APPENDIX 16 LETTER TO PRESIDENT REAGAN DATED JULY 19, 1983 FROM MEMBERS OF CONGRESS CONCERNING THE PROSPECTS OF AN ARMS RACE IN SPACE President Ronald Reagan The White House Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear Mr. President: We are deeply concerned about the prospect of an arms race in space and strongly believe that it is in the supreme national security interest of the United States to avoid such a race. The U.S. is highly dependent on its space-based military assets for vital communications, navigation, intelligence, and treaty verification purposes. Satellites provide essential and irreplaceable command and control services to our conventional and nuclear forces. The continued development of anti-satellite (ASAT) capabilities would jeopardize our security, erode international stability, and undermine the possibility for reaching future arms control agreements. The United States should immediately propose to the Soviet Union a mutual moratorium on the testing of anti-satellite weapons in space. A mutual moratorium on ASAT testing would slow the momentum of the arms race in space, as well as set the stage, for negotiations limiting such weapons. If the new American ASAT is tested to operational readiness, the verification problems it would create could very well preclude any future negotiations to ban ASAT's. Given the difficulties that such negotiations will surely face and the time needed to reach agreement on, and ratify, a space weapons treaty, it is important that we not undercut such an effort by continued ASAT testing. The present Soviet ASAT has very limited capabilities, since it cannot attack our most vital military satellites and has a demonstrated low reliability rate. Thus, a mutual ban on ASAT testing would not place the U.S. at a disadvantage. Since the American ASAT is much more advanced and capable than the Soviet ASAT, there are compelling incentives for Soviet compliance with the mutual test moratorium. Historical precedent for the use of mutual declaratory policies to regulate the superpower arms race has already been established. On August 5th we will mark the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963. That treaty was preceded by a test moratorium, established in 1958 through mutual declarations by the Soviet Union and the United States. The speed with which the treaty was concluded was in part a product of the experience gained during this mutual test moratorium. |