As part of a campaign for ratification of the SALT II agreement, ten questions and answers pertaining to the treaty have been sent by the Carter administration to all members of the United States Senate. These questions and answers appear below, followed in each case by a critique by Edward N. Luttwak, who is research professor at Georgetown University and senior fellow at the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies. Mr. Luttwak, a regular contributor to COMMENTARY, is a professional defense consultant and has written widely on strategic and military issues. His publications in this area include The Strategic Balance; The US-USSR Nuclear Weapons Balance; and Strategic Power: Military Capabilities and Political Utility.

1. What specifically will the Russians have to destroy as a result of SALT II? Won’t they destroy only their oldest launchers?

Administration:

The emerging SALT II agreement will require the Soviets to reduce their force by more than 250 strategic nuclear delivery vehicles—over 10 per cent of current Soviet force levels. This reduction is important militarily because of the destructive power these systems represent. It is important politically because it concerns an important political measure of strategic capability and the central goal of equality in numbers of systems mandated in the Senate resolution approving the SALT I agreement. Moreover, these reductions are symbolically important because they set a precedent for further reductions in the future.

As an example of the military significance of the systems to be reduced, they are capable of destroying the largest 250 cities in the United States. The launchers reduced will clearly be the older systems in the current Soviet inventory, but these systems are by no means decrepit. They include ICBM’s that are the same vintage as our Minuteman II missiles and SLBM’s that are newer than our Polaris. The bombers to be reduced include the only all-jet bombers in the Soviet force.

More important, without the ceilings provided by the treaty, the Soviets would not only maintain and probably modernize these delivery vehicles but, based on past performance, they would be likely to increase their force size by adding new systems. The resulting force would not only be substantially larger than 2,250—perhaps by a third—but would have far greater destructive power, throw-weight, and warhead levels.

Politically, the reductions achieve equality in numbers of strategic systems at lower levels. The Senate recognized the importance of this measure by mandating equality in numbers in approving the SALT I Interim Agreement. The value of these reductions cannot be depreciated. In their absence, it could be politically necessary for the U.S. to build up to projected Soviet force levels. This numbers race would cost billions of dollars—a major diversion of resources with no resultant increase in security.

Finally, a goal of the United States in SALT must be not simply to ratify the number of strategic delivery vehicles on the two sides, but to reduce these levels. The SALT II reductions are the critical first step in this process.

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Luttwak:

The SALT II agreement is advertised as imposing equal ceilings on intercontinental weapons of both sides. Since the United States has no more than 2,058 heavy bombers and ballistic missiles, while the Soviet Union has at least 2,504, a genuine equality would require the elimination of more than 400 Soviet weapons. In fact, a Soviet-desired ceiling of 2,400 units has been accepted, and various bookkeeping devices are now being used to justify the claim of equality. For example, some 220 old B-52 bombers in storage (some actually disassembled) are counted in the American total, even though they have no military value whatsoever.

Under the terms of the SALT II agreement, both sides are to reduce their overall forces to 2,250 weapons by the end of 1981. It will be noted that bookkeeping tricks aside, the United States is already below that ceiling. The Soviet Union, however, will have to eliminate some 250 weapons. The administration claims that this is a very important provision of the agreement. In fact, the Soviet weapons to be withdrawn consist of rather primitive ballistic missiles, comparable to U.S. Minuteman I ICBM’s (unilaterally withdrawn a decade ago) and Mya-4 jet bombers built in the 1950’s which are now quite decrepit. The Russians will certainly not lose any real military options: they have plenty of high-grade missile capability in their large new ICBM’s, and to replace the antique Mya-4’s they have brand-new Backfire bombers, which have artificially been excluded from the SALT II ceilings.

When the U.S. Senate in 1972 mandated an equality in numbers for any new SALT agreement, it could scarcely have expected that an American administration would join the Soviet Union in contriving arbitrary definitions of what is and what is not a “strategic” weapon in order to achieve a spurious numerical equality.

By linking the important and highly desirable principle of force reductions to grossly unbalanced definitions, the SALT II agreement perverts what could have been a useful precedent for the future. The Russians now know that if they keep obsolete and practically worthless weapons in their nominal weapons inventory, the United States will sooner or later reward them by making real and painful concessions in exchange for their withdrawal.

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2. Are multiple protective structure (MPS) mobile ICBM systems using vertical shelters permitted under SALT? What is the Soviet view of this issue?

Administration:

The Soviet side and the U.S. side have agreed on language in the SALT II treaty that states explicitly that mobile ICBM launchers are permitted after the Protocol expires. We have made clear that this language includes the various basing concepts we have been considering, including those, such as the MPS systems, in which missiles with their canister launchers are moved among shelters which might themselves be hardened. The Soviets have expressed the view that they do not see how the number of launchers in an MPS-type system could be verified and suggested that such a system would appear to involve construction of additional ICBM silo launchers. We have made clear that we do not accept these objections as valid.

With regard to verification, we recognize that there are additional difficulties connected with the monitoring of numbers of deployed mobile launchers, compared with such monitoring of fixed launchers, and that any new U.S. or Soviet mobile ICBM systems are subject to the SALT ban on deliberate concealment measures which impede verification of compliance with the provisions of the agreement. As a consequence of this prohibition, we must insure that any mobile ICBM system which we deploy will permit adequate verification of the number of launchers deployed, and we will insist that any Soviet system meet the same verification standards. (It is noteworthy that these same requirements apply to SLBM launchers where the location of deployed launchers is concealed and the sides depend on observation of submarine construction to determine the number of launchers.)

We are confident that the various mobile ICBM options we are considering would meet these verification requirements.

