On Arms Control

...The second option, better known in Europe than in the United States, is described as "alternative defense" or "defensive defense...

...For example: what are the trade-offs between landbased missiles in silos and mobile land-based missiles...

...What are the trade-offs between weapons with multiple warheads versus those with a single warhead...

...The NATO allies are not unified in either accepting or rejecting these plans...

...3) intrusive verification measures...

...Such an agreement would still be preferable to current strategic stockpiles, if it actually applied to current stockpiles...

...allies in Europe actually provide considerable military forces to the alliance...

...The asymmetries are far more complex, because U.S...

...As a result, there is growing support in West Germany for further steps toward the denuclearization of the Central Front, an idea strongly resisted by the United States...

...The United States argues that the credibility of NATO's deterrent requires modernizing these weapons, notably a successor missile to the eighty-eight Lance artillery-fired nuclear missiles and a new air-to-surface nuclear missile...

...Modernizing NATO The debate in Europe, however, turns on the 4,500 U.S...

...military and some military spokespersons in Europe, would deploy new technologies and redefine doctrine to give NATO the upper hand over the Warsaw Pact...

...The common measure—defense spending as a share 132 • DISSENT Comments and Opinions of GNP—is misleading, since it compares a U.S...

...Including forces in the United States designed for redeployment to Europe, the U.S...

...The forthcoming START agreement is unlikely to save budgetary resources...

...A healthy conventional balance would also defuse rising demands that the European allies stop taking a "free ride" on the U.S...

...defense budget and provide for their own defense...

...In contrast to the Reagan rhetoric, a START agreement may be arms control as usual—an opportunity to modernize the arsenal at considerable cost...

...There will be expenses to destroy current systems...

...For the Soviets, it eliminates the threat posed by the Pershing II missiles—aimed, with minimal warning time, at Soviet military, political, and economic targets...

...battlefield nuclear weapons still on the continent (down 1,400 since the start of the decade...

...defense budget designed for global defense commitments to European budgets designed to meet regional needs...

...This course is expensive in tight budgetary times and it has raised some concerns in the alliance (where elements of the strategy have been adopted as "follow-on force attack") that a more "offensive" appearance of NATO's forces could well prove destabilizing in a crisis...

...Thus, should a new treaty emerge from the next summit—not a foregone conclusion—it is not likely to be as historic as will be claimed...

...GDP committed to spending for the alliance is lower than that of the United Kingdom or France and only slightly above that of West Germany...

...warheads are concentrated on sea-launched ballistic missiles, while Soviet warheads are largely on ICBMs...

...Although INF treaty critics argue that the agreement leaves NATO significantly inferior to the conventional forces of the Warsaw Pact, there is considerable disagreement with this assessment...

...And it provides for careful but clearly intrusive inspection visits and permanent presences on the soil of each superpower...

...Both the Warsaw Pact and NATO nations could reduce military budgets while gaining in security...

...Moreover, the U.S...

...A new, comprehensive round of conventional force reduction talks will open this year in Vienna...

...The warm welcome accorded the INF agreement was genuine...

...one-hundred thirty-two advanced technology ("stealth") bombers...

...The INF agreement can be a start, making possible real changes in global security policy over the next decade—if, that is, the siren songs of strategic modernization and conventional buildup are resisted...

...Soviet and Warsaw Pact proposals for these talks accept, for the first time, all three features that characterize the new INF agreement: reductions in forces based, in part, on asymmetries (NATO is stronger in some categories, notably fighter bombers and air support, while the Warsaw Pact is in others, notably tanks and artillery) and verified in intrusive ways...

...The Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement will be ratified by the Senate this spring, setting new precedents for arms control agreements: (1) actual reductions in the number of nuclear warheads held by the superpowers...

...allies provide 53.2 percent of NATO's tanks, 45.7 percent of its artillery, 55.4 percent of the combat aircraft, 83.3 percent of the naval combatant ships, 58.4 percent of the active duty personnel and 80 percent of the reserve personnel...

