The Arms Race Is about Politics

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The Arms Race Is about PoliticsAuthor(s): Colin S. GraySource: Foreign Policy, No. 9 (Winter, 1972-1973), pp. 117-129Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLCStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1148088 .

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THE ARMS RACE IS ABOUT POLITICS

by Colin S. Gray

The SALT agreement reflects faithfully the weaknesses of American arms control and deterrence theories as they were elaborated in the 1960's. The principle that "the missile must always get through," otherwise known as mutual assured vulnerability, has now formally been enshrined in an arms control package that (a) is poor arms control; (b) does not very notably contribute to a solution to American strategic problems; (c) seems unlikely to catalyze a more satisfactory SALT II; and (d) is asymmetrical in ways that could promote "instability" for the rest of this decade and beyond.

Many analysts of what might be termed the arms control 't outrance school of thought manfully resist the conclusion that strategic weaponry must be viewed as an instrument of political policy. In a statement presented before a House Committee on May 31, 1972, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul C. Warnke said:

In my opinion, where a numerical advan- tage in any part of the arms arsenal is without military meaning, it should have no real political potential. Mr. Warnke confuses the "is" with the

"ought." The mutual ability to massacre civilians to a "sufficient" degree, that is, the repulsive dogma of assured destruction, should not be the sole-or even a major- criterion for the adequacy of the level of strategic forces. The principal task of SALT I was not to provide the ritual for a formal agreement to remove strategic weapons from a region of concern wherein they did not belong-that is "politics." Rather, the task of SALT I should have been to seek to moderate the more dangerous features of an interactive process that was all too relevant to the polit-

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ical and military options desired by statesmen. Before discussing the arms control and

arms race mythologies of our time, a few prefatory statements are essential.

First, the terms arms control and arms race are unfortunately beset about with unhelpful normative impulses. Arms control is neither inherently "good" nor inherently "bad." An agreement that raised the risk of war, or that increased the prospective damage should war occur, would clearly be an agreement that should not have been signed. By contrast to the cozy glow that surrounds the term arms control, the term arms race suggests hostility, danger and high taxes. However, the desira- bility or otherwise of vigorous competitive effort must depend upon the range of reason- able alternatives available. If the alternatives are some measure of surrender or war itself, then a costly attention to a dynamic military balance should not be viewed in a totally negative light.

Secondly, arms control negotiations cannot be expected to rescue inadequate national policies; that is unless the process of negotiation itself alters in a benign direction the political ambitions of the side that is "ahead," or unless the stronger side commits some serious errors in the bargaining process. The evidence of the past decade should not lead us to expect either of these possibilities to play a very significant role in SALT II.

Arms control agreements are not tools for the restructuring of international relations- nor even for the important adjustment of strategic relations-rather they register the intentions of governments. Politics are not left behind in the national capitals while dedicated arms controllers grapple with the technological monster that we term the nuclear arms race. For better or worse, the arms race is driven by, and is about, politics.

Thirdly, the negative opinions registered thus far concerning SALT I and the arms race and arms control assumptions upon which it would seem to be founded have been given prominence because we need urgently to

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learn from the past in order to achieve a more stable and orderly strategic future. SALT I does have some positive features. At the very least one should note what would seem to be the core of the Administration's defense of the package: that it was the best that could be achieved under the circumstances. Also, it is to be presumed that discussions proceeding intermittently from November 1969 until May 1972 must have yielded some greater degree of mutual understanding concerning strategic objectives, doctrines and policy- making structures and processes.

Yet, after two and a half years of negotiation, the Head of the United States Delega- tion, Gerard Smith, made this incredible but revealing statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee:

I think that the Soviets, as a result of the SALT negotiations, have moved toward accepting the concept of assured destruction. I would say that I don't know. I have no way of judging whether their doctrine, their national doctrine, says that this is their national strategic concept.

