CHAPTER 8

Missed Opportunities

The historic victory of Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential election paved the way for several important policy initiatives to be undertaken, most of which involved critical domestic issues pertaining to civil rights and poverty. However, there were a few pressing foreign policy matters that needed attention as well. The growing conflict in Vietnam loomed large, as did the question of how the Johnson administration was going to deal with China, given that nation’s new-found status as a nuclear power. Whereas the simplistic politics of presidential elections precluded sharp and decisive action at the time of the August 1964 Chinese nuclear test, after the election, Johnson was liberated by a mandate only a sweeping electoral victory could provide.

The Chinese acquisition of the atomic bomb highlighted the growing threat presented by the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology, a threat that had been identified by President Kennedy prior to his death and yet was pushed to the side by Johnson during the run-up to the 1964 election. With the election finished, Johnson could assemble a high-level committee that he tasked with exploring “the widest range of measures that the United States might undertake in conjunction with other governments or by itself” when it came to the limitation of the spread of nuclear weapons.1 This committee became known as the Gilpatric Committee, named after its chair, Roswell Gilpatric, the former deputy secretary of defense, who left his government job in January 1964 to take a position with a Wall Street law firm.

The Gilpatric Committee was composed of some of the most experienced men in government and industry, including the veteran diplomat and arms control specialist, John McCloy; another veteran diplomat and arms control negotiator, Arthur Dean; former White House science adviser George Kistiakowsky; former CIA director Allen Dulles; the chair of IBM, Arthur Watson; and the former NATO commander, General Alfred Gruenther. The committee was served by a strong and experienced staff, including Spurgeon Keeney of the National Security Council, as well as Henry Rowen and George Rathjens. The committee also consulted with officials in and out of government.2

The Gilpatric Committee made its report to President Johnson on January 21, 1965, the day following the president’s inauguration. The report set forth three pillars of policy guidance around which, in its opinion, a successful American nonproliferation policy must be built. First and foremost, the committee emphasized the paramount importance of the need for the United States to take the lead in the negotiation of formal multilateral agreements on the issue of nonproliferation. The second pillar was the need for the application of influence by the United States, and other like-minded nations, on individual nations considering nuclear weapons acquisition. And the final pillar, which was perhaps the most critical, was the need for the United States to set the example through its own policies and actions.³

Time, the Gilpatric Committee believed, was in short supply. “The world is fast approaching the point of no return,” the report warned ominously, “in the prospects of controlling the spread of nuclear weapons.”⁴ Though not the original intent of Eisenhower’s “atoms for peace” program, the fact of the matter was that the proliferation of nuclear power programs had succeeded in placing the “knowledge, equipment and materials for making nuclear weapons” in the hands of numerous nations.⁵ The Chinese nuclear test in October 1964, as with the French nuclear test before it, brought with it the impression that possession of a nuclear weapon awarded it automatic status as a regional, if not world, power.

If the United States was to have any success in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, the committee noted, there must be immediate, concerted and intensified effort. All policies were interlinked in this regard, including foreign relations abroad, the deployment of nuclear weapons at home and abroad, peaceful atomic energy, and commercial relations. Although other issues were important, the Gilpatric Committee noted, nonproliferation was going to need to be emphasized to a much greater degree than had been the case in the past.⁶

There could be no effective nonproliferation policy without the full involvement of the Soviet Union. This meant that the Cold War-inspired arms race had to be brought to an end because, as the committee underscored, “it is unlikely that others can be induced to abstain indefinitely from acquiring nuclear weapons if the Soviet Union and the United States continue in a nuclear arms race. Therefore, lessened emphasis by the United States and the Soviet Union on nuclear weapons, and agreements on broader arms control measures, must be recognized as important components in the overall program to prevent nuclear proliferation.”7 The Soviets, the committee stated, share this perception of the problem. The recent change in Soviet leadership, combined with a possible review of Soviet nuclear policies, could very well provide immediate opportunities for joint or parallel action by both the United States and the Soviet Union to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. The cornerstone of any nonproliferation regime, the committee held, was the need for an improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations, with an emphasis on strengthening arms control through new agreements. The Gilpatric Committee viewed the ongoing pursuit of a multilateral force (MLF) by the United States and NATO as inherently contradictory to the overall U.S. nonproliferation objectives, so they argued strongly for the MLF to be dropped.⁸

In perhaps its most controversial finding, the Gilpatric Committee recommended that the United States de-emphasize nuclear weapons as a tool of military and national power. This was, the committee believed, the only way to prevent giving other nations around the world any incentive to develop nuclear weapons. Not only would U.S. strategy need to be reworked but also the strategy of NATO, where tactical nuclear weapons played such an important role in the overall military defense posture. Even though the committee concurred that some tactical nuclear weapons capability needed to be retained within NATO for the purposes of preserving a viable deterrent, strategic flexibility, and overall credibility, the overall reliance on the part of NATO on tactical nuclear weapons needed to be significantly reduced.⁹

The Gilpatric Committee’s report challenged numerous aspects of U.S. policy in effect at the time, including arms control, relations with NATO, and the integration of nuclear weapons in overall U.S. military strategy. Upon conclusion of the committee’s verbal report, Johnson expressed some frustration, noting that to him it seemed like the implementation of the committee’s findings would be “a very unpleasant undertaking.”¹⁰ Johnson then ordered a complete embargo of the committee’s written report, including prohibiting the attendees from even mentioning the fact that the committee had produced a written report. The suppression of the committee’s report and findings left many committee members, including Gilpatric himself, angry and critical of the president and his advisers, especially of his secretary of state, Dean Rusk, who was singled out as being particularly inflexible when it came to altering U.S. foreign policy priorities.

President Johnson was confronted with two major foreign policy issues early on in his administration, both of which he had reflected on in his State of the Union speech delivered on January 4, 1965. The first was the issue with Soviet Union, to which the president said, “With the Soviet Union we seek peaceful understandings that can lessen the danger to freedom. Last fall I asked the American people to choose that course. I will carry forward their command. If we are to live together in peace, we must come to know each other better.”11 The Gilpatric Committee had provided President Johnson, through its report, with as big an incentive as possible for an immediate improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations, namely the need to jointly confront what was, in its opinion, the greatest threat faced by America: the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

But President Johnson was wrestling with another foreign policy demon, this one in Vietnam. While arguing for better U.S.-Soviet relations, Johnson noted that “In Asia, communism wears a more aggressive face. We see that in Vietnam.” As if debating himself, Johnson asked the question, “Why are we there?” His answer provided insight into the direction Johnson was heading concerning U.S. involvement in that nation. “We are there, first, because a friendly nation has asked us for help against the communist aggression.”¹² But the U.S. military action in Vietnam was damaging relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and, more critically, between the Soviet premier Aleksei Kosygin and President Johnson, at a critical time. Following the ascension to power of Kosygin and Brezhnev in the Soviet Union in October 1964, and the election of President Johnson in the United States in November 1964, efforts had been made by all parties to seek to repair relations between the world’s two superpowers, with particular attention being paid to the field of disarmament and proliferation. Johnson and Kosygin exchanged letters to that effect.

