ADELPHI PAPERS

NUMBER FORTY-THREE

NOVEMBER 1967

Ballistic Missile Defence:
Two Views

by D. G. Brennan and Johan J. Holst

THE INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES
18 ADAM STREET LONDON WC2

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# Post-Deployment Policy Issues in Ballistic Missile Defence

D. G. BRENNAN

## Introduction¹

Within the community of people concerned with arms control and strategic military policy, few subjects have ever received the attention devoted to ballistic missile defence (BMD) in recent years. It seems safe to predict that an intense debate about the subject will continue for at least the next few years, in spite of the American decision about deploying BMD announced by the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, on 18 September 1967. This paper is intended to provide some material for, and illumination on, that debate. In particular, I shall suggest that there may be ways of structuring strategic postures which include BMD that are stable against arms races and otherwise desirable.

Most of the public discussion of BMD has concerned defences intended to protect cities, and this paper will have the same focus. (In keeping with common usage, I shall use 'protect' to mean 'reduce the likelihood or degree of damage'.) It is possible to have active defences intended to protect only military forces, especially strategic nuclear forces (such as long-range missiles). These are known as 'point defences'. These would be of most effectiveness for protecting targets (such as missile silos) that were 'hardened' to withstand considerable blast overpressure from near (but not direct) hits; such defences are called 'hard-point' defence systems.

From the point of view of purely military calculations, active point defence of strategic forces is simply one among many possible ways of protecting a retaliatory capability. One might equally well protect strategic forces by hiding

them (e.g., on submarines) or surrounding them with more concrete ('passive defence'). The choice among the various techniques for protecting strategic forces is usually thought of as basically an economic one, to be judged primarily on narrow criteria of cost-effectiveness. (Some techniques, such as basing missiles on the moon, would of course raise quite different questions as well.)

The case of active defences to protect cities is altogether different. Whereas it is possible to protect people themselves from immediate attack with passive defence, perhaps at costs that would be political and social as well as economic, there is no potentially feasible alternative to active defence for the protection of most manufacturing capacity and other important civil resources, the loss of which would ultimately jeopardize even the people who survived the attack. Thus, BMD to protect cities might alter the nature of possible deterrent threats in a way not possible for any known alternative, whereas point defence of strategic forces is simply one among many technical devices, some of which are already in use. This accounts for the predominant interest in city-defence applications of BMD, as opposed to defence of strategic forces.

There are ways in which the two kinds are or may be related. Certain types of BMD systems, known as 'area-defence' systems, could protect large areas, such as the whole of the United States or North America, uniformly (or almost so) throughout the area. The limited system announced by Secretary McNamara is primarily of this kind. Obviously, an area-defence system will protect both those cities and those strategic

¹ I am indebted to several colleagues for comments on this paper, especially Lewis C. Bohn and Johan J. Holst.

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forces within its area. An area-defence system
might be justified, at least in part, because of the
protection it provided strategic forces. But it
would protect cities as well, and the system
should and probably would be judged for its
strategic impact as a city-defence system. I shall
hereafter consider only city or area defences,
not point defence of strategic forces.

It is extraordinarily difficult to write in depth
about this subject without creating impressions
- right or wrong - about the policy attitudes of
the author. Thus, it will probably be useful for
me to say something explicit here about the
position from which I write.

I believe the past American reluctance to
deploy a BMD system was proper - up to a
point. I have not been an advocate of immediate
deployment. On the other hand, it might well be
possible to create circumstances in which Ameri-
can deployment would make good sense, and
thus I have been a good deal more 'friendly' to
BMD than some of its more forceful opponents.
While it appears to be true that a majority of the
most prominent American academic strategists
have been friendly to some BMD deployment by
the United States, it is also true that they have
published little material on the subject. As a

result, most of the articulate public discussions
about the subject have come from critics of
BMD. Many of these criticisms have been
highly one-sided, and seem to me to require
some balancing discussion. Therefore, the distri-
bution of emphasis and tone in the following
discussion reflects two factors: first, my view
that, although past caution has certainly been
justified, it may still be possible to arrange
matters so that American BMD will make good
sense; second, the fact that much of the pub-
lished criticism about BMD has been unreason-
ably unbalanced. But the fact that I feel it
appropriate to answer many of the criticisms
made of BMD should not be interpreted to
mean that I think the issues are either simple or
settled. My personal recommendations are set
forth at the end of this paper.

Consideration of European implications will
be largely omitted here. I shall first discuss
briefly technical and economic aspects of
BMD, then take up the major arms-race issues,
and then discuss a number of other strategic
issues as they relate to BMD. The early part of
the paper will focus on the Soviet-American
strategic confrontation; considerations relating
to China and others will be taken up later.

Technical-Economic Status and Prospects

Estimates of the technical effectiveness of
ballistic missile defence have changed dramati-
cally in recent years. Both to provide some sense
of the developments that have brought about
this change, and to provide some idea of the
technical functioning of the systems most
seriously contemplated for deployment, I shall
begin with a review of the major developments
in missile-defence technology in recent years.²

Every system ever seriously considered for
deployment involves the use of radars to detect
and track the incoming targets, and the use of
these same or different radars to guide ground-
to-air interceptor missiles to the vicinity of the

targets. There a command from the ground
causes the interceptor warhead to detonate.
The interceptors can be avoided or outnumbered
- provided always that the enemy is willing to
pay the price in decreased fatalities or increased
cost to his offensive effort.

In the history of ballistic missile defence over
the past ten years, there has always been con-
troversy over its value or lack of value. The first
controversy took the form of the question,
'Could a bullet hit a bullet?' This phase passed,
first when calculations showed the feasibility of
such an intercept, and later and most definitely
when successful intercepts of actual ICBM tar-
gets fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base were
accomplished by the old *Nike-Zeus* system in
1962-63. There were 10 out of 14 successful
intercepts. This represents a single-shot kill
probability of 71 per cent, achieved five years
ago.

² Based on testimony by J. S. Foster, Jr., Director of Defense Research and Engineering, and others, in 'United States Armament and Disarmament Problems', United States Senate, *Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Disarmament of the Committee on Foreign Relations*, Washington, D.C., February and March 1967.

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After this 'simple' problem was solved, it was realized that the offence would replace the relatively easy-to-intercept single warhead with clouds of objects, or take other deceptive measures. Examples of these objects were decoys designed to look like warheads to the radar, and chaff designed to conceal the warhead in a cloud of light objects. Against those more sophisticated targets there was a necessity for the defence to discriminate among them so as to know which objects to take under fire. Hence many objects might have to be tracked and observed simultaneously. Also, it might be necessary for the defence to wait for atmospheric re-entry of the targets and rely on slow-down and burn-up of the lighter objects before this discrimination could be accomplished.

The old *Nike-Zeus* system, when confronted with these more sophisticated targets, had two fatal defects. One was that it used what are now considered to be old-fashioned mechanical radars, which had to be mechanically slewed or pointed at each target in turn – a matter of seconds. One practically had to have a radar for each target. And the other was that the *Zeus* missile could not be delayed in firing until atmospheric re-entry of the targets took place, because it was too slow. Hence discrimination could not be aided by atmospheric filtering.

Because of these defects, the *Nike-X* concept was born. First, the mechanical radars of *Nike-Zeus* were replaced by phased-array radars, which, by varying the electrical phase of the power over the face of a fixed antenna array, could change the direction of the radar beam in a matter of microseconds. This imparted a capability of tracking many objects simultaneously, and thus removed one of the *Zeus* defects. Second, a very-high-performance, short-range interceptor missile, the *Sprint*, was introduced. It was smaller and cheaper, and had much higher acceleration than *Zeus*, and thus could afford to wait until re-entry of the targets before being committed to fire. Atmospheric filtering was now feasible and the remaining targets could be attacked with the high-firepower *Sprints*. The old *Zeus* interceptor was initially retained in the system for long-range attacks on simple targets. There were then two interceptors – the *Zeus* and the *Sprint*.

The *Nike-X* development, initiated in 1963, was thus much more effective than the old

*Zeus* system. It must be noted, however, that it was essentially a 'local defence' system. The *Sprint* could only defend cities or selected sites. Hence, since it is obviously impractical to deploy local defences at every small city or village in the United States, it was subject to bypass attack. An enemy could always target the undefended cities and obtain high casualties. This option was available even to unsophisticated opponents. The sophisticated opponent, by concentrating his firepower, could overwhelm the defence at any selected defended site. The value of ballistic missile defence was therefore questioned.

The next important development in defence effectiveness came with the introduction of 'area defence' in the period 1964-65. The current concept of 'area defence' is as follows.

The detection sensor would be the perimeter acquisition radar (PAR), which detects ballistic missiles at long ranges. The PAR tracks the incoming missile and predicts its future path. To intercept the incoming missile, the *Spartan* missile, which is a long-range interceptor developed from the old *Nike-Zeus*, would be employed. Once the PAR has predicted the path of the missile, a *Spartan* missile would be fired so as to intercept it well above the atmosphere. Because of its long range, the *Spartan* can intercept incoming missiles directed at targets several hundred miles from the *Spartan* battery location. The *Spartan* missile is guided by a missile site radar (MSR) associated with each battery.

With the introduction of *Spartan*, the *Zeus* interceptor was no longer required: in effect, the *Spartan* replaced the *Zeus*. A comparatively small number of *Spartan* batteries can defend the whole United States from simple attacks.

The phrase 'simple attacks' should be stressed. It is still possible for a sophisticated opponent to confuse the defence and make the firepower demands on *Spartan* too high. In this case, local-defence *Sprints* must be added to strengthen the defence. The *Spartan* thus functions in two ways. It can provide a very effective defence over extended areas against simple threats. Against complex threats, it provides a defence in depth and is complementary to *Sprint*. In any case it forces an enemy, if he wishes to penetrate, to pay the price demanded by a sophisticated penetration-aids programme.

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Table I. TWO AMERICAN BMD DEPLOYMENTS

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>Posture A<br>($ billion)</th><th>Posture B<br>($ billion)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Investment cost for radars (MAR, TACMAR, PAR, MSR)</td><td>6.5</td><td>12.6</td></tr><tr><td>Investment cost for missiles (Spartan, Sprint)</td><td>2.4</td><td>4.8</td></tr><tr><td>Total DoD investment cost</td><td>8.9</td><td>17.4</td></tr><tr><td>AEC investment cost</td><td>1.0</td><td>2.0</td></tr><tr><td>Grand total investment cost (ex. R&D)</td><td>9.9</td><td>19.4</td></tr><tr><td>Annual operating cost</td><td>0.38</td><td>0.72</td></tr><tr><td>No. of cities with local defence</td><td>25</td><td>50</td></tr></tbody></table>

SOURCE: 1967 Posture Statement, p. 49, and Hearings, op. cit.

The *Spartan* missile employs a high-yield warhead (presumably measured in megatons) and a 'kill' radius against enemy warheads measured in miles. The *Sprint* missile, being intended for interception at lower altitudes, would presumably employ a smaller warhead.

The *Nike-X* system thus includes a flexible set of building blocks consisting of the radars PAR and MSR and two types of interceptor missiles, *Spartan* and *Sprint*. There is also a very large sophisticated radar called MAR, for 'Multi-function Array Radar', and one called TACMAR, both designed specifically against sophisticated attacks. These 'blocks' can be put together in various ways to provide varying levels of defence against different threats.

Other systems for BMD have been considered, though not seriously considered for deployment. For example, a good deal of study has been devoted to the possibility of intercepting ballistic missiles during their boost phase, when they are still employing their rocket engines and tanks and are therefore highly vulnerable. However, such systems have not so far appeared feasible.

Let us now take up some of the information released by the Secretary of Defense in his 1967 Posture Statement.³ Mr McNamara provided rough cost information on two alternative BMD deployments, a $10-billion programme denoted 'Posture A' and a $20-billion programme denoted 'Posture B'.

It is possible that implementing either of these programmes would suggest the desirability of some associated expenditures on other components of defence, such as air defence, but it is probable that these costs would be modest in relation to the indicated costs for the BMD. The first point to be noted about this table, therefore, is that the costs discussed are small in relation to the cost estimates often given by critics of BMD of $40 billion and more, plus operating costs of $1 billion per year or more. The operating costs indicated in the table are substantially below current operating costs for air defence.⁴ Since Mr McNamara has been strongly opposed to BMD deployment himself, it is unlikely that these data (and others quoted below) from his Posture Statement are biased in favour of BMD. (Cyrus Vance, then Deputy Secretary of Defense, asserted the contrary in Hearings, op. cit. But the assertion

³ 'Statement of Secretary 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, 23 January 1967', released 26 January 1967. (Referred to as the '1967 Posture Statement'.)

⁴ At an unclassified briefing at the headquarters of the North American Air Defense Command in spring 1967, the current annual air defence budget was placed at about $2.5 billion, including research and development.

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Table 2. BMD EFFECTIVENESS IF NOT OFFSET

<table><thead><tr><th rowspan="3">US programme</th><th colspan="4">No. of prompt fatalities in an all-out strategic exchange (in millions)<br>(Assumes no Soviet reaction to US BMD deployment)</th></tr><tr><th colspan="2">Soviets strike first,<br>US retaliates</th><th colspan="2">US strikes first,<br>Soviets retaliate</th></tr><tr><th>US fat.</th><th>Sov. fat.</th><th>US fat.</th><th>Sov. fat.</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Approved</td><td>120</td><td>120+</td><td>100</td><td>70</td></tr><tr><td>Posture A</td><td>40</td><td>120+</td><td>30</td><td>70</td></tr><tr><td>Posture B</td><td>30</td><td>120+</td><td>20</td><td>70</td></tr></tbody></table>

SOURCE: 1967 Posture Statement, p. 52.

was in extemporaneous discussion and is probably incorrect.)

Testimony by Dr Foster (Director of Defense Research and Engineering), released more recently, included discussion of a BMD system that could be deployed for $4 billion, using only the *Spartan* missile to provide area coverage, but information on the estimated effectiveness of that system has not been released. However, it is mainly this system that apparently has been selected for deployment. In his announcement, Mr McNamara spoke only of a 'light' system that would cost 'about $5 billion'. He clarified this in an interview in *Life* (29 September 1967), in which he said there would be area defence (using *Spartans*) of the whole United States and point defence (using *Sprints*) of the BMD radar and the *Minuteman* missile silos. Initial news reports placed the number of batteries (of both kinds of missiles) at 15-20, and later reports at 22.

