Will We Throw the Arms Race?
Rosen, Stephen
"Will We Throw the Arms Race?" view that any other creature is man's moral superior. Technology, in this view, is the most dangerous of gifts, and the possession of an intellect the gravest of temptations. The Cree share neither...
...In addition to limiting flight tests, the U.S...
...We appear to have negotiated a limit that gives the Soviets considerable freedom to proceed with their construction program while requiring a 40 percent cutback in our own...
...Business as usual would likewise have resulted in qualitative improvements, but also in the construction of more silos, perhaps containing the small, cheap missiles advocated by Mr...
...It is therefore incorrect to credit the SALT I agreement with a reduction in military expenditures on offensive systems...
...2) Both sides would be permitted to deploy 1,320 MIRVed missiles...
...It was the change in the character of the Strategic Air Command, and not the death of Cold War rivalries, that avoided a competition in silo construction...
...so we need a nuclear war-winning capability...
...Such a competition could begin if American leaders had reason to believe that increases in the Soviet missile force endangered the survivability of our Minutemen, reducing our capacity for assuredretaliation...
...Or different physical principles entirely could be utilized for the anti-submarine warfare (ASW) mission...
...More convincing is their knowledge that additional silo construction would give them little advantage over the United States...
...Still, this preoccupation is slightly wide of the mark, if only because the Soviet government has gone to a lot of trouble to make sure we never find out what its intentions are...
...Even more than the first SALT agreement, the arms treaty now in prospect will constrain the United States while permitting the Soviet Union to build weapons at full speed...
...Trying too hard to please the Soviet Union may produce the hostility and military buildup that detente hopes to avoid...
...Or it is concluded that the Soviet leadership has a peasant mentality combined with a Bolshevik ideology and thinks it can fight and win a nuclear war...
...The one ABM site we allowed ourselves was removed from operational status in 1976 because it was decided that one site with one hundred interceptor missiles was of relatively little value...
...As a direct result of 8 The American Spectator April 1978 the treaty, we kept only one ABM site at Grand Forks Air Force Base, dismantled a partially constructed site at Malmstrom AFB, and scrapped the plans for a continental system that would have included ten more sites...
...The problem is that we will observe the limits, and disarm ourselves to that extent, without any hope of enforcing the same limits on the Soviet Union...
...And a very fast interceptor missile does not need much time to shoot down its target...
...It is said that this will ban the deployment of mobile ICBMs, such as the Soviet SS-16, which has been tested, produced, and stockpiled in some numbers...
...Even the speedup actually ordered in the development of the Trident system left the United States without a weapons system that would be ready before 1979...
...We would then increase our own forces, prompting a Soviet response, since they might believe that our buildup was aimed at getting a usable superiority...
...This is a thoroughly bad idea...
...It could not have gotten us out of this cycle because we were not in it to begin with...
...Both the girl and the intellectual forget that we may begin with honorable intentions, or no intentions at all, and still finish by trying to do what we find we can do...
...The winner of this competition would be the country that could best defend its population, thereby reducing the number of civilians who would be killed in a nuclear war...
...Concessions that were tolerable in themselves also revealed our desperate attachment to arms control and our futile hope of avoiding the dreaded arms race...
...Within that overall limit, there would be sublimits of 820 MIRVed ICBMs and 1,200-1,250 MIRVed ICBMs and SLBMs...
...Agreements can channel energy into the development and deployment of weapons which do not increase the incentives for a surprise attack, or which decrease the destructiveness of war...
...Whether that attack would succeed depends entirely on how accurate and reliable those missiles can be made...
...On the other hand, it would be ridiculous to claim that the agreement increased our security or decreased our need to spend money on armaments...
...Our bomber force itself will carry ALCMs, and so will be limited to one-third of the existing bomber levels and to one-half of the proposed B-1 fleet...
...Collectively, they do give the impression of a country which is unwilling to fight for its positions if fighting means doing without an agreement, or increasing its defense budget...
