Defense Policy in the Reagan Administration

By William P. Snyder

By substantially increasing defense budgets, the Reagan Admin. (RA) did more than merely underwrite improvements in military forces, it undertook initiatives that changed both the image and reality of America's national defense. This book examines: the Strategic Defense Initiative, the 600 ship Navy, and the hefty increase in the Defense budget. Critics and supporters of the RA do agree on one point: the RA came into office with the intent of strengthening defense policy. How well the RA succeeded in that effort and the cost of that success are debated here.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Release date: May 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781839747557

Book preview

cover.jpgimg1.png

© Barakaldo Books 2020, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

DEFENSE POLICY IN THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION

EDITION BY

WILLIAM P. SNYDER & JAMES BROWN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

FOREWORD 5

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 6

INTRODUCTION 7

Part I—REGIONAL AND GLOBAL ISSUES 13

THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION AND ARMS CONTROL: REDEFINING THE AGENDA 13

Strategy and Arms Control in the Nuclear Age 15

The Legacy of SALT 16

The Alliance Dimension 19

Changing the Parameters of Arms Control: 1981-1983 21

The Geneva Arms Control Agenda 27

Arms and Arms Control—Whither Strategy? 30

THE UNITED STATES AND ASIA: THE SUCCESS OF CONTINUITY? 34

US Defense Policies in Asia 36

Building a Coalition Strategy 40

US Asian Defense Policy: The Political Context 42

The Reagan Defense Policy in Asia: An Assessment 51

AMERICAN-SOVIET RELATIONS: THE RHETORIC AND REALISM 55

From Rhetoric to Realism? 56

Reagan’s Response to Gorbachev 59

Issues in American-Soviet Relations 61

Prospects for American-Soviet Relations 68

TERRORISM: POLITICAL CHALLENGE AND MILITARY RESPONSE 73

The Problem 73

The Threat 74

Military Methods and Tactics 77

The Engagement: An Analytical Overview 78

Conclusion 84

THE BURDEN OF GLOBAL DEFENSE: SECURITY ASSISTANCE POLICIES OF THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION 87

Reagan Policies 88

Budget Flows and Regional Priorities 92

Policy Questions 94

Reagan’s Reasons for Granting Security Assistance 95

Part II—DEFENSE PROGRAM REQUIREMENTS 100

DEFENSE BUDGETS AND SPENDING CONTROL: THE REAGAN ERA AND BEYOND 100

Defense and the Budget: Long-Term Trends 101

The Reagan Defense Program 105

The Congressional Response 109

Gramm-Rudman-Hollings and Other Alternatives 112

Protecting the Baseline 117

Budget Policy Options 120

MANPOWER AND PERSONNEL POLICY IN THE REAGAN YEARS 123

Selective Service Registration in the Reagan Years 125

Women in the Military 126

Race in the Military 131

The GI Bill 131

The Military Retirement System 134

DEFENSE POLICY AND PROGRAMS IN THE GRAMM-RUDMAN ERA 138

Acting Upon the Four Principles: The Policy-Program Linkage 138

Part III—US FORCES AND WEAPONS 138

THE DECISIVE ROLE OF LANDPOWER IN US NATIONAL SECURITY 138

Strategic Environment 138

The Changing Nature of Military Strategy 138

Landpower Force Programs 138

Army Future Directions 138

THE US NAVY UNDER THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION AND GLOBAL FORWARD STRATEGY 138

The Maritime Strategy 138

Naval Force Structure 138

Future Navy Directions 138

The Post-Reagan Navy 138

THE US AIR FORCE: FORCE STRUCTURE, CHANGES, AND IMPLICATIONS 138

A Conceptual Framework 138

The Strategic Defense Initiative 138

The Midgetman 138

The Advanced Tactical Fighter 138

The Special Operations Forces 138

Judgments and Implications 138

POPULATION DEFENSE THROUGH SDI: AN IMPOSSIBLE DREAM 138

Population Defense Examined 138

Part IV—ACQUISITION AND READINESS 138

BUILDING REFORM IN WEAPONS ACQUISITION 138

The Acquisition Process 138

Needed Changes 138

DID READINESS GET ITS FAIR SHARE OF THE DEFENSE BUILD-UP IN THE FIRST REAGAN ADMINISTRATION? 138

The Meaning of Readiness 138

The Real Issue 138

THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS 138

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 138

FOREWORD

IN THE MINDS OF MANY observers, the Reagan administration was associated with policies redirecting the nation’s energies to provide for a stronger defense. By substantially increasing defense budgets, the administration did more than merely underwrite improvements in military forces; it undertook initiatives that changed both the image and reality of America’s national defense and its central role in the common defense of the free world.