A second point to be noted from Table 1 is that, in both the A and the B postures, approximately two-thirds of the total investment cost is allocated to radars. That is a lot of radar equipment.

The number of interceptor missiles for these two deployments was not given in this unclassified material, but one can obtain a general sense of what is envisaged from the fact that the AEC investment cost is given as one billion and two billion dollars for the A and the B programmes

respectively. This cost would presumably be for the warheads, and since it is known that nuclear explosives cost on the order of half a million dollars each, this would suggest that the total number of interceptors (*Spartan* and *Sprint*) would be on the order of 2,000 and 4,000 for the A and the B postures respectively. These estimates cannot be expected to be precise, but they suggest that the number of interceptor missiles intended is quite large in relation to the number of intercontinental missile warheads that are likely to be deliverable by the Soviets, at least within the next several years.

Let us now consider what would be accomplished by these two BMD systems on the assumption that the Soviets merely continued with their currently estimated strategic-force programme and did not engage in new or additional programmes specifically aimed at countering the United States BMD (Table 2).

The designation 'Approved', under the column headed 'US programme', refers to the then-approved American five-year strategic force programme, i.e., without any BMD. The numbers of fatalities indicated in the table result from analysis of hypothetical large wars conducted with the indicated strategic forces, presumably of the 1975 era. These estimates would be dependent upon many assumptions about the circumstances of the war, with regard both to the physical facilities available and to

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the tactics employed. They should be understood as indicative only of possibilities and trends.

Although estimates of this kind are always subject to wide uncertainties, a number of interesting points emerge from this table. Let us first note that the number of American fatalities in the case of a Soviet first strike against the 'Approved' (undefended) programme (120 million) stems from the fact that the Soviet first strike was taken to be partly a counter-city strike, while the smaller indicated number of Soviet fatalities resulting from an American first strike (70 million) reflects the fact that the American first strike was designed as a counter-force attack.

The first major point to note is the substantial reduction in American fatalities obtained from either the A or the B postures against either a Soviet first strike or a Soviet second strike. It is worth repeating that these numbers are not likely to be biased in favour of BMD.

The second major point to note is more complex. It has often been said that BMD is primarily a 'first-strike weapon', in the sense that it performs very much better against an opponent's degraded second strike than against that opponent's undegraded first strike. The data in Table 2 indicate that this contention is substantially incorrect. There is a greater reduction in fatalities in going from the American second strike to the American first strike in the undefended case (from 120 million to 100 million) than there is in going from the American second to the American first strike for either the A Posture (40 million to 30 million) or the B posture (30 million to 20 million). A difference of 10 million fatalities saved by 'going first' will certainly not make any plausible American decision-maker casual about starting a war of this kind at such absolute levels of fatalities. Thus, there is likely to be no significant 'preemptive instability' associated with such BMD deployments, at least on the basis of this evidence.

Let us now take up the case in which the Soviets might react to an American BMD programme by increasing their offensive capability. For this case, it is useful to have a framework within which one can compare the relative effectiveness of offence and defence. Let us consider a parameter we shall call the 'cost-exchange ratio', defined as the ratio of certain

offence costs to certain defence costs. If one country builds a certain BMD system, another country can in principle increase its own capability to penetrate those defences in such a way as to offset them. I shall call the ratio (that of the cost of the offsetting offensive forces to the cost of the defences that are offset) the 'cost-exchange ratio'.

This parameter is a rough measure of the cost-effectiveness of BMD. If the ratio is very small, say 1 : 100, it would indicate that the BMD concerned could be nullified with an expenditure of only one per cent of the defence cost. If it is very large, say 100 : 1, it would indicate a highly effective defence, one requiring an expenditure two orders of magnitude greater than the defence 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 offence and defence.

It depends very strongly on the criteria used in judging that the defence has been 'nullified'. If the offence aims only to guarantee a large number of casualties in the defended country, the task is very much easier than if the objective 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 relatively difficult for the defence to guarantee a high survival percentage, say 95 per cent, while it is much easier for the defence to guarantee the survival of 50 per cent. In other words, the cost-exchange ratio will be smaller for high survival percentages and larger for medium survival levels.

It is not difficult to see that this dependence would be in this direction; the offence always would have the option of concentrating its attack on one or a few cities, or perhaps on some small undefended cities, while the defence 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

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matters to strategic postures. For simplicity of discussion, let us consider a fixed intermediate level of survival, say 75 per cent, and fixed attack scenarios.

If the cost-exchange ratio were in fact as low as 1 : 100, I believe it is virtually certain that no one would be buying substantial BMD, or even thinking of it. Values of this order of magnitude were estimated some years ago, when the BMD problem 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 defence out of the realm of practicality. 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 defence was king, at least apart from bombers and air defences, 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. If air defence (against bombers) were also this effective, I believe that the role of strategic nuclear threats in Soviet-American relations would rapidly decline to the vanishing point.⁵ Consideration of this case will illustrate the importance for strategic postures of technical-economic possibilities. Other likely consequences include the elimination of any major concern in the super-powers 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 secondary powers 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 reduced confidence. It is likely only in the range of 1 : 5 or 1 : 4 to 4 : 1 or 5 : 1 that American and Soviet strategic postures would not be largely dominated by this cost-exchange ratio, and at least the American posture would be subject to some influence according to where in

this range the ratio was generally estimated to be. Unfortunately, estimates derived from the best available studies have not been available to the general public until recently.

But some useful estimates have now been released by Mr McNamara in his 1967 Posture Statement. While there is no single number that will stand as the cost-exchange ratio under all circumstances, it is clear that an appropriate value to think of as representative, and moreover one which is probably close to a 'correct' value for a significant range of circumstances, is 1 : 1, i.e. unity. But it should be stressed that we are dealing with a rough concept, one not likely to be meaningful to within less than a factor of two, perhaps even rougher.

It may be interesting to give the actual values included in the 1967 Posture Statement (on p. 53). The following numbers (fatalities in millions, not percentages) are based on a substantial American defence 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 United States in the face of our assumed BMD capability.⁶ Thus the offset costs are estimated Soviet costs for added offensive force capability.

<table><thead><tr><th>US fatalities<br>(millions)</th><th>Cost-exchange<br>ratio</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>49</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 illustrates the truly dramatic progress in BMD development in recent years.

For the balance of the paper, we shall mainly consider an 'average' cost-exchange ratio of unity. Departures from this value would be negligible for this level of analysis in most cases of interest, although we shall see mild excep-

⁶ It was not spelled out just what BMD capability was assumed. It is probable that the numbers are illustrative of the A or the B postures. It is to be expected that the cost-exchange ratios for the light area defence would be at least as favourable.

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⁵ I do not believe the possibility of clandestine delivery of 'suitcase' bombs would significantly affect this.

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tions in the second and third paragraphs below.

The first consequence of this value is that it means certain strategic choices can be put roughly in the following terms: assuming that both the United States and the Soviet Union have deployed comparable BMD, then a fixed sum of money to be spent on strategic weapons by (say) the United States can be used *either* to increase the number of casualties the United States can inflict on the Soviet Union or to reduce the number of casualties the Soviet Union can inflict on the United States *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 in fatalities) whether it is spent on offensive or defensive forces. Similarly, of course, for Soviet expenditures on strategic forces. We shall come back to this point.

A second consequence of cost-exchange ratios being near unity, given also that they will be greater than unity for small survival levels and smaller than unity for very high survival levels, is as follows. It is possible that a natural point of stabilization of the offence-defence 'mix' in unconstrained strategic forces would be at damage levels for which the exchange ratios were near unity. (Such levels would probably in most cases be appreciably below prevailing possibilities.) Any attempt by one super-power to raise the level of damage it could inflict on the other above that level, or to reduce its own possible damage below that level, would make it possible for the latter to offset the expenditure of the former (for offence or defence, respectively) at lower cost. (This model is interesting, but should not be taken too seriously.)

Strong Soviet interest in active defences may be correlated with the fact that the cost-exchange ratio increases as survival levels decrease. BMD may seem relatively more valuable to planners interested in saving at least, say, 30 per cent of their populace (for which BMD would be very effective) than to strategists who would often have a 'Who cares?' attitude towards such low survival levels, but who would be interested in saving higher percentages. (I doubt if Soviet analysts have actually articulated their concerns in these terms, but they may well have perceived something for which this is the appropriate articulation.)

Let us now consider the kinds of uncertainties

that reside in these technical and economic estimates, and the directions that such estimates may take in the future.

Critics of BMD, such as Mr McNamara, frequently point out that estimates of the cost required to achieve a given level of performance with some technical military systems have quite generally been excessively low: that is, systems have generally cost more than their proponents originally estimated. This is certainly correct, and this history should serve as a warning that the performance estimates for a fixed cost given above may be too high or the cost estimates for a fixed performance may be too low. However, additional factors should be mentioned in connection with the special case of these BMD estimates. The first is that, in the development of the estimated cost-exchange ratios, the analysis must take into account two opposing fields of technology, namely ballistic missile defence on the one hand, and penetration aids and tactics on the other. The technology of penetration aids and tactics is as new a field as BMD itself, and estimates of their performance for a fixed cost could easily prove too optimistic. Therefore, it is as likely that the estimated BMD performance discussed above is too low as that it is too high.

Much of the early pessimism about the possible technical effectiveness of BMD derived from over-optimistic estimates of the effectiveness with which cheap decoys could protect expensive warheads. The cost-exchange ratios given by Secretary McNamara indicate clearly that cheap decoys cannot be relied upon to work effectively. I know of no reason to believe that the BMD engineers are more optimistic in their estimates than are the people working on penetration aids and tactics.

A related point is that techniques for estimating system development and deployment costs have been much improved in recent years, and such estimates are generally more reliable these days than they were formerly, although high accuracy of estimates in a matter as complicated as BMD is not to be expected.⁷

Future basic developments in either offensive

⁷An anecdote illustrates the complexity. A senior American military official, who is responsible for training air defence personnel, once remarked that 'if *Nike-X* is ever deployed, it will have to be co-located with our major universities' - i.e., in order to have suitable people available to operate it. The remark was only partly facetious.

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or defensive technology cannot of course be predicted, and if they do occur, they would influence the cost or efficiency of offence or defence in ways that we cannot now foresee. However, the recent trend has been that defence has been showing increasing performance relative to

offence, and if radical new developments do not occur, this trend seems more likely to continue than to reverse. Thus, the estimates of cost and effectiveness given above will probably seem somewhat pessimistic (from the point of view of BMD) within a few years' time.

## Major Arms-Race Issues

The chief concern of most of those who have been opposing deployment of BMD, and who would still oppose a larger American deployment, appears to be that such deployment might initiate a substantial new dimension of the arms race, at best wasting large quantities of money, and at worst making the world more dangerous as a consequence of possible offensive-force increases that might be larger even than necessary to offset opposing defences. There is no question but that arms-race responses to BMD deployment are a real possibility, and this possibility (together with related political effects on the spread of nuclear weapons) constitutes the main reason in my own mind why the United States should carry out its deployment with caution.

For example, if both the United States and the Soviet Union are determined to maintain the capability to kill at least *X* million of the other's populace as 'hostages', where *X* is some large and fixed number, and if each simultaneously is determined to acquire defensive superiority and starts an active programme with the object of bringing the number of its own people at risk to the other's weapons well below *X* million, then each would react with new offensive forces to the other's defences and, presumably in turn, with additional defences to the other's new offensive forces. It is clear that a simple model of this kind of offence-defence interaction, based on a fixed number of hostages, would indeed lead to a vigorous arms race. What is much less clear is the extent to which this model has validity.

Of course, it is tautologous to say that if the relevant decision-makers are determined to preserve *X* million hostages, and if some incipient BMD system shows indications of reducing enemy hostages below that prescribed

level, they will attempt to offset the defences. But the relevant decision processes are not monolithic either in the United States or in the Soviet Union, and it is certain that the Soviet bureaucracy does not have this view of the requirements of deterrence. The position in the American bureaucracy is less clear: Mr McNamara holds to such a deterrence theory, or at least speaks as if he does, but it does not appear that a decisive majority of the relevant people in the American bureaucracy share that view, and it may well prove that only a minority are unalterably persuaded of its validity.

The ability to destroy some large number of enemy hostages (and associated manufacturing capacity) is generally called, in the American Defense Establishment, 'assured destruction' capability. It is the fact that an opponent's BMD would interfere with this 'assured destruction' capability that, according to Mr McNamara and others, would lead to arms-race responses in offensive forces. For the sake of analyzing whether or not such a response would be wise or necessary, and therefore for the sake of gaining some insight into at least one major dimension of the bureaucratic pressures that may ultimately be expected to influence such decisions, let us consider a hypothetical case in which the conflict between deployment of BMD by one state, and the 'assured destruction' requirements of the opposing state, would appear in a particularly sharp form. That would be the case in which the strategic offensive forces of both the United States and the Soviet Union were 'frozen' by agreement, at least in the sense of total gross weight of the delivery vehicles or perhaps total deliverable payload, while each state was free to build as much BMD as it liked.

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I shall call this posture a 'Russian freeze'.⁸ This posture would surely promise to erode the 'assured destruction' capabilities of both powers. Should they be motivated to avoid this?

I cannot understand why they should, if it is assumed 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 super-powers are not compelled by the logic of the situation to preserve 'assured destruction' capabilities, or at least not at present levels. It appears that the often-repeated insistence on such capabilities is something of a conditioned reflex, in which some may have lost sight of the original cause of the conditioning.

According to the 1967 Posture Statement (p. 38), the mission of the American 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'. The key phrase here is 'to deter deliberate nuclear attack'. The evolution of massive assured-destruction forces (on the scale of current forces) in the United States occurred in connection with a growing Soviet ability to mount a strategic nuclear attack on the strategic forces and population centres of the United States. At the time (January 1954) when John Foster Dulles first publicly articulated the 'massive retaliation' strategy, which then was probably intended primarily to deter a Soviet assault on Europe, the main American retaliatory force consisted of a few hundred bombers armed with pure fission (i.e., not thermonuclear) bombs, with a total deliverable yield of some tens of megatons. Corresponding present-day capabilities would be some thousands of megatons. In part, this increase is attributable to a sort of technological accident, i.e., the advent

of operational thermonuclear weapons. But much of the increase resulted from the growing Soviet capability, which put in question both the United States itself and America's ability to protect its allies.

