Upsetting a Delicate Balance

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Experts within the Government were initially doubtful, and many of them remain so. Technicians believe it unlikely that an impenetrable defense is feasible, and theoreticians question whether a nuclear-free world is even desirable. They point out that other countries, including some notably reckless ones in the Third World, could not be counted on to adhere to a nuclear-weapons ban sponsored by the superpowers. What is more, if the superpowers were released from the suicide pact of nuclear deterrence, they might be more likely to get into a conventional war. Since the knowledge of how to build nuclear weapons would still exist, it might then be only a matter of time before one or both superpowers rebuilt a nuclear arsenal. Finally, many students of the Soviet system and mentality believe that Kremlin leaders will never give up their ultimate weapons, since military strength is both the symbol and substance of their power, and the major compensation for their many weaknesses.

In short, these skeptics say, the genie is out of the bottle; it is a MAD world--like it or not. That was the reply of the State Department when, during Reagan's first term, the White House requested a secret study on the elimination of nuclear weapons. The President, however, resisted the conclusion of the report and demanded that the goal of a nuclear-free world be made a centerpiece of his arms-control policy. That presidential imperative was politically brilliant. It allowed Reagan to escape from the corner into which critics on his left had tried to paint him. No longer could they accuse him of being "against" arms control. He could go them one better, outflanking the arms-freeze movement and matching the nuclear abolitionists. Star Wars, if it worked, would even be a "cure" for nuclear winter.

Reagan's determination to exorcise the demons of Alamogordo and Hiroshima explains the insistence in the strategic concept that defenses too must be nonnuclear. Some of Reagan's own Star Wars planners privately feel that the language of the document is too restrictive, since some possible schemes for S.D.I. would require nuclear explosions in order to work (see following story). While Reagan takes seriously the goal of a nuclear-free world, most members of his Government still do not. "It's there in our rhetoric because the President wants it there, and he's the boss," says a Pentagon official who is an advocate of Star Wars but not a believer in the elimination of nuclear weapons. "We're worried not so much about how to get from here to that pie in the sky, but how to get from here to the 21st century in one piece."

The strategic concept has an answer to that question, a highly problematic one. The document envisions a "period of transition," starting around 1995, during which both sides would still have their offensive nuclear missiles. Those weapons would be protected by a latter-day version of ABMs called ballistic missile defense, or BMD. If American missiles and command centers were effectively guarded with radar-guided interceptors and death rays that could destroy incoming warheads, the Soviet Union would never be tempted to think that it could disarm and decapitate the U.S. with a pre-emptive strike. In principle, the Soviets could have a similar system.