The great ABM debate

DEFENCE LAURENCE W. MARTIN

Professor Martin's two articles in the SPECTATOR last year (25 November and 2 December) gave the first full account in the British press of the development of the anti-missile missile. In this further article he discusses the crucial strategic implications which are now emerging.

When public debate about the implications of improved technical possibilities for defence against missiles began belatedly in this country last year, the vast majority of opinion, both official and private, took up quickly and some- what unreflectively a position of strong hostility to any form of anti-ballistic missile defence. Meanwhile a much fiercer struggle has been going on in the Uited States, where Mr Mc- Namara and the arms control community have been resisting powerful support for an ABM system emanating from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, elements in Congress, parts of the Atomic Energy establishment and aerospace industry. The early months of 1967 have left the imme- diate outcome of this contest in doubt. What is becoming unmistakable, though so far generally unnoticed, is that we stand at the outset of a fundamental reconsideration of Western nuclear strategy that will go far beyond the issue of anti-missile defence itself.

Testifying earlier this year upon his next budget, Mr McNamara acknowledged more openly than ever before that Russia is well advanced in the deployment of an anti-missile defence for population sufficiently good to require Western countermeasures. For this reason he had decided to procure the new Poseidon submarine-launched missile with mul- tiple warheads, to fit improved penetration aids to some existing missiles and to develop new warheads for penetrating defended areas. At the same time Mr McNamara confirmed reports that Soviet efforts to multiply, disperse and harden its offensive intercontinental missile force have been proceeding at a rate much higher than that predicted, so that if the present respective programmes continue an American superiority of about three to one in inter- continental vehicles, once predicted for mid- 1967, may be eroded to parity by mid-1968. To his counter-efforts Mr McNamara has therefore added consideration of a new 'im- proved capability missile' and of the deployment of tom defence to protect the American offen- sive force.

Nevertheless, Mr McNamara remains hostile to the deployment of a defensive system, parti- cularly for protection of populations, and, while Promising energetic pursuit of research and development, he made the centre-piece of his policy the initiation of negotiations with Russia designed 'through formal or informal agreement, to limit the deployment of anti- ballistic missile systems.' Only if these discus- sions failed would he consider spending the modest $375 million which, for the first time, he requested against the contingency of taking the first steps to production.

This request was no doubt intended to con- vince Russia of the wisdem of negotiating and, for whatever reasons, the Soviet Union has revised its earlier attitude and agreed to talk. Nothing is publicly known of the very pre_

liminary talks about talks now proceeding in Moscow. We may, however, illuminate the prospects and at the same time reveal the full dimensions of the great debate that is almost certainly coming if we ask ourselves what the Russians hope to gain from agreeing to negotiate.

It is highly unlikely that they have sud- denly seen the light through McNamara's eyes and now agree that the anti-missile missile is a thoroughly bad thing. A simple agreement to desist is improbable. An agreement to talk merely to delay American efforts—as suspected in Congressional quarters—would be futile and frivolous. More likely and almost certainly part of the Russian motive is a determination not to be caught in an American diplomatic trap by refusing to talk. If the American adminis- tration could point to an explicit attempt to negotiate an arms control agreement rebuffed without discussion by the Russians, it would go some way to undermine the domestic and allied criticism that would otherwise attend an American decision to make a start on ABM system.

Much the most likely motive, however, is that the agreement to talk forms part of an effort, represented both by Russian anti- missile defence and by the energetic increases in Russian striking forces, to attain an overall position closer to strategic equality with the United States. At present the number of nuclear delivery vehicles possessed by Russia and the United States is not unequal—about 2,200—if we count both intermediate and long-range types. But in intercontinental delivery America enjoys a three or fourfold advantage. This fac- tor, which governs the capacity to devastate each other's homeland, may seem increasingly important in a period when alliances are loosening and when Europe's value as a hostage to Russia may be falling.

From this point of view, Russian anti- missile defence and an increase in Russian offensive power serve the same purpose of making the damage each superpower can do the other more equal: the former reduces Russian casualties, the latter either does the same by catching American strike forces before launch or raises the number of American deaths. Nor is anti-missile defence any longer a foolish way to affect these equations for, as Mr McNamara's own testimony reveals, at fairly high levels of damage it is now actually cheaper to reduce deaths by defence than to increase those of the other side by increased offence.

An attempt to redress the strategic balance in their favour is not without grave dangers for the Russians. It is certainly expensive and it now appears that Soviet military expenditure went considerably up rather than down after Mr Khrushchev's departure. More seriously, however, such a Russian effort runs the danger of provoking an excessive American response. Twice before, at the times of the so-called bomber gap and missile gap, the Russians, by talking too much about modest military efforts, provoked disproportionate American counter- efforts that left the Soviet Union in a much inferior position. All the more would it be reasonable for the Russians, then, if they are trying to achieve parity or at least less dis- parity in mutual destructive capacity, to seize any chance to do this by agreement at lower levels of effort. In sheer spending they must always lose, and well before the age of the anti- missile missile they were displaying enthusiasm for the idea of redressing the strategic balance in their favour by agreed restrictions on strategic systems.