...Yet competition need not be completely anarchistic or unlimited...
...In confirmation of Garthoff s claim came a report in the fall of 1977 by columnist William Beecher that the 63rd Soviet SSBN had just been launched, though it was not yet operational...
...But if population growth and relief from hunger, cold, and disease are to be reconciled with nature, the flight from intellectual analysis that distinguishes the real from the trivial threat must somehow be stopped...
...That would mean a new arms race, and for twenty years or more the arms-control lobby has been pounding it into the public mind that an arms race is the literal threshold to the end of the world...
...It was precisely to limit such improvement that the United States proposed in March 1977 to restrict the flight-testing of ICBMs and SLBMs to six each, every year...
...At a minimum, we had programmed the deployment of ten of these submarines at the rate of three every two years, starting in 1979 or 1980...
...If our ICBMs will become increasingly insecure as a result of the SALT agreements, we will have to rely more and more on the other components of our strategic force, our bombers and our submarine-launched missiles...
...This is an alluring goal, so much so that officials within the U.S...
...One day it may be possible to locate and track submarines with reliability sufficient to permit a coordinated attack on all combat submarines on patrol...
...Yet a strict count is to be kept of heavy bombers carrying ALCMs...
...If it were decided to go ahead anyway with a ban on all ASW research and development, the problem of determining what was going on within Soviet military laboratories would immediately arise...
...Did the 1972 accord get us out of this cycle, or keep us from falling into it...
...Enough has been written about the supposed invincibility of ALCMs to make some explanations necessary...
...I Nuclear arms and nuclear arms-control agreements share the objective of reducing the likelihood of nuclear war without spending intolerably large amounts of money...
...4) Heavy ICBM deployment would be held to 308 for a period of eight years...
...Both sides had hundreds of missiles in silos and submarines, and correctly believed they could afford to relax...
...Consequently, we will have to reduce our deployment of Trident submarines or prematurely retire another MIRVed system...
...Without an agreement in 1972, there probably would have been some sort of competition between the deployment of multiple independently-targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs) and ABMs...
...The Soviet Union rejected them, and our determination to have some kind of agreement induced us to back down...
...It is an interesting question, therefore, whether the first SALT agreement deserves more praise than the Strategic Air Command...
...To repeat, both sides had already stopped essentially all new silo construction three years before the agreement was signed...
...Its accomplishments can be summed up as follows: an end to ABM deployment, with the attendant financial benefits...
...In the following negotiations, the USSR stuck to its position and, not to put too fine a point on it, the United States collapsed...
...Dedication to arms control, however, will hinder such innovation...
...In that year Henry Kissinger said that failure to reach a new agreement would require the United States to spend an additional $20 billion on weapons over the next five years...
...We had The Soviet Union has now begun to deploy a new ground-to-air missile, the SA-10, which travels five times the speed of sound—possibly fast enough to destroy incoming, low-altitude cruise missiles...
...In fact, it is theoretically possible with MIRVs to wipe out the land-based forces of your enemy with just a portion of your missile force, if you attack first...
...Was it the case, then, that the SALT I agreement was neither The American Spectator April 1978 9 better nor worse than no agreement at all...
...These limits would also last eight years...
...The Soviet Union, if it so desires, could have over 6,000 warheads on its MIRVed ICBMs alone and could target six warheads on each of the 1,000 American ICBMs, while holding their SLBMs, Backfire bombers, and un-MIRVed ICBMs in reserve...
...The problem is that no weapon is invulnerable forever...
...Because our weapons were hard to destroy, we would have time to take counteraction in the event of a violation, before that violation became dangerous...
...Or it is divined that Brezhnev intends to attack the West if the cost is thirty million Soviet casualties, but not if the cost is forty million, and therefore we only need weapons sufficient to inflict that higher level of damage...
...But this was also rejected by the Soviet Union...
