Strategic Arms Reduction Talks Research Articles

Centralizing Advisory Systems: Presidential Influence and the U.S. Foreign Policy Decision-Making Process

This study is motivated by a simple yet vitally important question for an understanding of U.S. foreign policy. Quite simply, how does a president's choice of management style influence the U.S. foreign policy decision-making process and decision outcomes? Presidents play a critical role in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy; however, the presidential studies literature and foreign policy analysis literature arrive at very different conclusions regarding how presidents influence the policy process and both are often inaccurate. This study develops an Advisory Systems Typology to address how presidents influence the decision-making process. In addressing this question, this study overcomes the deficiencies of both the presidential studies and foreign policy analysis literature. Four different types of decision-making processes are produced by a president's choice of advisory structure and level of centralization. In addition, the study identifies “unstructured solutions” that indicate how the presidential advisers and president choose to resolve policy disagreements, thereby providing an indication of the decision outcome. The identified decision-making processes and their associated decision outcomes are explored using four cases of decision making on security policy drawn from the Nixon (Vietnam War), Carter (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks II), Reagan (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks I), and Clinton (Bosnia conflict) administrations. The case studies are constructed using the method of structured–focused comparisons, whereby a set of theoretically based questions and anticipated observations to those questions are made in order to guide the research and allow for comparison of decision making within and between cases.

Causes of Change in National Security Processes: Carter, Reagan, and Bush Decision Making on Arms Control

This article merges the literature on national security decision making with scholarly work on presidential decision making. It examines ways in which national security decision‐making structures are changed by international and domestic political forces as well as presidential management of the bureaucratic and organizational politics within the executive branch. Three decision‐making case studies–the Carter administration's March 1977 Strategic Arms Limitations Talks II(SALT II) proposal, the Reagan administration's initial strategic arms reduction proposal of May 1982, and President Bush's speech of September 1991 that led to the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) II–illustrate the dynamic and evolving nature of the national security decision‐making process. The case studies suggest that presidents make modifications in their standard interagency processes for the deliberate purpose of achieving specific political goals. Adjustments in policy are the impetus for adjustments in process.

The future of Russia's strategic nuclear force

Russia's current strategic nuclear force will become obsolete shortly after the turn of the century. Strategic modernisation is therefore essential if Russia is to remain a nuclear power on a par with the US. But modernisation will be extremely difficult because of the country's economic and political turmoil. Russia can probably maintain slightly more than 4,000 strategic nuclear warheads under the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) I Treaty - roughly half of what the United States could, in theory, deploy. Under START II, Russia's strategic force will likely contain between 1,800 and 2,500 warheads, compared to 3,500 for the US. Hence, the easiest - perhaps the only - way for Russia to recover rough parity with the United States would be through a START III Treaty that limits both sides to 2,000-2,500 warheads.

Stepping Back: Nuclear Arms Control and the End of the Cold War.

Acknowledgments Security, Cooperation, and Arms Control Bargaining and Cooperation Controlling Nuclear Testing: 1954-1980 Negotiating Limits on Nuclear Testing: 1981-1992 Negotiating Limits on Strategic Nuclear Forces: 1954-1980 Negotiating the 1987 Treaty on Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Strategic Arms Reduction Talks: 1982-1991 Stepping Back from the Cold War Selected Bibliography

Negotiating Start: Strategic Arms Reduction Talks and the Quest for Stability. By Kerry M. Kartchner. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1992, 329 pp. Index. Tables. Bibliography. Hard bound

Negotiating Start: Strategic Arms Reduction Talks and the Quest for Stability. By Kerry M. Kartchner. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1992, 329 pp. Index. Tables. Bibliography. Hard bound - Volume 52 Issue 1

Arms Control Challenges to Defense Planning

Understandably, military planners and strategists are often overtaken by real-world events. Given the profound changes in the world in the past few years, the basis for planners' analysis has not changed: strategy and force structure designed to enhance deterrence at reasonable and acceptable costs. Planners require new and refined guidance to move into uncharted post-Cold War waters. Military planners should call upon resources provided by arms control initiatives. Arms control offers the opportunity to negotiate parity at the lowest practical levels and to develop strategies and force structures with a relatively high assurance of success against potential enemies. The Strategic Arms Reduction Talks, Conventional Forces in Europe, and Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaties offer unique opportunities to apply arms control agreements to enhance defense planners' efforts. Future treaties should be shaped by defense needs as well as by arms control theories and broader foreign policy concerns.

Conversion policy in the UK

The democratization of Eastern Europe, the disintegration of the Warsaw pact, the proposed Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) and the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) agreements, are concrete evidence of the end to the Cold War. For NATO these events have precipitated an overhaul of strategic policies, resulting in major cutbacks in the defence budgets of member states. In the U.K., this has given rise to a growing debate on the economic effects of cuts in the military burden and the possible benefits to be derived from what has become popularly labelled the However, the way in which resources are transformed for the military into civil use, and the interpretation of the objectives of the conversion process, lie at the centre of a controversy about the optimal use of the peace dividend. This paper provides a critical assessment of the contributions to this debate. Copyright 1990 by Oxford University Press.

