Peter Huessyis Director of Strategic Deterrent Studies at the Mitchell Institute.
Since 1972 when the United States signed its first arms agreement with the former Soviet Union, there was always a caution that if our adversary in Moscow failed to live up to the terms of the agreement, the United States had to preserve the capability to expand our nuclear deterrent.
SALT & START
With the SALT I 1972 treaty allowing a five-fold increase in Soviet and US nuclear warheads—even with limits placed on overall strategic nuclear delivery vehicles knowns as SNDVs—breakout was less of an issue than today. And despite the huge increase in allowed Soviet multi-warhead land-based missiles, we called the SALT deal “arms control” to be consistent with the new era we described as détente and peaceful coexistence.
The 1979 SALT II treaty continued this build-up, but modestly limited SNDVs to 2250 but still allowed the growth in strategic or long-range nuclear systems to near 12,000 warheads. At the same time the companion arsenals of theater or short range and lower yield or battlefield nuclear weapons were not placed under any limits given serious difficulties in locating and accurately counting such arsenals.
Thus, at that height of the Cold War, US defense secretary Caspar Weinberger estimated all Soviet nuclear weapons at somewhere around 35,000—with the dissolution of the Soviet empire, the archives in Moscow and more open Russian officials told us the real number was closer to 45,000.
With the START I and II process markedly reducing strategic nuclear warheads in 1991 and 1993 agreements, the issue of “breakout” became more real. The Reagan administration as early as 1981 laid out in numerous NSDD’s or National Security Defense Directives the framework for the START reduction process and the companion rationale for the modernization of the US nuclear arsenal.
Critical to signing agreements with Moscow—whether the Soviet Union or the Russian Federation—was to hedge against a collapse of the treaties supporting reductions.
