Fire One on SALT

It is astonishing to reflect that it has been eight years since it was proclaimed, on a national review cover (March 9, 1971), that: “1. We are behind in the missile race. 2. If we do nothing about it, the Soviet Union will rule the world.” Of course, time flies when you’re busy, and that’s what we’ve been: busy dumping a Vice President, a President, and a subcontinent; busy aborting the ABM, the B-l, the search for alternative energy sources, the dollar, and the unborn; busy indulging the whims of every thumb-sucking minority and crackpot special-interest group that has the wherewithal to buttonhole a congressman.

But now this message of squandered opportunity and urgent necessity is suddenly respectable, and this was Paul Nitze’s message at a recent meeting of the Charlottesville, Virginia, Committee on Foreign Relations. Nitze, Harvard 1928 (cum laude), the Director of Policy Studies for the Committee on the Present Danger, is nobody’s idea of an extremist. Brezhnev calls him “the whitehaired hawk.” He is not a hawk. Hugh Sidey of Time recently said he was “James-Bondian.” He is, on the contrary, a dedicated, though uncharismatic, public servant, and a prudent bureaucrat. He served six of Jimmy Carter’s seven predecessors in an assortment of jobs including Secretary of the Navy and Deputy Secretary of Defense.

JA

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Joseph A. Rehyansky

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It is astonishing to reflect that it has been eight years since it was proclaimed, on a national review cover (March 9, 1971), that: “1. We are behind in the missile race. 2. If we do nothing about it, the Soviet Union will rule the world.” Of course, time flies when you’re busy, and that’s what we’ve been: busy dumping a Vice President, a President, and a subcontinent; busy aborting the ABM, the B-l, the search for alternative energy sources, the dollar, and the unborn; busy indulging the whims of every thumb-sucking minority and crackpot special-interest group that has the wherewithal to buttonhole a congressman.

But now this message of squandered opportunity and urgent necessity is suddenly respectable, and this was Paul Nitze’s message at a recent meeting of the Charlottesville, Virginia, Committee on Foreign Relations. Nitze, Harvard 1928 (cum laude), the Director of Policy Studies for the Committee on the Present Danger, is nobody’s idea of an extremist. Brezhnev calls him “the whitehaired hawk.” He is not a hawk. Hugh Sidey of Time recently said he was “James-Bondian.” He is, on the contrary, a dedicated, though uncharismatic, public servant, and a prudent bureaucrat. He served six of Jimmy Carter’s seven predecessors in an assortment of jobs including Secretary of the Navy and Deputy Secretary of Defense.