Managing Strategic Weapons

At the Washington summit in December 1987, the United States and Soviet Union signed the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, eliminating all their intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles, and instructed their negotiators in Geneva to work toward a reduction of strategic offensive nuclear arms by approximately 50 percent. The two countries also agreed to sweeping new cooperative procedures for verifying treaty compliance. At the same time, however, charges and countercharges of treaty violations have been exchanged, efforts to resolve current issues of compliance at the Standing Consultative Commission have broken down, and the United States has formally abandoned all Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I and SALT II) limits on strategic offensive forces. The present period is thus characterized both by high hopes for new compromises and by antagonism on a variety of major issues.

No one can say what will emerge from this turbulent atmosphere in the long run. But no matter what happens in the continuing negotiations, it is clear that if lasting improvement in the superpowers’ strategic relations is to be achieved during the next two decades, it must arise from a realistic assessment of contemporary U.S.-Soviet relations and of likely military and political developments.

One necessary element in charting a path toward a more stable relationship is a pragmatic judgment of technological trends and their military implications. These technological realities constitute the constraints or boundary conditions that the United States and the Soviet Union will almost certainly have to cope with in setting defense priorities and in negotiating arms control agreements during the next twenty years.

We begin by summarizing those technical realities and trends that can reasonably be foreseen over the coming two decades. These provide the basis for formulating an approach to increasing both the security of the United States and the stability of the nuclear arms balance with the Soviet Union. This approach incorporates both very specific bilateral agreements and de facto arms control through judicious unilateral decisions about weapons development and deployment. Above all it is designed to point out a pragmatic path for the near-term future.

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