Mr. Wayland Young

April 19, 1963

People in responsible positions outside the government have similar problems in slightly different form. I imagine Henry Kissinger gets frequent unsolicited papers of dubious value and must in addition pay some attention to the stream of papers being generated within the Harvard Center for International Affairs; in my own case, I can scarcely keep up with all of the major reports going out of the Hudson Institute to our sponsors, much less with all of the internal discussion papers and drafts produced by our relatively small Research Staff. People at RAND would presumably be even worse off. In one way or another, I should imagine there must be large numbers of not very useful papers that cross the desk of Alastair Buchan. And so on.

In such an environment, the community has a right to demand of us, and we are obligated to provide, assurance that any paper that we elect to publish in the journal will not waste the time of significant readers. It simply will not do to argue that it is sufficient that some only of the papers that we publish should be of high quality. Every time a Dyson or a Schelling or Panofsky or a Zuckerman picks up a copy of the journal and reads an article that simply wastes his time, we are responsible for that waste of his time and we have therefore failed in our responsibility as editors on behalf of this entire community. However, anytime such a person finds his time being wasted by something he reads in the journal, he will be that much less likely to pick it up again. So far as I am concerned, the audience we are publishing this journal for is defined by such people as Panofsky, McNaughton, Schelling, Dyson, and so on. If a paper is not something I should be willing to send myself to these people to read, I shall not approve its publication in the journal; it is as simple as that.

This was at the core of my argument with the people setting up the Michigan Journal--a quarrel I think you heard about. They simply could not be relied upon to provide standards of this quality, because they did not themselves possess sufficient skill and experience in the subject matter. Therefore I argued then, and continue to argue today, that the journal was a net liability to the community in spite of the fact that they might accidentally publish an occasionally

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Mr. Wayland Young

April 19, 1963

worthy paper, and therefore the journal would be better not being published at all. It was only because the Editorial Board of our own journal possessed much greater collective competence, and was moreover backstopped by the possibility of vetoing individual papers, that it seemed as if we might have something positive to contribute to the community and therefore worth supporting with time and trouble. If I thought that the International Journal would not have much greater utility than the Michigan Journal, I should (as in that case) come to believe the best thing that could happen to it would be its speedy demise.

Quite apart from being able to face our more respected colleagues with a clear conscience, there are important pragmatic reasons for maintaining standards so high as to seem almost fanatical. Such standards are the sure way to acquire very high prestige for the journal, and for a guaranteed readership in the most important quarters. This in turn will make it more widely read in the less important quarters. It will come to attract all of the more interesting manuscripts like a magnet. It will do dramatic things for your own reputation and for that of the publisher. If however a significant fraction of the published papers are second rate, it will do none of these things.

You are obviously beginning to discover that it is not simple to acquire large numbers of first rate papers. This is true, but is not an excuse for padding the journal with second rate ones. In my earliest discussions with Robert Maxwell about this journal, or what has ultimately become this journal, he understood this point very clearly to be in his own interest as well as that of the community; he was willing to contemplate even an occasional issue in which the sole editorial content (other than book reviews and news items) consisted of a statement that: "The editors regret that no acceptable papers were received during the preceding quarter." You may think this is a joke, but in fact actually doing this every now and then would most likely be a very useful device for putting the journal in the limelight.

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Mr. Wayland Young

April 19, 1963

One of the most encouraging things about this prospective
journal is the imaginativeness you have shown in thinking of poten-
tially useful and interesting topics for possible papers. As I've
mentioned before, and can say again in complete honesty, the
number of your suggestions for papers that have been of the very
first quality as suggestions has been truly impressive. If we can
turn twenty per cent of your good suggestions into equally good
papers, we shall be doing very well indeed. And the energy you
have devoted to this enterprise at its various stages seems likely
to accomplish this if anything will. In the meantime, I hope very
much you will understand it as in your own larger interests if some
of us who are more experienced in what constitutes good new mater-
ial exercise our editorial prerogatives a little more freely than you
might sometimes prefer from the point of view of "filling up" the
journal.

Passing now to the implimentation of these principles, I
have had printed up and enclose herewith some copies of the draft
"Editorial Board Review Summary" I sent you before. I am also
sending copies concurrently to the other recipients of this letter.
In your letter of 28 March, you asked what problem would be solved
by the use of such a form. There are lots of uses, and it seems to
me important to have something of this kind; I should imagine some
of the other Editorial Board members would also welcome such a
form, though whether they wish to use it in any individual case is
a matter between that individual and you. Let me say something
about the specific uses.

