President Carter’s plan for standing up to the Soviets calls for forcing the maximum personal sacrifices on the segment of Americans who have the least political and financial clout: the 18-and-19-year-olds. Meanwhile, the businessmen and bankers who engage in trade with the Soviets and other Communist countries get by with business as usual and are not asked for any sacrifice comparable to the career and financial sacrifice the 18-and-19-year-olds are asked to make in (a) boycotting the Olympic Games or (2) reporting for draft registration and induction.
A few feeble announcements have come out of the White House implying that technology shipments to the Soviet Union are being stopped. But U.S. shipments to build up the Soviet war machine have been a mighty river, and most of it is still flowing.
Two years ago, the Soviets bought navigation and electronic orientation devices from a U.S. firm. The technology that came with them is now being used to help Russian planes and ships track U.S. submarines.
A U.S. corporation sold the Soviets a large number of high-precision ballbearing devices which the Soviets used to develop highly accurate guidance systems for missiles and enabled the Soviets to put MIRVs into assembly-line production. It will now cost the U.S. taxpayers some $30 billion to offset the Soviets’ MIRV capability which they could not have achieved without our high technology.
The Gorky auto works, run with U.S. computers, makes amphibious assault vehicles and military trucks as well as civilian cars. American electronics, supposedly bought for civilian air-navigation use, have been converted to use in computers for missile guidance.
The Vnukovo Airport traffic control system in Moscow, built with U.S. high-performance computers is so complex and sophisticated that it can detect airborne objects without receiving a radio signal, can compute how fast the object is going, and can predict where it will be several minutes later. Known as the “en route” system, the Moscow system is far more advanced than the most widely used air traffic control systems, which depend on receiving radio signals from approaching aircraft. The military potential of “en route” is self-evident.
Some American firms simply get conned by Soviet advance men. U.S. businessmen appear to be just as gullible in dealing with Soviet trade negotiations as the U.S. State Department is in dealing with Soviet diplomatic (or SALT) negotiators.
The Soviets created a bidding war for wide-bodied jet airplanes among three U.S. companies. In their eagerness to nail down what they thought would be a profitable contract, the American firms handed over more and more production details. When the Soviets got all the information they needed, they terminated the contract negotiations.
The Soviets conned the West Germans the same way on diesel locomotive technology. Then the Soviets built their own.
Communist so-called “businessmen” (probably technically trained KGB operatives) come to the United States by the thousands. According to Senator Henry M. Jackson (D-Wash), “Their usual style is to demand technologically detailed proposals of the U.S. firms with which they want to do business. Our companies are badgered into complying with the Soviets in the hope of exclusive, big sales. Typically, after getting the basic plans and technical information, the Soviet-bloc representatives agree only to a relatively small sale.”
U.S.-Soviet exchange programs are always a one-way street. Russian “students” come here to study, for example, the chemistry of fuel-air explosives; American students go to Russia to study literature, history, music and ballet.
The Apollo-Soyuz space linkup in 1975 is a good example of the racketry of U.S.- U.S.S.R. “cooperation.” The Russians learned all about our most advanced space technology; we learned nothing useful.
In the years of the Cold War, anti-Communist speakers would frequently quote Nicolai Lenin’s prediction that Western businessmen would sell the Soviets the rope they would use to hang the capitalist system. Senator Henry J. Jackson recently told the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations: “The United States and its allies have been selling the rope to the Soviet bloc. What we haven’t sold or given away, they have stolen.”
