WHY THERE IS NO ARMS CONTROL

...Reagan's isolation from policy makes the "war of the two Richards"—Burt (State Department) versus Perle (Defense Department)— an important part of the frame...

...policy seems designed to deny them such acceptance, even in form...

...It is a fascinating, personalityladen and revealing journey into this world...

...New, unexpected players, among the public and in Congress, are pushing the process along...

...President Reagan emerges as a "reluctant and uninformed arbiter," who didn't know that the vast majority of Soviet nuclear warheads are on the land-based missiles the U.S...

...For the nuclear fraternity, these developments meant enhanced deterrence, a more refined deterrence...

...By the end of 1984, the U.S...

...Technologies such as MIRV, cruise missiles, and Star Wars do not generally emerge from the Pentagon...

...McFarlane is one of those policymakers who avoid publicity but are omnipresent...

...Since ignorance is distributed equally, anyone with access to secrets can play...

...Properly informed, Reagan probably wouldn't continue to believe any of this...

...Technology is another reason for the Reagan administration's reluctance about arms control...

...In the strategic-policy community, the arguments are not really about arms control but about power in Washington, D.C...

...This political strategy carries a high price, however, since it permits the next generation of nuclear weapons to emerge while arms-control progress is, at best, slow...

...This is a crucial reality—the stalemate of personalities in the Reagan administration means no policy...

...They lobby Congress and the Pentagon, provide inside advice in the early stages of a program, help design it, and hire the Pentagon officials who have promoted it...

...Talbott pays little 194 attention to Star Wars—a mistake...

...The succession at State led to high (and misleading) hopes, which may be instructive today: There was a widespread assumption inside the government and out, heavily tinged with wishful thinking, that one morning Reagan and the country would wake up and find themselves with a more traditional, middle of the road foreign policy, including a more negotiable set of arms control positions...

...Star Wars is the latest candidate for technology as pseudo arms control...

...Not only might the Soviet Union be tempted to strike before such a missile defense is operational...

...According to Talbott, the government could only define a negotiating position for START because McFarlane and Burt agreed on it, end-running Perle's opposition...

...Soviet plans included at least two new ICBMs, (SS–X –24 and –25), and a new SLBM (SS–NX-23), a new strategic bomber (Blackjack), cruise missiles, and hunter-killer satellites...

...Neither Max Kampelman (new delegation chief) nor former Senator John Tower (strategic arms negotiator) rate a mention in Talbott's book...

...192 Nuclear policy is also susceptible to personal idiosyncrasies because nuclear war has no history...

...And 12 years of talks have brought the world more nuclear arms and less security...

...Thus White House and State Department civilians can imagine they know as much about nuclear war, the arms race, and deterrence as anyone in uniform...

...Does Richard Perle, Defense Department Svengali, go to meetings to impose his power and does he avoid them with the same end in mind...

...As portrayed by Talbott, arms-control policy is really gossip...

...Such military programs consistently end up as all chips and no bargain...

...MIRVs are now seen as the biggest threat to U.S...

...Was Al Haig truly in charge, that mercurial secretary of state for whom being in charge was as important as the substance of policy...

...arms-control proposals from 1981 to 1983 sought to reverse the Soviets' strategic buildup, while permitting the U.S...

...congressional progress in weapons programs was held hostage to progress on arms control in the White House...

...This "refined deterrence" is the intellectual 195 logic driving the Reagan (and, in reality, most Democratic strategists') policy...

...When the Administration argues that all programs in the military budget require funds because they are "bargaining chips," Congress and the public may be expected to demand evidence of real progress in the talks, proof that chips really are being traded and that the Administration's proposal is truly negotiable...

...Talbott notes that the chiefs have regularly been more supportive of arms control (as part of strategic policy) than Pentagon civilians have been...

...The flaw in this logic is that the race never ends, and as it proceeds it becomes ever less stable...

...In reality, both Richards are "hard...

...Washington is the capital of gossip—a small town masquerading as center of global power...

...In his recent book,* Strobe Talbott takes us inside this world, so far inside that he, too, almost loses sight of the subject—the nuclear arms race itself...

...The range of alternative policies is much broader than the narrow, sterile debate and personality stalemate he describes...

...Over the past five years, the "iron triangle" of nuclear policy-making has become a lot less closed...

