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

93. Letter From Secretary of Defense Weinberger to President Reagan¹

Washington, December 18, 1985

Dear Mr. President,

(C) I am attaching the second part of the assessment you asked us to make of Soviet arms control violations and appropriate US responses.² In this report, I am recommending a package of US responses that not only help to ensure our security in the face of Soviet non-compliance but also provide incentives to the Soviets to correct their non-compliance and to abide by future arms control agreements.

(U) Your decision not to impose a double standard—by which we continue to comply with agreements that the Soviets are violating—is essential to protect the future of arms control. If we failed to respond forcefully to the growing pattern of Soviet violations, we would encourage the Soviets to plan and carry out future violations of increasing scope and gravity.

(S) My recommendation to you is that you submit to Congress a supplemental Defense Appropriation, called the Arms Control Compliance Act of 1986, which would provide for four specific initiatives:

○ preserving two Poseidon submarines that would have to be cut up in 1986 if we continued to abide by unratified, expired SALT agreements,

○ replacing 50 older Minuteman II ICBMs with the more capable Minuteman III missile now in storage,

○ implement telemetry encryption of future tests of strategic systems, to deny the Soviets the information they increasingly deny to us, and

○ intensify our research for countermeasures to the Soviet biological and chemical warfare effort.

(S) The first three measures would not be compliant with SALT restrictions. We estimate the total cost of these measures is in the range between 480 and a bit over 500 million dollars.

(U) I believe this response to Soviet arms control violations is a measured and prudent way for the United States to react and that it is vital to do to protect the integrity of the arms control process.

Respectfully yours,

Cap

Attachment

Memorandum From Secretary of Defense Weinberger to President Reagan³

Washington, December 18, 1985

SUBJECT

• Responding to Soviet Violations: Part II—Programmatic Responses (U)

(U) As I sought to convey in Part I of this report, our previous efforts to persuade the Soviets to comply fully with their arms control obligations have not succeeded. Indeed, the failure of past administrations to respond forcefully to an enlarging pattern of violations has only encouraged the Soviets to violate arms control agreements between us with increasing frequency and in increasingly important ways. We must not tempt the Soviet military leadership to plan on violating future agreements whenever those would interfere with their preferred military programs.

(U) Your statements that we would not permit a double standard—in which we comply with agreements that the Soviets are violating—is fundamental to protecting the integrity of arms control. You have already done much to restore the credibility of our arms control policy. In 1981, you broke with the mistaken but accepted approach that merely legitimized the Soviet build-up, by insisting that the United States focus on meaningful and verifiable reductions. Even the Soviets have now been forced to embrace your concept of sharp reductions, at least in principle, as evidenced at your recent meeting with Gorbachev. Yet, I recall that many critics then used to complain your stance would destroy arms control negotiations.

(U) Today, the time has come to reaffirm that arms control agreements cannot be violated with impunity. By responding meaningfully to Soviet violations we can make clear that cheating is incompatible with real arms control. By demonstrating to the Soviet leadership that they are expected to abide by treaties they sign—or pay the price accordingly—you will have taken the only action which can induce the Kremlin to respect agreements. Our critics, I am sure, will once again warn that this step will “imperil the future of arms control,” or even “subvert the summit.” I am confident they will be proven wrong this time as well.

Designing a U.S. Response (U)

(U) In considering appropriate and proportionate response options available to the United States, we employed several criteria. We concluded that our response must:

○ be militarily significant so as to impose costs which the USSR would not have faced had it abided scrupulously by its treaty commitments;

○ be consistent with our fiscal realities;

○ demonstrate that the United States will not accept a double standard of arms control compliance;

○ at the same time, be of a nature such that non-compliant U.S. actions can be reversed and full U.S. compliance re-established if warranted by Soviet action; and,

○ be perceived as a measure responding to the Soviet violations, not as an effort merely to restore DoD funding requests previously cut by the Congress.

(C) The JCS, the Services, and OSD, at my direction, reviewed nearly 30 different programmatic responses to Soviet violations. Based on the above criteria, I have decided against recommending further consideration of most of these. We have identified several measures, however, that can be combined to make for an effective and timely response, both by reducing the military danger we and our allies face from those violations, and by providing a meaningful incentive for Soviet compliance in the future.

An Appropriate and Proportionate Response (U)

(S) I recommend that the Department of Defense develop, for your submission to the Congress, a supplemental Defense Appropriation entitled the Arms Control Compliance Act of 1986. A supplemental request would make clear to the Congress that this package represents a special response and must not result in a further diminution of the overall defense budget. To distinguish it further from the “business-as-usual” approach, I propose that we not subject this response to the vagaries of the annual budget process and instead we use multi-year contracting where appropriate, to ensure that funds are provided to cover the entire proposed programmatic measure.

(U) If you approve this recommendation, we will work with OMB to develop legislation in a way so as to manage any problems that might arise because of the Gramm-Rudman Amendment.

(S) The supplemental would include four major initiatives:

○ preserving the Poseidon submarines that would have to be cut up in 1986 if we continued to abide by unratified, expired SALT Agreements;

○ replacing 50 older Minuteman II ICBMs with the more capable Minuteman III missiles that are now in storage;

○ intensifying our research and development effort to understand potential and suspected Soviet biological and chemical warfare agents, and to develop antidotes to and protection from these;

○ implementing data denial of future tests of strategic systems, to deny the Soviets the kind of information they have increasingly denied us.

