Strategic Forces And Arms Control: Defining The Path Ahead

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This paper addresses the related issues of U.S. offensive and defensive strategic force modernization and arms control policy. It is intended to contribute to the comprehensive strategic reassessment initiated by the Bush Administration.

A principal element of such a reassessment must be a realistic appraisal of corresponding Soviet strategic investments and the purposes to which the USSR puts arms control. The unpleasant reality is that the Soviet Union continues to make massive investments in its strategic offensive and defensive systems. Not only is the scale of this effort substantially beyond that of the United States; it is also greatly in excess of reasonable Soviet defense needs.

Such developments — combined with the direct and indirect effects of the prevailing arms control regime since 1972, including repeated violations of that regime by the USSR — have transformed Soviet military power and increasingly called into question the adequacy of the U.S. strategic deterrent. At this point, the cumulative effect is to challenge the United States’ ability to sustain the required strategic balance into the mid-nineties.

Ensuring effective deterrence in the future will require a different vision of stability than that being pursued today. Its central elements would be: a deterrent posture comprised of modern nuclear arms and deployed strategic defenses; exploitation of competitive advantages to achieve cost-effective survivability for the U.S. deterrent; and a revised approach to negotiation of strategic arms reductions.

Findings

  • Deterrence requires a resilient capability to counter the effects of sustained past growth in Soviet strategic capabilities to address the future dynamism of the Soviet threat.
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  • Recent quantitative and qualitative improvements in the USSR’s strategic offensive forces have been dramatic.
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    New Soviet systems include the mobile SS-25 and SS-24 ICBMs, a follow-on to the enormous SS-18 silo-based ballistic missile, the Delta IV submarine and SS-N-23 SLBM, the Blackjack bomber and new air- and sea-based long-range cruise missiles.

    Soviet offensive forces (measured in ballistic missile warheads) are today approximately four times larger than in 1972 (SALT I) and roughly twice as large as in l979 (SALT II). What is more, they have far greater accuracy and, increasingly, feature mobility and other elements that enhance their survivability.

     

  • Soviet strategic defense investments have matched those of an offensive character. The Soviets appear to have spared no expense in seeking a multifaceted ability to reduce the effects of nuclear attack.
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    The USSR has deployed modern ABM defenses around Moscow and powerful new radars well suited to ballistic missile defense throughout their territory. They are investing heavily in laser and space-oriented strategic defense activities. In addition, they have constructed extensive deep underground shelters, designed to permit their senior political and military cadres to survive and conduct nuclear war.

    The Soviets clearly do not agree with the traditional view that the ABM Treaty was intended to assure mutual vulnerability. On the contrary, the Soviet Union’s extensive strategic defense programs — including some that violate the ABM Treaty itself — suggest a determined effort to reduce Soviet vulnerability including, in due course, wholesale break-out from the Treaty.

     

  • It is noteworthy that the United States government has determined that the USSR has also violated other arms control accords including the SALT I and SALT II agreements and the Limited Test Ban Treaty.
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    These findings suggest a pattern of Soviet activity designed to secure for the Soviet Union maximum strategic advantage from arms control undertakings.

     

     

  • Such Soviet actions will inevitably have profound serious security consequences for the United States should America prove either unwilling or unable to adjust its deterrent forces accordingly.
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    U.S. national security cannot rest on hopes about a potential adversary’s benign intentions, but on his actual capabilities. What is more, the willingness to undertake aggression can change much more quickly than effective deterrents to such aggression can be put into place.

    Whatever Gorbachev’s proposals and personal intentions may be, the Soviet Union’s actual military programs have increased the USSR’s capability for intimidation and, if necessary, for strategic war — both in absolute terms and, strikingly, relative to the improvements made to U.S. forces over the past decade.

     

  • The START deep reductions agreement inherently raises serious problems:

      Verification is radically more difficult and militarily significant Soviet violations can occur more quickly at lower levels of forces even as the Soviet incentive for cheating rises. This is especially so in the absence of a coherent U.S. compliance policy.

      U.S. flexibility in ensuring deterrence and in responding to violations is greatly reduced at lower levels of strategic arms.

