DEFENSE: Second Thoughts on SALT I

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Under the terms of the freeze, the U.S. will be allowed to keep its 1,054 land-based ICBMS, plus another 710 missiles aboard 44 submarines. The Russians, meanwhile, are permitted 1,618 land-based ICBMS and another 950 missiles aboard the 62 submarines they are allowed under the agreement. (They now have 42 in existence or under construction.) The U.S. decision in the mid-1960s to perfect MIRV (multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle) warheads—still in the development stage in the Soviet Union—means that the U.S. has the edge in numbers of warheads. With as many as three MIRVed warheads packed atop each Minuteman III ICBM and ten to 14 on each Poseidon, the U.S. can deliver 5,700 separate warheads, v. 2,500 for the Soviet Union. But Brennan and other conservatives worry that the Soviets derive special advantages from superiority in numbers of missiles and sheer "throw weight," i.e. total payload, where the Soviets have a 400% advantage over the U.S. With that kind of numerical superiority, the conservative argument goes, a crisis like the Cuban missile confrontation might not play out nearly so favorably another time.

As Brennan sees it, the U.S. lag in numbers poses more tangible problems. If the Soviets could perfect their own MIRVS, they could mate them to their own much bigger boosters and quickly outstrip the U.S. in the warhead race. In theory, the huge new Soviet S59 missiles could be rigged to carry as many as 40 MiRVed warheads. Again in theory, that would give the Soviet force of about 300 SS-9s something like two or three times the punch power of the entire 1,000-missile Minuteman force.

Other analysts argue persuasively that it is useless to be as concerned about numbers as the conservatives are, simply because numbers do not mean much any more. "There is no such thing as superiority," says Adam Yarmolinsky, former Defense Department analyst. "Throw weight, megatonnage, boosters, who cares? What is relevant is that both sides now have enough deliverable damage-inflicting capacity." In this view, even the diplomatic impact of the size of a nuclear deterrent is open to question. Yarmolinsky argues that Cuba was not so much a lesson in the necessity of nuclear superiority as in non-nuclear superiority. It was a conventional naval quarantine, after all, that forced Khrushchev and Castro to back down.

THE ARMS RACE GOES ON. As even the Administration concedes, SALT I will not bring an end to the great postwar arms race. Instead, it will change the emphasis from quantity to quality and sophistication. The competition is already under way on both sides. In Moscow last May, Soviet officials made it plain to their American guests that they fully intend to go forward in categories not limited by the agreements, and few experts doubt that they can develop a full MIRV capability before the freeze runs out. By then, the Administration hopes to have a SALT II agreement that would include a ceiling on MIRVS. What if the Soviets begin to waffle on SALT II later on? The U.S. can then threaten to abandon its SALT I agreements.