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ryruivzyr
bc-rowan-2takes 2-15   The following rowan column is
copyrighted and for use only by newspapers that have arranged
for its publication with Field Newspaper Syndicate. Any other
use is prohibited.
Release WEDNESAY, February 15
(Transmitted 2-11)
Carl Rowan: Security, Like Love, Can't Be Bought
By CARL T. ROWAN
    WASHINGTON - Not many things have depressed me more in
recent months than the congressional testimony of Defense
Secretary Harold Brown.
    First he wants almost $4 billion more in defense funds to
counter the Communist threat, and then he says that the
U.S must double its expenditures for space weaponry because
the Soviet Union is leaving us behind.
    The inclination of some is to assail Brown, to ask how a
Defense Secretary chosen by Jimmy Carter, who vowed to cut
defense spending, could be so audacious as to propose such
increases. But I don't fault Brown. I say that he would be
irresponsible if he stood mousily wedded to Carter's campaign
rhetoric rather than responding to the realities of what our
most powerful pctential foe is doing.
    Still, there is an air of tragedy about it all. We responded
to the Soviets, and they to us, in the 1960s to the extent
that together we spent a thousand billion dollars on arms.
That, in this town, is referred to casually as a trillion
dollars.
    Out of mutual fear, the two great superpowers will spend more
than two trillion dollars in the '70s.
    The worrisome truth is that at the end of the '60s, with one
trillion down the drain, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union
felt less secure than a decade before. It is a certainty that
after blowing two trillion in the '70s, fear of the other
country will remain the dominant force in determining the
military budgets of each society.
    The pathos of the situation was illustrated the other day
when Gen. George S. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, issued a farewell report contending that ''in nearly
every area of military strength there hae been a relative
decline over the years in relation to the Soviet Union.''
    This provoked Rep. George H. Mahon (D.-Texas) to remind
Gen. Brown that during his three-year tenure as the nation's
top military officer the Congress had appropriated $330.7
billion for national defense. ''It's rather discouraging to
learn from you that this did not buy us the security we
need,'' said Mahon.
    The lesson seems to be that neither country has enough money
to ever buy enough security - that there is no end to this
dreadfully wasteful arms race.
    Perhaps we are all in the grips of the Frankensteins of
science, those who produce new weapons, new horrors, becauae
they can be produced - and because prestige and glory go with
being the first to produce them. It is hard to think of
anything so gruesomely lethal that someone in the Pentagon or
the Kremlin would not want to add to the arsenal.
    That is why the strategic arms limitation talks (SALT) are
so important - and perhaps so ill-fated in the long run. We
shall never be able to invest the trillions that now go to
arms into the production of food, the eradication of desease,
the education of people unless we agree that we will say to
the scientists:
    ''Concoct whatever new death rays, poisons, tidy neutron bombs
you wish, but we shall not build them. We'll take our star
wars only in the theater.''
fns   (more) 2-11
 
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n999  0337  11 Feb 78
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bc-rowan-1stadd 2-15
1stadd (WASHINGTON) Rowan (2-11)X X Xthe theater.''
    But there is so much fear and distrust that such a
limitation on such ghastly arms may never be possible. Many
Americans don't believe that any Soviet agreement is worth a
grain of salt. They smirk at our scientists' claims that they
can detect cheating by the Soviets.
    So the Soviet-American arms race goes on and on and on and on.
And China, Israel, Brazil, Pakistan, South Africa, Great
Britain, France either go along with the madness, or struggle
desperataly to become part of it.
    It is hard to believe that a species that has gotten itself
so hopelessly trapped in a self-perpetuating race to
destruction is really smart enough to avoid the
ultimate tragedy.
fns  (endit Rowan) 2-11
 
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