Reykjavik and Beyond Deep Reductions in Strategic Nuclear Arsenals and the Future Direction of Arms Control (1988) / Chapter Skim
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3. The Impact of Defenses on Offensive Reduction Regimes
3. The Impact of Defenses on Offensive Reduction Regimes
Pages 19-26
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From page 19... ...
The Reykjavik Summit demonstrated clearly, if there was any doubt, that strategic defenses have a critical impact on the attempt to achieve substantial reductions in offensive strategic systems. Although there were some remarkable discussions and considerable agreement at Reykjavik, when President Reagan was faced with a choice between a strategic defense and (leep reductions, he chose strategic defense.
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From page 20... ...
For example, General Abrahamson, director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, and other officials closely related to the SDI program emphasize the concept of partial defense, either as an end in itself or possibly as a stepping stone to an essentially impregnable or highly effective defense in some distant future. On the other hand, during the seminar, Secretary Ikle suggested a more modest objective: a system effective against the rather small threat that could exist when there were no ballistic missiles but only the residual problem of clandestine missiles or possibly a breakout from a treaty regime.
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From page 21... ...
prevent the Soviet Union from becoming a greater threat to us in a broader economic sense by holding down any changes in their society that might make it a more effective competitor. These different approaches demand!
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From page 22... ...
Nevertheless, as he pointed out, the size of our present stockpile is so large that given mutual reductions, one could reduce 50 percent or even 75 percent of our existing strategic forces and still maintain essentially the same target coverage. Moreover, such a reduction would maintain the same extended deterrent directed not only at deterrence in the normally accepted sense but also in the sense of preventing the Soviets from sustaining their war effort in the field on the assumption that the Soviets could do this even in the face of the loss of their society.
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From page 23... ...
Steinbruner essentially assumes this broader deterrent concept that, among other things, comprises attacks on a large number of military and command and control targets and on assets necessary to continue the Soviet war effort. ~ personally believe that a much smaller target set directed solely at economic targets would have the same deterrent significance.
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From page 24... ...
To my knowledge, no one has even come up with a concrete proposal as to how you walk the offensive forces down to this point while developing this highly uncertain, unpredictable defense on the other hancI. This includes the President's proposal at Reykjavik, to which Secretary Ikle referred, to reduce ballistic missiles to zero.
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From page 25... ...
There are yards and yards of quotations, but ~ think one that gets to the heart of the matter is found in the January 1985 White House white paper on the SDT that described what would happen if the Soviet Union deployed a nationwide ABM defense: "Were they (the Soviets) to do so, as they could, deterrence would collapse and we wouIc3 have no choice between surrender and suicide." A little later, Secretary Weinberger, in his famous letter to the President on the eve of the 1985 Geneva Summit, in the context of the Krasnoyarsk radar, made the statement that "even a probable Soviet territorial defense would require us to increase the number of our offensive forces and their ability to penetrate Soviet defenses to assure that our operational plans could be executed." Now, in this whole debate the Joint Chiefs of Staff have remained
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From page 26... ...
The uncertainty of these exchange ratios of offensive weapons in the face of an uncertain defense contrasts sharply with the rather straightforward and relatively cost-effective things that the offense can do in response to a strategic defense to maintain high condolence in its ability to cleter uncler the broadest possible range of circumstances. I will not go into these in any detail because you are all probably familiar with them, but I will just identify the general approaches.
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