Now that President Carter has promised Israel billions of dollars of U.S. aid in order to induce a signing of a Middle East Treaty, Israel ought to show its gratitude. I suggest that Israel loan us Prime Minister Menachem Begin to negotiate for us with the Russians on SALT II.
Begin is clearly the world’s best negotiator. He is tough, persevering, daring, and has a passionate dedication to his country’s security. In a word, he has all the qualities that President Carter and Secretary Vance lack. Here are some of the holes in SALT II which Begin might be able to dig the U.S. out of.
The supposed limitation in overall number of strategic weapons specifically excludes some of the major Soviet weapons, the Backfire bomber and the SS-20 mobile missile. That means that the Soviets can have hundreds of additional weapons over and above the SALT II “limit.”
By contrast, the United States will be forced to count as strategic weapons some that are not even operational. We have agreed to count B-52s now in the “bone yard” in the Arizona desert, along with the four experimental B-1s for which no crews are even being trained. The Soviets are now turning out new Backfire bombers every month, while Carter cancelled our B-1 bomber without any quid pro quo whatsoever.
SALT II will allow the Soviets to keep all their “heavy” ICBMs, of which they have 308. The United States is specifically prohibited from deploying a similar heavy missile even if we want to do so.
SALT II will allow the Soviets to keep their new “medium” ICBMs, the SS-17 with a throweight of 6,000 pounds and four MIRVed warheads, and the SS-19 with a throwweight of 7,000 pounds and six MIRVed warheads. The U.S. Minuteman, by contrast, has a throw weight of only 2,500 pounds and carries three MIRVed warheads.
SALT II does nothing to protect us from the Soviet advantage of reloads. The Soviets have perfected a cold-launch technique which means that their rocket motors do not ignite until the missiles are clear of the silos, and therefore the silos do not burn up in the launch process. This enables the Soviets to get the benefit of reloads stored in warehouses nearby. We use a hot-launch method and cannot use reloads.
SALT II does not include air defense systems, an area in which the Soviet Union is tremendously superior. The United States has approximately 325 interceptor aircraft and about 60 radars in our air defense system. We have no surface-to-air (SAM) missiles. By comparison, the Soviets have more than 2,700 interceptor aircraft, 7,000 radars, and 12,000 SAM launchers.
It is rather ridiculous to sign an agreement supposedly “limiting” both sides to a particular number of strategic weapons when the Soviets won’t tell us how many missiles they have. They have never revealed how many ICBMs they have deployed. Missile figures commonly used are simply those that U.S. intelligence gathering facilities have counted. No one knows how many more the Soviets may have.
In recent months, the Soviets have been encrypting data transmitted from missiles making tests, which makes it extremely difficult for the U.S. to gather accurate information. This clearly shows the Soviets’ determination to conceal everything they possibly can.
We recently discovered that the giant Soviet SS-18 ICBM is being given the capability of carrying up to 14 MIRVs, although SALT II is supposed to limit that missile to 10 warheads. So it looks as though the Soviets are violating SALT II before it is even signed.
It is easy to predict that Vance and the SALT-sellers will try to allay our fears by saying, “even though the Soviets are building and testing the expensive capability to put 14 MIRVs on the giant SS-18, we should rely on them not to use more than 10 MIRVs.” Please, Israel, lend us Mr. Begin while there is still time to prevent the lopsidedness and the loopholes of SALT II.
