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Show January 17, 1972 The UTAH INDEPENDENT Page 8 policy as well. This is clearly indicated by the Presidents stance on ABM, mulated exactly along the lines of Nixon Administration Continued From Page 7 ousted. In the wake of this debacle, the administration helped inspire a surge of anger against the world body anger which was thoroughly justified, but which, from the President's standpoint, had tire advantage of diverting public displeasure from himself. The administration's responsibility is manifest on several counts: The general softening of U.S. policy toward Peking, initiated by the President; the administration's acquiescence in Red China's entry, ignoring all legal questions concerning Peking's inadmissibility; its capitulation on the legal issue of w'hether the veto power could be used to block Red Chinas admission; Mr. Nixons refusal to ise our considerable economic leverage to oring the U.N. into line and, .finally, the. exquisite timing by which Mr. Kissinger was dispatched on yet another trip to China precisely at the ime the U.N. was getting ready for its prestige-conferri- ng crucial vote. These maneuvers have been explained to unhappy conservatives as an example realpolitik necessary' to serve our Ju-- t how our interests or those 3f the free world have been served, however, is difficult to determine. On the eadings to date, our China policy has indercut the effective .'oices in Asia not only the regime of on Taiwan, but also ?hiang Kai-she- k .he Sato government in Korea. The Frc cin and South Japan lient's strategy has dispirited leaders throughout the Pacific, uid given the friends of Communist Jhina enormous impetus. The adminis-ratio- n has handed the Communists a ncnumental victory, gratuitously ar.d vith barely a sign oi struggle. If the China debacle has been the Pres-den- ts most specular cold war failure, t may not be the most seiious. The most self-ntere- st. anti-Commun- anti-Commun- ist ist anti-Com-nun- ist Trievious default of the administration ias apparently occurred in the realm of lefense. Again inspection shows that the Write House has made marginal to conservative opinion, but these lave been marginal indeed. The sub-ta- n cs of his defense policy has been fully in keeping writh the liberal approach o matters of defense and. insofar as such lungs are measurable, to the left of the ges-ur- es stance assumed by President Johnson. Long since abandoned in the administrations defense policy is any mentionIn-of superiority or strategic edge. stead, the talk is of sufficiency a notion difficult to distinguish from the Johnsonian concept of parity attacked in 1968. Little if anything has been done to upgrade the condition of our arsenal Vliich as pointed out in a special study compiled by Dr. William Sclmeider for the American Conservative Union, represents in its delapidation a clear and present danger to American security. As Dr. Schneider nctes, our Strategic Air Command is the merest shadow of its e bombformer self some 450 ers compared to 2,200 medium and long-ranplanes a few years back. There has been a simultaneous slowdown In the development of our missile technology, particularly antimissile defenses. In the two previous administrations, disarmament theoreticians like Walt Rostow, Jerome Wiesner, and a coterie attached to the Institute for Defense Analysis devised the notion that we must get rid of wreapons systems provocative to the Communists or destabilising to the cold war balance of terror. The major point of this theory was that we should not try to be more powerful than the Communists, and that anything we could do to avoid the strengthening of our defenses was all to the good. Considered particularly anathema in this conception were manned bombers first strike weapons and therefore provocative and antimissile defenses, which by protecting cur own people from potential destruction w'ould make the Communists uneasy. Far better, from the standpoint of the disarmament bufis, to reassure the Communists by not protecting our own people from potential annihilation a move which has the added benefit of keeping our population terrorized and therefore receptive to disarmament. These notions are so close to clinical lunacy that it is hard to believe any administration, even one controlled by liberal Democrats, would predicate a national policy upon them. Still harder to believe, but true nonetheless, is that a supposedly conservative and administration would adopt such ideas and make them the basis for its lor.g-rang- ge anti-Commun- ist fordis- armament lobby reasoning. The President in his March 14, 1969, statement announcing replacement of the Johnson Sentinel program with the Safeguard system stressed that we were forsaking population defense and that Safeguard therefore was not provocative. The point was driven home by former Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard in an appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Safeguard, Mr. Packard asserted, had nothing to do with population defense. It was planned instead to emphasize defense of our retaliatory forces. Further, those Safeguard sites planned for initial deployment In ICBM fields defend some of the most sparsely populated portions of the United States. As for protests reentry veagainst multiple-targete- d hicles, Mr. Packard pointed out that The small size of the MIRVed warheads resulted In a lower capability In our forces to destroy Soviet retaliatory forces than could otherwise have been the case. . Moreover, he disclosed, this administration made a deliberate decision not note, not to Improve the acto what was curacy of our MIRV and is technically possible. ... Thus we make certain our population is not protected from enemy attack, while simultaneously insuring that our own weapons cannot inflict too much damage on the enemy. Thus wre talk of standing firm against Communist aggression in Asia, while moving to provide the Kremlin with Implements required to prosecute that aggression. And thus we speak of peace and international amity while presiding over the admission of the worlds principal aggressor into the United Nations. It is argued that while the President shares conservative concerns on the issues, he is faced with intractable conditions. He must confront, in the first place, a hostile Congress which wants to digo much further in the liberal-le- ft rection than does the administration, and the administrations are intended to prevent even wrorse things from occurring. In addition, there is the fact that certain things must be done for political reasons even though President Nixon himself may net like them. There is the further fact that the President has to face up to hostile pressure from the media and from marching mobs, and that some of these tilings must be done to placate these forces. The invariable half-measur- Moire's Yomnr Cfatsmice To Aft e es clincher is that any imaginable alternative to what the President is doing would be infinitely worse, so conservatives should back the President even as he Is heading to the left. On examination, each of these extenuations for the Presidents policies appears to be mistaken. It is not true, for example, that many of the Chief Executives leftward initiatives are forced on him by a hostile Congress. On several occasions, indeed, as my colleagues are well aware, there have been indications that Congress was quite willing to take a conservative stand on some issue and representatives of the administration have stepped in to prevent such an outcome. This is exactly what happened in 1969 when there was considerable sentiment here in Congress for permitting Governors to have effective veto power over poverty projects In their States. Heavy lobbying by Donald Rumsfeld and a reof some Republican sulting cross-ovvotes prevented this reform from occurring. As a result of the administration performance, according to my esteemed colleague from Oregon (Mrs. Green) : Congress did not achieve a single change in the . . . program in terms of administration In terms of structure In terms of all the abuses that have occurred and in terms of what I think are outright violations . . . of congressional intent . . . The only change In the blU was to say to OEO, "We will give er you an additional $295 million to spend in the way you want to spend It. Equally to the point, Mr. Nixon has repeatedly failed to use the considerable leverage of his office in other ways. Assuming a continuing tension between the White House and Congress, the obvious course for a President seeking maximum conservative results would be to make vigorous demands a total end to OEO, deep slashes in Federal spending, a thick ABM, and so on. The resulting compromise with the legislature would fall somew'herc between the Presidents view and that of Congress. This administrations course has been quite different the White House proposes its own variant of liberalism to be matched against the liberalism of Congress, with the resulting compromise being a matter of administrative detail rather than of substance. The nature of this process has been well stated by the National Observer, which comments that earlier conflicts of Ideology Unlike Continued On Page 9 coke AvloimeyS is looking DEVC for people wiffh IDEAS! Clip and mail or call DEVCOS services can help turn your idea into a profitable product. 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