Arms Race Heresies

The nuclear arms race is here to stay. The years since 1945 have been marked by very rapid technological advance, by a paucity of means by which power may be balanced, and by the certainty of mutual devastation if ((resort to war" were applied as the policy instrument to cut the Gordian knot of intol- erably tense superpower relations. Under these conditions an apparently perennial situation of "the arms race as usual" is only to be expected. The difficulties and uncertainties pertaining to the translation of strategic power into diplomatic influence is matched by an as yet undiminished official conviction (in both superpowers) that the state of strategic balance does matter. If that conviction were to alter, along the lines of "a deterrent is a deterrent," regardless of numerical imbalance, then indeed we would have to analyze the arms race in terms of the rather

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simple, apolitical, mad momentum model so beloved of those arms controllers to whom modern technology (and its human techni- cians) is the enemy. Instead, .I suggest that the arms race must and should be viewed as an arena of foreign policy manipulation.

The experiences of the period 1958-1972 should promote some healthy skepticism over whether arms control has merited the degree of devoted attention which it has received. Despite the spilling of an ocean of ink upon the subject, despite the growth of a trans- national community of dedicated scholars, and despite the solid institutionalization of "arms control" in the bureaucratic firma- ments of all major capitals, we have had scarcely any important measures of arms control.

It may well be true that the arms control literature was sound, but that the ideas for- warded were thwarted in application by the vested interests of bastions of strong military preparedness that could not be overcome. Thus, one might defend the record of arms control in the 1960's by asserting that its disciples were, in that period, conducting a protracted siege. Such an approach is not persuasive. At the very least our experience with SALT I, and the unpleasant prospects facing Ambassador Smith of seeking to undo some aspects of SALT I in SALT II, should lead us to question the foundations of the current orthodox wisdom of Western arms control theory.

In a previous article in this magazine,' I argued that the problem solving proclivities of very many strategic analysts, a bias naturally encouraged by the availability of official or semi-official positions, has resulted in a neglect of the roots of our wisdom. In no field is this more apparent than in arms control. The most striking feature of the arms control record of the past 14 years (apart from its apparent real world failure), has been the neglect of the basic subject matter-that

'"What RAND Hath Wrought," FOREIGN POLICY 4 (Fall 1971).

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is, of arms competitions. Of the thousands of books, monographs and articles produced on the subject of arms control, no more than a handful have been directed towards the nature of a competition in weapons. The frequency with which Samuel Huntington's "Arms Races: Prerequisites and Results" (Public Policy, Harvard Graduate School of Public Administration, 1958) has been re- printed in very recent years, is a fair comment upon the shortage of writings in the 1960's. The lack of understanding of arms races in general and the nuclear arms race in partic- ular has not precluded what might be termed ad hoc or hit and run theorizing. The state of our understanding has been accurately por- trayed by Johan Holst as follows:

It is hard to demonstrate a consistent pattern of action-reaction in the interactions between the Soviet and American strategic postures. We just do not have an adequate explanatory model for the Soviet-American arms race.2

Nonetheless, Secretary of State William Rogers felt confident enough to assert, with regard to SALT I, that:

There will be a break in the action-reaction pattern that up to now has fueled strategic arms competition.3

There is a fashion in theories and there is a tendency for theories to be oversold. For the past five years (at least), most politicians, bureaucrats and academics who have com- mented upon arms control have apparently adhered to the rather simple-minded proposition that to every arms race action, there must be a corresponding-in the sense of offsetting-reaction. Hence, the arms race "spiral" (a very dubious metaphor) is expen-

2 Comparative U.S. and Soviet Deployments, Doctrines, and Arms Limitation (Chicago: University of Chicago, Center for Policy Study, Occasional Paper, 1971), p. 19.

"Statement in Strategic Arms Limitation Agreements, Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, Senate, 92nd Congress, 2nd Session, 1972, p. S.

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sive, perennial and politically futile. Rational strategic men, playing a game in which they just block each other's shots, exist solely in the realm of strategic fiction.