First, it will insure that no paper falls through the cracks.
There was for instance the recent matter of the two book reviews that
were not enclosed in the scheduled envelope. I notice these have
now arrived, but presumably only because I have a sharp eyed secre-
tary who checked for the stated enclosures. There may well be other
papers you think you have sent me but which were lost en route or
which I have lost here since without ever reading. Having an
arrangement whereby you must receive such a form (from me at least)
before the paper is eligible for publication will insure against some-
thing going through accidentally.

Mr. Wayland Young

April 19, 1963

Another motivation for the form is to provide a simple way of sharply and unequivocally characterizing my response, without the necessity of using waste words to do so. Having a spectrum of standard responses available on the form will not only save time but also save misunderstandings as to what was intended in the response. In particular, it is important to have the "vetoed" response clearly distinguished from advisory opinion against publication.

Such a form should also help take you off the hook in case one of us later decides--after publication--that some paper really was pretty awful and shouldn't have been published. If in the meanwhile we have sent you specific form checked "publish as is", we can scarcely come back afterwards and complain, or similarly if it is checked "pass".

The obvious drawback of the arrangement is the potentiality of added delay, in cases where one of us becomes delinquent in the reading of our papers or is away on trips or something. In such cases, if the delay on a particular paper you wish to move becomes too long, I suppose you would have to send some kind of follow up postal card reminding the delinquent reviewer in question that he is still sitting on such a paper and would he kindly move. This is however a completely standard problem that many respectable journals live with; I have sometimes been on the receiving end of such delay in judgement on a paper of my own, in which case it was a nuisance, and sometimes I have been the reviewer who was taking longer to produce the review than the editor or author wanted, but in all cases people have been able to live with this problem and I see no alternative but for us to live with it. At worst, it should not amount to more than a month or two additional delay in getting out the first number of the journal, and after this length of time another month or two can scarcely loom as decisive. In contrast, the basic questions of the quality of the journal and operating practices to insure the quality are to me (at least) completely decisive.

I should like to send a copy of this letter to Aleister Buchan because I may be at least partly responsible for his association with this enterprise and would wish to know his reactions to this problem. Bernie Feld was involved with our earlier correspondence and both Henry Kissinger and Robert Maxwell have had their views mentioned in this letter and so these people should receive copies for these reasons. I am not sending a copy to Mott because I don't feel I know

published by Pergamon Press Oxford London New York Paris

Disarmament and Arms Control

An International Quarterly Journal

editorial office 100 Bayswater Road London W2 telephone AMBASSADOR 4187

Dr. Donald Brennan,
President,
The Hudson Institute,
HARMON-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.

1 May, 1963.

Dear Don,

Very many thanks for your most thoughtful letter of April 19th. I agree really with everything you say, and I think I understand what leads you to say it. There have been some second-rate articles distributed and there have been some second-rate outlines for articles distributed. I hope, though, that the first issue as composed will consist only of first-rate material, or material which, though by American standards it may be second-rate, will yet have enough other advantages to qualify it for publication. I am assuming that the photostat of my letter dated April 1st which you returned to me stamped "Received April 4th, 1963 D.G. Brennan" with the balloon round the list of projects from which I proposed to make up the first issue and the note "O.K." indicates that you were in practice agreeable to any of these being published.

I sent the issue to press on April 22nd, in accordance with my proposal to the Editorial Board, dated April 1st (the letter mentioned above). The articles it contains are numbers 87; First Editorial (under the heading "Notice")
1; Polanyi 68; Ahmed 47; Barnett 67; United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
41; Frisch 65; Unsigned note on international perjury R2; book review - Benoit
R4; book review - Healey R6; book review - Mott.

So much for the immediate practice. On the long term doctrine, I have only one point to make to you which even appears to conflict with what you say, and even that does not really conflict; it supplements. You say that the journal will only be useful if it catches the attention of and gives food for thought to a certain class of people whom you exemplify by a short list of the most advanced and thorough American and British students of disarmament and arms control. I do definitely envisage, as I wrote in an earlier letter to you, that it should also have another function; that of widening the area of debate among the mandarins and raising the level of the debate in the countries concerned where it is not yet so high. Take the two articles by Ahmed and Schwarz, for instance. Neither is very good; but I conceive it to be among our functions to exercise the minds of the

Over/

publishing office 4 & 5 Fitzroy Square London W1

advertisement and
subscription departments

Headington Hill Hall Oxford

Communication Page...T.C.C...

[w]

30/4/63.

