## Essay

# A New Approach to Arms Control

By HENRY KISSINGER

*To halt the strategic arms race, the former Secretary of State recommends a dramatic new approach. His plan would scrap all MIRVs starting in, say, 1990 and rely instead on a mix of mobile, single-warhead missiles.*

*The U.S. would implement this plan even if the Soviets refused to go along*

The nomination of a new director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency has prompted a major Senate debate over whether the Administration is seriously committed to arms control. The controversy misses the real question: To what kind of arms control should the Administration commit itself?

So far, the controversy has focused on negotiations over deployment of medium-range missiles in Europe. But even a success in these negotiations—likely now that the German elections are over—will make only a marginal contribution to the stability of the U.S.-Soviet strategic nuclear relationship. And here we are trapped in a conceptual crisis. For too long arms control and strategy have been proceeding on separate, increasingly incompatible tracks. Technology has driven weapons procurement at the same time that it has made irrelevant the traditional doctrines of arms control. Weapons systems and arms control schemes developed in isolation from each other had to be squeezed into a more or less arbitrary framework.

This article seeks to sketch an approach by which strategy and arms control can be reconciled and strategic stability achieved by ending the disproportion between warheads and launchers that is at the heart of the current strategic instability.

### THE ORIGINS OF ARMS CONTROL

The concept of arms control evolved when a growing Soviet nuclear arsenal suddenly threw into doubt the comfortable premises of the decade after World War II. It had been complacently assumed that by means of the "balance of terror," technology supplied a shortcut to security. Even after we had lost our atomic monopoly, our superiority was so crushing that in 1954 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles could still declare a policy of massive retaliation, countering Soviet aggression anywhere by the threat to devastate the Soviet Union. There was little incentive to decide a question that seemed then only esoteric: What were rational targets for the apocalyptic arsenal we were assembling?

Soviet hydrogen weapons and Sputnik foreshadowed a kind of stalemate. Once general nuclear war threatened both sides with tens of millions of casualties, the very existence of nuclear arsenals came to be perceived by many as a menace. Traditional wars had been sustained by the conviction that the consequences of defeat or surrender were worse than the costs of resistance. The nuclear specter banished that conviction. Fewer and fewer objectives seemed worth the cost or the risk.

One result has been the growing determination to stabilize and ideally to reverse the arms race by negotiated agreement. There are at least two unprecedented aspects to the nuclear arms race. The destructiveness of the weaponry sets an upper limit beyond which additions to destructiveness become more and more marginal. At the same time, the complex technology of the nu-

clear age raises the danger of an automaticity that might elude rational control. For if one side should destroy the retaliatory force of its adversary, it would be in a position to impose its terms. That prospect could tempt the intended victim to undertake a "pre-emptive" first strike—or launch its weapons on warning. Mutual fear could turn a crisis into a catastrophe. Proponents of arms control thus saw it as their immediate objective to reduce the incentives and possibilities of surprise attack.

The goal was to reduce the vulnerability of strategic forces by

maintaining symmetrical numbers of strategic weapons. If neither side could hope to destroy its opponent, the incentive for surprise attack would disappear in the face of certain and intolerable retribution. So long as missiles had single warheads and airplanes needed hours to reach their targets, a surprise attack would require a vast numerical preponderance. (Even with highly accurate missiles, an attacker probably would not risk a first strike without two warheads for each target, to allow for malfunctioning, hardened targets or errors in accuracy.)

In these circumstances, numerically equal retaliatory forces were rightly conceived as adequate insurance against surprise attack. The optimum total should be large enough so that it could be overwhelmed only by a violation of the agreement too large to be hidden. Yet it should involve a ceiling that would stop the accumulation of strategic weapons. This was the intellectual basis of the arms limitation talks proposed by President Johnson and implemented by President Nixon.

During 1969 and 1970, the Nixon Administration undertook painstaking studies to determine the lowest level above which a strategically significant violation could not be concealed. The culmination was the SALT agreements of 1972. These accords severely limited antiballistic missile defenses to discourage an aggressor from believing he could launch a surprise attack and then defend against a counterblow. The agreements also froze the number of offensive missiles for five years. At that point the Soviets had a numerical edge in missiles—though not nearly enough for a surprise attack with single warheads. But this advantage was counterbalanced, first, by our very large—and growing—advantage in warheads, since only we possessed MIRVs (Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicles) and, second, by our insurmountable superiority both in numbers and in the technology of long-range bombers, on which there was no limitation.

