Salt Syndrome; Public Affairs

- So I feel the SALT II agreement is a good thing, but it doesn't go far enough. An agreement like that will not keep people from moving ahead and building machines and guns and warfare to destruct the world. - I think that entering into these types of agreements with powers like the Soviet Union can only weaken this country. - I can't see any reason for the SALT II treaty. - I think we have to do something to get along with Russia. - Maybe it's a step in the right direction. - The one thing that bothers me is whether we know what Russia is doing. - Of course, being an average citizen, I don't know what we've got and what they've got. - Who's right, and does it really make any difference? For the next half hour, we will explore the facts about military strength. We look at where we stand relative to the Soviet Union, and how SALT II will affect America's security.

With only half the gross national product of the United States, the Soviets have outspent Americans on the military for many years, both in conventional and strategic weapons. [music, weaponry sounds] Such a rapid and intense armament program has not occurred since Hitler's armament of Germany before World War II. The Soviets are spending three times more than the United States for strategic arms.

But the United States began moving in the other direction in the 1960s, while Robert McNamara was Secretary of Defense. - We think it's in our interest and theirs to limit the deployment of the defensive weapons and we're quite prepared to discuss possible limitations in the deployment of offensive strategic nuclear weapons as well. - Secretary McNamara felt that the Soviets would not enter into an arms limitation agreement until they caught up to the United States, so he began to disarm. This established the pattern of unilateral disarmament, which we call the SALT Syndrome. One thousand American B-47 strategic bombers were phased out beginning in 1961. Our supersonic B-58 strategic bombers were deactivated in 1970.

President Carter accelerated our unilateral disarmament. In 1977, he cancelled the B-1 bomber, which was to replace our obsolete B-52 bombers. At the same time, the Soviets were building and deploying their new supersonic strategic bomber, the Backfire, at the rate of one every twelve days. And they are already testing three even newer strategic bombers. The U.S. has no plans for a new strategic bomber until at least the 1990s. The Soviet Union's medium and heavy strategic bomber force now number 675, while the U.S. bomber force has been reduced to 414. The number of United States strategic missiles was frozen at the 1967 level.

The Soviets continued to build missiles even after they passed U.S. numerical levels in 1969. President Carter further accelerated our disarmament by canceling our only ICBM production line. At that time, the Soviets were producing or testing eight new ICBMs. - During the past decade, the Soviets have added over a thousand strategic missiles of improving accuracy to their inventory and increased their number of deliverable warheads threefold. The Soviets are deploying the SS-18 and the SS-19 in numbers such that they will have high assurance of destroying the bulk of Minuteman solos in a preemptive strike in the early 1980s.

- The Soviets have at least 1,400 intercontinental ballistic missile launchers to our 1,054. Actually, this badly understates the Soviet advantage because many of their ICBM silos are designed for refire, while U.S. silos are not designed to be reloaded and refired. The Soviets have at least 1,000 extra missiles for refire, making their advantage in ICBMs at least 2,400 to our 1,054. These scale models of the latest deployed Soviet and American ICBMs show the relative size of missiles on both sides. Because of the larger size of the Soviet missiles, they have a 6-1 advantage over the U.S. in missile firepower. Even Soviet mobile ICBMs are not included in the ICBM count because they can be hidden

from our satellites in any building. So we don't know how many they have, but the U.S. has no mobile ICBMs. The number of U.S. sub-launched ballistic missiles was frozen at the 1967 level. The Soviet advantage in all types of ballistic missile submarines is now 93 to our 41, more than 2 to 1. The newest Soviet submarines, the Delta Class, have a ballistic missile, the SSN-8, with a range of 5,500 nautical miles, 3,000 miles longer than any of our sub-launched ballistic missiles. They are capable of reaching any target in the United States from protected Soviet waters. The first Trident, the comparable U.S. submarine, will not be operational until 1981.

During the past decade, hundreds of U.S. Navy ships have been mothballed. - The United States Navy in the last 10 years has been cut in half. That's a very serious drop from 950 ships down to something like 450 ships. To the point now where we have fewer ships than we had before Pearl Harbor. In the meantime, the Soviets have vastly built up their Navy. In attack submarines, the Soviet advantage is 3 to 1. When all types of active combat ships, large and small, are counted, the Soviets' numerical advantage is almost 5 to 1. The United States followed Secretary McNamara's theory of no defense, which is called Mutual

Assured Destruction. The theory is that if the populations of two nations are undefended, the people of each nation become hostages against nuclear war. Because if one side strikes first, the other could retaliate against its civilian population. So you play a very important role in U.S. strategy, that of nuclear hostage. - This is a policy which I believe to be immoral, self-defeating, and devastating in the context of America's ability to manage inevitable crisis. - One problem with this no defense theory is that the Soviets don't agree. They are defending themselves.

