Competitive Arms Control: Nixon, Kissinger, and SALT, 1969-1972 9780300265484

Citation preview

competitiv e a rms c o ntr ol

Y8013-Maurer.indb i

2/25/22 2:59 PM

This page intentionally left blank

john d. maurer

Competitive Arms Control Nixo n , K i ssi n g e r, a n d S A L T , 19 6 9 –19 72

N EW HAVEN AND LONDON

Y8013-Maurer.indb iii

2/25/22 2:59 PM

Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Amasa Stone Mather of the Class of 1907, Yale College. Copyright © 2022 by John D. Maurer. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please email [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Scala and Scala Sans types by Newgen North America. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2021949868 isbn 978-0-300-24755-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Y8013-Maurer.indb iv

2/25/22 2:59 PM

To my father, “the Elder”

Y8013-Maurer.indb v

2/25/22 2:59 PM

This page intentionally left blank

Y7996-Polisi.indb vi

2/4/22 9:57 AM

c ont ent s

Acknowledgments ix List of Acronyms xi Introduction 1 1 Early Deliberations

15

2 Deepening Divisions

34

3 The Verification Panel 4 SALT Begins

51

67

5 SALT Stalemate

89

6 The May 20 Agreement 7 Final Compromises 8 Moscow and Back

Conclusion Notes 195 Bibliography Index 293

Y8013-Maurer.indb vii

117

141 160

181

273

2/25/22 2:59 PM

This page intentionally left blank

Y7996-Polisi.indb vi

2/4/22 9:57 AM

ac know l e d gment s

This book began life as a dissertation on American arms control policy during the Cold War. Its earliest iterations were refined with the assistance of my dissertation committee, David Painter, Keir Lieber, and Kathryn Olesko. Additional thanks go to my many teachers and colleagues at Georgetown: Gregory Brew, Daniel Byman, Michael David-Fox, Anthony Eames, Chad Frazier, Toshihiro Higuchi, Oliver Horn, Robert Lieber, Robynne Mellor, Aviel Roshwald, and Adam Rothman. Nicholas Myers and Eric Sand provided feedback on parts of the project. Carolina Madinaveitia provided invaluable help in navigating the procedural aspects of producing a dissertation at Georgetown. Carla Braswell, William Burr, Richard Moss, and James Neel offered advice on locating the relevant sources and archives. Funding for the dissertation was provided by the Cosmos Club Foundation of Washington, D.C., as well as the Gerald R. Ford Foundation. Transforming the dissertation manuscript into a book was supported by Yale University’s Johnson Center for the Study of American Diplomacy and International Security Studies (ISS). Thanks go to Fritz Bartel, Ian Johnson, Paul Kennedy, Nuno Monteiro, Evan Wilson, and Ted Wittenstein. Michael Brenes provided advice on further archival resources, including the Henry Kissinger Papers at the Yale Library, while Larisa Satara provided advice on Yale more generally. My work also benefited from ix

Y8013-Maurer.indb ix

2/25/22 2:59 PM

x

a c k n o w l ed gmen t s

the feedback of Jean-François Bélanger, Tyler Bowen, Tim Choi, Susan Colbourn, Michael Franczak, Mathias Frendem, Mayumi Fukushima, Eliza Gheorghe, Michael Goldfien, Mariya Grinberg, Michael De Groot, Louis Halewood, Stephen Herzog, Michael Joseph, Jack Loveridge, David Minchin, Veysel Şimşek, Peter Slezkine, Jan Stöckmann, Emily Whalen, Claire Yorke, and Remco Zwetsloot. Paul Bracken provided a patient sounding board for my ideas on policy implications, while Robert Pfaltzgraff, Jr., offered insights into past arms control debates. Michelle Brown advised on additional research in the National Archives. In completing the manuscript during the COVID pandemic, I relied on the assistance of many friends and colleagues. The first full draft of the book was written during an additional fellowship at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. Thanks go to Nicholas Eberstadt, Danielle Pletka, Kori Schake, and Gary Schmitt for supporting my work. Matthew Ambrose, Hal Brands, Frank Rose, William Schlickenmaier, Henry Sokolski, and Pranay Vaddi all provided useful discussion about both the history and future of American nuclear weapons policy. Evan Abramsky heroically read the first draft from beginning to end, providing useful feedback. Final edits to the manuscript took place while I was teaching at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS) at Air University, thanks to Col. Sean Cochran, Col. Jeffrey Donnithorne, and Derrick Frazier. Special thanks also go to Jaya Chatterjee, Kristy Leonard, and Eva Skewes at Yale University Press for helping guide the book to its conclusion, as well as to the two anonymous readers for their helpful comments. Finally, this book was only possible with the love and support of my family. My parents, John and Maureen Maurer; my siblings, Margaret, James, and Clara Maurer; and my in-laws, David, Vivian, and Greg Shaull, provided endless encouragement for my work. My wife, Rebecca Maurer, endured with patience the many ups and downs of graduate school and postdoctoral life, and was always ready with good counsel. My daughter, Casey Marie Maurer, was a late addition to the team. She provided important perspective on the challenges of completing the book, along with much joy.

Y8013-Maurer.indb x

2/25/22 2:59 PM

ac r onyms

ABM ACDA ARVN CIA CJCS CMPDP DCI DPRC FBS FOFA FRG ICBM INF JCPOA JCS MARC MIRV MRV NATO NCA NIE

Anti-Ballistic Missile Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Army of the Republic of Vietnam Central Intelligence Agency Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense Policy Director of Central Intelligence Defense Program Review Committee Forward-Based Systems Follow-on Forces Attack Federal Republic of Germany Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Joint Chiefs of Staff Modern ABM Radar Complex Multiple Independently Targeted Reentry Vehicle Multiple Reentry Vehicle North Atlantic Treaty Organization National Command Authority National Intelligence Estimate xi

Y8013-Maurer.indb xi

2/25/22 2:59 PM

x ii

a c r on y ms

NSC NSDM NSSM OLPAR OMB PSAC SAIS SALT SAM SDI SLBM SORT SSBN START SWWA ULMS VPK

Y8013-Maurer.indb xii

National Security Council National Security Decision Memorandum National Security Study Memorandum Other Large Phased Array Radar Office of Management and Budget President’s Science Advisory Committee School of Advanced International Studies Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Surface-to-Air Missile Strategic Defense Initiative Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty Nuclear-Powered Ballistic Missile Submarine(s) Strategic Arms Reduction Talks Stop Where We Are Undersea Long-Range Missile System Voyenno-Promyshlennaya Kommisiya (Military-Industrial Commission)

2/25/22 2:59 PM

Introduction

pres i de n t r ic h a r d nix on wa s in a celebratory mood as he stepped to the podium on October 3, 1972. He had a good deal to celebrate—after nearly four years of difficult negotiations, the United States and the Soviet Union had finally ratified the first round of agreements from the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). To the assembled notables, Nixon reflected: These agreements mean a first step in reducing the danger of war in the world and increasing the chances of peace . . . the signing of these documents today . . . raise the hopes of all the people of the world for a dream of mankind from the beginning of civilization, a world of peace, a world in which peoples with different governments and different philosophies could live in peace together.1 The agreements that Nixon celebrated that day were remarkable. The first, the “Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems” (or ABM Treaty), prevented either superpower from building more than a token system for shooting down incoming missiles, heading off a potential race for missile defenses.2 The second, the “Interim Agreement on Certain Measures with Respect to the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms” (or Interim Agreement), prohibited the superpowers from building additional long-range missiles for five years, while negotiators 1

Y8013-Maurer.indb 1

2/25/22 2:59 PM

2

in t r o d u c t io n

hammered out a more comprehensive treaty that would limit all strategic nuclear weapons.3 Taken together, these first SALT agreements (or SALT I) placed limits on the strategic nuclear forces of the superpowers for the first time—a major accomplishment. Indeed, the agreements represented the beginning of a long and fruitful arms control dialogue between the United States and the Soviet Union (and eventually Russia), which has continued to the present day. Nixon’s statement on that historic day fits squarely into the traditional account of arms control during the Cold War, which describes the agreements as a stepping-stone on the road to greater cooperation between the superpowers. According to this interpretation, the United States and the Soviet Union had wasted years earlier in the Cold War on a race to build huge nuclear arsenals. By the late 1960s, the leaders of both countries realized how pointless and dangerous their nuclear competition had become, and gave up that unrestrained competition for cooperative negotiation via arms control. By giving up nuclear competition for a cooperative system of arms control, the superpowers set the stage for the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War decades later.4 Nixon’s celebration of SALT’s ability to produce “a world in which peoples with different governments and different philosophies could live in peace together” reflects the rhetoric of cooperation and mutual restraint that surrounded the American-Soviet arms control process. Behind closed doors, however, American leaders expressed very different views about arms control’s purpose. Rather than promoting cooperation, Nixon and his closest advisers saw SALT as an opportunity to continue the nuclear competition on American terms. In a secret meeting on August 10, 1971, while the SALT accords were still under negotiation, Nixon and his advisers discussed how to use arms control to enhance American military advantages. Their discussion focused especially on the increasing accuracy of the United States’ Minuteman missiles, each of which could carry multiple warheads (known by nuclear strategists as “multiple independently-targeted reentry vehicles,” or MIRVs): n ixo n: The advantage that we have, whatever advantage that we have,

has got to be maintained by the MIRVing of the system. d e p u ty s e c re ta ry of de fe ns e david pack ar d: Mr. President, let me suggest some agreement to reduce the total number of delivery

Y8013-Maurer.indb 2

2/25/22 2:59 PM

in t r o d u c t io n

3

vehicles, so that they are roughly equal . . . the MIRV is the one significant advantage we have. s e c r e ta ry of de fe ns e me l vi n l air d: With our research and development program . . . we can keep ahead of [the Soviets]. There is a lot more we can do with Minuteman at the site as far as getting it even more accurate . . . and we can do it at a very small price, because we have the technological capability that far outstrips the Soviet Union. n ixo n : Just talking about any kind of SALT agreement . . . we go gung-ho on the accuracy side, because that is unlimited. n a t i o na l s e c uri ty a dvi s e r he nr y k issinger : That’s right . . . accuracy is absolutely essential.5 For Nixon and his advisers, arms control negotiations were not meant to end nuclear competition, but rather to reshape it on American terms. Within that nuclear competition, arms control would be an important tool of American strategy.6 For these competitive arms controllers, SALT I did represent a turning point: not from competition to cooperation, but from one form of competition to another. As Nixon and Laird’s comments make clear, by the early 1970s American leaders were looking forward to a future in which American military power would be transformed by advanced technologies, especially the coming revolution in accuracy enabled by emerging digital computing. Given its grounding in the United States’ unmatched knowledge economy, this was a technological revolution that even industrially powerful competitors like the Soviet Union would struggle to match. Nixon and his advisers called this technologically enabled approach the “Strategy of Realistic Deterrence,” but it would later and more famously come to be known as the “Offset Strategy,” since advanced American technology would offset the Soviet advantage in numbers.7 As Nixon and Packard’s comments also indicate, American leaders saw arms control as an important element of the competitive offset approach. By equalizing the number of weapons through negotiations, the United States would ensure that future competition would take place solely in the realm of weapons quality—the very realm in which American leaders hoped to compete and prevail. Within the arms control

Y8013-Maurer.indb 3

2/25/22 2:59 PM

4

in t r o d u c t io n

agreements, American leaders intended to continue deploying new and better weapons enabled by emerging technologies. The combination of new weapons and arms control restrictions would allow the United States to sustain its global power, contain communism, and ultimately prevail in the Cold War. For Nixon and his advisers, channeling the nuclear competition toward areas of American advantage was the main purpose of arms control. This book provides a new narrative account of SALT in the Nixon administration, highlighting the competitive moves of American leaders that led to and guided the negotiations. To uncover these often-hidden motives, the book relies on a close reading of numerous declassified documents from the Nixon administration to show how American leaders pursued a competitive arms control program. In fact, the negotiations were greatly complicated by the mixed motives of different actors within the American government, where competitive arms controllers like Nixon and Laird had to contend with more cooperative arms controllers like Secretary of State William Rogers and Director of Arms Control and Disarmament Gerard Smith. American arms control policy was never purely competitive, any more than it was purely cooperative. Nixon’s greatest challenge was formulating an actionable arms control policy that could please both cooperators and competitors within his government, while still providing a sufficiently coherent rationale to pass congressional scrutiny.8 That Nixon succeeded in this difficult task was perhaps his greatest arms control accomplishment, one that later American presidents would struggle to match. While previous accounts have emphasized the role and influence of cooperators like Smith, this account will highlight how competitors like Nixon and Laird shaped the negotiations, with important implications for the course of the Cold War and the future of American military power to the present day. The resulting narrative informs our understanding of arms control in history, in theory, and in policy practice today. c omp e t i t i v e a rm s c on t r o l in hi s t or y Most previous accounts of Nixon’s SALT negotiations have reflected the major memoirs produced by American diplomats like Gerard Smith and Raymond Garthoff, whose recollections of SALT resonate with readers

Y8013-Maurer.indb 4

2/25/22 2:59 PM

in t r o d u c t io n

5

to the present day.9 For all their merits, these memoirs reflect the cooperative arms control views of their authors, portraying SALT I as the centerpiece of a larger effort to diffuse American-Soviet tensions known as détente. Smith’s and Garthoff’s accounts are critical of Nixon’s handling of arms control negotiations, especially his use of multiple secretive channels of negotiations to reach agreement with the Soviets, often without the knowledge of many of his closest advisers. Their memoirs conclude that the secrecy surrounding negotiations was driven by Nixon’s paranoia and desire to hoard credit for his administration’s foreign policy successes.10 Other important actors, including Nixon, Kissinger, and arms control negotiator Paul Nitze, also wrote memoir accounts, but these tend to be more circumspect about arms control motives. None laid out a comprehensive case for arms control in the way that Smith and Garthoff did.11 Later accounts of SALT built on Smith’s and Garthoff’s work, assuming that American-Soviet arms limitation was a fundamentally cooperative exercise. At the same time, scholars have discovered increasing evidence that important arms controllers—especially Nixon—did not support the “cooperative” arms control advocated by Smith and Garthoff. Much of this picture emerges from declassified records of high-level meetings from which cooperative arms controllers like Smith and Garthoff had been excluded. Instead, Nixon preferred that the United States retain whatever advantages in nuclear arms it could.12 Far from seeking to cooperate with the Soviets, Nixon could be dismissive of cooperators like Smith and Garthoff, who he worried would hand away too much to the Soviets in negotiation.13 The disconnect between Nixon’s arms control successes and his lack of interest in greater cooperation with the Soviet Union has puzzled scholars. Some point to the role of political interest groups in pushing Nixon to adopt cooperative arms control policies that he did not personally support.14 Others argue that cooperative policy entrepreneurship ultimately convinced even hawks like Nixon that cooperative arms control was a good idea.15 The idea that Nixon ultimately abandoned his competitive views and came to embrace cooperative arms control was a staple of hawkish criticism of his administration’s arms control policies.16 Still others have concluded that Nixon saw little value in arms control per

Y8013-Maurer.indb 5

2/25/22 2:59 PM

6

in t r o d u c t io n

se, but sought to trade progress on arms control for Soviet concessions on other issues that Nixon valued more highly—like ending the war in Vietnam.17 These accounts have added to our understanding of American arms control policy, but none have satisfactorily resolved the basic tension between Nixon’s clear desire for continued nuclear competition and his dogged pursuit of major arms control negotiations. The Nixon that emerges from the documentary evidence is not a president forced into arms control, but rather one who pursued negotiations with the Soviets with great determination and at significant political risk. Nor is there evidence that Nixon’s views evolved toward embracing greater cooperation—instead, even as he engaged in high-level dialogue with Soviet leaders, Nixon took steps to advance American nuclear competitiveness. The tension between Nixon’s competitive motives and his arms control policy choices remains. The mystery of Nixon’s arms control motives becomes clearer once we recognize that arms control can have a competitive purpose. Nixon’s antipathy toward cooperative arms controllers is explained by his desire for a competitively oriented negotiation. Nor was Nixon the only competitive arms controller in his administration. Once we acknowledge the existence and influence of this competitive arms control faction, we can better understand other aspects of Nixon’s policy. For example, the depth of division between cooperative and competitive arms controllers within the American government, and the threat that their dispute might derail arms control talks entirely, helps explain Nixon’s controversial decision to employ secretive back-channel talks in negotiation with the Soviets. The incredible secrecy of the back channel was necessary to achieve its purpose: to produce SALT agreements with the Soviets that could be presented to the factions within Nixon’s own government as a fait accompli, the better to head off divisive debates about arms control’s ultimate purpose.18 The costs of such secretive tactics were real, generating confusion and mistrust within Nixon’s administration. The benefits, however, were also real, producing a SALT agreement that both cooperative and competitive arms controllers could support, albeit for very different reasons. The detailed analysis necessary to reconstruct these specific American arms control debates supports the continued importance of studying American political history to understand American diplomacy.19

Y8013-Maurer.indb 6

2/25/22 2:59 PM

in t r o d u c t io n

7

The intricacies of the policy process by which Nixon and Kissinger arrived at their arms control decisions also provide new insights into American executive and bureaucratic politics. It has become commonplace to describe Nixon and Kissinger as promoting a highly centralized foreign policy process, in which the president and his national security adviser dictated foreign policy with little input from the bureaucracy in the State or Defense Departments.20 Nixon and Kissinger’s dictatorial instincts are often contrasted with the “honest broker” model pursued by President George H. W. Bush and his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, in which the national security adviser serves as a conduit between president and bureaucracy for exploring and debating foreign policy options.21 Yet despite the formal machinery of centralized White House control, Nixon and Kissinger’s experience of arms control was very much ad hoc and improvised, largely in response to competing initiatives from bureaucratic actors like Laird and Smith. Nixon’s unwillingness to discipline his bureaucratic subordinates was remarkable, driven by a constant fear that the bureaucracy would sabotage his foreign policy achievements before Congress or the American public. That so imperial a president would resort to such secretive and roundabout procedures demonstrates the tremendous difficulties of navigating the labyrinth of the American foreign policy process, as well as the importance of specific personalities in shaping both processes and outcomes. Identifying the important competitive dimension of American arms control policy also has implications for our understanding of the larger arc of the Cold War. Many previous accounts portrayed the superpower détente period of the 1960s and 1970s as an abortive effort at genuine American-Soviet cooperation, even perhaps an opportunity for an early end to the Cold War. In this retelling, détente was followed by a “Second Cold War” in the early 1980s, which was itself followed by an even more sudden second period of détente leading to the Cold War’s end a few years later.22 In these accounts, détente’s cooperative intent was symbolized by progress on superpower arms limitation, which was seen as the flagship of the détente movement.23 Cooperation at the arms control table pointed to the broader cooperation between the superpowers. My findings, however, support the view on détente that emphasizes the continuity of Cold War competition throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Indeed, many historians now see détente less as an effort to end the Cold

Y8013-Maurer.indb 7

2/25/22 2:59 PM

8

in t r o d u c t io n

War than as an effort to extend competition against the Soviet Union during a period of growing domestic political unrest, marked by popular protest and “third way” politics. In this new literature, détente was about reaffirming the centrality of American-Soviet bipolar competition to world affairs, rather than seeking to dismantle it.24 American arms control policy represented much of the same: rather than seeking an end to the Cold War arms race, American leaders sought to restructure the arms race from a frantic and expensive race for more and more missiles to a more sustainable long-term competition for iterative, marginal improvements in the quality of existing weapons.25 Competition in arms control negotiations points back toward the continuing geopolitical competition of the superpowers. Recovering the competitive dimension of American arms control policy also highlights the long-term importance of strategic and military issues in the latter half of the Cold War. Much recent scholarship has migrated away from military and arms control issues toward new topics from the late Cold War period, including economics and trade,26 international law and human rights,27 culture and ideology,28 and environmentalism.29 These studies enrich our understanding of the later Cold War, while also emphasizing the continuity between the later Cold War period and our contemporary political, social, and cultural concerns. They show how much of the “post–Cold War world” began emerging in the 1970s and 1980s as the international structure built in the aftermath of the Second World War began to break down. In appreciating the many factors driving the late Cold War, we must not lose sight of the period’s most iconic and high-stakes component: the military-technical competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. Some recent works treat the American-Soviet military competition of the 1970s and 1980s as a vestigial relic, a superpower prestige project swamped by the economic, legal, and cultural factors that were dismantling the Cold War architecture and building the post–Cold War international structure. Scholars would do better to consider the arms race of the later Cold War not as a historical cul de sac headed off by the dramatic political events of 1987–1991, but rather as the incubator for the American military hegemony that would characterize world politics for decades after the Soviet Union’s fall. Faced with the quagmire of the Vietnam War and the Soviet Union’s increasing ability to com-

Y8013-Maurer.indb 8

2/25/22 2:59 PM

in t r o d u c t io n

9

pete numerically in the arms race, American leaders developed a new competitive strategy that would reinvent American power through an all-volunteer, digitally enabled military whose training and technological advantages would allow it to deter and defeat competitors on the nuclear and conventional battlefields.30 In this offset strategy and the competitive arms control program that enabled it, we see the origins of the “accuracy revolution”—the bundle of precision missiles and advanced sensors enabled by digital computing that would serve as the hallmark of American military power from Desert Storm to the global drone campaign of the present day, as well as the biases against lower-intensity military missions that would dog the American military throughout the 1990s and 2000s.31 Journeying back to the military and arms control debates of the late 1960s can help us to understand the origins of the American military that would so decisively shape the post–Cold War world. c omp e t i t i v e a rm s c on t r o l in t he or y Arms control theory today has a strong cooperative bias, built primarily on the work of pioneering game theorist Thomas Schelling. Writing in the early 1960s, Schelling believed that even adversarial countries could discover areas of common purpose on which they could act in a mutually beneficial manner. In the nuclear arms race, Schelling saw one area where limited cooperation between the superpowers could produce security outcomes that were superior to those produced by unrestrained unilateral actions.32 Schelling was only one of many arms control theorists writing at the time, but for various reasons his work has risen to prominence while the work of more competitive arms controllers, like Donald Brennan and Robert Pfaltzgraff, Jr., has been neglected.33 As a result, for most students of world politics today, arms control is assumed to be a cooperative activity, much as Schelling described. The assumption that arms control is always cooperative creates several problems for contemporary scholarship. First, by insisting that arms control is synonymous with cooperation, scholars risk miscoding cases by assuming that all arms control negotiations reflect genuine efforts at cooperation, when in fact they can be (and often are) the product of continued struggles for competitive military advantage.34 This flawed assumption about arms control’s purpose creates a strong possibility that new theories may be built on or tested against cases that do not in fact

Y8013-Maurer.indb 9

2/25/22 2:59 PM

10

in t r o d u c t io n

support what the theory purports to show. In building the empirical evidence for their theories, scholars will need to take greater care in identifying what “counts” as international cooperation, and why. Second, the assumption that arms control is always cooperative overly simplifies our understanding of the arms control negotiating process, ignoring the important role of coincidence and contingency in the ability of countries to reach agreement on crucial arms control issues.35 Current arms control theory tends to confuse the motives behind and the outcomes of particular arms control policies, because the question of whether a policy is “cooperative” or “competitive” has more to do with the motives of the states involved than it does with the ultimate outcome of the policy in question. Much of the scholarship on international cooperation is focused on the question of whether states pursue (or should pursue) absolute or relative gains in their interaction with other states.36 In reality, however, few policies produce either relative gains or absolute gains, instead generating a mixed outcome in which both parties benefit to a degree, but one party benefits more than another, or in which both parties benefit more in different ways. Because outcomes are often mixed, the same policy outcome can theoretically support a mix of policy motives. A single policy can be both cooperative and competitive at the same time, if proponents of cooperation and proponents of competition see enough to like about the policy to support it for their own parochial reasons.37 Although not a work of theory, my narrative account shows how the Nixon administration built a compromise around an arms control policy that was designed to advance both absolute American security (by improving arms race stability) and relative American security (by allowing continued progress on specific weapons technologies deemed to be especially advantageous to the United States). Third, the assumption that arms control is fundamentally cooperative leads many scholars to mischaracterize the domestic politics component of the “two-level game” of arms control.38 Most accounts of arms control in American domestic politics emphasize the struggle between cooperative interest groups in favor of arms control negotiation and competitive interest groups who are assumed to be critical of arms control agreements.39 Far from being reflexive critics of a monolithic cooperative arms control interest, the competitive strategists within the Nixon administration—including the president—played an important role in

Y8013-Maurer.indb 10

2/25/22 2:59 PM

in t r o d u c t io n

11

conceptualizing American arms control policy, negotiating major arms control agreements, and then selling those agreements to Congress and the American public. Nixon’s success suggests the need to move beyond approaches to domestic political analysis that insist on “for/against” binaries, and to distinguish opposition to the idea of arms control more generally from opposition to the specific details of any given arms control agreement. Not every critic of a given arms control treaty should automatically be treated as a critic of arms control and international cooperation.40 Finally, recovering the competitive dimension of arms control supports recent critical accounts of the “nuclear revolution” thesis, which predicts that the advent of nuclear weapons and the security that they provide should produce a significant decrease in the intensity of greatpower competition.41 While nuclear weapons remain the ultimate deterrent, their invention did not end great power rivalry. Throughout the Cold War, the superpowers jockeyed for advantage in developing nuclear forces, including the ability to disarm or limit damage from an adversary’s nuclear attacks.42 While arms control has often been understood as a cooperative negotiation designed to bring superpower nuclear strategies in line with the technological realities of the “nuclear revolution,” in fact superpower arms limitation was yet another front in the longrunning Cold War competition for nuclear superiority.43 c omp e t i t i v e a rm s c on t r o l in p r a c t i c e The theoretical question of arms control’s purpose has important practical applications, because the cooperative bias in arms control theory strongly shapes the limits of our policy imagination. Today, earlier arms control successes appear under siege. The United States is mired in repeated negotiations with Iran and North Korea on their burgeoning nuclear weapons programs. After years of accusations of Russian cheating, the United States opted to depart from the long-standing Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) and Open Skies Treaties. While the last major American-Russian arms control agreement, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (New START), has been extended through 2026, its replacement remains uncertain.44 The future of arms control looks bleak, and we may soon need to begin again from scratch, rather than build upon legacy agreements stretching back to 1972.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 11

2/25/22 2:59 PM

12

in t r o d u c t io n

Arms control in the future will take place in a world looking more like that of the Cold War than any period since 1989. The United States government is increasingly convinced that the future of international politics will see a return to great-power competition, especially renewed efforts by China to overturn American military hegemony in the western Pacific and to challenge the United States elsewhere around the globe.45 In this new era of competition, the auto-pilot arms control policies of previous decades will no longer suffice. We should expect that in the coming years the great powers will bargain hard for military advantage through arms control arrangements. For the United States and for other great powers, this shift in competitive emphasis augurs a period of greater skepticism of arms control efforts, one that we can already see in our current politics. Countries will need to place a greater emphasis on ensuring that they are not “defeated” at the negotiating table by adversaries angling for military advantage. At the same time, the possibility of competitively oriented negotiations opens new opportunities for arms control policies, as the United States (and others) seek to advance their own strategic interests through new arms control pacts. While the international situation may look grim, on the domestic front the idea of competitive arms control also provides the basis to build political coalitions in favor of negotiations to promote American security. Arms control policy in the United States today has become the province of a relatively small cadre of cooperatively oriented arms controllers.46 As this account will show, this was not the case during the Cold War. Indeed, some of the largest breakthroughs in superpower arms limitation occurred precisely because a large and influential competitive arms control constituency joined forces with cooperative arms controllers, even though they were motivated by different policy agendas, to build coalitions in favor of arms control. By recovering the idea of competitive arms control, we create the possibility of forging a domestic political consensus about how to advance American security by shaping the international security environment. Future arms control policy can appeal to both cooperative and competitive arms controllers on their own terms. s t r u c t ur e o f t he b o ok What follows is a narrative of the arms control process in the Nixon administration. Chapter 1 provides a brief overview of nuclear strategy

Y8013-Maurer.indb 12

2/25/22 2:59 PM

in t r o d u c t io n

13

and arms control prior to 1969, before introducing the main actors in the Nixon administration and their competing motives. Chapters 2 and 3 discuss the early policy deliberations of the Nixon administration from February to November 1969. While Nixon inherited the SALT process from his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, he was determined to put his own stamp on arms control policy. As Nixon’s advisers sought to develop arms control policy options, it quickly became clear that deep divisions existed among them over arms control’s purpose. These divisions between cooperative and competitive arms controllers would complicate Nixon’s efforts to build an arms control policy that would promote longterm American strategic advantages. Chapters 4 and 5 describe the early negotiations between the American and Soviet SALT delegations from November 1969 to May 1971. Talks with the Soviets quickly stalled over major differences about what counted as a strategic weapon, as well as how to verify a future agreement. Nixon’s ability to negotiate with the Soviets was continually hamstrung by his administration’s inability to develop a consensus position on SALT, which made any concession to the Soviets appear politically fraught. Chapters 6 and 7 detail Nixon and Kissinger’s dramatic efforts from January 1971 to April 1972 to move the SALT negotiations forward despite continued gridlock within the American government. At Nixon’s instruction, Kissinger conducted secret backchannel negotiations with the Soviets, unbeknownst to the remainder of the American government. The resulting May 20 Agreement of 1971 with the Soviets set the basic terms for SALT I. Although secrecy allowed Nixon and the Soviet leaders to reach this basic agreement, it also made implementing the details of that agreement much harder, creating a cycle of further stalemate and back-channel intervention to drive negotiations forward. Chapter 8 discusses the final SALT negotiations before, during, and after the May 1972 Nixon-Brezhnev summit in Moscow. With the summit looming, the American and Soviet SALT delegations were surprisingly successful in finalizing many of the agreement’s technical details. Nixon and Kissinger’s efforts to negotiate the final points personally in Moscow led to confusion. With a little bit of luck, however, SALT I was successfully completed during the summit. Nixon’s efforts at blending cooperative and competitive motives into a single arms control policy

Y8013-Maurer.indb 13

2/25/22 2:59 PM

14

in t r o d u c t io n

paid dividends when it came to winning congressional approval for his signature arms control success, where both hawks and doves generally supported the agreements. A brief Conclusion reflects on the impact of SALT I on American competitive strategy in the Cold War and beyond, and the implications of competitive arms control for future study and practice.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 14

2/25/22 2:59 PM

c h a p te r on e

Early Deliberations

ri cha r d nix on’ s a r m s c on trol policy built on decades of previous attempts. American presidents going back to Harry Truman had tried to use arms control negotiations to bolster the United States’ strategy of containment via nuclear deterrence, but these previous efforts at limiting the growth of the Soviet arsenal failed, in large part because the United States enjoyed such a decisive numerical advantage over the Soviets in the number of nuclear weapons. Only as the Soviet arsenal approached numerical parity with that of the United States did Soviet leaders warm to the idea of talks to limit the superpowers’ nuclear arsenals. Lyndon Johnson made a belated effort to launch SALT with the Soviets in 1968, the final year of his presidency, but the ongoing turmoil over Vietnam combined with the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia derailed his attempt at a quick arms control breakthrough. The failure of Johnson’s last-minute arms control efforts meant that it would be up to the incoming Nixon administration to make SALT a reality. At least initially, Nixon delayed arms control talks in favor of pressing the Soviets on more imminent concerns. Nixon hoped that he might dangle the prospect of arms control in front of the Soviets to win their support for ending the war in Vietnam on American terms—a policy called “linkage.” Much has been made of this linkage approach, but in reality Nixon’s linkage policy lasted one month. As the president became 15

Y8013-Maurer.indb 15

2/25/22 2:59 PM

16

e a r ly d el ib er at ions

aware of the magnitude of the Soviet nuclear buildup, he quickly ordered arms control deliberations accelerated, the better to head off Soviet nuclear efforts and preserve some margin of American nuclear advantage. The race was on for SALT. Nixon and his advisers agreed to begin SALT as quickly as possible, but they remained divided over SALT’s ultimate purpose. Cooperative arms controllers like Director of Arms Control Gerard Smith and Secretary of State William Rogers saw SALT as an opportunity to codify a relationship of “mutual assured destruction” between the United States and the Soviet Union, avoiding a costly nuclear arms race and promoting peaceful cooperation. Competitive arms controllers like Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Earl Wheeler instead hoped that SALT could be a tool to keep the United States ahead in the arms race. By limiting Soviet strength, SALT would allow the United States to exploit its advantage in advanced technology to retain strategic nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union. These two arms control viewpoints rested together uneasily in the administration’s earliest days. a rm s c on t r o l p r i or t o 1 9 6 9 At the end of the Second World War, the United States adopted a strategy of national security rooted in American superiority in nuclear weapons technology. At that time, the United States had the only nuclear weapons on earth. American policymakers hoped to use this technological advantage as the basis for a new international security architecture that would allow the United States to contain the influence of Soviet-backed communism around the world.1 Nuclear weapons would allow the United States to deter Soviet aggression not just against the United States, but also against American allies neighboring the Soviet Union around the rimlands of Eurasia, a policy known as “extended deterrence.” By doing so, the United States would reassure those allies of American support, providing them with a safe environment in which they could recover politically and economically from the Second World War.2 Additionally, extending deterrent guarantees to allies ensured that they would not need their own nuclear weapons, preventing the proliferation of the new technology to recently defeated Axis countries. Nonproliferation advanced

Y8013-Maurer.indb 16

2/25/22 2:59 PM

e a r ly d el ib er at ions

17

American security directly, but it also reassured the Soviets that American allies in Germany and Japan posed no threat to Soviet security.3 The American strategy of extended deterrence and reassurance was challenged almost immediately when the Soviets tested their own nuclear capabilities in 1949. Yet American leaders saw the Soviet challenge as manageable so long as the United States could retain superiority in nuclear weapons.4 The result was a large buildup of American nuclear weapons throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, aimed at ensuring the United States retained the overwhelming nuclear firepower that most American leaders believed necessary to deter the Soviets and reassure American allies.5 As the American nuclear arsenal expanded, the Soviet Union struggled to keep up, especially in the development of the longrange bombers and missiles required to deliver nuclear weapons directly to the United States.6 The growth of the Soviet arsenal, however slow, provoked debate within the United States about the possibility of limiting the arms race through some form of negotiations.7 Early American arms control initiatives in the Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower administrations proposed ending the production of new weapons before discussing the reduction of existing forces—a proposition that would have frozen the American lead in weapons. Unsurprisingly, the Soviets rejected these American proposals.8 The biggest achievement of these early negotiations was the partial limitation of nuclear testing during the Eisenhower and John Kennedy administrations, enshrined in the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty.9 Although it was a major accomplishment, the test ban treaty limited only the testing of nuclear explosives, not the deployment of new nuclear weapons, so the superpower arms race continued unabated. American efforts to restrain the arms race became more frantic as the 1960s wore on. The tense nuclear crises over Berlin and Cuba in the early 1960s convinced some Americans that their strategy of nuclear deterrence might backfire and lead to the destruction of the United States in nuclear war.10 Given the United States’ massive lead in “strategic” nuclear forces—those bombers and missiles that could strike the Soviet Union from bases in the United States—American defense planners in the Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson administrations slowed the deployment of new strategic weapons in order to cut costs and refocus on

Y8013-Maurer.indb 17

2/25/22 2:59 PM

18

e a r ly d el ib er at ions

“general purpose forces,” especially as those forces were needed to wage war in Vietnam.11 From 1964 onward, American strategic launchers were fixed unilaterally at 1,054 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), 656 submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) on 41 missile submarines (SSBNs), and around 500 long-range bombers.12 This was a fateful decision, as by the mid-1960s the Soviet Union was finally embarking on a crash program to match and exceed the United States in the number of strategic nuclear missiles.13 While the Soviets had had fewer than 300 total strategic launchers in 1962, by 1969 they had added over 1,000 new ICBMs plus 192 SLBMs, with hundreds more on the way.14 The Soviet challenge to American nuclear superiority not only threatened the United States itself, but drove a deep wedge between the United States and its allies. How could American partners trust that the United States would defend them from Soviet aggression if such defense would put the American homeland at risk of nuclear attack? As French president Charles de Gaulle wondered, would American policymakers really risk the destruction of New York to defend Paris?15 To reassure American allies, Kennedy and Johnson adopted a strategy of “flexible response” in which the United States deployed thousands of smaller nuclear weapons on the territory of allies throughout Europe and Asia.16 Yet deploying more American forces overseas to deter the Soviets was expensive and competed increasingly with American military requirements in Vietnam.17 Nor did flexible response resolve the basic problem posed by the Soviets’ expanding missile forces, which might still coerce American leaders into backing down rather than fighting. The military and political challenges posed by the Soviet missile buildup drove Lyndon Johnson to seek a new program of strategic arms limitation with the Soviet Union.18 Johnson became the first president to make real headway with the Soviets on limiting strategic nuclear weapons. Initially, Johnson’s primary concern was to head off the growing Soviet arsenal and preserve some margin of American numerical advantage. Johnson and his secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, first tried unilateral measures to halt the Soviet missile buildup. The two promoted the “assured destruction” strategy, in which American nuclear forces were hardened, dispersed, and concealed in numerous missile silos and stealthy submarines, ensuring that new Soviet missiles could not destroy the American nuclear arsenal in a first strike. Johnson and McNamara

Y8013-Maurer.indb 18

2/25/22 2:59 PM

e a r ly d el ib er at ions

19

hoped that when the Soviets realized that their new missiles would not allow them to escape destruction via preemption, the cash-strapped Soviet leaders desperate to modernize the Soviet economy would accept their nuclear predicament and stop building new missiles.19 Soviet leaders, however, were not so ready to accept strategic nuclear inferiority to the United States. Instead, the Soviets kept building missiles. When his unilateral gambit failed, Johnson became increasingly concerned to get the Soviets to accept his assured destruction framework via negotiation. By getting the Soviets to agree that further nuclear competition was futile and sign an arms control agreement freezing nuclear stockpiles where they were, Johnson paradoxically hoped to preserve the United States’ diminishing numerical superiority in nuclear missiles.20At the same time, Johnson and McNamara were increasingly concerned about the projected costs of missile defenses. Johnson’s predecessors had considered such a system, but rejected it as too expensive and technologically immature. By the mid-1960s, however, the growing Soviet arsenal, coupled with the first nuclear tests by the communist People’s Republic of China, created greater pressure in the United States to explore missile defense options. American concern for missile defense only grew as the Soviets began building an experimental missile defense system of their own.21 Yet when they ran the numbers, Johnson and McNamara were not convinced that the United States could afford such a system. Intercepting incoming missiles was a daunting technical challenge. Even if possible, it would require the United States to deploy several missile interceptors for every incoming enemy missile—a costly prospect when the Soviets were deploying hundreds of new missiles a year.22 By late 1966, Johnson and McNamara agreed that they could solve both problems at once if the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to halt further deployment of both offensive strategic missiles and strategic missile defenses. Such a strategic arms limitation agreement would decrease pressure for defense outlays and prevent the Soviet Union from overtaking the United States in total number of weapons.23 In December 1966, Johnson’s ambassador to Moscow, Llewellyn Thompson, invited Soviet leaders to join Johnson in a wide-ranging strategic arms dialogue.24 When Soviet leaders were slow to respond, Johnson broached the issue with Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin at their impromptu summit

Y8013-Maurer.indb 19

2/25/22 2:59 PM

20

e a r ly d el ib er at ions

in Glassboro, N.J., in June 1967.25 At least initially, Kosygin and other Soviet leaders were not interested in Johnson’s proposals, especially those related to missile defenses.26 Frustrated by Soviet intransigence and under increasing pressure from hawkish members of Congress, Johnson ordered McNamara to begin working on a limited missile defense system, known as Sentinel. The president hoped that Sentinel would placate American conservatives while inducing the Soviets to come to the negotiating table.27 By late 1967, Soviet policy underwent a dramatic change, and Soviet leaders signaled a willingness to discuss strategic arms limitation. With the imminent arrival of numerical parity, some Soviet leaders concluded that the time had come to freeze the race before the United States built any more weapons.28 Soviet scientists and military experts were also increasingly skeptical of their ability to produce a working missile defense system. By prohibiting the deployment of missile defenses, the Soviets would ensure that the United States did not succeed where they had failed.29 Superpower arms control also provided the Soviets with better standing to insist on West German ratification of the Nonproliferation Treaty, a major Soviet security objective.30 Finally, negotiations would provide Soviet leaders greater prestige as leaders of the international community and promoters of world peace.31 For all these reasons, in December 1967, the Soviets signaled that they were interested in strategic arms talks on both offensive and defensive systems, as Johnson had proposed. Preliminary discussions carried over into early 1968, at which point Johnson and Kosygin agreed to discuss the issue in detail at a second summit in Moscow in the early fall.32 With a summit meeting tentatively scheduled, Johnson ordered his secretary of state, Dean Rusk, to produce a concrete proposal for what was increasingly referred to within the government as the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, or SALT.33 Despite the urgency, Rusk’s committee did not begin hammering out a SALT position until July 8, 1968, only a few months before the proposed summit. The committee’s deliberations revealed deep divisions between the State Department and the Defense Department regarding SALT’s purpose.34 Now that the Soviets had agreed to negotiation, it remained to be seen whether Johnson’s advisers could agree among themselves.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 20

2/25/22 2:59 PM

e a r ly d el ib er at ions

21

To smooth out the bureaucratic differences, Rusk and Director of Arms Control and Disarmament William Foster allowed the Defense Department to take the lead in drafting the notional SALT proposal. The deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, Morton Halperin, would draft a compromise document based on the views of the key agencies—the State and Defense Departments, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).35 Halperin was an auspicious choice to draft the first major strategic arms limitation proposal. One of the “whiz kids” that Kennedy and Johnson had brought to Washington to shake up national security policy, Halperin was an economist by training who had been coauthor with Thomas Schelling of a widely read book that first put the concept of “arms control” in the public eye.36 But Halperin would have his work cut out for him. Aside from the question of what to limit, perhaps the most contentious issue revolved around how to verify a future agreement. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) concluded that American technical intelligence capabilities—especially the rapidly maturing satellite reconnaissance program—would generally be sufficient to monitor the number of weapons in each arsenal, and provide some ability to track testing and qualitative improvements. At the same time, though, American intelligence analysts warned that the Soviets would be able to take deceptive measures to decrease the confidence of American monitoring, and that vigilance against Soviet cheating would be necessary.37 On August 7, 1968, Rusk’s Executive Committee met to consider Halperin’s draft agreement. The Halperin proposal would have frozen all strategic and shorter-range theater missile construction as of September 1, 1968. It would also have limited the number of missile interceptors to an equal level on both sides, though given the political sensitivity of the missile defense issue Halperin did not suggest a specific number.38 Halperin’s draft agreement was a major bureaucratic success, as both State and Defense agreed that it would be an effective starting point for negotiations.39 The support of more hawkish advisers like Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford was not difficult to explain, since Halperin’s proposed freeze date would have allowed the Soviets approximate equality with the United States in long-range land-based missiles, but would have frozen the large U.S. lead in submarine-launched missiles. At least in

Y8013-Maurer.indb 21

2/25/22 2:59 PM

22

e a r ly d el ib er at ions

theory, the Soviet inferiority in submarine-launched weapons was meant to be offset by the Soviet superiority in land-based theater-range weapons, especially in Europe. In practice, however, Halperin’s proposal would have derailed the Soviet submarine construction program and allowed the United States to retain hundreds more strategic missiles.40 After a week of tense deliberations, even the Joint Chiefs accepted Halperin’s proposal, though with a long list of conditions attached, including high levels of missile defenses, clear withdrawal provisions in case of Soviet cheating, and continued funding for qualitative force improvements allowed under the agreement.41 On August 16, 1968, Rusk forwarded a lightly modified version of Halperin’s proposal to Johnson as ready for presentation to the Soviets.42 Halperin’s SALT proposal was a major bureaucratic accomplishment, and its rough outline of a freeze on offensive missile construction and an equal numerical limit on missile interceptors was very similar to the actual SALT agreements that would be concluded in 1972—albeit four years later, with the Soviets enjoying the margin of numerical superiority, rather than the United States. Halperin’s proposal to freeze the Soviets in a position of numerical inferiority, at a time when the Soviets were churning out missiles and submarines while the United States stood still, would certainly have been rejected by the Soviets in negotiations. Additionally, Halperin’s proposal did not address the Soviet preoccupation with American tactical nuclear weapons throughout Eurasia, which unbeknownst to American observers would serve as the primary impediment to offensive force limitation in the coming years. Despite Rusk’s and Clifford’s endorsements, the likelihood was high that Johnson would have met a flat Soviet refusal in Moscow, creating the possibility of a “failed summit” if negotiations deadlocked entirely. In the end, Johnson never had a chance to put Halperin’s proposal to the test. On August 21, 1968, Soviet-led Warsaw Pact forces invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the reform government that was questioning Czechoslovakia’s place in the Eastern Bloc. Johnson had planned to announce the upcoming SALT summit that morning, but his advisers recommended against proceeding, lest it appear that the United States was condoning Soviet aggression.43 The cancellation of Johnson’s summit ended his administration’s arms control hopes.44 Johnson and Kosygin continued to exchange private notes throughout the fall of 1968 via a

Y8013-Maurer.indb 22

2/25/22 2:59 PM

e a r ly d el ib er at ions

23

back channel between National Security Adviser Walt Rostow and Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. This exchange of notes expressed a hope for future progress on arms control and set the precedent for Nixon and Kissinger’s own back-channel forays into arms control diplomacy.45 After Nixon’s election in November 1968, Johnson also floated the idea of a lame-duck summit with the Soviet leaders to begin SALT negotiations in December 1968. Johnson hoped to tie Nixon’s hands and force the president-elect to move quickly on SALT. Nixon’s refusal to support the scheme led to its collapse.46 Johnson’s accomplishment in winning Soviet acceptance of arms limitation talks was real.47 But as the Vietnam War immolated Johnson’s presidency, he was unable to turn that initial Soviet concession into actual arms control agreements. It would be up to the incoming Nixon administration to make Johnson’s notion of SALT a reality. t he ne w a d m ini s t r at i on More than most American presidents, Richard Nixon cultivated an image as a foreign policy expert. Once a rising star in the Republican Party, Nixon’s political career had come crashing down when he was defeated in his first run for the White House by John Kennedy in 1960, followed by a humiliating failure to become governor of California. Withdrawing from politics, Nixon went into “the wilderness,” traveling around the world and writing extensively on the challenges of American Cold War foreign policy. By the time he reemerged as a presidential contender in 1968, Nixon had remade himself from a young anticommunist firebrand into a sort of elder statesman on foreign affairs. In an era when many Americans were questioning long-held beliefs about the United States’ place in the world, Nixon seemed to offer the wisdom and experience necessary to escape the deadly quagmire of Vietnam and restore America’s rightful place as leader of the free world. Nixon ran as an “outsider” candidate, promising to bring fresh ideas and enthusiasm to a tired and inept Washington establishment. The race was tight, but Nixon was ultimately elected to the presidency, becoming the only man to win the White House on a second try in the twentieth century.48 Nixon saw his 1968 victory as both a personal and a political vindication. The president-elect remained deeply embittered against Kennedy and Johnson, as well as the establishment politicians and news media

Y8013-Maurer.indb 23

2/25/22 2:59 PM

24

e a r ly d el ib er at ions

that Nixon blamed for his previous humiliation. Given a second chance at national leadership, Nixon was determined to fix all of the problems he believed the Kennedy-Johnson establishment had created. The first and most obvious of these was the war in Vietnam, the most pressing and divisive foreign policy issue of the day, which would consume much of Nixon’s attention and effort.49 But Nixon hoped to do more than damage control on what he saw as Kennedy’s mistakes. The president-elect was determined to alter the trajectory of American foreign relations, replacing the imperial overstretch of the Kennedy years with a more realistic policy that would sustain American global leadership by conserving American power, and deploying it selectively against the most pressing challenges.50 A major part of this new foreign policy would be greater engagement with America’s main geopolitical adversaries, the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. As Nixon promised the Republican National Convention in August 1968, “After an era of confrontation, the time has come for an era of negotiation,” a pledge that he reiterated in his inaugural address in January 1969.51 Nixon’s rhetoric won him plaudits on the campaign trail, but on specific policy issues his campaign was less clear, especially when it came to nuclear weapons. Nixon’s call for an “era of negotiation” was widely interpreted to be an endorsement of arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union.52 On the other hand, Nixon also criticized Johnson for watching passively as the Soviet Union built a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, and promised that if elected he would restore America’s military strength and competitiveness, including the deployment of an antiballistic missile system to protect the United States from Soviet attack.53 Accomplishing both of these campaign promises would be the central challenge of Nixon’s SALT policy. Nixon’s views on nuclear strategy have been notoriously difficult to pin down. On the one hand, Nixon had little interest in the technical details of nuclear forces or the tortured logic of theoretical nuclear strategy.54 Nixon’s strong antipathy toward nuclear detail is well documented, including colorful outbursts when confronted by particularly arcane nuclear issues.55 On the other hand, Nixon had a strong sense of the importance of nuclear weapons to American foreign policy. The new president was distressed that the period of American nuclear superiority was passing away, and that in the future the United States would have to

Y8013-Maurer.indb 24

2/25/22 2:59 PM

e a r ly d el ib er at ions

25

deal with the Soviet Union on more equal nuclear terms.56 When Nixon called for negotiations with the Soviet Union, it was out of a belief that negotiations would enhance American power to ensure the continued containment of communist aggression. In implementing his “era of negotiation,” Nixon relied heavily on his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. Kissinger seemed an odd pairing for Nixon, since he had spent years advising the wealthy establishment icon Nelson Rockefeller, one of Nixon’s main rivals for the Republican nomination in 1968. Yet Nixon and Kissinger bonded over common sentiments and policy preferences. Like Nixon, Kissinger was an outsider in American politics: a German-born Jew who had immigrated to the United States, fought in the Second World War, and earned a Ph.D. at Harvard. Although he was a well-known policy commentator and consultant, Kissinger had never held any formal position in government. Like Nixon, Kissinger was a critic of many of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations’ policies, including those regarding Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and China, believing that the United States should husband its resources and manage the Cold War competition through negotiation. Together, Nixon and Kissinger were determined to set American leadership on a more sustainable basis by ending the Vietnam War and negotiating with the communist powers.57 Kissinger’s views on nuclear weapons are also difficult to establish. Kissinger was considered one of the foremost public intellectuals on nuclear strategy due to his widely read 1957 work Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. Kissinger had argued that since the United States and the Soviet Union both had large nuclear arsenals, a strategy of deterrence based on the threat of overwhelming nuclear attack was no longer credible. Instead, the United States would need to recalibrate its nuclear strategy to fight and win more limited nuclear wars against the Soviet Union, below the threshold of total nuclear destruction.58 In the ensuing years, Kissinger had distanced himself publicly from this previous advocacy of limited nuclear war fighting, noting the many difficulties that would arise in preventing a limited nuclear war from escalating into a total one.59 As a result, Kissinger’s public views on nuclear strategy and arms control came to look much like those of his Harvard colleague Thomas Schelling, who argued that limited nuclear war was unlikely to remain limited, that nuclear deterrence should therefore be based on the

Y8013-Maurer.indb 25

2/25/22 2:59 PM

26

e a r ly d el ib er at ions

threat of massive nuclear retaliation, and that arms control negotiations should serve to buttress the stability of this mutual balance of terror.60 As national security adviser, however, Kissinger remained interested in “limited strategic nuclear options,” or war plans that would allow the United States to respond to Soviet aggression with a series of smaller nuclear attacks aimed at intimidating the Soviets into standing down.61 To expand American nuclear war-fighting options, Kissinger supported the development of new nuclear counterforce capabilities that would allow the United States to attack Soviet nuclear forces on the ground.62 While Kissinger saw total nuclear supremacy as an unattainable goal, he hoped that the development of limited nuclear options would square the circle and allow the United States to retain some form of nuclear advantage, even as the American and Soviet arsenals approached parity in numbers. Nixon and Kissinger thus shared views on nuclear strategy and arms control. Both believed that American global leadership had depended on American nuclear advantages over the Soviet Union.63 The United States had relied on its nuclear superiority to deter adversaries, reassure allies, and manage major crises when they arose through diplomatic initiatives backed by nuclear threats. Nixon and Kissinger feared that the loss of American nuclear superiority would make the Soviets more aggressive, American allies less reliable, and American nuclear threats worthless during future crises.64 With the Soviet Union on track to overtake the United States in nuclear weapons, Nixon and Kissinger saw SALT as an opportunity to press pause on the arms race before the Soviet nuclear lead became insurmountable. If Soviet-American relations could be stabilized, Nixon and Kissinger would have more time to resolve the Vietnam conflict and rebuild a new domestic consensus around American leadership.65 The United States would then be in a better position to renew the competition in strategic nuclear forces. Given time, the United States would reemerge as a global leader.66 Successful SALT negotiations could buy the United States that time. To implement the president’s vision, Kissinger served as the chief architect of a major restructuring of the national security decisionmaking system. Kissinger believed that the foreign policy blunders of the Kennedy and Johnson years had been driven by the dysfunction and infighting within the American government. Kissinger was determined that Nixon would receive the best possible policy advice from a rigorous

Y8013-Maurer.indb 26

2/25/22 2:59 PM

e a r ly d el ib er at ions

27

interagency process run through Kissinger’s office.67 In designing this new system, Kissinger was aided by Morton Halperin, who agreed to stay on with the new administration and assist in building a new National Security Council (NSC) system.68 The new system called for a series of ascending committees. At Nixon’s instruction, Kissinger would organize interagency study groups by issuing a National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM). The lead agency on the given issue would chair an NSSM steering committee, which also would include representatives from all relevant agencies, providing an opportunity for every part of the government to have their say. The committee would provide indepth analysis and forward its conclusions to the NSC principals. Under Kissinger’s close guidance, the principals would draw upon this robust analysis to hammer out concrete policy options for the president. Nixon would then formalize his decision in a National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM). Kissinger and Halperin believed that this centralized process would reduce the infighting that had doomed the Johnson administration.69 Although the system seemed sound in theory, the reality was quite different. Departments and agencies balked at the new rules, which placed considerable power in Kissinger’s hands.70 Especially problematic was the provision that only Kissinger could issue study memoranda, which would prevent any other department or agency from raising issues for presidential consideration.71 Kissinger ultimately eased the provisions for issuing study memoranda, but the question of who could raise issues for Nixon’s consideration would dog the administration in the coming years.72 When Nixon took office in January 1969, Kissinger’s initial raft of study memoranda reflected the priorities of the administration. The first and most urgent study regarded American policy toward Vietnam, which remained Nixon’s foremost priority.73 In the first week, Kissinger issued eleven further NSSM on topics including the Middle East, foreign aid, Japan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), monetary policy, and Nigeria.74 Conspicuously absent was any study of arms control policy. While Nixon and Kissinger remained committed in theory to continuing Johnson’s SALT dialogue with the Soviets, in practice both mistrusted the planning that had occurred under the previous administration. They were determined that the administration would do its own homework

Y8013-Maurer.indb 27

2/25/22 2:59 PM

28

e a r ly d el ib er at ions

before proceeding.75 The first step was a comprehensive review of American military capabilities and policies, which Kissinger issued as NSSM 3. Once NSSM 3 was completed and Nixon had selected a comprehensive military strategy, then he would be ready to consider how SALT would fit into that strategy.76 This approach would allow time to develop a thorough arms control position, as well as consult American allies and other interest groups.77 In the meantime, Nixon and Kissinger sought to gain a diplomatic advantage out of their delay by using SALT as an incentive in their negotiations with the Soviets. From Moscow’s early communications, Nixon perceived that the Soviets were eager for arms control, suggesting that negotiations might be traded to the Soviets in exchange for concessions on more pressing issues like Vietnam or the Middle East–the “linkage” policy.78 Commentators at the time and since have made a great deal of Nixon and Kissinger’s linkage policy on arms control, but in reality it formed only part of their deliberations.79 Nixon had already decided to delay SALT until the administration could study the issue further; the linkage policy made a virtue of this necessity by trying to squeeze a few concessions out of the Soviets in the meantime. Furthermore, the linkage policy went nowhere: the Soviets balked at the idea of handing Nixon concessions that they viewed as extortionate in exchange for SALT.80 Nixon and Kissinger would periodically revisit the idea of linking SALT to other negotiations, but neither the president nor his adviser proved willing to slow or halt arms control negotiations in the pursuit of other objectives once talks began.81 When the administration’s arms control deliberations began in earnest, linkage quickly faded away. a rm s c on t r o l mo v e s f or wa r d Nixon’s decision to delay SALT was not popular. Johnson had raised public hopes about arms limitation, which made it difficult for Nixon to delay. At least initially, the Soviets added to the pressure: on January 20, 1969, the day of Nixon’s inauguration, the Soviet Foreign Ministry announced that the Soviet Union was ready for immediate arms limitation talks.82 Advice on arms control poured in from all corners of American society. Many newspapers editorialized that Nixon was missing an opportunity by delaying talks.83 Congress questioned Nixon’s appointees about why the administration had not announced a date to meet with

Y8013-Maurer.indb 28

2/25/22 2:59 PM

e a r ly d el ib er at ions

29

the Soviets.84 Interest groups and establishment experts weighed in on the need for quick action.85 Even within the government, many believed that Nixon should accelerate his consideration of SALT, build on the Johnson administration’s work, and begin negotiations as soon as possible.86 Despite this pressure, Nixon and Kissinger insisted that arms control should flow from military strategy, thus necessitating delay until NSSM 3 was completed.87 Kissinger’s new NSC system helped insulate the president from bureaucratic pressure to move forward on SALT. Nonetheless, Kissinger struggled to control one key member of the administration: Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. Unlike “outsiders” Nixon and Kissinger, Laird was at the center of political life on Capitol Hill. Elected to the House of Representatives from Wisconsin in 1952, Laird had joined a cadre of likeminded midwestern congressmen determined to reshape the Republican Party during the 1960s, when the Democrats controlled the Congress and the White House. Known as the “Midwestern Machiavelli,” Laird helped orchestrate Gerald Ford’s rise to the position of House minority leader in 1965, at which point Laird succeeded Ford as chairman of the House Republican Conference. He gained national notoriety for his hawkish criticism of the Johnson administration, especially McNamara’s attempts to mislead Congress. In addition to his experience as a party leader and partisan infighter, Laird’s long tenure on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee had given him a mastery of military bureaucratic detail that Kissinger and his staff struggled to match. As secretary of defense, Laird insisted on his independent prerogative to provide Nixon with advice on military issues, including arms control. Cunning and well-connected, Laird refused to be sidelined by Kissinger or anyone else.88 Like Nixon and Kissinger, Laird saw SALT as a tool for promoting long-term American advantages. As secretary of defense, however, Laird had a more specific vision for the future of the American military than either Nixon or Kissinger—a vision of a military transformed and empowered by emerging technologies. Laird’s future military would replace the unpopular draft with an all-volunteer force, whose relatively small numbers would be offset by their professional training and technological advantages. When it came to weapons, this generally meant building better rather than more, including continual upgrades to existing aircraft