A rival proposition is gradually gathering strength. The newer proposition holds that the arms race behavior of the state-actors is determined not so much by the perception of threat, as by "the games that bureaucrats play." The range of models for the elucida- tion of this proposition is formidable indeed. At one extreme, analysts devise an action- reaction model wherein the principle actors are the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Army- competing with a somewhat astrategic budget ceiling, and with the Soviet Union performing an essential game legitimization function. More work needs to be done on the domestic processes that result in arms race actions,' but it is important that the role of the dynamic external threat be not unduly degraded.

So long as we have only the most rudimen- tary ideas concerning the arms race behavior of the Soviet Union and the United States (really, hunches and axioms), then so long must arms control fulfil its promise more by luck than by judgment.

Thus far I have argued that contemporary arms control wisdom, of which SALT I is a rather unhappy reflection (from the point of view of the United States and its allies), rests upon a profound ignorance of its subject matter-that is, of the nature of an arma- ments competition. Before proceeding to dis- cuss the arms control ideas embedded in SALT I, some fundamental propositions that are heresy to the mainstream of the arms control faithful must be noted. 1. First, the nuclear arms race-like all arms races-must be seen as an expression of political conflict. The United States is racing (or, in important respects in the last 1960's, crawling) against an adversary whose leaders do expect raw strategic power to be trans- latable into the currency of political influence.

SSee my "The Arms Race Phenomenon," World Poli- tics, October 1971, pp. 73-78.

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2. The diminution of prospective damage should war occur ought still to be a very important objective of arms control. SALT I is a monument to the ideas of "stable deterrence" that are now apparently a part of the required intellectual baggage of the respectable arms controller. 3. The political opportunities that the Soviet Union may perceive as properly flow- ing from a strategic condition identifiable as one of parity or marginal superiority should not be thought of in terms of United States experience. The kind of collaborative political behavior that many United States commen- tators expect of a Soviet Union "satisfied" in terms of its strategic power may not be forth- coming. Should the "Chinese Problem" as- sume less obsessive proportions in Moscow, then the United States might have to face the difficulty of coping with a politically ambitious Soviet Union, seeking experimen- tally to "cash" its vast strategic investment. Some years ago it was widely observed that strategic studies had become unhealthily divorced from the study of politics. Today this divorce is most marked in the field of arms control. Much of the current strategic arms control literature is addressed almost entirely to the technicalities of a very nar- rowly and apolitically defined condition iden- tified as "stable deterrence."

The Arms Control Litany

It has been observed, with much reason, that the Soviet Union and the United States gather information by means of "plugging in" to the internal debates on each side, rather than by means of a direct exchange of data and of views. United States officials and academic strategists have constructed a force posture and an edifice of arms control and deterrence theory which reflect their own fears. After all, since we do not know with any confidence (a) what will deter the Soviet Union, (b) whether the Soviet Union needs deterring--we have little choice but to build and conceptualize with reference to what

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would deter us. However, strategists in the United States naturally have knowledge only of their own preferences (hence, by way of example, the quite excessive and counter- productive speculation on the "credibility" of the linkage between SAc and the defense of Western Europe), and of the possible inade- quacies of their own hardware and software (the ABM will not "work").

It is a little difficult to assess the costs, benefits and plain uncertainties pertaining to SALT I, unless at least an adequate working understanding is attained of the strategic doctrine of the other side and of the role of strategic doctrine in his force posture plan- ning. The record of the Hearings of the four congressional committees that recently investi- gated SALT I leaves the distinct impression that some unpalatable possibilities are not being given their due attention. The similarities between the two sides negotiating at SALT are in important respects less significant than points of divergence.

Among the factors that should work for "convergence," one must mention that large bureaucracies probably do function according to similar laws-hence, a profound understanding of "bureaucratic politics" in Wash- ington should shed some light upon the policy process in Moscow. However, general rather than specific wisdom is unlikely to be ob- tained. In a very general way one can identify functional alliances between similar interest groupings in each capital. But, our knowledge of the inner workings of defense policy in Moscow is still so inadequate that specific prediction is extremely hazardous.