At some levels of discussion, the increases in American strategic capabilities (notably in the B-52 forces) in the mid-1950s and later were justified primarily by the simple argument 'If they are to have more, we must have more'. However, the more sophisticated arguments supporting these increases (especially in the 1960 era) were based on considerations of force vulnerabilities and blackmail potentialities. American planners were troubled by the prospect that the Soviets might find a way to attack American forces with sufficient effectiveness to eliminate most of them, leaving only enough to inflict a degree of retaliation that the Soviets might find 'acceptable' in view of the fact that the war would thus substantially eliminate their principal opponent. The dominant rationale for the American force increases stemmed from this concern: it was intended to maintain sufficient strategic forces so that they could reliably inflict overwhelming retaliation if the Soviets should ever attempt such an attack.

Notice, however, that the attack that thus was to be deterred was one which, if not deterred, would have been essentially lethal for the United States. If the Soviet attack were itself less lethal, the retaliation could be correspondingly less massive. I shall elaborate on this assertion.

Mr McNamara and others presumably recognized this point at the time they approved the American disarmament proposals for percentage reductions in strategic forces, which would have much the same effect as symmetric American and Soviet deployment of BMD under the 'Russian freeze', but the principle seems less generally recognized in the BMD context.⁹ In the BMD setting, let us assume that the things that might be attacked, whether military forces or cities, are roughly equally protected on both sides by one means or another, and that American and Soviet strategic offensive forces are sufficiently protected as to be unattractive first-strike targets and are constrained by the 'Russian

⁸ I use this term because the posture (a) would be compatible with prevailing Soviet strategic views, (b) has been explicitly endorsed by some Soviet students of these matters, and (c) has been implicitly suggested in many Soviet pronouncements, e.g., by Mr Kosygin. It is not an official proposal of the Soviet Government.

⁹ The fact that the percentage-reduction proposals had only slight perceived likelihood of acceptance would not have spared and did not spare them from close scrutiny of their strategic acceptability.

10

freeze'. Then gradual but symmetric growth of BMD would have much the same effect (in the sense of maximum possible war outcomes) as gradual reduction of the offensive forces – with at least one important difference in favour of the BMD-imposed reduction: namely, it would be less sensitive to inspection.

Thus, if the American and Soviet 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 American and Soviet BMD are 'heavy', then our assured-destruction forces would be significantly degraded, but so too would the capability of the Soviets to eliminate the United States as a fighting society. This would reduce both the possible interest the Soviets might have in initiating such an attack, and the intensity of our motivation to deter it.

A reasonable basic requirement for a conservative American strategic posture would be as follows: following any plausibly feasible strategic attack by the Soviet Union, the United States should have the capacity to inflict as much or more total damage (of similar kind) on the Soviet Union as the Soviets had inflicted and could still inflict on the United States. This would imply that the Soviet Union could not achieve a significant military advantage by such an attack, and that an irrational, coercive, or punitive attack – whether large or small – would risk bringing as much or more destruction on the Soviet Union as the Soviets could or did bring on the United States. This would make nuclear blackmail unattractive to any reasonable decision-maker at any effective level of strategic forces. And there is no reason why such a posture could not be as well maintained under a 'Russian freeze', at any level of BMD deployment, as under percentage reductions in strategic offensive forces.

I do not myself believe that feasible growth of BMD under a 'Russian freeze' would in fact significantly influence deterrence of major nuclear attacks, which would be likely to remain 'saturated', although it would certainly influence possible war outcomes and probably other things as well. But it is important to address squarely the theoretical argument that assured-destruction capabilities cannot be reduced, either through direct reductions or in-

directly through BMD, because of the need to deter nuclear attack – without regard to the possible scale and consequences of the attack!

I believe it would be possible under a 'Russian freeze' to preserve the historical relationship between the capabilities of American and Soviet strategic forces. For example, if it should be true that the United States could deliver, say, three times as many bombs and warheads on the Soviet Union as the Soviet Union could on the United States, under like circumstances, then it should be feasible for the United States to preserve this ratio as the net capabilities of the offensive forces were effectively reduced by the growth of BMD. By thus maintaining a strong form of the kind of conservative posture mentioned above, this could provide all the deterrence needed at all effective levels of forces.

To summarize by repeating an earlier remark, the insistence that assured-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 the business of strategic analysis in the late 1950s assimilating the proposition 'Since we [the United States and the Soviet Union] cannot defend, we must deter', a partially true dictum imposed by the technology of the era. But this seems to have become solidified in some minds in the distorted form 'Since we must deter, we cannot defend'. This is plainly false.

Let us put aside the 'Russian freeze' for the time being and consider the plausible range of responses to BMD in the current environment, i.e., an environment in which there are no formal or informal agreements restraining either offensive or defensive forces. Let us first take up the question of possible Soviet responses to American BMD deployment. Mr McNamara (among others) has frequently asserted that the Soviets would surely respond with improvements in their offensive forces sufficient to offset any American BMD. For example, in the 1967 Posture Statement (p. 53), he said: 'It is the virtual certainty that the Soviets will act to maintain their deterrent which casts such grave doubts on the advisability of our deploying the Nike-X system for the protection of our cities against the kind of heavy, sophisticated missile attack they could launch in the 1970s. In all

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probability, all we would accomplish would be to increase greatly both their defence expenditures and ours without any gain in real security to either side'. (The whole of this passage is underscored in the original.) Does this represent a reasonable characterization of plausible Soviet responses?

It does not seem to me that it does. Both the nature and the extent of any Soviet response to American BMD will depend on a host of factors, including the scale of the deployment, the manner in which the deployment is 'talked about', the prevailing temperature of international relations, budgetary pressures within the Soviet Union for other uses for the money, and, most important, current and evolving Soviet attitudes and doctrines about the roles and interactions of strategic nuclear forces. One cannot predict with the certainty alleged by Mr McNamara how these forces would work out – not even in what direction they would work out.

The Soviets have always emphasized active defence – in the past, of course, air defence – in their strategic nuclear establishment. This heavy doctrinal bias in favour of defence can probably be traced to Russian military experience going at least as far back as Napoleon. It is the Soviets who have initiated BMD deployment in the current setting. Now that the United States is responding to that Soviet initiative with BMD deployment of its own,¹⁰ on a scale considerably smaller than the B posture discussed above, it is conceivable that the Soviets might react as Mr McNamara indicated, but that seems to me one of the least plausible outcomes. It is widely reported that the Soviets have recently been making substantial efforts to strengthen their offensive forces without any stimulation whatever from existing American BMD. That the Soviets would initiate additional major new efforts in their offensive forces as a consequence of a moderate American BMD programme, a programme that must have seemed to them a completely predictable response at the time they initiated their own BMD deployment, strikes me as most unlikely.¹¹

¹⁰ Mr McNamara has described the incipient American system as 'Chinese-oriented', not a response to Soviet BMD. This distinction is dubious, for reasons to be indicated later.

¹¹ Indeed, it is much more likely that the scale of current increases in Soviet forces was partly determined in expectation of an American BMD programme.

If they follow the kinds of patterns they have exhibited in the past in such matters, they are much more likely to respond with rather modest changes in their offensive forces, changes which would fall far short of fully offsetting the American BMD. It is even possible, and perhaps more probable than any other single alternative, that they will do nothing further at all. Or they might respond by further strengthening their own defensive forces – a response which, as I have indicated above, would not be harmful, at least as long as historical East-West strategic balances were not impaired.

The major historical prototype of this situation resides in experience with air-defence systems and bombers. In the mid-1950s, the United States began to acquire the initial operational capability of the SAGE air-defence system, an advanced system that was believed to make a great improvement in the effectiveness of American air defences against possible standard patterns of Soviet bomber attacks. Although the system was noisily advertised as having that effect, the Soviets did not respond by increasing their long-range bomber forces. There are of course many possible reasons why they did not – budgetary pressures, bureaucratic entanglements, and so on – but one reason that is *not* plausible is that they were relying on their ICBM programme, because the SAGE system became operational well before it was clear that the technical problems of missiles could all be solved satisfactorily. I believe the most likely reason they did not respond was that they did not have a doctrinal compulsion that they had to be able to kill X million American hostages.

Let us now consider briefly the plausible range of American responses to Soviet BMD deployment. The 'thin' defence decided upon in September 1967 does not necessarily constitute the final American programme, which will depend on Soviet programmes among other things. (I have not yet discussed all of the factors that should govern the American response, but I can at this stage identify the main lines of the forces and arguments.)

The extent and effectiveness of the Soviet BMD deployment are not clear. Indeed, at the time of writing (fall 1967) there is a remarkable public disagreement in the United States between the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of

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the Joint Chiefs of Staff, each of whom presumably represents larger groups, over the interpretation of such intelligence data as are available to the Government. In an official press release of 22 February 1967, the Department of Defense stated:

We have been asked for comment on news stories indicating a difference of opinion between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary McNamara on the extent of the Soviet anti-ballistic missile deployment. There is no disagreement that the Russians are deploying an anti-ballistic missile system around Moscow. There is no disagreement that the Russians are working on a system of some other kind in other parts of the USSR. Within the intelligence community, there is a difference of opinion on exactly what this second system is. Some hold the view that it is primarily an air defence system. General Wheeler finds that view difficult to accept. Secretary McNamara believes there is a great deal of uncertainty about the character of that second system. At the same time, he has emphasized repeatedly that in planning our own actions we must assume that the Soviets have already started to deploy a nationwide ABM system or will do so in the future.

A few days after that release, during the course of a television interview, General Earle Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said:

Mr Beecher, I believe in a press release the other day from the Pentagon it was pointed out that I found it difficult to accept that the second system you refer to is a surface-to-air missile system. And I based this belief primarily on the thesis that the Soviets certainly know that we are going increasingly to missiles as being the core of our strategic nuclear offensive capabilities. It doesn't make sense to me, from the military point of view, for them to spend sizeable sums of money and technological effort to install a new surface-to-air missile system under this circumstance. Now I am afraid that our intelligence is not good enough for us to say definitely whether or not this system is an ABM system, or a SAM system. Therefore, I reserve my doubts. I think the weight of military logic would dictate that it would be an ABM system.¹²

Obviously, I have no basis for an independent judgment about the nature of the controversial part of the Soviet active defences. The main argument of General Wheeler (that the Soviets

would be unlikely to spend large sums on new air defences) is persuasive, but, on the other hand, the Soviets have not always been intelligent about their expenditures on strategic forces.

If it becomes clear that the Soviets have undertaken (or in the future do undertake) a substantial BMD deployment, United States responses could be of several different kinds, but the likelihoods of the different possibilities are governed by different forces than appear to operate in the Soviet case. Those who believe, as Mr McNamara appears to, that the 'assured-destruction' forces must be able to kill X million Russian hostages without regard to the circumstances will presumably argue that the Soviet BMD would need to be offset by improved American offensive capabilities. Since this strategic view seems much more widely and more strongly held in the United States than it does in the Soviet Union, there is correspondingly more likelihood that increased Soviet BMD will bring an American offensive-force response, as it already has to some extent. However, as I have argued above, this view does not seem fundamentally sensible, and there are important elements of the American Defense Establishment that are not dominated by such an extreme form of this doctrine. Many military leaders, many academic strategists, and at least some important arms controllers would argue that it is better for many reasons to respond with active defences. Whether the views of this group, or the views of those who share the position of Mr McNamara, will ultimately prevail is something that cannot be forecast at this time.

It is perhaps worth noting explicitly that Mr McNamara himself has not always spoken with great consistency about these matters. In discussing the adequacy of American assured-destruction forces, he has often emphasized that he regards the existing forces as far more than adequate. For example, in the 1966 Posture Statement, he said (p. 48): 'It is clear, therefore, that our strategic offensive forces are far more than adequate to inflict unacceptable damage on the Soviet Union, even after absorbing a well-co-ordinated Soviet first strike against those forces. Indeed, it appears that even a relatively small portion of these forces would furnish us with a completely adequate deterrent to a

¹² From *Recent US Public Statements on Antiballistic Missile Systems*, issued by the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Disarmament Document Series, No. 479, 17 March 1967, p. 22.

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deliberate Soviet nuclear attack on the United States or its Allies'. In his BMD deployment announcement of 18 September 1967, he appeared to indicate that 'a relatively small portion' was about one-fifth, when he said: 'Our alert forces alone carry more than 2,200 weapons, averaging more than one megaton each. A mere 400 one-megaton weapons, if delivered on the Soviet Union, would be sufficient to destroy over one-third of her population, and one-half of her industry. And all of these flexible and highly reliable forces are equipped with devices that insure their penetration of Soviet defences'.

In other words, when discussing the adequacy of current assured-destruction forces, Mr McNamara appears to believe that he could tolerate up to 80 per cent attrition and still have an adequate deterrent *against an undiminished Soviet threat*. It seems to me the most elementary of calculations that one could therefore 'trade' some of this excess destructive capacity for a reduction in the Soviet threat, i.e., by responding to Soviet BMD with American BMD. Yet, although Mr McNamara does not appear to believe that current or foreseeable defences will achieve anything approaching an attrition rate of 80 per cent when he is discussing offence-defence interactions, he seems unwilling to consider even the slightest reduction in American destructive capacity, and determined to respond to Soviet BMD by increasing that destructive capacity rather than by reducing the Soviet threat. It is conceivable that this rather contradictory view of affairs will not ultimately prevail in the American Defense Establishment.

A significant factor in this debate is associated with the uncertainty over the extent and effectiveness of Soviet active defences. Some critics of a strategic posture based substantially on active defences, a posture in which there might be considerable effective reduction in the assured-destruction capabilities of the opposing offensive forces, argue that the relevant decision-makers in the United States would not be willing to live with the uncertainties of strategic forces with a large defensive emphasis, in which one could not reliably predict exactly how much penetration could be made against enemy targets. Arguments in this form will surely be heard during the debate. However, it should be pointed out that the opposing strategic forces

lived with this kind of uncertainty (possibly to a greater degree) for many years during the era when strategic nuclear deterrence was implemented chiefly by bombers and opposed with air defences. There are thus historical reasons for thinking such uncertainty would not necessarily be a major problem and good strategic reasons for thinking that it should not be, but whether it will be a problem is of course a different question.