...There is a tendency for intellectuals to base their judgments of strategic weapons and arms-control agreements on what they perceive to be the intentions of the Soviet Union...
...They simply outlasted us...
...We had planned to buy roughly twice that many B- 1 s. We have right now roughly three times that many B-52s...
...Then did the agreement increase American security or prevent the erosion of the nuclear balance...
...In order to do so, it directed our chief SALT negotiator to include the following unilateral statement in the offensive arms limit: The U.S...
...Those who favor an arms-control agreement therefore oppose this kind of system...
...Putting the question another way, what keeps the Soviet Union from violating their agreement to cease the construction of new silos...
...Arms Control and Disarmament Agency...
...Why did the Soviets essentially stop all new construction...
...The agreement will permit the development of Soviet air-defense systems which could blunt the effectiveness of our bomber force...
...But by putting radars up on towers or on airplanes it would be possible to see low-flying objects much farther away...
...This is an honest doubt shared by many people...
...3) ALCMs would be limited to ranges of less than 2,500 kilometers, while the testing and deployment of ground- and sea-launched cruise missiles would be limited to ranges of less than 600 kilometers, all for a period of three years...
...This rankles, but there is no immediate danger in the provision, since it does not endanger our own SLBMs...
...Though ABM systems can protect ICBM silos, as well as cities, MIRV technology enables the attacker to multiply cheaply the number of offensive warheads until they outnumber the defensive interceptors...
...It is therefore notable that the United States bomber force will be sharply limited by the terms of the proposed agreement...
...But heavy bombers carrying long-range ALCMs are to be counted towards the 1,320 MIRVed vehicles each side is allowed...
...Instead, both sides were allowed to develop their offensive capabilities, but not the defensive systems that would have nullified them...
...Our bombers were dispersed and kept on alert, our land-based ICBMs were buried in hardened silos, and a large number of submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) were put out to sea...
...But we would not break the treaty in any case...
...If we build 1,200 MIRVed ICBMs and SLBMs, we will be able to deploy only 120 heavy bombers carrying cruise missiles...
...A limit on strategic ASW systems intended to protect our strategic forces will interfere with the development of tactical ASW systems, since there is no substantial difference in the hardware used in each...
...Heavy bombers carrying air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) would be counted toward this limit...
...In this case, the limits will indeed be verifiable, but rather loose...
...Both the United States and the Soviet Union must guard against the possibility that its enemy might develop a weapon that could neutralize its strategic forces...
...But there are stable relationships and stable relationships...
...nevitably it will be wonderedd whether any of this matters if both sides retain their invulnerable submarine- launched missiles...
...It may be an array of microphones on the seabed similar to the American fixed undersea surveillance system...
...soldiers think about what he can do...
...Is that what arms control has to offer...
...The Soviets did not convince us they were right, nor did they offer us a deal...
...One could begin by asking whether the agreement constrained Soviet construction of ICBM silos...
...Mobile missiles hidden in tunnels, such as the proposed American M-X ICBM, could not be located precisely, and would improve the security of our land-based forces...
...If he tries something, what will I do...
...Is the man nice...
...ALCMs are hard to shoot down primarily because they fly so low—radar on the ground will not see the missile until there is very little time to respond...
...It was the actual military balance, supported by the political knowledge that the United States would do whatever was necessary to preserve that balance, that stabilized the strategic relationship between the two superpowers around 1970...
...The Soviet Backfire bomber is not included in this limit, although increases in its production may be banned by separate agreement...
...This provision was not dangerous, since it did not result in a threat to our retaliatory force...
...Nor did it end the general competition in strategic arms...
...The SALT agreement, it seems, was limited by the Soviet construction schedule, rather than the other way around...
...Advocates of arms control, recognizing the burden that has been placed on our strategic submarine force, might take this opportunity to urge a treaty limiting ASW research or deployment...
