Strategic Arsenals After START: The Implications of Deep Cuts

Strategic Arsenals After START The Implications of Deep Cuts Michael M . May, George F. Bing, and John D. Steinbruner T h e feasibility of reducing offensive strategic forces by 50 percent or more, once considered radically impractical, has in recent years become a respectable prospect. Reductions of this size have been outlined in formal negotiations, and an agreement would appear likely were the dispute over the ABM Treaty to be resolved. Anticipation of this result reflects the emergence of a widely shared practical assessment that the capacities of the opposing nuclear arsenals exceed the requirements of deterrence and that equitable reductions would improve international security. There are reasonable grounds for these presumptions but they have not yet achieved either the precision or the degree of consensus likely to be required for implementing an agreed reduction of strategic forces. The demands of such an agreement would extend well beyond the precedent now being set by the projected removal of missiles from Europe. Not only would active weapons have to be destroyed and their organizational units dismantled , but the technical design and operational configuration of remaining forces would probably have to be substantially adjusted as well. Since these adjustments may affect the core of the U.S. and Soviet military establishments , they will inevitably evoke differences in conceptual perspective, organizational interest, political commitment and other fundamental matters that influence policy decisions. To produce a coherent result it will be necessary to evolve a more refined understanding of the exact purpose and design of strategic force reductions. Extensive public discussion will undoubtedly accompany this process in the United States. This article is based on a more detailed report with the same authors, Strategic Arms Reductions (BrookingsInstitution, Washington, D.C., 1988);also available as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Report, UCRL 96886 Rev. 1 Preprint, June 30, 1987. Calculations using the Arsenal Exchange Model were done by Major Richard Wittler, USAF, of the Livermore Detachment, Field Command Defense Nuclear Agency. His work in performing and analyzing the calculations was critical and much appreciated. This study was undertaken at the request of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences. The report in its present form, however, is the responsibility of the authors only. Michael M . May is Associate Director at Large and George F. Bing is a staff scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. john D. Steinbruner is the Director of the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. International Security, Summer 1988 (Vol. 13, No. 1) 01988by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 90 Implications of Deep Cuts I 91 It is our hope to facilitate this discussion by reviewing technical facts and strategic principles that appear to provide the basis for consensus. Our intention is to examine these factors in detail, though they may seem obvious to some, in order to see whether policy preferences and strategic preconceptions associated with deep cuts in strategic forces are supported by detailed examination. The most general purpose of offensive strategic weapons is not disputed: they are universally meant to prevent war by presenting an effectivedeterrent threat. As this principle has been translated into specific target assignments, however, some dilemmas and associated differences in judgment have emerged regarding three basic missions that current strategic forces prepare to perform. These missions involve attacks on, respectively, strategic weapons , military infrastructure and industrial capability critical to continuing military power. The first, the counter-strategic mission, is a source of acknowledged danger to any deterrent arrangement. To the extent that it succeeds, an attack on the opponent’s strategic weapons would reduce the destructive potential arrayed against one’s own society but would also thereby diminish the opponent ’s deterrent capability. Today and under reasonable technical projections for the future, the expected success of such first-strike attacks is too partial and uncertain to provide a rational motive for initiating war, but is potentially sufficient to trigger an uncontrollable interaction under intense crisis circumstances. The first-strikemission against strategic weapons cannot be rationalized as an effective policy by either side, but is sufficientlyfeared as a possible policy of the opponent to be a significant practical...