JOSHUA LEDERBERG

A FREEZE ON MISSILE TESTING

“From a technical standpoint, the most amenable place for
controls is testing; a comprehensive freeze on all missile tests
would be most easily verified and would provide the utmost
assurance against the perpetuation of a costly technology race.”
Joshua Lederberg is executive head, department of genetics, Stan-
ford University Medical School. He received the Nobel Prize in
Medicine and Physiology in 1958 with George W. Beadle and
E, L. Tatum. An abridged version of this article appeared in the

“Washington Post.”

The strategic arms limitations
talks (SALT), which will resume in
Vienna this spring, have been la-
beled as the key to world survival
through the next decade. Even if we
frame the arms race as a by-product
of international politics rather than
as a living, demoniacal being with
independent existence, no one doubts
the value of a critical search for
practical limitations on the arms
spiral.

Arms investment is shaped by dy-
namic interplay of domestic and in-
ternational forces, actions and reac-
tions, as much as by negotiated agree-
ments. More than any other process,
nevertheless, these explicit agree-
ments require us to examine the as-
sumptions that underlie our strategies
of defense and of conciliation.

In my own view the most import-
ant function of the arms limitation
conferences is their educational value
for the participants so that the many
internal policy-making forces within
each country may better understand
the full depth of their national in-
terests, and how these may be pur-
sued in the light of the perceptions
of the other nations. It would then
be a mistake, as Fred Ikle stressed
for other reasons in “How Nations
Negotiate,” to judge the value of
diplomatic negotiations solely in
terms of the agreements formally
concluded.

Complicated multi-national inter-
ests, or more often the confusion of

4

sternal debate, may demand the
evidence of a formal treaty to affirm
a mutually rewarding accommoda-
tion. But, at times, the negotiators
should be congratulated for refusing
a pretense of agreement when such
an understanding was beyond the
comprehension, the ingenuity, the
interests or the power of the parties.

The sentimental idea that agree-
ments should be not only discussed
but accepted in a spirit of willing-
ness to compromise national inter-
ests will make it more difficult to
get countries into active negotiation
and exploration of the congruence
of their true interests. It leads to
such absurdities as refusing to dis-
cuss arms control with the USSR
after combative actions in Czecho-
slovakia or the Middle East, as if we
would otherwise be granting them a
favor contrary to our own interests
as part of an arms control package.

A compromise of conflicting na-
tional interest may well be a rational
goal of negotiation. This is based
on the assumption that both parties
can find a benefit from a non-zero-
sum game, and has nothing to do
with amicable sentiment or mutual
approbation.

General disarmament, whether
unilateral or by treaty, is emphatical-
ly not in question. Nothing would
throw the world in greater turmoil
than to leave its resources to appro-
priation or hijacking by any pirate
with a left-over hand grenade or

machine gun. Nor are we politically,
socially or economically ready for
the peaceful coalescence of sovereign-
ties into the unified world govern-
ment that must precede the disap-
pearance of national military forces.

.To paraphrase the still cogent ar-
guments of the naval strategist A. T.
Mahan, the peaceful borders between
the United States, Canada and Mexi-
co are quiet just because there is no
ambiguity about the distribution of
military power. Had we solved the
problems of cultural accommodation,
as well as economic and political ad-
justment, among the people of the
continent, we could also consider the
actual merging of sovereignty and
of military power. This is an ideal
we must pursue with more realism
than piety; but the harsh news of
the day points the other way — we
may still fail to halt the division of
the nations into blacks and whites,
Chicanos or French and English.
Even a threat of common doom may
be insufficient to enforce the dissolu-
tion of national sovereignties against
the resistance of economic disparities
like those between India and the
West. Both sides know that every
chance of industrial modernization
would evaporate if the world’s cap-
ital were equally diffused and con-
sumed in a population explosion.
The ‘‘white man’s burden” in con-
temporary terms is to find some way
that does work for the effective shar-
ing of capital for the development
of the poor countries; if not, we will
be relieved of that burden willy-nilly.

Economic Factors

In the eyes of the poor countries,
our commitment to the arms race has
drained the very resources that might
finance international development.
Their political pressure (like an im-
plicit threat that India might join
the nuclear club) is certainly among
the main forces that have dragged
the United States and the USSR
to the conference tables in Vienna,
Helsinki and Geneva. Were rational
calculation at the helm in the policy-
making foci of both superpowers,
this would have been unnecessary.

