CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -- SENATE

October 28, 1969

Page 31826

IMPORTANCE OF ARMS LIMITATION NEGOTIATIONS

Mr. MONDALE. Mr. President, the distinguished junior Senator from Maine (Mr. MUSKIE) made a thoughtful speech last week in New York on the importance of arms limitation negotiations. To promote the likelihood of this objective, Senator MUSKIE urged a moratorium on American development of the multiple independently targetable vehicles, the so-called MIRV's.

Senator MUSKIE's proposal is a constructive addition to the national dialog about the ways to achieve peace, at home and around the world. I commend Senator MUSKIE's remarks to the Senate and ask unanimous consent that they be printed in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the remarks were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

STATEMENT BY SENATOR EDMUND S. MUSKIE

In paying tribute to Meyer Weisgal and the Weizmann Institute, we are honoring the spirit of Israel: courage in the face of danger, tenacity under continuing pressure, and humanitarian concern in spite of the demands of war.

Israel is more than a patch of real estate in the Middle East. It is a dream come true and a challenge to all those who believe in freedom and the rights of man. It deserves our continuing support in the preservation of its freedom and independence.

In one of his last speeches at the first session of Knesset in Jerusalem in February, 1949, Dr. Chaim Weizmann said:

"Let us build a new bridge between science and the spirit of man. Where there is no vision the people perish. We have seen what science leads to when it is not inspired by moral vision ... All my life I have tried to make science and research the basis of our national endeavor, but I have always known fully well that there are values higher than science. The only values that offer healing for the ills of humanity are the supreme values of justice and righteousness, peace and love."

The Institute which bears Dr. Weizmann's name is a testament to his wisdom and vision. Amidst a virtually continuous period of war and near war, the Institute has devoted its energies and resources to the betterment of life for all mankind. Yet, while the Institute applies science to improve the human condition, too much of the world seems preoccupied with harnessing technology to develop newer and more destructive weapons.

Since the end of World War II the United State and the Soviet Union have engaged in

competition to develop more powerful armaments.

No one questions that -- under present circumstances -- military power is an essential part of our security system; but there is a point where preoccupation with purely military strength may diminish rather than increase our security. I believe we are at that point.

We are already involved in a new cycle of an ever more costly and perilous competition for nuclear superiority. At the same time, we and the Soviet Union have within our grasp a way to restrain this competition and to reassert a saner ordering of our national priorities.

We rationalized development of a MIRV system as a response to a limited Soviet ABM system and its possible expansion. The Soviets, in turn, started development of a MIRV system to insure parity in intercontinental missile systems for themselves. We moved to develop an ABM system in response to the Soviet moves to develop and deploy MIRVs. And so the arms race continues, unrelated to the real security of either nation.

While the development of MIRV will not alter the strategic stalemate between the Soviet Union and the United States, it can make it less and less possible to reach a nuclear arms control agreement.

At the present time, we and the Soviet Union can, through our own surveillance systems, tell with great accuracy the number of missile launchers the other has in place. But we cannot detect the number of warheads fitted inside a single missile. Thus, if MIRV missiles -- with their multiple warheads -- are deployed, it will be virtually impossible to achieve genuine arms control arrangement without detailed on-site inspection rights.

If we can achieve a ban on testing and deployment of such multiple reentry missiles, both nations, on their own, could police the testing of such missiles. Halting the final testing of such missiles is, therefore, crucial to reaching a self-enforcing agreement with the Soviets to bar their deployment.

Early last summer Senator Brooke, supported by myself and forty other Senators, proposed that a mutual moratorium on MIRV testing and deployment be negotiated with the Soviets as soon as possible. At the time of the Brooke proposal, it appeared that after a series of delays by both powers, the Soviets and the United States were about ready to commence such talks. The talks have not begun, and no dates have been fixed.

A strategic stalemate exists between the United States and the Soviet Union today. Neither nation can launch an attack on the other without bringing on its own destruction. Neither nation can realistically hope to break this stalemate by developing a new generation of nuclear weapons.

Each nation has the capacity to match any weapons developed by the other. Both sides tend to react to the potentialities as well as the actualities of action. It is precisely this cycle of action and reaction which fuels the arms race.

