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cent of the support of the Russian population. I think the Russians
will see that they won't be able to go on. What of course they will do is
strike. And we will do exactly the same thing. We put this country in
a situation where you have a very strong enemy who is trying to
reach military superiority, whom you dread incredibly, who, with
his military superiority, will just make mincemeat out of you, not
only militarily, but nationally, culturally. I think our decisions should
not be based on technological guessing: can we make these lasers, or
other lasers? Our basic decisions should be based on the longer point
of view. Unfortunately we very often lack a "long-run" point of view.
DANIEL ROSE: Thank you .
WILLIAM PHILLIPS: Most critics of the SDI program, and critics
of our defense program generally, argue that our government is
sneaky, that it's really trying to build up superiority rather than par–
ity . I don't see anything wrong with superiority, if superiority pro–
vides a better guarantee that there will be no war. I also don't
understand the point of the argument that if you won't have a perfect
system, that there will always be some vulnerability. It seems to me
that Mr. Pike's argument was based to some extent on the assump–
tion that if you're still partly vulnerable, that makes World War III
more likely. It seems obvious to me that until such time as we can
assure that we have a perfect defense system, we keep up our deter–
rent. And I don't see why the Russians should be induced, or find it
desirable, to carry out a first strike , just because we're not absolutely
secure in our defense system, if we still have the deterrence which
everybody agrees has been working up to now. I also want to ques–
tion the point that the Russians can always build more missiles.
They can always build more missiles even if we don't have an SDI,
and the arms war can still go on whether we have SDI or not. In gen–
eral , the critics of SDI , including the two we've just heard, argue
that the system either can't work technologically, or if it can work
technologically it's not politically desirable, or if it's politically
desirable, it's not economically feasible, and if it's economically feasi–
ble, it's culturally undesirable.
If
all the objections are valid it is
strange that the Russians are working on it . We have to have a
theory of the super-stupidity of the Russians. Why are the Japanese,
the British, and the French, and the military establishments of
various European governments interested in participating in the
development of SDI? Do they all want to compete in idiocy with the
United States? We're arriving at some theory of total idiocy.
DANIEL ROSE: Before we have our discussants answer any specific
