It's going to be a Monumental struggle in which the administration really hasn't done taking off his gloves. Yeah 2 to get this past you have to to undecided Senators young and vertical both have been part of what I would say is close to half of the Senate people who have not yet indicated publicly or privately how they're going to book how they're going to vote in a very tight ratification struggle one vote becomes enormously important the Panama Canal Treaty, of course, it was approved by 68 votes would be that on Unsolved will be none to spare.Goes through it'll go through with 67 votes. All Americans for salt. The coalition's strategies to Lobby constituents of the Senators, which means all of us are voting age through direct contact Distributing literature and generally putting forward their arguments. That's essentially what the opponents are doing to and naturally both sides are using figures and arguments which favor their positions because voters will be barraged with arguments and accusations from both sides. We've attempted to bring some of those arguments together as well as some of the claims about the motives behind each side stance throughout the story will your comments from God leaves recent visit to Fargo and some responses from a former US salt negotiator and now anti salt to spokesperson Paul nitze with whom I talk by phone. It's a began by explaining to me why he is opposedsalt 2 we hoped that it would be possible to negotiated a treaty with the Soviet Union limiting both sides to equals another word not be to the advantage of a decide to initiate a nuclear war. As it turns out. It's pretty does none of those things. It is not an indefinite duration until 1985 at a time when the relationship between the two sides have to be for the United States. Second point it does not provide for equality or even rough equivalent. It is very one-sided in favor of the forces on both sides by 1985 will be uneven. solve the problems of instability by 1985 they would have increased by a factor of 15 fold their ICBM to knock out alright in the end of the deficiencies of our own program, but it won't help the survivability of on Minuteman silos. Why is there so much opposition to a tree salt to which is really a very modest step toward? Toward the clearing this arms race. Let me let me just very briefly if I may talk about the provisions of that treaty and and then try to examine the mindset of the people who are opposing it. The treaty essentially puts ceilings on the numbers of missiles and bombers. The irrelevant numbers are 2250 missiles and bombers on each side that number will cause the Soviets the scrap about 300 missiles and or bombers. United States doesn't have the scrap anything because it has fewer than 2250 within that the ceiling of 2250 a certain number will be allowed to have multiple Warheads. Call the missiles 1200 of the missiles can carry multiple warheads and another 120 bombers can carry cruise missiles use of these new pilotless drones that can be launched from aircraft and travel up to 2,000 miles and hit hit the targets with great accuracy. Let me just deal with that very briefly with that that notion cuz it's going to be an important part of the whole debate that the Soviet Union somehow is is ahead of the United States the people who peddle this notion engage in them, but I call her one eye view of reality. You close your eyes to everything over here and you look only at what's over here and I can pick out over here a few areas where the Soviet Union is indeed in to asymmetrical military establishments ahead of the United States Soviet Union does have more missiles. Our missiles happen to carry more bombs on them and can therefore reach more targets are we can fire them with greater accuracy? We have Superior computer technology. These are things that are never mentioned by the opponents of the SALT Treaty in the paint of the people who are trying to Peddle the notion that the Soviet Union is ahead in point of fact that two nuclear superpowers are approximately even when your balance things off in an asymmetrical equation and that's them as long as that lasts that provides a certain kind of precarious a stability in the world. the the notion that the Soviet Union instead of an affirmation. Let me put it as a question. These folks are also suggesting that when if Soviets were ahead they can use that lead to threaten the United States either to attack it according to some versions or to try to Blackmail under other versions. The more sophisticated people talk only about the blackmail the less sophisticated sake soon as the Soviets are able to wipe out our icbms. They'll attack us. Question what? What would cause the Soviet leadership? Which today is still composed of the old men who remember World War II very vividly what would cause them to risk? The risk a retaliation from the United States that would wipe out in an hour five times as many people as died in 6 years of World War II mainly 20 million Rush when the memory of those deaths is still a psychological scar on the Soviet psyche why so much opposition groups and individuals have been opposing this treaty for 2 years. Well before its final stage of negotiation And I think it's very important for us to try to understand the mindset of the opponents of this treaty. first of all their opponents of any treaty their opponents of agreement you were talking essentially about people who don't want agreements with the Soviet Union. Who think of the Soviets as the devil and don't want to have any truck with the Devil? Most of them will not admit this others will but I think it's fair to say that then. there is no agreement that the Soviet leadership could accept his fair to its own sense of National Security that the American Security Council that the produced them that fell or the Coalition for peace through strength or Paul Nixa or scoop Jackson could possibly accept Sitting with the Russians saying nothing, but almost nothing but understanding much better than this. And it is not