DEFENSE: Orderly Formula

As he flew westward to San Francisco to address the International Industrial Development Conference, Vice President Richard Nixon did some heavy thinking. Nixon had never quite agreed, in National Security Council or Cabinet meetings, with the budget-first thinking that had put a $38-billion ceiling on defense spending. Now, in the second week of Sputnik, he drafted a speech that was considerably stronger than the President’s own let’s-keep-our-shirts-on position. Said Nixon, in effect, “Let’s roll up our sleeves,” and thereby he set the Administration on a realistic course between the hand-wringers and the shoulder-shruggers.

“Militarily,” said Nixon, “the Soviet Union is not one bit stronger today than it was before the satellite was launched. The free world remains stronger militarily than the Communist world. And we can meet and defeat any potential enemy who might dare to launch an attack . . .

“But at the same time we could make no greater mistake than to brush off this event as a scientific stunt of more significance to the man in the moon than to men on earth. We have had a grim and timely reminder of a truth we must never overlook−that the Soviet Union has developed a scientific and industrial capacity of great magnitude . . .

“The launching of the satellite will have rendered a signal service to the cause of freedom if only we react strongly and intelligently to its implications. Let us resolve, once and for all, that the absolute necessity of maintaining our superiority in military strength must always take priority over the understandable desire to reduce our taxes.”

“Outer-Space Basketball.” Nixon was soon joined in his anti-complacency mood by another powerful Administration member: Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Said Dulles, replying to questions about Sputnik at his press conference: “I think it is perhaps a good thing that this satellite was put up in good time so that there would not be an undue complacency. I think [we] felt generally that we were almost automatically ahead of the Russians in every respect. Well, that is not so, and those of us who have been close to the situation have, I think, realized that for some time.”

The Nixon-Dulles statements did not and could not overcome the general impression that the Administration was taking a bland view of Sputnik. Since the Soviet satellite first swirled skyward, there had been a continuous whirl of top-policy meetings behind closed Washington doors. (“A conference is not a place,” said a Washington wag. “It is a technique for hiding.”) The only apparent results came with the announcements that 1) Defense Department research and development funds would have to be cut by 10% because of an order issued last August by retiring Defense Secretary Charlie Wilson, and that 2) new Defense Secretary Neil McElroy would henceforth require weekly missile reports from his service chiefs. The importance even of the reports was open to question in view of the fact that Wilson had been getting much the same sort of carbon copies for more than 18 months. Moreover, in direct antithesis to Nixon and Dulles came other Administration remarks; e.g., White House Staff Chief Sherman Adams, in a thoroughly political speech seeking G.O.P. credit for decisive action at Little Rock, scoffed at an international satellite race as “an outer-space basketball game.”

Windshield Wipers? The bland attitude gave priceless mileage to the Administration’s Democratic critics. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, already planning a full-scale investigation of the Administration’s missile policy, said bitterly in an Austin, Texas speech: “The Roman Empire controlled the world because it could build roads. Later−when men moved to the sea−the British Empire was dominant because it had ships. In the air age, we were powerful because we had airplanes. Now the Communists have established a foothold in outer space. It is not very reassuring to be told that next year we will put a ‘better’ satellite into the air. Perhaps it will even have chrome trim and automatic windshield wipers.”

Minnesota’s Democratic Senator Hubert Humphrey denounced the Administration’s “pseudo optimism,” proposed a special agency for coordinating U.S. scientific and technical programs (Michigan’s G.O.P. Senator Charles Potter went Humphrey one better, urged a Cabinet-level Scientific Progress Agency). Missouri’s Democratic Senator Stuart Symington demanded a special session of Congress, criticized the President for being “paternalistically vague.”

“Outer-Space Raspberry.” If the Administration’s actions and reactions were an opportunity for Democrats, they were also a source of deep concern ito many Republicans and other Administration friends. Said Vermont’s Senator Ralph Flanders, a member of the Armed Services Committee: “Let the Administration shake off its complacency and act.” Kentucky’s Senator John Sherman Cooper called upon the Administration to face ihe “harsh reality” of Soviet progress: “If there have been faults in the organization of our missile program (see box opposite), or if arbitrary spending limits have been imposed, it is imperative that we correct them immediately and make a maximum effort.” Said former U.S. Ambassador to Italy Glare Boothe Luce: the beep of the Soviet satellite “is an intercontinental outer-space raspberry to a decade of American pretensions that the American way of life was a gilt-edged guarantee of our material superiority.”

It was from these blasts of criticism−the worst Dwight Eisenhower has ever suffered−that Richard Nixon and John Foster Dulles tried to save the Administration. Said Chicago Daily News Publisher John Knight: “While the Vice President is intensely loyal to the Administration, he is to be commended for talking so forthrightly when so many of the President’s advisers are mouthing sheer nonsense.” Wrote New York Times Columnist Arthur Krock: “It is the first orderly formula that a high officer of the Administration has offered.” But even that orderly formula would be meaningless until it was translated into action.