This book assesses those initiatives. It examines the policies and programs that were the center of controversy during the Reagan years. It concentrates upon the most important issues, like the Strategic Defense Initiative, the 600-ship Navy, and the hefty increase in the Defense budget.

Critics and supporters of the Reagan initiatives do agree on one point: The Reagan administration came into office with the intent of strengthening defense policy. How well the administration succeeded in that effort and the cost of that success are vigorously debated in these pages.

img2.png

BRADLEY C. HOSMER

Lieutenant-General, US Air Force

President, National Defense University

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE ESSAYS IN THIS VOLUME were presented at an April 1986 conference held in Dallas, Texas, organized by the Southwestern Regional Program in National Security Affairs, a grouping of faculty at institutions in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma with interests in national security issues. We are indebted to the participants in that conference for their thoughtful papers and their stimulating discussion of the many controversial aspects of the Reagan administration’s defense policies. Our desire to publish this collection was understandable, given the quality of the papers and the discussion.

Financial support for the Southwestern Regional Program and the conference came from several sources: the National Strategy Information Center, the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, and the Ora Nixon Arnold Foundation. We are grateful for their support and the help of their representatives: Mr. William Bodie, Dr. Jay Williams, and Professor Cecil Johnson. We also acknowledge the assistance of Professor Dennis S. Ippolito and Bryan Jones, chairmen, respectively, of the political science departments of Southern Methodist University and Texas A&M University. Finally special thanks are due Mrs. Maria Thurman for her typing and preparation of the manuscript.

The merits of the work belong to the authors; the editors are responsible for errors of fact or interpretation.

WILLIAM P. SNYDER

JAMES BROWN

INTRODUCTION

A safer world will not be realized simply through honorable intentions and good will...No, the pursuit of the fundamental goals our nation seeks in world affairs—peace, human rights, economic progress, national independence, and international stability—requires a dedicated effort to support our friends and defend our interests. Our commitment as peacemaker is focused on these goals.

—Ronald Reagan

WHEN THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION entered office in 1981 the détente of the 1970s had already ended. The military build-up initiated earlier by President Carter and soon to be expanded by President Reagan decisively reflected the gulf that had grown between the United States and the Soviet Union.

In the 1980 presidential campaign, Mr. Reagan had sounded the call to arms against what he viewed as a dire and immediate danger—an accelerating Soviet threat to America’s national security. Détente was disastrous, he contended, because it ignored the realities of Soviet expansionism and failed to stop the shift in the balance of strategic nuclear power in favor of Moscow. To address these problems, Mr. Reagan promised a rapid build-up of US military forces and large increases in defense spending.

It was assumed at the time that President Reagan would break radically with past policies and programs of the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations. This proved only partially correct. The President eschewed calls for quick fixes to redress the so-called window of vulnerability, and crash programs to increase conventional weapons production and combat strength. Rather, the President’s new initiatives involved across-the-board increases in ongoing defense programs. The one exception was the Navy. In essence, the initial Reagan initiatives did not change overall American strategy; rather, they focused on the resources needed to implement existing strategic goals successfully.

These initiatives required, and received, a sharp and sustained increase in defense spending. Congress was reluctant to finance these increases by cuts in the Great Society social programs that had been enacted during the Johnson administration. In addition, a generally stagnant economy seemed to demand fiscal stimulus; the administration responded with, and Congress approached, reductions in Federal tax revenues. In combination these measures resulted in a massive Federal deficit whose size increased substantially with each passing year. By 1984 the deficit exceeded $150 billion, and public concern over Federal fiscal policies could not easily be ignored.

