CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -- SENATE
August 1, 1969
Page 21894
AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 1970 FOR MILITARY PROCUREMENT, RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, AND FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF MISSILE TEST FACILITIES AT KWAJALEIN MISSILE RANGE, AND RESERVE COMPONENT STRENGTH
The Senate resumed the consideration of the bill (S. 2546) to authorize appropriations during the fiscal year 1970 for procurement of aircraft, missiles, naval vessels, and tracked combat vehicles, and research, development, test, and evaluation for the Armed Forces, and to authorize the construction of test facilities at Kwajalein Missile Range, and to prescribe the authorized personnel strength of the Selected Reserve of each Reserve component of the Armed Forces, and for other purposes.
SAFEGUARD AND NATIONAL PRIORITIES
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, we are engaged in a debate, as we consider the Safeguard proposal, over national security -- our capacity to prevent or survive an enemy attack -- and national vitality -- our ability to create opportunities for a more meaningful, rewarding, and healthy life for each of our citizens.
The Safeguard system must be tested against each of these considerations if we are to make an intelligent decision on the deployment question.
We face this decision at a time when our instincts, both prudent and humane, point toward the need to stem the decay of American society and to reconcile the differences among us. For more than a generation, external challenges have sapped our energies and diverted our resources from building America, while the accumulation of grievances, dramatic social change, and rising aspirations have made our needs ever greater.
As a result, public facilities are outmoded and overwhelmed, the effort to help the poor and the desperate has faltered, and patience is wearing thin. The agony of continuing sacrifice in Vietnam has brought our people to the greatest national anxiety and discord any of us has known.
These considerations are an important influence in this debate. They create pressures which prompt many Senators, of both parties, to differ from the administration on such an important matter of national security. The American people look to the Senate to provide balance and prudence in national security policies which have so heavy an impact upon the resources which are available for all our urgent tasks.
In the period immediately following President Nixon's announcement, I expressed my doubts about the Safeguard system -- doubts about the scope of the program, its justification, its feasibility, and its consequences for future strategic arms races and impending arms negotiations.
Those doubts have not been resolved in the course of this debate.
A question which finds the Senate so closely divided must, I suppose, be considered a close question.
Honorable and able Americans -- within and outside the Senate -- find themselves in disagreement on every critical issue which has been raised in this debate: Will the system work? Is it vulnerable? What is the thrust of Soviet weapons development? What are Soviet intentions? Which result in the Senate will contribute most favorably to the prospect of favorable negotiations with the Russians to limit nuclear weapons? What are the security risks associated with an "aye" vote? With a "nay" vote?
Each Senator, I am sure, has carefully considered each of these questions. Each Senator, I am sure, has concluded that the answers to these questions support the position he has taken. This Senator has found that the answers require a careful balancing of the arguments and available information.
Although the division in the Senate appears to be close, there appears to be much broader agreement on the wisdom of continued development toward a reasonable system to protect us against missile attacks, when and if it is needed.
Much of the debate over the ABM, therefore, has revolved around whether the nature of the foreseeable threat from the Soviet Union justifies going ahead now with deployment of this weapons system in its present form.
Though the weight of the evidence leads me to doubt that such circumstances are at hand, I believe most Senators are prepared to vote for authorization upon a proper showing of need.
For now, however, an impressive array of scientific skepticism about the Safeguard proposal, persuades me that it would be a mistake to go ahead with this program, at this time, and in this form. If there is well-founded doubt that the system can function effectively -- while it distracts our efforts from other, more appropriate steps and provokes our adversaries to a defensive escalation of the arms race -- deployment would be a serious mistake.
Safeguard is billed as a defense against a Soviet first-strike attack, but it depends on untested subsystems for logic and computing functions that may well fail against a massive sophisticated attack. Moreover, Safeguard's radars are critically susceptible to spoofing and its "eyes" – unshielded missile-site radars -- "MSR" -- could be blinded by a concentrated strike, leaving the Minutemen missiles wholly unprotected.
These questions raise doubts about the ultimate justification of Safeguard's technical worth and the wisdom of deploying the system in the light of such doubts. The committee resolves both questions in these words:
It is prudent that any doubt on this question (its ultimate feasibility) be resolved in favor of confidence in the system.
In my judgment, such a benefit of the doubt resolution does not give proper weight to the risk that deployment will provoke a Soviet response based not upon our doubts but upon the assumption of maximum effectiveness of our system.
Moreover, such a benefit of the doubt resolution may freeze us into a technological solution to the problem which is not the best answer.
But, even if the system achieves the limits of its planned effectiveness, I am persuaded that the simple mathematics of United States-Soviet confrontation may make the effort futile; the Soviet Union could negate the incremental protection of Safeguard with a few months' production of offensive missiles.
It is possible, Mr. President, that at some time in the future, developments in the threat may make an ABM essential to protect our retaliatory forces. It is also possible that a limited deployment of ABM's could become an element of practical and stable big-power arms limitations.
And it is certainly possible that a credible and effective ABM can be developed, applying lessons our scientists are learning today.
It is for these reasons that I welcome the initiative of Senators HART and COOPER to authorize research and development of an ABM program that can work when and if it is needed, but that will not, because it is deployed prematurely, embroil the American people in costs and consequences we will regret. I intend to support their amendment, and I commend their effort to put ABM development in a posture consistent with the Nation's long-term needs, a program the majority of the American people can sensibly support.
II
There is what could be a tragic irony in the way in which the Safeguard program has been presented to the American people.
As cast by the administration, the ABM would serve to "safeguard" our Minuteman retaliatory forces. If the need were clear and this role could be assured, I feel confident that the Senate would not hesitate to follow the President's lead. But reality is far more complex than the administration's assurance would suggest, and the Senate must ultimately judge the strategic impact of the Safeguard system in the broader context of its effects in combination with other pending weapons systems.
