To the Editor:

Patrick Glynn, in his excellent article, “Reagan’s Rush to Disarm” [March], mentions the Soviet Union’s rejection of President Carter’s deep-cuts proposal of Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) weapons in March 1977, but neglects to mention the origin of President Carter’s proposal. . . . The source of the problem was Leonid Brezhnev’s movement of intermediate SS-20s into Eastern Europe in the mid-1970’s.

As a defense against the SS-20s, English Prime Minister James Callaghan, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, and French President Giscard d’Estaing, meeting in Guadalupe in 1979, implored President Carter to send them Pershing and cruise missiles as intermediate-range weapons. The request was repeated after Reagan’s election by the newly-elected heads of state Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, and François Mitterrand. Before sending the missiles, Reagan made every possible attempt to have the Soviet leadership withdraw the SS-20s. . . .

The INF agreement has satisfied the original request of the mid-70’s to have the SS-20s withdrawn. It is therefore a clear-cut victory for President Reagan.

Edward C. Michaud
Weston, Massachusetts

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To the Editor:

. . . Patrick Glynn mentions “powerful psychological forces that produce myopia and strategic incomprehension.” That statement is entirely too kind . . . to those . . . who use the media to indoctrinate the naive and uninformed with . . . political propaganda.

Helen Caldicott of Physicians for Social Responsibility, for example, has appeared on numerous TV and radio talk shows . . . predicting that if Ronald Reagan were elected or reelected, nuclear war would be inevitable. Unless it has escaped my attention, no such event has taken place.

Carl Sagan and the Union of Concerned Scientists [UCS] have supported arms-control proposals made by Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, and Gorbachev. But not once to my knowledge during the five years that the Soviets were deploying their SS-20s did Sagan appear on any TV or radio program to denounce this escalation. When, after saying no for five years, the Soviets walked out of the negotiations, the UCS blamed Reagan for being intransigent. What seems to bother Sagan are the 200 single-warhead missiles pointed at the Soviet Union, but not the 650 to 950 multiple-warhead missiles pointed at the U.S. and NATO. . . .

Samuel T. Cohen, inventor of the neutron bomb, has suggested that the SS-20 may very well be a mobile ICBM. Like ground-launched cruise missiles, SS-20s can easily be concealed, especially in the vast expanse not covered by intrusive inspection under the verification regime of the INF treaty. The distance at which the SS-20 was tested was only 10 percent shy of the ICBM range. In addition, the telemetry was encrypted, the reason being that there is more to the SS-20 than the Soviets wish us to know.

Under the INF treaty, the Soviets are required to dismantle 650 SS-20s. According to current National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs), the Soviets possess at least 950 and possibly 1,200 SS-20s. Is there any way to prove their nonexistence under the criteria for verification? Why does Congress pass a law that binds Reagan to those portions of SALT II not yet violated by the Soviets? What purpose does it serve to ignore the fact that the Soviets have been violating the Helsinki accords . . . ever since they were signed? Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan, as well as the State Department and the Senate, should come under ridicule for keeping this agreement in force. . . .

Charles M. Aleman
River Ridge, Louisiana

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To the Editor:

. . . In the wake of the INF treaty there has been more attention than usual directed at the military balance between East and West. Some Senators have criticized the administration on grounds that it should have tied the INF treaty to negotiations to cut conventional arms as well as intermediate nuclear missiles. Yet fourteen years of negotiations at the Mutual Balanced Force Reduction (MBFR) talks have not produced a shred of accomplishment, due at least in part to Soviet deceptive measures. . . . So hopes that we can cut conventional forces are dubious.

A major assumption of supporters of the INF treaty is that NATO has sufficient nuclear firepower left over to deter Soviet aggression. Indeed, Boston Globe defense expert Fred Kaplan has stated baldly that the deployment of intermediate-range missiles was purely political, and had no military relevance. This assumption is disproved, however, by Christoph Bertram, diplomatic correspondent of the West German magazine Die Zeit. Writing in the Summer 1987 issue of Foreign Affairs, he looks at the nuclear firepower of NATO, and finds it to be fatally flawed. Bertram makes a number of points: NATO has 400 strategic submarine-launched missiles assigned to the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), yet these are unlikely to be fired in response to Soviet conventional aggression confined to Europe; shipboard cruise missiles are not assigned to NATO and are unlikely to be; in case of war the Soviets can preempt nuclear air attacks by forcing NATO planes to switch over to conventional missions; the presence of some 4,600 tactical nuclear weapons in NATO’s arsenal presupposes the least likely of military uses—early on in a war and on friendly territory; finally, the 120 missiles of Britain and France are insufficient to extend deterrence to NATO’s non-nuclear members. . . .

