SALT, MIRZMAD. •
SALT by JON ROTHSCHILD, The world capitalist press was virtually unanimous that Summit III, Nixon's third annual grande bouffe with Soviet Communist party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, was a flop. The American magazine Newsweek observed that "for all the hoopla and headlines that attended the summit, Mr. Nixon and Brezhnev failed to solve the main problem before them: further limiting the proliferation of offensive nuclear weapons. And that setback clouded the future of détente with the prospect of an alarming escalation in the arms race. " From the other side of the Atlantic, The Economist, which expresses the views of a not insignificant section of British finance capital, was equally blunt: "Mr Nixon achieved just enough in his third meeting with Mr Brezhnev to defend himself against the accusation that he should not have gone to Moscow at all. But he did not bring off what he had most wanted, and not long ago thought he could bring off. The nuclear competition of the superpowers has not been checked. No new agreement to curb it in any effective way emerged from the talks." What Nixon apparently "thought he could bring off" was a new nuclear arms limitation agreement, or at least a "conceptual breakthrough" on a potential agreement, to extend the one that was signed at Summit I in the Soviet Union in May 1972. That agreement was the product of the first round of "strategic arms limitation talks" (SALT I), which had begun in Helsinki in November 1969 and went on for two and a half years before producing results. In essence, the SALT I accords limited the number of missile launchers that could be deployed by Moscow and Washington. It is to remain in effect until 1977. Recognizing the necessity to work out a follow-up agreement well in advance of the expiration of the May 1972 deal, and aware of the length of time needed to produce such an agreement, the U.S. and Soviet regimes initiated the second round of talks, SALT II, in Geneva in November 1972. Until now, however, the new round of negotiations has made no progress. Neither Kissinger's visit to Moscow in March nor Nixon's in June was able to move SALT Il off "square one.
• détente? Why SALT? It is evident that both the American ruling class and the Soviet bureaucracy have an interest in introducing certain limits on the arms race. In the capitalist world -- and especially in the United States -- massive government spending on military hardware is an important factor in exacerbating inflation. In addition, the ever expanding budget for "defense" makes it more difficult for Washington to increase spending on projects designed to divert the radicalization in the Black community and to grant concessions to the working class as a whole. From the purely economic standpoint, U.S. imperialism would have much to gain by at least stabilizing its military outlays on strategic weaponry. For the Soviet bureaucracy, the economic gains to be made by reducing the arms budget are even more manifest than for the American capitalists. In the Soviet economy, spending on nuclear arms is a total waste. While a sector of the U.S. capitalist class makes enormous profits from weapons contracts, arms spending in the Soviet Union is purely an economic diversion. No section of society profits by it. Technically, the weapons produced are absolutely useless for the Soviet bureaucracy's policy toward the Eastern European workers states or toward the capitalist world as a whole. Increasing demand for consumer goods on the part of the Soviet working class, which is now a majority of the Soviet population--and an ever growing one at that--puts constant pressure on the bureaucracy to modify its investment policies. The arms race is a major obstacle to that. From the standpoint of the Soviet bureaucracy, the arms race would be better ended outright. The very existence of SALT, then, is an expression of a mutual desire in Moscow and Washington to do something to put limits on an escalation of spending on instruments of nuclear destruction.
19
SALT But the mutual desire for strategic arms limitation is mediated by the fundamental clash in the class character of the two states. As the leading imperialist power, the United States needs nuclear superiority over the workers states. In the nuclear age, ability to police the world means ability to utilize, or at least to threaten to utilize, a nuclear striking force. And the bureaucracy that rules the Soviet Union -- however prepared it might be to crush or betray revolutionary uprisings in the interest of preserving its own privileges -- has no choice but to defend itself against American nuclear hegemony. So for each technological innovation made in the U.S. to bolster American imperialism's ability to play at nuclear blackmail, there must be a defensive innovation in the Soviet Union. The inevitable result -- independent of the desires of either side, the so-called détente, or any other secondary factor -- is the nuclear arms race, which, in the last analysis, is the product of the irreconcilable contradiction between the social systems prevailing in the United States and the Soviet Union. This framework -- essential for understanding the course and importance of SALT -- may seem rather obvious to revolutionary Marxists. Unfortunately, it is not so obvious within the workers movement or even among its vanguard. The bourgeoisie and its spokesmen generally cast discussions on the nuclear arms race in terms of what is generally known as "game theory, one of the most decadent of all theoretical excrescences of the era of capitalism's death agony. The terminology and ideology of that theory as applied to nuclear weapons is prevalent not only in capitalist magazines but in the press of the workers movement. The most common sort of formulation betraying such an approach is the assertion that behind the SALT rigamarole lies the question of "the nuclear balance of terror between the two superpowers. " The specialized jargon that has been developed in the United States to refer to this balance of terror is MAD, which stands for the charming phrase "mutual assured destruction. " Its meaning was summarized by John Newhouse, author of a book on the history of SALT. He wrote, "The talks were launched not from a common impulse to reduce armaments but from a mutual need to solemnize the parity principle -- or, put differently, to establish an acceptance by each side of the other's ability to inflict unacceptable retribution in response to nuclear attack."
