CHAPTER 11

The Cold War Begins Anew

By the end of January 1976, public confidence in détente was deteriorating rapidly. Quick to exploit this domestic political environment was a challenger to President Ford for the Republican Party nomination, the two-time governor of California, Ronald Reagan. When Reagan announced his challenge to Ford for the Republican nomination in early 1976, Ford enjoyed a twenty-three-point lead in the polls. Within a month Reagan had taken an eight-point lead, largely on the strength of his attacks against the Ford-Kissinger policy of détente. “The overriding reality of our time,” Reagan reminded Americans, “is the expansion of Soviet power in the world.”1

Ford carried with him the power of incumbency and was able to narrowly win a bitter political battle for the nomination, edging out Reagan at the Republican convention. Ford may have won the nomination, but it was clear that the base of the Republican Party was with Ronald Reagan and his conservative views. Reagan accepted the political reality of the convention’s nominating process, noting that his one true regret was that he would not be able to reject, soon, any arms control propositions put forward by the Soviets.²

The battle for the White House in 1976 severely hobbled the Ford administration’s ability to make any meaningful foreign policy initiatives. The SALT II negotiations were left languishing, leading to charges leveled by Leonid Brezhnev that whereas the Soviets were reaffirming their support for détente, the Americans were sacrificing this policy, and the SALT, for domestic political reasons. The Soviets had a valid case. President Ford himself stopped using the term détente when defining U.S.-Soviet relations, instead speaking of “peace through strength” and the need to bolster American military capabilities. Congress followed up on this about-face, passing a resolution on May 5, 1976 that reaffirmed the principles of SALT but rejected détente in favor of a renewed emphasis on American military strength. Ford’s actions were a direct result of the pressures he felt from Ronald Reagan and had little to do with the reality of U.S.-Soviet relations. In September and October 1976, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko met with both President Ford and Henry Kissinger to achieve progress on the SALT negotiations, but domestic political considerations prevented any movement on the part of the Americans.3

Although Ford had overcome the challenge to his presidency posed by Ronald Reagan, he was struggling on the national scene to rise up to the Democratic challenger, a relatively unknown governor from Georgia named Jimmy Carter. Carter was successful at creating the image of Ford as a do-nothing president held prisoner by the Machiavellian policies of Henry Kissinger. Ford was never able to recover political traction, and Carter won the 1976 presidential election by a narrow margin. Even though Brezhnev had committed publicly to forward, positive momentum with whoever emerged victorious from the election, nonetheless, at a critical time in U.S.-Soviet relations, the Soviets had to adjust to a new American administration, replete with new policies and new policymakers.

As much as President-elect Carter may have wanted to begin his presidency with a clean slate in terms of policy options, he was soon to discover that the conservative backlash against détente was to outlast the Ford-Kissinger years. On December 26, 1976, the New York Times ran a story titled “New CIA Estimate Finds Soviets Seek Superiority in Arms.” This article disclosed in greater detail what earlier press stories, published in October 1976, had already alluded to: the existence of “Team B,” the alternative CIA that had been proposed by Edward Teller and John Foster back in November 1975 and that had been so decisively rejected by the CIA. But William Colby, the CIA director who had stood up to the Team B concept, was gone, and in his place the new CIA director, George H. W. Bush, proved unable or unwilling to stand up to the intellectual assault coming from the American political Right.⁴

The resurrection of Team B had come at the behest of an anti-Soviet group known as the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM), formed in 1972 by Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson and other like-minded Democrats and Republicans and dedicated to promoting policy that had at its core a belief that the Soviet Union represented a great evil. Thus the coalition believed that the Soviet Union had to be opposed by those who not only recognized the threat but sought its eradication in the name of global democracy. Led by Eugene Rostow, a number of CDM hard-liners decided that the time was right to resurrect the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), an organization originally formed in 1941 to raise public awareness of the dangers posed by Nazi Germany.5

The CPD had a high-placed ally in the form of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who was opposed to the policies of détente being pursued by Henry Kissinger. Rumsfeld, like the CPD, was not satisfied with the CIA estimates of Soviet strategic strength and therefore placed pressure on the new CIA director to initiate a review of the CIA’s work. Bush, against the advice of his own agency, sought and received White House approval to create a Team B of outside experts who would review the same intelligence used by the CIA and then prepare its own estimate of Soviet capabilities. The concept was approved on May 26, 1976.⁶

The Team B concept was originally designed to evaluate the Soviet triad of strategic capabilities—missiles, bombers, and submarines. However, the chief of naval operations, Admiral Bobby Inman, refused to release to the CIA any data relating to the operational deployments of U.S. SLBM submarines, which made any assessment of their vulnerability to Soviet anti-submarine warfare capabilities impossible to obtain. As a result, the third assessment topic was changed to Soviet strategic objectives. Richard Pipes, a Harvard professor of Russian and Soviet history, was selected to head this third panel, which included Paul Wolfowitz, Paul Nitze, and William van Cleave, among others.⁷

The Team B report was due to be released in December 1976. Prior to its release, Pipes and his team met with their CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) counterparts (the so-called Team A), to discuss and debate their findings. Led by Nitze, the Team B experts grilled their CIA counterparts on every aspect of the earlier national intelligence estimates (NIEs), calling into question the methodology of analysis as well as the facts. Whereas the CIA considered a broad spectrum of possibilities, Team B would only consider the worst-case scenarios. If facts did not lend themselves to a particular conclusion sought by Team B, then they would proceed as if the lack of evidence in and of itself constituted proof that something did in fact exist. The CIA derided the Team B approach, and it soon became clear to the latter that their product was doomed to be sidelined as inaccurate and irrelevant.⁸

Determined to prevent this from happening, Team B orchestrated a series of leaks to the press that reinforced the more alarmist conclusions they were drawing. Team B held that Soviet defense spending was at least twice the rate reported by the CIA, citing its own methodology, which held that because the Soviet Union was a dictatorship, standard models of economic evaluation could not apply. Assumptions on Soviet missile accuracy, based on speculation as opposed to hard data, led Team B to conclude that the Soviets were planning a first-strike capability. The Soviets were assessed as having expanded capability in mobile ICBMs, air defense, antisubmarine warfare, strategic bombers, and antiballistic missile defense (including an advanced laser research and development capability).9

The CIA disagreed with every aspect of the Team B report (in retrospect, Team B was in fact wrong on every account). But effective leaks to the media, coupled by high-level support in Congress and the Pentagon, assured the Team B report a level of influence it did not deserve. CIA Director Bush noted that the Team B report “lends itself to manipulation for purposes other than estimative accuracy,” whereas Kissinger accurately stated that its only purpose was to undermine détente and destroy arms control. But Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld took the opposite approach, applauding the Team B report as credible and worthy of concern. Rumsfeld’s support all but assured that the alarmist and incredibly inaccurate pronouncements of Team B would influence the incoming Carter administration more than any competing, sound analysis produced by the CIA.¹⁰

During this controversy over Soviet capability, President Jimmy Carter worked to assemble a diverse and capable national security team that would have to confront this issue and others. Harold Brown, a longtime national security specialist who had served during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations, was appointed Secretary of Defense. His last post, under Johnson, was as the secretary of the Air Force, a position he held until Nixon was elected president. From 1969 until 1977, Brown was the president of the California Institute of Technology. Brown became the first scientist ever to hold the position of secretary of defense, a status that some believed made him the most qualified secretary of defense up until that time. Carter selected a fellow Navy veteran, Cyrus Vance, as his secretary of state. Like Brown, Vance possessed vast experience dating back to the Kennedy administration, in which he served as the secretary of the Army under Kennedy and deputy secretary of defense under Johnson. Vance was a supporter of negotiations (he had led the U.S. team at the Paris peace talks in 1968–1969) and of arms control.

Perhaps his most controversial move was to appoint the Polishborn, anti-Soviet academic Zbigniew Brzezinski as his national security adviser. The hawkish Brzezinski had written many articles and books on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and in 1975 had been asked by then-governor Jimmy Carter to serve as his foreign policy adviser on his presidential campaign. A proponent of an aggressive human rights policy, Brzezinski was instrumental in shaping President Carter’s attitudes and opinions toward the Soviet Union at a critical time in the U.S.-Soviet relationship. Rounding out the ranks of critical appointments were Admiral Stansfield Turner, a Naval Academy classmate of Carter’s, as the director of the CIA and Paul Warnke, an advocate of arms control who had served in the Defense Department during the Johnson administration, as the director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the senior U.S. negotiator for SALT II. Warnke’s appointment was interesting, signaling as it did a new emphasis by the White House on the role expected to be played by ACDA in bringing the SALT II accord to fruition.

