May 6, 1971
Page 13882
REMARKS BY SENATOR EDMUND S. MUSKIE TO THE TOWN MEETING,
WORLD AFFAIRS COUNCIL, PHILADELPHIA, PA., APRIL 6, 1971
I have chosen to speak to you tonight about nuclear weapons and the need to control their cost and their dangers.
Today the United States and the Soviet Union have enough nuclear weapons to destroy each other many times over. They are each capable of ending civilization on this planet.
Nevertheless, in their search for military security, they have been building new offensive weapons. And each has developed defensive weapons in an attempt to neutralize the offensive missiles. This has led to new offensive weapons to overcome the defensive weapons.
The result is an arms race in which each side is less secure than before. Each has put precious resources – amounting to billions of dollars each year – into more expensive and more dangerous weapons because neither dares to stop.
For one and a half years the two countries have been engaged in strategic arms limitation talks – usually referred to as SALT talks. The purpose of those talks has been to reduce the pressure to develop new weapons and to end the push for more weapons. That, at least, has been our hope, but what are the prospects?
The fact is that there is no sense of urgency about the negotiations. Both sides seem to ignore the risk that, as the talks continue, still more weapons will be built, as they have, raising new uncertainties and new fears.
I wish I could say that the arms talks will soon lead to a firm agreement, or that the talks are slowing down the arms race. But this is not so. We are not likely to get an agreement during the current round of talks.
The talks are in trouble for several reasons. First – while the talks go on – the Soviets may be making changes in their offensive weapon deployments. We do not yet know what these changes will prove to be. Whatever they are, they increase our uncertainty as to Soviet intentions, and they make it more difficult for us to conclude an agreement to halt the arms race.
Second – since the talks began – the United States has begun to deploy a vastly improved new warhead System, the MIRV – a multiple, independently-targetable re-entry vehicle. Our Minuteman missiles are each being converted to carry three of these warheads. That means that each Minuteman missile can attack three separate targets instead of one.
We are now putting MIRV warheads on Poseidon missiles aboard 31 submarines. There will be ten warheads on each of the sixteen missiles carried by each submarine. Each submarine will be able to attack as many as 160 different targets. The first submarine fitted with these missiles was launched last Wednesday.
When these programs are completed, our arsenal of nuclear weapons, capable last year of delivering about 2,500 missile warheads, will total more than 7,000 warheads. Each of those warheads is considerably more powerful than the atomic bomb which killed 68,000 people at Hiroshima.
Understandably, the Russians are making every effort to match this weapon.
Third, while the talks go on the United States is continuing to install the defensive Safeguard anti-ballistic missile system to protect three offensive Minuteman missile sites. The Russians, on the other hand, have one obsolete anti-ballistic missile system around Moscow.
Our ABM systems does not threaten the Russians' ability to retaliate, because it is too small and it does not protect our cities. But it does permit military leaders in the Kremlin to argue that our ABM system can be expanded. Therefore, it can make them uncertain about our intentions.
In addition, as we build the Safeguard system the pressures to keep it will become stronger. As a result, the development of our ABM also hurts the chances of agreement.
Fourth, while each side has made a proposal in the talks, neither proposal has been given any encouragement by the other.
If we are to solve these problems, the Russians will have to give positive evidence that they will restrain their nuclear weapons program. They will have to be more responsive to our arms limitation proposals.
But we, too, must be willing to restrain our program and to respond to Soviet proposals. We must be willing to take the initiative in moving toward the other side.
In October, 1969, before the announcement of the opening round SALT, I urged a six month moratorium on the testing of our MIRV warheads. That moratorium would have permitted the talks to open on a positive and constructive note. The Nixon administration rejected my suggestion.
When the second round of the SALT talks opened a year ago, I recommended that we try to negotiate an interim standstill by both sides on all strategic weapons. That standstill would have placed an immediate freeze on all further deployments of offensive and defensive strategic weapons systems. It would have halted the testing of multiple warheads.
If that standstill had taken place, the arms race would have come to an end, for all practical purposes. All that would have remained would be a formal agreement. But my proposal was ignored by the Nixon administration, as was a similar proposal which passed the Senate by a vote of 72 to 6.
We have seen the consequences, both in the continuing arms race and the slow pace of the talks.
I remain convinced that such an interim agreement would greatly improve the prospects for success at the arms talks. I urge the President to propose such standstill in strategic weapons. It should cover the testing, production and deployment of offensive and defensive missiles.
I regret to say that the Nixon administration does not seem ready to take such an initiative. Instead, it seems to be operating on a double standard. It has called for Soviet restraint in deploying weapons, yet it is not willing to exercise comparable restraint. It fears the development of a Soviet MIRV – which the Soviets have not even tested adequately, if they have tested it at all – yet it refuses to admit that the Soviets have cause for concern about our MIRV, which is already being deployed.
At the SALT talks, we have proposed to include an ABM agreement in a package that would also place a numerical ceiling on both sides' offensive weapons, and a special sub-ceiling on the largest of the Soviet missiles. The Administration's package puts numerical limits on both offensive and defensive weapons, but it does not limit qualitative changes in the weapons systems.
The Russians have proposed a limitation on ABM defensive systems.
Each of these proposals is a limited – not a comprehensive – proposal. Ours involves a wider range of problems to be solved before agreement can be reached.
The question then, is whether we should try to work out an ABM limitation as a first step toward a broader agreement. The Nixon Administration has apparently rejected this possibility. It has said that such an agreement would reduce the incentive for the Russians to bring the entire arms race to a halt.
I disagree. An agreement on defensive missiles would reduce the pressure for further development of offensive missiles. Therefore, if we cannot get the Soviets to agree on the United States proposal at this round, I urge the President to try to negotiate an agreement limiting or banning anti-ballistic missiles. Such an agreement should be made with the clear understanding that it is the first step toward broader controls of offensive weapons as well. Both sides would have the right to reconsider the commitment if, after a specified time, they had not achieved further progress toward arms limitations.
Such an agreement would be in the interest of each side and could lead more quickly to the next step.
It is important to take that first step at a time when there is a balance in nuclear weapons, when neither side dares attack the other, and before ongoing developments on each side upset that balance.
Such a first step can slow down the waste of precious resources on a fruitless arms race, which only increases our danger, while reducing our ability to meet pressing human needs.
The costs of the arms race are very high. This year alone, the Nixon Administration is asking about $3 billion to carry on construction of the Safeguard anti-ballistic missiles systems and deployment of MIRV warheads.
This $3 billion could virtually cover the cost of Medicaid this year; or could help us to make major strides in providing good schools and adequate health care for all our citizens; or it could pay for the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency more than six times over.
In coming years, funds committed to nuclear weapons programs could provide untold benefits for our people in a host of critical areas.
We face, therefore, a basic decision. How can we best take advantage of what may be a fragile opportunity to reduce the dangers and the costs of nuclear arms?
If each side holds out for its own proposal in this fourth and crucial round of the arms control talks, the prospects for agreement may be reduced. I urge, therefore, that we improve those prospects by taking the most likely first step which I have described.
It would be a step in the right direction – a reduction in the hazards to survival for all mankind.