THE USSR's CHALLENGE: Rockefeller Report Calls for Better Military Setup, Sustained Will

THE U.S.S.R.'S CHALLENGE

INTO the post-Sputnik atmosphere of foggy fear and cautious reassurance came this week a careful, levelheaded assessment of the dangers that face the U.S. and some hardheaded suggestions as to what ought to be done about them. This was the Rockefeller Report, drawn by a panel of 19 citizens * after 14 months of hearing expert testimony, weighing evidence and hammering out conclusions. The report's basic message: the U.S.. with perhaps a two-year clear superiority in striking power, is rapidly losing its lead over the U.S.S.R. in the military race. "Unless present trends are reversed, the world balance of power will shift in favor of the Soviet bloc. If that should happen, we are not likely to be given another chance to remedy our failings. However, it is emphatically not too late if we are prepared to make the required big effort now and in the years ahead."

THE SOMBER THREAT

The peril to the U.S., says the report, lies in the meeting of two separate dangers. These are 1) the Communist threat, striving with a combination of missile rattling and peace propaganda to dominate the U.S. and the free world; 2) the city-killing potential of new thermonuclear weapons.

The city-killing potential is grimly set out: "An attack on 50 of our most important urban centers would, in the absence of effective defensive measures, produce at least 10 to 15 million dead, 15 to 20 million injured from blast and heat, and another 25 to 35 million casualties from fallout."

Already the U.S.S.R., by sacrificing "the civilian sector" of its economy, had passed the U.S. in the quantity and quality of many high-priority weapons. The Russian atomic stockpile, long smaller and less diversified than the U.S.'s, is now growing to the point where Communism can inflict grievous damage. The U.S.S.R. has a force of modern jet bombers with electronic defenses, a fleet of 4OO-plus submarines, even an arsenal of operational medium-range ballistic missiles with which the Communists can now attack targets in Japan, Formosa, and most of Western Europe (but the U.S.S.R.'s intercontinental missiles are still experimental).

And the U.S.S.R.'s greatest and growing advantage is that Communism, by its nature, is ready to strike the first blow and need prepare only for the war it proposes to fight, while the U.S., by its nature, must be defensive and gear its planning and procurement to any possible form of attack at any possible time.

Says the report: "Foreseeable new offensive weapons such as ICBMs—sudden in action, massively destructive, difficult to destroy either before launching or in flight—will greatly aggravate the problems of strategic defense and enormously increase its costs."

THE SPECTRUM OF RESPONSE

"The world knows that the U.S. will never engage in preventive war," says the Rockefeller Report. Nor can the U.S. turn into a coercive Communist-type garrison state. "The power which is generated by the voluntary effort of a free people cannot be equaled by the reluctant compliance of subject nations." The only choice for the U.S. is to generate the essential new power while also preserving and expanding the democratic vigor of the U.S. way of life and the growth of the domestic economy.