1999 (13 page)

We face the problem that the Soviet Union's stockpile of first-strike warheads has been rising rapidly. Unlike the United States, the Soviet Union did not stop after reaching the level of 1,006 land-based missiles. It kept production lines rolling at full bore. Its deployments peaked at 1,620. Moscow then turned to replacing old missiles with newer and more accurate ones. As a result, the Soviet Union had 5,240 first-strike warheads in 1985 and will have at least 8,000 in 1995. The fact that the United States has only 1,500 first-strike targets casts the Soviet strategic threat into stark relief.

Moscow's favorable ratio of warheads to targets does not mean that Kremlin leaders are quietly priming their missiles for a first strike. Gorbachev knows that a first strike would be the most complicated technological operation in the history of warfare. Complex weapons never tested under wartime conditions would have to work perfectly, and any error could lead to total disaster. Clausewitz warned that “everything in war is simple but the simplest thing is difficult.” Gorbachev understands that. He will be especially cautious of putting too much faith in high technology after the melt-down at Chernobyl and the explosion of Challenger. He will not casually stake the future of his country on a high-tech roll of the dice.

But technology continues to advance. When nuclear weapons were first invented, professional military men ridiculed the idea that they could be delivered by rockets to targets half a world away. Today, both sides have weapons that can reliably destroy even those targets that are specially hardened to withstand nuclear attack. In the future, missiles will become ever more accurate, and the uncertainties of a first-strike attack will diminish.

Although a Soviet first strike remains highly unlikely, Moscow's massive strategic buildup poses three real threats to the United States:

If war were to break out, the Soviet Union now has the capability to destroy 90 percent of U.S. land-based strategic forces in a first strike and have enough warheads left over to take out our cities. A President then would face a stark choice. With 90 percent of his most accurate missiles gone, he would not have enough left to take out the remaining Soviet land-based missiles. He could choose either to attack Soviet cities with less accurate sea-based or airborne weapons, which would in turn lead to an even more devastating reprisal on American cities, or to acquiesce to Soviet war demands. Putting it more bluntly, his options would be surrender or suicide.

If the Soviet Union were to launch an attack with conventional forces on American vital interests—such as the Persian Gulf—we would face a double dilemma. On the one hand, if the United States did not have conventional forces to counter Moscow, a President without nuclear superiority could not force the Soviet Union to back off with a nuclear threat. On the other hand, even if the United States did have significant conventional forces available, as was the case in the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the Kremlin could engage in nuclear blackmail. It could threaten the United States with its superiority in nuclear weapons and thereby deter an American conventional intervention.

If the strategic imbalance leads our allies to conclude that our nuclear umbrella is riddled with holes, the West Europeans and the Japanese might decide to seek a separate accommodation with Moscow. If our allies do not believe in our nuclear-security guarantees, our alliances would soon dissolve. While we would have avoided nuclear war, we would have been defeated without war.

To achieve real peace, we must be able to deter Moscow. But our deterrent is imperiled. We face a fundamental problem: A threat to commit mutual suicide is not credible, and a threat which is not credible will not deter.

The most popular concept among foreign-policy experts is that the United States does not need to enhance deterrence and should base its strategy on the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. They begin with the premise that superiority is impossible in the
nuclear age. They then argue that since both superpowers have thousands of nuclear weapons, neither could destroy all of the other's strategic forces in a first strike. That means that even after a first strike the victim could inflict unacceptable damage on the aggressor in a retaliatory attack. Even a loser in nuclear war could decimate the winner. Advocates of mutual assured destruction also argue that a strategic defense, even if possible, is undesirable because it would reduce the ability of one side to retaliate against the other.

The theory of mutual assured destruction is based on a false premise. It assumes that the United States and the Soviet Union are equal threats to peace and that
both
must be deterred from launching a nuclear attack. And while a persuasive case can be made for the theory in the abstract, a fatal flaw undercuts it: For the strategy to work, it must be
mutual.
Not only the United States but particularly the Soviet Union needs to subscribe to its tenets. If only one side adheres to the strategy, it assures not mutual destruction but unilateral superiority for the other side. The problem is that the Kremlin leaders have never signed on. If the United States had stood pat with its strategic bomber force of the 1950s, Moscow would have a total first-strike capability today. If we stand pat with our current strategic forces, the danger is that the Kremlin might be able to achieve a first-strike capability in the decades ahead.

As President, I did not subscribe to the doctrine of mutual assured destruction—and I knew Moscow did not either. I won a hard-fought struggle to get congressional approval for an ABM system to defend our strategic forces. When I signed the ABM Treaty, I was not returning to a strategy based on mutual assured destruction. I traded limitations on defensive systems for a cap on the offensive threat. Moreover, in my administration's annual reports on the state of the world, I explicitly moved American policy away from mutual assured destruction, a shift upon which all subsequent administrations built.

