Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume XLIV, Part 1, National Security Policy, 1985–1988

126. Memorandum From the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (Ikle) to Secretary of Defense Weinberger¹

Washington, August 19, 1986

SUBJECT

• The Vance, Laird, Scowcroft, et al, Paper on SDI, Arms Control, and such

Attached for your information is the paper made available to members of Congress, which was “endorsed” by Brown, Laird, Schlesinger, Scowcroft, and Vance, and which got front page coverage in last Sunday’s New York Times.²

On the small missile, this “consensus” paper is driven by the Scowcroft-Les Aspin position; on MX it’s a bit more supportive; but on the ABM Treaty and SALT, it’s left of center.

Given that these kind of “consensus” papers are bound to emerge—perhaps with increasing frequency—it is all the more important that the Administration have an effective and coherent articulation of its own approach. To this end, we are moving ahead on the effort (“task force”) that I am co-chairing with Albert Wohlstetter which, as you will recall, is designed to produce such reports for you and John Poindexter. I will provide you further information on this “task force” with a separate memo in a few days.

I have meanwhile spoken with Mel Laird to probe why he co-signed this paper with Hal Brown, Brent Scowcroft, et al. Mel said he got together with this group at the request of Senators Warner, Nunn, and Lugar, who apparently wanted to see whether there could be an agreed view among these former officials.

Mel sort of complained that this effort was a lot of work; that Brent Scowcroft was stubborn on the small missiles and they had to give in a bit to him, and that they got into real problems with Cyrus Vance. However, Mel Laird argued he finally got Cy to be supportive of the Trident, and Mel thinks the agreement on increasing SDI spending by 10% annually was an accomplishment, given the further to the left position of Vance and others. (He, Laird, would have wanted a 25% increase.)

I asked Mel why we had to bother including Cy Vance in a “consensus” and got no clear answer.

Mel also seemed to be somewhat defensive when I pressed him why he signed off here, on supporting continued adherence to SALT and re-emphasizing the ABM Treaty. He argued he had to do this, given his previous involvement. I offered to send him excerpts from his own testimony back in 1972, to remind him that his support for SALT and the ABM Treaty was based on anticipations that have not been realized.

Mel Laird also opined the Administration had been shifting its position on these issues, and that Paul Nitze, for example, wants to keep the ABM Treaty. He volunteered that he had seen the report on what Nitze said in Moscow³ and was struck by Paul’s emphatic defense of the Treaty. He also knew that Paul Nitze has an interview soon to be published in the New York Times which will reaffirm Nitze’s pro ABM stance.⁴

All in all, it seems to me that we need to spend some time with Mel Laird. I told him I would get in touch with him again. It seems to me that our policies will suffer if former Nixon, Ford, and Carter Administration officials should keep “ganging up on us.” And one may wonder why our Republican friends in Congress should ask for a “consensus” defense position that includes Cy Vance. It seems to me, the American electorate has spoken on that.

I welcome your guidance.

Fred C. Ikle⁵

Attachment

Paper Prepared by Former Government Officials⁶

Washington, undated

Introduction

The U.S. is faced with a set of interconnected decisions—about relations with the Soviet Union, about U.S. nuclear strategy and nuclear forces of intercontinental and of intermediate range, about arms control, and about the Strategic Defense Initiative. All of these policy issues are influenced by Soviet behavior, by the present strategic balance and by trends in that balance, and by the perceptions of the allies and of the U.S. public. The time seems ripe for a combination of negotiated agreements and unilateral decisions on force structure and programs. One reason for this is the present state of U.S. military capabilities and technological potential. Another is the future uncertainties—of different sorts—in the U.S. and Soviet economies. A third is the juxtaposition of a new, more vigorous Soviet leader who may be able to adopt new policies with a popular U.S. president who has put into effect a military buildup and an assertive foreign policy.

