AMERICA'S STRATEGY GAP

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000200980135-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 22, 2010
• Sequence Number: 135
• Publication Date: October 16, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000200980135-3
ARTICLE AFFEADJZ
ON PAGE
Letters
NOW YORK TIMES
16 OCTOBER 1980
America's Strategy Gap
To the Editor:
'Your Oct. 7 editorial-"Mr. Reagan's
Missile Gap" is as fatally flawed as
SALT II. The flaws of both the treaty
and the editorial are rooted in a blind
faith in the precepts of Mutual Assured
Destruction-MAD..
MAD Insists that both sides aim
their awesome weapons at the civilian
population of the opponent and that
those civilians remain undefended. If
both sides do this, then both nuclear
war and nuclear blackmail become
unthinkable. Hence the notion in the
editorial that "the very idea of superi-
ority has lost all meaning." Hence the
willingness to accept a SALT II which
Is so lopsided in favor of the Soviets.
Why worry that the Soviets can, ac-
cording to Secretary of Defense
Brown, develop a first-strike capabil-
ity against all our deterrent except
Polaris submarines at sea? Why not let
the newest Soviet strategic bomber go
uncounted while U.S. bombers in the
desert are counted in the balance? Why
not allow the Soviets an unlimited num-
ber of mobile ICBM launchers (SS-
16's)? Why worry that - as the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence re-
ports -,some critical provisions of
SALT II can be verified with only low
confidence?. What differences does a
bad treaty make if Soviet superiority
would be meaningless anyway?
For that matter, why bother with a
SALT treaty at all If the numbers and
types of nuclear weapons have no real
meaning?
What Governor Reagan perceives -
but the editorial does not - is that the
Soviets rejected MAD from the outset,
labeling the . theory "bourgeois
zlaIvet&." The Soviets have main-
tained that a combination of strategic
offensive and defensive forces can be
acquired which will permit them to
fight and win a nuclear war. Reagan
further knows that that is precisely
what the Soviets have been doing -
creating offensive nuclear forces to
kill U.S. weapons and strategic de-
fenses, which sharply limits the dam-
age from surviving U.S. weapons. So
the Soviet war-winning doctrine is not
to be dismissed as rhetoric.
While there is in fact a "missile'
gap" In that the Soviets outnumber the
United States 3 to 2 in strategic mis-
siles and 5 to 1 in deliverable megaton.
nage,.the most important problem is
the "strategy gap." So long as we per-
sist in MAD theories and the Soviets
persist in their inexorable quest for nu-
clear war-winning capabilities the
dangerous Imbalances in military
power will grow and SALT treaties
will continue merely to codify those
Imbalances. . DANIEL O. GRmAm
Lieutenant General, U.S.A. (Retired)
Washington, Oct. 7,1980
The writer Is a member of the National
Strategy Committee of theAmerican Se-
curity Council, aprivate organization.
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000200980135-3