SDI, Arms Control Are Compatible : Rather Than Carping, Democrats Should Realize Future Needs

The most remarkable thing about the history of the past 40 years is not what has happened, but what has not happened.

What has not happened is a war between the United States and the Soviet Union. If you consider how common war has been throughout history, or how frequently wars have occurred specifically during the past 40 years (about 140 times), or how close we have come to exchanging blows with the Soviets during tense moments in the Cold War, or how different our way of life is from theirs, you cannot help but conclude that the absence of a Soviet-American war verges on the miraculous.

It is, alas, one of life’s great ironies that nuclear weapons--the most terrible weapons known to man--have proved to be the most effective safeguards of the peace. This is not to argue that we should celebrate the existence of these horrific instruments of world order, but only that we ought to appreciate more fully some of the paradoxes of life after Hiroshima.

Another great irony of the nuclear age is that even while we evince a sense of alarm at the ever-present prospect of a nuclear catastrophe, we behave as if the system of mutual deterrence will somehow take care of itself. The usual response, for example, to the argument that America’s deterrent capability has been eroded (but not erased) by the apparent Soviet ability to destroy most of the U.S. force of intercontinental ballistic missiles is: So what? But does not the system of mutual deterrence that sustains the peace deserve better than to be taken completely for granted?

At the same time that we strengthen our forces in order to preserve and protect the present system of deterrence, however, we must also plan for its eventual replacement, because--to put it bluntly--it cannot last forever. The improbability of everlasting deterrence is without a doubt the source of all nuclear anxiety. It is this, more than anything else, that motivates the various disarmament campaigns of the past few decades. However impractical the proposals of disarmament advocates may be, their concerns are not without foundation.

The Reagan Administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative is responsive to these concerns. Whatever its imperfections, it is at least a call to the nation’s scientists and strategists to begin planning for deterrence beyond the year 2000. What can we do, the President is asking, to render the maintenance of peace less dependent on the threat of mutual annihilation?

To a man, the Democratic presidential candidates have vocalized tirelessly their disapproval of what they call “Star Wars,” but they have offered no alternative vision for the next century. That they are for arms control they have made abundantly clear. But who isn’t?

The Democrats’ obsession with arms control is little more than a confusion of means and ends. Our goal should be more stability, not fewer weapons. Only to the extent that arms control contributes to stability does it have any value. But far more important from the standpoint of global stability is the relative balance of forces. In the end it is not arms control that deters wars, but arms.

Moreover, no brilliance is required to see that demonstrations of excessive eagerness to negotiate are just bad form, which is why the more the Democrats speak about arms control, the less successful they will be at achieving it. It is no accident that 6 1/2 years into the Reagan military buildup an agreement of historic proportions appears to be in the offing--all this from a President who once tagged the Soviet Union as the “evil empire.”

It is unfortunate that the Democrats’ opposition to Star Wars has served so well the purposes of that other Great Communicator, Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Observing how, with no effort on the part of the Soviets, we managed to reduce from 200 to 50 the number of MX missiles to be deployed, enjoying now the growing domestic pressure to prevent deployment of the highly accurate D-5 missiles on America’s Trident submarines, Gorbachev prepares to watch the Democrats reverse Reagan’s fleeting steps forward in the area of strategic defenses. Despite the considerable SDI-type program of his own, Gorbachev can still with a straight face pretend that Reagan’s SDI has somehow upset the apple cart. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It would hurt neither the Democrats nor the nation to undertake a reexamination of the prevailing assumption that strategic defense and arms control are incompatible. Indeed, if anything, it would appear that strategic defenses would work better at reduced levels of offensive armament; at the same time, the deterrent value of reduced arsenals would be significantly enhanced by the existence of defensive systems. In short, Star Wars needs arms control; arms control needs Star Wars. And world peace may require that we learn how to put the two together.