Basic HTML Version
Winston Churchill wrote: "The
great defence against aerial menace
is to attack the enemy's aircraft as
near as possible to their point of
departu re." Today, the same prin–
cipie would mean attacking the
enemy's missiles while they were
sti ll in the ground, or thé enemy's
bombers before they could take off,
or the enemy's submarines before
they could launch their missiles.
It is this fear- that the other
side could disarm your side before
you could get your own forces off
the ground-which fuels the
nuclear "arms race."
That's why the big stumbling
block in the SALT
JI
agreement
was verifiability. Bluntly, a majori–
ty of the American Senate was
afraid that the Soviets would cheat
on the agreement and
gain the abil–
ity to launch a nuclear attack
without having
to
worry about the
American response.
To prevent such a surprise attack,
American nuclear war "experts"
developed the idea of "mutual
assured destruction"-MAD for
short.
The idea is that neither power
would dare launch a nuclear attack
against the other because if it did, it
would suffer devastation from the
other side's "second strike." Of
course, the idea depended on the
other side having enough forces left
after the first attack to launch that
second strike- something which
America might not possess if Soviet
weapons ever became accurate
enough to destroy American weap–
ons · before those weapons even get
off the ground!
For its part, the United States has
been willing to give the Soviets a
guarantee
that it would never launch
a surprise nuclear attack against the
Soviet Union.
Jn the 1960s the United States
deliberately dismantled its
air
defenses! It is a simple fact tbat
Soviet bombers (or anyone else's for
that matter) could attack major
American cities
undetected
because
of gaps in America's radar network
and America's almost total lack of
surface-to-air missi les with which to
shoot those bombers down.
Thus, a U.S. attack on the Soviet
Union could never work because if
February 1982
even only a few Soviet bombers
were to survive, they almost
cer–
tainly
would penetrate American
airspace to destroy a number of
American cities- something politi–
cally impossible for an American
President to allow.
MAD explains why no nuclear
weapons have been exploded since
World War 11. There was absolute–
ly no chance a Soviet surprise
attack could successfully disarm
the United States: retaliation was
sure. But MAD means a perpetua!
arms race; if the United States ever
allows its forces to come to the
point wbere the USSR could dis–
arm · those forces in a surprise
attack, nuclear war would be possi–
ble. Thus each side must continual–
ly build "better" and more accurate
weapons. MAD's critics wonder,
" This is the way to peace?"
No Sovie t Guarantees
Unlike the United States, the
Soviet Union has not given any
tan–
gible
guarantee that it would not
launch a surprise attack. The
Soviets have not so structured their
nuclear forces that they would be
vulnerable to a second strike from
the country they attacked. Instead,
the Soviet Union has only given
verbal
statements it would never
attack anyone.
Thus Soviet President Brezhnev
told interviewers for
Der Spiege/:
" 1 can declar e that the Soviet
Union will under no circumstances
employ nuclear weapons against
states that forego production and
acquisition of such arms and don't
have them stationed on their terri–
tory. We are ready to guarantee
that to any country, without excep–
tion, by treaty."
Notice! "Guarantee ... by trea–
ty." Suppose the USSR broke the
treaty? What would the attacked
nation do? Shake a piece of paper
at incoming bombers?
At another time, TASS news
agency commentator Yuri Kornilov
declared: "The Soviet Union needs
no war, does not threaten anyone and
is not going to attack anyone."
The problem, in a nutshell, is
that the world has only their words.
That's all. Just their
unenforceable
promise.
No wonder hard-headed military
planners- men in whose care the
very survival of nations is e n–
trusted- find they must look at the
other side's
abi/ity,
not its stated
intentions.
lf
a nation builds its
military forces
as
if
it planned a
surpr ise attack, yet all the while
proclaims its. peaceful intentions, it
cannot be trusted.
At one point in a conversation
with West German Chancellor Hel–
mut Schmidt, Brezhnev reportedly
said: "We never wanted to be strong–
er than anyone else. And we do not
have that aim now. We bave no
thought of attacking anyone. " Yet
over the past 15 years the USSR has
engaged in the greatest military
buildup in peace-time history . In
almost every category of weaponry,
numbers of long-range missiles,
numbers of mid- range missiles, total
power of warheads, numbers of
tanks, infantry a nd planes, the Soviet
Union long ago became stronger
than anyone else.
While the U.S. still leads in
number of ai rcraft carriers and
total number of warheads, even its
lead in warheads is expected to dis–
appear by the mid to late 1980s.
Unlike the United States , the
Soviet Union never dismantled its
air defense system as a guarantee it
would never st rike first. Combine
this fact with the Soviet buildup of
308 super-accurate SS-18 mis–
si les--capable of destroying hard–
ened missile silos. And combine it
with the Soviet pursuit of a n
aggressive civil defense plan. l t
suggests that the Kremlin wants at
least the capability of being able to
launch a nuclear attack on the
United States and
sti/1 survive.
A Pin c h of SALT
There are those who have likened
the arms race to two apes on a
treadmill, each too stupid to realize
the race is pointless and simply get
off. The conclusion they draw is
that at least the United States
should stop building
any more
nuclear weapons-and then thc
Soviets, realizing . the fruitlessness
of their own buildup, would do the
same tbing.
The problem with s uch an
approach is that it assumes a sur-
11