...President Carter cancelled production of the B-1 bomber, arguing that B-52s or cargo airplanes carrying ALCMs would be cheaper vehicles for the delivery of nuclear warheads on the Soviet Union...
...What is disturbing is that if the Soviet Union were able to trail all our submarines at sea, how would we know...
...Our concesssions might eventually lead us into a position of genuine strategic inferiority...
...The B-1 bomber, the Trident submarine system, and the M-X mobile ICBM would not have been ready until 1979 at the earliest...
...Yet it is impossible to believe that we will abrogate the ABM Treaty...
...Raymond Garthoff, the senior State Department Advisor and Executive Officer at the SALT I negotiations, wrote that the price for Soviet agreement to include SLBM launchers was to place "limitations" at a very high level—indeed, at the very highest level then estimated that the Soviet Union might deploy in the five-year period of the interim freeze even without any SALT limitation...
...It never considers the inadvertent destruction that results from its restrictions on the acts of others, though it is quick to denounce their inadvertancies...
...The Soviet Union had begun construction of hundreds of silos prior to 1969...
...John Newhouse, in his self-designated "definitive" account of SALT, denied that this was a question of great relevance, but acknowledged that "probably no one in government could say for sure [where these numbers had come from] other than Kissinger...
...In terms of our relationship with the Soviet Union, therefore, we should also be concerned with understanding what the objective Stephen Rosen spent last summer as an intern in the Strategic Affairs Division of the U.S...
...It is true that they are small, low-flying, and hard to shoot down...
...The point remains that even if the Soviet Union scrupulously adheres to the agreement, they will be able to deploy 500 SS-19 ICBMs and 308 SS-18 heavy ICBMs with MIRVed warheads...
...Some may be converted to carry cruise missiles, but all potentially could carry ALCMs...
...But the most important consequence of the agreement will be the effect the continued commitment to arms control has on ourselves...
...Something as big as a Boeing 747 carrying cruise missiles could be detected and intercepted long before it reached the borders of the Soviet Union, perhaps before it got close enough to its targets to launch its cruise missiles...
...To the extent that self-styled American environmentalists use their intellects and energies for these purposes, they help on a grand scale to arrive at a fruitful and lasting balance between human life and the capacity of the rest of the biosphere to renew itself...
...Nobody expected the agreement to end qualitative improvements (e.g., MIRVs) in the two missile forces, but merely to limit their numbers...
...Parity can exist when both sides possess roughly equal numbers of ICBMs, but it can also exist while both sides add hundreds of missiles to their forces every year...
...Government attaches to achieving agreement on more complete limitations on strategic offensive arms, following agreement on an ABM Treaty and on an Interim Agreement on certain measures with respect to the limitation of strategic offensive arms...
...Exploiting to the full the deadly power of delay, the movement has played an elaborate, tricky game with "rehearings," "environmental impact statement" reviews, "hearing reopenings," and tardy requests to expand the lists of intervenors in license proceedings...
...There was simply nothing ready to buy...
...But between 1969 and the signing of the offensive arms freeze in May 1972, only 80 new silos were begun, although during this period, and indeed afterwards, operational Soviet 'A• ICBM strength grew as silos were completed...
...Five years after the event, the origin of this provision was revealed...
...12 The American Spectator April 1978...
...Unchecked, they could have had over 80 SSBNs by 1977...
...5) The deployment of new strategic weapons other than tested SLBMs would be banned for three years...
...Without this retirement, the last Trident permitted will be the sixth, deployed in 1983 or 1984...
...In this context, several sorts of agreements could have been useful...
...An agreement which limited the deployment of MIRVs and verified it by on-site inspections, but which also allowed ABM deployment, would have encouraged a race between defensive systems, rather than a race between offensive and defensive systems...
...A follow-on agreement has been negotiated, but it conspicuously does not constrain the threat to our retaliatory forces...
...Should that occur, it would constitute a basis for withdrawal from the ABM Treaty...
