It is a pleasure for me to be with you today and to be able to talk about SALT. I don’t really think that we can talk about SALT or violations of SALT I, which I’m also going to talk about today, without putting it into an over-all strategic context. The Administration continues to tell us that SALT II and the SALT process is so important that we must exclude anything else from the discussions. It doesn’t matter what the Soviets are doing in Africa. It doesn’t matter how they are using their Cuban surrogates. It doesn’t matter what military adventurism they are perpetrating in Southeast Asia. All of these things are unimportant—we must consider SALT all by itself. I don’t think that’s possible. And when we do get to the floor of the Senate and debate on SALT II, I guarantee you that I fully intend to raise the issues of our overall defense posture, the Soviet threat, and the strategic balance between the United States and the Soviet Union. It does not make any sense to consider SALT II in a vacuum and exclude all of these other factors. They are relevant. They are extremely important in terms of whether SALT II should or should not be approved.
Let’s talk first about the defense budget. You hear a lot of news accounts both in the printed and in the electronic media about the large military defense budget. And it is large in terms of dollars. It is over 130 billion dollars for fiscal year 1980, and that is a lot of money. But I think we must consider the defense budget in terms of what it will buy, and in terms of comparisons to other criteria.
As a percentage of the Gross National Product, it’s the lowest of any year since 1950—the year before the Korean War started. In fact, even more startling, defense spending for the last three years, fiscal ’78, ’79, and ’80, has been lower than in any year since the Korean War started or the year before in 1950; less than 5 percent—4.8, 4.9 percent of the total productive output of this country. It’s also at the lowest level in terms of percentage of government spending—slightly less than 25 percent. Now the reason I stress this comparison with the pre-Korean War period is that most of you are very well aware that, for all practical purposes, we had just about totally disarmed after World War II. We were a nation which had more than 12 million men under arms. We had atomic weapons when no one else had them. We were militarily superior not only to any other country, but to all the countries put together at the end of WWII. We had not been attacked, and if we had wanted to be the first country to rule the world we certainly could have done so without much of a fight. It would not have been difficult. But we chose to disarm. We had sent nearly everyone home; our military expenditures were very low. We did not anticipate getting involved in another war so quickly and yet, today in 1979, by all those criteria we are spending less on defense and we have fewer men under arms than in 1950. And the levels actually are lower in some cases than they were in 1939 and 1940 when our troops were practicing with wooden rifles.
I have heard some of the pro-SALT sellers talk about how the American people always respond; we always rise to the occasion. We did after Pearl Harbor. Well, we are talking about an utterly and completely different world that we live in. We are not talking about having months to respond, to gear up our industrial capacity, to put people back into the armed services, to build weapon systems to combat that kind of attack. We are talking about an entirely different world, a world in which we have 18 to 22 minutes from the time we know an attack has been launched until we have been hit. And we are not talking about an attack on a relatively remote island, which would not injure the capacity of the United States to wage war for any long period of time. We are talking about a first strike that could be devastating—devastating to this country in terms of ability to retaliate and in terms of our survival. So I think you need to look at the military budget in that perspective, and not just in terms of absolute dollars.
In addition, I think we need to start looking at it in terms of Soviet expenditures. They are outspending us by an estimated 35 to 40 percent a year. The reason I say estimated is that we don’t really know what they are doing. We try very hard through our intelligence gathering activities to determine that, but they are a very, very closed society. They can read the New York Times and Aviation Week and Space Technology, sit in on Armed Services Committee hearings to learn about our defense preparedness. I know who the KGB agents are, I recognize the ones who cover the hill. We, in Congress, talk in terms of exact line items, how many dollars for this weapon system, and it is incredible the non-classified information that is available to Soviet KGB agents. We are a tremendously open society, and I’m glad we are, but the problem is much more difficult for us in obtaining information.
But let’s forget whether or not the Soviets are outspending us and make the hypothetical assumption that we are spending exactly the same number of dollars. Even if that were the case they would still be outspending us two to one in research and development and procurement of new weapon systems. One reason is that we made a conscious national policy decision a few years ago to have an all-volunteer military, and it’s expensive to do that. Fifty-five or fifty-six cents out of every dollar that we spend for defense of that $130 plus billion is for people. It isn’t for airplanes, tanks, guns, weapon systems, nuclear weapons—it is for people, for their salaries, for their fringe benefits, for their housing, for their enlistment bonuses and their reenlistment bonuses and their travel to move them from one place to another. The Soviets spend about 25 cents out of every dollar for people. They have a draft, they have conscription—they don’t have to have nice recruiting posters saying, “Uncle Sam needs you.” They don’t have to spend all their money on recruiting services to try to make military service attractive for people to join. So they outspend us more than two to one on procurement of new weapon systems and on research and development.
