signal restraint to the US; rather, it appears to have represented a decision, based on the relatively poor performance of the existing ABM system, to cut back even the modest original deployment around Moscow. (Work on the other eight complexes with a total of 64 launchers and associated battleengagement radars continued, reaching completion shortly before SALT began in late 1969, and construction of three additional sophisticated, large phased-array radars for long-range detection and tracking continued on through the early to mid1970's.) This pattern of ABM deployment suggested, as early as 1968, that the Soviet side might be prepared to agree, in SALT, to an ABM limitation at 75-100 launchers, for defense of Moscow.

Reflecting these developments, there was a sharp drop during 1968 in the frequency of references to an effective Soviet ABM defense-a claim for years routinely sounded by Soviet military spokesmen. This change clearly indicated reconsideration by the Soviets of their originally more or less automatic commitment to ABM deployment. Following the US "Safeguard" deployment debate, reference to Soviet ABM defense capability resumed in 1970, but again, as agreement on an ABM treaty became more likely in 1971, virtually all references to a Soviet ABM capability ceased, not to be resumed again.

During the period from 1966 through 1969, as we have seen, the Soviet ICBM force was growing by about 300 new silo launchers per year. It seems highly likely that the Soviet military and political leaders were determined that the Soviet Union should equal the US at least in number of ICBM's, and preferably in ICBM's and SLBM's combined. By the time the Soviets were prepared to begin SALT in 1968, the USSR had more ICBM launchers operational and under construction than did the US (although slightly fewer in protected silos). The USSR was, however, still lagging badly in SLBM's, just beginning deployment of a Polaris-class submarine (the nuclear-powered "Y" class, with 16 launchers).

The delay of SALT from the early fall of 1968 to November 1969 gave the Soviet Union the advantage of having an additional 375 ICBM's and SLBM's operational and under construction. At this point, having surpassed the US in number of ICBM's, the Soviet leaders decided to cease the buildup of ICBM launchers. After SALT began, no additional groups of ICBM silos were begun for a year (only a few individual silos needed for filling out standard groups -six silos for SS-9's, 10 silos for SS-11's and SS-13's were started late in 1969 or early 1970).

Indeed, three groups of SS-9's in early construction were abandoned in 1970. Construction of the remaining groups continued, for a putative total of 1,527 ICBM launchers at operational complexes (including 134 of the older SS-7's and SS-8's on "soft" launching pads). Construction of Y-class submarines with SLBM launchers continued apace, as the Soviet Navy still had very few-many fewer than the United States.

The Soviet cessation of its ICBM buildup was, in my view, intended as a "signal" in SALT, although it also reflected a Soviet intention to shift to a new generation of improved ICBM's if SALT did not preclude having more and the ICBM buildup resumed. One can only surmise, but it seems likely that the Soviet decision at that time was a contingent one, designed to seek the benefit for SALT purposes of a display of restraint, while keeping the door open for a renewed buildup if SALT did not result in a timely agreement limiting ICBM's. The "signal" in SALT was gently prompted by some unofficial Soviet spokesmen, but it did not really "catch" until well into 1970, partly owing to seasonal construction patterns but mainly because of the usual caution in reporting favorable intelligence. The Soviet side did not see a response to this signal.

About a year after the first signal, as the talks began to stalemate, a new "signal" of a different kind was made as a limited deployment of new missiles was undertaken-construction began on some 80 new ICBM launcher silos (and some new underground control chambers). This signal hit a little more rapidly, in the early spring of 1971, just before agreement was reached by the highest US and USSR government leaders on a new approach

in SALT. Probably as a consequence of the agreement of May 20, 1971, on new guidelines for the talks, no additional ICBM launchers were begun thereafter-again a positive signal by the Soviet leaders, unilaterally restraining their own deployment for the year until actual agreement on ICBM limitations was reached.

Skeptics of the value of the SALT accords suggest that the Soviets probably had no intention to build more ICBM's in any case. While conceivably this was so, it may be observed that these skeptics were often the same people who had projected much❘ higher levels of Soviet ICBM deployment, had doubted the "signals" of 1969-70 and 1971-72, and had most ardently during those years argued the need for limiting Soviet ICBM (and particularly SS-9) deployment. In fact, as we have noted, during the two and a half years of SALT negotiations lead-❘ ing up to the Interim Agreement of May 26, 1972, on strategic offensive arms, the Soviet ICBM buildup was unilaterally limited to 80 additional ICBM launchers, rather than the 300 to 350 each year for the preceding three years, apart from the agreement of the Soviet Union to build no additional ICBM silos over the five-year duration of the Interim Agreement.

