SALT: A BANKRUPT PROCESS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01315R000400370033-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 16, 2004
• Sequence Number: 33
• Publication Date: June 15, 1979
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

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ON PAU /L 15 June 1979
By ROBERT L. BARTLEY
In the strategic arms negotiations, the
present moment is heavy with deja vu.
Isn't this where I came in ten years ago?
Just before winging off for today's sum-
mit with Soviet Chairman Brezhnev, Presi-
dent Carter approved development of the
MX missile. The new $30 billion system is
intended to solve the problem of "Min-
uteman vulnerability." With high yields
and improving accuracies, by about 1982
Soviet missiles will be able to conduct a
first strike destroying all of our land-based
Minuteman missiles.
As Defense Secretary Brown puts it,
..The Soviets continue with a policy of
building forces that could be used in a
preemptive counterforce mode." The new
MX missiles are to be based in a 20-mile
trench so the Soviets won't know precisely
where to attack, and the administration be-
lieves they will lick the "Minuteman vul-
nerability" problem when they are. de-
ployed in 1989.
Back in 1969, the big concern of strate-
gic planners was something then called
"Minuteman vulnerability." The huge size
of Soviet missiles suggested that Minute-
man would eventually become vulnerable.
As Defense Secretary Laird put it in a
then-controversial statement, "With their
large tonnage warheads, they are going for
a first-strike capability-there is no ques-
tion about that." . As a response President
Nixon proposed the $10.3 billion Safeguard
system, an anti-missile system designed to
shoot down incoming ballistic missiles
around Minuteman sites.
Intended for deployment in 1977 or 1978,
Safeguard squeaked through the Senate by
a 50-50 tie vote in August. 1969. That No-
vember American and Soviet diplomats
clinked champagne glasses in Helsinki at
the first Strategic Arms Limitations Talks,
opening an era of negotiation President
Nixon proclaimed "most momentous."
Ten years of SALT, then, have done
nothing to solve our most pressing strate-
gic weapons concern. Indeed, SALT has
prevented the response that was approved
and funded back in 1969 and that would
have been available today. While not
emerging quite as soon as some pessimists
predicted, the Minuteman vulnerability
problem was correctly identified by ABM
proponents ten years ago. Now-the admin-
istration proposes to solve it with a system
that -if you choose to believe Mr. Carter's
MX, unlike Mr. Nixon's Safeguard, will in
the end actually be built-will be available
in 1989, ten years from now and seven or
so years after Minuteman becomes vulner-
able.
Period of Arms Build-Ups
On the Soviet side, meanwhile, the
SALT era has become one of history's
great arms build-ups. Between 1969 and
1978, U.S. strategic force levels were static
at 1,054 land-based missiles and 656 subma-
rine-launched missiles-though more mul-
tiple warheads were installed on these
launchers. Over the same time, the Soviets
increased their land-based force to 1,400
from 1,028, and their sea-based launchers
to 1,015 from 196. In conventional arms,
U.S. manpower shrank, while the Soviets
expanded their armies and supplied them
with large numbers of tanks, artillery
tubes and other arms.
This increased military clout already
seems to be casting a political shadow. The
Czech. coup took place in 1948 and the Na-
tionalist Chinese collapsed in 1949; until
the fall of Saigon in 1975, the only success-
ful Communist expansion were the victo-
ries of Ho Chi Minh in North Vietman and
Fidel Castro in Cuba. In the last four
years,. Soviet-allied Marxist governments
have been established by force of arms in -
seven nations: South Vietnam, Laos, Carn- I
bodia, Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and
South Yemen.
little wonder that new skepticism
abounds about both SALT and detente;
Tuesday night Senator Henry Jackson went
so far as to charge a policy of "ap-
peasement." Some caveats of course have
to be made:. American strategic forces
have been improved by both, the multiple
warheads and the new Trident submarine.
And the military and diplomatic weak-
nesses of the last decade can tie traced to
the general post-Vietnam disillusionment.
