Air University Review, November-December 1984
Dr. Keith B. Payne
Dr. Jeffrey G. Barlow
Dr. Barry R. Schneider
Rebecca V. Strode
THE
nuclear arms control debate in the United States generally is predicated on two differing theories of how to achieve an agreement. One theory, usually associated with critics of American strategic modernization programs, posits that plans for improving U.S. nuclear forces ruin the basis for arms control. It is argued that U.S. plans to add to its nuclear arsenal motivate the Soviet Union to build up its own forces and perpetuate the arms race. Consequently, strategic modernization programs (such as the B-1B, the MX Peacekeeper, and the Trident D-5 submarine launched ballistic missile) are regarded as inconsistent with the pursuit of arms control.1The second theory, commonly associated with proponents of American strategic modernization programs, holds that either credible plans to deploy forces or actual force deployments are necessary to motivate Soviet interest in arms control negotiations. According to this theory, the Soviets are quite unlikely to accept arms control constraints unless they are able to obtain useful constraints placed on U.S. weapons programs that particularly concern them. Consequently, since the Soviet Union has a dynamic strategic buildup in progress, U.S. force modernization is said to provide a necessary basis for successful negotiations.2
The implications of these two divergent theories and their respective validity (or lack thereof) are significant. Yet although the theories suggest direct contradictory avenues for success in arms control, there appears to be little historical analysis available to support either of them.
Concentrating on an approach to arms control which follows Winston Churchill's admonition that a country must "arm to parley, " one can find that this approach has been effective in several historical instances. These examples do not suggest that weapons deployments (or credible plans for deployment) must always precede success in arms control, but they do indicate that such a linkage does have historical precedent. They also indicate that it is not necessarily inconsistent to pursue arms control negotiations and strategic modernization programs simultaneously. Thus, these historical case studies can provide at least a partial answer to those who question the sincerity of those who support both negotiations and modernization.
When World War I ended in November 1918, the United States Navy found itself in an unbalanced posture in regard to ship construction. Having acceded to British arguments during the war, the U.S. Navy had concentrated on building antisubmarine craft, such as destroyers, at the expense of deploying a fleet that included significant numbers of new capital ships (battleships and battle cruisers). Britain, on the other hand, had continued throughout the war to build all types of ships. The result was that by war's end Great Britain's navy was not only distinctly superior to the American navy in capital ships but numerically stronger than the latter in all categories of warships--a situation that senior American naval officers were determined to remedy.
In November 1918, the U.S. Navy Department issued a planning document which concluded that the calculation of American naval requirements should be made relative to the strength of the British fleet. It also set forth three guiding principles for naval preparation:
Superiority of type (ship for ship).
Equality in strength in capital ships and cruisers.
Equality of shore facilities in the essential operating areas.
Congressional approval in 1920 of the Navy's 1916 shipbuilding program, which included funding for significant increases in capital ships, convinced the British government that the United States was determined to achieve parity with the British navy. British leaders were aware that an economically healthy, heavily industrialized United States could afford to expand her naval shipbuilding programs to reach that goal. By this time, however, Great Britain was undergoing increasing economic difficulties, The result was a realization by key British leaders that a U.S.-British naval treaty to prevent an expensive and dangerous naval arms race was vitally important.
Accordingly, at the Washington Naval Conference in 1922, Britain agreed to concede equality to the United States Navy in capital ships. Although she retained overall naval supremacy for the time being, for the first time in the history of the British Empire she had limited herself to numerical equality with another power.
The importance of this early-twentieth-century example of successful arms control is not belied by the fact that in 1919-21 the United States and Great Britain, recent allies in the "war to end all wars," were peaceful competitors and not strong political antagonists. Britain, recovering slowly from a war that had strained the resources of her empire to the utmost, saw a United States whose industrial and financial might had not only remained unharmed by the war but, in fact, had been increased by it and whose large, modern merchant fleet now threatened to capture an increasing portion of the world trade long dominated by British shipping. The U.S. Navy saw in Britain's continuing alliance with a resurgent Japan the danger of the establishment of a potentially hostile naval superiority in the Pacific. While the level of political enmity (actual or potential) between the two countries was not nearly as high as it has been between the United States and the Soviet Union since 1945, it still was not inconsiderable.