The Soviet ICBM force buildup, restraints, and limitation should be considered in light of the fact that this matter was viewed by the Soviet military also in terms of requirements vis-à-vis third countries. Both the USSR and the US would need to consider possible use of some portion of their ICBM❘ forces against China. But, for the Soviet military, that possibility, as well as possible use against yet❘ other countries and against US bases in Eurasia, required balancing ICBM's for these roles against MRBM's and IRBM's. In 1969 it became known that the USSR was deploying SS-11 missiles capable of being fired at targets either in the United States or on the Eurasian periphery, and shortly thereafter it became clear that a number of MRBM's and IRBM's were being phased out. In all, over 100 MRBM and IRBM launchers were deactivated by 1972, and perhaps two or three times as many ICBM's in all were deployed primarily for possible use against peripheral continental, rather than intercontinental, targets. In the SALT negotiations, the Soviet side nonetheless agreed to count all the latter missiles as ICBM's, recognizing that the US could not agree to exempt weapons which could be fired at targets in the United States.

Thus we see that the very proposal for SALT, and

then the two and a half years of negotiations leading to the May 1972 accords, almost certainly had an effect-a restraining effect on Soviet ICBM deployment and may have reinforced other considerations leading to an early leveling-off at a very low level of ABM deployment. On the other hand, they did not affect a standing SLBM buildup.

We do not know what the views of the Soviet military were on the pace and levels of strategic force buildup at various stages of the SALT process. It is likely that particular services had their own advocacies.

The Air Defense Forces probably lobbied for higher levels of ABM deployment, but even the military leadership probably was prepared to agree to forego Soviet ABM deployments if the US also would do so. It seems clear that the Soviet military leaders (and probably the political leaders, too) preferred to keep the Moscow ABM deployment, particularly to provide defense against small third-country strikes and accidental launchings (remote though the latter possibility would be), and perhaps also to have the benefit of some operational experience with an ABM system. But it is not clear that a complete ABM ban could not have been negotiated; the possibility was not fully explored.

The Soviet military, not unlike the American, were evidently inclined to prefer specific deployment limitations, but no more than minimal restraints on research and deployment and on system modifications and improvements. Nonetheless, initial opposition was overcome to such limitations as a ban on deployment of future "exotic" types of anti-ballistic missile systems, as well as a ban on development and testing of various ABM systems, such as space, air, sea, and land mobile-based and rapid refire systems.

The strongest military consideration pressed by the Soviet side, and one representing a major difference with the US, was the insistence that strategic offensive arms for purposes of SALT include delivery means capable by virtue of their deployment location of striking the USSR or the US, respectively. This position underlay their opposition to early US proposals to limit Soviet MRBM's and IRBM's deployed against targets in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, but the US did not press this proposal. Much more difficult has been the persistent Soviet attempt to include in some manner US forward-based systems (FBS) deployed within nuclear strike range of the USSR. These are mostly aircraft dual-capable (for nuclear or non-nuclear attack) based on US air

bases in Allied territory or on US attack aircraft carriers. It is not necessary here to discuss the issue -which bedeviled SALT for five years-save to note that the issue was probably posed by real concerns, exaggerated in their own minds, on the part of the Soviet military. The political leaders probably found these arguments convincing but not overriding in the context of the SALT I accord or, evidently, in the Vladivostok formula for a SALT II settlement. If the matter had been raised primarily❘ to cause difficulties between the United States and its allies or for tactical reasons in the course of negotiations, it would have been much more readily disposed of.

