Missile gap
The Soviet proposal to hold negotiations in Vienna this September on banning all weapons in space has caused undue ex- citement. Arms control talks are often seen as the earnest of an intention on the part of the superpowers to make peace by drinking vodka with one another into the small hours. But nations will not agree to limit their armouries unless they come to believe that they can attain the same objectives these armouries serve at lower cost. The 1972 US-Soviet ABM treaty, for instance, was not the expression of good fellowship, but the outcome of a shrewd calculation made in the light of contemporary military technology, given the uselessness of anti-ballistic missile systems against nuclear attack, it was a waste of money to build them. Now, however, the Americans claim they will soon be able to fire high-powered lasers into space, capable of destroying nuclear missiles, thus making their country invulnerable to attack. Although the pro- ject may well not be feasible to the point of offering complete safety, some of the ob- jections raised against it are disingenuous, to say the least. It is said, for instance, that deployment of such weapons will have a 'destabilising' effect because by making the US impregnable, the Russians will be given cause to fear that the Americans will have nothing to lose in launching a nuclear at- tack on them. This anxiety might lead them to do something nasty such as invading Western Europe or making an early nuclear strike on the United States. This is rather unconvincing stuff. Even if the Russians prove unable to develop a space -based defence system of their own (they have suc- ceeded in keeping up with all the advances in nuclear technology up to now), they have little to fear while they continue to hold Western Europe as hostage. And even if the Russians' armoury were rendered too weak for their threats to have any credibility, their experience of the years, first of the US nuclear monopoly, and then of irresistible US strategic superiority, should relieve them of undue fears. Either the US-based system will shield Western Europe equally, in which case we really will have entered an era in which nuclear weapons are superfluous, or it will turn out to be effec- tive only against missiles directed at the American continent, in which case we will remain in exactly the same position as we are in today, dependent on the US entering a European war.
Previous page