Dr. Donald Prentiss

Ahmed and Schwarz of this world. The best way to do this is by printing the articles which are available from the present level of sophistication in Egypt, Switzerland, etc. I am sure that the Panofskys, Zuckermans, Dysons and Wagnatons of the world will understand and bear with this sector of our operations. Even from here, i.e. London, there is a faint whiff of Cabot and Lowell about some of the best American thought. This is a political field, not a scientific one. If it were a scientific field it might be perfectly all right for the best minds to gravitate to the best laboratory or institute, to Washington say, or Moscow. But since it is political we cannot deny the experience and intentions of any part of the world merely because the intellectual style is inferior to the best American style. Groom them, yes; deny them, no.

The publication of the first issue, made up as I described above, is scheduled for late June, or early July. I hear from Clark Abt that his paper has been passed for publication by ACDA. Bernie has told me that he is much in favour of publishing it in our second issue, but I have your negative comment before me. Do you think that with cutting and stylistic revision, it might make a suitable article for us, or do you share the increasingly current view of the Pentagon and the British Ministry of Defence that Zonal Inspection should now be relegated to the status of a historical footnote altogether? In default of the arrival of more, and more excellent, papers than at present seems possible before the closing date for our second issue (end of June) I would like to run the Schwarz article about which you have expressed a negative opinion. Let me know your fuller thoughts on this, will you?

About the form; my fear is that I will find silence no more instructive if what I do not receive is a form, than if what I do not receive is a letter. If I do receive a letter, I will find it more instructive than a form because you are all, to my constant delight and the journal's constant benefit, highly literate.

I am sending copies of this letter to the people who received copies of your letter to me, with the exception of Maxwell, who is not really concerned with Editorial matters. I am also copying your letter, and this reply, to Mott as a member of the Editorial Board.

HUDSON INSTITUTE

QUAKER RIDGE ROAD, HARMON-ON-HUDSON, N. Y. 10520 CABLE ADDRESS HUDSON 914 RO 2-0700

July 2, 1965

Prof. Henry A. Kissinger
Harvard Center for International Affairs
6 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge, Mass. 02138

Dear Henry:

I have been asked by the *Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists* to do a review of Rapoport's book *Strategy and Conscience*, and a draft essay is enclosed. I am sending it to you for comments for several reasons. First, you are one of the people most frequently attacked in the book, as you probably know, and you may wish to suggest something specific in response to those attacks. Second, and most important, I have at several points felt quite free in stating things about you, such as what you did and did not believe, and while I am fairly confident that you will agree that all of these instances are reasonable, you should certainly check them before publication. Third, my association with the strategic community makes it slightly delicate for me to review Rapoport's book, and I am eager to have a few trusted friends criticize the review while it is still in draft. Fourth, you are very competent in these matters and might well think of something useful to say that has not been said or notice that it would be useful to eliminate something that has been said.

I should be especially grateful if I could hear from you within the next two weeks, or less. The essay is only about 5,000 words and will likely be shorter than that in its final form.

I thought your recent review in the Sunday *Times* of the book by Barnet and Raskin was very good.

DGB/pal

Enc: HI-561-D

July 8, 1965

Mr. Donald G. Brennan
Hudson Institute
Quaker Ridge Road
Harmon-on-Hudson
New York 10520

Dear Don:

Thank you for your letter of July 2nd.

I have read your review of Rapoport's book with some care and I am in the unfortunate position that I agree with everything in it. I said "unfortunate" because I have found that to make no comment at all is sometimes especially disappointing for an author.

Your review showed much more restraint than I could have mustered. In fact, I started reviewing Rapoport once and then found nothing to say that would not have sounded as one-sided as his own presentation. There is one point of relative unimportance: not only do I not use game theory, I have never even studied it.

Perhaps I would make a little stronger the point that at no stage does Rapoport grant the good faith of those he is criticizing. It is possible to argue that the many people who work on strategic matters have come to mistaken conclusions. It is quite another to insist that they want to bring about what it is clearly in everybody's interest to prevent.

It seems to me that Rapoport should grant as much good faith to the people he is criticizing as he is demanding for the Soviet Union.

I hope to see you soon.

Warm regards.

Henry V. Kiebler

Warm regards.

I hope to see you soon.

the Soviet Union.
to the people he is criticizing as he is demanding for
It seems to me that Rabobort should grant as much food

It is quite another to insist that they want to bring about what
who work on strategic matters have come to realize conclusions,
criticizing. It is desirable to argue that the many people
at no stage does Rabobort grant the food faith of those he is
Perhaps I would make a little stronger the point that

I have never even studied it.
of relative importance: not only do I not see game theory,
as one-aided as his own presentation. There is one point
and then found nothing to say that would not have sounded
have mastered. In fact, I started reviewing Rabobort once
Your review showed much more restraint than I could
especially disapproving for an author.

