Ba L

THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

1230 YORK AVENUE NEW YORK, NY 10021

 

JOSHUA LEDERBERG January 25, 1988

PRESIDENT

Dr. Robert Mikulak

MA/AT Room 5499

U.S. Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency

Washington, D.C. 20451

Dear Bob:

This is to respond to your note of January 12th and the
quote from Falin in Floral Lewis* column.

This rhetoric is of a piece with some of the things that
Arbatov said during one of our meetings in Moscow, (June 1985)
He said that of course if nuclear weapons are neutralized we
will have to use whatever other means at our disposal, conven-
tional or biological or whatever. If we proceed with means
that they view as "illegal" under existing conventions, I'm
sure that they will feel that their own obligations are
rescinded. I think I mentioned this to you at the time.

I don't think that there's any point in bringing this up
with the biological scientists that I'm going to be meeting
with; and I suspect that if we confronted let us say Batenin,
he would give an answer in the same framework as I mentioned
just before vis-a-vis Arbatov.

I would be happy to pursue any other inquiries you
would like to suggest. I have no doubt that if they feel
they have their backs to the wall they will do whatever they
feel is open to them to sustain their deterrent posture.
That is one of my reasons for concern about the kind of
blustering about our taking advantage of U.S. technology to
sustain superiority that has been much abroad in recent months.

XY sincerely,