Key Issues for the Strategic Offensive Force Reduction Portion of the Nuclear and Space Talks in Geneva

摘要

This Note discusses approaches for the limitation and reduction of U.S. and Soviet strategic attack forces. It identifies three national security objective that the United States and, arguably, the Soviet Union seek to obtain through a combination of strategic nuclear force deployments, arms control, and diplomacy: credible deterrence, strategic, crisis stability, and essential equivalence. It defines three measures that can be controlled to constrain the destructive capacity of intercontinental strategic attack forces: the amount of ballistic missile throwweight, the number of ballistic missile RVs, and the amount of bomber gross takeoff weight. It then considers an alternative approach, a weighted composite measure that yields a smaller initial difference between U.S. and Soviet ballistic missile forces than the pure throwweight approach, thus providing better prospects for successful compromise in negotiation. It concludes that the United States cannot reasonably expect to gain any treat significant reductions in Soviet ballistic missile capabilities without being prepared to accept considerable constraints on the growth of the U.S. bomber force weapon-carrying potential. (Author)