Another thing you need to look at is short-sighted budgets. The fiscal year 1980 military budget removed a billion dollars from Air Force research and development. Now that doesn’t show up next year or the year after or the year after that. You are looking at long-term results when you talk about research and development—five, six, seven years down the road. We took five billion dollars out of the Navy ship building programs at a time when our Navy has been reduced from over 900 ships in 1970 to fewer than 450 today. Five billion dollars out of the Navy ship building program—does that show up next year, or the year after? No. From the time you authorize a ship, it’s five to eight years before it’s in the water. This necessitates long lead time financing. So this budget is extremely short-sighted in many areas—in research and development and in procurement. In the mid 1980s, the United States is going to pay for the short-sightedness of not only this year’s budget but also for that of the past three or four years.
There is an argument to be made that the United States has a technological advantage over the Soviet Union. There is a good deal of truth to this argument, but we must recognize that our failure to appropriate adequate funds for research and development is going to haunt us in the years ahead. Just a few examples. Let us examine the position of our strategic Triad. The Triad is a system of strategic deterrence that consists of land based intercontinental bombers, land based intercontinental ballistic missiles, and sea based or sea launched ballistic missiles. Over the years, Republican and Democratic Administrations have supported the concept of the Triad as essential to our nation’s defense. It was believed that the Soviets could not threaten all three legs of the Triad. Whatever their choice was, we could deter war by keeping one or two legs of our Triad invulnerable to a Soviet attack. I think that theory is valid. I think it has worked. I think the Soviets have been concerned and, therefore, have not been willing to even think seriously about an attack against the United States.
But what have we done to our strategic Triad over the last few years? We unilaterally cancelled the B-1 Bomber. The reason I say unilaterally is because we asked nothing of the Soviets in return—absolutely nothing. We did not even say to the Soviets, we will stop production of the B-1 if you will stop production of the Backfire. They built a Backfire bomber that has the capability of hitting 80 percent of the United States in unrefueled flights and landing in countries like Cuba, and that has a refueling probe. The Soviets do practice air-to-air refueling, and it does not reassure me that the Soviets have said verbally that they would not use it as a strategic weapon against the United States. A B-1 or B-52 cannot fly to the Soviet Union and back unrefueled. I know something about air-to-air refueling, I’ve spent the last 20 years as an Air Force Reserve pilot. My duty assignment until I retire is a KC-135 squadron refueling aircraft. So believe me, the Backfire is a strategic bomber. It does have the capability to strike this country. That the Soviets tell us it does not, does not make it so.
The Soviets are building the Backfire at the rate of 2 and 1/2 to 3 per month; they have more than 100 of them already in operation and we anticipate that they will have more than 400 of them by the mid 1980s. What do we rely on? The B-52. The B-52 is being flown by some crews who were not born when it became operational. It is an old airplane that has many other operational problems. I would not want to volunteer to fly a Cruise Missile Penetration mission in a B-52. One might get in, but you are not going to get out. The B-52 is not a substitute for the B-1, no matter how much money you spend on it; you cannot turn it into a B-1. The FB-111 is not an alternative to the B-1. You have probably heard a lot about the replacement of the B-1 with wide bodied cruise missile carriers. Well, that’s an interesting thought. The 747 is a very large aircraft. It has a huge radar cross section when you look at it on a radar scope. It is not supersonic. It does not have low level capabilities. It has no penetration capabilities whatsoever. Moreover, by the time you put the pylons on it, by the time you modify it, put in the avionics, electronic counter measures, gears and all the things that go with it, I submit to you that it will cost as much as a B-1 would and you don’t have anything that even approaches the capabilities of a B-1. As a matter of fact a modified B-52 would cost as much as a B-1 and you still don’t have a B-1. The point is that we have cut off that leg of the Triad. We have no effective replacement for our aging B-52 fleet.
