Before our government embarks on the proposed forms of civil defense I hope that the following reasons for not doing so will be taken very seriously.

Preparations for the evacuation of cities in a society as free as ours would involve such drastic actions that they would be more of a signal than we would intend of our readiness for nuclear war. Combined with any build-up of strategic nuclear arms that suggested a first-strike capability to the other side, they would be more provocative than appears to us, to whom they would seem innocent and defensive. This reminds me of the account by Thucydides of the great pains the Athenians took to conceal from the Spartans the fact that they were rebuilding their walls after the Persian wars. What could be more innocent and defensive than a wall!

Greater account must be taken of the fears of the Soviet Union. In the long run they may fear China more than the U.S. We are their powerful adversary, who for decades expressed, more unofficially than officially, hostility to the Soviet Union.

Anyone who believes that the Soviet Union, because of its civil defense program, is better able to survive a nuclear war than the United States is totally misguided. And anyone willing to accept such a foolish argument is blind to three basic facts.

First, the massive urban evacuation program would have limited effectiveness in reducing the disastrous effects of a nuclear attack on the general population, even supposing that such a scheme could be effectively carried out on a national scale. Second, targeting for population destruction is not in any case a primary goal of our current strategic planning. Third, if Soviet strategic planners are contemplating a first-strike scenario against the United States (as many American hawks state in their arguments for an American civil defense evacuation scheme), they would be unable to employ their urban evacuation plan, because to do so would obviously destroy the element of surprise needed for any first strike to succeed.