Scrapping Ballistic Missiles Would Benefit Both Sides

For four decades, the Federation of American Scientists, founded by scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, has devoted itself to nuclear-arms control and disarmament. We have not dared--certainly not in recent years--to envision anything as dramatic, as an immediate goal, as eliminating all ballistic missiles from the Soviet and American arsenals. But President Reagan’s stated willingness, at Reykjavik, to pursue this goal in future negotiations is something we can support enthusiastically.

Such an agreement could effectively return the world to a considerably safer period, three decades ago, before ballistic missiles were introduced. And it would not undermine U.S. security in the slightest.

On the contrary, the U.S. strategic bomber force, armed with cruise missiles, is an even more formidable deterrent now than it was in the late 1950s, when it served quite well to satisfy all observers that it could offset any Soviet advantages in conventional force.

Once armed with Stealth technology, it need not fear unconstrained Soviet air defenses. Moreover, the penetration capability of our bomber force would be similarly unconstrained in important ways. In any case, no foreseeable air defense can be assured of completely defeating a nuclear-armed bomber force.

In fact, the elimination of Soviet ballistic missiles would be an enormous gain to U.S. security. It would:

-- provide more time for averting a nuclear war by “lengthening the fuse” from the 10- to 30-minute “delivery time” of ballistic missiles to the three to 10 hours of cruise missile or bomber attack;

-- eliminate the fears of a Soviet first strike (with missiles), therefore saving us tens of billions of dollars to develop defenses for our land-based missiles, either with new mobile missiles (Midgetman) or “Star Wars” technology;

-- improve our chances of protecting command and control against attack and maintaining command and control if war did break out;

-- reduce the amount of megatonnage that would be exploded (about 70% of warheads and 50% of megatonnage on the U.S. side, 90% in both categories on the Soviet side), which would be a step toward protecting the planet’s ecosystem and preventing such unanticipated phenomena as “nuclear winter”;

-- be an excellent first stage toward further nuclear disarmament, some of which may well require agreements on conventional forces.

Among other advantages we see for a U.S.-Soviet program of zero ballistic missiles is the pressure that it would put on Great Britain, China and France. Getting them to dismantle their ballistic missiles is more feasible than critics imagine. The British are already close to eliminating their deterrent unilaterally. The Chinese have committed themselves to join in with disarmament when the superpowers reach 50% cuts--which the proposal for zero ballistic missiles would achieve after only five years. And the French, faced with the agreement of other states, could, we think, be persuaded to rely on submarine-based cruise missiles and their excellent bombers as a deterrent.

Is this too good a deal for the United States? After all, it would leave us with the better bomber force and a major technological lead in cruise missiles. Maybe not. Even as the United States was boasting that the Soviets had made all the concessions at Reykjavik, the Soviets were boasting that indeed they had.

Secretary General Mikhail S. Gorbachev clearly is taking a new, statesmanlike approach to the importance of getting the world on the road toward disarmament. And in his new way of thinking, the counting of nuclear warheads, per se, is less important.

Whatever the balance, his nation also would achieve benefits parallel to the ones listed here for our side.

Moreover, his nation would no longer face ballistic missile threats from three other nuclear powers. And its economy would be greatly assisted (as would ours) by containing and reducing the arms competition.

We do not assume--and need not assume--that the Soviet Union would agree to zero ballistic missiles without further side conditions to assure its concept of its security. Presumably, the Soviets would want limits on cruise missiles (as should we) and, perhaps, the right to build up to equal limits. Zero ballistic missiles is a perfectly good starting point for those negotiations.

Ironically, of all the problems of reaching a ratified treaty on zero ballistic missiles, the Strategic Defense Initiative may be the least difficult. The 10-year ballistic missile disarmament program would have either succeeded or failed before the “Star Wars” defense was deployable. If the disarmament was successful, such a defense--if one still wanted to build it--would not start a new arms race.

In particular, under a zero ballistic missiles agreement nothing would change in the American strategies of deterrence or flexible response, which would be left just where they once were--and are now. It would simply turn the clock back three decades. Thereafter, others would see how to turn it back further.

Just as tax reform became successful only when really large changes in the tax rates made it possible to oppose special interests, so also a zero ballistic missiles program has the power to force all concerned to investigate the real security trade-offs of this major disarmament effort.

At Reykjavik, power was tied to pride of authorship. The political forces that might bring about elimination of ballistic missiles are in place, both in Moscow and Washington. We ought not to be lightly dissuaded from the possibility that the world’s most destabilizing weapons can be brought down to zero.