Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume IV, National Security Policy

140. Memorandum From the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski) to President Carter¹

Washington, June 3, 1979

SUBJECT

• NSC Meeting on Strategic Issues and US-Soviet Relations (C)

You will chair a meeting of the National Security Council on June 4 to discuss selected strategic issues and the general balance of power in US-Soviet relations. It will have a four-fold importance:

— On the eve of the Vienna Summit,² you will review the trends in the East-West strategic balance. For example, there is no doubt that JCS support for SALT ratification will be enhanced if problems with this balance are addressed at an NSC meeting and some specific actions taken to mitigate them.

— The following day you will review the Defense budget with OMB. It is important that strategic perspectives guide the budget decisions, not vice-versa.

— You will meet with Chancellor Schmidt two days later³ at which time you will want to indicate your position on TNF, which will also be reviewed at this NSC meeting.

— DOD will formally present its analysis of the M–X alternatives. (TS)

NSC Meeting: Issues and Conduct

With the above points in mind, the NSC meeting agenda will be as follows:

1. I will provide a brief review of CNA–78 and the PRC on the DOD Consolidated Guidance with conclusions that bear on the strategic trends. I shall also indicate several topics for a later NSC meeting, including C3I and strategic doctrine. Others will comment briefly.

2. We shall briefly review policy and planning on Theater Nuclear Force modernization, specifically: a) Chancellor Schmidt’s visit; b) the status of NATO consultations; c) development of force posture options within the USG. (An example is at Tab A.)⁴ You will receive a more complete memo on this subject in your briefing book for the Schmidt visit. You should instruct Harold to present you with specific deployment options by the end of June for our decision and then discussion with the allies in July.

3. The main business of this meeting is to discuss M–X alternatives and basing, which constitute the most important immediate decision required for long-term solutions to our strategic problems. Harold Brown will present the results of PRC deliberations, options on basing, options on the missile choice, and supporting analysis.

4. Time permitting, we shall have a brief discussion of the strategic problem we may face in the early 1980s when Minuteman will be highly vulnerable but offsetting new force deployments will not yet have been made. We want to elicit views as to whether we have a critical problem in the early 1980s and, if so, what short-term fixes might be in order. Several options have been surfaced, e.g., uploading more weapons on our Poseidon SLBMs, delaying deactivation of Polaris SSBNs, raising bomber alert rates, and accelerating B–52/ALCM conversions. We want to determine whether a more systematic look at these and other possibilities is in order. You should also ask Harold to present you with specific proposals by the end of June.

Throughout the meeting you should keep in mind three questions⁵ as criteria for decisions and guidance you may give on strategic matters:

a. In view of the continuing Soviet buildup and capability, what will be required to maintain stable deterrence in the 1980s and beyond?

b. In the event of a strategic crisis with the USSR, what will be required for a stable bargaining posture?

c. Finally, if deterrence fails in a crisis, what will it take to make our military power support politically selected war aims instead of letting our military posture draw us into a meaningless spasm war?⁶ (TS)

Analysis of M–X Choices

As I see it, you have two broad options to choose between—you can deploy a survivable land-based ICBM system (Harold’s option A) using one of the mobile/shelter systems that have been proposed, or you can place more emphasis on strategic aircraft and SLBMs and maintain an ICBM that is not independently survivable (Harold’s option B).

The main arguments in favor of option A are that land-based missiles provide the easiest way to achieve a quick response force with rapid reliable C3 and the capability to destroy all types of targets—in fact the land-based options being considered under option A have significantly lower life-cycle costs than SLBM or strategic aircraft forces of equivalent size.

The main argument for option B is that it does not require us to solve the collection of technical, environmental, and verification problems associated with option A. On the other hand, no matter what we say, abandoning the idea of a survivable ICBM force will be seen as a defeat for the U.S. It would also permit the Soviets to concentrate their efforts on jeopardizing our other forces.

If you choose option A, you must then decide on which approach to take in achieving ICBM survivability. DOD is strongly opposed to the air-mobile system because of its high cost and low endurance, and dead-set against truck mobiles because of their dependence on strategic warning and/or their high public impact when dispersed. Thus, the basing mode choice appears to be between MPS and the track-mobile systems. (See Tab B.)