Moscow still believes in military superiority. Its leaders accept the
fact
of mutual assured destruction but not the theory. If our strategic forces can survive a first strike, the Kremlin leaders will accept American deterrence as a fact of life. But facts change.
Moscow will not view American deterrence as a
permanent
reality and will do everything within its power to change it. When Secretary McNamara unilaterally limited the size of American nuclear forces, Kremlin leaders pushed ahead with theirs. When President Carter canceled or slowed down American strategic programs, Kremlin leaders accelerated theirs. Moscow viewed American restraint as an opportunity to gain an advantage.

Advocates of mutual assured destruction also fail to realize that advances in the accuracy of intercontinental ballistic missiles will create the possibility of a surgical first strike, perhaps as early as the turn of the century. Strategic weapons used to be crude weapons which were so inaccurate that they could only hit a target the size of a city. That is no longer the case. Both sides today have missiles accurate enough to land a warhead on a target the size of Yankee Stadium on the other side of the world. Technological advances will soon make it possible to target the opposing team's dugout. That means it will become increasingly feasible for one side to destroy the other's retaliatory forces. A first strike that is now possible only in theory might become possible in practice.

A strategy of mutual assured destruction would leave the United States with no viable options if deterrence were to fail. If war were to break out, an American President would be left with the single option of ordering the mass destruction of enemy civilians, in the face of the certainty that it would be followed by the mass slaughter of Americans. That is unacceptable and not credible. Even worse, any policy based solely on the threat to kill millions of civilians is profoundly immoral, especially if an effective alternative exists.

Our ability to launch an all-out retaliation might deter an all-out attack. But deterrence must also cover limited attacks. If the United States cannot meet a limited challenge with a limited response, an American response becomes less likely and an American threat to retaliate less credible. That, in turn, makes the Soviet challenge more likely. It is no longer tenable to base our deterrence solely on a threat of mutual suicide.

Those who advocate mutual assured destruction fail to see that the strategy does not fit the times. Negating the U.S. nuclear deterrent still stands as a principal Soviet objective. Moscow's strategic
buildup has already made American land-based missiles and bombers vulnerable to a first strike. Advances in technology could in the coming decades create the possibility of a successful surgical attack against all of our nuclear forces that would leave the United States without the ability to retaliate. That weakness would not only prompt greater Soviet aggression below the nuclear level but also reduce the American willingness to run risks needed to turn back Soviet challenges.

What does the United States need to do to maintain deterrence in the years beyond 1999? We must have strategic forces that achieve three essential purposes:

No first-strike vulnerability.
At a minimum, the United States must have strategic counterforce weapons that the Soviet Union cannot destroy in a first strike. Without retaliatory forces that can survive an attack and that can be used against military targets in the Soviet Union, deterrence evaporates. This capability is doubly important for the United States because Soviet superiority in conventional weapons forces us to rely much more heavily on the threat of nuclear retaliation. We must not allow the strategic balance to deteriorate further and must take measures to reduce the current vulnerability of our land-based forces.

Equivalent capabilities.
Our strategic forces must match Moscow's in terms of capabilities for conflicts other than all-out war. This is most important in a superpower crisis. If the Soviet Union were able to threaten to undertake a limited nuclear strike knowing that the United States did not have an equivalent capability, the Kremlin would have a decisive advantage. It could exploit its greater flexibility and its nuclear superiority through intimidation and nuclear blackmail.

Extended deterrence.
We must have nuclear forces that will extend our deterrence to prevent Soviet aggression against key U.S. allies and friends. We have maintained our extended deterrence for forty years through the threat to attack the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons if Moscow moved against our allies. That worked when the United States had nuclear superiority. Kremlin leaders are still faced with the problem that the United States
might
escalate
to the nuclear level to stop Soviet aggression. But we must recognize that, since the Soviets have achieved a margin of nuclear superiority over the United States, the threat has lost much of its credibility.

Through its continuing strategic buildup, the Kremlin threatens our ability to achieve all these goals. But we can counteract Moscow's efforts in three ways. We can build up our offensive strategic forces, especially our land-based missiles. We can deploy a strategic defense. We can negotiate an arms-control agreement with Moscow that creates a stable and enduring balance of power. Our objective must be to undercut the military value of Soviet first-strike forces. No one of these approaches would be adequate by itself. But action on all three fronts could provide the deterrence we need.

Alone, a buildup of our offensive forces in fixed silos would be counterproductive. It would put us on a hopeless treadmill. An offensive arms race favors an offensive power. Increasing the number of warheads is easier than increasing the number of missiles, because each missile can carry several warheads. The largest Soviet land-based missile has ten warheads, but could be equipped to carry as many as thirty. Even if three Soviet warheads are needed to destroy one American missile, the United States would, at best, need to deploy three times as many missiles as the Soviet Union to reduce the vulnerability of American forces.