Y8013-Maurer.indb 29

2/25/22 2:59 PM

30

e a r ly d el ib er at io ns

and missiles, as well as new technologies like terrain-matching cruise missiles and anti-ballistic missile defenses.89 Competition in technology weapons would play to American strengths, since the Soviets did not have anything like the American technology sector and would trail the United States when it came to weapon accuracy and reliability.90 Laird called his plan the “Strategy of Realistic Deterrence,” but over the longer term it would become better known as the “Offset Strategy,” a term developed in the Carter administration.91 Laird’s vision of an all-volunteer, technologically enabled force, and his political acumen to set the groundwork for that force, makes him one of the most important founders of the current American military. While Nixon and Laird were both competitive arms controllers, their specific views on SALT would often diverge. Nixon and Kissinger viewed SALT primarily as a political tool: negotiations to freeze the arms race could buy time for the United States to recover the political wherewithal to contest Soviet nuclear superiority. By comparison, Laird’s understanding of SALT’s role was intensely technical. He sought arms control agreements that would promote American technological advantages, limiting specific weapons that would play to Soviet strengths, while still allowing those weapons that were advantageous to the United States. Since “Realistic Deterrence” called for leveraging American advantages in advanced technology, this meant that SALT should limit the number of weapons where possible, but allow progress in improving the technological quality of existing forces. If SALT could help the United States retain a credible damage-limiting force, Laird believed, then it would make a major contribution to deterring the Soviets.92 Unlike Nixon, Laird was unwilling to wait for SALT to begin. Facing a massive Soviet missile buildup, the United States needed to act soon if it was going to head off Soviet weapons and retain its damagelimitation capabilities. By early February 1969, Defense representatives were joining the State Department in pressuring Kissinger to accelerate the NSSM 3 process and issue an arms control study.93 Later that week, Nixon received his first briefing from the Defense Department and military leadership on the strategic nuclear situation. The briefing provided grim news: while the American arsenal remained relatively secure, the Soviets were making rapid progress on new and dangerous weapons, including their massive SS-9 missiles and their Yankee-class missile

Y8013-Maurer.indb 30

2/25/22 2:59 PM

e a r ly d el ib er at ions

31

submarines. Nixon commented that the briefing was “astounding,” reinforcing the president’s fears that the United States was falling behind the Soviets in the arms race.94 The briefing’s impact was amplified when the Defense Department concluded that delaying SALT for six months might imperil American national security if it allowed new weapons like SS-9 and Yankee to go into production.95 Laird closed the deal in person when the NSC met on February 14 by playing on Nixon’s concerns about Soviet nuclear progress, while emphasizing the importance of securing American military-technological superiority.96 Under Laird’s direction, the Defense Department’s pressure campaign quickly short-circuited Kissinger’s NSC process, appealing to the president directly to accelerate SALT. Faced with the dire predictions of Soviet nuclear superiority, Nixon ordered the strategic nuclear portion of NSSM 3 accelerated, the better to enable a quick commencement to negotiations.97 A few weeks later, with NSSM 3 still underway, Kissinger issued NSSM 28, ordering the bureaucracy to begin compiling options for SALT. SALT options would now be developed concurrently with nuclear strategy, with the aim of meeting Nixon’s directive that the United States be ready for negotiations by May.98 Nixon was little swayed by voices for nuclear cooperation, but, faced with evidence of eroding American nuclear advantage, he quickly joined the SALT bandwagon. Leading the NSSM 28 SALT study process would be Nixon’s recently appointed director of arms control and disarmament, Gerard Smith. Nixon chose Smith because he was a staunch Republican with impeccable credentials. Smith had worked for years in the Eisenhower administration on nuclear issues, including several years as the director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff. After leaving government in 1961, he had served as an arms control consultant for the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. In these capacities, Smith had been intimately involved in virtually all of the major nuclear arms control initiatives of the previous twenty years, including the Atoms for Peace Program, the Open Skies Initiative, the Geneva Disarmament Conference, the Hotline Agreement, the Limited Test Ban Treaty, and the Multilateral Force Proposal. His knowledge of arms control theory and connections with the arms control community made him a natural choice to serve as Nixon’s head of ACDA.99 Smith’s credentials were exemplary, but he struggled to connect with Nixon on a personal level. After all, Smith was a scion of the very

Y8013-Maurer.indb 31

2/25/22 2:59 PM

32

e a r ly d el ib er at ions

establishment that Nixon despised. Born to wealth in New York and educated in law at Yale, Smith earned his own substantial fortune as a corporate lawyer. In the tradition of the “dollar-a-year” men, Smith believed that his privilege entailed a duty to serve his country. While working in Washington, he and his family would escape on weekends to his estate on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.100 Smith was urbane and intelligent, but his career of appointed expert positions left him with little instinct for politics. Convinced of his own expertise, he often struggled to understand those who disagreed with him. Devoted to duty, he would push for what he thought was right, even to the point of self-defeat. Despite appointing him to high office, Nixon came to suspect Smith’s patrician demeanor. Smith’s personality was not the only thing that alienated Nixon: the two men differed on foreign policy priorities. When it came to SALT, Smith’s views were as establishment as his pedigree. Smith argued that the United States and the Soviet Union had a mutual interest in ending the arms race, dismantling damage-limitation capabilities while relying on retaliatory arsenals to keep the peace.101 Over time, nuclear stability would ease suspicion and allow political reconciliation between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies.102 For geopolitical competitors like Nixon or Kissinger, Smith’s views on the possibilities for Soviet-American cooperation seemed hopelessly naïve. The president and his adviser worried that given free rein, establishment figures like Smith would unilaterally disarm the United States while the Soviets continued to expand their nuclear arsenal.103 Once in office, Smith quickly clashed with Nixon over the timing of SALT. Although Nixon had accelerated the arms control process, he insisted that he would only set a date for negotiation after the government had concluded its preparatory studies. To Smith and others in the liberal arms control establishment, this was a mistake. The United States had already delayed negotiations during Johnson’s last year in office—further delay would inflame Soviet suspicions about American motives.104 Preliminary negotiations would be entirely possible on the basis of the research done already in the Johnson administration.105 Nixon found none of these arguments compelling, and insisted that the administration present a united front on delaying the start of SALT, thereby allowing the government to finish its studies while also giving Kissinger’s linkage approach to Soviet-American relations more time to operate.106

Y8013-Maurer.indb 32

2/25/22 2:59 PM

e a r ly d el ib er at ions

33

Frustrated by the president’s instructions, Smith and other cooperative arms controllers set their own tone in public statements. Despite having been ordered to downplay the possibility of talks, Smith instead told his Soviet counterparts in Geneva that the United States would be ready for SALT soon.107 Nixon’s Secretary of State William Rogers also joined in the campaign to set a date for SALT. Rogers had been attorney general under Eisenhower when Nixon had been vice president. Nixon considered Rogers a friend and had appointed him as secretary of state to mitigate what the president considered the liberal establishment views of the State Department.108 But Rogers saw his job as representing the views of his department’s experts, which led him into conflict with Nixon. On the issue of SALT timing, Rogers repeatedly asked for authorization to set a date for negotiation with the Soviets.109 Despite being repeatedly instructed to wait, Rogers told Soviet officials in Washington that the United States was eager for negotiations, and he would soon be authorized to set a date.110 Smith and Rogers ultimately succeeded in moving up Nixon’s timetable. By the spring, rumors were swirling around Washington that the negotiations would begin any day.111 The administration was bombarded with requests by allied representatives regarding its intentions.112 Facing a potential diplomatic row, Nixon conceded the point: on May 21, 1969, while Smith’s NSSM 28 study was still underway, the president ordered the State Department to produce a timeline for the lead-up to SALT.113 From that point, the timing of the talks quickly diverged from the substance of the NSSM 28 review. By early June, with the review process still incomplete, Nixon authorized Rogers to set a date with the Soviets to begin talks on or around July 30.114 Nixon announced his readiness for talks publicly a few days later.115 Ironically, Smith and Rogers failed to speed up the negotiations themselves, because the Soviets gave no response to Nixon’s offer.116 As days turned into weeks, it became apparent that negotiations would not begin until the fall. What Smith and Rogers did manage was to alienate Nixon and Kissinger, who resented their efforts to pressure the White House into negotiations.117 But the rifts caused by these early disputes over SALT’s start date were minor compared with the major crack-up to come over missile defense policy.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 33

2/25/22 2:59 PM

c h a pte r tw o

Deepening Divisions

n i xo n a nd h i s a dvis e r s c a m e to an early consensus that SALT should proceed quickly. Yet the deep division within the administration over the purpose of arms control forced Nixon to mediate between cooperative and competitive camps. This dispute within the administration was inflamed by a major political battle with Congress over the military budget, especially Nixon’s desire to deploy an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system known as Safeguard to ward off a Soviet nuclear attack. The parallel political battles—between competitors and cooperators within the administration, and between the president and his congressional opponents—quickly strained Nixon’s ability to control or direct his subordinates. Nixon and Kissinger entered office determined to tame the foreign policy bureaucracy through the new NSC system. Within six months, however, that process broke down. On strategy, Safeguard, and SALT, the NSC process pitted competitors like Laird directly against cooperators like Smith, producing nothing but gridlock. None of the key participants were ready to play by Nixon and Kissinger’s rules: Laird and Smith were both happy to cross the line when they thought it served their interests, forming alliances with like-minded members of Congress to pressure the administration into their preferred policies, and bypassing NSC procedures to appeal directly to the president. Nixon responded to the chaos 34

Y8013-Maurer.indb 34

2/25/22 2:59 PM

d eepening d i v isio ns

35

with indecision, unwilling to alienate his advisers at a time when his administration was under attack from ABM critics both within and without. Kissinger’s increasing responsibility for arms control policy thus reflected a failure of the White House’s influence, rather than a success. In their initial appointments, Nixon and Kissinger hoped to delegate the SALT process to their subordinates, the better to allow Nixon’s concentration on the central issue of Vietnam. But Laird and Smith proved incapable of working out their differences within Kissinger’s system. This ongoing cycle of bureaucratic pressure and division would continue to drive more and more of the administration’s arms control policy directly into Kissinger’s hands. t he a b m - m i r v - s a lt p i l e u p The administration’s early internal debates over SALT were quickly overshadowed by the growing public debate over nuclear strategy in the spring and summer of 1969. The controversy centered on Nixon’s determination to deploy an anti-ballistic missile system. ABM was an emerging technology of tremendous strategic importance: a successful ABM system would use high-powered radars to track incoming enemy missiles and destroy them midair with missile interceptors before they could reach their targets. A working ABM system would have had profound strategic implications, potentially reversing the increasing vulnerability of the United States to Soviet missile attacks. By the time Nixon entered office, experts had been debating the merits of ABM technology for years. On the technical side, critics of ABM argued that such a system would never work. Striking even a single missile midair was a daunting challenge; blunting a Soviet attack of hundreds or thousands of weapons was impossible. And even a highly effective ABM system would do little against Soviet bombers and submarine-launched missiles. Building an ABM system would be a costly waste of resources.1 Proponents of ABM countered that advances in precision electronics and digital computing were creating opportunities for missile defense that hadn’t existed before. Of course, the technology hadn’t been proven, but no technology was ever proven until it was tried. There was only so much progress that could be made in the lab: deploying a firstgeneration ABM system would be the best and fastest way to iterate and mature the technology, which would only grow in strength as computers

Y8013-Maurer.indb 35

2/25/22 2:59 PM

36

d eepening d i v isio ns

became more powerful. In the meantime, even a limited system would help against a smaller Chinese attack or ward against an accidental missile launch.2 The technical dispute over ABM’s possibility was linked to a strategic dispute over ABM’s desirability. Paradoxically, opponents of ABM argued that although they were unlikely to work, missile defenses would also be strategically dangerous. If a country did deploy an effective missile defense system, it would then feel empowered to attack its adversary without consequence. By removing nuclear vulnerability, an effective ABM system would make war more likely by undermining mutual assured destruction. Even more dangerous would be the psychological consequences of deploying a faulty ABM system, which would make leaders feel less vulnerable and make war more likely without offering any meaningful defense. Finally, whether defenses worked or not, their deployment would cause the adversary to take offsetting measures of his own, deploying more offensive weapons to overwhelm the defensive system and further perpetuating the arms race.3 ABM proponents rejected the strategy of mutual assured destruction and embraced the logic of deterrence through damage limitation. Strategic defenses would allow the United States to limit damage from a Soviet attack, which would strengthen deterrence by convincing Soviet leaders that such an attack would be defeated. The Soviets were already expanding their strategic attack forces, even without an American defensive system. If the Soviets showed no restraint, why should the United States refrain from defending itself?4 Despite the academic debate, Nixon was determined to deploy an ABM system for several reasons. First, Nixon had promised voters that he would deploy ABMs to restore American strategic nuclear superiority.5 Second, Nixon believed that ABM technology would improve the United States’ strategic position, even if only marginally.6 Third, Nixon saw ABMs as an important bargaining chip in SALT. Since the United States was not building strategic offensive missiles, an active ABM program was essential to win Soviet concessions at the negotiating table. If the Soviets felt threatened by the American ABM program, Nixon believed they would be readier to freeze their own forces in exchange for limits on ABMs.7

Y8013-Maurer.indb 36

2/25/22 2:59 PM

d eepening d i v isions

37

Nixon knew that winning congressional support for ABM would be a challenge. On Nixon’s orders, Laird produced a new ABM plan known as Safeguard, which would deploy American missile defenses in phases.8 Nixon and Laird intended the Safeguard plan to preempt the earlier congressional criticism of Lyndon Johnson’s Sentinel ABM system, which would have deployed nuclear-armed interceptors in American urban and suburban areas. Thus, the early phases of Safeguard would concentrate missile defenses around remote American military bases across the Midwest. Over time, the missile defense system would expand to defend populated areas on the East and West Coasts.9 Convinced that Safeguard would mollify congressional opponents, Nixon approved the new scheme, and Laird began preparing the administration’s sales pitch to Congress.10 Nixon and Laird had underestimated the scope of congressional opposition to ABM deployments. Part of Nixon’s difficulty stemmed from the dynamics of American partisan politics. While Nixon had defeated Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey to take the White House, both houses of Congress remained firmly in Democratic hands, with the Democrats retaining a large 58–42 lead in the Senate.11 Furthermore, Democrats controlled important congressional committees, with William J. Fulbright as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and John C. Stennis as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.12 In dealing with Congress, Nixon would lack the tools of party discipline that Lyndon Johnson had enjoyed in approaching controversial issues like missile defense deployments. Nixon’s Safeguard problems went far beyond partisan politics, however, as the political disruption of the Vietnam War raised new challenges to building a congressional coalition to fund missile defenses. The war had caused many Americans to question whether American foreign policy had become overly militarized more generally. In this environment, the question of whether to deploy a multi-billion-dollar ABM system became a political symbol whose meaning extended far beyond the system’s strategic utility in superpower relations. Opponents of ABM characterized it as a wasteful boondoggle that would further a militarized American foreign policy while diverting resources from solving economic and social problems at home.13 This growing antimilitarist turn

Y8013-Maurer.indb 37

2/25/22 2:59 PM

38

d eepening d i v isio ns

against missile defenses cut across congressional party lines, creating strange coalitions as hawkish Democrats like Stennis and Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson came to support Nixon’s Safeguard program, while dovish Republican senators like Edward Brooke and Margaret Chase Smith opposed it.14 At the intersection of principled and partisan opposition to missile defenses stood Sen. Fulbright, whose Foreign Relations Committee became a locus of anti-ABM sentiment and who took the lead in questioning the administration’s Safeguard rationale.15 The opponents of Safeguard preempted Nixon’s missile defense announcement. Laird’s Safeguard plan was leaked to the press, appearing on the front page of the New York Times before Nixon had even approved it.16 Working with the leaked material, Fulbright’s committee began hearings criticizing Safeguard before Nixon had officially announced it. Numerous scientists, including many members of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), testified before the Foreign Relations Committee that Safeguard was wasteful at best, and dangerous at worst.17 Faced with such well-organized opposition, Nixon’s advisers predicted that the Senate might very well vote against funding Safeguard.18 On March 14, 1969, with opposing congressional hearings well underway, Nixon rolled out his formal Safeguard proposal. Nixon provided a moderate defense that Safeguard would advance ABM technology and defend American military bases from missile attack, while also inducing the Soviets to engage on SALT.19 Having set a conciliatory and measured tone, Nixon turned the lobbying campaign for Safeguard over to Laird in the hopes that the White House could move on to other issues.20 Nixon’s firm but conciliatory argument for Safeguard quickly foundered on the growing antagonism within his administration. Part of the difficulty came from Smith and Rogers’s lukewarm support for Safeguard. In internal deliberations, the two had voiced a preference to delay ABM deployments until SALT could begin, as a gesture of good faith.21 When called to testify before Congress, Smith and Rogers deferred questions about whether they supported Safeguard or not.22 On another issue, their lack of enthusiasm might have gone unnoticed, but Safeguard opponents latched on to their testimony as evidence that Safeguard was unnecessary, and that Nixon’s case for Safeguard was bunk.23 Nor could Nixon control Laird, who ignored Nixon’s conciliatory approach and took a much harder line on Safeguard. Laird had not been

Y8013-Maurer.indb 38

2/25/22 2:59 PM

d eepening d i v isions

39

Nixon’s first choice for secretary of defense. In fact, at Nixon’s behest, Laird had courted Democratic senator Jackson to lead the Defense Department. At the last moment, though, Jackson declined to serve in a Republican administration, leaving Laird on the hook as Nixon’s best choice. Preferring to remain in Congress, Laird had insisted that if he served as secretary of defense, he would need total leeway in filling every appointment in the Defense Department, without any White House interference—an extreme position that Laird had hoped Nixon would refuse. Instead, to Laird’s surprise, Nixon had given him total hiring power over the entire Department of Defense, an unprecedented amount of autonomy. Laird used the opportunity to staff his department with a bipartisan team of technocrats who owed their jobs to him, rather than Nixon. As a result, Nixon’s White House struggled to keep track of Laird’s activities, providing plenty of opportunity for Laird to do as he pleased. Laird had selected as his deputy secretary David Packard, cofounder of the major digital computing firm Hewlett-Packard. Laird relied heavily on Packard’s expertise in his plan to remake the American military into a high-tech, digitally enabled force. The founder of one of the first digital “start-ups,” Packard embodied the can-do spirit of the American defense industrial community, with a strong faith in the ability of smart engineering to overcome challenges.24 Packard’s faith in technology extended to the realm of ABM, where he maintained that advances in digital computing were creating opportunities for precision military missions like ballistic missile defenses.25 Working closely with Laird, Packard was one of the key architects of the Defense Department’s Safeguard lobbying approach. Whereas Nixon had presented a balanced rationale for Safeguard, emphasizing its multiple dimensions and uses, Laird and Packard quickly focused on Safeguard’s importance in meeting the Soviet missile threat. In their lobbying, Laird and Packard emphasized the Soviets’ deployment of SS-9 monster-missiles, gigantic weapons whose massive warheads could destroy American missile silos buried deep underground.26 The press responded positively to this testimony, with headlines emphasizing the Soviet threat.27 ABM opponents quickly pushed back. Nixon had said that Safeguard was a moderate response to an evolving international strategic environment; Laird was now saying it was an urgent requirement against an overwhelming Soviet threat.28 Safeguard

Y8013-Maurer.indb 39

2/25/22 2:59 PM

40

d eepening d i v isio ns

opponents also shifted their technical criticism from Safeguard itself to Laird and Packard’s methodology for estimating the Soviet threat, arguing that Soviet strategic forces were not as dangerous as the Defense Department claimed.29 Laird and Packard responded by promoting their own pro-Safeguard interest groups, including drafting pro-Safeguard talking points and articles for supportive members of Congress and the press.30 With conflicting messages emerging from the administration, Nixon chastised Rogers and Laird, insisting that both express a moderate but firm support for Safeguard in public.31 The public debate on Safeguard fed back into the administration’s internal deliberations. Smith convened the NSSM 28 Steering Committee in March, just as the congressional fight over Safeguard was heating up. The Steering Committee quickly organized a number of working groups to analyze various ideas for SALT.32 Halperin was an obvious choice to represent Kissinger on the new committee, but Kissinger also selected his close associate Helmut Sonnenfeldt to work on arms control issues. Kissinger and Sonnenfeldt had met while serving in Germany following the Second World War, and had bonded over their shared identity as German-Jewish expats studying in the United States. While Kissinger had pursued an academic career, Sonnenfeldt had joined the State Department as a Soviet expert.33 After joining the NSC staff, Sonnenfeldt was one of Kissinger’s closest confidants, to the point that some called him “Kissinger’s Kissinger.”34 Importantly, Sonnenfeldt shared Kissinger’s deep suspicion of the Soviet leadership and belief that SALT would be a struggle to assert American military advantages.35 Kissinger’s increasing reliance on Sonnenfeldt reflected his growing alienation from Halperin, who opposed Nixon and Kissinger’s policies in Vietnam.36 Sonnenfeldt kept Kissinger regularly informed of the Steering Committee’s activities.37 The Steering Committee quickly became convinced that SALT would need to address two weapons technologies in particular: ABMs and multiple independently-targeted reentry vehicles, or MIRVs.38 An arcane missile technology with an awkward acronym, MIRV nonetheless had tremendous importance for the military balance. A MIRV replaced a missile’s single warhead with a cluster of warheads attached to a small robotic spacecraft, which once lofted beyond the atmosphere would fire each warhead at a separate target. Each individual missile equipped with

Y8013-Maurer.indb 40

2/25/22 2:59 PM

d eepening d i v isio ns

41

MIRV could strike and destroy several different targets over a large area, and with greatly increased accuracy. Retrofitting existing missiles with MIRV allowed the United States to deploy thousands more nuclear warheads at relatively low cost, and without the political challenges of authorizing brand-new missiles. MIRVed missiles could overwhelm future missile defense systems, by bombarding them with a shower of nuclear warheads.39 Perhaps most enticing from the military’s perspective, the gradually improving accuracy of MIRVed missiles could allow even relatively small warheads to destroy hardened targets like missile silos and command bunkers, by delivering the warhead within meters of its target, rather than kilometers.40 Like ABM, MIRV provoked controversy. Its ability to destroy hardened silos and command facilities raised the possibility of a damagelimiting first strike. Proponents of a competitive damage-limiting strategy embraced MIRV as an essential element in retaining nuclear superiority, which would reinforce deterrence by convincing Soviet leaders that they would lose a war with the United States.41 Opponents of MIRV worried that a damage-limiting capability would make war more likely by undermining mutual assured destruction, increasing Soviet leaders’ insecurities and incentivizing them to attack first in a crisis.42 As the NSSM 28 Steering Committee reviewed SALT options, divisions emerged over how to address MIRV. By April, Smith was concerned that progress on MIRV testing might reach a point where limiting MIRVs in SALT would no longer be an option. Smith suggested that the administration defer further testing for the time being, at least until the United States had discussed MIRV limitation with the Soviets. Smith’s idea to delay MIRV testing met strong opposition from more hawkish members of the Steering Committee, especially Gen. Earle Wheeler, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS). Wheeler had served previously as chairman under Johnson, but had remained on at Nixon’s personal request. As an Army general, much of Wheeler’s time was consumed by managing the ongoing war in Vietnam, but on strategic nuclear issues he was an unrepentant hawk determined to retain American military superiority. Wheeler and Sonnenfeldt worried that delaying MIRV testing would allow the Soviets to catch up with the United States in a crucial technology, nullifying an important American advantage.43 Kissinger and Laird agreed with the hawks that delaying MIRV

Y8013-Maurer.indb 41

2/25/22 2:59 PM

42

d eepening d i v isio ns

testing was a bad idea, making it unlikely that Nixon would give Smith’s idea serious consideration.44 Although Smith’s idea for delaying MIRV testing had little support in the administration, it received some inadvertent support from Congress. On April 16, 1969, Nixon received a letter from Sen. Edward Brooke, a dovish Republican from Massachusetts. Brooke offered to support Nixon’s ABM policy if Nixon would support a Senate resolution by Brooke for a moratorium on MIRV testing.45 Brooke’s initiative took the White House by surprise—Kissinger worried that someone in Smith’s agency was feeding ideas to the Senate in an effort to preempt Nixon’s nuclear policy.46 The coincidence of timing was striking, but no evidence of leaking was uncovered. Nixon and Kissinger tried to convince Brooke that MIRV testing was in the United States’ best interests, but the senator was unconvinced: instead, he took his moratorium proposal public, calling for Nixon to delay MIRV testing as a first step in restraining the arms race.47 Brooke’s resolution was nonbinding, but enjoyed the support of forty-one senators.48 As with his Safeguard presentation, Nixon’s response was measured, thanking the senator for his contributions but also ruling out a slowdown on MIRV prior to negotiations.49 In and of itself, Brooke’s resolution was less concerning to the White House than the possibility that the senator might be reacting to and exacerbating divisions within the administration.50 In response to the questions over MIRV, Laird once again undermined Nixon’s moderate approach and launched a counteroffensive to shore up congressional support for nuclear modernization. In April, as Brooke’s resolution was being debated, Laird began telling Congress that the Soviet Union had already tested a MIRVed version of its massive SS-9 missile. As before, the press picked up Laird’s warning and reported it widely.51 Laird’s decision to publicize the SS-9 test was cunning. A MIRVed SS-9 posed a clear and present danger to American missile silos across the Midwest, providing an even stronger rationale for deploying the first phase of Safeguard. At the same time, if the Soviets were already testing their own MIRVed weapons, delaying American MIRV testing would be both dangerous and futile.52 By promoting the idea of an imminent Soviet MIRV, Laird killed two birds with one warhead. Laird’s ploy backfired, however, when the CIA concluded in late May that the Soviet SS-9 test had not been a MIRV, but was instead a basic

Y8013-Maurer.indb 42

2/25/22 2:59 PM

d eepening d iv isions

43

multiple reentry vehicle (MRV). Rarely had so technical a distinction had such important political implications: although both MRVs and MIRVs carried multiple warheads, only MIRVs could deliver those warheads quickly and accurately to multiple targets. MIRV was a deadly weapon; MRV was an engineering oddity. Furthermore, the CIA predicted that the Soviets remained several years away from developing a working MIRV capability, and that Soviet MIRV tests would be readily observable by American technical intelligence capabilities, providing plenty of warning.53 If the CIA was correct, then Laird’s campaign for Safeguard would suffer another major blow, but Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Richard Helms was more concerned about setting the record straight. A career intelligence officer who had been one of the founders of the CIA, Helms saw Laird’s MIRV announcement as a dangerous politicization of intelligence, which might poison Soviet-American relations by adopting an alarmist view of Soviet nuclear capabilities.54 Laird saw things differently and quickly spun into damage-control mode, demanding that the White House order an updated National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the Soviet strategic threat to clarify Soviet capabilities.55 In the meantime, Packard argued that even if the Soviet SS-9 test were just a MRV, it still indicated a Soviet desire to develop more advanced weapons like MIRV. Depending on how much the Soviets had learned from their MRV test, Packard reasoned, there was no guarantee that they would need many more tests before deploying a MIRV of their own.56 The sudden division between Laird and Helms over intelligence estimates threw the administration into disarray, as Nixon and Kissinger tried to prevent a major fight that would torpedo Safeguard’s chances and seriously damage the prospects for SALT. Kissinger ordered that Laird’s requested NIE on the Soviet threat move forward as quickly as possible.57 Nixon, deeply suspicious of the “establishment” careerists at the CIA, ordered Kissinger to set Helms straight, saying that Helms had “fifteen minutes to decide which side he was on.”58 Kissinger met with Helms to try to narrow some of the differences between his and Laird’s positions, but ultimately reported back to Nixon that Helms was simply telling the truth, and that it was Laird who was exaggerating the Soviet SS-9 threat.59 At the end of the day, neither Nixon nor Kissinger was willing to challenge Laird publicly if it meant undermining Safeguard’s

Y8013-Maurer.indb 43

2/25/22 2:59 PM

44

d eepening d i v isio ns

chances, so the SS-9 test remained a crucial part of the administration’s argument for Safeguard.60 With neither Laird nor Helms willing to back down, the MIRV intelligence issue continued to fester. On June 1, 1969, the New York Times ran an article about the growing “intelligence gap” on Capitol Hill, reporting that Defense Department and CIA briefers were providing contradictory information to senators and imperiling the administration’s Safeguard program.61 The story of Laird and Helms’s dispute unfolded in the press as June progressed, providing Safeguard opponents with considerable fresh ammunition against the administration.62 At the end of the month, the CIA issued a special update to its previous NIE on “Soviet Strategic Attack Forces,” specifically covering new information on Soviet SS-9 tests. Given that the CIA controlled the drafting process, the estimate unsurprisingly concluded that the Soviet SS-9 test was merely a MRV that would pose no direct threat to American missiles.63 But the estimate was riddled with dissenting footnotes from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the armed services, insisting that the SS-9 already had the range and accuracy to threaten American missile silos, and that even a MRV test was a major step toward a Soviet MIRV capability.64 The animosity between the Defense Department and the CIA had grown so great that the usual intelligence estimate process was no longer functioning. nssm 28 It was in this divisive environment that Nixon first turned to considering options for SALT, based on the initial NSSM 28 study. In Kissinger’s conception, the NSSM process was intended to give every agency an opportunity to be heard, and to hammer out well-defined and analytically rigorous options from which the president could select. In practice, however, the study process could not resolve the administration’s deep divisions over how to approach the nuclear competition with the Soviet Union. Before turning to questions of arms control, Nixon and Kissinger were determined to produce new guidelines on American nuclear strategy. Only after identifying the proper place of nuclear weapons in American foreign policy could the president make an informed decision on how to limit nuclear weapons through negotiation. Especially important

Y8013-Maurer.indb 44

2/25/22 2:59 PM

d eepening d i v isio ns

45

was to identify the role that nuclear weapons would play now that the Soviet Union was nearing parity in the number of nuclear missiles. In order to facilitate this process, Nixon had ordered that the strategic nuclear portion of the NSSM 3 study on American military strategy be accelerated.65 Despite months of intense debate, the NSSM 3 Steering Committee failed to produce any consensus on a new nuclear strategy. Hawks like Laird, Packard, and Wheeler insisted that the United States needed to retain a damage-limiting capability in order to deter Soviet aggression. Doves like Smith and Rogers thought that the United States should embrace mutual assured destruction, which they believed would produce the most stable deterrence at the lowest cost.66 The two objectives worked at cross-purposes: if the United States sought a damage-limiting capability, it would by definition decrease the Soviet Union’s ability to retaliate, which Smith and Rogers believed would increase Soviet insecurity and drive further Soviet weapons deployments, perpetuating the arms race. On the other hand, mutual assured destruction necessitated accepting the vulnerability of the United States to a Soviet nuclear attack, something that Laird, Packard, and Wheeler were unwilling to countenance.67 Each side accused the other of undermining American security by pursuing a nuclear fantasy.68 Nixon was ill equipped to adjudicate such an intense disagreement. The president was famously introverted and avoided personal confrontation whenever possible, relying on Kissinger and White House Chief of Staff Robert Haldeman to manage unruly subordinates.69 When presented with the option to pick between these competing schools of nuclear strategy in late June 1969, Nixon equivocated, ordering Kissinger to promulgate a vague definition of “nuclear sufficiency” as the goal of American nuclear strategy. On the face of it, sufficiency had the virtue of being neither superiority nor parity, suggesting that Nixon was seeking a third-way compromise between the extremes of Laird and Smith. In practice, however, the official definition of nuclear sufficiency called for both stable second-strike deterrence and an effective damage-limiting first strike.70 Nixon’s equivocation avoided a major intragovernmental showdown over nuclear strategy at a time of extreme political stress. Like previous work, the NSSM 3 study leaked to the New York Times, almost immediately stoking the raging fire that was the Safeguard debate.71 But Nixon’s failure to establish clear strategic guidelines also led to further

Y8013-Maurer.indb 45

2/25/22 2:59 PM

46

d eepening d i v isio ns

policy dysfunction. As a result of Nixon’s indecision, the NSSM 28 study process on SALT grew more contentious, as Laird and Smith continued to clash over whether damage limitation or mutual assured destruction was the administration’s preferred strategy.72 Absent any agreement on strategic principles, the NSSM 28 Steering Committee increasingly focused on technical issues of arms control verification. Given the United States’ extensive technical intelligence capabilities, the Nixon administration had many tools to aid in verifying Soviet compliance with a SALT agreement.73 But the structure of the agreement was also important when it came to verification. Certain agreements would be easier to verify than others: large and immobile missile silos were captured on camera by orbiting satellites, but quietcruising submarines were harder to count and track, and small mobile missile trucks even harder. This meant that the “level of confidence” in verifying a given agreement was important. If confidence in verification was high, then a weapon could be limited by agreement with little fear of cheating. If confidence in verification was very low, then a weapon could not be controlled at all; it would simply be too easy for the Soviets to cheat undetected. More commonly, however, the level of confidence in verifying a given restriction was moderate, with some chance that Soviet cheating would go undetected. At middling levels of confidence in verification, most in the American government believed that agreeing to limitation was only wise with significant “hedging”; that is, retaining enough weapons to allow the United States to respond quickly if it detected Soviet cheating.74 Whatever their differing strategic views, everyone involved in SALT policy could agree that a verifiable agreement was important. Verification thus emerged as a crucial political tool for building compromises between competing parties. At least initially, however, the NSSM 28 Steering Committee could not agree on which technologies could be adequately verified. As the “technical” verification debates intensified, it became increasingly clear that each side had staked out a technical verification rationale for its own preferred strategic choices. Debate centered primarily on the hot-button issues of ABMs and MIRVs.75 On ABMs, Laird, Packard, and Wheeler admitted that verification was possible, because ABM radars and interceptors were large and clearly visible from space. However, they believed that ABM limitation could not be verified with high reliability, because

Y8013-Maurer.indb 46

2/25/22 2:59 PM

d eepening d i v isio ns

47

the Soviets might cheat by deploying “space-tracking” radars that actually had missile defense capabilities, or “upgrading” their numerous antiaircraft weapons to have anti-missile capabilities.76 As such, they insisted that any limits on ABMs be generous, allowing the United States to continue deploying Safeguard as a “hedge” against Soviet cheating. Laird and Packard also favored strict constraints on radars and anti–air missile tests to prevent the Soviets from upgrading their other forces into missile defenses.77 Smith and Rogers considered that the problems of verification surrounding ABMs were considerably less, that the United States would notice if the Soviets suddenly began deploying many spacetracking radars, and that the Soviets would be unable to upgrade their air defenses into missile defenses without many easily observed tests to ensure that the new interceptors were reliable. As a result, Smith and Rogers advocated limiting ABM technology to very low levels or even prohibiting it entirely.78 A similar division emerged on the question of MIRV limitation. Laird, Packard, and Wheeler believed that verifying a MIRV ban would be virtually impossible once the technology had been tested, because additional warheads could be added covertly to existing missiles during maintenance, and there was no way to view the inside of Soviet missiles without sending American inspectors to dismantle them and count their warheads.79 Because Laird and Packard insisted that the Soviets had already conducted MIRV tests, they believed it was impossible to verify adequately a ban on the emerging technology.80 Finally, the hawks also insisted that MIRV was a crucial hedge against any Soviet cheating on ABM, because many warheads would allow the United States to overwhelm a covert Soviet missile defense system.81 Smith and Rogers generally agreed that verifying a MIRV deployment ban would be almost impossible, but insisted that a MIRV testing ban was still entirely viable. They did not believe that the Soviets had tested MIRV capabilities. Smith’s proposal that the United States cease its own MIRV testing was thus an attempt to preserve the ability by both sides to verify a MIRV ban in SALT. Furthermore, because they believed that a ban on ABM technology could be verified with high confidence, Smith and Rogers saw little need for MIRV as a hedge against Soviet ABM cheating.82 In both cases, the “technical” arguments on verification lined up with the larger strategic arguments of each side. Laird, Packard, and Wheeler

Y8013-Maurer.indb 47

2/25/22 2:59 PM

48

d eepening d i v isio ns

believed that retaining ABM and MIRV technology was important if the United States was to retain a damage-limiting nuclear capability and promote its technological advantages in the years to come. Unsurprisingly, they argued that limiting these capabilities would be unwise from the standpoint of verification, preferring instead that SALT place strict limits only on the number of offensive missiles, while leaving the United States free to pursue its high-tech advantages.83 Dedicated to preserving mutual assured destruction, Smith and Rogers opposed ABM and MIRV for the same strategic reasons that the hawks supported them. As a result, they argued that verifying these emerging technologies would be relatively easy, and that SALT should seek to limit all kinds of strategic nuclear capabilities, numbers and quality alike.84 Smith added to the dysfunction by mismanaging the study process. Although Smith was director of ACDA, Nixon had put him in charge of the NSSM 28 Steering Committee to coordinate the administration’s arms control policy. Nixon and Kissinger’s NSC plan called for the committee heads to operate as impartial arbiters of agency positions, laying out options for presidential consideration that had been vetted by the interagency process. The veneer of impartiality was all the more important given the deep divisions over strategy and the larger public debate about the future of American foreign policy. If the process seemed fair, then it would be easier for the president to make controversial decisions without alienating the key members of his government. Per this mandate, Smith had structured the NSSM 28 process into a series of working groups studying particular issues, which reported back to the central Steering Committee chaired by him. Each new agency idea had to be vetted by the appropriate working group and reviewed by the Steering Committee before it would be considered as part of the NSSM 28 report forwarded to the president.85 By June 1969, tensions were running high on the Steering Committee given the lack of consensus on key strategic and technical issues. Unable to come to an agreed position, the committee decided that it would instead present four “notional” SALT agreements to Nixon, and allow him to select the approach he preferred. The four positions covered the gamut of agency preferences. Laird, Packard, and Wheeler preferred the first option, which placed strict limits only on offensive missile numbers, while allowing key technologies like ABM and MIRV. Smith and

Y8013-Maurer.indb 48

2/25/22 2:59 PM

d eepening d i v isio ns

49

Rogers preferred a different option that, in addition to freezing missile deployments, would also ban ABMs and MIRVs.86 None of the options pleased everyone, but they provided a range of choices from which Nixon could select his preference. With the Study Report virtually completed, Smith attempted to use his position as chair of the Steering Committee to introduce a new, fifth option directly into the report, without running it through the interagency process. Smith referred to the new option as “Stop Where We Are” (SWWA). To be sure, Smith had good intentions. Under SWWA, the superpowers would cease all strategic nuclear activity, including testing and deployment, freezing the strategic balance where it was. To Smith’s mind, SWWA was an elegant solution: the proposal would curtail the entire strategic arms race in a single stroke, and sidestep all of the difficult technical verification issues that were dividing the administration. It would freeze the relatively stable existing balance in perpetuity. It would leave the United States with a marginal advantage in the number of deployed missiles. And it would be easy to verify, because any strategic nuclear activity would automatically be evidence of cheating.87 Although it had not gone through the NSSM 28 study process, Smith saw SWWA as having already been rigorously tested: the staff at ACDA had worked with the experts on the PSAC to ensure that the proposal would be effective, verifiable, and negotiable.88 By introducing his own agency’s preferred proposal at the last minute and attempting to railroad it through the bureaucratic process, Smith abandoned his position as “impartial” head of the Steering Committee to advance his own agency’s interests, rather than ensure that all agencies felt heard and included. Given the broad scope of SWWA, Sonnenfeldt, Packard, and Wheeler were not convinced that it would be verifiable, given the sheer number of potential Soviet activities that would need to be tracked. Furthermore, SWWA would halt both the United States’ ABM and MIRV programs, which hawks like Laird and Wheeler were determined to protect and advance.89 In response to criticism, Smith insisted that his responsibility as director of arms control and disarmament to provide the president with the best possible advice on arms control superseded his responsibilities as chair of an NSSM Steering Committee, and that since SWWA was a superior proposal, the president should see it immediately.90 In the end, Kissinger overruled Smith, insisting that

Y8013-Maurer.indb 49

2/25/22 2:59 PM

50

d eepening d i v isio ns

SWWA would remain off of Nixon’s agenda until the other NSSM 28 participants were able to read it in detail and critique it.91 Between the unresolved strategic differences, deep technical disputes, and bureaucratic infighting, NSSM 28 failed to produce a workable SALT compromise for Nixon. The NSC meetings leading up to the study’s presentation were marked by continuous arguments between Smith, Laird, and their respective allies over what sort of agreement was best and could be adequately verified.92 The verification disputes were especially problematic, because they raised the question of whether the president could make any informed decision at all given the basic technical differences that remained unresolved.93 The administration principals were cruising straight for a major collision on arms control, even as the Senate battle over Safeguard raged on. Fortunately for Nixon, by the end of June the Soviets had not yet agreed to a start date for negotiations, which gave the administration more time for deliberations. On July 2, 1969, Kissinger issued NSSM 62, which ordered the NSSM 28 Steering Committee to return to the drawing board and produce more detailed versions of the four options, as well as a detailed version of ACDA’s SWWA proposal.94 In effect, NSSM 62 initiated a do-over for the SALT study process, reflecting the total failure of the initial study to provide any sort of SALT guidance. With Smith’s Steering Committee continuing to flounder on interagency rivalries, Nixon and Kissinger began looking for alternative mechanisms to enact arms control policy.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 50

2/25/22 2:59 PM

c h a p te r thre e

The Verification Panel

t h e d i vis ion s w i th i n th e Nixon administration between cooperative and competitive arms controllers complicated Nixon and Kissinger’s efforts to build a workable SALT policy. Smith’s inability to serve as an “honest broker” for both cooperative and competitive ideas had quickly alienated competitive arms controllers like Laird, who worried that Smith would produce a “cooperative” arms control policy that in practice would allow the Soviet Union to pull ahead of the United States in the arms race. The stakes of this arms control division were heightened significantly by the continued domestic political debate over Safeguard missile defense, which competitors like Laird saw as a key area of American advantage over the Soviets, but which Congress was hesitant to fund. With his top defense advisers feuding over arms control policy, Nixon turned to Kissinger to break the bureaucratic deadlock and reach a SALT compromise within the government. Kissinger would prove to be a more effective interagency head than Smith had been. Unlike Smith, Kissinger understood the importance of appearing to be an impartial arbitrator between cooperators and competitors within the bureaucracy, even as in private he fed Nixon’s desire for a competitive policy. Kissinger’s Verification Panel, originally intended to explore the American technical intelligence capabilities, was by the fall of 1969 the forum in which 51

Y8013-Maurer.indb 51

2/25/22 2:59 PM

52

t he v er ific at io n pa nel

all major arms control issues were deliberated. By expanding the Verification Panel’s remit, Nixon and Kissinger also reformulated divisive political issues into solvable technical ones. Under Kissinger’s direction, debates increasingly focused on the arms control proposals the United States could make, given its force structure and intelligence capabilities, rather than which proposals it should make to pursue either cooperative or competitive objectives. By removing Smith from the head of the interagency process, Kissinger’s Verification Panel helped placate competitors like Laird. The increasing shift from political to technical debates also focused administration efforts on questions that could (at least in theory) be answered, creating room for interagency compromise without requiring Nixon to pick winners among the competing factions. But Kissinger quickly discovered that managing the divisions between Smith and Laird over SALT’s purpose would be no easy task. As talks with the Soviets approached, the administration’s SALT policy remained mired in division and delay. nssm 62 Nixon and Kissinger had hoped to delegate the SALT process, but the failure of the NSSM 28 Steering Committee to produce SALT options for Nixon’s consideration forced SALT higher onto the president’s agenda. Not only had NSSM 28 failed to produce a governmentwide consensus on the best approach to SALT, but its final report was riddled with basic factual disagreements. Far from generating consensus, NSSM 28 had inflamed disagreements within the government over SALT’s ultimate scope and purpose. Nixon found it increasingly difficult to manage this bureaucratic infighting while maintaining a united public face on issues like funding Safeguard and waging the war in Vietnam. For the moment, Nixon had few options but to order the government to try again. NSSM 62 kicked the report back to the NSSM 28 Steering Committee, ordering it to prepare new SALT options for the president’s consideration more detailed than the NSSM 28 illustrative proposals. To prevent the endless bickering that had derailed NSSM 28, Kissinger ordered that NSSM 62 be structured around four or five better-defined options, including a “limited” option, an “intermediate” option, a “compre-

Y8013-Maurer.indb 52

2/25/22 2:59 PM

t he v er ific at io n pa nel

53

hensive” option, and a “SWWA” option modeled on ACDA’s preferred total halt of all strategic nuclear activity. Nixon and Kissinger hoped that this more structured approach to generating SALT policy would avoid the interagency sniping that had characterized NSSM 28 by ensuring that every agency had an opportunity to have its say on which SALT approach was best.1 Unfortunately, by kicking the process back to the same Steering Committee, Nixon and Kissinger ensured that the previous animosities would carry over into the new NSSM 62 study. Especially problematic was Smith’s continued chairmanship of the Steering Committee. Even as he chaired the committee charged with providing an even-handed accounting of various SALT options, Smith continued to advise the president that the other options should be discarded in favor of rapid preparation for a total SWWA-style freeze.2 When Nixon would not discard the other options preemptively, Smith instead suggested that the president initiate negotiations without any official option, and instead propose an immediate moratorium to the Soviets on MIRV and ABM testing, to prevent these technologies from maturing while negotiations for a SWWA agreement took place.3 Smith continued to believe that his highest responsibility was to provide the president with the best possible advice on arms control, which just so happened to be his advice. He increasingly saw the interagency process as an unnecessary impediment to his ability to advise Nixon and shape SALT policy.4 Smith’s insistence on championing ACDA’s preferred positions left him open to charges of conflict of interest. Freezing all weapons deployments was a nonstarter for hawks like Laird and Wheeler, who hoped to use arms control to shape and win the arms race, not end it. Defense and JCS increasingly argued that Smith’s Steering Committee was ignoring major objections to a SWWA-style agreement in a continued effort to railroad SWWA through the interagency process.5 Laird and Wheeler also objected to the idea of a moratorium on MIRV or ABM testing, since they believed these technologies were the United States’ most important area of advantage. Despite Smith’s protestations to the contrary, a temporary moratorium on testing might very quickly become a permanent ban on testing, since there was little evidence that Congress would agree to restart weapons programs once they were stopped. Most of all, Laird and

Y8013-Maurer.indb 53

2/25/22 2:59 PM

54

t he v er ific at io n pa nel

Wheeler resented Smith’s continued efforts to bypass the interagency process, since a testing moratorium was not one of the approved options being considered by the Steering Committee.6 Smith’s position as head of the Steering Committee gave him some influence over the administration’s SALT proceedings, but the dapper dollar-man was ill prepared for the sort of scorched-earth bureaucratic infighting on which Laird had built his career. Aside from his direct and loud objections to Smith’s management style, Laird also worked to undermine Smith through the intelligence process. For several months, Laird had been engaged in a vicious fight with the CIA over whether the Soviet Union had tested MIRVed missiles or not.7 Although the dispute rested on arcane details of technical intelligence collection, in practice it bore directly on the administration’s SALT deliberations. Because new warheads could be added to existing missiles with little to no warning, Smith’s SWWA proposal depended heavily on freezing the arms race before the Soviets had conducted MIRV testing. Indeed, Smith’s proposal for a moratorium on MIRV testing reflected his concern that MIRVed weapons would make a comprehensive end to the arms race all but impossible. By insisting that the Soviets had already tested a MIRVed missile, Laird was doing more than just bolstering the administration’s public rationale for Safeguard: he was also attacking Smith’s preferred arms control option. As long as the question of Soviet MIRVs remained an open one, Smith’s efforts to quickly freeze the arms race were unlikely to succeed. Facing this turmoil, Nixon began to shift responsibility for the SALT interagency process from Smith to Kissinger. The first reduction in Smith’s responsibility came with the creation of the NSC MIRV Panel in June 1969. Given Smith and Laird’s disagreement over limiting MIRV, Nixon ordered Kissinger to form a special study panel that would address the MIRV question in particular. Kissinger convened the interagency MIRV Panel on June 19, 1969.8 Over the next several months, under Kissinger’s watchful gaze, the panel served as a forum for developing an agreed interagency position on MIRV technology. Nixon’s decision to form a special NSC Panel, rather than order a new study from Smith’s Steering Committee, reflected his steadily decreasing confidence in Smith’s ability to resolve such contentious issues.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 54

2/25/22 2:59 PM

t he v er ific at io n pa nel

55

The MIRV Panel presented its conclusions to Kissinger less than a month later, on July 17.9 The panel hammered out a rough compromise between Smith’s and Laird’s positions. On the question of Soviet MIRVs, the panel concluded that contrary to Laird’s claims the recent Soviet missile tests had been basic MRVs rather than full-fledged MIRVs. Laird grudgingly accepted this conclusion.10 On the question of verifying a MIRV ban, however, the panel ruled against Smith. The panel agreed that only an immediate ban on MIRV testing would allow the United States to verify Soviet compliance with a MIRV deployment ban, but it also concluded that even an immediate halt of MIRV testing would not provide adequate reassurance to the Soviets, since American MIRV testing had already reached the point where the United States could deploy MIRVed missiles.11 As such, the panel found little reason to hope that MIRVs could be limited as part of SALT. Smith’s hopes for limiting MIRVs remained undimmed. He continued to insist that Nixon should propose a MIRV moratorium to the Soviets, and let them decide whether it was in their interests.12 Although the MIRV Panel failed to resolve all of the administration’s differences over MIRV technology, its tentative compromise between the competing factions stood in stark contrast to the gridlock that characterized Smith’s Steering Committee. Per NSSM 62, the committee hammered out five notional SALT options. Each option built on the previous options, with escalating levels of restraint on various weapons. Option I, the most limited option, would prohibit further ICBM deployments and establish an agreed numerical limit on ABM deployments, while allowing full modernization and replacement of existing forces, including MIRVed weapons. Option II would also freeze SLBM deployments, with freedom to mix between ICBMs and SLBMs for replacement and modernization. Option III was similar to Option II, but without the freedomto-mix provisions, which would make verification easier but would limit flexibility in deploying new missiles. Option IV was similar to Option III, but would also ban the testing and deployment of MIRV. Option V was the outlier, a version of SWWA, including “a quantitative and qualitative freeze on those aspects of strategic offensive missile systems that can be adequately verified.”13 By providing a menu of possible SALT options, the committee had met the most basic requirement laid out by NSSM 62.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 55

2/25/22 2:59 PM

56

t he v er ific at io n pa nel

What the Steering Committee did not produce was an agreed framework on how to evaluate the options. Laird and Wheeler remained committed to a more limited option that allowed continued modernization of American forces, while ACDA maintained that only the SWWA option (Option V) would curtail the arms race in its entirety.14 Halperin and Sonnenfeldt warned Kissinger that the NSSM 62 process had in fact deepened the divisions between Smith, Laird, and their respective allies.15 Laird had become so impatient with Smith’s leadership that he had given up on the Steering Committee and begun following ACDA’s example in sending Defense Department SALT advice directly to the president.16 The same problems that had doomed the NSSM 28 Study now threatened to tear the NSSM 62 Study apart. By mid-July 1969, Kissinger conceded that NSSM 62 was proving no more successful than NSSM 28 had been. Rather than risk a second open fight between Laird and Smith, Kissinger instead recommended that Nixon delay final consideration of the NSSM 62 options, and instead order the government to prepare for an “exploratory” round of talks with the Soviets. Exploratory talks would provide more information on Soviet preferences, but also allow Nixon to delay any decision that might alienate a large part of his government. Such an exploratory round might include an “illustrative” proposal designed to provoke discussion with the Soviets. Reflecting his own preferences for competitive arms control, Kissinger recommended that Nixon keep the illustrative proposal limited and avoid discussing a MIRV ban for the time being.17 Nixon’s decision to “explore” SALT with the Soviets reflected the failure of the NSSM 28/NSSM 62 process to produce a workable negotiating position. In lieu of a full NSC meeting, on July 21, 1969, Nixon met with Smith one on one to discuss preparation for the first round of SALT. Smith made a final appeal that the United States open negotiations with a comprehensive SALT proposal and an immediate moratorium on MIRV and ABM testing. Nixon did not respond directly but later that day sent Smith a letter explaining his decision to forgo selecting any particular American SALT position and instead greenlight an exploratory SALT meeting. Like Kissinger, Nixon hoped that learning more about Soviet motives would help him determine the best course of action.18 At the same time, an exploratory round would buy time for Nixon to get his own arms control house in order.19 By choosing Kissinger’s arms

Y8013-Maurer.indb 56

2/25/22 2:59 PM

t he v er ific at io n pa nel

57

control advice over Smith’s, Nixon gave a clear indication that this housecleaning would involve shifting more arms control responsibilities from Smith to Kissinger. s a f eg ua r d ph a s e i Nixon and Kissinger’s efforts to corral the arms control process ran up against the public debate over Safeguard, which continued throughout the summer of 1969. The first round of debate closed on June 27, 1969, when the Senate Armed Services Committee voted 10 to 7 to forward Safeguard to the entire Senate for consideration. The split vote was unusual, and reflected the difficulty that Nixon would face in the coming Senate floor debate.20 The committee’s majority opinion supporting Safeguard began by describing Safeguard’s utility as a bargaining chip for the upcoming SALT negotiations. The committee’s minority opinion focused almost exclusively on the technical shortcomings of the Safeguard system.21 Committee chairman Sen. John Stennis and other congressional supporters rallied to the bargaining chip rationale because it sidestepped the opposition’s criticism of ABM’s military effectiveness. Even if Safeguard could not shoot down a single missile, if the Soviets feared it, then it had some utility in negotiation. Stennis’s downplaying of Safeguard’s military importance cut across Laird’s efforts to emphasize Safeguard’s military importance. Laird and his deputies maintained that large, MIRVed Soviet missiles were just around the corner, and that Safeguard was necessary to defend American Minuteman missile silos against a Soviet disarming strike.22 Laird sensed that Minuteman vulnerability was a rationale that could win over several fence-sitting members of Congress, who favored a strong defense but worried about Safeguard’s technical feasibility.23 In the short term, Laird’s insistent focus on Safeguard’s “point defense” capability ran up against both Stennis’s efforts to downplay Safeguard’s military utility and Nixon’s attempt to justify Safeguard for “area defense” of American cities. The mixed messages of Safeguard’s supporters drove a major Senate showdown over Safeguard and SALT. On July 8, 1969, the Senate floor debate on Safeguard began with a report by Stennis on his committee’s deliberations. Despite months of intensive debate, the final outcome remained unclear.24 As they had in committee, Safeguard’s opponents

Y8013-Maurer.indb 57

2/25/22 2:59 PM

58

t he v er ific at io n pa nel

called many scientific and technical experts to testify that Safeguard was technically deficient and strategically unsound.25 Laird’s Defense Department provided support for pro-ABM senators in the form of information and speech drafts in favor of Safeguard. Important Defense Department talking points included questioning the technical credentials of Safeguard opponents and emphasizing that Safeguard was necessary for successful SALT negotiations.26 Laird’s mobilization of pro-Safeguard opinion also began to bear fruit. Influential Safeguard advocates convened in Washington, D.C., on July 12, 1969 as the “Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense Policy.”27 The committee sent out mass mailings refuting common objections to Safeguard, defending its technical feasibility and its compatibility with SALT.28 The committee also prepared a longer report for Congress, which supported Laird’s argument that Safeguard was strategically necessary to defend against the Soviet missile threat.29 The Senate debate over Safeguard reached its height on July 17, 1969, when the entire Senate met in a closed-door session to see classified testimony on Safeguard’s technical characteristics. Laird and his supporters had been dropping hints for months that the Pentagon had classified analyses that proved Safeguard’s importance, a claim that Sen. Stuart Symington challenged Laird to prove.30 By insisting on debating the Defense Department on the classified technical details of missile defense, Symington fell into Laird’s trap. In what became known as the “Battle of the Charts,” Symington tried to prove that Safeguard was technically unsound. Symington’s testimony was overshadowed, though, by the overwhelming technical detail provided by the Defense Department, ably presented by Safeguard supporters including Sen. Jackson and nuclear strategist Albert Wohlstetter.31 Although the issue was not settled decisively, Laird and Jackson’s presentation effectively made the case that Safeguard would not be a waste of money. By mid-July 1969, the Safeguard debate was shifting in Nixon’s favor, as a number of undecided senators shifted to the administration’s column.32 On July 14, 1969, Sen. Winston Prouty of Vermont, who had opposed Johnson’s Sentinel program, announced that Safeguard would be a useful tool in negotiating SALT with the Soviets. Prouty credited the Defense Department briefings by Laird and Packard in convincing him to support the administration.33 Laird’s behind-the-scenes lobbying also

Y8013-Maurer.indb 58

2/25/22 2:59 PM

t he v er ific at io n pa nel

59

won the support of Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, who had opposed Safeguard in committee but voted to fund Safeguard on the Senate floor.34 By July 21, 1969, Sen. Richard Russell predicted that the Safeguard proposal would pass the Senate without significant amendment.35 The final result was still a near-run thing: on August 6, 1969, the Senate agreed to fund Safeguard 51–50, with Vice President Spiro Agnew casting the tie-breaking vote.36 Nixon cast the vote as a victory for the “Nixon Style” of leadership.37 But the administration’s post mortem revealed significant shortcomings in terms of leadership and coherence. Especially troubling was Laird’s willingness to go his own way in congressional relations, even when it contradicted Nixon’s instructions.38 That Laird’s Safeguard lobbying program had ultimately succeeded was little comfort to a president increasingly convinced that arms control policy was spinning out of his control. Nor was Safeguard the only place where Nixon and Laird were parting ways. Given continued public opposition to the Vietnam War, Nixon was determined to curtail defense spending proactively, to ward off even steeper cuts from Congress.39 On August 21, 1969, Laird preempted Nixon’s defense budgetary announcement with a press conference of his own, in which he criticized the president’s intention to seek a $3 billion cut to the defense budget for 1971. Laird noted that this cut would “reduce our capability to meet current commitments,” exposing the United States to greater risk in its foreign policy.40 Nixon fumed but was unwilling to confront Laird directly. Much as he had with Smith, Nixon turned to Kissinger to discipline Laird. On September 11, 1969, Nixon issued his “Colorado Springs Directive,” which ordered all members of the government to get Kissinger’s approval before making public statements about foreign policy.41 Soon after, Nixon announced the creation of a new NSC Defense Program Review Committee (DPRC), chaired by Kissinger, to review defense requirements and set broad budgetary priorities.42 Laird saw the new Review Committee as an effort by Nixon to curtail his authority and impose the White House’s budgetary agenda on the Defense Department. Kissinger left little doubt about Nixon’s intentions when he opened the first meeting of the DPRC with a demand to review the defense budget line by line. Packard led the rearguard action against Kissinger, explaining that the Defense Department did not have enough time to answer all of Kissinger’s queries in detail, and arguing that the committee would be

