Nuclear Arms Control: Where Do We Stand?

Harold Brown and Lynn E. Davis

From Foreign Affairs, Summer 1984

Article preview: first 500 of 6,999 words total.

Summary:  Negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union on nuclear arms control are at an impasse. Following the deployment in Europe of the first U.S. Pershing II and cruise missiles in the fall of 1983, the Soviet Union walked out of the negotiations on intermediate-range forces (INF) and refused to agree to a resumption date for the negotiations on strategic nuclear forces (START). Whether and under what conditions the negotiations will resume is uncertain.

Harold Brown, currently Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University, was Secretary of Defense from 1977 to 1981. He had previously held other senior positions in the Pentagon from 1961 to 1969 and was a member of the U.S. delegation for the SALT I and SALT II negotiations between 1969 and 1977. Lynn E. Davis is Professor of Military Strategy at the National War College; she was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Plans, 1977-81. The views in this paper are those of the authors and do not imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of Defense or the National War College.

Negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union on nuclear arms control are at an impasse. Following the deployment in Europe of the first U.S. Pershing II and cruise missiles in the fall of 1983, the Soviet Union walked out of the negotiations on intermediate-range forces (INF) and refused to agree to a resumption date for the negotiations on strategic nuclear forces (START). Whether and under what conditions the negotiations will resume is uncertain.

Both the United States and the Soviet Union indicate that they are abiding by the unratified SALT II treaty, but that treaty will expire at the end of 1985. The Reagan Administration has been unwilling to say that it would then continue to observe the SALT II limits, as it is currently doing for the expired SALT I agreement on offensive forces. In both the START and INF negotiations, the approaches embodied in the U.S. and Soviet proposals differ fundamentally. And within the United States, the arms control debate-on the freeze, the build-down, deep reductions-has polarized rather than reconciled differences. Congressional support for new strategic programs, including the MX, has been conditioned on a serious arms control effort. Political figures have sought to achieve public and legislative consensus by combining as many of the various arms control proposals as possible.

The hiatus in the negotiations provides an opportunity to step back and reconsider the overall utility of nuclear arms control and the objectives the United States should seek in negotiations with the Soviet Union.

The prospective utility of arms control is reflected in the many objectives that agreements can be designed to serve. They can provide greater confidence as to the future characteristics and size of the nuclear force postures of each side than would exist in the absence of any agreements. They can reduce the number of nuclear weapons, to decrease both the cost of maintaining a nuclear balance and the reliance of governments on nuclear weapons in their foreign and defense policies. They can constrain modernization, either overall or of the most destabilizing kinds of threats, e.g., accurate intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which can destroy missile silos in a preemptive strike. They can improve crisis stability by reducing the vulnerability of each side's nuclear forces. By moderating the competition, they can both reassure Western publics and reduce the degree to which each side's buildup becomes an independent source of tension.

It is important to understand, however, that an agreement will probably not achieve all these aims, let alone the more sweeping goals-such as ending the risk of nuclear war-that have often been promised by advocates of various arms control proposals. Negotiations with the Soviet Union cannot be expected to produce in the foreseeable future nuclear force postures with fewer than many thousands of nuclear weapons. Nuclear war will still be possible and its catastrophic consequences will not be changed. Moreover, negotiations would have to produce fairly significant reductions or limits on new weapons to arrest the drift toward more vulnerable nuclear forces ...

End of preview: first 500 of 6,999 words total.