Editing 78-14-B2 (section)

=== Transcript ===
For the last three broadcasts, I've been excerpting and quoting from an address
by Eugene Rostow on our defense posture and the significance of the continuing SALT
talks.

It must be understood that strategic nuclear weapons play a role in modern politics
and have a bearing on the entire process of world politics. It is often said that
the goal of our nuclear forces is to deter or make less credible the possibility of
war. It is, however, a mistake to believe that deterrence is also the goal of Soviet
nuclear policy.

As Rostow says,-- "Effective American nuclear deterrence cannot alone keep
the Soviet Union from using conventional forces, at least against targets they think
we regard as secondary, like Vietnam or Ethiopia. Except for massive attacks on our
most vital interests, like Western Europe or Japan, defense has to be provided by
conventional forces, at least in the first instance. But the absence of effective
nuclear deterrence would have a disastrous effect, denying all credibility to our
conventional force deterrent."

To understand what he means, we must review our experience back to 1945, when we
had a monopoly on nuclear weapons. In Greece, Turkey, the Berlin Airlift, Korea and
the Cuban missile crisis, the nuclear weapon was always a decisive factor in the
background. The Soviets knew that in a nuclear exchange, our casualties would have
numbered ten million, their's 100 million. By the middle '60's, their buildup had
brought us to a stalemate. We could no longer hint at the use of nuclear weapons in
places like Vietnam.

Now, "There can be no question", says Rostow, "that our position has slipped from
stalemate to the borders of inferiority. The strategic force relationship which
dominates the Cuban missile crisis will soon be reversed, unless we undertake a crash
program immediately -- that in the event of a nuclear exchange we should risk 100 million
casualties and the Soviet Union 10 million."

Rostow correctly points out that if we let such a situation develop: "our foreign
policy and conventional forces would be impotent and we should acquiesce." And, of
course, by acquiesce he means surrender and end this great experiment in freedom which
has, from its beginning, held out hope to a downtrodden mankind all over the world.
"it is the first objective of Soviet policy to achieve such a situation", says
Rostow, "Soviet leaders believe it would enable them to determine the future course of
the world politics."

"This", he says, "is what our nuclear weapons program and the SALT negotiations are
all about." To those who dismiss the vision of nuclear war as unthinkable, he says,
"The vision of Soviet political coercion backed by astronomical nuclear and conventional
forces is far from unthinkable. No President of the United States should ever be put
into a corner where he would have to choose between the surrender of vital national
interests and nuclear holocaust."

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
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