Y8013-Maurer.indb 59

2/25/22 2:59 PM

60

t he v er ific at io n pa nel

better served by confining itself to high-level review, while leaving the details to the experts.43 It was not an auspicious start to the new “partnership” on defense budgeting. Nixon and Laird’s divisions over defense spending would only grow as SALT deliberations intensified. k i s s ing e r ta ke s c h a r g e By mid-1969, Nixon and Kissinger needed a new interagency process on arms control, one that would curtail Smith’s conflicts of interest and corral Laird’s hard-ball tactics. The NSC MIRV Panel provided one alternative, slicing a technical arms control issue out of Smith’s portfolio and putting it under Kissinger’s purview. The success of the MIRV Panel had been qualified, but compared to the gridlock of Smith’s Steering Group it looked like a model of efficiency. Nixon and Kissinger were eager to replicate the MIRV Panel’s success, but on a larger scale. For his next trick, Kissinger would solve the administration’s debates over technical intelligence and verification, paving the way for a SALT compromise. To accomplish this feat, Kissinger would chair a new NSC interagency body, known as the Verification Panel.44 The idea of a special NSC panel on verification had originally been proposed by Smith, who by late June 1969 was frustrated with Laird’s insistence that a comprehensive arms control agreement could not be adequately verified. Smith believed that an all-encompassing agreement like SWWA would clear away the “noise” of day-to-day activities that made it difficult to detect specific Soviet cheating. SWWA would thus be easier to verify than a limited agreement, since under SWWA any strategic nuclear development would be a breach.45 This rosy assessment was not shared by Laird or his deputies, who argued that each additional restriction contained in an agreement added to the challenge of verification. Without a close watch on all prohibited activity, how would the United States know if the Soviets decided to violate just one part of the agreement? Laird insisted that only total information would allow the United States to monitor a total ban. Since total information was not available, Laird argued that only an agreement with few targeted constraints could be adequately verified, since it would require tracking only a handful of specific metrics of Soviet forces.46 As he had previously, Smith responded to Laird’s intransigence by bypassing the Steering Committee and appealing directly to the White

Y8013-Maurer.indb 60

2/25/22 2:59 PM

t he v er ific at io n pa nel

61

House. In late June 1969 Smith recommended that Kissinger convene a special NSC-level panel on verification issues, to establish better how American intelligence capabilities could be deployed to verify an arms control agreement.47 Kissinger forwarded Smith’s recommendation to Nixon, though with the provision that it would be Kissinger himself who would chair the Verification Panel, rather than Smith. As with the MIRV Panel, Nixon and Kissinger hoped that having Kissinger supervise the deliberations would resolve interagency differences driven by Smith’s mismanagement of the NSSM 28/62 process.48 Despite being passed over, Smith still hoped that Kissinger’s Verification Panel would conclude that a comprehensive agreement would be easier to verify than a limited one.49 Unfortunately for Smith, Kissinger agreed with Laird and Sonnenfeldt that comprehensive arms control agreements like SWWA would entail higher verification barriers than the more limited options.50 Smith’s plan to win a quick White House stamp of approval for his preferred policy backfired spectacularly, as the Kissinger-chaired Verification Panel eventually replaced Smith’s original Steering Committee entirely. The Verification Panel met for the first time on July 22, 1969, the day after Nixon ordered Smith to prepare for an “exploratory” first round of SALT. Kissinger instructed the panel to consider how American technical intelligence capabilities might aid in verifying SALT. To conduct this study, the panel appointed a Working Group led by NSC staffer Lawrence Lynn, which met later that week.51 Reflecting the White House’s growing displeasure with Smith, Lynn explained that the Working Group would not build on the work of the NSSM 28 Steering Committee, but instead consider the issue from scratch.52 Although the Verification Panel was initially intended to produce a report on verification capabilities, its authority quickly expanded to encompass all aspects of SALT policy planning.53 Since SALT would begin with an “exploratory round,” Smith’s NSSM 62 Study was put on hold indefinitely. But delay could not continue forever; eventually, Nixon would have to select some sort of starting position to guide American negotiators in SALT. At the August 8, 1969, Verification Panel meeting, Kissinger announced that the panel would conduct a second study on the verification issues associated with each of the five NSSM 62 options.54 Lynn described this itemized analysis of each option as a “building blocks” approach that would create the raw materials for future SALT

Y8013-Maurer.indb 61

2/25/22 2:59 PM

62

t he v er ific at io n pa nel

deliberations.55 Soon after, Nixon made the transition official, when he ordered the Verification Panel to consider not just the related verification issues for each option, but also their broader implications for American national security.56 By early September, the Verification Panel’s initial task—the Verification Report—was largely concluded.57 But the panel’s larger work on SALT was only beginning.58 The immediate winner from the expansion of the Verification Panel’s purview was Kissinger, who by September 1969 was established as the arbiter of the administration’s arms control policy. Kissinger’s position at the nerve center of the administration’s arms control deliberations would provide him with tremendous resources when it came to directing arms control policy, and later even conducting negotiations himself.59 Kissinger’s ascent was also generally good news for hawks like Laird, since Kissinger was more amenable to the Defense Department’s efforts at competitive arms control than Smith had been. Nonetheless, Laird and his deputies watched Kissinger’s ascent with concern, as Kissinger’s position at the head of both the DPRC and the Verification Panel created a formidable counterweight to Laird’s efforts to shape national security policy.60 On the other hand, Kissinger’s rise came at the expense of some of his former colleagues, including Halperin. Once Kissinger’s right-hand man, Halperin was increasingly out of step with the administration’s policies and overshadowed by more hawkish staffers like Sonnenfeldt and Lynn. Suspected of leaking information about Vietnam, by September 1969 Halperin departed the government.61 It was an unfortunate end for someone who had been so important in getting SALT started. The other major loser was Smith, who lost his position at the head of  the  interagency SALT process to Kissinger. Smith would later describe the Verification Panel’s studies as busywork, with little relevance to the actual negotiation of SALT.62 But Kissinger’s success in reining in the interagency process was a reflection of Smith’s earlier failure to do so. Despite its name, Kissinger’s Verification Panel had less to do with producing technical analyses than with hammering out compromises between entrenched bureaucratic fiefs. Even with a fresh start, finding compromise on SALT was no easy task. The technical issues of verification itself continued to divide hawks and doves despite Kissinger and Lynn’s best efforts. Could the United

Y8013-Maurer.indb 62

2/25/22 2:59 PM

t he v er ific at io n pa nel

63

States effectively monitor Soviet ICBM deployments? Submarine sorties? MIRV tests? ABM radar power levels?63 As the Verification Panel Working Group dug deeper, questions multiplied faster than answers. Just as challenging, Kissinger’s panel was beset by continued bureaucratic infighting. Laird and his deputies were still angry that Smith had forced his SWWA option onto the administration’s SALT agenda. They concluded that if Smith could get away with unilaterally adding new options, then so could the Defense Department, especially now that Kissinger was heading the interagency process. In October 1969, Packard sent Kissinger a memo outlining two new approaches to SALT. While the initial five NSSM 62 options were constructed as a set, with each option building on the previous one, Packard’s new options set out brand-new ideas for limiting the Soviet arsenal. Rather than limiting the number of missiles, Packard’s notional “Option VI” would have limited the payload of missiles, otherwise known as their “throw-weight.” Since the Soviet Union had larger missiles, the equal throw-weight limit would have restricted the Soviets to a smaller number of missiles than the United States. Packard argued that this was a more equitable option, and that the smaller number of Soviet missiles would allow Laird to consider canceling the American MIRV program, if the Soviets would do the same.64 Packard’s “Option VII” would have gone even further, proposing that the United States and the Soviet Union begin strategic force reduction, with each country dismantling 100 ICBM launchers per year until each had only 600 ICBMs. Buried in Option VII was the provision that each side would dismantle their oldest missiles first. Since the Soviets’ larger SS-9 missiles were technically older than their smaller SS-11 missiles, Option VII would also have neutralized the Soviets’ throw-weight advantage. By reducing the number of missiles, Packard also hoped that Option VII would create opportunities to deploy large ballistic missile defense systems, which the superpowers would find harder to saturate with their smaller remaining arsenals.65 Although Packard insisted that the new options were fair, each was clearly designed to promote American nuclear advantages by reducing the number and size of weapons while allowing the United States to continue improving its existing missiles. Not to be outdone, by the end of October Smith was also introducing new ideas for consideration, though

Y8013-Maurer.indb 63

2/25/22 2:59 PM

64

t he v er ific at io n pa nel

these were framed as modifications to existing NSSM 62 Options. “Option III-A” would still constrain ICBM and SLBM deployments, with a low limit on ABMs, but would allow “one-way freedom to mix”—that is, the ability to replace old ICBMs with new SLBMs. Smith believed that one-way freedom to mix would promote strategic stability, as SLBMs were both more survivable and less accurate than ICBMs.66 While Laird and his subordinates were unimpressed, the idea of one-way freedom to mix was well received, as the United States had major advantages in undersea warfare technology. Shifting competition from land-based to seabased missiles would confer a marginal advantage on the United States, a great naval power, in its competition with the Soviet Union, a great land power.67 Smith’s other new option was also designed to win over hawkish critics. “Option V-A” was a modification of ACDA’s SWWA proposal, which would allow limited testing and replacement of ICBMs to ensure reliability.68 Despite Smith’s efforts at compromise, Laird and Packard remained wedded to their throw-weight and reduction proposals, insisting that the administration propose them to the Soviets instead of SWWA. As the debate continued, the Verification Panel’s biggest contribution was providing a new vocabulary for old disputes in the form of “primary” and “collateral” constraints. The Verification Panel Working Group broke the options down into a list of individual “primary” constraints—that is, limits intended to affect the strategic balance. Examples included the number and type of missiles allowed, the number of warheads permitted on each missile, and the number of ABM interceptors deployed. The Working Group then matched each primary constraint to a series of “collateral” constraints, or limits intended to ease the verification of the primary constraints.69 One example of a collateral constraint was banning land-mobile ICBMs under any freeze on ICBM construction. Although missiles mounted on trucks were more survivable than silo-based weapons, they were also difficult to count via satellite, raising the risk that the Soviets might stockpile mobile missiles in secret. Therefore, most in the administration agreed that land-mobile ICBMs should be banned as a collateral constraint on any freeze of ICBM construction. Another example was the idea of banning new intermediate-range missiles, on the principle that intermediate and intercontinental missiles were difficult to distinguish via satellite.70 Both cooperative and competitive arms controllers saw collateral limitations as useful to verify notional agreements.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 64

2/25/22 2:59 PM

t he v er ific at io n pa nel

65

Agreement on “primary” or “collateral” constraints became more difficult when it came to now-familiar controversies around ABM and MIRV. Smith still hoped to open negotiations with a bilateral MIRV testing moratorium, which Laird and Wheeler still opposed.71 As the fall of 1969 wore on, debate in the Verification Panel shifted to the question of how to verify Smith’s moratorium. Everyone agreed that banning MIRV deployments would require a collateral constraint banning MIRV testing. Otherwise, each side would perfect MIRV technology and then secretly deploy it on existing missiles.72 Laird, Packard, and Wheeler argued further that a collateral constraint on testing would require its own collateral constraints banning tests of anything resembling a MIRV, including MRVs, missile decoys, and space-vehicle separation.73 Otherwise, the Soviets might hide MIRV tests in their civilian space program. But Laird and his associates also argued that such collateral constraints would end both the American and Soviet space programs, including American reconnaissance satellites, which ejected film canisters to return their imagery to earth. If the corollary constraints necessary to ban MIRV testing were so disruptive, hawks argued, then verifying such a ban would cost too much; and if that were true, then a ban on MIRV deployment was infeasible, too.74 Smith and other proponents of a testing moratorium argued that restraints on civilian space programs would not be necessary, since Soviet rocket tests would remain visible to American sensors, allowing the United States to deduce whether any given rocket test was a MIRV test in disguise.75 The Verification Panel was also divided over what collateral constraints were needed to limit missile defenses. Most agreed that limitation of ABM interceptors would need to be accompanied by collateral constraints on ABM-capable radars. Interceptors were easier to produce and could be stockpiled in secret. Large radars capable of tracking ballistic missiles took years to construct and were highly visible. The Soviets might agree to limit interceptor numbers but build large ABM-capable radars ostensibly for “air defense” or “space tracking.” Once these radars were deployed, the Soviets could abrogate the agreement and deploy a large missile defense system quickly.76 Even if restrictions on radars were necessary, it was not clear that they were possible, given the difficulty of categorizing different types of radars. Smith and his supporters believed that the United States would be able to verify a radar ban, since

Y8013-Maurer.indb 65

2/25/22 2:59 PM

66

t he v er ific at io n pa nel

American intelligence agencies could already measure the power output and capability of Soviet air defense radars. In contrast, Wheeler and the other Joint Chiefs argued that no workable definition of “ABM-capable radar” could be developed, and that therefore no meaningful restriction on missile defense was possible.77 How to control radars would remain one of the most troubling questions in SALT. In addition to collateral constraints, the Verification Panel Working Group also clarified what capabilities might be useful as a “hedge” for each primary constraint, so that the United States would retain some ability to respond should the Soviets be discovered cheating.78 Proposals for “hedging” continued to conflate ABM and MIRV into a single intractable morass. Hawks like Laird argued that if Nixon wanted the full Safeguard program, then the Soviets would demand the right to build a similar system in SALT. But the many radars of a Safeguard-sized system would make it easier for the Soviets to cheat on an ABM agreement, either by stockpiling missile interceptors in secret or by upgrading their existing surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) into interceptors. The best hedge against Soviet ABM cheating was American MIRV, which could saturate Soviet defenses. Therefore, even as Laird argued that the United States needed Safeguard to defend against Soviet MIRV, he also argued that the threat of Soviet ABM necessitated the retention of American MIRV.79 Smith and his allies argued that MIRV was not strictly necessary as a hedge, since American missiles could instead be equipped with unarmed decoys that would draw off Soviet missile interceptors. In the main, however, Smith agreed with Laird’s premise, but drew the opposite conclusion: the risk of Soviet cheating showed why the United States should abandon Safeguard and limit missile defenses to a low level.80 The Verification Panel’s analysis was ultimately compiled into a massive “Evaluation Report,” which was completed by early November 1969.81 The report laid out the administration’s SALT disputes in excruciating detail but provided little in the way of policy direction for Nixon.82 Although initially enthusiastic about directing SALT policy, Kissinger and his staff were realizing that brokering a SALT compromise within the government would be much harder than they had initially anticipated.83 In seizing control of the SALT process from Smith, Kissinger had also seized ownership of Smith’s previous challenges.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 66

2/25/22 2:59 PM

c h a p te r fou r

SALT Begins

i n an ide a l w or l d, a ne g otia t or envisions their ideal end-state and then develops a plan to work toward that end-state, staking out an initial position, developing fallback options, discovering points of leverage, and looking for areas of compromise.1 Within the Nixon administration, however, the divisions between cooperative arms controllers like Smith and competitive arms controllers like Laird made this studious approach to negotiation impossible. Without agreement on arms control’s purpose, defining the ideal end-state of the negotiation was impossible. Smith preferred a freeze that would halt all progress on strategic nuclear weapons, to secure the mutual vulnerability between the superpowers. Laird envisioned a more complex arrangement in which numerical reductions would be accompanied by rapid improvements to existing forces, a plan that over time would allow the United States to reassert nuclear superiority through its technological advantage. Nixon and Kissinger increasingly believed both plans to be unworkable, preferring a limited agreement that would halt the Soviet missile buildup without placing an undue burden on American force modernization. As a result, Nixon determined that consensus would emerge from the negotiations, rather than before them. The president hoped that the Soviets would reject both Smith’s and Laird’s plans, providing a reason to reject them without a bruising debate about arms control’s purpose. 67

Y8013-Maurer.indb 67

2/25/22 2:59 PM

68

s a lt b egins

When the American and Soviet SALT delegations first met in Helsinki in November 1969, their agenda was purely exploratory, but this vague “exploration” was not enough to resolve the divisions between cooperative and competitive arms controllers. Instead, negotiations with the Soviets further deepened suspicions between Smith and Laird, especially as Laird suspected that Smith would use his position as head of the SALT delegation to advance the cooperative agenda, regardless of Nixon’s instructions. Smith did little to assuage Laird’s suspicions, insisting that his comprehensive freeze proposal was the best possible outcome. Nixon’s ability to discipline his subordinates was limited by the steadily increasing pressure from Congress over Vietnam and the defense budget. Success in arms control would require the support of both Laird and Smith. In response to this dilemma, Nixon adopted a strange negotiating position: when the American and Soviet delegations met for a second time in the spring of 1970, the Americans would introduce two separate negotiating positions—Smith’s freeze and Laird’s reductions proposal. Nixon’s approach would not pass “Negotiations 101,” but it had the virtue of placating both Laird and Smith at a critical political moment. With luck, Nixon reasoned, the Soviets would reject both proposals and leave the way open for the administration to develop its real negotiating position—though not until after the negotiations had formally begun. g e a r ing u p f or s a lt While Kissinger assumed control of the SALT interagency process, Smith remained responsible for assembling the delegation that would meet with the Soviets once SALT began. With Nixon’s permission, Smith decided to lead the American delegation himself. As chairman of the delegation, Smith would be supported by his executive secretary, Raymond Garthoff. Garthoff was one of the State Department’s leading Soviet experts and had experience on nuclear issues, which gave him the language skills and expertise to engage in complex arms control discussions. Garthoff was also a fellow cooperative arms controller, who like Smith hoped that SALT would curtail the arms race and improve American relations with the Soviet Union more generally.2 While Smith was abroad, his ACDA deputy Philip Farley would represent him and his agency in Washington. Farley was another State Department arms control expert, with whom Smith had worked during the Eisenhower

Y8013-Maurer.indb 68

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt b egins

69

administration, and who also shared Smith’s desire to curb the arms race through negotiation with the Soviets.3 Smith’s delegation would also include representatives from the various departments and agencies involved in the arms control process. The State Department was represented by Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson, a career Foreign Service officer who had twice served as ambassador to the Soviet Union, in which role he had conveyed one of the first SALT proposals to the Soviet leadership in late 1966.4 The Joint Chiefs assigned Air Force Gen. Royal Allison as their representative to the delegation, a pilot who had flown bombers during the Second World War and spent most of the intervening decades planning for nuclear war with the Soviet Union in one capacity or another. Because of his planning experience and technical expertise, Allison had advised the Joint Chiefs on arms control issues in the final years of the Johnson administration.5 Allison was less skeptical of arms control than many of the Joint Chiefs, but he was still determined that the United States should retain a military capability second to none.6 The delegation’s chief technical adviser, Dr. Harold Brown, had also served in the Johnson administration, as secretary of the Air Force. A physicist and expert on nuclear weapons, by 1969 Brown was president of the California Institute of Technology.7 Brown’s views on arms control lay somewhere between the dovish Thompson and the hawkish Allison, though he tended to evaluate SALT possibilities by how they would impact America’s technological advantages. Laird selected veteran foreign policy sage Paul Nitze to represent the Defense Department on the delegation. Nitze was the Cold Warrior’s Cold Warrior. A graduate of the elite Hotchkiss School and Harvard University, Nitze made a personal fortune in finance and pharmaceuticals before leaving the business world for government service during the Second World War. As director of policy planning at the State Department under President Truman, Nitze had authored the influential NSC-68 defense planning document, which had justified large increases in the size of the American military to contain Soviet influence. In and out of government in the ensuing decades, Nitze had served as secretary of the Navy and deputy secretary of defense, while also founding the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University and the Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense Policy (CMPDP), an influential lobbying group dedicated to maintaining the United States’

Y8013-Maurer.indb 69

2/25/22 2:59 PM

70

s a lt b egins

military lead over the Soviet Union.8 In background, temperament, and intellect, Nitze was every bit the patrician that Smith was. Unlike Smith, Nitze saw arms control as an exercise in sustaining American power and shoring up the military containment of the Soviet Union. In his memoirs, Smith recalled that the delegation was affable and worked well together, despite their differing backgrounds and views.9 This was certainly the case when compared with the no-holds-barred interagency battles in Washington, but in practice the delegation replicated the administration’s SALT divisions in miniature. Smith would find Nitze especially vexing. Nitze was a proponent of the Defense Department’s “Option VII” strategic reduction proposal, which ran contrary to Smith’s own preferred SWWA-style Option V.10 It was the first of many disagreements. Much like Smith, Nitze was convinced of his own correctness and willing to go his own way to do what he thought was right, even if it meant going over Smith’s head to Laird or Kissinger. The politeness of their relationship could not entirely cover their profound disagreements on policy. After months of delay, by the fall of 1969 the Soviet Union was finally showing interest in beginning SALT negotiations. Nixon had announced that the United States was ready to begin negotiations as early as June 20, 1969, but had received no response.11 Despite assurances from Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, that his government would be forthcoming about setting a date to begin, months passed without any word.12 Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko met with Rogers at the United Nations in late September 1969 for an informal discussion, during which Gromyko indicated that the Soviets would be ready to begin negotiations soon.13 Still, no announcement came. The Soviet refusal to begin SALT in the summer of 1969 took Nixon and his advisers by surprise, given their early statements that they were ready to begin at any time Nixon preferred. No doubt part of the Soviet reticence was driven by Nixon and Kissinger’s earlier attempts at “linkage”—the Soviets were now at pains to insist that they did not want talks any more or less than the Americans did, lest they enter negotiations at a disadvantage.14 Yet the timing also reflected ongoing debates within the Soviet Union regarding the role of nuclear weapons. For years, a “little civil war” had raged within the Soviet defense establish-

Y8013-Maurer.indb 70

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt b egins

71

ment over what sort of nuclear force would best ensure Soviet security, between the proponents of an “assured destruction” strategy based on hardened missile silos and those of a “counterforce” strategy using accurate MIRVed missiles. Not until August 1969 did the Soviet Defense Council hand down a ruling regarding the wisdom of pursuing both approaches.15 The debate mirrored that within the Nixon administration over the meaning of strategic “sufficiency,” as both superpowers struggled to define their defense requirements in a world of nuclear plenty. Without such guidance, the Soviets would have struggled to assemble a coherent arms control proposal. A month later, Dobrynin proposed to Nixon and Kissinger that SALT begin on November 17, 1969, in Helsinki. Nixon agreed and told Dobrynin that the American negotiators would be treating the first round of talks as exploratory, to gain a better understanding of the two sides’ positions on SALT. Nonetheless, Nixon warned Dobrynin that the United States was preparing for serious SALT discussions, and that the Soviets should do the same.16 Kissinger informed Smith and the rest of the government that talks were scheduled to begin in less than a month.17 On October 25, 1969, the White House announced that SALT would begin on November 17 in Helsinki.18 After months of false starts, SALT was finally getting underway. The American delegation was dismayed by the announcement of Helsinki, since during the winter the Finnish capital was notoriously dark and cold. The Soviet proposal to hold talks in Helsinki was the result of a series of miscommunications between the American and Soviet governments. Months earlier, in the warmth of summer, Smith had proposed Helsinki as a possible neutral location for negotiation, along with Geneva and Vienna.19 Rogers passed Smith’s recommendations on to the Soviets, who latched onto the idea of Helsinki given its proximity to Soviet territory.20 When Dobrynin finally proposed meeting in Helsinki, Smith lobbied Kissinger and Rogers to push for a different venue, preferably one that would be warmer in November, but Rogers maintained that offering the Soviets the choice of venue only to object would be a poor way to begin the talks.21 When Nixon broached the issue with Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador allowed that although his government insisted on beginning SALT in Helsinki, future rounds might take place in a different

Y8013-Maurer.indb 71

2/25/22 2:59 PM

72

s a lt b egins

neutral venue, like Vienna.22 The result of this comedy of errors was one of SALT’s most distinctive features: the alternation of negotiations between Helsinki and Vienna throughout the first several years of talks. The coming onset of negotiations solidified the administration’s evolving interagency process, cementing Kissinger’s leadership on SALT. Rather than establish a new NSC arms control committee, Nixon ordered that Kissinger’s Verification Panel remain as the central organism for all SALT policy issues moving forward. Under Kissinger’s direction, the Verification Panel would continue to examine SALT options and provide recommendations to the president on high-level policy. Nixon’s decisions would then be passed to a Backstopping Committee responsible for developing specific negotiating instructions to implement Nixon’s decisions. Smith’s SALT delegation would report back to the Backstopping Committee, which in turn would provide regular updates to Kissinger and the Verification Panel.23 Since every relevant agency was represented on the Verification Panel, the Backstopping Committee, and the SALT delegation, the process ensured every stakeholder got their say. By insisting that all SALT policy would flow from analysis by the Verification Panel, however, the process also kept ultimate control in Kissinger’s hands. All that remained was for Nixon to select what “illustrative” SALT option the American delegation would present to the Soviets in Helsinki. Laird and Smith each lobbied Nixon to select their preferred option as the illustrative proposal, hoping to set the tone for future negotiations. The most contentious issue remained whether the United States should propose an immediate moratorium on MIRV testing to the Soviets, or not. Despite Nixon’s instructions that the first round be exploratory, Smith continued to push for a moratorium, arguing that proposing a temporary restriction was consistent with the president’s instructions to avoid substantive negotiations. Laird, Packard, and Nitze disagreed strongly, arguing that proposing a testing moratorium was exactly the sort of thing that Nixon had ordered the delegation to avoid.24 Nixon ultimately avoided taking sides in Laird and Smith’s dispute. Rather than selecting either preferred option, Nixon ordered the delegation to present Option II to the Soviets—a basic ICBM and SLBM freeze with an agreed limit on ABM deployments but no limitation of qualita-

Y8013-Maurer.indb 72

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt b egins

73

tive improvements like MIRV. It was a safe choice, showing favor to neither Laird nor Smith. The only hint of favor came in Nixon’s refusal to authorize a MIRV testing moratorium. The president ordered Smith not to mention a testing moratorium unless the Soviets mentioned it first. If the Soviets did raise the issue, Smith was under orders to report back to Nixon before committing the United States to any course of action.25 Although Smith was disappointed, Nixon’s decision against a MIRV moratorium was not surprising. The president was not against MIRV in principle. Instead, Nixon cared whether the United States or the Soviet Union was ahead in MIRV technology. In the NSC meetings leading up to Helsinki, Smith argued that over the longer term MIRV might favor the Soviets, since larger Soviet missiles would be able to carry more warheads. Laird, Packard, and Nitze countered that the United States was ahead in MIRV testing and that MIRV was a necessary counterweight to the growing size of the Soviet missile force.26 It was an ironic twist: after months of focusing on the Soviet MIRV threat to justify missile defenses, Laird and his deputies were now insisting that the American lead in MIRV technology was paramount. Whatever the inconsistency of their analysis, Nixon was more convinced by Laird’s efforts to preserve American nuclear advantages. Nixon would only consider a moratorium if it came with major concessions from the Soviets elsewhere.27 s a lt i — he l s ink i , n o v emb e r – d e c emb e r 1 9 6 9 On November 17, 1969, the delegations from the United States and the Soviet Union met in Helsinki to begin SALT. Smith’s delegation met with their Soviet counterparts, led by Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Semenov, a senior Soviet negotiator with extensive experience in European politics but little background in arms control.28 The American and Soviet delegations exchanged opening statements, congratulating each other on such an important negotiation. Smith was pleased that the Soviets’ remarks contained no polemics against capitalist warmongering. The next week, Smith presented the illustrative Option II to the Soviets, detailing the various parts of the notional agreement and how they fit into American thinking on issues like offense-defense linkage and adequate verification. The Soviets seemed interested in the presentation but provided little feedback.29

Y8013-Maurer.indb 73

2/25/22 2:59 PM

74

s a lt b egins

The bonhomie in Helsinki contrasted with the fighting in Washington. With negotiations underway, the Backstopping Committee was handling daily communications from the delegation on how to implement Nixon’s instructions. The committee quickly became another front in the interagency battle for SALT. Although Nixon had clearly ordered the delegation not to mention a MIRV moratorium, the Option II illustrative proposal allowed Smith to discuss—hypothetically—limiting various qualitative force improvements. Since MIRVs were a qualitative force improvement, Smith insisted that he could discuss MIRVs with the Soviets, despite Nixon’s instructions not to. After several days of recriminations and sniping, Farley and Sonnenfeldt worked out a compromise in the Backstopping Committee that Smith could mention limiting MIRV as a possibility for future rounds of SALT, but could not discuss an immediate MIRV moratorium.30 The Backstopping Committee also struggled with Nixon’s instructions on missile defenses. Option II stated that the United States wanted an “area defense” system, rather than a limited system. But Smith and Farley argued that “area defense” was a nebulous concept that might include even very small ABM systems. The White House and Defense Department representatives on the committee were quick to object, noting that Nixon had said repeatedly that by “area defense” he meant “the Safeguard system.” Kissinger ultimately intervened directly to clarify that by “area defense” he did indeed mean Safeguard.31 The controversies over implementing Nixon’s instructions generated renewed criticism by hawks that Smith was improperly using his interagency authority as head of the SALT delegation to evade the president’s instructions in favor of ACDA’s negotiating position. Laird especially feared that Smith would make an unauthorized proposal to the Soviets and return with a fait accompli agreement, railroading the administration into a cooperative policy contrary to Nixon’s intent.32 Smith clearly struggled with the conflicting interests of being ACDA director and delegation chair, but there is no evidence that he ever contemplated the sort of drastic move that Laird and his associates feared he might make. More to the point, the internal disputes over MIRV and ABM were increasingly overtaken by new controversies in Helsinki itself. After several weeks of listening to American proposals, by early December the Soviets began presenting their own ideas on SALT. Their

Y8013-Maurer.indb 74

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt b egins

75

biggest concern was not MIRV or ABM, but rather what the Soviets referred to as American “forward-based systems,” or FBS. The Kennedy and Johnson administrations had deployed thousands of smaller nuclear weapons throughout Europe and Asia as part of their efforts to reassure American allies. Semenov argued that any nuclear weapon capable of striking the homeland of the adversary was ultimately a “strategic” weapon. The Soviets therefore insisted that the United States limit not only the ICBMs and SLBMs contained in the American Option II proposal, as well as heavy intercontinental bombers, but also the vast majority of American “tactical” nuclear weapons in Europe and Asia. By comparison, Soviet tactical weapons, which could only strike American allies, would not count as strategic weapons. The Soviet FBS formula would require the United States either to accept a smaller force of ICBMs and SLBMs or withdraw virtually all tactical nuclear weapons from Eurasia. Either way, the Soviets would have thousands more weapons than the United States.33 The Soviet insistence that American, and only American, tactical nuclear weapons count as “strategic” was rejected by American hawks and doves alike. Aside from the blatant numerical imbalance, the United States still relied on these weapons to reassure partners threatened by their Soviet neighbor; negotiating the withdrawal of such weapons with the Soviets would drive an even deeper wedge between the United States and its allies. Yet the Soviets insisted that their proposal was genuine.34 Opening with such a sweeping demand was no doubt a negotiating tactic, but evidence from memoir accounts suggests that Soviet leaders were genuinely concerned by what they saw as their encirclement by the United States’ extensive tactical nuclear weapons.35 Indeed, Semenov remained firm in his insistence that FBS was the single most important SALT issue, to the exclusion of virtually all others. Semenov’s focus on American FBS was especially disappointing for Smith, who had hoped that the Soviets would mention MIRV testing and allow Smith to broach a MIRV moratorium. When it became clear that the Soviets cared more about FBS than MIRV, Smith made one final appeal directly to Nixon to allow the Americans to discuss MIRV testing.36 Nixon ignored the request, dumping Smith’s proposal back into the deadlocked Backstopping Committee to die.37 Decades later, Smith recalled Nixon’s refusal to discuss MIRV at Helsinki as a major blunder:

Y8013-Maurer.indb 75

2/25/22 2:59 PM

76

s a lt b egins

he stated that the Soviets were interested in banning MIRV, and that by failing to raise the issue the United States missed its final opportunity to limit MIRV in SALT.38 We cannot know how the Soviets might have behaved, but Smith’s “last chance” argument is unconvincing. The Soviets were not shy about raising the issues that they cared about—like FBS. Smith himself provided a more convincing explanation in a December 1969 memo to Nixon, where he concluded that the Soviets’ failure to raise the MIRV issue at Helsinki indicated that the Soviet leadership was committed to its own MIRV program.39 Smith’s December 1969 conclusion matched that of the NSC MIRV Panel of the previous summer— that the Soviets would resist any effort to limit MIRV once the United States took the lead in MIRV testing.40 Even had Nixon authorized Smith to propose a MIRV moratorium to the Soviets in Helsinki, it seems unlikely that they would have accepted. Aside from FBS, Semenov spent most of his time in Helsinki calling for “political” agreements on issues of mutual concern, including sharing information to prevent the accidental use of nuclear weapons.41 Semenov also suggested cooperation against “provocative attack” by third parties. Yet cooperating with the Soviets against other nuclear powers was difficult to imagine, since several “other” nuclear powers were American allies (Britain and France), while another was an important potential negotiating partner (China).42 At Semenov’s insistence, however, the “accidental” and “provocative attack” proposals became important components of the working program for future SALT negotiations. As the meetings in Helsinki wound down in December 1969, Nixon’s advisers remained as divided as ever over SALT’s purpose. The delegates returning from Helsinki generally agreed that the Soviets understood strategic concepts like nuclear parity, strategic stability, and the interrelationship of offensive and defensive forces.43 Whether the Soviets accepted these concepts was less clear. Smith’s official report of the Helsinki meeting indicated that the Soviet delegates seemed ready to negotiate toward mutual deterrence and equal security, including limiting or even abolishing destabilizing weapons like ABMs.44 Smith’s rosy view was not shared by all the American delegates. Nitze, Brown, and Allison all concluded that the Soviets were seeking an agreement that would benefit the Soviet Union disproportionately by banning American technological advantages like ABM and MIRV and dismantling Amer-

Y8013-Maurer.indb 76

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt b egins

77

ican tactical nuclear forces, all while allowing the Soviets to continue producing larger and larger ICBMs.45 A Special National Intelligence Estimate drawing on the new data from Helsinki also reached ambiguous conclusions: the Soviets seemed to have accepted the idea of mutual deterrence between the superpowers, but Soviet statements at Helsinki also suggested that Soviet leaders wanted numerical advantage over the United States, not parity.46 American analysts endeavoring to understand the Soviet Union often defaulted to mirror imaging of the adversary, and Nixon’s advisers were no exception.47 Smith and his cooperative colleagues saw the Soviets as genuine cooperators invested in making the world safer from the dangers of nuclear escalation; Laird and other American competitors worried that the Soviets were devious competitors looking for every nuclear advantage. Ironically, these dueling mirror images reflected a larger reality within the Soviet Union itself. The Soviet military and defense industrial establishment remained divided over how best to accomplish its security goals: through greater cooperation (which would secure second-strike forces) or greater competition (which would improve damage limitation capability). The August 1969 decision by the Soviet Defense Council to pursue both strategies had papered over this dispute, much in the way that “strategic sufficiency” had obscured Laird and Smith’s differences without resolving them.48 As a result, neither Smith nor Laird ever lacked for evidence that the Soviet Union reflected their own views, especially as arms talks provided new avenues for American cooperators and competitors to speak candidly with their Soviet opposites. Nixon avoided taking sides in the dispute over Soviet motives, but in private it was clear that the president believed the Soviets to be hostile and seeking military advantage in SALT.49 Meeting with the Soviets had done little to quell the fears of American hawks about the apparent Soviet drive for strategic nuclear superiority. Nixon and others in the administration remained committed to a competitive arms control policy that would halt the Soviet buildup and ensure continued American nuclear preeminence. a s u d d en r e v e r s a l Although it had not helped achieve bureaucratic compromise within the American government, in other regards the first round of SALT in

Y8013-Maurer.indb 77

2/25/22 2:59 PM

78

s a lt b egins

Helsinki had been a success. The American and Soviet delegates had had a respectful dialogue that identified the most pressing issues for future discussion.50 With the first round concluded, attention quickly turned to preparing for the next round of negotiations in the spring of 1970. The most immediate question was where and when the next round of talks would take place. This basic procedural issue was the first SALT negotiation conducted by Kissinger and Dobrynin via their secret “backchannel” forum. At Nixon’s behest, Kissinger had been meeting with Dobrynin periodically since February 1969. Their early discussions had focused on political issues in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.51 As the delegates returned from Helsinki in December 1969, Nixon asked Kissinger to discuss the location for the next SALT meeting with Dobrynin. In conversation on December 22, 1969, Dobrynin told Kissinger that the Soviets would be happy to meet in the spring in Vienna, rather than continuing in Helsinki. Nixon was pleased with the quick result, and he told Kissinger to keep the back channel open for SALT. Dobrynin agreed that they might work out high-level SALT issues in the future, allowing the delegations to work out the technical details.52 Kissinger and Dobrynin then turned to other issues; they would not engage in serious SALT negotiations for another year. Eventually, Kissinger and Dobrynin’s discussions would shape the entire SALT process. In early 1970, however, Nixon and Kissinger were still determined to build an interagency compromise on SALT, although the obstacles remained enormous. Nixon tried to portray his government as undivided, but his advisers fought constantly over SALT.53 The fighting continued to leak into public in awkward and potentially damaging ways. It was one thing for Farley and Sonnenfeldt to exchange angry memos among the Backstopping Committee, but Smith and Kissinger’s deputies also sniped at each other in front of Congress.54 The Option II proposal presented to the Soviets in Helsinki leaked immediately. Hawkish commentators like Stewart Alsop criticized the option as too favorable to the Soviets without noting that it was not a serious negotiating proposal, but only an illustration to provoke discussion.55 At the same time, key scientific advisers like Paul Doty, Richard Garwin, George Rathjens, and Jack Ruina were undercutting Nixon’s approach by telling their Soviet counterparts that the United States wanted to eliminate both MIRV and

Y8013-Maurer.indb 78

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt b egins

79

ABM. While the scientists were speaking as private citizens, Kissinger worried that their status as presidential science advisers would undermine actual American negotiating positions.56 Nixon’s hopes that meeting with the Soviets in Helsinki would discipline the interagency process were sadly disappointed. Smith returned from Helsinki fired up and ready to go. Debriefing the Verification Panel on January 21, 1970, Smith took aim at Kissinger’s panel itself, arguing that the administration had conducted enough technical analysis and that the time had come for Nixon to select the negotiating position that Smith would present to the Soviets that spring in Vienna—namely, Smith’s own preferred position of strict limits on MIRV and ABM.57 Nixon worried that Smith’s latest attempt to railroad his preferred policies through the interagency process would provoke another fierce response from Laird and his allies, who strongly opposed the idea of Nixon greenlighting Smith’s preferred proposal.58 But with the Vienna round fast approaching, Nixon would soon have to make his choice: what would Smith be presenting to the Soviets? Without a clear answer, Kissinger fell back on his old standby: more studies. The massive Evaluation Report covering all nine approved SALT options had failed to break the bureaucratic deadlock, so Kissinger and his deputies turned to a new approach. The Verification Panel would produce a large number of targeted studies on specific issues of interagency contention, known as “Y-Papers.” Many of the Y-Papers focused on aspects of SALT that had been introduced late in the previous round of study by the Defense Department or ACDA, including: whether the proposed Option VI limitation on missile throw-weight would be desirable or verifiable; how the proposed Option VII force reductions would impact the strategic balance over the longer term; and how to implement Option III-A’s one-way freedom to mix from ICBMs to SLBMs. Several other Y-Papers addressed topics that had been raised by the Soviets in Helsinki, including: whether to limit bombers and air defenses; how to prevent accidental or provocative nuclear attacks; and whether or not on-site inspections would improve verification.59 Kissinger hoped that the new, focused approach on specific issues of contention would help bridge at least a few of the divisions over what sort of SALT agreement would be desirable.60

Y8013-Maurer.indb 79

2/25/22 2:59 PM

80

s a lt b egins

While the Verification Panel hammered away at the Y-Papers, however, a tectonic shift occurred within the interagency process. Throughout the administration’s first year Laird and his deputies had been strong proponents of missile defense, arguing that Safeguard was an important area of American technological advantage over the Soviet Union. This had divided Laird and his allies from Safeguard skeptics like Smith, who believed that missile defense was dangerous to the mutual vulnerability on which Smith believed American-Soviet deterrence rested. Laird had insisted that SALT make room for Safeguard deployment; Smith had argued that SALT could prevent Safeguard deployment, by limiting or even banning missile defenses. Laird and Smith’s arguments over Safeguard and SALT had been one of Nixon’s most persistent headaches. By the end of 1969, however, Laird and his allies were reevaluating their assumptions about missile defense’s place in American strategy.61 The summer 1969 congressional debate to fund Safeguard had been bruising, and Laird’s congressional affairs advisers predicted that the FY71 budget would result in a similar battle, which might drive further congressional opposition to other strategic weapons programs.62 Laird determined that the administration would do better to jettison Safeguard and focus its budget request on rapid modernization of offensive missiles and bombers.63 At the same time, missile defense boosters like Packard concluded that Safeguard was yesterday’s technology, and that money for missile defense would be better spent on R&D for more advanced concepts, especially a point defense system of American missile silos.64 Silo point defense was simpler and cheaper than a full area defense system, and was a direct response to the threat of a Soviet surprise attack on American Minuteman missiles. Important swing members of Congress had also favored the point defense rationale during the 1969 debates.65 To shift toward point defense, Laird and Packard’s new proposal would truncate the Safeguard program, completing the Phase I deployments that had already been authorized but not requesting further funding for Phase II. Although Laird doubted Safeguard’s value, Nixon remained determined to build his signature missile defense program.66 Nixon’s advisers suspected that Laird’s trimming Safeguard from the budget was retaliation for the president cutting defense funding.67 Kissinger tried to compel Laird to fund Safeguard via the DPRC, but Packard argued that the

Y8013-Maurer.indb 80

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt b egins

81

tremendous complexity of the defense budget meant that there was no time for Kissinger to review spending line by line.68 Packard’s new opposition to Safeguard funding put him in uneasy alliance with ACDA, since Farley argued that missile defense was a dangerous technology that should be banned outright. For the time being, Laird and Smith were on the same side of the issue: Safeguard Phase II was not worth funding.69 In the short term, Kissinger was able to split Laird and Smith again by compromising on missile defense funding. While Nixon was adamant that some progress be made on Safeguard, the president cared less where that progress was made. Packard agreed to put funding for missile defense construction back in the budget, but the money would be directed entirely toward new Safeguard sites defending American missile bases in Missouri and Wyoming, rather than population centers in the Northeast and Northwest. In effect, Kissinger simply renamed Laird and Packard’s preferred ABM program as “Safeguard Phase II.”70 Outflanked by Kissinger, Smith still opposed any further missile defense funding, but he conceded that if Safeguard had to go forward, then focusing on point defense would be the least bad option for mutual deterrence, since it would not threaten the Soviets’ ability to retaliate against American cities.71 Smith’s grudging acceptance was good enough for Nixon. The president ordered Laird to prepare the new “Safeguard Phase II” proposal to present to Congress.72 Laird announced the Phase II plan on February 20, 1970, during his annual military posture statement to Congress.73 Laird’s growing skepticism of Safeguard also reshaped his arms control policies. Previously, Laird and his allies had insisted that any SALT agreement allow a Safeguard-sized ABM deployment. As recently as November 1969, the Defense Department’s preferred “Option VII” policy had insisted on Safeguard-levels of ABM deployments.74 But once Laird concluded that Congress would not allow the full Safeguard deployment, his position on ABM in SALT shifted. If Congress would only authorize a small missile defense system, then SALT would need to limit the Soviets to a similarly low level; otherwise the Soviets would simply outbuild the United States in a missile defense race. By March 1970, the Verification Panel’s Y-1 Study on ABM and MIRV turned up a surprising conclusion: all agencies (including the Defense Department) now agreed that the main ABM objective in SALT was to limit Soviet deployments to the lowest possible level. Because the Soviets had already begun

Y8013-Maurer.indb 81

2/25/22 2:59 PM

82

s a lt b egins

a small missile defense system around Moscow, the simplest “low ABM” agreement would be one that limited each side to a single missile defense base near its capital—the so-called “national command authority” (NCA) option.75 Of course, an NCA SALT proposal was not compatible with Safeguard, but given the growing conviction that Congress would not fund Safeguard in any event, this seemed like a minor obstacle to Laird and his allies. The sudden agreement between Laird and Smith on limiting ABM took Kissinger and his staff by surprise.76 Indeed, even years later Kissinger seems not to have fully understood it; in his memoirs he blamed the NCA-only proposal of 1970 on the influence of doves like Smith.77 Yet Smith had been promoting a low- or zero-ABM agreement all along. Only Laird’s shift to favoring a low-level ABM agreement forced Nixon’s hand in producing an NCA-only SALT proposal. It was an odd alliance: Smith favored limiting ABM because he feared missile defense was intrinsically dangerous, while Laird now promoted its limitation because he worried it was an area of Soviet advantage. Yet this fragile coalition against missile defenses provided a temporary resolution to one of the administration’s most vexing SALT dilemmas at a decisive moment. t he momen t o f d e c i s i on Much of the Nixon administration’s arms control policy was decided in the spring of 1970, as Nixon and his advisers struggled to hammer out a compromise proposal to present to the Soviets in Vienna.78 Months of analysis by the Verification Panel had helped bridge a few SALT divides. Laird’s change of heart on ABM meant that the administration now generally favored limiting missile defenses in SALT to a very low level.79 There was also a rough consensus that any agreement limiting missile defenses would need to be accompanied by strict collateral constraints on ABM-capable radars.80 When it came to limiting offensive missiles, there was a growing consensus that land-mobile missiles should be banned, and that older ICBMs should be replaceable with newer SLBMs—the “one-way freedom to mix.”81 Yet Laird, Smith, and their respective supporters remained deeply divided over whether to ban MIRV, and the Verification Panel’s work had done little to narrow their differences.82 The lines of argument became increasingly blurred as each side sought to undercut the other’s argu-

Y8013-Maurer.indb 82

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt b egins

83

ments. Smith and his allies increasingly adopted Laird’s own logic of nuclear competition to argue for a MIRV ban. Smith argued that since MIRVed Soviet missiles would eventually pose a significant threat to American strategic nuclear forces, the wisest competitive choice would be to ban MIRV entirely before the Soviet program could mature. Laird and his allies rejoined that MIRV was still an area of American advantage, since the United States was ahead in testing and would ultimately be able to produce better and more accurate MIRVed missiles than the Soviets, but they also increasingly deployed arms control–specific arguments against a MIRV ban, especially that a MIRV ban could not be adequately verified. Instead, the hawks argued that the best way to control the future Soviet MIRV threat was by reducing the number and size of Soviet missiles, especially the Soviets’ superheavy SS-9 ICBMs.83 Laird and Smith’s debate over MIRV became entangled in a highly technical subdebate concerning Soviet surface-to-air missiles. While previous Soviet SAMs had been designed to shoot down aircraft, Laird worried that over time the Soviets might upgrade their SAMs to have missile defense capabilities. Since the Soviets had many SAMs, an ABM upgrade would allow them to deploy a large missile defense system quickly. Given the risk of Soviet cheating, Laird and his allies insisted that the United States needed to retain its MIRV as a “hedge,” even if SALT limited ABM to very low levels. Smith and other MIRV skeptics argued that any SAM upgrades would be visible, since the upgraded missiles would still need to be tested in ways visible to American sensors; that upgraded SAMs would never be as effective as dedicated missile interceptors; and that the United States had other ABM countermeasures at its disposal, like missile-mounted decoys.84 Yet the prospect of Soviet cheating on ABM limitation continued to be a powerful argument in favor of retaining MIRV as a hedge.85 It also meant that a notional MIRV ban would be doubly hard to verify, since the ban would require collateral constraints not just on Soviet ballistic missile testing, but also on Soviet air defense forces.86 As Laird and Smith continued to trade blows, the interagency SALT process broke down again. Laird’s deputies conducted their own parallel SALT policy research in support of Laird’s lobbying efforts, the conclusions of which were not shared with Lynn and other members of the Verification Panel.87 Laird, Smith and others also regularly bypassed the

Y8013-Maurer.indb 83

2/25/22 2:59 PM

84

s a lt b egins

panel to lobby Nixon directly.88 Many also sought Kissinger’s personal support for their particular proposals.89 The Verification Panel struggled to keep pace with this constant maneuvering. The nine “official” SALT options that formed the basis of the Working Group’s updated “Evaluation Report” were increasingly irrelevant to the rapidly evolving ideas of Laird, Smith, and their respective supporters.90 Facing this continued bureaucratic dysfunction, and with only weeks left before the American delegation left for Vienna, Nixon ultimately ordered Kissinger to reboot the SALT policy process once again. On March 27, 1970, Nixon ordered the Verification Panel to scrap the nine Evaluation Report options and instead produce four brand-new negotiating proposals based on the agencies’ current preferences.91 With little time left, the job of synthesizing and drafting these four new options fell to the delegation’s executive secretary, Raymond Garthoff.92 This first draft was then edited by the Verification Panel Working Group, whose many disagreements about the draft proposals filled up a second long report assembled by Lynn.93 With the two reports in hand, Kissinger forcemarched the Verification Panel through the new options, ironing out what differences he could.94 By the time the new options were ready for Nixon’s consideration, the second round of SALT was only a week away. As Nixon had instructed, the resulting NSDM 49 Report replaced the nine previous Evaluation Report options with four new options, labeled A through D. But these four “new” options were much more complicated than the previous nine, and the differences between them remained profound.95 Each of the four options was favored by one of Nixon’s major arms control advisers. Option A, favored by Wheeler, would have limited ICBM and SLBM deployments to 1,710 (the current American total), with a sublimit on large ICBMs like the SS-9, one-way freedom to mix, and a ban on mobile ICBMs. Option A also contained an ABM agreement in which the United States (and only the United States) would be able to deploy several thousand point-defense interceptors to defend its missile silos, as “compensation” for the Soviet Union’s thousands of SAM missiles. Wheeler maintained that the proposed agreement was fair, but Nixon’s other advisers believed that the SAMs-for-interceptors model would be nonnegotiable with the Soviets.96 Option B, favored by Kissinger, was similar to Option A in that it would limit ICBMs and SLBMs to 1,710, but it would also prohibit “externally observable” modifications to

Y8013-Maurer.indb 84

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt b egins

85

existing missile silos in an effort to prevent the Soviets from upgrading their smaller missiles into larger ones, while still allowing the United States to continue MIRVing its smaller missiles. Option B would also include either a zero-ABM agreement or an NCA-only ABM agreement.97 Option C, favored by Smith, was similar to Option B, except that MIRV flight testing and deployment were also banned.98 Option D, favored by Laird, was a “reductions” plan under which the superpowers would each dismantle 100 ICBMs per year beginning with the oldest launchers until they had a total of 1,000 ICBMs and SLBMs apiece, while keeping Option A as a fallback.99 This reduction sequence would require the Soviets to dismantle all of their older SS-7 and SS-8 launchers, and then most of their large SS-9 weapons. Unlike Laird’s previous proposals, which had insisted on high levels of missile defense, Option D would also include either a zero-ABM agreement or an NCA-only agreement. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the NSDM 49 options pointed toward the direction that SALT would ultimately take. None of the options included American FBS or American strategic bombers. Three out of four options would have frozen the combined strategic missile forces of the superpowers at or around the size of the current American force, while allowing old ICBMs to be replaced with newer SLBMs. Three out of four options would have limited ABM deployments to low numbers. And three out of four options would have permitted testing and deployment of MIRVs. The proposals also contained similar collateral constraints on American and Soviet forces, including restrictions on large radar construction, mobile ICBMs, and intermediate-range missiles. At the time, though, with negotiations looming, the NSDM 49 options seemed like a hopeless maze of competing priorities. Nixon met with the NSC on April 8, 1969, to hear final arguments about which of the four options Smith should take to Vienna.100 By this point, Smith’s and  Laird’s differing positions were well known; Kissinger later described the meeting as “a Kabuki play . . . performed before a President bored to distraction.”101 Shortly after the meeting, Kissinger forwarded Nixon a memo describing all of the outstanding divisions over SALT policy, including one-way freedom to mix, land-mobile ICBMs, radar limits, SAM upgrades, bomber limitations, missile testing, and qualitative constraints.102

Y8013-Maurer.indb 85

2/25/22 2:59 PM

86

s a lt b egins

Kissinger’s Verification Panel hadn’t resolved all the differences between Smith and Laird, but it had narrowed Nixon’s SALT dilemmas down to two major decisions. Crucially, missile defense was not one of them. With both Laird and Smith now favoring low-ABM proposals, Nixon’s decision on ABM was effectively made for him.103 The United States’ initial SALT proposal would recommend restricting ABM to very low levels.104 Nixon’s first major decision was how to limit strategic offensive missiles. Three of the four NSDM 49 proposals suggested freezing the total level of missiles at 1,710. Laird’s preferred Option D proposal would instead have reduced the size of the superpower arsenals to only 1,000 missiles, including dismantling many of the Soviet Union’s largest weapons. Despite the overwhelming bureaucratic consensus that freezing the number of missiles would be a better first step than pushing for immediate reductions, Nixon had to consider the potential political costs of overruling his powerful secretary of defense. Nixon’s second major decision was whether and how to limit MIRVs. Three of the four NSDM 49 proposals would have allowed the United States to continue testing and deploying MIRVs. Smith’s preferred Option C proposal would have banned MIRV testing and deployment. Again, the bureaucratic consensus seemed to favor allowing MIRVs, but Nixon could hardly afford to alienate Smith, whose influence in Congress Nixon needed for both his arms control and force modernization programs. Unwilling to alienate either Laird or Smith, Nixon made a peculiar decision. Rather than selecting a single preferred option, on April 10, 1970, Nixon ordered Smith to present both Options C and D to the Soviets in Vienna. Each proposal would also have the same two ABM provisions: either zero ABM or NCA-level ABM. Nixon insisted that Smith present both options as coequal proposals and see how the Soviets responded.105 Kissinger later recalled that Nixon expected the Soviets to reject both options, which would allow Nixon to set aside both Laird’s and Smith’s pet projects while putting the onus on the Soviets rather than himself.106 Nixon’s nondecision was a shrewd bureaucratic maneuver, but it was a poor negotiating strategy, since it ceded the initiative to the Soviets by eschewing a decisive opening proposal.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 86

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt b egins

87

Nixon did make one alteration to Smith’s Option C: he added an on-site inspection provision to the MIRV ban. This minor addition provoked one final interagency dispute in the days leading up to Vienna. Laird and his allies had insisted that they would only accept a ban if it were accompanied by on-site inspections: visits by American inspectors to Soviet missile bases to dismantle Soviet missiles and check whether they contained multiple warheads or not. Smith and his supporters argued that the Soviets would never allow such inspections, and that a ban could in any event be adequately verified via American technical intelligence methods.107 In deference to Smith, NSDM 49 Option C had not included on-site inspection, though it had contained dissenting footnotes from Laird and Wheeler that inspections were necessary.108 Looking for a compromise, Nixon ordered Smith to present Option C in Vienna, but with on-site inspection included. Smith begged Nixon to drop the provision, but to no avail.109 Nixon’s addition of on-site inspections to Option C was later the target of intense criticism by Smith and Garthoff, who argued that Nixon had included Option C arbitrarily, with no supporting technical rationale, as a poison pill to compel the Soviets to reject the MIRV proposal.110 Yet Nixon’s decision to include on-site inspections was not arbitrary; rather, it was supported by a substantial portion of the government, especially the Defense Department.111 Nor was it clear that the Soviets would automatically reject on-site inspection, given that Semenov had not ruled out inspections when they were discussed in Helsinki.112 Even if the Soviets rejected inspections, Nixon could always have walked back the inspection provision in exchange for concessions from the Soviets in other areas.113 Nixon calculated that the Soviets would reject a MIRV ban regardless of its verification provisions because of the United States’ overwhelming lead in MIRV testing.114 Freezing the MIRV race where it was would only have frozen the American lead, as the interagency MIRV Panel Report had concluded the previous summer.115 Nixon did not add the inspections to sabotage Option C’s chances; he believed the MIRV ban proposal would fail either way.116 Rather, the president added on-site inspection to appease Laird while allowing Smith to present Option C to the Soviets. Nixon’s nondecision pleased no one, but prevented a major rupture before Vienna. Nixon met with the American SALT delegates the next

Y8013-Maurer.indb 87

2/25/22 2:59 PM

88

s a lt b egins

day to give them their instructions.117 Three days later, on April 14, Smith was in Brussels briefing NATO on the American Option C and D proposals.118 Two days after that, Smith met Semenov in Vienna to kick off the second round of SALT.119 The same day, Nixon briefed congressional leaders on the upcoming talks, outlining the proposals to be presented to the Soviets. Nixon praised the Verification Panel’s work specifically, claiming that the thorough technical analysis would allow the SALT negotiators to “cope with whatever issues arise on the basis of an agreed set of facts and analyses.”120 The reality, as always, was more complicated. While Kissinger’s interagency process had avoided a total breakdown, SALT policy remained so contentious that Nixon had sent two negotiating positions to Vienna in order to avoid picking sides. The panel’s work remained a rearguard action against the deep conflict between Smith and Laird over SALT’s ultimate purpose. This division between cooperative and competitive arms control would continue to plague Nixon as his administration moved into full negotiations with the Soviets.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 88

2/25/22 2:59 PM

c h a p te r five

SALT Stalemate

n eg o t i a tion s b e tw e e n th e a me r ic a n and Soviet SALT delegations began at the second round of SALT in Vienna in April 1970. To avoid division, Nixon had ordered Smith to present both Smith’s preferred freeze option and Laird’s force reductions option to the Soviets. Smith still struggled to separate his role as an arms control policy advocate from his role as lead SALT negotiator. Instead, Smith used his position as negotiator to promote his preferred arms control position, further provoking Laird and other competitive arms controllers. The rift between Nixon’s chief arms control advisers would only widen as negotiations continued, creating a persistent problem for the administration’s negotiating strategy. Negotiations with the Soviets added a new wrinkle to Nixon’s arms control dilemmas. Soviet negotiators insisted that any comprehensive SALT agreement would need to account for American tactical nuclear weapons deployed throughout Europe and Asia. The Soviets insisted that since these American forward-based systems could strike Soviet territory, they should count as strategic weapons under SALT. Since neither American proposal limited FBS, the Soviets rejected both. In lieu of a comprehensive deal, the Soviets proposed a more modest agreement limiting only missile defenses to very low levels. None of Nixon’s advisers, cooperative or competitive, were willing to accept the Soviet proposal. 89

