# The Politics of ABM

## *Aaron Wildavsky*

ISSUES HAVE lives of their own. Men can-
not often choose the ground on which
to fight major issues; they must take what the
world offers up. There is always the danger, then,
that the issue will control the men, rather than
the men the issue. The recent controversy over the
Safeguard anti-ballistic missile is a classic case
in point. Thus the advocates of ABM—people
who in the past were likely to be great believers
in the prevailing American doctrine of nuclear
deterrence—have taken the lead in challenging
that doctrine, while opponents of ABM—people
more or less of the Left and previously skeptical
of the same doctrine—have become ever more
firmly wedded to it. Thus, too, some of those who
are against ABM are willing to entertain a
launch-on-warning policy (that is, a policy which
would have the U.S. fire all its missiles to avoid
having them destroyed in a suspected enemy at-
tack) for the 1970's, while those who favor the
ABM are bitterly opposed to such a policy. And
thus, finally, some elements of the opposition to
ABM have talked themselves into believing that
the 1972 Presidential campaign should be run on
the basis of opposition to the power of the mili-
tary in the United States. One thing, however, is
clear: it all began when an always precarious
nuclear balance between the United States and
the Soviet Union was apparently threatened by
new weapons.

American strategy for deterrence is primitive. The United States seeks to have a sufficient number and diversity of nuclear weapons to guarantee that, in the event of a surprise attack by the Soviet Union, it would be able to strike back with enough force to destroy the aggressor. Since the Soviet Union also has sufficient capability to retaliate after an attack, each country is believed to be deterred from launching a surprise attack against the other by the threat of mutual destruction. It is this precarious equilibrium that Robert McNamara has called "assured destruction." No one can know for sure, of course, how much prospective damage to people and objects would actually deter a would-be aggressor. Estimating

the number of casualties required is essentially
a mystical enterprise, and the magic number has
shifted over time. Since the Soviet Union ab-
sorbed 20 million casualties in World War II, that
figure is usually considered to be the lowest tol-
erable point. The highest can run well over 100
million. If a successfully deterrent second strike
is put at or below, say, 30 million casualties, then
almost all U.S. Minuteman missiles are unneces-
ary because Polaris and other weapons can do
the job. If, on the other hand, the number of
"hostages" is set at close to 100 million, then mis-
siles are needed, and protecting them—which is
what ABM purports to do—becomes much more
significant.

The ability to destroy an opponent after he
has launched a first strike depends not only on
the yield and accuracy of one's nuclear weapons,
but on the number of different ways in which
they can be delivered. If there is only one major
weapons system, such as the Minuteman, there
is always the chance that it will malfunction or
be wiped out. American deterrence has, therefore,
depended on having at least three ways of get-
ting back at an enemy—the Minutemen in hard-
ened silos on American soil; bombers at "soft" air-
fields; and Polaris submarines, with their missiles
hidden in the depths of the world's oceans.
Redundancy has become an essential part of nu-
clear defense. Yet no one can say how many sep-
arate deterrent forces are required to make
certain that not all could be overwhelmed at the
same time.

American deterrent forces were built to be ef-
fective under the conditions of the 1960's. In
the process of raising billions of dollars to build
them, the weapons were oversold to Congress
and the public as relatively permanent answers
to nuclear defense. The more sophisticated peo-
ple involved always realized (and sometimes said
in public) that no system of defense could be
good for all time or even necessarily for more
than a decade. But it is fair to say that these
words of caution were lost. What has happened
in the last few years is that the effectiveness of
two of our three major deterrent systems has
been called into serious question.

Of the three, manned bombers have always
been the most uncertain because they can be eas-

AAKON WILDAVSKY is dean of the Graduate School of Public Affairs of the University of California at Berkeley and the author of numerous books and articles on public policy.

Commentary
Nov. 1969

56/COMMENTARY NOVEMBER 1969

ily destroyed unless there is time for them to take to the air. In November 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara reported that the Soviet Union was developing a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System that could deliver nuclear weapons from missiles flying in low orbit around the earth. While the accuracy of such a system is poor as compared with intercontinental ballistic missiles, FOB's are more than good enough to wipe out airplanes on the ground. Their low trajectory makes it difficult to detect them with regular long-range radars; and even with newer, over-the-horizon radars, warning time is sharply reduced. In addition, manned bombers are exceedingly vulnerable to missiles launched from submarines.

In December 1967 the Department of Defense reported the development of the Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV), a system in which a single vehicle carries multiple warheads that can be maneuvered to separate targets on independent courses. President Johnson's budget message in 1969 called for expenditures to provide multiple warheads for the land-based Minuteman Three and the submarine-launched Poseidon. At the same time, Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford noted the rapid growth of the Soviet Union's force of intercontinental ballistic missiles, which he warned might equal those of the United States by 1970 and would probably have larger payloads. Were the Soviet Union to continue its present rate of deployment, and were the Soviet SS-9 missile to continue to be developed as a MIRV, there might be grounds for questioning the ability of the Minuteman to strike back.

Hence the great ABM debate. Proponents of ABM argued that by the mid-1970's the Soviet Union could have a sufficient number of MIRV's (with accuracies that the United States is capable of achieving today) to destroy about 950 of the 1,000 Minutemen. Opponents argued that the Soviet Union would be able to destroy only a much smaller number and that a sufficient proportion of Minutemen would be left to wreak unacceptable damage. The debate is hard going for even the most informed observers, and one wishes the protagonists would confront each other directly so that the differences in their assumptions and modes of analysis could be exposed.*

My purpose, however, is not to make a case for or against the ABM, or even to give a complete account of the multitude of considerations raised by each side. The books and Congressional hearings on which this essay is based contain enough of that to satisfy anyone.† Now that the Senate has decided by one vote to approve initial deployment of the ABM, rehashing the debate would in any case be anti-climactic and no more informative than it was at the time. We can learn something, I believe, by asking not who was right but why the participants adopted the positions

they did. There is more, in other words, to be gained from an examination of why ABM was an issue at all than by evaluating the relative merits of the positions, although some such evaluation is necessary by way of background. Let us begin, therefore, by considering important arguments that do not matter—important because they appeared endlessly in the debate, but that did not matter because they were inherently inconclusive.

