NEWS AND GOMMAENT rae Arms Control Agency: Fred New Captain of a Disabled Ship | Congress established the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) in 1961 as a modest step to- ward redressing the balance in a gov- ernment then still feverishly engaged in building up the nation’s strategic weaponry. The director of ACDA was assigned, by law, to serve as the Presi- dent’s principal arms control adviser and to assume, under the Secretary of State’s direction, “primary responsibility within the government” for arms con- trol matters. No miracles were expected of ACDA, and none were performed. But this small agency, with a staff of never more than 270 people and an annual budget of never higher than $10 million, has. proved its value by playing a key role in bringing about agreements such as the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 and the ABM treaty of 1972. Today, however, ACDA_seems_ to be onthe Nixon Administration’s list of agencies marked, if not for extinction, for ob- scurity. A number of members of the Senate Foreign Relations Commit- tee will give voice to their growing con- cern over this situation at the public hearings, now set for 9 May, on the confirmation of ACDA’s newly desig- nated director, Fred Charles Iklé. Iklé’s confirmation itself does not ap- pear in any danger, for Iklé is a politi- cal scientist with a respectable if not luminescent record of scholarship into questions of modern weaponry and in- ternational negotiations. Indeed, the re- cent White House announcement of Iklé’s nomination was received with re- 570 lief by those who had feared that the nominee might be someone wholly un- qualified, such as one particular Repub- lican senator from the. West who was defeated for reelection last Novem- ber. Iklé, once a professor at Massachu- setts Institute of Technology, comes to ACDA from the Rand Corporation where he has been head of the social science department. If some profession- als in the field of arms control are un- easy at certain of Iklé’s ideas, they at least recognize him as one of their own kind and as someone with whom they can communicate. The real significance of the upcoming hearing is that it will give senators their first opportunity to question an admin- istration spokesman closely, and. pub- licly, as to ACDA’s future. If Iklé is unable to provide satisfactory answers, the committee or its arms control sub- committee can proceed from there, scheduling other Administration officials to testify about ACDA and possibly considering legislation intended to enhance the agency's status and in- fluence. ACDA seems to be undergoing a transition from an agency entrusted with important arms control_negotia- tions to one discharging a modest_ad- visory_role, yet_apparently without be- ing allowed to keep the tools necessary to perform even that latter role ade- Guately. First, note how ACDA has been stripped’ of a major: part of its role in negotiations. “A few months ago the agency was denied the leadership in SALT IT ne- gotiations when the White House named a career diplomat, Ambassador-at-Large U. Alexis Johnson, to head this second round of strategic arms talks with the Russians. In fact, Gerard C. Smith, who in January resigned as ACDA director last_ May was cut out of the final nego- tiations for SALT I—which he had Jed for some 2 years—and_w: t_invit to be in Moscow with President Nixon and H issi the SALT agreements were signed. — ACDA will provide some staff sup- nort for SALT Tour wheter This will be done largely through Johnson's ne- gotiating team or through Kissinger’s National Security Council staff is not yet clear. What is clear is that, in_ its new advisory and staff support role, ACDA’s_ influence on policy will prob: ably be weak by comparison with what it would have been if the agency were still actually leading negotiations. (The ACDA official currently assigned to the SALT negotiating team is Sidney N. Graybeal, the agency’s deputy as- sistant director for science and tech- nology.) ACDA remains in charge of U.S. participation in the multilateral arms control negotiations going on_at the United Nations Conference of the Committee on Disarmament (CCD) in Geneva, but whether this will continue to be so if these negotiations should suddenly begin moving toward impor- tant agreements appears very much a question, . Just the fact that Iklé is an acade- mician without practical diplomatic or high-level governmental experience it- self suggests that he was named to head a think tank of sorts and not an agency with the “primary responsibility” for- arms control, His qualifications are in marked contrast to those of his two predecessors. William C. Foster, direc- tor of ACDA from 1961 to 1969, served as director of the Economic Cooperation Administration and as deputy secretary of defense during the SCIENCE, VOL. 1290 Truman Administration. Gerard Smith was a high State Department official during the Eisenhower years, having served as an assistant secretary and director of policy planning. Henry Kissinger came to the White House from a background similar to Iklé’s, but, clearly, Kissinger is, in many ways, something of a nonpareil. Senator He M. Jackson of Wash- ington, who was consulted by the White House prior to the Iklé_ nomination, is quite openly of the conviction that ACDA has a seifish bureaucratic inter- est_in arms control agreements and definitely should not be in charge of negotiations, Jackson has supported past arms control agreements, but his gen- eral orientation on arms control has been more that of a hawk than a dove. Tkié’s own views are subtle and not easily characterized, but, for whatever it means, his nomination was warmly endorsed by Jackson, who had known Tklé as a consultant to his Government Operations subcommittee on national security. Henry Kissinger also has known Iklé for some time. If ACDA and Iklé are to be confined largely to an advisory role, then it is all the more pertinent to note some severe losses of human and _financial resources that will handicap the agenc and its new director in performance of that role. Consider the following: © The General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament, es- tablished by law as an adviser to the director, the Secretary of State, and the President, includes among its 15 mem- bers some of the most experienced men in the nation in arms control matters— people such as John J. McCloy (the chairman), William Foster, James Kil- lian, and Dean Rusk, The White House has asked ail of t b- mit their resignations, Apparently destined to undergo a complete change of membership, the committee may go a long time before again asserting it- self confidently, even if people of high caliber can be persuaded to serve on it. ® Much of A . ior staff is being wiped out by forced resignations. One whose resignation the White House has accepted is Spurgeon M._Keeny, Jr., the assistant director for science and technology. Keeny has worked on arms control problems under four different administrations, beginning in 1958 when he was a member of the. U.S. delegation to the Geneva Confer- ence on Nuclear Test Detection. Arms control liberals respect his quiet com- petence. 