Y8013-Maurer.indb 89

2/25/22 2:59 PM

90

s a lt s ta l em at e

As Nixon had hoped, the Soviet rejection of the initial American proposals allowed the administration to move toward an internal arms control compromise. Laird agreed that force reductions were not an immediate possibility, while Smith conceded that some qualitative improvements would need to be allowed. Instead, the administration developed and presented its first agreed negotiating position in August 1970, known as “Option E.” While the new option addressed some Soviet concerns, it still did not contain any restrictions on FBS, so the Soviets rejected it. With the Soviets unwilling to budge, the administration quickly found itself trapped by its own compromise. Further negotiations required modifications to Option E, but Laird and Smith could not agree on what the logical next step would be. Still unwilling to alienate his subordinates, Nixon repeatedly defaulted to insisting that the Soviets accept Option E, rather than exploring alternatives that might have angered either Laird or Smith. As the stalemated negotiations with the Soviets ground on into early 1971, pressure built toward a major interagency explosion. s a f eg ua r d ph a s e i i The April 1970 departure of the American SALT delegation for Vienna was overshadowed by a gathering storm over missile defense. For the second year in a row, the administration was preparing for a battle on Capitol Hill to fund its Safeguard ABM program. Congress had authorized the first phase of Safeguard by the slimmest of margins in 1969. Laird announced Safeguard Phase II in his annual military posture statement to Congress on February 20, 1970.1 Nixon’s Phase II plan would build a third Safeguard site to defend American missile bases in Missouri, as well as prepare land for future deployments to defend American cities in the Northeast and Northwest. Laird and his colleagues described Safeguard Phase II as a measured approach that would meet the immediate Soviet threat to American missile forces; lay the groundwork for a possible future expansion; and provide a key bargaining chip in SALT.2 Despite Laird’s forceful presentation, many within the administration predicted that Safeguard Phase II would face strong congressional opposition.3 Nixon was increasingly less concerned about Capitol Hill than he was about his own government. Within the administration, Safeguard remained a controversial topic. Smith and Rogers opposed missile de-

Y8013-Maurer.indb 90

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt s ta l em at e

91

fense deployments entirely. Laird favored missile defense, but he was increasingly skeptical of Safeguard and preferred to dedicate resources to newer ABM technology. Only Wheeler remained dedicated to the full twelve-base Safeguard deployment.4 Safeguard’s opponents in Congress latched onto any sign of division within the government about Safeguard’s purpose.5 If Nixon hoped to deploy a missile defense system like Safeguard, the White House would need to ensure that the government presented a unified rationale for further Safeguard funding. Nixon was increasingly resentful of missile defense opponents like Smith, but the real challenge to shepherding Safeguard through Congress was one of missile defense’s biggest proponents: Laird. The previous year’s Safeguard debate had shown that Laird was willing to run his own congressional relations campaign from the Pentagon, with little or no input from anyone else, including Nixon. For the second year’s debate, Nixon tasked Kissinger’s deputy, Brig. Gen. Alexander Haig, Jr., with overseeing Laird’s lobbying effort. An Army officer and combat veteran of both Korea and Vietnam, Haig was initially appointed as Kissinger’s military adviser. Haig’s can-do work ethic and hawkishness on Vietnam saw him rise through the ranks of Kissinger’s staff, as many of Kissinger’s initial advisers departed.6 Like Nixon and Kissinger, Haig struggled with Laird’s evolving views on missile defense. In early meetings of his Interdepartmental Safeguard Steering Group, Haig discovered that Laird’s deputies believed that the best political rationale for Safeguard was defending American missiles from Soviet attack. Laird therefore favored dropping Safeguard’s other missions—like defending the national capital from a decapitating strike, or protecting American cities from a limited Soviet or Chinese attack— and instead focusing entirely on Safeguard’s utility for defending American Minuteman missiles in the Midwest.7 Laird’s focus on defending Minuteman had won some last-minute votes in the first round of the Safeguard debate, but Nixon worried that focusing exclusively on defending Minuteman would be a losing proposition. Walking back the initial mission of defending American cities would allow Safeguard’s opponents to argue that the system wasn’t working as intended.8 Furthermore, Laird’s Minuteman defense mission was not consistent with the SALT proposals for Vienna, which allowed defense of national capitals, not missile silos. If Safeguard were deployed

Y8013-Maurer.indb 91

2/25/22 2:59 PM

92

s a lt s ta l em at e

only around American missiles, then Nixon’s own SALT proposals would require dismantling the entire Safeguard system.9 As such, Nixon insisted that Laird continue to support the full Safeguard program to defend both missile silos and American cities.10 Despite Nixon’s wariness of Laird, the Defense Department continued to lead the administration’s Safeguard Phase II lobbying. Laird saturated Congress with pro-Safeguard material, working closely with ABM supporters like the conservative Senator Jackson.11 As in the previous year, Laird’s deputies produced speeches and policy briefings for members of Congress to deliver supporting Safeguard.12 Nixon and Kissinger also took an active role, reaching out early and often to Senate swing votes to win their support for Safeguard Phase II.13 Laird’s lobbying program also promoted friendly commentary on Safeguard in the press.14 Most of Laird’s efforts were directed at smaller local newspapers, whose editorial boards adopted overwhelmingly proSafeguard positions. Winning the ground game in local newspapers played into Laird’s larger strategy of lobbying members of Congress, for whom local news remained an important barometer of constituent opinion.15 In fact, Laird’s media campaign was so successful that Nixon came to worry that the Defense Department might come under additional scrutiny for manipulating public opinion.16 This did not stop the White House from courting further media allies to increase pressure on Congress.17 Finally, Laird’s lobbying sought the endorsement of prominent private citizens, including scholars like Albert Wohlstetter, Donald Brennan, Foy Kohler, Dean Rusk, and Thomas Schelling, and civil society groups like the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, the Chamber of Commerce, the Navy League, and the Boy Scouts.18 Laird’s efforts met with considerable success as the summer wore on, as the Defense Department–backed Citizens’ Committee to Safeguard America won the support not just of foreign policy experts like Dean Acheson and Henry Cabot Lodge, but also of cinema superstar John Wayne.19 Critics of Safeguard, regrouping from their narrow defeat in 1969, continued to draw attention to the administration’s divided counsels as the best evidence that Congress should avoid funding Safeguard further. Although Smith and Rogers remained silent, rumors continued to swirl that the two opposed Nixon’s Safeguard policy.20 Laird’s desire for a dif-

Y8013-Maurer.indb 92

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt s ta l em at e

93

ferent type of missile defense system was also the subject of much speculation, undercutting Laird’s public statements in support of Safeguard Phase II.21 Quashing these rumors was especially difficult, since they were all essentially true. Opponents of Safeguard also found new ammunition in the growing congressional clamor against the administration’s policies in Vietnam. Missile defenses played no role in military operations in Asia, but opponents of Safeguard insisted that both were products of the overmilitarization of American foreign policy. Nixon’s promise of a new Vietnam policy had allayed critics for much of his first year in office. By early 1970, however, Senators Fulbright, Symington, John Sherman Cooper, and Frank Church were becoming much more vocally critical of the continued fighting in Vietnam. In May 1970, as Congress was debating Safeguard Phase II, opposition to the war was reignited by the dual shocks of the United States’ invasion of Cambodia and the shooting of anti-war protestors at Kent State University.22 The Safeguard lobbying effort was increasingly caught up in larger questions about the military’s role in American foreign policy. Growing Senate resistance to Safeguard left Nixon with no choice but to compromise with Laird.23 The secretary continued to insist that if Nixon wanted any missile defense program to make it through Congress, he would have to abandon Safeguard and adopt Laird’s preferred focus on defending American missile silos, which Laird believed Congress would support.24 It was an offer that Nixon could not refuse. As the Senate met in early July 1970 to discuss Safeguard, Nixon reluctantly agreed to focus the program on defending American missile bases. With Laird leading the administration’s defense, the amendment to defund Safeguard Phase II was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 51–49 on August 6, 1970.25 The passage of Safeguard Phase II was eased by an unlikely supporter: Gerard Smith. Nixon had asked Smith to support Safeguard as a bargaining chip for SALT. Despite his misgivings, Smith forwarded a short letter from Vienna agreeing that a sudden defunding of Safeguard would undermine the United States’ bargaining position, and agreed that Kissinger could show the note to a few senators in strict confidence.26 Smith’s letter leaked immediately, with the New York Times reporting on his surprising support for Safeguard.27 To Smith’s dismay,

Y8013-Maurer.indb 93

2/25/22 2:59 PM

94

s a lt s ta l em at e

the administration made significant use of his now-public support of Safeguard, which reportedly won over some fence-sitting senators.28 Nixon “won” Safeguard Phase II, but only by surrendering missile defense policy to Laird. Once he had Nixon’s blessing, Laird effectively cut the president out of the policy process entirely, working directly with Senator Jackson to formulate a new Safeguard proposal that would win wider Senate approval. Jackson had already been considering an amendment to block further Safeguard construction and redirect funding to R&D for a future dedicated Minuteman defense system, a proposal that closely aligned with Laird’s interests.29 To his credit, Laird stuck to Nixon’s instructions insofar as he convinced Jackson that Safeguard Phase II was a necessary stopgap on the way to a more advanced system.30 Jackson agreed to work with Laird in developing a new Safeguard amendment that would win Senate approval. Laird saw Safeguard Phase II through Congress, but the “Phase II” that Congress authorized looked suspiciously like Laird’s preferred policy rather than Nixon’s. The new “Phase II” amendment authorized by Congress on September 24, 1970, denied Nixon’s request to begin work on Safeguard bases in the Northeast and Northwest. Instead, it authorized two additional Safeguard bases defending American missile silos in Missouri and Wyoming, one more than Nixon’s proposal, bringing the total number of bases defending American missiles to four. Additional funding was allocated to R&D for future missile defense concepts, especially those related to defending American missile silos.31 For all intents and purposes, Safeguard was dead. Future missile defense proposals would focus on Laird’s preferred systems. Nixon was dismayed by Laird’s ability to engineer major congressional compromises contravening Nixon’s preferred policies. The president still preferred Safeguard, but his preferences mattered little in the face of Laird’s end-runs to Capitol Hill.32 Nixon found himself increasingly at odds with his defense secretary over the size of the defense budget and the balance of nuclear and conventional forces.33 For his part, Laird still chafed at Kissinger’s efforts to micromanage the defense budget through the DPRC.34 SALT added another wrinkle to Nixon and Laird’s relationship, as the arms control process shaped issues of strategy and funding that Laird saw as part of his domain. As they began negotiations with the

Y8013-Maurer.indb 94

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt s ta l em at e

95

Soviets, Nixon and Kissinger watched Laird, concerned with what the wayward defense secretary might do next. s a lt i i — v i enna As the American SALT delegation departed for Europe, there was one change in its lineup. Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson had been one of the original architects of SALT in the Johnson administration, but, diagnosed with cancer, he could no longer travel overseas. His health failed quickly, and he had passed away by early 1972.35 Thompson’s position as State Department adviser to the delegation was taken up by Ambassador James Parsons, an experienced diplomat with little knowledge of arms control issues, but an expert in drafting treaties; in conjunction with his Soviet counterparts, he would ultimately draft much of the initial SALT agreements.36 Parsons’s lack of arms control expertise meant that he stayed clear of the major interagency debates, focusing instead on the legal issues of drafting the agreements. Controversy attended the delegation as it prepared to depart. Nixon had ordered Smith to present two negotiating positions to the Soviets in Vienna: Option C, which would prohibit new missiles and ban MIRV; and Option D, which would reduce existing missiles but allow MIRV. Smith strongly favored Option C, which he saw as the last chance to get some sort of MIRV limitation into SALT, while Laird defended Option D, which would require the Soviets to dismantle their heavy ICBMs while allowing American MIRVs. In his last meeting with Nixon before departing for Europe, Smith made a final appeal to present Option C as the United States’ preferred position, but hawkish members of the delegation like Paul Nitze quickly rose to Option D’s defense. Fearing an argument, Nixon insisted that Smith present Option D as an equal American negotiating position, as Nixon had previously instructed.37 Smith was proving as problematic a chief negotiator as he had been an interagency head. Nixon had explicitly included Option D in Smith’s negotiating instructions as a concession to competitive arms controllers like Laird. As chief negotiator, Smith’s job was to implement the president’s instructions, regardless of his preferences. But as director of ACDA, Smith also believed it was his duty to provide Nixon the best possible arms control advice—Smith’s advice. Smith seemed entirely

Y8013-Maurer.indb 95

2/25/22 2:59 PM

96

s a lt s ta l em at e

incapable of recognizing the effect that his advocacy would have on those who disagreed with him. His appeal directly to Nixon, in full view of opponents like Nitze, reflected Smith’s basic tone-deafness on the depth of division within the administration. Under Smith’s leadership, the American delegation quickly got off on the wrong foot, as Smith continued to dodge Nixon’s instructions. Arriving in Brussels to brief the NATO leadership, Smith once again requested permission to present only Option C to the NATO leaders. Worried about confusing American allies, Smith instead proposed that he present Option C to NATO, and then to the Soviets in Vienna; if the Soviets rejected Option C, then Smith would return to Brussels, present Option D to the NATO leaders, and only then present it to the Soviets in Vienna. Smith’s request to present the options sequentially ran afoul of Laird and other Option D supporters, leading to a renewed row in the Backstopping Committee.38 Kissinger ultimately ordered Smith to present both options to NATO.39 In any event, the presentation went well: the NATO leaders seemed to understand both options, and Smith and the delegation proceeded on to Vienna.40 The American and Soviet delegations met for a second time on April  16, 1970, in Vienna to begin negotiations on SALT. Negotiations continued even as American military action in Vietnam escalated. On April 29, 1970, forces from the United States Army and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) crossed from South Vietnam into Cambodia to destroy North Vietnamese supply bases.41 Dobrynin had assured Kissinger that the Soviets would not break off SALT over the Cambodian incursion, but the White House Press Office nonetheless drafted a release criticizing the Soviets for canceling SALT.42 Although the Soviet delegation took a brief moment to condemn the American military action, the talks themselves continued without interruption.43 The Soviets appeared unwilling to call off SALT as Johnson had in 1968. Per Nixon’s instructions, Smith began presenting the United States’ two negotiating positions, starting with Option C.44 By this point, Laird and other hawks in Washington had lost all faith in Smith’s ability to negotiate impartially. As Smith laid out the details of Option C to the Soviets, Laird became increasingly impatient, worried that Smith was stalling the Option C presentation to avoid having to put Option D to the

Y8013-Maurer.indb 96

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt s ta l em at e

97

Soviets.45 Smith intended no such thing: the options were complex, and he was being thorough. Still, Smith’s repeated requests for more leeway in his instructions inflamed Laird’s suspicions.46 Kissinger sought to assuage Laird’s concerns by reminding Smith to give Option D equal status in the delegation’s presentation.47 Laird’s suspicions remained heightened even after Smith began presenting Option D to the Soviets on April 30, 1970, arguing that Smith was not advocating for Option D as hard as he had for Option C.48 Smith’s credibility in Washington was at an all-time low.49 Laird’s objections were eventually overtaken by events, as the Soviets rejected both Options C and D.50 On April 27, 1970, the Soviets tabled their own “Basic Provisions” for SALT. The Soviet provisions called for an unspecified numerical limit on ICBMs, SLBMs, and bombers, with total freedom to mix within this basic aggregate. Additionally, the Soviets insisted that all American forward-based systems would count against the United States’ total aggregate as “strategic” weapons. Soviet negotiators insisted that their own theater-range weapons would not count as “strategic,” since they could not strike the United States itself.51 After a few weeks Semenov softened this initial proposal by suggesting that the Soviets might instead receive a marginally higher numerical aggregate as “compensation” for American FBS.52 But Semenov remained cagy about what the exact numbers would be. Instead, the Soviets repeatedly asked the Americans to fill in the blanks in the Soviets’ own proposal.53 In one-on-one discussions, Soviet delegates indicated that they thought that an overall aggregate of 2,200 launchers (the approximate total size of the American strategic missile and bomber force) would be too high, but what number the Soviets would prefer remained a mystery.54 The Soviet Basic Provisions also recommended limiting MIRVs, but under terms that the United States would not accept. MIRV production and deployment would be banned, but the Soviets proposed no collateral constraints to verify the ban, such as prohibiting testing or allowing onsite inspection.55 Semenov admitted that verification under such a ban would be difficult, but insisted that banning MIRV testing would lock the Soviet Union into a position of inferiority, since the United States had already completed numerous MIRV tests.56 Given the fact that the Soviet Defense Council had already authorized the creation of next-generation

Y8013-Maurer.indb 97

2/25/22 2:59 PM

98

s a lt s ta l em at e

MIRVed missiles, it seems unlikely that the Soviets intended their MIRV ban proposal to succeed, any more than Nixon or Kissinger had expected of the American proposal.57 The Soviet SALT proposal was unacceptable to American hawks and doves alike. Kissinger believed the proposal indicated that Soviet thinking on arms control was far less advanced than that of the United States.58 Smith agreed that the Basic Provisions should be rejected, but saw the Soviet position as an opening gambit from which the Soviets would compromise as negotiations went on.59 As the Vienna negotiations stretched into their second month, however, it was clear to everyone—hawks and doves, Americans and Soviets—that the superpowers were very far apart on how to limit offensive weapons. On the other hand, Smith made quick progress on limiting missile defenses. Both American negotiating positions had recommended that the superpowers either dismantle all of their missile defenses or limit themselves to a single missile defense base near their national capitals—the National Command Authority (NCA) approach. The Soviets had resisted limiting missile defenses during talks with Johnson, but on April 27, 1970, Semenov announced that the Soviet Union would be happy to limit each superpower to one NCA-defense base apiece.60 This was a major shift in policy, and a recent one: the Soviet Politburo had concluded that technical and financial difficulties justified limiting missile defenses only in January 1970, after the first round of SALT in Helsinki.61 It was a rare moment of agreement in an otherwise divisive negotiation. Semenov’s acceptance of an NCA-only ABM agreement was a mixed blessing, since the Soviets rejected the other parts of the American proposals. This put Smith in a difficult position, since Options C and D were package deals in which the United States would agree to NCA only if the Soviets accepted the other parts of the proposals.62 Smith had made this clear to the Soviets, but Semenov treated the options like menus anyway, zeroing in on the parts that the Soviets preferred. Semenov also refused to consider important components of the American ABM proposals, including their collateral constraints on radars and SAMs. This meant that the superpowers were actually still quite far apart on missile defense issues, but Kissinger and Laird worried that this nuance would be lost if Safeguard’s domestic opponents learned that the Soviets had agreed to one missile defense base apiece.63 Laird demanded that the Soviets’ inter-

Y8013-Maurer.indb 98

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt s ta l em at e

99

est in limiting missile defenses be leveraged to win Soviet support for the Option D reductions of offensive forces, which Laird insisted the Soviets would accept if pushed hard enough.64 While Laird still hoped that Option D might prevail, by mid-May 1970 Smith concluded that the Soviets would accept neither of the existing SALT options. The Soviets insisted on compensation for American FBS; they maintained that banning MIRVs would not require restrictions on testing; and they refused to consider collateral constraints for radars and SAMs as part of an ABM agreement. Smith believed that the Soviets were still seeking a stable strategic balance and that their proposals to limit FBS and ABMs were driven by real Soviet concerns that these weapons were provocative and undermined mutual deterrence.65 More hawkish negotiators like Harold Brown, the delegation’s technical adviser, concluded that the Soviets were trying to limit weapons like FBS and ABMs, in which the United States enjoyed a decisive advantage while allowing weapons like heavy ICBMs and MIRVs, where the Soviets hoped to catch up.66 To this day, the exact mixture of Soviet motives in SALT remains unclear. Kissinger’s NSC staff concluded that while Soviet Foreign Ministry officials might have been interested in stabilizing the strategic balance, in general Soviet policy remained firmly in the hands of military and industrial officials who aimed to hobble American power by limiting missile defenses and dismantling American nuclear forces in Europe.67 Not everyone agreed—Smith and Garthoff believed that the Soviets were interested in genuine cooperation.68 For American analysts, Soviet motives remained frustratingly opaque. Retrospective accounts by Soviet officials present a mixed picture, but ultimately confirm the importance of competitive motives in Soviet arms control policy. Many prominent Soviet diplomats and scientists later recalled SALT as a cooperative effort to curtail the arms race.69 Yet the most candid recollections by those closest to Soviet arms control policy suggest that the Soviet arms control process was dominated by the militaryindustrial establishment, as many American observers suspected.70 Soviet leaders certainly accepted that nuclear war would be devastating for both countries and that deterring such a war was the military’s primary mission.71 But much like their American counterparts, Soviet defense officials remained committed to nuclear superiority, which they believed

Y8013-Maurer.indb 99

2/25/22 2:59 PM

10 0

s a lt s ta l em at e

would best deter American aggression.72 Furthermore, Soviet industrial leaders shared the American perception that the Soviet Union could not compete in quality of weapons, and that it was therefore important that SALT establish Soviet numerical superiority to offset the greater capability and reliability of American forces.73 Nor did Soviet political leaders curb the competitive instincts of their military advisers. While the Defense Council modified requirements on the margins to ensure that new generations of missiles would be more survivable, they did not prevent the Soviet military from pursuing larger and more capable counterforce weapons, any more than Johnson or Nixon prevented the American military.74 When the Politburo did act to limit major weapons systems, as it did with missile defenses, it did so only after Soviet military-technical authorities had concluded that the weapon could not be made to work.75 Given these similarities in strategic approach, it is not surprising that American and Soviet hawks ultimately saw the competitive dimension of negotiations in a similar light. Whatever their motives, the Soviets’ rejection of the American options raised an important question of how to proceed. On May 20, 1970, Smith asked to explore permutations of Options C and D with the Soviets as hypotheticals to gauge Soviet reactions—what Smith called “search warrants.”76 The idea of handing Smith any leeway in negotiation was controversial, since Laird still accused Smith of underselling Option D and demanded that Nixon refuse any new instructions until Smith pushed the Soviets harder to accept arms reduction.77 Laird’s suspicion of Smith was increasingly echoed by NSC staffers like Sonnenfeldt, who also resented Smith’s dual appointment as chief negotiator and ACDA director.78 With tensions running high, Nixon and Kissinger kept the reins of SALT policy tightly in hand. When the Backstopping Committee began drafting “search warrant” instructions at Smith’s request, Kissinger stopped them, insisting that any substantive changes needed to go through the Verification Panel first.79 Anticipating the Soviets’ rejection, Kissinger had already ordered a new raft of Verification Panel studies examining which provisions of Options C and D could be safely waived in negotiation.80 But the issues at hand were less technical than personal: Laird and his allies feared that Smith would misuse any authority he was given, and therefore opposed handing him open-ended orders. Kis-

Y8013-Maurer.indb 100

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt s ta l em at e

101

singer ultimately agreed with Laird: Smith would continue pushing for Options C and D while the Verification Panel worked out new detailed instructions.81 In the meantime, the American delegation was left to spin its wheels. The Soviets were also concerned by the stalemate in Vienna. By early May 1970, Semenov was suggesting a “limited” agreement that could be concluded at the end of the Vienna round in July, with the most divisive issues reserved for future negotiations.82 In a meeting with Kissinger on June 10, 1970, Dobrynin previewed a Soviet proposal for an ABMonly agreement, in which both sides would deploy only one NCA-type missile defense base.83 Nixon and Kissinger saw Dobrynin’s proposal as a ploy to derail Safeguard, while offering no Soviet concessions on offensive forces.84 Nixon and Kissinger’s suspicions were affirmed by the Verification Panel and the SALT delegation, both of which concluded that an ABM-only agreement was not in American interests.85 When Dobrynin raised the issue again on June 23, Kissinger rejected the “limited” agreement.86 Meanwhile, in Vienna, the Soviets responded to the lull by issuing a new proposal to limit the chances of accidental or provocative nuclear war. On June 30, 1970, Semenov suggested sharing more information to avoid unintentional conflict. Under this framework, an “accidental” war would occur if a technical malfunction led to an unintended weapons launch. A “provocative” war would occur if a third party launched a nuclear attack—for example, if the Soviets mistook a Chinese nuclear attack for the opening phases of an American offensive, and responded by attacking the United States. By sharing more information and not interfering with each other’s sensors, the superpowers would go a long way to alleviating this potential concern. They could also cooperate in surveilling other countries’ nuclear arsenals to avoid a surprise attack by a third party.87 The new Soviet proposal received a mixed response, creating division along predictable lines. Smith and his deputies saw it as a positive proposal, demonstrating the Soviets’ desire for a stable strategic relationship. More hawkish members of the government saw the value in preventing accidental war, but worried that the Soviets would use such an agreement to gather illicit information on American nuclear forces.88 More troubling was the idea of a “provocative attack” agreement, which

Y8013-Maurer.indb 101

2/25/22 2:59 PM

10 2

s a lt s ta l em at e

might require the United States to spy on its own nuclear-armed allies and complicate Sino-American rapprochement.89 Kissinger’s immediate response was to order the Verification Panel to study possible accidental/ provocative attack agreements.90 Even with the American delegation in Vienna, the SALT process remained mired in division and delay. o p t i on e — t he v i enna o p t i on By early June 1970, the negotiations in Vienna stalled out entirely. The Soviets’ ABM-only proposal meant that any momentum on limiting offensive forces would need to come from the American side. But the administration remained divided internally over what the new approach should be. Laird and Smith’s mutual animosity had driven Nixon to send both Options C and D to Vienna. Nixon and Kissinger had hoped that a Soviet rejection of both Smith’s and Laird’s proposals would have driven the two to compromise, but Laird’s continuing suspicion of Smith’s conduct kept the two divided. Whatever Nixon might want, progress on SALT would require a reconciliation between the administration’s two most influential arms controllers. The first step toward such a reconciliation came in early June, when Laird traveled to Europe to address NATO leaders. With the talks in Vienna moribund, Smith returned to Brussels for a sidebar with Laird, mediated by Nitze and Allison. The meeting was surprisingly productive. Smith, Nitze, and Allison convinced Laird that the Soviets had in fact rejected Option D, and not for any lack of trying. Laird was also reassured to hear Smith conclude that the Soviets were uninterested in a comprehensive freeze. Smith now believed that any SALT agreement would require continued modernization of American forces, both to ensure parity with the Soviets and to serve as bargaining leverage in future negotiations.91 Smith remained dedicated to eventually curtailing the arms race in its entirety, but his grudging acceptance of some modernization was enough for Laird, who favored such qualitative modernization to advance his own competitive program. Reassured of Smith’s intentions, Laird quickly agreed that the delegation should receive new instructions to move forward with SALT.92 The content of the new instructions remained contentious, however, because the Soviet rejection of Options C and D reopened a number of issues that had been closed prior to Vienna. Laird had been willing to ac-

Y8013-Maurer.indb 102

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt s ta l em at e

10 3

cept NCA-only missile defenses as part of a comprehensive SALT agreement limiting Soviet offensive forces, but when the Soviets rejected such limits, Laird turned against NCA-only and returned to favoring larger ABM schemes. Smith countered that if the ABM compromise was no longer valid, then the United States should also consider a zero-ABM agreement, which Smith had favored from the beginning. Smith and Laird’s continued division over missile defense policy was further complicated by the fact that the Soviets had already accepted in principle the American proposal for NCA-only defenses, which no one in the American government really wanted. Smith also continued to call for a MIRV ban, arguing that the administration should compromise by dropping its on-site inspection provision if the Soviets would agree to ban MIRV testing.93 Laird and Smith had buried the hatchet in principle, but their tentative reconciliation remained vulnerable to renewed disputation. Given the real risk of a further rupture between Defense and ACDA, Nixon still rejected Smith’s requests for greater leeway in negotiations, insisting that any compromise be vetted by Kissinger’s Verification Panel. Of course, the panel worked slowly, grinding its way through study after painstaking interagency study to ensure that every agency could comment.94 Kissinger’s panel met to discuss the new negotiating position only on June 24, almost a month after the Vienna talks had stalled. Smith returned to Washington personally to attend the panel meeting. Laird was represented by Packard as well as Allison, who came back from Vienna with Smith.95 Per Laird’s insistence, the purpose of the meeting was to develop a Defense-approved negotiating position that Smith could take back to Vienna. Smith brought with him a proposal that he and the delegation had developed on their own during the negotiating lull, which he called the “Vienna Option.” The Vienna Option reflected a first stab at an interagency compromise, reflecting the views of cooperators like Smith and Garthoff as well as competitors like Nitze, Allison, and Brown. The new option was also a synthesis of American and Soviet positions.96 Like Options A, B, and C, the Vienna Option contained an overall aggregate on strategic launchers, though this was raised from 1,710 to 2,000. This aggregate would be accompanied by a sublimit on large ICBMs, preventing the Soviets from deploying more SS-9 monster missiles, and a ban on mobile ICBMs to aid verification. The new option retained the NCA-only

Y8013-Maurer.indb 103

2/25/22 2:59 PM

10 4

s a lt s ta l em at e

proposal, which the Soviets had favored, but still insisted on collateral constraints on radars and SAMs. It contained two further concessions to the Soviets. First, American and Soviet bombers would be counted within the overall aggregate. Since the United States had many more bombers than the Soviet Union, this would effectively concede a slight lead in offensive missiles to the Soviets. Second, the United States would drop the collateral constraint on Soviet intermediate-range missiles if the Soviets would agree not to include American FBS.97 Overall, the Vienna Option was a sensible compromise, one that bore a striking similarity to the terms of the future SALT II Treaty. Not to be outdone, Laird sent Packard with his own SALT compromise. On offensive weapons, Packard’s proposal was similar to the Vienna Option, though with a total aggregate of 1,900 instead of 2,000 and without the collateral constraint on mobile missiles. When it came to missile defenses, however, Packard put forward several possible proposals, all of which insisted that the United States be allowed numerical superiority in missile defenses, as a counterweight to the Soviets’ large missiles. Packard’s new ABM proposals would have allowed the superpowers to have either no missile defense bases, NCA-only defense, or some larger ABM system, but in each case the United States would also receive an additional 400 short-range interceptors for point defense of missile silos. The notional agreement stipulated that the United States would dismantle these interceptors if and when the Soviets dismantled their SS-9s.98 Laird and Packard’s proposal to trade offense for defense was logical but flawed, since the Soviets would never agree. Smith and his allies obviously objected, but even hawkish analysts like Lynn agreed that Laird had misread the negotiating situation in Vienna.99 The strongest argument against Laird’s plan came from Allison, who noted that missile defenses were less important than breaking the momentum of the Soviet offensive forces buildup, and therefore concluded that the United States should accept an NCA-only ABM agreement so long as the Soviets halted missile production.100 Within a few weeks, even Packard admitted that NCA-only was a better option, if it meant fewer Soviet offensive missiles.101 As a result, the existing NCA-only policy stood, though only so long as it could be leveraged to prevent the Soviets from overtaking the United States in number of offensive missiles.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 104

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt s ta l em at e

10 5

Compared to Laird and Packard’s ABM antics, the deliberations on MIRV were anticlimactic. Smith reported to the Verification Panel on June 24 that the Soviets were no longer interested in limiting MIRV. As a result, the Vienna Option contained no MIRV constraint.102 A few strongholds of anti-MIRV opinion held out, but Smith had been their champion, and with his concession, the administration moved on from MIRV to focusing on missile numbers and size.103 Smith was dispatched back to Vienna with instructions to continue stalling until Nixon and Kissinger could work out final instructions for the delegation.104 Laird’s temporary embrace of NCA-only defense and Smith’s willingness to forgo MIRV limitation meant that Nixon could finally formulate an administration-approved negotiating position—nearly six months after negotiations with the Soviets had begun! On July 9, 1970, Nixon issued NSDM 69 outlining a new “Option E” proposal based almost entirely on the Vienna Option. Option E contained an overall aggregate of 1,900 launchers for ICBMs, SLBMs, and bombers, of which only 1,710 could be missiles, and of which only 250 could be heavy ICBMs like the SS-9. For collateral constraints, Option E included the previously proposed ban on mobile ICBMs, but also added new bans on missile silo construction and modification to complicate any Soviet attempt to replace older and smaller missiles with newer, larger ones. Option E also contained both zero-ABM and NCA-only ABM provisions, but only if the Soviets agreed to all of the offensive force limitations. Nixon forbade any direct compensation for FBS, but offered to exclude Soviet intermediaterange forces as a compromise.105 The brittle nature of the new SALT compromise was demonstrated as Nixon’s advisers bickered over how to implement his instructions. Smith immediately requested that the new Option E be modified along the lines of the original Vienna Option, which would have allowed both of the superpowers to build up to 250 heavy ICBMs. Smith’s proposed modification was actually tougher on the Soviets than the original Option E instructions, but even this minor request for latitude created new concerns by Laird and his allies that Smith was trying to exceed his instructions.106 Nixon ultimately upheld Smith’s request as “the tougher position,” but the amended instructions were not issued until July 22, delaying Option E’s presentation by several weeks.107

Y8013-Maurer.indb 105

2/25/22 2:59 PM

10 6

s a lt s ta l em at e

Unfortunately, Option E was not as popular with the Soviets as it had been within the administration. Kissinger gave Dobrynin a preview of the new option on July 20, 1970, framing it as a response to the Soviets’ limited ABM-only proposal. Dobrynin observed that Option E did not seem more limited than Options C or D.108 Smith began presenting the full Option E in Vienna on August 4, 1970, but noted that the Soviet response was “reserved.”109 By that point, the delegations had been “negotiating” in Vienna for nearly four months, much of which had been consumed by tedious repetition of existing positions. Rather than begin an extended debate over the merits of Option E, Smith and Semenov agreed to reconvene in Helsinki in the fall, which would give the Soviet government time to consider Option E in detail.110 It was an awkward conclusion to a long and awkward negotiation. Nixon met with the American delegates on August 19, 1970, to congratulate them on their work in Vienna.111 Negotiations had proven durable despite internal discord, congressional turmoil, and external shocks like the Cambodian incursion. The Soviets seemed genuinely interested in detailed discussions, even if their positions were far from those of the United States. And the new Option E represented a genuine if fragile consensus between Smith and Laird over the direction of arms control policy. Despite the celebratory atmosphere, many within the administration remained pessimistic about SALT’s chances at the upcoming Helsinki round. The Soviets’ cool response to Option E suggested that hard times remained ahead.112 s a lt i i i — he l s ink i Work for the third round of SALT began as soon as the American delegates returned to Washington. The grueling pace of arms control deliberation continued to take its toll on administration personnel. Lynn, whose position as head of the Verification Panel Working Group made him most responsible for wrangling the various agencies’ SALT views, departed from the NSC staff in mid-September. His position was taken by Kermit Wayne Smith, an economist by training who had previously headed the Defense Department’s Systems Analysis branch during the Johnson administration, after which he conducted research at the RAND Corporation.113 Wayne Smith was a strong selection to head the Working Group—his familiarity with the Defense Department would aid Kis-

Y8013-Maurer.indb 106

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt s ta l em at e

107

singer in his perennial struggles with Laird over arms control policy. Like Kissinger, Wayne Smith was also a competitive arms controller, concerned with ensuring that the United States remained ahead of the Soviet Union in the arms race. Lynn was not the only major departure, as several months earlier General Wheeler had announced he would be retiring from the Army.114 Faced with the stress of commanding the military during a period of frustrating stalemate and political division, Wheeler’s health had begun to fail.115 His replacement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was Adm. Thomas Moorer, who would prove to be a much more determined and energetic chief than Wheeler was.116 As former chief of naval operations, Moorer supported arms control policies that would shift nuclear competition out to sea, where he believed the United States enjoyed enduring advantages.117 Moorer was also a more aggressive bureaucratic combatant than Wheeler had been; determined to prevent Nixon from excluding him, he was not above asking military officers detailed to the White House to report to him directly on Nixon’s secret dealings.118 While Moorer lacked Laird’s political flair, he shared Laird’s ruthless determination to shape arms control policy in a more competitive direction. Preparations for the next SALT round took on a surreal quality— since the Soviets had not yet responded to Option E, discussions centered on hypothetical Soviet objections and how the United States might respond. Kissinger and Wayne Smith focused intensely on these tactical issues: now that Smith and Laird had agreed on a SALT position, there was little reason to reopen old wounds. Furthermore, a number of technical questions remained unresolved. For example, Option E included restrictions on modifying missile silos to make it harder for the Soviets to replace their older, smaller missiles with newer, heavier ones like the SS-9. But there was no agreed policy on what exactly these restrictions would be. A total ban on silo modifications might impede future upgrades to American missiles. But could a partial ban on missile silo modifications be verified? And how would such a ban be worded? Additionally, since Option E also allowed freedom to mix between silos, submarines, and bombers, it would need dismantling procedures to ensure that older weapons were actually destroyed when newer ones were installed. And since Option E allowed no on-site inspection, Nixon’s advisers agreed that it should also prohibit the superpowers from interfering

Y8013-Maurer.indb 107

2/25/22 2:59 PM

10 8

s a lt s ta l em at e

with each other’s technical verification capabilities—imaging satellites, electronic intelligence, and the like.119 By far the most technical of the remaining technical issues involved establishing controls over ABM-capable radars. Absent such constraints, the Soviets might build large numbers of peaceful “space-tracking” radars while stockpiling interceptors in secret. There were two major problems with limiting radars. First, the Soviets opposed limitation. Second, even American technical experts had difficulty expressing what precisely counted as an ABM-capable radar. The combined political and technical problems caused even some hawkish experts like Harold Brown to question whether the United States might not be better off with a zeroABM agreement. Smith leapt on Brown’s observation to support his own drive for zero ABM.120 Finding a verifiable and negotiable formula for ABM radar controls was one of Kissinger and Wayne Smith’s most pressing tasks.121 Kissinger’s effort to focus on technical topics was not entirely successful. As before, the primary instigator of controversy was Smith, who was increasingly frustrated by the glacial pace of negotiations. Over the summer, when the Soviets had rejected Options C and D, Smith began floating the idea of an interim freeze on new strategic weapons, as a supplement to the ongoing negotiations. The interim freeze was the latest permutation of Smith’s previous Stop Where We Are and MIRV moratorium concepts, all temporary measures that would create room for further negotiations while still establishing quick controls on the arms race. Having seen firsthand how difficult negotiations would be, Smith now favored a limited freeze in which the United States would temporarily halt ABM construction if the Soviet Union would halt ICBM deployments. Smith believed his interim proposal would meet Soviet demands for a “limited” agreement on ABM while still placing some restraint on the most dangerous part of the Soviet buildup—the heavy SS-9 ICBMs.122 Indeed, Laird initially supported the idea of a temporary freeze to disrupt Soviet deployments.123 Kissinger and his staff worried that a “temporary” freeze would become permanent if Congress used it as an excuse to cut funding for Safeguard, so no proposal was authorized for Vienna.124 Yet given the Soviets’ tepid response to Option E, Smith remained a strong proponent of offering them an interim freeze at Helsinki.125 The idea of an interim agreement would gain traction in the coming months, but for

Y8013-Maurer.indb 108

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt s ta l em at e

10 9

the time being Kissinger insisted that the Soviets respond to Option E before Smith made any new proposals.126 The other major dispute revolved around the Soviet proposal for an agreement to prevent accidental and provocative wars. Virtually all of Nixon’s advisers agreed that an agreement to avoid accidents through greater bilateral transparency was a good idea, but that the United States should refuse any offer to cooperate with the Soviets against third parties. The main division concerned how to respond to the Soviet proposal. Smith hoped that moving forward quickly on an accidental war agreement in Helsinki would unlock Soviet cooperation on other issues.127 But Kissinger and his advisers remained suspicious of Smith’s motives. Sonnenfeldt and Wayne Smith worried that if Smith were given a freer hand to negotiate, then he would conclude the accidental war agreement unilaterally and hand away useful bargaining leverage. Instead, they advised that Smith be permitted to indicate general interest in an accidental war agreement, but tie any progress directly to Soviet concessions on other issues like excluding FBS from SALT.128 The American and Soviet delegates met again in Helsinki on November 3, 1970, for the third round of SALT. Smith later described SALT III as short but “stormy.”129 Nixon ordered Smith to make no new proposals until the Soviets responded to Option E.130 Reflecting the widespread mistrust of Smith, his instructions also contained detailed conditions authorizing limited statements about topics like ABM controls or accidental war agreements only if the Soviets raised them first.131 Unfortunately, the Soviets opened with a generic statement that any comprehensive SALT agreement include American FBS, but no specific comment on the contents of Option E.132 Smith concluded that the Soviets’ insistence on limiting FBS was meant to pressure Nixon into accepting an ABMonly agreement.133 Indeed, while the Soviets would not comment on Option E, they were eager to discuss a limited SALT agreement. Semenov tabled an official ABM-only proposal on December 1, 1970, based on Dobrynin’s informal proposal of the previous summer, limiting each side to a single NCA-defense base with no collateral constraints.134 None of Nixon’s advisers agreed with the Soviet proposal, yet once again there was division over how to respond. Smith worried that a flat negative response to the first real Soviet proposal in months would antagonize them and make

Y8013-Maurer.indb 109

2/25/22 2:59 PM

110

s a lt s ta l em at e

negotiations harder.135 At Smith’s request, the Backstopping Committee began drafting new language that Nixon would consider the Soviet proposal, while also reiterating his opposition to an ABM-only agreement.136 Even authorizing this “soft no” was controversial among hawks like Laird and Moorer, who once again questioned whether Smith was bypassing the official position (Option E) in favor of his own preferred outcome (an immediate freeze). Yet Kissinger was also concerned about alienating the Soviets, and he authorized Smith’s request to promise the Soviets that Nixon would consider their proposal.137 With the Soviets leaning into the negotiating deadlock, many of Nixon’s advisers began to question whether the Soviets were serious about negotiating in Helsinki at all, given the upcoming Twenty-fourth Soviet Party Congress in the spring. Kissinger’s staff predicted that the congress might result in changes to the Soviet leadership. Perhaps the Soviets were marking time in Helsinki until they worked out their own political differences. If that were the case, the best course of action would be to end Helsinki quickly and reconvene again in Vienna at some point later in 1971, once the Soviets had put their own house in order.138 Before any recess, however, the United States needed to respond to the Soviet insistence on including FBS in SALT. Smith recommended a compromise in which the Soviets would accept Option E and the United States would promise not to deploy new FBS except in response to actions by the Warsaw Pact. Smith hoped that the compromise might appease the Soviets, but if they refused, then the record would show that it was the Soviets who had stalled negotiations, not the United States.139 Laird and other hawks countered that a vague promise of restraint would leave the United States vulnerable to harassment over the normal patterns of American overseas deployments, which varied over time. Even Rogers and Farley worried that an offer to compromise would embolden the Soviets to ask for more.140 Instead, Nixon ordered Smith to tell Semenov that the United States would only discuss limiting FBS after SALT had established effective controls on central strategic systems.141 Despite Nixon, Kissinger, and Laird’s insistence that Smith take a hard line with the Soviets, it was increasingly clear that progress would require compromising with the Soviets beyond Option E. One possible way forward was Smith’s “interim freeze” concept.142 The Soviets seemed to be thinking along similar lines: on December 11, 1970, Semenov told

Y8013-Maurer.indb 110

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt s ta l em at e

111

Smith that his superiors might agree to halt Soviet missile construction temporarily if Nixon would agree to limit American missile defenses.143 Whether American hawks like Laird would agree to such a compromise remained to be seen. While limiting Soviet ICBM construction was one of Laird’s primary objectives, abandoning Option E would likely provoke renewed fighting between Laird and Smith over what form an ABM agreement would take.144 Clearly, much work remained in both Washington and Moscow to prepare for a genuine SALT compromise. Having agreed to disagree on FBS, the only remaining issue for Helsinki was how to prevent accidental wars. On December 14, 1970, Smith proposed that he approach Semenov privately and explain that the United States would be interested in discussing an accidental war agreement at some point in the next round of SALT in Vienna.145 Kissinger agreed, if only to keep the issue alive as a bargaining tool.146 Smith and Semenov’s tête-à-tête concluded the discussions in Helsinki, as the delegations departed to prepare for a fourth round of SALT. s a lt i v — v i enna By January 1971, negotiations had hit a wall. By insisting on explicit compensation for American FBS, the Soviets had effectively rejected Option E. Yet Nixon hesitated to issue new instructions. Even if Option E was nonnegotiable with the Soviets, it remained to date the only viable compromise between competitive arms controllers like Laird and cooperative arms controllers like Smith. The need to retain some solidarity within the administration thus contributed to the SALT stalemate, as any modification to Option E would require relitigating controversial topics like ABM and MIRV that had produced so much discord between Laird and Smith.147 Although Nixon was loath to abandon Option E, by early 1971 it was clear that the administration’s compromise policy was living on borrowed time. Many Americans were becoming impatient with the lack of progress on SALT. In January 1971, dovish senator and possible future presidential contender Edmund Muskie made a widely publicized visit to Moscow, during which he and Kosygin agreed publicly that rapid progress on arms control was an important common goal for the superpowers. Muskie and Kosygin’s seeming eagerness for SALT reflected poorly on Nixon’s insistence that the Soviets were blocking progress on

Y8013-Maurer.indb 111

2/25/22 2:59 PM

112

s a lt s ta l em at e

negotiations.148 Hawkish senators like Jackson also joined in the criticism, arguing that Nixon was missing an opportunity to halt dangerous Soviet missile deployments.149 While congressional critics were not yet demanding that Nixon accept the Soviet ABM-only proposal, some in the press were.150 The political cost of standing firm on Option E was steadily rising. The public barbs at Nixon’s SALT policy were worsened by the continued leaking of sensitive details of negotiations.151 Anonymous leaks of parts of the administration’s SALT deliberations reinforced the growing media clamor for an ABM-only agreement with the Soviets, while also highlighting Laird and Smith’s continued disagreements.152 The constant partisan leaking increased Nixon’s fears that his advisers might betray him and join with congressional opponents to oppose Nixon’s arms control policies if he made decisions that they did not like.153 While some later accounts described Nixon’s concerns as the result of a paranoid personality,154 his worries were shared by Laird and Smith, both of whom called for greater secrecy surrounding SALT policy.155 Although in retrospect we know that Nixon’s SALT policies were successful, it was not unreasonable for Nixon, Laird, and Smith to worry in early 1971 that some combination of public opposition and leaks might destroy SALT’s chances in Congress. While external political pressure made sticking with Option E ever more difficult, the real challenge to the option’s long-term viability was the renewed divergence of Laird and Smith’s arms control objectives. As in previous years, divisions over SALT were heightened by Safeguard policy. Smith preferred to keep Safeguard at its previously authorized level—only the four Minuteman sites in the Midwest, along with some R&D on future concepts.156 Laird’s views still followed the winds of congressional opinion. While 1969 had seen a bruising battle, in 1970 a slim majority of senators had accepted Laird’s argument that missile defenses were useful if deployed around American missile silos. In 1971, Laird hoped to expand Safeguard’s midwestern footprint as a precursor to a future “hard-site” point-defense ABM system.157 Determined that Safeguard should go forward in some form, Nixon agreed to expand the midwestern Safeguard bases, and added funding for an NCA-defense site outside of Washington, D.C., to provide some flexibility in SALT bargaining.158

Y8013-Maurer.indb 112

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt s ta l em at e

113

As they had the year before, Laird’s evolving views on Safeguard had significant implications for SALT policy. In early 1970, when Laird had worried that Congress would not fund missile defense at all, the secretary had supported an NCA-only SALT agreement as part of a comprehensive program limiting Soviet forces. Now that Laird believed that Congress would fund missile defenses, however, he preferred bringing American SALT policy in line with its actual ABM deployments. Laird’s Safeguard request was accompanied by a new SALT proposal for an “ABM freeze,” which would allow the Soviets to finish their single ABM base around Moscow, and the United States to finish its four Safeguard Minuteman defense bases.159 Laird’s new “ABM freeze” proposal amounted to a vote of no confidence in Option E. The secretary had been willing to accept an NCA-only agreement when he had thought it might be traded for real limitations on Soviet offensive missiles. Once the Soviets rejected Option E, however, Laird and his allies lost any interest in NCA-only defense.160 If the Soviets retained their large SS-9 force, then it only made sense to hawks like Laird that the United States would keep its missile defenses, which would prevent the Soviets from wiping out American Minuteman missiles with a surprise volley of large MIRVed missiles.161 Laird proposed linking the two directly in future negotiations: if the Soviets dismantled their SS-9s, then the United States would dismantle its defenses. If the Soviets wanted to ratify their SS-9 advantage in SALT, though, then Laird would insist on American advantage in missile defenses.162 For Smith and his allies, Laird’s new Safeguard-for-Moscow missile defense proposal was anathema. Smith did not share Laird’s belief that Soviet SS-9 missiles posed an existential threat to Minuteman, given the large number of American missiles and the availability of passive countermeasures like further hardening of silos.163 To the extent that there was a Soviet missile threat, Smith still believed that arms control was the best way to limit it. The Soviets were eager for an NCA-only agreement, which would provide the leverage necessary to win concessions on Soviet offensive forces. Further expanding Safeguard or introducing Laird’s new and unequal ABM proposal would only confuse issues and make it harder to win real limits on Soviet missile construction.164 While Smith agreed that the Soviets seemed uninterested in Option E, he preferred that the United States retain its existing ABM proposal while exploring

Y8013-Maurer.indb 113

2/25/22 2:59 PM

114

s a lt s ta l em at e

temporary freezes on offensive missile construction. Opposed in principle to missile defenses, Smith concluded that if ABM policy were to change it ought to be toward zero ABM rather than higher levels of missile defense deployments.165 As the Option E compromise unraveled, Nixon and Kissinger tried to prevent a total rupture between Laird and Smith. The Verification Panel once again churned through the issues, seeking to reformulate the deeply political disputes between cooperative and competitive arms controllers as resolvable technical issues. On ABM, the panel’s Working Group focused on radar limitation, which both Laird and Smith agreed was necessary to prevent the Soviets from cheating.166 On offensive forces, the Working Group waded into the growing dispute over whether Soviet SS-9s would threaten Minuteman under various notional agreements.167 Since the Working Group relied heavily on the Defense Department’s force-on-force assessments to determine how many Minutemen would survive a given scenario, the study unsurprisingly confirmed Laird’s contention that Minuteman’s survival was increasingly at risk, and that higher levels of missile defenses might be necessary even under a limited agreement. Whether Laird’s Safeguard-for-Moscow proposal would be negotiable with the Soviets was uncertain, though Wayne Smith suggested that the proposal could be framed as a “freeze” in which the superpowers simply kept the offensive and defensive forces that they already had in place.168 As usual, the Verification Panel debated the issues right down to the wire. Nixon heard the panel’s conclusions on March 8, 1971, less than a week before Smith was set to meet with the Soviets again in Vienna for the fourth round of SALT.169 Smith requested wide authority to negotiate a quick SALT agreement, probably a zero-ABM treaty accompanied by a freeze on ICBM construction.170 Laird countered that an ABM-only agreement would hand away the United States’ strongest bargaining chip for nothing. Instead, the secretary called for new, detailed instructions, including a Safeguard-for-Moscow ABM deal and reduction of Soviet missile forces along the lines of the earlier Option D proposal.171 With Vienna rapidly approaching, Nixon was back in the SALT hot seat. Having abandoned Option E, Laird and Smith had returned to their familiar corners. The issues were both substantive and personal. Smith’s opposition to Laird’s missile defense plans had depleted any goodwill

Y8013-Maurer.indb 114

2/25/22 2:59 PM

s a lt s ta l em at e

115

the  two had achieved in their Brussels reconciliation of the previous summer. Laird simply did not trust Smith to negotiate effectively, and still worried that Smith would use any leeway he was given to undermine American competitive strategy. Nixon and Kissinger were caught somewhere in the middle. While the president and his adviser also found Smith insufferable, they agreed that Laird’s new SALT proposals were totally nonnegotiable. Nixon’s challenge was to negotiate a limited SALT agreement without alienating Laird, whose influence would be necessary to secure congressional ratification. For the time being, Kissinger recommended that Smith’s new orders defer to Laird’s wishes. On March 11, 1971, Nixon sent Smith to Vienna with orders to sound out the Soviets on Laird’s Safeguard-forMoscow ABM agreement.172 After four weeks, Smith and the other delegates could resubmit their ideas for a limited SALT agreement to Nixon. Nixon’s orders were a recipe for further stalemate, but they offered one possible way around Laird’s SALT objections. Perhaps a strong Soviet rejection of Laird’s proposal would convince the secretary that a more limited agreement was necessary.173 As Nixon and Kissinger had expected, when the American and Soviet SALT delegations reconvened for the fourth round of SALT in Vienna on March 15, 1971, the negotiations quickly hit a brick wall.174 Oblivious to the president’s bureaucratic maneuvering, Smith remained impatient for progress—within a few days he was already clamoring for new instructions to allow genuine negotiations to proceed.175 Once again, however, Smith was playing fast and loose with his instructions: despite Nixon’s orders, he had not presented Laird’s Safeguard-for-Moscow ABM proposal to Semenov.176 The delay in presentation was not entirely Smith’s fault. While Nixon had authorized Smith to offer a Safeguard-for-Moscow deal to the Soviets, the American delegates had not yet received clearance to share with their Soviet counterparts even the very basic details of the highly classified Safeguard system. Several days of frantic interagency wrangling followed until Nixon intervened directly, authorizing Smith to present the basic details of Safeguard interceptor and radar capabilities.177 The confused presentation did little to endear the proposal to the Soviets, though their rejection came as little surprise, since the proposal would have allowed the United States to build four missile defense bases to the Soviets’ one.178 Smith fumed that his prediction of Soviet confusion

Y8013-Maurer.indb 115

2/25/22 2:59 PM

116

s a lt s ta l em at e

and dismay had been borne out: no progress could be expected until Nixon selected a single ABM option.179 Nor was much progress made on the issue of radar restraints, which the Soviets continued to insist were unnecessary.180 Despite the stalemate, the delegates made some progress in negotiating an accidental war agreement. The Soviets took the initiative, tabling a draft proposal that was largely confined to the technical issues of communication. Smith and Kissinger agreed that the Soviet draft was a good basis for negotiations, though more work remained to be done.181 A “Special Group” was formed in Vienna to reconcile the Soviet proposal to some American objections, especially to sanitize the agreement of all references to third parties. A separate technical group discussed how to switch the American-Soviet hotline to a more secure direct satellite link.182 The progress on preventing accidental war, however slow, stood in sharp contrast to the impasse over limiting arsenals. Nixon and Kissinger’s stalemate policy delayed the showdown between Laird and Smith, but it also put Nixon under increasing political pressure to accept the Soviet ABM-only proposal. By April 1971, Safeguard’s Senate opponents were warming to the idea of an ABM-only SALT agreement as a powerful argument against Nixon’s missile defense program.183 Smith and his allies at State and ACDA also increasingly favored accepting an ABM-only agreement as a first step toward more detailed negotiations on offensive arms.184 Division also grew among those who opposed an ABM-only agreement, with Laird insisting that the United States needed four missile defense bases to the Soviets’ one, while Kissinger increasingly favored falling back to a two-for-one deal.185 Even as the pressure mounted, Nixon kept the American delegates spinning their wheels in Vienna. After four weeks, Smith dutifully asked for permission to discuss more limited agreements with Semenov, but Nixon instead ordered Smith to stand firm on the tattered remnants of Option E. Smith would return to Washington in early May to brief the Verification Panel. Nixon promised that he would issue new instructions then.186 And so the stalemate continued unabated. A showdown between Laird and Smith loomed. But by the time Smith returned to Washington, the negotiations in Vienna had been overtaken by secret back-channel talks between Kissinger and Dobrynin.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 116

2/25/22 2:59 PM

c h a p te r six

The May 20 Agreement

i n ea r l y 1 9 71 , n ix on l a u nc h ed a direct appeal to the Soviet leadership on SALT. The president would conduct his own talks with Moscow via the Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Dobrynin. Nixon had hoped for a quick agreement-in-principle, but the “back-channel” initiative ballooned into a months-long parallel negotiation between Kissinger and Dobrynin. The result was the May 20 Agreement, in which the superpowers committed to an ABM-only agreement coupled to an “interim” freeze on the construction of new offensive missiles. The May 20 Agreement was a victory for Nixon, as the Soviets effectively conceded that American FBS would not be included in SALT. The agreement established the main Soviet-American SALT compromise that would be concluded the next year in Moscow. Kissinger and Dobrynin’s back-channel discussions were the most dramatic and controversial component of Nixon’s SALT policy, because they were kept secret from the rest of the government. The secrecy provoked resentment from both cooperative and competitive arms controllers, but Nixon believed it necessary to move SALT forward. The Soviets’ rejection of a comprehensive SALT agreement had shattered the tenuous arms control compromise between Laird and Smith. Laird’s suspicion of Smith’s motives meant that any agreement Smith reached would almost certainly be rejected by Laird and his allies. By sidelining both Laird and 117

Y8013-Maurer.indb 117

2/25/22 2:59 PM

118

t he m ay 2 0 a gr eemen t

Smith, Nixon presented his own government with an arms control fait accompli acceptable to both cooperators and competitors. Nixon’s back-channel gambit was successful: the May 20 Agreement bypassed Smith and Laird’s divisions to provide a new basis for American arms control policy. The secretive fait accompli was not without its costs, as the May 20 Agreement was fraught with ambiguity. In retrospect we can see the back-channel negotiation as a major breakthrough, but its immediate consequence was to replace one stalemate with another. Implementing the May 20 Agreement would prove to be a major challenge in and of itself. t he b a c k c h a nne l Nixon had employed secret communications with the Soviet leadership since the early days of his administration. As early as February 17, 1969, Dobrynin had delivered to Nixon a note from the Soviet leadership expressing their desire for direct high-level dialogue. At Nixon’s behest, Kissinger and Dobrynin met periodically as a confidential back channel for direct communications between Nixon and the Soviet leaders.1 Initially, Nixon conducted little substantive negotiation via the back channel, since his focus was on the war in Vietnam.2 Kissinger and Dobrynin occasionally discussed SALT to clarify certain points in the frontchannel negotiations.3 Nixon preferred that Smith handle the bulk of negotiations. The first major back-channel SALT initiative came from the Soviets. On June 23, 1970, Dobrynin had floated the idea of an ABM-only SALT agreement to break the SALT deadlock in Vienna. At this point, Kissinger’s back-channel communications were not secret, as Dobrynin’s proposal was circulated among the government.4 Because the Soviets had not yet introduced their ABM-only agreement in Vienna, Kissinger delivered Nixon’s response to Dobrynin in another meeting on July 9. Eschewing detailed negotiation, Kissinger instead offered Dobrynin a brief preview of the upcoming Option E proposal in Vienna.5 Nixon was clearly not opposed to discussing SALT in the back channel, but his brief mid-1970 foray into direct negotiations was a response to a Soviet initiative, not an effort (as some later claimed) to undermine Smith in Vienna.6 Aside from Dobrynin’s ABM-only proposal, the 1970 back-channel discussions

