In his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, President Carter boasted: “Our modernized strategic forces, a revitalized NATO, the Trident submarine, the Cruise missile, the Rapid Deployment Force — all these guarantee that we will never be second to any nation. Deeds, not words — fact, not fiction.”
The clear implication of that paragraph is that the U.S. Trident submarine is a weapon which helps us to be “second to none.” That is fiction, not fact. The true fact is that the United States does not have a single Trident submarine operational (our first one is scheduled to be operational in October 1981), whereas the Soviet Union has 32 Trident-class submarines, called the Delta, operational today.
President Carter is either living in some kind of a dream world, isolated from the facts of the strategic balance of weapons between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., or he is deliberately misleading the American public.
The most respected authority in counting ships in navies all over the world is “Jane’s Fighting Ships,” published annually in London since 1897. The latest edition, published a few weeks ago, shows that the Soviet fleet has a total of 70 nuclear-powered submarines which can fire missiles at targets 700 to 4,800 miles away, and is producing additional submarines at the rate of 10 a year.
The SALT I Agreement limits the United States to a maximum of 41 nuclear missile-firing submarines. We have lived up to the spirit and the letter of the treaty whereas the Soviets have not.
“Jane’s Fighting Ships” hurled a warning in words unusually blunt. The Soviet Union, the ten-pound volume said, has built a massive naval force “far beyond the needs of defense of the Soviet sea frontiers” and is “truly a formidable force.” In the event of a major crisis, the Soviet Union could have 240 submarines at sea, while the combined NATO navies, deployed worldwide for all purposes would have only about 150.
Look at a world map and you will see that the Soviet Union has no need of such a formidable navy for its own defense, or even for keeping the satellite states in submission. There is no rational mission for such a superior Soviet Navy except aggression and cutting off the lifelines of those nations which depend on imports via the seas.
Carter’s use of the Cruise missile in his acceptance speech as an example of his “guarantee that we will never be second to any nation” is also just words, not deeds. Our Cruise missile is not ready for deployment. We can’t protect ourselves with future weapons; the only ones that count are those in-being when the attack hits.
Carter’s boasting about “our modernized strategic forces” is the biggest myth of all! “Modernizéd” is a trick word which means we are putting some new features on our old strateéic ICBMs and submarines, but not building any additional ones which are truly modern. The total number of U.S. ICBMs and nuclear missile-firing submarines has remained constant since 1967 at 1,054 and 41, respectively. It is a semantic trick to call those forces “modernized” in the face of the fantastically powerful Soviet strategic forces, which are so much more modern than ours.
It is worse than a trick; it is a lie to suggest that our strategic bomber force is “modernized.” Carter cancelled the B-1, the world’s greatest bomber, and is forcing us to Timp along with the old, slow B-52s, which are older than the pilots who fly them. In order to keep some in the air, we have to keep cannibalizing others for parts, which means we have a constantly shrinking number.
Carter criticized Ronald Reagan for “abandoning arms control policies.” It is obvious that arms control policies which “control” U.S. weapons, but not the Soviets’, are not in the best interests of the United States.
Carter said that his objective is “to seek balanced reductions in nuclear arms.” The trouble is that he seeks reductions even if they are not balanced, and that is why the United States is falling farther and farther behind Russia.
As long as our national policy is arms control no matter how unbalanced and peace at any price, we will continue to lose power, prestige, geography, and people to the Soviets to whom “arms control” means control only the United States, and “peace” means ‘conquer the world one piece at a time.
