Editor’s Note: This is the transcript of a video address recorded on or about January 20, 1983, provided to EIR by the LaRouche Legacy Foundation.

I want to talk to you about a very painful subject: the growing danger of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

That danger is very real, and the fact that it’s growing is very real.

I want to talk to you about what that problem is, and I want to talk to you about a possible solution to that problem.

Some years ago, about 20 years ago, there were two events which terrified the people of the United States and other nations.

These were, first, the 1962 Cuba Missile Crisis, in which most people believed at the time, and rightly so, that we were minutes away from the possibility of a thermonuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet government under Khrushchev.

Then, a year later approximately, President John Kennedy was assassinated, and the fact of that assassination, and the fact of the cover-up terrified Americans, and terrified people in Europe as well.

Under the impact of these two frightening events, we of the United States shifted into a policy which was then associated with Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara—or, the “S” stands for “Strange,” and I think it’s quite appropriate. This doctrine is called Mutually Assured Destruction, or, appropriately, MAD.

The doctrine essentially is this: that thermonuclear ballistic missiles are the ultimate weapon—a weapon so terrible that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union would ever actually launch a nuclear war. Therefore, the argument is, that we can eliminate war, first of all by maintaining static garrisons of this type—static forces of this type—and by setting up arrangements which are generally called crisis management: red telephones, special conferences, special arms negotiations, and all this sort of thing, to make sure that nothing goes out of control, and the two governments do not find themselves wandering by miscalculation into a situation in which they might actually set off some thermonuclear missiles.

So, this MAD doctrine has dominated us.

Now, this led—by the time the Soviets began to overtake us in the early ’70s—this led to a process called détente, which was begun by the former Mayor of West Berlin, Willy Brandt, and Willy’s close advisor, Egon Bahr. This resulted in the so-called SALT I and other agreements negotiated between President Nixon and Soviet Secretary Brezhnev. So, détente was on.

But no sooner was détente on, than we began to move toward the actual possibility of a thermonuclear war. This surfaced in 1974, and has been increasing ever since. In 1974 we had what was called the Schlesinger Doctrine—the doctrine that a limited nuclear war within such areas as the European theater, could occur without that leading to an actual nuclear war between the homelands of the Soviet Union and the United States.

After the Schlesinger Doctrine, we had other things moving in the same direction, generally called “forward nuclear defense.” What these meant, was that as the United States became weaker in its military capabilities, that certain kinds of capabilities, particularly nuclear capabilities, should be pressed forward closer and closer to an assault position versus the Soviet adversary—in other words, that we should increase our bluffing as we became weaker.

Then, at the end of the Carter administration, a policy directive, Presidential Directive 59, PD-59, was issued[fn_1]—the most insane policy in the series to date, and the policy which, in effect, is controlling the United States government today. This is really aggressive defense, involving the Euro-missiles and things of that sort.

Now, in the meantime, partly because we are going into a depression, and partly because of the effects of the so-called environmentalist or Malthusian movement—the idea of trying to push us into a post-industrial society—our basic in-depth strategic capabilities are collapsing, both in the United States and in Western Europe. At the same time, the Soviets are expending an extraordinary amount of their total product in developing not only the kinds of systems we’re looking at in the charts of comparison, but some absolutely new fundamental revolutions in military technology. They’re spending much more than even the CIA’s “Team B” some years ago estimated they were spending.

So, there is, in fact, a very rapidly-growing strategic imbalance between the two superpowers, in which we of the United States are becoming progressively weaker, and the Soviet Union is becoming progressively stronger. If this trend continues, possibly by 1988 or 1990, the Soviet Union will have a qualitative rather than merely a quantitative net edge on us in strategic balance. That is, they will reach the point at which they can virtually dictate to the world the shaping of general international policy.

Now, the danger is that sometime during the interval between now and, say, 1988 or 1990, that the President of the United States will be advised that this condition is developing, and may also be advised that it’s too late for the United States to do anything to correct it. Under that condition, the President has two choices: kiss the foot of whoever is boss in Moscow, or resort, perhaps, to using our thermonuclear arsenal for bluffing, and trying to bluff the Soviets out of reaching the state of military development in which they would have a qualitative, rather than merely a quantitative strategic superiority.

This danger is increased by a policy advocated by the so-called “nuclear freeze” movement.

Now, some of you think the nuclear freeze movement is an anti-war movement. It is not an anti-war movement! The nuclear freeze movement specifies three things: Number one, that the United States should cease all advanced technological development in military and other technology. Number two, that the United States should reduce its total military budget. But, three, that the United States must increase its conventional war-fighting capability for wars which shall occur below the Tropic of Cancer—i.e., Central America, South America, Africa, parts of the Middle East, and so forth and so on.

So, we are committing ourselves to fighting Vietnam wars, but not thermonuclear wars—at least so the doctrine goes.

However, if we get into that kind of geometry, which the backers of nuclear freeze advocates, such as Robert McNamara, Max Taylor, and so forth (rather familiar to those of us who remember the Vietnam War) —that if this policy prevails, we will be facing strategic inferiority relative to the Soviet Union, at the same time that we are massively engaged in Vietnam-style wars or something approximating that, shooting our former friends in Ibero-America, Africa, and elsewhere.

And this madness creates a general probability for war—thermonuclear war—during the second half of the 1980s. And if we continue on the present policies, then we shall lock ourselves into that geometry, and we shall have war. It’ll be so probable, we dare not say it’s not certain.

