It and Essence

By Alex Linder

[ The following is from a forum thread posting. ]

[opinion published in Pomona College’s The Student Life, Friday, September 19, 1986]

Daniloff: Political Pawn

By Alex Linder

By the time you read this, an innocent American citizen will have spent nearly three weeks as a hostage inside the Soviet Union, an unwitting victim of a brazen power play conceived and carried out by the KGB under the probably leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev. Seized in apparent reaction to the recent American apprehension of U.N.-based alleged spy Gennady Zakharov, U.S. News & World Report‘s Moscow Bureau Chief Nicholas Daniloff has been indicted on three counts of espionage. What has the U.S. done in response to this peculiar turn of events; what should it do in the future to with regard to preventing a similar occurrence; and, most importantly, what is the U.S. currently doing to obtain Mr. Daniloff’s release?

Before getting to these vital questions, let us lay some of the groundwork. To begin with, let there be not doubt that Zakharov is a spy and Daniloff is a hostage. Arkady Shevchenko, the highest ranking Soviet defector ever, has estimated that roughly one-third of all Soviet bloc personnel at the U.N. are engaged in intelligence gathering activities. Zakharov is simply one among the many, his alleged crime being the purchase of jet engine blueprints. Daniloff, on the other hand, was clearly entrapped by KGB operatives aided by one of his own Soviet friends.

A three-fold explanation of Soviet motivations would seem most plausible. First, in Daniloff, the Soviets saw a chance to kill two birds with one stone. By striking a deal with the US. they could not only get back a valuable agent, but rid themselves of a man who, according to USN&WR’s Mortimer Zuckerman, was responsible for several articles detailing the grimmer side of life behind the Iron Curtain. Secondly, the expulsion or sentencing of Daniloff would hopefully have what liberals are wont to call “chilling effects” on what the Soviets deem injudicious reporting on the part of the fourth estate. Finally, Gorbachev, through his lack of response to Reagan’s personal letter vouching for Daniloff’s innocence, may be testing the strength of those internal forces that would have the Administration schedule a summit regardless of the treatment of Daniloff.

But the reaction of the Reagan Administration has been, unfortunately, mixed. At the outset of the crisis, spokesmen in Santa Barbara, authorized, one would assume, by the President, issued statements to the effect that there would be business as usual between the superpowers. Secretary of State Schultz, however, took the position that only if Daniloff were freed would he discuss summitry in his upcoming meeting with Shevardnadze. Over the course of the succeeding two weeks the Administration has presented a more united front, with a sort of crystallization taking place around Schultz’s initial position, happily.

At this point the course the Reagan Administration should take is relatively clear. First, Reagan and Schultz should adamantly refuse to exchange Zakharov for Daniloff in a one-for-one deal. Gorbachev is well aware that Zakharov is a spy and that Daniloff was framed. Any deal-making would only lessen the dictator’s respect for our President. Reagan would appear to be backing down, and this in turn would weaken his hand at future bargaining tables.

Second, the Administration should refuse to even make preparations for a summit unless Daniloff is released.

Lastly, the President should capitalize on the recent attention paid to the problem with Soviet spy infiltration through the U.N. by deepending and expediting his cutback of the Soviet Union’s entourage. Estimating we could easily pick up 500 spies, Senator Daniel Moynihan recently remarked, “We’re paying for their KGB agents in the Secretariat.” The American public needs to be made aware, and Ronald Reagan is in an excellent position to do so, that the U.N. is essentially an ulcer in the belly of the beast, a tax-subsidized, rabidly anti-American propaganda and intelligence headquarters for the Soviets and their Third World lackeys.

What, then, can we reasonably expect if the Reagan Administration continues to follow, as it has in part, the previously outlined course? One suspects that the Soviets, once they realize that the U.S. will not back down, will devise some face-saving way of releasing Daniloff. Most observers, including the aforementioned Shevchenko, believe that the Soviet Union has a greater need for a summit than the U.S. If one accepts this view then it seems likely that the Soviets will either acquit Daniloff or find him guilty of but a peccadillo. Either way, Daniloff will be released and summit preparations gotten on with. All in all, Reagan can stand firm in the knowledge that both houses of Congress along with the domestic press (Daniloff is, after all, one of their own) are solidly behind him. If Reagan does indeed stick fast to his stated positions, the Soviets will conclude not only that future “deals” will not work, but that purssuant to their goals of an earlier summit and the preservation of a certain measure of goodwill on the part of Western liberals, their interests are best served by releasing Daniloff. //

By Alex Linder

[ The following is from a forum thread posting. ]

[opinion published in Pomona College’s The Student Life, Friday, March 7, 1986]

SDI: A Viable Defense

By Alex Linder

Saying that nuclear weapons could be rendered “impotent and obsolete,” President Reagan first brought the concept of a space-based defense against nuclear weapons to public attention in a nationally televised speech three years ago this month. Since that time there has been much debate over the strategic and political implications of such a defense, alongside more fundamental questions regarding workability and cost. The preponderance of evidence, however, shows that “Star Wars” is not only physically feasible and cost effective but strategically imperative.