...and seventeen Trident nuclear submarines with Trident II missiles...

...Deep-strike missiles and sophisticated aircraft communications would threaten the rear echelon of Warsaw Pact forces well behind the Central Front...

...Conventional Negotiations Europeans are reluctant to accept such dramatic changes in their security, in part because of the size and capabilities of Warsaw Pact forces...

...Counting warheads fully, the agreement would leave each superpower with something over 9,000 warheads, or roughly a 33 percent reduction, not 50, in the overall arsenal...

...In 1988, however, there are signs that such negotiations might make real progress...

...The bombers would carry air-launched cruise missiles, the next generation of free-fall nuclear warheads and the SRAM II version of the short-range attack missile...

...These technologies, combined with a battlefield strategy of maneuver, are seen as a way to overcome presumed Warsaw Pact numerical advantages in Central Europe...

...In fact, when one weights U.S...

...Some versions of this approach go further toward the use SPRING • 1988 • 133 Comments and Opinions of new military technologies...

...From INF to START The INF agreement destroys the delivery vehicles for an entire category of nuclear weapons (but not the warheads or guidance systems, which can be recycled...

...The U.S...

...In the short term, the most urgent debate focuses on the nuclear forces remaining in Western Europe...

...In reality, as the Natural Resource Defense Council has pointed out, the agreement will count bombers as if they were one warSPRING • 1988 • 131 Comments and Opinions head, instead of the twenty-four to thirty-eight warheads each can carry...

...Neither side saves any significant budgetary resources...

...There are strategic advantages to slimming down the force to this modernized capability: there may, for example, be an advantage to mobility in land-based missiles, because they would be harder for the adversary to target, hence less urgent to fire in a crisis...

...The going will get tougher with a strategic arms reduction (START) agreement...

...Because the details of this option are not yet well-defined and have not been adopted by major European governments (though some are welcomed by the West German Social Democrats), it is not likely to emerge as policy in the near future...

...it represents a real step forward...

...Moreover, there is likely to be resistance in the armed forces of both sides to reductions and changes...

...It does so in an asymmetrical way, with a larger number of Soviet missiles being destroyed...

...This option usually combines some or all of the following elements: a reduction of some of NATO's active duty forces, tank barriers at the inner German border, high-tech sensors at the border to detect Warsaw Pact attack, antitank weaponry in large numbers, and a well-trained military reserve...

...In addition, the United States maintains 150 "dual capable" F-111 bombers and has assigned two Poseidon missile submarines to the alliance to provide target coverage...

...Supporters of more defensively defined forces would have a credible and secure context in which to make their case...

...For the United States, more than $7 billion had already been spent on the cruise missiles and Pershing Hs...

...As a result, a simple agreement (which seemed possible at Reykjavik) is not easily translated into a treaty...

...The treaty has also opened the floodgates for a new round of debates over the conventional military situation in Western Europe with risks of a major buildup...

...some go further in the direction of "civilian defense," without large armies...

...2) asymmetrical reductions of weapons...

...In order to meet the 6,000-warhead limit, the United States would simply destroy current B-52 bombers, Minuteman II and III missiles, and retire the Poseidon and Trident I missiles and Poseidon subs...

...The countries with forces on the Central Front (the United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Belgium, West Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the USSR) have negotiated over such forces without success for more than fifteen years...

...Reductions, asymmetries, and verification are all likely features of future agreements...

...Conventional forces in NATO are also a focus of attention...

...the money was already out to sea and could not be recalled...

...From a military point of view, the new strategic arsenal would combine several advantages: by and large its components would be more mobile (less vulnerable), less visible (stealthy), equally diverse, and far more accurate...

...one-hundred B-1B bombers...

...Progress in conventional arms control talks, with significant force reductions, however, could have real payoffs...

...It will bring together all European countries and cover military forces in Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals...

