What History Can Teach - Ricerca sull'intelligenza artificiale specializzata al MIT

What History Can Teach

James Cameron

Most analyses of arms control during the Cold War focus on its role in maintain-
ing strategic stability between the United States and the Soviet Union. Tuttavia,
history shows that the superpowers’ search for strategic stability is insufficient to ex-
plain the roots and course of negotiations. This essay argues that arms control was
used as one tool in a broader strategy of war prevention, designed to contain a series
of challenges to U.S. and Soviet dominance of the international system that both
sides worried could upset bipolarity and increase the chances of conflict between
them. Allo stesso tempo, NOI. policy-makers balanced this joint superpower inter-
est with Washington’s extended deterrent commitment to its allies, which ultimately
upheld the integrity of the system as a whole. The essay concludes that today’s lead-
ers should integrate arms control into a more comprehensive strategy of political ac-
commodation fit for twenty-first-century conditions.

I n the winter of 1985, Thomas Schelling was unhappy. Surveying the state of

arms control negotiations in an article published in Foreign Affairs, Schell-
ing argued that the enterprise had “gone off the tracks” since its heyday in
the early 1970s, diverging from his and many other arms control theorists’ un-
derstanding of its basic aim: to ensure strategic stability between the super-
powers. IL 1972 Interim Agreement on Strategic Offensive Arms and the Anti-
Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty had fit well with Schelling’s vision of arms control:
the former froze both sides at approximate parity in intercontinental ballistic mis-
sile (ICBM) and submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) launchers, making
a disarming first strike extremely difficult, if not impossible; the latter banned na-
tionwide missile defense systems, meaning that neither side could build an effec-
tive defense of its homeland, leaving both the United States and the Soviet Union
open to a devastating retaliatory second strike if either sought to attack the oth-
er. Fitting with much existing arms control theory and administration rhetoric in
support of the SALT I (Strategic Arms Limitations Talks) agreements, this strate-
gic stability based on both sides’ vulnerability to a massive retaliatory attack be-
came seen as the lodestar of superpower talks, establishing itself as a central point
of contention in an increasingly polarized debate between supporters and oppo-
nents of arms control over subsequent decades.1

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Yet since 1972, the effort to limit arms had not lived up to Schelling’s early
hopes. Arms control had gone off the rails, according to the strategist, because it
had neglected the greatest contemporary threat to strategic stability: the race in
technology. While Washington and Moscow argued over numbers of weapons,
they had failed to tackle destabilizing developments such as “warheads per target
point, readiness, speed of delivery, accuracy or recallability after launch,” which
had the potential to endanger Schelling’s vision by making a disarming first strike
theoretically more feasible.2 As several scholars have recently reminded us, Questo
technological arms race between Washington and Moscow continued through-
out the 1970s and the 1980s.3 If strategic stability was the fundamental aim of
talks–as both advocates and critics of the process generally assumed–then this
was a strange outcome indeed.

Recent scholarship can help unravel this mystery. Rather than exclusively pur-
suing strategic stability, research shows that during the 1960s and 1970s, NOI. Guida-
ers used arms control as one tool in the pursuit of a broader strategy to contain a se-
ries of international and domestic challenges they believed could upset the glob-
al balance of power and increase the risk of war. The first challenge was a growing
crisis over the future of Germany in a divided Europe. The superpower standoffs
over the status of Berlin in the late 1950s and early 1960s, culminating in the Cuban
missile crisis of 1962, impelled policy-makers to use arms control to manage the
cockpit of the Cold War. The second challenge related to what Lyndon B. Johnson’s
National Security Advisor Walt W. Rostow termed “the diffusion of power” away
from the industrialized North toward the decolonizing Global South.4 This diffu-
sion included nuclear technology, which had the potential to supercharge states’
quests for political independence by giving them the capability to counterbalance
the existing nuclear powers with their own arsenals, while increasing the risk that
regional conflicts could end in nuclear conflagration. The third challenge was the
growing restiveness throughout the Eastern and Western Blocs during the late
1960s with the costs of prosecuting the Cold War, a trend that historian Michael
Cotey Morgan has characterized as two “parallel crises of legitimacy” that under-
mined both superpowers’ standing at home and within their respective spheres
of influence.5 As a result of sustained diplomatic engagement, NOI. policy- makers
gradually realized that Moscow shared many of these anxieties regarding the fu-
ture of world politics, providing the foundation for cooperation. IL 1963 Limit-
ed Test Ban Treaty (LTBT), IL 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear
Weapons (NPT), and the 1972 SALT I agreements governing strategic arms were in
large part superpower responses designed to contain these three challenges, con-
stituting the foundation of today’s arms control regime. As international relations
scholar Hedley Bull noted at the time, these accords limited the chances of nuclear
war in a way that served the superpowers’ joint interest in maintaining “the exist-
ing distribution of power” within the international system.6

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149 (2) Spring 2020James Cameron

Yet, in the words of historian John D. Maurer, “arms control is not always a
cooperative enterprise”–indeed it could not be. Successive U.S. administrations
pursued these negotiations with a keen eye to how any resulting treaties would af-
fect their allies, balancing U.S.-Soviet joint interests with the need to maintain the
integrity of U.S. security guarantees. Reinforcement of the credibility of the U.S.
commitment to come to its allies’ defense often required military-technical in-
novations in the U.S. arsenal that ran counter to the strategic stability prescribed
by Schelling.7 By reassuring foreign governments and domestic critics that the
United States’ commitments still held in an era of negotiation, Tuttavia, these im-
provements to the U.S. nuclear arsenal had the effect of limiting allied incentives
to pursue their own nuclear forces, stabilizing the nonproliferation elements of
the nuclear order and hence the balance of power that the treaties were funda-
mentally designed to preserve. The United States thereby managed to retain the
credibility of its pledge to use nuclear weapons in defense of its allies, while at the
same time reducing the chances that it would have to do so.