The SALT agreements of 1972 might well have achieved the objective of strategic stability. But both domestic and technical factors caused the accords to become increasingly controversial. The Viet Nam War and Watergate disintegrated the political consensus behind our defense and arms control policy just when technology was undermining its strategic premises. In the cli-

Illustrations for TIME by Eugene Mihaesco

TIME, MARCH 21, 1983

## Essay

at low numbers of single-warhead missiles would, in any event, assure considerable stability.

This course does not depend on Soviet agreement. It should be pursued whatever the Soviet reaction. If they refused our proposal—this one or another embodying the same concept—the U.S. could announce that after a certain date, say 1990 (or before then if the new missile could be developed earlier), it would deploy no more MIRVed land-based intercontinental missiles but would emphasize single-warhead launchers, the majority mobile. The size of that force would be geared to the number of warheads deployed by the Soviets; we would reserve the right to match each Soviet warhead with single-warhead missiles of our own. In practice, we would almost certainly choose a lower number than that we calculate could survive the maximum Soviet attack capable of being launched. The purpose would be to increase the number of targets the Soviets would have to hit but without increasing our capacity for surprise attack. We would gradually phase out our MIRVed missiles. If the Soviets agreed to a formal proposal, schedules for the mutual destruction of MIRVs would be negotiated. If they refused, we would build up single-warhead missiles to a level consonant with our security. The Soviets could always put a ceiling on our deployment by cutting the number of their warheads.

This scheme should pose no insurmountable verification problems. Fixed launchers can be detected through national technical means; existing Soviet MIRVed ICBMs could not be made mobile; development of a new mobile MIRVed ICBM would require extensive testing, which could be detected and would therefore be proscribed. Mobile single-warhead missiles would be more difficult to detect; this is why agreed numbers would have to be sufficient so that they could be exceeded only by a violation our means of detection would not miss. Obviously, the more airtight the inspection, the smaller can be the numbers. Only missiles tested *solely* within single warheads would be permitted; any tested with a MIRV warhead would be proscribed.

No one can predict how the rigid Soviet bureaucracy would react to this approach. It may upset too many vested interests. The new leadership may be too dependent on military support to challenge its military-industrial complex. Yet sometimes an impasse can be broken only by a daring departure; surely the nitpicking SALT negotiations offer little hope for the traditional approach. If the

Soviets can ever be interested in stability and in easing the economic burden of the arms race, they should—probably only on second thought—study this scheme with care. Like the Eureka approach, it requires them to redesign their forces; unlike the Eureka approach, it reduces their vulnerability. And upon reflection, the Soviets must realize that, one way or another, we will cure the vulnerability of our forces and in the process will almost surely enhance the vulnerability of theirs.

If the Soviets refuse to discuss such a proposal, one of three conclusions is inescapable: a) their arms program aims for strategic superiority if not by design then by momentum; b) they believe strategic edges can be translated into political advantages; c) arms control to the Soviets is an aspect of political warfare whose aim is not reciprocal stability but unilateral advantage.

Where does this leave the MX? A presidential commission is studying that question. I will address one issue: Should we have a "counterforce" capability (an ability to strike accurately at Soviet missile silos or command centers), or should we continue to aim for "assured destruction" of civilian and industrial targets? Ever since the Soviets began to approach strategic parity, it should have been obvious that a strategy aiming at civilian destruction was an irrational, suicidal, indeed nihilistic course that no President could implement. Undiscriminating slaughter is not a defense policy but a prelude to unilateral disarmament.

Similarly, why should a Soviet counterforce capability—as now exists—be treated as consistent with strategic stability,

while our attempt, represented by the MX, to provide a much smaller means to respond is considered as somehow destabilizing? If the U.S., by its abdication, guarantees the invulnerability of Soviet missile forces while the Soviets keep ours exposed, any Soviet incentive for serious negotiation will vanish. A secure Soviet first-strike capability poses an unprecedented danger—ultimately that it may some day be used, in the near term that it may increase Soviet willingness to run risks in regional crises.