The congressional response was Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, which mandated spending reductions and projected a balanced budget by the early 1990s. A throttling-back of Government spending has now set in and outlays are now growing at a rate roughly equal to overall economic growth. And, after its sharp increase during President Reagan’s first term, inflation-adjusted defense spending settled into a no-growth (actually slightly negative growth) pattern early in the second term.

In the strategic area, President Reagan combined strategic force modernization with new arms control initiatives. In addition to continuing the Carter initiatives regarding air-launched cruise missiles, force modernization involved procurement of the B-1B bomber, limited deployment of the MX missile, research and development on the single warhead missile, Midgetman, and a revamping of the strategic command, control, communications, and intelligence (C³I) systems. Arms control proposals—developed reluctantly and belatedly according to the President’s critics—involved sharp reductions in the levels of both intercontinental and intermediate-range systems. These proposals were initially unacceptable to the Soviets and attracted mixed support among arms control devotees. But the President’s most controversial initiative came in March 1983. Mr. Reagan directed establishment of a comprehensive and intensive research program to develop a defense against ballistic missiles. The Strategic Defense Initiative, SDI or Star Wars, added a note of uncertainty regarding the future of strategic nuclear deterrence. Equally, SDI threatened basic Soviet assumptions regarding its strategic relationship with the United States.

The Reagan initiatives, however, involved more than strategic force modernization, arms control, and SDI. Former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig, Jr., warned that the changing conventional military balance cast a shadow over every significant geopolitical decision....It influences the management of international crises and the terms on which they are resolved. In short, deterring future Soviet threats or outright aggression was possible only if the United States possessed capable conventional land, air, and sea forces. As a consequence, the Reagan administration adopted four initiatives related to conventional forces—an increase in the Navy’s fleet from about 450 warships to more than 600; an imprecise plan to pressure peripheral Soviet interests around the world in order to gain military leverage in other areas of critical interest to the United States; a move to accelerate development and procurement of smart battlefield weapons and to increase the stockpile of war materials needed in a protracted conflict in Europe; and finally, steps to increase the level of training and combat readiness of existing conventional forces.

Of the four initiatives, a larger Navy was by far the most ambitious and costly. President Reagan succeeded in persuading Congress to approve construction of two additional nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, at an estimated cost of $6.8 billion. The carrier request was symbolic of the President’s acceptance of the consensus among US military planners that conventional forces were becoming more crucial than at any time since Moscow achieved nuclear parity.

Without trivializing the military threat to the United States and its allies, congressional observers feared that the President’s approach would be self-defeating. Less confident than Mr. Reagan about funds for defense and concerned that his initiatives would sharply alter relations with both Moscow and America’s NATO allies, Congress was only cautiously supportive. Other observers advanced proposals regarding a range of issues not dealt with by the administration: reform of defense organizational arrangements, restructuring of weapons procurement policies, and changes in force structure and operational procedures, particularly as they apply to NATO Europe. Each of these proposals rested on the perception that the armed forces were infatuated with expensive and technologically complex weaponry, that military organizations, especially headquarters and agencies, were overstaffed at the officer level, and that military educational programs were deficient in important respects.

*****

For an April 1986 conference in Dallas, a diverse group of civilian and military scholars from several universities and governmental agencies took the opportunity to discuss the Reagan administration’s defense policies. The essays prepared for that conference and included here, detailed and insightful observations on the several topics touched upon in this introduction, have since been revised, updated, and edited for this volume. The editors believe that this collection provides, under one cover, one of the first comprehensive studies of the Reagan administration’s national security policies. That the authors reflected on these issues for some months also makes possible, perhaps, more reasoned and perceptive judgments of the long-term implications of the policies of this administration.

Part I of this collection includes five papers on regional and global issues. The first is by Schuyler Foerster, who analyzes the efforts of President Reagan to alter the agenda of arms control from the legacy of SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks). Foerster notes that President Reagan has pursued simultaneously a major strategic modernization program and sharp reductions in both strategic and intermediate nuclear weapons. Both initiatives were designed to overcome the perception of strategic vulnerability that developed in the 1970s. The paper examines the legacy of SALT, the dilemma of extended deterrence in NATO, and evolving US positions in both strategic and intermediate arms control negotiations. It is Foerster’s contention that while the two initiatives are compatible in the near term, success in arms control will ultimately require the United States and its allies to reassess their nuclear strategies and force modernization programs.

