"The Price Must Be Paid"

Excerpts from Andrei Sakharov's open letter to American Physicist Sidney Drell:

On the danger: All-out nuclear war [could] cause man to be destroyed as a biological species and could even cause the annihilation of life on earth. If the "nuclear threshold" is crossed, i.e., if any country uses a nuclear weapon even on a limited scale, the further course of events would be difficult to control and the most probable result would be swift escalation. It is relatively unimportant how the "nuclear threshold" is crossed--as a result of a preventive nuclear strike or in the course of a war fought with conventional weapons, when a country is threatened with defeat, or simply as a result of an accident. In view of the above, nuclear weapons only make sense as a means of deterring nuclear aggression by a potential enemy. Nuclear weapons cannot be viewed as a means of restraining aggression carried out by means of conventional weapons.

On conventional arms: For a long time, the West has not been relying on its "conventional" armed forces as a means sufficient for repelling a potential aggressor. [In contrast] the U.S.S.R. and the other countries of the socialist camp have armies with great numerical strength and are rearming them intensively, sparing no resources. [So] it is necessary to restore parity in the field of conventional weapons [and that] is only possible by investing large resources and by an essential change in the psychological atmosphere in the West. In the final analysis this is necessary to prevent nuclear war, and war in general.

On a nuclear freeze: Precisely because an all-out nuclear war means collective suicide, we can imagine that a potential aggressor might count on a lack of resolve on the part of the country under attack to take the step leading to that suicide, i.e., it could count on its victim capitulating for the sake of saving what could be saved. There must be a strategic parity of nuclear forces so that neither side will venture to embark on a limited or regional nuclear war. Of course I realize that in attempting not to lag behind a potential enemy in any way, we condemn ourselves to an arms race that is tragic. But the main danger is slipping into an all-out nuclear war. If the probability of such an outcome could be reduced at the cost of another ten or 15 years of the arms race, then perhaps that price must be paid while, at the same time, diplomatic, economic, ideological, political, cultural and social efforts are made to prevent a war.

On arms-control negotiations: For these talks to be successful the West should have something it can give up! It seems very important to me to strive for the abolition of powerful silo-based missiles. While the U.S.S.R. is the leader in this field there is very little chance of its easily relinquishing that lead. If it is necessary to spend a few billion dollars on MX missiles to alter this situation, then perhaps this is what the West must do. But, at the same time, if the Soviets, in deed and not just in word, take significant verifiable measures for reducing the number of land-based missiles (more precisely, for destroying them), then the West should not only abolish MX missiles (or not build them!) but carry out other significant disarmament programs as well. On the whole I am convinced that nuclear disarmament talks must be conducted continuously--in the brighter periods of international relations but also in the periods when relations are strained.

On the peace movement: I know that pacifist sentiments are very strong in the West. [But] one should not proceed from an a priori assumption of any special peace-loving nature in the socialist countries due to their supposed progressiveness or the horrors and losses they have experienced in war. People both in the socialist and the Western countries have a passionate inward aspiration for peace. [But] since 1945 there has been a relentless expansion of the Soviet sphere of influence [that] has today assumed proportions dangerously harmful to international equilibrium.

On his own situation: I am one of the few independent participants in this discussion in the U.S.S.R. The opportunity to criticize the policy of one's national leaders in matters of war and peace as you do freely is, in our country, entirely absent. Not only critical statements but those merely factual in nature, made on even much less important questions, often entail arrest and a long sentence of confinement or psychiatric prison. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.