Whatever level of MX deployment is recommended by the Scowcroft Commission should be strategically meaningful beyond a mere token deployment. At the same time, the MX, like the new single-warhead missile, should be an organic part of an arms-control strategy. To this end, we should offer to postpone MX deployment if the Soviets agree to destroy MIRVed SS-18s (their heavy missiles) over three years starting in 1986, and to abandon MX altogether once the SS-18s are dismantled.

This analysis has been confined to land-based missiles. Were the Soviets to show interest in the scheme outlined here, account would have to be taken of sea-based forces. Just as we cannot be asked to ratify our own vulnerability in land-based forces, the Soviets should not be expected to acquiesce in U.S. submarine-launched missiles capable of surprise attack. Specifically, as part of the agreement proposed here, we should be prepared to move to single warheads at sea as well, though over a longer period, say 15 years, because of the long lead times. In that case, the submarines would have to be made smaller and less expensive. It would be too risky to put so many eggs in one basket, as is the case with the current Trident submarines, each of which carries 24 missiles. A

new regimen would be required as well for heavy bombers.

The deployment-arms control scheme would then look as follows:

A. The U.S. would make a fundamental decision to shift to single-warhead missiles as soon as possible. Ideally, this decision would be reflected in an agreed ceiling at a very low number—perhaps 500—negotiated with the Soviets. An agreement should also limit throw weight to prevent development of huge single-warhead weapons.

B. If the Soviets refused such a scheme, we would proceed unilaterally toward our goal. The final size of a single-warhead force would depend on the number of warheads in the Soviet force and on what we need to assure our invulnerability.

C. The U.S. would begin deploying MXs

starting in 1986. It would be prepared to postpone deployment if, before 1986, the Soviet Union agreed to a schedule by which its SS-18s would be destroyed over a three-year period starting in 1986.

D. Both sides would also agree to dismantle the remaining land-based MIRV forces starting in 1990.

E. In that case, both sides would agree not to increase the number of warheads on MIRVs while they remain in the force.

F. Other mixes are possible. For example, a small number of MIRVed missiles and bombers, no more than 200, could be joined with a reduced single-warhead deployment, say 300.

This approach would be a serious test of Soviet intentions. It would conclusively end the danger of a first strike. It would establish clear equivalence. It would transcend the SALT and START debate and put strategy and arms control in a coherent context. If refused, it would be a clear signal of a Soviet bid for superiority; we would draw the appropriate conclusions. If we proceeded unilaterally, nevertheless, it would be a major contribution to strategic stability and U.S. security.

Of course, even the achievement of strategic stability would open up areas of concern now dormant. It would bring to the fore the pressing need to build up conventional forces to deter non-nuclear challenges. That problem would be addressed in a new environment. For all parties would know that they have taken— at last—a big step toward avoiding nuclear catastrophe. This is an imperative that humanity demands and reality imposes. ■

TIME, MARCH 21, 1983

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The Honorable
Henry A. Kissinger
1800 K Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20006

Dear Henry:

Your ACDA piece is bold, persuasive and unambiguous. I
like it very much. What suggestions I have to make in this
(for me) esoteric area, are contained in the text.

What concerns me are the following:

(1) What are the practical prospects for the proposal. Should you launch a new set of ideas unless there's some realistic possibility that it will make a dent in thinking. What will be the Soviet response? What will be the response of the professional arms controllers? On the Hill? In the White House? State?

(2) What about timing. Will this upset any current negotiations or other Administration plans or programs?

(3) What was your own position on MIRVing? What is your personal record on this issue. I remember talking with Ben Cohen about the matter and at the time he thought it would prove to be a catastrophic mistake.

(4) What will be the reaction of the ex-government officials
from Defense, State, CIA.

*

*

*

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March 14, 1983

The Honorable
Henry Kissinger
435 East 52nd Street
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Dear Henry:

My thanks on behalf of TIME for an excellent and newsworthy Essay. The ideas are refreshing, and I am confident the contribution to the arms control dialogue will be most meaningful. I am pleased you felt TIME was an appropriate place to put forth such an analysis.