This strategy was not foreordained and looks far clearer in hindsight than it
did at the time. It required incremental and committed diplomacy, growing slow-
ly out of what historian Marc Trachtenberg has described as “a web of under-
standings,” not only between the two superpowers, but also their allies, and at
times, other states within the system.8 If the United States wishes to adapt this re-
gime for a new multipolar order–and given the relative success of the first itera-
zione, it should do so–then it must continue to engage in a patient and sustained
dialogue with both old and new rivals, as well as allies and the nonaligned. Questo
will enable the United States to discover the emerging points of crisis, how those
interact with the military postures of the states involved, and the extent to which
arms control can help mediate the delicate balance between ensuring the joint
great-power interest in containing destabilizing threats, while at the same time
ensuring that the United States remains faithful to its security commitments. In
Da questa parte, arms control can act as one tool in a broader political process of accom-
modation that will help us to survive this century.9

F rom the late 1950s to the early 1960s, the world’s attention focused increas-

ingly on the developing superpower confrontation over Berlin. Deep with-
in East Germany, yet divided between American, British, French, and Sovi-
et occupying powers, the status of Berlin was an unresolved legacy of World War
II. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s 1958 E 1961 ultimatums demanding that
the Western powers withdraw from Berlin were widely interpreted as an attempt
to test the will of the United States to defend this outpost of capitalism. Tuttavia,
Trachtenberg has shown how the Berlin crises in fact stemmed from a toxic mix
of Soviet anxieties regarding the precarious division of Germany, unratified by
treaty, and the possibility that a future nuclear-armed Western Federal Republic

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(FRG) might press for revision of this tenuous status quo. Moscow’s pressure on
West Berlin, Trachtenberg argues, was a form of oblique Soviet signaling regard-
ing the danger of a revisionist, nuclear FRG–a signal that their Western interloc-
utors received and understood. A West German move toward an independent nu-
clear force, John F. Kennedy’s Secretary of State Dean Rusk observed, “might be
considered casus belli by the Soviets.”10

With this in mind, the easiest way to resolve the crisis would be to pressure the
FRG to forswear nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees. Whether
Bonn was genuinely interested in pursuing the nuclear option is still hotly con-
tested by scholars, but the FRG was not willing to unilaterally give up the nuclear
option, a course that West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer worried would
be the first step toward superpower-enforced neutrality. By mid-1961, President
Kennedy increasingly considered an agreement with the Soviets that would trade
Soviet guarantees of Western rights in Berlin for Bonn’s renunciation of any nu-
clear ambitions. Tuttavia, the administration remained unwilling to confront the
FRG directly on the nuclear issue given the fundamental West German security in-
terests involved.11

Only in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis was Kennedy able to face this
issue. The key was the change in the Soviet position. Khrushchev’s failure in Cuba
had persuaded him that a policy of confrontation had simply exhausted itself. In-
stead, the two powers attempted to come to an agreement that would place a lid on
the German nuclear question without isolating Bonn in a way that would lead it to
act unpredictably. The Limited Test Ban Treaty of August 1963, prohibiting atmo-
spheric nuclear testing and thus making any non-nuclear signatory’s efforts to de-
velop a deterrent far more difficult, was the answer. Exchanges between Kennedy
administration officials and the Soviets over the LTBT established an implicit link-
age: West Germany would have less incentive to nuclearize if West Berlin were
left untouched; allo stesso modo, Bonn would be wise to remain non-nuclear if it wished
to protect Berlin. Così, the Test Ban, according to Trachtenberg, “had come to
represent a whole web of understandings that lay just below the surface.”12

Bonn consented to this arrangement for a number of reasons. For Trachten-
berg, a combination of the FRG’s dependence on the United States and develop-
ments in West German domestic politics eventually compelled Adenauer to ac-
cept the LTBT. Nel frattempo, the United States deepened its public commitment
to the FRG’s security by agreeing, in Trachtenberg’s words, “to maintain a size-
able force in Germany on a more or less permanent basis.” This commitment em-
bedded West Germany’s forswearing of nuclear weapons even more profoundly:
any steps toward an independent deterrent would place this American pledge in
jeopardy. Così, the U.S. guarantee served both superpowers’ aim of keeping West
Germany non-nuclear, while ensuring Washington’s interest that the FRG remain
firmly embedded within NATO.13

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149 (2) Spring 2020James Cameron