But radical changes in disarmament policy were not part of the Johnson agenda. McGeorge Bundy, having helped created the Gilpatric Committee, was now leading the charge to undermine its findings. Neither Johnson nor Bundy had embraced any of the committee’s conclusions, or even its basic philosophy of arms control and nonproliferation. Overseeing the drafting of a new National Security Action Memorandum on arms control, Bundy emphasized to Johnson that the new review would “bring the issues up clear and clean where you can see them and hear the arguments of the different parties of interest,” a clear slap at the Gilpatric Committee, which Bundy viewed as being composed of “outsiders.”13 Bundy informed both McNamara and Rusk that the Gilpatric Committee report was “unbalanced in its apparent feeling that immediate progress is possible in these areas.”¹⁴ Rather than sweeping arms control proposals and initiatives, Bundy preferred that both the State and Defense Departments simply seek to “reaffirm our basic support for the principle of non-dissemination and the principle of a comprehensive test ban treaty.”¹⁵ Such limited thinking was designed to keep policy from becoming “unbalanced in the other direction,” this despite protests from Bundy’s NSC staff not “to sweep the [Gilpatric] report under the rug.”¹⁶

On June 28, 1965, Johnson authorized the issuing of National Security Action Memorandum 335, “Preparation of Arms Control Program.” Prepared by McGeorge Bundy, NSAM 335 directed the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency to draft “a proposed new program of arms control and disarmament, including a proposed program for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.” The end product of these efforts would be a new U.S. negotiating posture designed to reinvigorate the regularly scheduled meeting of the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva, which would be “brought to the attention of the President in a timely and orderly manner in order to permit a decision by him at the appropriate time.”¹⁷ The lack of specific direction in the body of NSAM 335 reflected Bundy’s prejudice against the Gilpatric Committee’s finding. A few days after issuing NSAM 335, Bundy wrote Johnson that “in light of the fact that the Gilpatric Committee has not worked out to your satisfaction, I want to be quite sure that our next efforts in this critically important field are along lines you approve.” President Johnson checked the “approve” box on the bottom of the page, indicating his concurrence with Bundy’s motives.¹⁸

Given Bundy’s stance on the Gilpatric Committee’s report, and Rusk’s continued embrace of the MLF, there was no hope for any meaningful progress on the issue of nonproliferation in Geneva. The Gilpatric Committee’s report, especially its findings on giving a nonproliferation treaty priority over agreement on MLF, was in direct opposition to the positions of President Johnson and Secretary of State Rusk, who were both heavily committed to the MLF. The Soviet Union continued to view the MLF as incompatible with a nonproliferation treaty. Rusk, in particular, continued to embrace the MLF as the best means to ensure West Germany did not pursue an independent nuclear capability. Any prospects of the Gilpatric Committee’s findings concerning MLF and NATO being widely embraced were further damaged by a National Intelligence Estimate published in April 1965, which warned that failure to achieve adequate nuclear sharing arrangements with Germany “may lead them to eventually consider alternative nuclear policies.”19 Upcoming German elections in September 1965 prompted the Germans to request the United States to remain low-key on MLF, out of fear of influencing German elections. But the MLF was destined to become a major issue after that time.

Hobbled by the lack of creativity on the part of Bundy and Rusk, and lacking any bold direction from the president, the best ACDA could produce was a draft nonproliferation treaty that was submitted at the ENDC on August 17, 1965. Predictably, the Soviets responded on September 24, 1965, noting that the greatest threat to proliferation was the MLF, and because the U.S. draft treaty continued to fail to address these issues, there would be no acceptable treaty text. All work toward achieving a viable nonproliferation treaty was stalled.²⁰

By failing to act decisively on the issue of proliferation, the United States continued to operate as if the status quo ante of U.S.-Soviet nuclear deterrence models were still viable. This may have been the case in a bipolar world, but the subsequent development of nuclear weapons capability in both France and China meant that these nations, operating outside the framework of U.S.-Soviet–dominated nuclear policy, would be developing their own nuclear deterrence programs. Thereby a model of independent national security policy would be created that other nations could then seek to emulate. This was something the Gilpatric Committee had both predicted and rightly labeled as inherently destabilizing.

While the United States sought to continue American control of nuclear ambition in the West through its pursuit of an MLF, France (and in particular its volatile leader, Charles de Gaulle) viewed such an integration of nuclear capability as an unacceptable limitation on European political sovereignty. Europe circa 1965 was, in the mind of de Gaulle, far removed from the period immediately following the end of the Second World War. Europe had recovered from the ravages of war, and the implementation of European institutions such as the European Community meant that there was no longer a pressing need for U.S. leadership. The Soviet Union had not emerged as a viable model for social, economic, and political development, and therefore any bipolar framework such as that being pushed by the United States was outdated. America no longer enjoyed a nuclear monopoly, and the ongoing war in Vietnam was damaging America’s role as a moral world leader. Not only was a U.S. guarantee of nuclear security no longer credible, but in fact, as many in France and Europe believed, it was also morally questionable.

Although France believed that an alliance with the United States was desirable, military integration, especially involving nuclear weapons, was not. France under de Gaulle would never cede the subordination of French security to another. By December 1960, the French Parliament had voted to fund a bomber force of thirty-six Mirage IV aircraft, as well as a nuclear missile-armed submarine force. An interim force of eighteen intermediate-range missiles was likewise funded as an interim measure until France’s submarine-launched missile force could be fielded. French nuclear deterrence went from being a theory to being a reality with which the entire world, including the United States, had to deal. Whether or not any direct American effort targeting France and its nuclear weapons program, as recommended by the Gilpatric Committee, could have succeeded in reversing the French nuclear effort will never be known. What is certain is that the uncertainty and instability created by an unconstrained French independent nuclear capability was unleashed on the world, creating a model that promoted nuclear proliferation as opposed to constraining it.21

As the Gilpatric Committee had warned, the world was on the cusp of viral proliferation. By 1965, South Africa was discussing the need to build a nuclear weapon for “prestige purposes.” At the inauguration of the Safari reactor in 1965, Prime Minister H. F. Verwoerd spoke of the duty of South Africa to consider the military applications of nuclear power.²² On November 2, 1966, another nation flirting with nuclear weapons status took a giant step in that direction. Israel conducted a test which brought it closer to having viable nuclear weapon. Although Israel would never formally admit to having a nuclear weapon (the official Israeli policy of nuclear ambiguity was in play), the November 1966 test, believed to have involved the use of high explosives compressing a core of natural uranium, also known as a “cold test,” is often cited as representing the starting point of Israel’s actual, versus theoretical, nuclear capability.²³

The question of China and its nuclear capability continued to loom large in the minds of the Johnson administration. In addition to the Gilpatric Committee, the Johnson administration had commissioned several panels and committees to examine the Chinese nuclear program and American policy responses. The fact of the matter was that China’s nuclear capability did not immediately manifest itself as a direct threat against the United States. Indirectly, China, by fielding several intermediate-range ballistic missiles, was able to extend its nuclear coverage over parts of the Soviet Union, Japan, and South Korea. While China possessed intermediate-range missiles, any Chinese intercontinental capability was at least a decade away. The biggest threat China posed in the short term was serving as an impetus for an Indian nuclear weapons program.

A January 1965 meeting between Undersecretary of State George Ball and the head of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, Homi Bhabha, provided critical insight into India’s thinking regarding nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation. The successful Chinese test of a nuclear device in October 1964 had sent shockwaves through India, and Bhabha himself believed that China had positioned itself advantageously vis-à-vis India when it came to prestige and influence among Asian and nonaligned nations. In Bhabha’s opinion, the Chinese could not have progressed as rapidly and as effectively as they had on a nuclear device without extensive help from the Soviet Union, including, according to Bhabha’s unfounded assertion, China’s receipt of a complete set of blueprints from the Soviets for making a nuclear weapon. Bhabha pressed Ball for similar support to India on the part of the United States, support that would enable India to manufacture a nuclear weapon in less than six months.24

From the American perspective, the loss of prestige India would suffer from having been exposed both as a fraud and a proxy of the United States would far offset any gains that might be achieved by becoming the nuclear equal of China. India would thus be better served by promoting the merits of nuclear nonproliferation as opposed to becoming a proliferator itself. Bhabha’s nuclear dreams came to a tragic end when, on January 24, 1966, he died in a plane wreck in Europe. Bhabha’s death slowed, but did not stop, India’s progress toward nuclear weapons.

