weapons—for "modernization," as it is called. Washington defense Scholastics know that there is even less incentive for limiting modernization in Moscow than in Washington. The Russians, it seems, do worry about the implications of a long race for quality, but they worry even more about their position in the race; they trail the Americans in strategic-weapons technology and appear determined to close the gap at least partially.

Another popular notion not to be taken for granted suggests that an action-reaction cycle underlies the arms race. Such wielders of military power as Napoleon and Robert McNamara have said that states design weapons to counter those of their adversaries. The truth contained in this reflection is self-evident but narrow. The famous action-reaction cycle is overestimated, misleading, and, in some cases, irrelevant to the procurement of various systems. Although arms development is obviously related to what other nations do, much of what the great powers deploy is inspired by internal politics and by the impulse of technology. So-called gaps that generate crash programs to catch up are sometimes not gaps at all; instead, they are in large part the product of pessimistic assumptions by bureaucrats and soldiers of both sides, who find gaps lurking in their extrapolations of data. It is as if force planners in Washington and Moscow were wedded to the higher interests of technology in a silent, unacknowledged compact. A State Department arms Scholastic deeply involved in the arms-limitation talks has described the action-reaction cycle as "very exaggerated," and has said, "In general, what one side does is used to fuel and fortify what the other wants to do anyway."

The Soviet Union's passion for security has also energized American programs—as much, perhaps, as the actual weapons the Russians have deployed. Nor is spending pressure traceable to a conspiratorial monolith popularly known as "the military-industrial complex." It is much more the consequence of single-minded bureaucrats' pursuit of independent organizational interests. Each military service tends to treat spending as if the other services didn't exist, except when it occasionally backs another's pet project the better to secure solid backing for its own. What is true of the services is also true of related departments, like Defense Department Research and Engineering,

NEW YORK NEWS 3 MAY 73

Disarmament
Won't Be Easy,
Brandt Warns

Washington, May 2 (NEWS Bureau)—West German Chancellor Willy Brandt cautioned today against "mishful thinking" on an early agreement with the Soviet Union for mutual and balanced reduction of military forces and disarmament.

Brandt, winding up two days of talks with President Nixon, told a National Press Club audience that he and the President are agreed that Europeans and Americans need each other in a world of far-reaching change.

"We need each other for reasons of security. We need each other as commercial and economic partners. We must not allow difficulties that may exist in one sector unnecessarily to affect other sectors."

Brandt said he and other Western European leaders share Nixon's desire for "a constructive dialogue between Europe and America could reach an interesting climax when the President visits our continent this fall," he said, adding that he was sure all parties to the talks would have "a frank discussion."

As for prospects of a pact with the Soviet Union, Brandt said that "We must beware of any blue-eyed idealism and of any illusions" about the difficulties.

Brandt also:

* Denied that there would be a trade war between Europe and America and cited overriding common interest.

* Said the Washington announcement that 1973 would be the "Year of Europe" was welcomed on the continent.

Brandt said he was leaving Washington with the feeling that he and Nixon "made good and productive use of our time."

"We have had serious talks and we have listed our common tasks," he said. "That is why I shall return to Germany tomorrow with a feeling of encouragement."

and Systems Analysis. In short, each group seeks to stake out and consolidate its share of the action with respect to strategic arms—its lasting role in the great game of deterrence. But the pattern is uneven and fortuitous, the structure far from monolithic.

The Scylla and Charybdis of deterrence, in the view of many in the arms-control and defense community, are the ARM and MIRV technologies. Some people tend to favor, or tolerate, one while deploing the other, and the two technologies have dominated strategic-force planning for many years. The development and deployment of these two weapons systems by the United States, which has a commanding lead in both technologies, was inspired in part by the so-called action-reaction cycle, but they are also the product of other tendencies,

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11-F

WASHINGTON POST- 3 MAY 1973

Rowland Evans and Robert Novak

# Dangers of 'Internal Decay' in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia—The abrupt withdrawal last week by two successive brigades from embattled defensive positions here in defiance of orders is more evidence of the Cambodian army's shocking deterioration which now menaces President Nixon's grand design for Indochina.

With Cambodian Communist insurgents probing Phnom Penh's suburbs, the commander of the Cambodian Army (Fank) 51st Brigade suddenly ordered his troops to withdraw from Siem Reap eight miles south of here. The 15th brigade replaced them, but it too was pulled out by its commander, who then refused to return. That followed two weeks during which Fank has all but disappeared as a fighting unit.

The result soon could be Cambodia's collapse, not through conquest but from internal decay leading to a pro-Communist government controlled by Hanoi. Such a disaster, establishing a logistics sanctuary for a new Communist general offensive in South Vietnam, would sever the few remaining trail underpinnings of the Paris peace agreement.

Although the withdrawal at Siem Reap left the capital open to assault its capture almost surely is not Hanoi's strategy. The widely reported "siege" of Phnom Penh never happened. Rather, the Communists hope to over throw the government by military pressure on the city's fringes, repeated routs of the Fank and serious attempts to capture the provincial capitals of Takeo and Kompot. If those cities fall, the end could be near.

Most of this has been accomplished

by Cambodian insurgents who last fall began taking over from North Vietnamese units. The present offensive is fought by nearly 40,000 insurgents with absolutely indispensable aid from some 3,500 North Vietnamese regulars—cadres, sappers, artillerymen, logistical troops. Hanoi-trained Cambodians control the insurgents 'politically. Overall direction, of course, is in Hanoi.

Although the Communist offensive is extraordinarily tenacious, it is not awesome in terms of the Indochina war. The heavy artillery, antiaircraft rockets and tanks sent by Hanoi to South Vietnam and Laos have not appeared here. Nor is there yet a genuine political-guerrilla apparatus in government-controlled territory (only 20 per cent of Cambodia but over 10 per cent of the population).

In sum, Fank has enough men (perhaps 180,000) and U.S. supplied equipment. It lacks the will. What was a poorly led, inadequately trained army with exceptionally high morale when we last observed it 18 months ago, has become something much worse. It refuses to move into battle. abandons cities without being attacked and quickly retreats when fired upon.