Yet perhaps the most important lesson that can be drawn from events now more than sixty years past is that even negotiations occurring under the auspices of relative political amity required the evidence of a commitment to a strong naval building program to induce the greater naval power to negotiate significant restrictions on the strength of its own fleet. If such an effort was required in an atmosphere where relative political amity existed between the parties, it certainly would appear unlikely that anything less could provide success under present circumstances.
Obviously, there is not a direct analogy between negotiating with such an erstwhile ally as Great Britain during the post-World War I period and negotiating with the Soviet Union during the current period. The level of political enmity is much higher in current U.S.-Soviet relations than in U.S.-British relations following World War I. This fact perhaps underscores an important point. Even in negotiations occurring in the context of relative political amity, the ultimate leverage leading to concessions was a credible and dynamic military modernization program. That such bargaining inducements are helpful in the context of hostile political relations is illustrated in a number of instances in U.S.-Soviet parleying.
The signing of SALT I (including the ABM Treaty and Interim Agreement) is perhaps the clearest example of the relationship between American nuclear weapons programs and the successful negotiation of arms control agreements. It is quite clear that congressional authorization for deployment of the U.S. Sentinel ballistic missile defense (BMD) program was the primary stimulus behind Soviet agreement to engage in SALT and Soviet accession to both the ABM Treaty and the Interim Agreement.
It is unlikely that Soviet agreement to "an exchange of opinion on arms limitation, including anti-missile systems" (i.e., SALT) on 27 June 1968, only three days after Congress decided to fund Sentinel, was coincidental. The notion of SALT had been first broached to the Soviets in December 1966. During the negotiations, it became clear that the primary Soviet interest was not in limiting offensive force levels but in countering the ongoing U.S. antiballistic missile (ABM) program. During the first round of SALT in Helsinki (November 1969), Moscow indicated its concern in this regard, reversing the Soviet position that Premier Aleksei Kosygin had presented two and a half years earlier at Glassboro. Then, the Soviet leader had indicated that ABM systems obviously were defensive and should not be restricted; during the initial round of SALT, however, the Soviet Union indicated an interest in limiting ABM systems and opposed discussion of limitation on offensive force qualities.
During the third SALT round in Helsinki, the Soviets revealed that they wanted an agreement on antiballistic missiles only and no limit on offensive weapons. In contrast, the United States sought limitations on offensive strategic systems and particularly the SS-9 ICBM, which was viewed as a threat to the survivability of Minuteman ICBM launch control centers. This lack of common objectives could have led to a stalemate. The solution, initiated by the United States, was to link offensive limitations to limitations on ABM systems.
There is little doubt that the ongoing U.S. ABM program (which was renamed Safeguard, as announced by President Nixon on 14 March 1969) was the object of Soviet negotiating interest and was the leverage that the United States exploited to gain Soviet agreement to the offensive limitations achieved at SALT I. The causal linkage between the U.S. Sentinel/Safeguard ABM program and the offensive limitations of SALT I was noted by many who participated directly in the negotiations. It was affirmed by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, during SALT I congressional hearings.3 Dr. Kissinger noted: "Our experience has been that an on-going program is no obstacle to an agreement and, on the contrary, may accelerate it. That was certainly the case with respect to Safeguard."4 John Foster (then Director of Defense, Research, and Engineering) and Gerard Smith (then Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency) noted the same linkage.5
The principle that the deployment of weapon systems is helpful leverage in arms control negotiations is reflected also in U.S. anxieties and in Soviet statements. For example, the U.S. quest for strategic arms limitations was essentially a response to the Soviet strategic offensive buildup of the 1960s. By 1969, the primary U.S. SALT goal was to limit the deployment of counterforce-capable ICBMs such as the Soviet SS-9, which was thought to pose a threat to the Minuteman force. (The primary U.S. negotiating objective at SALT and START has continued to be the limitation or reduction of heavy, "destabilizing" ICBMS, such as the SS-9 and its successors, the SS-18 and SS-19). The U.S. perspective at the time of SALT I was that there existed two distinctly different types of potential responses to the Soviet buildup. The United States could emphasize a renewed deployment program of its own; or it could emphasize capping the Soviet buildup through arms control. The United States chose to pursue negotiations and détente. The interesting points are that the United States pursued arms control in response to the Soviet strategic buildup and that U.S. decision makers generally perceived negotiations and modernization programs as distinct and separate alternatives.