The Soviet Union will see our ABM deployment in this perspective, and will make decisions about its own future weapons developments and the forthcoming arms negotiations in the light of
how it perceives America's true intentions in the field of strategic armaments. The mysterious efforts of the Soviet's lunar vehicle to dog the heels of our Apollo 11 may well be fresh evidence that they do not take all our declarations at face value.
It is in this context -- the role Safeguard will play in the overall strategic posture of the United States and the threatening direction our adversaries must perceive emerging in our strategic forces -- that I find the administration's proposal constitutes, not a safeguard, but a provocative and possibly dangerous game. It is notable that while the word "provocative" is the President's own term, the denial of such intent in Safeguard deployment cannot escape being taken by others as a thin mask for profoundly disturbing threats to the balance of mutual deterrence.
In assessing the overall capabilities of our strategic forces, the Soviet Union will give attention not only to the Safeguard, but also to our ongoing programs for equipping retaliatory forces with multiple independent reentry vehicles -- MIRV's.
The linkage between Safeguard and the MIRV's leads to a stark fact: by deploying a vastly expanded, hard-point strike capability along with an ABM area defense system, American retaliatory nuclear forces could be converted into a system suitable for launching a first-strike attack upon the Soviet Union, while minimizing retaliatory damage to the United States. I understand that that is not our intention.
I understand that is not our intention, and the Senate and the American people do not so regard our nuclear weapons development. Of course the President would deny that this is our intention -- as he should -- but, Mr. President, the Soviet military planners cannot escape looking at our weapons development in that way.
Specifically, with the expansion in the number of deliverable nuclear warheads and the significant improvements in accuracy of delivery stated as the objectives of MIRV programs, the United States could, barring significant expansion in the number of Soviet strategic targets, achieve the capability to wipe out a significant portion of the Soviet Union's nuclear strike forces.
Meanwhile, although the Safeguard has been billed primarily as a local defense of U.S. Minuteman silos, it also is designed with a degree of area defense capability -- pointedly described by Secretary Laird in his statement to the Armed Services Committee as "defense of the continental United States against the kind of attack which the Chinese Communists may be able to launch in the mid-1970's." This area defense would, by the same token, also serve to defend the United States against the weak retaliatory effort the Soviet might be capable of mounting after receiving a first-strike American attack.
I need not emphasize, Mr. President, the rather simple fact that the technical problems faced by an ABM in the role of backup to a first strike are far simpler than those the same system would face in meeting a sophisticated adversary's surprise attack. Safeguard's credibility in a first-strike role, I regret to say, is far greater than its credibility as a protection for our defense forces.
In terms of what we all believe American intentions to be, the foregoing might seem hypothetical and far-fetched; but in terms of what the Soviets may logically fear our intentions to be, the threat of an impending American first-strike capability, based on Safeguard and MIRV, could seem terrifyingly real.
The linkage between these two systems in the American weapons arsenal is by no means casual.
On March 19, in his statement to the Armed Services Committee justifying Safeguard expenditures, Secretary Laird also sought funds for a significant acceleration in the development of the Poseidon, a submarine-launched MIRV-carrying missile, for the express purpose of "enhancing its effectiveness against hard targets."
He said, at page 32 of his prepared statement:
The increase of $12.4 million for the development of an improved guidance system for the Poseidon missile, will advance the IOC ("Initial Operating Capability") of the system by about six months. This development was started in FY 1968. The IOC, however, was slipped by about one year in connection with the FY 1969 expenditure reduction effort, and the level of funding provided in the original FY 1970 budget, $33.5 million, would have slipped it further. This is an important program since it promises to improve significantly the accuracy of the Poseidon missile, thus enhancing its effectiveness against hard targets.
Surely, Mr. President, we cannot expect the Soviets to ignore that development as it undertakes to evaluate the thrust of our weapons development.
In the Poseidon program, 31 submarines will each carry 16 missiles, each in turn carrying as many as 10 warheads, for a total of almost 5,000 deliverable weapons, from the Poseidon boats alone. These and other offensive systems available to the United States, including the more than 1,000 Minutemen we may also equip with MIRV's, would be more than a match for the 1,200 to 1,300 ICBM's the Soviets are anticipated to have deployed during the next few years.
In this context, Mr. President, the Safeguard is a destabilizing weapon, raising the risk of nuclear war rather than diminishing it. As the American MIRV nears perfection and the Safeguard nears deployment, we are reaching for a point of no return in the arms race. If the Senate authorizes the deployment of Safeguard, we may well be stepping across that point of no return.
III
On April 3, I noted the following dimension of the administration's Safeguard proposal:
It is altogether possible, on the other hand, that the Administration is not, in fact, taken in by its own reassurance as to Soviet reactions. It may be that the Safeguard proposal is intended as a blunt challenge to the Soviets to come to the bargaining table and negotiate over strategic weapons, or else the United States will heat up the arms race, counting on our own superior technology to protect us if negotiations fail.
I submit, Mr. President, that this interpretation of our intentions is the logical one from the Soviet point of view, and interpreted as this kind of bluster, it has no rational justification.
One need not dwell on the lack of good faith such an American bargaining strategy would entail with respect to the forthcoming strategic weapons negotiations to which we and the Russians are both committed. What is more important is the lack of realism in assuming that negotiations with a proud and powerful country such as the Soviet Union might ever yield success when undertaken under the gun of crude threats, a lesson we should have learned in every arms control negotiation from the Baruch plan to the present.
