‘Bigger Blunder’ on SALT II

In your editorial “Bigger Blunder” (Nov. 30), condemning President Reagan’s breaching of the numerical limits of the expired SALT II agreement, you betray basic ignorance of the aims of arms control. The claim that the fielding of an extra B-52 bomber is somehow “more direct a violation”--and so presumably more important a violation--than the Soviet violations concerning verification, new missile types, ABM radars and ABM testing is misguided.

The aim of arms control is to increase strategic stability, not necessarily to reduce the numbers of weapons. Soviet violations threaten strategic stability much more than does the symbolic fielding of an old and slow B-52, which is a reasonably strategically stabilizing weapon. Despite the B-52’s 12 cruise missiles, Soviet strategic air defenses make the plane useless for any putative “first strike.”

However, Soviet violations show their desire to build a destablizing counterforce ICBM armory, their desire to erect a destablizing nationwide industry/population defense greater in scope than current “Star Wars” plans, and their desire to conceal their military efforts partly so that editorial writers consider the symbolic breaching of the SALT II treaty more newsworthy than the unwillingness of the Soviets to accept a fundamental political compromise that will minimize the need for armaments.

NEIL MUNRO

YVONNE M. BARTOLI

Los Angeles