The Chinese nuclear threat, or perceptions thereof, played a major role in propelling the United States down one of the more controversial arms acquisition paths of the nuclear age, one which continues to this day: ballistic missile defense. The Soviet missile threat was seen as being too massive to be viably countered by any system of surface-based missile interceptors. But the Chinese missile threat, comprised of a much smaller number of missiles, was a different story. The Sino-Soviet schism, which came to a head in the late 1950s, allowed the United States to begin viewing these two communist nations separately when it came to threat analysis. Building a ballistic missile defense system that was Chinese-specific was considered plausible, even after most U.S. defense analysts agreed that trying to put in place a similar system to counter the Soviets would be ineffective and cost-prohibitive.

The allure of a ballistic missile defense system had been around since the dawn of the missile age. In 1955, the U.S. Army had begun research and development work on the Nike Zeus antiballistic missile (ABM), but it was never deployed. President Eisenhower decided in 1959 to keep the Nike Zeus program alive as a pure research-and-development effort, which by January 1963 had evolved into what was known as the Nike X system. But whereas Nike X represented a viable ABM response based upon Soviet strike capabilities that existed pre-ABM, it was not a system that took into account what the Soviets would do to counter it. It was this cause-and-effect relationship between defensive and offensive weapons that led two top-level Pentagon scientists, Jack Ruina and Murray Gell-Mann, to write a 1964 paper titled “BMD and the Arms Race.” The main thesis of the Ruina/Gell-Mann paper was that ABM systems were inherently destabilizing and should not be pursued. The best way to control the arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States, the paper stated, was to limit ABMs. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara concurred, concluding that ABMs undermined arms control and encouraged an arms race because ABMs by their very nature called into question the assured destruction capabilities of the other side, having the potential to lead to a massive arms race as each side increased its offensive strike capability to overcome the defensive characteristics of a given ABM system.25

In the early 1960s, the Soviets had been making strides toward fielding a viable ABM system of their own. In early 1961, a V-1000 missile was used to shoot down a SS-4 intermediate-range missile using a conventional high-explosive warhead, marking the first time in the world that a genuine anti-ICBM capability had been tested. The Soviets began installing V-1000 sites around the Estonian capital of Tallinn, and later around Leningrad, with installation completed in 1962. However, these sites were dismantled in 1964, when the Soviets began fielding the A-35 ABM system around Moscow.²⁶ Designed to protect the Soviet capital from single-warhead Titan II and Minutemen II missiles, the ABM-1 was a three-stage missile with a 300-kiloton warhead possessing a range of some 300 kilometers. The system’s manually directed radars reduced its efficiency, and it soon became obvious to Soviet military planners that the A-35 ABM system as designed was ineffective.27

The perception of a growing Soviet ABM capability had led to McNamara’s Counterforce strategy as set forth in the Athens Doctrine coming under closer scrutiny from none other than McNamara himself. Misperceptions existed in the public sector that the No Cities targeting approach of the Counterforce strategy somehow made nuclear war more feasible. Furthermore, as the Air Force expanded the number of targets it needed to strike in order to achieve a genuine Counterforce capability, it began to demand even more nuclear weapons and vehicles to deploy them. The Counterforce strategy brought with it an assumption that there would need to be an even larger air defense capability (to defend against Soviet bombers ostensibly launched on their own “counterforce” sorties) and missile defense (to defend against Soviet ICBMs targeting American nuclear forces).

All of this led to increased military spending, which the Johnson administration could ill afford. When combined with the ongoing negative reaction to the Athens Doctrine from the Soviets and America’s NATO allies, McNamara had no choice but to turn to a strategic deterrence strategy of “Assured Destruction,” defined by McNamara as “to deter deliberate nuclear attack upon the United States and its allies by maintaining a highly reliable ability to inflict an unacceptable degree of damage upon any single aggressor, or combination of aggressors, even after absorbing a surprise first strike.”²⁸ In short, Assured Destruction existed when the United States maintained the capability to absorb the full brunt of a Soviet nuclear surprise attack and still retaliate with a force guaranteed to destroy 20 to 25 percent of the Soviet Union’s population and 50 percent of its industrial capacity.²⁹

Assured Destruction,” which soon morphed into “Mutually Assured Destruction,” or MAD, retained as a working principle the concept of “damage limitation.” This concept had American nuclear forces targeted in such a manner as to reduce the damage any Soviet nuclear attack might inflict on American population and industrial centers by attacking and diminishing the strategic offensive nuclear forces of the Soviet Union. But even this concession to the original Athens Doctrine was soon de-emphasized by McNamara out of concern that the Air Force would turn damage limitation into a genuine first-strike capability.

By the end of 1964, McNamara had set the strategic missile strength of the United States at 1,054 missiles (1,000 Minuteman missiles and 54 Titan II missiles) and 656 Polaris missiles on 41 submarines.30 As the Minuteman capability stood up, the original workhorse of the U.S. ICBM force, the Atlas missile, began to be phased out. The Air Force was not pleased with the limitation on a Minuteman force it once envisioned as being 10,000 in number.

However, technology soon intervened in a way that forever changed the calculus of mass destruction. Ironically, it was the Navy, and not the Air Force, that was initially responsible for the innovation in question: multiple re-entry vehicles (MRVs) in which a single delivery system, or missile, could carry more than one warhead. The accuracy of the Polaris A-3 at its maximum range of 2,500 miles was such that it was only useful as an area weapon. In order to increase kill probability, and to saturate any ABM system that might be deployed around a given target, the Polaris A-3 missile was deployed with a clam-shell multiple re-entry vehicle system, which carried three warheads underneath a re-entry shroud. Each warhead would be ejected by use of a small rocket motor, allowing for a given target area to be covered by three overlapping explosions. When the USS Daniel Webster took up its initial operational patrol in the Atlantic Ocean on September 28, 1964, the Polaris A-3 MRV was operational. This was followed on December 25, 1964, by the USS Daniel Boone when it began its Pacific Ocean patrol. The Soviet landmass was now fully covered by the Polaris A-3 missile, making it a critical component of the U.S. deterrent arsenal.³¹

Although the three-warhead MRV of the Polaris A-3 was designed to saturate a given defense, it still was operated on the premise of one target, one missile. In order to increase the effectiveness of an MRV missile, one would need to add what were known as penetration aids, or missile decoys. But even this did not change the one missile, one target equation. Missile designers experimented with the idea of maneuvering the “bus,” or vehicle that held the warheads. By doing this, and by controlling the timing of each warhead’s release, each warhead could be independently targeted. Thus was born the concept of the MIRV, or multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicle. Now each MIRV-capable missile became a force-multiplier, the missile-equivalent of however many MIRVs with which it was equipped.³² MIRVs were not developed as a response to Soviet ABMs, but once the capability to overwhelm ABM defenses was identified, the MIRV became the perfect weapons system. However, though MIRVs were a proper response to a Soviet nationwide ABM system, there was in fact no need for MIRVs if the Soviets didn’t have a viable ABM system, which was the case in 1965.

