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the possibilities of cheating by testing new weapons behind the moon and even the sun, were just a few of the inventive arguments posed to kill the nuclear test-ban negotiations. During this same time, I saw Eisenhower cancel the B-70 bomber and then reinstate it after being subjected to enormous pressure by the political leaders of the Republican Party. Exaggerated estimates of the Soviet nuclear bomb stockpile and delivery-system strength have been cited several times in order to justify purchasing unneeded US strategic forces. Interestingly, at no time when the truth was discovered did the creators or promoters of those distorted predictions show any concern about the buildup they had stimulated, or propose that the United States revise its objectives in order to limit the level of American and Soviet nuclear buildups. Last year, I spoke with a man who in 1950 had been one of the most vocal and articulate alarmists about the "bomber gap." I asked him why he hadn't revised his view of the Soviet threat when it became known that the Soviet Union did not have the suspected bomber force. His answer was that he had always been certain that the Soviets would present a nuclear threat to the United States sometime, and he didn't want to make it too easy for them. Even now, he isn't willing to admit that the enormous American nuclear-weapons buildup might have had anything to do with the ultimate buildup in the Soviet Union. Many other longtime advocates of a very strong military posture have been equally unwilling to recognize any cause-and-effect relationship between American initiatives and Soviet response. Recently, President Ronald Reagan himself denied this phenomenon in arguing for his military buildup. Close observation of military technology and development has convinced me that much of the Soviet nuclear buildup has been undertaken in direct response to American initiative. As President John Kennedy's special assistant for science and technology, I saw how he, too, had to contend with powerful opposition when he chose to continue Eisenhower's efforts to negotiate a nuclear-test ban. In fact, the opposition to Kennedy's efforts became even more intense when it appeared that he just might succeed. Similarly, pressure from Congress, the Defense Department, and outside groups caused Kennedy to build a much larger Minuteman |
missile force than was necessary, even after reconnaissance made it clear that the suspected missile gap did not exist.
I have observed similar pressures on subsequent Presidents. President Lyndon Johnson, for example, decided in 1967 to buy a modest antiballistic-missile system to protect the country from a hardly conceivable Chinese missile attack and, incidentally, protect himself from a much more probable attack by Republicans during the 1968 presidential election, when he expected to be a candidate. I attended a meeting of a special advisory group appointed by Johnson to advise him on the deployment of the Nike Zeus ABM defense system. The group's overwhelming verdict was that the system would not provide much protection and therefore would be a waste of money. Johnson accepted that advice but decided to build the cheaper anti-Chinese system to blunt political attacks on the earlier decision. This was hardly the first or the last time that billions of taxpayers' dollars were spent for political rather than security reasons. President Jimmy Carter yielded on the MX in the hope of getting the SALT II treaty through Congress. President Gerald Ford and his Secretary of Defense, James Schlesinger, because of military pressures, proposed to produce what they called a "limited, strategic, war-fighting capability" that Schlesinger ultimately admitted to Congress was planned for "a highly unlikely contingency." In an April 7, 1984, report on the successful effort to sell the B-1 bomber, the San Francisco Examiner detailed a history of fraud by the manufacturer in which funds for the space shuttle and other government projects were used to keep the B-1 project alive after it had been shut off by the Carter Administration. The story went on to outline the company's strategy of placing contracts so widely that almost every state and hamlet had a stake in the B-1's future. Even though the bomber is generally suspected to be unneeded, the campaign succeeded. According to the Examiner, the average stake per state on the B-1 was $700 million, and the states of the 20 senators who lobbied hardest for the aircraft were scheduled to get sums ranging from $1 billion to $9 billion. Even more disturbing is the fact that labor unions |