75-10-A4
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Soviet Superiority
TranscriptA newly issued report has some sensible things to say about America's defenses. I'll be right back. The Committee for a Democratic Majority was formed after the last presidential election by a group of Democrats which could be described as liberal but reasonable. Now they've issued a report on the state of America's defenses. The task force which worked on the report was chaired by Dr. Eugene Rostow, sterling professor of law at Yale and an Assistant Secretary of State under President Johnson. Other members of the task force included former Treasury Secretary Henry Fowler, Norman Podoretz, Editor of Commentary Magazine, Max Kappelmann counsel to Hubert Humphrey when he was Vice-President, a teacher's union leader Albert Schanker and professors Paul Seaberry, Lucian Pie and Gene Kirkpatrick. The one thing these people have in common aside from distinction is that they've generally been identified as members of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, though not of its radical McGovernite wing. We should listen all the more closely when such a distinguished group of citizens, none of them with any military connections, tells us that our defenses are rapidly deteriorating and advocates a 10-billion dollar increase in defense spending over and above the amount requested by the Ford Administration. In his summary of the report, Dr. Rostow is particularly sobering in his conclusion about the state of U.S.-Soviet relations, and I quote, "A condition of detente with the Soviet Union has been an unremitting goal of our foreign policy since President Roosevelt's time. It has not been reached. There has been no improvement in our relations with the Soviet Union save in the realms of public relations and wishful thinking. Soviet policy is exactly what it has been since 1944 or 1945, except that its pressures are greater and more diverse than ever and more difficult to deal with because they are backed by more force." Unquote. The dimensions of this growing Soviet force are documented by the task force report. The Soviets have nearly twice as many men under arms as we do, four times as many tanks, three times as many artillery tubes, twice as many heavy mortars and 40 percent more tactical aircraft. Their air defense systems far outstrip ours in every respect. In the naval realm, long an area of U.S. strength the Soviets are nearly equal in surface ships and have more than three times as many combat submarines. In the crucial field of nuclear weapons Dr. Rostow and the task force joined many other experts in pointing out that the tentative SALT II agreement announced at Vladivostok provides for equality only among launchers, but says nothing about throw weight or the number of warheads each missile can carry. The task force estimates that this loophole could eventually give the Soviets a lead of between three and six to one in deliverable warheads. It also points out that the Soviet's new intermediate bomber is not covered by SALT II even though it has the capability of delivering warheads to continental United States targets and the Soviets are outspending us in strategic weapons by two to one. The new realities of Soviet strength require an ability to face the facts as they are, not as we'd wish them to be. The most important problem of our foreign policy Dr. Rostow says is that, "we and our allies seem to be in a mood of somnamilism similar to that which paralyzed France, Britain and the United States during the 30s." Unquote. We'd better wake up before we face a prospect even more terrible than the one we awoke to then. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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