The reasons are many. Thanks to corruption and incompetence, many troops are not paid and refuse to fight. The Fank never recovered psychologically from the debacle of its atrociously planned November 1971 offensive against North Vietnamese regulars. Many officers like the good life in their Phnom Penh villas while their troops face death in the field.

But the army's overriding problem is

the crumbling regime of Marshal Lon Nol. Lacking public support, the regime cannot give its troops a reason for fighting.

Moreover, Lon Nol's palace guard blocks any reform of the army. His notorious, immensely powerful young brother, Brig. Gen. Lon Non, is a disgrace as commander of the 3rd Division (which includes the noncombative 51st and 15th Brigades). Another palace favorite, Brig. Gen. Ith Suong, entirely commands the hopeless 1st Division, also guarding the capital.

The surrealistic atmosphere is typified by the feud between Lon Non and Maj. Gen. Sosphenes Fernandez, comprising general of the Fank. Sosphenes Fernandez tells friends that Lon Non's thugs recently made an unsuccessful effort to kidnap his daughter.

 Marshal Lon Nol generated some hope by accepting U.S. demands that he send his brother abroad and disperse power among a new council of four. Two council members, Lt. Gen. Sirik Matak and Im Tam, told us radical reorganization of the Fank is imperative ("Fank is the source of all our troubles," said Sirik Matak). Gen. Sosphenes Fernandez, daring to speak openly, told us Lon Non "is not capable of commanding a division" and must be relieved along with Ith Suong.

But at this writing, Lon Nol has not yet convened the council of four and his brother talks openly of national political ambitions. Prospects for reform are murky, the Fank deteriorates and Cambodia clings to independence from Hanoi only because of U.S. air power—a subject for a future column.

© 1973, Publishers-Hall Syndicate

## ANNALS OF DIPLOMACY -- CONTINUED

The most important being an uncertainty about Soviet purposes, reinforced by internal bureaucratic politics in Washington. McNamara says that our decision to deploy MIRVs was taken in response to the installation of a Soviet ABM system around Moscow, since that installation might have foreshadowed a nationwide coverage that would have greatly complicated the ability of American missiles to reach their targets. Conversely, any number of offi-cials have said with equal certainty that what inspired America's decision was not the system McNamara referred to but another one.

The origin of the decision to deploy ABMs was even more complex than that of the decision to deploy MIRVs. McNamara and some of those who served with him when he was Defense Secretary assign the responsibility for the decision on ABMs to political pressures—chiefly from Capitol Hill. Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk

shares this view, but then he was not consulted about the decision, or even closely informed. It is true that the sentiment of assorted congressional guardians of the national security, produced by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did put President Johnson, and thus McNamara, under great pressure to deploy something, but the picture is far more complicated than one of high officials' responding to congressional pressure. The eventual deployment decision has tangled roots, and should not be accepted historically as the dilemma of a beleaguered Secretary of Defense no longer able to hold out against political forces that should have understood, as he did, that deploying ABMs would achieve nothing except a compensatory increase in the offensive capability of the Soviet Union. Here, again, a partial truth about an elusive subject obscures other—possibly deeper—truths. Catching a clear glimpse of the strategic-arms-limitation talks, and un-

derstanding the Moscow agreements signed in May, 1972, requires some insight into the curious, all too human forces that have animated both the anti-ballistic-missile and the multi-war-head-missile programs.

—JOHN NEWHOUSE

*(This is the first of a series of articles.)*

## WASHINGTON POST

3 MAY 1973

### Marcos Speech

MANILA—President Ferdinand Marcos said that the Philippines cannot continue to depend on the United States or its other allies in the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization and will follow a self-reliant defense policy. Speaking on the 38th anniversary of the Philippine air force, Marcos said that "we must fight for our own survival" and "work for the progress of our own people."

12-F

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CURRENT NEWS

PART II-MAIN EDITION-1200

THIS SUPPLEMENTS PART I-EARLY BIRD EDITION

DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TUESDAY, MAY 1, 1973

WASHINGTON POST - 1 MAY 1973 P-4

Rogers Defends
Cambodia Role;
Hill Is Skeptical

By Murrey Marder

Washington Post Staff Writer

Secretary of State William P. Rogers yesterday defended the constitutionality of President Nixon's orders for continuing bombing in Cambodia as being "of central importance" to maintain the total Vietnam accord.

The administration's long-
delayed, and repeatedly re-
vised, constitutional justifica-
tion for its Cambodia policy
came under extensive chal-
lenge as Rogers presented it
to the Senate Foreign Rela-
tions Committee.

After hearing Rogers, and
examining a 13-page legal ar-
gument which the secretary
presented, Sen. Edmund S.
Muskie (D-Maine) said, "What
we are doing there,
Cambodia is without justifica-

tion in policy, without justifi-
cation in the Constitution, and
without justification in the
law."

"We think it is illegal," said Sen. Stuart Symington (Mo.). "I don't see any basis for its constitutionality," agreed Chairman J. W. Fulbright (D-Ark.). Sens. Jacob K. Javits (R-N.Y.) and Clifford P. Case (R-N.J.) joined in challenging the administration.

But the President's dramatic
changes of personnel over the
Watergate case, which were
relayed to the hearing room,
overshadowed and at least
temporarily muffled the con-
stitutional clash. Fulbright,
whose committee has collided
so often with the Executive
Branch with the expansion of

See CAMBODIA, Pg. 2

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
MONITOR -5/1/73 P-7

Pentagon
'grabs' at
foreign aid

By the Associated Press

Washington

Sen. Hubert Humphrey
says a Defense Depart-
ment proposal to shift all
foreign military assistance
to its budget would remove
the aid from effective con-
trols of Congress and the
State Department.

Senator Humphrey (D)
of Minnesota made public
a letter from J. Fred Buz-
hardt, the Defense Depart-
ment general counsel,
which suggested that the
plan "makes more money
available for reconstruc-
tion in Southeast Asia than
any other option" and
might make it easier to
fund North Vietnam re-
construction by transfer of
funds.

Mr. Buzhardt's letter
was to Roy L. Ash, Presi-
dent Nixon's budget direc-
tor.

"It is my hope that this
bald-faced grab of the
State Department's re-
sponsibility and control
over foreign military assist-
ance will be thwarted,"
Mr. Humphrey said in a
Senate speech Monday.