...To an extent, this strategy has worked...

...This is especially true for the latest strategic technology— Star Wars...

...delegation to Geneva in January 1985 had so many participants clamoring for a voice...

...They were first sold as a bargaining chip and a safer weapon, and they have been deployed in growing numbers...

...negotiating position for START, for example, completely protected the MX and Trident D-5 missiles, while calling on the Soviet Union to dismantle two-thirds of its most modern, multiple-warhead ICBMs...

...It is precisely the deadly outcome of this apparent logic and the massive buildup sustained by it that has led to the public's demands, here, in Western Europe, and, one may safely presume, in the realm of the Soviet Union to search for some alternative to the nuclear arms race...

...The Administration has worked overtime to sell Star Wars as an alternative to the arms race—a blanket over the United States defending us from Soviet missiles...

...Star Wars might be real, however, as an integral part of an offensive strategy...

...Reagan administration officials are simply wrong when they contrast their policy of deterrence with something called "MAD...

...had roughly 5,700 strategic nuclear warheads, 1,054 ICBMs, 656 SLCMs, and 463 strategic bombers...

...policy on arms control: Robert McFarlane, the national security adviser...

...Somehow the next generation of weaponry will bring security, make us safe or put us "over the top...

...New U.S...

...The arsenals, however, have changed...

...As with MIRV technology (multiple warheads on missiles) and cruise missiles before it, Star Wars is advertised as a bargaining chip, but it is likely to remain as a military program...

...Secretary of Defense Weinberger looks to Perle for guidance on arms-control policy...

...military spending plans are closely tied together...

...Rep...

...strategic weapons plans included 2 new land-based ballistic missiles (MX and Midgetman), a new sea-launched ballistic missile (the Trident II or D-5), 3 versions of a low-flying cruise missile (sea-, land-, and air-launched), 2 new bombers (B-1 and Stealth), a whole new generation of new nuclear warheads, and a "Star Wars" antimissile system in space...

...For those who want the chips, calling them a bargain is crucial to selling the budget...

...Whether for secondstrike or first-strike goals, Star Wars is being developed as part of the strategy for fighting a "limited nuclear war," the next stage of the nuclear arms race...

...For such members as Aspin and Senator Al Gore (D—Tenn...

...Labs and contractors develop a stake in the arms race...

...MIRVs emerged from this rationale, and the Soviets copied them...

...could demonstrate that it was capable of nuclear war at all levels of nuclear combat, involving every type of nuclear weapon, the Soviet Union would be deterred at each level...

...Soviet nuclear forces included 7,000 strategic nuclear warheads, 1,400 ICBMs, 980 SLBMs, and 350 strategic bombers...

...Talbott tends to dismiss the public debate and the alternatives it presents as a sideshow or an "externality"—something that helped push the Administration into negotiations but doesn't really count in the policy arena...

...If the Administration demands new weapons to "strengthen our hand," it will hear from Congress and the public that our hand is already strong—the current triad of ICBMs, SLCMs, and bombers has been and remains a large, powerful, and credible deterrent...

...There is, first of all, the top...

...As Talbott notes, the Administration's START proposals were influenced by members of Congress who were seeking a more negotiable position...

...Pessimists would answer: so that if the U.S...

...Optimists would say: so we can ensure that a Soviet first strike cannot wipe out U.S...

...Nobody seemed to trust Shultz's predecessor, Al Haig, if Talbott is to be believed...

...Why protect our missiles...

...This Administration has brought into office a group of policy-makers who almost universally see the Soviet Union as aggressive, overarmed, dangerous, and deceitful...

...Landbased and space-based missile-defense systems (rockets, high-energy lasers, and particle beams) are being designed as an integral part of nuclear war-fighting strategy...

...It does betray, however, a general presidential ignorance of nuclear issues, which means other players have real power to define policy...

...Such a war has never happened...

...The Reagan administration is now infamous for the language of "protracted nuclear conflict," in which U.S...

...policy is to "prevail...

...Moreover, in this Administration arms control and U.S...

...land-based missiles...

...In fact, as the Administration began to prepare for a 1985 round of talks, New York Times reporter Leslie Gelb noted that the substance of arms-control policy was explicitly removed from everyone's bureaucratic agenda...