## II

EVERYONE agrees that ABM is an exceedingly complex technological system. Even if it does not quite live up to Senator Edward Kennedy's advertisement of it as "the single most complex undertaking man has yet set for himself in his time on earth," the system will not be easy to build and make effective. It requires radars to look over the horizon, track incoming weapons, filter out decoys, and pass information on to other computers which are connected to the Spartan and Sprint missiles and to various command-and-control arrangements, which must guide the outgoing missiles rapidly to the target so that the incoming missiles are destroyed high enough in the atmosphere to prevent serious damage. The Spartan, whose present range is 300-500 miles, would get first crack, and the Sprint, whose range is around 25 miles, would take over as missiles got nearer their targets. In initial deployment, these Spartans and Sprints would be placed around two Minuteman complexes.

Because of its complexity, endless disputes have raged about whether the ABM can do its job or indeed whether it will ever work at all. The major argument of opponents is that defensive systems, like the ABM, are likely to fail because adequate testing is difficult if not impossible. "... The history of initial failures of far simpler systems suggests that the probability of catastrophic failure of a defensive ABM is quite high," says physicist Leonard Rodberg. "It is much higher, in fact, than for offensive systems, which are less intricate and more susceptible to adequate testing." The

* Fortunately, the Subcommittee on National Security and International Operations of the Senate Government Operations Committee has published the fascinating debate between Albert Wohlstetter on the pro side and George Rathjens and others on the anti side. This exchange, called "Defense Analysis: Two Examples" (Ninety-first Congress, First Session, 1969), is the best brief example of defense analysis I know.

† Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, Ninety-First Congress, First Session on S. 1192, S. 2407, and S. 2546, Parts 1 and 2.

Abram Chayes and Jerome B. Wiesner, eds., *ABM, An Evaluation of the Decision to Deploy an Antiballistic Missile System*, Harper & Row, 282 pp., $5.85.

John Kenneth Galbraith, *How to Control the Military*, Doubleday, 69 pp., $3.95.

Johan J. Holst and William Schneider, Jr., ed., *Why ABM? Policy Issues in the Missile Defense Controversy*, Pergamon Press, 320 pp., $6.95.

THE POLITICS OF ABM/57

advocates of ABM respond by saying that "no strategic weapons system can be tested realistically in a nuclear war environment whether the system is defensive or offensive." If we are to be around to observe the results, they contend, analysis of nuclear war must proceed without testing in the real environment. But even if it is not desirable to test a system under realistic conditions, proponents of ABM believe it is still possible to take precautions. "If I am concerned at my summer home about being attacked by a mountain lion," Dr. Frederick Seitz said in defense of ABM, "I can go through a great deal of significant preparatory work. I can test cartridges in the basement. I can fire blanks in a gun, and be pretty sure that the system will work, if a mountain lion appears. I don't need to acquire a mountain lion, and have him attack me as an initial test."

In the time-honored tradition of finding counter-examples, Professor Abram Chayes arrived at a different conclusion. "If I were buying a gun to defend my house against burglars, and half the gun experts I talked to told me it wouldn't shoot, and I knew I couldn't try it out until the burglars got there, I think I would start looking around for some other way to protect my house." By now, the nature of the discussion should be clear to everyone. If you believe in the desirability of the ABM for other reasons, then you believe it will, must, and can be made to work. If you decide for other reasons that the ABM is undesirable, then you attempt to show that it cannot and will not work.

How does a decision-maker without technical expertise make a decision when those who should know are so divided? Since he cannot go into the technical problem, he may decide by placing confidence in the advice of men whom he trusts most, perhaps because their policy preferences are generally similar to his own. Argument by authority is not helpful in public, however, because there are so many eminent men on both sides. So the disputants search for historical experience that will appear relevant and accessible to laymen. What does history teach? The proponents of ABM say history teaches that the preponderance of scientists said the H-bomb could not be developed and they were wrong. They point to the outstanding success with complex missions involving interacting technologies, such as Polaris and Apollo. They observe that in the past scientists have been surprised at how rapidly systems considered impossible came into being. Dr. Seitz mentions television, radar, jet aircraft, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and so on. The other side has no difficulty in finding its examples of failures from the Maginot Line, all-weather interceptors, the Distance Early Warning line, Skybolt, and more. What history has to teach us, apparently, is that complex systems often do not work but that sometimes they do and, in addition,

that it is very difficult to tell in advance which of these two categories a weapons system belongs in.

One way to resolve the question is to agree with Abram Chayes that "... there is an inherent advantage for the side that deploys last. If the offense can see the characteristics of the ABM system ranged against it, it can adopt the tactics best able to overcome that particular system." If your opponent attacks you, of course, before you are ready to respond to a new system, then you are in trouble. There is no system, Albert Wohlstetter remarks, about which it cannot be said, "... you can always get something better if you wait." But the argument can be turned around: instead of waiting, perhaps the best way to get information about whether a system will work is to try it. Opponents of ABM would not regard this response as satisfactory.

THROUGHOUT the debate on the ABM there has been a swirl of contention about the relative costs of offense and defense. The point has been made, for instance, that the Soviet Union could always build more offensive missiles to negate the defensive value of the ABM. But the point is irrelevant; if enough money is spent, any offense can overcome a defense, and any defense an offense. The question remains how much each will cost, and—even more critical—what is the presumed advantage of offense over defense per dollar spent. The Chayes-Wiesner group contend that "the offense problem is simpler than that of defense, because ICBMs are pretargeted, and they do not have to be aimed within a few moments of launch on the basis of recently acquired target data. Moreover, the timing of the launch is not critical with offensive weapons, unlike the ABM, which must be able to respond on call against a target approaching at seventy-two hundred miles per hour."