In spite of this fact, the public has been allowed -- even encouraged -- to believe that somehow there is safety in ever growing weapons strength and that it still means something to be ahead numerically in nuclear weapons.

These are assumptions which must be challenged if we are to slow down the arms race, contribute to a reduction in international tension and apply our resources to the restoration of our society.

We have a unique opportunity to slow the arms competition. The strategic stalemate and the costs of further weapons development make an agreement restraining the arms race attractive and in the self-interest of the United States and the Soviet Union alike.

If we fail to seize this opportunity, we can, in fact, jeopardize our national security. The diversion of resources from human needs to unnecessary weapons development is a tragic waste. At the same time, as weapons grow more complex and numerous, it becomes ever more difficult to establish adequate safeguards against the risk that such weapons may be unleashed by accident or miscalculation. The question is whether we are taking the initiatives we might take to reduce the pressures for new weapons development and avoid these consequences. Unfortunately, forces are now in motion which can undermine our chances for achieving a nuclear arms control agreement with the Soviets. The decision to proceed with the deployment of the ABM was a setback, but ever more serious is the fact that both the United States and the Soviet Union are rapidly developing the capacity to deploy multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles -- so called MIRV -- missiles which can carry several warheads and launch them at separate targets. The MIRV-ABM development is a classic example of arms escalation which results in less, rather than more, national security.

There is some evidence that the Russians are not anxious to talk about substantive armaments control agreements with the United States until they have resolved their border dispute with Communist China. We should not let such delays prevent us from acting to keep MIRV missile development from jeopardizing chances of reaching an arms limitation agreement.

Let the United States unilaterally postpone the testing of all our multiple reentry missiles for a period of six months, announcing that we will not begin testing thereafter unless the Soviet Union initiates such tests.

It should be clearly understood that such a suspension in MIRV testing is not proposed as a step toward unilateral disarmament. It is not proposed as a unilateral commitment never to test MIRV.

It is proposed as a meaningful step to stimulate mutual efforts by the United States and the Soviet Union to control the escalation of nuclear weapons systems before it is too late.

If the Soviet Union ignores our gesture and goes forward with testing their multiple reentry missiles, or if they expand the scope of their ABM system, we can promptly resume our own MIRV program. Since the time needed to complete our development of the MIRV is far less than it would take the Soviets to construct a massive ABM system, and since a six-month moratorium would not provide significant lead-time for the Soviets, a moratorium on testing our multiple reentry missiles would not involve any appreciable risk to our security.

Ralph Waldo Emerson observed over a hundred years ago: "Every act, every thought, every cause is bipolar, and in the act is contained the counteract. If I strike, I am struck. If I chase, I am pursued. If I push, I am resisted."

As in the case of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the road to peace may require the United States to take the first step on its own. Hopefully, the Soviets would, in response to our action, act with similar restraint. If they did respond, and the two countries moved into the strategic arms limitation talks, the question of the MIRV and ABM systems could be taken up in the context of mutual efforts to reduce the level of terror.

To reverse Emerson's thought: "If we lead, the Soviets may follow." recognizing that the interests of their own people are served if man can be pulled back even one step from the brink of nuclear confrontation.

In this Twentieth Century the United States and the Soviet Union must break through the terrible cycle of distrust which breeds distrust, of action which produces reaction, of new weapons which beget newer weapons.

The overriding reality of our time is the interdependence of the human condition. Man has wrested from nature the power to make this earth an uninhabitable wasteland or to make it a fertile planet.

History demonstrates that conflict and hostility between nations is not immutable.

Accommodation and compromise are possible. Our problems are man-made and can be solved by the imagination and wisdom of man.

I am not suggesting that national rivalry and hostility can be ended in our lifetime. At this moment it would be utopian to hope for the end of all conflict with the Soviet Union. However, we can realistically seek to remove some of the danger from the conflict when, to do so, is in the self-interest of each.

As Adlai Stevenson once wisely counselled: "We must never fear to negotiate with the Soviet Union, for to close the door to the conference room is to open a door to war."

The time has come to embrace a broader vision of the route to peace.

Let us look beyond our missiles and military alliances and make the pursuit of arms control and reduction in the size of national military forces the heart of our national security objectives.

Let this nation demonstrate not only prudent concern for its military defense but also leadership in moving the world away from the infamy of war.