Edward L. Rowny
Reagan's next important speech, given at his alma mater, Eureka College, was an
outline of what he planned to do in strategic arms negotiations. He said it was not
sufficient to limit arms but necessary to reduce them.
To give emphasis to reductions over limitations, he changed the acronym from
SALT to START [strategic arms reductions talks]. Significantly, Reagan pointed
out that it is not sufficient to limit launchers of weapons as SALT had done, but
that we needed to limit the warheads on missiles to be fired from the launchers.
He made limiting warheads the main object of reductions. He also proposed that
there be a reduction of throw-weight, that is, the total amount of nuclear power.
This was highly important because the Soviets had roughly four times as much
nuclear power as the United States. If total nuclear power were not brought back
into line, not much would be accomplished in the field of arms control.
Two other important items to which attention was paid were equitability and
verifiability. The Soviets were willing to take percentage cuts, but not to lower
equal levels. President Reagan stressed that equality be the watchword.
Reagan also stated that the U.S. would enter into no agreement that was not
verifiable. This was very difficult to achieve because the Soviets had always
resisted intrusive verification measures. The Soviets habitually ruled out any type
of on-site inspection. We also encountered difficulties with verification in SALT
II over such items as encryption of telemetry.
In summary, President Reagan wanted to negotiate with the Soviets on reducing
substantially the numbers of strategic offensive arms. He also wanted to reduce the
right things and do it in a verifiable way.
Q ..
When you spoke about establishing priorities for modernizing arms after our 15
years of neglect, are you taking the neglect as far back as the Nixon administra-
tion?
Our neglect of strategic arms predates the Nixon administration. It began with
A
McNamara's unilateral cuts in the early 1960s. McNamara thought that if we
limited our forces, the Soviets would follow our example and limit theirs. You will
recall that he said we would not deploy more than 1,000 ICBMs because there was
no need to go beyond that number. He said the Soviets had neither the capability
nor the intention of ever surpassing us.
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