For the Russians as for ourselves, national and ideological motivations and the high stakes of international competition compel the continuing commitment of resources to weapons developments at whatever level is thought necessary to insure national security and at whatever level a prudent estimate of the intentions of the other may indicate. As a result, if the talks fail, the prospects for negotiated arms controls will dim, unbridled arms competition will resume, and the stability of mutual deterrence will be destroyed.
It is equally unrealistic to assume that any reasonable purpose could be served by locking the Soviets into another round of fantastic spending competition for armaments. Ever since arms competition with the Soviets began in earnest 20 years ago, the superior resources and technological advancement of the United States, coupled with the geographical encirclement of the Soviet Union, have combined to keep the Soviets on the defensive in any arms competition.
But the fact that in years past we could afford more weapons than the Soviet Union and that we could build them with less strain on our resources is not relevant to future competitions. The demands on our energies and resources are now too great, and the costs of the phenomenal weapons systems of which Safeguard is the precursor are too high, to warrant the conclusion that the American people can afford future strategic arms races.
Mr. President, the needs of the American people are too urgent and too demanding to bank our future as a nation on the casual economic dividends that high and rising levels of defense spending have come to mean. We must recognize that in future arms races -- even if we manage to keep the Soviets and all our other adversaries at bay without incinerating the world in the process -- the costs and sacrifices the competition will entail are such that we, not they, will be the losers.
IV
To recognize the futility and the risk inherent in adventurous weapons development is only the beginning of the necessary effort to forge security policies that serve the Nation's best interests in a time of strain and transition, at home and abroad.
Arms sufficiency is the new watchword, and arms sufficiency is an apt watchword, but one that requires careful judgment. Together the President, the Congress, and the country must find
ways in the months and years ahead to substitute good sense and prudence for uncontrollable gambits that lead only to blind and dangerous alleys. As we strive to end the war in Vietnam, we must never forget the lessons on the need for restraint that unhappy conflict teaches.
At the same time, we must also be mindful of the urgency and the extent of the Nation's domestic needs -- needs which can overwhelm us just as surely as the threat of external aggression, unless we can find the wherewithal, the ingenuity, and the spirit equal to the challenges.
The grim chain of urban sprawl and rural decline, of individual poverty and social disorganization, of wasted resources and hostile environments will not be broken by a government which is indifferent, or a private sector which is inactive -- or preoccupied with hunting the next arms contract.
The chain can be broken only if we set priorities, if we make a commitment to meet them, and if we organize ourselves to fulfill our commitments. I have indicated the priorities I would establish, and they are not the priorities of a fortress America. The priorities I would set are the priorities of men and women and children who have a right to enjoy for themselves the fruits of this world and to help insure the same right for others. The priorities we must set recognize the interrelationship of jobs, income, education, health care, housing, transportation, public facilities, recreation, and environmental protection in the balanced development of urban and rural communities.
These priorities will never be set or achieved so long as the United States is being bled by the continuing hemorrhage of spending on strategic armaments.
Mr. President, much attention is now being given to the consequences ending the Vietnam war will have on the funds which will be available for domestic programs. It has become common to speak for planning purposes of the revenue surplus resulting from the lessening of hostilities as a "fiscal dividend" -- the measure of the flexibility in the Federal budget that would be available for other national needs as the result of the termination of special Vietnam costs.
In March 1967, President Johnson appointed the Cabinet Coordinating Committee on Economic Planning for the End of Vietnam Hostilities. Their report appears as an annex to this year's report of the Council of Economic Advisers. The committee, assuming early cessation of hostilities, forecast annual fiscal dividends rising to $22 billion in fiscal year 1972 -- funds available for spending on other priority programs or for tax reduction. While the calculation assumed the continuation of existing authorized military programs -- including the Johnson administration Sentinel ABM -- that $22 billion sum, less amounts returned to taxpayers in tax cuts, represents a basic ceiling in funds available for expansion of all Federal programs, military and domestic.
To the extent that new weapons systems are authorized, or existing authorized systems exceed their anticipated costs, the funds available for domestic program expansion will be further reduced. Thus while $22 billion represents a basic maximum for domestic public purposes, a tax cut, weapon cost overruns, and additional weapons procurements will all squeeze that sum far below the maximum. If the costs of the war do not soon recede, of course, virtually no lessening of the budget squeeze can be anticipated. On the other hand, reduction of non-Vietnam military cost including the cancellations of all ABM deployment, would cause the fiscal dividend to be increased. There will be no fiscal dividend at all.
The fiscal dividend forecast by the committee, even assuming maximum availability, does not begin to match urgent demands for the rehabilitation and improvement of our society. For example, the report notes a $6 billion gap existing now between amounts the Congress authorized for fiscal year 1969 and the amounts the Congress has funded for domestic purposes. I ask unanimous consent that the table from the Coordinating Committee's report be printed at this point in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the table was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[Table omitted]
Mr. MUSKIE. The group also compiled a list of new programs "prominently and generally discussed recently as desirable to meet the needs of the Nation during the next several years," calculating their annual costs for fiscal year 1972 -- the year of the projected dividend. In many instances, the committee assigned dollar amounts far below the recommendations of the task forces or study groups from whose studies the programs were drawn. Even then, recognizing the list to be incomplete and inadequate, the Coordinating Committee reached a conservative total of almost $40 billion for these urgent needs, nearly double the maximum fiscal dividend estimated to be available. I ask unanimous consent that the committee's table, with explanatory footnotes, be printed at this point in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the table was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[Table omitted]
Mr. MUSKIE. Even this conservative calculation of the additional resources we will need to spend at home does not provide much leeway in making a major dent in the problems of the poor, such as a negative income tax preserving adequate incentives, which the committee noted might require between $15 and $20 billion a year, or in providing sufficient employment to make a significant reduction in the numbers of Americans who cannot find jobs. Nor does it encompass steps to assist States and localities in meeting their mounting revenue needs from their increasingly inadequate tax bases -- for which a revenue-sharing program of between $5 to $10 billion a year has been considered appropriate.