Secretary of Defense McNamara understood that if American MIRVs could overwhelm a Soviet ABM defense, then in due time Soviet MIRVs would likewise overwhelm any American ABM defense.33 Nonetheless, MIRVs became the weapon of choice for everyone involved in the strategic targeting business. For the Air Force and Navy, the limitations imposed by McNamara’s 1,054/656 missile cap were now meaningless because MIRVs allowed the number of deliverable warheads to be increased without changing those numbers. As MIRVs became more accurate, each warhead could be targeted on a single missile silo, creating not only a potent Counterforce capability but a viable first-strike weapon as well. As MIRVs made land-based systems more vulnerable, they in turn enhanced the importance of submarine-launched ballistic missiles, not only as a retaliatory force but also as a backup to the Counterforce/first-strike capability of ICBMs. During the period of 1965–1966, MIRVs were very much a theoretical weapon. However, the ascension of MIRVs as the new “wonder weapon” drove the strategic planning for future weapons acquisitions, and as such pushed the Soviet Union and the United States closer to the edge of a new, expensive, and dangerous, phase of the arms race.³⁴

McNamara commissioned a study concerning ABM employment and viability under the direction of Army Major General Austin Betts. The Betts Panel examined potential Nike X deployment locations, production schedules and costs, system effectiveness, national strategic objectives, and cost effectiveness in terms of both the current Soviet ICBM threat as well as any potential improvements the Soviets might make in response to an American ABM system. The critical factor behind whether or not the Nike X was deemed a viable system was the degree to which it reduced the Assured Destruction aspect of the Soviet strategic nuclear force. If the Nike X could prevent the Soviets from achieving the criteria set forth by McNamara for Assured Destruction (i.e., preserving more than 75 percent of the U.S. population and more than 50 percent of America’s industrial capacity), then the United States would achieve strategic dominance because it would, theoretically at least, emerge in a superior position from a full-scale nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.³⁵

McNamara had earlier commissioned a study to be conducted by the Office of Research and Engineering. Air Force Brigadier General Glen Kent headed the study. Kent organized his study so that two factors could be assessed: first, what the damage to the United States would be from a determined and adaptive Soviet attack; and second, what would constitute a proper allocation of resources among various entities (civil defense, Nike X ABM, Counterforce attacks by Minuteman missiles, antisubmarine warfare targeting Soviet missile submarines, and air defense against Soviet bombers) in order to limit damage against the United States.

Kent’s study concluded that in order to obtain a 70 percent survival rate for the American population against then-current Soviet forces, the United States would need to spend $28 billion. However, if the Soviets then responded to the American damage-limiting actions by deploying more ICBMs and SLBMs, then the United States would need to expend even more money to sustain the 70 percent survivability factor, at a cost of some $2 dollars spent on defense to every $1 spent on offense. Because a 70 percent survivability rate meant that some 60 million Americans were destined to die, this tack was politically unacceptable. Yet when efforts were made to improve the survivability factor to 90 percent, it was found that the exchange ratio (the amount the United States would have to spend to limit damage compared to the amount the Soviets would have to spend to create damage) rose to 6:1 in favor of the Soviets.36

In short, Kent concluded, it was always cheaper to create damage than it was to limit damage. The destruction generated by nuclear weapons, combined with the vulnerability of modern urban-industrial society, meant that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union could avoid national destruction in the event of an all-out nuclear conflict. This was even further underscored when one factored in that an attacker was able to modify its weapons and tactics after the defender had invested and deployed its defenses. McNamara, thanks in no small part to Kent’s study, determined that damage limitation as a national strategy simply would not work.³⁷ Instead of seeking to unilaterally limit damage through new weapons and strategies, the best option for both the United States and the Soviet Union would be to enter into negotiated treaties to curtail nationwide ABM defenses and limit the deployment of offensive nuclear forces.³⁸

But, as was far too often the case, national security considerations alone did not suffice to make the case. Politics reared its ugly head. Michigan Governor George Romney, by 1966 considered a leading Republican challenger to Lyndon Johnson in 1968, was being very vocal about the existence of an “ABM gap,” hoping to repeat the success that the so-called missile gap had created for John Kennedy in 1960. Romney made a point of the ABM gap during an interview on Meet the Press. Melvin Laird, head of the GOP Congressional Committee, was likewise making it clear that the ABM issue would be a focus of the Republican Party challenge to the national security policies of the Johnson administration.39

Romney and Laird had support from hawks in the U.S. Senate, such as Republican Strom Thurmond, but also including a number of prominent Democrats (e.g., Henry “Scoop” Jackson and Richard Russell) when it came to the early deployment of an ABM system. Both Thurman and Russell had long records of supporting a strong defense against a Soviet threat, whether real or perceived. Jackson’s motivations were more complicated: as the senator from Washington State, Jackson had become known as “the senator from Boeing” due to his unwavering support of the Seattle, Washington–based company. Boeing was a major contractor involved in the ABM system.

Secretary of Defense McNamara had opened the door for congressional action when, in his annual military posture statement presented to the House of Representatives in early 1966, he noted that a small ABM system could provide a “highly effective defense” against any ballistic missile attack launched from China. McNamara had made this statement in order to head off congressional pressure, noting that there was no rush to field such an ABM system because any viable Chinese missile threat would not materialize for many years.⁴⁰ Congress was considering three options for an ABM system: a “thick” nationwide system, costing some $40 billion and designed to provide maximum protection against a Soviet missile attack; a missile protection option designed to defend ICBM bases; and a “thin” nationwide system designed to protect against a Chinese-style attack and projected to cost around $5 billion.⁴¹ Based upon the work done by General Kent, McNamara was strongly opposed to either the thick defense or the equally expensive ICBM base defense, primarily because he believed the Soviets would be able to easily overwhelm these defenses with missiles then in development.

However, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, alarmed by intelligence reports detailing the deployment of Soviet ABM systems around Tallinn, Leningrad, and Moscow, together with other reports indicating the Soviets were modernizing their ICBM force, believed that national security could not brook a continued delay in fielding a national ABM defense. In 1966, Congress, against the desires of the Johnson administration but with the full support of the JCS, had authorized and appropriated some $167.9 million to produce the Nike X ABM. But President Johnson and Secretary McNamara, by the end of 1966, had refused to spend these funds.42

The political pressure on Johnson was starting to heat up. The JCS desires for immediate deployment of an ABM system were about to be made public by the Republicans in Congress, as was the intelligence about the deployment of a Soviet ABM system. Lyndon Johnson could ill afford to continue to delay on the issue of fielding an American ABM system. It looked as if McNamara was going to be overruled on this issue. Then, showing considerable political savvy, McNamara maneuvered back. In a series of meetings with Lyndon Johnson, held at the Johnson ranch in Austin, Texas, on November 3 and 10, 1966, McNamara pressed home his case that an ABM system simply would not work, was excessively expensive, and would dangerously destabilize the strategic balance between the Soviet Union and the United States. Following the November 10 meeting, McNamara pre-empted the Republicans in Congress by holding a press conference at which he revealed details about the Soviet deployment of an ABM system and his own belief that ongoing U.S. efforts to improve its offensive nuclear capabilities, namely the deployment of the Minuteman III ICBM and the new Poseiden SLBM, would represent a more-than-adequate response.⁴³

McNamara again traveled to Johnson’s Austin ranch on December 6, 1966, this time joined by Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance; the president’s special assistant for national security affairs, Walt Rostow (McGeorge Bundy, frustrated by the ever-escalating conflict in Vietnam, had resigned from the position in March 1966); and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The ostensible purpose of the meeting was to review the 1968 defense budget, due to be presented to Congress in February 1967. But the centerpiece of discussion was the issue of funding to produce an ABM system. The JCS was pressing hard for the funding and was equally opposed by McNamara and Vance. Rostow took the side of the Joint Chiefs, and it looked for a moment as if Johnson was going to overrule his secretary of defense.⁴⁴

