‘Star Wars’ and Arms Control

A news story (Nov. 7) on the collapse of arms-control talks between the United States and the Soviet Union in Vienna includes this sentence: “As it was in Reykjavik, the ultimate sticking point in Vienna was Soviet insistance on limiting to laboratory research the U.S. program to develop a space-based missile defense system, the Star Wars program . . .”

Missile defense system?

To understand “Star Wars” for what it really is, as opposed to what President Reagan says it is, one has only to recall something Lyndon Johnson said years ago when he was chairman of the Senate Preparedness Investigations Subcommittee:

”. . . control of space means control of the world, far more certainly, far more totally than any control that has been achieved by weapons or by troops of occupation. Space is the ultimate position, the position of total control over Earth.”

The Russians are well aware of this. So is Reagan. And that’s the problem.

DAVID KINKEAD

Forestville