The Soviets continue to develop and deploy a large force of ICBMs, with increasing counterforce capability, while reducing the vulnerability of their own strategic forces through hardening and mobility for ICBMs, and modernizing their ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) and the missiles (SLBMs) that they carry. They are also modernizing their heavy bomber force, and introducing long-range cruise missiles launched from aircraft, submarines and the ground. The Soviets retain and modernize their air defense forces, continue to develop the antiballistic missile (ABM) forces allowed in the ABM Treaty, and carry on a large research program on advanced technologies applicable to ground-based and space-based ABM. We hold a spectrum of views about the nature of Soviet intentions and future capabilities, and each of us might emphasize different aspects of what follows. We nevertheless agree on these prescriptions, and commend them to the Administration and the Congress as a basis for U.S. policy and programs.

Specific Points

1. Strategic Offensive Forces (SOF). The overall purpose is to convince the Soviets that, whatever the situation, they would be worse off if they initiated a strategic nuclear exchange than if they did not, because U.S. forces would not be greatly degraded by a preemptive attack, so that a Soviet first strike would not achieve its objective: the U.S. retaliation would cost the Soviet Union much more than it could possibly gain.

a) The U.S. should maintain a triad of forces—SLBMs, ICBMs, and bombers/cruise missiles. The purpose is to preserve and strengthen deterrence and enhance the stability of the strategic balance by assuring the capability of U.S. forces in the face of the Soviet force posture. Stability against the threat of preemptive strike, which would be greatest in times of crisis, is enhanced by avoiding overall force vulnerability to a single threat, be it antisubmarine warfare (ASW), ABM, accurate ballistic missile warheads targeted on ICBM silos, or a barrage of missiles aimed at blanketing the areas around bomber bases so as to destroy the alert bombers during their early flight.

b) U.S. strategic offensive forces should include a highly accurate and responsive capability that is not highly vulnerable to a preemptive attack and that is seen by the Soviets to be capable of fulfilling our national commitments. In practice that translates to land-based ICBMs, since they have a short response time and can be communicated with fairly easily. The size of that component of the U.S. force need not be equal to that of the Soviet ICBM force, in view of U.S. advantages in other force components. The objective is to encourage a move towards a world of survivable forces. The objective is promoted by reducing the number of warheads on both sides (and reducing also the ratio of each side’s warheads to the number of aim points on the other side required to be attacked in a preemptive strike), and especially by discouraging Soviet concentration of their capabilities in heavy fixed ICBMs carrying multiple warheads. Such concentration erodes stability because it is so much less valuable in a second strike than in a preemptive strike. A situation in which a large Soviet ICBM payload cannot be threatened by U.S. ICBMs but U.S. fixed targets (including ICBMs) are threatened by Soviet ICBMs could encourage imprudent Soviet behavior in a crisis.

The value of the M–X program to U.S. security is contained in two roles: to reduce a potentially destabilizing imbalance in Quick Hard-Target Kill (QHTK) capability and to encourage Soviet willingness to negotiate sharp reductions in such capability. The basing and other characteristics of the M–X deployment should promote these two objectives while maximizing stability and U.S. negotiating leverage. The numbers should reflect the degree of success in achieving these M–X related objectives. At a minimum, U.S. leverage should be maintained through keeping open a production line.

The U.S. should conduct R&D on a follow-on SSBN to the Trident, to provide an option that avoids an indefinite continuation of the concentration of 200 warheads in one aim point. Work should proceed so that a decision can be made on whether to produce more Tridents or an alternative with fewer warheads per submarine after the 12th Trident.

c) The U.S. should assure that its strategic C3 system can survive a preemptive strike. It should be made enduring insofar as a reasonable investment allows.