Mr. President, these are not small sums. They do not reflect small problems we can ignore.
Together, these estimates, whether or not one agrees with them in detail, represent a conscientious effort to determine a level of "sufficiency" for a comprehensive approach to the nonmilitary problems facing America, a level of sufficiency which we must attain if we are to preserve our viability as a nation.
By contrast, the $6 to $7 billion price tag assigned by the administration to the Safeguard system represents a far more valid measure of the relative significance of the ABM program, even assuming those systems costs have been fairly estimated, which many Members of the Senate have strong reason to doubt.
The true measure of the ultimate significance of the administration's Safeguard proposal lies in the likelihood of forcing the United States and the Soviet Union to higher and higher levels of arms competition, for which the costs forecast by Secretary Laird are only a very small down payment. The cost of such an adventure must be counted in tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars, which the United States can ill afford to spend on engines of destruction.
I think these great figures estimating our domestic needs, and estimating the cost of an unrestricted arms escalation, pose the problem which faces us on the ABM issue in its stark magnitude. We cannot do both. At least, we cannot do both without the exercise of discriminating judgment. We cannot do both without exercising restraint, geared to a careful evaluation of the risks involved with any subjects which we consider in the development of weapons for our arsenal.
We must somehow take a reasonable risk to protect our national security abroad. However, we must do more than we now are doing -- to eliminate the risks to our national security here at home.
Mr. PEARSON. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield.
Mr. PEARSON. Mr. President, I commend the Senator from Maine for a reasoned discussion and speech today in support of the pending amendment. He developed at some length the effect that construction and deployment of ABM would have on the forthcoming arms limitation negotiations with the Soviet Union. And in that regard the administration, particularly the Secretary of Defense, strongly made the point that the decision to go ahead at this time is essential to their position as a bargaining point as they enter the negotiations.
I have constantly failed to understand really this point in the particular argument, because we have, as I understand the figures after hearings and the debate and otherwise, a superiority in strategic force levels. For instance, in ICBM's, we have about 1,054 to approximately 1,000 on the part of the Soviet Union.
With respect to the Polaris missile, in round figures we have an estimated number of about 656 or 660 to perhaps 77 by the Soviet Union.
With respect to the intercontinental bombers, we have in round figures about 650 to 150 operated by the Soviet Union.
In deliverable warheads, we have some 4,200 as against 1,200 by the Soviet Union.
We have superiority in numbers in all of these fields. They must know of our industrial might measured against theirs. They must have some appreciation of our technical skill, for in the time frame of 1 week we succeeded in putting a man on the moon, whereas they failed with an unmanned moon vehicle.
We are ahead of them in the testing of MIRV's today.
With our superiority in all of these fields, does the Senator agree with me that the argument that we must have an ABM simply because the other side has an ABM to be in a proper bargaining point in negotiations?
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I think the Senator has made a very excellent point. I agree thoroughly.
I would like to add an observation. It seems to me that one can speculate prudently or prooflessly about what the Soviet position may be at the negotiating table and what we might do to influence it favorably toward arms limitation.
We have concentrated, as we have debated what will be a strong negotiating position, upon the need to demonstrate to the Soviet Union that we have the strength because of our deployment of the ABM to caution them against permitting a continuation of the arms race.
It seems that what we need, if we are to negotiate successfully, is to convince them that we want a stabilization of the arms race, that we want to roll back the growing risk to the survival of mankind.
It seems to me, in other words, that the situation is something like this: There are two great military powers -- we and the Soviet Union. Only if one of the two takes the initiative to move the other way from escalation of arms, do we have any chance to achieve that objective.
One of these two powers must take the initiative. One must be induced by the other.
It seems to me that the best way to make that initiative credible from the point of view of the other side is to take an initiative which carries some risks for us.
The road we seem to be choosing is to find a way to strengthen our arms to a point which will deter the Russians from trying to match it. I think we should try to encourage them to match us in taking risks in reducing arms. Of the two powers, the one most likely to take this kind of initiative historically, in the light of its belief in the tradition of humanism, is the United States of America.
I do not think delaying the deployment of an ABM system is an unacceptable risk. That there are risks or that there are considered to be risks is evident from the debate on the floor. So, to the extent that there are, our initiative in refusing to deploy an ABM to me would add credibility to our recommendations to the Soviet Union that we mutually de-escalate the nuclear arms race.
So, I agree with the Senator's argument, and I add this one of my own.
Mr. PEARSON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator. I notice also that the Senator dwelt at some length about the response on the part of the Soviet Union. It is my understanding that the rules of the war planners, and rightly so, involve these concepts. The Senator from Virginia (Mr. BYRD) is in the Chamber today. He has sat with me in the Armed Services Committee and heard the same words and concepts spelled out. We always plan on a greater than expected risk. We always plan -- and these are the rules by which our war planners govern themselves -- on the worst possible case.
We always plan on the basis that our systems will not work as well as we expect and that the enemy's will work better than we anticipate.
We always plan on the basis of long lapse time between conception and deployment of a modern weapons system taking about 10 years.
Does the Senator suppose that the rules we apply are any different than those applied by the Soviet Union war planners, and that this in and of itself has an inherent action or reaction cycle which is more accelerated when we get a defensive-offensive switch back and forth?
Mr. MUSKIE. The Senator is right, of course. This involves one of the principal arguments in my remarks.
