theater nuclear weapons. But even at that point, I would probably not move toward a declaration of no first use because of the residual deterrent effect which you described at the beginning. Mr. SOLARZ. Ms. Forsberg. IMPACT OF DECLARATION POLICY NOT VERY IMPORTANT MS. FORSBERG. I think the declaration probably isn't very important unless you completely reconfigure the forces to make it extremely unlikely. In that respect, I think I mostly agree with Ambassador Smith and Admiral Gayler. One advantage which I heard discussed at a Harvard conference recently, which I think is worth mentioning, is that in time of crisis, if you have had a policy for a long time of saying that you are prepared to use them first and of thinking about how you might do that, that is more likely to increase the chance of your doing so than if you hadn't had the declaratory policy. I would also like to agree with Mr. Woolsey in the sense that I think that the principal role of nuclear weapons is to deter conventional war among the great powers, not to deter nuclear war, and I don't think that that role, and with it the threat of escalation from conventional to nuclear war is going to end by changing declaratory policy. I think extended deterrence and first use concepts probably cannot end as long as the United States and the Soviet Union continue to engage in large scale unilateral military intervention in developing countries. If we want to decrease the readiness of preparations for nuclear escalation as a means of deterring conventional war, we have first to decrease the expectation of conventional war. That is in my view a more important factor in decreasing reliance on nuclear escalation than building up conventional strength in Western Europe. WILL PROPOSED BUILDUP GIVE UNITED STATES FIRST STRIKE CAPABILITY Mr. SOLARZ. Is it your judgment that when the MX missile is deployed, 100 of them, plus the new Trident II missiles, plus the existing capacity we have with our Minuteman III ICBM's, which have a hard target kill capacity, that this combined strength will give us a first strike capacity against Soviet land-based ICBM's? In other words, would we be able to use our Trident II's, MX's, and Minuteman III's to effectively destroy all the Soviet land-based ICBM's and have enough missiles left over on our subs and our bombers and our land-based ICBM's for a second strike if that should prove necessary? I am talking now just about our capacity vis-a-vis their land based ICBM's, recognizing that subs and bombers are a different question. Admiral GAYLER. My judgment, as well as my hope, is that we will never deploy 100 MX's, but assuming that we do, we cannot remove by this means mobile missiles, cruise missiles, which we can expect to see from the Soviets in large numbers. We cannot remove the Soviet bombers, which, few in number though they are, can destroy the United States by themselves, and we can't remove the Soviet submarines. So that we will not have a first strike capability against the Soviet Union. Mr. SOLARZ. I am talking about a first strike capacity against their land-based ICBM's alone. Admiral GAYLER. I understood that, but we must not consider those things in terms of the land-based ICBM's alone. Mr. SOLARZ. I am asking technically would we have that capacity? Admiral GAYLER. It is very unlikely. There are interesting studies done at MIT which suggests that the accumulation of expectable errors in the guidance of ICBM's and Tridents would be such that an important percentage of fixed land-based missiles even heavily attacked, would escape, in addition to which there is the obvious problem that they can be fired out on warning. Mr. SOLARZ. Mr. Smith. SOVIET ENCRYPTION OF TELEMETRY A SERIOUS VIOLATION Mr. SMITH. I just wanted to clarify a statement which I made which sounds wrong. I said I thought there was some equivalence between Soviet violations and ours. It seems to me that in the case of encryption of telemetry this is a far more serious thing than anything the Soviets have charged us with, and a far more puzzling thing as to why they are doing it. Mr. SOLARZ. Thank you all very much. This has been helpful to me. You have all given these questions a good deal of thought. You should know that you make a very valuable contribution to the understanding of these complex and very significant issues on the part of those of us in the Congress who share your concerns, but perhaps don't have the time to study these issues in the depth that we would like. You have shed some light on some very important issues. It has been a healthy antidote to some of the gloom and doom we heard yesterday from some of the other witnesses in this series. I am sure we will call upon you for future hearings. But now the bells have rung. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for me. The hearing is adjourned. [Whereupon, at 4:50 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] THE ROLE OF ARMS CONTROL IN U.S. DEFENSE POLICY TUESDAY, JUNE 26, 1984 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met at 9:30 a.m., in room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dante B. Fascell (chairman) presiding. Chairman FASCELL. The committee will please be in order. The committee meets today to continue its series of hearings on the role of arms control in U.S. defense policy. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued in past years a number of important pronouncements on matters of national and international concern. The bishops have a history of speaking out on issues of labor, welfare, crime, world food policy, South Africa, human rights in Latin America, and other issues. Last year, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a pastoral letter on one of the most important and pressing issues confronting us today: The ominous threat that nuclear war poses to the very survival of mankind. This Pastoral Letter on War and Peace, entitled "The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response," was released on May 3, 1983, a copy of which is before each member.1 We are honored today to have with us in support of the pastoral letter on behalf of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, two most prominent religious leaders: His Eminence Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Archbishop of Chicago; and the Most Reverend John J. O'Connor, Archbishop of New York. We look forward to their testimony on the issue of nuclear war. I would like to ask my colleague Mr. Hyde to say a few words. Mr. HYDE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Broomfield, who is the ranking member on our committee, has asked me to assume his chair for which I am most grateful, to join the chairman and Mr. Broomfield and other members of the committee in welcoming you. I hope you won't judge our interest in this subject by the paucity of attendance, but this time of the year, Congress has a way of demanding of each of us the gift of bilocation, sometimes trilocation, and it is hard to be everywhere at once. 1 The pastoral letter appears in appendix 6. We do welcome you as very important contributors to the ongoing discussion in arms control, so we are grateful that you are here. Chairman FASCELL. Cardinal, you may proceed. STATEMENT OF MOST REV. JOHN J. O'CONNOR, ARCHBISHOP OF NEW YORK Cardinal BERNARDIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and also Mr. Hyde. Archbishop O'Connor is going to make a presentation first, and then I will follow. Archbishop O'CONNOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. If you will forgive me, I will read this brief testimony in the interest of time and accuracy. And I begin by expressing the appreciation of the bishops who comprise the U.S. Catholic Conference and my own personal appreciation for the invitation given to Cardinal Bernardin and myself to present the views of the U.S. Catholic Conference on the arms race and the U.S. arms control policy. We have submitted a lengthy written statement, and we request, Mr. Chairman, that it be included in the record. In our oral statements, we will, therefore, highlight only the main features of this written testimony. May I say at the outset, that what I will be presenting here is in a sense what I would call philosophical. We do not consider ourselves skilled in either political or military matters, but we should obviously be expected to be able to speak from a moral and ethical perspective. Further, the full testimony we have submitted to you addresses those specifics which we felt it would be appropriate to address. I believe you will find that in the written testimony we have attempted to be politically nonpartisan, and from a moral and ethical perspective, we praise certain policies and actions of this administration and previous administrations, and we question others, but always again from a moral viewpoint and within the context of the Pastoral Letter on War and Peace. That pastoral letter of the U.S. Catholic Bishops, "The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response," was, as you have noted, issued in May 1983. In the past year, we, the bishops, have encouraged widespread study and discussion of the letter. We have been very much encouraged by the serious attention paid to it. We appreciate your noting its importance, Mr. Chairman. Attention has been paid, we feel, not only in the Catholic community, but ecumenically and in universities and public conferences, dealing particularly in the nuclear question, so our purpose in appearing before this committee is not primarily to address specific issues in detail, but to invite attention to the growing concern of leaders in the Catholic Community in the United States about the danger of nuclear war, and also to our conviction that the means used to fight modern warfare or even to deter it with nuclear weapons are subject to definite moral limitations. |