Tuttavia, it is clear that a continued U.S. commitment to a nuclear edge over
the Soviet Union was also a key part of the American package. As the recipient of
briefings on U.S. war plans, Kennedy increasingly recognized the declining utility
of American nuclear superiority, such that at the time of the Test Ban’s signature,
he realized that a first strike on the Soviet Union could not meaningfully limit the
damage the Soviet Union could inflict on the United States in retaliation.14 Yet de-
spite this, nuclear superiority remained a key element of the American rhetorical
armory regarding the FRG, as well as at home. “The U.S. had succeeded in having its
way on Cuba, because it had superior conventional and nuclear forces,” Kennedy
told Adenauer in November 1962. It was therefore necessary, the president argued,
“to strengthen both Western conventional and nuclear forces, both in general and
particularly in regard to Berlin.”15 These arguments became even more impor-
tant as the Kennedy administration pushed the case for the LTBT. Secretary of De-
fense Robert S. McNamara argued to the Senate that, far from weakening Amer-
ican nuclear superiority, the Test Ban could in fact increase it because Washing-
ton was more proficient in the underground testing permitted under the treaty.
McNamara privately reassured Adenauer that the Test Ban had only been possi-
ble because of “the increased military power of the West” and that both the Unit-
ed States and the FRG should “continue to expand their forces” under its aegis.16
This commitment to some form of nuclear edge over the Soviets, even as Mos-
cow drew to effective parity in strategic launchers, would have long-term con-
sequences for Washington as it sought to push forward with arms control. IL
agreements themselves would help manage central issues of dispute, stabilize
superpower relations, and thereby reduce the chances of war. Tuttavia, succes-
sive administrations would continue to expand and then modernize their nucle-
ar forces. Domestically, further advances in the U.S. nuclear posture convinced
some skeptical hawks that the United States would still be able to defend its inter-
ests under the treaties; internationally, it was designed to reassure nervous allies
that Washington still had the capability and will to come to their defense. This ne-
cessity of the broader political settlement introduced just the kind of technology-
driven instabilities feared by Schelling.17

T he case of West Germany highlighted another issue: the spread of nuclear

technology beyond the reach of the superpowers. While the FRG had been
contained somewhat by the LTBT, nuclear proliferation remained a cause
of increasing superpower anxiety. McNamara estimated that, in addition to West
Germany, as many as seven countries could go nuclear in the near term: the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China, India, Japan, Australia, South Africa, Sweden, and Israel.18
The prospect of further nuclear proliferation held the potential to supercharge
the other major geopolitical development of the postwar years, besides the Cold
War: the quest of former colonies for political independence. As historian Francis

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J. Gavin has argued, NOI. policy-makers had been opponents of proliferation since
the dawn of the nuclear age because of its “power-equalizing effects,” which could
help states resist pressure from Washington and increase the risk of a premeditat-
ed or accidental nuclear conflagration.19 A proliferated world would present Amer-
ican power with dangerous choices. NOI. intervention in a regional nuclear con-
frontation involving a Soviet ally could lead to a chain reaction ending in a U.S.-
Soviet war. Yet American refusal to involve itself in a regional nuclear crisis, Direc-
tor of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency John Foster worried, could lead
to “a renunciation of [U.S.] commitments and involvement all over the world.”20
The Chinese nuclear test in October 1964 forced policy-makers to fully come
to grips with this reality. Kennedy’s National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy
had described a Chinese bomb as “the greatest single threat to the status quo over
the next few years.” Yet Washington struggled to deter Beijing from pursuing
nuclear weapons and rejected the possibility of a preventive strike.21 The PRC’s
test proved that a country that the CIA considered “near the margin of bare sub-
sistence” could produce the ultimate weapon, setting a precedent for others.22
A committee chaired by former Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric
feared that without a change in course, Washington’s influence would wane in
Asia and the Middle East as regional powers such as India and the United Arab Re-
public went nuclear, ultimately weakening U.S. sway over Europe. If states in the
Global South developed nuclear weapons, the committee concluded, it would be
“unrealistic to hope that Germany and other European countries” would not do
the same, despite the implicit bargain of the LTBT. The spread of nuclear weap-
ons thus not only represented a major threat to international security, but also a
menace to the United States’ global military and political reach.23 Moscow shared
these anxieties. “As the world’s other superpower,” historian Hal Brands has ar-
gued, “the Soviet Union would find its influence diminished and security chal-
lenged by proliferation no less than would the United States.” This indeed seemed
to be the case as the Kremlin began to indicate through both public and private
channels that it was also concerned with the spread of nuclear weapons.24

This joint superpower interest in nonproliferation had to be reconciled with
NOI. security commitments. President Lyndon B. Johnson was cautious about
abandoning plans for a multilateral force (MLF)–a fleet of missile-armed ships
with multinational crews, controlled by a council of participating states–which
was designed to balance West Germany’s demand for a role in NATO’s nuclear op-
erations with the U.S. desire to maintain a veto over use. Only further evidence
that India was moving toward development of a nuclear weapon in the wake of
continued Chinese testing finally convinced both superpowers to compromise in
the second half of 1966. The Kremlin consented to the U.S. pursuit of a “software
solution” for NATO involving permanent West German membership of a consul-
tative mechanism on Alliance nuclear issues, the Nuclear Planning Group, E

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149 (2) Spring 2020James Cameron

permitted the MLF to die quietly rather than be disavowed publicly as a precon-
dition of a nonproliferation agreement. Allo stesso tempo, the United States pros-
ecuted a policy that international security scholar Daniel Khalessi has described
as “strategic ambiguity” with regard to existing NATO nuclear sharing–under
which allied personnel were trained to deliver U.S. manufactured and controlled
nuclear weapons in wartime–loosening the language of Articles I and II of the
NPT in a way that did not prohibit this arrangement. In late 1966, the Soviet Union
stopped pushing the United States for more specific wording that would explicitly
ban NATO nuclear sharing. As such, both sides compromised in order to manage
their joint fear of a proliferated world. With these obstacles removed, the path to
IL 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty became easier.25