As in the Soviet case, it is possible that the United States would not further alter established programmes for its strategic forces in response to further Soviet BMD, although, in this case, the likelihood of this response would become vanishingly small as the perceived intensity of the Soviet BMD became large. In his deployment announcement, Mr McNamara said: 'If the Soviets elect to deploy a heavy ABM system, we must further expand our sophisticated offensive forces, and thus preserve our overwhelming assured-destruction capability'.

It is clear from these considerations that an offence-defence arms race, resulting from BMD deployment, is at least a real possibility. It seems that this possibility derives more from defective American perceptions of strategic requirements than from unreasonable Soviet views, but this does not lessen the possibility of unnecessary arms-race effects. Let us now consider mechanisms that might be employed deliberately to head off such effects. It should be noted, however, that there is a fair chance that levels of offensive and defensive forces now programmed for the American and Soviet forces will prove stable without further effort.

Several American leaders in the past year or so had been proposing a complete moratorium on all BMD deployment, divorced from any other constraints on strategic forces. This would of course have headed off any possibility of an offence-defence arms race. If this had been the only possible way of stabilizing strategic forces, or even if it had been a possible way, it would have seemed not unreasonable from a strategic point of view, though I did not myself think it the best course of action. However, in view of the Soviets' attitudes on defence and their apparent reactions to this proposal, I did not believe that it was a possible way of stabilizing strategic forces.

A proposal for abstaining from deployment of

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active missile defences has been presented to
Soviets in one context or another at least since
1963, and possibly earlier. I have personally
been involved in many of these discussions. I
do not know of any reliably reported case in
which Soviets have responded favourably to this
proposal. I have heard reports that recent
contacts with Soviets on the subject have been
more encouraging, but personal contacts with
Soviet officials as recently as April 1967 lead me
to be sceptical of these reports.

In a press conference in London on 9 February
1967, Mr Kosygin was asked: 'Do you believe
it is possible to agree on the moratorium on
development of an anti-missile defence system
and if possible on what conditions?' He replied
in part: 'I believe that defensive systems, which
prevent attack, are not the cause of the arms
race, but constitute a factor preventing the
death of people. Some argue like this: What is
cheaper, to have offensive weapons which can
destroy towns and whole states or to have defen-
sive weapons which can prevent this destruction?
At present the theory is current somewhere
that the system which is cheaper should be
developed. Such so-called theoreticians argue as
to the cost of killing a man – $500,000 or
$100,000. Maybe an anti-missile system is more
expensive than an offensive system, but it is
designed not to kill people but to preserve
human lives. I understand that I do not reply
to the question I was asked, but you can draw
yourselves the appropriate conclusions'. This
does not sound like the comment of a man who
was friendly to a BMD moratorium.

It appears that antagonism to BMD restraint
is not confined merely to some one segment of
the Soviet bureaucracy, such as its military.
Every relevant element of the Soviet bureaucracy
seems imbued with the idea that defence is a
good idea. This includes many Russians who
are friendly to arms control and disarmament
and who are friendly to the West. The response
has been much what would be expected if
Russians were to ask the United States and its
allies to abstain from protecting Western
strategic forces, by abstaining from techniques
such as the use of hardened underground silos
or Polaris submarines. In the absence of a theory
with a force of persuasiveness that is difficult to
conceive, all significant elements in the Western
Establishment would react very negatively to

such a proposal. Responses of many individual
Russians suggest that this is the appropriate
parallel to asking them to abstain from BMD.

Events have now overtaken the moratorium
proposal, which has not seemed viable to this
observer since 1964. Let us consider then
another possibility for stabilizing strategic forces.
Let us return to the posture I earlier referred to
as the 'Russian freeze'.

The major traditional objectives of arms con-
trol are to reduce the likelihood of war, and to
reduce the scope and violence of war if it occurs.
It seems to me decisively clear that a 'Russian
freeze' could do more for these objectives than
could a simple BMD moratorium. (The chief
reason why suitable BMD deployment seems
likely to reduce the likelihood of war will be
taken up in the next section.) Another objective
of arms control, usually considered in the West
to be subordinate to the two just mentioned, is
to reduce the cost and burdens of the arms race.
BMD would not necessarily contribute to this
objective, although under such postures as a
'Russian freeze', and under others to be men-
tioned, it would at least not be in opposition to
it.

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 freeze' goes
too much against the grain of the American
Defense Establishment and that it would not be
accepted there. There are three points I should
note in response to this argument.

First, even if true now, this should not inhibit
the arms control community from analyzing
and discussing what *ought* to be done. Certainly
the community has never been similarly in-
hibited 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 defence community is concerned
with the same issues of deterrence and defence
discussed above and must ultimately be respon-
sive to forceful pertinent arguments; minds
and fashions have been changed before on no
more substantial grounds. For instance, as
recently as early 1966, Mr McNamara was
making very strong statements – as strong as
those he was still making against BMD until
mid-1967 – to the effect that a strengthened fall-

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out-shelter programme was an essential pre-
requisite to BMD deployment. No statement to
that effect appears in the current Posture
Statement, and rightly so ('rightly' for reasons
to be indicated later).

Second, even if true, there is no reason to
believe the BMD moratorium would have been
more acceptable to the Soviet establishment
than the 'Russian' version would be to ours.
Indeed, as indicated above, the evidence seems
clearly 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 col-
leagues in the Department of Defense, to put
it very mildly. Indeed, he has the unanimous
opposition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Whether
the Joint Chiefs and other groups would support
a 'Russian freeze' is of course a different ques-
tion, but they have not yet been presented the
issues and arguments, and one simply does not
know how the arguments would go. One senior
Pentagon official concerned with strategic forces,
not himself an arms controller, has said there
was 'no question' but that the Joint Chiefs would
accept a 'Russian freeze'. It is clear that many
military people are more sympathetic to a
defence-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 with
preserving its detailed nature. And, as I indicated
above, one could preserve such superiority
under a 'Russian freeze' (or under other defence-
oriented postures).

Some people occasionally question the feasi-
bility, or even the wisdom, of any kind of 'freeze'
or constraint on strategic forces. It is worth
pointing out that the American strategic forces
have been 'frozen' in several important senses
for several years now, and indeed they have
actually been declining in some respects, such
as weapon payload and first-strike-deliverable
megatonnage. (Roughly 2,000 bombers have
been replaced with a smaller number of missiles
with much smaller payloads.) Budgets have also
been declining; the American strategic-force
budget declined from $11 billion in fiscal year
1962 to $7 billion in 1965 and has remained at
about that level since, according to the 1967

Posture Statement (p. 64). The kinds of con-
straints I am discussing in the 'Russian freeze'
and in the other understandings discussed
below would not be more stringent, and should
be equally subject to change. The point of such
understandings as might be achieved by semi-
formal Soviet-American discussions, as I envis-
age them, is to establish expectations. If, after
some understanding had been established, the
American Government should revise its view of
what it required in strategic forces, it should be
as free to change them as if the understanding
had not been established - although notification
to and new discussion with the Soviets might
then be appropriate.

If the 'Russian freeze' itself is not accepted,
there are other alternatives in which some
BMD deployment could be permitted without
doing violence to arms-control objectives. The
arms-control community should not eschew
constructive and objective analysis of these
alternatives because of some putative sociological
reactions in the Defense Establishment. Let us
consider briefly some of these alternative pos-
sibilities of stabilized postures.

It has for some time seemed to me that the
United States and the Soviet Union might well
stabilize their strategic-force postures on the
basis of informal understandings about overall
strategic-force sizes, monitored via unilateral
estimates of strategic 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 dis-
close a possible meeting of minds on an under-
standing about overall levels of strategic forces,
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. One
might explore whether, within these levels, there
is some division of offensive and defensive forces
that seems mutually sensible. If so, fine, adopt
it; if not, let each determine its offence-defence
'mix' as it sees fit. As I mentioned above, it
may be that a 'natural' point of stability
would be at possible damage levels for which

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cost-exchange ratios were closest to unity.¹³

Such an understanding would head off the possibility of an offence-defence arms race (or other kind of strategic arms race, for that matter). With the strategic situation thus stabilized, the United States could freely contemplate whether, with any given strategic-force expenditure, it preferred to add X fatalities to

what it could inflict on the Soviet Union, or to subtract roughly X fatalities from what the Soviet Union could inflict on the United States. (This is the consequence of the cost-exchange ratio being near unity.) At least for some large values of X, the preferable choice seems clear to me.

In general, in circumstances where one might have some choice of the kinds of restraints to be imposed on strategic forces, I believe that offensive-force restraint is more to be encouraged than BMD restraint.

¹³ It is of course possible that American and Soviet cost-exchange-ratio calculations might differ appreciably, but unlikely that this would be a source of difficulty.

## The Impact of BMD on Crises

We shall now take up the potential impact of BMD on the behaviour of the two super-powers in crises. That is, we are interested in the way in which the presence or absence of BMD might influence the bargaining and negotiation taking place in an intense crisis before it actually reached a stage of general nuclear war. In addition, since such a war could almost surely not start except as it grew out of some grave crisis, it is in the interaction of BMD and crises that we must seek to understand the potential impact of BMD on the likelihood of a central war. Through the early part of this section, we shall assume a context in which substantial Soviet deployment of BMD has taken place.

Even more than in the case of the impact of BMD on the arms race, we are concerned here with the impact of large hardware systems of somewhat nebulous net technical characteristics on delicate psychological matters of highly nebulous character. Although I believe the general direction of this impact is clear, as such things go, it is not possible to quantify its magnitude in terms that admit direct comparison with other relevant factors.

For example, it is clear that crisis bargaining is related to such concepts as 'deterrence' and what has been called 'escalation assurance', which refers to the absence of panic, excessive fear, excessive doubts, or other weakening emotions in a crisis situation. A government achieves such assurance in many of the same ways that an individual would: collective belief in likely success, faith in the competence of the

system, consensus that the cause is morally worthy or at least not unworthy, high morale, and knowledge that reasonable preparations have been made and precautions taken. Plainly, however, the relationship of these factors to specific hardware systems is rather tenuous; and their relationship to Soviet perception of them, and thereby to some factor of direct relevance to American ability to influence the Soviets in a crisis, is even more tenuous. But this does not make them unimportant or insusceptible of analysis. I shall attempt to analyze the main considerations in the following sections.

It is generally understood that in political-military contests between two opponents of even roughly comparable technical resources, factors such as resolve or determination, skill, morale, and 'guts' are of critical importance to the outcome. There are two points to be made in this connection. First, these factors are conspicuously more dependent on individuals than on 'smallish' changes in hardware, doctrine, plans, etc. But for any fixed set of individuals, such as American and Soviet decision-makers, the hardware and doctrine are the only factors open to direct and systematic improvement; the individuals are not. It would be of dubious utility to say to a Secretary of Defense 'Be skilful!', or to exhort a President to 'Be like Churchill'. But one can build hardware - if not always with the foresight of a Churchill, then at least not often in wholly useless ways.

Second, the conspicuous importance of skill and resolve in such contests has led some analysts close to suggesting that they are

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sufficient factors in themselves, and that one need not pay much attention to the hardware. It may be true that, over broad ranges, skill dominates hardware, and it is undoubtedly true that less wealthy states have no real alternative to relying mainly on skill in confrontations with wealthier states. But it seems intrinsically silly for a country with the wealth of the United States to encourage dependence on sheer skill and guts when (a) it has a unique element of national power – its GNP – that could be brought to bear, and (b) there is no reason to believe American skill is unique. The Soviet GNP is at a level such that, with modern technology, the United States could not reliably achieve complete security by any level of defence spending whatever, and in that sense some dependence on skill is inevitable. But there is no sense in increasing this dependence without sufficiently good cause. (Of course, at some level, saving money or other resources can be a good cause.) History does not suggest that the United States has a monopoly on generals with the skill of a Rommel or a Guderian or a Lee, or on political leaders like Churchill or Bismarck or Lincoln.

A general consideration of a quite different kind concerns certain analytical distinctions. The attitudes and actions of decision-makers in a crisis can be considered the result of two sets of factors: first, the immediate pressures – threats of damage, political forces, etc. – operating in that particular crisis; second, the modes of thought and habit that provide the framework within which the events of the crisis are perceived and the responses formulated. Traditional deterrence and coercion aim at influencing the first set of factors, and traditional analyses of deterrence consider the pressures that would operate more or less explicitly in the short-term setting of some particular crisis. But it is clear that the modes and patterns of thought, habit, and expectation that decision-makers bring to that crisis – patterns which will of course vary considerably from one individual to the next – will be at least as important as, probably much more important than, the strategic-force postures and the threats concerning their use.

This fact is recognized, at least implicitly, in the defence community; e.g., consider the importance rightly attached to maintaining the

credibility of American commitments. If some Soviet leader expects some American President to yield in some crisis, his behaviour is likely to be very different from what it would be if he expected the President would not yield. However, it is not often that the importance of such patterns of thought is brought explicitly into strategic analysis of such matters as deterrence and crisis bargaining. I believe that the implications of BMD for crisis bargaining are especially dependent on prevailing modes of thought, and I shall accordingly emphasize below the possible 'educational' impact of BMD postures on those modes.

### The Impact of Damage-Limiting

Deterrence depends upon some threat, and if other things – such as the perceived determination of the threatener – are equal, it would probably be true in general that increasing the threatened pain will increase the deterrence of the threatened party. But 'other things' would rarely, if ever, be equal.

The threatener will almost always be deterred in some degree from executing his own threat. Let us call this 'self-deterrence'. It may operate in some degree even when no immediate pain to the threatener ensues from executing his threat, but self-deterrence will probably be strongest in those cases, such as some possible strategic nuclear scenarios, in which it is very costly to the threatener to carry out his threat. Thus, self-deterrence will operate to reduce the actual resolve, and possibly the perceived resolve, of a threatener as the consequences – to him – of executing his threat become increasingly stark. (There is no suggestion here that this dependence is linear or in any way quantifiable.)

