Sizing Up Vladivostok

...Intelligence reports indicate that without the imposed ceiling of 2,400, the Soviet Union would build as many as 3,000 delivery vehicles before 1985, and that 1,500-2,000 of them would carry mirvs...

...with figures on how much the Soviets will have, not how much they might have...

...Both sides will retain huge stockpiles of deadly weapons in the foreseeable future...

...Jackson has, of course, taken the White House to task before over its bargaining with the Kremlin...

...The Soviet rockets, far larger than ours, are capable of carrying more warheads...

...revise their foreign policies...

...In short, the accord aids those who seek to restrict military spending because it does place a "cap" on the arms race...

...To begin with, the Soviets may not attach as many warheads to their delivery vehicles as the Vladivostok provisions allow...

...Arms builders, like protectionists, prefer high levels for reasons having little to do with other countries' policies or programs...

...defense forces...

...It is better than nothing...

...and events seem to have vindicated him for demanding that we use the prospect of most-favored-nation trading status as a lever for extracting Soviet emigration concessions...

...inferiority could have unfavorable political repercussions, that with even part of the American strategic force vulnerable to a first-strike attack, the Soviets might be bolder in the Middle East, or the Western Europeans might Michael Mandelbaum is an assistant professor of government and research associate in the Program for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University...

...enjoys decided strategic superiority now: The Soviets possess few long-range bombers, and have as yet deployed no mirvs, thus giving the United States a substantial lead in numbers of warheads at the moment...

...Critics of the "payload gap" also argue that the mere appearance of significant U.S...

...Senator Henry Jackson (D.-Wash...

...Defense budget calculations are invariably based on a "worst case" analysis of the adversary's capabilities...

...But the limits to which the two leaders pledged themselves— 2,400 strategic delivery vehicles (land- and sea-based missiles and long-range bomber aircraft), including a maximum of 1,320 missiles equipped with multiple independently targetable warheads (mirvs)-do constitute a potential military and political milestone...

...It may not even deserve the title of "breakthrough" that its authors have bestowed upon it, but it does make life a little bit safer and a little bit less expensive than would otherwise be the case...

...To be sure, the level of strategic armaments, like the level of tariffs, also depends upon domestic considerations...

...it is better than nothing...

...Since 1945, uncertainty, among other things, has fueled the arms race...

...Still, the same estimates would be used by the proponents of a weapons build-up as a justification for greater defense expenditures...

...If the two sides cannot hammer out its details, or if they cannot find a mutually satisfactory way of monitoring it, or if Congress refuses to ratify it, the understanding will pass into history as a broken promise, an engagement canceled before the wedding...

...Nonetheless, in order to persuade Congress of their value, the Pentagon chiefs generally base their arguments on the strategic balance...

...It does not prohibit, for example, putting the Minute-man fleet on a high state of alert, so that the missiles can be launched before they are struck...

...Ultimately, therefore, the question of whether the President could have pressed successfully for lower numbers at Vladivostok is moot...

...The charge that the Vladivostok accord is worse than nothing has two rather conflicting bases...

...They worry about the enormous stockpiles of weapons the pact grants to both sides, and the expense and danger of the new hardware it allows...

...Finally, within the overall total of 2,400, we can shift our emphasis from land-based Minuteman ICBMs to less vulnerable sea-based missiles and airborne systems...

...Although the Vladivostok agreement does not usher in a millennium of peace and harmony, to reject it on that account would be unfortunate...

...In Moscow last summer a United States proposal calling for far fewer than 1,320 mirvs met with no enthusiasm from the Soviet leaders...

...it is nothing...

...It enables one to answer the perennial question "how much is enough...

...OF MIRVS AND MEN Sizing Up Vladivostok BY MICHAEL MANDELBAUM Three different verdicts, one veteran of previous arms control negotiations has observed, are possible on the Vladivostok protocol limiting strategic armaments that was worked out by President Gerald Ford and General Secretary Leonid I. Brezhnev in late November: It is worse than nothing...

...Nor does it rule out mounting the ICBMs on mobile platforms, or developing rockets of nearly the same size as the ones the Soviets have...

