The SALT treaties followed the regnant doctrine of the day: mutual assured destruction—founded on the idea that holding mass populations hostage better preserved deterrence than protecting them by shelters or missile defense, given vast amounts of offensive weapons. The Nixon administration enshrined MAD in SALT I, via the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The ABM Treaty—which the Senate ratified 88 votes to 2—sharply limited the deployment of missiles designed to intercept and destroy other missiles in flight. Of the many objections to this treaty, three were most salient:
1. The vast throw-weight (payload deliverable over distance capability) of Russia’s missiles, concentrated in highly accurate, land-based ICBMs.
2. The inability to verify actual numbers of Russian warheads.
3. The limits the treaty placed on missile defense.
Russia had deployed huge missiles—far larger than any in the American arsenal. The missiles possessed the requisite combination of accuracy and yield so that they could plausibly destroy large numbers of American missiles inside their silos. Russia’s monster SS-18 ICBM had seven to eight times the payload capacity of America’s mainstay Minuteman III ICBM. Its multiwarhead SS-19 missile, taking advantage of loose treaty language, replaced a far smaller (and less accurate) single warhead missile (SS-11); its monster SS-9 missile was topped with a 25-megaton warhead, the largest ever deployed on an ICBM. The SS-18 was the 1970s equivalent (on a vastly more destructive scale) of Japan’s leviathan battleships armed with 18-inch guns. Just as those guns could hurl a heavier shell farther than a U.S. 16-inch bore, so the throw-weight of Russia’s largest missiles was superior to anything in America’s forces.
The Soviets refused to consent to on-site inspections, and would not even tell the United States how many warheads and missiles they had or confirm U.S. estimates. So the treaty was based upon our counting what could be verified—silos in the ground, detectable by surveillance satellite cameras.[8] As to things that could not be seen, like warheads inside a missile nose cone, the United States devised “counting rules”—based upon the observed size of nose cones—to apply limits.[9] SALT I limited launchers, not missiles or warheads, for precisely this reason. A complex technical and strategic calculus underlay judgments as to the balance between offensive and defensive systems.[10]
As to missile defense, SALT I limited each side to radar to protect one major city and one ICBM base, a compromise designed so that the Russians could keep their primitive systems protecting Moscow and one missile base. (The United States briefly deployed an ABM under treaty rules, but scrapped it later in the 1970s.) The treaty decreed that ABM radars could be deployed only on the periphery of the country. This was to prevent them from being used for the “battle management” of a national missile defense system—that is, for the countrywide detection and interception of incoming hostile objects (and damage assessment after a hit). In the 1980s the Soviets deployed a massive battle-management radar installation in central Russia, in violation of the treaty, but denied it until the Cold War ended. SALT I’s Standing Consultative Commission regulating treaty implementation was a two-party affair with no final outside arbiter (none existed). Thus the U.S. could not force the Soviets to comply.
Disenchantment with SALT I did not stop the arms-control process—the new Carter administration unilaterally cancelled the strategic B-1 heavy bomber in 1977.[11] The next year, Carter did away with the proposed battlefield weapon known colloquially as the “neutron bomb.” Formally termed the “enhanced radiation, reduced blast” warhead, it combined intense neutron radiation with relatively limited explosive and heat energy. Covering a small area—typically, within a quarter-mile radius of the bomb’s low-altitude airburst detonation, half the physically destructive radius of the Hiroshima bomb—the highly lethal neutron radiation penetrated tanks and buildings, killing personnel inside (or outside) within hours. As any tank battle in Germany would have to take place close to heavily populated cities, German chancellor Helmut Schmidt had staked his prestige on the deployment of this weapon, and was enraged at Carter’s unilateral cancellation of it.[12]
The Carter administration signed the SALT II treaty in June 1979, essentially freezing new missile development at levels that left the Soviet heavy-missile arsenal intact. Its ratification—already an acrimonious subject in the Senate—became impossible when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve.
