Message to the Congress Transmitting Annual Report of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

To the Congress of the United States:

I am transmitting herewith the Sixth Annual Report of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. I do so with considerable satisfaction, since this year has seen significant progress in this Nation's twenty-year effort to bring under control the armaments which are the product of man's twentieth century ingenuity.

In 1966 a significant link was added to the still slender chain of arms control agreements--a treaty banning weapons of mass destruction in outer space and on celestial bodies. Its significance will grow as our mastery of space grows, and our children will remark the wisdom of this agreement to a greater degree than the present state of our own knowledge quite permits today.

The past year has also brought us close to another agreement, one of even greater immediacy--a treaty to prevent the further spread of nuclear weapons here on earth. Our hopes are high that this long effort will soon be crowned with success.

The United States has been trying to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons since 1946. At that time Bernard Baruch, speaking for the United States at the United Nations, said "If we fail we have damned every man to be the slave of fear." It is true that we failed then, but we did not become the "slaves of fear;" instead we persisted. In the Arms Control and Disarmament Act of 1961, Congress decreed that the search for ways to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war should become a matter of first emphasis for the United States Government. The establishment of an independent Agency to work out ways to bring the arms race under control was the act of a rational people who refused to submit to the fearful implications of the nuclear age.

Several things are evident from a reading of this Report. The first is that we are succeeding, after a few short years, in developing an integrated and highly expert attack on the problem of arms control and disarmament. Our security has two faces--strength and restraint; arms and arms control. We have come to the point where our thinking about weapons is paralleled by our thinking about how to control them. The Arms Control and Disarmament Agency plays a central role in this development.

The second is that despite the magnitude and complexity of armament imposed on the world by the cold war, the problem can be made to yield to imagination and determination, so that now we might legitimately begin to count up the score: we have cut down the danger of "accidental war" with the hot line, curtailed the injection of radioactive waste into the atmosphere with the limited test ban treaty, and joined in strengthening the system of safeguards designed by the International Atomic Energy Agency to close one of the doors to nuclear weapons.

The United States has anticipated the future by putting all of Antarctica, and more recently outer space, off limits to weapons of mass destruction. Non-armament is easier than disarmament, and in these terms alone, the value of these latter treaties cannot be overestimated. In addition, however, we should not overlook the significance of this approach to the problems in arms control we face right now. A treaty to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons will have this same preventive element--without it we face the prospect of a world in which more than a dozen nations will possess nuclear weapons. If our hopes for success in a treaty are realized, the chances for still further agreements will be greatly enhanced. These next steps will also be more difficult, because they must involve the weapons we might otherwise add to our arsenals, or even those now on hand.

This brings me to my last observation, which is that this Report reveals the sobering reality of the immensity of the task we have undertaken. Read in the context of recent developments in the Soviet Union--the buildup of their strategic forces and the deployment of an antiballistic missile system around Moscow--we are reminded that our hard-won accomplishments can be swept away overnight by still another costly and futile escalation of the arms race.

It is my belief that the United States and the Soviet Union have reached a watershed in the dispiriting history of our arms competition. Decisions may be made on both sides which will trigger another upward spiral. The paradox is that this should be happening at a time when there is abundant evidence that our mutual antagonism is beginning to ease. I am determined to use all the resources at my command to encourage the reduction in tension that is in our mutual interest, and to avoid further, mutually-defeating buildup. The work of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency will continue to be of invaluable assistance in this urgent task.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

The White House

February 17, 1967