‘Why Not Negotiate?’

Thank you for your editorial. For one who has followed the nuclear arms debate for the last six years, it’s terribly galling to hear the Administration now using our nuclear superiority to justify continuing the arms race. Since our weaponry is more sophisticated, the argument goes, we need to test more than the Soviets do and therefore a test ban is not in our interests.

For years, these same people have been telling us that the all-out U.S. arms buildup was being undertaken only to catch up with the superior Soviets. They made a great to-do about the Russians having greater throw-weight capacity and megatonnage.

Now they say, as arms control proponents have said all along, that the larger Soviet missiles are simply a reflection of their inability to build the smaller, more accurate weapons we have and not an advantage at all. They make this admission not to call for arms control, however, as logic and their stated intentions would require. They stand these facts on their heads to serve as justification for continued weapons building and testing!

I guess the American people want to be conned or they wouldn’t swallow a line that has all the accuracy and sophistication of a Soviet ICBM.

ANN ALPER

Pacific Palisades