Nuclear Optimists Need Solid Hope : Test Ban, Space-Weapons Pause Would Be Something Concrete

In the nuclear age, optimism is a historical duty. If we don’t believe that humans can control what humans have created, if we don’t believe in the possibility of truly massive reductions in nuclear arsenals, then we may as well throw in the sponge for the future of the species.

Physicians know that a nuclear war would imperil human existence. We know, too--and Chernobyl and Challenger remind us--that all human and mechanical systems are fallible and that a nuclear holocaust is therefore inevitable unless drastic changes are made. Our optimism is fundamental: We believe in the human capacity to make those drastic changes.

So President Reagan’s speech last week at Glassboro was gratifying. He said that new Soviet proposals seemed “a serious effort.” He talked not of stabilizing nuclear arms but of reducing them. He reiterated his goal of eliminating nuclear weapons altogether.

Nuclear strategists and arms-control professionals tend to be uncomfortable with this kind of abolitionist talk. In all Administrations, but especially in this one, tension exits between the rhetoric of the elected leader and the procurement-and-deployment decisions of his subordinates. We can rely on arms professionals to eliminate nuclear weapons about as much as we can rely on boxing referees to abolish prize-fighting.

The natural question following the President’s Glassboro address is not whether he was sincere--we presume that--but whether his words denote real changes among his own people. Was the talk just a political maneuver to sooth the anxieties of Democrats and our European allies about the death of SALT II? Was it an enticement to the Kremlin to keep a summit date? Or was it also a signal that the Administration has changed course substantively and is prepared to cut a deal with the Soviets--a deal that would lead to large mutual reductions?

Ronald Reagan the abolitionist heretofore has been hobbled by two personal handicaps. One has been his reflexive opposition to almost anything that Moscow puts forward, even when--as with bans on nuclear testing and anti-satellite weapons--Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev advocates measures that American negotiators first proposed. Maybe the Glassboro address signaled a U-turn out of that particular dead-end. His other handicap is “Star Wars.” Reagan may be the only powerful official in Washington who believes that the United States can develop technology that would protect its citizens against a nuclear attack. Certainly most scientists don’t believe it, and polls show that most ordinary citizens subscribe to the reasonable notion that the Soviets would do whatever they would need to do to counter Star Wars. As last week’s Time magazine revealed, the President’s professional arms strategists believe that it is either an excellent bargaining chip or (worse) an excellent complement to offensive nuclear arsenals.

A good way to keep the Glassboro speech in perspective is to look at news clips for the two days afterward. The State and Defense departments rumbled that observing SALT II limits would endanger American security, even though the CIA says that it is the Soviets, not the Americans, who could more easily exploit a lift in the ceiling. The Air Force wanted all of its $3.9 billion to test anti-satellite weapons even though unarmed satellites are vital for peace and even though the Soviets have said that they want a treaty banning anti-satellite weapons on both sides.

Then there was an article in the New York Times by Richard Sybert, special assistant to the secretary of defense, which appeared the day after the Glassboro speech. Sybert wrote that a mutual U.S.-Soviet moratorium on nuclear explosions would be a “hoax.” For one thing, he said, we need to explode nuclear bombs “to be sure whether they will work.” Most nuclear physicists disagree. But no matter. Sybert’s second point was the crucial one: “Testing is also necessary to develop new strategic weapons.” New nuclear weapons can be good either because they’re more “humane” (smaller, more accurate) or because they provide a response to Soviet forces. Those premises are certainly arguable. The new generation of smaller, more mobile, more concealable nuclear weapons tends to be dispersed widely throughout conventional forces, making an inadvertent nuclear war more likely. And the very existence of these weapons is difficult to verify for disarmament purposes. Since a Soviet-American test moratorium would apply equally to both sides, and since it would be readily verifiable, you have to wonder why it’s not as good as an arms-race spiral in which Americans and Soviets provoke each other through new and “better” nuclear weapons.

So maybe the crucial question for both the President and his arms professionals is whether they’re willing to not develop new weapons. We can speculate about rhetoric and reality in this Administration when it comes to reducing current nuclear arsenals. But there has been no doubt about its support for new weapon systems of all kinds. The Glassboro speech will mean much more the day that the President announces U.S. support for a mutual Soviet-American prohibition on something important to the war planners in Washington and Moscow. Maybe a test ban, maybe a moratorium on space weapons. Until then, it’s difficult to sympathize with a strategy for abolition that doesn’t include any plans for stopping the things that you want to abolish. We need a concrete, common-sense step to give us optimists some new reason for hope.