Beating Swords into Swords

Nuclear warheads from Pershing 2 missiles eliminated under INF were converted and scheduled to return to air bases in Europe. The reuse question returned in the strategic arms reduction (START) talks in Geneva, which upon completion will eliminate thousands of weapons over a seven-year period. The US is aware that Soviet warheads are more generic in design than their US counterparts and could be reused to an even greater extent. While defense planners may concoct esoteric needs and characteristics to justify new nuclear weapons requirements, no justification has been offered for these new nuclear bombs entering the stockpile. The hard truth is that the Energy Department needs the work.

Strategic Arms After Reagan: The Unfinished Agenda

STRATEGIC ARMS__________ AFTER REAGAN: THE UNFINISHED AGENDA Gary L. Guertner I consider the protection of peace and freedom with these annihilating weapons to be very problematic. The bombs fulfill their purpose only if they never fall. But if everyone knows that they will never fall, they do not fulfill their purpose. German Physicist Carl von Weizaecker .he Reagan administration set the stage for major changes in strategic doctrine, but its legacy is flawed by a lack of coherence among three of its most important strategic programs—arms control, nuclear weapons modernization, and strategic defense. For these programs to merge into a coordinated pursuit of stable deterrence, the Bush administration must first reconcile the contradictory goals that have been declared for each. Enhancing Stability: Arms Control vs. Strategic Defense According to conventional wisdom arms control treaties provide a framework for achieving strategic stability, that ideal posture where neither side has an incentive to initiate a nuclear attack, and minimizing strategic instability, that situation where neither the United States nor the Soviet Union believes that "victory" can be achieved or defeat averted Gary L. Guertner is visiting professor of strategy at the United States Army War College and author of Deterrence and Defense in a Post-Nuclear World (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989). From 1984 to 1985, he served on the START working group of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. 87 88 SAIS REVIEW without a preemptive attack.1 Thus the aim of arms control is to create an environment in which both sides feel less compelled to deploy new offensive or defensive weapons. Proponents of strategic defense and preemptive options, by contrast, reject the notion that stability can be based on deterrence by threat of retaliation. This traditional model of deterrence, they argue, is based on revenge, not true defense, and is thus not a credible way of deterring war. Strategic defenses capable of providing protection against ballistic missiles, these critics argue, are needed to overcome the balance of terror. Yet in practice the introduction of strategic defense actually complicates the offensive-defensive relationship by adding a new element of competition. This competition is fueled by the prudent expectation that no weapon is purely defensive. Defensive advantages can be exploited to support offensive threats, which precipitate both offensive countermeasures and efforts to match enemy defenses. Arms control advocates argue that open-ended offensive-defensive arms races will inevitably result from an overreliance on technological solutions to security. Technology , they point out, is neutral, it has no loyalty to offense or defense. Thus, today's defensive solutions can be negated by tomorrow's offensive breakthroughs. And, they add, diplomacy and arms control are also more cost-effective means of maintaining mutual security. Recent experience , however, such as the deadlock in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), has demonstrated the difficulties involved in reaching long-range arms control agreements. Spokesmen for the Reagan administration described mutual deterrence as an intermediate step on the route to a world of "impotent," "obsolete ," or "zero" nuclear missiles. But the attempt to achieve the defensive utopia embodied in the highly controversial Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) will more likely undermine than overcome mutual deterrence— unless the United States and the Soviet Union can agree on specific levels of offensive and defensive weapons. By the same token, arms control solutions will have little long-term value unless they can head off competition generated by the offensive-defensive relationship. The first step to solving this dilemma is to identify the contradictions and the instability created by a defensive doctrine (deterrence) that relies on an offensive military strategy. 1. Important to add, this state of disequilibrium can provide mutual crisis stability, but only if offensive forces are reduced to levels sufficiently low that retaliatory forces can be preserved through unilateral precautions, such as early warning systems, high alert rates, and mobile-basing of weapons. STRATEGIC ARMS AFTER REAGAN 89 Conditions of Stability Stable deterrence requires nuclear forces that can survive a first strike, thus confronting the enemy with assured retaliation. Vulnerable forces tempt preemption in a crisis. These traditional formulations are widely accepted in the arms control community and by those who advocate strategic stability through...

