The Dangers of a Nuclear-Free World

Few people are more qualified to analyze nuclear arms strategy than the author, who served as Director of the CIA under President Richard Nixon, Secretary of Defense under President Gerald Ford and Energy Secretary under President Jimmy Carter. His assessment for TIME of what almost happened in Reykjavik:

“It was the nearest-run thing you ever saw.” So remarked the Duke of Wellington after Waterloo. That might be the reaction in the West to the atmosphere of carefree utopianism that prevailed at Reykjavik prior to the summit’s collapse. In that seductive environment, the President proposed the elimination of all ballistic missiles by 1996, and for much of last week he and others fostered the impression that they had agreed to a Soviet counterproposal to eliminate all “strategic offensive arms” by then.

Though the Administration has now — perhaps wisely — denied that this latter proposal was accepted, the evidence indicates that Reagan considered it a way station to his hoped-for deployment of strategic defenses. Thus the U.S. positions at Reykjavik seem to have been little informed, either by the exigencies imposed by Western deterrent strategy or by reflection on the possibilities and limitations of nuclear disarmament.

For a generation, Western security has rested on nuclear deterrence. This includes a nuclear response to massive conventional attacks from the East. During the Eisenhower years, with the so-called trip-wire strategy, it was stated that conventional forces existed solely to trigger the unleashing of the Strategic Air Command. By the mid-’70s, NATO had accepted the importance of a stalwart conventional capability. Perhaps it would not be sufficient in itself to protect against an all-out invasion, but with the reinforcement provided by strategic and theater nuclear weapons, it provided a comfortable level of deterrence.

There NATO doctrine rested for the following decade. Despite the frequent controversies regarding deployment, nuclear weapons provide the glue that has held the Western Alliance together.

In the absence of the nuclear deterrent, the Eurasian continent would be dominated by the nation with the most powerful conventional forces. (In addition to far higher troop levels, the Soviet bloc now has a 5-to-2 advantage in tanks and a 3-to-1 advantage in artillery.) Is the existing structure of Western security to be cast aside before we are assured that an alternative truly exists? The President may win plaudits from some when he holds out his vision of a “world without nuclear weapons,” but has he seriously examined the consequences? What do the Joint Chiefs have to say about a world in which the nuclear deterrent has been removed? Indeed, how do our allies feel about the initiative taken at the summit without any prior consultation?

The Secretary of State is confident that, given its greater economic resources, NATO can create conventional forces superior to those of the Warsaw Pact. But such a view ignores the psychology, the long history, even the geography of the alliance. With economic strains, manpower shortages (particularly in West Germany) and no draft in the U.S., will the allies do in the ’80s what they were unwilling to do in the prosperous ’60s and early ’70s? Can we risk our security on so flimsy a hope?

Even the elimination of ballistic missiles raises questions. Are we to abandon the invulnerable part of our deterrent — the submarine-based missile forces — and return to the worries of the 1950s, when our retaliatory forces consisted of bombers on a small number of bases susceptible to surprise attack? The Administration has underscored that the Soviets invest many times as much as do we in strategic defense. Can our bombers be assured of penetrating the heavy Soviet air defense in the ’90s — especially if we were to “share” our strategic-defense technologies, as we have promised?

For Western security, the nuclear deterrent continues to represent the ultimate reality. Yet the President was prepared to negotiate it away at Reykjavik almost heedlessly. By contrast, SDI is treated as if it were a reality (the “key to a world without nuclear weapons”) instead of a collection of technical experiments and distant hopes.

Nuclear arsenals are going to be with us as long as there are sovereign states with conflicting ideologies. Unlike Aladdin with his lamp, we have no way to force the nuclear genie back into the bottle. A world without nuclear weapons is a utopian dream. Whichever party (there are more than two) successfully cheated and preserved even a fraction of its arsenal could achieve dominance. Even if all parties were actually to abide by an agreement to destroy strategic arms, all would, out of sheer prudence, be poised to resume production and deployment. Given that imprint of nuclear capabilities on our minds, to seek total nuclear disarmament is to seek a goal as risky as it is impractical.

A generation’s reflections have made clear that seeking so grandiose an objective as total nuclear disarmament not only is futile but diverts effort from more attainable and useful goals. Arms control has a more modest aim: increased stability in the forces of the two sides. But it is doable.

Gorbachev’s offer to reduce the grossly inflated Soviet strategic forces by 50%, if genuine, represents a goal we have sought for more than a decade. To his predictable demand that the ABM treaty be strengthened, we should have responded by seriously addressing his legitimate concerns about the scope of SDI testing, rather than switching suddenly to a proposed elimination of all ballistic missiles.

Nonetheless, it was the impasse over SDI that saved us from the embarrassment of entering into agreements from which we would have subsequently had to withdraw. Thus, ironically, SDI may already have made a major contribution to Western security — not for the elusive future usually advertised, but by preserving the elements of nuclear deterrence from our own recklessness at Reykjavik. Arms control may be tricky business, but trivializing arms-control negotiations can make it immensely dangerous.