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Assessing Strategic Arms Reduction Proposals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

M. Krepon
M. Krepon
Affiliation:
American Committee on East-West Accord
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Abstract

A number of options were available to the Reagan Administration for achieving the President's stated objective of deep cuts in nuclear weapons. However, various deep-cut proposals can have dramatically different prospects of being negotiated successfully, as well as varying impacts on strategic and crisis stability. Moreover, some arms reduction proposals may not be compatible with programs to accentuate nuclear war-fighting capabilities, another objective of the Reagan Administration. In rejecting the SALT II framework for reductions, the Administration set aside a relatively quick way to achieve reductions, although not of the kind championed by the President. Instead, a more ambitious approach was chosen-but one that has provided few positive incentives for the Soviets to reach agreement. If the U.S. position is seriously held, the prospect is for lengthy, acrimonious, and inconclusive negotiations.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , January 1983 , pp. 216 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1983

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References

1 Kennan, “A Proposal for International Disarmament,” speech delivered on accepting the Albert Einstein Peace Prize, May 19, 1981, reprinted in part in the Washington Post, May 24, 1981, p. C-3.

2 Drell, , “L & RV: A Formula for Arms Control,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, XXXVIII (April 1982), 28–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 For an assessment of the March 1977 proposal, see Krepon, Michael, “Reagan Approach: START Off from the Beginning” in Arms Control Today, XI (October 1981), 1–7.Google Scholar

4 General Thomas S. Power, cited by LeMay, Curtis E., America Is in Danger (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1968), 275.Google Scholar

5 Strausz-Hupé, Robert, Kintner, William R., and Possony, Stefan T., A Forward Strategy for America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), 322.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., 292.

7 Gayler, “How to Break the Momentum of the Nuclear Arms Race,” New York Times Magazine, April 25, 1982, pp. 48–49, 86–88.

8 Kennan (fn. 1).

9 See, for example, Eugene V. Rostow, “United States Objectives in Arms Control Negotiations with the Soviet Union,” address before the Council on Foreign Relations, mimeo (Washington: U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, October 20, 1981), 20–21; U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Strategic Weapons Proposals, 97th Cong., 1st sess., 1981, pt. 1, p. 83Google Scholar; New York Times, May 2, 1982, p. 1; New York Daily News, February 23, 1982, p. C-6.

10 New York Times, May 2, 1982, p. 1.

11 See Drell (fn. 2).