KOSYGIN OPENS A DOOR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70B00338R000300090044-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 9, 2006
• Sequence Number: 44
• Publication Date: March 3, 1967
• Content Type: NSPR

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Approved For Release 2006/01/30 : CIA-RDP70B00338R000300090044-8
Kos v -Yin Opens a Door
President Johnson has persuaded the Soviet Union
at least to discuss the possibility of averting an ap-
pallingly dangerous and costly race by Moscow and
Washington to deploy antiballistic missile systems.
This news is especially welcome as an antidote to
recent Soviet statements that discouraged hopes of
negotiating a freeze on A.B.M. development.
It is true that Premier Kosygin has responded cau-
tiously to the President's proposal for discussions
about heading off what would be a major escalation
of the competition in weapons of mass destruction.
But his willingness to discuss "means of limiting the
arms race in offensive and defensive nuclear missiles"
does represent an advance from the Soviet leader's
remarks on the subject at a London news conference
last month.
He then implied that nuclear defense systems did
not increase international tensions and that the limited
Soviet A.B.M. deployment around Moscow was "not a
factor in the arms race." Other Soviet commentators
had previously rejected Mr. Johnson's argument that
the United States and Russia have a common interest
in curbing an A.B.M. contest, as well as in disarma-
ment in general.
Yet that common interest is surely as evident as
it was in the nuclear test-ban treaty of 1963 or in the
pact concluded at the United Nations last year to bar
weapons of mass destruction from outer space. The
first casualty of an all-out Russian-American race to
build A.B.M. systems would be the slowly evolving
detente that produced those two treaties and that has
now brought the two governments close to accord on a
nuclear nonproliferation pact.
Such a race would revive the cold war at its worst
and freeze East - West,:relatiQns, far years. Only the
bellicose Chinese Communist regime could possibly
benefit from this Athinnilk 14ovalnnment. And the
supreme irony is that the systems costing each coun-
try perhaps $60 billion probably would add. little to
either's actual defense capability over the long run,
and certainly would increase, rather than diminish,
the chance of nuclear war. Time is running out for an
agreement to. halt this menacing spiral to the atomic
arms race
Approved For Release 2006/01/30 : CIA-RDP70B00338R000300090044-8