The Seven Lessons of SALT
Adelman, Kenneth L.
Kenneth L. Adelman THE SEVEN LESSONS OF SALT With or without the treaty, America may or may not be defended. SALT is stultifying stuff. Seldom has such a critical issue induced such public...
...147-159...
...Since the 1960s, the intelligence community has consistently underestimat-ed the Soviet ICBM buildup, missing the mark by wide margins and with strategic forecasts becoming progressively worse on the low side...
...SALT I and II covered only U.S.- and Soviet-based systems capable of striking each other, but technology has produced a myriad of "grey area" nuclear weapons-Soviet systems aimed at Europe (Backfire and SS-20) and Europe-based systems targeting the USSR (air-launched cruise missiles, aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean, and nuclear missiles for European deployment now under serious NATO consideration...
...Their cavalier manner in handling our self-inflicted "crisis" unavoidably dampened enthusiasm for the "SALT process...
...And the real problem was that we were doing most of them...
...Recall the pride with which SALT negotiator Paul Warnke addressed his final press conference in October 1978...
...Here presented are the "Seven Lessons of SALT...
...The SALT debate has punctured the new foreign policy perspective of those rushing into office under Mr...
...For the Russians would never employ military power against the U.S...
...Likewise for the overall Soviet military effort...
...During the Foreign Relations Committee hearings, Senator Jacob Javits pressed witnesses as to how it happened that America "goofed off' (his words) for 15 years in the strategic realm...
...It has not saved money for either side, and is unlikely ever to do so...
...Soviet military expenditures have become 25-45 percent greater than ours, and the Russians now spend three times more on strategic arms and one-third more on general purpose forces than we do...
...was disarming itself so fast-cancelling the B-l, shelving MX, delaying cruise missiles, deferring the neutron bomb, forestalling Tridents-that nothing new was left for Mr...
...Gurus of the state, church, and academia still cling to these fashionable canons, but now people openly laugh...
...The White House is now circulating a draft policy-"Presidential Decision 50"-which downplays the role of arms control: The U.S...
...How indeed...
...They sensed a new historical force marching and felt the U.S...
...The Carterites have come a long way from Mr...
...In government, the President climaxed his televised "Combat Brigade" performance by comparing Lincoln's Civil War, which served to "preserve the nation," to his own SALT II, which serves to "preserve the world...
...The Soviets, viewed sympathetically (often), were only compensating for past American military superiority...
...In academia, an exalted Professor Hedley Bull of the exalted Council oh Foreign Relations writes in Foreign Affairs' lead piece for its 1978 year-end wrap-up how "it is important that some state or group of states should undertake the task of balancing the power of the U.S...
...Strategic Might Is Dwindling Mightily...
...SALT proponents and opponents both agree that the former DMZ between "strategic" and "Euro-strategic" systems no longer holds...
...It is no coincidence that senators, boning up on defense because of the pending SALT tally, recently voted 55-42 for 5 percent real defense spending increases in the next two years' budgets-something inconceivable before the SALT debate and a sharp rebuff to the administration (keen to stick with 3 percent...
...Carter...
...If lucky, SALT II will soon take its rightful place beside * 'Munich," "Vietnam," and "Watergate"-whether ratified by the Senate or not...
...The high-sounding "Presidential Decision 50" appears awfully mundane, but compared to the early Carter administration's missionary zeal for arms control-on strategic systems, nuclear weapons testing, conventional arms transfers, in the Indian Ocean, Central Europe, space, etc...
...And there's no relief in sight...
...Church's behavior was matched only by that of the Russians...
...People chortled at the sappy ending...
...36 (Fall 1979), pp...
...militarily superior to the USSR while one-half believes the Russians have forged ahead...
...The Marxist septuagenarians in the Kremlin were too dull-witted to grasp that history had bypassed the utility of arms...
...or, viewed unsympathetically (rarely), were only wasting resources...
...tested and cancelled a new bomber, finished deploying one new SLBM, and began testing another...
...Such a politically potent shift cannot but enshrine linkage as a permanent factor of superpower negotiations...
...Maybe they'd catch on later, as they learned from the Americans...