The Committee on the Present Danger, fresh from its Team B intrusion into strategic policymaking, submitted fifty-three names of experts for President-elect Carter to consider for foreign policy appointments. Carter refused them all. Unable to take full control of the CIA’s assessment of the Soviet Union, the CPD sent its Team B members to the media, where they began a strident campaign designed to strike fear in the hearts and minds of Americans about the looming Soviet threat and in doing so to influence Congress to increase spending on defense.11

One appointment came under withering attack from the CPD, that of Paul Warnke as the director of ACDA. Nitze, the veteran arms control negotiator who was the heart and soul of the CPD anti-Soviet effort, testified at Warnke’s Senate confirmation hearings that Warnke’s views were “absolutely asinine.” Scoop Jackson followed suit, publicly warning Carter that if Warnke were confirmed by anything fewer than sixty votes, it spelled doom for any arms control agreement Carter might attempt to get ratified by the Senate. Due in large part to Jackson’s withering assaults, Warnke was confirmed by a vote of 58–40.¹²

Warnke’s confirmation difficulties were unwelcome developments for a president who had placed such a strong emphasis on arms control and disarmament. In his inaugural address, Carter noted: “The world is still engaged in a massive armaments race designed to ensure continuing equivalent strength among potential adversaries. We pledge perseverance and wisdom in our efforts to limit the world’s armaments to those necessary for each nation’s own domestic safety. And we will move this year a step toward our ultimate goal—the elimination of all nuclear weapons from this Earth. We urge all other people to join us, for success can mean life instead of death.”13 Six days after his inaugural address, Carter wrote a letter to Brezhnev, following up on January 30, 1977, with a meeting with Soviet Ambassador Anatoliy Dobrynin. In this meeting Carter emphasized his desire to move forward with U.S.-Soviet relations as well as for an early consummation of a comprehensive test ban treaty and a SALT agreement.¹⁴

The president had high hopes for a new SALT agreement, but the problems with the confirmation of Warnke as ACDA director, coupled with a track record of negotiation difficulties experienced in the recent round of the SALT negotiations (the Scoop Jackson–appointed replacement for General Royal Allison, Lieutenant General Ed Rowney, had proven to be so intractable and inflexible that the Soviets simply refused to do any business with him, much to Jackson’s delight), prompted Carter to seek to circumvent the normal negotiation processes. Instead, Carter sought to jump-start a new SALT II process in March 1977 by sending Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, armed with a new set of U.S. proposals, to Moscow. These proposals not only deviated from the SALT II positions the United States had agreed to during the previous administration but also were presented to the Soviets outside of the normal negotiating channels and in a highly publicized manner. The Soviets had grown accustomed to the diplomatic rhythms of Henry Kissinger and were naturally leery of the sudden shift on the part of the United States in both substance and style when it came to arms control.¹⁵

A broad consensus existed within the NSC that the best course of action would be to conclude a SALT II agreement based on the Vladivostok accords and then begin work on a more ambitious SALT III agreement. This track was favored by Vance. However, Secretary of Defense Brown and National Security Adviser Brzezinski were opposed to accepting a SALT II agreement they viewed as too favorable to the Soviets. Carter went along with Brown and Brzezinski. The major point of contention centered on so-called MIRV counting, which allowed both sides to spread out their MIRVs among a range of delivery options. The main U.S. concern was that the Soviets would concentrate their MIRVs among its heavy missile population and thus create a decapitating firststrike capability against U.S. Minuteman missiles. These concerns were shared by Scoop Jackson, who after the inauguration had lunch with the president, urging him to move away from the SALT II agreement of Nixon-Ford and to adopt a more stringent set of limitations that would meet Jackson’s concerns.16

Carter was intimidated by Jackson’s heavy-handed approach and, not wanting a fight in Congress over ratification of any future SALT agreement, instructed Brzezinski to take a completely new approach toward SALT. Such an approach should meet the concerns of Jackson and should break with the agreed framework that had been hammered out by Henry Kissinger. In early March 1976, Brzezinski chaired a special coordination committee, which prepared a new negotiating option known as the “Comprehensive Proposal.” The Comprehensive Proposal limited Soviet MlRV-capable ICBMs to 550, a level equal to that on the American side. It also sought to reduce the number of strategic nuclear delivery vehicles to 1,800 to 2,000 on each side and limit the number of MIRVs on each side to 1,100 to 1,200. The proposal also sought to cut the Soviet heavy missile force in half, to 150, and to ban all cruise missiles on air, land, and sea possessing ranges of more than 1,500 miles.¹⁷

In exchange for the Soviet commitment to cut its heavy missile force, Carter was prepared to halt all new ICBM developments, including Minuteman upgrades and the new MX missile. The United States also sought a ban on mobile ICBMs. More specifically, they pushed for the Soviet Union to abandon the deployment and further development of the new SS-16 mobile ICBM, as well as to work with the United States to develop the means of differentiating between the newly developed SS-16 ICBM and SS-20 intermediate range missiles. In exchange, the United States was willing to accept the Soviet position on the “Backfire” bomber, that it was not a strategic bomber with intercontinental range. The United States also pushed for a satisfactory resolution of the issue of MIRV verification.

Secretary Vance was nervous about such a decisive break from the Vladivostok accord and asked President Carter if he would permit Vance to propose a fallback proposal, based on Vladivostok, that would allow the unresolved issues such as the “Backfire” bomber and cruise missiles to be covered by a future SALT III agreement. Carter approved, on the condition that Vance would make sure that the Soviets knew the comprehensive proposal was the preferred U.S. position. Vance then communicated this new position to Dobrynin on the eve of his departure for the Soviet Union. Dobrynin warned Vance that any deviation from the Vladivostok accord would not be received well in Moscow.18

Vance arrived in Moscow on March 27, 1977, and almost immediately was put on notice by the Soviet leadership that Dobrynin had not spoken idly. Brezhnev reemphasized the importance of the Vladivostok accord to the Soviets, and Foreign Minister Gromyko, aware of Vance’s negotiating position from communications with Dobrynin, let Vance know in advance that if this was indeed the U.S. intention, then the Soviets would reject the proposal. Vance proceeded undeterred, believing that if the Soviets did in fact go through with their threat to reject the Comprehensive Proposal, they would undoubtedly respond with a counterproposal.¹⁹

The Soviets, however, rejected the Comprehensive Proposal out of hand and snubbed Vance’s fallback proposal. The Soviets viewed the Vance proposals as very much a one-sided deal in which the Soviets were being asked to make huge concessions while the United States gave up nothing. Gromyko declared the proposals “outrageous.” Vance had no choice but to concede publicly that the negotiations were a failure, and he departed Moscow. Vance’s mission was savaged by Gromyko, who belittled the U.S. effort as a “cheap and shady maneuver” seeking American “unilateral advantage.” Rather than emerging from Moscow with a SALT II agreement in hand, Vance and the Carter administration were left with a SALT strategy that lay in ruins.²⁰

Another major arms control policy initiative President Carter sought to achieve early on was a comprehensive test ban on nuclear weapons. Carter called for a preliminary analysis to be conducted on the problems associated with verifying a complete ban on nuclear testing for both military and peaceful purposes by the United States, the Soviet Union, and other nuclear powers. Carter was interested in what effect a U.S. ban on testing might have on the Soviet Union and directed that several diplomatic options be considered, including a unilateral U.S. testing moratorium, a bilateral U.S.-Soviet moratorium, and approaches to other nuclear powers to join in such a moratorium. It soon became clear, however, that neither the Joint Chiefs of Staff nor the weapons designers from the Atomic Energy Commission would support the cessation of underground nuclear testing, even if the Soviets agreed to follow suit. (The AEC was soon to be reorganized under the auspices of the Department of Energy, created by President Carter on August 4, 1977, in order to consolidate all national energy-related activities so as to best deal with the ongoing energy crisis.) President Carter was hoping to make a comprehensive test ban treaty the centerpiece of his nonproliferation efforts, but the bureaucratic resistance within the U.S. national security system stymied this effort.21

While President Carter and his national security team worked to pick up the pieces of their shattered arms control policy, they also struggled to define their national security policy, in particular the nuclear strategy that would serve in juxtaposition to any arms control strategy they might eventually be able to resurrect. The Carter administration had inherited the most up-to-date version of the SIOP, the SIOP-5, a derivative of the process put in place by Kissinger and Schlesinger via NDSM-242 and NUWEP. It was put into effect in early 1976. Although both President Carter and Secretary of Defense Brown were uncomfortable with NDSM-242, in particular the emphasis it placed on destroying so-called economic recovery targets, they had no formal policy guidance available to replace it.

To provide interim guidance, President Carter released Presidential Directive 18 (PD-18), which reaffirmed NDSM-242 and NUWEP as policy as well as retained SIOP-5 as the nuclear strike plan. PD-18 did not represent a drastic change from the policies elaborated in NDSM-242 and NUWEP in so far that it continued to affirm deterrence, damage limitation, and escalation control as the foundation of U.S. nuclear strategy. PD-18 simply superseded NDSM-242 and NUWEP, allowing the Carter administration to claim its own imprint on national security strategy.²²

PD-18, however, was a temporary measure. Formal policy guidance was needed, and in January 1977, President Carter signed Presidential Review Memorandum 10 (PRM-10), the president’s initial guidance for strategic forces. PRM-10 provided the basic guidelines for nuclear weapons employment and the basis for targeting within SIOP-5, as well as providing guidance for future weapons procurement and deployment. It reaffirmed that nuclear strategy policy would continue to be formulated via the PD-18/NDSM-242/NUWEPs model. It also established fundamental criteria for U.S. nuclear strategy, focusing on the maintenance of “essential equivalence” between the Soviet Union and the United States, with an understanding that America would never accept a strategically inferior position vis-à-vis any nation or group of nations. PRM-10 established that the U.S. would not undertake a policy which authorized a disarming first strike unless Soviets opted to establish a similar policy first. PRM-10 also directed that the United States would maintain a secure nuclear reserve force and the forces and command, control, and communications capability to ensure the ability to carry out limited nuclear attack options, as well as an adequate attack warning and assessment capability. The fundamental strategic objective behind PRM-10 was to achieve what the Carter national security team termed “flexible nuclear response.”23

Carter and Brown, in releasing PRM-10, recognized the evolutionary nature of nuclear deterrence. Though Assured Destruction may have been a viable posture once the United States established a secure nuclear retaliation capability in the 1960s, a policy of large-scale retaliation eroded the confidence of U.S. allies—especially in NATO—when it came to deterrence. In the minds of European allies, all the U.S. policy did was limit nuclear war to the European continent. Likewise, within the United States itself, the perceived rise in Soviet nuclear strike capability had resulted in declining confidence in the ability of the Minuteman Counterforce to keep the damage in the United States low in the case of nuclear war. This, coupled with a lack of a viable ABM defense, meant that Massive Retaliation as a strategy had run its course.

