European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - November 15, 1985, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 the stars and stripes Friday november 15, 1985 William Buckley some strange names on and addressed of Gorbachev granted that any full Page and addressed to general Secretary Gorba Chev that urges on him anything less Ihan Hal he resign and go to a monastery misses the Point. Bui after All Here were people in the talc 30s who addressed tearful full Page ads to Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler and no doubt it will continue to be so a Here will be those who believe that Gor acne is influenced by a full Page and that appears in the new York times and the Washington Pom in fuel the and thai ran under the head ing and All nuclear explosions is really directed at Ronald Reagan or. More accurately at inc american people. It is an and thai asks that we concern ourselves Over the growing risk of nuclear War by declaring a Mutual moratorium on nuclear explosions effective on Jan. I. 19h6, or sooner. Now the Sloppy thought revealed in the language Here quoted does t Surprise coming from certain people who lend to think non rigorously. Trie splashy and is signed by More than 100 people who classify themselves As distinguished Ameri cans and of course a lot of them arc exactly Hal bul distinction in one Field docs not or ing distinction in statesmanship. Pc arc familiar with inc awful performance of so Many scientists who spec Iuli a in documenting their gullibility. Scientists arc people who first build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy in the Laic William Schlamm go neral i cd. So one in t surprised to Sec the name of Paul Newman who is a Tine actor or Jesse Jackson who is a Fine orator or Richard Harriet who can find a pro Soviel pin in a Haystack or George Mcgovern who mourns the foreign policy of Henry Wallace or Carl Sagan who grows gaunt on perceiving nuclear Winter next semester at Cornell. But what Are former secretaries of defense Clark Clifford and Robert Mcnamara doing signing silly and or Townsend Hoopes who has studied nuclear statesmanship or for that matter Jimmy Carter who was commander in chief and. For heaven s Sake a straight in incr like Ted Turner Robert Mcnamara surely knows thai Tom Wicker when he was Secretary of defense we had bigger and dirtier bombs than we have now ordered by him. And the reason we now have a vastly reduced inventory of weapons is that we have tested and in an Effort to diminish the Holo dimensions of a nuclear Arsenal while maintaining an effective deterrent. Who says there is a growing risk of nuclear War Why is the risk greater now than yesterday or the Day before Don t these folks know that it is Only because of testing that for instance we have been Able to compress nuclear weapons to fit into smaller missiles that serve to deter yet minimize the scale of Poten tial nuclear exchanges surely they know that the ongoing search for Hydrogen substitutes for nuclear fission leaves us with the desired deterrent but reduces the risks that attach to radioactivity Don t they know that 20 years ago we could t be sure whether an air plane that crashed to the ground carrying a nuclear weapon ran the risk of a detonation bul that such risks no longer exist because of test ing that a nuclear weapon falling to the ground at other than the specified Speed and Angle will not now go off because of testing Don t they know that the non mired highly touted 30.000-ton min Tucman requires testing it is significant that conspicuously missing from the roster of names was Hal of James sch Csinger. And there is a Story of great Point going the rounds. It is that when president Carter toyed with the idea of declaring a total moratorium Energy Secretary James Schlesinger who had served As defense Secretary and As the head of the Cia spoke very bluntly to the president. It is said that he told him unless we periodically test our inventory of weapons we can t guarantee that they will go off if needed. And any Lack of credibility at this level diminishes inc Only reason for having the bombs in the first place which is As a deterrent. Jimmy Carter backed off. But now he is at it again. What these Folk arc trafficking in is pure superstition. That if you test a weapon that Means you arc likelier to use it. Exactly the contrary is the Case. Bul they Are hounded by the taste of atomic cinders in their Mouths and the result of it All is an analytical incapacitation that contributes nothing to world peace a great Deal to world insecurity. Because a roster of distinguished americans capable of such slovenly thought can Only encourage the so Viet Union to believe Hal Bourgeois do composition is in fact definitely in High gear. C Uri venal pre Syndicate Reagan ignoring lessons of first abm negotiations the Reagan administration s curious Deci Sion to keep Caspar Weinberger out of the Summit conference in Geneva next week provides a backhanded reminder of a different defense Secretary a different Summit and a remarkable turnabout. In january 1967, president Johnson said in his an Nual budget message that the United slates would continue intensive development of an anti ballistic missile system but he said he would take no action to deploy the defense pending the outcome of an overture to inc Soviel Union for talks on limiting abm deploy meals. Here was a classic Johnson Ian Compromise. Intelli gence suggested that the soviets were beginning to de ploy an abm defense around Moscow but continuing abm development by the United states would Tempo rarity placate the joint chiefs of staff congressional Hawks and Republican criticism. The delay in deploy ment plus the overture to Moscow reflected the opposition of Robert s. Mcnamara the Secretary of defense to abm defense and both his and the president s desire for strategic arms talks with the soviets. Moscow apparently suspecting that the United states wanted to limit Soviel defences while retaining what were then its own offensive advantages hedged on entering such talks. And in february prime minister Aleksci Kosygin. At a news conference in London stoutly defended Abms. More than 18 years later in a speech to the United nations president Reagan quoted Kosygin i believe that defensive weapons which pre vent attack Are not the cause of the arms Rice bul constitute a Factor preventing inc death of in june however Johnson and Kosygin unexpectedly agreed to meet at Glassboro. . The president brought Mcnamara along and Over lunch Mcnamara argued the Case against abm defense directly to the soviet prime minister. Kosygin appeared unimpressed and still refused to agree to arms talks . Wrote in his presidential memoirs that the Point did not get across or Kosygin chose not to understand in a speech in san Francisco thai september Mcna Mara made the Point publicly " an abm system can rather obviously be Defeated by an enemy simply Send ing More offensive warheads or Dummy warheads than there Are defensive missiles capable of disposing of them. Were we to deploy a heavy abm system. The soviets would clearly be strongly motivated to so in crease their offensive capability As to cancel out our defensive the United states tic said would respond in the same Way to the same Challenge. That remains the Crux of the Case against Abms of far More advanced technology including Rea Gan s proposed strategic defense initiative. Apparently the Point had had More effect on Kosy Gin than . Had realized. Mcnamara concluded the san Francisco speech with an extraordinary yes but when he said the United Stales would deploy a limited defense against the possibility of a missile attack from China a step owing less to strategic necessity than to the politics of the Johnson administration. Members of Congress and inc military made it Clear though Mcnamara opposed the idea that they considered it the first step in a heavy abm defense against soviet attack. That Prospect apparently convinced the russians to heed Mcnamara s Glassboro warning that a missile defense on one Side would inevitably stimulate an in crease in offensive missiles on the other and vice versa. In june 1968, Moscow agreed to enter arms control talks and Johnson who had by then refused to seek re election was ready to announce on aug. 21 that he would go to Moscow to begin such talks in october. Unfortunately the soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia on aug. 20 scuttled the arrangement. When what became known As inc Salt talks finally began in november 1969, Noi just president Nixon who had embraced the Mcnamara arguments and persuaded the joint chiefs to go along but the russians too were pressing for a limitation on Abms. It was ultimately reached in the Tarcaly of May 26, 1972. Moscow s willingness to enter that treaty represented one of the great turnabout in soviet american rela sons but no greater unfortunately than the Turna soul or the Reagan administration in becoming the new Champion of the old abm fallacy. New York Tom new service