...7. The Foreign Policy "Progressives" Are Being Discredited...
...world peace...
...Partly because frazzled senators (like Javits) never gave the matter any thought, until the treaty's submission demanded that they do so...
...their torpor to the coming strategic inferiority...
...Meanwhile, the U.S...
...All this signals a wish in Moscow to persist in acquiring larger and more sophisticated forces...
...Due to nefarious Soviet activity around the world-not to the Cuban brigade or recondite calculations of technical SALT experts-public support for SALT is ebbing...
...ry, that mankind was now prepared to cooperate on transnational problems (more critical than international ones): human rights, malnutrition, overpopulation, pollution, etc...
...The American people may not get his point, but no matter...
...Perhaps unwittingly, Secretary Vance may have started the ball rolling...
...The U.S...
...should join the vanguard...
...Any clash would automatically escalate to all-out nuclear war, suicidal for both sides...
...The Russians may do so-they greeted Nixon and signed SALT I on the heels of the U.S...
...Yet historical events often generate "lessons" more captivating than the episodes themselves...
...Nor is SALT capable of slowing the Soviet strategic swell...
...intelligence can be in verifying Soviet strategic systems (often of meager military meaning) and how dreadful it has been on forecasting the pace of the overall Soviet buildup (knowledge of which is critically important for U.S...
...History may judge the treaty's prime contribution as setting into motion pressures which, over time, redressed the strategic imbalance (regardless of ratification...
...Or more people will cry...
...This swiftly sliding sentiment has made defense once again nearly sacrosanct...
...Though dangerously distant from past realities-as Ernest May shows*-such lessons prove useful to policymakers...
...2. Defense Efforts Should Be Augmented Across-the-Board...
...There are always the Russians, though, as most folks now know...
...The Soviet military, already consuming more than half the nation's R&D scientists and engineers, is increasing its share of scarce skilled labor and scarce rubles...
...It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of not looking sufficiently progressive," Charles Peguy wrote 70 years ago...
...mining of Haiphong harbor-but America is not a totalitarian state...
...Speaking of "the difficulties [the U.S.] had at the U.N...
...That treaties cannot compel nations to reduce arms and embrace peace startles only the naive, historical know-nothings...
...The tiresome parlor discussions of "linkage" can now be relegated to weighty tomes on international political theory (where they belong...
...1. U.S...
...and it has not enhanced strategic stability (quite the contrary), and is unlikely ever to do so...
...This point has finally dawned on Senator George McGovern, who calls SALTII an "arms control hoax," and even on the Carterites...
...would refuse to enter into arms negotiations unless our position accords with existing defense goals and militarily restrains adversaries...
...is falling behind the Soviet Union militarily...
...Special Session on Disarmament back last May and June,'' Warnke said, "We tried to think of things we ought to come out for...
...Since these facts can't be disputed, interpretation of them is...
...They get the main point...
...The causes of such gross intelligence failures, all lulling the government and the public since none overestimated the Soviet buildup, are manifold, f Regardless of causes, the SALT controversy has hammered home how superb U.S...
...History and repentance demanded it...
...This has been happening for years...
...could not have prevented World War II, the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 in many ways contributed to Pearl Harbor, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1929 did not long keep war renounced...
...Polls had been showing three-fourths of Americans supporting arms limitations agreements...
...So even wide differences between the superpowers' military capabilities were deemed essentially meaningless...
...Seldom has such a critical issue induced such public somnolence...
...More people will laugh...
...Our representatives and reporters dozed, lulling the public on security concerns...
...Warnke to propose to the UN disarmament crowd...
...4. We Should Expect Nothing Much From the ' 'SALT Process.'' A formerly creeping consciousness has become galloping: The "SALTprocess'' may not be worth it...
...to "press not only for SALT II, but for SALT III, IV, V, and VI...
...How grateful we should be to the Soviet Union for picking up the mantle, for assuming the burdensome "task of balancing the power of the U.S...
...is now seen as falling behind militarily...
...The systems to be negotiated, and the negotiators, in SALT HI will have to be revised accordingly...