Considerable challenges remained, not least persuading most of the world’s
states to sign a treaty to forswear nuclear weapons. A key element of this cam-
paign was supposedly the so-called bargain, whereby states would give up nuclear
arms in exchange for peaceful nuclear technology and a commitment to disarma-
ment by the nuclear powers. Yet research by political scientist Dane Swango has
shown that linkage between adherence to the treaty and peaceful nuclear cooper-
ation was not as strong as commonly assumed: the NPT allowed states to continue
to work on civil nuclear projects with nonsignatories, while Washington was wary
of extending more help to NPT parties or cutting assistance to significant hold-
outs, such as Brazil.26 Similarly, as international security scholar Matthew Har-
ries has noted, the commitment to disarmament was highly qualified. Crucially,
the final treaty did not mandate specific arms-reduction steps. Invece, Article VI
of the NPT committed all dates to merely pursue–rather than conclude–“effec-
tive measures relating to” disarmament. Such language reflected “the core reali-
ty” that, “for a decisive number of [non-nuclear] stati, those aspirations [to dis-
armament] were not worth sacrificing the mutual security benefit that an NPT
would provide.” Instead, the language was designed “to offset the psychological
effect of accepting ‘second-class’ status” by being able to show that the treaty rep-
resented “a positive policy of peace, rather than a passive acceptance of inferior-
ity.” At the same time, through provisions for a review conference and language
contextualizing it within a broader disarmament push, the NPT established a po-
litical process that “would allow non-nuclear-weapon states to continue to make
the case for [a disarmed] world.” It was this compromise that allowed the central
element of the nonproliferation regime to come into being.27

Containing the diffusion of power was not entirely successful, nor was it cost-
free. The NPT entered into force in March 1970, but several important regional
powers refused to sign, most notably India–on which much superpower atten-
tion had centered–but also Pakistan, Brasile, Israel, and South Africa. Of the five
recognized nuclear states, France and China did not endorse it for decades. IL
FRG did not ratify it until 1975. This was indicative of a broader distrust. Despite

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their acquiescence, many West and East European governments remained wary
of the way the two superpowers had cooperated to preserve their dominance of
global politics at the expense of their allies’ military options. While states varied
in their responses to the NPT, both signatories and nonsignatories worried that it
presaged a new superpower condominium and looked for ways to maintain their
room for political maneuver.28

T he increasing restiveness of the superpowers’ close allies formed one half

of what Morgan has termed the “parallel crises of legitimacy” that afflict-
ed both the East and the West in the later 1960s. Both the United States
and the Soviet Union had to deal with newly independent foreign policies from al-
lies that had previously been relatively quiescent. While France had initiated an
independent course earlier in the decade, from 1966 as West German foreign min-
ister and 1969 as chancellor, Willy Brandt pursued a strategy designed to secure
“peace in the fullest sense of the word” through human contacts across the Iron
Curtain, a posture that U.S. policy-makers feared presaged a greater shift to inde-
pendence than was in fact the case. This process was paralleled in Eastern Europe
within stricter limits. In August 1968, Moscow moved decisively to crush Czecho-
slovakia’s bid for greater independence during the Prague Spring, but East Ger-
many, Poland, and Romania all became more assertive in pressing their economic
and political autonomy within the Eastern Bloc.29

As the 1960s progressed, the perception that Washington and Moscow had
reached some approximate balance of terror diminished fears of a superpower
clash, opening space for new policies on the part of West European states and rais-
ing questions about how to move beyond the existing stalemate. This new situ-
ation exacerbated military questions for Washington. During the early 1960s,
the United States had relied on its significant nuclear superiority over the Soviet
Union to project an image of confidence in the crises over Cuba and Berlin, lend-
ing credibility to U.S. pledges to come to the defense of NATO. Tuttavia, by the
end of the decade, the Soviet Union was engaged in a huge strategic nuclear build-
su, expanding its arsenal of ICBMs rapidly in an effort to reach nuclear parity.30 By
1967, NOI. diplomats worried that the Soviet buildup would “lead many in Europe
to fresh questioning of whether the U.S. would go to war on Europe’s behalf,"
with the erosion of Washington’s “ability to limit damage” to itself in a nucle-
ar war further accelerating “the erosion of the trans-Atlantic relationship which
is already in train.” American policy-makers thought this could ultimately lead
West European states to safeguard their security through independent accommo-
dation with Moscow, as some worried Brandt was doing, or by developing an in-
dependent nuclear capability in the French manner.31

The new president shared these anxieties regarding the credibility of Amer-
ica’s security commitments. Richard Nixon agreed that under conditions of

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strategic nuclear parity, the U.S. policy of “flexible response” to defend Western
Europe, carried over from the Kennedy-Johnson era, was “baloney.” Johnson had
left Nixon with the option of talks with the Soviet Union on the limitation of stra-
tegic armaments. Moscow had rejected Johnson’s overtures for substantive dis-
cussions until late in his term, but now it became increasingly interested in nego-
tiations in order, according to historian Vladislav Zubok, “to convert the growing
power of the Soviet Union into the coin of international diplomacy and prestige.”
Tuttavia, Nixon wanted to ensure that the United States had as many programs as
possible underway to bargain with. The Soviets had “closed the gap” and “contin-
ue to increase” in strategic arms, Nixon wrote to National Security Advisor Hen-
ry Kissinger, and “they want to talk. . . . We must see that the gap is not widened
on the other side.” Nixon wanted Congress to authorize funds for an anti-Soviet
missile defense system so the United States would have sufficient leverage to se-
cure a halt to the Soviet offensive buildup. Strategic arms talks could thereby pre-
vent the nuclear balance from tipping further against Washington, undermining
its commitment to Western Europe, and deepening the crisis of U.S. legitimacy
within the transatlantic community.32

