Restructuring the SALT Dialogue

I w i t h most bilateral Soviet-Americannegotiations suspended and several signed treaties not yet ratified, there is no doubt in late 1981 that arms control is in the doldrums, though there is little consensus as to the root cause of the problem. In the United States, some criticsargue that successiveadministrationshave neither exercised sufficientrestraint in strategicforce planning nor seriously pursued negotiated limitations, while others charge that negotiations are not worth pursuing because they have merely encouraged the Soviet Union to acquire a superior nuclear force. This essay seeks to distinguish between the positive and negative components of traditional arms control diplomacy as exemplified by SALT. The first part identifiesthose aspectsof SALTthat appear to have built confidence between the Soviet Union and the United Statesand imposed some effective controlsover strategicsystems; the second distinguishes those aspectswhich have consumed trust, eroded confidence, and encouraged a strategic force build-up; and the third suggests ways to achieve a more productive dialogue in the future. The Positive Aspects of SALT In practice few treaties ever reduce force levels; arms control negotiations nevertheless strive to: -stabilize and codify a mutually acceptablestatus quo that limits forces in an -set limits that can be easily monitored by non-intrusive means; -enhance communication between political adversaries; -establish and maintain up-to-date an agreed data base; -provide a mechanism to resolve ambiguities about treaty compliance. equitable manner; lane Sharp i s a Director for the Council for a Livable World and a Visiting Scholar at the Peace Studies Program, Cornell University. This article was written while the author was a research associate at the Centerfor Science and International Affairs, Harvard University. An earlier version, entitled "ConfidenceBuilding Measures and SALT," was presented at a Pugwash Symposium on confidence-building measures in Hamburg in April 1981. International Security, Winter 1981/82 (Val. 6, No. 3) 0162-2889/82/030144-34$02.50/0 @ 1982 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 144 Restructuring SALT I 145 CODIFYING THE STATUS QUO In the SALT context the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and the InterimAgreementon OffensiveForceswere both essentiallystatus quo agreements , freezing the levels of both defensive ABM and offensive land- and sea-basedintercontinentalballisticmissiles. Most importantly, forthe Soviets, these agreements were tantamount to American recognition of superpower status for the Soviet Union, much as the Washington Naval Agreements recognized the equal status of the United Stateswith Britain in 1922. The ABM Treaty sought to maintain the stability of the Soviet-American strategic balance by removing the incentive for each side to acquire extra offensivemissiles in order to overwhelm the adversary’sdefenses. The ABM Treaty was a classic of symmetry, allowing each side not only to maintain its existing deployments but also the right to acquire a second site of the type then deployedby the adversary. This levellingup to parity made little sense militarily-as was recognized in the 1974ABM Protocol limiting each side to just one sitez-but in 1972probably facilitated acceptanceof the ABM Treaty by arms control skeptics in the United States. PROGRESS IN MONITORING STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENTS SALT made substantial progress in the monitoring of arms control agreements by overcoming longstanding Soviet resistance to satellite reconnaissance of Soviet military installations, which hitherto had been categorized as intrusivee~pionage.~ Both SALTI agreementsprohibit any interferencewith the other side’s national technical means of verification, or the use of concealment which might impede verification by national technical means.4 ENHANCED COMMUNICATION The search for formal agreements to enhance communication,in the interest of crisismanagementbetween the United Statesand the SovietUnion, began in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis with the 1963 Hot Line agreement.5 1. Article 3 of the 1972 ABM Treaty see United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Arms Control and Disarmament Agreements: Texts and Negotiations (hereafter ACDA Agreements; Washington D.C.: ACDA, 1980), p. 140. 2. Article 1 of the 1974 ABM protocol, ACDA Agreements, pp. 161-163. 3. Stuart A. Cohen, ”The Evolution of Soviet Views on Verification: Implications For the Future,” in William C. Potter (editor), Verificationand SALT: The Challenge of Strategic Deception (Boulder: Westview Press, 1980), pp. 256 and pp. 49-75. 4. Article 12 of the 1972 ABM...