I have found that to make no comment at all it is sometimes
agree with everything in it. I said "unfortunate" because
some care and I am in the unfortunate position that I
I have read your review of Rabobort's book with

Dear Don:

New York 10230
Harmon-on-Hudson
Quaker Ridge Road
Hudson Institute
Mr. Donald G. Brennan

July 8, 1962

HI-817-P

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## Introduction

Ballistic Missile Defense--BMD for short--has become something of a dirty phrase in some segments of the arms control community, at least as applied to the defense of cities. Some arms controllers, including some prominent ones such as Robert McNamara, argue that major BMD deployment by one of the superpowers would only provoke a response of increased strategic offensive forces by the other, leaving both sides no better off than they were before--or possibly worse off, they might confront the possibility of even greater destruction and find themselves in a highly active offense-defense arms race. This theory has led to various proposals to prohibit deployment of BMD.

Now, I myself have often argued that the US ought not to deploy BMD for city defense without at least making a serious attempt to achieve an understanding with the Soviet Union about possible ways of stabilizing US-SU strategic forces. (There are several possible ways that could possibly form the basis of an agreement, perhaps an informal one.) I still believe this, and in that sense I am not a straight "deployment now" advocate. (This paper will be concerned only with city or area defenses, not point defense of strategic forces.)

On the other hand, it seems to me that there are important possibilities in which BMD could play a constructive role, possibilities that support the traditional arms-control objective of mitigating the consequences of war if it occurs, without conflicting with the objectives of reducing the likelihood of war and reducing the burdens of the arms race. These possibilities have not been much discussed in some quarters of the arms-control community, quarters which have tended to be surprisingly hostile to any suggestion of deploying BMD. It is possible that some of

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this hostility derives from the peculiar dichotomy in which the alternatives have often been cast: either BMD will be restrained altogether, or nothing will be restrained and there will be a large and dangerous arms race. There are in fact other alternatives. I shall try to indicate something of the range of possibilities in this paper.

To fix ideas, let us consider the following very specific alternative: Would it be better to have a complete moratorium on BMD but leave strategic offensive forces completely unconstrained, as Mr. McNamara and some other Americans have suggested, or to have a ceiling on strategic offensive forces (say, in terms of gross weight of delivery vehicles) but leave BMD completely unconstrained, as some Russians have come close to suggesting? There are of course many other alternatives, some of which will be indicated later, but this choice will serve as the focus of the following analysis. I shall argue that the "Russian Freeze" (as I shall call it) makes more sense, from virtually all points of view, than the "McNamara Freeze". The main issues concern the US-SU strategic confrontation; I shall take up China and other issues later.

## Some Technical Preliminaries

There is more interaction between technology and strategic postures than is often realized. This interaction is especially apparent in the case of BMD. Let us consider a parameter we shall call the "cost exchange ratio", defined as the ratio of certain offense costs to certain defense costs. If one country builds a certain BMD system, another country can in principle increase the capability of its strategic missile forces to penetrate those defenses in such a way as to offset them. We shall call the ratio (cost of

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the offsetting offensive forces)/(cost of the defenses that are offset)
the "cost exchange ratio".

This parameter is a rough measure of the cost-effectiveness of BMD, in some sense. If this ratio is very small, say 1/100, it would indicate that the BMD concerned could be nullified with an expenditure only 1% of the defense cost. If it is very large, say 100/1, it would indicate a highly effective defense, one requiring an expenditure two orders of magnitude greater than the defense cost in order to nullify it.

The cost exchange ratio of particular offensive and defensive systems reflects the costs and technological capabilities of the systems--radar discrimination, interceptor missile cost, interceptor warhead kill radius, etc., on the defensive side, and booster cost, chaff, decoys, etc. on the offensive side. It depends not only on the basic technology, but on detailed tactics of the offense and defense.

It depends even more on what criteria are used in judging that the defense has been "nullified". If the offensive side wishes only to guarantee that a large number of casualties can be produced in the defended country, the task is very much easier than if the objective of the offense is to restore the number of potential casualties to what it was in the undefended case. This can be expressed as a dependence on the percentage of population surviving in the defended country: it is a relatively difficult task for the defense to guarantee a high percentage of survival, say 95%, while it is a more difficult task for the offense to reduce the value to 50%. In other words, the cost exchange ratio will be smaller for high survival percentages and larger for medium survival levels.