Similar considerations, however, can be added to support the alleged advantages of a defensive system. In an effort to even out the debate, Albert Wohlstetter has stated that "an increment in defense offsets a larger increment in offense because the defense of missiles doesn't require defending all missiles and one can choose which silos to defend. . . . Moreover the defense can choose that at the last minute. The defense has the last move. in this sort of a system, whereas the offense cannot know which one is going to be chosen and therefore must attack all." Freeman Dyson takes the position that defensive forces eventually will triumph because they are situated much closer to the scene of action and can adapt more quickly than offensive forces, which must make their moves thousands of miles away and attempt to exert control over incredibly long distances. Here again, as in the dispute over the technical operability of the ABM, we have a clash of rival intuitions that has its interest as such,

58/COMMENTARY NOVEMBER 1969

but is of no real help to anyone trying to make
up his mind on an important issue.

In a similar category belongs the dispute over
the efficacy of penetration aids, such as decoys
and metal chaff, that are designed to confuse
radar and thus render an ABM system useless.
People who are against ABM claim that it would
be relatively easy for the Chinese, not to men-
tion the Russians, to develop simple and cheap
penetration aids that would negate high-altitude
defense. Supporters of ABM point out that the
United States has spent several billion dollars on
penetration aids, and experience has shown that
they are difficult to devise and deploy. They con-
clude that the Chinese will have great trouble
along these lines, but that countermeasures
against Russian efforts are feasible and desirable.
To this their opponents reply that one never can
tell but what the clever Chinese will make some-
thing that American designers have not
thought of.

A more interesting charge against the ABM
is that its deployment would result in shifting the
power to make life-and-death decisions from the
President to low-level technicians, or even from
persons to machines. By the time the President
got warning of incoming missiles there might be
anywhere from five to twenty-five minutes in
which to make a decision. If there is to be any
certainty of response, some people believe that
the actual decision will have to be made by the
men in charge of operating Safeguard or by the
computers on which they rely. "The point is not,"
Bill Moyers writes,

that under these or any other circumstances the
President relinquishes the actual command
decisions—he does not—but that the option when
it reaches him is almost no option at all. If the
system is to have any chance of intercepting
actual enemy missiles, it is difficult to see how the
President can avoid surrendering his decision-
making authority to the computers and the
junior military officers who stand over them.
The command decision becomes little more than
a hurried human reflex, devoid of political and
moral consideration, to confirm what the
machines say is inevitable.

This statement appears plausible until one con-
siders what the situation would be if there were
no ABM. What would a President of the United
States do if word reached him that a number of
intercontinental ballistic missiles were approach-
ing the United States? Advocates insist that ABM
would better enable the United States to ride out
an attack with some assurance that there would
be enough left with which to respond. There
would then be no need to make a precipitate
decision that might turn out to begin nuclear
war by mistake. "Deciding to launch our ICBM
might be the most important decision that will
ever have been made," Albert Wohlstetter told
the Senate Armed Services Committee. "That is

the decision for World War III. I do not want
to decide that on radar data. I can think of
ways such data might be spurious." The choice,
then, is between two kinds of errors: the error
that results in sending up an ABM that will ex-
aggerate at high altitude over or near our own
country; and the error that will send nuclear mis-
siles winging their way to destroy a large part
of the Soviet population, touching off a wave of
retaliation, if the Soviets had not intended (or
had not launched) an attack in the first place.

Another reason given for rejecting ABM is that it would make a future arms-control agreement more difficult. ABM would add another item to be negotiated, thus increasing the complexity of an already tortuous series of negotiations. As the Russians already have an ABM, however, it is hard to see how this matter can be left out of the negotiations. And in any case, one might think that opponents of the ABM, having insisted that it is too complex to work, should have no reason to believe that the Soviet Union would feel compelled to take countermeasures against it. But ABM opponents say that the Russians will have to believe that the system might work and therefore will take precautions against it by increasing the size of their missile force, thus further inhibiting the prospects of an arms-control agreement.

It should come as no surprise that advocates
of ABM believe on the other hand that the sys-
tem will make a positive contribution toward
arms control. One of the important barriers to
any arms-control agreement is the number of
parties who refuse to join. By improving the
possibilities for effective defense against lesser
powers, ABM, according to its supporters, will
enhance the chances for concluding arms-control
agreements without the participation of those
lesser powers—the more so since the possession
of ABM systems by the two superpowers would
enable them to relax a little about minor viola-
tions.

My own conclusion is that deploying the Saf-
eguard ABM would complicate the arms-control
negotiations in some ways and make them easier
in others, and that it is not easy to draw the
balance. The kind of decision required may
be illustrated by analogy to problems concerned
with the nuclear test-ban treaty. The unrelenting
march of technology always makes it possible for
someone to claim that new developments will in-
validate the safeguards that exist and hence the
value of the agreement, and the fact that there
are already dangers that presently cannot be
guarded against reduces the prospect of agree-
ment still further. Yet a reasonable man might
risk a bet on future American technology. Rather
than permitting underground testing, for in-
stance, simply because there were no existing
ways of indirect detection (and the Soviets would

THE POLITICS OF ABM/59

not allow on-site inspection), I would have preferred taking the risk that, given sufficient motivation, the United States could develop the necessary technology. In the ABM case, a belief that the system is essential would quickly resolve the technological doubts in its favor. Thus the question is not merely one of technology, unless there are strong scientific reasons for believing that the development is impossible in principle; rather, the question is one of assessing the technological probabilities and deciding the direction in which we wish to take our risks.

People on both sides of the debate have succumbed to the "funny numbers" syndrome. These are arguments that are constructed in such a way that neither the ABM nor any other system could ever be rejected or, alternatively, approved on the basis of them. Professor Edward Teller, for instance, observes that "the first year of the 'Safeguard' deployment will cost only one half as much as we spend on defense in one week." Since almost all systems have low initial costs, it is hard to think of one that would have been ruled out by this approach; besides, if defense expenditures were drastically reduced, the amount allocated to Safeguard would turn out to be a larger proportion of the whole. Phyllis Schlafly, co-author of three books on nuclear strategy, *The Grave Diggers, Strike from Space, and The Betrayers*, brings to our attention the fact that the Safeguard ABM "will cost only $8 per person per year. Isn't your life worth $8 per year?" she asks with admirable restraint.