...The Soviet Union has tested the SS-N-18, an SLBM with three independently-targeted bombs, but as of 1977 had not deployed any MIRVed SLBMs...
...The devastation of the Cree lands is the indirect result of these graceless procedures...
...We cannot do so now, although the United States Navy claims it is able to keep relatively good track of Soviet submarines because they are noisy and easy to find...
...Delegation has stressed the importance the U.S...
...Verification of range-limits is inherently problematic...
...I do not doubt that the arms-control lobby believes itself to be working to create a world in which our safety lies in treaties rather than weapons...
...The Pentagon's objections to the 2,500-kilometer range limit on ALCMs are not arbitrary...
...If the SS-N-18 can be retrofitted into older submarines that do not now carry MIRVed missiles, verification of the MIRV limit will prove interesting...
...President Carter's March 1977 SALT proposals would have put tight limits on heavy ICBMs, MIRVs, and the development of new missiles...
...1) Both sides would be limited to 2,160-2,250 strategic delivery vehicles—heavy bombers, SLBMs, and ICBMs—for a period of eight years...
...All the alterations can be completed in a hangar under an opaque roof and need not show on the outside of the finished airplane...
...Such construction would be detected by the United States and met by programs that would prevent the Soviet Union from gaining any usable superiority...
...We will be permitted six...
...How will we know whether all or some of the 63-plus Soviet submarines are carrying MIRVed missiles...
...Who can say...
...Those who would place all our retaliatory forces out at sea are literally betting the survival of their nation that we are and will continue to be technologically superior to the Soviet Union, and that an effective ASW system can never be secretly developed and suddenly deployed...
...proposed that both sides be restricted to 150 heavy ICBMs and 550 MIRVed ICBMs...
...What does he want...
...In 1972, the United States estimated that the Soviet Union had 22 modern SSBNs, with 15 more under construction...
...But certainly this zeal for a negotiated agreement is misplaced if it cannot decrease the very real threat to our ICBMs and only denies us the weapons that can...
...It is a foolhardy idea nonetheless, as much today as it was in the 1920s and 1930s...
...The intellectual preoccupation with the psychology of our enemy gives the literature on nuclear war and SALT a faint resemblance to the worries of an adolescent girl anticipating her first sexual encounter...
...New Soviet SSBN construction would be cut almost in half, even if it were not frozen...
...Would they have started again if there had been no agreement...
...Rather, it channeled the arms race, if one wishes to call it such, into directions that were more dangerous, rather than less so...
...From a high point in 1952 of $32:6 billion (in 1976 dollars), the cost of our strategic forces had come down to $7.7 billion in 1976...
...Longer range for the ALCM translates into an added margin of safety for our diminished bomber force...
...candidate in the government department at Harvard...
...The equal limits do not cut equally...
...The Soviet leaders formalized the rough parity in ICBM strength in 1972, and adhered to that agreement, for the same reason they stopped new silo construction in 1969 and would not have renewed it even if there had been no agreement...
...On the other hand, precisely because their carriers can be seen coming a long way off, ALCMs are poor weapons with which to launch an attack on the strategic forces of another country...
...An agreement to freeze our forces was safe because no violation could pose an immediate threat to either side...
...What it does with us depends on how well we guard our strength and reputation...
...The SS-18 can carry as many as 45 warheads in the 50-kiloton range...
...But missiles that cannot be located by satellite in order to attack cannot be counted by satellite in order to verify compliance with a treaty limit on their number...
...So violations of treaty limits will not seriously endanger the United States...
...If a war starts in Europe or the Middle East, we will want to send troops and supplies and not have them sunk by the large fleet of Soviet attack submarines...
...But if we will have to rely more on our bombers and submarines, we should recognize that a defense against ALCMs is possible, and is permissible under the proposed treaty...
...Its function is to make distinctions, to perceive realities not immediately at hand, and to try to eliminate the inadvertent...