The fact of the matter is rather different. Ever since the American monopoly of nuclear weapons was broken by the Soviet development of the fusion bomb, it has been Moscow's strategy to secure a solemn parity principle as a means of avoiding nuclear holocaust, while Washington's strategy has been to overturn that principle through technological innovations aimed at making nuclear war a realistic policy option for imperialism. To put it another way -- again in the terminology used by the ghouls of the imperialist nuclear think-tank industry -- Washington has always sought to develop a "firststrike capacity, " while Moscow's nuclear policy has been to develop sufficient counterattack potential to make it too great a risk for American imperialism to launch a first strike.
Technology and negotiation
There were two main aspects to the agreement that came out of SALT I. First, limits were put on the number of defensive missiles that could be deployed by each side. Each country was entitled to construct an antiballistic missile (ABM) system around its capital city and around one of its offensive missile-launching sites. The total number of antiballistic missiles was set at 200 for each country. This aspect of the agreement was not very significant. The effectiveness of the
ABM was always in great doubt. Historically, offensive technology has always developed more rapidly than defensive technology, with the result that most defensive missile systems have been rendered obsolete even before their installation. In the. United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s there was massive opposition to the deployment of an extensive ABM system that had been proposed by the Pentagon. The opposition came not only from the antiwar movement, but from large sectors of the ruling class itself. The proof of the insignificance of the ABM aspect of the SALT I accords is that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union has made any move to install the second system allowed under the terms. (Both had already deployed ABM systems around their capitals.) At Summit III, the two sides agreed formally to forego deployment of the second ABM system. The secord aspect of the SALT I accords was to limit the number of offensive missile launchers to be built by both sides. The agreement was that each side would freeze its number of launchers. The United States now has 1,000 land-based missiles and 710 sea-based missiles, most of them on Polaris and missiles and 950 sea-based ones. The comparison of numbers Poseidon submarines. The Soviet Union has 1,410 land-based of missiles, however, is not an accurate reflection of the destructive power each side commands. In the late 1960s, Washington introduced a technical innovation known as MRV, or multiple re-entry vehicle. The MRV system, based on a sort of shot-gun principle, was capable of landing several bombs a few miles apart in fixed patterns, all the warheads being launched from a single missile.
The MRV was followed by the MIRV, multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles, whose warheads could be directed at targets hundreds of miles apart. Operational MIRVs were installed into the American offensive missile arsenal beginning in 1969. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, did not move seriously into MIRV research until the weapon had already been completely perfected by the United States. The first known Soviet MIRV test took place only in August 1973.
SALT I did not place any restriction on the number of warheads either side could deploy, only the number of missiles.
So while the Soviet Union has an advantage in the number of missiles available, the United States has overwhelming superiority in the number of warheads. Washington now has about
7,900 nuclear warheads. By 1977, when the SALT I agreement expires, it will have 9,700. The Soviet Union, even if it presses ahead successfully with its own MIRV program, will only have about 4,000 warheads by 1977. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger estimated in March 1974 that the
Soviet Union then had 2, 600 deliverable warheads.
The problem with the SALT I agreement, then, was that Moscow saw no reason to allow Washington to limitlessly develop the MIRV, which would allow the United States to continue to add to its offensive missile capability. In 1973 the Soviet
Union tested four new missiles, three of which can carry
MIRVs. U.S. imperialism responded to the Soviet attempt to catch up by announcing early in 1974 that more Soviet military installations were being added to the list of targets for
American warheads. At the same time, Washington let it be known that it was moving to develop the next innovation in the MRV field, the MARV, or maneuverable re-entry vehicle.
The MARV incorporates the MIRV system, except that the individual warheads would be able to change course in midflight, a qualitative step forward in accuracy.