On the opposite side of the argument, we encounter talk of the lives that could be saved and the human spirits that could be nurtured if the money to be spent on ABM were devoted to other purposes. The lists that have been drawn up include the "10 million Americans [who] go to bed hungry each night; 26 million [who] live in abject poverty; ... polluted streams and air, housing, education, transportation. ..." Of course, anyone who loves the outdoors and wishes to spend money to keep nature in an unspoiled condition must also feel ashamed that his programs will divert funds from widows and orphans.

Finally, John Kenneth Galbraith has found an infallible way of winning the debate over ABM—he simply categorizes everyone who might conceivably be on the other side as a member of the "Military-Industrial Complex." He includes not only military officers, civilians in the Pentagon, defense contractors, members of the Armed Services Committees, but also "... the university scientists and those in such defense-oriented organizations as RAND, the Institute for Defense Analyses, and the Hudson Institute who think professionally about weapons and weapons systems and the strategy of their use." Just to make sure he has cast the net wide enough, Galbraith also includes social scientists who "responded eagerly to invitations to spend the summer at RAND.

They devoted their winters to seminars on the strategy of defense and deterrence. The only question was whether a man could get a high enough security clearance."

Unfortunately for Galbraith's point, if it were not for the fact that research institutes and universities have spread knowledge of defense policy around the country, it would have been difficult to have a debate on the ABM at all. Indeed, the ABM issue is the only one involving strategic forces in the past decade that was not brought to public attention by disputes within the military services, but rather by "defense intellectuals," and the most impressive arguments on both sides have been advanced by these same intellectuals. Galbraith, however, has covered his tracks: all one has to do in order to win an exit visa from the Military-Industrial Complex is to denounce the ABM.

There are, of course, many different phenomena that go under the name of the Military-Industrial Complex. There is reason to be concerned about the large number of ex-Pentagon employees who work for defense contractors, and the difficulties inherent in close and intelligent Congressional supervision of military programs are deserving of scrutiny and debate. More serious still in my opinion, though never mentioned, is the fascination of the general public with hardware and technological solutions to complex human problems. The rush on all sides to exclaim that the Apollo moonshot proves that the United States can solve any problem on which it sets its mind is but a recent reminder. But these and other problems cannot be solved by using MIC as a mindless slogan with which to castigate one's enemies. If the people who use it really believed in its full implications, there would in fact be no need for them to debate the merits of individual projects. They could just oppose anything and everything supported by the military on a priori grounds.

### III

THE ABM has several potential uses ... and abuses. It can be used as a defensive weapon to protect the Minuteman deterrent. It can protect against a small attack from China or any other power in possession of only a few deliverable nuclear weapons. And it may be emplaced around cities in an attempt to reduce civilian casualties in the event of nuclear war. The variety of uses to which an ABM might be put has occasioned dispute within the defense community and has resulted in different emphases being placed upon different purposes at different times. Unable to decide whether an ABM designed simply to protect cities was justified, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara came out for a defensive system, allegedly to protect against Chinese attack. The Nixon

60/COMMENTARY NOVEMBER 1969

administration at first adopted a city-defense objective, called Sentinel, and then turned to the present Safeguard whose objective is to protect part of the Minuteman deterrent force. Yet any one of these uses can be converted into any other. The second stage of Safeguard, for example, will have some modest city-defense capability since it must cover a substantial area of the United States in order to perform its primary mission.

The shifts and turns in the history of the ABM have interacted with the pre-existing anxieties of its opponents to produce an atmosphere of maximum distrust. The anomalies introduced by the change of objectives I have just described, together with the impossibility of adequately distinguishing one from another, have served to infuriate opponents of the ABM. What were they to think when the administration, which initially proposed the ABM to protect against an improbable Chinese attack, then offered to give it up if the Russians gave up theirs? The suspicion soon grew that the idea was to have the ABM no matter what the reason; rationales were seen as pure window-dressing. Thus, a long-time supporter of the defense program like Senator Stuart Syrnington could speak of "this new and pretty tricky sudden shift from the cities to the missile sites."

The way in which the ABM issue arose gave its detractors a special political opportunity. After the Sentinel ABM was proposed, and immediate efforts were undertaken to select sites for deployment of the Sprint and Spartan missiles near major cities, there was a political uproar reminiscent of the debate over civil defense in President Kennedy's time. In those days the Left was outraged at increasing militarism and the ludicrous idea that a defense was possible against nuclear weapons. The Right was briefly interested, but eventually decided that the whole thing was cowardly and that offense rather than defense should be emphasized. Despite the conviction expressed at the time that industrial firms, which stood to make billions from having us all burrow underground, would therefore secure a decision to proceed, virtually no support materialized for civil defense and it died.

The Sentinel ABM apparently generated just such a negative reaction among the people it was supposedly designed to protect. Hence it began to appear that there would be wider political opposition to the Sentinel than would normally be the case in matters of military policy and that ABM, therefore, might become an issue on which to take a stand against militarism. Just as many people began to get committed to turning the proposed ABM into a major political issue, however, the Nixon administration changed its line; the program was renamed Safeguard and was directed toward defense of the Minuteman deterrent force. By removing the ABM sites from the cities, where they caused alarm and could be criticized

as an attempt to protect the populace prior to an attack on the Soviet Union, the administration reduced the opportunity to make a good political issue out of ABM. By that time, however, the opponents were both angry and committed and began to pick up every rock they could find to throw at the proposal.