...The initial U.S...

...agreements have been signed, and the United States has not yet ratified a single new arms-control agreement...

...The Soviets followed suit, presenting us with Soviet long-range, sea-launched cruise missiles based off the American coast...

...And it would all be thanks to Shultz...

...What goes on inside this strange world of arms control, occupying so much time, talent, and energy, while accomplishing so little...

...When it comes to technology and new weapons, other players enter the strategic game, though Talbott does not describe them...

...As we move closer to imagining we can fight the protracted nuclear conflict we wish to deter, the temptation grows to use the weapons (or to strike at the adversary to prevent first use against us...

...Because the arms-control game has become infinitely more dangerous, it is now being played on a wider field than Talbott acknowledges...

...As technology made new levels of conflict seem possible, we had to develop them, or the Soviets would do so, thereby checkmating us...

...The new arms technologies drove armchair nuclear strategists into thinking about limited nuclear war in the 1960s...

...should fire first, the Soviets will realize they cannot retaliate successfully...

...Once inside, it becomes clear why arms-control choices are so few, the range is so narrow, and the progress so slow...

...The Soviet Union had 2,160 strategic warheads, 1,527 ICBMs, 497 SLBMs, and 140 strategic bombers...

...Strategic policy-makers on both sides dream and calculate, seeking the next advantage and the "ultimate system" that will end the race or give one side an upper hand...

...The Soviets match us, step-by-step, and both sides are left with more destructive power and less security...

...Mutual Assured Destruction has been dead for more than a decade...

...Star Wars is real, though not in the way the White House has described it...

...Precisely because nuclear strategy is a theoretical (albeit dangerous) exercise—and (to use Anderson's fairy-tale image) we find the emperors of arms control now indeed quite naked—Congress and the public have begun to enter the debate in growing numbers...

...The idea of a ladder of nuclear escalation, however, far predates the Reagan administration...

...He has reemerged in the 1985 round of talks as a crucial adviser to Secretary of State George Shultz...

...Simply because the Reagan policy-makers reject the idea of a bilateral nuclear freeze, and negotiator Ed Rowny bats it away with a piece of paper when the Soviets seek to discuss it, this proposal will not cease to exist...

...The problem with this gossip framework is that policy itself becomes secondary...

...Nuclear strategy and armscontrol policy are especially susceptible to inside stories and personal idiosyncrasies...

...As long as the U.S...

...There are other reasons, beyond personalities, why substantive arms-control policies are avoided by the Reagan administration...

...wanted to dismantle, who thought bombers and sea-launched ballistic missiles didn't carry nuclear warheads and that the latter could be recalled...

...Both support arms-control proposals that would permit the Defense Department to proceed with its entire nuclear buildup, and to punish the Soviet Union for having a large nuclear arsenal by demanding that some of it be destroyed...

...The Joint Chiefs of Staff are also critical...

...No wonder the U.S...

...Government laboratories (in the Star Wars case Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore), and contractors (Lockheed, Rockwell, BDM Corp., Science Applications, among others) are a far more important source of new weapons than the Pentagon...

...The last cause of the slow progress on arms control is the very concept of deterrence itself...

...It would then seem that a meaningful armscontrol proposal could only emerge from this Administration if it had the support of Shultz, Nitze, Burt, and McFarlane...

...land-based missiles, and Richard Perle, according to Talbott, is busy trying to put the MIRV genie back into the bottle...

...Supporters of arms control in the Congress have tried to turn this reality to their own purposes...

...had 9,000 strategic nuclear warheads, 1,045 ICBMs, 568 SLCMs, and 328 strategic bombers...

...The players who pretend to know about nuclear war and have access to the secrets are few in number...

...The struggle in the Administration between "bargaining chips" and "defense programs" is crucial to selling the Reagan military buildup to Congress...

...These technologies appeared to promise greater accuracy, invisibility, greater range and speed, and enhanced survivability, all of which propelled strategists down the road of counterforce targeting, war-fighting, and protracted nuclear conflict...

...position in START, Talbott notes that "the Administration's principal concern was to keep military programs on track...

...And if the Administration argues that the Soviet Union is building and developing weapons that violate treaties (one of which, SALT II, the U.S...

...Richard I ("soft") appears to seek an arms-control proposal that the Soviets will at least want to talk about...

