Sleepwalking with the Bomb

Начало книги

WHEN RICHARD NIXON RETURNED FROM MOSCOW IN 1972 HE brought with him the apparent triumph of a comprehensive agreement with Leonid Brezhnev that would end a nuclear weapons “arms race” and usher in a new era of constructive cooperation between the superpowers. Neither he, nor his grand strategist Henry Kissinger, understood that the ABM Treaty and separate offensive arms limitation agreements they negotiated would lead to a massive Soviet build-up that left the United States (and its allies) in a situation far worse than the one they hoped to improve.

Far from reducing the Soviets’ already vast nuclear arsenal, the agreements of 1972 actually increased both the number and lethality of Moscow’s nuclear forces. And they led directly to a challenge to the United States and its allies that was as grave as any in the Cold War.

The 1972 interim agreement fixed the number of launchers for nuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missiles, but it allowed for the enlargement of those launchers and the replacement of older, single warhead missiles by new missiles with multiple warheads. The Soviets promptly began to exploit both provisions of the agreement, first by replacing a class of missiles carrying a single warhead with a new class carrying three warheads. But not content with using an arms control “freeze” to triple the number of their warheads, they then proceeded to develop an entirely new missile, which was excluded from any limit because it lacked intercontinental range. The Soviets assigned this new missile (known as the SS-20) to the European targets that had been previously assigned missiles limited by the agreement. This freed up hundreds of missiles that could now be aimed at the United States.

Читать дальше →