Professors Differ on Approach to Limitation

Although the panelists at yesterday's Kennedy School discussion on arms control all agreed that arms should be controlled, their solutions to the problem differed greatly.

By the end of the afternoon, the crowd of 250 that gathered in the K-School Forum was sure of several things. First, as panelist Bernard T. Feld, professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) put it: "The nuclear arms race is a no-win business."

The three panelists also agreed that if there was a nuclear war, there would be no winners and no losers. "If we decide to destroy the Soviet Union tomorrow, and push the button," Albert Carnesale, professor of public policy, told the audience, "they will have enough missiles left to take us down with them."

But when it came to judging the success and deciding the future of arms control efforts, the panelists disagreed on both the direction and content of these actions.

Feld, a noted expert on nuclear weapons and the editor of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, was pessimistic, pointing to the negative side of past arms control treaties and agreements. "Arms control has been a relatively minor success," he concluded.

Carnesale, who is associate director of the K-School's Center for Science and International Affairs, said the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and other agreements were successful steps towards controlling the spread of weapons.

"Compared to the world as it might have been, arms control has done a great deal," Carnesale, who was a member of the U.S. negotiating team at the first set of Strategic Arms Limitations Talks, said.

George W. Rathjens, professor of political science at MIT and the State Department's deputy special represen- tative on non-proliferation, noted that comprehensive arms control negotiations have inflated the importance of weapons and sped up the development of new missiles.

Rathjens argued that the U.S. and the Soviet Union should agree on an average percentage reduction of their nuclear arsenals, that the U.S. should take unilateral steps that would hopefully push the Soviet Union to make similar cutbacks and that the two countries should declare a moratorium on further construction of weapons.

Carnesale argued that any wholesale approach to reducing the numbers of nuclear weapons--"trying to do much about the consequences fo war"--is hopeless, and that the U.S. should adopt a piecemeal approach, taking individual weapons and trying to negotiate specific limitations or cutback treaties with the Soviet Union.

Feld, who labelled the U.S. and the Soviet Union "nuclearholics," called for "something fundamentally new--that government agree not to use nuclear weapons."

Saying that the only really successful arms control agreements in the past were those banning agents of biological and chemical warfare as "usable" weapons, Feld said the two nations should negotiate a "no first strike use of nuclear weapons" treaty.

Carnesale differed with Feld, suggesting that nuclear weapons should be made not useful rather than not usable, and supporting a comprehensive ban on the testing of nuclear weapons. Such a ban, he said, would reduce the possibility that the weapons--having not been tested--would be used.

Unilateral moves by the U.S. to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons would be good only if the Soviet Union reponded in kind, Carnesale added.

The panel, which was moderated by Roger Fisher, Williston Professor of Law, was sponsored by the Cambridge Forum and the Institute of Politics