We have a tendency to think that if the enemy looks at us, he must, of course, recognize that our purposes are innocent; that we would never launch a first-strike attack and do not mean him harm. Unfortunately, that is not the way they read us. They are just as suspicious of our intentions as we are suspicious of their intentions. It will continue.
We are going to limit arms not because the other fellow thinks that we are nice guys, but because we are able to define the area of mutual interest which each decides is in his national interest.
The Senator is eminently right.
Mr. PEARSON. Mr. President, one other point. I note that the distinguished Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. PROXMIRE) wishes to join in the colloquy.
The Senator from Maine raises some question about reliability.
Aside from the reliability of the components, computers which have not yet been built, and the radars which have some vulnerability under attack -- the Senator has been a student of this debate and of the RECORD -- does he recall that at any time in the very excellent presentations made on both sides, any explanation has been made of how effectively we can deal with the subject of decoys, balloons, chaff, saturation problems, blackout problems, and the electronic jamming problem? Does the Senator find answers to those questions any place in the debate or anyplace in the RECORD before the Senate?
Mr. MUSKIE. I do not recall seeing it, and the answer has not been provided in any portion of the debate to which I have listened on the floor, either in closed session or in open session; nor has it been answered in any of the literature I have read which has been made available to me, rather generously, from both sides in this debate. I have not had a chance to read it word for word, but I have searched for that answer.
I understand, of course, the argument that has been made, I think very eloquently, by the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island (Mr. PASTORE), that at some point in the development of new technology you have to start putting the technology together and research the unanswered problems as you go along. I understand that.
Nevertheless, I think the Senator is absolutely right in the implication of the question he has put to me, that there are many unresolved technical problems seriously bearing upon its feasibility and its effectiveness which have not yet been answered. I think the supporters of the ABM proposition concede that.
Mr. PEARSON. I thank the Senator for a very valuable contribution at this time.
Mr. MUSKIE. I thank the distinguished Senator from Kansas.
Mr. STENNIS. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield.
Mr. STENNIS. On the question the Senator has brought up about the blackouts, the jamming, and decoys, I can say with firm assurance, as far as I can go, that that is a problem that always shows up. It is a part of the picture concerning any kind of method involving a weapon, offensive or defensive. If we never had built the ICBM's -- offensive weapons -- until we were certain that we had all the problems solved that go with it in the same field, in reverse, we never would have one. If we are going to wait until all the problems are solved and everything is known with reference to an ABM, a defensive weapon -- in that field, particularly -- we will never have one, and no one else will. It is all a part of the process.
I do not pose as an expert in this field, but I have been on a subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services and chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Construction during all the years that these missiles have been in process. The military construction came in in this way: You have to have those sites, and you have to have the research and development that involves those sites. Sometimes it is handled in a special way in that bill. We got this back in the days of the Nike-Ajax. That was the first little ground-to-air missile we had. We also got into the space field when Sputnik went up, and all those problems that went with it.
I know that uniformly we have these problems. I opposed the deployment of the ABM -- what is now the ABM -- years ago. We had a secret session. We have had many sessions in the committee over the years. The Senator from Kansas was a member of the committee for some time, and a very valuable member. I had always opposed the deployment until I was convinced that we had gone about as far as we could go, and I believe as far as we can go, with a weapon of this kind, until we really get down to the nub of things and take some steps forward that this very modest program now contemplates.
That brought me to the proposition as the Senator from Rhode Island has expressed it. He is the former chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, and he, really does know a great deal about this. We must make a start. It has been amazing, in the case of other missiles, how many problems have been overcome after the start, has been made. Men are surprised, and then they are disappointed, too, on the same subject of the many different missiles. I refer to men such as Dr. Wernher von Braun and others who are really capable.
I am glad to give the Senator a resume of my experience in that field, without getting into the scientific part of it, because I do not try to master that.
Mr. MUSKIE. I appreciate the Senator's comments, and I will respond briefly myself, but first I yield to the Senator from Kansas.
Mr. PEARSON. Let me say to the distinguished chairman of the committee, the Senator from Mississippi, that I understand and agree that many of these problems today, scientific and otherwise, which are talked about as deficiencies of the system, probably will be cured in time.
As a matter of fact, the great advance we have been making in computers really gave great credibility to the so-called Sentinel-Safeguard, as distinguished from the other systems.
But some other scientific problems are involved here, which I am not qualified to discuss, which have nothing to do with the ability of American scientists to conquer problems, and they deal fundamentally with the laws of nature and the laws of physics. The very efficiency of the radar makes it susceptible to chaff which may be spread across the sky. The better the radar, the better it can be fooled by that particular device.
Blackout, as I understand it, is a result of an explosion or high or low yield atomic blast within the atmosphere, which creates -- as its name implies -- enormous blackout, perhaps with a diameter of 100 miles, lasting as long as 5 minutes.
These are things, it seems to me, to which even the genius of the American scientific community has not found an answer. As a matter of fact, some of the very efficiency of our own system gives us back greater problems.
I do appreciate the response of the chairman of the Committee on Armed Services. I know of no one who knows more about this field or who embraces it and brings it to the Senate with a greater degree of honesty and sincerity than my former chairman.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, may I add this to the comments made by the distinguished Senator from Mississippi.
First, I agree with the comments that have just been made by the Senator from Kansas. I do not know of a Senator who would bring a question to the floor more conscientiously, more thoroughly, and with more thoughtful judgment, than the Senator from Mississippi. I want him to know that.