...The acquisition costs of new strategic systems (without which it might be difficult to obtain the agreement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) could come to at least $150 billion over the next five to ten years, not including the costs of operation and maintenance...

...West Germany, alone, maintains an active duty force of 400,000 soldiers, while France maintains over 500,000...

...These negotiations are likely to be lengthy and difficult, given the complexities of hardware, unit organization, age, doctrine, and location of current conventional military forces...

...For the United States, the INF agreement means a reduction in the number of Soviet weapons targeted to hit NATO and Japanese forces and installations when fired from Soviet territory...

...The superpowers are fashioning a treaty, however, that would permit a full modernization of each country's nuclear arsenal...

...In the end, each side may well end up with 6,000 strategic warheads based entirely on modern strategic weapons (some still on the drawing boards) rather than on currently deployed systems...

...strategic arsenal after a START agreement could thus be composed of fifty MX missiles in silos, fifty MX rail mobile missiles, two-hundred Midgetman single-warhead mobile missiles...

...The curious (and baroque) logic of strategic policy will lead both superpowers to do complex modeling of exchange scenarios before agreeing to eliminate a given number of any one type of strategic weapon...

...defense spending conservatively (60 percent for NATO, as estimated by the Defense Department) to reflect such commitments, the share of U.S...

...The START agreement is not the only mixed blessing to flow from the INF treaty...

...Strategic weapons based on a variety of delivery systems (land-and-seabased ballistic missiles, bombers, and cruise missiles constitute a far larger share of the nuclear arsenal...

...Despite the INF treaty, the United Kingdom and France retain strategic-range missiles targeted on the USSR...

...At the same time, the direction currently being taken by strategic policy in both countries, the outline of forthcoming arms control treaties and the domestic politics of defense in the United States all suggest that the champagne bottles should stay corked for the moment...

...One option, favored by much of the U.S...

...Such a redefinition is needed, however, given the INF agreement, Soviet pressures for negotiations on conventional forces, European debates over their future security policy, and economic pressures in both alliances for a change in policy and lower spending...

...Although the Joint Chiefs of Staff testified to the Congress that there was no weapons "quid pro quo" for their acceptance of the INF treaty, modernization plans for battlefield systems appear to be such a trade-off...

...On paper and in these models, reductions would have a direct effect on perceived strategic security...

...The START agreement will be portrayed as achieving 50 percent reductions to roughly 6,000 warheads for each superpower...

...The disadvantage is that such an arsenal moves yet another step toward imagining it would be possible to fight, control, survive, and prevail in a nuclear exchange...

...Ally bashing" is not a useful approach to redefining the future of European security policy...

...West Germany, in particular, is resisting the idea, since, with the removal of intermediate-range nuclear forces, West Germany is the battlefield on which such short-range forces would be used...

...all should be welcomed as meaningful precedents...

...In reality, there is little evidence that the allies are taking such a "free ride...

...The third security option for Europe would address this issue directly through conventional arms control negotiations...

...A major step of this kind toward U.S/Soviet agreement on security might make meaningful strategic arms reductions possible...

...Among many others, Senator Carl Levin, defense analysts William Kaufmann, Barry Posen, and John Mearsheimer, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London have argued that NATO's conventional forces provide an adequate deterrent, in themselves, to a conventional military attack by the Warsaw Pact...

...The INF agreement also contains risks: (1) all the above accomplishments may prove to be significantly more difficult when an agreement covers a large part of the nuclear arsenals, rather than just 4 percent of global nuclear warheads...

...European security could be assured without the need for nuclear modernizations or "deep strike" weaponry...

...and (2) although proposed next steps may provide some measure of stability in the nuclear relationship between the superpowers, they are not likely to prevent the modernization of each country's arsenals—nuclear or conventional—nor will they necessarily save budgetary resources...

...If they are correct, there is relatively less pressure to modernize the battlefield nuclear arsenal...