The Alliance And Missile Defense

As originally conceived by President Ronald Reagan, the Strategic Defense Initiative was potentially more disruptive of transatlantic relations than the Sentinel antiballistic missile system of 1967 or the Safeguard system of 1969. While Sentinel and Safeguard were short-term programs with specific and limited objectives, SDI was a vague, longterm program aimed at substituting an ambitious area defense of the United States for the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, which many Western Europeans believe is responsible for 40 years of peace in Europe. Unlike Sentinel and Safeguard, SDI posed a serious threat to a major arms control agreement. Many Western European leaders consider the 1972 ABM Treaty to be a crucial component of Western security and an important symbol of superpower cooperation. Given current budgetary constraints and SDI's more modest objectives under the Bush administration, the ABM Treaty is no longer perceived in Western Europe to be in jeopardy. Moreover, SDI no longer appears to be an insurmountable obstacle to the successful completion of the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks.

Arms control—now or never

A rising chorus of criticism in the United States has stalled “START”—the strategic arms reduction talks. When the debate resumes in the new administration, it will determine the future of arms control.

The Price for Effective Verification in an Era of Expanding Arms Control

Arms control has become an increasingly important aspect of U.S. security and foreign policy; at the same time, verification has emerged as the major consideration in judging arms-control agreements. Although the concept of military significance has been used as the criterion for determining effective verification of arms-control agreements over several presidential administrations, the demand for stringent and comprehensive verification regimes has increased in the past seven years to the point where implementing the regimes for the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) and Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) agreements will be costly, albeit beneficial because the agreements will contribute to bilateral relations and international security. The verification regime being put into place for the INF Treaty is the most rigorous and comprehensive ever negotiated. Verification of the START agreement will be far more extensive and expensive due to its broader scope and the fact that it reduces rather than eliminates classes of weapons. This article analyzes the verification criteria, costs, and benefits associated with current bilateral arms-control endeavors.

Doctrine and deterrence

H ave Soviet political and military leaders adopted strategic deterrence and arms control concepts compatible with those of their American counterparts? The Soviet view of strategy differs considerably from the American one in several important respects. Soviet military doctrine and military art (including strategy, operational art, and tactics) are based on both ideological and pragmatic traditions. Marxism-Leninism creates an ideological imperative which provides that history must continue to flow in certain, preferred directions, and that flow cannot be circumvented by technology. This longterm perspective admits of many short-run fluctuations in actual behavior. Of particular importance to Soviet planners is the "correlation of forces," which refers to a combination of social, economic, political, and military factors influencing the decision to go to war. Soviet leaders seek to avoid nuclear war with the same degree of seriousness that their military professionals are required to prepare for it. That the Soviets are serious about avoiding nuclear war, and pessimistic about what would happen if they could not, makes their interest in deterrence a matter of national self-interest. Western Sovietologists have noted that there is no exact Russian equivalent of deterrence, but I am asserting here that the Soviets understand what we mean by it. While they do not fully accept American formulations of deterrence theory and concepts, they have figured out where the bottom line is, and it is not unacceptable to them. A standoff in the military correlation of forces is preferable to Western superiority, with which the USSR has lived in the past. Arms control agreements that codify strategic parity provide confirmation that the USSR has reached coequal superpower status with the United States and represent commitments of the Soviet leadership which are judged binding upon their successors, other things being equal. Thus, United States efforts to redefine the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) regime as the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks" (START), to deploy intermediate-range ballistic and cruise missiles in Europe, and to launch the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) will be.interpreted by the USSR in terms of whether they contribute to, or detract from, their previously attained and acknowledged status. We can expect that, to the extent that the United States is perceived to be shifting the correlation of forces against Soviet interests in a significant way, the USSR will react with counterbalancing mechanisms. Having once attained the sweet smell of parity, the USSR is unlikely to give it up voluntarily. Whether the Soviet Union seeks military superiority is a much debated issue in the West. If the correlation of forces is taken on a global basis instead of being seen strictly as a United States-Soviet relationship, it is difficult to see that superiority is within their grasp, however much of their national product they commit to it. Although the Kremlin's position is not judged an enviable one, it is not one to be disparaged. Soviet geopolitical reach is assured by its expansive borders and secure interior lines, compared to the long distances its adversaries must travel to confront it at probable points of tension. Soviet military power is regarded as a prudent hedge against the failure of deterrence and. in the absence of war, as a useful coercive instrument. The United States and NATO can expect to continue to face Soviet pressures aimed at dividing the alliance politically. Soviet long-range objectives include, as they have declared, continuation of the class struggle primarily through indirect means. Nuclear war is not part of this scenario, unless Soviet rulers fail badly. Unlike the implausible expectations about war outcomes which took national leaders into World War I, today neither Soviet nor American officials could have many delusions about the risks to their societies and governments from nuclear war. A balance of terror may not be as appealing as a millennium, but it is the clear conviction of the USSSR, based on their behavior, that it has worked.