Let’s look at the Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles and another unilateral decision that we made in 1967. We decided at that time that we would not deploy more than 1,054 Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles—fifty-four Titans and 1,000 Minuteman IIs and Minuteman IIIs. We did this in the hope that if we showed restraint the arms race would abate, that the Soviets would reciprocate and emulate our restraint. At that time, the Soviets had roughly 500 ICBMs. Now 12 years later, we still have 1054, still 54 old Titans sitting around and 1,000 Minuteman IIs and IIIs, some of them with aging motors. We have no program to rehabilitate the Minuteman IIs. In contrast, the Soviets have over 1600 missiles. Yet, I continue to hear people echo the arms race “aping theory” of Paul Warnke that the United States is responsible for the nuclear arms race. I could go through dozens of examples where we have stopped without the benefit of any sort of treaty, and there has been absolutely no reciprocation on the part of the Soviets. As a matter of fact, during this twelve-year period of time, the Soviets have undertaken the biggest arms buildup by any country in the history of this world. We have closed down the only ICBM production line in the free world, not just in the United States; there are no production lines of ICBMs in the free world. The Soviets continue to operate four. Only after persistent pressure from the Congress has the President decided to proceed with full-scale development of the MX missile. We continue to delay a decision on a basing mode for the MX missile. Furthermore, the MX will not be fully operational until 1989 at the earliest. The Soviets had four new missiles during that twelve-year period of time and they have five new generations under research and development. We have one. We are way behind them in that particular area. So there goes that leg of the Triad.
The only possible bright spot is in submarine launched ballistic missiles. We do have a Trident submarine being built with Trident missiles. However, production has continually been delayed. We are looking at 1986 or 1987 before it becomes fully operational. In the meantime the Poseidon and Polaris submarines are reaching their service lives, and even with service life extension programs called SLEPS, by the mid 1980s we are going to have a reduction in the number of sea launched ballistic missiles deployed until the Tridents come on line.
The pattern that is developing is, at best, troubling. By the mid 1980s, we will be experiencing the adverse impact of budget cuts for research and development and for procurement of new ships and other weapon systems. The Soviets will have an estimated 300-400 Backfire bombers by 1985. The United States, on the other hand, is relying on the B-52 and has cancelled the B-1. We have closed down our ICBM production line while the Soviets push on unabated. Even if we made a decision today to go with the MX in a survivable basing mode, it will not be deployed initially until 1986 at the earliest. The point I’m trying to make and will continue to make is that we are potentially giving the Soviet Union a war winning capability by the mid 1980s. So we have just about cut off two legs of the Triad, and a third one is being weakened because of delays in the production of Trident submarines.
This is the context in which we must consider SALT. It is ludicrous to me to be told, “Senator, you must look at SALT totally on the basis of the provisions within it and ignore all of these other things that have been going on.” That is irresponsible. That is dangerous. So I repeat there will be a full scale debate on the floor of the Senate—not just on SALT II but on the entire policy direction of the United States and the adverse shift in the U.S.-Soviet strategic balance.
Now let’s look at SALT II. Many people have said, “How can you be against it, Senator, it is not completed yet?” Well, that’s true. But when I first went to Geneva a year ago to sit in on some of the negotiations, I was told it was 95 percent complete—I’ve been told that day after day. It was supposed to be signed in June, then in October, then in December, and the latest rumor is that it will be initialed next Monday,’ and that there will be a meeting between Brezhnev and Carter on the 20th of May in Geneva to sign it. Whether those exact dates are correct or not I do not know, but sooner or later SALT II will be signed. In any event, I think it has been essentially completed for many months. The details they are working on are relatively minor in comparison to some of the decisions that have already been made. And in the 95 percent, there are plenty of provisions that are sufficiently flawed in my opinion to defeat this treaty.
Now I say this as one who believes in the strategic arms limitation process. It would be a benefit to both countries.
Both of us have too many nuclear arms. Both of us spend too much money on defense. It would be an advantage to the people of both countries to have very deep cuts in strategic weapon systems—if they were fair and equitable to both sides. But I believe this treaty is not fair and equitable to both sides. I believe that it gives the distinct advantage to the Soviet Union. SALT I allowed them to come from a position of inferiority to a position of parity or rough equivalence. SALT II will give them nuclear superiority.