The "snag" that consequently developed in the negotiations for SALT II was, as the July 15 Newsweek put it, "agreeing to a formula that would equalize the nuclear strength of the two countries by balancing the Soviet superiority in total
Continuation of the arms race in spite of the detente confirms that conflict will persist -- conflict resting on the basic class difference between the missile launchers (2, 358 to 1,710) against the U.S. lead in nuclear warheads (7, 940 to 2,600). " Washington proposed to find the formula by extending the SALT I agreement by two or three years and arriving at a statement "in principle" limiting further expansion of MIRVs. Since Washington has already equipped its entire arsenal with MIRVs, while the Soviet Union has barely begun to deploy them, this would have left U.S. imperialism with a virtual monopoly on multiple warheads, one of the most important technical advances in nuclear technology. Quite naturally, Moscow rejected that proposal. Hence the deadlock and the failure of Summit Ill to produce even a "conceptual breakthrough. " Two strategies In its July 8 issue, Newsweek examined the importance to U.S. imperialism of preventing the Soviet Union from closing the MIRV gap. "For years, " the magazine wrote, "the Soviet Union has favored such heavy rockets as the big SS-9, capable of delivering an awesome 25-megaton nuclear punch (i.e., a fusion bomb with the explosive equivalent of 25 million tons of TNT -- INPRECOR), while the U.S. has relied on smaller, highly accurate missiles that aim to do the same job with fewer megatons of explosive power. But along with MIRVing, the Kremlin will also have acquired a tremendous advantage in 'throw-weight' (the capacity to deliver heavier payloads and bigger clusters of MIRV's), more than offsetting the present U.S. numerical edge in warheads. Pentagon experts expect the Kremlin to deploy about 8, 000 warheads over the next decade, giving the Russians a throw-weight advantage of nearly 6 to 1. A surprise blitz from that force, they assert, could wipe out most of the 1,000 Minuteman I|| ICBM's (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles -- INPRECOR) maintained by the U.S. " The implication, of course, is that given the previous Soviet reliance on heavier missiles, Moscow's development of MIRVs would represent a qualitative shift in the relationship of forces that the United States would have to answer by developing new weaponry, since "parity" would be destroyed by the Soviet Union acquiring a first-strike capacity. The only problem with this theory is that there is not the slightest evidence to support it and there is a good deal of evidence to contradict it. At present, the United States has -- in addition to the 1,000 two societies.
Minuteman Ills -- 41 Polaris and Poseidon submarines and 496 long-range bombers equipped with nuclear weapons. A good part of the bomber fleet is kept in the air at all times ("oil shortage" or not). flying from their bases in the United States to the Arctic circle and back again. Each of the Polaris and Poseidon submarines carries sixteen missiles; each of the missiles has 10 MIRV warheads (throw-weight 1,200 pounds) and a range of 2,750 miles. But that is not all. Secretary of Defense Schlesinger has proposed (and Congress has approved) construction of a new submarine called the Trident. Each Trident will carry 24 MIRVed missiles with a range of 5,000 miles. In addition, there are plans to construct 244 new B-1 superbombers (at $42 million each), the B-1 being an improvement on the B-52s that were used against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the Christmas 1972 bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. The consequences of all this are obvious enough. Newsweek itself noted: "Even if the Soviet Union were to run the cataclysmic risk of a surprise first strike on American military installations and ICBM sites, enough of this air and sea armada would survive to devastate Russian population centers." Devastate is not the word for it. Forty-one submarines, each of which has sixteen missiles, means 656 missiles. Since each missile carries ten MIRVs, the total number of warheads in the submarine fleet is 6,560. It takes, according to Newsweek, 100 warheads to kill 100 million people. This means that the missiles in the present American submarine fleet carry sufficient warheads to kill 6, 560 million people, which is more than twice the total population of the planet. And this leaves aside the bombers in the air, the new bombers on the drawing board, and the new submarines being developed. So the argument that Soviet development of MIRVs would give the Soviet Union the possibility of making a crippling "first strike" on the United States is simply nonsense. MIRV or no MIRV, even at its present strength, U.S. imperialism would be able to respond to a Soviet first strike by killing everybody in the world -- twice. It is perhaps in order to admit that this constitutes a strong deterrent. The fact of the matter is that in terms of direct nuclear conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, firststrike capacity becomes real only if one country is able in the first strike to cripple the ability of the other country to respond. It is absolutely clear that the Soviet Union has no such ability to cripple American response, nor will it ever have that ability, nor is there the slightest sign that it is try-
21
