232 



Military advantages neglected hy the siibcormnittee 



But in point of fact there were a number of important military 

 advantages accruing from the treaty. It was evident to the subcom- 

 mittee that the United States had performed many more tests than 

 had the Soviet Union of very small-yield, lightweight warheads, and 

 that the United States had had far more experience with both under- 

 ground and underwater testing than had the Soviet Union. For both 

 strategic and tactical applications, these small weapons — available 

 in large numbers — gave the United States a military superiority over 

 the Soviet Union which the test ban treaty would make more durable. 

 The "inverse cube" blast ratio referred to above ^^^ denigrated the sig- 

 nificance of the so-called big bombs, insofar as blast effect is con- 

 cerned. No reference was made to the probable military desirability of 

 inhibiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, nor to the contribution 

 of the treaty to this end. The inability of U.S. scientists, under the 

 treaty, to adduce information about Soviet weaponry on the basis of 

 air sampling and other external techniques was accounted a disad- 

 vantage ; conversely, cessation of tests would deny Soviet access to in- 

 formation about U.S. tests. 



However, an important and the most obvious military advantage 

 was not developed in either report. The function of military power is 

 to provide security and not merely to maintain a capability to wipe out 

 a potential adversary. By reducing military emphasis on atomic 

 weaponry, effort and resources might be released from the conduct of 

 hypothetical nuclear general war, and made available to support the 

 real conflict actually in progress in combating insurgency and insta- 

 bility in the developing nations. The utility of nuclear weapons to deter 

 this kind of military challenge had demonstrably been negligible, even 

 during the period of U.S. monopoly of atomic weapons, 1945^8. Yet 

 the subject of a partial inhibition on nuclear testing was approached on 

 the hypothesis that achievement of overwhelming nuclear superiority 

 was the sole and complete requirement for national security, bearing no 

 relation to other forms of military preparedness. 



V. Final Senate Decision Process on the Treaty 



Senate debate on the test ban treaty began September 9, 1963. It had 

 been preceded by the report of the Foreign Relations Committee, 

 September 3, by extensive statements and documentation from the 

 press, pro and con, discussions of reported dangerous concentrations 

 of radioactivity and their adverse psychological consequences, and 

 by evidences of popular support based on public opinion polls. Beyond 

 the obvious issue of whether or not to accede to ratification — which 

 in most quarters was regarded as a foregone conclusion — there were 

 three other important issues involved: 



1. How to approve the treaty without weakening it in the 

 process ; 



2. How to assert, the coequal status of the Senate with the 

 President in treatvmaking without weakening the treaty ; 



3. How to decide the underlying issue of how to secure the 

 national security in a nuclear age. 



"« See p. 21?!. 



