Reading 7: Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT)

That some form of agreement over missile numbers would have to be found was obvious. The
greater the stockpiles of weapons, the more horrifying the potential consequences of escalating
confrontations became. Even the development of small-yield, tactical, or battlefield nuclear
weapons did little to suggest that even a limited nuclear engagement would be less than
catastrophic. In the 1950s the United States Army undertook military exercises, such as
operations Sage Brush and Carte Blanche, to see if such weapons could be used to defend West
Germany from Soviet invasion. The conclusion reached was that they might – but only after
West Germany had virtually ceased to exist. As early as the mid 1950s it was generally
accepted that in a nuclear war the concept of a victory was ludicrous. There developed a
widespread pessimism that in a post-nuclear war world, suffering destruction, chaos, nuclear
fallout, famine and disease, the survivors would envy the dead.

Some steps to ease tensions had been taken. Badly shaken by their nearness to disaster during
the Cuba Missile Crisis, Kennedy and Khrushchev had installed a hotline (in reality a teletype
line connecting the Whitehouse and the Kremlin, so that both leaders could act quickly to
diffuse crises). They also agreed on a Partial Test Ban Treaty, moving test detonations of
nuclear weapons underground, which did something to reduce atmospheric radioactive
contamination from such tests. Furthermore they agreed not to station nuclear missiles in
space or on the seabed, which neither had the technology to do anyway. Also, to prevent those
countries that did not already possess nuclear weapons gaining them, in 1968 the Non
Proliferation Treaty was signed. By this, nations who either lacked the technology or the desire
to own them, agreed not to build nuclear weapons and to allow international inspection of their
nuclear facilities – providing, that is, that the nuclear powers undertook to completely disarm
at the earliest opportunity. Other nations who had (or hoped to gain) the technology, and had
the will, such as North Korea, Israel, Pakistan and India, either refused to sign or subsequently
withdrew from it. All soon gained nuclear weapons that threatened to begin regional arms
races.

But a solid agreement between the two main Cold War protagonists limiting the stockpiles of
nuclear weapons proved very difficult to find. President Eisenhower, in 1955, had urged an
agreement on ‘open skies’. By this, both sides would be free to over-fly each other’s military
bases. This would allow the verification that both were adhering to a future arms control
agreement. The Soviets promptly rejected the idea. They did not possess the aircraft to over-fly
US bases, and saw it as an American attempt to legitimise spying. To the Americans, strict
verification of Soviet compliance remained fundamental to any agreement. Herein lay a basic
problem. Both sides were convinced of their own moral superiority. It was the other side who
could not be trusted, and they reacted with astonished outrage when their own good intentions
were questioned.

But simply building ever more weapons was futile, costly and dangerous. By 2000 it is thought
that there had been over 30 ‘broken arrows’, or accidents involving nuclear weapons, and
perhaps six warheads had been lost at sea and never recovered. Also during the 1960s a new
technological development arose that threatened whatever stability MAD offered. This came
from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) system. This defensive system was designed to intercept
and destroy ICBMs in flight. Despite being in its infancy and having very limited reliability, it
might tempt a reckless leader to gamble on surviving retaliation and launch a surprise attack.
Deterrence would only work if it was mutual, and if both sides were sure the other could not
survive a nuclear exchange. Yet ABM would require sophisticated radar systems and its
missiles would have to be deployed in huge numbers to defend a nation, and it promised to be
impossibly expensive. It would also result in a new surge in constructing missiles in order to
have the ability to swamp the enemy ABM system. By 1967 therefore US president Lyndon
Johnson and Soviet premier Alexey Kosygin were ready to open negotiations.

The American position was that both sides should agree to abandon ABM systems, so that both
would remain defenceless and deterrence would continue to be mutual. This was not easy for
the Soviet negotiators to accept. They felt they had a duty to defend their citizens, and that
defensive weapons were moral, while offensive weapons were immoral. It took five years to
negotiate the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I). The United States and the
Soviet Union agreed to limit themselves to two ABM sites each, when there was only one,
around Moscow, in existence. This was subsequently reduced to one each, and the Soviets
chose to defend Moscow, while the Americans defended an ICBM site. It was further agreed
there would be no new land-based ICBMs beyond agreed numbers and no new missile
submarines beyond those under construction.

Superficially this might have seemed a considerable step forward, but the agreement was
reached as newer technology was being deployed. With the introduction of Multiple
Independentlytargeted Re-entry Vehicles (MIRV), a single missile could carry several
warheads and attack several separate targets – up to 12 in the case of some American missiles.
There was no limit on modernising or replacing existing missiles to carry MIRV (and later
MARV, or Manoeuvrable Re-entry Vehicle, which could change target in flight.) In fact SALT
I allowed for a major expansion of nuclear weapons, and the signing of SALT II in 1979, which
was ultimately to lead to a limit of 2,250 delivery systems (missiles, aircraft and submarines),
did little to alter this. Even then the US Congress refused to ratify the latter Treaty, arguing
that the Soviet Union had gained too much advantage in the agreement. Both sides, however,
indicated they would adhere to the terms, as long as the other did. Even then, the development
of cruise missile technology, which produced cheap, easily transportable and concealable
weapons, opened new problems for verification measures.