A good example of the effects of self-deterrence resides in the Berlin Wall crisis of 1961. It is possible to believe that the Wall would have been promptly torn down but for apprehensions over the possibilities of escalation implicit in NATO's own contingency plans for the defence of Berlin. Had these possibilities been less likely or less stark, e.g., if the defence posture was less reliant on nuclear threats, perhaps the Wall would have been torn down.

The relevance of this discussion to the impact of BMD on crisis bargaining should be apparent. It is perfectly clear that a Soviet capability for

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‘assured destruction’ of the United States is unhealthy from the point of view of American escalation assurance; it would introduce self-deterring overtones to any escalatory act considered by the United States that might couple to the nuclear level. To the extent BMD (or any other damage-limiting capabilities) would reduce Soviet capability for destruction of the United States, it would improve American escalation assurance, and to the extent that this was perceived by the Soviets, it could improve the American position in crisis bargaining.

Thus, American BMD could scarcely be bad for American escalation assurance and crisis bargaining. If we compare a posture of some American BMD with an alternative in which the country is naked to missile attacks, where it would be completely clear to everyone that the United States could not possibly derive any escalation assurance from limiting the damage of missile attacks if they occur, it is clear that some effect on crisis bargaining is certainly possible.

Whether BMD would significantly and favourably influence the evolution of plausible possible crises by this mechanism is a more delicate matter, one dependent on Soviet forces and postures, what people are on the American and Soviet scenes, how they are thinking about their forces, and so on. With foreseeable technology and force levels, no American President or Secretary of Defense can feel completely ‘assured’ in a stark confrontation with a massive Soviet strategic force, which might prove to have considerable capability of penetrating American BMD. Therefore, the expectable impact of American BMD on crisis bargaining by this mechanism is modest, though possibly significant. The mechanism considered next is probably much more significant.

## The Impact of Soviet Attitudes

The effects of damage-limiting for crisis bargaining considered above are the kind that may be significant in short-term crisis periods, and do not intrinsically depend for their significance on changes in long-term modes of thought. But the main potential impact of BMD for crisis bargaining would have been likely to depend – at least in a negative sense – on such changes.

As already noted, the Soviets have for many

years placed a great deal of emphasis on active defence. This history shows that Soviet elites are convinced that active defence constitutes a very important component of national military capabilities. And this belief in itself constitutes a most important fact. In a sense, it is irrelevant whether the belief is ‘true’ or ‘false’ (as concerns the actual outcomes of possible wars); the fact that they believe it can make it ‘true’ for them, so far as its impact on their behaviour is concerned.

Thus, if the United States had continued to abstain from BMD, while the Soviets deployed it, some Soviet leaders might well have begun thinking of the United States as missing a very important component of military capability, which they themselves possessed. This is not a habit of thought the United States should wish to inculcate in Soviet elites, to constitute part of their framework of perception at the onset of some crisis. Perhaps one could talk them out of it by repeated reference to the ability of American offensive forces to penetrate their defences; but perhaps not.

The Soviets in the past have certainly not considered themselves to be in a position strategically superior to the United States. This has probably had a good effect (for the United States) on their behaviour; in particular, it is widely believed to have been an important factor in the successful bargaining in the Cuban missile crisis. As long as the Soviets continue to think BMD important enough to justify large expenditures, for the West to have permitted indefinitely its one-sided growth would have risked eroding the Soviets’ established attitudes towards the United States and giving them some sense of strategic superiority.

In the first instance, a Soviet sense of superiority might well have some impact on Soviet-American diplomatic confrontations in non-crisis periods. Moreover, many Soviet generals, in consequence of their own attitudes towards defence, would have been likely to think of a United States without BMD as more susceptible to being ‘pushed around’ in crises than a United States with BMD. While admitting that I am here discussing sketchily the impact of subtle psychological effects which are not understood in detail, I should nevertheless claim that this conclusion is clear, and, as such things go, fairly reliable. This was perhaps the most

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important political-military reason supporting the American deployment decision.

Let us end this section by briefly considering the impact of BMD on Chinese-American confrontations. (I do not assume a context of substantial Chinese BMD deployment!) Some analysts believe that achievable American BMD systems could virtually exclude Chinese attacks for several years; the 'light' deployment selected now for the United States was publicly justified by Secretary McNamara largely on this ground. In this case the damage-limiting mechanism would operate with much greater force than in the Soviet case. As against Chinese attacks, this mechanism probably will have an educational effect on modes of thought and non-crisis behaviour; it is not likely to be an incrisis mechanism merely. That is, American leaders probably will develop different attitudes towards the Chinese than they would have if the United States did not have BMD.

## On the Likelihood of War

I have mentioned earlier that feasible BMD deployment would probably not influence the deterrence of all-out nuclear attack, deterrence that would be likely to remain 'saturated'. However, it is most unlikely that a central nuclear war (i.e., one in which the United States and the Soviet Union are exchanging strategic nuclear weapons on their homelands) would begin with such an all-out attack.

In view of the scale of the probable consequences of even a 'mild' central war, no reasonable decision-maker is going to initiate such a war on the basis of some hypothetical calculation in a non-tense period. Most strategists are convinced today that the only way a war of that kind could be started would be by a sequence of much smaller attacks which would escalate to larger ones. For example, it is not difficult to devise scenarios in which one side or the other begins by firing a single nuclear attack missile for 'demonstration' purposes, though the weapon might also have military objectives. It is at this level that BMD might have a significant influence.

It seems to some of us who have thought about this matter that decision-makers would be more reluctant to initiate such demonstration

attacks against a country defended by BMD than against one without. If only a single missile, or only a small number of missiles aimed at a small number of targets, were to be launched against a country protected by at least a moderate BMD system, there would be substantial probability that no warhead at all would penetrate. Especially if fired against area defences, the weapons would probably be intercepted so far out that few in the attacked country would know of the event except people in contact with the BMD system - presumably, of course, including the leadership. The missile or missiles might as well have been fitted with dummy warheads, and the attacked country probably could not tell whether or not they were dummies fired simply for bluff.

On the other hand, if the offence were to fire enough weapons in such a way that at least one weapon would reliably get through to its target, then there would be a very good chance that several weapons would get through and the event would no longer look so clearly like a demonstration attack. The offence would not be likely to know whether it needed to send six or a dozen or thirty missiles to penetrate reliably to a given target, and if the attack entails such numbers, it is much more likely to look like the opening salvo of a larger campaign and correspondingly more likely to trigger high-level retaliation. Therefore, in any tense situation in which some country might have employed a demonstration attack against an opponent without BMD, it would probably be more difficult to launch the attack against an opponent armed with BMD.

This is obviously not the kind of conclusion about which one can dogmatize. It is possible to devise hypothetical situations in which some individual decision-maker might be more willing to launch a demonstration attack against BMD, thinking it likely that it would fail, than he would be against an undefended opponent. However, it does seem clear that the dominant effect of significant deployment of BMD by both the Soviet Union and the United States would be to make the actual initiation of a central war more difficult. To fire missiles at a BMD screen in the expectation they would not penetrate would take a kind of 'cuteness' that is unlikely to be found in American and Soviet decision-makers, especially in a deep crisis.

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## Some Miscellaneous Issues

In this section, I shall make some brief assertions on various points which, though of major relevance, cannot be analyzed in detail here.

It would be quite possible to provide at least as much protection to the allies of the United States under a posture including BMD, such as the 'Russian freeze', as they enjoy at present. This might or might not entail the deployment of BMD on allied territory.

It has frequently been asserted in the past that BMD could be trivially nullified (for population defence) by ground bursts of enemy warheads upwind of the defended cities, unless the populace were protected by a more substantial fallout-shelter system than the one now coming into being in the United States. (Interceptor warheads themselves, being burst at high altitudes, would not contribute significantly to local fallout.) It has been clear since 1966 that an area-defence component would be included in any BMD system selected for deployment, and the one now selected is mainly an area system. For this and for several other reasons, most analysts close to the situation ceased to believe some time ago that added fallout protection is an essential prerequisite of BMD, though it may be independently desirable and could be rapidly added.

It has been argued by some (e.g., Ralph Lapp) that China will be more reckless and more difficult to deter in nuclear confrontations than the Soviet Union is or was. If this will ever be true, it will in any event not be true until the Chinese possess offensive and/or defensive forces on a scale which they cannot achieve within the time-span covered by this paper. Thus the deterrence requirements discussed in the section 'Major Arms-Race Issues' need not be modified because of China.

It has been argued by several writers, such as Elizabeth Young,¹⁴ that American and Soviet deployment of BMD is likely to signal to potential nuclear-weapon states a renewed interest in nuclear weapons on the part of the USA and the

Soviet Union, thereby making more difficult the achievement of a non-proliferation treaty and making more likely the acquisition of nuclear weapons by additional states. While some effect of this type is certainly possible, its likelihood seems to me to depend greatly on the context in which the deployment takes place and the way in which it is discussed. In particular, if the deployment had been under a 'Russian freeze' and the general aura were one of de-emphasizing strategic forces, perhaps with stabilized budgets, the effect would probably have been negligible at worst, and might even have gone in the opposite direction. Both the manner of discussing the new American BMD programme, and the impact of that programme on the problem of the further spread of nuclear weapons, remain largely to be determined. BMD has also been related to the spread of nuclear weapons by an argument that American BMD would improve the credibility of American guarantees to others. In particular, it is sometimes argued that even a very 'light' BMD system in the United States would provide substantial 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. (E.g., Mr McNamara argued so in his deployment announcement.) This may possibly be true, though I am less confident 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 of which Elizabeth Young is an exponent, it would depend on the context and on the discussion surrounding the deployment. It is conceivable that the degree of attention to Chinese capabilities implied by this theory will be counter-productive in its effects both on China and on American allies in Asia.

There are two ways in which the *détente* is related. First, it has often been said, usually without much serious thought, that BMD deployment would upset the developing *détente*. It is clear that the Soviets are not upset by their

¹⁴ For example, in 'ABM: No Alternative to Politics', in *Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists*, XXIII (June 1967), 47.

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own deployment, and surely it cannot be argued that they will be greatly upset by the United States doing likewise. It may be that some people in the United States are upset by the Soviet deployment, but this does not seem to me a sensible reaction, and it is therefore difficult to give much weight to it – especially when the people most directly involved are both very few and very intelligent, and seem to generate the reaction largely by talking to each other. Second, a more basic point sometimes raised is that the Soviets no longer threaten the United States and its allies in a manner or to the degree that would justify large American expenditures on defence. I am more respectful of this point, though it would have more force if the Soviets had not recently been substantially increasing their own strategic capabilities. But I am more interested here in choices of *allocation* between offence and defence (the ‘mix’) than with the absolute scale of all strategic forces, which, as I remarked before, could well decline. I should say here that I do not believe the United States can, will, or should permit the development of Soviet superiority in strategic forces, *détente* or no.

One of the arguments that has often been made against American deployment of BMD, more often by peace groups than by analysts, is that the populace would not be satisfied with only a modest degree of deployment, especially not one that protected some cities more than others, and partial deployment would create irresistible political pressures for

more, so that a system originally scheduled for $5 or $10 or $20 billion would ‘escalate’ to the point at which it would cost $50 or $100 billion or more. The argument is sometimes accompanied by a suggestion that we should ultimately all be obliged to live underground as a consequence of the associated civil defence requirements. This line of argument is often summarized by saying that, in matters of defence, one cannot be a ‘little bit pregnant’. This argument is so much against our experience and the evidence that I am moved to say it is utterly preposterous. Relatively few members of Congress, to say nothing of the general public, even know whether or not their home cities are protected by *Nike-Hercules* air-defence batteries. Some cities are protected, some are not, and it has been so for years. The existing batteries are not secret; there are identifying signs at the entrances to the sites and in some cases there are even signs in the surrounding area directing people to them, but the sites are not very conspicuous, and people simply do not notice them. Rather than the requirements in air defence escalating, it was our experience that it was difficult to build up to the plans originally set and to the system originally authorized. In the area of missile defence, a public opinion study conducted in the United States a few years ago found that about 70 per cent of the populace believed that the United States was *already equipped* with BMD! This indicates how much attention is likely to be paid to the deployment by the general public.

## Conclusions

It seems to me that the clearest conclusion that emerges from this analysis is that BMD is not an invention of the devil. American BMD deployment may cause problems, but they will be small if only a small number of intelligent people will think intelligently about them, instead of reacting unthinkingly to theoretical models of deterrence that were always dubious at best and now seem downright pernicious. I am, of course, referring to the idea that one must be able to kill X million enemy hostages as the keystone of a successful military policy. The world managed to survive quite well without

such capabilities until at least the mid-1950s, and it could survive quite well in the future with considerable diminution of that kind of capability if available technology permits it, as now appears to be the case.

This is not to say, however, that the American deployment decision of September 1967 was taken for the best possible reasons, or in the best possible way. Indeed, the exact opposite is more nearly the case. Mr McNamara was plainly forced into the decision by political pressures. The things he has said about BMD in the past will now make it most difficult to

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avoid the worst possible consequences of the decision. In particular, the greatest impetus to arms-race responses in offensive forces to BMD deployment unquestionably stems from his repeated and almost dogmatic insistence that such responses are so necessary as to be virtually automatic. If the Soviet Government has not yet assimilated this doctrine, it is not Mr McNamara's fault.

Somewhat in the Secretary's defence, he has tried in the relatively recent past (including the September 1967 deployment announcement) to identify the system selected for deployment as 'light' and 'Chinese-oriented', as distinguished from a 'heavy, Soviet-oriented' system which would only provide 'a strong inducement for the Soviets to vastly increase their own offensive forces'. It appears he would like to convince the Soviets that they should react strongly to the 'heavy' system but not at all to the 'light' system. It is of course possible that the Soviets may be persuaded that the difference is really that great; I personally am sceptical. For instance, it is at least possible that current Soviet missiles are mostly not more advanced in penetration capabilities than is to be expected of Chinese missiles of the mid-1970s. If so, the Soviets must either change their missiles - i.e., respond to the American BMD - or find some (perhaps considerable) reduction in what their missile force can accomplish when the BMD system is operational. It is worth noting that, when Mr McNamara speaks of overcoming Soviet BMD with American offensive forces, he refers mainly to advanced warheads for *Poseidon* and *Minuteman III* - i.e., to systems not yet deployed in the United States.