The FBS issue represented but does not exhaust the category of "worst case" calculations which each side can conjure up to justify hedges in limitations favorable to itself as counterweights to such conceivable advantages to the other. The US has had its share, including the onetime exaggerated concerns of some American officials over so-called "SAM upgrade," i.e., the possible upgrading of components of surface-to-air missile (SAM) anti-aircraft systems converting them into low-grade ABM systems. Despite strong Soviet military (and political) suspicions that this concern was both fraudulent and involved unwarranted impingement on air defense systems, the strength of the American concern did lead the Soviet side to accept obligations not to convert or upgrade SAM missiles, launchers, and radars to ABM missiles, launchers, and radars, and to agree not to test such SAM components against strategic❘ ballistic missiles, and not to deploy SAM or other phased-array radars of a certain power (except for agreed special and limited purposes). Real concerns were not without undue impingement on Soviet air defense once exaggerations of concern were set aside.

Perhaps the chief instance of Soviet refusal to accept an American-proposed limitation in the Interim Agreement was the definition of "heavy" ICBM's. In retrospect, it is clear that the Soviet SS-19 (and probably the SS-17) would not have been allowable within the US-proposed limit, and the Soviet military could never have accepted a limitation which precluded their deployment of the longawaited MIRVed ICBM counterpart to the US Minuteman III. The no "significant increase" in silo size is less constraining and thus permitted a compromise wherein the Soviets agreed not to retrofit SS-9 class missiles in the SS-11 silos (the main American concern), but kept the opportunity to deploy the SS-17 I

and the SS-19 in modified SS-11 silos, and the SS-18 in SS-9 silos.

In the SALT negotiations, each side has, of course, presented national positions, so that it would usually only be possible to infer which positions were adopted because of "military" concerns and preferences, as distinguished from those of nonmilitary leaders and negotiators. But the examples above illustrate some of the particular interests of the Soviet military establishment as reflected in the SALT negotiations.

It is reasonable to assume that Soviet military men have sought to couple their approval of the SALT limitations with commitments by the political leaders to continuation or intensification of some nonlimited military programs, although we can only infer from what has been happening in the Soviet military forces since the SALT accords. It is, for example, quite possible that the powerful PVO (Air Defense Command) "lobby" sought and secured an assurance that foregoing ABM defenses would not be followed by unilateral or negotiated cutbacks in air defenses-notwithstanding the gap in logic for maintaining costly (and relatively ineffective) strategic air defenses when the massive missile forces of the potential opponent would be unopposed. (Of course, the Soviet Air Defense Command and other military leaders do make a case for maintaining extensive air defenses to defend against possible air attack by other powers on the Eurasian periphery.) Similarly, the military leaders doubtless secured agreement to proceed with MIRVing much of the ICBM force by modifying existing launchers for new MIRVed missiles, and with deploying the additional modern SLBM's allowed under the Interim Agreement.

There is strong basis to conclude that the Soviet military leadership sees the current programs to build up the SLBM force and, above all, to replace part of the SS-11 and SS-9 forces with MIRVed SS-19's and SS-18's (and perhaps to produce a strategic bomber as well) as necessary and prudent actions in order to preserve parity by matching the already programmed buildup of US Minuteman III, Poseidon, Trident, and B-1 strategic forces. However, these Soviet efforts to catch up and then keep up with the US are seen by many in the United States as threatening to move ahead of the US in strategic offensive strength. These conflicting prespectives of the two sides have posed a major problem for the SALT negotiations.

Turning now from discussion of interacting in

fluences of Soviet deployment programs on SALT and vice versa, it may be useful to consider some aspects of doctrine and military thinking particularly pertinent to SALT and also interacting with it.

Military Doctrine

By 1969, the Soviet military had reached the conclusion that strategic superiority, in the sense of a first-strike option permitting escape from a crushing retaliatory strike, was not possible for either side in contemporary conditions. They recognized that, with the existing level of development of nuclear missile forces, it had become impossible in practice for an attacker to destroy such forces completely, and consequently that it had also become impossible to prevent an annihilating retaliatory strike. In other words, a kind of "nuclear balance" in terms of capabilities for mutual destruction had come into being. At the same time, the military were concerned that this balance could be threatened if one side (the US) achieved a highly effective anti-ballistic

-V. Mastiukov for TASS via Sovfoto.

missile defense while the other side (the USSR) did not have such a defense. Hence their willingness to support the political leadership in its desire to avoid heavy expenditures on an unpromising and even dangerous further round of strategic arms competition caused by extensive ABM deployment-if a mutually equitable limitation could be reached with the United States.