We do not accept the Soviet claim that the shelters in an MPS system would constitute additional ICBM silo launchers, since the MPS system we are considering employs a mobile canister launcher. The basis for classifying the MPS system as mobile is that essentially all the equipment required to launch the missile, as well as the missile itself, is moved together periodically from one shelter to another—with the shelter providing a protected launch location. (The hardened shelter alone cannot launch a missile.) This assessment would apply irrespective of the type or orientation of the shelters in which the launcher and its missile are deployed (horizontal, vertical, trench).

The United States has both publicly and privately made clear that the various mobile ICBM systems we are considering, including ones in which the launch point would itself be hardened, will be permitted to either side during the post-Protocol period. We accept the requirement that mobile ICBM deployment must permit adequate verification of the number of launchers deployed and have designed the MPS system accordingly. We do not plan to seek Soviet blessing of our designs and similarly are not asking the Soviets to submit their mobile ICBM designs for our review.

The responsibilities of both sides on this matter are clear. There can be no question on the part of either side as to the interpretation which will govern U.S. actions under the provisions of the SALT II agreement.

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Luttwak:

There is a fundamental difference between the two parties to the SALT II agreement: while the Soviet Union is a closed and unusually secretive society, the United States is virtually transparent. The Russians can easily find out exactly how many and what sort of strategic weapons the U.S. has, and will have, merely by reading the Congressional Record. By contrast, to keep track of Soviet weapons the U.S. must rely on the sometimes uncertain data of satellite and other remote sensors. Nevertheless, the fiction has been maintained that the two sides are in an equal position as far as intelligence is concerned. As a result, when the Soviets argued that the “multiple protective structure” (MPS) basing mode for MX would violate the SALT II agreement (on the grounds that they would not be able to determine the number of actual missiles involved), their objection was not rejected out of hand, as it should have been. Instead, the American side has apparently followed the discredited “unilateral statement” formula in claiming the right to deploy a new ICBM in the MPS (or now “sunroof”) mode, subject to adequate verification rules. (“We accept the requirement that mobile ICBM’s must permit adequate verification . . .”.)

Having seen the B-1 program cancelled unilaterally, the Russians obviously hope that the administration will sooner or later abandon the MX program also. Their objection to MPS was a friendly contribution to the unilateralist faction inside the Carter administration.

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3. Why are the Soviets permitted a 308-0 advantage in heavy ICBM’s?

Administration:

The U.S. gave up the rights to modern heavy ICBM’s in the course of the SALT I negotiations and agreed to continue this situation in SALT II quite simply because our military planners have absolutely no interest in such missiles. By giving up our rights to modern heavy ICBM’s, which we do not need and would not build, we were able to gain important concessions in other areas. In particular, this bargaining chip was used in the negotiations at Vladivostok in 1974 to get the Soviets to drop their insistence on limits on U.S. European-based aircraft and the nuclear systems of U.S. allies.

Furthermore, it is important to understand that the Soviet advantage in heavy ICBM’s only applies to silo-based ICBM’s. Neither side is permitted heavy mobile ICBM’s or heavy SLBM’s. We could have retained the option to deploy unlimited numbers of heavy mobile ICBM’s since this option was still open in the treaty in the fall of 1978. We recognized that keeping this option would have been attractive politically in offsetting arguments about the Soviet advantage in silobased heavy ICBM’s. At the same time, it was possible that the Soviets might some day exercise this option. We weighed this issue and with the support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed to the Soviets that heavy mobile ICBM’s and heavy SLBM’s be banned. The Soviets accepted.

Another important factor is that the treaty will allow us to build a missile of equivalent effectiveness to the Soviet heavy ICBM’s. The Soviets will be permitted a maximum of 10 warheads on their heavy missiles, the same number we will be permitted on our MX missiles which will have better accuracy. Thus, they will not be able to exploit the greater payload of their heavy missiles in any meaningful fashion.

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Luttwak:

Much of the destabilizing Soviet throw-weight advantage derives from the heavy ICBM’s in the Soviet force. SALT II would allow the Soviet Union to deploy 308 heavy modern ICBM’s (SS-18’s) as against zero for the United States. Once fully deployed, the SS-18 force alone would have a throw-weight of more than four-and-one-half-million pounds (by the lowest estimate) as compared to two million pounds for the entire U.S. ICBM force; and then of course the Soviet ICBM force includes another 1,090 ICBM’s (SS-11’s, 17’s, 19’s) on top of that.

The administration claims that the 308-to-zero advantage in heavy ICBM’s was exchanged for an important Soviet concession (“to get the Soviets to drop their insistence on limits on U.S. European-based aircraft and the nuclear systems of U.S. allies”). In other words, in Act I the United States freely agrees not to count Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles deployed against our allies; in Act II the Soviet Union extracts this major concession for the nuclear systems of U.S. allies which are deployed to match those same medium-range missiles. And again, in Act I the United States agrees that the Backfire is not a “strategic weapon”; in Act II the Soviets have to be given a major concession to “drop their insistence” that our F-l11’s (with less than half the range of Backfire) are strategic weapons. True, the F-lll’s are forward-based in the United Kingdom; equally true, however, is the fact that the Backfires do not need to be forward-deployed in order to reach the United States.

The administration points out that we have not built heavy ICBM’s as a matter of choice. True. In fact, Air Force planners wanted a balanced force-structure, with a modern medium-sized MX missile and a modern and versatile B-l bomber. The administration then proceeded to cancel the B-l bomber without even trying to trade it for Soviet concessions, and it has delayed procurement of the MX till this day. In other words, the Soviet planners chose to invest in heavy ICBM’s; ours chose to invest in the B-l and the MX. They have their SS-18 heavy ICBM’s fully operational, while we have only cancellations and endless reassessments.