SALT ing to obtain it. The American bombers that are constantly in the air cannot be eliminated by a Soviet first strike. The American submarine fleet, fully mobile and able to strike at the Soviet Union from distances of thousands of miles, could not be disabled by a Soviet first strike. Nor should it be forgotten that U.S. imperialism has a vast network of foreign bases -- some of them in countries that border on the Soviet Union itself -- that are equipped with planes that could retaliate against the Soviet Union even if the United States were totally eradicated by a Soviet first strike. All these things have been true throughout the Cold War, and they continue to be true in the era of "détente." Looking at the situation from the other direction, we come to rather different conclusions. The American offensive missiles, "smaller, " but "highly accurate" and equipped with multiple warheads, are suited to pin-point attacks on targets that are smaller than cities. Specifically, the attempt has been made to fashion missiles that could strike at Soviet missile sites, crippling the Soviet Union's ability to strike back or destroying concentrated industrial centers or other "limited' targets. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, before the extensive development of the Soviet missile-launching naval fleet, the Soviet Union was especially vulnerable to this sort of first strike. (One of the reasons for trenchant Soviet rejection of U.S. proposals for "on-site" inspection of nuclear installations during that period was undoubtedly Moscow's concern that the Soviet Union's vulnerability would be vastly increased if Washington were able to fix the exact location and extent of Soviet bases.) The constant American drive to develop increasingly accurate and virtually invulnerable offensive delivery systems of the MRV type is exactly a product of U.S. imperialism's attempt to endow itself with a first-strike capacity. In this regard it is of some interest that "scenarios" for "limited" nuclear war are once again being debated in the U.S. press. The April 22 issue of Newsweek described one such scenario. It postulates a Soviet seizure of West Berlin (so "the Russians" are clearly the aggressor), and describes a possible American response: "The President is determined to impress on the Russian leaders that he means business -- that they are risking nuclear war. He orders up a television picture of a hydroelectric plant in a remote Russian region. Satisfied that a mini-nuke blast there will cause minimum civilian casualties, he sends out the signal to launch a single ICBM. Then, on a TV screen in front of him, he watches as the hydroelectric plant is destroyed. "Impossible? Not at all. By the 1980s, the U.S. will have a network of stationary communications satellites, relay space stations and the Survsatcom (Survivable Satellite Communications) system capable of beaming back live television pictures to the President from any corner of the globe."
The difference in the strategy of the two countries is clear.
The nuclear arms race was initiated by U.S. imperialism, which at the beginning intended its nuclear monopoly to be the decisive factor in the establishment of Pax Americana
22 after the second world war. When the American nuclear monopoly was broken, Washington modified its tactics but retained its overall strategy, which was to endow itself with the possibility of making a first strike against the Soviet Union such that resort to nuclear weapons would always be a real policy option for imperialism. The United States therefore led the way in fields like supersonic bombers, missile-launching submarines, MRVs and their derivatives, and all other devices relying on large numbers of small but highly accurate missiles. The Soviet response was to develop massive warheads, some of them as large as 100 megatons, and gigantic missiles capable of delivering these warheads to the United States. While American technology was directed toward small, accurate, and diversified weaponry, Soviet technology was directed to perfecting awesome "doomsday" bombs. The two divergent directions were not taken as a result of temperament or aesthetic inclination. The American strategy corresponds to attempts to develop first-strike capacity. The Soviet strategy is based on developing means of destruction so massive that Washington would be deterred from a first strike by the certain knowledge that Soviet retaliation could destroy the whole United States. In every case, it has been the United States that has led the way in technological innovations escalating the arms race (missile-launching submarines, MRVs, etc.) with the Soviet Union simply trying to catch up. Then, the Soviet response would be followed by the next American technological development. It is this dynamic that is at the root of the nuclear arms race, and not a mutual attempt to overturn "the principle of parity" or the "balance of nuclear terror. " In this sense, continuation of the nuclear arms race in spite of the international "détente" is confirmation of the fact that whatever conjunctural agreements may be reached by Moscow and Washington based on the former's betrayal of the world revolution, the conflict between the American imperialist state and the Soviet workers state will persist. That conflict rests on the basic class difference between Soviet and American society. And it asserts itself not only in clashes over arms limitation agreements but in constant political and military maneuvering as both Moscow and Washington seek to extend their influence at the expense of the other. (The new
American penetration of the Arab East, conducted against the Soviet bureaucracy and to the Kremlin's obvious displeasure, and the continued failure of the Conference on European Security and Cooperation to produce results are two recent examples on widely disparate levels of the fundamental conflict of interest between the American and Soviet states.)
The "détente" has not eliminated that conflict; it has merely modified its form. In that sense, détente is but an extension of the Cold War of the 1950s and 1960s. The nuclear arms race -- instigated and intensified by imperialism's determination to preserve its military hegemony -- is thus as integral to the social system prevailing in the United States as racism or exploitation of wage labor. Until imperialism and capitalism are destroyed by the proletarian revolution, nuclear war, with all its threats to the survival of humanity, will remain a "thinkable" option in Washington.