Richard Gutman (Voice, Nov. 17) says that ”Star Wars is an integral part of an offensive first-strike strategy.” It can`t really be defensive, he argues, because ”even if only 1 percent of the Soviet missiles got through . . . the U.S. would still be annihilated.”
Really? At the worst, the Soviets could throw their entire force of 10,000 warheads at us. One percent getting through would be 100 warheads.
That`s not even enough to wipe out our missile forces, so the Soviets would be sure of devastating retaliation. In effect, Mr. Gutman is suggesting that the Soviets would willingly suffer retaliation by thousands of our nukes, in return for hitting us with only 100. Unlikely. They may be wicked, but they are not stupid.
But suppose they are that stupid. Would we ”be annihilated” by 100 warheads? (Bear in mind that the enemy cannot know which warheads will get through, so they can`t be sure of hitting the 100 most important areas.)
If each warhead kills half a million of us on average, that comes to 50 million dead, about a fifth of our population. That`s about twice what the Soviets suffered in World War II. It would be an appalling catastrophe for us, but far from annihilation.
And, it would be a lot better than suffering an attack by thousands of Soviet missiles which all gott through because we had no Star Wars defense.
