Senators Restrict Test Ban Debate To Strategy, Skip Political Points

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20--The meaning of "euphoria" is not all that Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara has had to explain to Sen. Richard Russell (D-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the other senators hearing testimony on the partial test ban treaty.

Committee members have requested and received the Administration's analysis of the treaty's effects on nuclear strategy and weaponry. Some senators have wanted to use this information to show that Khrushchev could twist the treaty into a spade for burying us. Others want to show that he could not.

Both groups, however, are missing the most important issues and are themselves helping to bury the Congress before it is fully dead from external forces and internal disorder.

By centering the ratification debate on nuclear weaponry and strategy, the opponents of the treaty are trying to compete in a market where the Administration holds a near monopoly; most of the proponents appear to have sold out already and the unannounced are, in effect, supporting the idea that military opinion ought to determine the vote on the treaty.

When Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced last week that the Joint Chiefs do not oppose ratifications, a favorable vote was assured. Opponents still hope to coax a disapproving phrase or two out of some testifying officer, but many senators who were withholding any committment until the military had expressed its assent are now free to speak, and are beginning to do so. These announcements will elevate further the stature of military advice and consent.

This would be nothing to complain of if military opinions on the treaty needed greater attention and respect, but the military view has already received a disproportionate airing. It would be nothing to complain of if many senators did not already have good reason to feel that the armed forces operate under very slight Congressional restraint and under only a little more from the Administration.

It would be nothing to complain of if the military did not face for the first time in many years the prospect of having to justify its expenditures. The nearly simultaneous appearance of a test ban treaty and of Sen. McGovern's call for a $5 billion reduction in military spending has almost certainly sent the armed forces scurrying to reinforcing their defenses. A show of great respect for military opinion on the test ban treaty will make rejection of military opinion on spending even more difficult.

It is not at all surprising that those pre-disposed to appose the treaty, or to be highly skeptical of its desirability, should have fixed upon issues of weaponry and strategy and turned to the military for support. The virtual assurance that violation would be detected, the right of withdrawal from the agreement, and the reassurances regarding inadvertant recognition of East Germany have made the argument about the scheming Red Russians seem somewhat rote and pointless, even to a few of the treaty's detractors.

The principal, superficially plausible, objection to the treaty is that underground testing or planned abrogation by a huge test series would allow the Soviets to snatch a decisive weaponry advantage. The President has argued, of course, that this is impossible. Unless the anti-treaty senators can themselves provide authoritative evidence for their claim, dissident members of the military must be their chief source.

Since the military, whatever its true opinion, has remained publicly united behind Gen. Taylor, the treaty opponents and skeptics have had to speak for themselves, with an occasional assist from Dr. Teller. They have been facing the full Administration battery, and their declining numbers show it. One example is enough to indicate their difficulties.

Shortly after the terms of test ban treaty were published, the doubters began to argue that the exemption of underground explosions was the Soviet ace-in-the-hole. Since the Russians have made fewer subterranean tests than the United States, they would be able to catch up in that category while this country was forbidden from atmospheric testing of hydrogen behemoths comparable to the ones the Soviets already have. Secretary McNamara testified we did not need the big bombs, but if we ever did, we could build them without testing them and still be confident they would work.

The crusher, however, was the revelation that the significance of previous underground tests was the opposite of what the treaty's critics claimed. The Administration asserts that since the U.S. has done more testing underground, it knows better how to do it and can actually increase its superiority in this category of devices suitable for such testing.

No anti-treaty senator has taken public issue with this argument. The incidence of references to underground testing has simply quietly dropped off. The facts have been kinder to supporters, who are multiplying dangerously.

When the President spoke to the country July 26, he opened the "national debate" on the treaty with an address that was an excellent initial attempt to define the scope and significance of the treaty. When he wrote to the Senate a few days later, transmitting the treaty for ratification, he abbreviated sharply most of the issues he had presented to the people and dwelt upon weapon development and strategy. He might have preferred to do otherwise, but if the treaty was to be approved, he had to speak to the question the Senate was asking.

The Senate has not changed its approach substantially and neither has the President. He seems to be satisfied with a tactic perfected by Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers: bash the opponent where he is strongest; when you beat him there, he's finished. The opponents of the treaty are finished. All that needs to be done now is to add up the score.

Much more should be done, however. The Senate should not allow the Administration to get by with making only the minimum case for the treaty. If the hired brains in the White House and State Department have not yet thoroughtly thought out the limitations and implications of the treaty, the Senate hearings and the floor debate can force them to do so.

In the first day of open hearings, Secretary of State Dean Rusk was asked why the Soviets agreed to this treaty now. He offered two explanations: that the Cuban crisis had confronted the Russians with the difficulties and dangers of nuclear power and war, and that economic problems were forcing them to reduce their military budget. Rusk should have explained why the rupture with China had not been cited as a major factor, or someone should have asked him. No one did.

Fortunately, the treaty is so innocuous that oversights of this magnitude do no harm. But the Senate, for its own sake, should conduct a debate extending equally to all the important questions which the treaty raises. Narrowing the debate principally to strategy and weaponry forces both sides to parrot the data and analyses of outside agencies and individuals. Both sides surrendered some of their independence when they act as a clearing house for the views of others. Proponents slight the treaty's importance by permitting opinionated experts to inflate minor uncertainties into forboding obsessions. In the process, the proponents neglect to examine the area in which they are best qualified, the political consequences of the treaty.

A more important job, however, is to begin the "historic and constructive debate" which the President called for. There can be no great debate over the strategic and technological implications of an agreement which does little more than move anti-ballistic warhead tests from the atmosphere to a hole in the ground and retard contamination of the air.

If much more is ever to grow from this first treaty, then the country must know what its own values are and what risks it would take with certain of them to secure others of them. The Senate ought to begin the Great Debate now, but it probably will not