440 NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 



I want to pass on to what I think is the most important aspect of 

 this, and that is the strategic considerations. I will state flatly that 

 the United States will maintain control of the sea, or be certain that 

 that control is in fairly friendly hands, or we will fight. We have done 

 so in every instance in our history where it has been thought that the 

 control of the sea was about to fall into unfriendly hands. 



I will state flatly that nuclear weapons make no change whatever in 

 this strategic consideration. We must have control of the ocean to 

 safeguard our entire society. 



The only thing nuclear weapons can do is to postpone the final 

 reckoning and escalate the fiinal holocaust. 



This is what leads me to the feeling of urgency in the matters with 

 w^hich you are dealing. 



I think if we go ahead with the normal 5 or 10 percent increment 

 per year in agency appropriations for the next generation or so 

 we will come eventually to a place where we will be able to effectively 

 occupy and use the ocean. If we lived in a peaceful world that might 

 be the best thing to do, but unf ortimately we do not. 



There are three traditional uses of the ocean. We are now speak- 

 ing about some new ones, such as mining, and so forth, but the three 

 traditional uses of the ocean have been military, merchant marine, 

 and fisheries. 



I propose to you the consideration that the military aspect of 

 the control of the ocean has been neutralized. We have developed 

 perfectly satisfactorily the military power to obliterate our larg- 

 est competitors. I have no question about that. However, while we 

 are doing that they are likely to obliterate us. Therefore, from the 

 standpoint of military control of the ocean we are unable to have 

 a confrontation with Russia in any place except of a brush-type war 

 where they do not have a major interest or in a situation where we 

 are pretty sure they will back down, as in the Cuba instance. A 

 straight out confrontation for military control of the ocean we can- 

 not have because of the consequences thereof. 



Then one comes down to what does establish control of the ocean. 

 I think one can say quite clearly that occupation and use is what 

 will control the ocean, in the absence of military control. 



Discounting the military use as being neutralized we find in the 

 ■transportation use that the Russians are actually ahead of us now in 

 merchant marine carrying tonnage, new fleets, becoming more highly 

 automated than ours, more efficiently operated, and taking an im- 

 portant role in mercantile commerce. 



We find in the fisheries that Russia has exceeded us as of some 

 years ago, and last year produced approximately twice as much ton- 

 nage of fish as did the United States. They operated fisheries over 

 the entire world oceans— Indian, Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic, and Ant- 

 arctic Oceans. They have better fleets of vessels fishing off of our 

 own coasts, off both coasts, than we have, and they operate the same 

 wav off Africa and Asia. 



I think that here lies the degree of urgency which has not yet 

 been considered in testimony that I have heard before your conunit- 

 tee. We need to get up and hustle if we are not going to let the 

 control of the ocean by the subtle means of occupation and use fall 

 "into the hands of our greatest competitor, Russia. 