The second paper, by Paul Godwin, considers US policies in Asia. Godwin argues that the United States has viewed Northeast Asia as strategically more critical than Southeast Asia. The geographic proximity of China, Japan, the two Koreas, and the Soviet Union in Northeast Asia has greater potential for conflict than exists among the smaller, less developed nations in Southeast Asia. The Reagan administration, Godwin observes, has accepted this view, with some adjustments, set in motion by previous administrations. The author contends that security relations in Asia, for both Washington and Moscow, are far more complex, fluid, and politically sensitive than in Europe. In fact, the United States under Mr. Reagan has been able to firm up loose coalitions of allies and friends in the Asia-Pacific region. But it must now strengthen its cooperative ties to friendly, if nonaligned, states, thereby strengthening the political context required for a successful defense policy.

Peter Zwick is the author of the third paper. He examines the reasons for Mr. Reagan’s shift from the harsh criticism of the Soviet Union that characterized his first term to what the author terms a realistic approach. He suggests that it is the ascendancy of Mikhail Gorbachev that led to this change. In addition, Gorbachev’s leadership style and the politics he adopted in his first year point to a new era in Soviet foreign policy: a differentiated approach to the West and to the Third World. In effect, Gorbachev hopes to raise the cost of confrontational rhetoric to the United States and to increase the payoff for realism in American foreign policy. Zwick questions whether President Reagan will understand and be willing to play by rules that necessitate a commitment to diplomacy and negotiated settlements based on mutual benefits.

John F. Guilmartin tackles what is the most topical element of the conflict spectrum with his wide-ranging historical analysis of terrorism. Guilmartin believes that the use of military force to counter terrorism has been reasonably effective. But he goes on to say that any long-term approach requires fundamental reform of the military instrument. More is involved than new equipment: the defense establishment must understand, appreciate, and learn to utilize more effectively the leadership and training of its personnel.

The final chapter in this part is Roy Werner’s essay on security assistance policies. He traces their evolution as a support tool of containment and as a political lever with nonaligned nations. Security assistance programs, Werner notes, have not been used as economic programs linked to the balance of payments and trade deficits. He also points out that the burdensome trade deficits faced by the United States may require such a consideration. In addition, this paper examines two fundamental questions regarding security assistance: the supplier’s responsibility to evaluate a recipient’s use of the weapons it receives, and criteria appropriate to this evaluation. Regardless of the how or why provided, security assistance should be viewed as only a secondary contribution; in the end peaceful resolutions of conflict will ultimately require solutions that do not entail coercive mechanisms.

The second part includes three papers on defense resource requirements. The first, by Dennis S. Ippolito, focuses on defense spending and budgeting. The paper reviews historical patterns of defense spending and the relationship of defense outlays to the rest of the Federal budget. Ippolito contends that the Reagan defense build-up has not, despite the popular perception, solely or even primarily been responsible for the worsening of the Federal budget deficit. Ippolito believes that President Reagan is in a unique position to achieve what was considered impossible when he came to office in 1981, namely, long-term growth in defense and a reduction in the relative size of the Federal budget. From any perspective, according to Ippolito, this would represent one of the most important budget policy accomplishments of the modern era.

David Segal and Nathan Hibler discuss manpower and personnel policies and conclude that the United States is in a far better posture in the late 1980s than a decade earlier. Recruitment goals have been met and the quality of personnel has improved markedly. Segal and Hibler attribute these improvements to increases in military compensation, to establishment of educational incentives, and to the relatively high civilian youth unemployment of recent years. The authors are concerned that under budgetary constraints both manpower and personnel accounts may become vulnerable. In addition, existing benefits, if cut or eliminated, will affect the military’s ability to compete in the marketplace for the quality personnel essential in an all-volunteer force. Weakening of recruitment incentives will necessitate additional recruitment from the secondary labor market: women and minority group members. Such a strategy raises concerns apparent during the 1970s: Will disadvantaged elements of society be greatly overrepresented in the armed forces and, in case of war, suffer disproportionate casualties?

