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THE UNITED STATES, of course, developed nuclear weapons first and in 1945 demonstrated their terrible power in attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Soviet Union acquired nuclear weapons in 1949, only four years later, due in large measure to the e‹ciency of their atomic spy ring at Los Alamos and in New York.1 The United States tested a thermonuclear weapon in 1952, and the Soviet Union followed suit in 1953. The vast nuclear arms race was now on in earnest. In the 14 2 Soviet Secrecy Fuels the Arms Race and Inhibits Verification beginning, nuclear weapons were measured in terms of kilotons, an equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT explosive power; the Hiroshima bomb was 12.5 kilotons, or the equivalent in explosive power of 12,500 tons of TNT. Subsequently, during the Cold War the United States built 72,000 nuclear weapons and possessed at a peak time over 32,000 of them. The Soviet Union built 55,000 nuclear weapons and possessed up to 45,000 for a number of years, while making enough nuclear explosive material for many thousand more weapons.2 When the Soviet Union broke the three-year moratorium on nuclear weapons testing in 1961 (see page 22 below), it did so with a blast of 58.6 megatons, the largest nuclear test explosion of all time.3 To gain an understanding of the destructive power of such weapons, consider that a 9-megaton warhead (the size of the weapon deployed on the largest U.S. strategic missiles in the early 1960s) detonated at theWashingtonMonumentwouldmoreorlesslevelWashington,D.C., out to the Beltway—some fifteen miles distant—in every direction. The United States and the Soviet Union came extremely close to nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Because of this destructive potential, any agreements between the two superpowers mutually limiting their ultimate weapons would have to be verifiable, or, to use the term developed later, “eªectively verifiable,” su‹ciently reliable to detect in time, if not prevent, cheating. But it would be several decades into the Cold War before independent and reliable verification would be practical and politically acceptable. The Challenge of Soviet Secrecy One of the major drivers of the almost absurd intensity of the nuclear arms race—as viewed in retrospect—was the deep suspicion between the two sides compounded by the complete Soviet dedication to secrecy. Indeed, secrecy was a deeply ingrained Russian national characteristic going back centuries. For a long time it was perceived as necessary to hide Russian weakness from the West. Russia had been invaded with devastating results by Sweden (twice), Napoleon, the SOVIET SECRECY FUELS THE ARMS RACE 15 German Kaiser, and finally Hitler. In all cases the Russians eventually prevailed, but only after huge losses, the worst coming in World War II. When the Soviet Union finally agreed to a minimal exchange of data on strategic systems in 1978 toward the end of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II), the Soviet ambassador said to the U.S. ambassador: “Today we are repealing 400 years of Russian history.”4 An example of this Soviet penchant for secrecy took place in 1970, during SALT I negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union. The objective of these negotiations was to place initial limits on the central oªensive strategic nuclear weapons systems of the two parties and thereby begin bringing the nuclear arms race under control . To help the chief U.S. negotiator, Ambassador Gerard Smith, to make the point that bigger missiles were not necessarily more threatening , one of the U.S. advisers made a chart showing silhouettes of the various ballistic missiles of each side. It demonstrated that though smaller, the U.S. Minuteman and Polaris missiles posed a greater threat than the then current much larger Soviet missiles. The Soviet ambassador gave the chart to his senior general staª o‹cer, who commented only that “the Americans have a good artist.” The Soviets refused to engage further. On another occasion, the representative of the Joint Chiefs of Staª on the U.S. delegation was explaining a new comprehensive U.S. proposal to the Soviet side. In making his presentation, the U.S. representative ,GeneralRoyal Allison,madeuseof amapof theSovietUnion that disclosed the location of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) deployments. After Allison’s presentation, his Soviet opposite, General Nikolai Ogarchov, took him aside and asked him not to make such a presentation to the Soviet delegation...

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