We regretted the cutting. It was a painful process; I felt the need to check Kriss occasionally for loss of blood in the battle. It is my hope that we increased the lay readership by making the subject of arms control seem slightly less forbidding.

As Ron probably mentioned to you, we normally pay around $2,500 for an outside article from a source of eminence (God forbid we should get any other kind of source), and we had felt $5,000 was appropriate for the article you suggested. However, we will be sending $10,000 because the piece is really quite special in news terms.

Again, my congratulations on both prose and substance. I hope the people who matter are listening to what you suggest.

RC:d1r
cc: Ronald Kriss

3/9/83 - TIME

# A New Approach to Strategic Arms Control

The nomination of a new director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency has become the occasion of a major debate in the Senate over whether the Administration is seriously committed to arms control. The controversy misses the real question: To what kind of arms control should the Administration commit itself.

So far most of the controversy has focussed on the deployment of medium-range missiles in Europe. Now that the German elections are over that issue is likely to be resolved by some sort of compromise, most probably along the lines of the informal discussions between the Soviet and American negotiators of last summer. But even a success over European missiles will make only a marginal contribution to the stability of the strategic nuclear relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. And here we are trapped in a conceptual

2

crisis: For too long arms control and strategy have
been proceeding on separate, increasingly incompatible,
tracks. Technology has driven weapons procurement at
the same time that it has made irrelevant the traditional
doctrines of arms control. The result has been that
already completed weapons systems had to be made compatible
with notions of arms control developed in isolation.

This article seeks to sketch an approach by which
strategy and arms control can be reconciled and strategic
stability achieved by ending the disproportion between
warheads and launchers which is at the heart of the current
strategic instability.

The Origins of Strategic Arms Control

The very concept of arms control is a legacy of
a different age, the Fifties, when a growing Soviet nuclear
arsenal suddenly threw into doubt the comfortable premises
of the decade after World War II. It had been complacently

3

assumed that, by means of the "balance of terror," technology
supplied a shortcut to security. Even after we had lost
our atomic monopoly Secretary of State Dulles in 1954
could still declare a policy of massive retaliation countering
Soviet aggression anywhere by the threat to devastate
the Soviet Union. Our margin was so crushing that the
risks of such a course seemed acceptable. There was
little incentive to decide a question that seemed then
only esoteric: What were rational targets for the apocalyptic
arsenal we were assembling?

The Soviet explosion of hydrogen weapons and the
launching of Sputnik in 1957 ended our complacency. It
drove scientists and students of political and military
affairs to reflect on the implications of an approaching
nuclear stalemate between the United States and the Soviet
Union. The prediction that parity was imminent proved
premature; the arrival of a kind of stalemate was nonetheless

4

inexorable. Once it was understood that general nuclear
war threatened both sides with tens of millions of casualties
in a matter of hours, defense policy grew passionately
controversial in the West; the very existence of nuclear
arsenals came to be perceived as a menace. Traditional
wars had been sustained by the conviction that the consequences
of defeat or surrender were worse than the costs of resistance.
For an increasing number the nuclear specter banished
that conviction. It became increasingly difficult to
imagine consequences more horrendous than the devastation
of an all-out nuclear war. At a minimum, fewer and fewer
objectives seemed worth the cost or the risk.

One result first in the intellectual community and
then in governments has been the growing determination
to stabilize and ideally to reverse the arms race by
negotiated agreement. To be sure history has offered little
cause for optimism, all previous disarmament efforts

5

having failed disastrously. But there were at least
two unprecedented aspects to the *nuclear* arms race. The
destructiveness of the weaponry sets an upper limit beyond
which additions to destructiveness become more and more
marginal. At the same time, the complex technology of
the nuclear age raises the danger of an automaticity
that might elude rational control. For if one side should
succeed in destroying the retaliatory force of its adversary,
it would then be in a position to impose its terms. That
prospect in turn could tempt the intended victim to undertake
a "preemptive" first strike--or to launch its weapons
on warning. Mutual fear could turn a political crisis
into catastrophe. Proponents of arms control thus saw
it as their preeminent immediate objective to reduce
the incentives and the possibilities of surprise attack.