...The Soviet Union, he claimed, was building eight or nine missile-carrying nuclear submarines (SSBNs) a year...
...We are cultivating a reputation for being eager to please...
...More silos would have reestablished some of the stability lost by MIRVs, and made the enemy build more missiles if he still wanted to gain an advantage...
...The fear of falling dangerously behind was removed by the quality of the weapons in each arsenal, not by diplomacy, and with that fear went the impetus for an arms race...
...The agreement did not measurably improve or diminish the quality of our deterrence, at least in the short run...
...A system that locates submarines by passively listening for them cannot be detected...
...Paul Nitze has advocated a treaty that would limit both countries to ICBMs too small to carry more than one small warhead...
...It is decided, perhaps, that the Soviet leadership has no real desire or need to quarrel with the West, hence a few missiles held in reserve are more than adequate to insure our safety...
...Arithmetic reveals that they will be permitted to deploy at least 380 MIRVed SLBMs, if they wish...
...Stephen Rosen Will We Throw the Arms Race...
...And the cost of this security was not high and rising, but low and declining...
...This failure would be less disturbing if our ICBM force were not also in some danger...
...One MIRVed missile can destroy several ICBM silos, depending on the size and number of the warheads and the accuracy and reliability of the system...
...To suppose otherwise is to suggest that the Soviet leaders believed they could have continued to grind out ICBMs while the United States sat back and did nothing...
...Commitment to the principles of detente is one explanation...
...Arms Control and Disarmament Agency are quite willing to acknowledge that they believe their worst enemies sit in the Pentagon, not the Kremlin...
...This proposal was rejected by the Soviet Union...
...When does a Boeing 747 (or an Antonov 22) stop being a cargo plane and start being a heavy bomber carrying ALCMs...
...The longer the range of the ALCM, the farther our bombers can "stand-off' and still be within range of their targets...
...On-site inspection of launcher complexes could solve this problem, 10 The American Spectator April 1978 but is unacceptable to the Soviet Union...
...The American Spectator April 1978 11 planned to deploy a new SSBN system of Trident submarines, each equipped with 24 longer-ranged SLBMs with MIRVed warheads...
...It is also true that they are carried by airplanes that are big, high-flying, easy to find, and easy to shoot down...
...The SS-18 has been flight-tested with ten warheads, the SS-19 with six...
...A secondary effect of the agreement will be the tension created by limits which cannot be verified by our national technical means...
...The U.S...
...We will instead witness a period in which they become increasingly vulnerable...
...The first SALT agreement (1972) might have been valuable if the ban on further ICBM silo construction and the limit on antiballistic missile defenses (ABM) had prevented a competition in strategic weaponry that would have forced both sides to spend a great deal more money to preserve their deterrent forces...
...and the retirement of 210 old Soviet ICBMs that otherwise would have been modernized or replaced...
...But the irrational fear of an "arms race" did not give us this kind of agreement...
...Alternatively, the increased danger to our silos would have been countered by the construction of ABM sites protecting our ICBM fields...
...Missiles become more accurate as machine-tooling techniques, computer software, heat-resistant materials, mapmaking, and other mundane and exotic technologies improve...
...Well, it is not...
...Intellectuals, after all, think about what the enemy thinks...
...Both forget that how one acts before the crisis has something to do with how much we think we can get away with when push comes to shove...
...For one thing, we could do little to construct an ABM system tomorrow if we broke the treaty today: Work on ABM technology has stagnated because few scientists with careers to make are going to work in a field the treaty has made a dead end...
...For better, for worse, the Indian recognizes that man has an intellect, and the gravest temptation is to avoid the trouble of using it...
...The reality is that the Soviet Union has not acted in good faith towards or lived in peace with even its own subjects and fraternal socialist countries...
...To note only one problem, the United States works hard at improving its tactical ASW capability...
...Finally, it must be emphasized that there is nothing moral or immoral about the natural drive of a species to multiply and to use the natural environment to sustain its membership...
