In this book Dr Christoph Bluth presents an original analysis of the build up of Soviet strategic forces from the death of Stalin to the SALT I agreement. The author is able to demonstrate how domestic priorities and internal power struggles account for the seeming inconsistencies of Soviet military and foreign policy.
The United States and the Soviet Union have been negotiating nuclear arms control agreements for over twenty years, yet radical differences remain in the two sides' concept of, and approaches to, strategic stability and arms control. This book compares and contrasts those approaches, using START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) as a case study. Throughout two decades of negotiation, U.S. policy has been directed toward dialogue that would encourage convergence of American and Soviet thought on nuclear deterrence. In Kartchner's view, that hope is belied not only by continuing asymmetries in the development and deployment of their strategic nuclear arsenals, but by differing U.S. and Soviet negotiating positions. The Reagan administration viewed START as a means of repudiating SALT II, restoring a measure of balance in the U.S.-Soviet strategic competition, and as a way of closing the so-called window of vulnerability. In contrast, Kartchner analyzes the Soviets' differing views of nuclear balance, emphasizing their satisfaction with SALT II and a strategic equilibrium shaped by a decade of bilateral arms control. Kartchner offers a detailed exposition of the major negotiating issues in START, contrasting concerns of U.S. and Soviet negotiators. Not surprisingly, each side's agenda was dominated by weapon systems that figure prominently in the other's development program. The author concludes by summarizing and comparing American and Soviet quests for stability and drawing up an assessment of U.S. efforts in both SALT and START to use arms control negotiations as a kind of classroom for instructing Soviet officials in American notions of "stabilizing" versus "destabilizing" weapon technology and America's own ethnocentric view of stability. START will profoundly affect the acquisition, operation, maintenance, and cost of U.S. strategic nuclear forces well into the next century. The history and analysis presented here will provide an essential source to policymakers and students of military-political relations for much-needed further study of this treaty's implications.
The purpose of this book is to examine the birth of bilateral strategic arms control between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Johnson Administration, from 1964 to 1969. It is about the time and the place of the birth of bilateral strategic arms control as it came about in the United States through the efforts of President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in the 1960s. This is the time of the birth of what quickly came to be known as SALT, or the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. This inquiry firstly considers whether the move towards bilateral strategic arms control was institutional or personal. It then looks for the motivating factors: both theoretical and substantive. As few things have only a single cause, it is likely that we shall find that the birth of strategic arms control was influenced by both nuclear weapons employment theory, and by a substantive incident or reality such as the ever increasing number and sophistication of nuclear weaponry. Lastly, we must look for an immediate precipitating factor, such as the move towards deployment of a potentially destabilizing ABM system by both the USA and USSR. Therefore, it must be borne in mind when examining the people and their theories, the institutions, the prevailing realities, and major precipitating factors, that they all come together to form the basis for the birth of bilateral strategic arms control. This book shall therefore strive to reveal the extent of personal input; the objective basis for that personal commitment; and examine the major precipitating factors, namely Anti-Ballistic Missiles (ABM), and to a lesser extent, Multiple Independently Targeted Re-Entry Vehicles (MIRV). Although barely discussed at the time, the MIRV would turn out to be a major arms control problem: far greater than the hotly contested ABM system which spurred so many debates. The unique aspect of this research is that other writers have concentrated almost totally on the people and events surrounding the Nixon Administration when studying SALT. While it is true that the talks did not get underway during the Johnson years, this study will show that all of the theoretical and preparatory work was done in the Johnson years, and conclude by showing that many of the same people appear in the Nixon years. Without the input of McNamara and his team, there would have been no movement on strategic arms control until possibly the 1970s. To add to the historical value of the work, I have included in the annexes complete texts of the initial arms control proposal which the US team was to present to the Soviet Union in the autumn of 1968. In addition, presented here for the very first time are the full instructions to the negotiating team and the initial presentation paper to be read by the team leader on the opening day of the talks. When this final material is tied in with the history of the push for the talks, the story is indeed exciting and meaningful. For the first time we are presented with the almost complete picture of the formulation of an arms control proposal. There is of course a fluke of history which brought this all to light. As the Johnson material was never directly used in the formal SALT talks, it was not subject to the same stringent security classifications as those of Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton materials. Therefore the documents started to be declassified in the late 1980s, with the bulk coming to light in 1991 through 1994. Here then is the story of the origins of strategic arms control.
Balanced and comprehensive in approach, this text assembles classic statements on nuclear strategy and arms control made by Soviet and U.S. policymakers, military thinkers, and opinion leaders during the last forty years. Major Soviet statements, rarely appearing in translation, reflect the disagreement over whether "victory" or "parity" is the goa
This paper, which is included as a chapter in [U.S.-Soviet Relations: The Next Phase] (Cornell University Press, 1986), analyzes the nuclear arms control dimension of U.S.-Soviet relations as it enters a new phase. It reviews the developments and forces that led to the present impasse, discusses the nuclear arms agenda before the leaderships of the two states, and considers the prospects for future agreements. It includes an analysis of the Soviet and American arms control proposals of October and November 1985 and discusses prospects for agreement in the light of congruent and divergent aspects of the two proposals. The authors suggest that an arrangement between the superpowers that provided the Soviet Union with assurances against a U.S. strategic defensive breakout during the lifetime of any new far-reaching arms reduction treaty might facilitate conclusion of such an agreement. Constraints on flight testing might slow down the pace of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), depending on precisely where the line was drawn between permitted research and forbidden testing and for how long. However, in the context of a new treaty reducing nuclear offensive arms, continued U.S. conduct of a vigorous SDI research program within agreed constraints would provide the Soviet Union with strong additional incentives to comply more punctiliously than it has in the past with treaty provisions.
Published for the first time in paperback, this book offers a fascinating look at the first SALT talks by the former Chief American Negotiator. This account of the historic meeting of the superpower adversaries, Russia and the United States, includes a description of the complex bargaining process, the agreements that were reached, along with revealing portraits of members of the Nixon Administration. Originally published by Doubleday in 1980.
With sweeping changes in the Soviet Union and East Europe having shaken core assumptions of U.S. defense policy, it is time to reassess basic questions of American nuclear strategy and force requirements. In a comprehensive analysis of these issues, Charles Glaser argues that even before the recent easing of tension with the Soviet Union, the United States should have revised its nuclear strategy, rejecting deterrent threats that require the ability to destroy Soviet nuclear forces and forgoing entirely efforts to limit damage if all-out nuclear war occurs. Changes in the Soviet Union, suggests Glaser, may be best viewed as creating an opportunity to make revisions that are more than twenty years overdue. Glaser's provocative work is organized in three parts. "The Questions behind the Questions" evaluates the basic factual and theoretical disputes that underlie disagreements about U.S. nuclear weapons policy. "Alternative Nuclear Worlds" compares "mutual assured destruction capabilities" (MAD)--a world in which both superpowers' societies are highly vulnerable to nuclear retaliation--to the basic alternatives: mutual perfect defenses, U.S. superiority, and nuclear disarmament. Would any basic alternatives be preferable to MAD? Drawing on the earlier sections of the book, "Decisions in MAD" addresses key choices facing American decision makers. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