Rejection urged

The proposed legislation,
he said, "would, in effect,
able the foreign military
assistance efforts of our
government to be easily
expanded and placed out-
side of truly effective con-
trol by either the Congress
or the Department of
State."

He urged President
Nixon to reject the pro-
posal and keep it from
reaching Congress as ad-
ministration policy.

Foreign military assis-
tance and military credit
sales now are funded gen-
erally under a separate
foreign-aid budget re-
viewed by the House For-
eign Affairs Committee
and the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee.

NEW YORK NEWS
1 MAY 1973 P-10

2 Considered
For Pentagon

Washington, April 30 (News
Bureau) — Former Deputy De-
fense Secretary David M. Pack-
ard, and Deputy Secretary of
State Kenneth F. Rush were re-
ported today to be leading con-
tenders to succeed Defense Sec-
retary Elliot L. Richardson at
the Pentagon, according to ad-
ministration sources.

Richardson, who was today
nominated by President Nixon to
replace Attorney General Richard
G. Kleindienst, will remain in the
top Defense post until a suc-
cessor is picked.

Packard, a co-founder of the Hewlett-Packard Co. electronics firm of Palo Alto, Calif., served in the No. 2 spot under Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird from early 1969 until December 1971.

Rush, a former U.S. ambassador to West Germany and former president of the Union Carbide Corp., succeeded Packard as deputy defense secretary and served in that post until he was appointed to the State Department early this year.

Congressional review

Military aid for South
Vietnam and Laos is han-
dled currently through the
Defense Department au-
thorization reviewed by
the congressional armed
services committees.

Mr. Buzhardt's letter
lists as a probability that,
with the Vietnam cease-
fire agreements, the Sen-
ate Foreign Relations
Committee will approve
amendments to return
South Vietnam and Laos
aid to the foreign aid bill,
and that the move will not
be opposed by the Armed
Services and Appropria-
tions committees.

Mr. Buzhardt suggested
that foreign military aid,
merged with the large De-
fense Department procure-
ment and spread over
many accounts, "would be
less visible" and more
likely to withstand con-
gressional reduction ef-
forts.

Also, he said, there is
"good probability" that
existing ceilings and other
restrictions on foreign mil-
itary aid could be elimi-
nated.

NEW YORK TIMES - 1 MAY 1973 P-1

Kissinger Is Going to Moscow
For Talks on Brezhnev's Visit

Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, April 30 (—
Henry A. Kissinger will fly to
Moscow this week for talks
with Leonid I. Brezhnev, the
Soviet Communist party lead-
er, on plans for Mr. Brezhnev's
expected visit to the United
States late in June.

While in Moscow with his
top staff aides, Mr. Kissinger
will also discuss Vietnam, arms
control negotiations, trade
questions and other matters
with Mr. Brezhnev and other
top officials, a senior Admin-
istration official said.

The White House, in making
the announcement, limited it-
self to saying that Mr. Kis-
singer would leave Thursday for
four to five days in Moscow "for
an exchange of views on a wide
range of bilateral problems and
matters of mutual interest."

But a senior Administration
official said that the primary
mission of the President's ad-
viser for national security

would be to discuss the details
and likely agenda for Mr.
Brezhnev's visit to the United
States, which will return Mr.
Nixon's visit to the Soviet
Union last spring.

No date for Mr. Brezhnev's
trip has been announced, but
an Administration official said
that both sides were planning
on late June—around June 25.

It will be Mr. Brezhnev's first
journey to the United States
and the first by a top Soviet
official since Premier AleksEI
N. Kosygin met with President
Lyndon B. Johnson at Glass-
boor, N. J., in 1967. At the time
Mr. Kosygin was in the United
States to attend a special ses-
sion of the United Nations Gen-
eral Assembly on the six-day
war in the Middle East.

The only comparable trip
here by a Soviet leader was
that of Premier Nikita S.
Khrushchev in 1959, when he
was the guest of President
Dwight D. Eisenhower.

See KISSINGER, Pg. 2

PREPARED BY THE AIR FORCE (SAFA) AS EXECUTIVE AGENT FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE TO BRING TO THE ATTENTION OF KEY
DOD PERSONNEL MATTERS WITHIN THEIR OFFICIAL RESPONSIBILITIES.

JAMES KILLINGBECK, CHIEF, CURRENT NEWS BRANCH, OX 78765

FOR RESEARCH, CLIPPING SERVICE AND DISTRIBUTION CALL HARRY ZUBKOFF, CHIEF, EXECUTIVE AGENCY SERVICE, OX 52884

Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, April 30 — Henry A. Kissinger will fly to Moscow this week for talks with Leonid I. Brezhnev, the Soviet Communist party leader, on plans for Mr. Brezhnev's expected visit to the United States late in June.

While in Moscow with his top staff aides, Mr. Kissinger will also discuss Vietnam, arms control negotiations, trade questions and other matters with Mr. Brezhnev and other top officials, a senior Administration official said.

The White House, in making the announcement, limited itself to saying that Mr. Kissinger would leave Thursday for four to five days in Moscow "for an exchange of views on a wide

But a senior Administration official said that the primary mission of the President's adviser for national security would be to discuss the details and likely agenda for Mr. Brezhnev's visit to the United States, which will return Mr. Nixon's visit to the Soviet Union last spring.

Continued on Page 4, Column 4

THE NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, MAY 1, 1973

# Kissinger Is Going to Soviet This Week

## Continued From Page 1, Col. 3

official since Premier Aleksei N. Kosygin met with President Lyndon B. Johnson at Glassboro, N.J., in 1967. At the time Mr. Kosygin was in the United States to attend a special session of the United Nations General Assembly on the six-day war in the Middle East.

## Roles for Kissinger Aides

A White House official said that Mr. Kissinger would be accompanied to Moscow by four aides, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, recently named an Under Secretary of the Treasury in charge of East-West trade matters; William G. Hyland, a Soviet specialist; Philip A. Odeen, a specialist on the talks on limitation of strategic arms, and Peter Rodman, Mr. Kissinger's personal assistant.

