Strategic Vulnerability of a Multinational State: Deterring the Soviet Union

Abstract

The efforts to ratify both SALT treaties will be remembered above all else as a competition for shaping public and congressional perceptions of the strategic balance. Nearly all critics have argued that the nuclear balance is delicate and that weapons symmetry is a requirement of strategic stability. Isolated variables (megatonnage and throwweight, for example) have been cast in scenarios illustrating U.S. Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) vulnerability and Soviet first-strike incentives. Many of these arguments were incorporated in the Jackson amendment to SALT I, which mandated equal numerical ceilings in SALT II. Each administration since 1972 has been bound by the Jackson amendment, but has rejected efforts to define precise qualitative balances between strategic forces or to rival every Soviet weapons system. Instead, the concept of essential equivalence has been substituted. Thus, weapons advantages enjoyed by the Soviets need not be matched so long as they are offset by other U.S. advantages. Stability under this rubric requires equivalent, but not equal, capabilities across the technical spectrum. ' Like its critics, who advocated acquiring a first-strike capability, the Carter administration's concept of essential equivalence was limited to weapons characteristics. Both positions illustrate how the SALT process has been dominated by a wide range of technical imperatives pushing U.S. strategic doctrine fur-