The Soviet civil defense program provides shelters for military and civilian leaders and protection for a large percentage of industry. New housing construction includes underground shelters. Soviet losses would be dramatically reduced by their civil defense preparations. The U.S. has abandoned its civil defense program in everything but name. The Soviet Union also built a massive strategic defensive weapons system, backed by 100 times as many radars as we have. The Soviets built 2,600 fighter interceptors, while the U.S. cut back to 309. Their supersonic fighters can overtake our aged B-52s from behind. The Soviets built 12,000 surface-to-air missiles to shoot down bombers, while the U.S.

cut back to zero. During SALT I, we caught the Soviets in a massive violation of that accord by testing the SA-5 in an anti-ballistic missile mode. The SA-5 is the world's largest bomber defense missile, it has now deployed throughout the Soviet Union, has been deployed at great, great cost. This missile, with a ceiling of well over 150,000 feet, range of over 200 miles is capable of defending the Soviet Union against ballistic missiles. The Soviets are now on the threshold of deploying a particle beam weapon which would throw giant lightning bolts up at incoming ballistic missiles to simply obliterate them. It is my judgment that the weapon has now been largely perfected and will appear in

the field operationally early in the 1980s. So when you combine the SA-5 and the massive Soviet particle beam weapon effort, I foresee a time very soon early in the 1980s when the Soviets will believe they are largely immune to attack from abroad. - We have placed ourselves at a significant disadvantage, voluntarily. This is not the result of SALT, it is the consequence of unilateral decisions, extending over a decade and a half, of a strategic doctrine adopted in the '60s, and of the choices of the present administration. All these actions were unilateral and avoidable. Rarely in history has a nation so positively accepted such a radical change in the military balance.

[Russian speech] By 1972, the Soviets had already gained a three-to-two numerical advantage over the United States in ICBMs. This Soviet advantage was accepted by the U.S. in the first Strategic Arms Limitation agreement. SALT I was approved by the U.S. Senate in 1972, but with the Jackson amendment, which required that the next SALT treaty must be equal. - As a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, I was deeply concerned about the imbalance inherent in the SALT I treaty. However, because of President Nixon's firm commitment, which was in turn, supported before the Congress by the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, leading to modernization of our

strategic forces, I did support the treaty. This modernization was to include the Trident submarine, the MX missile, the cruise missile, the B1 bomber, and advanced research and development as well. - Every one of the United States' defense programs that was promised in order to get SALT I has now been either canceled, delayed, or stretched out, and it puts us in the position of facing the threat of the '80s with equipment designed for the '60s. Meanwhile, the Soviets have modernized their forces by spending $104 billion, more than the United States on strategic weapons in the last decade. In 1979, the Carter administration settled for a SALT II treaty which only appears to be equal.

- The SALT II treaty reduces the danger of nuclear war. For the first time, it places equal ceilings on the strategic arsenal of both sides, ending a previous numerical imbalance in favor of the Soviet Union. - But this treaty does not meet the standards of the 1972 Jackson Equality Amendment to SALT I. - To enter into a treaty that favors the Soviets, as this one does, on the ground that we will be in a worse position without it, is ladies and gentlemen, I think, appeasement in its purest form. - I think the treaty almost guarantees that you're going to have a strategic inequality and a very significant inequality, not only now at the beginning of the treaty time, but in 1985, when the treaty ends. In a word, I think we got out-negotiated. SALT II will codify the current American military position vis-a-vis the Russians, and will,

in fact, concede superiority to the Russians, and at the same time, cosmetically give the impression to the American people of "well done." - From a historical point of view, it's clear that we cannot trust the Soviets to keep SALT II. Out of 27 summit agreements with the Soviet Union, they have broken or cheated on all but one, and that, of course, includes SALT I. I think it's quite clear that we must have some form of positive verification of this treaty. - The administration claimed that this treaty is verifiable is simply not true. There is no way that intelligence, for instance, can tell you how many of a certain missile are being manufactured in the Soviet Union. We can't verify that. We can't verify the range of a cruise missile. Any more than you can verify how far an automobile will go if you go out and take a picture of it in the parking lot. And furthermore, you can't tell, and this is very important, you can't tell, for sure,