Y8013-Maurer.indb 118

2/25/22 2:59 PM

t he may 20 agreemen t

119

focused on smaller irritants like the sale of Soviet weapons to Egypt and the deployment of Soviet submarines to Cuba.7 Nixon’s most pressing back-channel concern was not SALT, but rather organizing a summit with the Soviet leaders, which Nixon hoped would cement his reputation as a foreign policy genius.8 In October 1970, when Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko visited the United States, Nixon saw his chance. Nixon proposed to Gromyko that he travel to Moscow during the summer of 1971. Gromyko was open to the idea, though he warned that any summit would have to follow the Twenty-fourth Party Congress in March and April 1971. Nixon and Gromyko agreed that Kissinger and Dobrynin would handle the details of planning the trip.9 Although Gromyko had agreed in principle to a summit, the Soviets were less willing to set a date. While initially Dobrynin maintained that preparations for the Party Congress were consuming the Soviet government’s planning ability, he later indicated that the Soviets would set a date only after Nixon had agreed to a detailed agenda of what the leaders would discuss.10 Nixon and Kissinger interpreted Dobrynin’s change of heart as an effort to gain concessions on SALT. Dobrynin was saying that the Soviets would give Nixon a summit only if he agreed to an ABMonly arrangement, as well as an agreement on accidental and provocative war.11 Nixon was frustrated by the delay in setting a summit date, but he was not without leverage of his own, especially over Berlin. After decades of tension, the Soviets were deeply invested in establishing a stable relationship with the West German Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). By the late 1960s, only one major obstacle remained to a Soviet-FRG agreement: Berlin. At least in theory, the city remained divided into four “occupation zones” overseen by the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. In exchange for a treaty with the Soviet Union, the West Germans insisted that the occupying powers affirm the continued independence of West Berlin from East Germany. Talks began in 1970 but quickly stalled.12 If the Soviets linked SALT to the summit, then Nixon would link Berlin to SALT.13 Congressional turmoil and ongoing divisions between Laird and Smith had already made SALT politically fraught, but its complexity escalated further as Nixon and the Soviets linked it to the summit and Berlin.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 119

2/25/22 2:59 PM

120

t he m ay 2 0 a gr eemen t

Faced with such a delicate operation, Nixon made a fateful choice: he ordered Kissinger to begin separate SALT negotiations with Dobrynin. On November 16, 1970, Kissinger and Dobrynin agreed to develop an agenda for a future summit, including high-level SALT and Berlin agreements.14 Nixon moved swiftly to cut off the back channel from the formal negotiations when Semenov hinted to Smith that “higher authorities” were taking the initiative on SALT.15 Kissinger reassured Smith that there were no other lines of SALT negotiation.16 This was technically true, since Kissinger and Dobrynin had not yet begun their SALT discussion, but was little comfort to Smith when the details were later revealed.17 Kissinger asked Dobrynin that the Soviets refrain from involving Smith or other American SALT delegates in future back-channel discussions.18 Nixon’s dramatic decision to begin his own parallel SALT negotiation was the most controversial of SALT’s early years. Smith, Garthoff, Laird, and Nitze all later described Nixon as paranoid and obsessed with credit for SALT, to the point of saddling the American delegation with nonnegotiable positions to gain time for Kissinger’s negotiations to succeed.19 Kissinger replied that the bargains necessary to move SALT forward could only have occurred in secret, since they would have ground the interagency process to a halt and set Laird and Smith at each other’s throats.20 Nixon’s decision to bypass his own government on SALT carried costs, but the evidence supports Kissinger’s contention that secret backchannel negotiations had the highest chance of success. Critics may be correct that the Soviets would have agreed to a SALT compromise in the front-channel negotiations.21 By late 1970, however, the real obstacle to progress on SALT was not the Soviets, but rather the deep divisions between Nixon’s advisers.22 Deeply mistrustful of Smith, Laird would not countenance handing the SALT delegation the authority to deal with the Soviets, viewing virtually any compromise as a dangerous concession to the expansion of Soviet military power.23 Yet Nixon was also under pressure from Congress to offer even more radical concessions to the Soviets, including accepting their ABM-only proposal.24 The claim that a more transparent process would have produced a compromise between these increasingly divergent arms control factions is dubious. Although extreme secrecy carried significant risks, it also represented the best

Y8013-Maurer.indb 120

2/25/22 2:59 PM

t he may 20 agreemen t

121

chance of producing an arms control position that Laird, Smith, Congress, and the Soviets would support. k i s s ing e r ’s neg o t i at i on Kissinger and Dobrynin began their back-channel SALT negotiations in January 1971, shortly after the delegations returned from the stalemate in Helsinki. Kissinger began by offering a basic compromise: Nixon would accept an ABM-only agreement if the Soviets would accept an interim freeze on offensive forces that did not include American FBS. The superpowers would then negotiate a more comprehensive SALT agreement covering offensive weapons. The compromise gave each side something that it wanted: the Soviets an ABM-only SALT agreement, the United States limitation of Soviet offensive forces that did not include American FBS.25 Kissinger’s ABM-for-freeze proposal built on Smith’s longstanding advocacy of some sort of strategic weapons freeze.26 Nixon and Kissinger were attracted to the proposal by its relative simplicity and negotiability: Semenov had already indicated in Helsinki that the Soviets were thinking along similar lines.27 The major weakness of the ABM-for-freeze proposal was that it was highly unpopular with Laird and other competitive arms controllers, who opposed accepting an ABM-only agreement in exchange for only “interim” controls on Soviet missiles.28 Yet Nixon ultimately agreed with Smith that interim controls were better than no controls at all. By introducing the proposal in the back channel, Nixon hoped to bypass Laird’s objections. Nixon still expected Soviet resistance to dropping American FBS from SALT, so he added a further concession: if the Soviets agreed to an ABM-for-freeze deal, then American negotiators would conclude the Four-Power Agreement on Berlin. Linkage thus reentered the SALT negotiations, but in reverse: rather than linking American concessions in SALT to Soviet concessions on other issues, Nixon was now offering concessions on other issues (Berlin) to win Soviet concessions in SALT. Nixon hoped that the ABM-for-freeze compromise, coupled with flexibility on Berlin, would pave the way for a triumphal summit in Moscow.29 Nixon hoped that the back-channel negotiations would move quickly.  On January 9, 1971, Kissinger presented Dobrynin with the

Y8013-Maurer.indb 121

2/25/22 2:59 PM

12 2

t he m ay 2 0 a gr eemen t

ABM-for-freeze proposal, suggesting that Nixon and Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin could formalize the deal in an exchange of letters in February, which would allow the American and Soviet delegates to begin working out the details in March. Kissinger proposed that the letters indicate only the broadest contours of the proposed agreements, such as the ABM-only agreement and the noninclusion of American FBS. When Dobrynin asked whether the freeze would extend to submarine-launched missiles, Kissinger again recommended that the delegations be allowed to work out the details. The proposed Nixon-Kosygin exchange would establish high-level guidance only.30 Although Nixon had hoped for a quick breakthrough, the Soviets were slow in responding.31 Over a month later, on February 10, 1971, Dobrynin replied that the Soviet leaders would negotiate on Nixon’s terms: a formal ABM agreement; a temporary freeze on the number of offensive missiles; and a promise of comprehensive negotiations in the future. To this Dobrynin added that the Soviets preferred that the ABM agreement be NCA-only and that the freeze apply only to land-based missiles. Kissinger was pleased, though on the details of missiles and missile defenses he was noncommittal.32 Up until this point, Kissinger avoided discussing the substance of future agreements with Dobrynin, preferring that the Nixon-Kosygin letters focus on broad principles. With the Soviets on the hook, however, Nixon and Kissinger changed tactics. On February 22, 1971, Kissinger gave Dobrynin a draft letter that Nixon and Kosygin might exchange. As previously agreed, the letter described an ABM-only agreement, but it also stipulated that the United States retain three Safeguard missile defense bases to the Soviets’ single Moscow base. The letter also called for a freeze on the construction of new offensive missiles beginning on April 1, 1971, which would come soon after the start of the fourth round of SALT in Vienna. The letter did not mention submarine-launched missiles. Dobrynin forwarded the draft to Moscow.33 Kissinger’s inclusion of the three-for-one ABM arrangement in the draft letter was odd given his earlier insistence that the delegations handle the details. Perhaps Nixon and Kissinger were responding to Dobrynin’s previous insistence that Nixon commit to NCA-only. By introducing a proposal that the Soviets were unlikely to accept, Nixon and Kissinger set the stage for a “compromise” in which the final letter would contain no

Y8013-Maurer.indb 122

2/25/22 2:59 PM

t he may 20 agreemen t

123

ABM details at all. But introducing new details also lengthened negotiations, because any new proposal to Dobrynin had to be transmitted to Moscow and then dissected by the Soviet leadership. Once again, Nixon and Kissinger were left waiting impatiently for a Soviet response. The Soviet response was further slowed by the ongoing political changes within the Soviet Union itself. The Twenty-fourth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union met in Moscow in April 1971, reordering the political scene. The winner of the Party Congress was Leonid Brezhnev, the chairman of the Soviet Communist Party, who emerged preeminent among the Soviet leadership. Brezhnev’s rise mirrored the declining influence of Kosygin, with whom Nixon had assumed he would negotiate.34 Preparations for the Party Congress meant that the Soviet response to the back-channel SALT proposal was even slower.35 So Nixon and Kissinger waited, hoping that their back-channel proposal would lead to a breakthrough soon.36 Unfortunately, the delayed Soviet response meant that there would be no back-channel SALT agreement prior to Smith’s return to Vienna. The interagency process remained stalled by Laird’s refusal to offer an ABM-only compromise to the Soviets—the very compromise that Nixon was pursuing secretly in the back channel.37 Hoping that the Soviets would respond soon, Nixon ordered Smith to stall in Vienna by sticking with Option E, while also introducing a four-for-one Safeguard-forMoscow ABM proposal.38 Smith’s instructions placated Laird while preventing Smith from offering more than what Nixon had already offered in the back channel.39 If successful, Nixon’s ploy would outflank Laird and enable an ABM-only compromise. But the longer the Soviets delayed, the more Nixon was keeping from his subordinates, and the more awkward his position became. Unfortunately, the Soviet response was not what Nixon had hoped. On March 12, 1971, as Smith was preparing to leave for Vienna, Dobrynin presented an alternate letter draft from the Soviet leadership. The Soviet draft retained the ABM-only agreement, but promised only to try to freeze offensive forces, and then only after the ABM treaty had been concluded. Kissinger rejected the Soviet letter—the whole point of Nixon’s proposal had been to limit both offensive and defensive forces. Dobrynin recommended that Kissinger compose a new letter incorporating provisions from both the American and Soviet drafts. Specifically, Dobrynin

Y8013-Maurer.indb 123

2/25/22 2:59 PM

12 4

t he m ay 2 0 a gr eemen t

now preferred that the letter not include the ABM modality or freeze date, which he agreed could be left to the delegations.40 Nixon had initially imagined a quick back-channel compromise to enable the front-channel negotiations, but Kissinger and Dobrynin’s back-and-forth had transformed the back channel into a parallel SALT track. Kissinger drafted a new response to the Soviets with only a small circle of staffers to support him, including Haig and Sonnenfeldt.41 This coterie backstopped Kissinger’s private negotiation, analyzing Soviet proposals and drafting responses. Kissinger had effectively created a second Verification Panel within the NSC. The intense secrecy meant that Kissinger’s trusted staff had their work cut out for them. While Kissinger’s immediate response to the Soviets’ March 12 letter had been indignant, on closer examination the text seemed to contain a major concession. The Soviet draft proposed a freeze on “strategic offensive launchers,” a phrase that might mean that submarine-based launchers would be frozen alongside land-based weapons. Kissinger downplayed this concession to Nixon, saying that the important point was the limit on the Soviets’ heavy SS-9 ICBMs.42 Nonetheless, Kissinger pocketed the apparent “concession” without comment; his March 16, 1971, draft incorporated the Soviet language on “strategic offensive launchers.”43 Kissinger’s handling of submarine-launched missiles would later cause a great deal of controversy.44 Kissinger claimed his ambiguity was intentional, since the Defense Department was still deciding whether to deploy more missile submarines.45 Laird and Moorer were uncertain whether the United States should continue building its current Polaris submarines, or redirect resources toward a next-generation submarine, the Undersea Long-Range Missile System.46 The question was important for SALT: building more Polaris submarines would require excluding SLBMs from the freeze, but if the United States planned on halting submarine construction to develop the ULMS, then it would want to freeze SLBMs.47 Kissinger was aware of these submarine studies, so he may very well have fostered ambiguity on the SLBM issue to keep options open.48 On the other hand, Nixon and Kissinger were also trying to trick the Soviets into including submarine-launched missiles. Kissinger accepted Dobrynin’s March 12 offer to freeze “strategic offensive missiles,” but in his talking points for his March 15 meeting with Dobrynin, Kissinger’s staff wrote: “Freeze now applies to all offensive weapons DO NOT

Y8013-Maurer.indb 124

2/25/22 2:59 PM

t he may 20 agreemen t

125

MENTION.”49 Dobrynin’s account was also ambiguous; his account of a March 16 meeting with Kissinger included the parenthetical note: “The word ‘freeze,’ Kissinger once again explained, affects land-based weapons, but they [the Americans] are willing, as they have said before, to extend this to both sea-based weapons and aircraft.”50 Despite this equivocation, Kissinger reported to Nixon that the Soviets agreed that SLBMs could be frozen if the United States desired.51 Leaving the SLBM question ambiguous was a terrible blunder, since there was no mechanism to compel the Soviets to accept Nixon and Kissinger’s interpretation of the letter. Blurring such distinctions had helped Nixon stave off a meltdown within his own government over SALT, but Nixon also had final authority to decide what a given interagency text meant. This sleight-of-hand would not work with the Soviets. Instead, the intentionally vague provision for SLBM proved to be one of the greatest hurdles in actually implementing the back-channel agreement.52 Nixon and Kissinger’s negotiating error was not born of ignorance, but it was a major error, nonetheless. In mid-March 1971, recriminations about SLBM still lay in the future. Kissinger and Dobrynin hammered out new compromise language in a series of meetings on March 15 and 16, 1971. Most of the divisive details were excised in favor of a generic agreement similar to the one that Kissinger had originally proposed: an ABM treaty, a freeze on offensive forces, and a commitment to continued negotiations, without specifying the ABM-deployment modality or the date on which the freeze would begin.53 The largest point of contention was the timing of the negotiations: Nixon would only accept an ABM-only agreement if it were accompanied at the same time by an offensive freeze, not after, as the Soviets had proposed.54 To speed the Soviet response, Kissinger also spoke with Dobrynin about the Four-Power Berlin talks. On March 18, 1971, Dobrynin presented a draft Berlin agreement to Kissinger.55 Unlike their supersecret SALT discussions, Nixon and Kissinger shared their back-channel Berlin discussions with Ambassador Kenneth Rush, who led the front-channel Berlin team. Nixon knew Rush—he had taught Nixon law at Duke University. More important, Nixon trusted Rush to follow his instructions to the letter. Unlike Smith, Rush was happy to stonewall his Soviet counterparts. Nixon authorized concessions on Berlin only after he was

Y8013-Maurer.indb 125

2/25/22 2:59 PM

126

t he m ay 2 0 a gr eemen t

satisfied with progress on SALT. Under Rush’s stewardship, the FourPower Agreement on Berlin was concluded in September 1971.56 c l o s ing t he d e a l Linkage with Berlin may have helped move the Soviets on SALT, but more important was the conclusion of the Party Congress in Moscow. Brezhnev distanced himself from the military, calling for a “peace program” that included rapid progress on SALT.57 Returning from the congress in early April, Dobrynin confirmed that Nixon would now be negotiating directly with Brezhnev, even though Kosygin’s name would remain on the letter. In addition to greetings from Brezhnev, Dobrynin also presented Kissinger with a new draft letter on April 23, 1971.58 The promise of quick SALT progress came not a moment too soon—the negotiations in Vienna had been stalled for over a month, and the American government was calling for new direction.59 A break in the impasse appeared at hand. Nixon and Brezhnev remained divided on two points. First, Nixon insisted that the ABM agreement and the interim freeze be discussed and concluded simultaneously.60 But the Soviet April 23 letter merely conceded that the two agreements would be negotiated at the same time, while insisting that the ABM agreement would be concluded before the freeze.61 Second, the new Soviet draft insisted that the ABM agreement be NCA-only, a position that the Soviets maintained that they had already accepted in the front channel.62 Kissinger was bitterly disappointed by the Soviet response, yet Dobrynin insisted that the new Soviet draft met previous American demands, all evidence to the contrary. When Kissinger insisted on a new draft reflecting actual American priorities, Dobrynin wearily agreed, but warned that Brezhnev was growing impatient with the complicated back-and-forth.63 Both sides found the final yards of negotiations grueling. While they waited for yet another Soviet response, Nixon and Kissinger scrambled to conceal the negotiations from the remainder of the American government. Dobrynin had been dropping hints for months to various members of the administration that the Soviets would accept an ABM-only agreement. Nixon and Kissinger were frustrated by Soviet efforts to fish for a better deal outside of the back channel, but with few other options they stayed the course.64 The tensest moment came on May 4, 1971, when Semenov proposed to Smith in Vienna that

Y8013-Maurer.indb 126

2/25/22 2:59 PM

t he may 20 agreemen t

127

the Soviets would accept a temporary freeze on ICBM construction if the United States would conclude a formal agreement limiting ABMs. Semenov repeated his proposal a few days later on a day trip into the mountains of Carinthia.65 Smith was surprised by the informality of the new proposal—previous Soviet proposals had occurred only in the formal plenary sessions—but also by Semenov’s insistence that the new proposal was a response to an earlier suggestion made by Smith himself. In reporting the incident, Smith reassured Nixon that he had made no such proposal.66 Semenov’s ABM-for-freeze proposal caused tremendous excitement and consternation within the American government. Smith and allies thought it was a good proposal and that Nixon should respond quickly. Laird and his allies remained opposed to an ABM-only agreement, even if linked to a freeze on offensive forces.67 The two factions battled over how to respond in the Verification Panel meeting on May 15, 1971, with Kissinger the only participant aware that a similar agreement was nearing conclusion via the secret back channel.68 Kissinger vehemently accused Dobrynin and Brezhnev of trying to manipulate Nixon by playing the two channels against each other.69 Dobrynin insisted that Semenov had not leaked and that Smith must have made the incident up, but Kissinger’s explosion clearly unnerved him, and he reported to Moscow that Nixon and Kissinger’s anger might imperil negotiations.70 Semenov’s May 4 proposal remains a puzzle. Dobrynin later claimed that Semenov leaked the ABM-for-freeze proposal to Smith on his own initiative and was disciplined for his indiscretion.71 Yet Semenov’s breaching of the back channel’s secrecy also increased pressure on Nixon. The Soviets were well aware of the divisions between Nixon and his advisers and were looking for ways to use those divisions to their advantage.72 Perhaps Semenov’s insistence that Smith had made the ABM-for-freeze proposal first was an effort to distance himself from a proposal that he had no authority to make, but it also sowed distrust between Smith and Nixon.73 The idea of ABM-for-freeze was now out in the open. Smith was returning to Washington to champion the proposal. Laird opposed an ABM-only agreement, but he especially opposed letting Smith negotiate such an agreement. Nixon would need to produce his back-channel SALT fait accompli before Smith returned to Vienna in late May. Time was running out.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 127

2/25/22 2:59 PM

12 8

t he m ay 2 0 a gr eemen t

The only remaining question was how to sequence the negotiations. On May 12, 1971, Dobrynin produced a new draft letter from Brezhnev, which committed both parties to an ABM agreement without specifying the mode of ABM deployment.74 But the Soviet letter still suggested that the ABM agreement would be concluded before the freeze. Dobrynin insisted that any change to the language of the draft would require weeks more work by the entire Soviet government.75 Under immense pressure to conclude the negotiations before Smith arrived, Nixon ultimately accepted the draft letter as it was, ambiguous language and all.76 Dobrynin agreed to forward a clarifying memo to Brezhnev outlining Nixon’s understanding that the letter did in fact commit the Soviets to a simultaneous conclusion of the ABM and freeze agreements. Kissinger and Dobrynin agreed that the letters would be made public on May 20, 1971, to give each side time to brief their government on the contents of the new deal.77 Nixon spent the week leading up to May 20 agonizing over whether to call off the announcement if Brezhnev did not agree to the new language on sequencing.78 Kissinger ultimately convinced Nixon to announce the letter even though Brezhnev had not confirmed his acceptance of a simultaneous ABM agreement and freeze. Kissinger argued that the negotiating record demonstrated Nixon’s commitment to simultaneous agreements. Brezhnev would not end negotiations over a few words, Kissinger claimed, and in any event Nixon retained leverage on Berlin to keep the Soviet leader in line.79 Nixon would soon rue this decision, as the Soviets quickly claimed that Kissinger had agreed to negotiate an ABM agreement first, with a freeze to follow. Kissinger and Dobrynin’s negotiating record reveals that the Soviets were lying, but Nixon and Kissinger were ultimately responsible for creating this vulnerability to Soviet manipulation in the first place. Reassured for the moment, Nixon and Kissinger briefed the administration on the new SALT agreement on May 19, 1971. At the eleventh hour, Nixon worried that revealing the negotiations might cause the very rupture with Laird and Smith that he hoped to avoid.80 As it turned out, the briefing went quite well. Smith was dismayed at having been left out of the loop and was critical of the agreement’s imprecise language, but saw the substance of the agreement as good.81 Smith’s support for

Y8013-Maurer.indb 128

2/25/22 2:59 PM

t he may 20 agreemen t

129

an ABM-for-freeze deal had not been in question; for Nixon, the bigger victory was that Laird also supported the May 20 Agreement.82 Even a competitive arms controller could appreciate that limiting Soviet offensive forces without restrictions on American FBS was a major breakthrough.83 The cost had been high—Nixon would never regain his advisers’ trust.84 In the end, though, the fait accompli had worked. After nearly a year of sharp division, Smith and Laird were once again on the same page on SALT. While Smith and Laird remained guarded, the American press and public greeted the May 20 Agreement as an unqualified success. Nixon and Kosygin made a joint announcement of their letters on the afternoon of May 20, 1971, committing their delegations to conclude a SALT agreement along the specified lines.85 The White House spread the story that Nixon had saved SALT through his no-nonsense direct bargaining with the Soviets.86 From a public relations perspective, the May 20 Agreement was a major success.87 For all the fanfare, implementing the May 20 Agreement proved difficult. When the delegates returned for the final week of SALT IV in Vienna, Semenov immediately claimed that the Soviets would only discuss the interim freeze once the delegates had completed a full draft of the ABM Treaty, while Smith insisted that the negotiations happen concurrently.88 Furthermore, Semenov claimed that the May 20 Agreement “implicitly” indicated that the ABM Treaty would allow for a non-zero but equal number of interceptors, which excluded Smith’s zero option and Laird’s Safeguard-for-Moscow scheme, but conveniently allowed the Soviets’ preferred NCA-only agreement.89 Smith worried that if Semenov wrote these differences into the concluding communiqué for SALT IV, then the entire May 20 Agreement might collapse. Kissinger quickly contacted Dobrynin to head off such a possibility.90 Brezhnev agreed to order Semenov not to mention implementation of the May 20 Agreement in the Vienna communiqué and to reserve detailed negotiations for the fifth round of SALT in Helsinki.91 It was hardly an auspicious start to the new agreement. Although May 20 broke the previous SALT deadlock, it had done so by avoiding many of the most controversial SALT issues. Resolving those differences would be considerably harder than Nixon and Kissinger had imagined.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 129

2/25/22 2:59 PM

13 0

t he m ay 2 0 a gr eemen t

SALT was not the only area of disappointment. Despite the May 20 Agreement, Brezhnev would not agree to a 1971 summit.92 Concerned that the Soviets were baiting him with a summit that would never come, Nixon presented an ultimatum: either Brezhnev would agree to a summit date in September 1971, or Nixon would not visit Moscow that year. The ultimatum did not mention that if Brezhnev refused, then Nixon would announce his visit to China.93 Delaying the Soviet summit until 1972 would mean that some negotiations, like the Berlin and accidental war agreements, would be ready too soon, but more durable problems like Vietnam and SALT would probably still be on the agenda for a 1972 Nixon-Brezhnev meeting.94 Kissinger delivered the ultimatum to Dobrynin on June 8, 1971, but Dobrynin still demurred.95 Having made so much progress on SALT, perhaps Moscow next hoped to leverage the summit into further American concessions on Berlin.96 Regardless, Nixon’s foray into back-channel SALT diplomacy had not won him the summit he craved. s a f eg ua r d , y e t ag a in SALT was not Nixon’s only headache. Nixon and Laird’s struggles over defense spending had transformed the budgetary process into a yearround phenomenon. Kissinger’s DPRC began working on the FY73 defense budget in November 1970. As usual, Laird and Moorer argued that Nixon’s efforts to cut defense spending would leave the United States and its allies vulnerable.97 Unlike Moorer, Laird would consider cutting conventional forces if it meant preserving strategic nuclear programs— an approach that Laird called “Realistic Deterrence.”98 Realistic Deterrence also included redirecting resources toward the long-term goal of transforming the American military into an all-volunteer force.99 Unfortunately, Laird’s “realistic” budget still cost more than the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) believed wise, given the worsening fiscal situation.100 Controversy over the defense budget was worsened by bad news from Southeast Asia. In February and March 1971, American-backed South Vietnamese forces launch a major offensive into the Lam Son region of Laos, attacking North Vietnamese forces along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The offensive was meant to show progress on Nixon’s strategy of “Vietnamization” by proving that the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN)

Y8013-Maurer.indb 130

2/25/22 2:59 PM

t he may 20 agreemen t

131

could defeat North Vietnamese forces with only limited American assistance. The result was a disaster, as the South Vietnamese offensive ground to a halt just over the border.101 Opponents of the American presence in Southeast Asia claimed that Lam Son demonstrated that the war was hopeless.102 Nixon worried that Congress might reduce the defense budget by $7 billion beyond what Nixon had proposed to Laird.103 Such steep cuts would have prevented the strategic nuclear modernization favored by Nixon, Laird, and other competitive strategists. Yet Nixon and Laird still struggled to compromise on the budget. OMB insisted on a lower figure than Laird would accept, and Moorer argued that even Laird’s budget was too low.104 Laird threatened to spread OMB’s reduction proportionally across all American forces, including the strategic nuclear capabilities that Nixon wanted to expand.105 Nixon was furious at Laird’s threat to slow nuclear modernization, especially since Kissinger had identified entire sections of the budget (like nextgeneration air defenses) that Nixon would cut entirely.106 In the end, though, Nixon was forced to accept a higher overall budget as the price for nuclear modernization. Most of the “reduction” in spending would come from continued withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam, which continued despite the concerns about Vietnamization.107 Nixon’s troubles with Laird were even more pronounced when it came to Safeguard. Nixon had already conceded to Laird that Safeguard policy would refocus on defending Minuteman, reflected in the additional money for Minuteman defense at the core of Laird’s FY72 Safeguard proposal.108 Yet Laird was pessimistic again about Safeguard’s chances. Years of debate had thoroughly educated Congress and the public on missile defense issues, reducing Laird’s ability to bludgeon opponents with his staff’s overwhelming technical knowledge. The lines in Congress were now drawn on ABM, leaving Laird much less room for political maneuver or persuasion.109 Worried that the Minuteman defense rationale had lost its political luster, Laird now demanded that Nixon justify Safeguard primarily as a bargaining chip for SALT. Laird’s desire to secure continued Safeguard funding from Congress was linked to his insistence on a Safeguard-forMoscow SALT proposal, which once again brought American missile defense construction in line with its arms control policy. Laird’s focus on Safeguard’s SALT utility meant that his lobbying efforts suffered early

Y8013-Maurer.indb 131

2/25/22 2:59 PM

13 2

t he m ay 2 0 a gr eemen t

setbacks, as Safeguard opponents questioned the system’s utility given the lack of progress in negotiations with the Soviets.110 Linking criticism of Safeguard and SALT ultimately backfired, however, when the sudden and unexpected success of the May 20 Agreement bolstered Laird’s case for Safeguard as a bargaining chip.111 Nixon was frustrated by Laird, but Laird was furious that Nixon had excluded him from the negotiations leading up to May 20, and increasingly determined to shape national security policy with or without Nixon’s blessing.112 Laird’s new “active” approach to policy was quickly apparent: on June 23, 1971, the New York Times published the American negotiating position for the upcoming SALT round in Helsinki, including not only opening statements but also fallback positions.113 The leak caused serious damage, ironically especially to Laird’s preferred ABM policy, since the leak revealed that if pressed Nixon would fall back from a four-for-one ABM deal to three- or even two-for-one. Kissinger’s staff concluded that the leak had come from the Pentagon but were unable to prove Laird’s involvement.114 The Times piece was a shot across Nixon’s bow, a reminder to take Laird seriously in future negotiations. Yet it also graphically demonstrated why Nixon had excluded Laird from the back channel in the first place. Laird also continued his monopolization of Safeguard policy, with increasingly limited White House involvement. Despite the May 20 Agreement, congressional opposition to Safeguard remained strong, while Laird still preferred to curtail Safeguard in favor of his preferred future hard-site defense program. Negotiating directly with Senator Stennis, Laird worked out a budget compromise that retained R&D funding for hard-site but cut the Safeguard program to only two of the Minuteman bases that Congress had already authorized—a major reduction from Nixon’s demand for four Minuteman defense bases and one NCA-defense base.115 The June 23 leak and the Safeguard “compromise” sent a strong signal to Nixon that his nuclear modernization and arms control policies would not survive without Laird’s support. i mp l emen t ing t he may 2 0 ag r e emen t : s a lt v — he l s ink i The May 20 Agreement was a major breakthrough, but it was not a SALT Treaty. From the American perspective, May 20 resolved one problem— the Soviets dropped their insistence on limiting FBS. With a quick freeze,

Y8013-Maurer.indb 132

2/25/22 2:59 PM

t he may 20 agreemen t

133

the Soviet offensive missile buildup might be halted long enough for the United States to begin its offsetting nuclear modernization, restoring American competitiveness. In doing so, May 20 also made an ABM-only SALT agreement acceptable (if only barely) to competitive arms controllers like Laird and Moorer. Beyond that leap forward, however, numerous issues remained to be worked out, both with the Soviets and within the administration itself. When it came to defensive limitations, Nixon’s policy was still a Safeguard-for-Moscow ABM Treaty, which would give the United States a marginal advantage in the number of missile interceptors. To make the proposal seem fairer, Nixon and his advisers increasingly described it in terms of options: each superpower could choose either one NCAdefense base or three ICBM-defense bases.116 In practice, however, the United States would insist that the Soviets “choose” their one existing NCA-defense base near Moscow, while the United States would “choose” the Safeguard bases it was building in the Midwest.117 Additionally, the ABM Treaty would include collateral constraints on radars to prevent Soviet cheating. By early 1971, delegation technical adviser Harold Brown was recommending a new concept to limit where radars could be deployed, rather than limiting radars themselves. The treaty would allow the superpowers a limited number of specially designated “Modern ABM Radar Complexes,” or MARCs—small, threekilometer-diameter areas in which each side could deploy as many ABMcapable radars as it wanted. By limiting MARCs rather than specific radars, the treaty could control ABM-capable systems without requiring a complicated definition of what “counted” as ABM-capable.118 In addition to MARCs, the United States also wanted to limit the number of powerful space-sensing radars not deployed for ABM purposes, known by the awkward acronym of Other Large Phased Array Radars (OLPARs).119 When it came to offensive forces, Nixon’s advisers agreed on freezing construction of new offensive missiles at an early date, as well as preventing replacement of smaller missiles with larger ones.120 Limiting the size of missiles required collateral constraints on the size of missile silos, to prevent the Soviets from installing larger missiles covertly during regular silo maintenance. Land-mobile missiles would be banned for the same reason.121 In this regard, Laird and Smith were on the same page. Smith saw larger missiles as destabilizing, given their ability to carry big

Y8013-Maurer.indb 133

2/25/22 2:59 PM

13 4

t he m ay 2 0 a gr eemen t

silo-busting warheads. Laird also worried about the silo-busting properties of larger missiles, though mostly because the Soviets had them and the United States did not. On July 2, 1971, Nixon issued Smith new instructions to conclude an agreement with the Soviets according to the May 20 terms at the fifth round of SALT in Helsinki. Smith would propose an ABM Treaty allowing the Soviets their one Moscow NCA-defense base and the United States three Safeguard bases in the Midwest, each with its own set of MARCs. The treaty would be accompanied by an interim freeze on all new ICBM and SLBM construction, beginning on the date on which Smith introduced the proposal in mid-July. Nixon’s advisers estimated that such a freeze would leave the Soviets with several hundred more ICBMs than the United States, but would curtail Soviet SLBM production below the American level, giving each side rough equality in launchers. Smith’s instructions were once again very detailed, including specific fallback provisions that he would be authorized to make, though only with explicit permission from Nixon. Key fallbacks included: excluding SLBMs from the freeze, but only if the Soviets agreed to dismantle their ICBMs under construction; and reducing the Safeguard-for-Moscow ratio from threeto-one to two-to-one.122 Nixon remained concerned that Smith would hand away too much to the Soviets, or alienate hawks like Laird, or both. Once Smith returned to Helsinki, however, the talks stalled again over sequencing. Semenov insisted that the ABM Treaty be negotiated in its entirety before any discussion of the offensive freeze, which he argued was implied in the May 20 terms. Smith maintained that bargaining over offensive and defensive limitations would happen simultaneously.123 Dobrynin had suggested to Kissinger that Smith humor Semenov and spend a few weeks discussing only ABM.124 In the hope of keeping talks moving, Nixon authorized Smith to begin discussing the ABM terms, with the understanding that after a few weeks the Soviets would have to begin reciprocating on offensive limitations.125 As Semenov dragged his feet in Helsinki, Laird and Smith’s divisions began to surface again. Smith worried that insisting on Safeguardfor-Moscow and freezing SLBM would prevent the conclusion of a quick agreement. Smith remained strongly in favor of a zero-ABM agreement, and made no secret of his disdain for an agreement allowing Safeguard.126 Yet Laird argued that the ABM and freeze terms were already

Y8013-Maurer.indb 134

2/25/22 2:59 PM

t he may 20 agreemen t

135

too generous and that additional movement would have to come from the Soviet side.127 Nixon authorized Smith to question Semenov about a zero-ABM agreement, no doubt hoping that Semenov’s rejection would end the issue.128 Instead, Semenov said he would happily listen to any proposal on limiting missile defenses.129 Given Semenov’s seeming receptivity, Smith began assembling a draft of a zero-ABM treaty, based on the provisions contained in the previous year’s Option E proposal.130 Despite Smith’s optimism, the Soviets would not likely have accepted a zero-ABM proposal in the summer of 1971. The Politburo’s original decision to limit missile defenses in January 1970 had rested on the compromise that the Moscow system would be retained and upgraded.131 Though Semenov was willing to entertain Smith’s musings, other members of the Soviet delegation remained adamant that the Soviet Union would not dismantle the Moscow ABM system.132 Dobrynin, too, continued to needle Kissinger about accepting an NCA-only framework that would allow the Soviets to retain the Moscow system.133 These continued signals in favor of NCA-only suggest that the Soviet government would have rejected a zero-ABM proposal even if Smith had been authorized to propose it to Semenov, if only out of a desire to preserve its own internal compromise over the direction of arms control policy. Semenov might have entertained Smith’s zero-ABM proposal, but Laird would not. The idea of Smith writing his own zero-ABM Treaty drove Laird berserk.134 Laird insisted that he would only accept a zeroABM agreement if it were linked to offensive force reductions, the Defense Department’s favorite undead arms control proposal.135 Laird’s insistence on arms reduction was probably not a serious proposal, but it underscored his point: absent a reduction of the Soviet offensive missiles, missile defenses were needed to prevent a Soviet surprise attack on Minuteman, which Laird insisted the Soviets could accomplish by modernizing their forces during the freeze.136 Nixon chaired an NSC meeting to consider zero ABM on August 11, 1971, but given Laird’s opposition to the plan the outcome was a foregone conclusion.137 In a private letter to Smith, Nixon explained his rejection of the zero-ABM option in terms of negotiability, arguing that a major change in the American ABM proposal would further weaken the May 20 Agreement and open the door to renewed Soviet insistence for an ABM-only agreement with no freeze provisions.138 Although negotiability was clearly on the president’s mind,

Y8013-Maurer.indb 135

2/25/22 2:59 PM

13 6

t he m ay 2 0 a gr eemen t

Nixon also had to contend with Laird’s opposition to zero-ABM, as well as his own long-standing support for American missile defenses. On August 12, Nixon ordered Smith to keep the Safeguard-for-Moscow proposal and not introduce a formal zero-ABM position.139 Nixon sided with Laird in rejecting zero-ABM, but he backed Smith’s request to ban future “exotic” defense technology, including directedenergy weapons like lasers. Smith argued that deployment or field testing of exotic defenses would allow the Soviets to evade ABM restrictions.140 Laird agreed with banning deployment or field testing of exotic technologies, as long as laboratory R&D was allowed to explore future alternatives.141 Only Moorer opposed restricting exotic missile defense, claiming it was impossible to define and limit technologies that did not yet exist.142 Nixon ultimately sided with Laird and Smith.143 It was a clear example of Laird’s pivotal role in the administration’s arms control policy. When Laird opposed Smith’s ideas, Nixon too opposed them; when Laird agreed with Smith, Nixon was willing to go along. “Exotic” defenses had little impact on SALT, but Nixon’s decision to prohibit them proved important a decade later, when the United States began considering such technologies in the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).144 While Nixon felt his way toward an ABM compromise, progress in Helsinki remained glacial, as Semenov would not discuss offensive force limitations, insisting on completing the ABM Treaty first. On July 27, 1971, Smith presented a full draft SALT agreement to Semenov, including a three-for-one Safeguard-for-Moscow ABM Treaty and an offensive freeze on ICBM and SLBM construction beginning on July 31, 1971.145 Semenov responded (negatively) to the ABM proposal, but he refused even to comment on the freeze. Kissinger warned Dobrynin that without limitation of offensive forces, the negotiations would deadlock again.146 Once Semenov did comment on offensive force limitations in early September 1971, another obstacle emerged. The Soviets now insisted that the interim would only cover land-based missiles, not submarine-based ones. That the Soviets would adopt such a position was predictable, since they were building many missile submarines. But the Soviet position was complicated by Semenov’s refusal to discuss SLBM at all, claiming that Kissinger had already conceded to Dobrynin that SBLM would not be included in the freeze.147

Y8013-Maurer.indb 136

2/25/22 2:59 PM

t he may 20 agreemen t

137

Faced with continued Soviet stonewalling on offensive forces, Laird lobbied Nixon to cancel SALT V and bring Smith home until Semenov agreed to negotiate on Nixon’s terms.148 Kissinger agreed with Laird that freezing SLBM was desirable, but argued against cutting short negotiations. SLBMs were highly inaccurate, posing little threat to hardened missile silos. If the real threat was a Soviet surprise attack on Minuteman, then a few additional Soviet SLBMs added little to their capability. An agreement that froze only ICBMs was better than letting the Soviets build additional large, accurate missiles with no constraint at all.149 Buoyed by Kissinger’s support, Nixon allowed SALT V to continue, though he warned the Soviets that he expected serious discussion of the offensive freeze first thing at SALT VI.150 The remainder of SALT V focused on a rapid series of ABM proposals from both delegations. Smith first proposed a three-for-one Safeguard-for-Moscow agreement, allowing each side to keep the missile defense bases it was already building.151 When Semenov refused, Nixon ordered Smith to fall back to a two-for-one Safeguard-for-Moscow proposal, which Semenov also rejected as unequal.152 Having sat across from Semenov for months, Smith was increasingly convinced that the Soviets would never accept an “unequal” ABM agreement.153 He now favored a new compromise in which the United States would still get two missile defense bases to the Soviets’ one, but with equal interceptors: 100 around Moscow, and fifty at each Safeguard base.154 Once again, Nixon and Laird worried that Smith was conceding to the Soviets too quickly.155 The Soviet position was evolving, too. Semenov had begun SALT V insisting (falsely) that Kissinger had promised Dobrynin an NCA-only agreement in the negotiations leading up to May 20.156 By August 1971, however, the Soviets were realizing that Nixon would not return to his previous NCA-only proposal. What followed was a confusing series of Soviet proposals, each more elaborate than the last. Semenov initially suggested that each side could build two bases defending cities but not missile silos, which Smith rejected as inconsistent with Safeguard.157 Then Semenov suggested that in addition to allowing each side an NCA base, the United States could build one Safeguard base so long as the Soviets could defend an equal number of their own missile silos. Since Soviet ICBM fields were smaller and more dispersed than Minuteman,

Y8013-Maurer.indb 137

2/25/22 2:59 PM

13 8

t he m ay 2 0 a gr eemen t

Semenov explained that “equal” ICBM coverage would require two separate Soviet bases. This would mean three Soviet bases to the United States’ two, which Smith also rejected.158 Smith and other American delegates believed that Semenov’s three-for-two proposal was a ploy to move Nixon to a two-for-two ABM deal. But until Semenov conceded offensive force limitation, Nixon would not authorize a two-for-two deal, which Laird and other hawks strongly opposed.159 Negotiating the ABM Treaty was further complicated by the Soviet resistance to radar controls. Smith scored a major victory in August when Semenov finally agreed to prohibit testing SAMs and their supporting radars in an “ABM mode.” Smith further insisted that ABM-capable radars should be limited to a few small MARC zones and a small, equal number of OLPARs. Yet aside from SAMs Semenov remained suspicious of radar controls, insisting that they were overly complicated and unnecessary.160 The stalemate in Helsinki had an especially frustrating conclusion, as the superpowers devolved into a fit of name calling. Shortly before leaving Helsinki, Semenov presented Smith with a note accusing Nixon of breaking his May 20 pledge to seek an equitable ABM agreement.161 Nixon responded via the back channel, writing to Brezhnev that the negotiating record clearly demonstrated Nixon’s preference for a Safeguardfor-Moscow deal. Furthermore, Nixon insisted that the May 20 terms allowed limiting SLBMs; if anyone was breaking the May 20 terms, it was Brezhnev. Nixon insisted that solutions could be found “not so much in legalistic interpretations but in a spirit of goodwill based on the importance of the objective.”162 Nixon was technically correct about the backchannel negotiation, but the ambiguities of the record—some left intentionally by Nixon—dogged the president to the last seconds of SALT. progress Despite the struggles over limiting arms, Smith and Semenov made quick progress on other fronts. Having concluded that he would not visit Moscow in 1971, Nixon instead announced his intention to visit China.163 On July 15, 1971, in the midst of SALT V, Nixon announced dramatically on television that Kissinger had traveled secretly to China for preliminary talks with the communist leaders. Nixon would make his own visit to China in early 1972.164 The Soviet response was dramatic. Dobrynin quickly inquired whether Nixon would visit Moscow before China. With

Y8013-Maurer.indb 138

2/25/22 2:59 PM

t he may 20 agreemen t

139

the shoe on the other foot, Kissinger had the pleasure of telling Dobrynin that Nixon would consider the timing of a Moscow visit later.165 To signal Nixon’s continued interest in Soviet-American negotiations, Smith recommended that Nixon conclude the Accidental and Hotline Agreements early.166 The agreements had been completed at the fourth round of SALT in early 1971. Nixon had hoped to conclude the agreements personally with Brezhnev, but as the summit timeline receded the political value of the agreements decreased dramatically. Only one minor issue remained: the Soviets preferred that the agreements contain an “accession clause” to allow third parties to join the agreement later, but Nixon’s advisers remained suspicious of the Soviets’ previous efforts to shoehorn third parties like China into a “provocative war” agreement.167 When Nixon rejected the accession clause, Semenov did not insist.168 Kissinger proposed an early conclusion of the agreements to Dobrynin in late July, soon after Nixon’s China surprise.169 When Dobrynin did not immediately respond, Nixon ordered Smith to introduce the idea into the front channel in early August 1971.170 Gromyko and Rogers ultimately signed the agreements during the former’s visit to Washington on September 24, 1971.171 The Four-Power Agreement on Berlin was concluded that same month.172 With two major summits now approaching, Nixon would rely on triangular diplomacy between the Soviets and Chinese as his main source of leverage. Gromyko also used his September 1971 visit to Washington to finalize the details of Nixon and Brezhnev’s summit, which Gromyko proposed would begin in Moscow on May 22, 1972.173 The summit would come soon after Nixon’s return from Beijing. On October 12, 1971, Nixon announced that he would visit the Soviet Union in May 1972. The president hinted that a major SALT agreement would be ready for final talks and conclusion.174 Nixon was proud that he had successfully scheduled a summit with Brezhnev, but Laird and Smith were not pleased to read about the summit in the newspaper.175 Smith worried that Nixon would delay negotiations to conclude SALT personally in Moscow, lengthening a dangerous arms race to gain political credit.176 Although Kissinger assured Smith this was not the case, in private Nixon was thinking along those lines. The president was looking toward the 1972 election, hoping that concluding SALT personally would improve his electoral chances.177

Y8013-Maurer.indb 139

2/25/22 2:59 PM

14 0

t he m ay 2 0 a gr eemen t

While Smith had an accurate read on Nixon’s intentions, in the end his worry that the president would stall SALT negotiations proved unfounded. Instead, as the summit approached the growing concern was that SALT would not be ready in time for Nixon’s visit to Moscow. Rather than delaying talks, Nixon’s summit sent SALT into frantic overdrive. After years of halting negotiations and grinding stalemates, concluding SALT would require an all-out effort.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 140

2/25/22 2:59 PM

c h a p te r se ve n

Final Compromises

n i xo n h a d h op e d th a t th e May 20 Agreement of 1971 would allow SALT to conclude quickly. Unfortunately, the Soviets’ insistence on “interpreting” the agreement according to their interests significantly delayed the talks. Having agreed privately to trade limits on offensive missiles for limits on missile defenses, the Soviets quickly reverted to insisting that limiting missile defenses would have to occur before limiting offensive missiles. This impasse consumed months of discussion, ending any hope for a quick resolution. The stalemate worsened Laird and Smith’s divisions over SALT policy. Laird initially accepted the May 20 compromise, but as the Soviets dragged their feet he became increasingly concerned. By delaying the interim “freeze” while building more missiles, the Soviets were ensuring that they would enjoy a sizable numerical advantage once the freeze went into effect. The more the Soviets built, the harder Laird pushed for control of Soviet missile submarines and leeway for American missile defenses. Laird’s hard bargaining ran afoul of Smith, who worried instead that negotiations might fail entirely and favored a quick agreement on the May 20 terms, even if it meant marginal Soviet superiority. As always, Laird and Smith’s substantive disputes were complicated by Smith’s position as chief SALT negotiator. For his vocal advocacy of 141

Y8013-Maurer.indb 141

2/25/22 2:59 PM

14 2

final co mpr o mise s

cooperating with the Soviets, Smith lost the confidence of competitive arms controllers like Laird, and eventually even Nixon himself. By the spring of 1972, with the Moscow summit looming, Nixon ordered Kissinger to launch a second back-channel negotiation with the Soviets. Ignoring hawkish advisers like Laird, Nixon agreed to parity in missile defenses if Brezhnev would freeze submarine-launched missiles. To sweeten the deal, Nixon suggested that the Soviets would be able to continue building new missile submarines under the freeze, so long as they dismantled their older ICBMs. Once again, Nixon entrusted Kissinger to make the concessions that he no longer trusted Smith to make. Like the May 20 Agreement, this second back channel infuriated Laird and Smith, but ultimately allowed Nixon to advance negotiations through fait accompli. s a lt v i — v i enna By the fall of 1971, a SALT Treaty still seemed distant, despite the terms of May 20. Sequencing remained the largest obstacle. Semenov still insisted that the May 20 Agreement stipulated that an ABM Treaty would precede an interim freeze on offensive forces. Nixon’s efforts to humor the Soviets in Helsinki meant that negotiations on the ABM Treaty had proceeded much farther than those on limiting offensive forces, despite Nixon’s insistence that the two agreements be negotiated and concluded simultaneously. The grinding procedural stalemate turned even the most basic substantive discussions into interminable slogs.1 While the ambiguity of May 20 prolonged the talks, the superpowers were much closer than the previous fall, when they had agreed on almost nothing. Now only two major substantive issues remained. First, Smith demanded to discuss whether to freeze SLBM, while Semenov insisted that submarine-launched missiles could not be discussed under the May  20 Agreement. Second, Smith proposed a two-for-one Safeguardfor-Moscow ABM Treaty, which Semenov also claimed was incompatible with the May 20 Agreement’s insistence on “equal security.” Instead, Semenov now offered a three-to-two proposal, giving the Soviets one more missile defense base.2 SALT V had resolved little, but from the continued arguments the outlines of another bargain emerged. The Soviets wanted equality in ABM bases, while the United States wanted to freeze SLBMs and

Y8013-Maurer.indb 142

2/25/22 2:59 PM

final co mpr o mise s

143

heavy ICBMs. The obvious solution was to trade the one for the other: the United States would agree to equal ABM bases if the Soviets agreed to freeze SLBM.3 By November 1971, most of Nixon’s advisers had concluded that an ABM-for-SLBM bargain was the most likely to win Soviet approval.4 Once again, the largest obstacle to progress was the hostility between Laird and Smith. Both recognized that the ABM-for-SLBM bargain was negotiable, but Laird did not think it was desirable. When it came to missile defenses, Laird and his competitive allies still opposed parity in ABM deployments. Having concluded that Safeguard-for-Moscow was going nowhere, Laird now favored yet another ABM proposal, in which the Soviets would get a small number of long-range interceptors near Moscow while the United States would get a large number of short-range interceptors near its midwestern missile bases (a “hard-site”-for-Moscow proposal).5 Smith believed that Laird’s new proposal would be just as nonnegotiable as his previous one, and instead backed a one-for-one proposal in which the Soviets would keep their Moscow base and the United States would keep only its Safeguard base at Grand Forks, North Dakota.6 Kissinger agreed with Smith that any “hard-site” agreement would be nonnegotiable, but still hoped to win some face-saving nominal advantage in missile defenses to offset Soviet advantage in offensive forces— perhaps a modified Safeguard-for-Moscow proposal in which the United States would get an extra ABM base but each side would get the same number of interceptors.7 Although they differed significantly over missile defenses, Laird and Smith were still on the same page when it came to limiting radars. Smith’s July 27 proposal limited missile defense radars to two MARCs per base, and prohibited the superpowers from deploying any OLPARs. When Semenov had refused, some of Nixon’s advisers recommended compromise. Rogers suggested offering a larger number of MARCs per base to win Soviet acceptance of the general concept.8 Ironically, Rogers’s proposal to cooperate with the Soviets was supported by archcompetitor Admiral Moorer, who argued that limiting radars was a fool’s errand and that Nixon should loosen restrictions if the Soviets would agree to stricter limits on their offensive forces.9 Yet on radars neither Laird nor Smith favored immediate compromise with the Soviets. Laird hoped to limit Soviet missile defense

Y8013-Maurer.indb 143

2/25/22 2:59 PM

14 4

final co mpr o mise s

capability as much as possible, and opposed modifying the MARC proposal until the Soviets had agreed to prohibit OLPARs.10 Smith saw the small number of MARCs as a key limitation on the size of missile defense systems, which over the longer term he still hoped to eliminate.11 Once again, the two demonstrated their centrality to Nixon’s deliberations: when Laird and Smith agreed, the president almost always went along. ABM was not the only controversy—Nixon’s advisers were deeply divided on how to limit offensive forces, as well. Laird and Moorer believed that Semenov was stalling negotiations to pack as many Soviet missiles into the freeze as possible. Rather than limiting Soviet options, the freeze (when it came) might very well lock the United States into an unfavorable situation, unable to escape the Soviet threat to destroy Minuteman in a surprise attack. Laird also worried that an unequal freeze would become the baseline for future negotiations, establishing Soviet numerical superiority forever. Rather than codify Soviet long-term advantage, Laird and other hawks now lobbied Nixon to abandon the May 20 terms and return to a comprehensive proposal to place real limits on Soviet offensive forces.12 Nixon and Kissinger defended the May 20 Agreement to Laird, claiming that a freeze could still enhance American competitiveness. Freezing some margin of Soviet numerical superiority was better than allowing the Soviets to build with no restraint at all.13 Nor did the numerical comparison convey the real effectiveness of the two arsenals. The freeze would not include the United States’ many bombers. American submarines also operated at a higher tempo than their Soviet counterparts due to superior American training and forward bases. Even if the Soviets had more SLBMs, the United States would still point more SLBMs at the Soviet Union than vice versa, as Soviet submarines spent most of their time sitting in port.14 Finally, a freeze synergized with Nixon and Laird’s redirection of competition from the number of weapons to the quality of weapons, an area of American strength.15 Nixon realized that winning Laird’s support for a freeze meant placing some restraint on SLBM. Nixon himself was ambivalent about freezing SLBM. He and Kissinger concluded that excluding SLBM from the freeze would be acceptable if it meant limiting land-based weapons like the Soviet SS-9 monster missile.16 On this point, Nixon and Kissinger

Y8013-Maurer.indb 144

2/25/22 2:59 PM

final co mpr o mise s

145

actually agreed with Smith, who favored a quick freeze on some missiles over a slow freeze on all missiles. SLBM could be left for future SALT discussions.17 Laird disagreed. He and Moorer had stopped American missile submarine construction to dedicate resources toward the nextgeneration ULMS system, which would not be ready until the late 1970s. Freezing SLBM construction would support Laird’s ULMS plan by halting Soviet construction until the United States was ready to leap ahead.18 Freezing SLBM was Laird’s price for accepting a freeze at all. As usual, the disagreements between Laird and Smith were aggravated by tactical questions of how to negotiate. Smith argued that rapid progress was essential, and that Nixon should make a high-level appeal to Brezhnev offering equality in ABM bases in the hope of enticing the Soviets into concessions on the freeze. But Laird worried that falling back on ABM before receiving Soviet concessions risked allowing the Soviets to pocket another American concession.19 Although Nixon agreed substantively with Smith’s compromise proposal, the president shared Laird’s concern that if given the opportunity Smith would hand away American bargaining leverage for nothing in return.20 Nixon and Laird’s mistrust of Smith meant that the president was hesitant to authorize any new compromises. On November 15, 1971, Nixon ordered Smith to return to the sixth round of SALT in Vienna and stand firm on the previous stalemate proposal: a two-for-one Safeguard-for-Moscow ABM Treaty and an interim freeze including SLBM. Expecting that the Soviets would still refuse this proposal, Nixon instead ordered Smith to focus his efforts on narrowing specific technical differences between the American and Soviet drafts of the ABM agreement, especially on radar deployments.21 Smith was disappointed that Nixon insisted on standing on the two-for-one ABM Treaty, which could lead to nothing but continued deadlock.22 Yet Laird was also increasingly unhappy with Safeguard-for-Moscow and disappointed that Nixon would not issue a new hard-site-for-Moscow proposal.23 None of Nixon’s advisers were especially happy with the status quo, but Smith dutifully carried out his instructions and insisted that Semenov discuss how to freeze offensive forces.24 Fortunately, now that the summit date was set Semenov arrived in Vienna ready for serious negotiations, beginning with some important concessions to American demands. The Soviets agreed in principle that

Y8013-Maurer.indb 145

2/25/22 2:59 PM

146

final co mpr o mise s

they would not replace lighter ICBMs with heavier ICBMs, though Semenov quickly added that no collateral constraints on missile or silo size would be necessary to verify this new provision.25 After several more weeks’ discussion, Semenov also agreed to the American MARC proposal for controlling ABM-capable radars, although he preferred that each side be allowed six or eight MARCs per base, instead of the two that Smith had proposed.26 Even so, Semenov’s concessions were large steps toward important American SALT objectives. For negotiations to continue, however, Nixon would need to offer concessions of his own. Notably, Semenov would still not consider freezing SLBM, and also still insisted that the Soviets receive three missile defense bases to the Americans’ two. Laird was still seething over Nixon’s rejection of his hard-site-for-Moscow plan, so Smith focused his efforts on a possible SLBM compromise.27 After months of discussions with Semenov, Smith believed that the Soviets were primarily concerned with replacing their fleet of obsolete missile submarines with new, updated boats. One possible compromise would be to allow construction and replacement of submarines during the freeze period, as long as the number of SLBM tubes on those submarines remained constant.28 Nixon thought Smith’s idea had merit, but had no way to gauge what Laird’s response would be. Instead, he ordered Smith to return to Washington for the holiday break in December, at which point Nixon would hammer out new instructions with his advisers in person.29 The continued infighting between Laird and Smith meant that Kissinger’s Verification Panel worked overtime to develop new compromise positions that both could accept. Wayne Smith retired from the NSC staff shortly after SALT VI began; his duties as chair of the Panel Working Group were taken over by Philip Odeen.30 Like Lynn and Wayne Smith, Odeen was a Defense Department systems analyst and a useful ally in Kissinger’s attempts to corral the Pentagon into supporting Nixon’s defense policies.31 Under Odeen’s guidance, the panel quickly approved Smith’s proposal to freeze only SLBM numbers while allowing construction of new submarines.32 Yet an agreed structure for the ABM Treaty still eluded the panel. Smith still wanted to move to a one-for-one ABM agreement in which the United States would retain only a single Safeguard base at Grand Forks. Laird remained adamant about his hardsite-for-Moscow proposal.33 Nixon became increasingly frustrated by the

Y8013-Maurer.indb 146

2/25/22 2:59 PM

final co mpr o mise s

147

continued division as the summit approached, believing that both Laird and Smith were undermining the progress that Nixon had won on funding Safeguard.34 The approaching summit also raised the question of what form the SALT agreements would take. Nixon preferred that the ABM agreement be a formal treaty, while the interim freeze would be a less formal executive agreement. Yet Laird had reservations. If the ABM agreement were a treaty, Laird believed it would need special language allowing the United States to withdraw if the superpowers did not soon conclude a comprehensive agreement limiting offensive forces. The secretary worried that once the ABM Treaty was on the books, the United States would lose its most important bargaining chip, and the Soviets would simply run out the clock on the interim freeze while insisting that the ABM Treaty remained binding. In fact, Smith had proposed such language to Semenov during SALT V, but the Soviets had insisted that a formal withdrawal clause was unnecessary. Smith now advised Nixon to drop the withdrawal clause in exchange for greater Soviet flexibility on limiting radars. Laird would not agree. He insisted that withdrawal provisions were necessary to preserve American leverage into the second phase of SALT, and indicated that he would not support an ABM Treaty that did not include such provisions. Kissinger and his advisers supported Laird in principle, though they wondered whether a more ambiguously worded withdrawal provision might be more acceptable to the Soviets.35 Smith returned to Washington in December 1971 for the holiday break determined to lobby Nixon for new instructions. Given Laird’s belligerence, however, Nixon was still hesitant to hand Smith more authority. In the end, Nixon’s supplementary instructions were minimal. Smith could modify the freeze proposal to include SLBM but not submarines, but the direction of the ABM agreement remained uncertain.36 Nixon had regularly delayed key decisions to avoid ruptures between Laird and Smith, but with the summit approaching this tactic was losing value.37 The situation was maddening for everyone involved. The final SALT compromise was clear: Nixon would offer the Soviets equal missile interceptors if the Soviets included SLBMs in the freeze. Indeed, both Semenov and Dobrynin hinted repeatedly that they were amenable to this sort of compromise.38 Yet with Nixon, Laird, and Smith so fatally divided, the final step lay just out of reach.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 147

