Read Online Sleepwalking With the Bomb by John C. Wohlstetter - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: John C. Wohlstetter
Tags: History, Military, Europe, Political Science, International Relations, Russia & the Former Soviet Union, Nuclear Warfare, Arms Control
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the bombers, the small portion that survived would have to cover all targets. 7
Pessimistic estimates presented to President Eisenhower were based in part on reconnaissance flights showing Soviet missiles being deployed; the United States estimated that the Soviets would deploy 100 ICBMs by 1960. At the time, both sides based missiles above ground, leaving them highly vulnerable.
The “nuclear strategic triad” doctrine held that each leg of the triad—land, sea, and air—must itself be able to accomplish full postattack retaliation, to guard against Russian breakthroughs that neutralized the other two legs. Such secure, survivable forces would remove any temptation the Soviets might feel to launch such an attack, thus strengthening deterrence. In other words, no one intended to “make the rubble bounce.”
In November 1969, the new Nixon administration met with the Soviets in Helsinki for the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, known by the acronym “SALT.” The talks were from the outset muddled by fundamental cultural differences in the way American and Russian negotiators approached their complex task. Henry Kissinger, who superintended the Nixon and Ford administration arms talks, explained the problem in his memoirs.
American negotiators ardently seek agreement, and thus look for ways to break deadlocks with initiatives, find some compromise. They even at times urge far-reaching concessions to reach a provisional accord, secure that other officials will oppose them and thus temper the final result. They continually seek to convince their opposite numbers of America’s good intentions, in hope of getting a reciprocal conciliatory gesture. Soviet negotiators were almost the polar opposite in approach and temperament. Their diplomacy “substitute[d] persistence for imagination.” They derived no reward for making proposals or concessions. They could sit rigid for years without any domestic pressure, and wait for the other side, under heavy domestic pressure, to give in. (So can Russian negotiators today. Neither their bargaining culture, nor ours, has changed.)
The SALT treaties followed the regnant doctrine of the day: mutual assured destruction—founded on the idea that holding mass populations hostage better preserved deterrence than protecting them by shelters or missile defense, given vast amounts of offensive weapons. The Nixon administration enshrined MAD in SALT I, via the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The ABM Treaty—which the Senate ratified 88 votes to 2—sharply limited the deployment of missiles designed to intercept and destroy other missiles in flight. Of the many objections to this treaty, three were most salient:
1. The vast throw-weight (payload deliverable over distance capability) of Russia’s missiles, concentrated in highly accurate, land-based ICBMs.
2. The inability to verify actual numbers of Russian warheads.
3. The limits the treaty placed on missile defense.
Russia had deployed huge missiles—far larger than any in the American arsenal. The missiles possessed the requisite combination of accuracy and yield so that they could plausibly destroy large numbers of American missiles inside their silos. Russia’s monster SS-18 ICBM had seven to eight times the payload capacity of America’s mainstay Minuteman III ICBM. Its multiwarhead SS-19 missile, taking advantage of loose treaty language, replaced a far smaller (and less accurate) single warhead missile (SS-11); its monster SS-9 missile was topped with a 25-megaton warhead, the largest ever deployed on an ICBM. The SS-18 was the 1970s equivalent (on a vastly more destructive scale) of Japan’s leviathan battleships armed with 18-inch guns. Just as those guns could hurl a heavier shell farther than a U.S. 16-inch bore, so the throw-weight of Russia’s largest missiles was superior to anything in America’s forces.
The Soviets refused to consent to on-site inspections, and would not even tell the United States how
Pessimistic estimates presented to President Eisenhower were based in part on reconnaissance flights showing Soviet missiles being deployed; the United States estimated that the Soviets would deploy 100 ICBMs by 1960. At the time, both sides based missiles above ground, leaving them highly vulnerable.
The “nuclear strategic triad” doctrine held that each leg of the triad—land, sea, and air—must itself be able to accomplish full postattack retaliation, to guard against Russian breakthroughs that neutralized the other two legs. Such secure, survivable forces would remove any temptation the Soviets might feel to launch such an attack, thus strengthening deterrence. In other words, no one intended to “make the rubble bounce.”
In November 1969, the new Nixon administration met with the Soviets in Helsinki for the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, known by the acronym “SALT.” The talks were from the outset muddled by fundamental cultural differences in the way American and Russian negotiators approached their complex task. Henry Kissinger, who superintended the Nixon and Ford administration arms talks, explained the problem in his memoirs.
American negotiators ardently seek agreement, and thus look for ways to break deadlocks with initiatives, find some compromise. They even at times urge far-reaching concessions to reach a provisional accord, secure that other officials will oppose them and thus temper the final result. They continually seek to convince their opposite numbers of America’s good intentions, in hope of getting a reciprocal conciliatory gesture. Soviet negotiators were almost the polar opposite in approach and temperament. Their diplomacy “substitute[d] persistence for imagination.” They derived no reward for making proposals or concessions. They could sit rigid for years without any domestic pressure, and wait for the other side, under heavy domestic pressure, to give in. (So can Russian negotiators today. Neither their bargaining culture, nor ours, has changed.)
The SALT treaties followed the regnant doctrine of the day: mutual assured destruction—founded on the idea that holding mass populations hostage better preserved deterrence than protecting them by shelters or missile defense, given vast amounts of offensive weapons. The Nixon administration enshrined MAD in SALT I, via the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The ABM Treaty—which the Senate ratified 88 votes to 2—sharply limited the deployment of missiles designed to intercept and destroy other missiles in flight. Of the many objections to this treaty, three were most salient:
1. The vast throw-weight (payload deliverable over distance capability) of Russia’s missiles, concentrated in highly accurate, land-based ICBMs.
2. The inability to verify actual numbers of Russian warheads.
3. The limits the treaty placed on missile defense.
Russia had deployed huge missiles—far larger than any in the American arsenal. The missiles possessed the requisite combination of accuracy and yield so that they could plausibly destroy large numbers of American missiles inside their silos. Russia’s monster SS-18 ICBM had seven to eight times the payload capacity of America’s mainstay Minuteman III ICBM. Its multiwarhead SS-19 missile, taking advantage of loose treaty language, replaced a far smaller (and less accurate) single warhead missile (SS-11); its monster SS-9 missile was topped with a 25-megaton warhead, the largest ever deployed on an ICBM. The SS-18 was the 1970s equivalent (on a vastly more destructive scale) of Japan’s leviathan battleships armed with 18-inch guns. Just as those guns could hurl a heavier shell farther than a U.S. 16-inch bore, so the throw-weight of Russia’s largest missiles was superior to anything in America’s forces.
The Soviets refused to consent to on-site inspections, and would not even tell the United States how
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