It may still be feasible to avoid the worst possible consequences of the decision, perhaps even to capitalize on it as the first step in a constructive trend in the evolution of strategic forces - whether there are to be heavier defences deployed or not. But to do so may require a good deal more intelligent thought and discussion than has yet been devoted to the problem.

It is important that discussions about these matters be held in a number of different contexts. First, the United States and the Soviet Union should be having joint discussions along the lines indicated earlier about ways to stabilize total strategic-force postures, so as to avoid any arms-race consequences of BMD deploy-

ment. (In addition to their immediate importance for the BMD problem, such discussions are important for the long-term future of arms control, to get some drawing together of strategic postures.) Second, there should be substantial discussions within the Western Alliance, both to develop a better common understanding of the political and strategic issues involved than exist at present and, if possible, to evolve a consensus on the degree of defensive emphasis that would be desirable in a total strategic-force posture.

One of the chief reasons for discussion, perhaps *the* chief reason, concerns the possible spread of nuclear weapons to additional countries. If the United States and the Soviet Union cannot find ways of stabilizing their strategic forces, and more generally of downgrading the importance of nuclear weapons, it will be difficult for other countries to abstain from acquiring them indefinitely. The super-powers should straighten out their strategic doctrine in relation to this problem without further ado, and especially before proceeding with additional deployment of BMD. (Whether they *will* do so may, unfortunately, be a different question.)

Another reason it is important to have such discussions is to provide the opportunity for the United States to have a discussion with itself. There has been extraordinarily little intelligent discussion within the United States, either inside or outside the Government, on such matters as the roles active defence can play in a strategic posture and on ways of evolving suitably stable strategic-force postures with the Soviets in such a way as to be in our mutual interests.

On most intellectual issues on nuclear strategy, the Soviets have lagged behind, and have learned from, the West. On the particular matter of active defence as a component of a strategic posture, it seems to me that the Soviets have stolen a march on the West. I believe they have been correct in perceiving that BMD can, on balance, provide an important contribution to their own posture, and I believe that it could be an equally important contribution to the West. Some important elements in major Western governments have not yet perceived this. If intelligently managed, BMD can even be a contribution in the joint interests of both East and West. It is time for us to begin to think more seriously about these possibilities.

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# BMD and European Perspectives

JOHAN J. HOLST

## Scope and Context

This paper examines the possible nature and direction of West European reactions to the deployment of BMD by the Soviet Union and the United States. Such attempts at prediction are by definition conjectural and uncertain.¹ A multitude of factors will influence the relative importance of the various considerations involved. Generalizations may be largely meaningless, and we shall therefore have to make explicit, for example, our assumptions in regard to such variables as the magnitude and structure of the deployment in question, the degree of reciprocation, the political and military circumstances attending the deployment decisions, the general nature of European expectations concerning the short-term evolution of the European polity, and the arms-control context.

It is unlikely that anything resembling a single 'European' attitude towards BMD issues will emerge either within the various European countries or as a concerted reaction from European governments. It should also be noted that governments do not perceive the implications of major military hardware decisions solely or even primarily in terms of cost-effectiveness or 'macro-strategic' calculations. The political reactions to BMD issues will depend largely on how the various governments expect BMD to influence their own aspirations and predicament. In regard to issues where the implications are ambiguous, we should expect the political interpretations to be influenced as much by

established images and prejudices – or even various degrees of ignorance – as by strategic assessments of BMD as military systems. It is worth noting that, for many small and middle powers, major foreign policy interests are regionally defined, a state of affairs which may cause them to entertain different priorities and foci from those which structure the global interests of the super-powers. Since international politics cannot be understood outside a context of human reactions and calculations, any objective analysis must take account of the subjective considerations that are likely to influence the behaviour and interpretations of governments.

BMD issues have so far received only little attention in Europe, and there appears to be a widespread opinion that BMD would have adverse impacts on the stability of the strategic balance, the intensity of the arms race, the level of diplomatic tension, the cohesion of the Atlantic Alliance, the political mobility of the middle and small powers, etc. Some of these conclusions may be reasonable in a wide range of circumstances, but the issues are so complex and pervasive that analytical insight rather than axiomatic suppositions should guide us. BMD issues will certainly affect Europe in many ways. The critical question is how. For Europeans it is important to complete their homework in this area in terms of evaluating the implications of BMD and establishing the European interests at stake. This would also seem to constitute one of the prerequisites for being able to influence the decisions and priorities of the United States in regard to BMD.

This paper is focused on the issues stemming from the installation of BMD systems in the Soviet Union and the United States. It does not

¹ The United States does not possess an operational BMD system today. It is unclear to what extent the Soviet system is operational, in parts or in toto, at this stage. We know for certain only that decisions have been made to deploy limited systems. This paper will discuss also the impact of possible extensive deployments in the future.

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address itself to the feasibility or implications
of BMD systems deployed for the direct defence
of Western Europe or particular countries in

that region. This limitation of focus is solely a
matter of convenience and does not reflect any
views of mine on BMD in Europe.

## The Detente, Stability, and the Arms Race

It is reasonable to expect Europeans to react adversely to any BMD deployment if this were perceived as inhibiting progress towards a European settlement and an East-West détente. BMD might be considered an impediment if it served to destabilize the strategic relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States and accelerate the arms race of the super-powers. If one assumes for the time being that BMD could produce instability and intensify the arms race, the fact that the Russians rather than the Americans were the first to initiate the new round in the arms race will have considerable bearing on the political repercussions on relations between the United States and her European allies. It is now evident that the Russians have initiated the deployment of some missile defences, although the magnitude of the deployment is still obscure. On 18 September 1967, Mr McNamara announced his decision to initiate a light BMD deployment ostensibly against the expected Chinese missile threat in the early 1970s. In a comparative perspective, such a moderate American BMD deployment may have a symmetrical quality which to many will seem reasonable. In fact an American response which was asymmetrical, in the sense of only emphasizing quantitative and qualitative offensive-force augmentations, might look much more like an arms-race response than the acquisition of some BMD.

This, of course, is not to say that European support is forthcoming for the moderate American BMD 'response' to the Soviet BMD deployment. The repeated statements of Mr McNamara and others of American strategic superiority (aimed primarily at an American audience but inevitably overheard by others) make it incumbent upon the American authorities to demonstrate in a reasonable fashion that the Soviet BMD acquisition has in fact cut significantly into that superiority or even changed the situation.² Many Europeans might also tend to feel that BMD technology is still

at a sufficiently volatile stage to make it imprudent to commit large resources at this point, when a later commitment might increase the relative advantages of the later-comer and radically transform the strategic confrontation in the direction of making defence ascendancy a more realistic option.

The impact of the American decision in favour of BMD would presumably be less politically unsettling in an atmosphere of cautious but not very specific expectations for a European settlement than in a situation in which such a decision is believed to eliminate particular and salient opportunities for progress in that direction. The present situation seems to fall squarely within the former category. It also seems likely that expectations for the conclusion of a satisfactory European settlement are not uniformly distributed among the countries in Western Europe. Hence it is possible that BMD acquisition by the United States could have a polarizing effect on divergences within NATO, with, for example, Germany supporting the United States, and Britain, Scandinavia, and the Netherlands assuming the role of the critics. These divergences may create different lines of cleavage in that a BMD world might accentuate the differences between the United States and the other nuclear powers in Europe. We shall revert to this issue later.

It is no doubt true that the stabilization of the Soviet-American strategic relationship in the 1960s contributed to the greater freedom of political manoeuvre which is currently enjoyed by the countries in Western and Eastern Europe. It is not at all clear, however, that this condition is necessary and least of all sufficient to provide for a further development of polycentric

² I am not questioning the reality of American strategic superiority; I merely take exception to the all too frequent calculations of intercontinental missile quantities as a measure of the strategic balance, calculations that ignore asymmetries in deliverable megatonnage, alliance commitments, target structures, strategic doctrines, vulnerability, etc.

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flexibility. Economic prosperity, industrial revitalization, troubles in other areas of the world, the *entideologisierung* of Soviet objectives, are among other important contributing factors, and are largely independent of the Soviet-American strategic relationship. It could even be argued that uncertainties, deriving from BMD developments, regarding the continued stability of that relationship may make the super-powers more intent on working out acceptable solutions in Europe, so as to reduce the chances of a major war being triggered by tensions arising from the present division of Germany.

The Soviet leadership seems intent on obtaining some reasonable assurances against the emergence of a nuclear and hostile Germany. They may not expect BMD *per se* to slow down the feared process of nuclear proliferation, but they may expect BMD to provide some measure of protection against its consequences should proliferation actually occur. Hence it is not totally inconceivable that the Russians would be more willing to discuss settlements in Europe – including some forms of German reunification – in an environment in which BMD promised to reduce the vulnerability of the Soviet heartland to possible threats from a major nuclear power in Western Europe. In any case it is not easy to see how Soviet (and American) BMD acquisition would work against any Soviet interest in accommodation in Europe, except in the event that BMD acquisition resulted in an *unexpected* acceleration of the arms race.

We must now look at the argument that BMD would have a destabilizing influence on the strategic environment. Instability might in principle result from a variety of interactions. According to one common argument, BMD would stimulate the Russo-American arms competition and thus by feedback exacerbate political tensions. We could imagine several kinds of arms races characterized by defence-defence and/or defence-offence and offence-defence interactions.

The arms-race argument against BMD may be predicated on the assumption that such systems would introduce an unsettling element of uncertainty in the strategic equation, particularly because BMD gives primary importance to qualitative assessments, whereas more straightforward quantitative calculations are

presumed to dominate in the comparison of offensive-force postures. It is probably going to prove difficult to assess the true effectiveness of BMD systems by observing their external characteristics, and military planners may consequently be presumed to exhibit a tendency towards over-reaction when responding to the adversary's BMD by offensive-force adjustments. That tendency is reinforced by the fact that the powers are always responding to what the adversary might have some five or more years in the future. Mr McNamara has expressed very vividly the kind of arms-race interactions which his priorities seem bound to produce:

> ... there are certain gaps in our knowledge of the Soviet Union's capabilities and intentions. We don't know whether they are deploying the *Galosh* missile only around Moscow; we don't know whether the other system is partially an ABM system or wholly an ABM system. And I tell you, frankly, I don't care. ... The important point ... is that it doesn't make a bit of difference to me in deciding what I must recommend to you. ... This is the truth because I believe that for planning purposes we must assume the Soviets are going to deploy ABMs all over the Soviet Union. Moreover, I say this: We must assume that they are going to deploy a very sophisticated ABM system all over the Soviet Union. I make two assumptions in coming to my judgment as to what we should do: (1) There is going to be a nation-wide deployment in the Soviet Union, and (2) it is going to be a highly sophisticated system. Therefore, I am buying offensive forces on those two assumptions. In fact, I believe that neither one of those assumptions is going to hold over time. The Soviets are probably going to do less than what I have assumed for planning purposes. Therefore, as a result of our offsetting actions the Soviets will be worse off than if they had never started to deploy an ABM system in the first place.³

In fact it does seem that any joint arrangement for managing the arms race would presuppose a certain congruity in the Soviet and American images of the requirements of deterrence and defence. At present the images are still as incongruent as were their images of how nuclear war might be initiated during the 1958 talks on surprise attack.

Perhaps another seriously destabilizing effect

³ Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, *Hearings on Military Posture and a Bill* (HR 9240), Washington, D.C., 1967, pp. 429-30.

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of the uncertainties associated with BMD is the opportunity it affords for propagandistic manipulation. Radical claims could be made about the effectiveness of one's own BMD in the expectation of extracting political concessions, or about that of the adversary in order to justify higher defence efforts. However, one could also imagine decelerating interactions, whereby BMD offered opportunities for a strategic-force balance at substantially lower levels of effort than are presently exerted. In this connection it is not inevitable that the Russians will perceive the American BMD as a threatening capability requiring increased offensive-force build-ups. In fact they have been arguing quite consistently that defensive forces in their view are not destabilizing.

Mr McNamara has indicated that at substantial levels of population damage it may be relatively cheaper to reduce the number of one's own casualties in a war by active defences than to increase those of the adversary by offensive-force augmentations. Thus the stability argument activates the question of how much damage capacity is needed for deterrence, and – for Western Europe – what margin of American superiority in terms of damage-inflicting potential (if any) is needed in order to extend reliable guarantees to the European members of NATO. Is it possible to envisage stable strategic relationships based on lower levels of assured-destruction capabilities given reciprocal improvements in damage-limitation potentials?

The arms-race argument, furthermore, assumes a pattern of Soviet-American mutual responsiveness in strategic-force policies which is not incontestable. In fact it may be argued that Soviet decisions in regard to the composition of the strategic forces – rather than the absolute magnitude of the military effort – have not been particularly responsive to American allocations but have rather constituted the products of indigenous bargaining among conflicting service and doctrinal interests in the Soviet decision-making structure. In such a situation it is not necessarily wise to tell the Russians about the necessity of responding offensively to defence-force deployments if ‘education’ is needed in order to make them behave according to the defence-offence arms-race model. It appears to be the case that the Russians are at present pursuing a course involving BMD acquisition

as well as a substantial augmentation of their strategic offensive forces. Assuming that the Russians are interested in a *détente* in Europe, they do not appear to perceive a contradiction between the attainment of that objective and their current strategic-force policy. (The assumption may, of course, be wrong, in which case the *détente* argument in relation to BMD becomes largely irrelevant.)

There is also the argument that population protection by means of BMD might tend to make the super-powers less cautious in a crisis, on the presumption that the ability to absorb and limit the damage from the nuclear attacks of an adversary would substantially affect the risk calculations. The argument appears to be somewhat tenuous for several reasons. The kind of BMD systems which may be installed in the short run are not able to provide immunity against nuclear attacks from a substantial nuclear power. Hence commitments in a crisis could hardly be made with impunity. Actually the existence of BMD might strengthen the capacity for crisis management by providing some insurance against catalytic actions by third powers and against automatic escalation should nuclear weapons be used. The political and psychological inhibitions against any first use of nuclear weapons would probably constitute a dominating factor in any major international crisis, particularly in view of the shared interest in erecting barriers against nuclear proliferation (such barriers are likely to include a tradition of non-use).