Whether the pattern of arms lim-
itation now under negotiation with-
in the SALT framework will result
in much savings from arms budgets
is problematical. This benefit may
be a long-range consequence of the
political stability that is the central
aim of strategic policy. In the short
run, there is more likely to be only
a shifting of expenditures to the pro-
grams left out of the agreements.

The obvious and in many ways de-
sirable contender here is the naval
option. Despite its expense as a
launch platform, the submarine has
long been advocated as the way to
separate the retaliatory force from
vulnerable cities, and to provide an-
other resource for assured destruc-
tion of an attacker. Qa

igmicctauncis _
eeS Sittace Mhips.wtespite their vuln-

erability, may also be undeservedly

neglected as féXpensive-deceys andy,

ERE sektomepeteresyet o to dilute an

enemy's first strike ‘cap capability. The
mix of cheap, vulnerable platforms
must, however, be carefully cali-
brated if it is not to be confused with
a force useful only for a first strike.
There will be no lack of alternative
proposals —- some quite plausible —
to buy more reliability and to plug
potential gaps in systems dedicated
to infinite security.

Overkill Potential

Another stated argument for arms
control is that the very accumulation
of the stockpile, with its vast poten-
tial for overkill, makes it more likely
that nuclear war will break out.
There is a core of rationality to this
argument. The technology of nu-
clear weapons is likely to leak and
proliferate in some proportion to the
total effort devoted to them. The
nonproliferation treaty would have
been unnecessary if every nonnuclear
country had first had to finance a
Manhattan project to learn to make
a bomb. Furthermore, the chance of
an unauthorized psychotic or acci-
dental firing with its potentially cata-
strophic consequences is larger the
more weapons abound, other things
being equal. The superpowers, how-

ever, are technically and politically
constrained to invest more effort in
protective systems for their large
stockpiles, and countries like France
and China which are still develop-
ing their nuclear capabilities prob-
ably present more serious threats of
significant accident.

As to “overkill,” the metaphor
makes sense for a first-strike capa-
bility — a small percentage of the
stockpile of either superpower could
wipe out civilization — but a cred-
ible deterrent must still be perceived
as inflicting intolerable injury after
having absorbed a preemptive attack.
Overkill potential is exactly what
stabilizes the system to make the act-
ual use of a nuclear weapon in anger
unlikely.

From this point of view, it is point-
less to discuss nuclear parity or suf-
ficiency or superiority in terms of
numbers of missiles, which is the
fashionable game of the decade. The
accuracy of intelligence about the
location of missile launch sites, the
precision of guidance, the shrewdness
of target selection, the security of
command and control and, above all,
how well these are perceived by an
enemy and by ourselves — these now
become far more crucial to deterren-
cy than an advertisement of crude
numbers of missiles or of warheads.
The essential function of strategic
arms is to ensure that they will never
be used by either side, and that any
threat of their use works to stabilize
rather than to inflame the relations
of competing nations.

The arms race having progressed
to an effective stalemate, which has
worked better than anyone could
have hoped 25 years ago, its main
hazards today come from its side ef-
fects on both international and na-
tional policies. The most serious of
these is an unremitting anxiety and
suspicion about possible technical
breakthroughs that might topple the
stalemate. At one level, this leads
to the mutual reinforcement of dis-
trust about each side’s intentions and
plans. At another it provokes the
constant search for the technology
to do it first here.

The main argument openly leveled
by most academic physicists against
the ABM is that it simply will not
do any of the several jobs for which

it is purportedly designed. The real
force of their anxiety is that a long-
range program of ABM_ research
might eventually develop methods
that more credibly offer a prospect
of antimissile defense.

Needless to say, it would be com-
forting to imagine a world in which
the defense had a real margin over
attack. But how do we get there,
except through closely monitored
mutual agreements? In the process,
the existing balance will be broken,
and we will face the most serious
risks of either side’s feeling com-
pelled to undertake a preemptive at-
tack. At the very least both sides
would strive to redouble their of-
fensive weaponry in order to sustain
the credibility of their retaliatory
potential.

Effective defense against missiles
evidently remains quite remote, but
it might be technically achieved at
the far end of an extensive program
of trial and development, of which
Safeguard is the first step. This is
a technological ‘Race to Oblivion,”
the history of which has been author-
itatively documented in Herbert
York’s recent book of that title.