The most apparent rationale for opposing the Safeguard ABM is lack of trust in the military. It is perhaps not surprising that an organization like Women Strike for Peace should commit itself "to defeat the ABM and to attempt to turn the country away from the tide of militarism before it is too late." But when the Governor of North Dakota says, "... our nation is swept along by contrived hysteria to keep the pipeline of the defense industries full," the defense establishment is obviously in trouble. Evidently, the lesson learned from the Vietnam war has been that the judgment of the military (even when supported by the President) should be questioned everywhere. One should always be as skeptical of the claims of government as of declarations of love, promises of eternal peace, assurances of investment profits, or any other relationship where ego, self-interest, and uncertainty are involved.

But one cannot challenge everything at once. Learning where and when to trust will be difficult. From World War II the U.S. learned to arm itself in order to secure peace. It was wise, Americans thought, to intervene before little wars became big ones and little dictators thought of world conquest. The Vietnam experience apparently teaches us that if a nation has arms it may use them and small wars may become large if big countries are involved. The trouble is that the United States seems capable of learning only one lesson at a time—"look before you leap" (Vietnam) supplants "he who hesitates is lost" (Munich)—when what needs to be asked is under which conditions these proverbial lessons apply.

SINCE THERE IS little trust, anger at alleged deception is always near the surface. While many opponents of the ABM like to think of themselves as apostles of change, they argue that nothing has happened in the last few years to alter the requirements for nuclear defense. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, for example, writes in his introduction to *ABM: An Evaluation of the Decision to Deploy an Antiballistic Missile System*: "Our nuclear forces are so large, and so sophisticated, that they would deter an enemy from attacking us while we sought an arms limitation agreement with the Soviets over some predetermined period, just as they have deterred our enemies over all the years of the nuclear age." The same line is taken by Theodore Sorenson, who asserts: "Having assured the West Europeans for some years that, even after suffering a first strike, we possessed a second-strike capacity

THE POLITICS OF ABM/61

of weapons systems in the ground, underwater, or in the air sufficient to destroy any attacker several times over, we will have a difficult task convincing them now that an ABM system is needed to make this deterrent effective." After a decade in which billions have been spent on nuclear weapons, it galls the critics of ABM to hear others claim that the expenditures were not good for an indefinite future. It seems more likely to them that as the war in Vietnam is—one hopes—being phased out, new excuses are being found to replenish military expenditure.

The climate of opinion in the United States, however, is still such that arguments have to be phrased in terms of advocacy of national defense. No one can win broad support by saying he wants to leave the nation defenseless. So the opponents of ABM must worry about our nuclear deterrent and they must have alternatives to ABM in case the deterrent should be threatened. In order to avoid what they consider the overriding present evil—a useless ABM that will divert billions from domestic uses and strengthen the military politically—they are easily led into excessive reliance on a strategy of assured destruction. Under this doctrine the superpowers would maintain large arsenals of intercontinental ballistic missiles and make no persuasive efforts to defend their own populations; thus, each nation's people becomes hostage for its own good behavior. The attraction of assured destruction as a strategy is that it would appear to result in a nuclear standoff while ruling out all sorts of fanciful and expensive ways of making believe that the nation might render itself safe in the face of nuclear weapons.

The adherents of assured destruction (under which the total vulnerability of the U.S. and the Soviet Union to attack by each other is the guarantor of peace) see every move to increase defensive facilities as a trick to unleash an offensive holocaust. What unimaginable things might an American government not do, they ask, if civil defense or an ABM gave it the idea that it could escape total destruction in a nuclear war? Then the vast urge for destruction in a people prone to violence might spill out and engulf the world. The image of America as a modern dinosaur, with an incredible technical arsenal and a pea-sized brain, comes to the fore. For this image the adherents of assured destruction would substitute that of a man asking his friends, half in terror and half in exaltation, to hold him back lest he commit an act of murder, so great is his deep-seated potential for violence; such is the emotive level of those who believe that for America the only guarantee of national morality lies in being defenseless. This profound lack of trust in a whole people long antedates Vietnam and suggests that any effort at defense would meet with fierce opposition.

But, an advocate of ABM might ask, how

would a policy of assured destruction work in practice? Imagine that a nuclear missile is coming. What can the United States do? The proponents of assured destruction say that the United States is capable of a devastating attack on the Soviet Union no matter what happens. Yet that would not stop the missile, and the President is not to be envied who might have to explain why, though he knew missiles were coming, strategic doctrine required that he have no means of intercepting them.

This and other challenges to the doctrine of assured destruction have been put forward by many of the authors represented in *Why ABM?*, a volume published by the Hudson Institute. These men regard mutual suicide as an unsatisfactory basis for national defense; they advocate a different theory of deterrence, calling for substantial ballistic-missile defense by the superpowers together with phased reductions in offensive missiles, which are defined as missiles that can reach the other country. Such a policy could vastly reduce the incentives for third powers to get nuclear weapons and to engage in nuclear blackmail. It would also reduce damage in case of accident or a breakdown of deterrence. It would not, probably, reduce the chances of nuclear war below the present posture of mutual annihilation but it would not markedly increase them either. Should some temporary breakdown in deterrence occur, it would be possible to limit damage and have somebody around to learn the lesson and push for more complete disarmament.

IT SHOULD BE pointed out that responsible opponents of ABM never say that they do not care about protecting the deterrent. On the contrary, they care very much. "I think," Abram Chayes says, "if the Soviet threat should materialize along the lines projected by Secretary Laird, which I believe to be unlikely, and if the strategic arms-control talks fail, we then will have to consider very urgently the goal of protecting our deterrent." Nevertheless, these opponents would still wish to have an alternative to ABM should the Soviets appear in the late 1970's to be able to destroy a very large proportion of Minutemen. According to Herbert York, if we think that two years are available before the period of maximum danger, more Minutemen can be deployed. If four years is a more feasible time period, the number of Polaris submarines could also be increased.

The difficulty with these alternatives is that they would vastly increase the amount of American destructive power and hence might exacerbate Soviet fears of a possible surprise attack. Should the danger period be numbered in terms of weeks, it is possible to go on airborne alert, but this posture would be prohibitively expensive over a longer period of time. These alternatives to ABM, therefore, are either limited, un-

62/COMMENTARY NOVEMBER 1969

feasible, or would tend to increase markedly the destructive power of nuclear weapons and the anxiety of the major powers.