The administration takes pride in having persuaded the Soviet Union to ban heavy mobile ICBM’s and heavy SLBM’s. In fact, a heavy missile as large as the 120-foot long SS-18 can scarcely be made mobile at all anyway. As for heavy SLBM’s, a definition of these is eagerly awaited, since the current Soviet SSN-18 SLBM is already very large indeed, and already has a throw-weight/range greater than that of the future U.S. Trident C-4.

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4. Since the Backfire bomber can reach targets in the continental U.S., why shouldn’t it be included in SALT?

Administration:

The Soviet Union is currently deploying Backfires in both their long-range air force and in naval aviation units. The Backfire bomber has been in production for several years, and current production averages two and a half aircraft a month. We continue to believe that the primary purpose of the Backfire is to perform peripheral attack and naval missions. Undoubtedly, this aircraft has some intercontinental capability in that it can surely reach the United States from home bases on a one-way, high-altitude, subsonic, unrefueled flight; with refueling and Arctic staging, it can probably, with certain high-altitude cruise flight profiles, execute a two-way mission to much of the United States.

The ability to strike the territory of the other side is not the criterion for determining whether an aircraft is a “heavy bomber” and, thus, subject to the limitations in the SALT II agreement. For example, the U.S. has 67 FB-III’s which are part of our strategic bomber force and dedicated to attack on the Soviet Union. We also have over 500 aircraft deployed in the European and Pacific theaters which have the capability to strike Soviet territory. The Soviet Union at one time tried to get these latter aircraft included in SALT on the grounds that they could strike the Soviet Union. With the firm support of our allies, we adamantly resisted that position on the grounds that these aircraft, whatever their theoretical capability, are deployed for theater missions and, thus, not subject to SALT limitations. The Soviets have used this same argument with respect to the Backfire.

Nevertheless, the Soviets have agreed to furnish specific assurances concerning the Backfire. The U.S. regards the obligations undertaken by these assurances as integral to the treaty. These assurances, which include a freeze on the current Backfire production rate, are consistent with the U.S. objective of constraining the strategic potential of the Backfire force, while continuing to exclude our own European and Pacific-based theater aircraft from SALT. Those assurances also help to restrict the Backfire to a theater role. In particular, limiting the numbers available means that Soviet diversion of Backfire from its theater and naval missions to a strategic role would substantially reduce Soviet strength in these areas while adding only marginally to overall Soviet strategic capability.

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Luttwak:

The Backfire bomber looks like a strategic bomber, flies like a strategic bomber, and could definitely strike at targets in the United States as a strategic bomber. Only in the text of the treaty is the Backfire not a “strategic” bomber.

The administration asserts that it agreed not to include Backfires in the overall SALT II weapon ceilings in exchange for Soviet agreement to a similar exclusion of the FB-lll’s on our side. The Russians are producing some 30 Backfires a year with some 150 already built; we have long since stopped building FB-111’s and have a total of only 67; the Backfire is also about three times as large as the FB-111 and has more than twice the range, with a larger payload.

More important still is the underlying inequality in air defenses. To get through the 2,500 Soviet interceptor fighters and 12,000 Soviet anti-aircraft missiles, American bombers need special weapons, large ECM payloads, lots of range (for evasion), and a great deal of fortitude. To attack targets in the United States, Soviet bombers need only to get here, since we have no deployed surface-to-air missiles at all and only 309 active interceptor fighters, a derisory force by any estimate. As a result, while Backfire bombers would not perhaps be sufficiently capable for our own purposes against the Soviet Union, they are definitely more than adequate for Soviet attacks against us.

The administration stresses the fact that the Soviet Union has given us verbal assurances that the Backfires would not be used in a strategic role. This introduces a novel standard in arms control: can anyone imagine a scenario in which the Russians would want to bomb the U.S. targets with Backfires but would then refrain from doing so because they had given such “assurances” in SALT? Verification is supposed to regulate concrete capabilities, not vapid “assurances.”

There is merit in the administration’s claim that Backfires would be more effective in the theater role (against Europeans, Chinese, and U.S. forces overseas) than in executing attacks over intercontinental ranges. That is true of any aircraft, or indeed of any vehicle: the shorter the range of the mission, the easier to get there, and the greater the payload that can be carried.

The real issue is the very unsound precedent that would be created in our arms-control dealings with the Russians. They know that we know that the Backfires should in fact be counted under the overall SALT weapon ceiling; now they also know that we can be maneuvered into distortions of the criteria of definition, in their favor. This will confirm the Soviets in their judgment that in dealings with the U.S. a tough diplomatic stance sooner or later results in American concessions, no matter what the merits of the case might be.

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5. Won’t our Minuteman missiles be vulnerable to a Soviet first-strike under SALT II? What good is SALT if it couldn’t solve this problem?

Administration:

SALT did not produce the Minuteman vulnerability problem. With or without SALT, our Minuteman missiles will become increasingly vulnerable to attack by Soviet ICBM’s. This situation is the result of Soviet advances in missile accuracy, coupled with the deployment of large numbers of MIRVed ICBM’s. The issue of Minuteman vulnerability must be viewed in perspective. As Secretary of Defense Harold Brown has stated, the vulnerability of the Minuteman—a serious problem requiring corrective action by the U.S.—“would not be synonymous with the vulnerability of the United States or even of the strategic deterrent.” Any Soviet planner must realize that even a successful attack on the Minuteman would still leave the Soviet Union vulnerable to massive response by our submarines and heavy bombers. The damage these remaining forces could do, to military, political, and industrial targets in the Soviet Union, would be devastating.

The inability of SALT to solve the Minuteman vulnerability problem, largely a consequence of substantial MIRV deployments on both sides and the infeasibility of formulating verifiable limits constraining missile accuracy, testifies to the fact that some strategic problems are not amenable to solution in SALT but must be solved by unilateral U.S. action under a vigorous strategic-forces modernization program.