Excesses of the Nuclear Arms Build-Up

The question addressed by peace campaigners, of how much deterrence was needed, was
addressed by government and military institutions on both sides. An American study
considered how many 100 megaton thermonuclear weapons would be needed to utterly destroy
the Soviet Union. It found that after 400 or so detonations there would be nothing left worth
attacking. Further detonations would be ‘making the rubble bounce’, or targeting isolated
shepherds. Unquestionably the Soviets performed a similar study and reached a very similar
conclusion. Of course the situation was a little more complicated. Some missiles would be
destroyed in a surprise attack. Others would be intercepted or simply miss their targets. Others
would fail to launch or be undergoing routine servicing. A degree of redundancy was needed,
say four-fold. By this logic, neither side needed to go beyond the expense and inherent risks of
producing more than 1600 warheads. But by 1985 the United States could deliver nearly
20,000 and the Soviet Union well over 11,000. Why did such an irrational state of affairs come
about?
From the 1970s there was a considerable amount of research studying this question, and a
number of factors have been suggested that might explain this degree of overkill. One is the
competition between and within the armed services of a state. Any major arms programme
carries with it prestige and resources and also secures careers for the service responsible for it.
With nuclear weapons obviously intended as the mainstay of American defence strategy for
decades, if not generations to come, all services campaigned to win a role in their deployment.
Thus the United States Navy insisted on the superiority of the SLBM to prevent the United
States Air Force gaining a monopoly over missile deployment. The United States Army, for its
part, clamoured for battlefield nuclear weapons so as not to be excluded. Also within the army,
for example, different sections demanded either nuclear artillery shells or ground launched
cruise missiles.
All services lobbied government for a larger slice of the pie. But this does not necessarily
explain why the size of the pie kept growing. Governments were not obliged to concede every
demand made upon them by their own military. A similar argument can be used when
addressing the issue of bureaucratic politics, where a similar process of competition for the
resources, prestige and careers made available by the arms race existed between government
agencies and departments.

Another possible factor explaining the nuclear build-up lies within the nature of the political
and social systems involved. The fears and uncertainties of a nation can be exploited.
Governments, it has been suggested, used the arms race to fuel fears of a foreign threat to
enhance patriotism, national unity and their own authority. The arms race could be seen as a
cynical exercise in social control. Both Soviet and American observers often accused their Cold
War opponents of such squalid motives. But it remains a conspiracy theory based on intuition
rather than fact, and should be treated with considerable caution.

A similar degree of caution should be used when ascribing the arms race to the military-
industrial complex. This assumes that the arms manufacturers have a common interest in
fostering a climate of fear to increase sales to the military. They are assumed to foster moral
panics of the kind that followed the launch of Sputnik, so that the public will clamour for
military expansion.
In the United States most major weapons systems are produced by about eight large
corporations. Between them they represent a huge investment in productive capacity and
expertise. They are seen as vital and irreplaceable national assets, and cannot be allowed to go
bankrupt. If in trouble, the US government will always be tempted to bail them out with hefty
orders. Also, within research laboratories, the development of new weapons had become the
norm, and the arms race had developed a measure of organisational momentum. They represent
great investments that make it difficult to justify halting. But how does this work in the Soviet
Union, where the profitability of arms manufacturers was no great issue?
Electoral politics can, perhaps, supply another explanation. The claim that the nation was in
danger, and that the incumbent administration was imperilling the United States by allowing a
‘missile gap’ to develop was certainly used to great effect by Kennedy in the 1960 presidential
elections. It was a simple message, easily grasped by the electorate, accompanied by a simple
solution – spend more money on defence. Once in office Kennedy found there was no ‘missile
gap’, but expanded America’s missile forces in part, at least, to prevent a future opponent
levelling similar accusations against him. At a lower level, congressmen of constituencies where
warships, for instance, are constructed will constantly stress the Soviet naval threat. The more
warships built, the more local jobs, and the more votes that might be won. This is perhaps a
more convincing argument. But how could it be applied to the Soviet Union? As an explanation
it is at best only partial.
Also, it is simply logical to respond to the actions of a potential enemy to negate any possible
advantage they might gain. Thus if deterrence was to be the strategy, then the risk posed by
ABM needed to be countered by MIRV and then MARV, to swamp or outfox it. Furthermore
there was always the tantalizing possibility that research might find the ultimate weapon, or
the impenetrable defence. As the arms race progressed the chances of this happening became
increasingly unlikely. But could a state take the risk of ignoring the possibility? When in 1983
Reagan unveiled his Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), which envisaged a network of orbiting
lasers, particle beams and intercepting darts to destroy ICBMs in flight, it was widely treated
with derision in the United States, where the press jeeringly referred to it as ‘Star Wars’, after
the science fiction film. But could the Soviet Union afford to assume it would never work and
ignore it? It certainly caused Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev considerable anxiety.

Added to this was the simple fact that, in the arms race, the United States had the much
stronger economy. Part of the logic of proceeding with SDI was that, eventually, the arms race
would cripple the Soviet economy. This is in fact what was happening. By the 1980s the strain
of keeping abreast in the arms race was causing unsustainable strains on the Soviet Union,
paving the way for a complete re-alignment of East-West relations.

A final, perhaps even more attractive, point comes if the arms race is viewed as a measure of
political will. The fact that it existed was not necessarily a sign that war must come, but simply
proof that both sides were competing. It might even be seen as a relatively low risk form of
competition. Competing by building weapons is, after all, a much better than competing by
using them. But it must be said, even from such a perspective, had some error or mishandled
crisis ever led these weapons to be used, the consequences for the world would have been too
terrible to contemplate. Arguably by confining their competition to the sports field, or not
competing at all, both sides would have served humanity far better.