...He has promised to wage a campaign to send the Administration back to negotiate for the lower plateau before accepting any bargain...

...New and sophisticated weapons like the Trident submarine and the B-l bomber have a natural appeal for the Armed Services...

...Moreover, the Kremlin has dropped its previous insistence that Forward Based Systems be included in the aggregate total...

...But the argument can be made that the President and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger brought back the best deal possible at this point...

...Perhaps most important, although the USSR may in the future gain an advantage over our land-based missiles, the U.S...

...The world might be better off without nuclear armaments, yet to do away with them once and for all would require a revolution in international politics-one that has been awaited steadily for three decades, since Hiroshima, and intermittently for three centuries, since the emergence of the independent nation-state...

...Hence the considerable controversy that has arisen since the figures were made public...

...This nightmare, however, is extremely unlikely to come about...

...And even if they did, thereby endangering our Minuteman force, we would still possess a formidable deterrent against a first strike: the hundreds of deadly warheads on submarines and in strategic bombers, as well as on the fighter aircraft of our "Forward Based Systems" abroad that the agreement does not cover...

...With 1,320 "MiRVed" missiles, the USSR would be potent enough to destroy America's 1,054 land-based ICBMs in a single, sweeping "first-strike...

...security by imperiling the nation's fleet of land-based Minuteman inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs...

...indeed, Secretary of Defense James R. Schle-singer has already announced that the accord would lead to "some upward adjustment" in the arms budget and could require a change in the structure of U.S...

...So, while the prospects for the Soviet force are formidable in the long term, the present status of Moscow's arsenal would probably dampen its interest in discarding weapons it does have to reach a 1,760 level...

...has denounced the protocol for setting the two arsenals at an unacceptably high plateau, and has given the figure 1,760 as a preferred ceiling for delivery vehicles...

...The agreement may, in fact, come to nothing in the end...

...And since it is normally impossible to know with assurance what another country will do in the future, prudence dictates error on the side of caution...

...The limited test ban treaty of 1963 and the nonproliferation accord of 1968 expressed the Soviet-American wish to restrict the number of first-class nuclear powers to two...

...Another suspicion voiced by the dovish critics is that the accord stimulates the accumulation of weaponry to the 2,400 ceiling...

...The two salt agreements bespoke a joint desire to contain the arms race, not to end it altogether...

...Those hoping to cut defense spending have reason for recalling the message of a 1968 Parisian wall poster—"Everything not prohibited is mandatory"-and perhaps concluding that the cause of arms control would be better served by rejecting the pact...

...But the Ford-Brezhnev agreement permits measures to reduce any apparent vulnerability...

...Arms controllers, like free traders, have a better chance of keeping defense budgets low when they can say exactly where that balance rests, and can feel confident that the Soviet Union will not unilaterally raise its end...

...Some critics feel it threatens U.S...

...Ever since arms control began in earnest, just over a decade ago, it has reflected the common interests of the two most powerful nations, and these, though firm, are exceedingly narrow...

...There was bound to be pressure for more and better armaments however the Ford-Brezhnev meeting turned out, but a failure at Vladivostok would no doubt have intensified Pentagon demands...

...A New York Times editorial last December 4 complained that "more and more, the Vladivostok agreement appears to be an agreement between the military on both sides-achieved through the intermediary of the chiefs of government-to permit the build-ups each desired...

...President Ford encouraged this view at his December 2 news conference...

...But this is precisely what troubles the agreement's second group of critics...

...Secretary Kissinger has strenuously argued the contrary-asserting that without the agreement the stockpiles on both sides will grow much higher than the limits set— and his contention carries considerable weight...

...The United States, he declared, has an "obligation" to maintain its strength at the maximum permitted, and he added, "The budget that I will recommend will keep our strategic forces either up to or aimed at that objective...

...Whatever the outcome of the battles guaranteed to take place in Congress over new weapons programs, and of the further negotiations to reduce the overall limits set at Vladivostok (which, according to Secretary Kissinger, could begin almost immediately), we are not likely to see the nuclear equivalent of free trade...

...Such estimates, naturally, are always conjectural, and the people putting them about have a vested interest in propagating the view that the agreement represents a triumph for American diplomacy...