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PARTISAN REVIEW
Union can do to prevent the United States from destroying the
Soviet Union as a society. There is absolutely nothing that the Soviet
Union can do to prevent us from killing two hundred and fifty million
Russians in fifteen minutes.
If
a situation existed where both sides
deployed both offensive and defensive forces , the side that strikes
first can kill two hundred million people , but the side that strikes sec–
ond might be able to kill twenty million people. And under those
circumstances, the incentive for striking first would be quite signifi–
cant , particularly because the other guy is sitting there thinking the
same thing. In a situation where you have offensive forces such as
the type we have deployed today, in combination with leaky
defenses, the decision as to whether you strike first or strike second is
the difference between survival and annihilation.
WILLIAM PHILLIPS: And suppose you had no SDI, how does
that change things?
JOHN PIKE: There's no incentive to strike first because there's
nothing that you can do to prevent the retaliation.
WILLIAM PHILLIPS: I don't follow that. One more question that
you didn't answer, why are the Russians so stupid, and the Japanese
so stupid and everybody else so stupid , that they want to go ahead
with the SDI?
WASSILY LEONTIEF : We're paying them hush money to stop
them from criticizing us. Prior to the time Secretary Weinberger
made this offer of industrial participation, all the allies were ex–
tremely skeptical of this.
WILLIAM PHILLIPS: How much are we paying the Russians?
DANIEL ROSE: I really feel it's time to throw it open.
JOHN PIKE: Prior to the time that we made the offer all of the
allies were extremely critical, because regardless of how well the SDI
works to protect North America, it clearly isn't going to work nearly
as well to protect Western Europe. It's simply a matter of geography.
In protecting North America we can put six or eight layers between
us , and the West Germans basically would be able to put up one
layer.
WILLIAM PHILLIPS : How about the Russians, whom we're not
paying?
JOHN PIKE : The Soviets clearly face a very different strategic
problem than the United States. A fundamental fact is that every
nuclear weapon in the world is either in the Soviet Union or aimed
at the Soviet Union . They have to worry about the French, the Chi–
nese , the British. We don't have to worry about the Chinese any-