The official said that it was expected that Mr. Kissinger's ides would meet in Moscow with their Soviet opposite numbers and discuss progress in their own fields and possible points for the Washington summit meeting.

Mr. Kissinger will discuss with Mr. Brezhnev the current situation in Indochina, particularly the American irritation over the failure of Hanoi-backed insurgents in Cambodia to agree to a cease-fire, and charges infiltration of men and supplies by North Vietnam into South Vietnam.

The last time Mr. Kissinger was in Moscow was last September, for a general review with Soviet leaders of relations,

particularly on trade and European problems.

The White House said that Mr. Kissinger would not stop off in Paris on his way back to the United States. Mr. Kissinger expects to meet with Le Duc Tho, the chief North Vietnamese negotiator, in Paris in mid-May. That will be a separate trip, a

senior official said.

Mr. Kissinger is scheduled to leave Washington on Thursday and to arrive in Moscow on Friday. Before his departure, he will consult here in Washington with William H. Sullivan, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

A 6

Tuesday, May 1, 1973

THE WASHINGTON POST

# Kissinger Plans 4 Days in Moscow

By Dusko Doder

Washington Post Staff Writer

Presidential adviser Henry Kissinger will fly to Moscow Thursday night for four days of talks expected to focus on the forthcoming visit to the United States by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

Well-placed sources said Kissinger and Brezhnev would discuss details of the planned summit, which is expected to take place in late June. They were also expected to conduct preliminary discussions on the contents of a final communique to be issued after Brezhnev's talks with President Nixon.

Announcing the Kissinger trip, Gerald Warren, deputy White House press secretary, said its purpose is "to hold discussions on a whole range of bilateral problems" and "matters of mutual interest."

Warren said Kissinger will not stop in Paris for a possible meeting with Hanoi Politburo member Le Duc Tho. The White House announced last week that Kissinger and Tho would meet sometime in May, but Hanoi subsequently cast doubt on its readiness to proceed with such a meeting without U.S. concessions.

Indochina is expected to be another major topic of Kissinger's discussion with Brezhnev, as it was on each of the three occasions the presidential adviser visited Moscow during 1972.

Kissinger's trip follows a decision by Moscow to suspend its heavy exit taxes on Soviet Jews seeking to emigrate to Israel. The suspension has placated some congressional opponents of Soviet emigration policies who wanted to deny trade concessions to the Soviet Union.

Moreover, the Communist Party's Central Committee last week retired two senior officials from the ruling Politburo, apparently giving Brezhnev a strong mandate and endorsing his policy of detente with the United States.

Senior US. officials said yesterday that the date for Brezhnev's trip has not been set, although it is assumed that he would come here in late June. Asked if Kissinger would be arranging for a firm date, Warren said, "I just don't know."

According to Warren, arrangements for Kissinger's visit had been under discussion for several weeks.

Yesterday's announcement of Kissinger's trip was made simultaneously here and in Moscow. Tass, the Soviet news agency, said Kissinger and Soviet leaders would exchange opinions of "mutual interest."

Besides Vietnam, these discussions were expected to include the proposed European security conference, to be held in late June; negotiations looking toward mutual and balanced troop reductions of NATO and Warsaw Pact forces in Central Europe; details in the current round of negotiations on nuclear arms limitations, and Soviet-American trade problems.

If Brezhnev decides to visit Washington in June, this would reflect Moscow's belief that Mr. Nixon would obtain the congressional authority he is seeking to grant tariff concessions, or most-favored-nation status, to the Soviet Union. The administration promised to gain such concessions when a comprehensive Soviet-American trade pact was signed last fall.

NEW YORK TIMES 1 May 1973

Timely Brandt Visit

In his drive for a new Atlantic Charter and a "revitalized Atlantic partnership," President Nixon has scheduled no more important preliminary than his talks today and tomorrow with West German Chancellor Willy Brandt. In every respect, Mr. Brandt will be a key figure for the success or failure of the Administration's ambitious objectives for the "Year of Europe."

The Chancellor comes from a political base powerfully reinforced by his coalition's decisive victory in last November's election and solidified by his recent triumph over a left-wing faction that tried to turn his Social Democratic party away from the Atlantic Alliance and its ties with the United States. He can speak with greater authority than any other Western leader Mr. Nixon has seen or will receive prior to his European trip this fall.

Mr. Brandt is also uniquely equipped to give Mr. Nixon a useful up-to-date overview of the prospects for advancing East-West détente in Europe. He has followed up his

ice-breaking treaties with the Soviet Union, Poland and East Germany by working to upgrade relations with Czechoslovakia and by his recent visit to President Tito in unaligned Yugoslavia. He will be receiving Leonid Brezhnev in Bonn before the Soviet leader comes to the United States for his visit with Mr. Nixon.

Most important of all is Mr. Brandt's powerful faith that the European Community is "growing beyond economic integration," coupled with his equally strong belief that this development "will not estrange the integrating Europe from the United States." Here again he is the leader uniquely qualified to take Washington's case—if it is a reasonable one—to his peers in the Community, while also in position to warn the President against pushing unrealistic demands that can only alienate Europe.

If the Administration means business about fashioning a new Atlantic Charter and negotiating a sounder relationship with its European partners, Mr. Brandt's visit could not have come at a better time.

BOSTON GLOBE 30 April 1973 (1May)

Mr. Kissinger's bafflement

As he prepared to pack his bags for another Paris try to end the war in Indochina, White House foreign policy adviser Henry Kissinger confessed that the continued fighting baffles him.

"What should the United States do?" he asked. "If we can neither threaten nor offer incentives, if we are criticized for attempting to maintain the (Jan. 27) cease-fire by force and are pressed (by Congress) not to provide the economic incentives which might be another motive for keeping the agreement, then we should ask ourselves where we will be if what was a very solemn agreement very painfully achieved, in which we made very major concessions, is disregarded."

It is a long question. The short answer to it, objectionable as it may be to White House activists, would appear to be that it is our own futile and illegal intervention in the internal affairs of other nations that is prolonging the Indochinese war and the killing. This is especially so in Cambodia where no cease-fire has been negotiated and the rebels have all but routed the unpopular government which would so clearly fall if it were not supported by American bombers. The troubled query of US Ambassador to Phnom Penh Emory C. Swank is right to the point:

"What is the use of all this heavy air support (60 sorties of B52s and 140 sorties of fighter bombers daily at a rounded-out cost of $19,000 per sortie, plus the crew risks) if there is nothing to support?"