      The emerging START agreement is seriously flawed: Instability will not be reduced; SDI will be made more difficult to realize; counting rules do not reflect reality and perpetrate a fiction of deep reductions; serious verification problems exist; the START-induced regime may prove more costly than the existing force posture.

Policy Recommendations

  • In the face of profound strategic uncertainties, there is a continuing need for the United States to maintain a robust deterrent posture.
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  • The credibility of that deterrent posture will be substantially enhanced if the United States adopts a new approach to strategic arms — an approach that would simultaneously and in an integrated fashion restructure current offensive force modernization plans, implement defensive deployment options and make appropriate adjustments in U.S. arms control negotiating strategies.
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    The Bush Administration’s comprehensive reassessment of U.S. foreign and defense policies affords an ideal opportunity to develop and implement such a new approach.

    The recommended approach for ensuring the future effectiveness of U.S. strategic forces would entail: redirection of the current program for modernizing the land-based ballistic missile program; other steps needed to preserve credible offensive deterrent systems; the introduction of the first phases of strategic defenses; and complementary changes to America’s arms control negotiating positions, notably in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START).

    If implemented, the package of recommended changes offers the prospect of greater robustness for the United States’ strategic forces, possibly at lower cost than the current program and with greater public support. It also features arms control objectives which — if incorporated into a U.S.-Soviet treaty — would result in greater stability than those currently being pursued.

Offensive Forces

  • Land-based ballistic missiles: As part of this package approach, the present U.S. ICBM program — with its emphasis on highly mobile systems — would be revised.

       

      This approach offers enhanced survivability in a manner that lends itself to verification under an arms control regime — in stark contrast to the mobile ICBM programs being pursued by the USSR.

      A ban on mobile missiles (as opposed to systems with limited transportability within confined deployment areas) should be a prerequisite for any START agreement.

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    The current effort, intended to make a substantial number of American ICBMs survivable by striving for the sort of road- and rail-mobility characteristic of some new generation Soviet ballistic missiles, is unlikely to produce such survivability and will prove exorbitantly expensive.

    Moreover, U.S. intelligence has found that these Soviet ICBMs cannot be effectively verified. If — as the Soviet Union has insisted — mobile ICBMs were permitted under a START regime, they would offer the USSR a simple, inexpensive way to circumvent the treaty’s limitations, perhaps to the point of neutralizing the mandated reductions.

    Accordingly, the Bush Administration should cancel the current programs to develop rail-mobile and road-mobile launchers for the MX and Midgetman missiles respectively and should, instead, pursue an ICBM basing configuration featuring limited transportability, i.e., the so-called "carry-hard" concept for deploying a relatively small number of missiles among a larger number of vertical, underground shelters.

    Accordingly, the Bush Administration should reaffirm its predecessor’s proposal in START for a ban on genuinely mobile systems. Absent Soviet agreement to such a ban (as ultimately emerged in the INF Treaty with respect to medium-range ballistic missiles), any reductions agreed to in START could be readily circumvented and without detection.

    By adopting this approach, the United States could: field a system that, especially with preferential defenses, would lend itself to real resilience against attack; allow reallocation of funds to provide for deploying strategic defenses; permit the replacement of aging Minuteman ICBMs with modern missiles; and establish a basis for a START agreement that does not force the United States to choose between unverifiable Soviet reductions and survivable post-agreement forces.

     

  • Sea-based deterrent forces: The size and composition of America’s ballistic missile submarine force must provide for maximum survivability.
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    This argues for retaining the largest possible number of submarines — a goal that may prove incompatible with a START regime.

    A complementary deployment of long-range, nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs) among a large number of naval platforms is an inexpensive means of greatly increasing deterrence. It would be counterproductive — and in any case, ineffectual — to try to limit such systems in START: they are clearly not suited to massive and preemptive warfare; their deployments are impossible to verify; and any limitation will inevitably impinge as well on essential non-nuclear options (e.g., as with GLCMs in INF).

