Abstract :
Like Rathjens, Brennan is for negotiating with the Russians. Beyond that, their disagreements are basic. Brennan thinks that the Safeguard system, which he is in favor of seeing deployed, is insufficiently substantial. He favors the deployment of considerably more massive defensive systems that, unlike Safeguard, would be designed to save lives instead of the retaliatory missiles that hold other human lives as hostages for our own. He thinks that both we and the Russians should deploy such massive, life-saving systems in preference to any further escalation of offensive forces by either side. It is in our common interest, he stresses, to limit damage on both sides should war occur¿and war, he emphasizes, can indeed happen; we´ve just been lucky so far. Brennan thinks that ABM is a protective umbrella that we can well afford, and that the choice to be made in allocating our resources is not between defensive missile systems and other national priorities, but between such systems and offensive ones¿a proposition he thinks the Russians would agree to, to judge from their historic preoccupation with defense over offense. His truly novel assertion, however, is that appropriate defensive systems might also provide the political-psychological umbrella under which the people of both nations could feel reasonably secure while negotiated reductions in offensive force levels were taking place.
