The Risks of Taking Up Shields

By Strobe Talbott

In the nuclear age, it may be safer when each side has only spears

To President Reagan, a foolproof system for shooting down nuclear weapons is nothing less than "a new hope for our children in the 21st century." Such an antiballistic missile (ABM) umbrella, he said, would make the U.S. safe from attack, the world free from the danger of cataclysmic conflict between the superpowers, and the doctrine of deterrence more credible--and far more humane--than the traditional reliance on the threat of massive retaliation.

To many experts, however, Reagan's dream of a "truly lasting stability" is a nightmare of a new, and highly destabilizing, arms race. It is part of the paradox and perversity of nuclear weapons--and practically an article of faith among those who must think about how to prevent their use--that defensive systems can be every bit as treacherous as the offensive ones they are meant to counter. The reason is that in theory, strategic defenses would tend to upset the balance of terror and increase the chance of war.

According to the definition Reagan used in his speech last week, "Deterrence means simply this: making sure any adversary who thinks about attacking . . . concludes that the risks to him outweigh any potential gains." The President was speaking just about American deterrence of Soviet attack. "The United States does not start fights," he asserted. "We will never be an aggressor."

But the military planners and political leaders in the Kremlin will never proceed on that assumption, nor can they. They want to feel confident that deterrence works the other way and that they could retaliate effectively against an American attack on them. There is no room in the concept of mutual deterrence for one side to claim, as Reagan did, a monopoly on virtue and peaceful intentions. Sure enough, Izvestia, the Soviet government newspaper, launched a rhetorical counterstrike at Reagan, accusing him of turning "Washington into a dangerous hotbed of thermonuclear confrontation." Nor is there any way to exorcise from deterrence what Reagan called "the specter of retaliation." That specter is in the nature of nuclear weapons. As Winston Churchill observed nearly three decades ago: "Safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation."

The buildup of strategic defenses could touch off a chain reaction of negative consequences. If the U.S. tried to erect the sort of protective umbrella Reagan has in mind, the Soviet Union would suspect that the U.S. was seeking the capability of destroying the U.S.S.R. with impunity. To forestall that, the Soviets would no doubt accelerate their own already considerable research into defensive weapons, while simultaneously refining their offensive weapons in order to "beat" or "penetrate" whatever ABM system the U.S. devises. In that sense, the worst sin against strategic stability is a good defense--particularly the sort of "prevent defense" Reagan has in mind. ABMS could also be a troublesome factor in the calculations, and miscalculations, that would determine the outcome of a crisis. If one side felt secure against retaliation thanks to its defensive system, it might bet everything on what Harold Brown has called "the cosmic roll of the dice," an attempt to disarm the other side by knocking out its defensive forces.

Moreover, the gamble might be carried out by using ABMs themselves. Any system powerful, accurate and pervasive enough to destroy all the adversary's attacking missiles after they are launched would also, almost by definition, be capable of destroying those same missiles before they are launched. Or, for that matter, an ABM based in space could be used to zap airfields, factories, bunkers or an office building inside, say, a walled fortress on the banks of the Moscow River. In short, an ABM system cannot be, on the one hand, omniscient and omnipotent while at the same time being purely and exclusively defensive--at least not in the eye of a beholder on the other side.

All these cautionary considerations were dismissed last week by Under Secretary of Defense Fred Ikle as "doctrinal blinders that have been in the way for the past 20 years or so." Ikle, like Reagan, sees ABMS as an "alternative" to a deterrent made up of offensive weapons. But offensive weapons would almost certainly remain and quite possibly increase in response to the surge in defenses.

It was American defense intellectuals who first fully appreciated the perils of an interlocked offensive and defensive arms race, with an escalation in either one driving the other. Back in 1967, the Johnson Administration suggested to the late Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin the possibility of calling off an ABM race before it began. Kosygin's initial reaction was that it would be grossly irresponsible and even crazy for any nation to forgo a system that would allow it to protect itself and its populace.

During the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I), however, the Soviets accepted sharp restrictions on ABMs. They were moved to do so not just by the philosophical wisdom of the American argument, but by the strength of the American bargaining position. The U.S. had started to build an ABM of its own, despite stiff political opposition, so the Soviets had to ponder the implication of unregulated competition as an alternative to negotiated restraint. They also realized the apparent impossibility of an effective ABM. The 1972 SALT I treaty limiting ABMs is the only nuclear arms control agreement still legally in force between the superpowers. As amended in 1974, it restricts each side to one ABM installation. The U.S. has already retired and put into storage its own Safeguard system that was protecting the Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile field at Grand Forks, N. Dak. The U.S.S.R. still has an operational ABM system surrounding Moscow. The ABM treaty is generally regarded as the most valuable achievement in the otherwise controversial and, to many, disappointing history of U.S.-Soviet arms negotiations.

Whether the agreement can endure is another question. From the moment it was concluded, U.S. officials made clear that just as a defensive rivalry would fuel an offensive one, so defensive arms control must be accompanied by offensive arms control. In May 1972, Richard Nixon's chief SALT negotiator, Gerard Smith, put his Soviet counterpart, Vladimir Semyonov, on notice that there would have to be a SALT II treaty extending limitations on offensive arms within five years. Otherwise, "U.S. supreme interests could be jeopardized," and the treaty might have to be scrapped.