Mr. Kissinger rightly states that the Washington-Hanoi cease-fire agreement "was very painfully achieved." But it at least recognized the reality which Washington now seems so reluctant to recognize. The reality is that we achieved nothing more and sought nothing more than the extrication of our own forces and the return of our prisoners of war. The cease-fire terms, specifically permitting the continued presence of North Vietnamese troops in South

Vietnam and the replenishing of arms on both sides, were virtually a blueprint for continued fighting.

This is not intended as denigration of the cease-fire terms. These terms were the best that could be negotiated. But it hardly comports with the realities for Washington now to attempt making a great issue of Communist violations of the cease-fire in Vietnam and Laos, especially when the United States itself, according to official reports of Canadian observers, has also been violating the cease-fire daily since the day after it was signed.

Hanoi of course makes the most of our violations in its propaganda. It has the controlled mechanism for it as well as expertise in technique. But so has Washington, as is evidenced by new revelations that the Nixon re-election committee spent campaign funds to fake popular support for the mining of Haiphong harbor last May. In these circumstances of fabricated "popular support," as now disclosed by a disenchanted former member of the Nixon campaign staff, the nation, and especially the Congress, should be on the double alert against new US military action at which Defense Secretary Elliot Richardson hinted when he said our protests to Hanoi were "signals of possible retaliation."

What kind of "retaliation" Washington may have in mind has not been indicated. It needs to be noted, however, that the Administration, after poring over the Constitution and relevant statutes for months, has been unable to find one shred of legality for its current bombing (110,000 tons of bombs in the first two months following the cease-fire), let alone any new military action it may be contemplating.

It should be noted, too, that Mr. Kissinger himself has frankly stated that "our purpose in negotiating the (cease-fire) agreement was to end the American involvement in Southeast Asia."

So?

2-E

Editorial
comment...

The US bombing of Cambodia, according to Western diplomats, results in heavy losses among the civil population. We must assume that the perpetrators of these actions and their political superiors feel this is a sacrifice the Cambodian victims have to make in order to enable their compatriots to live under an anti-Communist regime.

This is a weak conception not only in a moral, but in a practical respect almost as weak as the anti-Communist government of Cambodia itself, that has the support of only a small part of the populace.

—Trosus, Amsterdam

Nothing in the discouraging news from Indochina should be surprising in view of the long Communist record of duplicity... Some kind of response to Communist violations clearly is required. But the public hardly would support a response that entailed a large-scale recommitment of American blood and treasure.

—Daily Oklahoman, Oklahoma City

Those who demand that Americans get out of Europe should not be allowed to disturb the delicate and complex process of adjustment that the US and Western Europe are now facing. Problems that arise cannot be solved by means of anti-American demonstrations. Mutual respect and understanding is the best point of departure for those who want to create a better Atlantic relationship.

President Nixon should therefore be welcomed to Europe also by those who dislike him in his capacity as President of the American superpower. And it should be easier for them to accept Mr. Nixon after even Brezhnev has allowed himself to be treated as his guest in the White House.

—Aftenposten, Oslo

EDITORIALS

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

27 April 1973 (1May)

RICHMOND TIMES DISPATCH 18 April 1973 (1May)

The cease-fire—
after 3 months

We are now three months along from
the day when the fighting was supposed
to have stopped in Vietnam and Laos.
How is the arrangement going?

Not well, in one sense. The White
House has just announced that Henry
Kissinger will shortly make another trip
to Paris to meet his old adversary, Le
Duc Tho, to see what can be done about
improving matters. Preliminary talks
between their deputies have started.

The biggest worry (foreign policy
area) at the White House is said to be
over the size and possible implications of
the North Vietnamese armed forces now
deployed in and around South Vietnam.
Might an offensive be launched in the
near future? What would President
Nixon do about it should such a thing
happen?

Widely differing versions of this de-
ployment are circulating in Washington.
The official claim is that there have been
massive violations of the cease-fire.

It is certainly true that during the two
months immediately preceding the
cease-fire both sides reinforced their
local clients in South Vietnam. Whether
the United States or North Vietnam won
on that twin operation remains to be
tested. And there is little doubt that the
North Vietnamese units deployed in the
South have been resupplied and their
casualties replaced.

However, the intended use of these
units may be over. They "covered" a
Viet Cong land grab that started on the
eve of the cease-fire. Much of the land,
and most of the hamlets, grabbed that
night have since been retaken by the
Saigon forces which counterattacked ev-
erywhere. That operation went on for
about two months. Of late it has tapered
off. Something like a military stalemate
exists in most areas. And some of the
North Vietnamese units are known to
have been withdrawn to camps or bases
north of the DMZ.

That there is still some fighting in
South Vietnam and that there is still not
even a cease-fire agreement for Cam-
bodia is of course disappointing. But it is
not in the least surprising. If anything,
the surprise is how well the Saigon forces
have acquitted themselves in the hamlet
recovery operation.

The three months since the cease-fire
started have served to clarify a number
of things about Indo-China. The United
States has withdrawn its ground forces,
but not lost interest. President Nixon is
still using his bombers in Cambodia and
from time to time hints that he might use
them again in Vietnam. The Viet Cong
have consolidated a lot of back country
and mountain areas of South Vietnam,
but are not pushing farther — at the
moment. Saigon seems to be able to hold
its own — at the moment.

These are the facts from which Dr.

The Ax Falls

Advocates of reduced military
spending now have a taste of the
fruits of their efforts, and a very
bitter fruit it is proving to be. The
Pentagon has announced an
economy move that will result in
the elimination of between 37,000
and 42,000 civilian and military
jobs.

New England will be especially
hard-hit. Massachusetts, for
example, will lose more than 13,000
jobs as the Boston Navy Yard and a
few smaller installations are
closed. Rhode Island will lose the
naval station at Newport, the naval
air-station at Quonset and a total of
21,000 jobs.