Dr. Ray Cline of Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies is going to talk to you in detail about the dangerous implications of Soviet nuclear superiority. Let me just say first that I don’t expect the Soviets to launch a first strike attack against the United States out of the blue. They wouldn’t want to risk losing 20 or 30 million of their own people or to have their own country devastated. Rather, the Soviets will exploit their nuclear superiority to embark on a military and politically adventurist foreign policy designed to isolate the West. We are already seeing the results of the shift in the military balance in Soviet provocative activities in Africa, Iran, Afghanistan and Southeast Asia. There isn’t anybody in this country better able to tell you to what uses the Soviets will be able to put their superiority than Dr. Cline, and I hope you are all here when he talks about this.
We could spend days talking about provisions of SALT II. Let me give you just a few examples of why I think this treaty should be defeated. In March 1977, President Carter put forward to the Soviets what I considered on the whole a good negotiating proposal for SALT II. He talked about some cutbacks and some terms that I was pleased with. One of those was in the area of the SS-18 Missile. The Soviet SS-18 is a huge missile. It dwarfs our Minuteman III by six or seven to one in terms of throw weight. Throw weight simply means the amount of explosive power a missile can deliver. The Soviets deliberately went to a huge missile to offset the advantage of accuracy that we have. However, I don’t think that there’s any doubt in anybody’s mind that by the mid 1980s they will be able to couple accuracy with that size. And then they will have a devastating weapon. President Carter said, “I want your SS-18 limited to not more than 150.” The Soviet Union said, no, we want 308 SS-18s. Do you know where we compromised? At 308. Now in Utah we might have gotten them down to 301, or 302, or split the difference. We said we want 150 and they said we want 308. We gave them 308.
Now that has been our bargaining posture all along through two or three Administrations. We make an offer which is a good offer, they say no, and eventually we give in to them. We gave into them on ground and sea launched Cruise Missile Range Limitations. Over and over again we have simply gotten no compromise from them at all.
Let me throw out the question as to whether you really think this is an arms control agreement. First, let’s do away with the Soviet armies. Let’s do away with their thousands and thousands of tanks and conventional weapons. Let’s do away with all of their various ICBMs and their Backfires and their Navy. And let them keep the SS-18 at the limits we talked about—308 of these SS-18s, which can carry ten MIRVs. A MIRV is a multiple, independently targeted reentry vehicle. That simply means that one missile comes over and it can split into a number of different warheads—like the difference between a shotgun and a rifle. Rather than having one shot you’ve got numerous pellets coming out from one launch vehicle. Ten separate warheads. Ten times 308 is 3,080 warheads. Each of these warheads has the capability of over one million tons of equivalent T&T explosive power. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasacki were 17,000 tons.
So if we eliminated everything they had and left them with their SS-18, that would amount to 3,080 warheads of over one million tons of T&T that could hit this country—18 to 22 minutes after their launch. Just think of that. Just think of what it could do to this country. The vulnerability of our Minuteman III and Minuteman II missiles undermines our ability to maintain an effective retaliatory capability. And the Soviets have SS-9s, 11s, 13s, 16s, 17s, 19s, and 20s that we haven’t even talked about. That is what SALT II would allow them to have. In addition, SALT II does not allow us to have any heavy missiles. So we are freezing into place a clear Soviet superiority. SALT II also has a provision on MIRVs that allows both to maintain their present arsenals. Well, our missiles have three MIRVs while the Soviets’ have ten. These are the kinds of inequities that are being negotiated by your government.
Now, these aren’t simply Jake Garn’s opinions—these are facts. You wait and see, it says only 308 SS-18s, ten MIRVs each. We don’t have any that even compare. The only argument that you will receive on that is that our Minuteman IIIs are much more accurate. That’s true—they are today. No doubt about it. However, by the mid 1980s they will not be, and we will have allowed the Soviets to keep the SS-18.
Let me highlight another inequity in SALT II involving ground and sea launched Cruise Missile Range Limitations. SALT II includes a 600-kilometer range limitation on ground launched and sea launched cruise missiles. Secretary Vance told me in a hearing that this is justified because we are placing the same range limitations in both countries. Get out a map of the world. Look at the United States and the Soviet Union, and see if you think that a 600-kilometer range limitation on a sea launch cruise missile is equitable to both sides. You’ll discover rather easily that the United States has three coasts—Atlantic, Pacific and the Gulf Coast, and if you draw a line 350 nautical miles inland you’ll find that you can hit 50 percent of the population of the United States, all of our ports, and most of our major industrial cities. Look at a map of the Soviet Union and see how much water there is around it and start drawing 350 nautical miles inland. Only two to five percent of the Soviet Union would be vulnerable.