SALT does make it more feasible, however, to consider mobile ICBM systems as an alternative basing mode for ICBM’s. Without the SALT II limits on MIRVed ICBM’s and the number of warheads per missile, a multiple protective structure (MPS) mobile ICBM system would face much more serious feasibility problems from the standpoint of both cost and land availability. Similarly, the viability of the air-mobile ICBM basing mode is also improved through the limitations in the SALT II agreement.

Because we do maintain a balanced strategic-nuclear force of land-based ICBM’s, submarine-launched missiles, and heavy bombers, we are in a position to take the time to evaluate judiciously and deliberately implement alternative, more survivable, ICBM basing modes to replace the increasingly vulnerable fixed ICBM.

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Luttwak:

The purpose of arms control is, or should be, to control arms. Since the United States has a comparative advantage in developing high-technology weapons, the only justification for accepting parity in strategic-nuclear forces would be to achieve genuine and substantial arms control. Thus, if the Soviet Union and the United States had reached an agreement which actually limited strategic arms, and if equality had truly been achieved, there would be equal ICBM throw-weights and the Minuteman vulnerability problem would have receded. The Soviets could not threaten our Minuteman force if they only had the same missile throw-weight that we have. What creates a problem now is the fact that the Soviet ICBM force is several times as large in throw-weight as the American, and this potential is increasingly exploited in the deployment of large numbers of accurate and very powerful warheads.

Under SALT II we get the worst of both worlds: there is no real control on the most important threat, and we must therefore undertake the great effort of protecting our ICBM force. On the other hand, a number of Soviet-desired restrictions have been imposed on our technological abilities, thus making remedial measures much more expensive and difficult than would otherwise have been the case. Without the SALT II restrictions, it would be much easier to cope with the Minuteman vulnerability problem.

As it is, we have to tread the thin (and very expensive) line between the demands of verification (which means that the missiles must be seen, in order to be counted) and the necessity of protection (which means that the missiles must be concealed).

An active defense of the missile silos would offer by far the most effective (and cost-effective) solution to the vulnerability problem. This is now ruled out by the 1972 ABM treaty. But we signed that treaty in the declared presumption that the next SALT agreement would seriously limit Soviet ICBM throw-weights. If SALT II is ratified, we will not have controlled Soviet throw-weights, and we will still be prevented from defending the Minuteman silos by means of ABM weapons. This is doubly unfortunate, since nowadays ABM techniques are available to protect ICBM silos at a cost much lower than the mobility-and-concealment schemes being considered by the administration. For example, the “trench-and-sunroof” scheme, in which MX missile transporters would be placed in concrete trenches with sliding roofs, would cost some $30 billion; a silo-defense ABM would by contrast be available for one-third that amount.

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6. How do our NATO allies feel about SALT? Aren’t they concerned about the lack of limits on such Soviet systems as the SS-20 IRBM? Aren’t they concerned about continued U.S. cooperation on theater systems?

Administration:

Allied support of SALT was evidenced recently by the strong statements made by allied leaders at the Guadeloupe summit meeting. German Chancellor Schmidt has urged early ratification on several occasions, while former British Prime Minister Callaghan declared that it would be tragic if the SALT II treaty were not ratified. French President Giscard d’Estaing also noted the need to move quickly to a conclusion of SALT II. This allied support at the highest levels reflects the continuing and close consultation which the U.S. has had with the allies throughout the conduct of the SALT II negotiations in order to insure that SALT II will fully protect allied as well as U.S. security interests.

While the SS-20 and the Backfire bomber are part of the Soviet arsenal which unquestionably does threaten Europe, NATO is confident that the alliance spectrum of conventional, theater-nuclear, and strategic forces remains an effective deterrent to aggression. Nevertheless, Soviet deployment of the SS-20 and the Backfire is a cause for concern. As a result, NATO is currently conducting an in-depth review of the issue of long-range theater-nuclear force modernization in order to insure that we can adequately respond to Soviet threats of both a military and political nature. This includes the possibility of new deployments of long-range theater-nuclear systems, as well as arms-control initiatives in this area, possibly within the context of SALT III.

We have assured our allies both privately and publicly that we will not permit the Soviets to use SALT as a vehicle for undermining continued close cooperation in the theater-nuclear area. The agreement will not affect existing patterns of collaboration and cooperation with our allies, nor will it preclude cooperation in modernization. We explicitly rejected a Soviet effort to prohibit the transfer of technology or systems in this area and have made clear to our allies that the non-circumvention provision in the agreement does not entail any additional obligations beyond those assumed in the agreement.

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Luttwak:

At a time when the Western world was being seriously threatened by multiple crises, including the troubles in Iran and Turkey, German Chancellor Schmidt, British Prime Minister Callaghan, and French President Giscard d’Estaing discovered that President Carter had called them to the Guadeloupe summit mainly to extract from them pro-SALT statements for the benefit of the TV cameras, and of Congress.

By now, only the naive remain deceived: it is plain that the European leaders must do business with the President of the United States, no matter who he is. They have urgent matters of their own to transact with the U.S., and they have powerful left-wing factions at home which are pressing for disarmament; both Schmidt and Callaghan must live with strong pro-disarmament factions within their own parties. As a result, if the President of the United States insists on parading their approval of SALT for the TV cameras, they will perform. But it is no secret that Chancellor Schmidt was dismayed by the fatal incoherence of the Presidents sense of priorities. As for President Giscard of France, he made his real opinion very clear indeed upon his return to Paris, when he flatly ruled out any French participation in SALT III.