The focus of the then new-fangled theory was to
reduce the vulnerability of strategic forces by an agreement

6

to symmetrical numbers of strategic weapons. If neither
side could hope to destroy its opponent the incentive
for surprise attack would disappear; and there would
be no point in striking at civilian targets in the face
of the certainty of intolerable retribution. So long
as missiles had single warheads and airplanes needed
hours to reach their targets, a surprise attack would
require a huge numerical preponderance--an advantage
of at least two to one in numbers of missiles. (Even
with highly accurate missiles it is generally assumed
that an attacker would not risk a first strike unless
he had available two warheads for each target to allow
for malfunctioning, hardening of the target or errors
in accuracy.) Long-range bombers, so the theory went,
would not affect that ratio because they would take so
long to reach their target that the victim would have
plenty of time to launch his missiles.

In these circumstances numerically equal retaliatory forces were rightly conceived to provide an adequate insurance against surprise attack. The optimum total seemed reducible to an arithmetical problem. It should be large enough so that it could be overwhelmed only by a violation of the agreement too large to be hidden from each side's intelligence capability. Yet it should involve a ceiling that would stop the accumulation of weapons of mass destruction. This was the intellectual basis of the strategic arms limitation talks proposed first by President Johnson and implemented by President Nixon.

During 1969 and 1970 the Nixon Administration undertook painstaking studies in pursuit of this concept. They sought to determine the lowest level--weapon by weapon--above which a strategically significant violation could not be concealed from our national means of verification.

8

(There was no illusion that we could detect every last
violation no matter how small; it seemed quite feasible,
however, to spot violations that might threaten the survival
of our retaliatory forces.)

The upshot was the SALT agreements of 1972. These
accords severely limited antiballistic missile defenses
on both sides, to remove any temptation on the part of
an aggressor that a surprise attack could reduce a counterblow
to levels manageable by his defenses. The agreements
also froze the number of offensive missiles for five
years at the levels reached by the unilateral building
programs of both sides. At that point the Soviets had
a numerical edge in missiles--though not nearly enough
for a surprise attack with single warheads. More important,
the Soviet advantage in missile launchers was counter-
balanced by first, our very large--and growing--advantage
in warheads since only we possessed MIRVs. (Multiple

9

Independently Targeted Reentry Vehicles). And, second, there was no limitation on the number of long-range bombers in which we had an insurmountable superiority both in numbers and in technology.

The SALT agreements of 1972 might well have achieved the objective of strategic stability. But both domestic and technical factors caused the accords to become increasingly controversial. The Vietnam war and Watergate disintegrated the political consensus behind our defense and arms control policy at the precise moment when technology was undermining its strategic premises. Almost every new weapons system proposed in the Seventies had to run a gauntlet of increasingly bitter criticisms. One was the need to focus on "domestic priorities" even though defense spending as a percentage of GNP was falling every year. Technical objections were also raised on two somewhat contradictory grounds: that existing weapons were adequate or else

10

that we should wait for newer and better weapons coming
along years hence. The deeper objection was philosophical,
however, and grew out of the climate of collapsing confidence.

It was the fear that the only way to keep our government
from using nuclear weapons was to deprive it of all alter-
natives to the most devastating and suicidal strategy.

Paradoxically, groups usually associated with humane
views came to advocate strategies geared solely to the
destruction of the Soviet population. Any additional
capacity beyond this level was ridiculed as overkill--
never mind that the targeting of civilians guaranteed
mutual annihilation.

The other end of the spectrum disdained the proposition
that we lived in a new world. It insisted that a significant
strategic superiority was still attainable, that arms
control was both a trap and a delusion. At the least,
it was argued, an unconstrained arms race would bankrupt

11

the Soviet Union.

Thus at the very moment that incipient nuclear parity imposed the pressing need to reassess nuclear strategy as well as arms control, we consumed ourselves in bitter controversies about individual negotiations and weapons systems, each of which was passionately attacked or defended as a surrogate for larger and often unacknowledged concerns.

SALT I, at first widely acclaimed, was drawn into that vortex. SALT II never emerged from it. Advocates of arms control oversold its significance and sometimes belittled the extent to which it was being overtaken by technology. Opponents focussed on whatever debating point proved handy. The numerical "advantage" that SALT I allegedly gave the Soviets became a war cry for critics who overlooked that the agreed totals reflected exactly the level of US forces the Pentagon had chosen long before there was any thought of arms control and that we retained

12

a numerical advantage in both warheads and airplanes.

