McNAMARA'S PERSPECTIVE
Brighton marked a turning point which will almost certainly be endorsed at Scarborough.
The enthusiasm which brought Labour to power in 1964 and which was turned into apathy and despair by the antiworkingclass policies of the government will now be revived under the impulse of the new militancy which is developing within the movement.
Socialism is once more on the agenda for British Labour!
September 9.
OF UNLIMITED MEGA-DEATHS
In an address to United Press International publishers and editors at San Francisco September 18, Defense Secretary Robert 5S. McNamara made one of the most important statements in the past decade on U.S. military strategy.
He announced Johnson's decision to build a "limited" Nike-X missile system which will cost $5 billion. It will rely on long-range radar to pick up approaching missiles thousands of miles away, launch Spartan interceptor missiles within 400 miles of the target and fast-— accelerating Spring missiles within fifty miles of the target.
McNamara claimed that this network was being installed as a countermeasure to the emerging nuclear capability of China.
"China has been cautious," he said, "to avoid any action that might end ina nuclear clash with the United States -however wild her words ~-- and understandably so. We have the power not only to destroy completely her entire nuclear offensive forces, but to devastate her society as well.
"Is there any possibility, then, that by the mid-1970's China might become so incautious as to attempt a nuclear attack on the United States or our allies?
"It would be insane and suicidal for her to do so, but one can conceive conditions under which China might miscalculate. We wish to reduce such possibilities to a minimun."
He stated that the anti-China system would bring the added benefits of restraining China from employing nuclear blackmail against her neighbors and linmiting nuclear weapon proliferation in that area, strengthening the Minutemen sites against Soviet attack, and protecting the U.S. against the accidental launching of an intercontinental missile.
The bulk of his speech, however, was directed to the Soviet leadership. He warned Moscow against following the U.S. example and expanding its limited antimissile network. The penalty, he indicated, would be an increase by the U.S. of its offensive arsenal.
"The cornerstone of our strategic policy," he stated, “continues to be to deter deliberate nuclear attack upon the United States, or its allies, by maintaining a highly reliable ability to inflict an unacceptable degree of damage upon any single aggressor, or combination of aggressors, at any time during the course of a strategic nuclear exchange -- even after our absorbing a surprise first strike.
"This can be defined as our ‘assured destruction capability.'"
McNamara went on to say: "The United States cannot -- and will not -- ever permit itself to get into the position in which another nation, or combination of nations, would possess such a first-strike capability, which could be effectively used against it...
"Now, we are not in that position today -- and there is no foreseeable danger of our ever getting into that position."
He pointed out that, as matters stand, neither the Soviet Union nor the United States possesses a first-strike capability and both have "an actual and credible second-strike capability" against one another. However, the United States "does have a substantial superiority over the Soviet Union in the weapons targeted against each other."
Washington is determined at all costs to maintain this advantage. "We are
not going to permit the Soviets to outdistance us, because to do so would be to jeopardize our very viability as a nation."
The defense secretary called on the Soviet leaders to begin negotiations to slow down the catastrophic nuclear arms race and reduce the size of the overkill arsenals both sides possess. Both powers now have more than enough ICBM's to deter a first strike by the other.
"Our alert forces alone carry more than 2,200 weapons, averaging more than one megaton each," he said. "A mere 400 one-megaton weapons, if delivered on the Soviet Union, would be sufficient to destroy over one-third of her population, and one-half of her industry. And all of these flexible and highly reliable forces are equipped with devices that insure their penetration of Soviet defenses."
Significantly, McNamara made no mention of tactical atomic weapons which the Pentagon has plans to use in what the defense secretary designated as "a wide spectrum of lesser forms of political and military aggression -- a level of aggression against which the use of strategic nuclear forces would not be to our advantage..."
The decision to go ahead with a limited missile defense system at this time is characteristic of Johnson's style of procedure. His administration keeps taking partial steps in escalating the arms race while protesting that it would prefer to take the opposite course if only the enemy would be more reasonable.
For months influential members of Congress and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, egged on by big corporate contractors, have been pressong for a massive antimissile system costing $50 billion or more to be erected against a supposed Soviet surprise attack. The administration has been reluctant to plunge into so costly a venture when the federal budget is already far out of balance.
However, Johnson does not want to foreclose such a move lest, among other reasons, the less restrainable Dr. Strangeloves in official circles charge in the coming election year that he is jeopardizing the security of the American people. The plan to proceed with a limited Nike-x network is a step in that direction.
McNamara argued that the sole purpose of stockpiling such colossal megatonnage is to deter the Soviet Union and China and that the United States does not harbor any aggressive intentions.
His assurances are rendered somewhat dubious by what James Reston, associate editor of the New York Times, had to say in a book published the same week. Reston, who has direct access to the thinking of the Pentagon's military strategists, writes that Khrushchev's assumption that the United States would never use nuclear power was "highly reckless," adding: "For nuclear war...is not ‘unthinkable.' It is, in cold fact, being thought about and planned."
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