...Of course, a major weakness of "White House-ology" is that one has to start the explanation all over again when new players enter the game...

...no general has ever fought one...

...A freeze, among other benefits, might end Soviet MIRVs, halt new missile developments in Siberia, and prohibit deployment of additional Soviet ballistic missiles off our coasts that threaten our ICBMs...

...The major flaw of the book is its underlying tone, suggesting that the issues debated among Perle, Burt, Nitze, and the others are the real agenda—that, for instance, deterrence is eroding because of the Soviet nuclear buildup, the Pershing II missiles are needed to deter Soviet SS-20s, and "modernization" (next-generation) nuclear weapons programs must proceed...

...its most likely response would be an unprecedented expansion of nuclear warheads in order to overwhelm such a system...

...While Talbott (and perhaps a few players in the Administration) realize that the Soviets are strongly motivated by the need to be recognized as equal to the United States, U.S...

...One motor of the nuclear arms race is pressure from defense contractors and research labs to develop the next generation of strategic technology...

...Still another player emerges as central to what little progress was made between 1981 and 1983 in defining U.S...

...Technologically, this is absurd, as even the program's supporters acknowledge...

...If the Administration says the MX and Star Wars are bargaining chips, the public and Congress may respond by declaring a moratorium on funding for these programs, look for a Soviet response, and watch for proof that the Administration intends to actually trade them as part of the process of getting meaningful concessions from the Soviets...

...This was (and remains) true for the MX missile program: "By making the MX a bargaining chip in START, the Administration could put Congress in the position of not daring to end the program...

...All U.S...

...These research and development contractors are key players in the "iron triangle" (Pentagon, Congress, and the contractors) that is an important crucible of the arms race—and a key obstacle to progress on arms control...

...196...

...The nuclear agenda, however, is far wider, and it is unlikely to narrow down in the future...

...Reagan came into office committed to what has become the most rapid peacetime expansion of military spending in American history (even higher in constant dollars than it was during the Korean or Vietnam wars...

...Progress in technology is marketed as a kind of arms control and solution to the arms race...

...Richard II ("hard") seems to want no proposal at all or, at best, one the Soviets will reject out of hand...

...Once the war we hope is protracted begins, the outcome is uncertain, unpredictable, and deadly...

...INF negotiator Maynard Glitman rates four mentions, only one of them remotely substantive (Richard Allen, then national security adviser, described Glitman as a "utility infielder...

...Paul Nitze, negotiator in the failed Euromissile talks, was scorned by most of the players for "wandering off the reservation" (trying to explore what the Soviets might really accept...

...Les Aspin (D—Wis...

...And does Richard Burt hide proposals he has negotiated with one bureaucrat, in order to slip them past others...

...Now, 12 years later, arms control talks have come, gone, and come again...

...In describing the evolution of the U.S...

...Weinberger's position is hard-line, and he loves land-based missiles (including the MX...

...The goal of this bigger game is security, ours and that of the world around us...

...never ratified) and endanger our deterrent, it will hear from the public that a verifiable freeze might make us more secure...

...While Talbott does not explicitly lay out the deeper sources of this stalemate, much of the evidence lurks in his pages...

...to carry out its own plans...

...The goal of Star Wars is to protect missiles, not people...

...Real arms control seems scarcely to have been tried since * Deadly Gambits: The Reagan Administration and the Stalemate in Nuclear Arms Control, by Strobe Talbott (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984...

...Because Talbott has chosen to focus on policy as gossip, he misses what is probably the most important piece of the arms control landscape: the changed public mood, the public's increasing involvement in the policy debate, and the fact that such involvement has widened the range of possible policy alternatives...

...Information is highly classified and the arguments are arcane—a hypothetical theology resembling world-class chess, with pieces nobody wants to move...

...new chair of the House Armed Services Committee, sought this kind of leverage when he engineered the 1983 —84 campaign to save the MX...

...Star Wars takes both countries to the next and more dangerous level of nuclear insecurity...

...Talbott notes, at the very end of the book, that three 193 years of gossip and in-fighting on arms control had produced, at best, a mouse: "The substance of policy remained largely undefined...

...The technology that seemed to be the solution is now part of a bigger problem...

...The same is true of cruise missiles...