As both superpowers have at least super- ficially similar bureaucracies, so also these bureaucracies must choose from a similar menu of strategic options. Thus, the idea has gained strength that technology will be the great leveler of formerly divergent styles of research, development, procurement, deployment and doctrine. Finally, the task of the arms controller is not merely to describe the world, it is to change it. As Dr. Donald

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Brennan explained in the bible of arms control, back in 1961:

One way in which arms control could lead to a safer world is rather indirect but deserves mention. This would be to educate the Soviets in mutually desirable strategies and armament policies.5 This idea is an attractive one, but the

record of the past 12 years would seem to show that (a) a Soviet willingness to under- stand Western doctrines has not been matched by a corresponding desire to domes- ticate them to meet Soviet requirements, let alone alter those requirements, and (b) the basic premise of a superiority of Western thought has been obsolete for many years. The dawning of parity (really of presently balanced asymmetries) should certainly have rendered mutual strategic education a more fruitful pursuit, and should also have en- hanced the prospects that education might lead to some mutual policy adjustments. The SALT I exercise demonstrates, by contrast, rather that by flouting the rules of stable arms race management, as understood in the United States, concessions may be extracted. The public record does speak for itself in this regard. The principle American objective in undertaking the SALT process in November 1969 was to "stabilize" a strategic balance at a believed uniquely favorable juncture of mutual satisfaction. But, in the summer of 1972, all of the leaders of the American SALT delegation (and the Joint Chiefs of Staff) testified to the effect that the United States could not live permanently with the terms of the Interim Agreement on the Limitation of Offensive Arms. It may be objected that the strictly temporary nature of the Agreement renders irrelevant any question of adjusting to a permanent situation structured by this Agreement, and that pressures for a "better" outcome to SALT II will be applied through ex- plicit linkage of an offensive forces agreement to the continuation of the ABM Treaty and by "Arms Control, Disarmament, and National Security (New York: George Braziller, 1961), p. 40.

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an aggressive research and development program. Nonetheless, the United States' delegation will enter SALT II with a weaker bargaining position than it did SALT I.

With some risk of oversimplification, the weight and quality of the United States' end of the central strategic balance is in large measure the product of the following beliefs:

DSo long as both sides maintain strategic forces invulnerable to a first strike, the foreign policy consequences of being ahead or behind in numbers or in quality are nonexistent.

DNeither side will tolerate a threat to its deterrent. Unfortunately, we do not know how much promised damage is sufficient for deterrent purposes. Therefore, there will be automatic (though "lagged" for lead time or bureaucratic political reasons) arms race reactions to perceived threats.

>Assured destruction capability is the principal criterion of an adequate deterrent. Therefore, neither side must protect its civilian hostages.

DMeaningful strategic "superiority" is unat- tainable, therefore it must not be sought. By superiority should be understood a capability to disarm the adversary in a first strike.

>The Soviet Union must, in its own interests, accept the logic of Western strategic theory. Soviet deviance from the tenets of deterrence through assured destruction may be explained in terms of powerful vested interests or inadequate understanding. Alas, Western arms control theory has

been wrong on nearly all counts. Despite their attainment of a secure second strike force, the Soviet Union still has no known counterpart to the doctrine of assured destruction.

First steps in arms control have not led to important second steps because Soviet leaders do not apparently value arms control qua arms control. Arms control is but one instrument in the kaleidoscope of political struggle and accommodation that is the essence of

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international politics. The arms race is seen not as a beast to be tamed, but rather as a beast to be ridden at variable speed for political ends. Until the very late 1960's, Soviet military organizations were preparing ear- nestly to defend the homeland, regardless of Western strictures against ballistic missile and civil defense programs. Also, a Soviet defense community well "plugged in" to Western debate should have been far more interested in a test ban on multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV'S) than in fact proved to be the case at SALT.