2/25/22 2:59 PM

14 8

final co mpr o mise s

Nixon’s ability to mediate between Laird and Smith was limited given his need to manage other pressing foreign policy issues. Nixon intended to visit the People’s Republic of China in early 1972, but he worried that his plans would be derailed by the conflict in South Asia between India and Pakistan, which boiled into open war in December 1971. The war disrupted Sino-American relations since Pakistan served as an important intermediary for Sino-American communications.39 Nixon adopted a hands-off approach to the conflict, and the United States placed only moderate sanctions on Pakistan even as it murdered many thousands of Bangladeshi inhabitants of East Pakistan. The war ended quickly when India cut off West Pakistani access to the newly independent Bangladesh.40 The war in South Asia drove Nixon further away from Smith. In addition to preserving relations with China, Nixon’s main priority was preventing the Soviets from gaining influence in South Asia by lending aid to India. On December 13, 1971, Smith received an urgent telegram from the president ordering him to present “a cool and somewhat more reserved attitude” toward Semenov in the talks. Nixon’s dramatic side was at work—the president clearly hoped that Smith would put on a show of displeasure to signal to the Soviets to back off in South Asia. Rather than adopting a standoffish attitude, however, Smith simply informed Semenov that Nixon was displeased with Soviet activity in South Asia, before moving on with the day’s scheduled discussions. Nixon was “alarmed” at Smith’s direct approach, which he worried might delay SALT at a crucial moment.41 The incident had no impact on the talks, but Nixon and Smith’s miscommunication on the South Asian crisis indicated the deeper clash of personalities that drove their growing animosity: Nixon’s dramatic manipulative tendencies clashed with Smith’s genteel, straightforward manner. Their mutual incomprehension made formulating SALT policy that much more difficult. Aside from Nixon’s mind games, little was occurring in Vienna. Smith felt increasingly foolish, entering every meeting with the same rote demands for Semenov to reject.42 Smith continued to draft compromise proposals, hoping that if Semenov would budge an inch on SLBM that Nixon would authorize an equal ABM agreement. By January 1972, Smith’s latest proposal would allow one-way replacement of old ICBMs with newer SLBMs. The Soviets would get to build some newer Y-class

Y8013-Maurer.indb 148

2/25/22 2:59 PM

final co mpr o mise s

149

boats during the freeze, while the United States would prevent the Soviets from replacing their older ICBMs with newer counterforce weapons.43 Nixon liked Smith’s formulation but still insisted that the proposal face interagency scrutiny.44 Despite Odeen’s efforts, the proposal ground to a halt in the Verification Panel’s endless deliberations, leaving Smith empty-handed in Vienna.45 Other SALT delegates were more proactive than Smith. Paul Nitze attacked the ABM question directly, seeking his own compromise. In conversations with his Soviet counterparts, Nitze presented elements of Laird’s hard-site-for-Moscow proposal without Nixon’s permission. The Soviets seemed amenable to Nitze’s proposal, which allowed many smaller interceptors and radars around missile silos. Yet Nitze buried the lead: his proposal would allow the United States 1,000 smaller interceptors, while the Soviets would keep their 100 larger missiles.46 Nixon quickly ordered Nitze to withdraw his unauthorized proposal, despite his protestations that he was making progress.47 The negotiations were coming apart at the seams. Worried that Laird might conduct his own negotiation with the Soviets through Nitze, Nixon ended SALT VI in early February with the intention of resuming talks in early March.48 The sixth round had seen the first serious negotiation on offensive limitations and progress on radar controls and other technical issues. But Nixon and his advisers were falling into familiar patterns of dispute and delay. Nixon needed another dramatic breakthrough to conclude SALT. r e ta ining t he ed g e For competitive arms controllers like Nixon and Laird, the “freeze” on offensive forces would need to be accompanied by a vigorous program to improve existing American strategic nuclear forces. The freeze would hand the Soviets some margin of numerical superiority, but with the number of launchers fixed, competition would shift from the number of weapons to the quality of weapons, where American advantages in technology would predominate.49 To use this opportunity, however, the United States would need to accelerate qualitative improvements like faster bombers, more accurate missiles, and quieter submarines.50 These qualitative improvements would begin with marginal upgrades to existing forces, especially MIRVing Minuteman missiles and supplementing

Y8013-Maurer.indb 149

2/25/22 2:59 PM

15 0

final co mpr o mise s

older B-52s with newer, faster bombers. Over the longer term, however, the United States would also pursue more transformative weapons, including new ICBMs that were much larger and potentially mobile; new submarine-launched missiles with much greater range and accuracy; and new long-range cruise missiles that would turn existing ships and aircraft into long-range missile platforms.51 Increasingly accurate weapons would be guided to their targets by rapidly improving sensing capabilities to track Soviet missiles both on land and at sea.52 Taken together, these qualitative improvements would allow the United States to hold at risk Soviet nuclear forces and reestablish deterrence on the basis of American strategic nuclear advantages, rather than mutual vulnerability.53 Funding this strategic nuclear modernization was more than just log rolling to win the approval of hawks for SALT. For competitive arms controllers like Nixon and Laird, nuclear modernization and arms limitation were part of the same competitive strategy to reestablish American nuclear superiority. Aside from new hardware, Nixon and his cadre of nuclear competitors also began to explore new potential strategies for using American nuclear weapons in crises. Initially, Nixon tried to tie nuclear threats more directly to American diplomatic initiatives. In October 1969, Nixon ordered American nuclear-armed B-52 bombers on higher alert in an effort to coerce Soviet and North Vietnamese leaders into joining ceasefire negotiations.54 In an effort to increase the credibility of this signal, Nixon and Kissinger sought to signal to Moscow that Nixon’s growing frustration with the war in Vietnam might drive him to do something irrational—the so-called “Madman Theory” of nuclear diplomacy.55 Nixon’s Madman gambit was unsuccessful, but the search for more credible nuclear threats continued. Even as SALT negotiations ground on, Kissinger’s staff were conducting the first in a series of studies on “limited strategic nuclear options,” an approach in which the United States might meet Soviet conventional aggression by firing a small portion of its strategic nuclear arsenal, in the hope of coercing Soviet leaders to back down without a massive nuclear exchange.56 Laird and Packard soon joined Kissinger’s search for new concepts on limited nuclear war.57 The search for more credible nuclear threats would remain behind the scenes until Laird’s successor, James Schlesinger, publicized the concept in 1974.58 Yet the groundwork for Schlesinger’s dramatic announcement

Y8013-Maurer.indb 150

2/25/22 2:59 PM

final co mpr o mise s

151

had been laid years earlier, at the same time as SALT. The conceptual search for more effective means of nuclear coercion paralleled the search for technological advantage through negotiations. Nixon and Laird agreed on competitive strategy toward the Soviet Union, but they differed on political tactics toward Congress. Nixon still worried that congressional opponents of Vietnam would slash the defense budget and imperil nuclear modernization. To preempt congressional opposition, the president preferred a smaller defense budget focused on rapid strategic nuclear modernization, even if this meant cuts to conventional forces.59 Kissinger set the DPRC to study how to fund strategic modernization during the SALT freeze without provoking congressional backlash.60 Laird, too, wanted rapid strategic nuclear modernization, but he believed that Congress would pass a larger budget if Nixon asked.61 As he had before, Laird ignored Kissinger and the DPRC and went straight to Capitol Hill. On February 15, 1972, Laird offered a preliminary FY73 budget to Congress, calling again for “Realistic Deterrence” including rapid improvement of missiles, submarines, and bombers. Laird reminded Congress that “it is essential that we maintain technological superiority . . . second place in the technological race is simply not good enough.”62 Laird once again exceeded his instructions, as the DPRC was still studying nuclear modernization. Once Laird’s accelerated nuclear program was announced, though, Nixon could not walk it back.63 Winning congressional support for such an aggressive program made rapid SALT success all the more imperative. By committing Nixon publicly to nuclear modernization, Laird also closed off Nixon’s room for maneuver on SALT. The centerpiece of “Realistic Deterrence” was leaping ahead to a next-generation submarinelaunched missile, the ULMS—later known as Trident. Laird already favored freezing SLBM in SALT, but Nixon’s other advisers—including Kissinger and Smith—favored freezing only ICBM if the Soviets would accommodate Nixon’s ABM proposal.64 By enshrining Trident at the heart of Nixon’s plans for strategic modernization, Laird virtually guaranteed that Nixon would insist on freezing SLBM, since even an accelerated Trident would not be available until the late 1970s. Of course, Kissinger and Smith believed that the Soviets’ price for freezing SLBM would be equality in missile defenses. By pushing so hard to freeze SLBM, Laird set the stage for the very ABM compromise that he so strongly opposed.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 151

2/25/22 2:59 PM

15 2

final co mpr o mise s

s a lt v i i — he l s ink i By early 1972, Nixon knew the SALT bargain he wanted: he would accept a two-for-two ABM agreement if Brezhnev froze SLBM construction. Kissinger, Odeen, and Sonnenfeldt agreed that this compromise could theoretically win support from Laird, Smith, and the Soviets.65 A number of detailed technical issues also remained when it came to collateral constraints on radars and missile silos, but an ABM-for-SLBM bargain would settle the remaining major disputes on the substance of the agreements. Unfortunately, the division of Nixon’s advisers made achieving this final bargain difficult, if not impossible. Laird and other hawks were absolutely opposed to an equal-ABM agreement, demanding that Nixon propose Laird’s “hard-site” program to the Soviets. Nitze had already discussed parts of the hard-site plan with his Soviet opposites, and believed that the Soviet delegates would be amenable even though the United States would enjoy a ten-to-one lead in interceptors.66 Even if the American interceptors were less capable than their Soviet equivalents, though, no one else believed that the Soviets would consider such a blatantly unequal proposal. The hard-site proposal would only stall negotiations further, possibly irreparably, and would prevent the conclusion of an ABM Treaty in Moscow.67 Yet Laird still insisted that he would not accept an equal ABM agreement until Nixon at least suggested hard site to the Soviets.68 Nixon’s continued differences with Laird over ABM were matched by his increasing differences with Smith over SLBM. Smith believed in principle that freezing SLBM would be useful, but in practice he insisted that leaving SLBM unfrozen was the easiest way to reach an agreement with the Soviets.69 Nixon actually agreed that freezing SLBM was less important strategically.70 But Smith remained maddeningly oblivious to the political imperative of freezing SLBM, which Nixon saw as necessary to win Laird’s support on ABM.71 Smith’s repeated recommendations to drop SLBM rankled Nixon, who still worried that Smith would hand away too much in negotiations and turn Laird against SALT.72 Smith sensed Nixon’s hesitation. On March 21, 1972, he actually suggested that Nixon make another back-channel appeal to Brezhnev on SLBM, to head off criticism from hawks like Laird.73 Unbeknownst to Smith, Nixon had already issued another SALT back-channel proposal. The Soviets had paid close attention to Laird’s

Y8013-Maurer.indb 152

2/25/22 2:59 PM

final co mpr o mise s

15 3

“Realistic Deterrence” message, and Dobrynin questioned Kissinger on February 15, 1972, about how Nixon could insist on freezing SLBM while also pursuing advanced submarine-launched missiles. Kissinger had replied that Nixon might accept an equal ABM Treaty if Brezhnev agreed to include SLBM in the freeze.74 On March 9, 1972, Kissinger offered Dobrynin more details on the freeze, including Smith’s one-way freedomto-mix concept.75 The full proposal came March 17, 1972, when Kissinger indicated that Nixon would accept an ABM Treaty limiting each side to two bases if Brezhnev agreed to freeze SLBM construction. Dobrynin’s account of the meeting indicated that Kissinger also offered to move the freeze date back from July 27, 1971 to July 31, 1972, which Kissinger suggested would allow the Soviets to build approximately forty-eight Y-class submarines, slightly more than the forty-one American missile boats. By trading in their older ICBMs, Kissinger estimated that the Soviets would be able to build up to fifty-five Y-class boats.76 True to form, the Soviets were slow in responding. By the time Smith departed for Helsinki, Brezhnev had made no response.77 As he had before, Nixon concealed this second back-channel SALT initiative from most of his advisers.78 On March 23, 1972, still awaiting a response from Brezhnev, Nixon issued new instructions to Smith for SALT VII in Helsinki. Smith’s new instructions allowed him to make a vague offer of equal ABM levels if SLBM were frozen, but only after three further weeks of standing firm on the current American proposals.79 Even these instructions carried a serious risk of alienating Laird, since they contained no mention of Laird’s hard-site ABM option. Laird was furious, but his Defense Department advisers recommended that he not rock the boat, since Nixon had stood firm on SLBM.80 Despite Laird’s temporary restraint, Nixon was skating on thin ice: Laird and his allies were prepared to abandon SALT and torpedo negotiations to avoid a bad agreement that would weaken the United States. Instead of addressing the key issues head-on, Smith focused on technical disputes in Helsinki, of which there were still many. Perhaps the most important was the limitation of Soviet heavy missiles, one of Nixon’s key SALT objectives. Semenov had already agreed in principle that the superpowers would not replace smaller missiles with substantially larger ones like the SS-9, but had not provided any definition of “smaller” or “larger” missiles, raising concerns that the Soviets would

Y8013-Maurer.indb 153

2/25/22 2:59 PM

15 4

final co mpr o mise s

simply reclassify the SS-9 as a “light” missile and replace all of their smaller weapons anyway. Nixon’s advisers believed that verifying limits on missile size would require numerous collateral constraints, including a ban on new missile silos, a ban on substantially expanding existing missile silos, and a ban on mobile ICBMs.81 Semenov insisted that none of these constraints were necessary, furthering American suspicions. Limiting radars also remained contentious. Semenov had agreed in principle to the MARC concept, but still insisted on receiving more MARCs than Smith had offered. Smith also pushed for limits on OLPARs, to which Semenov had not agreed. Finally, Smith also insisted that the ABM Treaty contain a withdrawal provision, as Nixon and Laird had demanded.82 Even without the main disputes over ABM bases and SLBM, it was a tall order. Unfortunately, the negotiations in Helsinki seemed to confirm Laird’s fears that the Soviets would pocket an equal ABM agreement without agreeing to freeze SLBM. Smith soon reported that while Semenov was intensely interested in an equal-ABM agreement, he still refused to consider SLBM.83 Semenov’s intransigence only furthered Smith’s conviction that the Soviets would not freeze SLBM, and that Nixon should fall back to freezing only ICBM.84 Nixon would not concede SLBM, but he did allow Smith to present a detailed equal-ABM proposal in the hope of enticing the Soviets to freeze SLBM. Smith’s new ABM proposal was two-for-two but retained some of the asymmetries of previous proposals: while the Soviets would receive one NCA-defense base and one ICBMdefense base, the United States would receive two ICBM-defense bases.85 With Nixon’s permission, Smith also questioned Semenov about a symmetrical agreement in which each side would receive one NCAdefense site and one ICBM-defense site.86 Surprisingly, Laird quickly supported the two-for-two symmetrical proposal, having concluded that hard-site was dead and that an NCA-defense base would be preferable to a second Safeguard base in Wyoming.87 Laird’s flipflopping frustrated Nixon to no end, but the secretary’s alignment with Smith created an opening for a new ABM compromise.88 For the time being, the two-for-two ABM compromise remained hypothetical, contingent on Soviet acceptance of freezing SLBM. Yet even this hypothetical compromise unlocked a flurry of concessions from

Y8013-Maurer.indb 154

2/25/22 2:59 PM

final co mpr o mise s

155

Semenov. In early April, the Soviets finally recognized Smith’s demand for some control over OLPARs to prevent cheating. Semenov agreed that each side would limit the power of phased array radars deployed outside of agreed-upon MARCs. Since missile defense required high-power radars, limits on OLPAR power would prevent the covert deployment of an ABM network. The exact allowed level of power remained contentious, but the agreement in principle was still a major gain.89 Semenov also agreed to a proposal that would meet Soviet demands for “equal security” while allowing for an equal number of bases. By increasing the diameter of an “ICBM-defense base” from 70 to 150 kilometers, the Soviets would need only a single “ICBM-defense base” to defend two adjacent ICBM fields.90 Yet these two steps forward on radar controls also saw one step back. Although Semenov had accepted the idea of MARCs, Laird had remained skeptical of them since they would not fit with his preferred hard-site defense system. Nitze’s unauthorized hard-site proposal during SALT VI had confused the issue by suggesting that ICBM-defense bases should be allowed many smaller radars instead of a few MARCs. When Laird finally embraced a two-for-two ABM agreement, the American position shifted back to insisting that all missile defense radars remain within MARCs. While Semenov agreed that MARCs would work for an NCA-defense base, by mid-April the Soviets were arguing that their future ICBMdefense base required more distributed radars to cover dispersed missile silos. To make matters more confusing, Semenov attributed this position to the United States!91 Smith was stuck arguing against the radar control scheme that Nitze had originally proposed, even if only informally. Progress on the ABM Treaty would have been good news, except that it was once again outpacing progress on the interim freeze. Every “hypothetical” development of the treaty’s terms made it more likely that the Soviets would pocket the offer for equal ABM without freezing SLBM.92 Indeed, the closer the treaty came, the harder Smith pushed to drop SLBM from the freeze and conclude the agreements already in hand.93 Yet Nixon still expected Laird to revolt if the final agreements placed no limits on submarines.94 Agreement with the Soviets was closer than ever before, but agreement between Laird and Smith remained frustratingly out of reach.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 155

2/25/22 2:59 PM

156

final co mpr o mise s

k i s s ing e r ’s g a mb i t By the spring of 1972, Nixon’s foreign policy reached the breaking point. Nixon’s visit to Beijing stood in sharp contrast to the mire of SovietAmerican relations. Laird and Smith remained at each other’s throats; the White House was under increasing fire from both hawks and doves in Congress; and Nixon would soon face the American electorate to bid for a second term as president. Since entering office, Nixon had been convinced that the road to success lay through Moscow. A successful summit would cement Nixon’s legacy as a strategist and world leader. A failed summit would ensure Nixon’s electoral defeat and historical ignominy. The greatest challenge as the summit approached was the ongoing war in Southeast Asia, where Nixon’s efforts to win “peace with honor” were failing. Despite several years of “Vietnamization,” ARVN’s battlefield effectiveness remained limited. The failed Laotian incursion of 1971 not only undermined morale but also allowed the North Vietnamese to prepare a major offensive for early 1972.95 An invasion would strain both ARVN and the American commitment to South Vietnam, but Nixon worried especially that it would torpedo his summit with Brezhnev, just as the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia had ended Johnson’s summit hopes in 1968. In fact, North Vietnamese leaders hoped that their offensive would do just this.96 As the summit approached, Nixon watched the buildup of communist forces around South Vietnam with apprehension.97 Given the centrality of Vietnam to both American foreign policy and his reelection chances, Nixon was determined that the Moscow summit resolve the conflict. Like most of his advisers, Nixon remained convinced that Moscow had significant influence over Hanoi, and was increasingly frustrated by Brezhnev’s apparent unwillingness to halt the North Vietnamese invasion. In truth, Brezhnev had little influence over Hanoi, which was actively trying to block Brezhnev’s détente policy.98 Yet Nixon was desperate to avoid the Vietnam trap that had doomed Johnson’s presidency. Throughout April 1972, as North Vietnamese artillery began to bombard the South, Nixon pestered Brezhnev via the back channel, threatening to cancel the summit if the Soviets did not induce some restraint in Hanoi.99 Hoping to keep the summit on track, Brezhnev agreed to meet with Kissinger secretly in Moscow in mid-April 1972. Kissinger suggested

Y8013-Maurer.indb 156

2/25/22 2:59 PM

final co mpr o mise s

15 7

treating the meeting as a “dress rehearsal” to ensure that Nixon and Brezhnev could conclude as many agreements as possible, including SALT.100 But Nixon saw Kissinger’s trip as a last-ditch effort to salvage Vietnam, without which Nixon saw little hope of a summit. In his final instructions, Nixon emphasized that “our goal in talking to [Brezhnev] is solely to get action on Vietnam.” Kissinger was to avoid discussing other issues with Brezhnev until he had received an iron-clad guarantee from the Soviets to denounce Hanoi or otherwise halt the Vietnamese communist offensive.101 As Kissinger’s trip approached, he and Nixon also suffered from a rare disagreement on SALT. Kissinger intended to make an in-person appeal to Brezhnev to freeze SLBM in exchange for equality in ABM deployments. Nixon was skeptical that Brezhnev would agree, since the Soviet leader had seemingly ignored Kissinger’s previous back-channel ABM-for-SLBM proposal. Instead, the president instructed Kissinger to fall back on freezing SLBM if that were the price of concluding SALT at the summit. Kissinger remained concerned that Laird would oppose such an agreement, but Nixon insisted that the political challenges of SALT without SLBM were preferable to no SALT at all.102 With his attention on Vietnam, Nixon was increasingly uninterested in SALT bargaining. As long as SALT froze Soviet ICBMs, it was good enough. Kissinger arrived in Moscow on April 21, 1972, for his meeting with Brezhnev. Like previous back-channel missions, Kissinger’s activities were cloaked in extreme secrecy, even from Nixon’s other key advisers. To conceal Kissinger’s absence, Nixon retreated with his staff to Camp David for a week-long strategy session, away from the prying eyes of the public (and Laird and Smith). In Moscow, Kissinger bypassed the American Embassy entirely, instead communicating with Camp David via his airplane’s radio.103 In their first meeting, Kissinger conveyed to Brezhnev Nixon’s growing concern on Vietnam. As he had before, Brezhnev insisted that he had little influence over Hanoi; that the Soviet Union was not supporting the communist offensive materially; and that the Chinese were Hanoi’s real backers.104 Nixon was furious. If Brezhnev would not restrain Hanoi, Nixon ordered Kissinger to cancel the remainder of his trip and return to the United States.105 Rather than risk the summit, Kissinger ignored Nixon’s orders to focus on Vietnam and moved on to other summit-related business

Y8013-Maurer.indb 157

2/25/22 2:59 PM

15 8

final co mpr o mise s

with Brezhnev. When discussion turned to SALT, Kissinger no doubt expected hard bargaining, given the Soviets’ previous refusal to freeze SLBM. Brezhnev surprised Kissinger by offering a new proposal. First, Brezhnev agreed in principle to a two-for-two symmetrical ABM agreement. Second, Brezhnev agreed to freeze SLBM. Under Brezhnev’s SLBM proposal, the United States would keep its 41 SSBNs and 656 SLBMs during the freeze. In exchange, the Soviets would be allowed to build up to 62 SSBNs and 950 SLBMs, after dismantling some of their older ICBMs. Brezhnev’s proposal was similar to the one that Kissinger had given Dobrynin, though with a few additional Soviet boats.106 Kissinger agreed to pass Brezhnev’s proposal to Nixon. Once Nixon approved the deal, Smith would introduce a formal proposal in Helsinki, which Semenov would accept.107 With that, Kissinger and Brezhnev broke the final deadlock and paved the way for SALT at the summit. As with the May 20 Agreement, however, Kissinger’s back-channel achievement faced serious difficulties in implementation, beginning with Nixon himself. Kissinger emerged from his meeting with Brezhnev convinced that he had saved the summit from total collapse.108 But Nixon was furious that Kissinger had ignored his orders to focus on Vietnam.109 Sequestered at Camp David, Nixon was increasingly concerned by how Kissinger’s mission to Moscow would be received by the rest of the government.110 The president also appeared confused by reports arriving simultaneously from Kissinger in Moscow and Smith in Helsinki, worried that Smith was stealing credit for the final SALT breakthrough.111 Nixon feared Kissinger himself was imperiling the summit by grandstanding with Brezhnev instead of hewing to his instruction.112 Nixon and Kissinger shared a tense meeting on April 24, 1972, at Camp David. Kissinger explained that even if Brezhnev would not influence Hanoi directly, holding the summit at all would isolate Hanoi politically. Nixon, famously uncomfortable with confrontation, backed off of his previous criticism and offered Kissinger some awkward congratulations. By the end of the meeting, Nixon seemed appeased and ready to move forward with announcing the new SALT back-channel breakthrough.113 The revelation of Brezhnev’s SLBM proposal provoked strong reactions from Laird and Smith. Even though the Soviets would be given 62  missile boats to the United States’ 41, Laird supported the new proposal out of relief that SLBM would be frozen at all. Kissinger ar-

Y8013-Maurer.indb 158

2/25/22 2:59 PM

final co mpr o mise s

159

gued with some justification that, since the Soviets would dismantle 200  older ICBMs to build their new submarines, the effective number of Soviet SSBNs would really be around 50, which was acceptable given major American advantages in submarine operations and time-on-station. By incentivizing the Soviets to dismantle their older ICBMs rather than modernize them, the agreement also reduced the threat of Soviet land-based missiles to the Minuteman.114 The numerical difference was large, but given superior American technology, skill, and geography, the freeze could still promote long-term American advantages, especially if it bought time for next-generation weapons like Trident.115 Ironically, Smith was more critical of Brezhnev’s terms than Laird. Although he had initially favored one-way freedom to mix, Smith was surprised by the number of boats the Soviets were allowed to build.116 He tried to redraft Brezhnev’s terms into a “Nixon proposal” on SLBM, which replaced the specific unequal numerical limits with a more generic freeze date and allowed both sides to replace ICBMs with SLBMs. In theory, Smith’s proposal would have allowed the Soviets to deploy the same number of SLBMs, but would have concealed the numerical disparity in opaque language.117 But Nixon and Kissinger were incensed by Smith’s interference, which they worried would destabilize the summit.118 Nixon was especially angry, since Smith had favored an SLBM deal only to turn against it when Nixon achieved it.119 For Smith, the devil was in the details, but trust within the administration was at an all-time low. Nor was Nixon happy with Kissinger’s work on Vietnam. As the communist offensive intensified, Nixon considered expanding American aerial bombardment to strike the Hanoi area, including mining Haiphong Harbor, which linked North Vietnam to the outside world.120 On May 1, 1972, Brezhnev wrote to Nixon threatening to cancel the summit if the United States intensified its bombing campaign.121 Nixon’s staff drafted a “Contingency Statement” criticizing Brezhnev for imperiling détente and supporting North Vietnamese aggression.122 As Smith and Semenov returned to Helsinki to establish the final terms of SALT for the Moscow summit, Nixon remained uncertain whether the summit would happen at all.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 159

2/25/22 2:59 PM

c h a pte r e ight

Moscow and Back

t h e s p r in g of 1 9 72 w a s c on sum e d by a mad dash for SALT. With the Moscow summit looming, Nixon and his advisers scrambled to conclude final details. Kissinger’s last-minute back channel had established the broad parameters of the agreements: a treaty limiting missile defenses to low and equal levels, coupled with an interim “freeze” of both land- and submarine-based offensive missiles. Yet with only weeks before Nixon and Brezhnev would meet in Moscow, Smith and Semenov faced significant differences over numerous technical issues: how many submarines would the Soviets build during the freeze? Could they “replace” older, smaller missiles with newer, larger ones? How would ABMcapable radars be limited? Item by item, the SALT negotiators worked their way toward the final agreements. By the time Nixon left for Moscow, only a few details remained unfinished. Nonetheless, the Moscow summit remained plagued by procedural difficulties. While Nixon and Kissinger negotiated with the Soviet leaders in Moscow, Smith remained in Helsinki, where parallel negotiations on technical details continued. The result was total confusion, as Nixon and Brezhnev struggled with the technical points of arms control, while their experts sat waiting for instruction hundreds of miles away. Laird and his competitive allies remained in Washington, increasingly agitated by confusion emanating from the summit. Only a last-minute Soviet 16 0

Y8013-Maurer.indb 160

2/25/22 2:59 PM

mo s cow a nd b ack

161

concession on submarine limitation salvaged a diplomatic disaster. The confusion left lasting impressions, solidifying the ill-will that Nixon’s secretive negotiations had engendered among his advisers. For years, Nixon had struggled to bridge the divide between Laird and Smith. Returning from Moscow, however, the president turned this division into a political asset. Nixon was able to deploy both cooperators like Smith and competitors like Laird in support of his signature arms control achievement, sending each to win the support of their own faction in Congress. This targeted lobbying was a major success: Nixon’s arms control achievement passed congressional scrutiny with little difficulty, along with more funds for modernizing the American nuclear arsenal. For cooperators, the agreements stabilized the arms race by preventing further missile deployments; for competitors, they broke the momentum of Soviet deployments and reoriented competition toward technological quality, where American advantages would predominate. For different reasons, then, many American leaders supported Nixon’s arms control achievement. It was a satisfying capstone to a frustrating process. s a lt v i i c on t inu e s While fighting raged in Vietnam, Smith and Semenov worked feverishly on workable SALT agreements for the Moscow summit. On May 1, 1972, Nixon ordered Smith to proceed with negotiations according to the terms upon which Brezhnev and Kissinger had agreed: a two-for-two symmetrical ABM agreement with MARC and OLPAR restrictions, and an interim freeze containing both ICBMs and SLBMs.1 For perhaps the first time, agreement seemed within reach. With the end of the road in sight, Nixon’s advisers were already wrangling over the future of SALT. Brezhnev’s freeze terms would allow the Soviets a larger number of long-range missiles. Since the Soviets were building missiles and the United States was not, a temporary unequal agreement halting Soviet momentum made some competitive sense.2 Over the longer term, however, Laird would not accept Soviet numerical superiority—in future negotiations, the most important objective was establishing numerical equality in offensive forces. To this end, Laird insisted that the ABM Treaty contain a withdrawal clause that would activate if a permanent and equal offensive agreement was not concluded

Y8013-Maurer.indb 161

2/25/22 2:59 PM

162

m o s co w a nd b ac k

within five years. If the Soviets wouldn’t agree, then Laird wanted Nixon to make a unilateral statement that the United States would withdraw if the Soviets were not forthcoming in the future.3 Smith worried that Laird’s demand for a unilateral statement on withdrawal would be a disaster. After all, the Soviets could respond with politically loaded, unilateral interpretations of their own, perhaps by claiming that their numerical advantage had been given to them as “compensation” for British and French nuclear forces or by reopening the tangled debate over American forward-based systems.4 Once again, Nixon waded into negotiations directly to avoid a dispute between his advisers. Another secret back channel was unnecessary: Nixon would discuss the ABM withdrawal clause in Moscow with Brezhnev himself.5 Reducing Smith’s workload was for the best, because negotiations in Helsinki quickly devolved into confusion over how to implement Brezhnev’s SLBM proposal. Semenov insisted that the Soviets would begin the freeze with 48 Y-class boats. They would then dismantle some of their older ICBMs to reach the limit of 950 ICBMs on 62 Y-class boats. But Semenov also claimed that the Soviets could replace their obsolete G- and H-class missile boats with even more Y-class boats above the 62/950 limit.6 Smith argued that Nixon had never committed to the 48-boat figure and that the Soviets should begin the freeze with the  41  Y-class boats that the CIA estimated the Soviets would have in service or under construction by June 1972. The hundred SLBMs contained on G- and H-class boats would be grandfathered into the freeze, giving the Soviets a starting total of 740 SLBMs. The Soviets would retire all of their 209 older SS-7 and SS-8 ICBMs and their older boats to reach the final total of 950 SLBMs on 62 Y-class boats.7 Semenov accused Smith of reneging on Kissinger’s previous commitments, but to Smith it looked like the Soviets were packing even more submarines into the freeze by building a brand-new Y-class boat for every decrepit G-class rusting at a pier.8 Smith recommended falling back to an ICBM-only freeze, perhaps with a tacit agreement on limiting SLBM.9 Nixon insisted on freezing SLBM, so Smith, Semenov, and the other delegates returned to the drawing board. One possible solution was to avoid referencing the number of submarines. Instead of 48 Y-class boats, the Soviets would start with all submarines “currently operational and under construction.” Since the United States estimated that the Soviets

Y8013-Maurer.indb 162

2/25/22 2:59 PM

mo s cow a nd b ack

163

would have 41 Y-class boats at the start of the freeze, this “compromise” was simply a less explicit restatement of the previous American position.10 The issue became even more confused when Semenov insisted that the 48-boat figure was the number of Soviet Y-class submarines operational and under construction, raising further questions about how the Soviets understood “under construction.” Submarines were usually constructed in segments on factory floors before final assembly at a shipyard, but because reconnaissance satellites could not track construction inside closed factories, American intelligence usually began counting a new submarine as “under construction” only when its components began assembly at the shipyard. Perhaps the Soviets were also counting parts of submarines within factories to reach their 48-boat figure?11 Absent a clear definition of “under construction,” Smith’s initial compromise could not succeed. Once again, Smith recommended accepting an ICBM-only freeze.12 Freezing SLBM was by far the most complicated SALT issue confronting Nixon in Moscow. Although SLBM remained troubling, the weeks before the summit were especially productive, especially in the realm of radar controls. Here confusion had reigned, since the Soviets now favored Nitze’s unauthorized proposal for many small distributed radars over the official American proposal to limit radars to a few MARCs.13 Nixon had previously insisted that the Soviets limit radars to MARCs, but with SLBM now frozen he was more amenable to compromise. Smith and Semenov ultimately agreed that each superpower’s NCA-defense base would have only a few MARCs, while each ICBM-defense base would have two high-powered radars and eighteen lower-powered radars, measured by the ratio of their total power output to their aperture size (the “power-aperture ratio”).14 The power-aperture ratio metric also proved useful in resolving the OLPAR issue. In late April 1972, Semenov tentatively agreed to limit OLPARs to three million watts per meter squared, a relatively low figure, then quickly withdrew his proposal. After tremendous cajoling from the Americans, by mid-May Semenov instead proposed OLPARs be limited to ten million watts per meter squared, much higher than the Americans would accept.15 Laird was especially incensed by Semenov’s waffling and advised Nixon to take the issue to Brezhnev at the summit, if necessary.16 Nixon was not inclined to risk SALT over such an obscure technical issue, and ordered Smith to prepare the three million figure as a unilateral

Y8013-Maurer.indb 163

2/25/22 2:59 PM

164

m o s co w a nd b ac k

statement.17 Fortunately, at the last minute Semenov once again agreed to limit OLPARs to the three million figure.18 SALT’s most technical dispute was finally resolved with only days to spare. Aside from radar controls, the weeks leading up to the Moscow summit saw breakthroughs on a number of other issues. For example, Smith insisted that both superpowers should be able to replace their older ICBMs with newer SLBMs, not just the Soviets.19 Semenov resisted changing any part of Brezhnev’s initial SLBM proposal, but he ultimately agreed that the United States could have the formal right to replace its 54  older Titan II ICBMs with newer SLBMs, if Nixon would promise Brezhnev privately not to exercise that right.20 Another technical issue concerned the procedures for dismantling older missiles and constructing new submarines. Brezhnev’s SBLM proposal was unclear on whether older ICBMs would have to be dismantled before or after newer submarines entered construction or service.21 Eventually, Semenov revealed that Brezhnev preferred to dismantle older ICBMs when a new submarine entered service. Smith replied that the Soviets should begin decommissioning older weapons when the submarine was launched, but before it was tested and armed.22 Importantly, Smith’s formulation would not prevent the United States from beginning construction of new Trident submarines during the final year of the freeze, so long as they were not launched.23 Semenov ultimately agreed that dismantling would occur “at the beginning of the sea trials of the replacement submarine.”24 The exact meaning of this compromise would come under greater scrutiny after the summit, but for the time being it removed another important technical issue from Nixon’s Moscow agenda. p r e pa r ing f or mo s c o w Smith and Semenov’s last-minute bargaining left Nixon and Brezhnev only a few SALT topics for the summit. Given the ongoing violence in Vietnam, however, Nixon continued to worry that he might not visit Moscow at all. Even as violence intensified, Brezhnev urged Hanoi to resume talks with the United States and find a negotiated solution. On May 2, 1972, North Vietnamese representatives resumed their secret discussions with Kissinger in Paris. Despite Brezhnev’s urging, however, the North Vietnamese offered no serious concessions, instead pursuing vic-

Y8013-Maurer.indb 164

2/25/22 2:59 PM

mo s cow a nd b ack

165

tory on the battlefield. With talks going nowhere, Nixon not only recalled Kissinger but also suspended the public Paris peace process.25 Nixon’s next step was further escalation of American aerial attacks on North Vietnam. Intensifying bombardment would both hamper the communist offensive in the South and put further pressure on the North Vietnamese leadership to negotiate in Paris.26 Brezhnev warned publicly that he would cancel the summit if Nixon escalated further, but the Soviet leader had already committed significant political capital to the meeting: Kissinger’s advisers predicted that Brezhnev was bluffing.27 Nixon wasn’t so sure. For several days, he vacillated over whether to escalate the aerial campaign and, if so, whether to cancel the summit preemptively, to prevent Brezhnev from canceling it first.28 Nixon ultimately decided that showing strength in Vietnam was worth risking the summit. On May 8, 1972, the president resumed direct attacks on Hanoi, which American forces had avoided since April. Additionally, Nixon announced that the United States would mine North Vietnamese ports, warning all ships to avoid North Vietnamese waters.29 Bombing Hanoi was one thing, but mining North Vietnam was very risky, since several Soviet-flagged cargo ships were trapped in Haiphong Harbor, exposed to the American bombardment of the port facilities a short distance away.30 As the summit date approached, all of Washington waited with great apprehension to see the Soviet response.31 Fortunately for Nixon, Brezhnev valued the summit more than solidarity with the North Vietnamese. Dobrynin quickly conveyed Brezhnev’s opposition but did not threaten to cancel the summit.32 Nor was there any break in SALT in Helsinki. In fact, Smith and his colleagues were toasted by their Soviet counterparts at a reception at the Soviet Embassy the day after Nixon’s announcement. Vietnam was not mentioned.33 With the Soviet economy faltering and the American inroads in China, Brezhnev needed the summit as much as Nixon did, if not more.34 Nixon’s decision paid off handsomely: Brezhnev’s refusal to cancel the summit enhanced the impact of the American bombardment, highlighting Hanoi’s increasing isolation.35 With Vietnam sidelined, Nixon could focus on the upcoming summit. Unfortunately, Nixon’s efforts to conclude SALT were hindered by continued parallel negotiations. Since Smith and Semenov were already holding technical negotiations in Helsinki, Nixon decided to leave them

Y8013-Maurer.indb 165

2/25/22 2:59 PM

166

m o s co w a nd b ac k

in place while he and Brezhnev met in Moscow. The two leaders would reach high-level political consensus, and then their delegates in Helsinki would finalize the agreement, which they would then bring to Moscow for Nixon and Brezhnev to conclude. Keeping Smith in Helsinki also reflected Nixon’s continued fears that, if given the opportunity, Smith would once again provoke conservatives by giving too much away too quickly.36 But leaving Smith in Helsinki further complicated the American policy process, since Nixon could only communicate with Smith securely by relaying messages via Washington, a cumbersome procedure. The result was much needless frustration and acrimony.37 Fortunately, by the time Nixon departed for Moscow on May 20, 1972, only a few SALT issues remained. Three of the issues were very minor. First, the United States insisted that land-mobile ICBMs should be banned, while the Soviets preferred that they be allowed.38 Second, the United States wanted the ABM Treaty to specify that the two bases—one for NCA defense, one for ICBM defense—could not be within 1,500 kilometers of each other, while the Soviets refused to comment.39 These two issues were easy to resolve and took up very little time in Moscow. The third “minor” issue ended up being more complicated. The United States still wanted to define “light” and “heavy” ICBMs, as well as collateral constraints on increasing the size of missile silos.40 Smith had previously proposed that any missile larger than 70 cubic meters in volume, roughly the size of the smaller Soviet SS-11 missile, would be counted as a “heavy” ICBM. With the summit approaching, Smith then suggested that light ICBMs could be up to 10 percent greater in volume than the SS-11, leaving some room for future improvement.41 A final compromise dropped any numeric definition and instead prohibited missiles whose volume was “significantly greater” than existing weapons.42 Yet Semenov insisted that only common sense was necessary to determine whether a missile was “light” or “heavy.”43 The most he would concede was limiting significant increases to silo size.44 Smith believed the best course was to issue a unilateral statement on missile size and modification.45 Kissinger ordered Smith to draft the statement but hold it until Nixon had met with Brezhnev.46 Minor technical issues aside, Nixon and Kissinger faced one major SALT topic in Moscow: the level of SLBM in the freeze. Both sides had agreed in principle that the Soviets would be allowed to build up to 62

Y8013-Maurer.indb 166

2/25/22 2:59 PM

mo s cow a nd b ack

167

missile submarines and 950 SLBMs during the freeze, so long as they replaced older missiles to reach this total. But the Soviets still insisted on beginning the freeze with 48 Y-class boats, which Nixon could not accept. Furthermore, the Soviets seemed unsure of the details of their own proposal, sometimes arguing that they could build above the 62/950 figure by replacing their obsolete H- and G-class boats. Nixon departed for Moscow with a concession in his back pocket: he would exclude the G-class boats from the freeze if Brezhnev promised not to improve them with newer missiles. Excluding the G-class boats would theoretically give the Soviets another dozen submarines above the 62 total, but as long as the decrepit vessels were not modernized it would not affect the strategic balance one way or the other.47 Another bargain seemed at hand, but SLBM would be the most confusing and dramatic SALT issue in Moscow. Preparing for negotiations with Brezhnev was only half the battle. Even as Nixon departed for Moscow, his administration was already preparing for the political battle that he would face upon his return. Nixon had spent years managing governmental and public opinion on SALT through intense secrecy. The discussions in Moscow would enjoy similar secrecy, but the moment of truth was quickly approaching. Soon, Nixon would need to present SALT to Congress and the American people, and hope it could stand the scrutiny of both hawks and doves. With Nixon and Kissinger in Moscow, Haig would coordinate preparations for the public SALT debate. Haig managed Nixon’s communications, keeping important competitive constituents like Laird and Moorer appraised of what was happening, while also lobbying hawkish senators like Goldwater, Tower, and Jackson to support the president’s initiatives. Nixon ordered Haig to emphasize how SALT would advantage the United States in the arms race, especially if Congress accelerated high-tech weapons like Trident and the next-generation nuclear bomber, B-1.48 In addition to Congress, Haig sought conservative intellectuals like Edward Teller, Albert Wohlstetter, Herman Kahn, Donald Brennan, William Kintner, and Richard Foster to join his lobbying effort. Haig’s thesis was simple: SALT would allow the United States to compete more effectively by capping the number of weapons while allowing new, advanced weapons like Trident and B-1. Not everyone agreed: Brennan in particular took material he received from Haig’s early briefing and used it to savage SALT in the press.49 Overall, though, Haig was successful, as many

Y8013-Maurer.indb 167

2/25/22 2:59 PM

16 8

m o s co w a nd b ac k

prominent senators—Goldwater, Stennis, and Tower—agreed to support SALT even before they had seen the final agreements.50 Despite Haig’s best efforts, Senator Jackson remained an outlier. Nixon’s one-time ally in promoting missile defenses, Jackson had turned against SALT after Nixon had agreed to an ABM Treaty that traded away Safeguard. Having worked with Laird during the Safeguard hearings, Jackson knew better than most the importance of having “expert advice” on your side when it came to nuclear strategy. To develop his own experts, Jackson hired Wohlstetter student Richard Perle as a staffer on nuclear and arms control issues.51 Haig sought to persuade the two of SALT’s competitive wisdom, but Jackson and Perle were not convinced that granting the Soviets superiority in number of weapons would ultimately advantage the United States. At the very least, Jackson would want to attach reservations to any arms control agreement that favored the Soviets.52 Despite some positive signs, therefore, hawkish support for SALT remained contingent on what happened in Moscow. Nixon and Kissinger would conduct negotiations with an eye toward their hawkish critics at home. t he mo s c o w s umm i t Nixon and Kissinger arrived in Moscow on May 22, 1972.53 In the first plenary meeting, Nixon and Brezhnev discussed SALT briefly, agreeing that most of the arms control discussions would be delegated to Kissinger and Gromyko.54 The mobile ICBM issue was resolved most quickly. Nixon suggested banning land-mobile missiles to Brezhnev during their morning meeting the next day, but when Brezhnev demurred, the two referred the issue back to Helsinki, in favor of focusing on more important issues.55 Nixon’s decision to move on ended any chance of freezing land-mobile ICBMs. Semenov still rejected banning land-mobile missiles, and in the end Smith produced a unilateral statement that the United States hoped the Soviets would not deploy land-mobile weapons during the freeze.56 The distance between ABM bases also posed little difficulty. On the morning of May 23, 1972, Brezhnev accepted Nixon’s proposal that the two bases be separated by at least 1,500 kilometers.57 That afternoon, Brezhnev reversed his position, claiming that he preferred 1,200 kilometers. Kissinger believed that Brezhnev would still accept the 1,500 figure.58 As negotiations ground on over SLBM, however, Kissinger became

Y8013-Maurer.indb 168

2/25/22 2:59 PM

mo s cow a nd b ack

169

less certain. On May 25, 1972, in the midst of their SLBM discussions, Gromyko presented Kissinger with a compromise figure of 1,300 kilometers.59 To win Soviet acceptance of his SLBM compromise, Kissinger agreed to the 1,300 figure and passed it to Smith in Helsinki.60 This final point concluded the ABM Treaty. Other aspects of SALT in Moscow were much more difficult. Especially confusing was the issue of size limits on ICBMs, whose resolution played out in a comedy of errors. Once again, Brezhnev displayed a tendency to make several different proposals in rapid succession. On May 23, 1972, Brezhnev said he would accept “no increase” in silo size, as opposed to the “no significant increase” currently tabled by Semenov in Helsinki.61 Knowing how important size restrictions were to Laird, Nixon further suggested that a “significant” increase in missile size be defined as 10–15 percent greater than the currently deployed missile. Brezhnev claimed he would need to confer with his colleagues before responding.62 It was here that the cumbersome communications between Moscow, Washington, and Helsinki began to interfere with negotiations. Kissinger’s initial report claimed that Brezhnev had agreed to no increase in missile size, rather than silo size.63 Laird and Moorer would never have accepted this proposal, since it would have prohibited the newest version of Minuteman, which was larger than previous variants. More problematic, however, was that Nixon’s own proposal of a 10–15 percent limit would also have prevented Minuteman modernization, since the newer missiles were by some measures 25 percent larger than the weapons they were replacing. Nixon ought to have proposed limiting each side to a missile 10–15 percent greater than the largest missile in either country’s inventory—namely, the Soviet SS-11, which was larger than any Minuteman variant. Smith quickly realized this error, and made several panicked attempts to contact Kissinger and tell him to withdraw the proposal.64 Ironically, Smith was trying to prevent Nixon from accepting a virtual MIRV ban, since Minuteman III’s larger volume was necessary to fit multiple warheads.65 Smith’s efforts were ultimately for naught, since Brezhnev quickly returned to his previous insistence that no definition of missile size was necessary.66 Like Nixon, Brezhnev had likely been confused and offered a proposal beyond what his advisers recommended. After the initial confusion, Kissinger concluded that Brezhnev would not define missile size, and ordered Smith to draft a unilateral statement

Y8013-Maurer.indb 169

2/25/22 2:59 PM

17 0

m o s co w a nd b ac k

of the American definition. Kissinger remained hopeful, however, that the Soviets might agree to freeze silo size, as Brezhnev had initially proposed.67 Meeting with Gromyko, however, Kissinger found that the Soviets did still prefer the vaguer “no significant increase” language already under discussion in Helsinki. Frustrated at the bait-and-switch, Kissinger suggested defining a “significant” increase in silo size as 10–15 percent, reusing the number from the American proposal on missile size.68 Gromyko was originally skeptical, but on the morning of May 26, 1972, he suddenly announced that he could accept the 10–15 percent figure on silo size.69 As a result, the Interim Agreement contained an agreed definition on silo size and a unilateral American declaration on missile size. ICBM definitions were confusing enough, but by far the most difficult negotiation in Moscow concerned SLBM. In the opening plenary, Brezhnev would not negotiate on the issue, insisting that he had been promised 48 boats at the beginning of the freeze, and that that was what he would get. When Nixon suggested that the Soviet H- and G-class boats should be included within the 48-boat starting figure, Brezhnev argued that the older boats had no military utility and therefore did not need to be included in SALT. In fact, Brezhnev spent much of his first meeting with Nixon complaining about the much greater threat posed by Trident, though by the end of the meeting Brezhnev seemed reassured that Trident would not be ready for deployment during the freeze.70 Brezhnev’s initial insistence on SLBM was not surprising, but as the days passed in Moscow Kissinger found the Soviets quite unwilling to move from their initial position. On May 25, 1972, Kissinger sat down with Gromyko and Dobrynin to begin serious negotiations on SLBM. The Soviets were joined by a new partner unfamiliar to Kissinger: Leonid Smirnov, the chairman of the Soviet Military-Industrial Commission (Voyenno-Promyshlennaya Kommisiya, or VPK). As VPK chairman, Smirnov coordinated all military manufacturing and research and was a member of the Politburo commission responsible for arms control— the Soviet equivalent of Kissinger’s Verification Panel.71 Kissinger found Smirnov a more challenging negotiating partner than either Gromyko or Dobrynin—the VPK chairman was determined that Kissinger should make the final concessions.72 Kissinger’s proposal that the 6 H-class boats be included in the 48-boat number, allowing 42 Y-class boats at the

Y8013-Maurer.indb 170

2/25/22 2:59 PM

mo s cow a nd b ack

17 1

start of the freeze, went over like a lead balloon. Smirnov was insistent on 48 Y-class boats at the start of the freeze.73 Smirnov was not the only one who disliked Kissinger’s SLBM compromise. Back in Washington, Laird and Moorer complained that the freeze already gave the Soviets a sizable numerical advantage in SLBM— even if the H-class boats were counted, handing them a pass on the G-class was almost too much to bear.74 Smith too began to worry that the G-class compromise was a mistake, which would poison conservative opinion against SALT. As he had for weeks, Smith maintained that a bad SLBM deal would be worse than no SLBM deal at all.75 With the SLBM issue now deadlocked between Smirnov and Laird, it seemed as though years of negotiations might still end in embarrassing failure. Kissinger’s SLBM compromise did have one important supporter— Nixon. Kissinger discussed strategy with Nixon in the early hours of May 25, 1972, while the president laid rather incongruously naked on a massage table, relaxing after a tense session with Brezhnev on Vietnam. Hearing the objections to the G-class deal from his advisers, Nixon nonetheless told Kissinger to push the Soviets hard on the compromise.76 Nixon no doubt calculated, as Kissinger and Haig did, that given the choice between an SLBM freeze without the G-class boats and no SLBM freeze at all, Laird and Moorer would support the compromise.77 Nixon’s decision carried some risk, but it allowed Kissinger to push back against Smirnov’s opposition. Kissinger, Gromyko, and Smirnov discussed SLBM limitation late into the evening of May 25, 1972. Smirnov and Gromyko maintained that Brezhnev’s SLBM proposal, to which Nixon had already agreed in principle, did not include the older H- and G-class boats in the 48-boat starting figure. Kissinger replied by reading to Smirnov and Gromyko several confidential telegrams outlining Laird and Moorer’s objections to the Soviets’ SLBM terms, underlining the threat of conservative opposition to arms control within Nixon’s own administration.78 After hours of back and forth, as they prepared to depart for the ballet, Smirnov suddenly announced that his dispute with Kissinger had been a miscommunication all along. Contrary to his previous statements, Smirnov now insisted that Brezhnev had always intended that the H-class boats be counted in the 48-boat figure—they would begin the freeze with 42 Y-class boats and

Y8013-Maurer.indb 171

2/25/22 2:59 PM

17 2

m o s co w a nd b ac k

6 H-class.79 Perhaps the Soviets really did misunderstand the American classification of their submarines—for example, the Soviet designation for the H-class was Project 658.80 On the other hand, Smirnov’s sudden reversal seemed like a compromise without compromising, agreeing to Kissinger’s terms while still blaming the impasse on Kissinger himself. Reconvening after the ballet, Kissinger, Gromyko, and Smirnov discussed the final details for the SLBM freeze. Kissinger explained that if the G-class boats were not included in the freeze, the Soviets would have to promise not to upgrade them during the freeze period. If the Soviets did put upgraded missiles into their G-class boats, those missiles would count against the 950-missile limit, even though the G-class boats would not count against the 62-boat limit. Gromyko and Smirnov claimed that the restriction was unnecessary, since there were no plans to upgrade the G-class boats. Kissinger retorted that if this were true, then the Soviets would have no problem promising this in the agreement. Smirnov seemed unconvinced, but with midnight approaching, Gromyko promised Kissinger that the Soviets would think on the proposal and reply within the next few days.81 The next morning, Gromyko suddenly announced that the Soviets would accept Kissinger’s terms on SLBM, including G-class modernization.82 Nixon authorized the final compromise later that morning for passage to Helsinki.83 Substantively, SALT was finished. The suddenness of Gromyko’s SALT concessions made for an awkward end. Late on May 25, 1972, Gromyko told Kissinger that Brezhnev would speak to Nixon again before any decision was made and that SALT would therefore not be concluded for several days. On the morning of May 26, 1972, however, Gromyko announced not only that Brezhnev had accepted the SLBM compromise, but that he wanted to conclude the agreements with Nixon that evening.84 Yet the agreements did not yet exist: the formal wording of the SLBM compromise had to be negotiated by the technical experts in Helsinki, at breakneck speed. Garthoff and his Soviet counterpart Nikolai Kishilov drafted new language that afternoon.85 Kissinger ordered Smith to fly to Moscow immediately.86 The final documents were typed up and initialed by Smith and Semenov aboard the American delegation’s airplane en route to Moscow. During one moment of turbulence, the drafts were almost ruined by the celebra-

Y8013-Maurer.indb 172

2/25/22 2:59 PM

mo s cow a nd b ack

17 3

tory beer shared by the American and Soviet negotiators.87 Fortunately, the documents made it to Moscow on time. SALT’s conclusion was marred by a final confrontation between Smith and Kissinger. Arriving in Moscow, Smith was mistakenly directed to the Kremlin, where he spent several hours wandering among Soviet guards before making his way to the American Embassy for the press conference announcing the agreement. Stressed and frustrated, Smith accused Kissinger of intentionally diverting him to have the announcement all to himself. Smith joined Kissinger for the press conference, though Kissinger handled the longer press conference following the ceremony by himself.88 Smith’s accusation was unfair: Gromyko had given Kissinger less than twelve hours’ notice, and Smith’s poor treatment was a result of the ensuing confusion, not a deliberate slight.89 Of course, Nixon had kept Smith in Helsinki, rather than bringing him to Moscow for the summit. Smith’s outburst was a symptom of the mistrust and frustration that Nixon had engendered. SALT was nonetheless an occasion of great fanfare. Nixon and Brezhnev signed the ABM Treaty and the Interim Agreement on Offensive Forces that evening, May 26, 1972, as planned.90 Two days later, Nixon provided Brezhnev with the final piece of the SALT puzzle: the previously agreed note on ICBM replacement, in which Nixon promised not to dismantle the United States’ older Titan II missiles during the freeze.91 After nearly four years of negotiations, both within the American government and between the superpowers, the first phase of SALT negotiations was concluded. r e t urning home Concluding SALT was a major achievement, but Nixon’s real test still lay ahead. For four years, Nixon had structured SALT to avoid public debate about the purpose of arms control. With the agreements signed, however, the time for secrecy had passed—Nixon had to explain SALT to the American public. The SALT skepticism of many American conservatives made it all the more important that Nixon and his advisers retain solidarity. Support from competitors like Laird and cooperators like Smith was crucial to win the bipartisan consensus that Nixon needed to cement his victory.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 173

2/25/22 2:59 PM

174

m o s co w a nd b ac k

For years, Nixon followed a simple formula: present SALT as cooperative to cooperators and as competitive to competitors. Kissinger’s secretive back-channel negotiations had advanced this objective. By excluding Laird and Smith from the negotiating process, Nixon could justify his fait accompli by presenting Laird with a competitive rationale and Smith with a cooperative one. Now, Nixon took further steps to prevent discord between Laird and Smith. Further SALT negotiations were suspended while Congress considered the first-round agreements.92 Nixon also limited Laird’s freedom of maneuver as the SALT debate approached. When Packard returned to private industry in March 1972, Nixon replaced him with Ambassador Kenneth Rush. Rush had little experience in defense issues, but he was Nixon’s friend, which made him perfect for reining in some of Laird’s schemes.93 Now Nixon replicated his intragovernmental success on a larger scale. Since Congress had not negotiated the ABM Treaty or the Interim Freeze, Nixon could present different SALT rationales to different members of Congress, to win support from both sides. Kissinger and Haig began this two-sided lobbying before the Moscow summit even ended. In early briefings with cooperatively oriented members of Congress, Nixon’s advisers justified SALT as ending the arms race and heading off dangerous technologies like ABM.94 To competitors, however, SALT was portrayed as a long-term gambit, one that halted Soviet missile construction while the United States leapt ahead with qualitatively superior weapons like Trident and B-1.95 Yet to cooperators, Kissinger and Haig insisted that Trident and B-1 were only bargaining chips for the next round of SALT, in which Nixon would replace the Interim Agreement with a permanent treaty to end the arms race, once and for all.96 Despite the hard sell, Nixon knew that the bargaining chip logic had its limits, especially when it came to missile defense. Because the ABM Treaty allowed one ICBM-defense base and one NCA-defense base, Laird hoped that Congress might fund a second base outside of Washington. Nixon worried that opposition to building a base near Washington remained strong. Few people wanted missile defenses in their neighborhoods, but many congressmen also worried about the political wisdom of deploying defenses only around the Capitol, while leaving their constituents undefended.97 Linking SALT’s passage to a second Safeguard base