Those who believe that the United States should defend its Minutemen with ABM state that their policy is designed to avoid the worst strategic alternative-launching missiles before they have a chance to be destroyed. Professor Richard Rosecrance insists that:

We should defend Minuteman because we ourselves could respond in escalatory and undesirable ways if we fail to reinsure Minuteman's invulnerability to attack. Imagine a situation in which the BMEWS radars give indication of an incoming attack on our land-based forces. And surely Minuteman is what the SS-9's would shoot at. One can imagine enormous pressure upon an American President to launch Minuteman before the incoming warheads land on target. He might or might not yield to that pressure. But he would know that if he did not launch Minuteman within approximately 20 minutes and the radar warning was accurate, he could expect a very large proportion, between 90-99 per cent, of the force to be destroyed in their silos. Under these circumstances it would not be surprising if he authorized launch of Minuteman. Such a decision would certainly result in saving Minuteman, but if the radar indications were erroneous, the measures taken by the President to protect our force could have catastrophic consequences for our own society.

However, incredible the idea of a launch-on-warning posture may appear, it too has seriously been mentioned as an alternative to ABM. Jerome Wiesner, for example, writes:

> However, if one is truly worried about a full-scale SS-9 attack, it is possible to launch the Minuteman and Titan missiles after unequivocal warning of a large attack received but before the attacking missiles have hit. The missile warning could be associated with other knowledge, such as information about attacks on bomber bases, Polaris submarines, etc., to provide confirmation that an attack is really under way.

The most feasible immediate alternative to ABM would be the superhardening of existing Minuteman sites. The trouble here is that we do not know the precise effectiveness of hardening much beyond present levels, and in any case as missiles became more and more accurate, whatever effectiveness hardening might have would be rapidly diminished. What the advocates of ABM dislike about hardening—it cannot be easily expanded or adapted—is exactly what the opponents like about it. It is a limited response to a limited threat.

Who could have foretold that eminent spokesmen for peace would seriously contemplate a launch-on-warning policy, or would pledge themselves to rush into huge provocations in the 1970's if a Soviet threat materializes, or would glory in the desolation of the population as a guarantor of restraint?

of restraint? Indeed we have a case here of men being controlled by an issue.

## IV

WE COME NOW to perhaps the most interesting question of all: why did the ABM debate turn into one of the major domestic issues of the decade? The principal reason, in my opinion, is that the debate lent itself to manipulation by people whose primary political interests lay elsewhere—specifically, in bringing the Vietnam war to an end and in opposing on general grounds high defense expenditures. These people had perceived, no doubt correctly, that a major conflict over funds to support the war, or a direct assault on the military men involved, would be politically ineffective. (Despite the evident unpopularity of our engagement in Vietnam, there appears to be no good way of making a political issue out of funds denied to American men under fire.) What the ABM debate offered, quite simply, was a temporary tactical opportunity to test whether opposition to military influence in American life was a sufficiently powerful issue on which to base a successful Presidential campaign.

John Kenneth Galbraith's volume, *How to Control the Military*, is quite explicit on this point. "The goal, all must remember," Galbraith insists, "is to get all military power under firm political control. This means electing a President on this issue next time. This, above all," he repeats, lest we forget so soon, "must be the issue in the next election." If it were up to him, there would be "an organization alert to the military power" in virtually every Congressional district that would exact specific promises from candidates "to resist military programs."

Now, the idea of a campaign based on opposition to the military is open to criticism on several counts. A theorist of public opinion, for example, without recourse to actual evidence, might predict that an issue like ABM would not be understood by most voters. The minority of the population who felt they knew something about the matter, moreover, would probably be taken from the better educated portion of the electorate that is traditionally Republican and conservative, and hence would most likely be in favor of military programs in general. All the polls would bear this prediction out. In addition, while there is probably general agreement that defense expenditures are too high, this is not equivalent to support for a holy war against the military profession. To his personal credit, Galbraith says that his "is not an anti-military crusade. Generals and admirals, and soldiers, sailors, and airmen are not the object of attack. The purpose is to return the military establishment to its traditional position in the American political system."

Yet however laudable the distinction, it is cer-

THE POLITICS OF ABM/63

tain to be lost. The attack is bound to become
vague and vulgar, and the response equally if
not more so. Does Galbraith have a candidate to
lead the unpatriotic party? Will this candidate
wish to spend his time explaining why he reviles
the sacrifices of American men in arms? We love
our servicemen, he will say, it is just that we hate
all the things they do. This line might go over big
in some circles but not, I think, in any part of
the electorate not already convinced. The strat-
egy would be a disaster at the polls, especially
since there is unlikely now to be a Kennedy whose
personal popularity might have been so great as
to give the appearance that the anti-military
thesis was accepted by a majority of voters. No
one really knows what elections mean in
terms of specific issues, but they can be made to
mean things that voters have hardly contem-
plated. If an election is ostensibly lost on the is-
sue of military influence, would that mean that
generals and admirals had public license to pur-
sue any policy they saw fit?

The most certain result of an anti-military
election strategy would be to lay the groundwork
for the further politicization of the American
military. Whatever else one might say about mili-
tary officials in the United States, they have not
organized to thwart direct and explicit civilian
commands because of their alienation from a
hateful system of government. But if they should
become pilloried in public as the scapegoats for
an entire nation's tragedy, military men would,
in effect, be given moral sanction to enter poli-
tics en masse to defend themselves against attack.
That would be an exceedingly high price to pay
for a losing campaign issue.

Presidential campaigns aside, however, we
should also consider the probable reaction of mil-
itary men to the actual positions taken by ABM
opponents—dedication to a policy of assured de-
struction, rejection of defensive systems, and vocif-
erous attacks on the defense establishment. In
the face of such concerted antagonism, the strat-
egy of the military and its right-wing allies will
undoubtedly be to wait, as they have many times
before, for an immediate danger to appear and
then to press for an all-out response. If they can-
not get part of what they want in advance of a
crisis, they will use the crisis to get all they can.

