April 12, 1978

Can We Trust The Living Dead?

Can you convince a zombie that "power is the perception of power"?

This is the conundrum we must answer conclusively before the United States can manufacture and deploy the so-called "neutron bomb."

President Jimmy Carter wisely has postponed the decision until we can get a handle on the controversy - but we can't put it off too long.

The Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) has been under negotiation with the Soviets for more than a decade.  The talks long ago deteriorated into useless exercises of rhetoric.  It is doubtful that anything useful ever will come of them.

Over the years, the United States has cut back on its military strength - presumably as gestures of goodwill to induce Russia to follow suit.  The communists, meanwhile, intensified their military strength.  As a result, U.S. defense capability relative to the Soviets has dwindled from superiority, to equivalency, to "sufficiency."

One ponders the vague euphuisms and worries that behind the reassuring words there may be a fatal drift of policy.

Personally, I feel the reduction in U.S. military power has been accepted by a succession of presidents and Congresses as a realistic accommodation to latent isolation and concern over inflationary costs.

The need to be militarily strong in a military world, while providing the good life for a democratic society, places U.S. political leaders between a rock and a hard place.

Having watched Presidents Nixon and Ford get chewed up for advocating defense strength, President Carter appears to be substituting the perception of power for the real thing.  His aides peddle this concept vigorously on Capitol Hill as they justify cancellation of the B1 bomber and slashing the Navy budget in half.

Such actions belie the militant speech President Carter gave at Wake Forest University last month wherein he warned the Soviet Union against continuing its massive build up of military might far exceeding defensive requirement.

"We will modernize our strategic systems and revitalize our conventional forces," he said.

Waffling on the neutron weapon issue can only encourage the Soviet Union to bolder military adventures.  You can't stuff words in a cannon.

The neutron bomb really is a warhead for the Lance 75-mile missile and the 11-mile atomic cannon.  It was designed as a "clean" explosive to replace the devastating atomic warheads now deployed at NATO bases.

The main purpose of the neutron weapon is to stop Russia's 16,700 tanks poised on its frontiers.  Tank technology has developed to the point that conventional "gun-powder" explosives are ineffectual.  The neutron warhead spews out powerful x-rays that penetrate steel armor.

Russia has launched a massive propaganda campaign depicting the neutron warhead as a horror weapon.  Certainly its ability to kill people, while leaving buildings relatively undamaged, smacks too much of Orwellian fiction for civilized tastes.

The weapon is too selective and too convenient in the view of Germany and France who would bear the brunt of a Soviet attack.  It is reasoned that the U.S. is reluctant to use atomic weapons, but might not hesitate to employ clean neutrons.

This is rather tortured reasoning, in my opinion, but it suffices to make our principal NATO allies nervous.

Strangely, no one has brought up a more serious objection to the neutron warhead: it does not kill all its victims instantly.

The "enhanced" radiation diffuses as it spreads out from the point of explosion.  Persons close to "ground zero" absorbing a thousand rads of neutrons will be "immediately rendered inoperable" as the Pentagon quaintly puts it.  In other words, the human nervous system will not be capable of moving a trigger finger.

Soldiers outside this instantaneous circle will die lingering deaths of several hours to several days.

What will be the attitude of enemy tank fighters who know they have absorbed a lethal dose of radiation but have time for reckless revenge before they become "inoperable"?

I asked the Pentagon press officer - a two-star general - this question recently.  He stuttered for awhile but finally asserted that "Russians do not have a tradition of kamikaze psychology."

This is not good enough.  I don't trust the living dead, whether Russian or Japanese.  We must noodle out the impact of this new weapon without further delay - preparing to use it or some other powerful system if necessary.

If Russia does not reciprocate President Carter's gestures of appeasement - and I fear it will not - we will know they do not perceive us with power.  Our only recourse then will be to sack the SALT and prepare to defend ourselves against a certain enemy.

Author: Lindsey Williams