Need For Creativity

Dr. York recounts how the arms
race mentality was exploited with
great skill and mendacity in the
1960s to fund redundant and use-
less weapons systems, and to ensure
that each of the services in an im-
perfectly unified defense establish-
ment would be placated. He believes,
as I do, that the security of the coun-
try depends only in part on technical
innovation, and that we must address
our greater efforts to stabilizing the
security of the world if we are to
have any for ourselves. But we can-
not overlook the need for techno-
logical creativity which will rapidly
disappear if we do not repair the
sources of the cynicism of our youth
about the legitimacy of our national!
goals. By building so heavily on
technological bases of security, while
neglecting the causes of internal dis-
affection, we have impaired our mil-
itary security far more than any mis-
sile deficit would imply.

Dr. York also recounts the over-
reactions initiated by the United
States to the Soviet development of

March 1971 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 5
Sputnik and of their early ICBMs.
Perhaps naively, he attributes the
Soviet deployment beginning in 1967
of the SS-9 missiles, with their im-
mense 25 megaton warheads, to re-
dressing the boasts of U.S. defense
officials about our nuclear superior-
ity. These were made “in order to
be able to resist internal pressures
for still greater expansion of our of-
fensive forces.” Such boasts and gen-
erally the two-sided demand for clear
Superiority over the other in missile
counts will add up to little advantage
for either. Perhaps they are a psy-
chological necessity for people who
sense the threat of mutual annihila-
tion. But they are an irrational re-
sponse that can do little but worsen
the odds.

The Cuban Crisis

Mutual misperceptions of strategic
posture undoubtedly fueled the grav-
est confrontation to date, the Cuban
missile crisis in 1962. Dr. York re-
calls how we grossly overrated the
military significance of Sputnik in
1957. The Soviets had, in fact, over-
built their rockets in a way that
suited them for space flight but
slowed up their deployment in stra-
tegically significant numbers. The
missile gap myth of the 1960 election
campaign was based on vastly in-
flated estimates of the Soviet opera-
tional capability. This is a difficulty
inherent in any intelligence organi-
zation, which will never be criticized
as much for drawing the most ex-
tensive implications out of fragmen-
tary data, as it would be for over-
looking any possibility.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., in his
memoirs “A Thousand Days” makes
the curious remark that the Soviets
in 1960 were “innocent of the higher
calculus of deterrence as recently de-
veloped in the U.S.” Therefore,
they could not comprehend the sta-
bilizing purpose of President Ken-
nedy’s plans to enhance U.S. missile-
ry. Knowing the actual strength of
their own forces they may in fact
have viewed Kennedy's missile pro-
gram in the same way that Secretary
Laird construes the SS-9s, namely the
development of a first strike poten-
tial that could smother the ability to
retaliate.

“Too bad, that’s their problem!,”
6

some might say. But that confusion
may explain Khrushchev's Cuban
gambit, a desperate move that would
have been senseless as a direct stra-
tegic threat against the United States
— provided the Soviet really had an
ample long-range missile force based
on their own soil.

When your opponent has nuclear
weapons, his jitters are your problem
too. (The interpretation of the 1962
Cuban missile crisis is borne out by
Roger Hilsman’s account of its back-
ground in “To Move a Nation.’’)

The Cuban gambit had to be re-

_ sisted for its potential side-effects on

Latin-American politics, more than
as an element in strategic deterrency.
It does suggest one avenue that might
be opened up for a negotiated pro-
gram of low-cost mutual security.

In 1961, the late Leo Szilard wrote
a fictional parable, “The Mined Ci-
ties” (Bulletin, December 1961),
wherein the superpowers had ex-
changed the capability of assured
destruction by allowing the major
cities to be mined by the other side.
The idea has been revived from time
to time — but like Rep. Craig Hos-
mer’s suggestion that we multiply
world security by giving every coun-
try four A-bombs — it does an in-
genious metaphor the worst injustice
to take it too literally. The parable
does point out that our cities are
hostages to one another, whether the
bombs are underground, or need to
be delivered by a 30-minute rocket
flight. (This reasoning also makes
one question whether Moscow and
Washington are the right cities to
be shielded with ABM, when the po-
tentates would make the most cred-
ible hostages.) Why not then agree
that the problem of mutual security
has some technical solution, achiev-
able at the lowest mutual cost.

The establishment of a Soviet mis-
sile base in Cuba, or American bomb-
ers in Libya entailed political com-
plications almost as unacceptable as
giving extraterritorial access into the
U.S. capitol to a Soviet bomb squad.
And where would we fit the French
and the Chinese?