If the Russians are in fact pursuing parity and the West is truly anxious to avoid taking the next round in the arms race at the gallop, then the problem of anti-missile defence must obviously be faced in the wider context of the whole East-West strategic balance; a balance within which China will be an unwelcome com- plication. In particular, the Western alliance, especially the United States, must ask itself very earnestly whether it must continue to insist upon the margins of strategic nuclear superiority to which it has become accustomed. Here Mr McNamara's role is perhaps equivocal because, if he is the hero of those who oppose ABM defence, he is also the prime architect of a deterrent policy based upon the over- whelming superiority that probably provokes Soviet anxieties.

Can this superiority be maintained at a toler- able cost? An editorial in Technology Week, criticising McNamara for 'unilateral non- armament,' calls it a delusion to try 'to convince the Russians that they should accept a position of inferiority in armament as a step to world stability.' The implied remedy is pre- sumably to race the Russians until they have no choice but to accept a position of inferiority. This, though good for business, is what Mr McNamara wants to avoid, hoping, one sup- poses, that the knowledge that America could take this course will deter the Russians from issuing the challenge. Present Russian actions suggest the failure of this policy, which must in any case always be an uneasy solution to the problem, offering the Russians, as it does, a standing incentive to seek some technological surprise with which to overthrow the balance.

We may well reach the conclusion that, if the West is to realise Mr McNamara's hopes of a relaxed arms race in which neither side hustles the other, it may have to be at a lower level of American superiority. The coming debate must take a fresh look at why the United States needs such a margin. Is the numerical differential illusory, compensated for by greater Russian payloads and more difficult American targets? Probably not to a great extent. Does the United States need a margin to offset Russian use of Europe as a hostage? Is it a conscious or subconscious feeling of moral asymmetry that justifies the virtuous side pack- ing more punch? In any case, if it is the ratios of exchange that are so important, why is it that Mr McNamara reacts so much more sharply to Russian efforts to improve the ratio by anti-missile defence, which does nothing to kill Americans, than to an increase in their strike forces, which does?

The latter reaction suggests that what is at stake is not so much the ratio of mutual striking force as the preservation of a par- ticular level of destruction of the Soviet Union. Some minimum level of destruction is unques- tionably essential if deterrence is to be main- tained; the coming debate will have to inquire, however, whether the present level is the least American can accept. Mr McNamara objects to anti-missile defence because it threatens the pre- sent level of American assured destruction of Russia. Yet in proposed plans for disarmament the Western powers have accepted the prospect of severe cuts in mutual capacity to do damage.

Moreover, in resisting pressures to create an American ABM system, Mr McNamara and his

supporters, British as well as American, have consistently denied that any foreseeable tech- nology could cut casualties to the point at which nuclear war became a remotely attractive option. Is there, then, some level of potential destruc- tion at which Mr McNamara fears the Russians would be more adventurous though still unwill- ing to launch nuclear war in cold blood?

Such deep waters can scarcely be plumbed here. There will be many highly technical questions to investigate, not merely about the performance of weapons but also about the probable strategy and political context of a future nuclear war, before a conclusion can be reached. It seems clear, however, that the fundamental Western philosophy about the level and ratios of deterrence requires thorough re-examination in the light of the emerging diplomatic balance and the most recent mili- tary technology. Nor should it be assumed beforehand that anti-missile defence is neces- sarily incapable of playing a desirable role in that balance.

Underlying all this there is an even deeper question to ask about our approach to the control of military technology. There can be no more vivid illustration of the irresistible push of that technology than the emergence of the anti-missile missile as a possibly economic option within three or four years of being generally dismissed as hopeless. Yet already ABM defence itself is stimulating the next round of wonders: now the multiple warhead; soon, no doubt, the manoeuvring re-entry vehicle. The fact that a warhead that can manoeuvre to avoid interception can presum- ably also do so to improve accuracy against hardened targets gives leave to doubt whether killing off the anti-missile missile Would cut off this further line of development.

For the last five or six years it has been popular to assume that there was no answer to the intercontinental missile and that the world had therefore reached a technological plateau. The dominance of the ICBM has by no means been overthrown : the strategic balance is inevitably secure for some time to come and the dangers of ,instability still lie far •1 ahead. But recent events demonstrate the probable hopelessness of trying to cut off technological advance and to stand still at a particular generation of weapons. If this is so, efforts at arms control become more, not less, essential; the dominant image, however, must not be that of damning the flood but of chan- nelling it into safer directions.