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Disarmament Conferences: Ballets At The Brink

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Authors: Robert H. Ferrell

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February 1971 | Volume 22, Issue 2

As spring moved northward over Europe in 1970, a familiar scene was enacted in Vienna, a city where diplomacy is as much a part of the civic tradition as steelmaking in Pittsburgh. In April, Soviet and American officials exchanged greetings, drank champagne, smiled at news cameras, and then settled down to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, known to headline writers as SALT . So, with the opening of the 1970’s mankind’s long dream of disarmament once more cast its spell. It is a compelling vision. But a glance at the past suggests, even to those not inclined to be cynical, that the hopes of beating even a few surplus spears into pruning hooks will remain, as often before, unfulfilled.

The force that brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the parley was their awareness of the awesome destructive power of their nuclear arsenals. Any limitation on these superweapons will enlarge mankind’s chances of surviving future wars. Yet this awareness of possible disaster goes back beyond the era of the atomic bomb. Since the century’s beginning, military inventions —the submarine, the bomber, high explosives—have been creating an age of overkill. Nations have hesitated to pursue arms races that yearly become more threatening to noncombatants, merchant fleets, cities, factories, the countryside, and even civilized life itself.

A second motive for disarmament is the crushing financial burden of maintaining deadly modern weapons. Sooner or later even the richest nations must stagger under the cost of their military forces.

There are, then, powerful reasons for Moscow and Washington to disarm, at least partially. But there are also reasons why even the obvious gains of arms limitation will not produce quick and easy agreement by both sides. First, there is the technical aspect. To reduce armaments it is necessary to work out a formula by which both parties will remain equally strong as they lay aside their weapons. But this requires some knowledge of the capabilities of both sides, since no country will risk an arms reduction without some idea of the cost in security. The further development of the MIRV (multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicle) will make such information far more difficult to obtain. A MIRV warhead contains several nuclear bombs, each capable of reaching a different target. If MIRV is perfected, it will be impossible to know how many weapons an enemy nation has put into the business end of its missiles. Thereafter, there will be no way to calculate the relative nuclear forces of opposing nations. Under the circumstances, MIRV may therefore put an insuperable roadblock in the path of the SALT negotiators.

Political considerations, too, limit the prospects for the Vienna negotiators. To take but one example, both the United States and the U.S.S.R. must make their security plans not only with an eye on each other, but with a deep concern over possible conflict with China.