true that I look upon any of those three already in the world that they are. In fact more peace-loving than is the United States that there is no objection to they're having a position because they were using that position with discretion is a future which way would like to see for this country. Do you think we can trust the Soviets enough to make treaties with them? Do you think we should be making treaties with him? Well, I'm not worried about making treaties with them provided. They are Equitable treaties and provided. We are in a position to see to it that still the only way we can see to it that they don't file it while we were unprepared to take the actions which would have been appropriate when the unilateral interpretations of the earlier still treating sounds to me like you're saying that the way we can verify that the Russians will hold up their end of the treaty is for us to be so strong and so powerful so much more so than the Russians that they wouldn't dare increase their own mats for fear of what we might do. Within the next 10 or 20 years. Actually stronger than Russian. But what I'm saying is that if the Russians know if we will take action in order to increase are violated probation. Then there is an incentive for them not to buy later to the probation. I want to ask you about what do you think the Soviet mentality is? I'm wondering if you think the Soviets are are truly interested in avoiding nuclear war or or if you and other people who are very concerned and opposed to the SALT Treaty think of the Soviets. Are all ready and willing to to push the button or to a tour to start a nuclear war and I'm persuaded that they don't want a nuclear war. What they do want however is to achieve an ever-expanding position of influence in a decrease in the position of the United States challengeable. Superpower and we will not in the in the world and they propose to do that with a lot of of action some of the ones that is undertaking in Ethiopia. Eritrean Iraq and Afghanistan so that we could not even try to challenge. The things that they're doing is a straightforward superiority in strategic materials. do you foresee an end to the arms build-up now as I said before I understand the intent of the people who are supportive of the salt II Treaty to at least put a lid on arms build-up some kind of feeling pretty with permissive 13 fold increasingly Hard Target killed capability of their ICBM seven years that it is intolerable. It doesn't even do that when people talk about the process and what is projected from to the end of thought to continue that Trend and sultry what is even more disastrous. There's talk about a it is renewed talk now about a civil defense program and the talk is in terms of an evacuation scheme evacuating the cities in case so far the possibility of nuclear war terms of money. What it finally is coming down to it was relatively little money and still at the study stage. I think it may be fair to say that this was a Carter trial balloon to find out that what the public reaction would be public reaction has tended to be very negative. every year every newspaper editorial I've seen from all kinds of papers has been negative and I think he's going to slightly increase the civil defense budget put it in a in a new agency, which will be responsible both for nuclear war Civil Defense plus civilian nuclear civilian civilian defense and They'll be along study of the possibility of emptying the cities and evacuating the city's all of this presumably because the Soviets do have something that is more developed in the way of civil defense that we do they spend more money on it. But what what is the Soviet civil defense program? First of all, it's so it's hiding the top of your ship in case of War. I assume they have their equivalent of Mount weather Virginia a big hole in the mountain which leads to an underground city where the president and his top staff and the heads of Congress and and I don't know if the secretaries get to go or not, but there will be a functioning government even if for the rest of us are gone, and there's a big money supply in Mount weather and there's a whole ring of such bases underground around the knee Appalachians aroundthe, Washington. Exactly the Soviets were supposed to do something. It's not very clear. What for their skilled workers. I don't I don't know where they supposed to take the skilled workers, but this is on paper part of their program, but the big part of their program is an evacuation plan now with the supposed to evacuate their cities. That may take a couple of days may take a week and during this. The United States just sits there and watches them go out on foot on foot, especially in the winter and they go out to the countryside. I'm not going to make them not making this up. I'm describing what I've read about Soviet civil defense manual and they're told to dig ditches and get in the ditches and cover themselves with brush. But that has anything to do with the nuclear war against the United States. So I'm not quite sure I'm living in the same world. My guess is that the Soviet Union historically has been very defensive-minded because of the many invasions they've had and this is something they do to convince the public that they're doing something but the clues to the Soviet Public's attitude are given by a joke that I first heard 1962 when Crush off son-in-law Badger bait, I've visited Kennedy in the white house and then I heard it again in the New York Times couple years ago in an article by David shipler on Soviet civil defense joke hasn't changed in the intervening years and I'll tell it to you and you can judge for yourselves. Soviet popular attitudes toward their civil defense program goes this way. What do you do in case of alert? You go to the bedroom to take the sheet off the bed you wrap yourself in the sheet and you walk slowly to the nearest cemetery. That's not the punchline why slowly so as not to create panic? Now what that's that joke has been making the rounds since the early