Save the Nukes

ON December 4, an anti-nuclear barrage hit the U.S. media. It’s too bad it didn’t come on December 7, for in effect it was a Pearl Harbor attack designed to destroy the very core of the United States’ ability to protect itself and its key allies around the world. Except that this time the attack was launched not by an enemy but by retired officers of our own military, led by Gen. Andrew Goodpaster, former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, and Gen. Lee Butler, former commander-in-chief of the Strategic Air Command. Their agenda was to work for nothing less than, as Gen. Goodpaster put it, the “ultimate complete elimination” of all types of nuclear weapons.

This is not the first time a radical change in our country’s policies regarding nuclear weapons has been proposed. During Eisenhower’s Presidency a strategic nuclear arsenal sufficient to deter the Soviet Union from attacking us directly was built up; research was begun on anti-ballistic-missile defenses to protect the American people even if the Soviets had chosen to attack; and research (in which I was involved) was done on small, discriminate battlefield weapons. However, under President Kennedy and his secretary of defense, Robert S. McNamara, testing shifted away from small, discriminate weapons and missile defense and toward weapons so massive that, in the McNamara theory of Mutual Assured Destruction, neither side would dare use them.

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Samuel T. Cohen

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ON December 4, an anti-nuclear barrage hit the U.S. media. It’s too bad it didn’t come on December 7, for in effect it was a Pearl Harbor attack designed to destroy the very core of the United States’ ability to protect itself and its key allies around the world. Except that this time the attack was launched not by an enemy but by retired officers of our own military, led by Gen. Andrew Goodpaster, former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, and Gen. Lee Butler, former commander-in-chief of the Strategic Air Command. Their agenda was to work for nothing less than, as Gen. Goodpaster put it, the “ultimate complete elimination” of all types of nuclear weapons.

This is not the first time a radical change in our country’s policies regarding nuclear weapons has been proposed. During Eisenhower’s Presidency a strategic nuclear arsenal sufficient to deter the Soviet Union from attacking us directly was built up; research was begun on anti-ballistic-missile defenses to protect the American people even if the Soviets had chosen to attack; and research (in which I was involved) was done on small, discriminate battlefield weapons. However, under President Kennedy and his secretary of defense, Robert S. McNamara, testing shifted away from small, discriminate weapons and missile defense and toward weapons so massive that, in the McNamara theory of Mutual Assured Destruction, neither side would dare use them.