There has been considerable debate over whether the Soviets really would want to attack Western Europe. . . . Some have argued that such an invasion would not be worth the price to the Soviets—citing occupation problems in West Germany, the disruption of trade with the West, etc. Others have even recommended building NATO strategy around a concept of “defensive defense,” whereby large numbers of civilian reservists armed with anti-aircraft and antitank weapons would use a mix of anti-tank defense, civil disobedience, passive resistance, and guerrilla warfare to defeat an invader. . . . But this strategy presents many problems: it leaves the West vulnerable to blackmail; it assumes that any occupation of West Germany and other European countries would turn out the way Afghanistan did (debatable, since, unlike Afghanistan, the terrain of Europe works against the guerrillas and in favor of occupation armies); it would leave Europeans at the mercy of Warsaw Pact troops, to be killed in large numbers by these troops; it assumes there would be outside aid to resistance forces (also debatable, since in Europe the Soviets would no doubt threaten the use of nuclear weapons to deter outside countries from aiding resistance forces). . . .

There is a further danger to the present situation. Continued problems in Eastern Europe and recent fighting in Soviet Armenia have undoubtedly caused Kremlin leaders to be concerned that they are losing their grip on their empire. If so, this could bring about a kind of psychology of desperation which develops into a determination to risk all. Given this fluid situation, which could become very ugly in the near future, it is not smart to enter into disarmament talks that we may regret . . . in years to come.

Michael Daly
Wakefield, Massachusetts

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To the Editor:

I like COMMENTARY very much, . . . so I was saddened to see a deliberate misstatement on the cover of the March issue. . . . “Reagan’s Rush to Disarm” just isn’t so. The article by Patrick Glynn is about a treaty and not about Reagan’s rush to disarm.

Is this blatant misinformation a form of vituperation and hatred or a careless disregard of facts to make a point and/or discredit the President? Your reputation is too good for you to do this.

Ronald Brown
Key Biscayne, Florida

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To the Editor:

Patrick Glynn is on target when he writes about blind faith in “the arms-control process itself,” in which the sheep pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism but the wolves pay no heed.

The 20th century has been unkind to liberal democracies which tried to defend themselves with pieces of paper instead of cold steel. Even today, in Ethiopia, it is the men holding the AK-47 rifles in their hands who control the dribble of food to the starving thousands.

Robert P. Fairchild
Fort Knox, Kentucky

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Patrick Glynn writes:

While I appreciate Edward C. Michaud’s compliment, I am puzzled by his assertion that I fail to mention the SS-20, since mention of the SS-20’s role is plainly made on page 26 of my article. Also, as a factual matter, President Carter’s March 1977 “deep-cuts” proposal covered not intermediate-range missiles but rather strategic arms. The Western INF proposal was not advanced until December 1979. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the rationale for NATO’s INF deployment was not singular but twofold: to counter the Soviet SS-20 and also to restore the credibility of NATO’s strategy of “flexible response.” As West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and others began suggesting in 1977, the credibility of NATO’s strategy of threatening to use nuclear weapons against an attack by superior Soviet conventional forces had inadvertently been undercut by SALT I, which appeared to end the era of U.S. nuclear superiority by codifying a condition of strategic parity between the superpowers.

While it is true that the INF agreement addresses the first issue, the SS-20, the broader problem—the diminished credibility of NATO’s deterrent strategy—has actually been aggravated by the treaty. Not only does the agreement eliminate the weapons seemingly most suited, in the present strategic environment, to the flexible-response mission (an issue touched on by Michael Daly), but the treaty and the anti-nuclear rhetoric used to promote it have further undermined European public support for NATO’s nuclear posture. That is one reason, among several, why the INF agreement is far from being the smashing success the Reagan administration makes it out to be.

Apart from the other issues raised in Charles M. Aleman’s letter, he should be aware that the SS-20’s mobility is not a subject of speculation but instead a matter of public record.

I must say, finally, that Ronald Brown’s odd complaint about the article’s title makes no sense to me. In my opinion, the title conveys very accurately not only the substance of the article but also, unfortunately, the tenor and spirit of the Reagan administration’s approach to arms control these past several months.

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