Weinberger’s Call for Testing

Richard P. Sybert’s letter (June 10) in support of Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger’s call for continued nuclear testing was surprisingly misleading and inaccurate. Most experts disagree with him.

An end to nuclear tests “would check the spiraling arms race in one of its most dangerous areas,” said President Kennedy (June, 1963). “It would increase our security--it would decrease the prospects of war.” His words carry even more truth today, with much larger and more threatening nuclear stockpiles on each side. Without testing, over an extended period of time, nations would lose confidence in their ability to launch a first strike, but they could retain sufficient confidence in their arsenals for the purpose of deterrence.

Testing has produced many new more “advanced” U.S. weapons, such as the MX and Trident II missiles. But it has also allowed the Soviets to modernize their weapons, which can hardly increase our security.

The top military goal of this Administration is regaining the ability to “prevail” in any nuclear conflict. This has been a consistent goal since the advent of the bomb in 1945. Yet “prevailing” is not acceptable to the people, to the medical community unable to cope with thousands in acute pain, millions dead, everyone finally understanding.

We cannot build security by threatening somebody else. Using violence and weapons to build security is serving to escalate the scale of insecurity. If we threaten the Soviet Union with a first strike, we are pushing them to strike first.

The Pentagon argues that we need to test weapons to make sure they work when in fact, fewer than 5% of all tests conducted at the Nevada test site are to prove bombs work. Even those are unnecessary, according to Hans Bethe, Paul Warnke, and six other weapons experts who wrote to the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in 1985. That letter declared that “the best way to confirm reliability is to disassemble sample weapons and to subject components to non-nuclear tests.” In any case, uncertainty in both nations that the bombs will work is an advantage to preventing nuclear war, since it would encourage hesitation in using them.

With regard to Sybert’s argument that new strategic weapons’ “humane” accuracy is a reason for continued testing, the fact is the decreased yields currently being designed into some weapons result from improvements in the accuracy of delivery systems that make less destruction necessary in order to eliminate a target. These improvements are performed in the course of missile testing, not warhead testing, as conducted at the Nevada test site.

In response to his claim that “There is no particular environmental objection to underground testing.” Even the federal government admits that 42 underground tests have indeed created fallout. Fallout from one such test in Nevada was detected in Minnesota and Canada. Exposure to excessive radiation causes cancer, genetic problems, as is evident from the number of cases that appear among nuclear weapons workers and their families.

The sole purpose of testing weapons is to make them effective for use. The use of nuclear weapons would destroy life as we know it. Stopping the testing of nuclear weapons will be a major step in reversing the arms race.

BARBARA CONE

Santa Monica