Dov Zakheim contends that the defense programs in the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings era must of necessity remain roughly similar to those proposed prior to the introduction of this deficit reduction legislation. He reasons that US forces must continue to support commitments that have existed for several decades. Altering these commitments is unlikely since they are constructed on the basis of political relationships developed since World War II. Zakheim believes that Gramm-Rudman-Hollings will not appreciably affect the defense budget» but will engender changes in other areas of governmental spending.

Part III considers forces and weapons systems. It opens with a chapter on land warfare by William Staudenmaier. Staudenmaier contends that fiscal austerity will prevent the Army from achieving the force structure its leaders believe required by the threat facing the United States. As a consequence, the Army, which requires 860,000 soldiers to man an 18-division force, must choose between a hollow Army or cuts in its force structure. Staudenmaier is also concerned that the equipment necessary to fight effectively will not be forthcoming during this period of austerity. Ultimately, the United States will be forced to rely primarily on air and naval forces in situations short of war, with the Army’s rapid deployment capability available for appropriate circumstances. To improve overall flexibility, Staudenmaier therefore suggests a reallocation of defense spending, reducing general purpose NATO force expenditures by 6 percent, with this savings applied to contingency forces, thereby increasing them by 25 percent.

The Navy has been the prime beneficiary of the Reagan administration’s largess. John Williams amplifies and details the strategic concept known as the Maritime Strategy, which formed the basis for that Service’s expansion. The Maritime Strategy evolved within the Navy, and dictates how increased naval capabilities would be used to deter, and possibly to fight, a conventional conflict with the Soviet Union. Critics of the strategy, Williams points out, view the Maritime Strategy primarily as a rationale for the expanded forces the Navy has long desired. Williams suggests that the current Maritime Strategy will be difficult to sustain in the light of budgetary retrenchment. The dilemma this poses for the Navy is that the threat to our national commitments is unlikely to decline.

A discussion of the Air Force follows. Thomas Fabyanic examines this Service and notes that the Air Force in 1986 was a far superior military instrument, quantitatively and qualitatively, to the one inherited by President Reagan in 1981. Some of the changes that have brought this about were motivated by civilians, for example, Midgetman and Special Operations Forces; others were promoted by the Air Force, an institution that Fabyanic contends is too hardware-oriented. This latter quality hamstrings the institution in its ability to develop effective strategic concepts, leaving the Service vulnerable to pleas for new systems whose warfighting values are suspect.

The last article in part III is a discussion of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Slater and Goldfischer are skeptical, contending that confusion and inconsistency on the part of the Reagan administration characterize that program. As presently conceived, SDI will likely lead both to an arms race and to crisis instability. There are good arguments for a ballistic missile defense, according to Slater and Goldfischer, but the bad arguments put forth by the Reagan administration have all but buried the good ones. The authors discuss reasons why SDI is worth pursuing: for safe-guarding against clandestinely retained nuclear weapons and against third-party or terrorist attacks.

In part IV, Jacques Gansler examines readiness issues and acquisition policies. Gansler argues that both Congress and the executive branch have historically focused on problems of fraud and abuse. Both institutions, he believes, should shift their attention to a needed restructuring of the planning, budgeting, and acquisition process, along the lines proposed by the Packard Commission. In addition, Gansler suggests reforms that would change the culture of procurement and, by providing incentives for efficiency, contribute to improvements in the acquisition process.

Lawrence Korb suggests that the Department of Defense achieved commensurate improvements in readiness and hardware capabilities during the Reagan era. These improvements were a result of a 52 percent real growth in the defense budget (discounting for inflation) between fiscal year 1980 and fiscal year 1985. However, Korb is not optimistic that readiness and sustainability will continue to be adequately funded. The fiscal year 1986 budget declined by 6 percent in real terms, the largest drop in 15 years, and the short-term outlook does not appear hopeful for budget increases. The challenge will be to maintain the balance between modernization and readiness in a period of budget retrenchment. If this is not done, Korb argues, the gains in readiness of the early 1980s will be lost quickly.

*****

The authors and editors hope this volume opens new vistas and suggests directions that heretofore have not been pursued by this or previous administrations. Furthermore, for scholars, we hope these articles will stimulate further analysis and debate of the issues examined in this volume. Clarification of the strengths and weaknesses of past policies will ultimately assist in understanding the multidimensional security needs of the United States and its alliance partners in the decades ahead.

