THE WRONG RACE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70B00338R000300100097-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2006
• Sequence Number: 97
• Publication Date: September 17, 1967
• Content Type: NSPR

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Approved For Release 2006/01/30 : CIA-RDP70B00338R000300100097-8
Approved For
The Wrong Race
"There is a kind of mad momentum intrinsic
to the development of all new nuclear weaponry,"
Secretary McNamara said yesterday in announcing
President, Johnson's decision to install a "thin,"
"China-oriented" $5 billion anti-ballistic missile
system over the next five years. And he added:
"The danger in deploying this ... sytem is going
to be that pressures will develop to expand it into
a heavy Soviet-oriented ABM system."
This in indeed the danger, and it is demonstrated
in no small way by the very decision which Mr.
McNamara made the occasion for an eloquent
and compelling argument against a race for arma-
ments and in favor of a "race towards reasonable-
ness." Just last January, Mr. McNamara was telling
the Senate Armed Services that a decision to
build a Chinese-oriented ABM system "need not
be made this year." In the meantime, he has pro-
duced no fresh evidence which would suggest a
heightened Chinese threat. There has, however,
been very heightend political pressure for an Amer-
ican ABM system to counter suspected ABM de-
ployments by the Russians. One can only conjec-
ture whether this pressure may not have had
something to do with the decision to announce the
beginnings of a "thin," anti-Chinese ABM system
at this time, and wonder, too, about the "reason-
ableness" of this.
Still less is the layman able to judge with much.
competence whether such a "thin" system is needed
at all. On this point, the word and judgment of
those who possess the intelligence data and the
incredibly intricate technical knowledge must be
taken largely on faith, for there was little in the
'Secretary's address to document this need.
Where Mr. McNamara was considerably more-
-persuasive, however, was in his argument that "the
next step-towards a heavy ABM system-would
take us and the Russ ans off on a "foolish and feck-
less course." It would, the Secretary said, be a
strong inducement for the Soviets to "vastly in-
crease their own offensive forces." `And this, he
added, would "make it necessary for us to respond
in turn-and so the arms race would rush hope-
lessly on to no sensible purpose on either side."
This is the heart of the matter. And if we are
obliged to assume that the Administration knows
what it's talking about when it talks of the need
for a "thin," Chinese-oriented ABM system, we
must also assume that our officials and our experts
and bur scientists also know what they are talking
about when they say that the Russian-American
nuclear arms race has passed the point where
either contestant can hope to gain decisively by
continuing it.
If the Russians want to continue it anyway, out
of false hope or for their own internal political
needs, they would not require the pretext of the
"President's decision to deploy a new ABM missile
system. Pretexts for arms spending can always be
found. Conversely, if they see some merit in an
agreement which would ratify the current stand-
off, and slow or halt the nuclear arms race, they
can quite readily ignore our ABM deployment for
they are, after all, installing some such system of
their own.
It is up to them-and up to us. If there is to
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more rightly said, "we had better all run, that