Almost totally obscured in this debate was the reality
that multiple warheads were making the traditional SALT
approach obsolete. In SALT I a rough balance between
the delivery vehicles of the two sides substantially
reduced the possibility of surprise attack. But multiple
warheads were bound to restore the advantage of the attacker.
As the Seventies progressed and the MIRV warheads multiplied
an attacker could hope to overwhelm the opponent's fixed
missile sites even if the number of missiles and warheads
were equal on both sides. The side that struck first
would have an advantage--thus reviving the destabilizing
danger and fear of surprise attack.

Fairness compels me to point out that the decision
to proceed with MIRVs was taken by President Johnson
and was made irrevocable in the Nixon Administration.
We proceeded because in the climate of the Vietnam period

13

we were reluctant to give up the one strategic offensive
program that was funded with which to counter the rapid
build-up of the Soviet missile force; because we doubted
that the Soviets could achieve accuracies to threaten
our missile force in the foreseeable future and because
the Soviets turned a cold shoulder to our hints to open
the subject of a MIRV ban in the SALT talks. Whatever
our reasons, there can be no doubt that the age of MIRVs
has doomed the SALT approach.

The abstract controversy over whether arms control
was a boon or a trap left defense policy increasingly
at the mercy of the exploding public concern about the
dangers of nuclear war. No democratic leader can govern
any longer without demonstrating to his public his devotion
to peace. The Reagan Administration learned soon after
coming into office that the assault on what it called
the "fatally flawed" SALT II treaty made for better campaign

14

rhetoric than foreign policy. It compromised on the
strange course of observing but not ratifying SALT II.
In recent months Administration rhetoric has been brought
in line with public and alliance realities. It has been
extravagant in proclaiming its devotion to arms control
and there is no reason to doubt its sincerity. The challenge
it faces is to resolve, finally, the intellectual problem
of how to ensure strategic stability amidst the revolution
wrought by thousands of multiple warheads--the challenge
which stymied all its immediate predecessors.

The Present Dilemma

There is a "flaw" in SALT II, though not the one
usually discussed. It is that SALT limitations were
expressed in terms of numbers of delivery vehicles at
the precise moment when the increase in the accuracy
and number of warheads caused numerical "equivalence"
to be more and more beside the point. With each side

possessing the capability (the Soviets' actual, ours
latent) of making its opponent vulnerable, arms control
after a decade of negotiations had returned to its starting
point.

This problem cannot be solved by the deep reductions
in delivery vehicles which many critics in the Seventies
urged as an alternative to SALT. So long as the disproportion
between warheads and launchers remained unimpaired reductions
were either irrelevant to the danger of surprise attack
or perversely _increased_ it. The greater the reductions
the fewer would be the targets that had to be destroyed
in a first strike; the simpler became the calculations
of an attacker.

This is well illustrated by President Reagan's Eureka
College speech of May 9, 1982, which contains the basic
American proposal for the strategic arms reduction talk
(START). It was an _advance_ over an uncontrolled arms

16

race because it set a ceiling. It was an advance over
SALT in relating the ceiling to warheads rather than
launchers. And it stressed significant mutual reductions
of strategic forces rather than a balance near the existing
levels. It was a brave first attempt that unfortunately
did not solve the root issue of multiple warheads. Even
were the Soviets to accept our proposal (a contingency
that the design of their forces makes highly improbable)
the Eureka scheme would at best maintain the existing
balance; it would almost surely worsen rather than ease
our dangers. A quick glance at the numbers involved--
tedious but necessary--illustrates the problem:

Under the provisions of SALT II about 5000 Soviet
landbased warheads would be aimed at 1054 American launchers--
a ratio of a little less than 5 to 1. The Eureka proposal
would worsen this ratio even as it reduces the permitted
warheads to 2500 on at most 400 launchers. Even were

17

it technically feasible to distribute warheads in this
manner (and the Soviets would have to redesign their
entire strategic force to do so) this would give the
side striking first an advantage in warheads-to-targets
of a little better than 6 to 1. And at these lower numbers
of launchers an attack would be far more calculable.

