The Defense Debate

Eastward over Siberia, and then out over the Pacific, soared a Soviet ballistic missile last week, headed for a target area 1,000 miles southwest of Pearl Harbor. Next day an announcement from Moscow echoed round the world: Soviet ship-borne scientists stationed in the area had determined that the missile traveled 12,500 kilometers (7,762 miles) from its launching site and landed less than two kilometers (1.24 miles) from the precalculated target point.

Moscow billed the missile shot as a test of a peaceful space-exploration vehicle, but it was unmistakably an exercise in political muscle flexing, designed to impress the U.S., its allies, and the world's sideline countries with the spectacle of Soviet missile might. Viewed with cool reason, the Pacific shot represented no missile breakthrough. The U.S. Air Force's Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile, already operational in small numbers, has flown more than 6,000 miles, has a potential range of 8,000 miles or more. And Atlas' accuracy, proved in several tests, is as close to pinpoint perfection as the Soviet Pacific missile. But once again, without altering the realities of power, the U.S.S.R. had succeeded in projecting the image of power: the fact that impressed the world was that a Soviet ballistic missile traveled farther than any U.S. missile had flown so far.

Narrowed Gap. Like a giant exclamation mark, the Soviet Pacific shot punctuated the first rumblings of an election-year debate over the adequacy of Administration defense programs. Missouri's Democratic Presidential Hopeful Stuart Symington, Harry Truman's Air Force Secretary from 1947-50, charged in a speech on the Senate floor that "this Administration is now, in effect, planning that this nation become a second-rate power." New Jersey's Democratic Governor Robert Meyner told a Democratic gathering in Manhattan that as a result of the Administration's "bankrupt leadership," the U.S. is now "dancing to Russia's tune."

Against the background of Soviet success in projecting the image of power and U.S. concern about that image, Defense Secretary Thomas S. Gates Jr. and General Nathan Twining, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went before the Senate and House Armed Services committees to explain the new $41 billion defense budget. "The way they presented it, it was encouraging," said Georgia's Richard B. Russell, Chairman of the Senate committee. In his testimony, Gates unwrapped a big and pleasant surprise: a new U.S. intelligence estimate of future Soviet missile strength, he said, had sharply narrowed the expected "missile gap" in the early 1960s from the 3-to-1 margin that the Administration estimated a year ago.

But the good news promptly backfired in Gates's face. When reporters at his midweek press conference questioned him skeptically about the new intelligence estimate, he was unable to defend it, because even a vague explanation would have involved national secrets. Result: during one of the roughest press-conference pummelings that veteran Washington newsmen could recall, Gates lamely conceded that the new cheerfulness about the missile gap was based on an estimate of how many missiles the U.S.S.R. intended to make over the next few years rather than how many it would be capable of making.

Tiger Talk. That admission stirred charges and suspicions that the new estimate of future Soviet missile strength was a gimmick designed to quiet criticism and tranquilize public opinion. "Disgraceful!" said Washington's Democratic Senator Henry M. Jackson. Sneered the Washington Post: "No longer, presumably, need we worry about the lethal power of the big bruiser next door with the club, once we are told his heart is pure." The Administration, hooted Minnesota's Presidential Hopeful Hubert Humphrey, was basing its "rosy picture" on a "hope that a potential aggressor that may have the appetite of a tiger is going to act like a household kitten." And Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson cried that the Administration was relying on an "incredibly dangerous" assortment of guesses and hunches.

All but unnoticed amid the hubbub was one highly important detail: after Gates explained the new estimate to the House Armed Services Committee in a closed-door session, committee members, both Democrat and Republican, reported that they had found the explanation reassuring. "I feel a little better about it," said Virginia's Democratic Representative Porter Hardy Jr.

SAC Wallop. As a result of the intelligence-estimate flap, the Administration lost the points it might otherwise have gained from Secretary Gates's vigorous defense of the President's overall defense program. "The impression in some quarters that the Soviet Union has overtaken the U.S. in military power," said Gates on Capitol Hill, "is simply not supported by the facts." Whatever missile gap there may be in the early 1960s, he argued, will not mean a defense gap: the U.S. will be relying not on missiles alone but on missiles plus the mighty nuclear wallop of the Strategic Air Command's manned bombers, plus the nuclear punch of carrier-based Navy planes. All U.S. forces together, said Gates, "represent a clear balance heavily in our favor. There is no deterrent gap. It is the conclusion of those who have analyzed this matter that even a surprise attack by all the missiles and aircraft the Soviets could muster would not suffice to destroy enough of our retaliatory strike forces to enable him to make a rational decision to attack."

Then he added a warning that his more politically minded critics might well ponder. "It can be dangerous to our national security and our position in the world to allow a false impression to gain ground that the U.S. is second to the Soviet Union."

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