McNamara interceded one last time, stating unequivocally that building an ABM system was absolutely the worst decision the United States could make at this juncture. The proper course of action was to expand the offensive strike capability of the United States in order to overwhelm the Soviet ABM system. This would obviate the Soviet defense (at great expense to the Soviets) while at the same time making sure the United States did not make the same blunder. Recognizing that Congress had already approved funding for the ABM system, McNamara proposed that the 1968 budget allow for a small amount of money for ABM procurement. However, McNamara then wanted to inform Congress that none of this money would be spent, and no final decision would be made about deploying an ABM system, until the United States made every possible effort to negotiate an arms control agreement with the Soviets that banned ABMs and limited offensive nuclear forces.45

Johnson agreed to this compromise approach. He directed Secretary of State Dean Rusk to begin outreach to the Soviets for the purpose of initiating dialogue on arms reductions and limitations. The president even tried to assist this effort when he revealed in a March 1967 meeting with educators in Nashville, Tennessee, that the United States had an extensive satellite reconnaissance program and that from it the United States was able to know exactly how many ICBMs the Soviets had. “I wouldn’t want to be quoted on this,” Lyndon Johnson said, knowing full well he would be quoted, “but we’ve spent thirty-five or forty billion dollars on the space program. And if nothing else had come out of it except the knowledge we’ve gained from space photography, it would be worth ten times what the whole program has cost. Because tonight we know how many missiles the enemy has and, it turned out, our guesses were way off. We were doing things we didn’t need to do. We were building things we didn’t need to build. We were harboring fears we didn’t need to harbor.”⁴⁶ But even this “slip of the tongue” did not produce results; the Soviets, having invested so heavily in seeking nuclear parity, simply refused to talk about arms reductions.

There were several reasons behind the Soviet obstinacy over arms limitations talks. First, the United States was still not seen as an honest partner when it came to arms reduction talks. The Soviets continued to be frustrated by the insistence of the United States to support the MLF, which in the eyes of the Soviets meant giving their arch-nemesis, Germany, access to nuclear weapons. President Johnson had supported a Polaris-armed surface fleet but was opposed on this by the British. Prime Minister Harold Wilson in turn proposed his own compromise, termed the Allied Nuclear Force (ANF), consisting of a partnership between U.S. and British submarines with a loose attachment to NATO. This concept was also rejected. The United States continued to push for an MLF out of concerns that in opposing this force, the Soviets were really trying to undermine NATO.

In March 1966, the United States submitted a draft nonproliferation treaty text that prohibited transfer or control of nuclear weapons to nonnuclear weapon states or to an association of nonnuclear weapon states. Its language fudged the MLF issue: the planned deployment of Polaris-armed ships within NATO territories would not constitute a violation when interpreted that because France, the United Kingdom, and the United States were already in possession of nuclear weapons, and were NATO members, NATO could not be defined as an association of nonnuclear weapon states. However, by this time it was becoming clear to President Johnson that the MLF was a dead issue. It was also clear that Johnson was hesitant about moving forward with a nonproliferation treaty that would alienate Germany.

Adrian Fisher, the ACDA deputy director, conducted some deft political maneuvering, getting Senator John Pastore, the chair of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, to submit a resolution in May 1966 that commended President Johnson for his work in pursuing a nonproliferation treaty and encouraged additional effort by the president to bring such a treaty to fruition. There was no mention of the role of the MLF in sidelining work on nonproliferation. However, hearings conducted in support of this resolution, in which McNamara and others testified, highlighted the reality that America’s efforts over the course of two years on the MLF had not only harmed efforts concerning a nonproliferation treaty but had also failed to achieve any sort of viable agreement within NATO about the MLF. Pastore, a close friend and political ally of Johnson, made it clear to the president that his committee would not amend the Atomic Energy Act as required by the MLF to permit the transfer of U.S. nuclear weapons to Germany, or to any other nation’s control. The MLF was officially dead. Johnson responded as Adrian Fisher and Senator Pastore had hoped he might: on June 13, 1966, the president wrote Pastore a letter in which he noted that ACDA was being instructed to “renew our urgent pursuit of a treaty.”47

President Johnson was preoccupied with the growing escalation in Vietnam and the negative reaction that war was generating at home. Realizing that a nonproliferation treaty might improve his slumping public approval ratings, Johnson pressed Secretary of State Rusk to start looking for common ground with the Soviets on treaty language. On July 5, 1966, Johnson held a press conference in which he formally announced his desire for “an acceptable compromise” on treaty language that would allow the Soviet Union and the United States to move forward.48

The opportunity for movement came in September 1966, when Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko again restated the Soviet position that any nonproliferation treaty must contain language that prohibited nonnuclear countries from producing or obtaining nuclear weapons from any means, including an alliance. The Americans, by this time souring on the MLF, altered their negotiating position with the Soviets, proposing a counter-provision prohibiting the five nations then in possession of nuclear weapons (China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States) from transferring control over any of their nuclear weapons to anyone. At the same time the American proposal kept the door open for preserving current “dual-key” control of U.S. nuclear weapons stationed in NATO countries.

Rusk and Gromyko chaired a series of working groups in New York, where the specifics of an agreement on treaty language were hammered out. Further negotiations between the United States and West Germany resulted in the Germans accepting their status as a nonnuclear nation, meaning that there was no longer any need for the MLF, and a nonproliferation treaty would therefore be acceptable to the Soviets. Although this quid pro quo arrangement managed to breathe new life into a nonproliferation treaty, it did so at the expense of a genuine multilateral undertaking. The nonproliferation treaty had become very much a bilateral affair, to be negotiated between the United States and the Soviet Union, and only after that to be considered by the rest of the world.⁴⁹

On June 17, 1967, China successfully exploded its first hydrogen bomb in western China. The explosive power was 150 times that of the atomic bomb used by the United States against Hiroshima during the Second World War. However, China’s ongoing Cultural Revolution, which had paralyzed the nation since April 1966, almost derailed the test. Through sheer force of will, China’s nuclear design team was able to overcome an extremely chaotic political environment that had manifested itself in numerous management and logistical problems and to execute the test successfully and on time. Despite the success of the test, the Cultural Revolution was to wreck China for nearly a decade to come, detrimentally affecting China’s overall strategic nuclear programs. It was because of these ongoing internal domestic problems that China’s test passed virtually unnoticed by either the United States or Soviet Union.50

China was not viewed by either the Soviet Union or the United States as being a major problem in the summer of 1967. Vietnam continued to dominate the news, and a new conflict in the Middle East likewise seized the attention of the United States and the Soviet Union alike. On the morning of June 5, 1967, the Israeli air force launched a surprise attack against Egypt and Syria. Six days later, Israeli forces were in control of the Golan Heights, had completely occupied the Sinai Peninsula, and had reclaimed Jerusalem, together with all of the Jordanian-controlled West Bank. The Middle East would never again be the same. The 1967 Six-Day War, as it became known, also marked the point when Israel transitioned from being a nation capable of having nuclear weapons to a nuclear weapons–possessing state, having assembled at least one, and probably more, viable nuclear weapons during the height of the conflict.

On June 19, 1967, Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin delivered an address to the General Assembly of the United Nations in which he presented a draft Soviet-sponsored resolution condemning the Israeli actions. Kosygin was in New York to attend an emergency session of the UN Security Council convened to address the consequences of the Six-Day War. Once these meetings were finished, Soviet and American officials conspired to organize an unplanned summit between President Johnson and Premier Kosygin. The Americans preferred a meeting held in Washington, while the Soviets preferred New York City. As a compromise, a decision was made to meet at Glassboro State College in New Jersey, a location almost exactly half-way in between.