Part I—REGIONAL AND GLOBAL ISSUES

THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION AND ARMS CONTROL: REDEFINING THE AGENDA

Schuyler Foerster

NO PRESIDENT ENTERS THE OVAL OFFICE with a blank agenda, nor does he enjoy the unconstrained freedom to shape an agenda. Observers may debate the extent to which a President can shape the destiny of his administration, or whether his accomplishments are significantly determined by the various political systems—international and domestic—in which he is but one, albeit important, actor. In the arenas of defense policy, nuclear strategy, and arms control, a President’s latitude is more constrained by systemic factors than it is in other policy arenas. For the United States, no less than for other states, arms control in particular is interwoven with both high and low politics, at the domestic level, within an alliance framework, and in an East-West international context.

Much of the arms control agenda was already in place when Ronald Reagan entered the Oval Office. Equally, the President inherited a situation in which there was a strong impetus to pursue arms control initiations. Because arms control is a contractual process between two independent (sovereign) actors, each party must approach the process with a sense of strength with which to negotiate, even as each party is brought to the process out of a sense of vulnerability. Although these two elements—strength and vulnerability—are arguably part of any contractual process, they are especially salient in the nuclear business where both the measures of power and the magnitude of risk involve such high stakes.

It is commonplace to note that, political and ideological conflicts notwithstanding, the United States and the Soviet Union share a common interest in war avoidance and nuclear confrontation. This mutual vulnerability of the nuclear age provides an incentive for each to seek a regulated strategic relationship as one means to enhance national security. Conceivably, arms control can provide mutual benefits in a nonzero sum game context. Yet the United States and the Soviet Union approach this security dilemma of the nuclear age with different geostrategic outlooks, different perspectives on the utility of nuclear weapons and of military force in general, and, accordingly, different force structures. For either to feel confident about its ability to secure its interest in such negotiations, therefore, each side requires sufficient manifestations of military strength to sustain leverage in the negotiations.

The Reagan administration entered office at a time when US military strength was viewed as inadequate to sustain an efficacious bargaining position. Perhaps more to the point, the sense of American vulnerability was especially high. In his first Annual Report to Congress, Defense Secretary Weinberger stressed the long over-due modernization of our strategic forces.{1} Noting that arms control was a melancholy chapter in the troubled history of the last decade or two, Weinberger was specific about the source of US disappointment: Our land-based deterrent forces have become highly vulnerable even though one of our main purposes in SALT was to prevent such vulnerability.{2}

In many ways, the Reagan administration has attempted to redefine the agenda of arms control, and in many respects it has succeeded in doing so. It is not so clear, however, that the redefinition will be as complete and as straightforward as hoped by the administration. There seemed, from the outset, to be a sense that a rebuilding of strength would be the antidote to vulnerability, with strategic modernization and a return to new forms of arms control proceeding in sequence. As events evolved, however, the same vulnerability that drove the pursuit of strength also compelled deliberate moves in arms control. Indeed, the pursuit of arms control was necessary as a concomitant condition for the pursuit of military strength.

Even as the Reagan administration seemed bent on redefining the agenda, it could not escape the fact that it had inherited a policy framework from its predecessors. To understand the context of arms control in the Reagan administration, therefore, it is necessary to explore the legacy which it inherited. The next section discusses the relationship between strategy and arms control, since the latter cannot be—or ought not to be—disconnected from the former. Subsequent sections summarize the legacy of the SALT process in the 1970s, lamented by Weinberger in his first annual report, and the alliance dimension of US strategy and arms control.

The unsuccessful negotiations on both intermediate nuclear forces in Europe and strategic weapons between 1981 and 1983 provide the context in which the Reagan administration sought to define its own approach to arms control. That period laid the foundation for the latest efforts, ongoing in Geneva since March 1985. That process has revealed a security dilemma, inherent to the nuclear age, with profound implications for US policy.