d) In terms of force structure, this corresponds to introduction during the next seven or eight years of the D–5 submarine-launched ballistic missile to modernize the SLBM force, and of the Advanced Technology Bomber (ATB) (and the advanced ALCM-air-launched cruise missile) and the Midgetman as needed to reduce the vulnerability of the U.S. bomber and land-based ICBM forces respectively to Soviet air defense and Soviet high-accuracy ballistic-missile attack. The options for deploying a new M–X basing mode (e.g. multiple protective shelters, tunnels, super hard, hard-carry) and a new submarine carrying fewer warheads than Trident during the following decade should be kept open. To these ends, B–1B production should be terminated at 100 and, M–X production should be continued at a low rate. The Midgetman performance specifications should emphasize mobility in a hardened mobile deployment. A 37,000 pound Midgetman missile weight could initially be deployed with a payload of one warhead plus penetration aids; some of the same force could, as later decided, carry two warheads without penaids. This course would avoid the delay of up to two years and other drawbacks (such as decreased mobility) attendant on a substantially higher payload weight.

2. SDI.

a) The ABM Treaty has been a means of enhancing stability. It should be preserved until and unless very strong reasons appear for changing it, e.g.: if Soviet preemptive capability appears likely to become such that a U.S. nuclear strategy of deterrence by the threat of retaliation, holding at risk what the Soviet leadership values, could not be maintained under the Treaty; if the Soviets were to break out (or creep out) of the Treaty; or if an offense-defense mix could be demonstrated to provide significantly enhanced stability.

b) It might at some future time be necessary for the U.S. to adopt some form of strategic defense to maintain the credibility of U.S. nuclear strategy. A program of research and technological development (not systems development), applicable to defense against ballistic missiles and airbreathers (aircraft and cruise missiles), should therefore be pursued:

i) to explore the technologies and potential designs applicable to strategic defense.

ii) to judge the cost-exchange ratios for defending various targets to various levels of survival in the face of a responsive threat including countermeasures, to determine the vulnerability of the defenses to direct attack, and to analyze the stability of various configurations of defensive and offensive deployments.

iii) to deter and if necessary to respond to a Soviet ABM breakout.

iv) to preserve possible options for active defense of selected retaliatory forces and strategic C3, for limited population defense against certain small attacks, or otherwise to complicate Soviet strategy.

c) Deterrence of nuclear attack by maintaining survivable offensive forces and C3 will remain the only feasible strategy for the foreseeable future. A transition to greater dependence on active defense for the protection of retaliatory forces could probably be implemented by the end of the century, but its desirability is not clear. A significant degree of protection of population, if feasible at all in the face of countermeasures, would be decades away.

Given these considerations:

d) the U.S. should

i) Abide by the historical (“restrictive”) interpretation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

ii) Protect fully, in any negotiations, the ability of the U.S. to do research (as described in 2 b) above) under the Treaty.

iii) Continue to evaluate SDI by the criteria of cost-exchange ratios at the margin, degree of vulnerability of the defensive system to direct attack, effect on stability, and impact on the strategic balance. The cost and value of SDI must also be weighed against those of other military programs for both strategic and general purpose forces.

e) The SDI research program should:

i) Avoid spectaculars carried out for their own sake;

ii) Emphasize ground-based terminal defense of mobile or hard points, ground-based and space-based sensors, and advanced directed energy weapons (such as ground-based free-electron lasers and space-based chemical lasers). Insofar as space-based kinetic-energy weapons appear to be vulnerable to straightforward countermeasures, that approach should be deemphasized.

iii) Proceed at a measured technological pace, increasing annual TOA from the FY 1986 level of $2.76 billion (in the Department of Defense—the Department of Energy program contains separate funding of $300 million) over the next two or three years at a rate consistent with efficient progress; we judge that to be on the order of 10 percent per year.

iv) Divert some of the funds thus made available to high-technology conventional force initiatives in order to reduce the risk that the rapid rise in SDI R&D funding may have starved U.S. conventional forces of the technological edge they need to offset Soviet advantages in conventional force size.

v) Not make any decision on full-scale engineering development of a multi-tier SDI system before the early 1990s at the earliest.

f) The U.S. should continue active efforts to enforce Soviet compliance with the ABM Treaty.

g) In maintaining SDI options, the U.S. should:

i) Seek constraints on antisatellite systems (ASAT), to avoid their becoming a loophole for evasion of the ABM Treaty (see 4b).

