Books that make history are not always on the best-seller list. They do not always have sexy or epigrammatic titles. What chance do you think a 600-page paperback would have called “U.S.-Soviet Military Balance, Concepts and Capabilities, 1960-1980”?
Its subject is “net assessment.” That means adding up all the elements of U.S. and Soviet military power. Its author is John M. Collins, the senior specialist in national defense for the Congressional Research Service. It’s a book people don’t want to read because it is all bad news, but fortunately it is becoming a topic of discussion among many leaders in the defense and foreign policy fields.
A decade ago, when the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee delivered his swan song upon retiring from Congress, he cried out that the military disarmament of America showed us to be “Hell-bent on national suicide.” Collins’ book uses no such alarmist rhetoric as Congressman L. Mendel Rivers did in his landmark speech on Sept. 28, 1970. But the facts, statistics, and charts sound the same ominous warning.
When asked why his stunning evidence was so muted in his conclusions, Collins said: ” I didn’t want to shout, ‘The Russians are coming!’ I wanted to say, ‘Look what you’ve done to yourself. Is this really what you want?”
Of course, the American people don’t want disarmament, disaster, and defeat. They want military strength and security, and all Presidential candidates and Defense secretaries know this. That’s why they keep reassuring the people that America is the strongest nation on earth.
The only trouble is they are wrong, and Collins’ massive evidence proves they are wrong. He even states that our technological superiority is vanishing. “The day has passed,” he writes, “when the United States could be smugly sure of unquestioned scientific and technological superiority, which has sustained this country in the past and is the key to future capabilities.”
The present Commander-in-Chief of our Army and Navy, Jimmy Carter, is the most vulnerable target in history when it comes to fulfilling the first duty of government: to provide for the common defense. No President has ever done more to disarm our nation in the face of a powerfully-armed enemy.
Just catalogue Carter’s record. He cancelled the B-1 bomber. He cancelled the neutron bomb. He delayed the MX and cruise missiles. He cut the Navy in half. He signed the fata]]y—f]awed SALT II Treaty. He gave away the Panama Canal.
He accepted the growth of the Soviet military presence in Cuba with no effective reaction. He gave amnesty to Vietnam draft evaders. He wants to draft women into the army. He betrayed the anti-Communist leaders of Iran, Nicaragua, and Rhodesia. At least six new nations have gone Communist since Carter became President.
The U.S. Armed Services are in a dismal state of combat unreadiness. Only six of the Navy’s 13 aircraft carriers are combat-ready, according to a September fleet readiness report. Only 94 of the Navy’s 155 air squadrons were rated combat-ready. Other major unreadiness was reported among tactical fighter, attack and electronic warfare squadrons.
The unreadiness of our Navy is matched only by similar unreadiness in the Air Force and the Army. Six of ten Army divisions in continental United States were recently rated not ready for combat.
Jimmy Carter claims that Ronald Reagan’s defense policies would trigger a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. The fact is that the Soviets have been doing all the racing while Carter has forced our country to sit on the sidelines growing weaker every day, while our arch-enemy grows stronger.
The results of Carter’s policies of weakness are apparent. We are a helpless giant, buffeted around and humiliated by petty tyrants all over the world. The only long-term solution is to regain our military superiority.
In the short term we must cope with Soviet superiority by developing innovative concepts to use our present weapons in a more effective way. We must release ourselves from the SALT restraints which impede these solutions.
