Reassessing the Strategic Balance

I Until recently, any discussion of the evolvingAmerican-Soviet strategic relationship could have proceeded along fairly straight-forward lines. There was generally agreement in analytical circles (within the West at any rate) over 1)what capabilities should be included in any assessment of the “strategic balance,” and 2) how these various capabilitiesshould be measured. Indeed, analyses of the “strategic balance” from the late 1960s onwards gradually became fairly simple “bean counting’’ exercises in which analysts agreed on such static indices of strategic power as warhead numbers, equivalent megatonnage and missile throw-weight, while disagreeing on the significance of these measures in dynamic scenarios. Thus, a few years ago, when Paul Nitze argued that the fourth generation of Soviet ICBMs (the SS-l7s, 18s and 19s) would enable Moscow to substantially alter the existing balance in both counter-military and counter-value potential after a hard-target exchange by both sides, there was little disagreement over how he reached this conclusion. Rather, the debate centered around the relevance of Nitze’s ”post-exchange” ratios to examiningtrends in the balanceand more important, whether highly-stylized nuclear exchanges against similar American and Soviet target sets was the best way to think about the balance. This debate (which really focuses on how a nuclear conflict might begin and how it would then proceed) has, however, become a good deal more complicated recently. There are several reasons why this is so, but three factors, in particular, are worth noting: THE UNCERTAIN STATUS OF SALT Even before the SALT I1 treaty became bound up in domestic debates over the level of American defense spending and then was derailed by events in Afghanistan, it had become clear that strategic arms control had not lived up to the expectations created by the 1972 ABM treaty and interim agreement on offensivemissiles. SALT, during the last decade, did not become a forum for American and Soviet doctrinal convergence. In fact, it tended to mask the different directions in which the two sides were moving with their forces. Nevertheless, the 1972accords, together with the Vladivostok understanding and more recently, the new treaty, did inject a measure of predictability into the strategic competition which could be absent through all or part of the 1980s.If, as now seems possible, both defensiveas well as offensiveprograms Richard Burt is National Security Correspondent for the New York Times, Washington Bureau. 37 International Security I 38 will be allowed to run free through the coming decade, the problem of forecasting the evolving balance will become far more hazardous. THE BREAKDOWN OF CATEGORIES Even if SALT survives the current hiatus, either by the long-delayed ratification of SALT I1 or by a move toward a new agreement, it will still be increasingly difficult to forecast the future of the balance. This is because the weapons and capabilities limited by SALT are unlikely to reflect the state of the overall balance: while it has been possible to talk about a distinct, "strategic balance" in years past, it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify and count a distinctive class of weapons that can be used to deliver nuclear warheads against strategic targets in the homelands of the two superpowers. Both the United States and the Soviet Union are deploying new types of more versatile systems, epitomized by the cruise missile, which can be used in a variety of roles and armed with a wide range of munitions. As so-called "peripheral weapons" like the Soviet SS-20 or the American groundlaunched cruise missile proliferate, it will not be possible-for purposes of arms control or analysis more generally-to continue to think and talk in terms of a "strategic balance," a "theater nuclear balance," and so on. As traditional categories for organizing American and Soviet forces break down, analyses of the evolving military relationship will have to be placed in the context of specific military contingencies if they are to bear any resemblance to reality. THE HIDDEN FACTORS IN THE BALANCE Changing technology not only makes it increasingly futile to attempt to compartmentalize a "strategic" dimension of the overall Soviet-American military balance. Within the area of strategic forces, new capabilities have become more difficult to pin down and...