But what is involved here is not simply the question of whether, having decided to build a piece of technology -- whether it is a weapons system or something else -- we have reached the point where we can start putting it together and work out additional bugs from there on. If that were the only question, I would say, "Yes," let us start, and let us start the business of working on a piece of hardware as we undertake to answer the unanswered questions. But, in addition, these other questions are involved, which are not susceptible to precise measure: the effect of our deployment upon the arms race, the effect of our deployment upon the Soviet evaluation of the thrust of our weapons development, and the effect of our deployment on negotiations.
Then, there is my own fundamental belief that if we want really to put together a credible negotiating posture from the point of view of the Russians, I think it is more important to convince them that we want to roll back in weapons development than it is to convince them if they will not agree with us that we have the capacity to deploy an ABM. I think the first conviction is more likely to be persuasive upon them than the second conviction.
I can see that honest men can disagree on this matter, as they obviously do, and we appear to be divided about 50-50 here. However, it is my conviction that we must take an initiative that is clearly recognized and identified by the Russians as an initiative toward peace.
Mr. PROXMIRE and Mr. DOMINICK addressed the Chair.
Mr. MUSKIE. The Senator from Wisconsin has been waiting to be recognized for quite a while. I yield to the Senator from Wisconsin.
Mr. PROXMIRE. Mr. President, I wish to commend the distinguished Senator from Maine for a superlative speech. I am especially impressed by his presentation because I think we in the Senate, and I think people around the country during the last year or so, have recognized that he is a very careful man, very measured, and responsible, and unusually so.
For example, he indicated we are taking a risk in not going ahead with the ABM. Many of us might not share that feeling because we may be more impulsive and feel we are convinced on the basis of what we have seen and heard that the ABM will not work, that it is a waste, and that the decision is, therefore, easier. But the Senator from Maine was very careful in not taking that position. He said that it may work and that we may be mistaken in not going along with it, but that we have to take certain risks.
I think the Senator makes an extremely strong case in arguing on the basis of his own assumptions about the Soviet Union that they are more likely to negotiate an arms limitation if we do not go ahead than if we do.
Mr. MUSKIE. I wish to say something on that point which the Senator has brought out. The Senator has said "more likely." This is something more than agreeing to go to the negotiating table. When I speak of the likelihood, I am talking about the substance of an agreement. We have to be concerned with that, too.
It was argued on the floor of the Senate that last year when we voted on deployment, the Russians indicated they were willing to go to the negotiating table. That is not the whole story.
What is their attitude when they get to the negotiating table? It would take a crystal ball to foresee what their attitude would be, and I do not know or claim to know what that situation would be.
Mr. PROXMIRE. I thank the Senator. The Senator's observation goes to the heart of the matter.
The other point I wish to make is one that I think has been overlooked in this debate and I refer to the question of recognizing priorities, and that we have to make these hard choices; that when we go ahead with ABM it has an effect on what we can do with regard to our domestic problems which are so pressing and urgent.
I think no Senator has been more concerned and done more constructive work in preventing pollution or has made a greater contribution in connection with the Federal-State relationship than the Senator from Maine. I think he is eminently qualified to recognize the urgency of those priorities. It is always difficult to say we will not move for a marginal weapons system at this time because certain domestic situations must be met. I think the Senator from Maine, in posing this problem with respect to priorities and reminding us we cannot have everything we want, has made a real contribution today.
Mr. MUSKIE. I thank the Senator. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Colorado.
Mr. DOMINICK. Mr. President, I did not have the pleasure of listening to the entire speech of the Senator from Maine. However, I did enter the Chamber during the process of his colloquy. I wish to make a few comments in this regard.
First, with respect to the point made by the Senator from Kansas about technical difficulties that are involved, I wish to point out that a panel of four very fine scientists appeared before the Committee on Armed Services in a public hearing. I am not sure the Senator from Mississippi brought out this point. I know he has in the past. Two of these scientists were against the ABM system and two were for it. Each of them, in response to direct questions, said this was the very best available technical mechanism for a defense of this kind that had been or could be developed under present technology. That statement was agreed to whether they were for or against the ABM. All four of them said that.
With regard to the blackout situation, and I do not wish to get into a technical discussion on the situation, the system of arrangements of radar which has been contemplated under this system would avoid that particular problem and a great deal of work has been done in connection with it.
So I would think that although there are problems, and no one doubts that there are problems, under the present methods of deploying the system most of the problems that have been brought out, or a good many of them, have already been foreseen and circumvented by the planners who worked on the system. With respect to the comment by the Senator from Maine on the need to convince the Soviets that we want meaningful arms limitations, I do not think anybody in the Senate or anybody in the Congress would disagree with the Senator. I think we all agree on that point. I cannot think of a happier situation than a viable arms limitation agreement which is properly supervised. I think it would be enormously fruitful for the Russians, for us, and for the entire world.
However, I wish to recount a few things along this line.
In connection with the test ban treaty, or moratorium -- it was not a treaty -- we followed through and said we would not do any more high-altitude testing. The Soviets said the same thing, but when it became in their interest to do it in 1960 and 1961, they unilaterally violated this moratorium and put themselves in a technical situation which, having gone forward, they had an earlier start or solution on some of the technical problems the Senator from Kansas has been talking about.
Mr. MUSKIE. That did not involve an agreement.
Mr. DOMINICK. That did not involve an agreement. It was a joint unwritten moratorium by verbal acquiescence.
Mr. MUSKIE. The Senator mentioned "verbal acquiescence.” What does the Senator mean?
Mr. DOMINICK. We had gone along for a period of 18 months under a statement publicly made by the President of the United States that we would not make any more high-altitude tests as long as the Russians did not, and they did not. As a matter of fact, when they broke this unwritten agreement–
Mr. MUSKIE. The President said something. Did the Russians respond in kind?
Mr. DOMINICK. Yes. There were verbal assurances from the Soviets at that time that they had no intention of going ahead with this either as long as we did not.