...In justifying the 1972 accords, Henry Kissinger referred most often to the limit on submarine-based missiles...
...If new Soviet SSBNs carry 24 SLBMs, as do our Trident submarines, the Soviet Navy will be permitted 15 or 16 boatloads of new MIRVed SLBMs...
...Will this treaty reduce the threat to our ICBMs that was left undiminished, if not actually increased, by SALT I? Let us assume that the limit on MIRVs can be verified by our national technical means, even though the official American position in 1969 was exactly the opposite...
...This asymmetry is illogical and offensive to American interests, which was why the United States declined to include heavy bombers in the 1972 agreement...
...The United States has about 400 B-52s...
...This tendency is understandable...
...In the recent past, the United States endeavored to instruct the Soviet Union in American resolve and ability...
...an insignificant change in air quality seems to it as significant as massive poisoning of the water supply...
...It must be remembered that we could not have spent a lot more money on strategic systems during the treaty period (19721977) even if there had been no agreement...
...a change in the shape of a reservoir, now to be used for pumped storage of potential energy, becomes as degrading as the flooding of the Cree's ancient hunting lands...
...The unregulated development of these two systems was potentially dangerous...
...To review, the new SALT agreement will not help us preserve the security of our land-based ICBMs...
...The willingness to have unverifiable limits, the constraints that restrict us but allow the Soviet Union to build at full speed, the collapse on the issue of antiaircraft defenses, the omission of the Backfire bomber from the proposed limits—these are not disastrous individually...
...But the consequence of the first SALT agreement was that ABMs were limited, MIRVs were not, and everybody was worse off...
...A brief recapitulation of the provisions of the new agreement as they have been revealed so far is therefore in order, although we should be aware that all the newspaper accounts of the SALT II terms are based on leaks by both hawks and doves who each have their own political purposes to serve...
...We would be held at that level until the treaty runs out in 1986...
...Before the arms-limitations talks began, there was no doubt in anybody's mind that our deterrent was secure...
...II Reflection on the first SALT agreement naturally leads us to wonder whether its successor will remedy its weaknesses...
...And it is a race that can be lost by those who choose not to run...
...Research and development of new weapons continue, and should not be limited by treaty, because it would be irresponsible for either country to rest the physical safety of its people on an instrument of international law...
...Verification of the number of ALCM carriers would be equally difficult...
...We were building none, and would not be able to do so for seven or eight years...
...On the other hand, if the missile cannot be launched from existing submarines, we will be able to verify the limits on its deployment by counting the number of new submarines built to carry it (the treaty will allow such a new fleet of submarines to be built...
...An arms race is the process which produces the substantial military equality and stability on which strategic harmony rests...
...To be sure, $20 billion is a lot of money, but can SALT promise nothing more than a saving of one percent in the annual federal budget...
...Theoretically possible higher SLBM levels for 1977, developed after the April Moscow meeting [where the SLBM deal was worked out] were later cited as support for the value of the limitation [emphasis in original...
...An agreement would be useful if it established stability at the existing levels instead of permitting a dynamic stability based on an open-ended arms race to continue...
...This rejection is justified if it is correct to assume the continued invulnerability of our strategic submarines...
...supreme interests could be jeopardized...
...It is pointless to expect the human species to recoil in horror from what its members have no reason to feel is bad...
...In itself, the formal limit on ICBM strength was almost trivial...
...We mean, however, to limit ourselves to 1,200 MIRVed ICBMs and SLBMs...
...The counsel of the arms-control lobby has led us to conduct ourselves so as to teach the Soviet Union to make excessive demands on the United States...
...Starting in the late 1950s, the United States took steps to insure that we would always have the ability to retaliate against a nuclear attack...
...Both sides may use converted cargo planes to carry ALCMs...
...The movement overlooks what is not at hand...
...The Cree share neither of these views...