At the same time, the Eureka proposal would establish
limits of 2500-3000 seabased warheads. This would force
a reduction of our submarine force from the 42 permitted
under SALT to 15 or less (depending on what type of submarine
we use). In those conditions we could keep at most 10
boats at sea at one time as against the current 25-30.

If there are any advances in anti-submarine warfare technology--
as is probable--arms control will have increased the
vulnerability of both our underwater *and* our landbased
strategic forces--the supreme irony.

The Soviet proposal of a flat 25 percent reduction
in launchers while simpler suffers from the identical

18

disability.

In short, a negotiation begun over a decade ago
in quest of enhancing stability and reducing vulnerability
is in danger of achieving the opposite. Arms control
is heading for an intellectual dead end.

## Where Do We Go From Here?

We thus face two related tasks: First, arms control
requires not so much a new proposal as a fresh concept.
Second, arms control must become an organic part of defense
policy.

This requires that we return to first principles.
The principal cause of instability with current weapons
systems is the disproportion between warheads and launchers.
All the remedies that have been tried are vulnerable
to technology: hardening to accuracy, seabased systems
to advances in anti-submarine technology. There is no
workable, effective, or intellectually adequate solution

19

to this problem except to seek to eliminate multiple
warheads within a fixed time period, say ten years.

Fortunately, technology which creates the problem
can offer a solution. According to published literature
it is possible to develop a mobile missile that could
be significantly protected in a heavily armored cannister.
Its mobility alone could complicate the task of the attacker.
Moreover, the new missile could--and should--be equipped
with a single warhead. With strategic forces of such
design, numerical limits would be both simple to establish
and far more significant than under SALT II or START.

Once we decided on such an approach we could proceed
with it either as part of an arms control agreement with
the Soviet Union or as a program to be implemented unilaterally
as part of our defense policy.

For example, the United States could propose to
the Soviet Union to reduce and transform the strategic
arsenals of both sides to a low number of single warhead

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missiles over a ten year period. The totals should be set at the lowest number that could be monitored by existing intelligence capabilities; that is, at a level where a violation significant enough to overturn it could not be hidden. The permitted number of missiles may well be as low as 500; at any rate, the number of warheads in this scheme would be only a small fraction of current totals. The permitted missiles could be mobile or fixed in silos; the choice would be left to each side. Mobility would reduce the incentive of surprise attack even further; but equivalence at low numbers of single-warhead missiles would in any event, assure considerable stability.

It should be pursued--and would contribute to arms control--whatever the Soviet reaction. If the Soviets refused our proposal--either as outlined here or in some alternative embodying the same concept--the United States could announce

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that after a date curtain, for example 1990--or earlier
if the new missile can be developed by then--it would
deploy no more MIRVed landbased intercontinental missiles
but would emphasize single-warhead launchers; the majority
of them mobile. The size of that force would be geared
to the number of warheads deployed by the Soviets; we
would reserve the right to match each Soviet warhead
with single warhead missiles of our own. In practice,
we would almost certainly choose a lower number that
we calculate could survive the maximum Soviet attack
capable of being launched against it. The purpose would
be to increase Soviet targets without increasing our
capacity for surprise attack. As our MIRVed missiles
grew obsolescent we would gradually phase them out. If
the Soviets agreed to a formal arms control proposal,
schedules for the mutual destruction of existing MIRVs
would be negotiated. If they refused, we would build
up single warhead missiles to a level consonant with

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the security of our forces. The Soviets could always
put a ceiling on our deployment by cutting down the number
of their warheads.

This scheme should pose no insurmountable verification
problems. Fixed launchers can be detected through national
technical means; existing Soviet MIRVed ICBMs could not
be made mobile; development of a new mobile MIRVed ICBM
would require extensive testing, which could be detected
and would therefore be proscribed. Mobile single warhead
missiles would be more difficult to detect; this is why
agreed numbers would have to be sufficient so that they
could be overcome only by a violation we are confident
our means of detection would not miss. The "counting
rule" for the new missiles would be straightforward.
Only missiles tested _solely_ with single-warheads would
be permitted. Any missile tested with a MIRV warhead
would be proscribed.