The nondeployment of a potential
ABM system is a constructive equiv-
alent to cheapening the hostage sys-
tem, with the fewest side effects.

MIRVs (multiple independently tar-
geted reentry vehicles) complicate
the deterrence equations, giving the
first-striker a better chance to destroy
a deterrent, but the naval option and
a multiplication of feints are as plaus-
ible answers as any forseeable ABM.
As far as arms control is concerned,
once the potential for MIRV was
understood little room was left for
any verifiable control over its further
development. Indeed, the need to
play out this act so that both sides
could work out the implications of
MIRV may have compelled the post-
ponement of SALT until now.

If we separate the gimmickery
from the parable behind “The Mined
Cities,” we can see that the naval
options may give us the greatest room
for. mutual advantage. Ironical
schemes can be composed that point
up some of the absurdities of the
world system. For example, it would
be more to our advantage if Soviet
submarines refueled at Portland,
Maine, than at Cienfuegos, Cuba;
and we might offer to exchange base
privileges on U.S. shores for their
equivalent on the Black and Baltic
Seas. But even if such superrational
exchanges could be negotiated, they
would raise untold mischief through
disputes over the interpretation of
the guaranteed free access on which
they would have to be based. Better
that we work out a de facto equili-
brium, provided that this is based on
the clear understanding that any solu-
tion must provide for a zone of stra-
tegic security on both sides,. or noth-
ing but desperate maneuvering can
follow.

Surprise Attack

The greatest anxiety about surprise
attack in the next decade — for both
sides are in fact expanding the naval
option — is that new technology
may impair the invulnerability of
the submarine. It is absolutely in-
conceivable that antisubmarine de-
tection and warfare could reach the
point of reliably removing the bulk
of a retaliatory force in a single sur-
prise attack, without having first
been widely exercised and tested.
Mutually advantageous agreements
to limit such testing should be fairly
amenable to verification. They could

(Continued on page 43)
TESTING FREEZE

(Continued from page 6)

a oe
———

be a logical extension of the existing
ban on testing nuclear weapons un-
der water.

There is also a danger that units
of naval strategic force may become
involved in tactical conflicts, with
a consequent erosion of the line that
marks nuclear weapons off from all
others. This will require very careful
attention to our own doctrine.

The problem of surprise attack can
be formulated in more precise, quant-
itative terms than any other aspect
of defense strategy. There are still
many uncertainties, for example the
operational reliability of immense
computer programs, and the level of

nuclear retaliation that would be so
_ “unacceptable” to a potential attack-
er as to deter him. Nevertheless, the
analyst can make a fairly simple
model of the array of forces, and ig-
nore the complexities of mass psy-
chology and serpentine recalculation
that blur the scientific predictability
of any political confrontation. The
simplicity of the problem to the ra-
tional analyst, and its appeal to the
paranoia of the antirational, have
captured our attention and resources
out of proportion to the role of sur-
prise attack in world conflict. By
over-designing our solutions to that
problem, we leave ourselves ever less
prepared to cope with the actual dif-
ficulties of today’s world.

The nuclear deterrent can play no
direct role in dealing with the Soviet
penetration of Africa, harassment by
air pirates or the reenslavement of
Czechoslovakia. These have no easy
answers, but they clearly require the
rebuilding of a sense of community

March 1971

with our allies and friends, who are
inevitably isolated by a historic trend
of unilateral force commitments and
defense investments typified by
Vietnam and by the ABM.

Freeze Proposed

All sides are approaching the con-
clusion that mutual defense against
surprise attack needlessly consumes
an inordinate portion of world te-
sources. We seek a new pattern of
reciprocal arms disposal whose very
momentum would be the best assur-
ance that it was not merely a gambit
for strategic advantage. This would
be hard to construct, merely against
the fears, angers and entrenched in-
terests of important elements within
both superpowers.

A simple moratorium on the em-
placement of strategic weapons has
been suggested, but it is likely to be
entangled in contentious differences
over whether it should embrace air-
craft, tactical missiles and so on.

From a technical standpoint, the
most amenable place for controls is
testing; a comprehensive freeze on
all missile tests would be most easily
verified and would provide the ut-
most assurance against the perpetua-
tion of a costly technology race. It
would complicate some peaceful ap-
plications of space technology. How-
ever, none of these requite precise
reentry after a brief, high velocity
flight. Furthermore, nothing would
be lost in requiring a definite pat-
tern of international participation in
Space missions to assure that these
were a net benefit to the whole earth
from which they have embarked.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 43