It becomes almost militarily worthless to even build cruise missiles launched from submarines with such a short range. Look at a ground launched cruise missile. The same range limitation. Well, you can hit France and Germany from England, but you are certainly not going to hit the Soviet Union from Western Europe with a range limitation of that kind. We have drastically cut down the effectiveness of these weapon systems of ours in SALT II.
There is an issue that is even more critical than those of the SS-18 and Cruise Missile Range Limitation and the Backfire bomber. That is the issue of verification. If I could write a SALT II treaty that I felt guaranteed the security of the United States, what good would it be unless you can prove that the Soviets will live up to it? There are some in this Administration and in the Congress who want us to trust the Soviets—how can you? Just look back at the history of our relationship with the Soviet Union since the end of World War II. Over and over again they have broken international commitments when it was to their advantage to do so. Again, we could spend a lot of time giving examples of Soviet violations of treaties and in many cases total abrogation of those treaties when they found it was no longer to their advantage to live by the terms of them. Their word has never been worth anything. I sat in the Kremlin across the table from Brezhnev three months ago, and he looked at me and four other Senators and said, “It is you who have superiority in NATO. It is you who have more men, equipment, guns and airplanes. We have not put a single additional man, no new tanks, no new additional airplanes in the Warsaw Pact countries for ten years.” He did it with a straight face. They have 45,000 tanks and we have 11,000. It’s incredible. Four days of being lied to, and they did it absolutely with a straight face. So if anybody thinks that we can trust the Soviets, I suggest he look at the last 30 years and see what has happened.
Verification, therefore, becomes an absolutely key issue. I think we ought to have onsite inspection. I think we ought to be able to kick the tires, so to speak, and look at what they have. But we are not going to get that. We are going to rely primarily on national technical means. And we have some very good means of spying on the Soviets through satellites and other ways, but interestingly enough there have been some revelations which greatly cut down our ability to monitor the Soviets. One of those you may have read about involved a Mr. Kampiles. After six months with the CIA, Mr. Kampiles just happened to sell the Soviet Union a technical manual on one of our spy satellites—one that had incredible capabilities. This was a highly top-secret document that not even all of the Senate and the House knew about. Yet here a six-month trainee sells them a technical manual for $3,000. I’d never seen the technical manual—it shows the flight patterns of one of our most sophisticated satellites, and gives the Soviets diagrams good enough that they can build one. That isn’t startling enough. What is bothersome to me is that more than 13 of those manuals had been gone for more than a year and a half. And their loss had been covered up. One of our best means of verifying Soviet compliance with SALT II has been compromised.
The best means of seeing whether the Soviets in their test programs were complying with the terms of SALT I happened to be in Iran. Here were two ground sites for monitoring the test flights of Soviet ICBMs from Southwestern Russia. As you are probably aware, this monitoring equipment is no longer functioning. We have heard during the last few days numerous Administration officials telling us that we have substitutes for those two sites. Now I’m going to say something that is very blunt and probably too candid—that is a lie. We do not. We are being lied to about the importance of those Iranian sites. I’ve had to debate this issue two or three times in the last couple of weeks, and the Administration knows it has us in a spot. The Administration knows that I, as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, have access to top-secret code word briefings on all these supposed alternatives, and they know that I can’t prove what I’m saying without violating security. But just believe me, the earliest we could hope to have the capabilities to replace those two Iranian sites because of geography and location and technical problems with other sites and other means is 1984—one year before SALT II is due to expire.
One issue I can talk about is the use of U-2 flights as a substitute for the Iranian sites. This issue involves something else that is going on that disturbs me—the release of classified information by Administration sources to help the SALT sellers. They know that verification is a big issue. They are fully aware that SALT II could fail or pass on the basis of verification. Two weeks ago tomorrow I was in a briefing that was so classified that my staff was not allowed to be there—just Senators and a few key staff members from the committee. The next morning I picked up the New York Times and read the entire business about the U-2 in nearly as much detail as I had been briefed as a Senator in a top-secret briefing. And it said in the article that it came from Administration sources. The next day the Administration admitted that, yes, this is what they were considering.