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It is not difficult to see that this dependence would be in this direction; the offense always would have the option of concentrating its attack on one or a few cities, while the defense would not know where the concentration would occur. But it is not possible to determine the quantitative dependence, which (rough as it is at best) is all-important, by introspection.

Let us now take up the relationship of these matters to strategic poses. For simplicity of discussion, let us consider a fixed intermediate level of survival, say 75%, and fixed attack scenarios.

If the cost exchange ratio were in fact as low as 1/100, I believe it is virtually certain that neither the Russians nor anyone else would be buying BMD, or even thinking of it. Values of this order of magnitude were estimated some years ago, when the BMD problem was often described as "like trying to hit a bullet with a bullet", and was widely regarded as unsolvable. A value of 1/100 would mean that an investment in offensive forces of $10 billion -- fairly modest as offensive forces go--would price an opposing defense completely out of the realm of possibility. Some public discussion today is carried on as if BMD were still this inefficient, but the technology has changed.

On the other hand, if BMD were so effective that ratios of 100/1 or more prevailed, we should live in a world in which defense was king, at least apart from bombers and air defenses, and everyone would stop investing in long-range ballistic missiles forthwith. A $10 billion BMD system would nominally require $1,000 billion to offset it, a sum not within the capabilities of the US economy in the time scales involved, still less of the Soviet economy. If air defense (against bombers) were also this effective, I believe that the role of strategic nuclear threats in US-SU relations would rapidly decline to

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the vanishing point. Consideration of this case will illustrate the impor-
tance of technical-economic possibilities for strategic postures. Other
likely consequences would include eliminating any major concern in the US and
SU over catalytic nuclear events, intentional or accidental, and perhaps some
reduction in great-power interest in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons--
but only some, since much of the great-power interest derives from a belief
that it is bad for Indians and Pakistanis to blow each other up even if the
rest of us do not become involved.

If the number 100 in the preceding two paragraphs were changed in both
to 10, I believe the same conclusions would still hold, with slightly reduced
confidence. Thus, a cost exchange ratio of 1/10 would still imply a world
of deterrence by offensive forces, and a ratio of 10/1 would still imply a
defensively-oriented world. It is probably only in the range of 1/5 or 1/4
to 4/1 or 5/1 that US and SU strategic postures would not be largely domin-
ated by this cost exchange ratio, and at least the US posture would be sub-
ject to some influence according to where in this range the ratio was gener-
ally estimated to be. Unfortunately, estimates derived from the best avail-
able studies have not been available to the general public until the very
recent past.

But some useful estimates have now been released by Mr. McNamara, in
his January 1967 "Posture Statement" for Fiscal Year 1968 ("Statement of Sec-
retary of Defense Robert S. McNamara Before a Joint Session of the Senate
Armed Services Committee and the Senate Subcommittee on Department of Defense
Appropriations on the Fiscal Year 1968-72 Defense Program and 1968 Defense
Budget, January 23, 1967", released January 26, 1967) (hereafter denoted the
"1967 Posture Statement"). While there is no single number that will stand

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as the cost exchange ratio under all circumstances, it is clear that an appro-
priate value to think of as an average value, and moreover one which is prob-
ably close to a "correct" value for a significant range of circumstances, is
1/1, i.e., unity.

It may be interesting to give the actual values included in the 1967
Posture Statement (on p.53). The following numbers (fatalities in millions)
are based on a substantial US defense system and a Soviet second strike, which,
Mr. McNamara rightly notes, would be the case examined by the Soviets if they
are bent on maintaining a capability for "Assured Destruction" of the US in
the face of our hypothetical BMD. Thus the offset costs are calculated SU
costs for added offensive-force capability.

<table><thead><tr><th>US Fatalities<br>(Millions) (not %)</th><th>Cost Exchange<br>Ratio</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>40</td><td>1/4</td></tr><tr><td>60</td><td>1/2</td></tr><tr><td>90</td><td>1/1</td></tr><tr><td>100</td><td>undefended case</td></tr></tbody></table>

The dependence of the cost exchange ratio on the survival percentage
can be seen in the table. It is also clear that, for this assumed situation,
the cost exchange ratio for fully restoring the second-strike fatalities to
the undefended case would be greater than unity.

This information neatly summarizes the truly dramatic progress in BMD
development in recent years. It may have been some indication of such prog-
ress that led Khrushchev to boast that Soviet BMD could hit a fly in space,

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although, as has been truly noted, the US strategic force does not consist
of flies.

For the balance of this paper, we shall simply consider an "average"
cost exchange ratio of unity. Departures from this value in most cases of
interest would be negligible for this level of analysis.