A summit meeting can easily be manipulated, but the underlying strategic realities are not to be concealed: the Soviet build-up in “continental” weapons (notably the SS-20 missiles) presents a direct threat to NATO; the strategy of inaction followed by the Carter administration in the face of Soviet imperialism threatens the vital supplies of oil and scarce metals of the entire Western world; and the willful refusal to maintain the strength of U.S. strategic-nuclear forces undermines the credibility of the American guarantees on which the entire structure of the alliance is based. As far as Schmidt, Callaghan, and Giscard are concerned, those are the subjects which should have been raised at the Guadeloupe summit.

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7. Why did we accept the cruise-missile limits in the Protocol? Don’t these limits affect only U.S. systems? Won’t they set a precedent for follow-up negotiations?

Administration:

In the course of the SALT II negotiations, it became clear that, in order to get an agreement that contained limits on certain Soviet strategic programs of interest to us, we would have to accept some limitations on cruise missiles. For air-launched cruise missiles (ALCM’s), we had a clear idea about what type of limits would be acceptable for the period through 1985 and were able to reach agreement with the Soviets on ALCM limits in the 1985 portion of the treaty, which do not, in any way, constrain the ALCM options of interest to us. However, for ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCM’s) and sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCM’s) (that is, surface ship or submarine-launched), we were not prepared to accept long-term limitations.

Early in SALT II, the Soviets proposed that the treaty contain a ban on the testing and deployment of SLCM’s with ranges over 600 km and later adopted the same position for GLCM’s. We took the position that consideration of restrictive long-term limits on these systems should be postponed to future negotiations. However, the Soviets insisted that SALT II should contain some limits on SLCM’s and GLCM’s. When it became clear in the post-Vladivostok negotiations that an agreement could not be concluded without some SLCM and GLCM limits, the U.S. attempted to obtain Soviet agreement to a variety of packages limiting SLCM’s and GLCM’s. Eventually we agreed to accept some SLCM and GLCM limits in a short-term Protocol, not in the treaty itself. By this approach, we accommodated Soviet insistence that the agreement address SLCM’s and GLCM’s, while making certain that these limitations would have no impact on U.S. programs. The Protocol limits ban the deployment of SLCM’s and GLCM’s with ranges over 600 km but place no limit on development and testing, which can and are going forward.

Therefore, under the terms of the Protocol, the U.S. can continue its cruise-missile development program on schedule. We can test SLCM’s and GLCM’s to any range, while we have given up only the right to deploy such cruise missiles during the period of the Protocol—which we had no plans to do anyway. In the meantime, we can continue to analyze with our allies the potential role of SLCM’s and GLCM’s in long-range theater-nuclear force modernization and arms control. We consider this an acceptable outcome on this difficult issue.

Concerns about the precedential nature of the Protocol limits on SLCM’s and GLCM’s are totally unwarranted. The President would not accept any limits on SLCM’s and GLCM’s in future negotiations which were not in the interests of the U.S. and its allies. This means that any limitations on systems designed for theater missions would have to be accompanied by appropriate limitations on Soviet systems. Similarly, the United States Senate would have the opportunity to review and make their own judgments as to whether any future SLCM/GLCM limits that might be negotiated are in our national interest.

The history of SALT supports the conclusion that limits accepted in one agreement are not necessarily extended to another agreement unless they are judged to be in our national interest. For example, the original ABM treaty limited ABM deployments to two sites. This was later changed to one site. That agreement also contained a very restrictive limitation on the transfer of ABM systems and components; the SALT II agreement contains no such limits for offensive systems. The SALT I Interim Agreement provided for unequal aggregates of ICBM and SLBM launchers and unequal limits on ballistic-missile submarines, and some predicted at the time that these unequal limits would become a permanent feature of SALT. However, SALT II provides for equal aggregates between the United States and the Soviet Union and drops entirely the idea of numerical limits on submarines.

On the other hand, the two sides agreed to extend the SALT I freezes on building new ICBM silos and converting light ICBM launchers to heavy ICBM launchers. In the first case, we wanted the extension and, in the second case, the Soviets wanted it—which we accepted in return for Soviet concessions in other areas.

Moreover, both sides have made it clear in the negotiating record that the Protocol limits expire with the Protocol.

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Luttwak:

The Soviet system of government has a comparative advantage in allocating national resources to build up military power; the United States, being a creative, open society, has a potential advantage in science and technology for military innovation. The cruise missile (CM) is the current expression of this potential. Of low value on a unit basis, cruise missiles are of potentially very great value on a force basis. (A single cruise missile is worth much less than a single ballistic missile, but a billion dollars’ worth of cruise missiles can provide a more powerful, and certainly more survivable, force than a billion dollars’ worth of ballistic missiles.) The main advantage of the cruise missile is its small unit size and its potential for high accuracy. The first quality allows highly versatile deployments: CM’s can be launched from many kinds of aircraft, from ships, submarines, or even from the back of ordinary trucks forward-deployed in Europe or the Far East. It was therefore a high Soviet priority in SALT to impose restrictions on the cruise-missile potential of the United States. The SALT II Protocol would now ban cruise-missile deployments of strategic value (by prohibiting sea-launched and land-based CM’s with ranges in excess of 600 kilometers) except for air-launched CM’s mounted on heavy bombers. As a result, only a fraction of the potential of CM technology will be realized if the SALT II agreement is ratified.

The goals of arms control are supposed to be, first, to insure strategic stability; second, to limit destruction in war; and third, to limit military expenditures. The central fact that SALT obscures is that CM technology offers in itself the means to achieve these goals:

First, since they are so small and so versatile in deployment, CM forces are inherently very stable indeed: not even the most optimistic counter-force planner could hope to target a diversified CM force distributed among ships, submarines, aircraft of various kinds, and small ground vehicles.

Second, CM’s are highly accurate and therefore need only small (and less destructive) warheads; a force of 100 current CM’s would cause less fallout than a single Soviet SS-18 ICBM.

Third, since CM’s are inherently cheap, a shift to CM forces would reduce expenditures as compared to an equivalent force of ICBM’s, bombers, or SLBM’s.