To understand why the implementation of a space shield is instrumental to the defense of the United States, one must look at the present alignment of forces between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. The U.S. relies on a strategic triad of land-based Minuteman missiles, B-52 bombers and Trident and Poseidon submarines. Under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, the United States and the U.S.S.R. foreswore radar defenses of their cities and military installations and instead relied upon second-strike capability, or retaliation, to defend themselves and deter attacks. Thus, the ABM treaty essentially institutionalized the theory of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).

The problem for the United States came as the Soviets began to develop an alarming first-strike capability over the rest of the decade and continuing into the 1980s. What with the “silo-busting” SS-18s of the so-called “fourth generation,” the U.S.S.R. gained the ability to destroy and estimated 90-95 percent of the U.S. ICBM force. When this fact is taken in conjunction with the existence of massive Soviet air defenses, it becomes obvious that nearly two-thirds of the American strategic triad would be useless after a Soviet sneak attack. In fact, it is generally conceded that submarines at sea (as opposed to those in port) would be the only section of the triad to emerge unscathed from a Soviet first strike. And the Soviets, you may rest assured, are hard at work developing their anti-sub capabilities.

The upshot of this discussion is that an Ameriacn president would be left with no viable alternatives after a Russian first strike. The president would be left with three equally repugnant options: 1) launch on warning — this would result in World War III, 2) order U.S. subs to fire on Russian cities (subs are incapable of destroying hardened military installations), which would result in little more than mutual suicide, 3) do nothing, which would leave the U.S. subject to nuclear coercion.

The answer to the strategic dilemma American currently faces is to abandon the ABM Treaty (which the Soviets have already violated by building a radar base in Krasnoyorsk, Siberia) and proceed full speed ahead with development and deployment of a space-based defensive system.

What, it will be asked, is the current state of “Star Wars” technology? According to Robert Jastrow, author of How to Make Nuclear Weapons Obsolete, “the technologies that are already in hand will allow us to put into place in the early 1990s, a simple but highly effective defense at a cost of roughly $60 billion.” The defense Jastrow envisions consists of satellites containing “smart rocks” (101-pound non-nuclear projectiles) which they fire at Soviet missiles during their booster stage of flight. The second layer of this defense involves the shooting down of Russian missiles as they begin to descend toward earth at the end of their flight. That phase is called the terminal defense, and it makes use of small heat-seeking interceptors similar to “smart rocks.” But this two-stage defense is only the beginning. “Star Wars” supporters envision what will eventually be a four-stage defense replete with lasers or possible particle-beam weapons that will be 80 percent effective on every level, resulting in a 99.8 percent success rate in stopping incoming missiles.

One of the major arguments against Star Wars is that unless it works perfectly it is useless, since if only one bomb got through it could cause tremendous damage. This argument is countered by pointing out that the main intent of “Star Wars” is to prevent a war. It has a great chance of succeeding because the Russian first-strike capability would be greatly weakened by a large surviving American retaliatory force.

Others say that American deployment of “Star Wars” would result in a pre-emptive Soviet attack. That argument, however, assumes that the Soviets would have no space shield of their own. In fact, in Jastrow’s words, “the Soviets are working as hard as they can on their own missile defense program and have been for more than a decade.” Hence, the Soviets already have a head start on the U.S.

Two final arguments frequently voiced by “Star Wars” opponents are that 1) the Soviets could overwhelm the space shield by merely flooding the atmosphere with decoys, and 2) they could build rockets with a fast-burn booster that would save the booster from some of our defenses. The problem with the first argument is that decoys are lighter and grow colder faster than the real warheads. U.S. satellites can pick up the differences in heat and thus concentrate on killing the real warheads. The second argument is refuted by pointing out that fast-burn boosters are less reliable because they tend to explode due to over-acceleration, they carry a smaller payload, and the “bus” is still susceptible to particle-beam weapons. Also it would cost the U.S.S.R. around $500 billion to replace all their old missiles with fast-burn boosters.

All in all, “Star Wars” is greatly needed by the United States to counter the Soviets’ present first-strike ability. Instead of relying on perpetual Soviet rationality as a way of avoiding World War, “Star Wars” offers a viable, physical defense that may eventually be perfected, thus leading to a world in which nuclear weapons truly are “obsolete.”//