The Solution

Now, what I’ve proposed is a solution to the military side of this problem. My proposal is: eliminate the superiority of thermonuclear weapons as the final weapon, or an absolute weapon. They are not an absolute weapon: We have had, over the same 20 years, actual weapons systems, and potential weapon systems, which can destroy thermonuclear missiles, ballistic missiles, in the stratosphere. We have had systems which could provide point-defense, to defend cities, or to defend missile sites or other targets, from an incoming warhead.

Most recently, the Soviet Union, in the past six years or so at least, has been developing a set of weapons systems which could do this by means of laser-like beams, beam weapons. There are many kinds of beam weapons. I won’t go into the technicalities of it, but these are quite feasible now. If we developed a crash program, for example, we could, probably within ten years or less, guarantee that 99.44% of a full flight of missiles thrown against the United States would not strike the homeland of the United States. That is, we have the imminent technological capability to do that.

The Soviets have it, too. The Soviets are well ahead of us in developing such a capability. And some of the things you see them putting up peacefully into space are relevant to that. They’ve been on an accelerated program to develop this for some years, while we’ve been lagging.

Furthermore, not only can we eliminate that kind of missile, the land-based or air-based missile—that is, the missile fired from a plane or the missile fired from land—we can also potentially kill missile-carrying submarines. Now, some people say that submarines are undetectable. That’s a lot of bunk! We now know the technological means to pinpoint missile-carrying strategic nuclear subs. There are several kinds of technology involved; again, that’s a technical matter, but it exists. So, if somebody tells you that sea-based or submarine missiles are invulnerable, they don’t know what they’re talking about, or they’re lying, because I know at least enough of the technology to know that subs are intrinsically detectable. So, therefore, it is possible to do this.

Now, if one side—we or the Soviet Union—were ever to emplace such a strategic system first, we would have won World War III by default. It now looks as though, with current trends from the Heritage Foundation and other lobbies in Washington, that the Soviets, perhaps by the end of this decade or perhaps earlier, will have such a strategic capability, and we will have lost World War III; or, perhaps we will go to World War III during the middle of the 1980s in order to head them off at the pass, as the boys say.

So, therefore, I have proposed that we change our negotiations on arms with Moscow in the following way.

One, we agree to independently, but in parallel, develop and deploy anti-missile defensive beam-weapon and supplementary systems.

We agree, two, to manage the progress in such deployment, to such effect that we do not create a strategic imbalance of critical significance during the process of deployment.

Three, that we then proceed on the basis of that agreement to a program of eliminating thermonuclear weapons.

Four, that we agree that as we put this in place, that if any third nation attempts to launch one or any number of thermonuclear weapons, we will jointly destroy those launched weapons at that time—that we agree, in short, to free the world from more than 20 years of thermonuclear terror. There is no other way to go.

It will be impossible in any negotiation to go so far with reducing the number of warheads, that either the United States or the Soviet Union would actually give up what it considers the capability to obliterate the other by nuclear means. So, therefore, disarmament leads nowhere. It accomplishes nothing, because we cannot eliminate thermonuclear missiles except by going to a weapons-system deployment that makes them relatively obsolete.

Granted, there’s the possibility of an arms race starting from such a development as I’ve proposed. That’s true. We could go beyond defensive systems, to developing offensive systems of great and terrible power. I know a little bit about this; I’ve been involved in it for some time. It’s awful.

But, let us hope that by avoiding, and averting the immediate danger of nuclear war before us, that in that process we might grow up a little bit. And then, having grown up a little bit, we might, the next time around, find ourselves acting like mature people, to take actions to remove the causes of war, rather than simply trying to stop the weapons.

I think the answer to that—removing the causes of war—lies, as Dr. Edward Teller said in Washington this past October[fn_2]—and I agree fully with him on this—that if we commit ourselves to this technological revolution—and it is a technological revolution in modes of production as well as it is in military science—and we use this technology to assist the development of developing countries, to increase the general welfare of mankind on this planet—to make ourselves more rational, more scientific, more inclined to think scientifically about the connection between policies and practices, and the results of those policies and practices down the road—that if we commit ourselves to these things which are properly the common aims of mankind, perhaps in that great effort we can find a solution.

And, therefore, I propose that we adopt this policy, a beam-weapon development policy, a crash program to do this, to negotiate with the Soviets on this question, as I’ve indicated, and to couple this to a plan, an effort to restore technologically progressive economic growth, and to finally remove the hideous effects of centuries of British and other imperialism that blight the conditions of life of people in the developing sector. I think that is the way to peace, and I think that is the proper military policy for the United States.

Thank you.

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[fn_1]. A redacted version of Presidential Directive/NSC-59 was later declassified and released. It is available here. [back to text for fn_1]

[fn_2]. On Oct. 25, 1982, Dr. Edward Teller, speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., declared that “Eighty percent of Americans are not for or against the [nuclear] ‘freeze,’ but are extremely frightened, justifiably.... The 25-year mutual balance of terror is no longer balanced, only terror. The particular person responsible for this policy of mutual terror was a Defense Secretary, Robert Strange McNamara.... If the freeze people prevail ... then war would be likely.... If we behave more reasonably ... we would have a good chance to postpone a confrontation ... and do much more than avoid war. We can improve the horrible way of life in the Third World, by using technology, and create a situation where the causes of war can be eliminated.” Teller’s Jan. 18, 1983 address at Georgetown University, “Teller on Beam Weapons: ‘Secrecy Is Not Security,’ ” New Solidarity, Vol. 13, No. 90, Jan. 28, 1983, is reprinted in this issue of EIR. [back to text for fn_2]