Finally, BMD could exert a destabilizing influence if it were to give substantial advantages to first-strike rather than second-strike strategies. In this connection some Europeans have argued that BMD might favour first-strike initiatives by virtue of being more effective against a retaliatory strike from a power whose forces and command centres had been disrupted than against a well-co-ordinated first strike. The BMD of the first-strike party would allegedly also have the advantage of being on the alert. In this sense, of course, there would always be a relative advantage associated with the first initiative. The question here is whether the advantage is substantial enough to make a difference in the choice between war and peace.

Mr McNamara, in his 1967 Posture Statement, has provided us with some figures which throw

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light on the problem (see Table 2, p. 5, in Mr Brennan's paper). According to his calculations, in an all-out exchange in which the Soviet Union struck the first blow, American prompt fatalities could be reduced from a total of 120 million without BMD to 40 or 30 million, respectively, for two different postures including BMD, and assuming that the Russians decide not to spend money on their offensive forces for the purpose of offsetting the American BMD. Under the same assumptions, American casualties would decrease from 100 to 30 or 20 million, respectively, in the event that the United States should strike first. The absolute fatality reductions are substantial. The important observation to make here, however, is that the difference in American casualties between the case when the United States strikes first and the case when we assume a second strike is 10 million, which is 10 million less than the difference in the undefended case! If we assume the Soviet Union to react with offensive-force augmentations up to a point where the cost-exchange ratio⁴ equals unity, the difference between the American fatalities in the case of an American first strike and a second strike is 30 million, but now the absolute numbers are 120 or 90 million respectively. (Note that in the latter case they would have been 100 million in the undefended case.)

Hence, on the basis of currently available evidence,⁵ there does not seem to be much of a case for the contention that BMD would produce pre-emptive instabilities. Secondly, it is hardly inevitable that the Russians would feel compelled to react to American BMD deployment by augmenting their offensive forces to the point where the cost-exchange ratio equals unity. (It is even harder to understand why the Americans should be so compelled in the face of Soviet BMD, given their present force structure.) If they felt the need to react they might reasonably estimate that an assured destruction against,

⁴ See Mr Brennan's paper, p. 6, for the definition of this term.

⁵ It should be noted that Mr McNamara's figures constitute illustrations only; they do not provide predictions about actual war outcomes. The American Secretary of Defense has made this clear by stating that the data 'are highly sensitive to small changes in the pattern of attack and small changes in force levels'.

e.g., one-fourth of the American population (i.e. 50 million) was sufficient. In this case their extra expenditures on offensive forces would, according to Mr McNamara's calculations, be limited to one-fourth of the American BMD expenditures. From an American point of view the expected increase in damage limitation (50 million saved) may seem valuable enough to warrant the extra expenditures on defence forces. In regard to the alert argument, it is rather unlikely that the difference between normal alert status and crisis alert will be operationally very significant owing to the rapid mobilization capabilities of such systems. Furthermore, a surprise attack out of the blue is only one, and hardly the most likely one, of a whole spectrum of hypothetical contingencies influencing the design and scale of force postures. A wide spectrum of nuclear wars may be preceded by tension which would permit the alerting of forces.

The developments in offensive-force technology, particularly the prospective introduction of high-accuracy multiple warheads, could pose a counterforce threat against which hard-point BMD could have a re-stabilizing effect. The limited American deployment which was announced by Mr McNamara includes close-in *Spartan* defence of the perimeter radars (PAR) as well as the *Minuteman* force in the north-western parts of the United States. Such a deployment may very well look less provocative to the Russians than alternative responses such as the procurement of mobile land-based ICBMs and increased numbers of submarine-launched missiles. An American hard-point defence does not add to the American first-strike potential, nor does it significantly affect the Soviet assured-destruction capabilities. Developments in high-acceleration interceptors and large-aperture, phased-array radars may promise to make a terminal point defence of retaliatory vehicles an increasingly effective option. Such a system would constitute additional hardening of the second-strike forces against the offsetting developments in offensive accuracy and coverage and hence be considered highly desirable by Europeans as well, since their security is also dependent on the survivability of the American deterrent.

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## Hegemony and Political Mobility

From the point of view of the middle and small powers in Europe, one of the most important considerations might well be the anticipated impact of BMD on their political freedom of action in the international arena. It is frequently asserted that BMD would tend to re-establish a system of strict bipolarity based on super-power dominance. Sometimes the argument is carried even further in predicting the transformation of a counterpoised hegemony into a Soviet-American condominium aimed at regulating the international system.

Relatively effective hard-point defences of strategic offensive forces might, it is argued above, serve to stabilize the strategic balance. Such a development might further contribute towards decoupling a wide area of international politics from the influence of the strategic nuclear balance. The fear of inadvertent escalation to nuclear warfare would tend to diminish in the calculations of the decision-makers. Hence BMD might in fact corrode the hegemonic position of the super-powers to the extent that that dominance is associated with their nuclear capabilities.

Area defences for populations could, however, serve to make the societies of the super-powers less vulnerable to nuclear attack than those of the other powers in the international system. (They would, though, constitute more likely targets.) This state of affairs might reduce fear on the part of the super-powers of catalytic triggers and inadvertent escalation to central war, and hence erode some of the present restraints on intervention. It could also provide incentives for indirect deterrence (proxy deterrence), whereby the allies of the opposing super-powers are kept as nuclear hostages.⁶ There is likely to be a definite asymmetry in this area, since it is hard to imagine the United States pursuing such a strategy of deterrence vis-à-vis the Soviet Union via Eastern Europe. It would be incompatible with the policy of

peaceful engagement in Eastern Europe and would probably cause considerable internal dissension in the United States. The presumed interest in preventing nuclear proliferation might also militate against such developments which seem bound to stimulate the incentives for independent nuclear forces by assigning to nuclear weapons a central role as arbiters of international affairs. It should be noted also that BMD as it is at present contemplated would be far from being able to provide absolute immunity against nuclear attack from a major nuclear power. The damages incurred in a nuclear exchange would continue to be sufficiently disastrous for the decision-makers in the Soviet Union and the United States to assign top priority to avoiding the calamity. We have been discussing marginal trends rather than major shifts in the international system.

The argument about Russo-American condominium begs the question of what consensus on values would uphold the common endeavour. We can easily imagine a variety of fields where a mutuality of interest would cut across the incompatibility of basic world outlooks. Such areas would include the prevention of nuclear war and nuclear proliferation. However, what would constitute a compatible world in American eyes is sufficiently incongruent with the Russian outlook to make a Soviet-American global condominium highly unlikely.

From the point of view of the potential nuclear powers, BMD might look like a means for the reaffirmation of super-power dominance in the sense that it might nullify the threats from smaller nuclear powers against the super-powers. BMD would, so to speak, raise the entrance fee for great-power status, and would possibly be resented for that reason by certain European countries. Other European states might regard such impacts as a virtue of the system. We shall revert to the arms-control implications of BMD below.

It is not at all clear that the French Force de Dissuasion is designed to elevate France to the level of a super-power. The primary motives behind the Force are most likely to be found on the political rather than the military level

⁶ The limited anti-Chinese deployment which the United States will initiate and a Soviet deployment of similar scale would probably not affect the security of the European countries directly. We are discussing here the impact of hypothetical extensive deployments.

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of considerations. The Force may be viewed, *inter alia*, as a symbol of the restoration of French self-respect, assertiveness, and prestige. As such a symbol, it may have contributed to the reconciliation of a disillusioned army and an embattled political system, *in via* towards a new sense of national purpose and pride. Whether it is a necessary adjunct of French diplomacy – it is certainly not a sufficient foundation thereof – is not a question which admits of definitive answers. From a policy perspective which emphasizes the ephemeral nature of political alignments, the Force may very well be perceived as a necessary hedge against political uncertainties.

How would Soviet BMD influence the French calculations concerning the efficacy of the Force? The question is not an easy one to answer, since it is unclear what the underlying assumptions would be. How effective must the Force be in terms of its expected penetration capabilities in order to compete successfully for continued funds in the French decision-making process? At present it consists exclusively of manned bombers (a total of 62 *Mirage IV-As* have been ordered), which are confronted with an impressive (as such things go) Soviet air-defence system. The French deterrence calculations are apparently based on what we might call 'residual uncertainty': i.e., the Force is believed to be large enough and sufficiently sophisticated to present to the Russians an unacceptable risk of unacceptable damage. That argument could presumably also be made in favour of a French missile force confronting a Soviet BMD system. The French force is scheduled to consist of 25-30 SSBS missiles (Sol-Sol Balistique Stratégique) by 1970, with the addition of 48 submarine-based MSBS (Mer-Sol Balistique Stratégique) by 1974. It does not appear likely that a Soviet BMD system could with confidence deny such a force some access to some key urban targets on which it might be concentrated.⁷ Whether the residual

uncertainty is large enough to deter the Russians would depend partly on the stakes of the conflict and the political environment in which it is staged.

Today it is rather unlikely that the Russians need to be deterred from attacking France, and even if they do, the probability of American intervention is most certainly viewed as unacceptably high in Moscow. The conclusion is much less obvious if we postulate a conflict in which the Soviet Union is confronting France as the protector of Western Europe for high stakes and with high confidence in American abstention. To the extent that the perceived utility of the French force derives from its prospective growth into a credible deterrent in such a contingency, BMD may be expected to interfere significantly with the realism of the prospects. We should note also that Soviet BMD might generate European interest in the acquisition of, e.g., advanced cruise missiles as substitute strategic delivery vehicles. It is also conceivable that BMD might serve as a stimulant for a European deterrent which could constitute a force of sufficient magnitude and quality (advanced penetration capabilities) to deter either of the two super-powers sheltering behind screens of BMD. Incidentally, such a development might be anti-proliferatory in its impact, not only because it would tend to eliminate the participating European countries as potential proliferators but also because it would set a standard concerning the requisite size of a nuclear power which would not admit of widespread emulation.

⁷ In the case of an extensive Soviet BMD deployment, the French may be motivated to extend the life of their sophisticated bomber force. It is generally considered that the French missiles will be technologically superior to the Chinese ICBMs in the early 1970s. France would, however, need to have a substantial penetration- aids programme, as well as to develop techniques for salvo attacks, etc. Present BMD technology is very good against single re-entry vehicles or a small number of them (as the American *Zeus* tests show).

## The Future of NATO

Another critical area of inquiry would be the implications of BMD for the future structure of the Atlantic Alliance. Would extensive BMD

have an integrating or a disintegrating influence on the alliance, or would the influence in this realm be negligible? Here we are dealing,

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not with measurable quantitative relationships, but rather with political perceptions and expectations.

If one assumes a moderate to large BMD deployment in the United States, including a substantial area defence, those whose preferences are structured by Atlantic perspectives might expect the American deployment to increase the credibility and reliability of the American guarantee to Europe. This perception is based on the calculation that American willingness to honour the guarantees will grow as the United States is able to limit the damage from Soviet retaliation. Hence BMD might be seen as strengthening the alliance by adding to the potency of the American guarantee. This argument does, however, carry the implicit admission that the guarantee is at present in need of being strengthened if it is to remain credible and reliable. By the same line of reasoning, an extensive Russian BMD deployment may make the threat which the United States could mobilize on the part of her allies look less impressive than the more the Soviet system promised to reduce the damage of any American retaliation. Hence, a bilateral BMD deployment might on balance also be perceived as reducing the effectiveness of extended deterrence. However, the assumption underlying the above arguments is not necessarily a reasonable one. American willingness to come to the rescue of a Europe subjected to Russian attack will depend, surely, not so much on American casualty calculations as on the community of values and interests which holds the alliance together. The argument that, in an actual crisis, American decision-makers will undergo an instant re-education with respect to the importance of casualty calculations cannot be dismissed, but it is still difficult to imagine that they will ever think of their relationship with Western Europe in terms of any specific casualty-tolerance level.

The introduction of substantial and effective BMD for population protection could serve to differentiate substantially between the security mechanisms of the two super-powers and those of their allies. The security of the United States, for example, might in principle become heavily dependent on direct *defence*, while that of Europe rested on dependent (i.e. American) *deterrence*. In such a world the super-powers might develop incentives for deterrence by

proxy, to the detriment of the countries in Western Europe, who would understandably resent developments assigning to them the roles of client states at the mercy of American good will and Soviet good behaviour. (The Soviet Union has, of course, for a long time structured her strategic forces for a posture of proxy deterrence, primarily emphasizing threats against Western Europe as well as intercontinental threats against the United States.) Such developments might tend to freeze the political confrontation in Europe and hence counteract the hopes for European reunification and *détente*. Alternatively, the European states might perceive pressures for accommodation in such a situation and become willing to make substantial concessions in order to get their cities off the nuclear hook.

Those who question the sufficiency of the current American guarantee may focus on the differential in the vulnerability of the American and European populations to Soviet attack, a differential which BMD might tend to re-emphasize. (This argument applies to city defence and not to strategic-force defences.) The United States would be acquiring an option which remained unavailable to her European partners. Hence, to some, BMD might conceivably look like an expression of American neo-isolationism – a return to Fortress America based on self-defence without entanglements.

We see, then, that the interpretations of the implications of BMD for Europe and NATO may point in quite different directions. The conclusions which will be drawn probably depend first of all on the existing images in Europe of the nature and development of the Atlantic Alliance. At this point, however, certain modifications to this rather stark confrontation of incompatible perspectives should be introduced. Both perspectives are predicated on the assumption that strategic nuclear threats constitute the dominating factor in the security positions of the European states in NATO. That, I would venture, is not an indisputable assumption. Furthermore, the logic of the arguments is expressed in absolute terms, which hardly correspond with the probable state of the world. As already stated, the kinds of BMD systems which the super-powers might deploy within the foreseeable future

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would be very far from providing absolute invulnerability. The United States and the Soviet Union would still be in a position to inflict upon each other damage of a magnitude that reasonable men may be expected to find unacceptable. There would be no immunity for the super-powers even in a BMD world. We would still be living in a world of some deterrence, even though active defences might play an important role in damage limitation should deterrence fail. Deterrence would presumably remain sufficiently strong to constitute an effective barrier against the use of any nuclear weapons against anybody. Hence it is certainly arguable that BMD need not significantly affect the European exposure to nuclear threats. The multiplicity of restraining elements in the Soviet-American strategic balance, and the common interest in excluding the use of nuclear weapons from the realm of international politics, would probably cancel out quite significantly whatever marginal truth may lie in the above arguments about the opportunities and limits of extended deterrence.