Clearly, though, the high hopes of SALT
have been dashed. The agreements have
not slowed the Soviet build-up in any per-
ceptible way; certainly we have not been
able to find a negotiated solution to Minute-
man vulnerability. By contrast, there is
plenty of reason to believe that the SALT
process has subtly but effectively curtailed
American strategic programs. The dy-
namic is this: arms control mutilates the
best options, and the Budget Bureau moves
in to kill off the cripples.
,. Thican perhaps be best grasped
through the Minuteman vulnerability issue.
In military history there are a limited
number of ways to deal with vulnerabili-
ties. You can plan an active defense-in
this case an ABM. You can fortify-but
missile silos have already been hardened
about as much as they can be. Or you can
'conceal-as in the MX trench.
Active defense of missile sites should
not in theory interfere with disarmament
efforts; by reducing the advantages of a
first-strike it promotes "strategic stabil-
ity" and reduces the likelihood of war. But
the ABM was an anathema to arms control
advocates because they feared it would be
expanded to defend cities as well as mis-
siles. This would interfere with mutual as-
sured destruction (MAD), a doctrine that
holds that war can be prevented by making I
sure that if it happens both societies would
be destroyed.
Between the influence of the MAD doc-
trine on the U.S. side and the understanda-
ble Soviet desire to curtail American ad-
vantages in anti-missile technology, SALT-
I sharply restricted ABMs.. It did bow to
the logic of active defense of missiles by
allowing each side one ABM site for mis-
sile defense. However, to prevent expan-
sion, this system was limited to 100 inter-
ceptor missiles. So American budget
guardians asked what: was the sense of
spending a lot of money on a system that `I
could be defeated simply by sending 101
Soviet warheads. The U.S. ABM site in
Grand Forks, N. Dak., was opened in 1975
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SALT: A Bankrupt Process
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Perhaps worse, U.S. research on active I
defense has slowed drastically; SALT-I I
bans not-yet invented ABMs based on
"exotic physical principles." Ironically,
information-processing technology now
makes it possible to envision ABMs without
nuclear warheads. A proposed Porcupine
system, for example, would attack incom-
ing missiles with a shotgun burst. of one-
pound metal darts. But no one pushes this
system vigorously, because while it does
not clearly violate the disarmament treaty
someone will charge that it does.
With active defense ruled out by the in-
teraction of arms control and the Budget
Bureau, and with the possibilities of hard-
ening about exhausted, you are left with
concealment. But easily concealed mobile
missiles are an arms control problem; the
other side can't count them to check for
cheating, or "verify" the treaty. Indeed,
this concern led the U.S. to issue a "uni-
lateral declaration" against deployment of
mobile missiles when SALT-I was signed.
This did not stop Soviet development of the
mobile SS-16, but it did inhibit U.S. think-
ing about mobility. It also guaranteed So-
viet planners the U.S. would have neither
active defense nor concealment, making a
sure thing out of heavy investment in first-
strike missiles.
With such Soviet missiles coming on
line, U.S. planners are trying to square the
circle with a mobile missile that (1) can be
concealed to avoid attack, (2) can be seen
to permit verification and (3) will pass
budget muster. Not surprisingly, the op-
tions look like something from Rube Gold-
berg.
The Air Force wanted the "shell
game," a series of vertical shelters with
one real missile and several dummies,
which had to have the same shape, weight
and radiation characteristics as the real
one. This was deemed unverifiable. '
So Mr. Carter opted for the MX in the
"trench." The notion was to move the mis-
sile up and down a trench, the Soviets
could see there was only one, but would not
know where it.was at any minute. Unhap-
pily, it was discovered that a trench is an
excellent conductor of blast waves, so that
a hit anywhere on a' 20 mile trench would
get the missile wherever it was.:
Series of Shelters
So the MX trench will have' a series of
shelters, or hard points, with the: missile
shuffled Among them. But will shelters
work if they're uncovered? And if you
cover them how do you allow verification?