President Carter was simultaneously confronted with an emerging Soviet nuclear capability that threatened U.S. nuclear deterrence as well as a collapsing arms control mechanism to contain this threat. The Soviets had waited until 1977 to get a SALT agreement they felt had been all but assured. The failure of the Vance mission to Moscow further complicated matters. The health of Leonid Brezhnev was declining, and there were concerns that any future Soviet leadership would not be receptive to arms control. President Carter needed to act quickly to secure a meaningful arms control agreement with the Soviets, but he also needed to move forward to secure American credible nuclear deterrence in the face of both declining prospects for SALT and increased Soviet strategic nuclear capability.

Complicating this situation was the fact that the Soviet Union was, itself, going through a period of political transformation. The position of relative unchallenged authority Leonid Brezhnev had been enjoying since having pushed Aleksei Kosygin from the inner circle was coming to an end. As Brezhnev grew older and more unpredictable in his health and behavior, he was increasingly challenged by a growing clique of senior officials, including Andrei Gromyko, the foreign minister; Yuri Andropov, KGB chair; Dmitri Ustinov, representing the Communist Party Central Committee; and Marshall Andrei Grechko, the minister of defense.

Lacking the ability to limit Soviet nuclear power through arms control–induced agreements, President Carter had no choice but to reach out to a new generation of American nuclear weapons delivery systems. Carter had to provide the United States not only the assurance of national survival through nuclear deterrence but also the ability to successfully implement the flexibility mandated by the new nuclear targeting guidance. President Carter turned to his secretary of defense, Harold Brown, for input on how best to shape the American nuclear arsenal. A critical aspect of U.S. nuclear deterrence was the survivability of the American nuclear arsenal. The foundation of U.S. nuclear strategy lay in its embrace of the triad of nuclear delivery systems—land-based ICBMs, sea-based SLBMs, and manned bombers. Since the end of the 1960s, the United States had been planning follow-up weapons systems to replace the Minuteman-Titan ICBMs, Poseidon SLBMs, and B-52 bombers, the three of which constituted the triad as of 1977. Criticized for supporting arms control policies projected as solidifying not only a Soviet quantitative advantage but a qualitative one as well, the Carter administration was under considerable political pressure to push funding for a new generation of nuclear delivery systems through a hesitant Congress. This funding would tilt the qualitative factor back in favor of the United States. Key among the weapons being proposed was a new generation of ICBM, the MX missile, designed to deliver ten MIRV warheads with greater accuracy than the current Minuteman III arsenal. Carter was also interested in pursuing the Trident submarine, capable of carrying twenty-four Trident II missiles, each armed with eight MIRVs.24

President Carter was under tremendous pressure to approve a new generation of manned U.S. bombers, the B-1. Although he had initially campaigned for the presidency pledging to cut the B-1 bomber, which Carter viewed as too expensive and obsolete, members of Congress in whose districts the B-1 was scheduled to be built lobbied hard to keep the B-1 alive. Nevertheless, at a price tag of more than $100 million per aircraft, President Carter found it hard to justify producing the B-1. He had already been briefed on the existence of new stealth technology that would allow for the production of a more viable manned bomber for penetration missions into the Soviet Union and other highly defended territories. Furthermore, the Air Force was in the process of procuring advanced, air-launched cruise missiles that could be retrofitted onto the existing B-52 fleet at a fraction of the cost of building the B-1. A single B-52 bomber could be equipped with up to twenty of these advanced missiles, making each bomber the equivalent of an SLBM-equipped submarine on patrol. In July 1977, facing considerable criticism from the political right wing, President Carter announced that he was canceling the B-1 bomber program, opting for the cruise missile–armed B-52 bomber instead.25

The next system to come under scrutiny by the Carter administration was the Trident submarine program. Viewed as a key part of a revamped nuclear delivery capability that gave teeth to the NDSM-242 flexible response concept, the Trident program had been slowed by political opposition from a combination of antinuclear domestic advocacy groups, arms control proponents, and an increasingly frugal Congress. The U.S. Navy’s fleet of ballistic missile submarines was equipped, as of 1977, with Poseidon C-3 missiles, possessing a range of more than 2,500 miles and an accuracy of .25 miles. Capable of carrying up to fourteen MIRV warheads (but deployed with only six, to increase range), the Poseidon C-3 was a devastating weapon. The deployment of the Poseidon C-3 was a driving factor behind the pressure to revamp the SIOP because suddenly the Pentagon had more deliverable warheads than actual targets. Yet the Poseidon C-3 was a controversial missile because its accuracy limitations fell short of true hard-target capability but exceeded simple assured destruction requirements. Its MIRV capability created a political problem as well, with its large MIRV capacity eating into arms control–driven MIRV caps.²⁶

The U.S. Navy had been working on a follow-up to the Poseidon SLBM program, known as the Trident C-4, or Trident I. It possessed similar capabilities as the Poseidon C-3 in terms of accuracy and payload but had far greater range, up to 4,000 miles, thus increasing the survivability of the submarine launch platform. The Trident I missile was designed to be retrofitted into existing Poseidon-capable submarines. There was also a program for a new class of large ballistic missile submarines, the Ohio (which was capable of carrying twenty-four versus sixteen missiles), as well as a completely new missile, the Trident D-5, or Trident II, which had even greater range, accuracy, and genuine hard-target kill capability than Trident I.²⁷

The Carter administration was disenchanted with the Trident submarine program, in large part because of its cost overruns and limited value when compared to the Trident I missile–equipped Poseidon submarines. Prior to being sworn in as president, Carter had queried the Pentagon as to what constituted “minimum deterrence” and had requested a study on the viability of reducing the number of SLBMs in the U.S. inventory down to between 200 and 250 as a means of promoting strategic arms reductions. In addition to their concerns about excessive costs, both President Carter and Secretary of Defense Brown remained skeptical about the overall viability of the Trident submarine as part of the U.S. nuclear deterrence capability.28

Another weapons system under scrutiny by the Carter administration was the Air Force’s MX missile. Designed as a follow-up to the Minuteman III ICBM, the MX missile was supposed to provide increased survivability and hard-target kill capability, both advantageous capabilities in the face of a projected Soviet first-strike capability and the new Counterforce emphasis created by the policy combination of NDSM-242 and PD-18. The MX missile was a larger missile than the Minuteman III and was designed to carry twelve MIRVs if armed with the same 335-kiloton Mk-12a warhead carried by the most up-to-date version of the Minuteman III. The original Minuteman I missile had been phased out of service by 1974, replaced by the Minuteman II, which possessed a giant 1.2-megaton warhead, and the MIRV-capable Minuteman III, the final missile of which was deployed by 1976. A total of 450 Minuteman II missiles were deployed, along with 550 Minuteman III missiles, which together with the 54 Titan II missiles still in the U.S. inventory comprised the 1,054 U.S. ICBMs in service.²⁹

One of the main reasons the MX was being promoted was the perceived vulnerability of the silo-based Minuteman missiles to a Soviet pre-emptive attack. By 1976, Congress had rejected a plan to base the MX missile in silos because such a move defeated the purpose of the MX, which was designed as a mobile missile, to begin with. Two ground-basing schemes were considered. The first was a so-called trench system, which involved a trench five feet below the ground, ten to fifteen miles in length and covered by five inches of concrete and earth. A transport erector launcher (TEL) would transverse the trench, and if a launch was required, would raise a launch canister that would break through the concrete, allowing the missile to be launched.³⁰

The second option under consideration was known as Multiple Protective Shelters (MPS). MPS called for two hundred missiles that were randomly moved between 4,600 “soft” (not hardened against nuclear blasts) shelters spread out among sites located in the deserts of the American Southwest. Both options were expensive, and both had issues in terms of the viability of their survival in case of an attack. As a result, shortly after he assumed office, President Carter put the MX missile program on hold, reducing the funding level for MX deployment by 85 percent. One of his reasons for doing so was that he hoped to get the Soviets to agree to a ban on mobile missiles as part of the SALT II agreement.31

The Soviets had been experimenting with mobile ICBM concepts since the early 1960s. A critical aspect to effective mobility was the need for a solid-fuel system, like that of the Minuteman. The first Soviet effort at a solid-fuel ICBM was the experimental RT-1 system. It was flight tested between 1962 and 1963, with mixed results. A follow-up system, the SS-13, was tested in 1966 and initially deployed in 1968. The SS-13 missile was adapted as a mobile ICBM, known as the SS-14, using the two upper stages of the SS-13 missile. This system was extensively tested but never deployed, in large part because the Soviets had begun work on the SS-16 solid-fuel ICBM.³²

Development of the SS-16 began in 1969 and was flight tested in 1972. The SS-16 was developed in tandem with the SS-20 intermediate-range missile, designed as a mobile replacement for the SS-4 and SS-5 liquid-fueled missiles of Cuban missile crisis infamy. The SS-20 used the first two stages of the SS-16 and as such represented a nightmare system for the United States in terms of arms control and for Europe in terms of its overall security. NATO had grown comfortable with its ability to target and interdict the older SS-4 and SS-5 missiles, and the introduction of a mobile missile with quick reaction/launch capability threw NATO targeting into flux. Moreover, the SS-20 was armed with three MIRV warheads, meaning that the Soviet nuclear strike capability against NATO had improved not only in terms of response time but also in overall strike capability, since one missile could now hit three targets.