Genuine arms control could thus have best been achieved by leaving CM’s entirely unlimited, to provide an incentive for a shift into these stabilizing, less destructive, and cheaper weapons. But arms control and SALT II parted company long ago, and the outcome is not surprising.

The administration claims that the SALT II Protocol limits only the deployment of CM’s and only until the end of 1981; it also claims that ground-launched and sea-launched CM’s could not have been deployed within that time anyway. That result was of course contrived by manipulating the scheduling of the CM program: we could have had CM’s by 1980, given the will to acquire them. The administration states above:

In the course of the SALT II negotiations, it became clear that, in order to get an agreement that contained limits on certain Soviet strategic programs of interest to us, we would have to accept some limitations on cruise missiles.

One would like to know exactly what were those “limits on certain Soviet strategic programs” that the Russians accepted in exchange for the heavy restrictions on our CM technology. With no strategic sea-launched CM’s in prospect, no submarine CM’s, no ground-launched CM’s, and air-launched CM’s allowed only on “heavy bombers,” it appears that in the end the only benefit which we will obtain from the entire CM technology will be to enhance the penetrability of roughly 120 of our old B-52’s. That is certainly not what we expected when the B-l was cancelled. At that time, the White House spoke of the cruise missile as the great new weapon which had made the B-l unnecessary, and there was talk of thousands of cruise missiles, deployed in all convenient modes.

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8. It is claimed that SALT II will be adequately verifiable; but how will the U.S. make sure that the Soviets aren’t cheating? Doesn’t the loss of intelligence-collection sites in Iran undermine our ability to verify the SALT II agreement?

Administration:

The U.S. relies for verification on “national technical means” (NTM) which is a general term covering a variety of technical collection methods for monitoring Soviet military activities. As the President has publicly confirmed, these national technical means include photographic satellites. There are other collection methods as well. For example, we are able to monitor Soviet telemetry—that is, the technical data transmitted by radio signals from the Soviet missiles during tests—from outside Soviet territory. A further example of national technical means are the ships and aircraft which we also use to monitor Soviet missile tests. The sides have also acknowledged that large radars, such as the COBRA DANE radar at Shenya Island in the Aleutians, can be used as a form of national technical means.

This is not a complete list of the technical devices that constitute our NTM. Still less is it a complete list of U.S. intelligence resources. Many of our intelligence resources are very sensitive. Public acknowledgment of their existence, much less of their technical capabilities and details of how they work or what information they produce, would make it far easier for the Soviets to negate them. Therefore, what we can say publicly about the details of our intelligence facilities is very limited. Members of the Senate who will have to vote on the treaty will, of course, have full access to all the details.

However, there is no secret that our NTM enable us to learn a great deal about Soviet military systems, including the strategic-nuclear forces that are limited in SALT. We are able to monitor many aspects of the development, testing, production, deployment, training, and operation of Soviet strategic forces, despite the closed nature of Soviet society and Soviet concern with secrecy. A good measure of the capabilities of our systems of intelligence collection is the detailed information we publish on Soviet forces. For example, the Secretary of Defense’s Report for Fiscal Year 1980 lists the numbers of Soviet bombers and missiles, and gives estimates of the numbers of weapons carried on Soviet forces. We know that the Soviets have a “fifth generation” of ICBM’s under development, and we know a good deal about their characteristics—this, before a single missile has been flight-tested. That this is by no means the full extent of our knowledge of Soviet systems is clear from the mass of unofficial—but often all-too-accurate—leaks of detailed information on Soviet programs.

From these sources, then, we are able to assemble a detailed picture of Soviet forces, both overall and in terms of the characteristics of particular systems. No one source is essential; instead we rely on information from a variety of sources—for example, what we learn from photography can be checked against information from radar or telemetry monitoring. This means that loss of a particular source, though it can be important and can require replacement, does not “blind” our ability to monitor what the Soviets are doing. Moreover, the use of multiple sources complicates any effort to disguise or conceal a violation. The Soviets know we have a big intelligence operation and know a certain amount about how it works, from our official statements, from leaks, from spies, and from their own NTM. But we know they do not know the full capabilities of our systems—or, equally important, how we use the information we collect. The result is that efforts to conceal would have to be planned to cope with a number of U.S. collection systems, some of them entirely unknown. (The need to maintain this uncertainty is a major justification for continued secrecy about our intelligence systems and methods.)

As for the loss of the intelligence-collection sites in Iran, we are proceeding in an orderly fashion to reestablish that capability. As Secretary of Defense Harold Brown pointed out in his April 5 speech in New York, the issue is not whether the capability will be reestablished but rather how, where, and how quickly. There are a number of alternatives available to us for recovering the capability. Some can be implemented more quickly than others. Some involve consultations with other countries, some do not.

Intelligence of the kind obtained from the Iranian sites provides information on Soviet strategic systems, including some of the aspects of the strategic systems which are limited by SALT. For this reason, we will be moving with all deliberate speed to reestablish the capability. However, as noted above, we have a large number of other technical intelligence-collection sources which collect intelligence on Soviet strategic systems. As a consequence, it is not imperative that the Iranian capability be immediately established to insure that the emerging SALT agreement is adequately verifiable, i.e., that any Soviet cheating that could pose a military risk be detected in time for the U.S. to respond and offset the threat. As long as the capability is reestablished on a timely basis—as we plan to do—there will be no impact on SALT verification. We estimate that regaining enough capability to monitor adequately these tests for SALT purposes will take about a year.

The principal information at issue is the nature and characteristics of new or modified Soviet ICBM’s. Each such Soviet program will require about 20 flight tests over a period of years. We would be able to monitor testing and detect violations well before the testing programs were complete. On this basis, we are confident that we will be able to verify adequately a SALT agreement from the moment it is signed.