Nuclear weapons are a significant element of national military power for superpowers, but possession of a strategic nuclear arsenal does not automatically provide a deterrent, nor does it necessarily translate into an efficacious political instrument. Regardless of one’s offensive prowess, societal vulnerability is a reality which can be only partly mitigated by military strength. Weapons programs are necessary instruments for one’s strategy, but they also provide the necessary leverage for arms control processes which that same vulnerability compels. The Reagan administration has pursued both substantial improvement in the US strategic arsenal and a dramatic reorientation of the arms control agenda. Success in the former is a hedge against failure in the latter, but improved capabilities also serve as levers for success in the latter. There remains, however, the possibility that success in both arenas may create fundamental incompatibilities between the two policy directions.

Strategy and Arms Control in the Nuclear Age

Well over a decade ago, amid a debate on whether or how detente would alter the post-war international system, Michael Howard wrote:

The objective of strategy has remained unchanged since before the advent of the nuclear age—coercing one’s opponent into abandoning his preferred course of action by posing the alternative of unacceptable punishment; but that object was not to be achieved less by manipulation of actual forces than by manipulation of risks.{3}

In many respects arms control has evolved into a component of defense policy, serving to complement a state’s ability to manipulate others’ perception of risk. Arms control has left its maternal source, idealistic notions of disarmament, and has become integral to the strategic frameworks in which weapons find their utility.

The distinction between arms control and disarmament is an important one. As Thomas Schelling and Morton Halperin pointed out 25 years ago, arms control is "concerned less with reducing national capabilities for destruction in the event of war than in reducing the incentives that may lead to war or that may cause war to be the more destructive in the event it occurs."{4} Similarly, Hedley Bull noted at the same time that disarmament—the reduction or abolition of arms—need not be controlled, although arms control involves the necessary element of restraint in arms policies.{5} Such restraint may apply to the character of weapons, to their deployment, or to their employment; it need not involve a reduction in the level of armaments and, indeed, may not necessarily be incompatible with the increase in certain types of armaments as long as that increase is within a framework of restraint on future policies.

Ideally, arms control can facilitate the creation of a strategic relationship in which antagonists can subsequently reduce levels of armaments. The essential element of arms control, however, remains the stability of the relationship between strategic adversaries rather than levels of armaments. There may be other side benefits—reducing the effects of war, building mutual confidence between adversaries, or lowering the costs of defense—but the central utility of arms control is its ability to reduce the chances of war by minimizing miscalculation, misperception, and anxiety in a crisis and by reducing the incentives for starting a war.{6}

The development of arms control thinking along these lines paralleled the evolution of deterrence theory itself as the latter adapted to the realities of the missile age. In particular, Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) derived as much from arms control theory as from deterrence theory. Proceeding from the premise that nuclear warfare was not—and should not be—a usable instrument of state policy, MAD made possible certain distinctions in weaponry that, in turn, provided a foundation on which arms control could develop. Invulnerable retaliatory capabilities and vulnerable societies were essential to mutual deterrence. It followed, then, that weapons which were vulnerable, capable of disarming an adversary’s retaliatory force, or capable of defending one’s own society were destabilizing; weapons which were invulnerable, capable of destroying an adversary’s society, but not threatening to an adversary’s capability to retaliate were stabilizing. In short, the traditional preference of defense over offense, at least for arms control purposes, was in a fashion reversed: deterrence rested on an offensive retaliatory capability, while the avoidance of defense—at least for one’s society—helped to ensure that any incentive for initiating war would be absent.

The Legacy of SALT

In practice, the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) embodied a process which had no element of disarmament associated with it. Limits on intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) launchers in the 1972 SALT I Interim Agreement on Offensive Weapons reflected the US and USSR force structures, either deployed or under construction, for the five-year duration of the treaty. When combined with the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, however, SALT I appeared to institutionalize parity; both the United States and the USSR would preserve their invulnerable retaliatory capabilities and endure a mutual hostage relationship.

Yet institutionalizing MAD as a strategic framework for superpower relationships has been elusive. In the wake of SALT I, it became evident that the Soviet Union did not share the US theoretical view that societal vulnerability and assured retaliatory capability were desirable elements of a strategic framework. The reasons are political, ideological, historical, and cultural, as well as strategic. Some subsequently argued that it was irrelevant whether the Soviets accepted societal vulnerability as a