Not surprisingly, Massachusetts
officials are protesting loudly. To
be sure, that state was a major
center of the peace movement
during the Vietnam war and many
of its most prominent public of-
ficials have called repeatedly for
reduced defense spending. But the

gored ox rule applies to defense
spending as much as it applies to
anything else, and the
Massachusetts officials' passion
for a curtailed military budget does
not mean that they favor the
elimination of any of their own
state's bases. So Gov. Francis W.
Sargent and Senators Edward W.
Brooke and Edward Kennedy have
advised the Pentagon that they are
not the least bit happy about its
decision. Let the ax fall elsewhere.

But wherever the ax falls, it will
hurt someone. It is impossible, of
course, to reduce defense spending
without eliminating some jobs and
ceasing some operations. As long
as the Pentagon is guided by
realistic military and economic
considerations in making its
decisions, rather than by political
motives, it cannot be fairly cen-
sured.

BRIDGEPORT (CONN.) POST 11 April 1973 (1May)

Postwar War

With every passing day it becomes
clearer that the cease-fire in Vietnam
was drawn primarily to allow the United
States to remove its ground forces
and get its prisoners of war back.

The Paris accord was purposely
vague in regard to the ultimate fate of
Vietnam. It could not forever end the
fighting. To expect the Communist side
to accept the status quo of a divided
country would have been unrealistic.
This was what the war was all about.

For Hanoi to recognize the existence
of an independent South Vietnam would
mean it acquiesced to a defeat at the
conference table that it did not suffer
on the battlefield.

North Vietnam did, however, agree
to an indeterminate cease-fire period. It
also professed to abide by the condition
that an international peace-keeping force
would police the cessation of hostilities.

This makes the recent shooting down
of two International Commission of
Control and Supervision helicopters in-
excusable. Nine lives were lost in one
of these acts of treachery.

On the other hand, the United States
cannot claim its hands have been clean
since the January 28 agreement was sign-

ed. Our bombers continue to pound
Cambodia. They provide cover for tank-
ers running the blockade around the
capital city of Phnom Penh.

In 1970 when our forces invaded
Cambodia, President Richard M. Nixon
said the action was necessary to protect
our ground forces in Vietnam. That
justification no longer exists.

Today Secretary of Defense Elliot
Lo Richardson defends the bombing by
appealing to the President's "residual
authority" from the Vietnam conflict.
Members of Congress have understand-
ably questioned the tenuous link with a
war, supposedly ended, which was it-
self open to constitutional challenge.

Are we finished with the fighting in
Indochina or are we not? We know well
the centripetal force of war that drew
us into full-scale participation in Viet-
nam. It would be only too easy to get
trapped in another interminable struggle.

The final resolution of the bitter
rivalries in Laos, Cambodia, and Viet-
nam must ultimately be left to the Indo-
chinese peoples themselves. There seems
little point in our continued interven-
tion. Our role should be limited to send-
ing aid to our allies and exerting diplo-
matic and economic leverage on Russia
and China to make their friends agree
to political solutions.

Kissinger and Mr. Le Duc Tho can talk
when they meet. Dr. Kissinger's bar-
gaining position in the talks would be
excellent if he could make a tempting
economic aid offer to Hanoi. At the
moment no aid program could ever get
through Congress.

Yet if peace is to become more stable
in Indo-China there will have to be an
American aid program. It was part of the
original bargain. We have to hope that
Dr. Kissinger's famous ingenuity will
find a way over or around this present
flaw in his bargaining position.

1-E

Victor Zorza

WASHINGTON POST - 1 MAY 1973

U.S. Steps Up the Pressure on Europe

Mr. Nixon's invitation to Europe to agree to a set of principles to be enshrined in a "historic" Atlantic Charter is really a clever bit of arm-twisting, but it will make history if it succeeds.

The proposal for an Atlantic Charter publicly launched by Henry Kissinger is a device to force Europe into making the military and economic arrangements with the United States which the Europeans have long resisted. The announcement of the planned Nixon visit is, in effect, an ultimatum.

The United States has long urged Europe to bring its policies up to date so that they would accord with the new realities of power. But Europe has been dragging its feet, because it suspected Washington's motives.

Now the United States has forced the issue. Washington has told the Europeans that it wants the Atlantic Charter, which would define the "new relationship" to be ready toward the end of the year, when Mr. Nixon visits the European capitals.

What is the difference between an ultimatum and a deadline? An ultimatum threatens certain consequences if action is not taken within a specified time. Here the threat is only implied. The President of the United States does not travel for pleasure, but for business. If no charter, then no visit?

European governments won't collapse just because Mr. Nixon doesn't dine with the Queen at Buckingham Palace, or fails to lay a wrath at the Arc de Triomphe. The visit is supposed to resolve at the highest level the final differences that still remain after the economic and military experts and the diplomatic negotiators have gone as far as lower level officials can go. American concessions at the highest level, which the Europeans want, could only be made by the President himself

at the summit — as happened in both Peking and Moscow. So the Europeans have a real interest in the visit. But Kissinger's "linkage" technique is much distrusted Europe.

Even the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Alec Douglas Hume, managed to hint at his restatement of the practice in a speech which, on the surface, was intended to welcome Kissinger's design for the Year of Europe. The Europeans believe that each set of negotiations should proceed independently of each other. The new economic arrangements which the U.S. want in order to safeguard its access to the European market have nothing to do, in their view, with the question of American troop levels in Europe.

But Kissinger replies that "the political, military and economic issues in Atlantic relations are linked by reality. But by our choice, nor for the tactical purpose of trading one off against the other." The Europeans, to put it bluntly, don't believe a word of it. They have already experienced some of the subtle pressures of "linkage" in which progress in one area is made to depend on concessions in another.

The typically-thorough preparations for the Year of Europe made by Kissinger's office included a request for studies from all the government departments concerned. But after they arrived at the White House, they were returned to the Pentagon with instructions for more specific discussion of options and trade-offs involving military deals with Europe. The Treasury got its own paper back so that Under Secretary Paul A. Volcker could look at the economic trade-offs in relation to the military proposals. And the State Department was asked to look at both in relation to the diplomatic possibilities.

There need be nothing sinister about trade-offs. An exhaustive study of all the options is a necessary part of the preparation for any negotiations. So is horse-trading.

