Weinberger’s Call for Testing

The angry letters (May 26) denouncing Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger’s call for continued nuclear testing, betrayed a lack of information about U.S. strategic programs and the reasons testing is essential for our security.

We all hope for a world free of nuclear weapons, but until we can forgo our dependence on nuclear deterrence to maintain security and stability we must rely on nuclear weapons to keep the peace. Other nations as well rely on our nuclear deterrent. Our adversaries are deterred by it. All must have confidence in it.

Deterrence has, after all, successfully kept the world free of global war for more than 40 years. Nuclear weapons offset what otherwise would be a dangerous military imbalance resulting from the substantial Soviet advantage in conventional arms, chemical arms, and manpower. They provide a disincentive to Soviet aggression.

As long as America relies on nuclear weapons, we must test them. They are not much of a deterrent if no one is sure whether they will work. Nuclear warheads have a “shelf life” like other complex equipment and must be checked and maintained.

A moratorium on testing would have resulted in a disproportionate and destabilizing erosion of confidence in our capacity for deterrence. We rely on more sophisticated nuclear technology than the Soviet Union does. The Russians observe a “brute force-low technology” approach that we likely would have to adopt in the absence of testing. Our warheads--like the delivery system on which they are deployed--are smaller, lighter, and more complex than Soviet weapons. Most of our nuclear stockpile is also older than the Soviet arsenal, which adds to uncertainties.

Testing is also necessary to develop new strategic weapons. New weapons can be better weapons even from a “humane” point of view. Through miniaturization of components, better engineering and improvements in the accuracy of missiles, warheads can be made smaller, less destructive, safer, and more survivable. They can be targeted on military assets more discriminately without unnecessary loss of life.

Indeed, using such methods the United States has been able to reduce unilaterally its nuclear megatonnage by 75% since 1960. Moreover, testing enables us to field new weapons such as the MX, the Midgetman intercontinental ballistic missile, and submarine-launched Trident II missile, which are necessary in the face of the continuing buildup of Soviet offensive and defensive forces.

There is no particular environmental objection to underground testing. The amount of radioactivity that may leak into the atmosphere is infinitesimal--less than is emitted by an airport X-ray machine. Radiation produced by testing in recent years is so small a part of background readings that it is virtually unmeasurable.

If there is the political will on both sides to eliminate nuclear arms, it can be done through negotiation. If there is not, it makes little sense to stop testing and to trade relative stability for the erosion of confidence in America’s nuclear deterrent that would result.

Pleas for a testing moratorium are not supported by sound policy reasons or facts, and merely play into the hands of a Soviet Union anxious for any agreement that effectively will maintain the status quo and the shift in the balance of power that it has engineered under cover of the arms control process. Let us not compound past errors by continuing to ignore our own security interests.

RICHARD P. SYBERT

Los Angeles

Sybert served as special assistant to the secretary of defense in 1985-86.