The meeting was intended to provide a forum for the discussion of serious arms control issues. At the initial introductory meeting on June 23, 1967, President Johnson told Kosygin that in the three years he (Johnson) had been in office, there were no new arms control treaties between the two nations. Johnson’s primary purpose in convening the Glassboro Summit was to engage the Soviets in a meaningful dialogue on arms control to head off a spiraling arms race. The issue of ABMs was addressed in detail. But ultimately Kosygin saw little hope of genuine discussions so long as the Vietnam War continued and the situation in the Middle East remained unresolved. The Glassboro Summit ended shortly thereafter with nothing having been accomplished.⁵¹

The lack of results from the Glassboro Summit represented a setback to the Johnson administration’s ambitions to pursue a meaningful arms control agenda. There were almost immediate consequences for this failure. Upon their return to Washington, Johnson and McNamara met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where it was agreed that in the face of the Soviet refusal to discuss the ABM issue, the United States would initiate immediate action to expand its offensive strike capability. The cheapest and most effective way to do this was to move forward with the development and deployment of MIRVs. However, McNamara recognized that this measure had inherent risks, namely that if the Soviets followed suit and deployed its own MIRV capability, then the United States would find itself on the receiving end of a more potent Soviet arsenal, magnified by the reality of the larger payload capability of the Soviet missiles. Therefore, even though the United States would develop a MIRV capability, a final decision to deploy MIRVs would be withheld pending a renewed effort at negotiating a treaty to ban ABM defenses. If such a treaty could be implemented, then the MIRV program would be terminated.52

Like the United States, the Soviets were assessing their potential enemy’s strategic capabilities and making their own adjustments. The Soviets were following the deployment of the Minuteman missile with great interest. They knew that the Minuteman operated as a wing of 150 missiles. Each wing consisted of three squadrons, each composed of five flights containing ten missiles each stored in an unmanned launch facility, or silo. The silos were separated from one another by three miles, which also represented the distance the silos were from their respective launch control centers (LCC). In order to successfully target the Minuteman missile complex, the Soviets would either have to saturate the area with huge warheads in the large megaton range, hoping to collapse the silos, or target each silo independently with smaller warheads requiring a much greater degree of accuracy.

The Soviets soon realized that the weak link in the Minuteman system was the LCC. If the LCC could be taken out, then this achieved the same effect as taking out ten missiles in their silos. If the Soviets were to embark on a Counterforce strategy of their own, then they would need a missile capable of carrying a warhead large enough to defeat a hardened LCC and accurate enough to get within .5 nautical miles of the target—a circular error of probability, or CEP, of about 925 meters. Soviet recognition of this operational requirement led to their development of the SS-9.⁵³ The SS-9 was an “ampulised” missile, meaning that it would be loaded into its missile silo as a sealed round of ammunition, completely fueled and ready to fire. In this mode, the SS-9 could guarantee being able to launch for a period of at least five years. It would be transported to its silo, loaded in, fueled, and then sealed and left unattended. Like the Minuteman, the SS-9 silos were to be separated from one another—but by eight to ten kilometers, making them difficult to target.54

Whereas the SS-9 ICBM was designed as a Minuteman-killer, the Soviets still needed an equivalent ICBM to match the Minuteman in performance (i.e., the ability to be quickly launched). The answer came from the design bureau of Vladimir Chelomei in the form of the SS-11, a lightweight ICBM that ultimately would be deployed in more numbers than any other Soviet ICBM. The SS-11 was designed to be silo-launched as a certified round of ammunition and was able to be stored, fully fuelled and ready to launch, for up to five years. The Soviet Union was in such a hurry to match the Minuteman capability of the United States that secret survey teams were already constructing silo locations for the SS-11 even before the missile was initially tested. The SS-11 carried a 1.1-megaton warhead, but its accuracy was so poor as to limit its effectiveness to “soft” targets, like cities and major industrial areas.⁵⁵

Amid a growing U.S.-Soviet arms race, there was some progress being made in arms control. By the spring of 1967, the nonproliferation treaty, having broken free of its MLF-imposed chains, was in the final stages of negotiation. Concerted U.S.-Soviet negotiations, conducted throughout the fall and winter of 1966, had produced a draft treaty text in which most major problems had been rectified. New West German elections had produced a coalition government that endorsed improved relations with the Soviet Union. Willy Brandt, the new German Foreign Minister, gave final approval to the termination of any potential for a future German nuclear weapon. There was widespread support for a nonproliferation treaty around the world, although not from all corners, or without reservations.⁵⁶

By August 1967, separate but identical U.S.-Soviet treaty texts were submitted to the ENDC in Geneva for consultation and consideration. On December 19, 1967, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution calling for the ENDC to present a full report on the status of the nonproliferation treaty by March 1968. By January 1968, the United States and the Soviet Union had produced a single, agreedon treaty text that was then subjected to debate within the ENDC until March 1968. Then, with some final tinkering of language concerning safeguards and the right to pursue atomic energy, a draft nonproliferation treaty was finally a reality. On June 12, 1968, the General Assembly of the United Nations commended the draft treaty, and on July 1, 1968, the treaty was opened for signature and was signed on that date by the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and fifty-nine other countries. China, along with France, did not sign the nonproliferation treaty, instead denouncing it as a “conspiracy concocted by the USSR and the U.S. to maintain their nuclear monopoly.”57 But Chinese opinion circa 1968 did not carry much weight in Washington, and on July 9, 1968, Lyndon Johnson submitted the nonproliferation treaty to the U.S. Senate for ratification. The president finally had his long-sought arms control agreement.

It was a moment that Lyndon Johnson would not be able to share with his long-time secretary of defense, Robert McNamara. Since 1966, McNamara had become more and more controversial in the face of his opposition to both the president and the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the war in Vietnam. McNamara’s resistance to an ABM system also alienated him from his military counterparts. On November 29, 1967, with a contentious political season approaching, President Johnson had pulled the plug, announcing that McNamara would be resigning from his position as secretary of defense and moving on to become president of the World Bank. McNamara left office on February 29, 1968. For his seven years of dedicated service, President Johnson awarded him both the Medal of Freedom and the Distinguished Service Medal.⁵⁸ McNamara was replaced by Clark Clifford, who took over in March 1968. Unlike McNamara, Clifford was not a proponent of arms control; he wanted to limit any initial steps involved in arms negotiations to simple administrative and procedural functions and await a specific Soviet proposal. Clifford viewed any commitment made by the United States up front as concessions preceding the negotiations, something he contended was never a wise move in the field of diplomacy.⁵⁹

But Lyndon Johnson wanted more. His time as president was running out. Because he had not been elected president in 1960, Johnson was not affected by the Twenty-Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, limiting a president to two terms in office. It was widely assumed that Johnson, despite being heavily criticized over the conduct of the Vietnam War, would seek reelection. However, a strong showing by antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy during the New Hampshire primary on March 12, 1968, followed four days later by Robert Kennedy’s announcement that he would challenge Johnson for the nomination of the Democratic Party, compelled Johnson to rethink his ambition. (Bobby Kennedy’s bid for election was tragically cut short by an assassin’s bullet on June 5, 1968.)

