https://declassified.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/32f8d3e14e5553b25c38fb8fde89fd16.pdf 81dff470c0b5c08d494aa3a06c978d54 PDF Text Text Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur Tacces a Tinformat n vj* D E P A R T M E N T OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS \ ^7-ff-T subject .&.Amll Date June... 14, 19.69 Publication..:..J.^....9A9^... ±1^1 IA rationale that does not conceal Dr. Michael Sherman, a political scientist specializing in the problems of nuclear warfare, told the Commons Committee on External Affairs and Defense this week that if is necessary to have proof before we can argue that decisions to build an anti-ballistic missile defense system "are steps taken by fools, or knaves, or both". It would be very tempting to cite as such proof the testimony of U.S. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird which was made public the same day. "If Congress rejects the Administration's phased ABM deployment plan, the United States will have no choice but to strengthen its strategic offensive forces . . . this would add billions of dollars to the defense budget for the next few years and we still would not have a defense against the Chinese ICBM threat or against an accidental ICBM launch." It is exactly because simpler souls are appalled by the dangers of nuclear holocaust and the tremendous cost of maintaining the balance of terror, that the United States military has turned to such organizations as the Hudson Institute which employs Dr. Sherman for a rationale to make plausible concepts of nuclear conflict which otherwise appear to be madness. Based on the proposition that there are "degrees of awfulness" to nuclear war, the Hudson Institute and similar think tanks like the RAND Corporation talk of nuclear power in terms of deterrence theories, second-strike capacities, assured destruction and overkill. Thus in writing "scenarios" these researchers can quite dispassionately debate the rel- M I ative merits of missile systems that would reduce the probable toll from 40 "megadeaths" (40 million) to 20 megadeaths and so on. Hence Dr. Sherman, has cautioned the committee members against making any judgments about the ABM systems before "analyzing the complexities of the various positions". Dr. Sherman and his colleagues would have us believe that at least some level of nuclear warfare is acceptable if not inevitable. We can't understand the current ABM controversy at all, he claims, so long as we cling to the assumption that the first nuclear blast is the "beginning of Armageddon". This assumption may be valid if the two superpowers confront one another but it does not cover the "complexities" introduced if the confrontation is between a superpower and a smaller nuclear power. There is a, similar negative logic which links the testimonies of Dr. Sherman and Mr. Laird. While' Dr. Sherman X madness says we should not assume that building the ABM system will lead to an arms race because the other side may not decide to respond, Mr. Laird argues that the United States must go ahead with the ABM because it "cannot preclude the possibility that the combination of Russian offensive missiles . . . and ABMs might seriously degrade the U.S. capability to deter a Russian missile attack by maintaining its ability to launch a counter-attack". Dr. Sherman's final word on the risk of nuclear Armageddon arising from a "controlled" nuclear war getting out of control is that this is "a political judgment, not a self-evident truth". But the world operates on political judgments. We have seen that each new missile system has meant an escalation of the arms race and we shouldn't be soothed by the fact that the present Nixon proposal is only a small start and "it is not as if an entire anti-ballistic / system was being created overnight". 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource External Affairs Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Canadian Crown Subject The topic of the resource Anti-ballistic missiles Description An account of the resource A Rationale that Does Not Conceal Madness Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Canada Declassified Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Language A language of the resource en