Arms Chill

Bomb banning in Congress

"This is not only bad defense policy," fumed Secretary of State Alexander Haig, "but it is a bad arms-control policy as well." The target of Haig's blast: a congressional resolution calling for a freeze on nuclear weapons by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The nonbinding measure, introduced in both houses of Congress last week, has already attracted 20 Senators and 143 Representatives as sponsors. "Will the time ever be more right?" asked Democratic Congressman Jonathan Bingham of New York. "Will the Russians stand still while we build the MX missile, the B-l bomber and the Trident submarine?"

The resolution was the brainchild of Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, who returned to Washington after the holiday recess last January deeply impressed with the burgeoning grass-roots movement against nuclear arms. Republican Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon agreed to join him as sponsor, and the two lawmakers spent several weeks lining up other supporters. The single-page resolution calls upon both Washington and Moscow to "pursue a complete halt to the nuclear arms race," asks for a bilateral ban on the "testing, production, and further deployment of nuclear warheads," and urges "major reductions" in stockpiled weapons.

Haig contended that the proposed freeze would be "devastating" since it would preserve as much as a "six-to-one" Soviet advantage in nuclear weapons in Europe. Kennedy and Hatfield shot back that the Secretary chose "to use misleading figures to attack his caricature of that resolution." In Europe, they argued, the Soviets have 2,000 nuclear warheads, vs. 1,200 for NATO. The Senators stressed that the proposed freeze would be worldwide, not just in Europe, and that overall the U.S. has 9,000 warheads, vs. only 7,000 for the Soviet Union. (The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, whose estimates are given wide credence by nuclear experts, places the Soviet arsenal at 8,000 warheads. The Soviet weapons, moreover, far outstrip their U.S. counterparts in megaton force.)

The measure's sponsors are now pushing for formal hearings, and while chances for passage in the House look good, the outcome in the Senate is uncertain. Though the resolution is purely symbolic, its passage would surely embarrass, if not hamper, the Administration in any arms-control negotiations. Meanwhile, as Administration hawks scramble to defuse the measure, a grassroots campaign against doomsday weapons picked up more support last week. Maine's legislature became the eighth to request a moratorium on the spread of nuclear arms.

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