Yet it was the domestic crisis of legitimacy that had the most direct impact on
Nixon’s approach to arms control. Upheaval within the United States stemming
from U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia had already brought down one
president, and during the 1968 presidential election Nixon had pledged to bring
“an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.” Initially, Nixon and Kissinger planned
to use the possibility of nuclear talks to entice Moscow into pressuring North
Vietnam into coming to terms. As Nixon’s first year progressed, Tuttavia, it be-
came increasingly clear that this anti-Vietnam backlash was growing into a revolt
against the militarized containment of communism. One of the early targets of
this backlash was Nixon’s ABM program, which became the focus of intense de-
bate in the Senate. Criticized for its expense and technical infeasibility, funding for
the system passed the upper chamber in August 1969 by a margin of one. Designed
to fortify Nixon’s hand at the upcoming strategic arms limitation talks, ABM be-
came emblematic of how difficult it would be to launch new nuclear programs to
offset future Soviet forces if Moscow did not sign a strategic arms agreement.33

In these unpropitious circumstances, SALT stalled, with the Soviets advocat-
ing for a treaty limiting technologically advanced U.S. ABM systems, but pressing
for concessions on offensive forces that were unacceptable to Washington. By late
1970, Nixon’s strategy was in danger of failure. It was far easier to identify the Viet-
nam War as the root of Washington’s travails than to find a way out of it, short
of capitulation. Pressure on Hanoi and Moscow, including conventional bombing,
operations in Cambodia, and a secret alert of U.S. nuclear forces, had produced lit-
tle.34 Nor was there much to report on the administration’s attempts to reach out
to the People’s Republic of China, with progress frozen until the spring of 1971.

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Needing a breakthrough on at least one issue, the White House accelerated talks on
strategic arms as a way to show that Nixon’s strategy of peace was delivering tan-
gible results. The framework agreement of May 20, 1971, was the outcome: Wash-
ington and Moscow would sign a treaty on ABM systems–the area of greatest So-
viet concern–combined with “certain measures” regarding strategic offensive
arms. This resulted in a permanent ABM Treaty, limiting both sides to two ground-
based defensive missile sites each, and a five-year Interim Agreement on Strate-
gic Offensive Arms that froze U.S. and Soviet land-based ICBM launchers at 1,056
E 1,618, with SLBM launchers capped at 656 E 740, rispettivamente, O 710 E 950,
all on modern submarines, if older SLBM and ICBM launchers were dismantled.35
Nixon signed the SALT I agreements with great fanfare at the Moscow Summit
of May 1972, yet was criticized by former supporters, such as Washington Sena-
tor Henry M. Jackson, who believed he had given away too much. Nixon private-
ly shared many of his critics’ doubts, but given congressional opposition to new
programs in the face of the Soviet buildup, it was the best deal available. The pres-
ident lamented the American public’s loss of will, which he saw as endangering
Washington’s extended deterrent guarantee. “The real question is whether the
Americans give a damn anymore,” Nixon reflected a few weeks before he signed
SALT I. “No president could risk New York to save Tel Aviv or Bonn.” Despite
his upcoming meeting with Brezhnev at which he would conclude the first U.S.-
Soviet strategic arms agreements, Nixon believed that ultimately, it was only U.S.
“strength” that prevented “the world” from “becoming entirely communist.”36

While he found the post-Vietnam backlash against militarized containment
distressing, Nixon understood that the “peace issue,” as he called it, was an un-
avoidable feature of the domestic political landscape. Gearing up for his reelec-
tion campaign, on his return from Moscow, Nixon argued that the agreements
strengthened peace for both sides by limiting the arms race, adapting Schelling’s
arguments for a broader audience. To a joint session of Congress, Nixon claimed
that the accords “enhanced the security of both nations” by limiting an arms race
that was both “wasteful and dangerous.” Adopting the rhetoric of the arms con-
trollers, Nixon argued that the agreements “reduce[D] the level of fear by reduc-
ing the causes of fear, for our two peoples and for all peoples in the world.”37 The
situation in Central Europe reinforced the sense that the world was indeed en-
tering a new era. Instead of using nuclear parity to reopen the question of Ber-
lin, Moscow opted for diplomacy, signing the Four Power Agreement regulating
the situation in Berlin and the Treaty of Moscow on Germany’s postwar borders.
Just as U.S. quantitative superiority in strategic launchers receded into the past, so
seemingly did one of its primary justifications: to maintain the status quo in Cen-
tral Europe through the credible threat of force.38

Yet at the same time, as the president publicly advocated for arms control
based on stability, the Nixon administration continued to press ahead in areas

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unconstrained by SALT I. The United States had conceded a Soviet margin in
numbers of strategic offensive missile launchers, but the administration argued
that Washington would still retain a lead in warheads, with around 3,200 multiple
independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) after the Interim Agreement
expired in 1977. The United States also pressed ahead with developmental stud-
ies for a next-generation MX ICBM, the new Trident submarine-launched ballistic
missile, and the B-1 bomber. In part, this was to build support for the agreements
among Nixon’s traditional conservative base, but also to secure the approval of
the Department of Defense. Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird was adamant
that such improvements were essential for the United States to maintain the cred-
ibility of its security commitments. As Maurer has recently argued, through this
combination of arms control and new programs, the Nixon administration was
able to defuse much of the post-Vietnam animus against strategic arms and cap
Soviet offensive forces, while channeling the superpower arms race into an area
of traditional American strength: technology.39