ii) Examine an anti-tactical ballistic missile system (ATBM) as a possible way to protect NATO forces and C3 from a Soviet non-nuclear attack. Such a system will be feasible politically only if governments and publics can be convinced that it is more effective than other methods (such as dispersal, hardening, and mobility) by themselves, and also affordable. If so, and ATBM is pursued, it will be important to define constraints that will prevent it from becoming a loophole or an easy route for Soviet creepout from the ABM Treaty.

iii) Keep technologies open but avoid foreclosing arms control options. At present it appears that this is best done by being very cautious about space-based weapons systems because: their effects might be destabilizing; strategic offensive forces can be defended without space-based weapons; and in a possible transition to heavier reliance on defensive systems, space-based defensive systems are likely to be appropriate at a later time than ground-based ones.

3. SALT II. The general U.S. policy should be to continue not to undercut the Treaty, especially its numerical limits. Response to Soviet transgressions should be first to pursue the Standing Consultative Commission (SCC) route. Where the results of that approach are unsatisfactory, the adequacy of programmed U.S. forces should be reviewed in the light of such Soviet actions. In deciding on U.S. responses, whether political in nature or in the form of a change in strategic force structure, both the likely effect on future Soviet compliance and the range of possible Soviet political or force structure response should be considered. U.S. force structure responses to perceived⁷ payloads of ballistic and air-breathing systems can be defined. Submarine-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs) will also have to be dealt with. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. would then be limited to common ceilings on the numbers of warhead equivalents and on payload equivalents, at about 50 percent of the present (higher of the U.S. or Soviet) numbers. A common ceiling on payload equivalents can be approached either directly or through certain warhead or other subceilings. Since U.S. deployments for active defense of its strategic offensive forces (for example ICBMs) are limited under the ABM Treaty, and would presumably also be limited under any modification of it, there should be limits on the Soviet forces that threaten them. To that end, a sublimit of 3000 to 4000 ICBM warheads would be appropriate. Mobile ICBM deployment should be permitted consistent with adequate verification of numbers.

b) Dedicated ASAT operational capabilities should be limited to their present level on both sides. This includes existing U.S. MHV/F–15 and Soviet coorbital SL–8. Development of ground-based laser ASATs should be allowed (to allow SDI technology development, and insurance in the form of development of defense suppressors against a Soviet space-based SDI breakout) but not testing against targets or mirrors in space.

c) The U.S. and U.S.S.R. should have equal rights to a reduced number of INF: equal numbers in Europe; U.S. rights to a number (in U.S. or Asia) equal to Soviet numbers in Asia; British and French systems neither frozen nor included in totals; U.S. may choose not to exercise rights fully.

d) The U.S. should ratify the Threshold Test Ban and work for a reduction of the Threshold to lower values as verification improves; a level on the order of 10KT is a reasonable near-term target. We should continue negotiation on the possibility of a Comprehensive Test Ban.

1. Source: Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Weinberger Papers, Department of Defense Files, Box CL 843, Subject File, 1986, General Arms Control: Set A #52–72 (3). For Official Use Only.
2. Reference is to Charles Mohr, “5 Former U.S. Officials Urge Delay in ‘Star Wars’ Testing,” New York Times, August 17, 1986, pp. 1, 10.
3. Memoranda of conversation of the Nitze-led U.S. delegation to Moscow are printed in Foreign Relations, 1981–1988, vol. XI, START I, Documents 142, 143, and 144.
4. Not further identified.
5. Ikle signed the memorandum “Fred” above his typed signature.
6. No classification marking. Brown sent the paper to Ikle under cover of an August 12 letter, which is attached but not printed. Also attached but not printed is an August 1 covering note by Brown that reads: “The attached is a talking paper that includes recommendations on strategic nuclear policies and programs, arms control, and SDI. Its general thrust is endorsed by Messrs. Laird, Schlesinger, Scowcroft, Vance, and myself.”
7. Page 6 is missing in the original.