Testing Preferable To Soviet Gimmicks

U.S. scientists detonated a nuclear defense device under the Nevada desert this week and simultaneously demolished Mikhail Gorbachev's blue-smoke-and-mirrors proposal "an unverified nuclear test ban."

Hopefully this will be the end of gimmickry and the beginning of serious negotiations on nuclear
disarmament.

The signs are hopeful.

Gorbachev hinted he wouldn't come and soft-soap Ronald Reagan unless we gave up testing defenses against his monster nuclear ballistic missiles.

When no one reacted but Sen. Teddy Kennedy and the Greenpeace wimps, Gorbachev then declared he wouldn't test any more nuclear weapons if we wouldn't.

Cute.

The Soviets had just completed a long series of nuclear tests, including a laser space killer.  It will be a year or two before they will be ready for their next series.

In the meantime, a "mutual" test ban would derail our space defense program until Russian spies could steal U.S. technological secrets.

The gimmick was that the ban would be based on trust - no need for U.N. teams poking around to verify compliance.  The liberals of America can be counted on to ferret out and denounce the slightest U.S. infraction, while the Soviet gestapo certainly will maintain the usual secrecy of Russian activities.

President Reagan said, "No thanks," and the Europeans - who once fell into a cataplectic fit when the Soviets growled - yawned mightily.

In the face of such indifference, Gorbachev turned up the corners of his mouth and ordered his ambassador in Washington, D.C., to hurry up and get on President Reagan's calendar.

So much for old style Soviet diplomacy.

One advantage of a U.S. president long in tooth is that he remembers things personally that the rest of us consider ancient history.

The United States accepted a Soviet-proposed nuclear test ban back in 1961.  While we slept, the Soviets developed a new generation of super nukes.  The "mutual" moratorium ended with the largest series of explosions the world has ever seen, including one gargantuan warhead equivalent to 58 million tons of TNT!

It is against that terrible weapon - and unknown numbers of others like it - that President Reagan pushes a strategic defense.

After the Soviets broke the 1961 test ban, President John F. Kennedy said, "We know enough now about broken negotiations, secret preparations and the advantages gained from a long test series never to offer again an un-inspected moratorium."

Another Gorbachev gimmick - crippled but not yet dead - is the removal of intermediate-range nuclear missiles from western Europe.  Unverified, of course.  This would place defense of the NATO allies entirely upon U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles 3,000 miles away.

The Soviets believe, correctly, that the United States would not risk an all-out nuclear war for the sake of Europeans an ocean away.  Thus the overwhelming Russian superiority in tanks, planes, artillery and soldiers could pluck Europe unmolested.

For the first time, European anti-nuke protestors in Europe are getting scarce.  They are starting to realize that peace lies in strength, not appeasement.  It is no coincidence that the longest peace Europe has ever known - the 40 years since 1945 - has occurred in the nuclear age.

Perhaps the most revealing indication of the collapse of Soviet gimmickry was the paucity of publicity given Katerina Lvcheva.  In case you have already forgotten, she was the well-coached, 11-year old child actress brought here by Children Of The Peacemakers (honest) to lecture us about the horrors of nuclear war.

Katerina's sojourn among us capitalists supposedly was the return of a similar pilgrimage to Moscow a couple of years ago by Samantha Smith, a 13 year-old American girl also well-coached by liberal parents.  That visit was such a successful gimmick the communists dedicated a postage stamp to her.

What we should not forget is that both trips were gimmicks - one arranged by the Soviets (for Samantha) and the other by a Soviet-line dupe (for Katerina).  The tip-off for Katerina's ploy was the single movie Children Of The Peacemakers chose to show her as typical American -"Rocky IV." It was a fourth-rate movie featuring a slapstick caricature of an evil Soviet fighter.

Obviously, the choice was meant to give the little Soviet "peacemaker" an opportunity to see how misinformed and prejudiced Americans are about Russians.  Katerina dutifully so reported upon her return home.

It is heartening to discover that the western world has wearied of peace gimmicks.  We don't work up a sweat any more over precocious kids full of empty slogans.  Nor of lighting candles, holding hands, toting empty coffins, chalking faces, burning effigies, marching hither and yon, ringing bells, twanging guitars, pouring chicken blood, lying down in hallways, trashing dormitories and spray painting graffiti.

This is kid stuff, which, inevitably had to end with kids.

Gimmicks won't influence so serious a matter as nuclear disarmament.  The U.S. and Russia will do what they must do to prevail in the ideological struggle for the hearts and minds of Earth's five billion people.

But incinerating each other is not in the interest of that struggle.

The current series of U.S. tests aims to develop small nuclear weapons capable of knocking out specific military targets - of winning a war without annihilating either Russia or ourselves.  Testing has enabled the U.S. to reduce its nuclear megatonnage 75 percent since 1960 while improving accuracy.

The Soviets are a long way behind us and desperately trying to keep their nuclear monsters credible - and America intimidated - until they catch up.

Ironically the possibility of nuclear holocaust lessens as hygienic nuclear war becomes feasible.  Testing by both the U.S. and Soviet Union is essential to manageable nuclear weapons.

This may be small comfort, but it is preferable to a gimmick test ban and Armageddon.

Home