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From: david@fisher.UUCP (David Rubin)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re : Re: Re: Harold Brown and the arms race
Message-ID: <469@fisher.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Jan-85 09:19:07 EST
Article-I.D.: fisher.469
Posted: Mon Jan  7 09:19:07 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 8-Jan-85 13:20:43 EST
References: <1133@drusd.UUCP> <2082@randvax.UUCP>
Organization: Princeton Univ. Statistics
Lines: 37

[Please skip to the last paragraph if you're not interested in 
 my opinion: there's a brief point I'd like to make.]

Tony Johnson rightly points out that the USSR's leadership would
likely "accept" a higher number of casualties than the US would.
However, the Soviet leaders will not find the destruction of their
state acceptable, and the Soviet state is far more fragile than ours.

The Soviet government maintains its centralized rule over its subject
nationalities by force.  Even if a nuclear exchange were to kill an
"acceptable" number of Soviet citizens (say only 50-100 million), the
destruction of Soviet industry, centers of government, and
disproportionately high casualties among the one nationality (Russian)
which could be expected to show spontaneous loyalty to the regime,
would severly disrupt the Soviet state.  In fact, the USSR would
certainly splinter if the surviving leadership did not apapt to the new
state of affairs by permitting local governments tremendous autonomy.

To destroy its foreign opponents at the price of losing control of its
own peoples would be for the Soviet leadership to win a battle but
lose a war.  Yes, the Soviet leaders have different interests than we
do, but if they are not restrained by Biology, they will be by
Politics.
	
(last paragraph)
Proposition:  If the Soviets are now capable of killing off 150-200
million Americans (which they are) AND they would only sustain
"acceptable" losses themselves AND they are not constrained by
humanistic considerations, then they would strike NOW.  Thus at least
one of the assumptions must be incorrect, and, rather argue for the
goodness of Chernenko's heart, I presume they consider their likely
losses "unacceptable".  Soviet inaction is the greatest testimonial to
the adequacy of American deterrence, and observation is more
trustworthy than theory.

					David Rubin
			{allegra|astrovax|princeton}!fisher!david