These views came slowly, in part because they were not self-evidently consistent with the standard military statements implying Soviet victory in a nuclear world war if one should come. Such public statements in the military press and on national military commemoration days have a number of purposes, prominently including indoctrination and morale-boosting of the armed forces and the public. Also, specifically with respect to ABM defenses, since the early 1960's it had been standard military litany to claim in a general implied way the existence of reliable anti-missile defenses (although beginning in 1967 a muted countercurrent to this view began to be expressed). Moreover, as noted earlier, it had been the established Soviet view that ABM defenses

Some controversy has arisen in Western commentaries over the significance of the Soviet agreement to the 1972 ABM Treaty with its clear acceptance for the indefinite future of assured vulnerability of the USSR (as well as the US) to missile attack. Some commentators who are opposed to the idea of "mutual assured destruction" (calling it "MAD") are also reluctant to conclude that the Soviet leaders subscribe to such a doctrine. They rightly note that Soviet military doctrine has long stressed "damage limitation," and that the USSR continues to maintain extensive strategic antiaircraft defenses. Moreover, a comment by Marshal Grechko that "research and development directed toward resolving the problems of the defense of the country against nuclear missile attack" is not limited" suggests that the military did not originate, and may have been cool toward, the Soviet position in favor of an explicit ban on deployment of a ballistic missile defense of the territory of the country. However, these considerations do not negate the fact of the Soviet acceptance in the ABM Treaty of mutual assured vulnerability of the Soviet Union and the United States to missile attack. The Soviet leaders value doctrine, but they are not always doctrinaire.

The SALT negotiations thus far have not led to the kind of far-reaching dialogue on military concepts that some of us hoped to see emerge from SALT. There was early agreement on certain basic concepts such as mutual deterrence, equal security, and strategic stability. But views on specific prescriptions for "strategic stability" in particular have differed significantly. Moreover, each side has stressed those aspects of stability of greatest concern to it and in terms of support for its current proposals. (This has led to some interesting reversefield-running by both sides at different stages of the negotiation.) But the net result has been to negotiate in a classical bargaining fashion as much as to

19 See "Kosygin is Cool to Missile Curb," The New York Times, Feb. 10, 1967; and "Transcript of Kosygin News Conference at the UN," ibid., June 26, 1967.

14 In Pravda, Sept. 30, 1972.

An example can illustrate the difficulty in engaging in discussion of doctrine. During an exchange on strategic stability in the SALT plenary meetings in the spring of 1970, the Soviet side referred to the possibility that ICBM silos might be empty by the time of an enemy strike, since the ICBM's in them could already be in flight owing to information gained from technical early-warning systems. The US delegation took the occasion of this remark to make clear that the US held any "launch on warning" doctrine abhorrent, and a statement to that effect by the Secretary of Defense was subsequently placed on the SALT plenary record. The Soviet side declined, however, to pick up a suggestion that it, too, make an official statement of the Soviet position-not necessarily because “launch on warning" was the Soviet doctrine, but because the Soviet military were consistently adamant against any discussion of such matters of operational doctrine.15

The Interim Agreement on strategic offensive missile forces did not place serious constraints on Soviet programs already under way, although it did rule out more far-reaching buildups which were otherwise technically possible and had been cited by some American military leaders. In particular, the number of SS-9 and SS-18 launchers at operational ICBM complexes has been limited to about 300, rather than the 400-500 or more projected by the US Secretary of Defense in the 1969-71 period. American concerns next turned to focus on Soviet MIRV programs, which were not limited by the Interim Agreement. This paralleled the continuing Soviet concern over the rapid American buildup in MIRVed missiles (SLBM's as well as ICBM's) since 1970. But it was then too late to agree on more than a rather high ceiling for numbers of MIRVed missile launchers.

The unsuccessful attempt in 1973-74 to isolate a differential MIRV limitation for the late 1970's coupled with an extension of the Interim Agreement fell afoul of the asymmetries in the missile systems and states of MIRV development and deployment of the two sides. This led to the decision at the June 1974 summit to try to work out in 1975 a ten-year agreement to supersede the Interim Agreement and, in November 1974, to the Vladivostok "breakthrough" agreeing on an overall level of 2,400 ICBM's, SLBM's and heavy bombers for each side,

15 See Gerard Smith, "SALT Thoughts," Journal of International Affairs (New York), Spring 1975.