...only one-tenth of the public now considers the U.S...
...Despite all the fanfare, the Covenant of the League of Nations (with or without the U.S...
...In the church, William Sloane Coffin urges the U.S...
...We have to be meek, or there will be no one left to inherit the earth...
...SALT II, like SALT I, primarily places fences around what the Soviets intend to do anyway...
...For they believed that today's world was on the verge of escaping the conflict-ridden history of the first two-thirds of this centuf Spelled out at excruciating length in Robert Ellsworth and Kenneth Adelman, "Foolish Intelligence," Foreign Policy, No...
...He fouled up the administration's ratification strategy by insisting at a press conference in Idaho that SALT II had to await removal of the Soviet combat brigade from Cuba...
...If the Soviets take such brazen measures now-in the heat of public debate on their troops in Cuba and in the midst of Senate deliberations on SALT II- they will be yet bolder later (especially after acquiring strategic superiority in the early 1980s...
...Warnke to ' 'Presidential Decision 50...
...Kenneth L. Adelman, former Assistant to the Secretary of Defense (1975-76), is a frequent writer on international political and strategic issues and Senior Political Scientist at the Strategic Studies Center of SRI International...
...it has not reduced the destructive power of either side, and is unlikely ever to do so...
...No candidate in 1980 (not even Kennedy) can run promising to slash the defense budget, a la Carter in 1976...
...Superpower negotiations (on SALT or whatever) simply cannot be separated from superpower relations, at least in our system of government...
...Those who didn't-the SALT-sellers with something serious at stake-cringed, since Carter continues to be their greatest strategic liability for ratification...
...Nor is it a coincidence that the Senate passed $3 billion more for defense this year (fiscal 1980) than the House-a startling turnabout since my Pentagon days and earlier, when the House was more hawkish...
...5. European Security Must Be Tied to SALT...
...time after time throughout the hearings he promoted SALT II first because it "will permit, and in fact aid, the necessary modernization of our strategic forces" and only second because it "will slow the momentum of Soviet strategic programs...
...It's nothing new that the U.S...
...America was viewed, with a profound sense of guilt about past evils abroad, as a deeply flawed superpower, a p>roven threat to...
...Even after the latest Jane's Fighting Ships announced that Russia had launched Cuba "in a new naval league," far outpacing its Latin American neighbors, Moscow dispatched a 205-ton gunboat to Cuba precisely as Secretary Vance and Ambassador Dobry-nin were conferring hourly on the brigade issue...
...it is positively startling...
...But this "progressive" crowd-and their intellectual mentors back in the Council on Foreign Relations and the Ford Foundation -has generated more foolishness (and future danger) than cowardice...
...Moscow's military infrastructure, upon which future arms programs are mounted, is nearly double ours...
...weapons procurement decisions and force planning...
...What's new is that the U.S...
...Now a clear plurality opposes SALT II...
...For the present, this can only be the Soviet Union...
...Three years ago, the CIA overnight (and retroactively) doubled the percentage of GNP it reckoned the Soviets called to arms: from 5-7 percent (or a nick above our level of effort) to 11-13 percent (nearly three times ours...
...Fervent SALT-seller Representative Bob Carr wrote in a House Armed Services Committee report: "The important perception is not how the Soviets perceive us but how they perceive us perceiving them...
...Indeed, since SALT I the USSR has deployed four new ICBMs, two new SLBMs (with two more under development), and a new bomber...
...The SALT debate has brought to light staggering CIA errors compounded year after year over the last 15 years or so...
...Senator Frank Church, so staunch an opponent of linkage in theory, forced it in practice...
...Who better to subvert the SALT-sellers than one of their own...
...3. Linkage Cannot Be Denied...
...SALT II-for all its innumerable failings-has awakened Americans from * Ernest R. May, " 'Lessons' of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History," in American Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, 1973...
...As the lessons of SALT sink deeper into American consciousness, such statements will appear even more ludicrous, nay outrageous, than they do today...
...While waiting, we had no need to fret...
...6. Intelligence Verifies Adequately But Doesn V Forecast Well...
Vol. 12 • December 1979 • No. 12