On March 31, 1968, Lyndon Johnson addressed the American people in a live televised speech, during which he announced that he was ordering the suspension of aerial bombing attacks on North Vietnam in favor of peace negotiations. Johnson concluded his presentation with a stunning statement: “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.”60 Johnson was in poor health, and he and his family were very concerned that he might not survive another term in office. Thus liberated from the constraints of a national election, Lyndon Johnson turned to thoughts of his legacy. Worn down by Vietnam, Johnson had been rejuvenated by the success of the nonproliferation treaty and was intent on closing out his tenure as president with even more far-reaching arms limitation agreements.

Lyndon Johnson had sought arms control treaties even prior to his decision not to seek a second term. On January 22, 1968, Johnson had sent a letter to Soviet Premier Kosygin in which he proposed early talks on strategic missile controls.⁶¹ Having not heard back from the Soviets, on March 16, 1968, Secretary of State Rusk instructed the U.S. embassy in Moscow to seek a favorable response to the president’s letter. The U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, Llewellyn Thompson, met with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko on March 26, 1968, to discuss Johnson’s proposal, only to be told that the Soviet government, though attaching great importance to the idea, was still studying the proposal.

By May 2, 1968, the continued Soviet silence prompted President Johnson to write another letter, noting his concern over the “necessity to initiate meaningful discussion as soon as possible,” noting that “each passing month increases the difficulty of reaching agreement on this matter as, from a technical and military point of view, it is becoming more complex.”⁶² Concerned about possible problems in the General Assembly over the opening of the nonproliferation treaty for signature, Johnson told Kosygin that “It is important that our two governments do everything possible to give the greatest impetus to world sentiment favorable to opening the treaty for signature at an early date,” and to this end proposed that “our two governments announce early…they have agreed to commence bilateral negotiations on an agreement to limit strategic offensive and defensive missiles within a specific time from the date of the announcement.”⁶³

On May 17, 1968, the Soviets responded indirectly, having a diplomat state that Moscow was still considering the U.S. proposal that talks begin. Then, on June 21, 1968, Aleksei Kosygin finally responded in a letter of his own to Johnson. The Soviet premier told Johnson that the Soviets “attach great importance to these questions, having in mind that they should be considered together, systems for delivery of offensive strategic nuclear weapons as well as systems for defense against ballistic missiles. All aspects of this complex problem are now being carefully examined by us, and we hope that before long it will be possible more concretely to exchange views with regard to further ways of discussing this problem, if of course the general world situation does not hinder this.”64

The success of the the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (i.e., the nonproliferation treaty) did not, in any way, slow down the nuclear arms race then underway between the Soviet Union and the United States. On July 1, 1968, following the opening of the nonproliferation treaty for signatures, both nations simultaneously announced that they agreed to meet in the “nearest future” to discuss strategic nuclear arms limitations, as well as limitations on ballistic missile defense. Johnson decided he would up the ante by increasing the pressure on the Soviets to come to the negotiation table. On July 2, Dean Rusk met with Soviet ambassador to the United States Anatoliy Dobrynin and informed him that President Johnson wanted another summit meeting with his Soviet counterpart in the near future.⁶⁵

President Johnson’s desires for an arms control agreement did not, however, directly translate into an agreed upon position within the U.S. national security hierarchy. Secretary of Defense Clifford was concerned about on-site inspection and verification regimes that would be associated with any such agreements. Others wanted to preserve the ability to maintain qualitative force improvements, both for a nuclear warhead for the Sentinel ABM but also for any future MIRV warhead. Under pressure from the White House, a policy paper was prepared on July 31, 1968, that outlined the basics of an agreed-on U.S. position on strategic arms limitations: a freeze on ICBM, MRBM, and SLBM submarines; a ban on deploying mobile ICBM systems; a ban on mobile ABM systems; and an agreement to limit any ABM system to a specific number of fixed launchers and associated radars.⁶⁶

A final meeting of the principal players tasked with drafting a U.S. position was held on August 7, 1968. It soon became clear that there were many issues that lacked resolution. The Joint Chiefs were very concerned about cheating scenarios involving mobile ICBMs. Dr. Ivan Selin, representing Clifford, responded that the Soviets would only be able to field 200–300 mobile ICBMs without being detected, and the U.S. nuclear force was able to withstand a surprise attack from thousands of nuclear warheads. This kind of cheating scenario, in Selin’s opinion, was not possible. Furthermore, “Our forces are so large and diverse,” he stated, “that our assured destruction capability is relatively insensitive to most forms of qualitative improvements, cheating or abrogation scenarios.”67 In his opinion, MIRVs represented a far greater threat than mobile ICBMs.

At this point, Adrian Fisher of ACDA interjected that he thought the Soviets might seek to ban MIRVs, a possibility that Selin conceded had not been considered by the Pentagon. The two MIRV systems being considered by the United States, the Minuteman III and the Poseidon, were due to be flight tested in mid-August. Secretary of State Rusk asked if these flight tests should be postponed until after the arms limitations talks were held. However, the consensus among attendees was that the tests should go forward as scheduled. This was a critical decision because by agreeing to flight tests of an MIRV capability, the United States had made it all but impossible to ban MIRVs once negotiations began. The final U.S. position was submitted to the president on August 15, 1968. In covering memorandums, both Rusk and Clark offered their support for the position paper, noting that the United States would maintain its deterrent posture, leave no doubt as to the adequacy of the deterrent, be confident that the deterrent could not be eroded by one or more powers alone or in combination, would maintain a damage-limiting capability, and be able to prevent other (non-Soviet) nuclear powers from threatening the agreement.⁶⁸

All that was needed was a summit. Presidential politics intervened, in the form of the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon, asking to be received in Moscow. The Soviets agreed, prompting Secretary of State Rusk to ask Moscow if the Soviets might likewise agree to meet the man who was still the president.⁶⁹ The Soviets postponed the meeting with Nixon. Then, on August 19, the Soviets finally agreed to receive Johnson in Moscow on October 15, or any other date close to that time.⁷⁰ Elated, President Johnson prepared to make an announcement concerning his trip and the goals of limiting strategic arms through reduction talks.

At this portentous moment, unexpected events intervened. On August 20, 1968, Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia. The series of reforms initiated in the country since Alexander Dubček had replaced the Czechoslovakian Communist Party leader, Antonin Novotny, in the spring of 1968 had proven to be too much for the Soviet leadership to accept. Czechoslovakia’s neighbors, East Germany and Hungary, were nervous about the liberalization of what was being called “Prague Spring” and were pressuring the Soviets to do something. On July 14 and 15, the Soviets hosted a Warsaw Pact meeting, without Czech involvement, followed on July 23 by the Soviets announcing a large military exercise, “Nieman,” which served as a cover for the deployment of hundreds of thousands of troops and more than 7,000 tanks to the Czech border regions. The final decision to invade Czechoslovakia was made between August 15 and 17, with Soviet Communist Party chair Leonid Brezhnev sending a letter to Dubček on August 19, the same date the Soviets extended the invitation to Johnson to visit Moscow.71

On August 20, President Johnson convened a cabinet meeting to discuss the status of the strategic arms reduction talks. The National Security Council agreed with Johnson’s calling the Soviet invasion an “aggression” and agreed that thus there could be no summit with the Soviets on arms reduction, noting that such a meeting might be interpreted by the Soviets and others as the United States condoning the Soviet action. Ambassador Dobrynin was summoned by Rusk, who informed him of the president’s decision.⁷²

There was some effort to restart the talks, with the Soviets agreeing to a meeting in mid-September 1968 to set out an agenda. But Johnson had taken the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia as an insult. As Rusk told Ambassador Dobrynin on September 20, 1968, during a lunch meeting, “the coincidence of actions [the invasion of Czechoslovakia and agreeing to arms reduction talks] was like throwing a dead fish in the face of the President of the United States.”⁷³ Time had run out on the Johnson administration for accomplishing meaningful arms control with the Soviets.

