Pass the SALT

FOR SEVERAL MONTHS now, the Carter Administration has been announcing the impending completion of a new strategic arms treaty. Last week, negotiators worked out the remaining details of the accord and finally presented it for the inspection and approval of the public and the Senate. While the treaty itself represents a heartening, if small, step in the direction of arms control, the reception it has met with on Capitol Hill has been disappointing, to say the least.

The new SALT II treaty represents something of an advance over the SALT I treaty of 1972. Though it fails to limit the qualitative arms race, allowing both sides to improve and replace their current arsenals, it does, for the first time, place a ceiling on how many strategic nuclear delivery vehicles can be constructed.

Unfortunately, it is now uncertain whether even this limited progress will be achieved. Lobbying against the proposed treaty has become a Washington cottage industry in the past few months, as groups like the Committee on the present Danger and the Coalition for Peace Through Strength have mounted massive propaganda campaigns to persuade the public that will, if adopted, critically undermine national security. These groups and their advocates in the Senate--including, among others, Senators Henry M. Jackson (D-Wash) and Sam Nunn (D-Ga.)--have argued that the loss of American listening posts in Iran will make it impossible for the United States to verify Soviet compliance with the provisions of the treaty, despite the averrals to the contrary of Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and Secretary of State Vance.

It seems now that President Carter will secure Senate passage of the SALT treaty, if he secures it at all, only at the cost of increasing U.S. military expenditures and the quality of U.S. nuclear weapons. Having already boosted the original military expenditure proposal in this year's federal budget, and having obtained the resignation of Paul Warnke as head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the Carter Administration talks of building the MX missile, a mobile, land-based missile that would be shuttled from launching site to launching site, thereby frustrating Soviet efforts to locate American missiles. If the MX is approved, SALT II will, paradoxically, have pushed the arms race to an even more dangerous level.

As limited as SALT II is, it remains an indication that arms control is possible. We urge all Harvard students to write their Congressman in support of the treaty.