Letter from Washington

Good news this week on SALT. Scoop Jackson, after huddling with Howard Baker and other anti-SALT senators, told a staff meeting that there are 39 votes against the treaty package. That figure represents a new high-water mark for the opposition and has persuaded the Administration to ease off pressure to force a vote by year-end. Jackson and Baker both stress, however, that vote tallies ebb and flow in response to domestic politics and international developments. (His Starkness the Ayatollah, for instance, is worth as much as ten votes to the opposition, according to one source.) In other words, SALT is not yet dead. It’s just breathing hard.

We have said it before, but it bears repeating. The challenge to SALT II— in the face of united support from the White House, the Pentagon, and the media—is a development of the first magnitude. If America is to save herself, she will do so only by the narrowest of margins. If the SALT II treaty had not come along at this time and if a few flinty patriots had not chosen to stand against it, our last chance to rearm and survive might have slipped away. Paul Nitze, Howard Baker, Scoop Jackson—we can never repay them. And the Soviets, they helped, too. We should be everlastingly grateful for what now appears to be a grave strategic error on their part. They pressed too far and too soon in their drive for international domination. They allowed us time—just barely enough time—to respond.

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Good news this week on SALT. Scoop Jackson, after huddling with Howard Baker and other anti-SALT senators, told a staff meeting that there are 39 votes against the treaty package. That figure represents a new high-water mark for the opposition and has persuaded the Administration to ease off pressure to force a vote by year-end. Jackson and Baker both stress, however, that vote tallies ebb and flow in response to domestic politics and international developments. (His Starkness the Ayatollah, for instance, is worth as much as ten votes to the opposition, according to one source.) In other words, SALT is not yet dead. It’s just breathing hard.

We have said it before, but it bears repeating. The challenge to SALT II— in the face of united support from the White House, the Pentagon, and the media—is a development of the first magnitude. If America is to save herself, she will do so only by the narrowest of margins. If the SALT II treaty had not come along at this time and if a few flinty patriots had not chosen to stand against it, our last chance to rearm and survive might have slipped away. Paul Nitze, Howard Baker, Scoop Jackson—we can never repay them. And the Soviets, they helped, too. We should be everlastingly grateful for what now appears to be a grave strategic error on their part. They pressed too far and too soon in their drive for international domination. They allowed us time—just barely enough time—to respond.