‘Why Not Negotiate?’

I am outraged that because of the continuation of nuclear testing by the United States, despite the Soviet unilateral moratorium, we have missed, at least temporarily, a historic chance to reverse the arms race.

The Administration has a ready supply of reasons for the continued testing, so that when one reason is refuted it can pick another one from the basket and then another and another as the need arises, hoping that by the time it has to return to its original reason, the public will forget how it was refuted, and the cycle can start again.

First, it was doubt about verification. But improvements in seismic measurement capability and offers of on-site inspection have invalidated that excuse, or at the very least should provide an impetus for intensifying negotiations, not abandoning them. Then it was the need to check the working readiness of existing weapons. This reason has been refuted by experts who claim that readiness can be verified by non-explosive examination, and in any case approximately only 5% of U.S. tests to date have been for this purpose.

The next reason occasionally put forth is that we must develop new weapons, supposedly smaller and safer. Whether or not I believe that our new weapons will make me safer, I certainly doubt that the new bombs the Russians might develop will make me safer. The argument against the comprehensive test ban, quoted in Ernest Conine’s column (Editorial Pages, April 14), that if we had had a total test ban since 1957 we would have not benefited from the “progressive downsizing” of our arsenal, is utter nonsense. If we had had a total test ban since 1957, at the very least we can be sure we and the Russians would not have MIRVs, with their threat of first-strike.

Another purported justification for continued testing is that we must test the effects of nuclear weapons on parts of other items of military hardware, like communication systems and the Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) components. Despite the President’s proclamations that “nuclear war is unwinnable and must never by fought,” hardening devices to withstand the radiation effects of a nuclear environment sure sounds like preparation to fight a nuclear war, whether it be in space or on Earth.

LEO MARCUS

Santa Monica