Well the U-2 cannot replace the Iranian sites. It is not physically possible. You can’t mount an antenna on a U-2 big enough to replace what was lost in Iran. You cannot physically place the equipment in a U-2 to do it. Even forgetting all the problems of overflight rights, of whether or not you know when the Soviets are going to testfire, of whether you have U-2s in the air 24 hours a day, and all sorts of other problems, the U-2 physically can’t carry the equipment or the people to do the job. Now that is the type of credibility gap we have when the SALT sellers just come out and make bold statements.
It is not possible to verify SALT II at this time. And I qualify that because I’ll be one to help the Administration, the Department of Defense, everyone I can to make certain we do replace that capability. What I’m telling you is that at this time we do not have the capability to verify Soviet compliance with SALT II, and it will take years to replace adequately that capability.
So verification is a big issue. Let’s go back and talk about it in terms of SALT I. I hear a lot of talk that, well no, the Soviets haven’t violated SALT I. They may have stretched the terms a little bit here and there, but they really haven’t violated it. I’ve written a major article on the subject of Soviet violations of SALT I, and it will be published in a foreign policy journal in the next month or two. Let me just highlight a few examples. Violations of SALT I which we know about have consisted of deployment of prohibitive offensive forces, particularly conversion of light to heavy ICBMs. The SS-11 Mod 1 that had 1500 pounds of throw weight has been converted to SS-17s, and SS-19s with 7 to 8 thousand pounds of throw weight. In 1976, the Soviets failed to dismantle 41 ICBM sites on time when their force went above the limit allowed by SALT I. They have constructed 150 additional silos, which they claim are for launch control purposes for testing. In addition, the Soviets have increased the size of their missile silos beyond the 15 percent limit agreed to under SALT I.
The SS-20 could be a violation of restraint on mobile ICBMs if it had slightly greater range than 5,000 kilometer estimates or if an additional stage is added. I’m getting technical just to give you a flavor for the difficulties of this thing. You can’t tell the difference by any photographic or telemetering verification means between the SS-16 and SS-20. You can just change the configuration a little bit and hide one. It’s another real problem. Obviously, there’s a great potential for cheating.
The Soviets have developed anti-ballistic missile capabilities prohibited by the terms of SALT I. They have constructed additional ABM Management Radars beyond the one allowed at Moscow. They have built an ABM-X-3 Radar in the Kamchatka Impact Area where one was not allowed. The radar is mobile and this is also not allowed. They have tested the SA-5, a SAM Missile, in an anti-ballistic missile mode. They have developed and deployed tactical anti-ballistic missiles; these could be used in a strategic anti-ballistic mode. I don’t expect you to understand all of this, but I am just trying to let you know what they are doing.
Now there’s one point I want to make when I talk about the problem of verification. First, I don’t know about successful Soviet activities in this area. We have no idea how successful they have been in concealment and deception activities, because we won’t find the good ones. But they have concealed activities at Soviet SSBN (those are their submarines) construction and refit facilities. I personally have seen pictures of concealment of submarines. There has been use of canvass covers over missile silo doors, which is prohibited, testing of decoy submarines, which is prohibited, and concealment activities related to the deployment of SS-16 and SS-20 missiles. There is probable deception in the range of the Backfire bomber. I happen to think it has a much greater range than some of our own intelligence agencies think it has.
The suppression of information is widespread covering the selling of SALT II. I’ve already mentioned the suppression of the details on the sale of the KH-11, the withholding of information concerning the adverse impact of the loss of the monitoring sites in Iran, and we certainly have seen a withholding of information on the Soviet missile accuracy. There’s no doubt about this. This concealment or suppression of information on Soviet violations of SALT I and the efforts to sell SALT II has gone on not just in this Administration but through several Administrations. I believe it is deliberate. I believe the American people have the right to know. I think this denial of necessary information to the American people strikes at the heart of our democratic process. It must be stopped.
In closing, and then I’ll respond to questions if you have them, I would like to emphasize what Lenin said a long time ago: treaties are like pie crust, they are made to be broken. I believe that SALT II should be defeated and that we should go back to the bargaining table and continue to work for a fair and equitable treaty. When I was in Moscow, Brezhnev continued to tell us every day that if we defeated SALT II we would return to days that were more dangerous than the Cold War of the 1950s. I finally had to say that “If you are really sincere in wanting peace and the United States Senate does defeat this treaty, then you will be willing to go back to the bargaining table and continue to talk about arriving at a meaningful arms control treaty that will hopefully guarantee for both countries peace and freedom in the future.”
[Since this speech was given, the Treaty has been initialed and signed.]