Y8013-Maurer.indb 174

2/25/22 2:59 PM

mo s cow a nd b ack

17 5

might imperil not only SALT but also the funding for new weapons like Trident and B-1, which were crucial components of Nixon’s long-term competitive strategy.98 As a result, Nixon relegated ABM funding to R&D for his FY73 budget, and focused on new submarines and bombers.99 Perhaps the greatest challenge lay in the continued confusion over the Interim Agreement itself. Kissinger had negotiated the SLBM freeze in private with Smirnov and Gromyko, with virtually no input from Smith or anyone else. When Nixon returned with the text of the Interim Agreement, questions quickly arose over what the agreement said.100 Laird insisted that the Interim Agreement actually did include Soviet G-class boats in the freeze, even though Kissinger had promised the Soviets the exact opposite in Moscow.101 Nitze was especially unhappy about the G-class, but most agreed with Kissinger that the old boats had no military value.102 When Kissinger reached out to Dobrynin for clarification, the ambassador furthered confusion by insisting that the Soviets might replace their G-class boats above the 62/950 limit, despite what Smirnov and Gromyko had said in Moscow. After a frantic appeal by Nixon to Brezhnev, the Soviets quickly accepted that the G-class boats could not be replaced.103 There was further confusion about the dismantlement procedures. Prior to the summit, Smith and Semenov had agreed that older missiles would be dismantled as soon as the submarine carrying the 740th Soviet SLBM entered sea trials.104 At that point, Smith assumed that the G-class would be counted in the freeze, and therefore that the Soviets would begin dismantling their older missiles almost as soon as the freeze began. Nixon’s decision to exclude the G-class from the freeze gave the Soviets room to construct several more Y-class boats after the freeze began before dismantling their ICBMs. Once this discrepancy became apparent, all of Nixon’s advisers agreed that the Soviets should begin replacing older missiles as soon as the freeze began, and build their “free” Y-class boats after they had dismantled all of their older ICBMs, rather than before.105 Kissinger reached out again to Dobrynin, explaining that Nixon believed it imperative that the Soviets dismantle their ICBMs earlier.106 Brezhnev agreed to dismantle the missiles earlier, though he remained somewhat vague about when exactly that would be.107 It was the best that Nixon was going to get with his eleventh-hour foray.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 175

2/25/22 2:59 PM

17 6

m o s co w a nd b ac k

fa c ing c ong r e s s Historically, the public debate over the ABM Treaty and Interim Agreement has been overshadowed by the much fiercer battle over the ratification of SALT II.108 Yet as Congress considered Nixon’s arms control agreements, success did not seem assured.109 Given flagging congressional interest in missile defense, the ABM Treaty was popular, and despite requiring the consent of two-thirds of the Senate, its passage was relatively easy.110 The Interim Agreement was a different story. Nixon insisted on treating the agreement as a congressional-Executive Agreement, which required a simple majority from both houses of Congress, as well as accepting congressional proposals for potential amendments. Congressional support would strengthen the Interim Agreement and provide Nixon a vote of confidence heading into the election. Yet the Interim Agreement was not nearly as popular as the ABM Treaty. American hawks disliked giving the Soviets a numerical advantage in weapons. They worried that it might serve as a template for a future treaty, locking the United States into numerical inferiority in perpetuity. Proponents of Soviet-American cooperation had fewer objections to the agreement itself, but did object to Nixon’s larger defense budget, which ran contrary to the agreement’s presumed purpose of slowing the arms race.111 Given SALT’s complexity, cooperators, competitors, or both might have defected from the agreement. If Congress voted against the agreement, Nixon could either ignore them and implement it anyway, or accept Congress’s decision and walk away from a major negotiation. To pass the Interim Agreement, Nixon pulled out all the stops.112 Returning from Moscow, Nixon personally lobbied for SALT’s passage. Like Kissinger and Haig, the president provided rationales for both cooperative and competitive arms controllers. To cooperative arms controllers, Nixon announced that SALT would restrain the arms race and improve political relations between the superpowers. To competitive arms controllers, Nixon justified the Interim Agreement’s numerical imbalance as reflecting the existing balance of forces—the Soviets were building missiles and the United States was not—but argued that by breaking the momentum of the Soviet numerical buildup the United States could regain its competitive footing through superior weapons systems like MIRV, Trident, and B-1.113

Y8013-Maurer.indb 176

2/25/22 2:59 PM

mo s cow a nd b ack

17 7

Nixon also deployed his advisers to support the agreements. Laird and Smith’s disputes over SALT had long been a liability, but now Nixon sent his subordinates to convey different signals to different congressional constituencies.114 In his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, Smith described the agreements as cooperative, claiming the ABM Treaty would avoid a “large, costly, destabilizing ABM competition,” and that the Interim Agreement would “reach a more stable strategic relationship with the U.S.S.R. in order to improve the prospects of peace.”115 Rogers agreed, describing the agreement as “a break in the pattern of action and reaction under which each side reacts to what the other is doing . . . a major factor in driving the strategic arms race.”116 On the other hand, Laird reminded senators that “the success of SALT and prospects for ultimate peace depend on sustained strength.”117 By halting the Soviet buildup, Laird explained, the agreements would strengthen the United States over the longer term.118 Balancing these testimonies was a difficult task.119 Smith and Laird peppered their remarks with enough caveats to avoid direct contradiction: Smith supported further strategic modernization, and Laird denied that the United States was seeking “unilateral advantage.”120 But the tones of their testimonies sent very different messages to very different audiences in Congress. Nixon craftily used the high political stakes to distance himself from any given statement, allowing him to retain the support of both cooperators and competitors even as their differences were breaking out into the open. For example, in conversations with cooperative arms controllers like Rogers, Nixon played off Laird’s testimony as necessary to win support from congressional hawks, while urging Rogers to appeal to more dovish senators.121 By justifying every statement as politically necessary, Nixon avoided taking sides with either Laird or Smith, while benefitting from the testimony of both. Nixon also tried to manage Soviet expectations, since they were watching the ratification debate closely. In signaling his competitive motives to Congress, Nixon risked alienating the Soviets, who were unlikely to ratify an agreement they perceived as discriminating against them. Nixon warned Brezhnev that he would hear aggressive testimony from hawks like Laird, but assured the Soviet leader that the rhetoric

Y8013-Maurer.indb 177

2/25/22 2:59 PM

17 8

m o s co w a nd b ac k

was intended for American domestic consumption.122 What Brezhnev thought of this exercise in smoke-and-mirrors is not clear, but the Soviets were sufficiently mollified to avoid any disruptive statements during the SALT ratification process. Despite its occasional inconsistencies, Nixon’s lobbying campaign for SALT was remarkably successful, winning support from both hawks and doves in Congress. By far the biggest obstacle was Senator Jackson’s opposition to the Interim Agreement. Jackson was deeply skeptical of any agreement that would give the Soviets a larger number of offensive missiles than the United States.123 From his seat on the Armed Services Committee, Jackson had a choice position to criticize the SALT agreements, grilling Smith and Laird alike with probing questions about the agreement’s provisions, its history, and its ultimate purpose.124 Although he was only one senator, Jackson was unusually well supported by his arms control staffer Perle, and was able to strike on a number of vulnerable technical details in the Interim Agreement—the inconsistency on SLBM levels, the difficulties of defining ICBM silo size, the decision not to include the G-class boats. Nixon and Kissinger had some concern that Jackson’s criticism might cause other more hawkish senators to turn against the agreement, too.125 As SALT headed from committee to the entirety of Congress, Nixon and his team were on the lookout for any opportunity to convince Jackson to support SALT, rather than oppose it. While he played both sides of the debate, Nixon also sought to mollify critics by reminding them that the current agreements were only the first phase of a much longer SALT process. Indeed, the Interim Agreement was by design a temporary freeze in new weapons, which would need to be followed by a more permanent agreement on offensive forces. By emphasizing the possibilities of future negotiations, Nixon was able to placate critics of the agreements on both sides, insisting that the shortcomings of the current phase would be rectified in future negotiations. But these future improvements could only be achieved by giving Nixon what he wanted now—ratifying the Moscow agreements and funding Trident and B-1.126 Despite his harsh criticism of the Interim Agreement, Jackson ultimately took Nixon’s bait and agreed to write an amendment that would shape the second phase of SALT negotiations, rather than seeking to amend the Interim Agreement itself. The Jackson Amendment

Y8013-Maurer.indb 178

2/25/22 2:59 PM

mo s cow a nd b ack

179

demanded that the second phase of SALT be conducted on the principle of equal strategic offensive forces, without the numerical majorities that the Interim Agreement temporarily provided the Soviets. Jackson also insisted that any future arms control agreement be aimed at removing the Soviet threat to American Minuteman silos, which would mean putting much stronger constraints on the Soviets’ largest missiles.127 Aside from its arms control provisions, the Jackson Amendment also insisted that Nixon continue to modernize and improve American nuclear forces as allowed under the Interim Agreement, to ensure better bargaining power during the next round of negotiations.128 The amendment was a stinging critique of Nixon’s arms control accomplishment, insisting that the president and his administration do better in their future efforts. Given its insistence on continued nuclear competition, the Jackson Amendment was very unpopular with both American cooperative arms controllers and the Soviet government. Smith took Jackson’s criticism very personally and felt betrayed when Nixon and Kissinger would not oppose Jackson’s amendment directly.129 Dobrynin also relayed his dismay about Jackson’s posturing. Nixon and Kissinger had leaned heavily on the threat that hawkish Americans like Laird and Jackson might oppose arms control in the final SALT negotiations in Moscow. Dobrynin said that the Soviet leadership was becoming weary of Nixon’s efforts to preempt negotiations by congressional fiat, rather than negotiating in good faith. Kissinger insisted that Nixon had no control over Jackson, and so there was little that the president could do other than accept the senator’s amendment as it was.130 In any event, when the Supreme Soviet “debated” whether to ratify the agreement themselves, several more hawkish Soviet leaders staked out public positions similar to those of Laird and Jackson, arguing that the Soviet Union needed to compete vigorously under the Interim Agreement and bargain hard during the second phase of SALT.131 The second round of negotiations would occur under the shadow of increasingly bellicose rhetoric from both sides.132 Soviet leaders often struggled to understand the decentralized nature of American government and society, but in this case their perception that Nixon and Jackson were on the same side was largely correct.133 While Nixon did not support Jackson’s critical amendment, his White House adopted a studied position of neutrality on the issue, allowing the amendment to go forward as the price for successful SALT ratification.134

Y8013-Maurer.indb 179

2/25/22 2:59 PM

18 0

m o s co w a nd b ac k

Jackson’s insistence on continued force modernization also strengthened the link between ratifying SALT and funding Trident and B-1, another of Nixon’s major objectives.135 Nixon and Jackson might have differed on tactics and specific negotiating issues, but in the main, they shared a common goal of using arms control to promote American competitive nuclear advantage over the longer term. With Jackson’s criticism nullified, at least for the moment, the conclusion of the Moscow SALT agreements was easily achieved. On August 3, 1972, the Senate ratified the ABM Treaty by an overwhelming margin of 88 to 2.136 Securing congressional approval for the Interim Agreement took somewhat longer, but both the House and the Senate authorized the agreement by majority votes on September 30, 1972.137 With the ABM Treaty approved in the United States, the Supreme Soviet also ratified both agreements in mid-August.138 On October 3, 1972, the Moscow agreements officially entered force, as Nixon and Soviet president Nikolai Podgorny exchanged letters of notification concerning the ratification. Nixon hailed the agreements as a first important step in limiting the arms race and reducing the danger of nuclear war.139 With Congress’s approval of Nixon and Laird’s plan of qualitative force modernization, Nixon might also have added that the agreements were an important step in ensuring the United States’ long-term nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union.140 Future arms control negotiations with the Soviets would pose many serious challenges. For the time being, however, Nixon had made superpower arms limitation a reality.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 180

2/25/22 2:59 PM

Conclusion

l i ke m a ny of h is f or e i g n p o l ic y accomplishments, Nixon’s initial SALT success was quickly overtaken by the Watergate scandal, which destroyed any hope of his administration achieving a rapid second SALT treaty with the Soviets.1 Despite Nixon’s self-destruction, his competitive arms control success cast a long shadow over the remainder of the Cold War and into the present day. Understanding the competitive origins of the American-Soviet arms limitation process provides us with new insights into the history, theory, and practice of great-power arms control. c omp e t i t i v e a rm s c on t r o l in hi s t or y With Watergate, Nixon exited the story, but some progress on SALT was made by the short-lived Gerald Ford administration, in which Kissinger continued to play a leading role. Especially important to future arms control dialogue was the 1974 Vladivostok accord. At the summit in Vladivostok, Ford and Brezhnev agreed in principle that any future arms limitation agreement would include equal aggregates for strategic forces—ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers—without including American forward-based systems. Given previous Soviet insistence on receiving compensation for FBS, this concession was a major accomplishment and set the standard for all subsequent Soviet-American and 181

Y8013-Maurer.indb 181

2/25/22 2:59 PM

18 2

concl usion

Russo-American arms limitation agreements. Continued differences between American and Soviet negotiators over heavy missiles and MIRVs, however, prevented Ford from concluding a detailed SALT II Treaty.2 Ford’s defeat in 1976 by Jimmy Carter meant that a third president would be involved in negotiating SALT II.3 By that point, however, delays in major American weapons programs, coupled with Soviet progress on MIRVing their own missile force, had turned many competitive arms controllers against SALT II. They feared the treaty would endorse the Soviets’ advantage in heavy missiles and establish an unfavorable strategic balance.4 Opposition by American conservatives, especially Senator Jackson, coupled with the political shocks of the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, meant that the SALT II Treaty concluded by Carter and Brezhnev in June 1979 was never ratified by the American Senate.5 Although the arms control process suffered setbacks, the larger competitive strategy that it had served continued to expand and accelerate. Despite the technical difficulties of developing game-changing, next-generation strategic nuclear weapons, Laird’s initial strategy of Realistic Deterrence was continued and expanded under Carter’s secretary of defense, Harold Brown, himself a former SALT negotiator who had advised Nixon and Laird during the opening round of talks. Brown folded the nuclear component of Laird’s strategy into a larger “Offset Strategy,” which continued nuclear modernization while also extending the accuracy revolution into the conventional realm. Aside from reasserting American nuclear advantages, Brown foresaw a future in which tremendous improvements in accuracy would overturn Soviet numerical advantages even on the conventional battlefield.6 Although Carter’s SALT II agreement was dead on arrival, the arms limitation process begun in the Nixon administration did not end with Carter’s defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980. Although he had run against the Ford and Carter administrations’ arms control policies, Reagan ended up rebooting Soviet-American arms limitation negotiations as the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks, or START.7 Reagan’s arms control negotiations ended up accomplishing much of what the competitive arms controllers in the Nixon administration had initially hoped: coupling the deployment of long-planned advanced weapons systems—the MX ICBM, Trident, and B-1, as well as new theater-range weapons Per-

Y8013-Maurer.indb 182

2/25/22 2:59 PM

concl usion

183

shing II and the Gryphon ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM)—to a more rigorous arms control process aimed at reducing the number of nuclear weapons on both sides.8 The 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty marked the beginning of the superpower drawdown in the number of nuclear weapons by eliminating their land-based theater nuclear missiles.9 The INF Treaty was followed closely by the 1991 START I Treaty, which in its steep reductions of strategic nuclear forces bore remarkable similarities to Laird, Packard, and Nitze’s earlier advocacy of steep strategic arms reduction—a competitive strategy designed to reduce the importance of the number of Soviet weapons vis-à-vis American advanced technology.10 Both treaties included heightened verification mechanisms, including the on-site inspection of missile facilities that American leaders had pursued since the Nixon years. Verification was further bolstered by the 1992 Open Skies Treaty, in which the United States, the newly emerged Russian Federation, and their respective allies agreed to allow scheduled overflights of reconnaissance aircraft to supplement the satellites on which the original SALT agreements had relied.11 Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, American missile defense technology had also continued to mature at the testing facilities permitted under the ABM Treaty, like Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. This testing of new missile defense concepts received a major boost under the Reagan administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative. Once again, missile defenses were back at the forefront of Soviet-American arms control discussions. Reagan was so hopeful for a breakthrough in missile defenses that he even considered abrogating the ABM Treaty, provoking a fierce political debate in the United States. In the end, Reagan and his administration decided that the technology was not sufficiently mature to warrant immediate abrogation.12 The issue faded for a time from the larger political consciousness, even as treaty-permitted incremental improvements continued to allow American testing. The Reagan administration also embraced and expanded Brown’s Offset Strategy with regard to conventional forces, integrating precision attack into American joint war planning in a process known as “AirLand Battle” and “Follow-on Forces Attack” (FOFA). The effectiveness of this transformed and integrated force was vividly demonstrated the same year that START I was concluded, when the American military led

Y8013-Maurer.indb 183

2/25/22 2:59 PM

18 4

concl usion

a large coalition in the brief Desert Storm campaign, overwhelming and quickly expelling the Soviet-equipped and -trained Iraqi Army from occupied Kuwait.13 The parallel tracks of force improvement and arms limitation did not end with the Cold War—in fact, they continue to the present day. By the early 2000s, the atrophy of the Russian strategic nuclear arsenal, combined with the continued modernization of American strategic nuclear weapons, created a circumstance in which the United States enjoyed a potential first-strike advantage against its nuclear peer for the first time since the early 1960s—the exact sort of capability that Nixon, Laird, and other hawks had been pursuing thirty years previously.14 Continued reduction of the number of strategic nuclear weapons under the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) of 2002 and the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START) of 2010 has created an even greater potential for nuclear counterforce, leading to a renewed race for highly accurate weapons.15 Today, nuclear force improvements and arms reduction agreements continue to work in tandem to enhance high-tech nuclear counterforce capabilities.16 This interaction is not a coincidence: it represents a design feature of the arms control process dating back to the initial precedentsetting decisions of the early 1970s. Another important contemporary legacy of Nixon-era arms control lies in the realm of missile defenses. After years of debate and deliberation, the United States withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2002, exercising the withdrawal mechanism that Laird and Moorer had insisted the treaty contain.17 Continued maturation of missile defense technology, especially in the realm of enhanced digital sensing and guidance technology, offered the possibility that older nuclear-armed interceptors could be replaced by kinetic hit-to-kill interceptors. This development would allow for much cheaper volume of fire and reduce fears of accidental detonation or crippling electromagnetic effects.18 More important, by the early 2000s, American leaders were more concerned with small-scale missile attacks from rogue states like Iraq, Iran, or North Korea than with large-scale Russian missile attacks. Against these smaller threats, missile defense seemed more technically viable.19 Of course, American missile defense deployments reopened questions that the ABM Treaty had long closed about the growing counterforce effect of missile defense

Y8013-Maurer.indb 184

2/25/22 2:59 PM

concl usion

18 5

systems. Might even a relatively small but capable missile defense system allow the United States to “mop up” the straggling remains of the Russian or Chinese missile arsenals in the aftermath of a large American first strike? To date, American leaders have insisted that their strategic missile defenses are not aimed at peer competitors like Russia and China. This pledge has not reassured American adversaries, who continue to criticize missile defense deployments as threatening to their security, especially since the United States has not renounced as policy the first use of nuclear weapons.20 Many critics of the American decision to leave the ABM Treaty have claimed that the United States was violating the spirit of the treaty by withdrawing only to build new sophisticated missile defenses. No doubt Gerard Smith would have agreed with this criticism, seeing as he did the ABM Treaty as a perpetual guard against inherently dangerous and provocative missile defenses.21 For the competitive arms controllers who shaped American policy in the Nixon administration, however, the abrogation of the treaty in favor of more advanced missile defenses was its natural culmination, not a betrayal.22 For competitive strategists like Nixon, the treaty had always been meant as a stopgap to buy time until American missile defense technology matured and domestic political conditions warmed toward missile defense deployments. In the realm of conventional forces, Laird’s vision of an all-volunteer military enabled by high-tech, accurate weapons has matured into the globe-spanning drone attack network of the present day. The cluster of technologies that enables accurate drone strikes—gyroscopes, global positioning, electro-optical sensors—all have their origins in Laird’s strategy of Realistic Deterrence and its various successors.23 Today’s command-and-control network is based on the one developed to allow the United States to wage nuclear war on a global scale during the Cold War. This network allows presidents to select personally targets that American service personnel on multiple continents then cooperate to attack.24 In both the nuclear and conventional realms, then, the strategic and arms control decisions made in the Nixon administration cast a long shadow over our present world. Despite its tremendous importance, Nixon and Kissinger’s arms control legacy remained eclipsed by their unwillingness to enunciate a clear competitive purpose for arms negotiations. This ambiguity was undoubtedly necessary to engage Soviet

Y8013-Maurer.indb 185

2/25/22 2:59 PM

18 6

concl usion

leaders, who would have rejected negotiations predicated on maintaining American nuclear superiority. Yet Nixon’s ambiguity ran deeper than deceiving the Soviets. Facing a deeply polarized Congress and electorate, the president was unwilling to confront his subordinates over questions of nuclear strategy or arms control policy, allowing divisions between competitors like Laird and cooperators like Smith to fester within his administration for years. Kissinger abetted Nixon’s indirect tendencies, serving as the president’s shadow negotiator for the latter stages of SALT. This was remarkable behavior for an “imperial president” and his national security adviser who so prided themselves on a take-charge, top-down style of leadership. In the short term, Nixon’s discretion and secretive negotiations were successful, if only barely, in bringing SALT I to a successful conclusion. Absent a clear explanation from Nixon or Kissinger about its larger purpose, however, SALT went down in history as a useful but flawed experiment in mitigating great-power competition, its competitive purpose effaced. c omp e t i t i v e a rm s c on t r o l in t he or y The belief that SALT was a cooperative agreement had significant impacts for the development of arms control theory. Today, we can see that the genesis of arms limitation in the Nixon administration bears very little resemblance to Schelling’s theory of arms control. There were important actors within the Nixon administration like Gerard Smith and Raymond Garthoff who acted more or less as Schelling would have predicted, seeking to cooperate with the Soviets to establish stable mutual deterrence through negotiation. Many within the administration, however, including much of the White House and the Department of Defense, had a very different objective: shaping future competition with the Soviet Union in ways that would advance American power. Contrary to Schelling’s prescription, Nixon and his advisers largely set out to achieve relative security gains through arms control negotiation. We also have some evidence that influential parts of the Soviet government were pursuing similar competitive goals, although more detailed work in Russian archives remains to be done.25 While SALT in the Nixon administration is only one case study in arms control, its connection to the superpower strategic arms limitation negotiations that followed makes it stand out as a very important one.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 186

2/25/22 2:59 PM

concl usion

18 7

Nor are SALT and its successors the only major arms control achievements that advanced the competitive interests of the negotiating parties: the 1919 Versailles Treaty, the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, and the 1968 Nonproliferation Treaty all formalized the military advantages of some states over others.26 And many of the structural elements of SALT that Nixon and his advisers hoped would be conducive to American power, especially the limitation of the number of weapons but not their quality, remained and remain features of Soviet-American and RussoAmerican arms limitation. The prevalence of competitive arms control among the great powers, even in agreements that seem on the surface to be cooperative, suggests the need for a new theory of arms control that can take into account the truly mixed motives of the negotiators. Most pressing, SALT’s competitive history begs the question of why states sometimes enter into arms control agreements that seem to disadvantage them militarily, a rather counterintuitive outcome given the primacy that many theories attribute to unilateral security seeking in state behavior. It may be, as many arms control critics contend, that security-seeking states are repeatedly duped into arms control arrangements that privilege the military advantage of more aggressive adversaries.27 The experience of the Nixon administration, however, suggests that two advantage-seeking parties may still be able to conclude an arms control agreement, as long as both sides are willing to trade off different advantages to achieve an agreement.28 In this sense, SALT I represented a bargain in which the United States traded away its notional advantage in missile defenses to curtail the Soviets’ emerging advantage in offensive missile numbers. Understanding competitive arms control compromises may also require taking a closer look at the differing time horizons of the parties involved.29 Nixon and his advisers accepted nearterm risks of Soviet numerical superiority in exchange for long-term payouts when American qualitative improvements came online. Faced with such an American offer, the Soviets may have preferred to take the obvious advantage offered them now over the nebulous potential American advantage later. The key role of uncertainty points to a third possible explanation, in which competitive arms control is understood as a wager between two parties on the unknown future utility of emerging weapons technologies. In this framing, Nixon and his advisers “bet” that marginal but compounding increases in weapons accuracy would over time

Y8013-Maurer.indb 187

2/25/22 2:59 PM

18 8

concl usion

provide significant military advantages over existing weapons, a wager that Soviet leaders accepted in the hope that the superior number and size of their missiles would prove to be more enduring. In retrospect, the Soviet wager was perhaps not farsighted, but at the time the “accuracy revolution” remained far off in an uncertain future. Such scenarios indicate the possibility of reaching points of agreement in negotiations between hostile, advantage-seeking parties, points that future arms control theory should seek to address. c omp e t i t i v e a rm s c on t r o l in p r a c t i c e The arms control process begun in the Johnson and Nixon administrations produced historic agreements and played a pivotal role in shaping the military balance, often to the benefit of the United States. Yet today, the fifty-year process of U.S.-Russian bilateral strategic arms limitation is coming to an end. The proximate cause of this unraveling has been Russia’s increasing unwillingness to abide by its arms control commitments. In the summer of 2019, the United States withdrew from the INF Treaty, citing Russian noncompliance; in the spring of 2020, the United States also withdrew from the Open Skies Treaty, again due to Russian refusal to abide by the terms of the agreement.30 While the Joe Biden administration has extended the New START Treaty for five years, Russia’s continued deployment of new types of strategic nuclear weapons and growing American insistence on limiting Russia’s large arsenal of nonstrategic nuclear weapons will complicate future negotiations significantly.31 If New START expires as scheduled in February 2026 without replacement, the American and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals will be unconstrained by agreement for the first time since 1972. The surface-level disputes between the United States and Russia over arms control compliance mask deeper structural issues driving the breakdown of bilateral strategic arms limitation. The decades of American unipolar dominance that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union created a uniquely permissive environment for arms control negotiations—the lull in U.S.-Russian strategic competition made it possible to extend reflexively Cold War arms control arrangements despite their diminishing relevance to the shape of international relations.32 Yet this holiday from strategic competition is over: today, the United States faces a return to great-power competition, as revisionist leaders in China and

Y8013-Maurer.indb 188

2/25/22 2:59 PM

concl usion

18 9

Russia seek to undermine and perhaps overturn the American-led alliances and institutions on which global order has rested for the past thirty years.33 While this renewed competition is rooted in the political differences between the competing powers, it also has an important technological component. In the search for renewed military advantage, the great powers are once again modernizing and expanding their nuclear arsenals, signaling the beginning of a new nuclear arms race.34 This increased nuclear competition includes not just increasingly lethal legacy systems like ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, nuclear submarines, bombers, and overhead reconnaissance capabilities,35 but also new weapons systems like maneuverable hypersonic missiles,36 autonomous loitering munitions,37 reconnaissance drone swarms,38 and intrusive cyber capabilities.39 More disruptive still, the new nuclear arms race is increasingly multipolar, as India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel, and perhaps soon Iran join the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France in jockeying for nuclear advantage.40 The bipolar U.S.-Soviet competition for nuclear ballistic missiles is long gone. If the world is changing so rapidly, and the current structure of arms control is crumbling, then what does the history of U.S.-Soviet arms control negotiations have to tell us about the present day? In fact, a great deal. As the bilateral arms limitation process falls apart in the face of new political and strategic realities, we find ourselves in a position very similar to that facing the Nixon administration in January 1969. Great-power competition once again frames our foreign policy debate. The nuclear weapons of the great powers are once again unconstrained by meaningful arms control arrangements. American domestic politics are once again sharply polarized, with increasing questions about America’s place in the world and growing concern that the United States may not be able to afford the costs of global leadership. In many ways, we are back to square one. The lessons of how previous generations of American leaders overcame similar challenges to build such a successful and enduring arms control regime have never been timelier. To achieve in arms control the successes accomplished by previous generations, we will need to recognize the important competitive dimension inherent in any attempt by the great powers to limit armaments. The autopilot arms control negotiations of the past thirty years sufficed for an era of overwhelming American might. That age is over. If the

Y8013-Maurer.indb 189

2/25/22 2:59 PM

19 0

co ncl usio n

United States is to wage a new long-term competition with great-power rivals, then it must rediscover the long-term competitive purposes of arms control. Arms control negotiations were never solely cooperative— they were instead a hybrid policy, one that could allow for limited cooperation between the great powers even as they continued to jockey for military advantage. We should not lose the cooperative element, but we also cannot forget the competitive dimension. Recovering the competitive arms control deliberations of the Nixon administration is a first step toward dismantling the mythology of cooperative arms control and embracing a realistic understanding of arms control policy in which competitive deliberations play a much larger role in the search for security. Defenders of the arms control status quo will balk at such a reimagining of arms control’s ultimate purpose. At a time when legacy agreements are faltering, revisiting and revising arms control’s first principles to embrace a competitive ethos might seem like changing horses midstream—an intellectually useful exercise to be put off for a less urgent time. And indeed, once we recognize arms control’s competitive purpose, we will naturally be more skeptical of possible future arms control arrangements. Yet the world is changing, whether we wish it or not. Finding areas of genuine compromise, where great powers can come together to advance their common interests while also pursuing their competitive advantage, will simply be harder in the future. But there is no alternative. If arms control cannot adapt to these new political and strategic realities, then it will continue to wither away. Only a competitive arms control program will remain relevant to the greatest foreign policy challenges of our time. Crucially, the history of competitive arms control shows us that while negotiations will be more difficult in a world of great-power competition, they will not be impossible. Far from impeding progress, a competitive arms control framework provides us with new opportunities. First, establishing some conceptual distance between “arms control” and “cooperation” can help explain why some existing arms control agreements are worth retaining, even if they are not promoting political cooperation with potential adversaries. For example, many American conservatives criticized the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal (formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) on the grounds that continued Iranian support of violent extremists throughout the Middle

Y8013-Maurer.indb 190

2/25/22 2:59 PM

co ncl usio n

191

East demonstrated that Iran’s leaders had no intention of seeking a broadly cooperative relationship with the United States.41 When “arms control” and “cooperation” are not considered as necessarily the same, this criticism carries less weight. So long as the arms control agreement produces an advantageous security outcome for the United States—an outcome like delaying the emergence of Iran’s nuclear arsenal—then Iran’s other behavior is irrelevant to the wisdom of the agreement. While the original JCPOA has clearly run its course, the Biden administration would be wise to seek future negotiated limitations on Iran’s nuclear capability. Similarly, the questions of whether and how to negotiate a successor agreement to New START would rest not on an assessment of the broader state of Russo-American relations, but rather on the specific question of whether or not any New START successor would provide specific military advantages to the United States.42 Second, competitive arms control provides us with a clearer longterm vision of what the future arms control regime will look like, especially when it comes to China. The idea of using arms control to manage China’s military rise received a significant boost from the Donald Trump administration, which insisted that China must be party to any future U.S.-Russian arms limitation arrangement.43 Most experts doubt that China will participate in arms control talks in the near term.44 This assessment of Chinese policy is a safe bet, given the relatively small size of China’s nuclear arsenal. China finds itself in a similar position to the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, when Soviet leaders refused American arms control proposals that would have locked them into perpetual nuclear inferiority. Chinese leaders will be no more eager than the Soviets were to enter into an unequal arms control treaty with the United States. Yet if Sino-American competition continues to shape international affairs more broadly, then the United States cannot afford to leave China outside the realm of arms control. The projected rapid expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal, combined with the growing insistence in both the United States and Russia that China be included in future negotiations, suggests that U.S.-Russian arms dialogue is no longer sufficient, and that future strategic arms limitation agreements will ultimately have to include a wider set of nuclear-armed powers.45 Allowing China to continue building its forces unconstrained denies the United States one of its most important tools in shaping Chinese behavior: arms control

Y8013-Maurer.indb 191

2/25/22 2:59 PM

19 2

co ncl usio n

negotiations. Engaging China on arms control issues is absolutely essential for any future program of great-power arms limitation. Such a negotiation will also likely have to include other Asian nuclear and nearnuclear states like India and Japan. While engaging China is unlikely to bear fruit in the short term, it can lay the groundwork for longer-term success, much as early U.S.-Soviet dialogue in the 1950s and 1960s created the opportunity for later negotiations in SALT. Third, competitive arms control helps us recognize the short-term steps we ought to take in the pursuit of our longer-term vision. For starters, bilateral arms control arrangements will still have competitive value, even in a world of nuclear multipolarity. Even at the height of the Cold War, U.S.-Soviet bilateral negotiations had multilateral implications. Bilateral agreements provide opportunities for coalition building among nuclear-armed states, much as the Soviets attempted to lure the Nixon administration into a nuclear quasi-alliance against China. In more recent years, the United States and India have used nuclear technology agreements to strengthen their joint efforts to contain Chinese power, with significant success.46 Similarly, arms control agreements that reduce the intensity of competition between two competitors can have significant implications for relations with third parties. Soviet insistence that they be allowed “compensation” under the 1972 Interim Agreement for Chinese, British, and French nuclear forces reflected this preoccupation with the implications of bilateral agreements for multilateral nuclear contests. Later bilateral agreements like the 1987 INF Treaty had even more dramatic implications for relations with third parties like China, especially as the agreement allowed China to take the lead in precision intermediate-range missiles.47 While the long-term objective should be a comprehensive multilateral agreement to limit the arsenals of the great nuclear powers, this goal need not prevent shorter-term negotiations among willing partners. Even legacy bilateral agreements like New START can have important multilateral competitive implications if they allow the United States to redirect resources from deterring a fading competitor like Russia to more productive use containing a rising competitor like China. Aside from shorter-term bilateral negotiations, the United States could take other concrete steps to incentivize its rivals to enter into serious arms control dialogue. Just as arms control negotiations shape com-

Y8013-Maurer.indb 192

2/25/22 2:59 PM

co ncl usio n

19 3

petition, they are also driven by competition: rival great powers come to the negotiating table when they believe that negotiations could improve their security. We can see the importance of unilateral security concerns in the foundation of SALT: American leaders were desperate to use negotiations to limit the expansion of the Soviet nuclear arsenal, while Soviet leaders seemed very eager to prevent the United States from deploying a large missile defense system. If arms control with China and Russia is to have any future, then the United States will need to compete for military advantage. Only a powerful American defense program, especially modernization of American nuclear forces and expansion of American missile and missile defense capabilities, will provide the leverage necessary to bring adversaries to the negotiating table. This is especially important if the United States hopes that future negotiations will enhance American competitiveness by compelling significant concessions from adversaries. A strong defense program and a competitive approach to arms control can work synergistically to promote American military advantage over the long term. Finally, competitive arms control can help us build the sort of bipartisan consensus that will be needed to sustain both military competition and arms control negotiations. This new consensus is essential because arms control can only succeed if it enjoys strong bipartisan support in the United States. Recent experience has borne this out, as one of the Barack Obama administration’s signature arms control initiatives, the Iran Nuclear Deal, was quickly dismantled by the Trump administration. Arms control advocates cannot simply hope that future occupants of the Oval Office will support cooperative arms control policies. Leaders of both parties will occupy the White House in the coming decades, and unless all support some strategic framework for arms control, the result will only be further chaos. It is here that competitive arms control shows perhaps its greatest promise. Justifying arms control negotiations on their competitive merits will attract new political supporters, especially from those who might otherwise be skeptical of arms control’s value. Sustaining support for arms control in an era of great-power competition means appealing to those who value American military competitiveness. By defending arms control on both its cooperative and its competitive merits, advocates could build a new bipartisan consensus in favor of long-term military

Y8013-Maurer.indb 193

2/25/22 2:59 PM

19 4

co ncl usio n

competition and negotiations, much as existed during the second half of the Cold War.48 As the experience of Nixon and his successors makes clear, forging such a compromise will pose significant challenges. Yet their previous successes, however difficult and contingent, hold out some hope for the present and future. A new domestic consensus built on a broader appreciation of arms control’s purpose can reinvigorate the global regime to limit nuclear weapons while also meeting current national security challenges in an era of renewed great-power competition.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 194

2/25/22 2:59 PM

no t e s

ab b r e v i a ti o n s FRUS

Foreign Relations of the United States series (with appropriate year, volume, and document number) PCP ProQuest Congressional Publications PHN ProQuest Historical Newspapers Soviet-American Relations Keefer, Geyer, and Savage, eds., Soviet-American Relations: The Détente Years Soviet Intentions Hines, Mishulovich, and Shull, eds., Soviet Intentions 1965–1985, Volume II: Soviet Post–Cold War Testimonial Evidence TAPP Peters and Woolley, eds., The American Presidency Project The Nixon Tapes Brinkley and Nichter, eds., The Nixon Tapes, 1971–1972 in t r o d uc ti o n 1. “Remarks at a Ceremony Marking Entry into Force of the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems and the Interim Agreement on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms,” October 3, 1972, TAPP, https://www .presidency.ucsb.edu/node/255127. 2. Treaty Between the United States and the Soviet Union, May 26, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 316, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d316. 3. “Interim Agreement Between the United States and the Soviet Union,” May 26, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 317, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d317; “Protocol to the Interim 19 5

Y8013-Maurer.indb 195

2/25/22 2:59 PM

19 6

4.

5.

6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 196

no t e s t o page s 2 – 6

Agreement Between the United States and the Soviet Union,” May 26, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 318, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d318. York, Race to Oblivion; Warnke, “Apes on a Treadmill,” 12–29; Bundy, Danger and Survival; Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation; Garthoff, The Great Transition; Knopf, Domestic Society and International Cooperation; Evangelista, Unarmed Forces; Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly; Krepon, Better Safe Than Sorry. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. A transcript of the full conversation can be found here: Conversation Among President Nixon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of Defense Laird, and Others, August 10, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 190, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d190. The American pursuit of ever more accurate missiles is well documented; see especially: MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy. I build on MacKenzie’s earlier observations about the social dimensions of missile development by showing how American arms control proposals enhanced the strategic impact of these accuracy improvements. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 157, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d157; Martinage, Toward a New Offset Strategy; Hicks et al., Assessing the Third Offset Strategy; Keefer, Harold Brown. Maurer, “The Purposes of Arms Control,” 9–27. Smith, Doubletalk; Smith, Disarming Diplomat; Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation; Garthoff, A Journey through the Cold War. Smith, Doubletalk, 222–244, 465–469; Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 207–213. Kissinger, The White House Years; Hyland, Mortal Rivals; Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost; Nixon, RN. Ambrose, “Between Two Poles,” 371–379; Burr and Rosenberg, “Nuclear Competition in an Era of Stalemate,” 107; Ritter, Dangerous Ground, 170–186; Schulzinger, “Détente in the Nixon and Ford Years,” 376–377. Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft, 104–116. Knopf, Domestic Society and International Cooperation; Bundy, A Tangled Web; Cameron, The Double Game; Ambrose, The Control Agenda. Evangelista, Unarmed Forces. Lebovic, Flawed Logics, 64–131. Tal, Strategic Arms Policy in the Cold War. On Nixon’s back-channel negotiations, see: Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow. Johnson, Congress and the Cold War; Johnstone, “Before the Water’s Edge,” 25–29; Craig and Logevall, America’s Cold War; Zelizer, Arsenal of Democracy; Bessner and Logevall, “Recentering the United States in the Historiography of American Foreign Relations.”

2/25/22 2:59 PM

no t e s t o page s 7 – 9

197

20. This characterization of Nixon and Kissinger owes much to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s The Imperial Presidency, and was built on in numerous memoir accounts both laudatory (Kissinger, The White House Years, 38–48) and critical (Smith, Doubletalk, 61–65; Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 14–16). 21. George H. W. Bush called Scowcroft the “honest broker” when he announced his appointment as national security adviser in 1988 (“Transcript of Bush News Conference on Choice of Scowcroft,” New York Times, November 24, 1988: B12, PHN), and the moniker stuck (Allegar and Schaller, “An Honest Broker”). Scowcroft’s openness and honesty often serve as a foil to Nixon and Kissinger’s centralized bureaucratic approach; see: Rothkopf, Running the World, 152–156, 260–272; Hadley, “The Role and Importance of the National Security Advisor”; and Gans, White House Warriors, 34–57, 89–95. 22. Bowker and Williams, Superpower Détente; Froman, The Development of the Idea of Détente; Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation; Nelson, The Making of Détente; Gaddis, Strategies of Containment. 23. Blacker, Reluctant Warriors, 102–104; Schors, “Trust and Mistrust and the American Struggle for Verification of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, 1969–1979,” 85–87. 24. Suri, Power and Protest; Hanhimäki, The Rise and Fall of Détente. 25. Maurer, “The Purposes of Arms Control,” 16–19; Green, The Revolution That Failed, 48–65. 26. Ferguson et al., eds., The Shock of the Global; Painter, “Oil and Geopolitics,” 186–208; Sargent, A Superpower Transformed. 27. Moyn, The Last Utopia; Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War; Morgan, The Final Act. 28. Kuznick and Gilbert, eds., Rethinking Cold War Culture; Shaw and Youngblood, Cinematic Cold War; Vowinckel, Payk, and Lindenberger, Cold War Cultures. 29. McNeill and Unger, eds., Environmental Histories of the Cold War. 30. Hunt, Melvin Laird and the Foundation of the Post-Vietnam Military, esp. 363–394 and 543–558. 31. Knox and Murray, eds., The Dynamics of Military Revolution 1300–2050; Tomes, US Defense Strategy from Vietnam to Operation Iraqi Freedom; Kaplan, Daydream Believers. 32. Schelling and Halperin, Strategy and Arms Control; Sims, Icarus Restrained; Freedman and Michaels, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, 243–257. 33. Brennan and Halperin, “Policy Considerations of a Nuclear-Test Ban,” 234–268; Pfaltzgraff, “The Rationale for Superpower Arms Control,” 3–20. While many political scientists remain wedded to Schelling, intellectual historians are increasingly turning their attention to the intellectual history of American conservatism during the Cold War, though to date most historical accounts portray American conservatives as reflexively opposed to arms control. See, for example: Abella, Soldiers of Reason; Amadae, Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy; Heilbrunn, They Knew They Were Right; Robin, The Cold

Y8013-Maurer.indb 197

2/25/22 2:59 PM

19 8

no t e s t o page s 9 –11

War They Made; Robin, The Making of the Cold War Enemy: Culture and Politics in the Military-Intellectual Complex; Zellen, State of Doom. For an alternative view, see: Maurer, “Divided Counsels,” 353–377. 34. For prominent works that assume all arms control is a form of cooperation, see: Jervis, “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma,” 167–214; Lipson, “International Cooperation in Economic and Security Affairs,” 1–23; Axelrod and Keohane, “Achieving Cooperation Under Anarchy: Strategies and Institutions,” 226–254; Fearon, “Bargaining, Enforcement, and International Cooperation,” 269–305; Kreps, Saunders, and Shultz, “The Ratification Premium,” 479–514. A recent exception to the cooperative trend is Coe and Vaynman, “Why Is Arms Control So Rare?,” 342–355. Coe and Vaynman focus on how states might use arms control verification to gain better information for military targeting. Their argument about the potential military dangers of transparency is compelling, though it does little to help us explain why even arms control agreements that lack significant verification mechanisms (like SALT I) are also quite rare. In examining the SALT I negotiations, my emphasis is not on information, but rather on how the selection of specific weapons technologies to be limited by an agreement shapes the military balance to the advantage of one party or another. In other cases, the two approaches need not be exclusive: states might use arms control negotiations to pursue both technological and informational advantages. 35. Grynaviski, Constructive Illusions. 36. Grieco, “Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation,” 485–507; Snidal, “Relative Gains and the Pattern of International Cooperation,” 701–726; Powell, “Absolute and Relative Gains in International Relations Theory,” 1303–1320. 37. Grynaviski focuses on “creative misunderstandings” occurring at the international level that allow states to reach specific agreements even when they disagree on fundamentals. I recommend extending his findings into the “second level” of the two-level game, to show how misunderstanding—or simply ignoring—the motives of actors within one’s own government can help build domestic consensus in pursuing certain policies. 38. On the importance of the interaction between international and domestic politics in major negotiations, see: Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics,” 427–460. 39. Miller, “Politics Over Promise,” 67–90. 40. Of course, there are also critics of arms control as a concept. See, for example: Gray, House of Cards. But major ratification debates in Congress generally turn less on the theory of arms control than on the details of the specific the arms control agreement in question. 41. Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution. 42. Kroenig, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy, 65–113; Lieber and Press, The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution, 66–93. 43. Green, The Revolution That Failed, 108–112, 133–135, 143–148, 223–226.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 198

2/25/22 2:59 PM

no t e s t o page s 11 –17

19 9

44. Rumer, “A Farewell to Arms . . . Control”; Korb, “Why It Could (but Shouldn’t) Be the End of the Arms Control Era”; Thielmann, “Are We Approaching the End of the Arms Control Era?”; Brooks, “The End of Arms Control?” 45. Mattis, “Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America”; Colby and Mitchell, “The Age of Great-Power Competition.” 46. The largest arms control advocacy groups pay virtually no attention to questions of competitive strategy; this includes the Arms Control Association (https://www.armscontrol.org/about), the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation (https://armscontrolcenter.org/about/), the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (https://thebulletin.org/about-us/), and the Federation of American Scientists (https://fas.org/about-fas/). There is also a long-standing network of organizations dedicated not just to controlling nuclear weapons, but to abolishing them entirely, including the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (https://cnduk.org/who/), the Ploughshares Fund (https://www .ploughshares.org/what-we-fund), Global Zero (https://www.globalzero.org/ about-us/), and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (https://www.icanw.org/people_and_structure), the last of which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for its advocacy of a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. By comparison, there are no major advocacy groups or think tanks whose sole purpose is to advocate for competitive approaches to arms control. ch a pte r 1 . e a r l y d e l i be r a ti o ns 1. Sherwin, A World Destroyed; Herken, The Winning Weapon; Ross, American War Plans, 1945–1950; Kaplan, To Kill Nations, 19–76. 2. Gaddis, Strategies of Containment; Leffler, A Preponderance of Power; Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State. 3. Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace, 252–256, 380–398; Schrafstetter and Stephen, Avoiding Armageddon, 133–162; Gavin, “Strategies of Inhibition,” 9–46; Debs and Monteiro, Nuclear Politics, 359–377, 394–417; Lutsch, “In Favor of ‘Effective’ and ‘No-discriminatory’ Non-dissemination Policy,” 36–57; Yoshida, “In the Shadow of China’s Bomb,” 172–195. The competitive dimension of American nonproliferation policy has received more attention from historians than that of superpower arms limitation; see, for example: Maddock, Nuclear Apartheid. 4. Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon, 125–257; Herken, Counsels of War, 39–225. 5. Rosenberg, “The Origins of Overkill,” 3–71; Kaplan, To Kill Nations, 77–161. 6. Zaloga, The Kremlin’s Nuclear Sword, 22–100; Podvig, ed., Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces, 4–6. 7. Wittner, Confronting the Bomb; Schelling and Halperin, Strategy and Arms Control, 2–4. 8. Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 1953–1961; Medhurst, “Atoms for Peace and Nuclear Hegemony,” 571–593; Tal, The American Nuclear

Y8013-Maurer.indb 199

2/25/22 2:59 PM

20 0

no t e s t o page s 17 – 20

Disarmament Dilemma, 1945–1963; Kearn, Jr., “The Baruch Plan and the Quest for Atomic Disarmament,” 41–67; Drogan, “The Nuclear Imperative,” 948–974. 9. Seaborg, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Test Ban; Greene, Eisenhower, Science Advice, and the Nuclear Test-Ban Debate, 1945–1963; Higuchi, Political Fallout. 10. Cameron, The Double Game, 29–48. 11. Kaplan, Landa, and Drea, The McNamara Ascendancy, 1961–1965. 12. Norris, Kosiak, and Schwartz, “Deploying the Bomb,” 116–118, 130–131, 136–139. 13. Zaloga, The Kremlin’s Nuclear Sword, 101–134; Burr and Rosenberg, “Nuclear Competition in an Era of Stalemate,” 88–111. 14. Podvig, Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces, 6–8, 127–129. 15. Memorandum of Conversation (Memcon), Kennedy, DeGaulle, et al., May 31, 1961, FRUS 1961–63, Vol. XIV, Document 30, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1961–63v14/d30. 16. Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft, 30–56. Gerard Smith later recalled that the United States had 850 tactical aircraft deployed at any given time that the Soviets claimed were capable of launching nuclear attacks on Soviet territory from American overseas bases (Smith, Doubletalk, 132). 17. Gavin, Gold, Dollars, and Power, 135–164. 18. Drea, McNamara, Clifford, and the Burdens of Vietnam, 1965–1969, 316–319, 321–332. 19. Cameron, The Double Game, 62–66. 20. Cameron, The Double Game, 69–76. 21. Ambrose, The Control Agenda, 18–19; Cameron, The Double Game, 60–69. 22. Brands, “Progress Unseen,” 274–277. 23. Drea, McNamara, Clifford, and the Burdens of Vietnam, 1965–1969, 332–335. 24. Brands, “Progress Unseen,” 277. 25. Drea, McNamara, Clifford, and the Burdens of Vietnam, 1965–1969, 364–367; Cameron, The Double Game, 83–94. 26. Brands, “Progress Unseen,” 279. 27. Cameron, The Double Game, 94–99. 28. Holloway, The Soviet Union and the Arms Race, 43–47; Dobrynin, In Confidence, 148–154; Savel’yev and Detinov, The Big Five, 1–10; Radchenko, “The Soviet Union and the Cold War Arms Race,” 167–171. 29. Parrott, The Soviet Union and Ballistic Missile Defense, 26–27; Nation, Black Earth, Red Star, 261–262; Evangelista, Unarmed Forces, 124–232; Yost, Soviet Ballistic Missile Defense and the Western Alliance, 92–102; Stevens, “The Soviet BMD Program,” 201–205. 30. Ambrose, The Control Agenda, 21; Cameron, The Double Game, 100–101. 31. Garthoff, “BMD in East-West Relations,” 286–317; Zubok, A Failed Empire, 192–226. 32. Cameron, The Double Game, 99–100. 33. Drea, McNamara, Clifford, and the Burdens of Vietnam, 1965–1969, 336–341.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 200

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 20 – 2 4

201

34. Record of Meeting of the Executive Committee of the Committee of Principals, June 8, 1968, FRUS 1964–68, Vol. XI, Document 252, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964–68v11; Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, 287–290. 35. Newhouse, Cold Dawn, 114–115. 36. Schelling and Halperin, Strategy and Arms Control, 118–121, 137–147. 37. Special National Intelligence Estimate, FRUS 1964–68, July 18, 1968, Vol. XI, Document 257, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964–68v11/ d257. 38. Paper Prepared by the Interagency Working Group, July 31, 1968, FRUS 1964– 68, Vol. XI, Document 264, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1964–68v11/d264. 39. Memo, Keeny to Rostow, August 12, 1968, FRUS 1964–68, Vol. XI, Document 267, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964–68v11/d267. 40. “Strategic Missile Talks, Basic Position Paper,” August 24, 1968, folder Johnson Administration SALT Position, 1968, Box 77, Henry A. Kissinger (HAK) Office Files, Nixon Library. 41. Memo, Clifford to Johnson, August 13, 1968, FRUS 1964–68, Vol. XI, Document 268, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964–68v11/ d268. 42. Memo, Rostow to Johnson, August 16, 1968, FRUS 1964–68, Vol. XI, Document 273, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964–68v11/ d273. 43. Editorial Note, FRUS 1964–68, Vol. XI, Document 274, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964–68v11/d274. 44. Newhouse, Cold Dawn, 130–131. 45. Memo, Warnke to Clifford, January 25, 1969, folder Johnson Administration SALT Position, 1968, Box 77, HAK Office Files, Nixon Library. 46. Letter, Johnson to Nixon, November 25, 1968, folder SALT January–May [1969] Volume I [2 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Newhouse, Cold Dawn, 137. 47. Brands, “Progress Unseen,” 279. 48. On Nixon’s political career, see: Ambrose, Nixon; Nixon, In the Arena; Thomas, Being Nixon; and Farrell, Richard Nixon. 49. Dallek, The Price of Power, 27–32, 60–62; Thomas, Being Nixon, 107–147. 50. Nixon, RN, 280–292; Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 28–39; Bundy, A Tangled Web, 14–19. 51. Richard Nixon, “Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida,” August 8, 1968, TAPP, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-accepting-the -presidential-nomination-the-republican-national-convention-miami; Richard Nixon, “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1969, TAPP, https://www.presidency .ucsb.edu/documents/inaugural-address-1.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 201

2/25/22 3:00 PM

20 2

no t e s t o page s 2 4 – 26

52. Marquis Childs, “Nixon Embraces Era of Negotiation,” Washington Post, August 12, 1968, A20, PHN; Don Irwin, “Nixon Pledges to Seek Arms Curbs, Guard Nation’s Strength,” Los Angeles Times, October 27, 1968, C64, PHN; Stephen Nordlinger, “Cut in Arms Race Is Urged by Nixon,” Sun, October 27, 1968, 1, PHN. 53. Skinner et al., The Strategy of Campaigning, 70–71; Newhouse, Cold Dawn, 133–134. 54. Kissinger, The White House Years, 148, 542; Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft, 109–110. 55. Record of Meeting with President Nixon, July 28, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 147, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d147; Conversation Among Nixon, Kissinger, and Haldeman, April 17, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 148, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d148; Conversation Between Nixon and Kissinger, April 19, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIV, Document 126, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v14/d126. 56. Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, February 12, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 5, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d5. 57. On Kissinger, see: Kissinger, The White House Years; Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger; Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century; and Ferguson, Kissinger, Vol. I. 58. Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. 59. Kissinger, “Limited War,” 800–817. 60. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 230–254; Schelling, Strategy and Arms Control, 9–39. 61. National Security Study Memorandum 64, July 8, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 41, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d41; National Security Study Memorandum 69, July 8, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 42, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d41; Study Prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, undated, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 129, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d129. See also: Terriff, The Nixon Administration and the Making of U.S. Nuclear Strategy. 62. See, for example, Kissinger’s advocacy of an arms control proposal that would limit the survivability of Soviet nuclear forces: Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, May 23, 1969, folder SALT January–May [1969] Vol. I [1 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 63. Kissinger, The White House Years, 81–86. 64. Burr, “The Nixon Administration, the ‘Horror Strategy,’ and the Search for Limited Nuclear Options, 1969–1972,” 38–40; Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft, 104–119. 65. Brendan Green has described Nixon and Kissinger’s concerns about the strategic balance as linked to their assessment of the “constitutional fitness” of the United States to generate the resources necessary to compete with the So-

Y8013-Maurer.indb 202

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 26 – 2 8

20 3

viet Union in strategic arms; see: Green, The Revolution That Failed, 103–108. Yet constitutional fitness is too static a concept to describe Nixon and Kissinger’s conception of the strategic situation. The two saw American competitive disadvantages not as determined by American ideology or government, but rather as temporary features of the political landscape caused largely by the political-social breakdown that accompanied the war in Vietnam and the evolving international system. Nixon and Kissinger intended that arms control negotiations would buy time to adjust to these new circumstances and rebuild a consensus in favor of containing Soviet influence, not as a tool for offsetting a perpetual American disadvantage. See: Kissinger, The White House Years, 65–70. 66. Kissinger, The White House Years, 1245. 67. Kissinger, The White House Years, 43–44; Essay by Henry Kissinger, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. I, Document 4, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v01/d4. 68. Morris, Uncertain Greatness, 77–90; Hersh, The Price of Power, 25–31. 69. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, December 27, 1968, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. II, Document 1, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76 v02/d1. 70. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. II, Document 2, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v02/d2; Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, January 7, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. II, Document 3, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v02/d3; Kissinger, The White House Years, 45–46. 71. Memo, Laird to Kissinger, January 9, 1969, folder SecDef Correspondence— White House/NSC (1), Box D11, Laird Papers, Ford Library; Memo, Pursley to Laird, January 20, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. II, Document 9, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v02/d9. 72. National Security Decision Memorandum 1, January 20, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. II, Document 10, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v02/d10. 73. Memo, Kissinger to Rogers, Laird, and Helms, “National Security Study Memorandum 1, Situation in Vietnam,” January 21, 1969, Nixon Library, https:// www.nixonlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/virtuallibrary/documents/nssm/ nssm_001.pdf. 74. “National Security Study Memoranda,” Nixon Library, https://www.nixon library.gov/national-security-study-memoranda-nssm. 75. Kissinger, The White House Years, 38–48. 76. Memo, Kissinger to Rogers, Laird, and Helms, “National Security Study Memorandum 3, U.S. Military Posture and the Balance of Power,” January 21, 1969, Nixon Library, https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/virtuallibrary/ documents/nssm/nssm_003.pdf. 77. Briefing Paper, January 14, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XII, Document 2, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v12/d2; Memo,

Y8013-Maurer.indb 203

2/25/22 3:00 PM

204

no t e s t o page s 2 8 – 29

Ginsburgh to Kissinger, January 17, 1969, folder SALT January–May [1969] Vol. I [2 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 78. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 1, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d1; Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, February 18, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XII, Document 17, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v12/d17. 79. Hanhimäki, “‘Dr. Kissinger’ or Mr. Henry?,” 637–676; Hoff-Wilson, “‘Nixingerism,’ NATO, and Détente,” 501–525; Ambrose, “Between Two Poles,” 371–379; Caldwell, “The Legitimation of the Nixon-Kissinger Grand Design and Grand Strategy,” 633–652; Ritter, Dangerous Ground, 170–186; Burr and Rosenberg, “Nuclear Competition in an Era of Stalemate,” 107; Schulzinger, “Détente in the Nixon and Ford Years,” 376–377; Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft, 104–116; Tal, “‘Absolutes’ and ‘Stages’ in the Making and Application of Nixon’s SALT Policy,” 1090–1116. 80. Dobrynin, In Confidence, 201–202; Memcon, Kissinger and Sedov, January 2, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XII, Document 1, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v12/d1; Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 4, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d4; Memcon, Volkov and Bowden, June 13, 1969, Political and Defense, DEF 18–6 4/1/69 to DEF 18–6 7/1/69, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1967–1969, RG59, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD. 81. Tal, US Strategic Arms Policy in the Cold War, 6–14, 25–26, 43. 82. Richard Reston, “Soviet Reaffirms Desire for Talks on Arms Cut,” Los Angeles Times, January 21, 1969, AC, PHN; Theodore Shabad, “Soviet Tells U.S. That It Is Ready for Missile Talks,” New York Times, January 21, 1969, 1, PHN; Bruce Winters, “Russia Proposes Arms Discussion,” Sun, January 21, 1969, A1, PHN. 83. Charles W. Corddry, “Laird Expects More Delays on Atom Treaty,” Sun, January 15, 1969, A1, PHN; Victor Zorza, “Nixon Could Aid Soviet Doves by Agreeing to Missile Talks,” Washington Post, January 22, 1969, A27, PHN; Joseph Kraft, “Russians Watch for Actions Bearing Out Nixon’s Preview,” Washington Post, January 23, 1969, A21, PHN. 84. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. I, Document 8, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v01/d8. 85. Kissinger, The White House Years, 131; Memo, Foster to Kissinger, February 12, 1969, folder SALT January–May [1969] Vol. I [2 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 86. Smith, Doubletalk, 25–27; Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 77–78; Notes of Review Group Meeting, February 6, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 4, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d4. 87. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. I, Document 9, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v01/d9. 88. On Laird, see: Van Atta, With Honor.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 204