Similarly, it is clear that the Soviets believe that it was their own dynamic strategic buildup that "forced" the United States to seek arms control negotiations. As General V. G. Kulikov (then Chief of the Soviet General Staff) observed, the United States was forced to seek the SALT accords after "soberly evaluating" the growth of Soviet military might. This belief reflects the facts of the situation, and perhaps more important, the Soviet perspective concerning what is required for success in the arms control process. As Paul Nitze (now U.S. Representative to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Talks during the Reagan administration) has noted:
Soviet officials have indicated the view that what they call the "correlation of forces" . . . is moving in their favor and that, even though we may today believe that their proposals are one-sided and inequitable, eventually realism will bring us to accept at least the substance of them.6
In short, it is the apparent Soviet perspective that dynamic modernization programs are the currency of arms control negotiations. This Soviet view should be a critical factor in U.S. considerations concerning conditions likely to facilitate Soviet agreement in arms control negotiations.
There is little doubt that the Soviet Union required the manifest threat of American ABM deployment before consenting to engage in strategic arms control negotiations, and a quid pro quo in terms of limitations on U.S. weapons programs before agreeing to negotiated restraints on its own forces. This negotiating principle was revealed in the reported response by Soviet academician A. N. Shchukin (member of the Soviet SALT delegation) to a query concerning what the Soviets would limit in return for President Carter's decision to halt production of the B-1 bomber. Reportedly, Shchukin replied, "You misunderstand us. We are not pacifists nor are we philanthropists." 7
There is some evidence that the U.S. multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) program also provided an impetus to the Soviet Union to enter into the SALT I negotiations. In the first half of 1968, U.S. plans to deploy MIRV warheads on Minuteman ICBMs and Poseidon SLBMs were made public. The prospect of facing both an ABM program (which could have provided some potential protection for U.S. ICBMS) and the MIRV program (which increased the threat posed by each ICBM) may have combined as important factors in the Soviet decision to join the United States at the negotiating table. At the time, the Soviet ABM system was beset with technical difficulties, and the Soviet MIRV program was immature as well. Arms control negotiations offered an opportunity for the Soviet Union to curb U.S. advantages derived from these two strategic technologies.
Another example of the role of active deployment programs in arms control negotiations can be found in the treatment of limitations on SLBMs and SSBNs in the SALT I Interim Agreement. Under the terms of the Interim Agreement, the Soviet Union was allowed a greater number of SSBNs and SLBMs than was the United States. The Soviet Union was permitted 950 SLBMs and 62 "modern" nuclear submarines, while the United States was allowed 710 SLBMs on 44 SSBNS. In addition, older, diesel-powered, nuclear missile carrying submarines in the Soviet fleet were excluded from the SALT I limits on submarines.
When these numerical discrepancies became known, a number of members of the Congress questioned the equity of an agreement that allowed such quantitative advantages to the Soviet Union. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger admitted that the asymmetrical submarine quotas were not as restrictive as the United States would have liked, but he defended the limits that were achieved on the ground that they constituted the best agreement possible, given the magnitude of the submarine construction program which the Soviets had under way at the time. The Soviets, Kissinger indicated, were building several SSBNs per year, while the United States was building none. As Kissinger explained, this was "not the most brilliant negotiating position" from which to seek Soviet restraint. Without an active U.S. submarine program or at least a near-term deployment schedule for additional forces, the United States had little leverage with which to influence Soviet deployment plans.
From the beginning, Soviet cooperation on the issue of theater-range missiles in Europe had been keyed to the level of NATO commitment to theater nuclear force modernization. In March 1979, at a time when the missile deployment issue was first beginning to take hold, Premier Kosygin warned the European members of NATO, particularly West Germany, that if they pursued a "building of military preparations" they would be jeopardizing economic relations with the Soviet Union. By May 1979, the Warsaw Pact Foreign Ministers were calling for the convening of an all-European conference (along with Canada and the United States) to discuss transforming political détente into military détente.