Given the reality of mutual vulnerability, the military significance of this tech-
nological edge was highly contestable, yet successive U.S. administrations be-
lieved it was important. According to political scientists Austin Long and Bren-
dan Green, some American policy-makers entertained the idea of using these new
capabilities to limit damage in a nuclear war. They also saw them as symbolically
significant, calculating, in the words of Long and Green, “that the nuclear balance
would shape the political choices of other states–the Soviet Union, NATO allies,
and third parties–even in an era of nuclear plenty.” Even if superpower politics
had moved beyond the crises of the early 1960s, the Nixon, Ford, and Carter ad-
ministrations held on to the belief that they needed to push forward with techno-
logical innovation in order to maintain the integrity of the U.S. security guaran-
tee to NATO. NOI. leaders recognized that this technological advantage may have
been more valuable as a symbol of American power than for its military effec-
tiveness, but in a balance characterized by arsenals of almost unimaginable de-
structiveness, perception was perhaps more important in maintaining allied con-
fidence than the reality. As Nixon put it to the National Security Council, “to our
allies and the public, appearances matter.” According to State Department offi-
cial Seymour Weiss, “We told [the allies] we were qualitatively superior. We can’t
now say that that doesn’t make any difference.”40

The Nixon administration and its successors therefore struck a delicate but en-
during balance between the imperatives of arms control and the requirements of
extended deterrence. As such, successive administrations have been criticized for
both going too far in institutionalizing a militarily unwise and immoral posture of
“mutual assured destruction” (or MAD) through arms talks and at the same time
doing too little to stop the self-defeating action-reaction cycle that left both Mos-
cow and Washington running an interminable and destabilizing technological

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race, as if they were “apes on a treadmill.”41 Yet moving toward an exclusive reli-
ance on either arms control or arms racing was fraught with dangers. The feared
political consequences of conceding the technological race to the Soviets were
large. Without a credible story to tell about the validity of extended deterrence
to domestic and international audiences, the U.S. commitment to NATO could be
called into question, leading allies to take a more neutral stance between East and
West, or even reopening arguments regarding the need for an autonomous Euro-
pean deterrent, which would endanger the global nonproliferation regime and un-
dermine the entire arms control edifice that had been built since the early 1960s.
The dilemmas of maintaining allied confidence were brought home with the So-
viet deployment of the SS-20 intermediate-range ballistic missile in the 1970s.
“Periodic reassurances” to West Germany, the State Department argued, “have
always been necessary” because “the Germans may never be wholly satisfied with
American nuclear guarantees.” However, any U.S. counter-deployment to re-
assure Western Europe also needed to be combined with arms control, to mini-
mize political controversy and maintain “stable East-West relations.”42 NATO re-
sponded with the 1979 dual-track decision, balancing missile deployments with
the offer of talks.

Moving to greater reliance on arms racing at the expense of arms control held
its own disruptive potential. When the Reagan administration appeared to be do-
ing so in its early years, the resulting antinuclear protests in both the United States
and Western Europe played a role in the White House’s shift to greater engage-
ment with the Soviet leadership while maintaining its modernization efforts.43
This tradition of balance endured in the Obama White House’s approach to New
START, at once cutting U.S. and Russian strategic forces to their lowest levels in
decades while, at the same time, laying out a comprehensive plan for the tech-
nological overhaul of the U.S. arsenal. Così, the “character” of U.S. weapons de-
velopment, criticized by Schelling as endangering strategic stability, played and
continues to play an important role in holding together the broader security order
that American arms control efforts are ultimately designed to preserve.

B y the early 1970s, the foundations of today’s arms control regime had

emerged. Over the preceding decade, Washington had crafted a network
of treaties that helped to contain the disruptive potential of the German
question and the spread of nuclear arms. The United States had also struck stra-
tegic limitation agreements with its superpower rival that saw off the domestic
backlash against militarized containment in the United States while capping the
Soviet offensive buildup. Allo stesso tempo, these agreements preserved Ameri-
can freedom to develop increasingly effective nuclear weapons, helping to reas-
sure its allies that it would still come to their defense, thereby stemming demand
for independent deterrents and strengthening barriers against proliferation. As

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come, arms control has proven an extremely useful tool in managing the manifold
dilemmas that nuclear weapons pose to the United States’ relations with adver-
saries, allies, and nonaligned states, as well as its domestic politics. Given this, Esso
would be wise for Washington to seek the preservation of this network of treaties
for as long as possible. Any steps to modify it should be taken in a way that does
not jeopardize these enduring benefits.

The extent to which the current regime can be extended to stabilize the new
multipolar era of great power relations is an open question. China defines its
strength far more by its economic reach and conventional military than by its nu-
clear arsenal, presenting a fundamental challenge to those who argue it should
join strategic arms control talks as befits its growing status. It also reminds us of
Hedley Bull’s dictum that “arms control is concerned chiefly with only one dimen-
sion of world order, viz. peace and security” and it would be foolhardy to “saddle it
with responsibility for every dimension.”44 If arms control does not adapt to take
account of China’s growing military strength, Tuttavia, it will lose its former level
of effectiveness as a tool for managing the security dimension of great-power re-
lations. Given the success that U.S. policy-makers have enjoyed in using arms con-
trol as a tool to uphold both American influence and global security, it is impera-
tive that they try.

As well as underscoring the value of arms control and the risk of tearing up es-
tablished pacts in search of the perfect agreement, history should teach policy-
makers to look beyond formulae for strategic stability to other ways in which arms
control can help to contain disruptive challenges to the balance of power and min-
imize the chances of war. Identification of these challenges, the joint interest in
managing them, and the military-technical and diplomatic measures that can be
taken to do so can only be achieved through the maintenance of sustained dia-
logue on the full range of issues confronting the major powers. This great-power
exercise in threat management should be balanced with engagement with allies
to find the compromises necessary to ensure the continued credibility of U.S. se-
curity guarantees and thereby broaden the domestic political coalition in favor of
agreement.45 This will be a piecemeal process, progressing in fits and starts, often
in response to immediate crises, in a manner that will appear clearer in retrospect
than it did at the time. The results will inevitably be imperfect, failing to satisfy
fully any domestic political tribe or state within the system, but history teaches us
that the sustained and patient elaboration and maintenance of such a web of un-
derstandings is our best hope to avoid catastrophe.

