EVER since the development of missiles that could span continents, the possibility of nuclear-armed rockets arcing over the horizon from a hostile nation has been a nightmare for U.S. planners. How could such monstrous weapons be dealt with? How could the nation avert a death toll of hundreds of millions of its people? For 14 years, military men and scientists have labored mightily to devise some protection against such an eventuality. The principal result of their efforts is the Sentinel anti-ballistic-missile system, a complex of nuclear-tipped rockets and radars aimed at crippling inbound enemy warheads before they can hit their targets in the U.S.
Ideally, decisions concerning complicated weaponry—and the Sentinel system is one of the most complicated ever devised—should be the quiet business of Government: its civilian leaders, military men and scientists. That has not been so with the ABM, as the defensive system is now known. The question of whether the U.S. should install an ABM network—and how extensive that network should be—has suddenly become a national issue that has immense strategic, political and social ramifications for the American people and perhaps the rest of the world. The debate over that issue, warned New York Republican Senator Jacob Javits last week, "could become as bitter and destructive as the dispute over Viet Nam policy."
Unabated Battle
Any President facing this kind of situation would have a major problem. For Richard Nixon, who must contend with opposition majorities on Capitol Hill and try to govern by conciliation, the situation is particularly hazardous. As the Sentinel dispute heated up, he said that he would announce his ABM policy this week. By any reckoning, it is the biggest decision of his Administration to date—and it could bring down righteous wrath on Nixon's head no matter how he decides.
The general expectation was that the President would choose to continue the ABM program in some form, despite the bitter criticism that that course would draw. To do otherwise would amount to a vote of no confidence in the military and undercut Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, who has come out in favor of the ABM. In the highly unlikely event that Nixon chose to abandon this system, he would come under heavy fire from those Americans who voted for him at least in part because he promised to guarantee clear U.S. military superiority over the Soviet Union. To steer a cautious middle course between continuing the project as laid out by the Johnson Administration and ending it outright, could simply result in satisfying no one. Whatever the President's decision, in short, the battle over the ABM is almost certain to continue unabated.
ABM's advocates contend that the system would be a stabilizing influence among the nuclear powers, a necessary addition to the U.S. arsenal, a strong lever in prospective arms-control negotiations—and the savior of tens of millions of lives in the event of nuclear war. The project's foes, on the other hand, see the ABM in itself as a threat to peace—a new source of fuel for the already flaming arms race and a potentially voracious consumer of resources urgently needed for a lengthening catalogue of domestic ills. Beyond that, the critics contend, there are reasons to doubt that an ABM, in its present state of technology, would