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104  The Real Missile Gap Is
     In knowledge of Psychology
     The Washington Post,  Saturday, June 29, 1968

     The season for the missile-gap game has rolled around again.
This time the Republicans promise to lambaste the Democrats for 
letting the Russians creep up on our "nuclear superiority."

     A large backward step is the premise that nuclear supremacy is
an end in itself.  If this is a valid aim for the United States, it
should be also for every other independent power.  These familiar
arguments about mutually aggravated escalation are too often attributed
to a world view that is supposed to be soft-minded about communism
and what the Reds would do to us if we gave them half a chance.

     To the contrary, I must give great credit to the world Communist
conspiracy for inciting the United States to unrealistic goals that
drain our resources.  With good reason, they are as afraid of American
irrationality as we are of theirs.  It would be a cosmic crime to
tempt them by our own weakness into the ultimate gamble that might,
once and for all, pacify the world.  But it is so easy to exploit
our adolescent temperament, our historic insistence on being the
prima donna, if we accept any part at all on the world stage.  So
they feint in Berlin, or with ballistic-missile defenses or just by
holding back in Vietnam and we promptly overreact in pushbutton 
fashion.  

     The missile-gap game should stimulate us to hard thinking about
the truths of national security.  The achievable purposes of strategic
nuclear weapons are to forestall nuclear blackmail and to deter
a mortal attack.  These are essentially psychological aims, intended
to influence our own behavior and that of the adversary.  If strategic
nuclear weapons ever again have to be used, they would have been
dismal failures--and we, as a species, along with them.

     In this light, a striving for nuclear superiority may temporarily
further some national psychological aims; but do we need to bolster
self-confidence that can resist blackmail? Perhaps yes.  The ultimate
step in any scenario of nuclear deterrence is exquisitely irrational.
An unsophisticated public may demand the comfort of large irrational 
numbers in order for nuclear stalemate to be emotionally acceptable.
We might also wonder about the public on the other side: will they
also understand that there is no difference between being killed or
overkilled?

     There is unfortunately more to deterrence than the calculated
physical capacity to retaliate after a first strike.  We might make
that capacity more credible and thus more effective, especially if
the adversary is ill-informed, by expanding our own advertised reserve 
force.  But deterrence also demands that we feel secure enough not
to have to gamble on a desperate strike.  Parity is the most stable
equilibrium for mutual security, for each side may then feel that both
will be unacceptable damage no matter who takes the initiative.  The
most unstable is that disparity is approached.

     The case for escalating nuclear armaments as a valid investment
in world stability (rather than a step toward preemptive war) would
be far more reasonable if the psychological objectives of nuclear 
policy were more clearly perceived and used as a basis of research and
action.  How our friends and adversaries perceive this country's 
policies and motives are at the root of our foreign and military policy.
Do we spend 1 per cent of our arms outlay on social and psychological
research and action?  If so, Congress is not aware of it, for it would
surely be squelched, by the same illogic that led to the halving of
the already puny budget of the Disarmament Agency.  Perhaps the brunt
of such research ought to be directed at the perplexing psychology of
our own Congress.


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