The first consequence of this value to be noted is that it means certain strategic choices can be put in the following terms: Assuming that both the US and the SU have deployed some BMD, then a fixed sum of money to be spent on strategic weapons by (say) the US can be used _either_ to increase the number of megatons the US can deliver on the SU _or_ to reduce the number of megatons the SU can deliver on the US _by the same amount_. This means that a fixed sum to be spent on the strategic forces of one side will have the same immediate effect on the nuclear balance (considered as a difference) whether it is spent on offensive or defensive forces. Similarly, of course, for SU expenditures. We shall come back to this point.

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The "Assured Destruction" Mission

If I understand him correctly, Mr. McNamara does not like BMD deployment primarily because he fears that BMD deployment by one side will interfere with the "Assured Destruction" capability of the other, leading it to respond with offsetting offensive forces and possibly starting a major arms race. We are considering a hypothetical case in which a real race in offensive forces would be precluded by the "Russian Freeze" (though changes in penetration aids would not necessarily be precluded). However, the real question to be addressed is: **Should** the US and SU be intrinsically motivated to forestall reductions in their "Assured Destruction" capabilities? This, it seems to me, is the key issue in evaluating the desirability (and, thus, the potential stability) of the "Russian Freeze".

I cannot understand why they should, under the assumption that the reduction takes place as a consequence of more-or-less symmetric growth of BMD capabilities, together with some reasonable additional conditions. Indeed, I should say that it is very clear that the US and SU are **not** compelled by the logic of the situation to preserve "Assured Destruction" capabilities. It appears that Mr. McNamara's insistence on such capabilities is something of a conditioned reflex, in which he may have lost sight of the original cause of the conditioning.

According to the 1967 Posture Statement (p. 38), the mission of the US Assured Destruction forces is: "To deter deliberate nuclear attack upon the United States and its allies by maintaining, continuously, a highly reliable ability to inflict an unacceptable degree of damage upon any single aggressor, or combination of aggressors, at any time during the course of a strategic nuclear exchange, even after absorbing a surprise first strike."

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The key phrase in that statement is "To deter deliberate nuclear attack". The evolution of massive Assured Destruction forces in the US occurred in response to a growing Soviet ability to mount a strategic nuclear attack on the strategic forces and population centers of the US. The reason for the massiveness of the threatened response was the persuasive one that such a Soviet attack might be lethal for the US, and since the Soviets might be highly motivated to eliminate their principal opponent, at least in some severe crisis, it was judged necessary to deter such an attack with the threat of a similarly lethal retaliation. But if the Soviet attack were itself less lethal, the retaliation could be correspondingly less massive.

This point was presumably recognized by Mr. McNamara at the time he approved the US disarmament proposals for percentage reductions in strategic forces, which would have much the same effect as symmetric US and SU deployment of BMD under the "Russian Freeze", but the principle seems less generally recognized in the BMD context. In the BMD setting, let us assume that the things that might be attacked, whether force or value targets, are roughly equally protected on both sides by one means or another, and that US and SU offensive forces are constrained by the "Russian Freeze". Then gradual but symmetric growth of BMD would have much the same effect (in the sense of possible war outcomes) as gradual reduction of the offensive forces--with at least one important difference in favor of the BMD-imposed reduction, viz., it would be less sensitive to inspection.

Thus, if the US and SU BMD are both "light", our BMD would not much diminish Soviet ability to destroy us, but then Soviet BMD would not much reduce the effectiveness of our Assured Destruction forces either; if both

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US and SU BMD are "heavy", then our Assured Destruction forces would be
significantly degraded, but so too would the capability of the Soviets to
eliminate the US as a society. This would reduce both the possible inter-
est the Soviets might have in initiating such an attack, and the intensity
of our motivation to deter it.

I should add that I do not myself believe that feasible growth of BMD
under a "Russian Freeze" would in fact significantly influence deterrence,
which would likely remain "saturated", although it would certainly influ-
ence possible war outcomes and probably other things as well. But it is
important to address squarely the theoretical argument that Assured Destruc-
tion capabilities cannot be reduced, either through direct reductions or
indirectly through BMD, because of the need to deter nuclear attack--with-
out regard to the possible scale and consequences of the attack!

It should be clear that it would be possible, using BMD under a "Rus-
sian Freeze", to preserve the historical relationship between the capabili-
ties of US and SU strategic forces. For example, if it should be true that
the US could deliver, say, three times as many bombs and warheads on the SU
as the SU could on the US, under like circumstances, then it would be feasi-
ble for the US to preserve this ratio as the net capabilities of the offen-
sive forces were effectively reduced by the growth of BMD. This could pro-
vide all the deterrence needed at all effective levels of forces, large,
medium, or small.