In October 1979, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, in a speech in East Berlin, announced the withdrawal of up to 20,000 Soviet troops and 1000 tanks from East Germany and further suggested that the Soviet Union was prepared "to reduce the number of medium-range nuclear" weapons deployed in its western area--but only if no additional medium-range systems were deployed in Western Europe. President Carter responded that what Brezhnev was offering, in effect, was "to continue their own rate of modernization as it has been, provided we don't modernize it all."
With time growing shorter before NATO's deployment decision, Brezhnev announced in early November 1979 that the Soviet Union was prepared to begin negotiations on theater missiles "without delay." He added that it was "important that no hasty actions be taken that might complicate the situation or obstruct the attainment of positive results." Several weeks latpr, Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko increased the pressure on NATO by announcing that if NATO "should come to such a decision [to deploy new missiles in Europe], if our proposals for immediate negotiations should be rejected, the basis for negotiations would be destroyed." On 12 December 1979, the North Atlantic Council decided in favor of going ahead with the missile deployment. And six months later, the Soviet Union began hinting once again that it was willing to negotiate on the missile issue.
As the time for actually deploying the first Pershing II and ground-launched cruise missiles approached, the Soviet Union showed itself willing to concede some points at the Geneva negotiations. In August 1983, General Secretary Yuri Andropov offered to "liquidate," rather than merely withdraw from western Russia, some SS-20 missiles reduced under an intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) agreement. Within a few days, Soviet negotiators asserted that the destruction promise applied only to SS-20 launchers, not the missiles themselves. But within a month, Soviet negotiators had agreed to destroy one missile with each launcher.
The Soviet Union had also been saying for many months that because the British and French nuclear forces must be counted in the INF totals, the Soviets could not reduce their deployed SS-20s in the western Soviet Union below the 162 missile total of the British and French forces. Yet as the time for NATO's deployrnent of its first theater-range missiles approached, Andropov proposed, on 26 October 1983, that this Soviet SS-20 force could be reduced to "about 140." Obviously, the continued demonstration of NATO's resolve to deploy the Pershing IIs and ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMS) had increased Soviet incentives to negotiate in a last-minute attempt to prevent missile deployment.
However, events were moving beyond the capacity of Moscow's limited, grudging concessions to hold them in check. By the first week of November 1983, Yuri Andropov already was seriously ill (he was to die some three months later), curtailing the Soviet government's negotiating flexibility; with the deployment of the first of the new American missiles only several weeks away, the Soviet government apparently decided to accept the inevitable and began making plans for its threatened walkout of the talks.
In mid-November the Soviet Union floated a last-minute, informal offer to cut its SS-20 force targeted on Western Europe by 572 warheads--to some 120 missiles--in exchange for no deployment of American Pershing IIs and ground-launched cruise missiles. However, this offer was soon revealed as more of an effort at "mud-dying the waters" than a serious negotiating stance: not only did the Soviets inform U.S. officials that the United States would have to make a formal proposal to the Soviet Union along these lines, but also, when the informal offer was made public, Moscow quickly denounced it. Finally, on 23 November 1983, the Soviets walked out of the INF negotiations in Geneva.
Over the previous months of the negotiations, the Soviets had moved begrudgingly toward concessions on theater-range missiles in Europe, as NATO's determination to deploy the new missiles had been made manifest. Yet, in the end, the pace of Soviet compromise had proved far too slow. In retrospect, it seems obvious that the Soviets' negotiating effort had been doomed to failure by the nature of their approach to the INF negotiations. Clearly, from the outset of the talks, the Soviet leadership had been pinning its hopes for preventing the NATO missile deployment on persuading key West European parliamentarians, indirectly and directly, that deploying the new NATO missiles would result in unmanageable adverse political and military consequences--consequences that could otherwise be avoided.
Thus the Soviet Union had adopted an extremely hardline negotiating stance from the beginning of the INF talks, predicating its acceptance of limits on its deployed SS-20 missile force on a U.S. commitment to forgo any deployment of new intermediate-range missiles to Europe. Subsequently, over the course of the negotiations, it refused either to move from this unnegotiable demand or to accede to U.S. counterproposals for dismantlement of Soviet European-targeted, theater-range missile force as the price for achieving a U.S. commitment not to deploy Pershing IIs and GLCMS. By the time the Soviet leadership realized that its propaganda campaign had failed to avert the missile deployment, it proved unwilling or unable to compromise with the United States sufficiently at the INF negotiations to accomplish its goal through this means either.