Both Kissinger and Sir Alec Douglas Hume urged the need for frank discussion of the issues on both sides, which is really an admission that they have not been as frank with each other in the past as allies should be. The substantive issues, economic and military, affect questions of national interest on both sides.

But the questions of linkage and timing, although seemingly procedural, can cause even more bad blood between the allies. They underlie the major issue between the U.S. and Europe, which is summed up in the more extreme European complaints that what Washington really wants is to dominate the continent. Linkage would allow the U.S. to force Europe to make concessions to American economic interests even when such concessions were not justified in economic terms.

The quarrel about timing goes even deeper. It is in the European interest to delay the working out of new arrangements until Europe is more united, economically and politically, and therefore packs a stronger punch in its dealings with the U.S. Converently, it is the interest of the U.S. to make the most of its strength before too much of it ebbs away to the new centers of power now emerging.

To put it crudely, the U.S. as a "satiated" power wants to freeze the international framework into a shape that accords most closely with its own interests. But Europe, Russia, China and Japan are all seeking to enhance their own power — which they can only do at the expense of the U.S.

© 1973, Victor Zorza

ROGERS' TEXT...................CONTINUED

Utive power should be vested in a President," that he "shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States," and that "the shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." The President is also given the authority to make treaties with the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate, to appoint ambassadors with the advice and consent of the Senate, and to receive ambassadors and other public ministers.

The proceedings of the Federal Constitutional Convention in 1787 suggest that the ambiguities of this division of power between the President and the Congress were deliberately left unresolved with the understanding that they were to be defined by practice. There may be those who wish the framers of the Constitution would have been more precise, but it is submitted that there was great wisdom in realizing the impossibility of foreseeing all contingencies and in leaving considerable flexibility for the future play of political forces.

'An Important Role'

The Constitution is a framework for democratic decision and action, not a source of ready-made answers to all questions, and that is one of our great strengths.

There is no question but

that Congress should play an important role in decisions involving the use of armed forces abroad. With respect to the continuation of U.S. air combat activity in Cambodia, what is that role? The Congress has cooperated with the President in establishing the policy of firmness coupled with an openness to negotiation, which has succeeded in bringing about the agreement of Jan. 27 and which can succeed in securing its implementation. This cooperation has been shown through consultations and through the authorization and appropriation process. The Congress has consistently rejected proposals by some members to withdraw this Congressional participation and authority by cutting off appropriations for necessary military expenditures and foreign assistance. The Congress has also enacted several provisions with specific reference to Cambodia. The President's policy in Cambodia has been and continues to be fully consistent with these provisions.

It was, of course, hoped that the agreement signed at Paris on Jan. 27 would be strictly implemented according to its terms, including the prompt conclusion of cease-fires in Laos and Cambodia and the withdrawal of

foreign troops from those two countries. What has happened instead is that, in Laos, the cease-fire has been followed by continuing Communist stalling in forming the new government and, in Cambodia, the Communist responded to the efforts of the Khmer Government to bring about a de facto ceasefire with a fierce general offensive. North Vietnamese forces remain in Laos and Cambodia and continue to infiltrate men and war material through these countries to the Republic of Vietnam.

Value of U.S. Air Strikes

North Vietnamese forces in Cambodia continue to participate in and to support Communist offensive operations.

United States air strikes in Laos were an important element in the decision by North Vietnam and its Laotian allies to negotiate a cease-fire in Laos. If United States air strikes were stopped in Cambodia, despite the Communist offensive, there would be little, if any, incentive for the Communist to seek a cease-fire in that country, and the temptation would doubtless be great for North Vietnam to leave its troops and supply lines indefinitely in Laos and Cambodia. Such

a situation would be the opposite of that prescribed by Article 20 of the Vietnam agreement and would so threaten the viability of the settlement in Vietnam and the right to self-determination of the South Vietnamese people as to be totally unacceptable to the Republic of Vietnam and to the United States. In light of these facts, it seems clear that the argument that the Constitution requires immediate cessation of United States air strikes in Cambodia because of the Paris agreement is, in reality, an argument that the Constitution, which has permitted the United States to negotiate a peace agreement—a peace that guarantees the right of self-determination to the South Vietnamese people as well as the return of United States prisoners and withdrawal of United States armed forces from Vietnam—is a Constitution that contains an automatic self-destruct mechanism designed to destroy what has been so painfully achieved. We are now in the process of having further discussions with the North Vietnamese with regard to the implementation of the Paris agreement. We hope these discussions will be successful and will lead to a cease-fire in Cambodia.

2-F

WEDNESDAY MORNING, 2 MAY 1973

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR 2 MAY 1973

# Partners once more?

By Robert R. Bowie

The Kissinger speech last week proposing a "new Atlantic charter" was compared by some to the Marshall Plan speech of 1947. Such "inspired" hyperbole is wide of the mark.

The speech was clearly designed to assuage serious concerns mainly of the Europeans, though Japan was also mentioned. They were reassured on continued United States support for European unity, on keeping U.S. forces in Europe, and against any sacrifice of allied interests in East-West negotiations. But they were also reminded of U.S. objections to a "closed trading system," and the Common Agricultural Policy, and of the need for more equitable sharing of defense burdens. The main point, however, was that such specific issues — economic, political, or security — should be dealt with in terms of partnership, for which top political leaders must provide the impetus.

This basic concept is sound and indeed essential. The task is to convert the words into deeds. How far that is done will depend on answers to three crucial questions:

First, does the speech reflect a real clarification of U.S. priorities? Only events will tell.

As Kissinger said, partnership calls for a "shared view of the world we seek to build." The concept implies that relations among the U.S., the European Community, and Japan are the foundation for the constructive effort to come to terms with interdependence. For several years, the

U.S. acceptance of that premise has been extremely doubtful to say the least.

Second, will the allies be able to respond effectively to the challenge of partnership? The immediate answer is probably not. The European Community is still some years from being an entity for most purposes other than trade; it cannot yet speak for its members on political or defense issues, or even on monetary reform. Thus, if the U.S. expects the Europeans to act soon as a full-fledged partner, it is bound to be disappointed, and the Europeans frustrated. And for different reasons, the same is true for Japan.