We have already observed that a Soviet BMD deployment might, under certain assumptions, tend to reduce the perceived efficacy of smaller nuclear forces like those which Britain and France are likely to possess in the short run. What would be the impact of such a development on intra-alliance relationships in the West? It is certainly arguable that a BMD neutralization of the small deterrents might reduce the British and French influence in Washington to the extent that that influence is tied up with those countries' national nuclear forces, which the Americans cannot ignore (and clearly have not ignored) in their contingency planning. Even a marginal loss of Franco-British bargaining power could cause a substantial redistribution of power and influence in NATO. British and French bargaining power is important also from the point of view of the smaller states, whose interests are best served

by an alliance in which the distribution of bargaining power permits diversity rather than enforces conformity.⁸

Should the French Government persist in its policy of maintaining an independent deterrent in an environment where its impotence vis-à-vis the Soviet Union is generally perceived, the force might come to look more like a potentially anti-German vehicle or an instrument for the insurance of French ascendancy in Europe. We need not belabour the political effects of such perspectives. These potential implications are, of course, predicated on the assumption that France and Britain would be unable to bear the costs of an adequate penetration-aids programme for their missiles. That assumption is not necessarily reasonable. Furthermore, the United States would perhaps be motivated to capitalize on her allies' interests in penetration technology to bargain for the kind of strategic co-ordination which was at one time sacrificed for the still-born MLF project.

It is certainly true that in many ways BMD would complicate defence planning for the alliance. Because BMD activates so many fundamental strategic issues it constitutes both an opportunity and a danger for the alliance. The danger lies in the possibility of a wider disparity between the United States and Western Europe in regard to having access to relevant information and participation in planning about nuclear weapons. However, because the strategic implications of BMD are so pervasive, it might constitute a very useful issue on which to concentrate efforts at joint planning and discussion. A good beginning seems to have been made in the Nuclear Planning Group, but more permanent arrangements will probably have to be found for the working level at which the detailed elements of the complex texture are examined and evaluated.

⁸ Some of the small states may, however, be more willing to concede priority to preventing any nuclear proliferation than some of the middle powers.

## The Arms-Control Context

For many Europeans, particularly in Scandinavia, Britain, and the Netherlands, the impact of BMD on current arms control negotiations

and arrangements, as well as on the prospects for future progress towards arms control, would constitute a very important factor. It can

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certainly be predicted that any abrogation of
the limited nuclear test-ban treaty for purposes
of increasing knowledge about exo-atmospheric
radiation effects would encounter severe critic-
ism from several West European governments.
The same prediction would hold if it appeared
that the prospects for a complete test ban
collided with a Russo-American interest in
underground testing for BMD warhead develop-
ments. Opposition to BMD would probably
also mount if the deployment of such systems
were perceived to reduce the chances of a
non-proliferation treaty by ignoring the non-
nuclear powers' demand for great-power counter-
parts. In this realm BMD might indeed work
against détente and the political drive for arms
control as a regulating mechanism in inter-
national society. Much would here appear to
depend on the possible Soviet-American dis-
cussions about strategic-force postures. So far,
however, President Johnson's initiative does not
seem to have proceeded beyond the stage of
talk about talks. It is of course possible that
the super-power contacts would lead to some
kind of restructured force postures, in which
BMD might be seen as playing a constructive
role also from an arms-control perspective. But
if they did not, BMD might alter the temper
and direction of current diplomacy and propel
it into a new phase of uncertainty about arms
control.

It seems reasonable to assume that adverse
European reactions to American BMD deploy-
ment will be least strong if the implementation
of the deployment is gradual rather than a
major crash effort. Other considerations would, of
course, influence reactions as well, such as
beliefs about the American effort to head off
a new round in the strategic arms race. However,
even the small ostensibly anti-Chinese deploy-
ment may encounter substantial criticism,
since it will beg the question whether the embryo
is not going to grow into a full-fledged system
against the Soviet Union once the United
States has become BMD-pregnant. Such a
reaction need not reflect distrust in the sincerity
of American decision-makers so much as
anxiety about how the issue will evolve in the
future political climate.

It should be emphasized that the official
American view of China is not widely shared in
Europe. It is noteworthy, however, that Mr

McNamara, in the speech in which he announced
his BMD decision, implied an image of a rational
and cautious China. The American deployment
decision was made for 'marginal' and 'pruden-
tial' reasons. Mr McNamara said that it would
be 'insane and suicidal' for China to attack
the United States, but that 'one can conceive
conditions under which China might miscal-
culate'.⁹ Later he amplified his reasoning by
stressing the need to protect, for example, against
the contingency of the Chinese acting under pre-
emptive pressures in a crisis due to the vulner-
ability of their force.¹⁰ The Assistant Secretary
of Defense for International Security Affairs,
Mr Paul C. Warnke, has given expression to a
view of China that most Europeans would find
reasonable:

We see no reason to conclude that the Chinese are
any less cautious than the rulers of other nations
that have nuclear weapons. Nor do we believe that
Peking is at all ignorant of the effects of nuclear
weapons. On the contrary, we believe that the
Chinese leaders understand the devastation which
the use of nuclear weapons by China could bring
to the mainland of China itself. Indeed the Chinese
have shown a disposition to act cautiously, and to
avoid any military clash with the United States
that could lead to nuclear war.¹¹

There would presumably be innumerable ways
in which a China bent on blowing up some
American cities could find ways of doing so
that would not be covered by BMD protection.
Actually, a limited area defence may come to be
seen as a necessary protection for the super-
powers in the context of a world *en route* towards
greater multipolarity. Such deployments could
increase the uncertainties in the minds, for
instance, of Chinese decision-makers about
American behaviour and thus motivate them in
favour of caution. Such perceptions could also
cause countries like India and Japan to regard
American BMD as an implicit guarantee
against Chinese nuclear violence in the rest of

⁹ Address before United Press International Editors and
Publishers, San Francisco, 18 September 1967, News
Release, Office of Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public
Affairs), No. 868/67, p. 21.

¹⁰ See interview with Mr McNamara, 'Defense Fantasy
Now Comes True', *Life*, 29 September 1967, p. 28A.

¹¹ Address before the Advocates Club, Detroit, 6 October
1967, News Release, Office of the Assistant Secretary
of Defense (Public Affairs), No. 950/67, p. 8.

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Asia. The problems compound, however, when such guarantees are given explicit formulation.

The American decision to deploy a thin-area BMD system against China may, however, also be interpreted as another indication of the presumed priority of Asia in American foreign policy. To the extent that an anti-China BMD is expected to exacerbate tension between Washington and Moscow - because the Russians will view the system as directed also against themselves (which is true), or because it will strengthen the BMD lobby in the Kremlin - the United States might become vulnerable to the criticism of buying herself security against China at the expense of European security. An actual threat from China in the form of a sizeable ballistic missile force is still several years in the future. Many Europeans might therefore argue that the Americans could well afford to wait and see where China is heading, since American BMD systems could presumably be deployed with shorter lead-times than Chinese ICBMs. However, intelligence estimation is a sticky business, and the lead-times may be far from comfortable from a point in time when the United States could reckon with some precision the actual time schedule and magnitude of the Chinese ICBM effort.

It is sometimes argued that BMD could dissuade other non-nuclear powers from going nuclear because it would raise the entrance fee for any state aspiring to a capability to threaten the super-powers with nuclear weapons. It is, however, all too obvious that many of the nuclear aspirants would want the weapons in order to deal with regional security problems rather than to achieve equal status with the super-powers. Similarly, the argument that the American BMD deployment might dissuade China from developing ICBM capabilities is unlikely to carry much credence in Europe. There is still a widespread feeling in Europe that China must somehow be reintegrated into the international community, from which she has too long been estranged and in which she is bound to play a major role. It might be argued that the Chinese demand for great-power status is fairly inelastic so that any increased price would tend primarily to reduce the resources which the Chinese could allocate to other purposes such as economic growth and

consumer-goods production. Such a diversion of resources may not necessarily produce a less belligerent attitude in Peking. The image of unpredictable and extremist hooliganism projected by the events of the Cultural Revolution, and the possibility of disintegration and warlordism in a country with nuclear weapons, may, however, come to change a lot of views about policies towards China.

I suspect that the Americans may find it hard to convince Europeans generally about the necessity and advisability of deploying an anti-Chinese system in order to strengthen the credibility of the American guarantees to the non-nuclear Asian powers. Much will probably depend on the expressed preferences of the Asians themselves. It is quite conceivable that the American deployment will prove counterproductive in the sense that it will magnify, rather than minimize, the importance of the Chinese threat in the eyes of India and Japan. The result could be increased incentives for proliferation or even tendencies in the direction of Japanese neutralism and Indian disintegration. The American insurance against Chinese ICBMs might also cause the Chinese to put greater emphasis on shorter-range missiles covering the major American allies (potential and actual) in Asia.

From the point of view of China, an American BMD system will extend in time the American ability to threaten China with a credible first strike. The fact that the prospective American BMD deployment was *expressis verbis* identified as an anti-China measure may tend to reconfirm Chinese assumptions about incompatible hostility and hence slow down China's reconciliation with the international community. There is also the danger that emphasizing American nuclear preponderance in Asia may cause other Asian countries to abrogate their responsibilities for building up the requisite conventional forces for local resistance. The latter would seem a vital component in the infrastructure of a stable Asian political system.

While, no doubt, the Europeans would in principle favour an American posture which provided credible guarantees against Chinese nuclear blackmail and attack against other Asian countries, I suspect that the process of spelling out and implementing such guarantees may generate considerable apprehension in

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Europe. It would probably be feared that the United States would underwrite the policies of certain countries in such a wide range of contingencies that these countries would pursue their national policies with less caution, thereby increasing the chances that the United States and her European allies would become embroiled in a major war. Experiences from NATO would probably suggest to many that the problem of extending credible guarantees is an extremely complex one, even in the context of an organized alliance. The offer of assurances frequently generates demands for spelling out the operational nature of the guarantee in a wide range of circumstances of varying plausibility. The offer of assurances may indeed increase the perceived need for protection, and ultimately the very process of spelling out workable arrangements may generate incentives for nuclear autarchy.

It should perhaps be pointed out that Western Europe is closer to China in terms of potential missile trajectories than is the United States or, for that matter, than are the big cities of southern Australia. In a situation in which China had acquired an operational ICBM capability, a recognition of Europe's vulnerability to the Chinese nuclear potential might change the outlook of Europeans. The political conclusion which would be drawn from such a situation would presumably depend rather critically on the extent to which European interests and those of China were at cross-purposes and in active conflict in Asia. In the short run the majority of European governments will probably argue the case for moderating Chinese objectives and behaviour by attempting to integrate her into the international community. The uncertainties about the eventual outcome of the Cultural Revolution could also be mobilized in

favour of a wait-and-see approach to China.

The press reactions in Western Europe, Canada, India, and Australia (I have not had a chance to read Japanese commentaries yet) have generally been critical of the American BMD decision. Most of the commentaries focus on the danger of an acceleration of the arms race in terms which are not only accidentally reminiscent of the arguments which have been propagated with great consistency by the American Defense Department and Arms Control and Disarmament Agency over the last years. It is true that Mr McNamara has also been consistent in retaining the option of deploying against China and of hardening strategic offensive forces but always against the expressed fear that pressures for expansion would develop in the political environment. (There is no precedent for this expectation in the experience with the SAGE system and the deployment of *Nike-Ajax* and *Nike-Hercules* anti-aircraft missiles.) Most of the commentators also seem to perceive the American decision as being primarily a pre-emptive response to internal political pressures. That interpretation is probably incorrect. President Johnson could have chosen to announce the decision within the context of next year's budget proposal, deliberately blurred the issue of whether it was an anti-China or an anti-Soviet system, and hence disarmed most of the internal criticism to the extent that BMD was felt to be a major issue. The way the decision was announced provided an occasion for an extensive public policy examination. However, most observers have observed that Mr McNamara's announcement harboured a curious *non sequitur* in its progression from analysis to policy recommendation.

## Concluding Remarks

The big question concerning BMD is how the political pressures will evolve and how they will structure the decisions. The Soviet deployment which we are witnessing today is the result of decisions which were reached several years ago, possibly in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis. Hence it is possible that the balance of considerations and bargaining power

within the Soviet decision-making structure *is* different today from what it was when the deployment decision was first made. There have been significant changes in the top military leadership (General Staff and Air Defence), where Army generals now hold many of the key positions. The Soviet deployment *may* not expand significantly. It should be noted also

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that the announced American BMD deployment will require outlays which are only one-half of present American expenditures on air defences and one-quarter of what the latter were some years ago.

In the absence, however, of some kind of tacit or explicit understanding about the arms race, serious developments may ensue. Political pressures in America for extensive city defences, coupled with substantial offensive-force augmentations (at least in the number of deliverable warheads), could propel the United States in the direction of a strategic preponderance which may become confused with political omnipotence, or this may be how some people might come to perceive it. From the point of view of international society, it is, I believe, much healthier that power be harnessed by a counter-vailing balance than entrusted to the enlightened prudence of the dominant alone. Unbalanced power may affect the behaviour and values of those who wield it in ways which would

be detrimental to the general good of the citizens of all states, including those of the superior state.

In order to prevent such a situation it will be necessary for the decision-makers to abandon any dogmatic presuppositions about inexorable arms-race responses and fixed levels of assured destruction. The arms-race incentives are not derivable from the cost-effectiveness calculations which have been made public, but rather from a set of doctrinal assumptions according to which the super-powers have to preserve X million hostages for purposes of deterrence and X is presumed to equal the number of currently held hostages. The Soviet and American perspectives are not congruent on this issue. We should hence have to ask who should educate whom about the requirements and priorities of deterrence, and as realists we must be prepared to face the issue of what to do if education fails. The need to develop sensible force postures will continue also in a BMD world.

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