Ultimately, the Soviet Union chose to withdraw from the INF talks rather than to make the necessary concessions on the SS-20 issue. Whether the Soviet "walk-out" will be permanent remains to be seen. Perhaps the Soviet government hopes that its refusal to negotiate will cause doubts within the NATO alliance concerning the wisdom of the "two-track" decision--doubts which might, in turn, undermine the NATO consensus on INF deployments. Yet, if NATO remains steadfast in its support for the Pershing II and cruise missile deployment option, the Soviets may come to realize that only a return to the negotiating table can bring hope of U.S.-Soviet accommodation at lower force levels than would result from an unconstrained arms race. Foreign Minister Gromyko's recent discussions with President Reagan, coming unexpectedly shortly before the 1984 elections, provide grounds for hope that this realization is already taking shape within the Kremlin. Certainly, if the United States halts further INF deployments, the Soviet Union will have no incentive to return to negotiations. The same can be said of the impact that possible cancellation of the Peacekeeper ICBM program would have on Soviet interests in returning to the START negotiations.
In SALT II negotiations, a complex agreement limiting forces on both sides was secured. Both sides agreed that during the negotiations "Nothing was agreed until all was agreed upon."
According to Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, the best results of the treaty, those most favorable to the United States were:
The ceiling that was put on numbers of reentry vehicles (RVs) and warheads allowable on any given type of SLBM and ICBM. This "fractionation" limit allowed no more than ten RVs per ICBM, no more than fourteen RVs per SLBM, and fewer RVs for those types tested with fewer. Soviet SS-18s otherwise had the potential for twenty to thirty warheads.
The 820 MIRV ICBM ceiling, which constrained the Soviet MIRV ICBM program but fit our own plans more easily.
The 308 limit on "heavy ICBMS," such as the SS-18. The United States has no plans for such "heavies," whereas the Soviet Union has had an active buildup program.
The "new types" rule, restricting each side to one new ICBM only. Had this provision of the treaty been observed by the Soviet Union, it would have permitted MX in either a mobile or fixed basing mode and permitted the Soviet Union one new type only. The Soviets had four new types of ICBMs planned for testing at the time of SALT II.
Soviet agreement not to interfere with U.S. national technical means required for verification of the treaty nor deliberately to conceal information crucial for verification.8
Freedom for the United States to deploy 120 air-launched cruise missile (ALCM)-equipped bombers beyond the 1200 MIRV sublimit. At the time (1979), the Soviet Union was considered several years behind in ALCM technology; of course, both sides now have long-range ALCMs in deployment.
U.S.-Soviet agreement to equal aggregates (2250), as well as equal sublimits on MIRVALCM bombers (1320), on MIRVs (1200), and on MIRV ICBMs (820). This provision redressed an earlier SALT I disadvantage for the United States, since the Soviet Union deploys more platforms and we had agreed to unequal inferior numbers in SALT I.
The Soviet Union, on the other hand, also gained from the agreement. It secured:
A ceiling average of no more than twenty-eight ALCMs on each U.S. bomber.
A protocol with range limits on testing ALCMS, GLCMS, and SLCMS.
A ceiling on the total numbers of ALCM-equipped bombers.
No counting of Backfire bombers or SS-20s (with ICBM-range potential) in the aggregates or sublimited totals.
A unilateral advantage in "heavy" ICBMs (i.e., SS-18s) of 308.
At the 1974 Vladivostok summit, President Gerald R. Ford had agreed to permit the unilateral Soviet advantage in "heavy" ICBMs in return for Soviet agreement to discard the unequal ceilings of SALT I on total strategic nuclear delivery vehicles. Equal numerical limits were agreed to. The Soviet Union agreed not to count U.S., French, or British "forward-based systems" in SALT II totals.
After Vladivostok, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger pushed for an accelerated U.S. strategic cruise missile program in order to increase U.S. bargaining leverage in SALT II. It was this U.S. cruise missile program that the Soviets tried the hardest to block or limit during negotiations. A protocol temporarily limiting ALCM testing was agreed on, but this expired on 31 December 1981 and had no discernible effect on the ALCM testing schedule then planned.