(S) The overall cost of this entire package will amount to about half a billion dollars, and breaks down as follows:

Preserving Poseidon Options	$334 to 400M
Minuteman Replacement	$33M
Biological and Chemical Warfare R&D	$120M
Data Denial	TBD

Rationale of the Proposed Programs (U)

(S) Preserving Poseidon Options: The proposed measure preserves the [less than 1 line not declassified] Poseidon boats that would have to be cut up in FY 1986 if we continued to abide by the SALT provisions. At least [less than 1 line not declassified] Poseidon boats are reaching the end of [less than 1 line not declassified] life and these submarines would have been dismantled if the United States continued to abide by the SALT limits on the total number of deployed MIRVed missiles and SLBM tubes (our deployment of the [less than 1 line not declassified] Trident submarine will bring us over these limits).

(S) Instead of cutting these submarines up, they would be defueled and the ships’ systems maintained to allow future overhaul. Within [less than 1 line not declassified] after the Poseidons commence shipyard availability, a decision must be made either to reactivate the ships as SSBNs, reactivate and convert the submarines for other military uses, or dismantle/inactivate the ships. This would provide you with considerable flexibility to respond to future Soviet behavior on arms control compliance.

(S) The submarines could not only be used to deploy the [less than 1 line not declassified] that they now carry, but also could be converted by about 1992 to deploy the [less than 1 line not declassified]. Moreover, they could also be converted to a launch platform for SDI. This role would be recognized by the Soviets as militarily meaningful. The flexibility for an SDI role thus could provide significant leverage to encourage the Soviets to reverse their non-compliant behavior. We are, as a matter of priority, undertaking a study to determine the timing and specific merit of these uses of the Poseidon boats.

(S/FRD) Replacing 50 Minuteman II with Minuteman III: [15 lines not declassified]

(S) Intensified R&D on Biological and Chemical Weapons: In the face of Soviet violations of their treaty commitments concerning chemical and biological weapons, it is appropriate that we enhance our defensive capability. It is not proposed here that we abandon any of the treaty restrictions in this area. In particular, we do not wish to produce biological weapons. But the massive Soviet research and development program, including their testing of new toxic agents, necessitates a greater effort on our part to prepare countermeasures. I am recommending an acceleration in our program to investigate the chemistry and effects of the new Soviet agents, including efforts to identify and synthesize biological and chemical agents or penetrants capable of defeating our current defensive equipment. The objective would be to find countermeasures against these threats.

(S) Denial of Data from our Tests of Strategic Systems: We should implement telemetry encryption for our future tests of strategic systems, notably ballistic missile systems, to deny the Soviets the kind of information they have increasingly denied us. Since the Soviets have now resorted to almost total encryption of their tests, in violation of SALT, it is timely and appropriate that we no longer provide the Soviets with our unencrypted test data.

Potential Soviet Reactions (U)

(S) We cannot predict specifically how the Soviet Union will react if we responded to Soviet violations in ways that fall outside of SALT limits. Most probably, the USSR would refuse to dismantle launchers to remain within numerical SALT constraints, in which case their forces would increase slightly, in terms of the retention of older, less effective weapons. While the USSR might take some highly visible action to dramatize the “costs” to the United States of exceeding SALT boundaries, it seems likely that the military threat to the United States would not differ significantly from that which we might face if U.S. responses to Soviet violations all stayed within SALT limits.

(S) Frequently in the past, arms control agreements have been justified which contained inordinately high limits on forces, on the grounds that there would be massive increases in Soviet forces in the absence of such limits. These arguments, however, have not reflected actual estimates by the U.S. Intelligence Community.

(S) For a variety of reasons, it is unlikely that the absence of SALT constraints would cause a surge in Soviet capabilities. For the Soviet Union, the costs of such an expansion would not be matched by increased military benefits. A major surge in strategic systems would not appreciably alter the Soviet Union’s existing capability to destroy the U.S. target base. Investment of the same resources in other areas of Soviet military power could have a much greater practical return.

Conclusion (U)

(S) Responding to Soviet arms control violations with meaningful steps, such as those described above, is consistent with and fully supportive of your proven strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union. By demonstrating that we will not accept a double standard for arms control compliance, you will influence not only current Soviet behavior, but future behavior. A response which makes clear that Soviet arms control violations entail real penalties will not only provide leverage to get the Soviet leadership to adopt policies bringing the USSR back into compliance with existing agreements—it will also send an important signal to them regarding negotiation and observance of future arms control pacts. Finally, a strong response will clarify to our friends as well as to our adversaries that we will not allow Soviet violations to continue unchallenged.

(C) A further attraction of this package is the fact that all of the activities we recommend which are non-compliant, can be reversed should a decision be made to do so in the event the Soviets become fully compliant.

(C) I believe the supplemental package described above offers such a response. It is militarily significant, fiscally prudent, and—if necessary—reversible in those areas involving U.S. selective non-compliance. This package of responses, combined with vigorous efforts towards realizing the potential of SDI and fielding the planned capabilities of the Strategic Modernization Program, would underwrite your goals for the arms talks in Geneva and provide the strength to hedge against the military consequences of Soviet behavior. I recommend that you approve it and instruct us to prepare the necessary legislative initiative.

Cap

1. Source: Washington National Records Center, OSD Files: FRC–330–87–0008, Box 3, USSR 388.3 (Nov–Dec 1985). Secret.
2. For the first part, see Attachment, Document 83.
3. Secret; Formerly Restricted Data.