By 1977, units equipped with the SS-20 missile began deploying to operational sites in the western Soviet Union, where they could target NATO sites. This caught the attention of NATO—West Germany in particular. On October 28, 1977, during a speech delivered in London on the dangers of an escalating arms race, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt emphasized the SS-20 deployment and specifically requested President Carter to come up with a response to this development, which had assumed crisis proportions in Europe.³³

The fielding of the SS-16 and the SS-20 presented two challenges to the Carter administration. The first was military in nature: having to deal with how best to respond to the new operational realities created by the SS-20. The second dealt primarily with the field of arms control and centered on not only banning mobile ICBMs as a practical matter but also the specific verification problems arising with the SS-20 and the SS-16 missile systems, which used identical first and second stages. Given the stalled status of SALT II, the most immediate problem was how best to respond militarily to the SS-20 deployments.

In 1977, the United States maintained three battalions of Pershing 1a medium-range (460 miles) missiles, consisting of thirty-six missile launchers each. The German Luftwaffe had had two similarly equipped Pershing 1a units. The Pershing 1a was a capable system, but its lack of range meant that it was useless as a counter to the SS-20 missile. Another problem was that, as a tactical nuclear weapon, the Pershing 1a’s four hundred-kiloton nuclear warhead was larger than all U.S. strategic systems, with the exception of the Titan II and the Minuteman II. Since 1973, the United States had been developing a follow-up system, the Pershing II, possessing a smaller warhead (a variable five- to fifty-kiloton weapon) with improved accuracy (making use of a maneuvering reentry vehicle, or MARV).34

Originally, the goal was to place the new MARV on the Pershing 1a missile. By 1977, however, the overall military posture of the Soviet Union in Europe had changed dramatically. The Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact maintained not only an overwhelming conventional force advantage but also a major modernization program, which included the fielding of advanced TU-22 “Backfire” bombers and SU-24 “Fencer” attack aircraft in addition to the SS-20 missile. The balance of power in Europe between NATO and the Warsaw Pact had shifted dramatically in favor of the latter. A new weapon would be needed, and the Pershing II missile was redesigned with completely new rocket motors that gave it a range of 1,100 miles. This redesign meant that Pershing II deployment would be delayed by at least five years.³⁵

In addition to the Pershing II missile, the United States was looking at a new generation of weapon, the ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM), to counter the growing Soviet theater nuclear capability in Europe. The GLCM was an outgrowth of the air-launched cruise missile (ALCM) program that had been conceived in the 1960s under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and pursued in the 1970s by Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger as the ideal weapon for flexibility in nuclear war. ICBMs and SLBMs were armed with large-yield nuclear weapons possessing accuracy limitations that made them effective against large targets but less so against smaller, more discriminatory targets. Even if used in a discriminating Counterforce role, an ICBM strike would result in the deaths of millions of civilians.

A cruise missile, on the other hand, could achieve accuracies of thirty meters or better. The need for flexibility in designing a nuclear response short of total war dictated a weapon possessing the accuracy offered by the cruise missile. The concept of flexibility in a nuclear conflict meant that nuclear war would become a protracted event as opposed to a single spasm of apocalyptic destruction. The goal in such a conflict was to keep any nuclear exchange confined to the lowest level possible and to prevent nuclear conflict from escalating to the next level. The weapons sought for use in this environment were conceived so as to obtain what became known as “escalation dominance,” meaning that any potential enemy would be deterred from taking the next step in escalating a given conflict.36

The U.S. Air Force and Navy had been working on separate cruise missile programs. In 1974, they had been ordered to cooperate on their respective technologies, with the Air Force providing its propulsion system and the Navy its guidance system. The Navy’s version surpassed that of the Air Force in demonstrated capability, prompting a congressional threat to cut funding for the Air Force system. By early 1977, a Joint Service Cruise Missile Project was created, requiring as much commonality between the two programs as possible. The Air Force version became known as the air-launched cruise missile, or ALCM. The Navy’s version was not only brought into service as the ship-launched cruise missile, or SLCM (launched from ships and submarines) but was also finding a new life as a ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) operated by the U.S. Air Force.

Suddenly, cruise missiles were the weapon of choice. The cancellation of the B-1 bomber by President Carter created an even greater necessity for the deployment of the air-launched cruise missile as a way of extending the viability of the aging B-52 bomber. And the Soviet deployment of the SS-20 missile made the ground-launched cruise missile that much more vital as a counter in the European theater.³⁷

Cruise missiles were formally integrated into the overall U.S. approach with a view toward helping NATO shape a military response to the Soviet threat. Official NATO strategy was expressed in the MC 14–3 plan adopted in 1967 and embracing the notion of flexible response. NATO strategy was designed to deter and counter a limited nonnuclear attack and to deter any large nuclear attack. This plan presented a large enough conventional military capability that any attacker would have to know that engaging this force meant the prospects of an escalation to general nuclear war were real. The ambiguity of this strategic posture had permitted the United States to push NATO for a stronger conventional military capability while allowing NATO to shield itself with an American nuclear umbrella.

The deterrence chain that held MC 14–3 together called for a large conventional military capability that was designed not to defeat the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact but rather set the requirement for any Soviet/Warsaw Pact conventional military attack so high as to guarantee an escalation of hostilities into the realm of nuclear conflict. A jump straight from conventional conflict in Europe to general nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States was not desirable, especially within Europe, because of the concern that the relative equality of the U.S.-Soviet strategic nuclear capability would prompt the United States to abandon Europe in the face of Soviet aggression as a means of self-preservation. This was the primary reason why NATO opposed the concept of Assured Destruction.

The flexible response strategy instead required an ability to viably escalate any NATO conflict with the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact into the realm of nuclear exchange short of general nuclear war. As such, there had to be a balance of capabilities between the theater nuclear forces of NATO and those of the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact. The fielding of the SS-20 mobile missile, together with the deployment of the “Backfire” and “Fencer,” tipped the balance of power of theater nuclear forces decisively in favor of the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact by providing the Soviet Union with so-called escalation dominance. This escalation dominance meant that in any conflict between NATO and the Soviet Union, the advantage in terms of nuclear strike capability would lie with the Soviets at every phase of the conflict (low-level through all-out war), creating pressure to avoid any escalation because there would be no advantage to NATO in doing so.

This reduced the likelihood of NATO use of nuclear weapons, thereby keeping any conflict in Europe confined to conventional forces. The SS-20, with its mobility, multiple warheads, and longer range (meaning it could operate effectively from deeper inside Soviet territory), represented a true revolution in military affairs for the Soviets. The combination of its capabilities and NATO’s inability to counter it effectively created a genuine feeling of fear and concern in the West. The deterrence chain, from the perspective of NATO, was broken. With NATO nuclear deterrence thus nullified, the Soviets were able to begin work on a radical new approach to a conventional ground war in Europe, known as the “reconnaissance-strike complex,” designed to have Soviet/Warsaw Pact forces reaching the English Channel without any need to escalate to nuclear weapons (this became official doctrine in 1984). The challenge for President Carter was to construct a combination of military response and arms control measures that restored equilibrium to the deterrence chain.38

Following the March debacle in Moscow, President Carter found himself making greater efforts to getting the SALT negotiations back on track. Carter maintained that the United States should try adhering closely to the comprehensive proposal pushed by Cyrus Vance in Moscow, while at the same time making limited concessions based upon Vance’s fallback position and known Soviet concerns. The NSC worked throughout April to weld these three positions into a single, coherent position, which was presented to Carter on April 23, 1977, with Brzezinski, Brown, Vance, Vice President Walter Mondale, and ACDA Director Warnke in attendance.

Based upon this briefing, Carter instructed Vance, on April 25, 1977, to reach out to the Soviets with the new compromise position. Vance reopened the back channel with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin, who received the proposals in a positive light. Carter was under pressure to achieve a breakthrough because the SALT I agreement was due to expire on October 3, 1977. With this deadline in mind, the president dispatched Vance to Geneva for meetings on May 18, 1977, with Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko.³⁹

After ten hours of intense negotiations spread out over three days of meetings, Gromyko and Vance were able to indicate, in a joint statement released on May 21, 1977, that a thaw in relations, strained since March, had been achieved, and that the differences between the two sides on SALT had been “narrowed.” Vance and Gromyko were aided by the work of their respective SALT negotiators, ACDA Director Warnke and his Soviet counterpart Vladimir Semyonov, who had hammered out the particulars of the so-called secondary issues that could have interfered with any broader understanding.