In the United States it only takes one man to
make an issue—the President. It is difficult to
have a major issue without his participation. Yet
instead of running away from conflict over ABM,
the President started it. Why did he help make an
issue that was bound to stir up antagonism to-
ward the military? One reason is that the Nixon
administration did not expect that ABM would
become the major issue it turned out to be. If
MIRV and this year's Vietnam budget had not
caused widespread criticism, there was no reason
to expect that ABM would. The administration
failed to realize that many Americans who might

trust the President to deal with foreign affairs
would withdraw that trust in regard to ABM be-
cause ballistic missile defense would be seen
by them as a domestic matter. It is all right, ap-
parently, to build missiles that threaten havoc
abroad (and therefore at home) but not to em-
place defensive missiles near cities that will re-
mind people of the potentialities for disaster.

The decision to proceed with deployment of
the Safeguard ABM was a political mistake for
the nation. Nixon should have realized that his
foreign policy will remain mortgaged to the Viet-
nam war as long as that conflict continues, and
that he cannot subject the nation to controversy
without opening the floodgates of recrimination.
A year's delay in deployment now might have
adverse effects on the nation's nuclear deterrent
in the mid-1970's, but everything has a price, and
the cost of Vietnam has to be paid out until
the mortgage is lifted by substantial troop with-
drawals.

THE ABM debate has followed Gresham's
law: bad arguments drive out good
ones. There is still time, however, to talk about
critical issues, like halting deployment of MIRV
in an arms-control agreement and sharply reducing
expenditures of the general purpose forces. Most
important of all, the nation's current strategic
doquence—assured destruction—should be given the
closest scrutiny.

If the United States continues to rely on a
doquence of assured destruction, the prospect of
losing that assurance in time of crisis will be im-
mensely threatening. After all, ABM might not
work, and it is possible that hardening of the
missile sites will not work either; neither can be
tested under actual circumstances. What we do
know how to do, all too well, is build more Posei-
don and Minuteman missiles with multiple war-
heads, and if we feel our lives threatened we
may be pressed into doing all the things we
know how to do as quickly (and as expensively)
as possible. In the 1980's we might then come to
look back upon the period from 1965 to 1975 as
one in which modestly hopeful efforts were un-
dertaken to deal with urgent domestic problems
before they were swamped entirely by an over-
whelming concern with national survival.

Should the ABM debate lead to a consideration
of these issues, and to a complete reassessment
of American deterrence policy, it may finally be
seen to have been to the good. So far, however,
the debate has resulted not in public enlighten-
ment but in a heightened disposition on the part
of Americans to blame one another for real and
imagined errors in public policy. If the debate
leads to continued indiscriminate attacks on the
military, coupled with an unquestioning belief
in the policy of assured destruction, it will man-
age what no event except for Vietnam has done—
it will combine foreign and domestic disaster.

DEC 27 1969

Dear Dean Wildavsky:

Many thanks for your very thoughtful letter of November 19, 1969. I am grateful for your taking the time to write such a stimulating analysis, and apologize for the delay in responding. I have been holding it until I could read it with the attention it deserves.

I hope you will get in touch with me the next time you are in Washington so that we can discuss this and other subjects. I have also read your article on the ABM debate in *Commentary*. It is the best piece of work I have read on the subject.

I would like to write you at greater length in response to your letter, but have made it a practice not to write long letters on such subjects since they tend to become official documents. I know you will understand.

Please do get in touch.

Dean Aaron Wildavsky
Graduate School of Public Affairs
University of California
Berkeley, California 94729

Rewrtn: HAK:lds:12/24/69

4967

ACTION

December 3, 1969

MEMORANDUM FOR DR. KISSINGER

FROM: John Holdridge

SUBJECT: Attached Letter

Aaron Wildavsky of the University of California at Berkeley has sent you his views on Vietnam (Tab B). His central point is that the Administration would do better to announce a fixed, very slow timetable for the withdrawal of American forces rather than refuse to make public any timetable. He contends that, unless we have a public timetable, Administration policy will not appear creditable for long to the American public.

He admits that a fixed timetable would reduce our bargaining power in Paris, but he does not think that would make much difference because the real key to North Vietnamese concessions is a demonstration of the potential survivability of the SVN government.

RECOMMENDATION:

That you sign the reply to Wildavsky at Tab A.

Attachments

JHH:DM:allh (12/3/69)

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

BERKELEY • DAVIS • IRVINE • LOS ANGELES • RIVERSIDE • SAN DIEGO • SAN FRANCISCO

SANTA BARBARA • SANTA CRUZ

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS
OFFICE OF THE DEAN

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 94720

November 19, 1969

Dr. Henry Kissinger
Assistant to the President
The White House
Washington, D.C.

Dear Dr. Kissinger:

My concern about the President's speech on Vietnam is directly related to its possible effects on the stability of our political institutions. The major danger stemming from American participation in the Vietnam war lies in the attempt by radicals to use it to undermine public faith in the political process. It is not merely the lives lost, but the charges of bad faith and duplicity on the part of the highest public officials that make Vietnam so potentially dangerous. For if even a significant minority can be made to believe that our leaders are, if not vicious, at least incompetent and untruthful, the process through which these leaders are chosen will become suspect. The attack on national conventions, for example, is not merely designed to bring their practices into closer conformity with democratic ideals, but also to suggest that nominations and elections produce illegitimate candidates and public officials. Participatory democracy, in which tiny elites manipulate huge masses, replaces the ordinary democratic process which is alleged to work contrary to the public interest. All this is familiar. But I fear that the Government's position on Vietnam has not been adopted with a view toward shoring up confidence in our leaders and institutions.

