The New York Times

December 13, 1982

The MX Invites Attack

By Herbert Scoville Jr.

The Administration's claim that the MX missile is necessary to bolster the United States' deterrent against Soviet nuclear aggression is a prostitution of the basic concept of deterrence - the notion that no nation would launch a nuclear attack because the consequences of a possible retaliation, not against their strategic nuclear missiles but against their other military and industrial targets, would be totallyunacceptable. In fact, the MX would act as a magnet - would attract a Soviet attack not deter one.

The Administration argues that without the MX, which it seeks precisely in order to be able to destroy the Soviet land-based intercontinental missile force, we cannot continue to deter an attack against our land-based missiles. What the President does not acknowledge is that a missile force that is designed specifically to threaten the entire Soviet land-based deterrent can only provide incentives for Moscow to launch first or on warning that our attack is under way. For surely the Soviet Union would gain more by destroying our MX missiles than by allowing us to wipe out all of theirs.

Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger has repeatedly stated that we do not intend the MX to be a first-strike weapon. Instead, he argues that it would be used only in retaliation against Soviet missiles in the event that Moscow launched a first strike against the United States. But Soviet defense planners cannot rely on such a statement by the Secretary of Defense - any more than we would rely on a similar promise by Defense Minister Dmitri F. Ustinov. By Mr. Weinberger's logic, we should not be concerned even if the Soviet Union were able to threaten all our land-based missiles - only one quarter of our strategic forces - as long as they said they would not launch a first strike.

Any American missile force that can threaten Soviet missiles in a retaliatory strike would undoubtedly be even more effective in destroying Soviet missiles in a first strike. Furthermore, there is serious question whether a significant fraction of the MX missiles would survive to retaliate against a Soviet attack - even with the new ''dense pack'' basing plan. Evidence was apparently not persuasive to the Congress or a majority of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that more of our land-based missiles would survive if we used this new plan than would have survived with Jimmy Carter's ill-starred deployment in multiple shelters spread over thousands of miles of Utah and Nevada.

Mr. Reagan and Mr. Weinberger have made it a cornerstone of their strategic policies that our existing Minutemen silos are vulnerable to a Soviet attack. Yet the Secretary of Defense continues to complain about the Senate's refusal to authorize deploying the MX in those silos. This makes his claim that he only wants the MX for retaliation a transparent subterfuge - for if the MX missiles could not be counted on to survive an attack, they would certainly not make a credible retaliatory threat to Soviet land-based missiles.

But even if the Air Force's optimistic predictions for ''dense pack'' were fulfilled - if 50 of the 100 MX missiles did survive and were launched against Soviet missile silos - how could the Administration expect them to destroy the Soviet missiles? By the time our MX warheads reached their targets, the silos would be empty. The Russians would have launched part of their force in their first strike, and certainly they would not leave those missiles they have kept in reserve waiting in their silos to be destroyed once they knew our retaliatory attack is under way. As soon as their warning systems told them that we had sent our missiles toward the Soviet Union, Moscow would launch every remaining missile it could get out of the ground. Launching an MX retaliatory attack against Soviet silos would thus only insure that every single warhead the Soviet Union was capable of launching would be dispatched toward every American target the Russians could find.

The Russians must see that the MX missile system would pose little threat to its land-based missiles unless it were used in a first strike. They must therefore assume that that under some circumstances, the United States would actually launch such a strike - and undoubtedly their military plans are based on this assumption. They have no choice but to prepare themselves to pre-empt an American attack - to beat us to the punch. Thus, the Administration's claim that we must build the MX to maintain our deterrent is totally illogical. Instead of making nuclear war less likely, it can only increase the chance that this ultimate horror will take place. The White House, not Congress, must have been ''sleepwalking'' when it nicknamed the MX the ''Peacekeeper.''

Herbert Scoville Jr., former assistant director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and deputy director for research of the Central Intelligence Agency, is author of ''MX: Prescription for Disaster.''