This issue has been "deferred" in Mr. Car-'
ter's "decision" to proceed with "devel-
opment." Also, the MX will weigh 95 tons,
and moving it will create significant seis-
mic effects theoretically subject to. detec-
tion.
In all, Mr. Carter's MX proposal does
not look like the kind of a system that will
withstand the cost-effectiveness scrutiny
that killed the one-site Safeguard, the B-1
bomber, the B-70 before it, and earlier ver-
sions of the MX that would have been
available sooner. And despite the SALT-II
provision explicitly aliowine one new mis-
sile on each side, the Soviets have already
started a propaganda campaign against
the MX like the one against the neutron
bomb.
The arms control-Budget Bureau dy-
namic is certain to continue as SALT-III is
negotiated. Any money spent on MX may
be "wasted" if SALT-III terms.ban mobile
missiles in an extension of the three-year
protocol in SALT-II. Even more impor-
tantly, the same ambiguity will cloud the
U.S. cruise missile, where the U.S. now
holds a technological lead comparable to
its-ABM lead in 1969.
In fact, the dynamic has already de-
layed deployment of ground and sea
launched versions of the cruise missile by
two years. President Carter killed funds to
buy these weapons in fiscal 1979 after read-
ing Budget Bureau advice:' "Defer 1979
procurement of both the anti-ship and land-
attack 'sea-launched cruise missile in view
of (a) uncertainty as to how SALT protocol
provision affecting these systems will be
reflected in future agreements. .
Also, provisions of the treaty Mr. Carter
signs Monday will effectively preclude air-
based cruise missiles on short take-off and
landing aircraft, a promising basing mode
in Europe.
From the Soviet viewpoint, SALT must
seem. an excellent way to delay, grind
down and eventually kill the most promis-
ing U.S. weapons developments. It has
kept the U.S. from exploiting its strong
card of technology; while the Soviets have
rolled along with their strong card of
churning out masses of weapons. It has
been a lever through which they have ma-
nipulated our procurement decisions.
Few people, of course, would want to
give up even exploring, the possibilities of
sound arms agreements. But it should be
clear by now that we are in a dynamic
never contemplated back in 1969. Experi-
ence suggests that it is not.,easy,.and may
not ultimately be possible, to arrive at
sound agreements. with a nation that is to-
talitarian, a closed society. and interested
enough- in''armies to_spend aseventh of i.ts,
entire output on them. Without some kind,
of new start to break the current dynamic,
the SALT process seems to result in one-
sided restraint.
Anyone who thinks that the current pro-
cess reduces the chance of war ought to
think a bit about what will in the end prob-
ably be done about Minuteman vulnerabil-
ity. Within the past few weeks, Secretary
Brown said that in any attack on Minute-
man the Russians "would face a consider-
able risk that we could launch all or part
of our ICBMs before they could be de-
stroyed." Secretary of State Vance echoed
the idea: "One should not make?the? as-
sumption that if such an attack were com-
ing in, and we could pick that up very
clearly, that we would leave the missile in
the hole."
`Latmch on Warning'
In - strategic jargon this is called
"launch on warning." We have 15 to 30
minutes warning of incoming missiles, and
systems could be built to fire the Minute-
man in that interval. It does not take much
reflection to see that such a doctrine would
vastly increase the- chances of a, nuclear
exchange by accident or misunderstand-
`ing.. and most analysts have envisioned it
as the ultimate in unstable strategic. envi-
ronments. Yet to judge by the latest state-
ments, it is probably where we are headed
after 1982.
We would not be talking about launch on
warning if Safeguard or some evolutionary
descendant of it were now being deployed.
Without the guarantees of American vul-
nerability in SALT-I, it is even conceivable
that the Soviets would have concluded that
a big fleet of first-strike- missiles was not
worth the money. Without SALT the Min-
uteman vulnerability problem : would not
exist, and. we would not be headed toward
a hairtrigger nuclear environment by 1982.
If the champagne glasses had- never
clinked at Helsinki, the world would be a.
safer place.
Mr. Bartley, editor of the Journal, has
written extensively on strategic. issues
since 1969.
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