Soviet acceptance of a two-site token ABM deployment in the ABM Treaty is an important break with recent history. A few years ago it would have been almost inconceivable to contemplate the Soviet Union accepting a permanent prohibition upon the defense of the national territory against missile attack. However, it is far from certain that the ABM Treaty should be viewed as a triumph for arms control ideas. After all, the most im- mediate effect of the Treaty is to remove the principal programmed means of defense for the single largest leg of the United States' deterrent triad. A thorough overhaul of Western deterrence theory and practice might suggest that in the ABM Treaty, as Donald Brennan suggests, the wrong thing has been done very well.

By "racing" extremely hard from 1965 to 1972, the Soviet Union has gravely upset the foundations of a Western deterrence and arms control doctrine that was forged in a period marked both by a notable strategic imbalance in favor of the West and by a technology that did not promise any very tempting counter- force options. Analytical rigor in the late 1960's would seem to have been over-applied to a field where political judgment should have been at a premium. Today, because missile defense has been viewed as a doctrinal abomination, there is no "hedge" against accident, unauthorized firing, third party action or the range of possible superpower first strikes. Despite differences in economic

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performance and potential, the United States today must deal with another superpower whose stature, both self- and other-perceived, is far greater than might have been the case had the United States sought to deter Soviet arms race activities in the 1960's.

SALT and yet more SALT

How should one think about the SALT I package that was signed on May 26th, 1972? The answer rather depends upon what one thinks an arms control agreement should achieve. Certainly SALT I is defensible on the following grounds: it is symbolic of and con- tributory to the process of superpower detente (really, "failure" at SALT would have been politically inconceivable. After two and a half years some agreement had to be produced); some money should be saved on both sides; the course of arms control itself, as a process, has been advanced.

These are important matters, but they really are secondary to the endeavor to tame a competition that is fraught with future dangers. After all, a few faltering steps taken on the road to Peking are probably more likely to lead to an improvement in Soviet-American relations than is a "successful" round of arms control negotiations. Furthermore, the money saved by SALT I is as problematical as are the predicted Soviet deployment programs in the absence of SALT I. Mr. Nixon's casual reference to a $15 billion per annum add-on for strategic forces in the event that SALT I had "failed" should be seen as a background noise in support of the Treaty, the Agreement and current strategic programs, not as a revelation of his intended contingency program.

I have been discussing the arms race in terms of the "softest" area of analysis- namely, that of politics. Too much of the Senate and House investigation of SALT I focused upon such Jesuitical matters as how many Minutemen would survive a first strike in 1977. From a question such as "how sure are you that we could detect the emplacement of the 1,619th Soviet ICBM?"-Senators tended

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to jump to the all-encompassing and really unanswerable question of "will we have a credible deterrent in 1977 and beyond?" The important question too often left unpursued was "what do we want our deterrent to do for us?"

It is not too extreme to claim that SALT I

encourages accelerated activity in the region of one of the principal engines of the arms race-namely, research and development.

SALT I does not apply any important brakes to the arms race, since both sides are per- mitted to retrofit their missiles to the degree desired, and to replace their ICBM's and SLBM's with newer models-provided the volume increase in "light" ICBM's is no greater than a 30 percent increase over the volume of the Soviet SS-11 missile. The threat to Min- uteman survivability is decreased to the ex- tent that the Soviet Union is restricted in the number of "heavy" ICBM's it can field to the number of 313. But, Minuteman is now denied effective active defenses and must co- exist with Soviet ICBM's that may be MIRVED

without limit. If, at one level of analysis, the American strategic problem in SALT I was the threat of the SS-9, it is difficult to see how the trade of Safeguard for Soviet numerical momentum was a very good bargain.

However, the proper level of analysis of SALT I is not that of horror scenarios of a nuclear Pearl Harbor (not unreasonably, I think, we may presume that the military are competently gaming future worst plausible cases), rather it is that of the "instability" that could flow from a process of arms control negotiation that endorses a condition in which the Soviet Union looks-perhaps to strategically unsophisticated eyes-more mus- cular than does the United States.

Great geopolitical insight is not required to perceive that a status quo, ocean-empire superpower needs more raw strategic power than does a dissatisfied heartland superpower. Military power, unfortunately, is still legal tender in international politics.

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Documents

The Arms Race Is about Politics