In Defense of Counterforce

I n Defense of Counterforce I L a s t rites have been given to multiple shelter basing for the M X missile. Its demise probably became inevitable with election of the current administration. The new administration has seen the SALT I1 Treaty as fatally flawed, and given SALT’S uncertain future, could not project any limits on the size of the threat the Soviets might ultimately pose to MX. With no near-term prospects for limits on Soviet warheads, no guarantees could be given that the United States wouldn’t end up building thousands of additional shelters in the Southwest -and the citizens of that area realized that. There are respectable arguments suggesting that a race to keep M X vulnerable would never have taken place, even if multiple shelter basing had been pursued. It would not have been an attractive race for the Soviets to run. Unless they had increased the threat to MX by investing in silo-based missiles, which are relatively inexpensive, the race would have cost them far more to run than it would the United States. Alternatively, threatening M X with additional silo-based forces would have meant heavy new investments in forces that are going to be vulnerable, a prospect the Soviets seem likely to find as worrisome as do Americans. Equally important, an unlimited race to maintain a threat against MX in multiple shelter basing would have required the Soviets to forgo SALT and any prospects for limiting the comprehensive modernization and expansion This essay reflects the influences and ideas of an enormous number of people with whom I worked or whose work I read during my four years on the National Security Council Staff. I am particularly indebted to Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who asked three questions that led me to frame my thoughts and, ultimately, this essay as I have. The questions were: What are the strategic requirements of 1) nuclear warfighting for defined political objectives? 2) stable crisis bargaining? and 3) stable peacetime deterrence? I am also indebted to David Aaron for his observations about the linkage between wartime escalation stability, crisis bargaining stability, arms race stability, and the political stability of our alliances, and to Jasper Welch for his comments on the significance of the Soviets’ ability to maintain reserves in wartime. Finally, I want to thank William Schultis of the Institute for Defense Analyses, Barry Blechman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and David Perin of the Center for Naval Analyses for the many improvements they suggested for this essay. Victor Utgof recently joined the Institute for Defense Analysis after four years as a senior staff member for the National Security Council. International Security, Spring 1982 (Vol. 6, No. 4) 0162-2889/82/040044-17 $02.50/0 @ 1982by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 44 In Defense of Counterforce I 45 of nuclear forces that the United States has embarked on. Given a host of American defense undertakings-new Trident submarines and Trident I missiles being deployed, ongoing programs for a variety of nuclear cruise missiles , new long-range nuclear missiles for Europe, Stealth bombers, the new M X ICBM, and now a Trident I1 missile and resurrection of the B-1 as wellthe Soviets seem likely to be keenly interested in strategic arms limitations. Finally, in deploying MX, the United States is threatening the bulk of a strategic force that the Soviets have spent over a hundred billion rubles to put together over the last decade. Limits on the number of warheads they might have deployed against a multiple-shelter-basing system would seem like a cheap price for the Soviets to pay for limits on the threat that the United States could pose to their forces. These arguments suggest that the multiple-shelter-basing concept might have worked out very satisfactorily, at least from a technical point of view. Note that the arguments depend on the fact that M X would threaten the Soviets’silo-basedmissiles in much the same way that the Soviets’silo-based missiles are coming to threaten Minuteman. With the MX missile continuing and the controversial multiple shelter basing out of the...