The Foreign Service Journal, May 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2020 29 Report set the stage for NATO to participate fully in arms control policymaking and negotiations with the USSR. Where the NPT was concerned, the Soviets were trying to destroy a bête noire that had preoccupied them since World War II—the specter of a German nuclear weapons program. It is easy to forget, but when the NPT was being negotiated, a number of European states were pursuing their own nuclear weapons—not only Germany, but countries as diverse as Sweden and Swit- zerland. The Soviets were intent on ensuring that the Germans never got their own nuclear arsenal. They therefore agreed to the notion that certain NATO countries in Europe would have nuclear weapons on their territories, but those weapons would remain in full control of the United States. For the Soviets, the NPT, which was opened for signature in 1968, was the instru- ment by which Germany would remain a non-nuclear weapon state, and for that reason Moscow accepted U.S. nuclear weap- ons on the territory of some NATO countries. I note this because for the past few years the Russians have been complaining that the United States is “violating” the NPT by deploying nuclear weapons under its control on NATO allied terri- tory. However, the NPT negotiating record clearly shows that their Soviet predecessors agreed to these arrangements. It was worth it to them to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of the Germans. Glassboro: Toward the First Détente The Glassboro Summit is an important but little-remembered moment in arms control history that took place June 23-25, 1967, at Glassboro State College in New Jersey. Now called Rowan Uni- versity, the site was chosen because of its proximity to New York City, where Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin was addressing the United Nations over the Middle East crisis—the Six-Day War had occurred just a few weeks earlier. Tensions were also high over the VietnamWar. Kosygin wrote to President Lyndon Johnson, and the two agreed to meet. It was the first time that the United States presented to Soviet leaders the proposition that it is important to limit strategic ballistic missile defenses as well as strategic nuclear offensive weapon systems. It is a simple argument: If strategic strike offensive mis- siles are limited and ballistic missile defense systems continue to improve technologically and expand operationally, then over time, the defense systems will begin to undermine the strategic offensive deterrent of one party or the other. The Soviet leaders were baffled: How could limiting defenses ever be a good thing? Kosygin and his colleagues were no doubt confounded because Soviet military doctrine and strategy, including nuclear doctrine, were strictly the purview of the Soviet military leadership. It was doubtless the first time that the Communist Party leadership had ever heard anything in detail about the nuclear offense-defense relationship. But by the time President Richard Nixon met in Moscow with General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev in May 1972, the Soviets were convinced of the need to limit defensive as well as offensive systems. Nixon and Brezhnev signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which limited each side to 100 defensive launchers in two sites each; they also signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), which was called an interim treaty because it simply froze the number of launchers then deployed. This is significant because the same theme comes up again and again in the history of U.S.-Russian arms control policy: namely, the delicacy of the offense-defense balance and the importance of its maintenance to strategic stability. Fast-forward now to 1979 and the completion of SALT II, the first treaty to seek to limit strategic offensive arms. It never entered into force because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December of that year—but President Jimmy Carter was already facing an uphill battle in getting the advice and consent of the Senate to its ratification. The reason? U.S. hawks and skep- tics were sharply criticizing what they called the Soviet breakout potential—the advent of MIRV technology. MIRV stands for multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, which allow a country to deploy multiple warheads on top of individual mis- siles. Because the Soviets were deploying heavy missiles—the SS-18 and SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)— they had more capability to carry warheads and deliver them. This was the famous “throw-weight” debate of the 1970s and 1980s. It was feared that they had enormous potential to deploy and deliver many more warheads than the United States could, thus upsetting the strategic balance. Of course, two can play at this game; and within a short time the United States was also deploying very capable MIRVs on its ground-based systems, the ICBMs, but more so on its subma- rine-based systems, the sea-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The United States maintained much quieter submarines in that era, and was able to deliver more accurate strikes from sea- As the 1950s unfolded, both the United States and Soviet Union continued to test more and more powerful weapons, racing to acquire the hydrogen bomb.