|
Soviet Union [USSR] Retaining a Capability to Fight and to Win
In addition to deterring a nuclear world war, Soviet strategic
forces were expected to fight it and to win it. SALT I was
acceptable to the Soviet military not only because it made war less
likely but also because the Soviet military would have the
capability to carry out its intercontinental strike mission even in
a worst-case scenario. By limiting defensive systems to one
installation in each country, the ABM Treaty guaranteed that Soviet
missiles could successfully penetrate United States airspace.
Because SALT I limited the number of ballistic missile
launchers but not the number of warheads, the Soviet Union was able
to increase its intercontinental missile arsenal. It used new
technologies to equip its land- and sea-based strategic missiles
with several warheads, known as multiple independently targetable
reentry vehicles (MIRVs). The Soviet military also greatly improved
the accuracies of its missiles, especially the SS-l8 and SS-l9
ICBMs.
In 1979, when President Jimmy Carter and General Secretary
Leonid Brezhnev signed the second SALT agreement in Vienna, the
Soviet Union had 5,000 warheads on its strategic missiles, an
increase of 2,500 since l972. By l986 the number of Soviet
strategic warheads exceeded 10,000. Thus neither of the SALT
agreements significantly constrained Soviet nuclear modernization
and the growth of the Soviet arsenal, whose ultimate aim was to
hold at risk the vulnerable United States force of land-based
Minuteman III missiles.
Soviet leaders objected to United States proposals in the
Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), a new round of talks to
reduce nuclear arsenals, that began in June 1982, because, if
accepted, such proposals would have cut in half the number of
Soviet ICBMs, their principal war-fighting component. In the mid1980s , when it began deploying the fifth generation of ICBMs (the
mobile SS-24 and SS-25 missiles, to assume part of the SS-l8
mission), the Soviet Union began to show interest in reducing the
number of its heavy SS-18 missiles. Since their deployment in 1974,
the United States had viewed the SS-18s as the most threatening and
destabilizing component of the Soviet arsenal. In 1989 the Soviet
leaders continued to link reduction of the SS-l8s to severe
restrictions on the testing of SDI. First unveiled by President
Ronald W. Reagan in March l983, the SDI promised to yield advanced
technologies for a North American antimissile shield. Should SDI
prove feasible, it could render Soviet nuclear weapons "impotent
and obsolete."
This prospect alarmed the Soviet military because such a shield
could prevent it from attaining its two most important military
objectives: avoiding wars and being prepared to fight them. In l989
the Soviet Union appeared willing to agree to deep cuts in its
offensive weapons in order to derail SDI or at least to force the
United States to ban SDI-related tests in space for a minimum of
ten years.
Data as of May 1989
|
