The Strategic Arms Nuclear Power Weapons Treaty

The attention of the world was focused on Vienna, Austria, for three days in June 1979. Two men, surrounded by aides, soberly faced each other across a massive 25-foot (8-m)-long table. They eventually signed a treaty said to "reduce substantially the dangers of nuclear holocaust," the feared finale of today's arms race.

These men, Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union and Jimmy Carter of the United States, represented the front-runners in the international arms race that, in recent years, has reached lightning speed and created hideous means of mass destruction. Nearly $400 billion (U.S.) a year is used for military expenditures. Some 26 million persons around the world are in the armed forces.

The agreement signed in Vienna was labeled by Carter as "the most detailed, far-reaching, comprehensive treaty in the history of arms control." Will it finally stop the maddening arms race? No! That is not even its expressed purpose. The Strategic Arms Treaty (widely known as SALT II) basically limits to a set number only certain types of weapons considered vital in the event of intercontinental warfare. And those limits are considerably higher than either country has yet attained. So they are really new goals toward which to reach.

Seven years ago these same governments signed an agreement that limited, among other things, the number of missile launchers. What was the result? Both powers, according to the New York Times, "learned to make the limit obsolete by loading a whole batch of weapons aboard each launcher." The report concluded: "The fact is that the treaty [of 1979] does not prevent either side from building any weapon that it really cares to build."

Though many feel that some control is better than no control, are such arms-limitation treaties really the answer to the problem? Will the nations, on their own, ever stop stockpiling weapons? Or will it require action from a source higher than man? Yes, is divine action needed? Think about those questions as we review what the nations already have developed in strategic arms and what they are now devising.

Arsenals of Nuclear Weapons

In the field of nuclear weapons alone, the destructive power is enormous. Arsenals contain tens of thousands of sophisticated nuclear warheads with a total explosive power equivalent to that of one million Hiroshima bombs. If only a fraction of these were used in war, civilization would cease to exist.

To reach distant targets quickly with nuclear weapons, so-called strategic delivery systems have been developed and have increased enormously in number and capability. According to a publication entitled "Armaments or Disarmament?-The Crucial Choice," released in 1979 by SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), the United States and the Soviet Union have at their disposal a total of 4,796 strategic nuclear-delivery systems, including land-based rocket-propelled missiles, submarine-carried missiles and strategic bombers.

These arsenals are now so huge that any further increase in number is meaningless. However, improvements are constantly being made in quality, particularly as regards accuracy and reliability. The SIPRI publication states:

"New warheads for the US Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile, for example, are so accurate that 50% should fall within 200 metres [656 feet] of the intended target at intercontinental ranges. The next generation of these missiles will be accurate to within a few tens of metres. All military targets would be vulnerable to such weapons."

Is there a realistic chance that such accurate weapons will be used? "Such precision, together with other advances," warns the same publication, "may give military decision-makers misplaced confidence that they may actually fight and 'win' nuclear wars, rather than simply deter them. . . . The temptation to strike first will increase dangerously, and the risk of nuclear war by miscalculation, accident or madness will increase correspondingly."

But that is not all. There are yet other weapons in the arsenals.

Source: The Environmental Case for Nuclear Power: Economic, Medical, and Political Considerations by Robert C. Morris (Author)