KUSK, D,

    

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DILL March 22, 1979

JOSHUA LEDERBERG

PRESIDENT

Professor Dean Rusk
School of Law
University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia 30601

Dear Professor Rusk:

It was an extraordinary pleasure to hear you at
the Council for Foreign Relations Monday evening.

I was pressing you for the possibility of cor-
roborating some historical detail on rational motiva-
tions for the Russian gambit in the Cuban missile
crisis. Enclosed is an extract from Roger Hilsman's
book that was the provocation for that hypothesis: I
am simply still trying to evaluate the conjecture that
effective Soviet missile strength in 1961 was actually
below our estimates: this would have made the Gilpatric
message even more “horrendous" than we perhaps had in-
tended.

The showdown has been a major pivot of Soviet arms
policy ever since. Hopefully, it was the closest object
example we will need to encounter for many years, of the.
dynamics of actual nuclear confrontation.

I also seconded your remarks about the utility of
the surface naval option for deterrent platforms. Here
is something I wrote awhile ago (by no means still
generally valid) that touches on the same issue. There
are perhaps two more arguments contra: 1) the problem of
manning craft whose manifest role is to be a lure; and
2) the complications for numerical verifiability that
would be presented by such deployment of nondescript
platforms.

On the other hand, you are surely right about the
pervasiveness of the "solid gold" syndrome, and the net
detriment to national security that ensues.
Professor Dean Rusk
March 22, 1979

-2-

Again my admiration for a superb and candid presen-
tation that must have enlarged the imagination and in-
sight of everyone in that audience.

Yours sincerely,

oshua Lederberg

Encl.