The U.S. must recognize that enhancing the capacity of Europe and Japan to be effective partners is one of the tasks for the period ahead. It will be significantly affected by how the U.S. approaches the substantive issues. Chancellor Brandt put it well

"This situation requires the U.S. generously and understandingly to negotiate with the members of the European Community as if the community were already the big single partner. The forthcoming negotiations on world trade and international monetary problems will require the courage to act on the basis of the reality of tomorrow." The corollary is that the members of the community have an obligation to expedite its progress as rapidly as possible.

Third, will Japan be included as a "principal partner" from the beginning? The Kissinger speech so stated,

but it seemed too much like an afterthought or addendum.

Since the Nixon shocks, the Japanese have been uneasy and unsettled as they have shown most recently in their confusing handling of the Emperor's visit and a possible Nixon trip. The Europeans will probably not be especially helpful about Japan in the first instance. Many of them fear the Japanese economic drive and would prefer to keep Japan at arm's length. Hence the U.S. will have to take the lead in helping Japan find its rightful and satisfying place among the advanced nations.

What does all this imply? In my view, partnership among the U.S., Europe, and Japan must be the cornerstone for any solid structure of peace. Ultimately, it will have to reflect greater equality among the partners in burdens and roles. But it will take time for the community and Japan to reach that stage.

Any charter will have to recognize that fact and be designed to facilitate the emergence of the community and Japan as full partners without demanding the impossible now.

Meanwhile, the U.S. will have to accept the role inherent in its position as things now stand. And the Europeans and Japanese will have to take all the steps they can to assist the U.S. with its political problems during this difficult phase of transition.

Nurturing the partnership will require both vision and political realism all around.

Dr. Bowie is a member of the Harvard Center for International Affairs and of the Harvard faculty.

WASHINGTON POST 2 MAY 1973 P-4

WEDNESDAY MORNING, 2 MAY 1973

WASHINGTON POST - 2 MAY 1973 Page 6

# High Goals Hit GI Recruiting, GAO Reports

By Michael Getler

Washington Post Staff Writer

The Pentagon's drive for all-volunteer armed forces could fall between 11,000 and 83,000 men short next year unless the services relax their goals and take fewer high school graduates and more men from the lowest category of mentally acceptable recruits.

That finding was reported to Congress yesterday by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of the legislature, in a report that reflected considerably less optimism than the Pentagon has exhibited about attracting high quality volunteers to military life.

The GAO said that with the exception of doctors, the services were having no problem recruiting and keeping officers, and that the Air Force was having no difficulty in maintaining its quality goals on enlisted men.

The shortage in the more highly qualified enlisted personnel, the GAO said, would fall mostly on the Army and Marine Corps and to a smaller degree on the Navy.

keep the Category IV recruit levels down to about 20 per cent of the 162,000 men it needs to enlist in Fiscal 1974.

The GAO also says that the importance of maintaining a proper cross section of skills and aptitudes is illustrated by the fact that in the Army and Marine Corps over half of the specific military skill ratings were either undermanned or overmanned by more than 20 per cent as of June, 1972.

The investigators estimate that this imbalance could grow worse unless a new Pentagon proposal for $2,500 enlistment bonuses for volunteers in a variety of speciality jobs is able to reverse current trends.

The Pentagon has also just increased the enlistment bonus for men joining the combat arms—infantry, armor and artillery—to $2,500 for a four-year hitch in the Army or Marines.

The bonus had been at $1,500, but figures show that while recruitment has risen in the last 24 months, the Army still had not met its combat

WASHINGTON POST - 2 MAY 1973 Page 3

# Use of GIs as Servants Defended by Army Chief

United Press International

Army Secretary Robert

Froehlke, defending the use of GIs as servants, said yesterday he did not want his chief of staff going home at 5 p.m. to mow the lawn.

Froehlke, in testimony before the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee, said the $21.7 million annual expenditure to provide enlisted aides to generals, admirals and some Navy captains "makes sense from a management standpoint."

If Congress stops the practice, he said, it will have to provide new, more easily maintained quarters for the brass at greater cost, he said.

A General Accounting Office survey has disclosed that enlisted aides, at taxpayer expense, wash private cars, babysit, garden, keep house and walk dogs for top commanders.

The military services contend the practice, which dates back to the Revolutionary War, is necessary to free commanders from onerous tasks and enable them to fulfill entertainment obligations.

Referring to Gen. Creighton Abrams, Army chief of staff, at his side, Froehlke said, "It doesn't make sense for him to hurry home at 5 p.m. and mow his lawn and spade his garden."

"Well, he could hire his own help like the rest of us do," unannoyed Chairman George

four enlisted aides.

Froehlke said Abrams' government-supplied home, a high-ceilinged turn-of-the-century brick affair, is old and decrepit and requires constant maintenance.

"My wife told me she wouldn't consider living in Julia Abrams' house without someone to help her, because it is an old monstrosity," Froehlke said.

WASHINGTON POST

2 MAY 1973

# Swedes Hit Bombing of Cambodia

STOCKHOLM, May 1 (UPI) —Premier Olof Palme and Foreign Minister Krister Wickman accused the United States today of violating the Paris agreement by bombing defenseless refugees in Cambodia.

"One cannot win the confidence of people through violence," Palme said in a May Day speech in Stockholm with

Kissinger Identifies
Chinese Go-Betwee

Associated Press

Henry A. Kissinger disclosed yesterday that a veteran Chinese diplomat now stationed in Washington was his secret contact during a crucial period prior to President Nixon's journey to China.

The presidential assistant said Huang Chen, who this week opened China's liaison office in Washington, served as his go-between in July and August 1971 — after Kissinger had secretly visited China to begin arrangements for the trip Nixon made in February 1972.

At that time, Huang Chen was stationed in Paris and Kissinger was making regular but secret trips to the French capital for Vietnam negotiations.

The White House has consistently refused to divulge details of the secret contacts, but Kissinger volunteered during a conversation with newsmen that he had met four times with the Chinese diplomat during July and August of 1971.

The foreign-policy adviser

would not discuss specifics on how contacts were handled before July of 1971, saying only, "We did it through a third country."