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50 Million Lives?
During the Kennedy years and the first Johnson Administration, the White House and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara resisted pressure from the military and Congress to set up some version of ABM. Meanwhile, the research effort led to Nike-X, an expanded and refined system that employs two types of missiles and electronically operated radars that can handle numerous targets simultaneously (see box next page). Theoretically, at least, the Nike-X proj ect — which is still receiving $175 million a year in development funds — thus overcame some of the main technical problems posed by Zeus.
Even so, McNamara, along with many prominent scientists both in and out of the Government, remained highly skeptical of the ABM's efficacy against a large-scale Soviet attack. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and particularly the Army — which has jurisdiction over land-based ABMs — continued to press for its installation on the grounds that some protection was better than none. Army General Earle Wheeler, J.C.S. chairman, has argued that a full-fledged ABM might save between 50 million and 80 million American lives in an all-out war.
In 1967, McNamara finally presented two alternative schemes, one involving an investment of $12.2 billion and an other costing $21.7 billion. The less ex pensive approach might reduce the death toll to 40 million (from an estimated high of 120 million). The second sys tem might lower fatalities to 30 million. Yet these calculations were essentially academic numbers games based on constantly changing realities. They presumed a static Russian defensive capability as it existed in 1967. McNamara himself pointed out the big drawback: "We can be certain that the Soviets will react to offset the advantage we would hope to gain."
This line of reasoning, rebutted by some experts, assumes that the offensive side in missile warfare always has the advantage, that it can cheaply and easily offset any improvement in defenses. This theory also presupposes antagonists of roughly equal strength and technological development. The equations all changed when, in the mid-'60s, the Chinese developed their own rudimentary nuclear program. Now there were two threats to consider, and pro-ABM pressure rose accordingly.
In a few years the Peking regime, which is vitriolic and unpredictable in its self-imposed isolation, will theoretically be able to hit the U.S. with nuclear missiles. Although the U.S. could destroy China as a modern society even more easily than it could the Soviet Union, a touch of yellow-menace fever has set in. "The Chinese are different," argues one general. "They have no regard for human life. Imagine if the Red Guards had got their hands on a couple of ICBMs!" At the same time, the Russians resisted Lyndon Johnson's initial attempts to open negotiations aimed at checking the nuclear-arms race. Moscow made no secret of the fact that it was going ahead with its own ABM. As early as 1962, Nikita Khrushchev bragged that his anti-missile weapon could "hit a fly in the sky."
By late 1967, with an election year imminent and the strong possibility that the Republicans would resuscitate the familiar