If political stability is made a central concern in Vietnam policy certain principles would be adopted. The first is that the Government follow the policy it has enunciated. The worst that could happen would be to have the Government charged again with duplicity because it cannot make good on its promises. Far better, for instance, to announce a longer time period for withdrawal and keep to

Page 3--
Dr. Henry Kissinger

November 19, 1969

in the context of the entire Vietnam situation it loses force. I have yet to hear of any proposed agreement that would be mutually acceptable to the warring parties. Until the political disadvantages for North Vietnam in continuing the war are higher than those of the United States, there is no reason for them to make concessions on any point. If, after withdrawal of one-half to two-thirds of the American forces, the government in South Vietnam gives evidence of a strong potential for survival, the situation would be drastically altered. Political disabilities to the United States would be markedly decreased, and North Vietnam's internal political problems (when faced with the prospect of an endless war) would increase. Only then would it make sense for North Vietnam to seek arrangements which would save something for it and its Viet Cong allies.

The "silent majority" is certainly opposed to domestic coercion and demonstrations; it is disposed to rally to the President. But the majority also wants palpable evidence that the war will be brought to an end. If our Government halts the necessary withdrawal of troops it will face severe public reaction from all segments of opinion. The most important conclusion to be derived from the polls on Vietnam is that not only doves but hawks are opposed to continuing the war, except under conditions of drastic escalation that no American government would adopt. What good did it do President Johnson to learn that two-thirds of the voters who supported Senator McCarthy in New Hampshire were hawks? They were simply venting their displeasure at the President's irability to make good on his promises; President Nixon must not suffer the same fate.

The most important idea in President Nixon's speech regarding domestic institutions--that mobs should not determine governmental policy--is entirely laudable and yet may prove exceedingly dangerous. For the President has tied these worthy sentiments to the achievement of his stated goals in Vietnam, from the maintenance of a non-Communist government to receipt of unspecified policy concessions from the North Vietnamese. If these goals are not achieved, as well they may not be, the critical principle of elected officials determining government policy will be undermined. I would not want anyone to believe that collapse of the government in South Vietnam meant that mass intimidation is a preferred way of influencing government policy. If the North Vietnamese maintain their adamant position, thereby forcing a halt to the withdrawal of American troops, I do not want anyone to conclude that this justifies violence against our political institutions.

Page 4--
Dr. Henry Kissinger

November 19, 1969

Conservatives will approve of President Nixon's desire to preserve the authority of the United States Government in foreign policy. No doubt Burke would agree, but he would add that "circumstances . . . give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect." One always does well to quote Burke's famous dictum: "A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation." Present circumstances, however, give heightened meaning to the oft-neglected sentence that follows in the "Reflections": "Without such means it might even risque the loss of that part of the constitution which it wished the most religiously to preserve."

The President's first task, no less for Nixon than for Lincoln, is to preserve the constitution. Every objective that is obtainable under prevailing conditions can be achieved without leaving the Government open to failures in Vietnam that may help undermine our political institutions. There is still time to reformulate American objectives so that they are attainable.

Sincerely,

Aaron Wildavsky, Dean

AW/od

MEMORANDUM

THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON

February 19, 1970

MEMORANDUM FOR DAVID YOUNG

FROM: Walt Slocombe
SUBJECT: Meeting of Dr. Kissinger and Aaron Wildavsky

Attached are the talking points that were prepared for the meeting of Dr. Kissinger and Aaron Wildavsky which was to have been held today but was cancelled.

The part of the talking points which deals with Vietnam was prepared by John Holdridge.

Attachment

2/19/70

TALKING POINTS
AARON WILDAVSKY

## Vietnam

Dean Wildavsky wrote you a very thoughtful letter on November 19, 1969, pointing out that the President had to end the war and to do it in a manner which would reinforce the faith of the American people in their system of government. He suggested that it would be preferable to announce a longer period for withdrawal and stick to it than to be forced at some point to stop withdrawals if the North Vietnamese step up the pace of their military action. The latter course would lead to mass disillusionment among the American public.

### Dean Wildavsky's position:

He will probably:

- express support of your intent to preserve the confidence of the people in the U.S. Government;

- express support of Vietnamization but suggest you announce a fixed if slower schedule.

### Your position:

I recommend that you:

- explain why we do not want to announce a fixed time-table, no matter how slow or fast;

- indicate that we do plan to continue withdrawals under Vietnamization, though the pace has to be kept flexible.

2

ABM

Dean Wildavsky published an article in *Commentary* (attached) called "The Politics of ABM," which analyzed the debate on the program last year in a way generally quite favorable to the Administration. His basic point was that the policy of assured destruction has serious intellectual and political weaknesses which Safeguard and the strategic thinking behind it seek to correct and that the opposition arguments were a hodgepodge of claims motivated ultimately by the belief -- which Wildavsky thinks grossly mistaken -- that there is great political mileage to be gained in harrassing the military.

In talking to him you may want to make these points:

- His concern with the limits of "assured destruction" as a comprehensive strategic theory is shared by you and the President. You might want to refer to the foreign policy message discussion of the subject.

- His position that the detailed arguments about ABM tend to be mere vehicles, rather than the real reasons for positions, is being confirmed by the opposition side at least:

    - A year ago, some were arguing that Minuteman is not in danger; now some argue that the danger is so great that Safeguard will be overwhelmed.

3

3. Some opponents argue simultaneously that the Chinese ICBM is very far away and that when it appears it will have very sophisticated penetration aids.

-- Some opponents argue that we shouldn't build the anti-China part of the system because it will tend to make China feel that we wish to keep her in a position of permanent nuclear inferiority; others argue that we don't need defenses because we could rely on a first strike to destroy the Chinese nuclear forces.

[You might concede that the opposition does not have a monopoly of logical inconsistency on the issue -- e.g., the way some advocates of other military systems such as ULMS or mobile Minuteman downgrade Safeguard in arguing for their favorites.]

-- You may also want to make some reference to his argument that general denigration of the military over any convenient issue is a dangerous practice and very unjust to the military, who are at least as loyal to their political superiors as the civilian bureaucracy.