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Luttwak:

The fundamentals of verification are not in fact a matter of satellite technology, telemetry, and so on. The crucial facts of the matter are political. We have a virtually transparent society; the Russians are entirely secretive. We publish masses of hard data on our military forces; they publish only vague boasts. As a result, when we obtain a satellite photograph of a missile-like object on a Soviet test-range, all we know is just that. When the Russians get a similar photograph, they can immediately find out from published evidence whether it is an experiment or a prototype, if there is a production program and how large, what is its range and payload, what is the intended mission, and more.

This long-standing intelligence imbalance has become much worse of late. We have lost critical observation facilities in Iran, and some of our most important satellite systems have been fatally compromised. (The Russians now know exactly how the devices work; they therefore know how to fool them.) Beyond that, we have virtually eliminated the CIA’s ability to collect intelligence overseas by covert means.

We can still identify and count large, fixed objects of classic form such as uncamouflaged ICBM silos. Beyond that, everything is a matter of relative uncertainty and claims to the contrary are either dishonest or ill-informed. Stansfield Turner, the director of Central Intelligence, did his honorable duty when he testified before Congress that the SALT II agreements could not be verified reliably at the present time, and that it would take five years to acquire the necessary capabilities. Others, much closer to the politics of the White House, more remote from the realities of the trade, and free of the special responsibilities of the director of Central Intelligence before the nation, have claimed that we could verify SALT II within one year. It is evident that Turner deserves our respect for his civic courage in telling the truth in the face of extreme political pressures.

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9. If this SALT agreement is so much in the national-security interests of the United States, why does the Soviet Union want it?

Administration:

Before examining possible reasons for the Soviets’ concluding that this agreement is in their national interest, it is important to note that there is nothing inconsistent in the agreement’s being in the interests of both the United States and the Soviet Union. As in any agreement voluntarily signed by two independent parties, whether it be a business deal, a labor contract, or an international treaty, the incentive for signing and adhering to an agreement is that both parties find it beneficial, even though it is less than their maximum desires.

There are several possible reasons for the Soviet interest in this agreement. First of all, it should not be surprising that they, like us, believe that an unconstrained strategic-arms competition could increase the risk of nuclear war, while at the same time not enhance the security of either nation. This is not to imply that they view the U.S. as any less of a competitor—or that they would expect to lose such a race—but only that they realize that it is safer, and more in their interest from the viewpoint of national survival, if that competition is limited in the area of strategic weapons.

A second possible reason concerns the allocation of resources within the Soviet economy. While there is no question that they will spend on military systems whatever they think they need to, or could get an advantage from, it is well known that their economy is not in good shape. They have chronic problems with their agricultural production, technology lag, a shortage of skilled labor, a very cumbersome system of production and distribution, and the possibility of an energy shortage sometime in the next decade. With these problems, Soviet defense spending becomes a very great burden. The Soviet Union spends about 12 per cent of its gross national product on defense, while we spend only about 5 per cent.

Another reason for Soviet interest in SALT II may be that they see the equality in the SALT limits as confirming equal superpower status with the United States. The Soviets might well find it ironic that there are those in the U.S. who tend to regard them as 10 feet tall, since that is their general attitude toward us—particularly where technology is concerned. Even though the Soviets have had a larger overall number of strategic delivery vehicles than the U.S. for several years, they have lagged behind the U.S. in the most modern of strategic systems, MIRVed missiles, and could feel that they were viewed as second-best.

Finally it is clear that the current Soviet leadership has invested considerable personal prestige in the SALT negotiations. Thus, they probably want SALT to succeed so that their view of détente and the utility of cooperation with the West in some areas can be vindicated over the views of others in the Kremlin who may not be so enthusiastic about the SALT process.

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Luttwak:

Unlike the United States, the Soviet Union has a strategy. As a result, for Soviet planners arms control is a tool of policy instead of being a policy goal in itself. It is self-evident that the goal of Soviet strategy over the long term is to maximize the relative power of the Soviet Union.

In the past, the Soviet superiority in ground forces was diminished even within the sphere of land combat by the Western advantage in tactical air power; beyond that, any Soviet advantages in land strength (ground and air) were contained by the Western advantage in naval power. In the still broader frame of overall military strength, any Soviet advantage in conventional military forces would have been offset by the net advantage of the United States in strategic-military capability.

In the past, therefore, the Soviet Union was unable to use military force or the threat of force to impose its will upon other nations beyond the boundaries of the empire it had already conquered by 1945. Offsetting Western advantages checkmated every major Soviet military option.

Over the last two decades, the Soviet Union has worked with extreme tenacity to remove one by one the Western military counterweights to its strength. In tactical air power, a broad development effort has by now produced a Soviet tactical air force much larger than the American, and it has greatly narrowed the gap in quality. At sea, the Soviet Union now has a large oceanic navy that has definitely ended the period of U.S. naval supremacy.

The Soviet effort in building tactical air and naval forces has been impressive, but there is no doubt that the finest achievement of Soviet strategy has been the skillful combination of arms-control negotiations with a most energetic build-up program in the realm of long-range nuclear weapons. This combined policy now promises to eliminate the last of the counterweights—American nuclear deterrence of Soviet military pressures against NATO and other U.S. allies. By using SALT as a tool of policy (while the United States allowed the SALT process to usurp the proper place of strategy), the Russians have managed to stimulate American unilateralism (e.g., the B-l cancellation, MX and cruise-missile delays) even while they themselves were building ICBM’s, SLBM’s, and bombers by the hundreds. Even better, they have been able to use SALT as a way of overcoming the most difficult of all the obstacles in their path, American technological creativity.

