Sentinel Signals a Halt

Around, around the sun we go: The moon goes round the earth. We do not die of death: We die of vertigo.

--Archibald MacLeish

The "mad momentum" of the nuclear-arms race, as former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara once described it, lost a bit of velocity last week--after a vertiginous go-around between the world's two superpowers. First, the U.S. Senate voted to begin work on the nation's projected Sentinel anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system, designed to provide a "thin" defense screen against enemy rockets. Barely 72 hours later, the Soviet Union called for talks on slowing down the debilitating pace of the missile race.

Moscow's move caught U.S. policymakers by surprise, although Lyndon Johnson and Special Assistant Walt Rostow made no effort to conceal their glee. For 17 months, the Russians had rebuffed every U.S. overture, including Johnson's disarmament plea at the United Nations three weeks ago. Then, in an address to the Supreme Soviet last week, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko declared that Moscow was "ready for an exchange of opinion" on the missile issue. Said Gromyko: "The current revolutionary epoch is doing away with the traditional concepts of strength." Stripped of Marxist-Leninist bafflegab, Gromyko's speech presumably indicated Soviet discomfiture over U.S. plans to go ahead with an ABM system of its own. Whatever Moscow's motives, it seemed genuinely inclined to slow down the nuclear momentum.

Roundabout Manner. Once the Russians began installing an ABM system around Moscow and Leningrad two years ago, it was inevitable that the U.S. would follow suit. Washington did so, however, in a roundabout manner. Last September, after years of opposition to an ABM network, McNamara reversed field and announced that the U.S. intended to begin building Sentinel --to defend the country against the Chinese, not the Russians.

Sentinel's system of radar tracking stations, long-range Spartan missiles and short-range Sprint rockets could indeed be of some avail against Chinese intercontinental missiles, although Peking has fallen a year behind schedule and is not expected to pose any threat until the mid-1970s . Against the real and present peril of 780 land-based Soviet missiles already pointed at U.S. targets, however, Sentinel will afford virtually no protection. Even a "thick" ABM shield, costing $40 billion instead of the projected $5.5 billion for the thin screen, would be hopelessly porous. Missile experts are quicker to devise new offensive weapons, such as multiple warhead rockets, than the means to shoot them down.

The fact is that Sentinel was intended less as a truly effective defense system than as an expensive propaganda gesture for Soviet consumption. McNamara admitted that the Administration's original decision to go ahead with Sentinel was prompted by "marginal" factors. Some cynics speculated that another Johnson objective was to prevent the G.O.P. from making an election issue out of the "antimissile gap."

Circular Line. Thus, when Clark Clifford, McNamara's successor as Defense Secretary. went to Capitol Hill to request $227 million as a first installment on Sentinel, he ran into a skeptical Congress. In the Senate, Sentinel was opposed by a potent bipartisan coalition that included such normally defense-minded figures as Stuart Symington, a former Air Force Secretary, and Maine's Margaret Chase Smith. Their arguments: Sentinel is worthless and would merely prompt both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to build more offensive missiles. Eugene McCarthy interrupted his presidential campaign to denounce the ABM system on the Senate floor and Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, deserting the Administration, blistered the Pentagon: "The Department of Defense just asks what it wants, and this Congress will give it to them. You can never satisfy them."

Defending the Administration's decision, Clifford underscored Sentinel's real value--as a deterrent to further Soviet moves in the ABM field. "If they [the Soviets] develop and deploy a workable ABM system and we do not," he declared, "we are at a disadvantage." His logic made an impact. By a 52-to-34 vote, the Senate defeated a move to eliminate funds for Sentinel from the defense budget.

Already pinched by a defense budget of $50 billion, up 15% since last year, the Kremlin seemed to seize on the Senate's vote as a chance to check huge military spending. It was a decision gratifying to both sides in the Sentinel debate. The system's opponents could claim credit for underscoring U.S. reluctance to pay for redundant weaponry. Its proponents could congratulate themselves for prompting Gromyko's move. Together, they proved that the shortest distance in rocket diplomacy between Washington and Mos, cow is often a circular line.

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