President Carter had agreed to a three-tiered approach to framing any SALT agreement. In a major concession to the Soviets, Vance had agreed that for the first tier, the SALT II formula would follow the 1974 Vladivostok agreement, at the same time getting a Soviet agreement that both sides would work to lower the numbers of aggregate launchers for any final treaty. Both sides agreed that any SALT II agreement would be effective through 1985. The second tier involved the Soviets agreeing to a statement of general principles regarding any future SALT III agreement that committed the Soviets to pursuing the deeper cuts desired by President Carter. Two of the most contentious issues facing the United States and Soviet Union—cruise missiles and the “Backfire” bomber—were moved out of any formal agreement and instead were to be dealt with in a separate protocol that ran parallel with a SALT II agreement: the third tier of the negotiation.40

While the two sides were still some distance from reaching a final agreement—Gromyko cautioned the press that “major and serious difficulties remain”—the fact was that the United States and the Soviet Union had found a formula for discussions that seemed to work. Key to this was the return to Kissinger-like secrecy on the part of the United States, not only in terms of reopening the backchannel line of communication but also in terms of telling the press as little as possible about the status of negotiations. (In Moscow back in March, Vance had undertaken a very high-profile relationship with the press, providing daily briefings that detailed the minutia of the talks, much to the ire of the Soviets.)⁴¹

When Vance and Gromyko departed Geneva, they left behind their respective negotiators (Warnke and Semyonov) to continue their work in the shadows, crafting a final agreed draft treaty text. The tenuous nature of the framework supporting the SALT negotiations was underscored by the fact that just as Vance and Gromyko were working hard toward the thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations in Geneva, the U.S. Congress voted for a $35.9 billion defense budget. This budget included funding for new strategic weapons, including cruise missiles and a new, highly accurate guidance system for the Minuteman III missile, one that would give it true hard target kill capability. This congressional action led to heated criticism from the Soviet media, which accused the Pentagon of trying to stir up a new arms race between the two nations.⁴²

Vance and Gromyko had left Geneva with an understanding that the two sides would meet a few months later with the goal of trying to conclude a final agreement by early fall 1977. Hardly had Vance returned to Washington, however, than it became obvious that serious divisions existed within the Carter national security team with regard to the details of a SALT agreement. Throughout the summer of 1977, Zbigniew Brzezinski had clashed with Secretary of Defense Brown and Cyrus Vance on the specifics of a formal U.S. SALT negotiating position. In many instances, President Carter himself was called on to mediate. By August 30, Brzezinski forced the issue by establishing a deadline of September 6 for a U.S. negotiating position to be finalized in time for an NSC meeting—with the president in attendance—scheduled for that date. A critical issue centered on whether the United States should allow ALCM-equipped heavy bombers to count in the overall 1,320 delivery system total in exchange for a raised MIRV ceiling.43

The United States also needed a public assurance from the Soviets that the “Backfire” bomber would not be adapted for intercontinental use. On September 9, 1977, Vance was directed to use the back channel with Dobrynin to communicate U.S. expectations of the Soviets. At the upcoming meeting between Vance and Gromyko scheduled for September 22 in Washington, America expected the Soviets to address the issue of reducing the Vladivostok ceilings, limiting the numbers of heavy ICBMs that would be permitted, and imposing a subceiling on MIRV-equipped ICBMs.⁴⁴

Any expectations for a breakthrough to emerge from the September 22 meeting between Gromyko and Vance were quickly dashed, as the Soviets refused to budge from their insistence that any SALT II accord adhere as closely to the 1974 Vladivostok agreement as possible. Gromyko continued to hold a hard line during his meeting with President Carter the next day. Then, on September 27, Gromyko requested a meeting with Carter and Vance, this time armed with a Soviet proposal that had been approved by the Politburo, the most senior Soviet decision-making body. The September 22–23 meetings had been an effort to ascertain the seriousness of the United States when it came to the defense of its position. Seeing no room for flexibility, and conscious of the need to make progress, the Soviets relented on their hard-line stance concerning the Vladivostok numbers, agreeing in principle to lower the aggregates by as much as 10 percent and accepting the U.S. limit of 1,320 MIRVs.⁴⁵

In another concession to the United States, the Soviets agreed that there could be an “allowance” for ALCM-equipped bombers within “the context” of an overall MIRV limit. The issue of ALCM range would be addressed outside the framework of any formal SALT II treaty, with a separate protocol restricting the ALCM range for a period of three years, after which the United States could field a longer-range version. The Soviets continued to resist having any limits placed on the numbers of SS-18 ICBMs, preferring that these be counted against the overall launcher ceiling. The Soviets also agreed in principle to a banning of telemetry encryption—the practice of encoding the electronic data sent by a missile to ground stations during test flights in order to assess a missile’s performance in flight—as a means of verification, meaning that all flight tests would be able to be monitored in detail by the electronic surveillance systems of the other side. President Carter hailed the Washington meeting as a “conceptual breakthrough,” but the fact remained that the details of any SALT II agreement still needed to be hammered out by the U.S. and Soviet SALT negotiating teams in Geneva. One positive achievement was that both the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to honor the SALT interim agreement until a SALT II accord could be finalized.46

The September conceptual breakthrough, though not bringing full closure to the SALT II issue, did manage to get the United States back on track to fulfilling President Carter’s goals and objectives in the field of arms control. The president was at the same time dealing with yet another contentious issue: whether to go forward with the development and deployment of the so-called enhanced radiation weapons, better known as the neutron bomb, in Europe. Given the conventional military superiority enjoyed by the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact forces, and the almost certain collapse of NATO’s conventional defenses in the case of any conventional attack, which would result in the employment of tactical nuclear weapons, the desirability of enhanced radiation weapons was high. The employment of such weapons would kill invading Soviet/Warsaw Pact forces with minimal damage and significantly reduced radiation contamination due to the efficiency of these weapons, which produced little or no nuclear fallout.

The NATO military leadership was very much in favor of the weapon. On the other hand, the political leadership of the various NATO members opposed such an action, including the British, basing the decision on whether to go forward with enhanced radiation weapons on the success of future arms control agreements, especially SALT. But the Dutch, in early 1978, voted against the deployment of enhanced radiation weapons, regardless of the success or failure of ongoing arms control talks, putting the United States in the position of developing a weapon whose utility was limited to the European theater of operations but which the Europeans did not want to deploy. In the end, Carter deferred the final decision, instead modernizing the U.S. tactical nuclear arsenal in Europe so that each weapon could be upgraded with enhanced radiation warheads if the decision was made to go forward.47

If Carter had been hoping for significant progress in the aftermath of his September 1977 meetings with Andrei Gromyko, he was sadly disappointed. On his return to Washington Carter authorized his national security team to conduct a series of closed-door briefings for selected senators, including Scoop Jackson. Because the details of the negotiations were classified, Jackson was unable to directly and publicly confront the Carter administration armed with facts. Instead, he began selectively leaking information to the press—using his aide Richard Perle as the conduit—for the purpose of shaping public opinion against any SALT II accord. The message Jackson was doing his best to send was that the Carter administration had conceded too much to the Soviets, and as a result American national security had been endangered. Jackson was incensed at the willingness of the U.S. side to barter away the cruise missile without gaining Soviet concessions on the “Backfire” issue or reductions of SS-18 missiles. Jackson also made effective use of Paul Nitze, who publicly proclaimed that the Carter administration had locked the United States into a position of strategic inferiority vis-à-vis the Soviets. It was clear that Carter had his work cut out for him in terms of crafting an agreement that not only would be workable with the Soviet Union but would also pass muster in the Senate.⁴⁸

The negotiations in Geneva dragged on inconclusively, emerging from the summer of 1978 with little to show in the way of progress. On September 30, 1978, to breathe life into the stalled talks, President Carter had lunch with Gromyko and Vance at the White House. Carter agreed that the best policy for the United States and the Soviet Union was to pursue a SALT II treaty first, followed by a comprehensive test ban. Knowing there were numerous unresolved issues, Carter highlighted the matter of encrypted telemetry as the most pressing. He also pointed out that a key aspect of any arms control agreement is its ability to be verified. Neither the Soviets nor the Americans were in favor of intrusive on-site inspections, and in any event, the task of confirming every technical detail of an accord such as SALT was beyond the capability of any human-based verification organization.⁴⁹

Both sides, however, had enough confidence in their understanding of the capabilities of each other’s current arsenal of strategic weapons. In order to maintain this level of confidence, and to ensure that future weapons systems were in compliance, it was necessary to monitor the technical data related to a given system’s operation while in flight, either as part of a research and development program or as in-service testing. Each time a missile was flown for testing purposes, a whole range of technical data was monitored by onboard sensors, which then transmitted these data to receiving stations on Earth. These data were known as telemetry. In order to protect the specific technical capabilities of the system being tested, both the United States and the Soviet Union encrypted these signals, so even if they were intercepted by another party, they would be useless. The Americans were insisting that the Soviets cease encrypting their telemetry so that the United States would be able to confirm that any missile tested by the Soviets did not exceed performance limitations (for instance, MIRV deployment) imposed by the SALT accord (the Soviets had earlier agreed in principle to this demand, but had not yet implemented the practice.)

