McGeorge Bundy

The time is ripe for a global program to reduce existing nuclear arsenals and prevent their further proliferation. The immediate tasks are to execute agreed-upon bilateral reductions in U.S. and Russian forces, assure that Russia remains the only nuclear weapon state of the old Soviet Union, and strengthen the international effort against the spread of nuclear weapons by tougher monitoring. Further steps to take under U.S. leadership include: adopting a "no first use" doctrine except as a last defensive resort to deter a nuclear attack; ending new weapons tests and phasing out safety tests by 1996; replacing the goal of strategic defense against missiles with a limited defense objective, and seeking Russian agreement on a warhead ceiling lower than the accepted range of 3,000-3,500. Effective future action will require a stronger policy of public explanation from American political leaders than ever before.

General reflections on the promise of the 1990s, and the gap to be crossed from the dismantling of totalitarian states to the building of healthy and prosperous democracies.

The reelection of Ronald Reagan makes the future of his Strategic Defense Initiative the most important question of nuclear arms competition and arms control on the national agenda since 1972. The President is strongly committed to this program, and senior officials, including Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, have made it clear that he plans to intensify this effort in his second term. Sharing the gravest reservations about this undertaking, and believing that unless it is radically constrained during the next four years it will bring vast new costs and dangers to our country and to mankind, we think it urgent to offer an assessment of the nature and hazards of this initiative, to call for the closest vigilance by Congress and the public, and even to invite the victorious President to reconsider. While we write only after obtaining the best technical advice we could find, our central concerns are political. We believe the President_s initiative to be a classic case of good intentions that will have bad results because they do not respect reality.

One of the most important questions about the working of the United States government is the nature and location of the authority to use the armed forces of the country against an adversary. It is not an easy matter. Doctrinaire readings of the constitutional grant of the war power to the Congress are as misleading as executive reliance on the role of the President as Commander in Chief. The formal treaties that bind the United States to allies in Europe, Asia and this Hemisphere are couched in language that quite deliberately skirts the question of who would do what, and by what process of decision, at the moment of truth. Even greater uncertainty surrounds the largely untested War Powers Resolution of 1973. And in all our complex debates on strategic deterrence we seldom ask ourselves just how one would square the possible requirements for rapid executive action with the rights of the Congress, let alone the people.

The summer of 1969 has seen men on the moon and almost half the American Senate voting against a defense decision supported by two Presidents. In the summer pride of the moon landing it is not pleasant to turn the mind back to the terrible topic of nuclear danger. Yet the splendid technical achievement of Apollo contains its own reminder that similar skills applied with similar single-mindedness have now led the two greatest powers of our generation into an arms race totally unprecedented in size and danger.

It is with some sense of temerity that a member of the White House staff undertakes to comment on the large topic of the Presidency and the Peace. Loyalty and affection are so normal in such service that detachment is difficult. Nevertheless the importance of the topic and the enforced familiarity of close experience with the Presidential task may justify a set of comments whose underlying motive is to express a conviction that is as obvious as the daylight, in general, and as fresh as every sunrise, in particular: a conviction that the American Presidency, for better, not for worse, has now become the world's best hope of preventing the unexampled catastrophe of general nuclear war.