The presidential elections of November 5, 1968, saw Republican Richard Nixon defeat Vice President Hubert Humphrey. With a new administration due to take power, there was no incentive for the Soviets to sit down and talk, even on an issue as important as arms reductions. The nonproliferation treaty notwithstanding, from his rejection of the Gilpatric Committee report in 1964, to the demise of the strategic arms reduction talks in the face of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, President Johnson had presided over a period of history where so much could have been accomplished in the field of disarmament, and so little was.

ENDNOTES

1 Thomas Alan Schwartz, Lyndon Johnson and Europe: In the Shadow of Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 53.

2 Raymond Garthoff, A Journey Through the Cold War: A Memoir of Containment and Coexistence (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2001), 193.

3 Glenn Seaborg and Benjamin Loeb, Stemming the Tide: Arms Control in the Johnson Years (New York: Lexington Books, 1987), 143–144.

4 Roswell Gilpatric, A Report to the President by the Committee on Nuclear Proliferation (hereafter cited as the Gilpatric Committee Report), January 21, 1965, 3.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid., 4–5.

7 Ibid., 5.

8 Ibid., 7–8.

9 Ibid, 20–21.

10 Seaborg and Loeb, 144.

11 President Lyndon Johnson, State of the Union Addresses (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), 13.

12 Ibid., 14.

13 Memorandum to the president, 25 June 1965, “McGeorge Bundy, vol. 11, June 1965 [1 of 2]” folder, Memos to the President, NSF, Box 3, Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library.

14 Memorandum to the secretary of state and the secretary of defense, 27 March 1965, “Presidential Task Force, Committee on Nuclear Proliferation” folder, Subject File, NSF, Box 35, Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.; Memorandum for Bundy from Keeny, 26 March 1965, “Presidential Task Force Committee on Nuclear Proliferation” folder, Subject Files, NSF, Box 35, Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library.

17 National Security Action Memorandum 335, Preparation of Arms Control Program, June 28, 1965.

18 Memorandum for the president, 3 July 1965, “McGeorge Bundy, vol. 12, July 1965” folder, Memos to the President, Box 4, Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library.

19 National Intelligence Estimate, Prospects for West German Foreign Policy, April 22, 1965.

20 Seaborg and Loeb, 277.

21 John Gearson and Kori Schake, The Berlin Wall Crisis: Perspectives of Cold War Alliances (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002), 76.

22 International Peace Academy, South Africa in Crisis: Regional and International Responses (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 74–75.

23 Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 232.

24 George Perkovitch, India’s Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 94–95.

25 Ashton Carter and David Schwartz, Ballistic Missile Defense (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1984), 334–336.

26 Nigel Hey, The Star Wars Enigma: Behind the Scenes of the Cold War Race for Missile Defense (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2006), 20.

27 Povdig, 415.

28 Trevor Dupuy, A Documentary History of Arms Control and Disarmament (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1973), 549.

29 Alain Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, How Much Is Enough? (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2005), 207.

30 Gregg Herken, Counsels of War (New York: Knopf, 1985), 154–155.

31 Graham Spinardi, From Polaris to Trident: The Development of U.S. Fleet Ballistic Missile Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 72.

32 Robert Ehrlich, Waging Nuclear Peace: The Technology and Politics of Nuclear Weapons (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), 54.

33 John Clearwater, Johnson, McNamara, and the Birth of SALT and the ABM Treaty 1963–1968 (Boca Raton, FL: Universal Publishers, 1996), 53.

34 Ibid., 55.

35 United States Department of the Army, History of Strategic Air and Ballistic Missile Defense, Volume II (1956–1972) (San Diego: U.S. Military Press, 1975), 201.

36 Glenn Kent, Thinking About America’s Defense: An Analytical Memoir (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2008), 51.

37 Glenn Kent, Damage Limiting: A Rationale for the Allocation of Resources by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (Washington, DC: Directorate of Defense Research & Engineering, January 1964).

38 Clearwater, 8.

39 Morton Halperin, Priscilla Clapp, and Arnold Kanter, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1974), 298.

40 Ibid., 300.

41 Memorandum from the deputy secretary of defense to President Johnson, 10 December 1966, “Washington National Records Center, OSD,” files, FRC 330 71 A 3470, ABM Memo and JCS View Folder 103.

42 United States Department of the Army, 203–204.

43 Clearwater, 82.

44 Ibid., 83–84.

45 Ibid. 87–88.

46 “Satellite Spying Cited by Johnson,” The New York Times, March 17, 1967.

47 George Bunn, Arms Control by Committee: Managing Negotiations with the Russians (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 72–73.

48 News conference, Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Vol. II, no. 27 (July 11, 1966).

49 Bunn, 76–77.

50 John Lewis and Litai Xue, China Builds the Bomb (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), 202–210.

51 John Dumbrell, President Lyndon Johnson and Soviet Communism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 76–77.

52 Robert S. McNamara, Blundering Toward Disaster: Surviving the First Century of the Nuclear Age (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), 65.

53 Rob de Wijk, Flexibility in Response? Attempts to Construct a Plausible Strategy for NATO, 1959–1989 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 83.

54 Povdig, 127.

55 Ibid., 127.

56 Renata Fritsch-Bournazel, Europe and German Unification (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1992), 48.

57 Kevin Pollpeter, U.S.-China Security Management: Assessing the Military-to-Military Relationship (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2003), 53.

58 Roger Trask, The Secretaries of Defense: A Brief History, 1947–1985 (Washington, DC: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1985), 33.

59 John Prados, Keepers of the Keys: A History of the National Security Council from Truman to Bush (New York: William Morrow, 1991), 193.

60 Larry Berman, Lyndon Johnson’s War: The Road to Stalemate in Vietnam (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 176.

61 Seaborg and Loeb, 432.

62 Letter from President Johnson to Chairman Kosygin, 2 May 1968, “Department of State, Pen Pal Correspondence,” lot 77 D 163, Special U.S.-U.S.S.R. File, Pen-Pal Series, 1968.

63 Ibid.

64 Message from A. Kosygin to President Johnson, 21 June 1968, “Papers of Clark Clifford,” Box 12, Soviet Union, Talks, Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library.

65 Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968–69, Book II, 765.

66 Paper Prepared by Interagency Working Group, Strategic Missile Talk Proposal, 31 July 1968, “Clifford Papers, Kosygin-Talks with Soviet Union (2),” Box 22, Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library.

67 Glenn Seaborg, The Journal of Glenn T. Seaborg (University of California: 1990), 132-133.

68 Memorandum from Secretary of State Rusk and director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency to President Johnson, 15 August 1968, “National Security File, Intelligence File, Arms Limitation Talk,” Box 11, Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library.

69 Memorandum of conversation between Secretary of State Rusk and the Soviet ambassador, 15 August 1968, “National Security File, Rostow Files, Rusk-Dobrynin,” Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library; H. W. Brands, The Foreign Policies of Lyndon Johnson: Beyond Vietnam (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1999), 28.

70 Telegram from the president’s special assistant to president Johnson, 19 August 1968, “National Security File, Rostow Files, Trip to Soviet Union,” Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library.

71 Brands, 29–30.

72 Notes of Emergency Meeting of the National Security Council, 20 August 1968, “Tom Johnson’s Notes of Meetings,” Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library.

73 Memorandum of Conversation, 20 September 1968, “National Security File, Rostow Files, Rusk-Dobrynin,” Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library.