...The number of ALCM-carrying bombers, the range of cruise missiles, the exact number of MIRVed missiles possessed by the Soviet Union will all be uncertainly known quantities, and will be sources of contention between American hawks and doves, as well as between the United States and the Soviet Union...
...Delegation believes that an objective of the follow-on negotiations should be to constrain and reduce on a long-term basis the threats to the survivability of our respective strategic retaliatory forces....If an agreement providing for more complete strategic offensive arms limitations were not achieved within five years, U.S...
...He is currently a Ph.D...
...A system that actively searches out submarines by emitting some form of energy and then listening for echoes could be tested first against Soviet submarines, in order to prevent Americans from "hearing" the broadcast energy...
...While no agreement can permanently halt the application of these advancements to missiles, the American proposal of March 1977 was constructive, and would have limited the danger to our Minutemen, not forever, but for the eight years it would have lasted...
...We now have 1,046 MIRVed Minuteman III ICBMs and Poseidon SLBMs, none of which is scheduled for retirement within the time period of the proposed agreement...
...Having found stable deterrence unobtainable through negotiation, we might reasonably turn our attention to technological innovations which could serve the same purpose...
...The tight limit on our bombers becomes even more significant when we realize that it is in no way matched by limits on the Soviet anti-bomber defense force, which now includes over 10,000 antiaircraft missiles...
...Since a sudden increase in the offensive forces of the Soviet Union might not be detected if they could substitute MIRVed missiles for un-MIRVed ones in silos hidden from reconnaissance satellites, MIRVs were inherently destabilizing...
...It was wondered, however, where the ceiling of 62 SSBNs and 950 SLBMs had come from...
...It is true that the ABM Treaty did save us some money...
...Should all 400 count toward the 1,320 MIRV limit...
...The Soviet Union has all three kinds of systems under development, and they could prove quite useful in defending against cruise missiles...
...This seemed a genuine achievement...
...Since his book was written with no little cooperation from Kissinger, curiosity, if not suspicion, was aroused...
...They have consciously or unconsciously rejected the idea of a strategic triad in which our security is based on three separate systems, each capable of independent retaliation if the others should be destroyed...
...The actual provisions limiting the deployment of MIRVed SLBMs will have some impact on the building programs of both countries...
...But the movement rarely troubles to make distinctions: It values the furbish lousewort with the porpoise...
...Thus, the agreement will make our capacity for assured retaliation more heavily dependent on our submarine-based missiles...
...Nitze (if it would not have produced more silos, what was the advantage of having a formal limit...
...The agreement limited them to 62 modern SSBNs and 950 SLBMs, and required the retirement of one old (pre-1964) ICBM for every SLBM beyond the 740th...
...Since roughly that many tests are necessary to check up on the reliability of existing systems, this limit would have slowed down the development and testing of more accurate missiles...
...It will be remembered that the basic check on the Sovietmilitary has been the American ability to answer any Soviet buildup with a response adequate to destroy any nascent superiority...
...It had been thought that we would build ABM systems, the Soviets would build MIRVs to counteract them, and nobody would be better off...
...Beyond that, the agreement did not materially affect any American weapons program or save us any money...
...As a result, the ICBM forces of both sides became more vulnerable, not less, thereby increasing the incentive to strike first...
...military and political realities on both sides have been, what effect arms control has had on these realities, and what effect the SALT agreement now in prospect is likely to have...
...But this logic would constrain the Soviet Union even if there were no SALT negotiations or agreement...
...Long before that happened, however, we would be faced with the danger that the Soviet Union, accustomed to our easy ways, may one day go too far and meet not accommodation but unlimited outrage...
...Our weapons, not our diplomacy, may have been the best guardians of our security...
...As long as that is true, it is unreasonable to demand that arms-control agreements end the search for new weapons, which is the only safeguard either side has against a technological surprise developed by the other...
Vol. 11 • April 1978 • No. 6
