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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 15, 1993                   TAG: 9303150566
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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NUKES EQUALIZERS AND EQUALIZEES

THE COLD WAR is over, right? So why does it live on in American nuclear-weapons programs?

The U.S. military is still buying bombers and missiles (such as B-2s and Tridents) designed to wage nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The Department of Energy is still busy designing new nuclear warheads.

It's time to rethink such policies.

The START treaties with Russia, if implemented, will go a long way toward reducing the size of the nuclear arsenals. They call for cutting the number of U.S. warheads from 20,000 to 8,500.

But even if all cuts go as hoped, the world still would have nuclear weapons with the explosive power of more than 200,000 Hiroshima bombs.

It is time to absorb one of the lessons of the Gulf War - that conventional weapons are effective; tactical nuclear weapons aren't needed.

It is time to recognize the improbability of America ever using its strategic nuclear deterrent to accomplish limited goals against an ill-defined threat.

And what does all this mean? It means Americans should ponder the thoughts of Les Aspin, expressed last summer when he was a congressman:

"Nuclear weapons were the big equalizer - the means by which the United States equalized the [conventional] military advantage of its adversaries. But now the Soviet Union has collapsed . . . .

"A world without nuclear weapons would not be disadvantageous to the United States. In fact, a world without nuclear weapons would actually be better. Nuclear weapons are still the big equalizer, but now the United States is not the equalizer but the equalizee."

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