To summarize by repeating an earlier remark, the insistence that As-
sured Destruction forces cannot be permitted to undergo effective attrition
seems to be a conditioned reflex--perhaps one should say, an ill-conditioned
reflex. Many of us "grew up" in this business in the 1950's assimilating

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the proposition: "Since we cannot defend, we must deter", a true dictum imposed by the technology of the era. But this seems to have become solidified in some people's minds in the distorted form: "Since we must deter, we cannot defend". This is plainly false.

## Some Miscellaneous Issues

In this section, I shall make some brief assertions on points of major relevance to the subject, but of which a detailed analysis would take us too far for this paper.

**Protection of Allies.** It would be quite possible to provide at least as much protection to the Allies of the US under a "Russian Freeze" as they enjoy at present. This might or might not entail the deployment of BMD on Allied territory. Professionals should note that Mr. McNamara himself defined the mission of the US Assured Destruction forces as: "To deter deliberate nuclear attack...".

**Coupling to Shelters.** It has frequently been asserted in the past that BMD could be trivially nullified (for population defense) by ground bursts of enemy warheads upwind of the defended cities, unless the population were protected by a more substantial fallout-shelter system than the one now coming into being. It is now clear that an area-defense component will be included in any BMD system selected for deployment in the near future. For this and for several other reasons, most analysts close to the situation no longer believe that added fallout protection is a necessary prerequisite of BMD, though it may be independently desirable.

**China.** It has been argued by some (e.g., Ralph Lapp) that China will be more reckless and more difficult to deter than the SU is or was. If true, which I now consider doubtful, the argument will in any event have

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no great relevance until the Chinese possess offensive and/or defensive forces on a scale which they cannot achieve within the time span of interest to the analysis of this paper. Thus, the deterrence requirements discussed in the previous section on Assured Destruction do not need to be modified because of China. For other China-related issues, see the next paragraph.

**Impact on Proliferation.** It has been argued by some writers, such as Elizabeth Young, that deployment of BMD by the US and the SU is likely to signal renewed interest in nuclear weapons by these states to potential nuclear-weapon states, which would thereby make more difficult the achievement of a non-proliferation treaty and make it more likely that additional states would acquire nuclear weapons. While some effect of this type is certainly possible, its likelihood seems to me to be greatly dependent on the context in which the deployment takes place and the way in which it is discussed.

In particular, if the deployment is under a "Russian Freeze" and the general aura is one of de-emphasizing strategic forces, perhaps with stabilized budgets, the effect would likely be negligible at worst, and might even go in the opposite direction. BMD has also been related to the spread of nuclear weapons by an argument that US BMD would improve the credibility of our guarantees to others. In particular, it is sometimes argued that even a very "light" BMD system in the US would provide complete protection against possible Chinese missile attacks for many years, and this would make more credible our guarantees to India and Japan, which would make it less likely that these countries would feel a need for nuclear weapons of their own. This may possibly be true, though I am less confident

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of it than I once was. It is a theory about complicated psychological and political reactions in certain countries in Asia, not a matter of engineering and physics, and, as in the argument above attributed to Elizabeth Young, would depend on the context and on the discussion at the time. (I do not in any event believe the theory provides sufficient basis for a positive BMD deployment decision if the decision were otherwise in exact balance.)

**The Detente.** It has often been said, usually without much serious thought, that BMD deployment would upset the developing detente. It is clear that the Soviets are not upset by their own deployment, and surely it cannot be argued that they would be greatly upset if the US did likewise. A more basic point sometimes raised is that the Soviets no longer threaten the US and its Allies in a manner or to the degree that would justify large US expenditures on defense. I am more respectful of this point, though it would have more force if the Soviets had not recently been making very substantial increases in their own strategic capabilities. But I am more interested here in choices of allocation between offense and defense than with the absolute scale of all strategic forces, concerning which I shall have a remark in the last section. But I should say here that I do not believe the US can, will, or should permit the development of substantial Soviet superiority in strategic forces, detente or no.

## Which Freeze?

It seems to me this analysis argues decisively in favor of the "Russian Freeze" as against the "McNamara Freeze". The "Russian" version could do substantially more, on balance, for the traditional objectives of arms control than the McNamara version.

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Some arms controllers, including some who have been conspicuous in their opposition to any mention of BMD deployment, admit all this, but argue that the "Russian" version goes too much against the grain of the US defense Establishment and that there is therefore no chance of its acceptance in the US. There are three points I should note in response to this argument.