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No one can predict how the rigid Soviet bureaucracy
would react to such an approach. It may run counter
to too many vested interests. And the new leadership
may be too dependent on military support to challenge
its military/industrial complex. On the other hand, sometimes
an impasse can be broken only by a daring departure;
surely the seven years of nitpicking SALT negotiations
and controversy offers little hope for the traditional
approach. If the Soviets can ever be interested in stability
and in easing the economic burden of the arms race they
should--probably only on second thought--study this scheme
with great care. Like the Eureka approach it requires
them to redesign their forces; but unlike the Eureka
approach it reduces their vulnerability. And upon reflection,
the Soviets must realize that over a historical period,
one way or another, we will cure the invulnerability
of our forces and in the process will almost surely

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enhance the vulnerability of their own.

If the Soviets refuse any discussion of such a proposal
one of three conclusions is inescapable:

a) that their arms program aims for strategic superiority
if not by design then by momentum,

b) that their leadership believes strategic edges
can be translated into political advantages,

c) that arms control to the Soviets is an aspect
of political warfare whose aim is not reciprocal stability
but a unilateral advantage for the Soviet Union.

Where does this leave the MX? A Presidential Commission
soon to report is studying the technical, military and
arms control aspects of that question. I will confine
myself to one issue in the public debate: whether the
United States should have a "counterforce" capability
(that is, an ability to strike accurately at Soviet missile
silos or command centers) or whether we should continue

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to aim for "assured destruction" of civilian and
industrial targets.

Ever since the Soviets began to approach strategic
parity with us, it should have been obvious that an American
strategy that aimed at civilian destruction was an irrational,
suicidal, indeed nihilistic defense policy which no President
could possibly implement. A policy of undiscriminating
civilian slaughter is not a national tool but the prelude
to unilateral disarmament; no responsible advocate of
such a policy would be prepared to carry it out in practice,
nor should he be.

Similarly, it cannot be accepted that a unilateral
Soviet counterforce capability--as now exists--is consistent
with strategic stability while an American attempt to
acquire a much smaller counterforce capability (represented
by the MX) is somehow destabilizing. If the United States
by its abdication guarantees the invulnerability of Soviet
missile forces unilaterally even while the Soviets insist

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on keeping ours exposed, any Soviet incentive for serious
negotiation will vanish. A secure Soviet first-strike
capability poses an unprecedented danger--ultimately
that it may someday be used in as yet unforeseeable circumstances,
in the near term the even greater likelihood of an increased
Soviet willingness to run risks in regional crises.

What level of MX deployment would be appropriate,
and in what basing mode, I leave to the Scowcroft Commission.
Obviously, it should be strategically meaningful beyond
a mere token deployment. It is worth remembering that
the 100 MX missiles proposed by President Reagan in the
ill-fated dense pack proposal represented a 50% cut of
the Carter program.

At the same time, the MX, like the new single-warhead
missile, should be an organic part of an arms control
strategy. To this end we should offer to postpone the
MX deployment if the Soviets agreed to destroy their

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MIRVed SS-18s (the Soviet heavy missile) according to an agreed schedule over a three year period starting in 1986, and to abandon the missile altogether once the dismantling of the SS-18 is completed.

Just as we cannot be asked to ratify our own vulnerability in land-based forces, the Soviets should not in an arms agreement be expected to acquiesce in US submarine launched missiles with a capability for surprise attack. The problem is less acute because sea-based forces are not aimed at each other as land-based forces are; nor are the weapons as yet sufficiently accurate. Still, we should be prepared to apply the principles of this approach to sea-based forces. Specifically, as part of the agreement proposed here, we should be prepared to move to single-

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warheads, though because of the long lead times, over a longer period of time, say fifteen years. In that case, the submarines would have to be redesigned, becoming smaller and less expensive. It would be too risky to put so many eggs in one basket, as is the case with the current Trident class, each of which carries 24 missiles.

And a new regimen would be required as well for heavy bombers.

The deployment/arms control scheme would then look as follows:

A. The United States would make a fundamental decision to shift to single-warhead missiles as soon as possible. Ideally, this decision would be reflected in an agreed ceiling at a very low number--perhaps 500--negotiated with the Soviets. In case of agreement, there should be a limit on throwweight to prevent the development of huge single-warhead weapons.