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110  Arms Control Issue Rates
     More Campaign Attention
     The Washington Post  Saturday, August 10, 1968

     Arms control is a central issue of national strategy today.  It 
might have a larger part in the election campaign if the candidates'
talk could complete with the vigor of President Johnson's recent
actions, like the negotiation of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty
and the reopening of bilateral  discussions with the Soviet Union.

     Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy has at least helped to kindle some
thoughtful debate.  He aims at a comprehensive program of arm control
and rational disarmament based on a series of international   
agreements.

     The existing strategic balance should first be frozen, to save
the world from the blood-draining costs and frightful instabilities
of another round of the arms spiral.  Chemical and biological warfare
should be kept from further development.  Nuclear test bans should be
broadened to the technical limits of potential surveillance. Eventually,
we should be able to agree on reduction of arms to levels that can
be patrolled with relatively nonintrusive methods of inspection.

     More needs to be said about the tactics of achieving, these aims,
but who could quarrel with their substance? Nevertheless, most of the
candidates have been unable or unwilling to detail their idealistic
goals for a peaceful world.

     McCarthy's tactical proposals have to be read in the light of the 
sillier and more specious arguments that were forwarded for the funding
of the Sentinel antiballistic missile (ABM) project.  We were asked
ed to spend $6 billion to start with, as a bargaining point with the
Soviets, to hurry them into the ABM moratorium. (Sentinel is the
project that was originally supposed to protect us from an undeterrable
attack by the Chinese while their strategic nuclear offensive capacity
was still limited.  It is hard to see how this could have ever been
of any use, except to protect the U.S. from the Chinese retaliation
in response to a preemptive  blow.  The allure of such an ultimate
answer to China's growing nuclear power, or rather the world's belief
that we might entertain such a hypothesis, remains one of the most
dangerous booby traps of the project.

     McCarthy suggests that we announce a holdback , "pending speedy
agreement with the U.S.S.R.," on the ABM and also on more advanced 
models of our deterrent strike force.  Poseidon and Minuteman III.

     These  restraints deserve thoughtful consideration, but not
coupled with negotiations. If we can safely defer spending on ABM and
possibly on other strategic systems, now is certainly the time for a
stretchout.  Reasonable expectations of detente and negotiated arms
plateaus must not be ignored in our planing; we must also calculate
how quickly we can restore our momentum if exigencies demand it.
 
     The snare we must avoid is the subjugation of our basic policies
to mere bargaining gambits.  Then we let the Soviets trap us in our
own games: for example, to make us spill out $6 billion in earnest 
money, resources so painfully extracted from urgent domestic programs
and from positive support of world development.

     A more subtle problem is that unilateral gestures are not always
a friendly accommodation.  On the contrary, they veil a threat of
renewed intransigence if the other side fails to respond according to
our own time scale.

     In the past years, we have indeed passed over many opportunities
for peace-speeding unilateral actions.  Direct communication with the
Soviets over arms control having finally been established, it is a
poor time to concoct unnegotiated faits accomplis.  However well 
intentioned, they stand a grave risk of being perceived differently in 
Moscow, or in Seattle, than to Washington.


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