There is little doubt that the package of Soviet concessions that the United States acquired in SALT II negotiations resulted in part because of U.S. concessions on ALCM-equipped bombers whereby such weapons were included in the 1320 sublimit to the treaty.
The United States successfully resisted any restrictions on MX so long as the Soviets refused to cut back on their "heavy" ICBM force of SS- 18s. In the negotiations, the Soviet Union proposed banning all new types of ICBMS, all new types of MIRVed ICBMS, and all mobile ICBMS. The United States resisted all such attempts to ban MX.9
It was clear in the SALT II negotiations that both sides desired to limit the threat posed by the other and could secure reductions or limits only at the cost of limiting something in their own program. The quid pro quos were complex, not one-for-one exchanges. The United States accepted a package of concessions from the Soviets in return for its own package of concessions. Soviet concessions would not have been made without Soviet concern about the size and character of U.S. strategic offensive forces. In SALT II, the United States gained leverage from its planned improvements, which included MX missiles, Trident I missiles, ALCMS, and other cruise missile programs. These systems gave our SALT II negotiators leverage in securing limits on Soviet programs--although some of those limitations now appear to be rather hollow, given Soviet noncompliance.10
Three rounds of ASAT arms control talks occurred between 1977 and 1980. The Soviet Union was anxious to ban potential U.S. ASATS, just as U.S. negotiators were anxious to ban the operational Soviet ASAT. During the talks, the Soviet delegation attempted to slow, limit, or ban the U.S Space Transportation System (STS), commonly called the space shuttle, as a potential ASAT. Although the United States could not agree to give up shuttle flights, this example again illustrates how potential U.S. military capabilities and programs can induce the Soviet Union to offer concessions concerning its own.
Another indication of how U.S. ASAT-related programs have produced leverage in informal negotiations was the Soviet unilateral moratorium on additional Soviet ASAT testing, announced in August 1983 and reaffirmed by Konstantin Chernenko. The Soviet Union, of course, insisted that the United States also scrap its test program on F-15 direct-ascent ASATs. The offer was made on the eve of the first scheduled test of the U.S. system. The Soviet Union obviously was attempting to halt the U.S. ASAT program and retain a unilateral ASAT advantage, since the Soviet Union had already tested two types of ASATs in twenty previous tests, while the yet-to-be-tested U.S. system was considered to have superior potential to those of the Soviet Union. Although the Reagan administration rejected the Soviet offer, it is significant that the Soviet Union considered the stopping of the U.S. ASAT program important enough to offer to stop its own ASAT testing.
Since August 1983, the Soviets have not resumed ASAT testing. The U.S. ASAT is being tested but only against coordinates in space, not against actual targets. U.S. congressional legislation has barred U.S. government ASAT testing versus space targets until 1 March 1985 unless the Soviets break their moratorium first. Clearly, the Soviet ASAT moratorium has influenced the thinking of members of Congress just as a potential U.S. antisatellite weapons program had affected the Soviet policymakers' decisions in 1983 to call for a moratorium. Behind the recent flurry of apparent Soviet interest in space arms control probably lies not only Soviet interest in terminating the U.S. ASAT program but also Soviet hopes to undermine or eliminate the U.S. strategic defense initiative (SDI) before it develops momentum. Just as the U.S. ballistic missile defense program of the early 1970s encouraged Soviet willingness to negotiate SALT I, the SDI proposed by President Reagan in March 1983 appears to have motivated great Soviet interest in space arms control. Indeed, even during the U.S. 1984 pre-election period, when the Soviet Union had curtailed any hint of a cooperative Soviet-U.S. atmosphere, the Soviet leadership floated proposals to begin discussions strictly limited to space weapons. Despite claims to the contrary, at this point it appears that the SDI may lead to increased Soviet interest in arms control.
The case studies examined here span sixty-one years and include two sets of negotiating partners of strikingly different character. In each, either the threat of force deployment or actual deployment appears to have been a necessary prelude to progress or success in arms control. This experience does not suggest the weapons programs should be initiated simply as "bargaining chips." It does suggest, however, that needed arms modernization programs should not be opposed on the grounds that they will inevitably result in the failure of arms control and another "spiraling round" in the arms race. In these case studies, U.S. arms modernization programs facilitated success in arms control. U.S. gestures of goodwill or unilateral restraint were not a factor.