11 MAY 1973 * ACDA’s budget has been cut from $10 million down to $6.6 million—-at the same_time the President seeks a’ $4.2-billion increase in military spend- ing. ACDA expenditures for contract research will decline by 75 percent, going from $2 million to only $500,- 000. ACDA can and has made effective use of research done by other agencies, and the value of some of its contract research can be questioned. But, as shown in past attempts by the Penta- gon’s Advanced Research. Projects Agency to obscure the significance of advances in methods for discriminating between earthquakes and underground explosions, ACDA_needs_a_strong_in- dependent research and research-evalua- tion capability. LE Foster Is “Horrified” Taken altogether, these various changes at ACDA are viewed by many people in the arms control field with a sense of distress. “I am horrified at what’s happening to the agency,” Wil- liam Foster, now chairman of the board of the Arms Control Association, told Science. “I think they are trying to abolish it, by indirection.” Just who “they” are, Foster cannot say. ‘““Who is doing the crucifixion act, I don’t know. Nobody seems to know.” That Iklé is assuming the helm of a badly listing—if not a sinking—ship takes a certain edge off of any inquiry into his ideas. Nevertheless, the sena- tors on the Foreign Relations Commit- tee_will want to know his views 23 to_ how ACDA can contribute to SALT Il and whethe i of new U.S. proposals at the CCD on is- sues such as a comprehensive ban on nuclear testing (the U.S. position on the test-ban question has not changed essentially since 1963, despite the fact that, given available seismic detection tec nuclear ex- plosions of yields as low as 1 or 2 kilo- tons can now probably be verified with high confidence, and without onsite inspections). “More generally, Iklé is sure to be questioned about his article in the Jan- uary 1973 issue of Foreign Affairs, en- titled “Can nuclear deterrence last out the century?” Here, in passing, Iklé expressed concern about the possi- bility of a nuclear war starting by acci- dent_or by an unauthorized launching of _weapons.. He observes: “In the 1950's, prior to the missile age of Rus- sia’s massive buildup of her nuclear forces, one heard a great deal about the risk of accidental war. Now, when American and Soviet missiles by. the thousands are poised in constant readi- ness, this concern has curiously dimin- ished.” The article’s main thrust, how- ever, is to question what Iklé sees as the_premises on which the theory of mutual deterrence (the “balance of terror”) is based, as in the following: When le: of a werful count are credited with a willin t on some scheme for nuclear surprise at- tack——a_scheme whose calculations they cannot validate, w: umptions they — cannot test and who: failur mean the end of their_regi their Country—-how ration al . decision = we assuming in our posture of deter 2 Wek The reall arnt eee : = 7 : mutual deterrence postulat Russian nuclear posture and our own must designed to defer an o h degraded rationality, why stop _at_ this Fticular degradation in judgment? Having said this, however, [klé makes himself not at all clear as to what to do about it. In calling for rejection of “the dogma that to deter nuclear at- tack, the threatened response must be the mass killing of people,” Iklé seems to advocate some kind of counterforce strategy. That is, nuclear forces should be targeted against Soviet “military, transportation, and industrial assets” instead of against population centers. To be sure, Iklé certainly does not want the United States to do anything that could cause the Russians to fear for the survivability of their deterrent. Yet, if the United States is to have missile forces large and accurate enough to respond to an attack by striking de- liberately and selectively and destroy- ing all or part of the Soviet Union’s war-making potential, then the Russians might well believe that these forces have been designed to have a first-strike potential. The problem here is typical of the difficulties that arise when a stra- tegic theorist turns his mind to the fine- tuning of nuclear war. Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D- Minn.), a member of the Senate Fortign Relations Committee and sponsor of the ACDA legislation 12 years ago, may want Iklé’s views on a piece of legislation which the senator and his staff are now formulating. It would re- quire the preparation of “impact state- ments” for all major new military sys- tems, analogous to the environmental impact statements required for federal projects undex: the: National Environ- mentat Policy Act. A number of agen- cies would contribute such statements, looking at military projects from the standpoint of their budgetary, economic, S71 social, and_ strategic impacts. ACDA_ people, such legislation would have the sition of leadership in arms control would have the key role of analyzing virtue of formalizing ACDA’s advisory negotiations would no doubt be fu- proposed projects from the standpoint “role, now possibly the only role the tile. If the President is determined to of their_impact_on the future of the “agency is to be allowed to play. For remove ACDA from such a role, there "arms race. . Congress to go beyond this and de- probably is nothing Congress can do - From the viewpoint of arms control ‘hand that ACDA be restored to a po- about it.—LuTHer J. CARTER