At first, the Russians were unhappy with discussions of qualitative limits in SALT, so long as negotiations focused on heavy ICBM’s and such; but they soon realized that the Americans in their unstrategical innocence were willing to give up their only real card in the power competition across the board: technological innovation. This of course was the key to the implementation of Soviet strategy, since in the natural course of things they could never have hoped to defeat the creativity of American society.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the Russians should greatly desire SALT II. As far as they are concerned, the treaty is a most important achievement, a critical element in a broader strategy designed to eliminate the one residual American military advantage, so that Soviet strength can at long last be brought to bear with full effect on the world situation. If SALT II fails to be ratified, if a great national debate ensues on the purposes and content of U.S. strategy, the Soviet Union would have a great deal to lose. A key ingredient in Soviet success to date has been the American enthusiasm for arms control for its own sake. This would not survive a clear-sighted reappraisal.

The administration’s spokesmen like to explain Soviet enthusiasm for SALT as due to a putative desire to reallocate resources within the Soviet economy. It is true of course that the Soviet Union allocates 12 per cent of its gross national product to military outlays (as compared to 5 per cent for the U.S.). Nevertheless, the administration’s theory reveals a touching innocence, or perhaps a fatal credulity: the Russians have never allowed civilian priorities to get in the way of their strategic goals. And if they did want to reallocate resources, why not simply slow down by a little the frenetic pace of their build-up? After all, even if they were to stop the SS-17 and SS-19 ICBM programs, they would still have two other healthy ICBM programs as against our single MX project (still in its research-and-development phase). Why pursue multiple SLBM efforts with such drastic urgency? The fact is that the Soviet Union is building in accordance with a strategy, and SALT II will in no serious way reduce Soviet efforts. If the precedent of SALT I is any guide, Soviet strategic expenditures will not go down by a single kopek.

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10. Did the Soviets violate the SALT I agreements?

Administration:

No. We have closely monitored Soviet strategic forces limited by SALT I for over six years. During this period on several occasions we have observed ambiguous situations or Soviet activities which were of concern to us. In each instance, we have promptly raised our concerns in the Standing Consultative Commission, a special body created in SALT I to deal with questions of implementation of the agreements, including questions which might arise concerning compliance and related situations which may be considered ambiguous. In each instance, the questionable activity ceased or additional information has clarified the situation and allayed our concern. In no instance did we find any grounds for charging the Soviets with a violation of the SALT I agreements.

The Soviets, for their part, have raised questions about U.S. activities which they considered of concern. These questions have also been satisfactorily resolved.

The record of exchanges by the parties on these issues has been provided to the Congress by Secretary of State Vance in February 1978. This report is available to the public (Department of State Publication 8930).

The record of the SALT I agreements demonstrates both the ability and willingness of the U.S. to object to questionable practices and the commitment of both sides to insuring the viability of the SALT agreements by using effective procedures for resolving compliance questions when they arise.

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Luttwak:

The administration’s answer is a flat no. That is a true, but grossly incomplete, answer. It is true that the Soviet Union did not violate the strict letter of the SALT I agreed texts. But the Soviet Union made nonsense of the whole meaning and purpose of the SALT I agreements by exploiting every significant loophole and by violating the entire spirit of the accords.

Actually, in a way, it is the United States that has violated its own undertakings: the loopholes in the agreement were obvious enough, and were clearly pointed out at the time in the open literature.¹ We were told, however, that there was nothing to worry about, since a series of “unilateral statements” issued by the United States had fully covered all the loopholes. We were told that the U.S. would terminate the agreements if these restraints were ignored by the Soviet Union.

In reality, since 1972 the Soviet Union has ignored the unilateral statements while the United States has failed to enforce them by appropriate remedies. For example, the whole rationale for the American acceptance of the unequal limits on ICBM’s in the 1972 SALT accords (1,608 for the USSR versus 1,054 for the U.S.) was that the Soviet Union would limit the overall throw-weight of its ICBM’s by not building any more “heavy” ICBM (SS-9/SS-18) silos—otherwise, we were told, the U.S. Minuteman ICBM’s would be endangered. To obtain the 308-unit limit on “heavy” ICBM silos in SALT I, the United States agreed to the higher overall ceiling for Soviet ICBM’s of all types. Obviously the presumption was that those ICBM silos which were not for “heavy” missiles would be used for “light” ICBM’s. As we now know, the Soviet Union was even then building SS-19 ICBM’s, which are not “light” by any imaginable definition: their throw-weight is more than three times as great as that of the “light” SS-11’s or Minuteman Ill’s. Each SS-19 carries up to six large warheads of half-a-megaton yield (as against three 0.17 megaton warheads for the Minuteman III); two SS-19’s are therefore more of a threat to U.S. ICBM silos than one SS-18 would have been. In 1972 it was commonly understood that the Soviet Union would not be allowed to replace “light” ICBM’s with heavy ones. By replacing SS-1l’s (no threat to Minuteman) with SS-19’s, the Soviet Union has in effect done just that.

More generally, the Soviet Union has violated the whole purpose of the SALT I accords. An arms-control agreement is supposed to control arms, but since 1972 we have witnessed the deployment of no fewer than four new Soviet ICBM types (SS-16, SS-17, SS-18, SS-19), three types of SLBM submarines, two new SLBM’s (SS-N-17 and SS-N-18), and the Backfire bomber. All but one of these weapons (the SS-16) have been produced in generous quantities. Had the Soviet Union shared a genuine interest in arms control, it would surely have taken care to exercise at least a modicum of restraint. Why not have, say, only two ICBM types to match each American project instead of four? Why all the urgency and costly multiplicity of types?

There is no reason to believe that SALT II will serve the interests of the United States, or the disinterested purposes of arms control, any better than the SALT I accords did.

¹ See Edward N. Luttwak, The Strategic Balance, CSIS Washington Paper No. 3, 1972.