A New Strategic Arms Agreement: Taking the Long View

A NEW STRATEGIC ARMS AGREEMENT: TAKING THE LONG VIEW Theodore H. Moran and Peter A. Wilson .he Reagan administration is now embarked on its second major attempt to negotiate a strategic arms agreement with the Soviet Union. Like its predecessor, the new proposal is vast in scope and requires substantial changes in the Soviet nuclear arsenal, especially with regard to the heavy missiles that endanger our own fixed land-based deterrent force. The Soviets rejected the last American approach, so the Reagan administration has softened its position under pressure from Congress to be more "realistic." However, the Soviets are again dismissing the American proposal as "nothing but words." How far can the United States go, and on what issues, to conclude a successful negotiation? Conversely, what are the dangers to the United States if it keeps failing to reach an agreement? Given the linkage between the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks and the controversial plan for deploying new intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe, what strategy would preclude another negotiating failure? The United States faces two threats to its strategic force posture, and the Reagan administration has focused onjust one of these: the growing vulnerability of the fixed land-based missile system—one leg of the nuclear triad. The second threat is posed by the longer-term vulnerability of the other two legs of the triad—the American bomber force and the nuclear missile submarines. The United States must assess the threat posed to all three legs of the nuclear triad in determining the need for an agreement on arms limitations—nay, reductions—and what will happen if it does not reach one. The Reagan administration's principal preoccupation when it came Theodore H. Moran is Landegger Professor at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Peter A. Wilson is a consultant on defense issues. 117 118 SAISREVIEW into office was the so-called window of vulnerability, a term used to describe the Soviets' increasing accuracy and the heavy megatonnage of its missiles, thus putting the U.S. fixed land-based system at serious risk. The Scowcroft Commission tempered the discussion about the growing Soviet capabilities, arguing that Soviet advances would be slower and more uncertain than the administration's early rhetoric implied. Undisputed , however, was the commission's conclusion that—independent of partisan debates about how best to deal with the Soviets—the techniques of atomic destruction on both sides are outpacing the ability of civil engineers to protect fixed land-based missiles.* This, of course, has substantial adverse implications for the U.S. strategic posture. Fixed land-based systems are far more responsive to command and control, they can be retargeted faster and more easily, and their survival status is more dependably monitored. Most important, as the third leg of the American nuclear triad, they provide a synergism with bombers and submarines that renders the other legs of the triad much more secure against the sinister or desperate designs of would-be Soviet attackers. This combination of several different U.S. weapons systems diffuses and dilutes the Soviet military effort and helps ensure against the possibility of technological breakthroughs that could suddenly alter the East-West equation (i.e., in antisubmarine warfare). The land-based missile system, specifically, provides a timing problem for Soviet attackers that would enormously complicate a hypothetical Soviet first strike: A launch of Soviet missiles against U.S. silos provides thirty minutes' warning time for retaliatory bombers to take off; a quick submarine strike from close, onshore positions against American airfields , in contrast, provides an unambiguous signal to launch retaliatory American missiles. For this reason, the whole of the triad is greater than the sum of its parts—the loss of one leg would significantly reduce the efficacy ofthe other two, thus diminishing the retaliatory capability ofthe United States. The conclusion is inescapable: Without some form of the triad, the United States would be weaker and far less secure. Ideal negotiations with the Soviets would seek to achieve such large cuts in the Soviet counterforce capability that the U.S. land-based missile systems would remain invulnerable. The Reagan administration has consistently pushed for such reductions throughout the negotiation process, whether in the context of...

Reducing Short-Range Nuclear Systems in Europe: An Opportunity for Stability in the Eighties

Assumptions about European security that have sustained the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance since the 1950s are coming apart. Although steady Soviet force improvements continue, many European observers no longer see the Warsaw Pact as an overwhelming conventional force. Some think new conventional weapons technologies could hold the line; others just worry less about the danger of invasion. Strategic parity among superpowers has called NATO's flexible-response strategy into question, just as growing minorities have begun to ask whether nuclear weapons have become more menace than deterrent, thereby inhibiting nuclear weapon modernization plans. Arms control has lost credibility as a solution because there has been so little in contrast to the pace of weapons development and deployment. Some new, orderly pattern that restores support for NATO defense and credibility to the arms control process is badly needed. One way to begin is to draw down tactical nuclear arsenals on both sides, which could reduce the risk of nuclear war in Europe, enhance conventional strength, and support the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks and intermediate-range nuclear forces negotiations.

Reagan Through Soviet Eyes

Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction negotiations to the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START)-it is important to take a hard look at the deeper trends in U.S.-Soviet relations. The trends, frankly, are far more discouraging and potentially dangerous than is understood by many American commentators, who know little of the mood in Moscow. And these developments will continue even if Andropov is gone tomorrow. It would be wonderful if the Soviet Union saw the Reagan administration as the administration sees itself: stern, clear-eyed, calling the Soviet Union to account, but fair-minded and even ready to be generous if the Soviet Union