Mr. MUSKIE. I think the language is important. I do not know if the Senator is paraphrasing the Russian attitude or position. An intention not to go forward is different than an agreement not to go forward unless there is a unilateral intention not to do something or a bilateral agreement with somebody not to do something.
Mr. DOMINICK. We tried to convince them of the fact that we did not intend to go forward with any more of these testings and we would not do so even though it was important to all kinds of applications, space and otherwise, if we had gone forward with it. We said we would not do it. I am sure the Senator from Maine remembers that well.
Mr. MUSKIE. I do.
Mr. DOMINICK. The time they violated this agreement was when they were before the so-called Belgrade group, saying again that they were not going to do anything in the way of disturbing what was going on, while at that very time they sent up the high altitude missile.
Mr. MUSKIE. I understand. Whether we thought that hope was documented by a binding agreement may be another question, but I am sure we all hoped, by the coincidence of two unilateral actions taken by the two governments involved, that we had achieved an end of testing in the atmosphere. I am sure there are clearer illustrations in history of violations of agreements by the Russians. I understand that. The question is whether, now, we are so inhibited by history and documentation from trying again to work out an understanding with the Russians.
Mr. DOMINICK. We were never inhibited by that, we should not be, and I hope that we never will be. That was the point. The point I am making is that the United States, over a period of time, has tried again and again to impress upon the Soviets that we are not happy with our arms buildup, that we are ready to limit it; that it looks as though we are getting somewhere, and then, all of a sudden, we shoot off on a tangent again.
Let me illustrate the particular situation that we are faced with on the ABM. The United States has proposed not to build any more land-based ICBM's. We have a gigantic number of launchers, which the Russians know about. We have not built any more. We have not built any more Polaris submarines. We have a large number of submarines, and we have not increased them or replaced them or replaced them as they get older. We have a declining number of manned bombers. We had hoped -- against experience, I might say -- but we had hoped that in recognition of this, the Soviets would also level off their production, but they have not done so in any one of those fields.
This would indicate to me that we have done our best to impress on them we would like to get to an agreement on arms limitation and reduction just as rapidly as we can, that we do not want a proliferation of our weaponry. If we could reach such an agreement we would be delighted to do so.
Mr. MUSKIE. May I ask, in response, How do we identify a point where it is clear to both sides that the reaction of one side on continuing an activity is not a reaction to what the other side did earlier? If we are going to look for the point, because each side has unilaterally taken such clear steps to limit its arms that the other side can be sure that there is no risk of escalation, then we will not need an agreement.
We had Polaris submarines long before the Russians, and they are now engaged in producing their own. I cannot recall at the moment whether the dates of the beginning of construction of their Polaris program were at the time we were developing the MIRV program, but it is conceivable, unless the dates suggest otherwise. I do not have them. Their Polaris program was a response to our MIRV Program. Thus, we can debate this until the cows come home.
The other point I make is that the Senator may be right. It may be that what we have already done to stabilize our own nuclear weapons development will be sufficient evidence to the Russians of the credibility of our initiative to work out a meaningful agreement. But it may not, as well.
We have to decide this question, not after we understand what the Russians' willingness may be, but now.
I must say that I regard the debate to be on the Senator's side of this question of MIRV, that development and deployment of the ABM is more meaningful in respect to our defense posture vis-a-vis the Russians than the addition of more Minutemen, because the Senator has told us that the additional Minutemen are offensive missiles and are not the answer to the Russian threat. It is argued that the ABM is the answer. The Senator from Washington (Mr. JACKSON) made an eloquent speech to that effect in this Chamber that few of us were privileged to hear. So that I think with respect to evaluating the attitude of the Russians, what we do about the ABM may be more persuasive than what we have done to discontinue production of more Minutemen.
Mr. DOMINICK. The interesting fact about that is that Kosygin himself and other Soviet leaders have said they consider the ABM a purely defensive weapon, for the purpose of protecting their own citizens and our citizens from being killed, and not as a threat to the other side.
Mr. MUSKIE. I do not know why we should take their word on that, when we do not take their word on other things when it seems to suit our purpose.
Mr. DOMINICK. They have already deployed their ABM.
Mr. MUSKIE. I understood that they had discontinued it.
Mr. DOMINICK. That is not so. I had some colloquy on that with the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. GORE) just the other day.
Mr. MUSKIE. I would be happy to get the facts.
Mr. DOMINICK. I brought up the fact that they are continuing the construction of their ABM system. They are modernizing their present system and are also developing a new one.
Mr. DOMINICK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the RECORD an article published in the Chicago Tribune dated July 27, 1969.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
WORDS UNRELATED TO ACTIONS
All indications are that the Nixon administration and the Soviet Union are getting ready for negotiations, including a summit conference, on a broad range of problems, including strategic arms limitations.
Andrei Gromyko, Moscow's foreign minister, coupled a scathing attack on Red China with an appeal for "friendly relations" with the United States in his recent address to the supreme soviet.
Recalling President Nixon's statement in his inaugural address that we are moving from a period of confrontation to a period of negotiation with the Russians, Gromyko said his government favored "wide-ranging" negotiations with the Nixon administration.
Hubert Humphrey in Moscow said Premier Alexei Kosygin talked to him "in some detail and with complete and utter frankness and candor" about world problems and urged him to tell President Nixon and the American people how much the Soviet Union desires "to work with the United States in the cause of peace." Humphrey was almost as rapturous about Kosygin as the egregious Ambassador Joseph E. Davies was about Stalin in World War II.