National Institute for Public Policy
Fairfax, Virginia
Notes
1. This theory provides much of the basis for opposition to the MX-Peacekeeper. See, for example, Daniel Ford, Henry Kendall, Steven Nandis. The Union of Concerned Scientists, Beyond the Freeze, the Road to Nuclear Sanity (Boston: Beacon Press, 1982).
2. See, for example, Colin S. Gray, "Strategic Forces and SALT: A Question of Strategy," Comparative Strategy, vol. 2, no. 2 (1980), pp. 113-28.
3. U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Strategic Arms Limitation Agreements, Hearings, 92d Cong., 2d sess. (Washington: GPO, 1972), p. 410.
4. Ibid., p. 403.
5. See, respectively, U.S. Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Military Implications of the Treaty on the Limitations of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems and the Interim Agreement on Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, Hearings, 92d Cong., 2d sess. (Washington: GPO, 1972), p. 218; and U.S. Senate, Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, Department of Defense Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1971, Part I, Hearings, 91st Cong., 2d sess. (Washington: GPO, 1970), p. 247.
6. Quoted in Thomas W. Wolfe, The Salt Experience (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger, 1979), p. 95.
7. See, for example, the discussion in Congressional Record Senate, 6 April 1983, p. S4176.
8. 'There has been, since that time, considerable encryption of Soviet missile test telemetry beyond reasonable interpretation of the treaty.
9. Ironically, the Soviet Union appears to be testing two or three new ICBMS, MIRVed and potentially mobile, while U.S. domestic political pressure threatens to undermine production of even the reduced number of MX missiles planned by the Reagan administration.
10. For U.S. official presentations of Soviet noncompliance, see the President's "Report on Soviet Noncompliance with Arms Control Agreements," reprinted in Congressional Record-Senate, 1 February 1984, pp. S648-49. The General Advisory Committee of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency has released an unclassified summary of a detailed, classified study of the Soviet arms control compliance record. This summary cites seventeen acts of Soviet noncompliance. It is reprinted in Soviet Aerospace, vol. 41, no. 22 (15 October 1984), pp. 152-59.
Contributors
Keith B. Payne (A.B., University of California at Berkeley; M.A., Ph.D., University of Southern California) is Executive Vice-President and Director of Research at the National Institute for Public Policy. A specialist in U.S. and Soviet foreign and defense policy, Dr. Payne previously served as both a member of the senior professional staff at the Hudson Institute and a consultant for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He is coauthor of Nuclear Strategy: Flexibility and Stability (1978), the author of Nuclear Deterrence in U.S.-Soviet Relations (1982), and contributing editor of Laser Weapons in Space (1983) and Missiles for the Nineties (1984). Dr. Payne's articles have been published in numerous journals, including Foreign Affairs, Comparative Strategy, Washington Quarterly, and others.
Barry R. Schneider (B.S., M.A., Purdue University; Ph.D., Columbia University) is a Senior Defense Analyst at the National Institute for Public Policy. Formerly, he was a foreign affairs officer and a public affairs officer at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and he has been a professor at Wabash College, Purdue University, Indiana University, University of Maryland, American University, and George Mason University. Dr. Schneider, who is the author of more than seventy articles and published papers, is coauthor of Missiles for the Nineties (1984).
Jeffrey G. Barlow (B.A., Westminster College; M.A.., Ph.D., University of South Carolina) is a Senior Defense Analyst at the National Institute for Public Policy. Formerly, he was a senior national security analyst at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. Dr. Barlow edited the monograph Reforming the Military and is the author of articles that have appeared in various publications, including The Military Engineer.
Rebecca Strode (B.A., University of Virginia; M.A., Harvard University) is a Senior Research Analyst at the National Institute for Public Policy. Formerly a Soviet defense analyst at the Hudson Institute, Ms. Strode is a contributor to Laser Weapons in Space (1983), a coauthor of Areas of Challenge for Soviet Policy in the 1980s (1984), and the author of articles published in Comparative Strategy, International Security, Problems of Communism, and previous issues of the Review.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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