     

  • Airborne deterrents: The U.S. should enhance the flexibility and assured penetrativity of its airborne deterrent.
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    The U.S. should initiate production and deployment of the B-2 "stealth" bomber. This technology represents an area of competitive advantage for the United States. It offers a flexible platform for a variety of nuclear and conventional missions that — given the evolving anti-aircraft threat in the USSR and its clients — increasingly can only be performed by "low observable" systems.

    Air-launched cruise missiles (nuclear and non-nuclear) are likely to remain crucial to the viability of the U.S. bomber force — especially with the introduction of low observable technology. Arms control should not limit these forces — especially in the absence of limitations on the air defenses with which they must contend.

Defensive Forces

  • Strategic Defense: The United States should, as part of this package approach, begin preparations at once for deployment of the first phases of defenses against ballistic missiles.

      A partially effective SDI deployment will greatly complicate attack planning by any adversary and serve as a powerful disincentive to a ballistic missile strike against the United States and its allies.

      As such, SDI will contribute more to U.S. security than would an agreement effecting fifty-percent reductions in Soviet strategic forces. SDI without START is preferable to START without SDI.

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    This system should be comprised of ground and space-based sensors and interceptor systems. A perfect defense is neither required nor likely for such a system to enhance deterrence.

    A first-phase defense need not — and should not — be constrained to comply with the ABM Treaty, which has been broken by the Soviets and from which they threaten wholesale breakout. Even if the Soviet Union were to return to full compliance with this accord, its prohibition on effective U.S. defenses is no longer in the national interest.

Other Strategic Capabilities

  • Strategic Command, Control and Communications (C3): The United States must ensure that the C3 systems that permit its strategic offensive and defensive forces to operate effectively — and therefore to be effective deterrents –are given no less budgetary priority than are those forces.
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  • A Viable Nuclear Weapons Production Complex: It is imperative that the Bush Administration make the investment of capital and exercise the political muscle needed to restore the United States’ capacity to make and maintain its nuclear weapons and related materials.
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  • Intelligence systems: The United States requires priority emphasis on deployment of improved, multiple-sensor, intelligence systems — including those for wide-area surveillance — for military and arms control purposes.
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  • Space Programs: The United States must close the current space-gap with the Soviet Union, which through its heavy lift, satellite, anti-satellite and space station programs, is seeking the military and economic domination of space.

Arms Control

  • A new, altered approach should be adopted for START:
    • The U.S. should undertake no new agreements until the Soviet Union fully complies with all existing agreements.
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    • Force structure implications, verification and counting principles must be thoroughly reviewed.
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      As noted above, mobile, land-based ballistic missiles of intercontinental range (ICBM’s) should be banned.

      The emerging counting rules for ballistic missiles should be revised so as to reflect the number of weapons each missile can actually carry. This should be done even if doing so results in higher sublimits. The shallower reductions that would ensue would mitigate somewhat the stability, verification and break-out problems inherent with deep reductions.

      The United States should insist on asymmetric verification provisions designed to provide equal verification results in light of underlying differences in the societies being monitored, especially the secretive character of the Soviet system. In any event, the United States must develop a systematic approach to the security of its sensitive installations under on-site inspection regimes.

       

    • Most importantly, SDI is essential as insurance against Soviet breakout and increased offensive potential at lower force levels
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      Accordingly, the United States must desist from efforts to "reinforce" the broken ABM Treaty (by extending the non-withdrawal period or by negotiating new limits or definitions further constraining U.S. ability rapidly to develop, test and deploy defenses against ballistic missiles)

      The price for START should be a decision to deploy defenses — in contrast to the present mind-set which makes constraints on SDI the price for reductions in START.

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  • The Administration must also be alert to the insidious effect other arms control initiatives would have on the United States’ ability to maintain effective nuclear forces.
    • A Comprehensive Test Ban (CTB) would make it impossible over time to field the safe, reliable and effective nuclear arsenal the United States must have.
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    • Even arms control limitations on nuclear testing that fell short of a CTB, but imposed more restrictions on underground tests than those currently in effectwould make it appreciably more difficult to maintain the requisite confidence in the efficacy and safety of America’s nuclear deterrent forces. (e.g., reducing permitted numbers of nuclear tests and/or lowering yield levels),
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Center for Security Policy

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