how many individual warheads are within a Soviet missile nose cone. - The trouble with signing these agreements is that, as well meaning as we are, we live up to them and the euphoria sets in and the Congress just simply will not vote in increased conventional weapon spending following SALT II as they did not after SALT I. - That agreement will now in effect codify some fundamental deficiencies between the United States and the Soviet Union with grave consequences on America's ability to manage inevitable crisis in the period ahead. - SALT II is so lopsided that if we allow the Soviets to get away with this one, then we'll never be able to get any equitable arms control agreements with the Soviets, no matter how hard we try. - One of the ways in which the numbers were manipulated to make SALT II look equal was that over 200 B-52s,

retired to the aircraft boneyard in Arizona, are countered against the U.S. limits as strategic weapons, even though they would take more than a year to get flying again. Yet, the 150 deployed operational Soviet Backfire bombers are not counted as strategic weapons in the Soviet limits. - We should be concerned because with a range of over 5100 nautical miles, the Backfire bomber, launching from its bases in Northeastern Siberia, can cover all of the United States recovering in Cuba, Mexico, or Latin America. - The treaty grants the Soviet Union a unilateral right to 308 launchers for heavy ICBMs. While the Joint Chiefs of Staff recognized in the outset... - General Rowny represented the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the SALT II negotiations for more than six years. But he retired in June 1979 so that he could speak out against this treaty. - Further, the United States was not even compensated for this large asymmetry.

- The U.S. has no heavy ICBMs and SALT II would prohibit us from building any. The 308 Soviet heavy missiles alone possess more destructive power than all our missiles combined and give the Soviets a first strike capability. The SS-18, one of the Soviet heavy missiles, can deliver 10 warheads, each of which is more than 50 times as large as the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In just 17 years, the SALT Syndrome has reduced the United States from a position of clear military superiority to one of clear inferiority. The SALT II would now lock us into inferiority. The Soviets now have a two-to-one advantage over the United States in offensive strategic

weapons, a 47-to-one advantage in defensive strategic weapons, a two-to-one advantage in major surface combat ships and submarines, and are more than four-to-one advantage in tanks and artillery. Why have the Soviets worked so hard to gain military superiority? Lenin and every Soviet leader since have stressed that the ultimate Soviet objective is world domination. [translator] - Capitalism is a society without a future. Vietnam has been a glorious victory after Vietnam it was Laos and Cambodia who won their freedom. - Since SALT I, the Communists have accelerated their takeover of other countries without opposition from the United States.

Communism has indeed been succeeding in its move toward world domination. - Every war since SALT I has been started by the Soviets in one way or another. It's been fought by their proxies. It's been protected by friendship treaty or they have used their veto in the United Nations. When we had clear superiority, we forced them to back down in Cuba. Now that they are acquiring superiority, they will start to coerce us in our allies. During the Soviet-backed revolution in Iran, President Carter ordered the United States carrier Constellation to go to Iran to help stabilize the situation. But he had to back down and recall the carrier when the Soviets warned us not to intervene in Iran. The disruption of the flow of Iran in oil triggered our recent oil shortage. OPEC sees our power waning and they with strong Soviet encouragement continue to increase

oil prices exorbitantly. If SALT II is ratified without really major changes, we can expect greater coercion everywhere in the world. - Too much time has been lost. Too many weapons systems have been unilaterally abandoned. Too many military adventures have been encouraged by the Soviet Union. The growth of Soviet strategic nuclear forces has been inexorable for a decade and a half. It is imperative that we recognize without illusion that dangerous trends that are emerging. It is crucial that we begin to rectify them now. - We all want peace, but for the past several years, the Soviets have negotiated SALT on the basis of what's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable. So in my opinion, we must reject SALT as currently proposed and stop this continuous disarmament

and appeasement. The facts are, we are already behind. Our choice is clear. We either must accept disaster through weakness and disarmament or peace through strength. Which do you want? - In a nationwide opinion survey, we found that 77% of all registered voters favor some kind of nuclear arms limitation, but at the same time, as many as 89% would be opposed to an agreement which contains some of the terms of SALT II. For example, 80% would oppose an agreement that leaves out some Soviet missiles and bombers which could strike the United States. Clearly, even though Americans want to limit nuclear arms, the more they find out about the details of SALT II, the more they oppose it. In addition, 65% want the United States to be superior to the Soviet Union in military and technological capability.

33% want the two countries to be equal and only 2% want the United States to be inferior to the Soviet Union. We in the United States face greater danger today than we did in December 1941 after Pearl Harbor. History tells us that only the strong survive. The decision is yours, call your senators now. If you agree with Governor Clements, get involved in the debate. Fight peace through strength, Boston, Virginia, 22713.