181. National Intelligence Memorandum1
NIM 77–025
THE SOVIET PERSPECTIVE ON SALT
1. Soviet leaders view their relations with the United States as basically competitive and approach SALT from that perspective. They want to secure and, if possible, enlarge hard-won Soviet strategic gains of the past decade and to enhance the Soviet military-political position vis-à-vis the United States, while at the same time reliably controlling the risks of nuclear war. They believe that these objectives can better and more safely be pursued when the strategic arms competition with the United States is constrained by SALT.
[Page 760]2. For the Soviet leaders, SALT is important
—as a process for influencing the broad political environment of US-Soviet relations, including the braking of US arms programs, even without agreements;
—and substantively as a means of achieving specific agreements. The process and substantive aspects of SALT are probably linked in their minds, both being valued above all for their political effects.
3. In their view, the SALT process is one of the means for:
—registering and reinforcing the co-equal superpower status of the USSR;
—keeping the Soviet Union in the forefront of US foreign policy and security concerns;
—maintaining the strategic nuclear balance as the crux of US-Soviet relations, thus overshadowing Soviet disadvantages in other aspects of the global competition with the United States, e.g., economics, technology.
4. Substantively, the Soviets see SALT as a forum for negotiating agreements
—to avert US weapons or force developments that could sharply upset the strategic balance. Stopping US ABM efforts was the major case of this kind;
—to protect their strategic gains. For example, they regard the Interim Agreement and the Vladivostok Accord as having sanctioned a continuing Soviet advantage in heavy ICBMs, purchased by what the Soviets regard as a major (but temporary) concession on FBS;
—to constrain future US strategic developments in areas of likely US advantage at minimum cost to the USSR. The Soviet effort to curtail future US cruise missile programs without a reduction in their own ongoing MIRVed heavy ICBM deployment is an example of this kind.
5. The Soviets appreciate that they and the US approach SALT from different frameworks of military doctrine. Both wish to preserve deterrence. But the United States adheres to a concept of stable deterrence through maximum survivability of forces and mutual assured destruction (MAD). The USSR, on the other hand, still tends to see the pursuit of capabilities to wage, survive, and, if possible, to win a nuclear war as the right way to manage the nuclear dilemma, however difficult. This difference frequently presents a direct conflict of strategic preferences. For example, the United States wishes to limit heavy missiles with MIRVs because they threaten our silo-based ICBMs. The USSR values them for just that reason. The United States values the cruise missile as an effective penetrating weapon in a retaliatory role. The Soviets see it as yet another hard-to-defend-against threat to their homeland. Given the asymmetries in the strategic preferences and present and programmed forces of the two sides, SALT proposals [Page 761] based on US-favored criteria impose limitations on strategic assets of a type that Moscow values more highly than does Washington.
6. Soviet leaders believe that the global “correlation of forces” is shifting inexorably, if gradually and unevenly, in their favor. But they still fear the potential of superior American technology and industrial capacity in an unconstrained arms race. How strongly these fears incline the Soviets to accommodate to US SALT requirements depends on their estimate of the will and capability of the US government to concert its objectives and sustain its negotiating positions and, in the absence of agreement, to press its technological and industrial advantages. For the Soviets, this is essentially a political judgment.
7. The Soviets would probably be content to reap the benefits of the SALT process without concluding fresh agreements that compelled them to make painful concessions. They appreciate that SALT as a process can constrain U.S. moves and limit its advantages in areas not covered by explicit agreement if that process appears to have forward momentum and to enjoy broad US public support. But they appear to believe that periodic agreements formally registering progress are needed to sustain momentum. It is much less clear whether they appreciate how their own arms programs undermine the strength of tacit political constraints on US behavior.
8. Thus the conception of SALT as a forum in which the two sides conscientiously and jointly attempt to work out “fair” agreements to stabilize their strategic relationship along MAD lines is alien to the Soviet political mind. The Soviet leaders are not readily persuaded that the US side really frames its proposals in strict accordance with such a conception. In the Soviet view, each party in SALT seeks agreements to regulate those aspects of the strategic nuclear force relationship in which unconstrained competition would be either disadvantageous or superfluous from its point of view, while reserving for unregulated national strategic policy those aspects deemed most advantageous and/or critical to it. At points where these unilateral interests are congruent, agreement can be reached.
9. Accordingly, the Soviets measure American “good faith” by the extent to which we are willing to negotiate within a framework in which the Soviets can press their own preferences and protect their most highly valued strategic assets, as they expect the U.S. side to do, in a process of hard, detailed bargaining. Indeed, American “seriousness” rather than “good faith” is a more appropriate description of Soviet concerns when assessing new U.S. proposals. For the Soviets, a “serious” U.S. proposal is one that reflects a strong American preference to achieve a less than optimal agreement rather than no agreement at all and that suggests a U.S. willingness to accommodate Soviet positions on issues deemed most fundamental by Moscow.
[Page 762]10. The Soviet reaction to the March U.S. SALT proposals reflected Soviet irritation at losing earlier negotiating gains, which was amplified by heightened Soviet fears of new U.S. military technologies contemplated or under development. The Soviets reacted with a hard line to redirect pressure back on to the American side, relieving political and propaganda disadvantages under which they were temporarily placed, and avoiding the internal difficulties of formulating new positions themselves. The Soviet leaders probably believe their hard tactics since March have moved the negotiations back closer to their strongly preferred Vladivostok baseline.
11. It is difficult to know what precise mixture of puzzlement, concern and hard-headed pursuit of tactical advantage is involved in public and private Soviet statements on SALT. Elements of all seem present. They reinforce one another in encouraging the Soviet leaders to persist during the September talks in hard tactics in order to discover where U.S. positions may finally settle down.
12. Given the broad Soviet perspective on SALT and the tactical line Moscow has pursued in discussions since March, we expect the Soviet side to approach the September talks with the following posture:
a) They are unlikely to produce substantial new proposals of their own so long as they have reason to believe that U.S. positions on a new negotiating framework remain fluid, or that more acceptable American fall-back positions are being held in reserve;
b) They can be expected to exploit any openings offered by new U.S. proposals to bring the negotiating framework back closer to Vladivostok lines;
c) They will continue to demand stringent cruise missile restraints and can be expected to express dissatisfaction with whatever may be offered by the U.S. side in that regard;
d) They will probably attempt to work out a mutual understanding to extend the Interim Agreement and to reaffirm the ABM Treaty.2
13. An important indication that the Soviets believe the discussions have reached a sufficiently “ripe” stage would be their signalling this week of any willingness to limit ongoing Soviet programs—such as their MIRVed ICBM or, more significantly, their MIRVed heavy ICBM program—in exchange for the limitations on U.S. programs which they seek. Soviet failure to transmit such signals would not necessarily indicate they believe the discussions are hopelessly stalemated, but could reflect either: (a) their belief that the beneficial possibilities of working for fresh U.S. concessions have not yet been exhausted; or (b) that the Soviets are unwilling to agree to any interruptions of their ongoing MIRVed ICBM and MLBM programs.