First, even if true now, in some sense, I do not think it should inhibit the arms control community from analyzing and discussing what ought to be done. Certainly the community has never been similarly inhibited from discussing such measures as an agreement not to be first to use nuclear weapons, which would seem to be much more against the grain of the Establishment than the "Russian Freeze". The defense community is concerned with the same issues of deterrence and defense discussed above and must ultimately be responsive to forceful pertinent arguments; minds and fashions have been changed before on no more substantial grounds. For instance, as recently as a year ago, Mr. McNamara was making very strong statements to the effect that a strengthened fallout-shelter program was an absolute prerequisite to BMD deployment. No statement to that effect appears in the current Posture Statement, and rightly so.

Second, even if true, there is no reason to believe the McNamara Freeze would be more acceptable to the US Establishment than the "Russian" version would be to ours. Indeed, up to the time of writing (early March 1967), the evidence seems mainly to point in the opposite direction.

Third, I am doubtful that it is true. Mr. McNamara's surprisingly intense opposition to BMD is not universally shared by his colleagues in the Department of Defense, to put it very mildly. Indeed, he has the unanimous

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opposition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Whether the Joint Chiefs and other
groups would support a "Russian Freeze" is of course a different question,
but they have not yet been presented the issues and arguments, and one simply
does not know how the arguments would go. It is certainly clear that many
military people are at least as sympathetic, often more so, to a defense-
oriented posture than to a deterrence-oriented posture, a preference that is
wholly in keeping with military traditions. It is possible that military
people generally would be more concerned with preserving whatever strategic
superiority has been established than the detailed nature of that superiority,
and, as I indicated above, one could preserve such relationships under a
"Russian Freeze" (or other defense-oriented postures).

In any event, even if the "Russian Freeze" itself is not accepted, there
are other alternatives in which some BMD deployment could be permitted with-
out doing violence to arms-control objectives. That the arms-control com-
munity should largely eschew constructive and objective analysis of these
alternatives because of some putative sociological reactions in the defense
Establishment seems very odd--especially when the sociology involved has not
even been significantly investigated!

## Some Other Alternatives

Let us finally consider briefly some possibilities of stabilized pos-
tures other than the "Russian" and McNamara Freezes.

It might be possible to consider some kind of joint agreed ceilings on
both offensive and defensive forces. This would serve to head off an offense-
defense arms race resulting from BMD deployment, but it could possibly be
arranged to provide some flexibility in how much emphasis each of the US and

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the SU devoted to offense and how much to defense. I do not know how best to formulate ceilings (other than zero) on BMD; I doubt that a formula can be found that is as simple and satisfactory as "gross weight of delivery vehicles" is for offensive forces. Perhaps it could be done with budget ceilings.

In fact, it has often seemed to me that the US and SU might well stabilize their strategic-force postures on the basis of informal understandings about budgets. One can estimate the approximate cost of some apparatus or system without even knowing precisely what it is intended to do, and there are probably substantial groups in the government staffs of each country already devoted to estimating the strategic-force budget of the other.

Some private bilateral discussion might disclose a possible meeting of minds on an understanding about levels of strategic-force budgets, an understanding that might quietly reflect historical differences that have prevailed for many years. I can see nothing intrinsic to the situation that would prevent an understanding about a downward trend in these levels, if this seems appropriate. One might explore whether, within these budgets, there is some division of offensive and defensive forces that seems mutually sensible. If so, fine, adopt it; if not, let each allocate its budget as it see fit.

Such an understanding would head off the possibility of an offense-defense (or other, for that matter) arms race. With the strategic situation thus stabilized, the US could contemplate whether, with any given strategic-force expenditure, it preferred to add X megatons to what it could deliver on the SU, or to subtract roughly X megatons from what the SU could deliver

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on the US. (This is the consequence of the cost exchange ratio discussed earlier being near unity.) At least for some number--large--of X's, the preferred choice seems clear to me.

The Russians have not been as silly about BMD as some of us have sometimes thought.

HUDSON INSTITUTE

QUAKER RIDGE ROAD, CROTON-ON-HUDSON, N. Y. 10520 CABLE ADDRESS HUDSON 914 RO 2-0700

26 May 1967

MAY 29 1967

Dear Henry:

I was very sorry you were not able to be present at the meeting of the Joint MIT-Harvard Arms Control Seminar at the session at which we discussed the enclosed paper. I was sorry at the time simply because I missed your presence on the scene, and I have been sorry since because your view has recently been represented to me as being in opposition to the line of thought set forth in the enclosed paper.

I rather doubt that this would be so, and I should be most grateful if
you could tell me whether or not that allegation is correct.

DGB/ga