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author’s note

The author would like to thank Susan Colbourn, Francis J. Gavin, Jonathan Hunt,
Benoît Pelopidas, Scott D. Sagan, Heather Williams, Robert Legvold, Christopher
Chyba, and the fellow contributors to this volume for their comments and sugges-
zioni. He is grateful to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for its
support.

about the author

James Cameron is a Research Associate in the Department of War Studies at
King’s College London and an affiliate of the Oslo Nuclear Project at the Universi-
ty of Oslo. He is the author of The Double Game: The Demise of America’s First Missile De-
fense System and the Rise of Strategic Arms Limitation (2018).

endnotes

1 Thomas C. Schelling, “What Went Wrong with Arms Control?” Foreign Affairs 64 (2)
(1985/86): 219–233; and John D. Maurer, “The Purposes of Arms Control,” Texas Na-
tional Security Review 2 (1) (2018), http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/870.

2 Schelling, “What Went Wrong with Arms Control?" 227. On the contested development
of thinking on stability, see Benjamin T. Wilson, “Insiders and Outsiders: Nuclear
Arms Control Experts in Cold War America” (Ph.D. diss., Massachusetts Institute of
Tecnologia, 2014), 49–107.

3 Austin Long and Brendan Rittenhouse Green, “Stalking the Secure Second Strike: Intel-
ligence, Counterforce, and Nuclear Strategy,” Journal of Strategic Studies 38 (1–2) (2015):
38–73; John D. Maurer, “The Forgotten Side of Arms Control: Enhancing U.S. Com-
petitive Advantage, Offsetting Enemy Strengths,” War on the Rocks, Giugno 27, 2018,
https://warontherocks.com/2018/06/the-forgotten-side-of-arms-control-enhancing
-u-s-competitive-advantage-offsetting-enemy-strengths/; and Niccolò Petrelli and
Giordana Pulcini, “Nuclear Superiority in the Age of Parity: NOI. Planning, Intelligenza
Analysis, Weapons Innovation and the Search for a Qualitative Edge, 1969–1976,” The
International History Review 40 (5) (2018): 1191–1209.

4 Jonathan Hunt, “Introduction: ‘A Peace That Is No Peace,’” Atomic Reaction: The Spread of
Nuclear Weapons and America’s New Global Mission, 1945–1970 (draft book manuscript).
5 Michael Cotey Morgan, The Final Act: The Helsinki Accords and the Transformation of the Cold

War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2018), 253.

6 Hedley Bull, “Arms Control and World Order,” International Security 1 (1) (1976): 3–16;
and Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente (Cambridge,
Massa.: Stampa dell'Università di Harvard, 2003), 1–6, 213–265.

7 Maurer, “Purposes of Arms Control”; Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long,
“The Geopolitical Origins of U.S. Hard-Target-Kill Counterforce Capabilities and
MIRVs,” in The Lure and Pitfalls of MIRVs: From the First to the Second Nuclear Age, ed. Mi-
chael Krepon, Travis Wheeler, and Shane Mason (Washington, D.C.: Stimson Center,
2016), 19–53.

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8 Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement (Princeton,

N.J.: Princeton, Stampa universitaria, 1999), 390.

9 Marc Trachtenberg, “The Past and Future of Arms Control,” Dædalus 120 (1) (Inverno

1991): 203–216.

10 Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace, 251–256, 305.
11 Gene Gerzhoy, “Alliance Coercion and Nuclear Restraint: How the United States Thwart-
ed West Germany’s Nuclear Ambitions,” International Security 39 (4) (2015): 91–129;
Andreas Lutsch, “The Persistent Legacy: Germany’s Place in the Nuclear Order,” Nu-
clear Proliferation International History Project Working Paper No. 5 (Washington,
D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2015); and Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace, 280–282, 327–342.
12 Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace, 380–391.
13 Ibid., 394–402.
14 Fred Kaplan, “JFK’s First-Strike Plan,” The Atlantic, ottobre 2001, https://www.the
atlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/10/jfks-first-strike-plan/376432/; Scott D. Sa-
gan, “SIOP-62: The Nuclear War Plan Briefing to President Kennedy,” International Secu-
rity 12 (1) (1987): 22–51; and Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace, 295–297, 317–318.

15 “Memorandum of Large-Group Meeting of FRG Chancellor Adenauer and U.S. President
Kennedy, Washington,” November 14, 1962, History and Public Policy Program Digi-
tal Archive, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, https://digitalarchive
.wilsoncenter.org/document/115399.

16 NOI. Embassy to Department of State, “Secretary McNamara’s Conversation with Chan-
cellor Adenauer,” August 2, 1963, in The Making of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, 1958–1963,
ed. William Burr and Hector L. Montford (Washington, D.C.: National Security Ar-
chive, 2003), https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB94/; and James Cameron,
The Double Game: The Demise of America’s First Missile Defense System and the Rise of Strategic
Arms Limitation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 43–44.

17 Francis J. Gavin, “Strategies of Inhibition: NOI. Grand Strategy, the Nuclear Revolution,
and Nuclear Nonproliferation,” International Security 40 (1) (2015): 33; Long and Green,
“Stalking the Secure Second Strike,” 38–73; Maurer, “The Forgotten Side of Arms Con-
trol”; Maurer, “Purposes of Arms Control”; and Petrelli and Pulcini, “Nuclear Superi-
ority in an Age of Parity,” 1191–1209.