sixties and it still making the rounds and what it tells me is that the Soviet people have about as much confidence in their civil defense program how much they spend more money than the American people but their Common Sense have in in the nonsense about Fallout shelters in the early 60s or talk about the evacuating the cities now, I've also read the civil defense manual. description of what does manual call for I need the people are at Los Alamos laboratory. In fact that the Soviets are used. Follow the instructions. I will in fact give you an immense protection against So that the crew and I think it's the month probably untrue and has been demonstrated to be untrue for those who says I have just a couple of well-chosen questions. Number one in the United States. Are we supposed to get out of the cities in our cars? What happens if they don't work or if there's a traffic jam? Where do we go? The current scheme is talking about host areas where where are these hosts areas? And and what who who in the country is supposed to take care of the the masses from the city. I did hear Bartell Toronto who's in charge of us over the fence at the moment explaining that they're now looking into the problem of how do you get the 10 million people off Long Island over the Throgs Neck Bridge leading to the Bronx in orderly fashion now and that's in that kind of slowly right in sheets. Do they take pets with them? That's not a facetious question cuz lots of Americans have pets and what do they do with the pets? What about the sick and the infirm and what about the mental institution to those people get the evacuated also and what happens after a two-week waiting. Assuming, they survive the two week wait until assuming all of these people survive a two-week waiting period during which there has been a nuclear war. What are they come back to? I just throw these out as a few stray questions to suggest that as they study they will have to come up with some answers, which I think will impose themselves. And that the other notion of evacuating the cities will fall on its face through the studies. You can't make a nuclear war on drugs. To civil defense, but it is an important fact. Questions issue is can one make a nuclear war less likely by denying them superiority. I believe that the most dangerous thing would be if we underestimated our capability braces overestimated capability. Then that is what is most likely to cause a nuclear war. so that you don't want the second correctly and also want to be in a position where there is no temptation if it's okay if we go back to a. As a result of Of the loss of salt to when you have an arms race virtually without restraint among other things that's going to mean a positive encouragement to everybody else to get in the act. Why because That's a big boys do it. The big boys have the power and influence in the world. And if you want to have power and influence roll-your-own. If you think that I am a world of 20 nuclear-armed States and a population of 6 billion is a safe place to be by the the year 2 mm them. I have to disagree with that. I think that's that's the kind of world where we are courting disaster. Courting disaster. So I think I could make the case more powerfully that the absence of a SALT Treaty is a more compelling reason to have this tree than the actual limited modest merits of the treaty itself. I am not I repeat predicting that the day after it goes down to defeat by one vote in the United States entered if it comes to that there will be no clear War. I'm saying the kind of world we would be going into. In that situation will be in much more dangerous world that will lead with in probably 20 years to a nuclear war. I think they've already designed their program. So it is is closest Optimum close to the edge close to the Optimum as I can figure out so I don't really think this to over what it would be if there were two trees. Now what we do about it. I think it's the important thing. I'm not sure that if we just had to ratify the salt II Treaty the doctors also have to do is to get at the pad of reversing the current lead singer where that's at the wrote this the Soviets wouldn't stay in the same position. They are as soon as we moved to increase our positions about the optimum point if we increased our plans and our armaments did the Soviets would have changed. But doesn't make much sense to me. Are there already people run Fitness in how much is a GMP there spending on defense today? One estimate is 13% Another has 18% around. Three or four times what we are spending they are making an enormous sacrifice and also their program is if we get into their Five-Year Plan to change that Five-Year Plan and frankly, I don't think there was enough in it for them to change their program. I think during the salt debate we should raise the question about guns and butter. I think we should raise the question about inflation because military spending by its nature. Is very inflationary producing we're pumping billions of dollars into the economy every year without producing goods and services that the public can buy with that money. And and that oughta be introduced into the debate, but I think what you have is a situation where Americans are willing to spend anything if they think it's International, so if they really think it's defense they think they're really being defended by this then they are prepared to spend it. And therefore you don't have a clear-cut choice between guns and butter. You have to have a kind of a fuzzy choice because they they think that the expenditure on guns really is defense. So one of the other one of the other Concepts, we've got a got a raise. This is the weather Whether or not guns in a sense of rifles, but h-bombs added to an arsenal of Overkill are making us more secure coming salt 2 treaty during a recent visit in Fargo. He argue not quite face-to-face with former US salt negotiator and anti salt spokesperson Paul nitz, it spoke with us by telephone from his Washington office. This is Bridget Shay.