Despite Carter’s personal intervention, Gromyko was noncommittal on the issue of telemetry. He did, however, indicate that the Soviets would back down on their insistence that cruise missiles possess a range less than 2,500 kilometers, if the United States would agree to limit the number of cruise missiles that could be deployed on a given aircraft to twenty. Buoyed by this development, Carter sent Vance to Moscow again, in October 1978, with high hopes that a decisive breakthrough could be obtained that would finally permit closure on a SALT II treaty. The talks mired down over the issue of MIRV counting, although the Soviets did finally give in on the point that the MX missile could be armed with ten MIRVs, a huge political victory for Carter, who could now inform Congress that the United States, under a SALT agreement, would possess an equivalent ICBM to the SS-18.50

President Carter instructed Vance to work with Dobrynin via the back channel to get the SALT talks back on track toward an early resolution of the outstanding issues. The two met repeatedly throughout November and into early December, covering and recovering the same ground as before in an effort to reach some sort of compromise language acceptable to both sides. Thanks to the work of Vance and Gromyko in Washington and the teams of SALT negotiators in Geneva, dates were set, December 21–23, 1978, for Vance and Gromyko to meet in Geneva to settle on a final draft of a SALT II treaty that then could be signed during a summit between President Carter and Leonid Brezhnev to be held in Washington in January 1979.

On December 15, while SALT was wrapping up, President Carter, in a surprising move, announced plans to normalize diplomatic relations with China effective January 1, 1979, and to host the Chinese leader in the United States later that same month. A week later, Vance and Gromyko met in Geneva, in what was supposed to be a final meeting that would conclude the SALT II agreement. President Carter was optimistic that his announcement on China would not damage the prospects of a SALT II agreement, and indeed the initial meetings in Geneva seemed to back up his view. The breaking point in the talks came, however, with the issue of encryption of telemetry. The Soviets were against any banning of encrypted telemetry. As a compromise, Vance had been able to get Gromyko to accept a broad principle that held that encryption would not be permitted in any manner affecting the other side’s ability to verify treaty limitations, but it would not be banned outright. This meant that the Soviets would leave unencrypted those signals they believed were related to measuring missile performance characteristics related to an arms control treaty but continue to encrypt those signals it deemed outside the framework of any such agreement.

This set off a firestorm, especially among those in the arms control community who were inherently distrustful of the Soviets. Both technically and legally, the Soviet position was defensible. However, for those on the U.S. side who were inherently distrustful of the Soviet Union, to allow any encryption of telemetry not only was a major compromise in terms of principle but also opened the door for potential Soviet contravention of any arms control agreement it might enter into with the United States. Lieutenant General Edward Rowney, the Pentagon’s senior representative on the U.S. SALT delegation, resigned in protest. Back in Washington, Carter was besieged by Stansfield Turner, the CIA director, as well as Brzezinski, Brown, and General Jones, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who insisted that there be no encryption permitted whatsoever.51

Carter personally directed Vance to inform Gromyko that the Soviet definition of what constituted compliance was too vague. To illustrate his point, Vance brought up a recent Soviet test of a SS-18 missile, conducted back on July 29, 1978, and told the Soviets that the encryption undertaken during that test would be viewed as a violation of the SALT II agreement. To make matters worse, the Soviets conducted a similar test of the same missile type on December 21, 1978, in which the telemetry was encrypted in the same manner as the July test. Gromyko was visibly angered by the U.S. position, especially the references made to specific Soviet missile tests. There would be no final agreement. The Geneva talks ended in the same manner as those that had preceded it—failure.52

While the outstanding differences over critical aspects of the agreement, such as telemetry, appeared to represent the primary reason for the failure of the December meeting in Geneva, Carter’s precipitous announcement concerning U.S.-Sino relations may have been the real reason behind the undoing of the negotiation. Brezhnev had no desire to sign a SALT II treaty in the United States only to be overshadowed by Deng Xiaopeng’s visit. For this reason, the SALT process was deliberately slowed down by renewed Soviet intransigence on positions on which there previously had been what was believed to be an agreement.⁵³

While President Carter believed that the opening of U.S.-Sino relations would damage neither SALT nor U.S.-Soviet relations, Brezhnev cautioned otherwise, stating that “the Soviet Union will most closely follow what the development of American-Chinese relations will be in practice.” Moscow likewise sought to shift the blame for the collapse of the talks onto the United States, accusing the American side of continuing to seek “supremacy in strategic armaments, thus obtaining unilateral advantages.” The Soviets could look to the fiscal year 1980 military budget for evidence in this regard, with the Carter administration asking Congress for $123 billion, a $10 billion increase since Carter took office.⁵⁴

Events elsewhere in the world further damaged the prospects for a SALT agreement. Throughout 1978, one of America’s closest allies in the Middle East, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran, had been coping with an increased level of unrest stemming from the brutal and authoritarian nature of his reign. Iran was strategically vital to the interests of the United States, in part because of its status as a major producer of oil, in part because of its long border with the Soviet Union. The United States maintained a series of electronic monitoring stations along the Iranian border with the Soviet Union that provided outstanding coverage of Soviet missile launches from Kapustin Yar and Baikonur. Faced with unrest verging on the brink of civil war, the shah was forced to flee Iran in January 1979. On February 1, 1979, Shi’a religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini left Paris and returned to Tehran, where he was greeted as a hero. On April 1, 1979, Iran was declared an Islamic republic.

The loss of the Iranian monitoring stations provided new ammunition to the anti-SALT forces in Congress, in particular Jackson, who used his position as the chair of the Arms Control subcommittee as a platform to declare the harm done by the loss of the Iranian facilities to America’s ability to monitor and verify a SALT agreement as “irreparable.” Carter and Brown both responded by declaring that the United States would regain its complete coverage of the Soviet target within a year’s time. Under the direction of the president, measures were taken to field new satellites that would be able to monitor Soviet missile launches.55

January 1979 brought other problems for President Carter. That month he met with French President Giscard D’Estaing, British Prime Minister James Callaghan, and German Chancellor Schmidt, all three of whom were extremely concerned about deterioration of U.S.-Soviet détente. The ongoing deployment of Soviet SS-20 missiles was a major issue for the Europeans. Carter expressed his frustration that his NATO allies didn’t want any of the weapons systems the United States was proposing as a counter to the Soviet deployments, namely enhanced radiation weapons, the Pershing II, or GLCM. D’Estaing supported the development of these new weapons—but only as a bargaining chip to be able to negotiate away the SS-20. Callaghan wanted the United States to press forward with SALT II, so that the issue of intermediate nuclear forces could be handled as part of a SALT III treaty. Schmidt didn’t want any new nuclear weapons on German soil unless other NATO nations were willing to take some as well. Carter reminded Schmidt that it was his speech in December 1977, in which Germany asked for U.S. intervention in the face of the Soviet deployment of SS-20 missiles, that started the whole affair. The NATO leaders had touched on what Carter knew was true: there had to be a breakthrough on SALT II soon, or the entire fragile framework of arms control between the United States and NATO, on one hand, and the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, on the other, would fall apart.⁵⁶

President Carter summoned Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin to the White House on February 27, 1979, informing him that both the United States and the Soviet Union needed to immediately initiate corrective action to repair their relations, or they were in danger of threatening not only SALT but détente as a whole. Carter’s message got through to the Kremlin. Within a few days, on March 2, Brezhnev publicly announced his support of the SALT II process. This announcement met with a burst of progress in Geneva, where Soviet negotiators suddenly agreed to the U.S. conditions concerning the encryption of telemetry, as well as the U.S. definition of what constituted a “new” missile, namely the 5 percent size difference.57

One by one, the obstacles that had previously dogged the negotiations fell to the side, as pressure from Brezhnev swept aside any remaining Soviet reticence concerning the SALT negotiation process. The Soviets agreed to provide a statement that committed them to capping production of the “Backfire” bomber at the current rate of thirty per year. The Soviets accepted a compromise of cruise missiles that limited the total number that could be carried to twenty on heavy bombers and twenty-eight on other types of aircraft. On May 7, the United States made the final concession, agreeing that no more than three MIRVs would be mounted on the Minuteman III missile. On May 11, the United States and the Soviet Union formally announced that President Carter would meet with Brezhnev in a summit to be held in Vienna, Austria (the same location as the historic summit between President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Khrushchev back in 1961), on June 15–18, 1979, for the purpose of signing the SALT II treaty.⁵⁸

The lengthy negotiating process had created a tricky political environment that President Carter had to navigate with care. In a risky move that could have undermined his chances for a successful summit, Carter announced on June 8 that he was pushing forward with the deployment of two hundred MX missiles. This move was designed to simultaneously appease those in Congress who were concerned that the SALT II agreement would put the United States in a disadvantageous position vis-à-vis the Soviets and create leverage in any future negotiations with the Soviets on force reductions.⁵⁹