A Search for Common Interests: Late Cold War Arms Talks
THE ADVENT of the Reagan administration in 1981 bid fair to change the arms-control picture. Reagan had campaigned against the SALT II treaty as a symbol of the deteriorating military balance between the United States and the Soviet Union. Despite never ratifying the treaty, as president he informally adhered to its limits, for want of congressional support to build beyond them. In Paul Nitze’s view, by not seeking Senate ratification of SALT II Reagan allowed future arms talks to begin from scratch, rather than be treated as a continuation of SALT II and thus bound by SALT II’s foundation principles.
While a Republican Senate from 1981 to 1986 gave President Reagan support for new weapon systems, a Democratic House of Representatives and the tug of arms-control politics severely limited his options. The House shrunk the domestically unpopular MX “Peacekeeper” program—200 missiles with 10 warheads each, shuttling on railroad tracks between 4,600 launching points in vast western rural tracts—down to 50 missiles in existing silos. Russia could deploy large numbers of such land mobile missiles because its populace had no say in such matters. Strong domestic political opposition—NIMBY: Not In My Back Yard—made mobile missile ICBMs politically toxic in America.
Ronald Reagan dramatically changed arms-control direction. On March 23, 1983, he called for the development of a comprehensive missile defense system to protect the entire population—the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or “Star Wars” to its critics)—in a decisive rejection of MAD. In truth, even though MAD had been public-official declaratory doctrine since 1967, no president ever fully accepted it. Richard Nixon attempted to deploy missile defense but critics crippled the system, which was finally done in by SALT I. Gerald Ford’s years saw James Schlesinger’s tenure as secretary of defense, during which Schlesinger pushed for “limited nuclear options” short of all-out retaliation. In effect, this was a refinement of Kennedy’s flexible response doctrine, seeking options between all-out mutual suicide and total surrender.
Even dovish Jimmy Carter authorized targeting leadership cadres, who were exempt from targeting under a pure MAD doctrine.[13] Carter’s defense secretary, Harold Brown, endorsed limited nuclear options, telling Congress that even if it were likely that an initial nuclear exchange would escalate to all-out nuclear war, “it would be the height of folly to put the United States in a position in which uncontrolled escalation would be the only course we could follow.” But these refinements were easily swamped in sound-bite public political debate, and thus stayed in the shadows.
8
Military surveillance satellites, in contrast to the communications satellites we use every day, usually make a highly elliptical orbit of Earth—for example, 700 miles perigee (lowest point) and 12,000 miles apogee (highest point). At low altitude over their photo reconnaissance target, they can photograph objects as small as a tennis ball and clearly display license plate numbers. But weather over the target area can complicate observation, and—as its orbital path is a matter of the laws of physics—the people whose assets are under surveillance can enhance concealment every 90 minutes when the satellite passes overhead.
9
Counting rules were complex. Rules had to be devised not only for missiles based on land, but also for those carried deep underwater by missile submarines. Rules for the latter were devised by counting launching tubes, with estimates of possible extra missiles based upon the size of the submarine and the types of missiles it carried. Counting warheads on bombers also proved very hard: rules had to be devised for bomb bay sizes and the size of bombs carried externally—under wings or under the fuselage.
11
President Reagan put the B-1 back in production in 1981. It remains part of America’s bomber force.
12
In order to boost support for the SALT II treaty, Carter committed to developing the Trident submarine-launched missile, and deployed it in 1979. Its intercontinental range and MIRV warhead payload greatly enhanced the sea leg of the U.S. triad.
13
Presidential Directive 58 (PD-58), issued June 30, 1980, established a program to protect the president and top U.S. leaders in event of nuclear attack. PD-59, issued July 25, 1980, called for targeting Soviet leadership cadres in event of nuclear war between the superpowers. The latter directive ran flatly counter to the precepts of MAD, which called for targeting deliberately unprotected civilians, while leaving alone offensive military assets (missile defense was banned). By inescapable implication, the Soviet leadership would not be targeted under MAD, so it could survive to order retaliation after an American attack.