SALT II-A CALL TO DISARM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01315R000400360045-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 8, 2004
• Sequence Number: 45
• Publication Date: July 28, 1979
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 200_5/ 1 DP88-01315
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28 July 1979
COUNTERING COUNTERFORCE
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MARCUS G. RASKIN
ALT II is an attempt at a joint arms-planning
arrangement between the military' and national-
security bureaucracies of the United States and the
Soviet Union. Under the agreement, the Soviets
will dismantle 250 strategic but vulnerable missiles.
Although the missiles are outmoded, the Soviet commit-
ment should nevertheless be counted as an impressive
achievement of American negotiators. On the other hand,
SALT 11 does not touch or transform the institutional
structure of the U.S. national-security state, its assump-
tions or purposes. Nor, for that matter, does it alter the
assumptions of the Russian security and military appara-
tus, or the bureaucratic mind set of its military and
national-security planners.
The Soviet interest in signing the SALT II agreement is
primarily political, Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders see it
as a way of relieving the sense of national encirclement that
the U.S.S:R. has harbored for hundreds of years. A grand
alliance with the United States has been the goal of Com-
munist leaders since 1945. Brezhnev and Gromyko want to
leave the Russian political scene having accomplished what
Molotov, Malenkov, Bulganin and Khrushchev failed to
bring about.
The support for the treaty by American leaders derives
from their perception of it as a means of controlling adven-
turous elements among politicians and the bureaucracy.
SALT II is not intended to change a fundamental tenet of
American foreign policy-this country's "leadership of the
Free World." Rather, it is based upon the political and tac-
tical grounds of co-opting the more "rational" factions
within the national-security bureaucracy into ratification
machinery. SALT II is seen as a planning process involving
military and national-security groups from the Departments
of State and Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency and
the National Security Agency, as well as the National
Security Council. These groups are by and large made up of
sober people, conservative in outlook and, within the
framework of their world, not "crazy." If the treaty is
passed, those who are made a part of the process will be
strengthened. They will be assigned "joint planning"
responsibilities related to arms control. This involvement
Marcus G. Raskin, co-founder of the Institute for Policy.
Studies, served as a member of the special staff of the Na-
tional Security G~ f di Oih~l~1 ' 0' kf k~*2+lr lA
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