18 Moeed Yusuf, “Predicting Proliferation: The History of the Future of Nuclear Weapons,"
Foreign Policy at Brookings Policy Paper No. 11 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institu-
zione, 2009), 15.

19 Gavin, “Strategies of Inhibition,” 9–46.
20 Jonathan Hunt, “The Birth of an International Community: Negotiating the Treaty on
the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” in Foreign Policy Breakthroughs: Cases in Suc-
cessful Diplomacy, ed. Robert Hutchings and Jeremi Suri (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2015), 80.

21 Francis J. Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 2018), 78; and Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace, 383–386.

22 Cameron, The Double Game, 68.

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23 Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft, 82; and “Report by the Committee on Nuclear Proliferation,"
Gennaio 21, 1965, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XI, Arms Control
and Disarmament, ed. Evans Gerakas, David S. Patterson, and Carolyn B. Yee (Washing-
ton, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1997), https://history.state.gov/
historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v11/d64.

24 Hal Brands, “Non-Proliferation and the Dynamics of the Middle Cold War: The Super-
powers, the MLF, and the NPT,” Cold War History 7 (3) (2007): 402–403; and Andrew J.
Coe and Jane Vaynman, “Collusion and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime,” The
Journal of Politics 77 (4) (2015): 983–997.

25 Brands, “Non-Proliferation and the Dynamics of the Middle Cold War,” 404–408;
Daniel Khalessi, “Strategic Ambiguity: Nuclear Sharing and the Secret Strategy for
Drafting Articles I and II of the Nonproliferation Treaty,” The Nonproliferation Review
22 (3–4) (2015): 421–439; and Mohamed I. Shaker, The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty:
Origin and Implementation, 1959–1979, vol. 1 (London: Oceana Publications, 1980), 129–
189, 214–249.

26 Dane Swango, “The United States and the Role of Nuclear Co-Operation and Assistance
in the Design of the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” The International History Review 36 (2)
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27 Matthew Harries, “The Role of Article VI in Debates About the Nuclear Non-Prolifera-
tion Treaty” (Ph.D. diss., King’s College London, 2013), 90, 97–141; and Mohamed I.
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(London: Oceana Publications, 1980), 555–648.

28 Brands, “Non-Proliferation and the Dynamics of the Middle Cold War,” 409–410.
29 Morgan, Final Act, 27–32, 67–72.
30 Cameron, The Double Game, 110.
31 Morgan, Final Act, 21–27, 67–74; and U.S. Department of State, “A Study of U.S.- Soviet
Military Relationships 1957–1976: Foreign Policy Implications,” December 18, 1967,
Tab B and C, NOI. Nuclear History: Nuclear Arms and Policy in the Missile Age, 1955–1968,
Digital National Security Archive.

32 Cameron, The Double Game, 79–106, 110–111; James Cameron, “Moscow, 1972,” in Tran-
scending the Cold War: Summits, Statecraft, and the Dissolution of Bipolarity in Europe, 1970–
1990, ed. Kristina Spohr and David Reynolds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016),
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Union and the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill: Università della Carolina del Nord
Press, 2007), 207.

33 William Burr and Jeffrey Kimball, “Nixon’s Secret Nuclear Alert: Vietnam War Diplo-
macy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Readiness Test,” Cold War History 3 (2) (2003): 116;
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34 Burr and Kimball, “Nixon’s Secret Nuclear Alert,” 113–156; and Scott D. Sagan and
Jeremi Suri, “The Madman Nuclear Alert: Secrecy, Signaling, and Safety in October
1969,” International Security 27 (4) (2003): 150–183.

35 Cameron, The Double Game, 136–160; “Interim Agreement between the United States and
the Soviet Union,” May 26, 1972, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume
XXXII, SALT I, ed. Erin R. Mahan (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Print-
ing Office, 2010), https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v32/d317;

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36 Cameron, The Double Game, 158–159; Henry Kissinger, The White House Years (Boston: Little,
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37 Cameron, The Double Game, 137, 160; Richard Nixon, “Address to a Joint Session of the
Congress on Return From Austria, the Soviet Union, Iran, and Poland,” June 1, 1972,
available at the American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/
node/254910.

38 Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft, 72–73.
39 Cameron, The Double Game, 158–159; Maurer, “The Forgotten Side of Arms Control”;
Maurer, “Purposes of Arms Control”; and Petrelli and Pulcini, “Nuclear Superiority in
an Age of Parity," 1200.

40 Green and Long, “The Geopolitical Origins of U.S. Hard-Target-Kill Counterforce Capa-

bilities and MIRVs,” 20–24, 33–34, 41–47.

41 Donald G. Brennan, “Strategic Alternatives I," Il New York Times, May 24, 1971; and Paul

C. Warnke, “Apes on a Treadmill,” Foreign Policy 18 (1975): 12–29.

42 Richard A. Ericson Jr. and George H. Vest to Cyrus Vance, “SCC Meeting on PRM-38,
August 23,” August 16, 1978, Thirtieth Anniversary of NATO’s Dual-Track Decision: The Road
to the Euromissiles Crisis and the End of the Cold War, ed. William Burr (Washington, D.C.:
National Security Archive, 2009), https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb301.
43 William M. Knoblauch, Nuclear Freeze in a Cold War: The Reagan Administration, Cultural Activ-
ism, and the End of the Arms Race (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2017).

44 Bull, “Arms Control and World Order," 13.
45 Maurer, “Purposes of Arms Control.”

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