Jimmy Carter missed Smith's deadline by two years. SALT II was not signed until 1979, and it has never been ratified. Still, the ABM treaty has remained in effect, and Reagan was careful to say last week that his pursuit of a breakthrough in defensive technology would be "consistent with our obligations under the ABM treaty." Making good on that assurance will be tricky, since Article V of the treaty prohibits not just deployment but development of space-based ABMS, as well as more down-to-earth methods.

Reagan's professed adherence to the ABM pact rings a little hollow when examined against the backdrop of his Administration's overall attitude toward, and record in, arms control and defense. In looking for a way to protect the planned MX from Soviet pre-emptive attack, civilian and military officials of the Pentagon have seriously considered various schemes for ballistic missile defenses, or BMD, a land-based system of antimissile missiles that would require drastic renegotiation if not abrogation of the 1972 treaty.

The chief negotiator in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), Edward Rowny, has voiced skepticism about whether the U.S. should continue to comply with the ABM treaty. In 1972, he says, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. in effect agreed to throw away their shields; since then, the Soviets have acquired an ever more bristling armory of spears; therefore the U.S. must think seriously about picking up its shield again.

Rowny has conveyed a version of this gladiatorial analogy to his Soviet counterpart, Victor Karpov, at the negotiating table in Geneva. Rowny has also reminded Karpov of Smith's warning to Semyonov eleven years ago: the viability of the ABM treaty will depend on progress in offensive arms control.

The Soviet comeback: It is the U.S., not the U.S.S.R., that refuses to ratify SALT II. The Reagan Administration's START proposal would require drastic and immediate cuts in Soviet forces and is unacceptable to the Kremlin for that reason. Therefore, the Soviets argue, the U.S. will have only itself to blame if the ABM treaty collapses and a race to develop defensive superweapons begins in earnest.

Underlying the President's speech and many policies of his Administration is a confidence that the U.S. could win such a race. While decrying what they see as an across-the-board inferiority to the Soviet Union by most measures of military power, Administration officials seem to think that the U.S. enjoys a lasting and at least partially compensating advantage in high technology.

One of the burdens under which the Administration's arms-control negotiators are laboring is an injunction not to trade away, or even accept, significant limitations on weapons systems where the U.S. has a technological lead. For example, American advances in microelectronics and precision guidance put the U.S. cruise missile program well ahead of the U.S.S.R.'s. As a result, cruise missiles have been declared virtually out of bounds for restrictions under START.

This faith in technology as the solution to the country's military problems shone through clearly in Reagan's speech when he called on the American scientific community to "give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete." That faith, however, may be both forgetful about the past and shortsighted toward the future. It is also strangely insensitive to the purely economic costs of opening yet another huge area in the arms race--and, conversely, to the economic benefit of keeping that area closed with arms control.

The Soviets have been able to overcome technology gaps before. The classic, and pertinent, example is multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVS), the warheads on ballistic missiles. MIRVs were an American monopoly in the late '60s. The Johnson and Nixon Administrations decided to proceed with the deployment of Hydraheaded missiles rather than seeking to ban or limit them in SALT I, because MIRVS were a hedge against Soviet ABMs. But the Soviets first caught up with the U.S. in MIRVS, then gained effective superiority by putting them on larger missiles. Now Henry Kissinger and others responsible for the decision of the late '60s wish they had tried harder to cap MIRVS before that genie was out of the bottle.

So it may be with cruise missiles with in a few years, and so it may be with exotic ABMs early in the next century, when Reagan is hoping that American children will be safe at last. Today's panacea can be tomorrow's poison, especially if the other side is busily filling the same prescription. Prudence certainly requires that the U.S. continue brainstorming on possible ABM plans, with a wary eye on what the Soviets are up to -- but without any illusion that ABMs can make the threats of both Soviet aggression and nuclear war disappear.

The question is not so much whether either the U.S. or the U.S.S.R. can beat the other in a space weapons race. Rather, the danger is that both will lose, each aggravating the insecurity of the other as it strives to keep up. That is a danger that will loom long before the scientists and generals know whether the systems they are so feverishly developing will actually work. And to work, these systems must be 100% effective. Even a tiny percentage of "leakage" (offensive warheads slipping through the defensive net) would mean millions of deaths.

If, in the end, a system did work-- if, despite all the skepticism voiced by the experts last week in reponse to Reagan, Yankee faith in Yankee know-how paid off-- then a final irony would come sharply into focus. As the U.S. moved closer to actual deployment of any such system, the Soviet Union would be under an increasingly desperate temptation to strike while it still had a chance, to attack before the U.S. not only rendered Soviet weapons impotent, but rendered the Soviet Union itself permanently at America's mercy. There is only one way the U.S. would be able to put its unpenetrable, invulnerable antinuclear umbrella in place without the gravest risk of nuclear war: it would have to share its invention with the U.S.S.R. The most striking thing about Reagan's speech last week was his treatment of ABMs as a solution that the U.S. can adopt on its own rather than a problem that must be subject to management with the other superpower. That same instinct for unilateral defense without the benefit of bilateral diplomacy has characterized his custodianship of nuclear weapons more generally. --By Strobe Talbott This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.