This sudden access of euphoria, so soon after the recent tragic events in Czechoslovakia, is disturbing. It is reminiscent of the "spirit of Geneva" in 1955, only a year before Russian tanks crushed the Hungarians; of the "spirit of Camp David" in 1959, only a year before Khrushchev insulted President Eisenhower and torpedoed the Paris summit conference and three years before he put nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba; and of the "spirit of Glassboro" in 1967, only a year before the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.
With recurring armed clashes on their frontiers with Red China, which could lead to a major war, the Russians naturally would like some temporary accommodation with the United States that would assure its benevolent neutrality. Having bamboozled the United States with a so-called gentlemen's agreement against atmospheric nuclear tests, which they broke by testing monster warheads, and with a test-ban treaty which now forbids us to test similar weapons; having jumped into the lead in over-all offensive missile strength, and having deployed an anti-ballistic missile system, the Russians now would like to bind the United States with an arms limitation treaty that would prevent us from catching up.
We hope President Nixon will keep these considerations in mind when he enters into negotiations with the Russians. There is danger that they will be persuaded, by all the unreciprocated concessions we have made to the Communists in our efforts to end the war in Viet Nam, that we want peace at any price and can be pushed around.
Dean Acheson, former secretary of state, was a high priest of the "trust Stalin" cult during and after World War II, but he was disenchanted by bitter experience. He learned, as he has written, that the Russians use conferences and the forms of negotiation as "an instrument of war."
Acheson, as quoted in a recent Senate report on the soviet approach to negotiations, says the notion that "there is no alternative to negotiations with the Russians . . . is, of course, silly. For if there is no alternative, and if the Russians will only negotiate, as is now the case, on their own terms, then there is no alternative to surrender. But plainly there is an alternative, which is by action to change the attitude of the other party. . . . Action is often the best form of negotiation."
The soviet concept of diplomacy was best expressed by Stalin: "Words must have no relation to actions -- otherwise, what kind of diplomacy is it? Words are one thing, actions another. Sincere diplomacy is no more possible than dry water or wooden iron."
O, but the present Russian leaders are different, it is said. Robert Conquest, a distinguished English author and student of Russian affairs answers that argument in the same Senate report:
"Russia is now ruled by a faceless group, almost all of whom took the first moves in their careers in the great purge of 1936-38. Kosygin went up in four steps, from shop manager in a Leningrad factory to minister, in about two years. This was at a time when the Leningrad Communists were being slaughtered on an even larger scale than elsewhere. And so it was with Brezhnev and Kirilenko in the Ukraine, where there were three survivors of the 102-man local central committee."
To have been promoted in those days was a sign of active complicity in Stalin's crimes. Conquest writes. He describes the Lenin-Stalin-Malenkov-Khrushchev-Brezhnev succession as a "dynastic disaster." And in the last two years, he adds, "we have seen an increasingly swift process of re-Stalinization." Even the long-discredited "short course" history of the Communist party, an embodiment of the Stalin myth, has been rehabilitated by the Brezhnev-Kosygin regime.
Such is the character of the present Russian rulers, who are so anxious, we are told, to work with the United States in the cause of peace.
Mr. PEARSON. Mr. President, will the Senator from Maine yield, so that I may address a question to the distinguished Senator from Colorado?
Mr. MUSKIE. I am happy to yield.
Mr. PEARSON. As the Senator has returned to the Chamber, recognizing that he has been here all during the session, we were debating and discussing the point made by the able Secretary of Defense as to authorizing the construction and deployment of the ABM system as a bargaining point as we enter into the talks that are contemplated with the Soviet Union.
Does the Senator from Colorado hold a similar view as to the ABM and say that it is essential as a bargaining point to go ahead with it at this time?
Mr. DOMINICK. I do not know that I would want to put it in those words. I should say that it is an important bargaining point; I do not say it is an essential bargaining point, no.
Mr. PEARSON. I asked the Senator that question because a point has been made and developed a number of times that we must have an ABM because the Russians have an ABM. The Secretary of Defense, in his own words, made it an essential bargaining point. The reason I address this question to the Senator from Colorado is that it was the distinguished Senator himself who first warned about and watched and studied the Russian deployment of a FOB system. Long before it was announced, the Senator from Colorado was doing some studying in this field. The testing of the fractional orbiting bombardment system did go forward, and the Russians have such a system today.
Mr. DOMINICK. That is correct.
Mr. PEARSON. It has been our judgment that the United States should not build or construct or deploy a FOB system. Does the Senator think that the United States should perhaps build an FOB system today because the Soviet Union has one, because if we do not have one and we enter discussions with the Russians, perhaps we would be in a weakened position?
Mr. DOMINICK. No, I do not think so at all. I hope we will never develop a FOB system.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. EAGLETON in the chair). Does the Senator from Maine yield the floor?
Mr. MUSKIE. Yes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Colorado.
Mr. DOMINICK. Mr. President, I merely wish to finish the colloquy.
It seems to be that the FOB system which has been developed by the Soviets is designed either to attack our airfields, which can also be done with submarine launchers, or by air bombers; or for use as a city destroyer, which is something that gives me cold chills. I hope the United States will never develop a weapon which is aimed to strike against cities only.
Mr. PEARSON. Would the Senator from Colorado agree that perhaps the Soviet utilization of that system would be to negate any effectiveness that an ABM system would have?
Mr. DOMINICK. No, I would not. I have a deep reluctance to have us forego the deployment of an ABM system, if for no other reason than to give the President another button to save us from an accidental or an unauthorized launch in the middle 1970's, whether it be by the Soviet Union, the Chinese, the Egyptians, or whoever it might be at that point. I just cannot see putting ourselves in a position where the only alternative we would have would be to wreak a holocaust.
Mr. PEARSON. I thank the Senator from Colorado.