The main technical distinction between these systems is the speed with which the missiles would move from shelter to shelter. This distinction leads to major differences in the systems’ verifiability, environmental impact, and their acceptability. The MPS system shuffles its missiles relatively slowly, which implies a critical dependence on maintaining the security of missile locations, and the required security measures complicate verification. The track mobile system uses high speed transporters that allow complete randomization of missile locations within the flight time of a Soviet ICBM. This feature costs perhaps $2 billion more than the corresponding MPS system if the tracks are on the surface, but makes missile location security less important and leads to a system that is considerably easier to verify. A track system in an openable trench would be less verifiable than one on the surface and somewhat more expensive—whether it would have more or less environmental impact is not clear. (S)

The choice of which missile to deploy must also be made unless you choose option B, which makes sense only with the common missile. As I see it, we are eventually going to want to build the Trident II missile independent of what we do for the land based force. This is because once a dozen or so Trident submarines have been built, it will become more cost effective to go back and fill those submarines with the largest possible SLBM than to build toward an equivalent capability using only the Trident I. Thus, the issue is do we want a significantly different land based missile? (S)

In our PRC meetings, OSD compared the capabilities of the Trident II and the 192,000 lb MX missile the Air Force prefers. These comparisons show that if the Trident II can meet its accuracy goals, it would be nearly as capable as the large MX and thus not many more would be required to achieve the assumed design goals of the land based force. Thus a savings of perhaps $4 billion might ultimately be achieved by using the Trident II in the land based deployment—though more money would be required up front to design a missile that is able to operate in both basing modes. (S)

There are major problems involved in choosing the common missile approach however:

— many in Congress and elsewhere want “largest” missile allowed under SALT II;

— Trident II is not well enough defined to begin now. The 6–12 month delay needed to define it will exacerbate concerns about Soviet strategic momentum;

— designing a missile for land and sea use will pose a significant management challenge—some see possibility of another TFX;

— a common missile implies some increase in the probability of a simultaneous failure in both land and sea based missile forces;

— suspicions will be generated that we will cancel the land based deployment once SALT II ratification is behind us. Such suspicions will result in lower SALT support that would have been generated by the choice of the largest missile;

— the Air Force is strongly opposed for above reasons and more;

— the Navy is opposed because funding for Trident II will divert resources from other programs they strongly prefer (S)

Taking everything into account, I don’t believe it would be prudent to choose the common missile for the land based deployment. I believe the partly common missile is even a poorer idea because it poses pretty much the same difficulties as the common missile, but promises significantly smaller ultimate saving even if everything works out. (S)

M–X Decisions

You should try to make as many of the above decisions as you can. At a minimum, you should make the broad choice between options A and B. If you choose B, it is extremely important that you announce it before the Summit in order to avoid any impression that it is the result of a deal with the Soviets. (TS)

Assuming you choose A, you should also try to choose between MPS and the track-mobile systems and, unless you choose MPS now, you should ask Harold to refine the track-mobile concept by the end of June. (S)

Again, assuming you choose A, I recommend that you decide in favor of the large M–X missile and announce it now, particularly if you are not ready to choose between MPS and the track-mobile concept. (S)

Agenda and Recommended Decisions

1. CNA–78/CG review—ZB; comments by others.

2. TNF—Brown instructed to provide concrete deployment plans by the end of June.

3. Early ’80s imblance—Brown asked to present by the end of June options for short-term fixes.

4. M–X issue—resolve as completely as possible prior to Summit—if B is your choice, must be announced before Summit.

1. Source: Carter Library, National Security Council, Institutional Files, Box 56, NSC–019, 6/4/79, Strategic Arms Policy and Relations with USSR. Top Secret. Sent for action. The date is handwritten.
2. Carter traveled to Vienna on June 14 and met with Brezhnev June 15–18. On the final day of the summit, the two leaders signed the Treaty Between the United States and the Soviet Union on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. See Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, vol. XXXIII, SALT II, 1972–1980, Document 241.
3. Documentation on Chancellor Helmut Schmidt’s June 6 visit to the White House is scheduled for publication in Foreign Relations, 1977–1980, vol. XXVII, Western Europe.
4. Not found attached.
5. An unknown hand underlined “three questions.”
6. An unknown hand drew a bracket in the left margin next to points a–c and wrote: “key issues.”