Carter and Brezhnev arrived in Vienna on June 15, ahead of the date for signing the treaty. In a marathon negotiating session, the U.S. and Soviet delegations in Geneva hammered out the final details of what was the most technically arcane agreement in arms control history. The final detail to be smoothed over was the fate of the eighteen Fractional-Orbit Bombardment (FOB) systems the Soviets had developed back in the 1960s. Outdated, inaccurate, and ineffective, these missiles were confined to a single missile field outside Tyuratom, Kazakhstan. The United States wanted these missiles counted as part of the heavy-missile ceiling, while the Soviets claimed that they were used for testing purposes only. In the end, the Soviets agreed to dismantle twelve of the missiles and clearly mark the remaining six silos as being used for tests only.⁶⁰

In his first meeting with President Carter, held on June 16, Brezhnev set the stage for a successful summit by calling the SALT II treaty “mutually acceptable, adequately balanced, and acceptable.” As part of the elaborate diplomatic process that involved both sides providing “statements” that would serve as understandings outside the body of the treaty text, President Carter read statements on cruise missile limits and the Minuteman missile MIRV limit. Brezhnev was supposed to do the same about “Backfire” production being kept to thirty per year, but he only said he would not dispute any U.S. claim that the production rate was thirty a year.61

Brezhnev stated that SALT II would not go into effect until ratified, which deviated from past practice, which had both parties adhere upon signing. He also said that any future arms control agreement would have to take into account British and French weapons, and those of the Chinese as well. Likewise, in a clear message to the United States that the SALT II negotiations were over, Brezhnev stated that the Soviet Union would not accept any unilateral amendments from the U.S. Senate. Remarking on Carter’s announcement on June 8 about the MX missile, Brezhnev expressed concern over the basing option for the MX, saying more than one silo per missile was a violation of the SALT II treaty.⁶²

President Carter, somewhat taken aback, responded that this issue had already been discussed between the United States and Soviet sides. The two leaders concluded the first day’s session by exchanging statements that no encrypting of telemetry of weapons systems covered by SALT II would be allowed and that there would be no interference with national means of verification operating in support of the treaty. Despite the bumpy nature of the discussions, Brezhnev remained positive, telling President Carter that both sides had no choice but to go forward.⁶³

The next day, and again on the morning of June 18, the two leaders discussed issues pertaining to future arms control agreements, and the Soviets pressed the United States for a formal statement pledging no first use of nuclear weapons. However, the situation in Europe, in which NATO faced off against a superior Soviet/Warsaw Pact conventional force, meant that the first use of nuclear weapons on the part of the United States and NATO represented the only true deterrent to a Soviet attack. What Carter was able to agree to in the end was a statement in which the United States pledged to no first use of military force. And to clear up the issue of Soviet “Backfire” production, Carter was able to get Brezhnev to formally state that “the Soviet Union will not produce more than 30 Backfire bombers per year,” which was accepted by the United States in lieu of a written statement. Before the two leaders wrapped up their meeting, Carter again pressed Brezhnev on the importance of an early SALT III accord that sought deep reductions in the strategic arsenals of both nations.64

The meetings between Brezhnev and Carter were anticlimactic. With no firm agenda at play save signing the SALT II treaty, all that was left to do was complete the act. The SALT II treaty itself was signed in a short ceremony held in the magnificent gold and white ballroom of the Redoutensaal, part of the Vienna Hofburg Palace Complex. The two leaders exchanged a few words beforehand, and then the treaty documents were signed. Within ten minutes the deed was done, and President Carter said his farewells to Leonid Brezhnev. The two would never again meet.

For Brezhnev, the fight was over: The Soviet position as expressed in the treaty text represented a formal government decision. For Carter, however, the battle was just beginning, with a long and difficult fight expected with Congress and others over treaty ratification. President Carter flew home on the afternoon of June 18, 1979, and later that night he addressed a joint session of Congress on the SALT II treaty, repeating the practice of Richard Nixon after he had signed the SALT I agreement in 1972. In his speech, Carter tried to shape the coming debate on SALT II by making clear what was at stake. “The truth of the nuclear age is that the United States and the Soviet Union must live in peace, or we may not live at all,” Carter warned. “Between nations armed with thousands of thermonuclear weapons—each one capable of causing unimaginable destruction—there can be no more cycles of both war and peace. There can only be peace.”⁶⁵

Carter’s political foes, in particular the Committee for the Present Danger (CPD) wasted no time in responding. The CPD sent delegations around America armed with maps showing American cities that would be destroyed by warheads carried on the SS-18 missiles the CPD accused Carter of allowing the Soviets to retain in an unconstrained fashion. Paul Nitze was a principal player in this effort, both in terms of his participating in the delegations as well as through his testimony savaging the SALT treaty. The irony was that the Carter administration had expended a tremendous amount of energy and time consulting with Nitze about the state of the negotiations, and the vast majority of the issues Nitze had expressed concern over had in fact been addressed in a manner that resolved the basis for his concern. Nevertheless, as a central part of the CPD team, Nitze had to stay on message in order to help promote the principal underlying political objective of the CPD, which was to get President Carter out of office in 1981 and replace him with someone more in line with the CPD’s ideology.66

The principal candidate for that task was former California governor Ronald Reagan, who had challenged Gerald Ford in 1976 and was poised to make another run at the White House in 1980. Reagan had been openly proselytizing for the CPD and its anti-SALT campaign, and in March 1979 he began receiving polling data from the CPD designed to counter mainstream polls, which had more than 60 percent of the American public supporting a SALT agreement. In his radio broadcast of March 27, 1979, Reagan used CPD data to ask questions in a manner that exposed not the flaws of the SALT agreement but rather the ignorance of the American people about SALT. He pointed out that one could really only make an argument that slightly more than 20 percent of Americans truly supported the SALT process and that the majority of Americans had no idea about the specifics of what SALT represented. Reagan continued his radio attacks on SALT II, weighing in negatively during the midst of the Senate debate on ratification. Reagan was more than simply a mouthpiece for the CPD—in 1979, he joined the ranks of the CPD as a member of its executive committee.⁶⁷

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings throughout the summer of 1979 on the issue of SALT. The Committee chair, Frank Church, did his best to keep the discussion balanced, but in the end the opponents of the treaty were many and could not be ignored. The underlying thesis of the conservative opposition to the SALT II treaty was that the Soviet Union was a threat that could not be contained by either détente or arms control. They maintained that the SALT II treaty was an unequal treaty that conceded an unacceptable strategic advantage to the Soviets at the very time the Soviet Union was engaged in expansionistic intervention around the world—in Africa, Asia, and even America’s own backyard, the Caribbean. They also attacked the verifiability of the treaty, focusing on General Rowney’s contention that the treaty language opened the door for Soviet selective encryption of telemetry, which would enable them to mask treaty violations. Finally, they asserted that the SALT II treaty weakened NATO by limiting weapons systems needed to counter the growing Soviet threat presented by both the SS-20 missile and the “Backfire” bomber, without limiting these Soviet systems at all.⁶⁸

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee wrapped up its hearing in August 1979. The Senate Armed Services Committee conducted its own, separate hearings, as did the Intelligence Committee. The Foreign Relations Committee convened on October 15 to formally consider the SALT II treaty. The debate was hot and contentious, and lasted through November 8. However, on that date, the Foreign Relations Committee voted 9 to 6 to send the articles of ratification to the Senate floor. It looked as if President Carter might get his treaty after all.

But outside events conspired against the U.S.-Soviet arms accord. On October 1, reflecting both the sensitivity of U.S. national security relating to the Middle East and southwest Asia and the need to be seen as tough in the face of perceived Soviet expansion, President Carter announced before a television audience the creation of the so-called Rapid Deployment Force, or RDF, a mobile combat capability designed to respond rapidly to crises around the world but focused on the Middle East. The goal of the RDF was to use U.S.-only forces in a manner that precluded any drawdown on forces committed to the defense of NATO.69

Soon after his announcement of the creation of the RDF, Carter found himself facing a full-scale crisis in the Persian Gulf. In October 1979 the United States admitted the exiled shah of Iran into the country for cancer treatment. Immediately, elements in Iran, including its leadership, began calling for the extradition of the shah to face trial and judgment. The United States refused, but the shah soon left for Egypt, where he and his family were offered exile by Anwar Sadat. On November 4, hundreds of Iranian militants, primarily university students angry at the United States for letting the shah go, stormed the U.S. embassy in Teheran, seizing fifty-two American diplomats. Images of blindfolded diplomats and U.S. Marines (who guarded the embassy) were soon broadcast around the world.

