Is Missile Defense Our Best Shot at Nuclear Abolition?

Peter Huessy is Director of Strategic Deterrent Studies at the Mitchell Institute.

Are arms control and deterrence two sides of the same nuclear coin? Or are they separate and distinct, serving different objectives and fundamentally at odds? In a new book, Winning and Losing the Nuclear Peace, Michael Krepon, the founder of the Stimson Center, argues that while both deterrence and arms control are necessary, only the pursuit of arms control reduces nuclear dangers.

Krepon is particularly upset with conservative opponents of some arms control deals. He considers them American hawkish triumphalists, unwilling to exercise nuclear restraint and seeking to get the drop on the other guy through a misguided search for nuclear dominance.

While it is true that conservatives have long held that agreements with the Soviet Union and now with Russia have harmed U.S. security, it is not because such treaties prevent the United States from achieving dominance.

Far from it. It’s the other way around. For example, the SALT I and II agreements in 1972 and 1979 respectively allowed a huge buildup in nuclear forces, where the Soviets went from under 2,000 deployed strategic nuclear weapons to over 11,000, a 550 percent increase.

Particularly troublesome was the huge Soviet arsenal allowed under the SALT deals of land-based multiple-warhead systems. These missiles were nearly at 100 percent alert (ready to fire) levels and could quickly eliminate U.S. nuclear missile forces in Minuteman silos, and/or remaining triad elements at U.S. submarine and bomber bases, leaving only the navy submarines at sea available for retaliation.

At the height of the Cold War, Moscow could use or threaten to use a relatively small fraction of its 11,000 strategic long-range nuclear warheads to take out upwards of 80 percent of U.S. nuclear forces, leaving a remaining imbalance with which to coerce the United States to stand down in a crisis.

Then-candidate Ronald Reagan made this dynamic, what he described as a “window of vulnerability,” central to his push for a major change in U.S. foreign policy. After the 1980 election and the subsequent adoption of what became known as a “peace through strength” strategy, Reagan and his successor George H.W. Bush successfully ended the first Cold War and dismantled the Soviet empire.