December proved to be an even more contentious month for the embattled Carter administration. In mid-December, NATO voted to accept 464 GLCM and 108 Pershing II, with deployment scheduled to begin in 1983. In addition to deploying these new weapons, and as a measure to offset the public outcry expected in Europe over this escalation of armaments, NATO linked its approval to deploy these weapons with a U.S. agreement to approach the Soviets for the purpose of entering negotiations designed to reduce the numbers of intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) on both sides. This policy, referred to as the “dual track” (for both the deployment of weapons and negotiations to reduce weapons), represented an amalgamation of the French, British, and German positions briefed to President Carter during his January 1979 meetings with the leaders of the three nations. NATO was looking to the U.S.-Soviet INF talks to generate equal ceilings for both sides. Carter also moved at this time to convince moderate senators, like Sam Nunn of Georgia, that he was not soft on defense, putting forward a defense budget for fiscal year 1981 that was 5.6 percent larger than the previous years.70

The dual-track NATO decision was viewed by the Carter administration as a positive action regarding the SALT II ratification process, and it, together with Carter’s commitment to increase defense spending, was seen to offset some of the more negative attention the SALT II treaty was getting, including the unanimous vote (10–0, with 7 abstentions) against SALT II on December 20 by the Senate Armed Services Committee, whose chair, Senator Barry Goldwater, proclaimed that the treaty, as it stood, “was not in the national security interest of the United States of America.” Nevertheless, the SALT II treaty was scheduled to go before the Senate for a vote on ratification sometime in January 1980, and President Carter was optimistic that it would (barely) pass the ratification process.⁷¹

Then disaster struck. On December 24, 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, crossing in from Afghanistan in order to—formally—assist the Afghan military in confronting Islamic fundamentalists opposed to Afghanistan’s socialist government, but in reality to oppose the regime of Hafizullah Amin, who had ousted a pro-Soviet Afghan faction in a coup in September 1979. On December 25, Soviet paratroopers began landing in Kabul. On December 27, Soviet special operations forces launched an assault on the Afghan presidential palace, killing Amin, who was replaced as prime minister by Babrak Kamal. Kamal immediately asked for Soviet military assistance, and by the end of December Soviet troops were pouring into Afghanistan.

More than anyone, President Carter was aware of the realities associated with the Soviet action in Afghanistan, and he knew that what the Soviets were doing was not part of a major grab for regional and global power, but rather a limited reaction to a pressing regional crisis that was threatening to spill over into the Soviet Union itself. Unfortunately, the realities of American politics trumped fact and reason, and Carter was forced to take a hard line in response to the Soviet actions. On January 1, 1980, Carter announced he was considering boycotting the 1980 Summer Olympics, scheduled to be held in Moscow. The next day he withdrew the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union in protest of the Soviet action in Afghanistan and convened a meeting of the National Security Council to discuss additional measures that could be taken against the Soviet Union.

One clear casualty was the SALT II treaty. Carter was approached by Senator Robert Byrd, the Senate majority leader, who informed him that the SALT II treaty had no chance of passing the Senate given the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Byrd advised that to avoid defeat on the Senate floor, and the embarrassment of withdrawing the treaty, the best course of action would be to keep the treaty in the Foreign Affairs Committee, postpone the Senate action, and then subsequently work with the Soviets to keep the provisions of the treaty adhered to until ratification could be reconsidered. On January 3, President Carter wrote a letter to Senator Byrd, informing him that “in light of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, I request that you delay consideration of the SALT II Treaty on the Senate floor. The purpose of this request is not to withdraw the Treaty from consideration, but to defer the debate so that the Congress and I as President can assess Soviet actions and intentions and devote our primary attention to the legislative and other measures required to respond to this crisis. As you know, I continue to share your view that the SALT II Treaty is in the national security interest.”72

The next day, President Carter addressed the American people about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, informing them of his decision to “defer further consideration of the SALT II treaty so that Congress and I can assess Soviet actions.” He stated that, given the Soviet action in Afghanistan, the United States could no longer conduct “business as usual with the Soviet Union,” and that the United States would severely restrict trade with the Soviets. Diplomatic interaction would be curtailed. In short, U.S.-Soviet détente was dead, and along with it the prospect for meaningful arms control in the foreseeable future.⁷³

ENDNOTES

1 William Bennett, America: The World’s Last Great Hope, Volume 2 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007), 455.

2 Ibid., 516.

3 Joseph Nogee and Robert Donaldson, Soviet Foreign Policy Since World War II (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 306.

4 John Diamond, The CIA and the Culture of Failure: U.S. Intelligence from the End of the Cold War to the Invasion of Iraq, Stanford Security Series (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 436.

5 Andrew Kopkind and JoAnn Wypijewski, The Thirty Years’ War: Dispatches and Diversions of a Radical Journalist, 1965–1994 (London: Verso, 1995), 335–336.

6 Anne Cahn, Killing Détente: The Right Attacks the CIA (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1998), 139.

7 Raymond Garthoff, A Journey Through the Cold War: A Memoir of Containment and Coexistence (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2001), 328.

8 Diamond, 50.

9 Cahn, 176.

10 Sidney Blumenthal, The Strange Death of Republican America: Chronicles of a Collapsing Party (New York: Sterling Publishing, 2008), 160.

11 Philip Burch, Reagan, Bush and Right-Wing Politics: Elites, Think-Tanks, Power and Policy, Part 1 (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1997), 136.

12 Lawrence Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Disarmament Movement, 1971-Present (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 108.

13 Phillip J. Morledge, “I Do Solemnly Swear”: Presidential Inaugurations from George Washington to George W. Bush (Sheffield, UK: PJM Publishing, 2008), 240.

14 Anatoliy Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War President’s (1962–1986) (New York: Random House, 1995), 423.

15 April Carter, Success and Failure in Arms Control Negotiations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 197–198.

16 Strobe Talbott, Endgame: The Inside Story of SALT II (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 53.

17 Raymond Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994), 868.

18 Terrence Garvey, Bones of Contention: The Basis of East-West Relations (London: Routledge, 1978), 94.

19 Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 755.

20 Talbott, 74.

21 Carter, 88.

22 Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991) 383.

23 David Walsh, The Military Balance in the Cold War: U.S. Perceptions and Policies, 1976–1985 (London: Routledge, 2007), 22–24.

24 David Skidmore, Reversing Course: Carter’s Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics, and the Failure of Reform (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1996), 49–50.

25 Douglas Lackey, Moral Principles and Nuclear Weapons (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1984), 65–66.

26 Donald MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), 215–217.

27 Lackey, 65.

28 Tom Sauer, Nuclear Inertia: U.S. Weapons Policy After the Cold War (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), 120–121.

29 Brian Auten, Carter’s Conversion: The Hardening of American Defense Policy (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008), 128.

30 Ibid., 205.

31 Robert Ehrlich, Waging Nuclear Peace: The Technology and Politics of Nuclear Weapons (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1985), 109.

32 Carter, 153.

33 Walter Goldstein, Fighting Allies: Tensions Within the Atlantic Alliance (Dulles, VA: Brassey’s, 1986), 42.

34 Eric A. Croddy and James J. Wirtz, eds., Weapons of Mass Destruction: An Encyclopedia of Worldwide Policy, Technology, and History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005), 283.

35 Auten, 176.

36 Stephen Flanagan and Fen Osler Hampson, Securing Europe’s Future (London: Routledge, 1986), 31.

37 Ronald Huisken, The Origin of the Strategic Cruise Missile (Greenwood, CT: Praeger, 1981), 3.

38 James Martin, “How the Soviet Union Came to Gain Escalation Dominance: Trends and Assymetrics in the Theater Nuclear Balance,” in Soviet Power and Western Negotiating Policies, ed. Uwe Nerlich (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing, 1983), 92–98.

39 David Rothkopf, Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2005), 195.

40 Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 900.

41 Talbott, 87.

42 Auten, 123.

43 Rothkopf, 490.

44 Talbott, 81.

45 Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 897.

46 Carter, 154.

47 Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 937.

48 Thomas Graham Jr., Disarmament Sketches: Three Decades of Arms Control and International Law (Seattle: Institute for Global and Regional Security Studies, University of Washington Press, 2002), 79–81.

49 Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (New York: Bantam, 1983), 232.

50 Ronald Powaski, March to Armageddon: The United States and the Nuclear Arms Race, 1939 to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 172.

51 Richard Gabriel, To Serve With Honor: A Treatise on Military Ethics and the Way of the Soldier (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), 184.

52 Powaski, 174.

53 A. Carter, 157.

54 Adam Ulam, Understanding the Cold War: A Historian’s Personal Reflection (Edison, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002), 266.

55 Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices: Critical Years in America’s Foreign Policy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), 136.

56 J. Carter, Keeping Faith, 234.

57 Ibid., 243.

58 Auten, 276.

59 Ibid., 279.

60 William C. Potter, Verification and SALT: The Challenge of Strategic Deception (Boulder: Westview Press, 1980), 120.

61 J. Carter, Keeping Faith, 255.

62 Vance, 138.

63 Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 950.

64 Richard Scribner, Theodore Ralston, and William Metz, The Verification Challenge: Problems and Promise of Strategic Nuclear Arms Control Verification (Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser, 1985), 205.

65 Theodore Windt, Presidential Rhetoric: 1961 to Present (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing, 1987), 272.

66 Jerry Sanders, Peddlers of Crisis: The Committee on the Present Danger and the Politics of Containment (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1983), 254.

67 Richard Stubbing and Richard Mendel, The Defense Game: An Insider Explores the Astonishing Realities of America’s Defense Establishment (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), 17–18.

68 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, The SALT II Treaty Hearings, 96th Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1979).

69 Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 1084.

70 Michael Mandelbaum, The Other Side of the Table: The Soviet Approach to Arms Control (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1990), 104.

71 Barry Goldwater, With No Apologies: The Personal and Political Memoirs of United States Senator Barry M. Goldwater (New York: William Morrow, 1979), 298.

72 John Moore, ed., U.S. Defense Policy: Weapons, Strategy, and Commitments (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1980), 54.

73 Ibid., 54.