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 3 0 – 3 2

20 5

89. On Laird’s work as secretary of defense, see: Hunt, Melvin Laird and the Foundations of the Post-Vietnam Military. 90. Conversation Among Nixon, Laird, et al., August 10, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 190, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d190. 91. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 157, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d157; Keefer, Harold Brown, 575–600. 92. Brendan Green has argued that while Nixon resisted more liberal advocacy in favor of cooperative arms control, he faced no serious pressure from more hawkish American conservatives to pursue a more competitive nuclear strategy, and was in fact more competitive than most of his defense advisers; see: Green, The Revolution That Failed, 114–118, 150–153. This was probably true of conservatives in Congress, who (with a few exceptions) were generally ready to support Nixon in his competitive arms control policy. Conservatives within the administration, however, were a different matter. Laird especially proved effective at pressuring the White House into adopting more hawkish positions on both military procurement and arms control initiatives. In this regard, Nixon and Kissinger really were trying to find a middle way between doves and hawks within their own government. 93. Notes of Review Group Meeting, February 6, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 4, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d4. 94. Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, February 12, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 5, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d5. 95. Notes of Review Group Meeting, February 6, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 4, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d4. 96. Notes of National Security Council Meeting, February 14, 1969, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 7, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d7. 97. Notes of National Security Council Meeting, February 14, 1969, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 7, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d7. 98. Memo, Kissinger to Rogers, Laird, Smith, et al., “National Security Study Memorandum 28—Preparation of U.S. Position for Possible Strategic Arms Limitation Talks,” March 6, 1969, Nixon Library, https://www.nixonlibrary .gov/sites/default/files/virtuallibrary/documents/nssm/nssm_028.pdf. 99. On Smith’s career, see: Smith, Doubletalk, 5–14. 100. On Smith’s life, see: Smith, Disarming Diplomat. 101. Smith, Doubletalk, 85–86. 102. Smith, Doubletalk, 24–29. 103. Kissinger, The White House Years, 198–207.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 205

2/25/22 3:00 PM

20 6

no t e s t o page s 3 2 – 3 6

104. Smith, Doubletalk, 25–27; Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 77–78. 105. Memo, Haig to Kissinger, February 22, 1969, folder SALT January–May [1969] Vol. I [2 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 106. Letter, Nixon to Smith, March 15, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. I, Document 16, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v01/d16. 107. Kissinger, The White House Years, 135–136. 108. Kissinger, The White House Years, 26–27. 109. Notes of National Security Council Meeting, February 14, 1969, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 7, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d7; Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, May 23, 1969, folder SALT January–May [1969],Vol. I [1 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 110. Memcon, Dobrynin, Rogers, et al., May 8, 1969, folder SALT January–May [1969] Vol. I [1 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 111. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, May 23, 1969, folder SALT January–May [1969] Vol. I [1 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 112. Memo, USMissionNATO to SecState, April 29, 1969, folder SALT January–May [1969] Vol. I [2 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memcon, Flaemig, Smith, et al., April 11, 1969, Political and Defense, DEF 18–6 4/1/69 to DEF 18–6 7/1/69, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1967–1969, RG59, NARA; Memcon, Schnyder, Smith, et al., May 8, 1969, Political and Defense, DEF 18–6 4/1/69 to DEF 18–6 7/1/69, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1967–1969, RG59, NARA; Memcon, Catalano and Aaron, May 13, 1969, Political and Defense, DEF 18–6 4/1/69 to DEF 18–6 7/1/69, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1967–1969, RG59, NARA; Memcon, Pauls, Smith, et al., May 16, 1969, Political and Defense, DEF 18–6 4/1/69 to DEF 18–6 7/1/69, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1967–1969, RG59, NARA. 113. Memo, Nixon to Richardson, May 21, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 8, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76 v32/d8. 114. Telegram, SecState to AmEmbassyMoscow, June 12, 1969, folder SALT June– July [1969] Vol. II [2 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 115. James Yuenger, “Nixon Sees Arms Talks in Mid-August,” Chicago Tribune, June 20, 1969, 2, PHN. 116. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 151. 117. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, May 21, 1969, folder SALT January–May [1969] Vol. I [1 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library. ch a pte r 2 . d e e pe n i n g d i v i s i o ns 1. Bethe and Garwin, “Anti-Ballistic-Missile Systems,” 21–31; Chayes and Wiesner, eds., ABM. 2. Holst and Schneider, Jr., eds., Why ABM?; Kintner, ed., Safeguard. 3. Bethe and Garwin, “Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems”; Chayes and Wiesner, ABM. 4. Holst and Schneider, Jr., Why ABM?; Kintner, Safeguard.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 206

2/25/22 3:00 PM

n o t e s t o page s 3 6 – 3 8

207

5. Skinner et al., The Strategy of Campaigning, 70–71; Newhouse, Cold Dawn, 133–134. 6. Kissinger, The White House Years, 204–210; Nixon, RN, 415–417; Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries, 38–39. 7. Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, February 19, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 8, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d8. 8. National Security Study Memorandum 23, February 20, 1969, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 9, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d9; Knopf, Domestic Society and International Cooperation, 168–170. 9. Paper Prepared in the Department of Defense, undated, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 14, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d14; Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, March 5, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 16, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d16. In fact, the administration referred to this ABM program as “modified Sentinel” up until Nixon’s announcement of the system (Memo, Buchanan to Nixon, March 14, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 24, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d24). To avoid confusion, I refer to “modified Sentinel” as “Safeguard” throughout the text. 10. Transcript of Telephone Conversation, Nixon and Kissinger, March 11, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 22, fn4, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d22; Memo, Harlow to Nixon, March 10, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 21, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d21. 11. Guthrie, Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election of November 5, 1968. 12. David E. Rosenbaum, “John C. Stennis, 93, Longtime Chairman of Powerful Committees in the Senate, Dies,” New York Times, April 24, 1995, B11, PHN; Woods, Fulbright, 485–560. 13. Lytle, America’s Uncivil Wars, 334–356; Johnson, Congress and the Cold War, 144–161; Scanlon, The Pro-War Movement, 96–124. 14. Warren Weaver, Jr., “A Complete Ban on ABM Sought by Senator Smith,” New York Times, August 6, 1969, 1, PHN; John W. Finney, “ABM’s Opponents Select Strategy,” New York Times, July 31, 1970, 11, PHN; Robert M. Smith, “Senate Defeats New Bid to Limit ABM Expansion,” New York Times, August 20, 1970, 1, PHN. 15. Lindsay, Congress and Nuclear Weapons, 39–40. 16. William Beecher, “Pentagon Drafts Revised Proposal on Missile Shield,” New York Times, March 2, 1969, 1, PHN. 17. Key witnesses included George Kistiakowsky, Herbert York, James Killian, Hans Bethe, Carl Kaysen, Wolfgang Panofsky, George Rathjens, Jack Ruina, Marshall Shulman, Jerome Wiesner, Harvey Brooks, and Gordon Macdonald.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 207

2/25/22 3:00 PM

20 8

no t e s t o page s 3 8 – 39

For the full testimony, see: U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on International Organization and Disarmament Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Strategic and Foreign Policy Implications of the ABM Systems, Part 1, March 6–28, 1969, 91st Congress (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1969), PCP; U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on International Organization and Disarmament Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Strategic and Foreign Policy Implications of the ABM Systems, Part 2, May 14 and 21, 1969, 91st Congress (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1969), PCP; U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on International Organization and Disarmament Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Strategic and Foreign Policy Implications of the ABM Systems, Part 3: Anti-Submarine Warfare, Multiple Independently Targeted Reentry Vehicles (MIRV), May 16 and July 16, 1969, 91st Congress (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1969), PCP. 18. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 6, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d6. 19. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 6, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d6. 20. Memo, Pursley to Laird, March 25, 1969, folder Public Affairs, 1969–72 (1), Laird Papers, Ford Library; “Memorandum,” folder Department of Defense— Problems, 1969, Box A69, Laird Papers, Ford Library. 21. Memo, Richardson and Smith to Rogers, March 6, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 19, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d19; Memo, Smith and Johnson to Rogers, March 9, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 20, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d20. 22. U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Part 2, February 18 and 20, 1969, 90th Congress (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1969), 337–379, PCP; U.S. Senate, Strategic and Foreign Policy Implications of the ABM Systems, Part 1, March 6–28, 1969, 91st Congress (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1969), 3–17, PCP. 23. John W. Finney, “Laird Sees ‘Rapid’ Soviet Missile Gains,” New York Times, February 21, 1969, 1, PHN; “The Negotiator and the Confronter,” Time, April 4, 1969, 25–26, PHN. 24. On Packard’s business experience, see: Packard, The HP Way. 25. Notes of National Security Council Meeting, February 14, 1969, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 7, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d7. 26. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 6, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d6; “Statement by Deputy Secretary of Defense Packard before the Committee on Armed Services . . . ,” March 20, 1969, folder ABM—David Packard Testimony, 1969, Box A50, Laird Papers, Ford Library.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 208

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 39 – 41

20 9

27. Joseph R. L. Sterne, “Laird Says Soviet Arms Justify ABM,” Sun, March 21, 1969, A1, PHN; Joseph Alsop, “Capability of a First Strike Adjudged Real Russian Aim,” Washington Post, March 21, 1969, A21, PHN; John W. Finney, “SS-9 Helps Administration Score Points in Missile Debate,” New York Times, March 24, 1969, 30, PHN. 28. John W. Finney, “Fulbright Says Laird Uses Fear to Promote ABM,” New York Times, March 22, 1969, 1, PHN; John W. Finney, “Mansfield Criticizes Pentagon on Its ABM Views,” New York Times, March 25, 1969, 14, PHN; “No Question About It?,” Washington Post, March 25, 1969, A20, PHN. 29. John W. Finney, “Study Backs Foes of Missile Shield,” New York Times, April 9, 1969, 1, PHN; George C. Wilson, “ABM Has Breached Pentagon’s Guard,” Washington Post, April 13, 1969, 33, PHN; Irving S. Bengelsdorf, “Even Considering MIRV, the ABM Argument Falls Down,” Los Angeles Times, April 17, 1969, e7, PHN. 30. “ABM—Written for a U.S. Senator,” folder ABM—General (1), Undated— 1969, Box A50, Laird Papers, Ford Library; Teller, “Statement on the Ballistic Missile Defense,” April 21, 1969, folder Sentinel ABM System, Vol. II 4/1/69–5/31 69 [1 of 2], Box 844, NSC Files, Nixon Library; “Statement of Albert Wohlstetter, University of Chicago, The Role of ABM in the 1970’s,” April 23, 1969, folder Sentinel ABM System, Vol. II 4/1/69–5/31 69 [1 of 2], Box 844, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, BeLieu to Nixon, April 14, 1969, folder Sentinel ABM System, Vol. II 4/1/69–5/31/69 [2 of 2], Box 844, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 31. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 25, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d25. 32. Memo, Smith to Rogers et al., March 13, 1969, folder NSSM-28 2 of 2 [1 of 3], Box H-140, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Moose to Halperin, Keeny, and Lynn, March 17, 1969, folder NSSM-28 2 of 2 [1 of 3], Box H-140, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 33. Ferguson, Kissinger, Vol. I, 201. 34. Emily Langer, “Helmut Sonnenfeldt, Aide to Henry Kissinger, Dies at 86,” Washington Post, November 20, 2012, PHN. 35. Minutes of a Review Group Meeting, June 19, 1969, FRUS 1969–76 Vol. XXXII, Document 20, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d20. 36. Hersh, The Price of Power, 78–79, 91–92. 37. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, April 22, 1969, folder NSSM-28 1 of 2 [2 of 4], Box H-108, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, May 1, 1969, folder SALT January–May [1969] Vol. I [2 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 38. “Possible Alternative Options for Strategic Arms Control,” folder NSSM-28 2 of 2 [1 of 3], Box H-140, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 39. Greenwood, Making the MIRV. 40. MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 209

2/25/22 3:00 PM

210

n o t e s t o page s 41 – 43

41. Green and Long, “The Geopolitical Origins of US Hard-Target-Kill Counterforce Capabilities and MIRV,” 19–54; Petrelli and Pulcini, “Nuclear Superiority in the Age of Parity,” 1192–1195, 1199–1203. 42. York, “ABM, MIRV, and the Arms Race,” 257–260; Lambeth, “Deterrence in the MIRV Era,” 221–242; Potter, “Coping with MIRV in a MAD World,” 599– 626; Weber, Cooperation and Discord in U.S.-Soviet Arms Control, 147–203. 43. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, April 22, 1969, folder NSSM-28 1 of 2 [2 of 4], Box H-108, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 44. Memo, Laird to Nixon, April 21, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 26, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d26; Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 43, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d43. 45. Letter, Brooke to Nixon, folder ABM—General (1), Undated—1969, Box A50, Laird Papers, Ford Library. 46. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, April 25, 1969, folder Sentinel ABM System, Vol. II 4/1/69–5/31/69 [1 of 2], Box 844, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 47. Memo, Richardson to Nixon, May 22, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 9, fn2, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d9; “Sen. Brooke Asks Pause in A-Tests,” Washington Post, April 25, 1969, A4, PHN; Memo, Walsh to Kissinger, June 20, 1969, Political and Defense, DEF 18–6 4/1/69 to DEF 18–6 7/1/69, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1967–1969, RG59, NARA. 48. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 18, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d18. 49. Nixon, Richard Nixon: 1969, 474. 50. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 43, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d43. 51. “SS-9 Has Long Range,” New York Times, April 22, 1969, 3, PHN; Richard Homan, “SS-9 Goes 5500 Miles in Test,” Washington Post, April 23, 1969, A26, PHN; “Russian SS-9 Spurs Worry,” Sun, April 23, 1969, A8, PHN. 52. Memo, Packard to Kissinger, May 30, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 13, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d13. 53. Memo, Helms to Kissinger, May 26, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 30, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34 /d30. 54. Helms and Hood, A Look Over My Shoulder, 384–388. 55. Memo, Haig to Kissinger, “Urgent Items Requiring Your Attention Today,” May 27, 1969, folder SALT January–May [1969] Vol. I [1 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 56. Memo, Packard to Kissinger, May 28, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 31, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d31. 57. Memo, Haig to Kissinger, “Urgent Items Requiring Your Attention Today,” May 27, 1969, folder SALT January–May [1969] Vol. I [1 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 210

2/25/22 3:00 PM

n o t e s t o page s 43 – 45

211

58. Memo, Packard to Kissinger, May 28, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 31, fn3, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v34/d31. 59. Kissinger, The White House Years, 37. 60. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, June 5, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 33, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d33. 61. John W. Finney, “Administration Critics Say ‘Intelligence Gap’ Clouds ABM Issue,” New York Times, June 1, 1969, 2, PHN. 62. David Kraslow, “U.S. at Odds on Soviet Missiles, Report Reveals,” Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1969, 1, PHN; David Kraslow, “Hill Intelligence Report Disputes Administration on Red Peril,” Washington Post, June 18, 1969, A6, PHN. 63. Memorandum to Holder of National Intelligence Estimate 11–8-68, June 23, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 38, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d38. 64. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, June 30, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 40, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d40. 65. Notes of National Security Council Meeting, February 14, 1969, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 7, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d7. 66. “U.S. Strategic Posture—Basic Issues,” folder NSC Meeting 6/13/69—Review of US Strategic Posture NSSM 3, Box H-022, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, June 17, 1969, folder NSC Meeting 6/18/69 SALT (NSSM 28) [1 of 2], Box H-022, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Minutes of a National Security Council Meeting, June 18, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 19, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d19. 67. Minutes of Review Group Meeting, May 29, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 32, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d32. 68. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, June 24, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 20, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d20. 69. Kissinger, The White House Years, 10–15, 25–28; Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries, xi–xii, 2–8. 70. National Security Decision Memorandum 16, June 24, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 39, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d39. 71. William Beecher, “Administration Gets Study of Global Nuclear Strategy,” New York Times, May 1, 1969, 1, PHN. Smith and Kissinger suspected that the leak was from Laird, but had no way to prove it (Memorandum of Telephone Conversation [Telcon], Smith and Kissinger, May 1, 1969, folder SALT January–May [1969] Vol. I [1 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library). Smith would later be critical of Nixon’s excessive secrecy on SALT (Smith, Doubletalk, 64–65), but at the time Smith and most members of the administration recognized that secrecy was important to effective negotiations. Of

Y8013-Maurer.indb 211

2/25/22 3:00 PM

212

n o t e s t o page s 4 6 – 4 8

course, Smith did not approve of Nixon and Kissinger keeping major secrets from him. 72. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, May 1, 1969, folder SALT January–May [1969] Vol. I [2 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library; “Questions on SALT”; folder Issue Areas—General, 1969 (1), Box A74, Laird Papers, Ford Library; Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, 300. 73. Katz, Verification and SALT; Richelson, “Technical Collection and Arms Control,” 198–205. 74. Rowell, Arms Control Verification, 73–91; Hughes, Foreword to Verification and Compliance, vii–x; Gallagher, The Politics of Verification, 1–14. 75. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, “NSSM 28, Substantive SALT Issues and NATO Aspects,” June 10, 1969, folder NSSM-28 2 of 2 [2 of 3], Box H-140, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 76. Paper Prepared by the Interagency SALT Steering Committee, undated, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 14, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d14. 77. Minutes of a Review Group Meeting, June 12, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 17, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d17. 78. Paper Prepared by the Interagency SALT Steering Committee, undated, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 14, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d14; Minutes of Review Group Meeting, May 29, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 32, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d32. 79. Memo, Lynn to Sonnenfeldt, May 28, 1969, folder NSSM-28 2 of 2 [3 of 3], Box H-140, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 80. Paper Prepared by the Interagency SALT Steering Committee, undated, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 14, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d14; Minutes of a National Security Council Meeting, June 18, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 19, https:// history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d19. 81. Minutes of a National Security Council Meeting, June 18, 1969, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 19, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d19. 82. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, April 22, 1969, folder NSSM-28 1 of 2 [2 of 4], Box H-108, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Minutes of a National Security Council Meeting, June 18, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 19, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d19. 83. “Questions on SALT,” folder Issue Areas—General, 1969 (1), Box A74, Laird Papers, Ford Library; Minutes of a National Security Council Meeting, June 25, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 22, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d22.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 212

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 4 8 – 5 3

213

84. Minutes of a National Security Council Meeting, June 25, 1969, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 22, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d22. 85. Paper Prepared by the Interagency SALT Steering Committee, undated, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 14, fn1, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d14. 86. Paper Prepared by the Interagency SALT Steering Committee, undated, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 14, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d14. 87. Paper Prepared in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, June 11, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 16, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d16. 88. Memo, DuBridge to Kissinger, June 13, 1969, folder SALT June–July [1969] Vol. II [1 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 89. Memo, Wheeler to Laird, June 23, 1969, folder NSC Meeting 6/25/69 SALT NSSM 28, Box H-022, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Laird to Kissinger, June 26, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 23, https:// history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d23. 90. Minutes of a Review Group Meeting, June 19, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 20, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d20. 91. Minutes of a Review Group Meeting, June 12, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 17, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d17. 92. Minutes of a National Security Council Meeting, June 25, 1969, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 22, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d22. 93. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, June 24, 1969, folder NSC Meeting 6/25/69 SALT NSSM 28, Box H-023, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 94. National Security Study Memorandum 62, July 2, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 24, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d24. ch a pte r 3 . th e v e r i f i c a ti o n panel 1. National Security Study Memorandum 62, July 2, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 24, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d24. 2. Minutes of a Review Group Meeting, June 19, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 20, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d20. 3. Letter, Nixon to Smith, July 21, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 26, fn2, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d26. 4. Smith, Doubletalk, 115–116.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 213

2/25/22 3:00 PM

214

no t e s t o page s 5 3 – 5 7

5. Memo, Wheeler to Laird, June 23, 1969, folder NSC Meeting 6/25/69 SALT NSSM 28, Box H-022, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Laird to Kissinger, June 26, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 23, https:// history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d23. 6. Memo, Wheeler to Laird, August 1, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 31, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d31. 7. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, June 30, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 40, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d40. 8. Memo, Perez to Kissinger, July 23, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 29, fn3, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d29. 9. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 43, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d43. 10. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 43, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d43. 11. Memo, Perez to Kissinger, July 23, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 29, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d29. 12. Letter, Smith to Kissinger, November 3, 1969, folder NSC Meeting 11/10/69 SALT (NSSM 62) [1 of 2], Box H-025, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 13. “Alternative I,” folder Review Group SALT [part 1] 7/7/69, Box H-039, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 14. Minutes of a Review Group Meeting, July 17, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 25, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d25. 15. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, July 12, 1969, folder SALT June–July [1969] Vol. II [1 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Halperin to Kissinger, July 16, 1969, folder SALT June–July [1969] Vol. II [1 of 2], NSC Files, Box 873, Nixon Library. 16. Letter, Packard to Kissinger, July 17, 1969, folder SALT June–July [1969] Vol. II [1 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 17. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, folder SALT June–July [1969] Vol. II [1 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 18. Letter, Nixon to Smith, July 21, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 26, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d26. 19. Kissinger, The White House Years, 149–150. 20. John W. Finney, “Senate Unit Votes Safeguard, 10–7, Heralding Fight,” New York Times, June 28, 1969, 1, PHN. 21. “Excerpts From Majority and Minority Reports by Senate Committee on the ABM,” New York Times, July 8, 1969, 12, PHN. 22. John W. Finney, “Laird Modifies Missile Warning,” New York Times, June 24, 1969, 1, PHN; William Beecher, “U.S. Aide Believes Soviet Tests MIRV,” New York Times, August 6, 1969, 1, PHN. 23. Hunt, Melvin Laird and the Foundation of the Post-Vietnam Military, 407.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 214

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 5 7 – 59

215

24. John W. Finney, “ABM Debate Aims at Ten Senators Still Undecided,” New York Times, July 9, 1969, 1, PHN. 25. David Gilbert, “Experts Warn the Safeguard Is Unreliable,” Chicago Tribune, July 11, 1969, 2, PHN; John W. Finney, “ABM Called Defense for Obsolete Missile Force,” New York Times, July 17, 1969, 8, PHN. 26. “ABM—Written for a US Senator,” folder ABM—General (3), July–Dec 1969, Box A50, Laird Papers, Ford Library. 27. Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly, 110–114. 28. “Safeguard: Does the Supposed ‘Softness’ of Radars Render Safeguard Vulnerable?,” folder ABM—General (3), July–Dec 1969, Box A50, Laird Papers, Ford Library; “Safeguard: Will Safeguard Precipitate an Arms Race?,” folder ABM—General (3), July–Dec 1969, Box A50, Laird Papers, Ford Library; “Safeguard: Would a U.S.-Soviet Moratorium on MIRV Testing Eliminate the Need for a Defense of Minuteman?,” folder ABM—General (3), July–Dec 1969, Box A50, Laird Papers, Ford Library. 29. “A Report from Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense Policy,” folder ABM—General (3), July–Dec 1969, Box A50, Laird Papers, Ford Library. 30. “Pentagon Says Secret Chart Backs Need for Safeguard,” New York Times, June 3, 1969, 27, PHN; John W. Finney, “Secret ABM Data Heard by Senate in Closed Session,” New York Times, July 18, 1969, 1, PHN. 31. John H. Averill, “ABM Debated Behind Locked Senate Doors,” Los Angeles Times, July 19, 1969, 6, PHN. 32. Nathan Miller, “Plan to Block Safeguard Ignites Tempers in Senate,” Sun, July 24, 1969, A1, PHN; Stephen F. Nordlinger, “ABM Foes to Show New Attack,” Sun, July 30, 1969, A7, PHN. 33. John W. Finney, “ABM Foes Set Back as Prouty Shifts to Support Nixon,” New York Times, July 15, 1969, 1, PHN. 34. Van Atta, With Honor, 188–193. 35. “Russell Sees Nixon Winning Battle for Safeguard Plan,” New York Times, July 22, 1969, 30, PHN. 36. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 18, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d18. 37. Letter, Nixon to Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Kissinger, August 7, 1969, folder Sentinel ABM System Vol. III 6/1/69, Box 844, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 38. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, October 23, 1969, folder Sentinel ABM System Vol. III 6/1/69, Box 84S4, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 39. Kissinger, The White House Years, 212–215; Report on Meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Policy, April 10, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. I, Document 19, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v01/d19. 40. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 49, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d49. 41. National Security Decision Memorandum 33, November 12, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 40, fn4, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 215

2/25/22 3:00 PM

216

no t e s t o page s 59 – 62

42. National Security Decision Memorandum 27, October 11, 1969, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 56, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d55. 43. Minutes of Defense Program Review Committee Meeting, October 22, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 96, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d96. 44. Kissinger’s project was originally called the “Verification Committee” during its first meetings in mid-1969. For clarity’s sake, I refer to the organization as the Verification Panel throughout. 45. Minutes of a Review Group Meeting, June 19, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 20, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d20; Minutes of a Review Group Meeting, July 17, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 25, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d25. 46. Memo, Laird to Kissinger, June 26, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 23, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d23; Minutes of a Review Group Meeting, July 17, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 25, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d25. 47. Memo, Smith to Kissinger, June 30, 1969, folder Miscellaneous Verification Panel, Box H-108, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 48. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, folder Miscellaneous Verification Panel, Box H-108, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 49. Minutes of a Verification Panel Meeting, July 22,1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 28, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d28. 50. “NSSM 62—SALT Proposals HAK Talking Points,” folder Review Group SALT [part 1] 7/7/69, Box H-039, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 51. Minutes of a Verification Panel Meeting, July 22, 1969, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 28, esp. fn8, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d28. 52. Memo for the Record, July 24, 1969, folder Verification Panel Meeting— Review of Capabilities 7/22/69, Box H-004, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 53. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, August 26, 1969, folder Verification Panel Meeting, 8/29/69, Box H-004, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 54. “August 8, 1969 2nd Verification Committee,” folder Verification Panel Minutes Originals / 1969–3/8/72 [6 of 6], Box H-107, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 30, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d30. 55. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, August 26, 1969, folder Verification Panel Meeting, 8/29/69, Box H-004, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 56. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 30, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d30.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 216

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 62 – 65

217

57. Memo, Lynn to Verification Working Group, September 2, 1969, folder Verification Panel Meeting, 8/29/69, Box H-004, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 58. Memo, Lynn to Verification Working Group, September 9, 1969, folder Verification Panel Meeting 8–29–69, Box H-004, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 59. Kissinger, The White House Years, 148–149. 60. Hunt, Melvin Laird and the Foundation of the Post-Vietnam Military, 45–51. 61. Hersh, The Price of Power, 86, 103. 62. Smith, Doubletalk, 115–116. 63. Paper Prepared by the National Security Council Staff, undated, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 33, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d33; Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, September 27, 1969, folder Verification Panel Meeting, Status Report, 9/29/69, Box H-004, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 64. Letter, Packard to Kissinger, October 17, 1969, folder SALT October– November 16, 1969, Vol. IV [2 of 2], Box 874, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 65. Letter, Packard to Kissinger, October 17, 1969, folder SALT October– November 16, 1969, Vol. IV [2 of 2], Box 874, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 66. Memo, Smith to Kissinger, October 27, 1969, folder SALT October– November 16, 1969, Vol. IV [2 of 2], Box 874, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 67. “Evaluation of Possible Strategic Arms Control Agreements Between the United States and the Soviet Union,” folder SALT October–November 16, 1969, Vol. IV [2 of 2], Box 874, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 68. Memo, Smith to Kissinger, October 27, 1969, folder SALT October– November 16, 1969, Vol. IV [2 of 2], Box 874, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 69. Memo, Lynn to Verification Working Group, September 9, 1969, folder Verification Panel Meeting 8–29–69, Box H-004, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 70. Paper Prepared by the National Security Council Staff, undated, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 33, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d33. 71. Letter, Smith to Kissinger, November 3, 1969, folder NSC Meeting 11/10/69 SALT (NSSM 62) [1 of 2], Box H-025, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 72. Paper Prepared by the National Security Council Staff, undated, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 33, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d33. 73. “Technological Consequences of a MIRV Flight Ban,” NSC Meeting 3/25/70 SALT, Box H-027, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 74. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, August 26, 1969, folder Verification Panel Meeting, 8/29/69, Box H-004, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 75. “Evaluation of Possible Strategic Arms Control Agreements Between the United States and the Soviet Union,” folder SALT October–November 16, 1969, Vol. IV [2 of 2], Box 874, NSC Files, Nixon Library.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 217

2/25/22 3:00 PM

218

no t e s t o page s 65 – 69

76. Paper Prepared by the National Security Council Staff, undated, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 33, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d33. 77. Memo, Allison to Wheeler, September 26, 1969, folder SALT August– September [1969] Vol. III [1 of 1], Box 874, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 78. Memo, Lynn to Verification Working Group, September 9, 1969, folder Verification Panel Meeting 8–29–69, Box H-004, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 79. Memo, Tucker to Laird, November 7, 1969, folder SALT October–November 16, 1969, Vol. IV [2 of 2], Box 874, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, August 26, 1969, folder Verification Panel Meeting, 8/29/69, Box H-004, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 80. Paper Prepared by the National Security Council Staff, undated, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 38, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d38; Memo, Hyland for the Record, November 3, 1969, folder SALT October–November 16, 1969, Vol. IV [2 of 2], Box 874, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 81. “Evaluation of Possible Strategic Arms Control Agreements Between the United States and the Soviet Union,” folder SALT October–November 16, 1969, Vol. IV [2 of 2], Box 874, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 82. Paper Prepared by the National Security Council Staff, undated, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 38, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d38. 83. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, September 27, 1969, folder Verification Panel Meeting, Status Report, 9/29/69, Box H-004, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. ch a pte r 4 . s a l t be g i n s 1. Sebenius, Burns, and Mnookin, Kissinger the Negotiator, 67–186. 2. Garthoff, A Journey through the Cold War. 3. Smith, Doubletalk, 38; “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, One Step Forward; Interview with Philip Farley, 1986,” November 10, 1986, WGBH Media Library and Archives, http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V _B1AF905A6FC5403C81A5AD8B9085B1B1. 4. Smith, Doubletalk, 39–40; Brands, “Progress Unseen,” 277. 5. Smith, Doubletalk, 41; “Lieutenant General Royal Bertram Allison,” U.S. Air Force, November 15, 1969, https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Biographies/ Display/Article/107826/lieutenant-general-royal-bertram-allison/. 6. “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, One Step Forward: Interview with Royal Bertram Allison, 1986,” December 2, 1986, WGBH Media Library and Archives, http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_6A78D59412874E2 F8C840E75BD916CD2. 7. Smith, Doubletalk, 40.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 218

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 7 0 –7 3

219

8. On Nitze, see: Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost; Talbott, The Master of the Game, esp. 23–90. 9. Smith, Doubletalk, 37–45. 10. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, November 11, 1969, folder SALT October–November 16, 1969, Vol. IV [2 of 2], Box 874, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 11. James Yuenger, “Nixon Sees Arms Talks in Mid-August,” Chicago Tribune, June 20, 1969, 2, PHN. 12. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 151. 13. Minutes of a National Security Council Meeting, October 8, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 34, fn5, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d34. 14. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 149–151. 15. Holloway, “Racing Toward Armageddon?,” 81–82. 16. Memcon, Nixon, Kissinger, and Dobrynin, October 20, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 35, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d35. 17. Smith, Doubletalk, 80. 18. News Conference #357, October 25, 1969, folder SALT October–November 16, 1969, Vol. IV [2 of 2], Box 874, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 19. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, June 24, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 21, fn2, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d21. 20. Telegram, SecState to AmEmbassyMoscow, June 12, 1969, folder SALT June– July [1969], Vol. II [2 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 21. Smith, Doubletalk, 78. 22. Memcon, Nixon, Kissinger, and Dobrynin, October 20, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 35, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d35. 23. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, August 29, 1969, folder NSSM-28 2 of 2 [2 of 3], Box H-140, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 24. Minutes of a National Security Council Meeting, October 8, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 34, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d34; Minutes of a National Security Council Meeting, November 10, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 39, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d39. 25. National Security Decision Memorandum 33, November 12, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 40, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d40. 26. Minutes of a National Security Council Meeting, November 10, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 39, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d39. 27. Minutes of a National Security Council Meeting, November 10, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 39, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d39.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 219

2/25/22 3:00 PM

2 20

no t e s t o page s 7 3 –7 7

28. Smith, Doubletalk, 37–51. 29. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 41, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d4. 30. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, November 24, 1969, folder SALT 17 Nov 1969–30 Nov 69, 1969, Vol. V [1 of 1], Box 875, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 31. Memo; Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, November 24, 1969, folder SALT 17 Nov 1969–30 Nov 69, 1969, Vol. V [1 of 1], Box 875, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 32. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, December 3, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 42, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d42. 33. “Report of the U.S. Delegation to the Preliminary Strategic Arms Limitation Talks,” December 29, 1969, folder SALT 1 Dec 1969–31 Dec 69, Vol. VI [1 of 2], Box 875, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 34. Smith, Doubletalk, 88–97. 35. Savel’yev and Detinov, The Big Five, 9–13, 23–24. 36. Telegram, Smith to Nixon, December 3, 1969, folder SALT 1 Dec 1969–31 Dec 69, Vol. VI [1 of 2], Box 875, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 37. Telegram, SecState TOSALT, December 5, 1969, folder SALT 1 Dec 1969–31 Dec 69, Vol. VI [1 of 2], Box 875, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 38. Smith, Doubletalk, 164–168. 39. Letter, Smith to Nixon, December 9, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 44, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d44. 40. Memo, Perez to Kissinger, July 23, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 29, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d29. 41. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, November 24, 1969, folder SALT 17 Nov 1969–30 Nov 69, 1969, Vol. V [1 of 1], Box 875, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 42. Letter, Smith to Nixon, December 9, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 44, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d44. 43. Letter, Smith to Nixon, December 9, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 44, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d44. 44. “Report of the U.S. Delegation to the Preliminary Strategic Arms Limitation Talks,” December 29, 1969, folder SALT 1 Dec 1969–31 Dec 69, Vol. VI [1 of 2], Box 875, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 45. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, December 3, 1969; folder SALT 1 Dec 1969–31 Dec 69, Vol. VI [1 of 2], Box 875, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 46. Special National Intelligence Estimate, February 19, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 53, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d53. 47. Bronfenbrenner, “The Mirror Image in Soviet-American Relations,” 45–56. 48. Holloway, “Racing Toward Armageddon?,” 81–82. 49. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, December 17, 1969, folder SALT 1 Dec 1969–31 Dec 69, Vol. VI [1 of 2], Box 875, NSC Files, Nixon Library.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 220

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 7 8 – 8 0

2 21

50. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, December 3, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 42, fn1, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d42. 51. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, 15 February 1969, Soviet-American Relations, 6–8; Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, 6 March 1969, Soviet-American Relations, 27–28; Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, 3 March 1969, Soviet-American Relations, 28–35. 52. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 45, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d45. 53. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, November 15, 1969, folder SALT October–November 16, 1969, Vol. IV [2 of 2], Box 874, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 54. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, November 20, 1969, folder SALT 17 Nov 1969–30 Nov 69, 1969, Vol. V [1 of 1], Box 875, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 55. Memo, Haig to Kissinger, December 8, 1969, folder SALT 1 Dec 1969–31 Dec 69, Vol. VI [1 of 2], Box 875, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 56. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, November 19, 1969, folder SALT 17 Nov 1969–30 Nov 69, 1969, Vol. V [1 of 1], Box 875, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 57. Letter, Smith to Kissinger, January 20, 1970, folder SALT 1/70, Vol. VII [1 of 2], Box 876, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 58. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, January 19, 1970, folder SALT 1/70 Vol. VII [2 of 2], Box 876, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 59. Memo, Kissinger to Members of the Verification Panel, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 11/4/69, Box H-004, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 60. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, January 6, 1970, folder SALT 1/70 Vol. VII [2 of 2], Box 876, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 61. Hyland, Mortal Rivals, 44–45. 62. Memo, Knight to Baroody, October 7, 1969, folder Issue Areas—General, 1969 (2), Box A74, Laird Papers, Ford Library. 63. Minutes of Defense Program Review Committee Meeting, November 13, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 100, fn7, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d100. 64. Memorandum for the Record by Packard, December 8, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 106, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d106. 65. Letter, Drell to DuBridge, December 23, 1969, folder ABM-System 1–70–3–70 Vol. III Memos and Misc. [2 of 2], Box 840, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, January 5, 1970, folder ABM-System 1–70–3–70, Vol. III Memos and Misc. [2 of 2], Box 840, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 66. Wheeler and the Joint Chiefs also still supported Nixon’s Safeguard plan (Memo, Wheeler to Laird, December 31, 1969, folder ABM-System 1–70–3–70 Vol. III Memos and Misc. [2 of 2], Box 840, NSC Files, Nixon Library). 67. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, October 23, 1969, folder Sentinel ABM System Vol. III 6/1/69, Box 844, NSC Files, Nixon Library.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 221

2/25/22 3:00 PM

222

no t e s t o page s 81 – 83

68. Minutes of Defense Program Review Committee Meeting, October 22, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 96, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d96. 69. Notes of Defense Program Review Committee Meeting, December 20, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 109, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d109; Memorandum for the File by Smith, January 9, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 46, fn2, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d46. 70. Telcon, Kissinger and Packard, December 30, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 113, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d113; Memo, Packard to Kissinger, January 13, 1970, folder SALT 1/70 Vol. VII [2 of 2], Box 876, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 71. Memo, Smith to Nixon, January 21, 1970, folder ABM-System 1–70–3–70 Vol. III Memos and Misc. [2 of 2], Box 840, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, undated, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 125, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d125. 72. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 50, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ch2. 73. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, undated, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 125, fn7, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ch2. 74. “Evaluation of Possible Strategic Arms Control Agreements Between the United States and the Soviet Union,” folder SALT October–November 16, 1969, Vol. IV [2 of 2], Box 874, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 75. Paper Prepared by the National Security Council Staff,” March 23, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 158, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d58. 76. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, March 20, 1970, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 3/20/70, Box H-005, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 77. Kissinger, The White House Years, 539–540. 78. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 155. 79. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, March 20, 1970, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 3/20/70, Box H-005, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 80. “Verification Panel March 5, 1970,” folder Verification Panel Minutes Originals / 1969–3/8/72 [6 of 6], Box H-107, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, March 18, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 56, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d56. 81. “HAK Talking Points Verification Meeting,” March 12, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV, 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [2 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 82. Paper Prepared by the National Security Council Staff, March 23, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 58, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d58. 83. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, March 11, 1970, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 3–12–70, Box H-004, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 222

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 83 – 8 4

2 23

84. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, March 5, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV, 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [2 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library; “Verification Panel March 5, 1970,” folder Verification Panel Minutes Originals / 1969–3/8/72 [6 of 6], Box H-107, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 85. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, March 3, 1970, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 3–5-70, Box H-004, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 86. Memo, Tucker to Kissinger, March 16, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [1 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 87. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, March 3, 1970, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 3–5-70, Box H-004, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Davis to Members of NSC, March 21, 1970, Box H-005, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 88. Letter, Smith to Nixon, March 23, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 57, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d57; Memo, Richardson to Nixon, March 25, 1970, folder NSC Meeting 3/25/70 SALT, Box H-027, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Rogers to Nixon, April 6, 1970, folder SALT 1/70 Vol. VII [1 of 2], Box 876, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Laird to Nixon, April 9, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, SALT I, Document 67, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d67. 89. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, March 24, 1970, folder SALT 1/70 Vol. VII [1 of 2], Box 876, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Letter, Smith to Kissinger, March 24, 1970, folder NSC Meeting 3/25/70 SALT, Box H-027, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Telcon, Kissinger and Smith, April 7, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 63, esp. fn4, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d63;. 90. Minutes of a National Security Council Meeting, March 25, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 59, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d59; Memo, Davis to Agnew, Rogers, Laird, et al., March 21, 1970, folder SALT 1/70 Vol. VII [2 of 2], Box 876, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 91. National Security Decision Memorandum 49, March 27, 1970, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 61, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d61. 92. Memo, Garthoff to Members of the Verification Panel Working Group, April 4, 1970, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT Options 4/6/70, Box H-005, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 93. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, April 9, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. VIII 4/9/70–5/10/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 94. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 62, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d62. In his memoir, Smith recalled that Garthoff had drafted the NSDM 49 options, which showed that the Verification Panel’s work was a waste of time (Smith, Doubletalk, 118–119). Setting aside the fact that Garthoff’s report was based on the Verification

Y8013-Maurer.indb 223

2/25/22 3:00 PM

224

no t e s t o page s 8 4 – 8 7

Panel’s previous work, the final NSDM 49 options paper was also a product of the Verification Panel, which thoroughly reviewed and amended Garthoff’s original draft. 95. Memo, Garthoff to Members of the Verification Panel Working Group, April 4, 1970, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT Options 4/6/70, Box H-005, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 96. “ABMs: Should SAMs Be Counted as ABMs,” folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT Options 4/6/70, Box H-005, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 97. Kissinger, The White House Years, 542–545; Telcon, Kissinger and Smith, April 7, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 63, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d63. 98. Memo, Rogers to Nixon, April 6, 1970, folder SALT 1/70 Vol. VII [1 of 2], Box 876, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 99. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, March 24, 1970, folder SALT 1/70 Vol. VII [1 of 2], Box 876, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Laird to Nixon, April 9, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 67, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d67. 100. Memcon, Nixon et al., April 8, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 65, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d65. 101. Kissinger, The White House Years, 542. 102. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, April 9, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. VIII 4/9/70–5/10/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 103. “Task Y-1 ABM/MIRV Options,” March 13, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [1 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 104. Memcon, Nixon et al., April 11, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 69, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d69. 105. National Security Decision Memorandum 51, April 10, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 68, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d68. 106. Kissinger, The White House Years, 542–545. 107. “ABMs: Should SAMs Be Counted as ABMs,” folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT Options 4/6/70, Box H-005, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 108. Memo, Garthoff to Members of the Verification Panel Working Group, April 4, 1970, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT Options 4/6/70, Box H-005, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 109. Memcon, Nixon et al., April 11, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 69, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d69. 110. Smith, Doubletalk, 168–173; Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 155–159. 111. In fact, the Verification Panel had already considered the question of on-site inspections in March 1970 in its Y-13 Paper on verification issues. While Y-13 had not concluded whether inspections were necessary to police a MIRV ban, all agencies (including ACDA) had agreed that on-site inspections would

Y8013-Maurer.indb 224

2/25/22 3:00 PM

n o t e s t o page s 8 7 – 9 0

2 25

improve confidence in such a ban (“Verification Policy Option Task Y-13,” March 12, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [1 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library). Smith and Garthoff later claimed that the Verification Panel did not even consider on-site inspection until after it had been proposed to the Soviets in Vienna. It is true that the Verification Panel began a more detailed study of how to implement on-site inspections after the delegation departed for Vienna (Memo, Rochlin to Verification Panel Working Group, June 14, 1970, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 6/18/1970, Box H-005, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library). But the Y-13 Paper concluding that inspections would be useful predated Vienna by over a month. 112. Letter, Smith to Nixon, December 9, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 44, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d44; Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, April 9, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. VIII 4/9/70–5/10/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 113. “ABMs: Should SAMs Be Counted as ABMs,” folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT Options 4/6/70, Box H-005, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 114. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, December 17, 1969, folder SALT 1 Dec 1969–31 Dec 69, Vol. VI [1 of 2], Box 875, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 115. Memo, Perez to Kissinger, July 23, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 29, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d29. 116. Bundy, A Tangled Web, 96–100. 117. Memcon, Nixon et al., April 11, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 69, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d69. 118. Memo, Kissinger to Smith, April 13, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. VIII 4/9/70–5/10/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Rogers to Nixon, April 15, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, SALT I, Document 70, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d70. 119. Letter, Smith to Nixon, May 4, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. VIII 4/9/70–5/10/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 120. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, April 15, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. VIII 4/9/70–5/10/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library. cha pte r 5. s a l t s ta l e m a te 1. “Statement by Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird Before the House Subcommittee . . . ,” February 25, 1970, folder Defense Report—FY1971—Published Report, Box A66, Laird Papers, Ford Library. 2. “Statement by Dr. John Foster, Director, Defense Research and Engineering on FY71 Modified Phase II Safeguard Program,” February 24, 1970, folder ABM-System 1–70–3–70 Vol. III Memos and Misc. [1 of 2], Box 840, NSC Files, Nixon Library; “Statement of Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard on FY71 Modified Phase II Safeguard Program,” February 24, 1970,

Y8013-Maurer.indb 225

2/25/22 3:00 PM

2 26

3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

8.

9. 10.

11. 12. 13.

14.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 226

no t e s t o page s 9 0 – 9 2

folder ABM-System 1–70–3–70 Vol. III Memos and Misc. [1 of 2], Box 840, NSC Files, Nixon Library. Memo, Brown to Kissinger and Magruder, January 20, 1970, folder ABMSystem 1/70–3/70 Vol. III Memos and Misc. [1 of 2], Box 840, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Smith to Nixon, January 21, 1970, folder ABM-System 1–70–3–70 Vol. III Memos and Misc. [2 of 2], Box 840, NSC Files, Nixon Library. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, January 5, 1970, folder SALT 1/70 Vol. VII [2 of 2], Box 876, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, undated, folder ABM-System 1/70–3/70 Vol. III Memos and Misc. [1 of 2], Box 840, NSC Files, Nixon Library. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, January 31, 1970, folder ABM-System 1/70–3/70 Vol. III Memos and Misc. [1 of 2], Box 840, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Friedheim to Henkin, January 13, 1970, folder Public Affairs, 1969–72 (1), Box A87, Laird Papers, Ford Library. On Haig, see: Haig, Jr., Inner Circles. Memo, Slocombe for the Record, February 26, 1970, folder ABM-System 1–70–3–70 Vol. III Memos and Misc. [1 of 2], Box 840, NSC Files, Nixon Library. Memo, Kissinger to Klein and Ziegler, February 20, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [3 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library. Memo, Friedheim to Nixon, April 17, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [1 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library. Memo, Slocombe for the Record, February 26, 1970, folder ABM-System 1–70–3–70 Vol. III Memos and Misc. [1 of 2], Box 840, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Kissinger to Klein and Zielger, February 20, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [3 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library. Memo, Friedheim to Haig, March 11, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70 to 30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [2 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library. Memo, Watts to Harlow, April 24, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [1 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library. Memo, Timmons to Nixon, March 19, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [1 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Timmons to Kissinger, April 29, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [1 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library. Joseph Alsop, “Three Illusions Cherished as Battle of ABM Builds Up,” The Washington Post, March 2, 1970, A19, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [2 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library; C. L. Sulzberger, “Foreign Affairs: The Shield vs. the Sword,” New York Times, March 8, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [2 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library.

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 9 2 – 9 3

2 27

15. Laird’s editorial efforts were extensive; see: “No Arms Letup,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, February 24, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [2 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library; “Yawning Strategic Gap,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [2 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library; “Soviet Buildup,” Omaha World-Herald, February 26, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [2 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library; “The Best Button-Works,” Virginia Pilot, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [2 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library; “ABM Case Looks Persuasive,” Los Angeles Times, February 27, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [2 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library; “The Gretchko Statement,” Washington Star, February 27, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [2 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library; “ABM Opponents Boxed In,” March 4, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [1 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library; “Editor Raps Cutbacks in U.S. Defense,” Chicago Tribune, March 9, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [2 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 16. Memo, Haig to Kissinger, March 11, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70– 30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [1 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 17. Memo, Haig to Haldeman, Timmons, and Magruder, March 21, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [1 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 18. Memo, Friedheim to Haig, March 11, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [2 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Colson to Haldeman, April 6, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [1 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library; “Speakers Schedule,” March 11, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [2 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library. Kissinger also spoke at pro-Safeguard events in the hope of generating further public support (Memo, Lehman to Kissinger, April 29, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [1 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library). 19. “Statement of Foy Kohler on the Formation of the Citizens’ Committee to Safeguard America,” June 24, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. VI May 70–30 July [2 of 2], Box 842, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 20. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, February 24, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 54, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d54; Memo, Friedheim to Nixon, April 10, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [1 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 21. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, March 18, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [1 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 22. Johnson, Congress and the Cold War, 162–179.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 227

2/25/22 3:00 PM

228

n o t e s t o page s 9 3 – 9 4

23. Letter, Haldeman to Friedheim, April 16, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [1 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 24. Memo, Friedheim to Nixon, April 17, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [1 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 25. Memorandum for the Record, July 24, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 98, esp. fn2, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d98. 26. Telcon, Kissinger and Smith, August 13, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 102, fn2, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d102). Smith also spoke with several senators in a conference call a few days later (Note for the File by Smith, August 12, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 101, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d101). 27. Telcon, Kissinger and Smith, August 13, 1970, FRUS 1969–96, Vol. XXXII, Document 102, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d102. 28. Letter, Smith to Foster, August 17, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. XII 7/20/70–Sept. 70 [1 of 1], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library. In their memoirs, both Kissinger and Smith recalled Smith’s intervention as a turning point in the Safeguard debate (Kissinger, The White House Years, 548–551; Smith, Doubletalk, 148–149), but the timing of Smith’s letter makes this unlikely: by the time Smith’s “support” for Safeguard leaked, the Senate had already rejected the zero-Safeguard amendments, and the only question that remained was what level of Safeguard would be funded. 29. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, February 18, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [1 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Letter, DuBridge to Kissinger, July 1, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. VI, May 70–30 July 71 [2 of 2], Box 842, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 30. Letter, Laird to Jackson, August 7, 1970, folder ABM-General (5)—July 1970– July 1972, Box A50, Laird Papers, Ford Library. 31. National Security Decision Memorandum 44, February 20, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 125, fn8, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d125. 32. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, September 5, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. VI, May 70–30 July 71 [2 of 2], Box 842, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 33. Memo, Laird to Nixon, May 30, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 143, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d143; Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 146, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d146. 34. Notes of Defense Program Review Committee Meeting, April 24, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 140, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d140; Paper Prepared by the Defense Program Review Committee Working Group, August 18, 1970, FRUS 1969–

Y8013-Maurer.indb 228

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 9 5 – 97

2 29

76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 152, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d152. 35. “Llewellyn Thompson Dead at Age of 67; Ex-Envoy to Soviet,” New York Times, February 7, 1972, 1, PHN. 36. Smith, Doubletalk, 43–44. 37. Memcon, Nixon et al., April 11, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 69, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d69. 38. Memo, Laird to Kissinger, April 27, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. VIII 4/9/70–5/10/70 [1 of 2]. Box 887, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 39. Memo, Kissinger to Smith, April 13, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. VIII 4/9/70–5/10/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 40. Memo, Rogers to Nixon, April 15, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 70, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76 v32/d70. 41. Sorley, A Better War, 191–216. 42. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, March 24, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. VIII 4/9/70–5/10/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 43. Letter, Smith to Nixon, May 6, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 76, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d76. 44. National Security Decision Memorandum 51, April 10, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 68, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d68. 45. Memo, Laird to Kissinger, April 18, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 71, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32 /d71. 46. Memo, Kissinger to Verification Panel et al., April 25, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. VIII 4/9/70–5/10/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Laird to Kissinger, April 27, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. VIII 4/9/70–5/10/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 47. Memo, Kissinger to Smith, April 13, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. VIII 4/9/70–5/10/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 48. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, June 6, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. IX 5/10/70–6/12/70 [1 of 2], Box 887, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Laird to Nixon, June 5, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. IX 5/10/70– 6/12/70 [1 of 2], Box 887, NSC Files. 49. Smith, Doubletalk, 63–65. 50. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, June 6, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. IX 5/10/70–6/12/70 [1 of 2], Box 887, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 51. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, April 23, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. VIII 4/9/70–5/10/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 52. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, June 6, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. IX 5/10/70–6/12/70 [1 of 2], Box 887, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 53. Smith, Doubletalk, 59, 123–129, 182–185.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 229

2/25/22 3:00 PM

23 0

no t e s t o page s 97 – 9 9

54. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, June 6, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. IX 5/10/70–6/12/70 [1 of 2], Box 887, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 55. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, April 23, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. VIII 4/9/70–5/10/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 56. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, June 6, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. IX 5/10/70–6/12/70 [1 of 2], Box 887, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 57. Holloway, “Racing Toward Armageddon?,” 81–82. 58. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, April 23, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. VIII 4/9/70–5/10/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 59. Letter, Smith to Nixon, May 4, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. VIII 4/9/70–5/10/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, May 4, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. VIII 4/9/70–5/10/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 60. Memo, Laird to Kissinger, April 28, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 73, fn3, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d73. 61. Savel’yev and Detinov, The Big Five, 21–23; Holloway, “Racing Toward Armageddon?,” 83–84. 62. National Security Decision Memorandum 51, April 10, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 68, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d68. 63. Memo, Laird to Kissinger, April 28, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 73, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d73. 64. Memo, Laird to Nixon, June 5, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. IX 5/10/70–6/12/70 [1 of 2], Box 887, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 65. Letter, Smith to Nixon, May 19, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. VI, May 70–30 July 71 [2 of 2], Box 842, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 66. Letter, Brown to Kissinger, May 20, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 78, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d78. 67. Memo, June 4, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. IX 5/10/70–6/12/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 68. Garthoff’s reflections on Soviet motives at Vienna are somewhat jumbled. In Détente and Confrontation, he claimed that the Soviets rejected Option C primarily because Nixon and Kissinger attached on-site inspection provisions to its MIRV ban, but that the Soviets rejected Option D because it did not limit FBS (Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 159–162). Yet Option C also contained no limitations on FBS, which seemed to be the Soviets’ dominant concern when it came to offensive weapons. All in all, it seems that the Soviets disliked both options immensely; there is little reason to believe that they rejected Option C only because of its inspection provisions. 69. Dobrynin, In Confidence, 148–154; Gromyko, Memoirs, 147–149, 281–282, 285–288; Evangelista, Unarmed Forces, 124–232.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 230

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 9 9 –101

231

70. Savel’yev and Detinov, The Big Five, 15–30. 71. MccGwire, Military Objectives in Soviet Foreign Policy, 22–58; Battilega, “Soviet Views of Nuclear Warfare: The Post-Cold War Interviews,” 156–160; Podvig, “The Window of Vulnerability That Wasn’t,” 118–138. 72. Savel’yev and Detinov, The Big Five, 1–4; Battilega, “Soviet Views on Nuclear Warfare,” 160–163; Hines, Mishulovich, and Shull, Soviet Intentions, 1; Interview with Gen.-Col. (Ret.) Adrian Danilevich, Soviet Intentions, Vol. II, 29–30, 33, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb285/. 73. Hines, Mishulovich, and Shull, Soviet Intentions, 1965–1985, Vol. I, 4–8; Interview with Gen.-Col. (Ret.) Adrian Danilevich, Soviet Intentions, 35–37; Interview with Gen.-Col. Igor’ Illarionov, Soviet Intentions, 79–82; Interview with Vitalii Kataev, Soviet Intentions, 97–98. 74. Holloway, “Racing Toward Armageddon?,” 81–82. 75. Holloway, “Racing Toward Armageddon?,” 83–84. 76. Minutes of a Verification Panel Meeting, May 26, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 79, fnn1 and 3, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d79. 77. Memo, Laird to Nixon, June 5, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. IX 5/10/70–6/12/70 [1 of 2], Box 887, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 78. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, May 20, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. IX 5/10/70–6/12/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 79. Memo, Sonnenfeldt and Lynn to Kissinger, May 22, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. IX 5/10/70–6/12/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 80. Memo, Kissinger to the Verification Panel, May 4, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 75, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d75. 81. “Verification Panel Meeting May 26, 1970,” folder Verification Panel Minutes Originals / 1969–38/72 [5 of 6], Box H-107, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 82. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, May 20, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 77, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d77. 83. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, June 10, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 81, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d81. 84. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, July 13, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 95, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d95. 85. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, July 1, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. XI 7/1/70–7/19/70 [1 of 2], Box 878, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Backchannel Message, Kissinger to Smith, July 4, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 88, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d88. 86. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, June 23, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 83, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d83.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 231

2/25/22 3:00 PM

23 2

no t e s t o page s 101 –10 4

87. Memo, Lynn and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, July 1, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 86, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d86. 88. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, July 7, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 90, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d90; Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, July 8, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 91, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d91. 89. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, July 14, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. XI 7/1/70–7/19/70 [1 of 2], Box 878, NSC Files, Nixon Library. Garthoff would later write, “Kissinger’s excessively manipulative approach thus led him to misconstrue the Soviet purpose . . . and the nature of the provocative attack proposal” (Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 197–203). Yet Kissinger’s assessment was widely shared within the American government, which generally saw the “provocative attack” proposal as a political ploy to undermine Sino-American cooperation (“SALT: The Politics of ‘Provocative Attack,’” July 31, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. XII 7/20/70–Sept. 70 [1 of 1], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library). 90. “Verification Panel June 24, 1970,” folder Verification Panel Minutes Originals / 1969–3/8/72 [4 of 6], Box H-107, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 91. Telegram, Laird to Rogers, Kissinger, and Packard, June 11, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. IX 5/10/70–6/12/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 92. Memo, Lynn and Hyland to Kissinger, June 12, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. IX 5/10/70–6/12/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 93. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, June 18, 1970, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 6/18/70, Box H-005, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 94. Memo, Kissinger to the Verification Panel, May 4, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 75, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d75; “Verification Panel June 24, 1970,” folder Verification Panel Minutes Originals / 1969–3/8/72 [4 of 6], Box H-107, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 95. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, June 24, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. X 6/13/70–6/30/70 [1 of 2], Box 878, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 96. Smith, Doubletalk, 146–147. 97. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, June 24, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. X 6/13/70–6/30/70 [1 of 2], Box 878, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 98. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, June 24, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. X 6/13/70–6/30/70 [1 of 2], Box 878, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 99. “Verification Panel June 24, 1970,” folder Verification Panel Minutes Originals / 1969–3/8/72 [4 of 6], Box H-107, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, June 24, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. X 6/13/70–6/30/70 [1 of 2], Box 878, NSC Files, Nixon Library.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 232

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 10 4 –10 6

233

100. Telegram, Allison to Wheeler and Moorer, June 29, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. X 6/13/70–6/30/70 [1 of 2], Box 878, NSC Files, Nixon Library. Brown made a similar argument for retaining the NCA-only position in the face of a challenge by John McCloy and the General Advisory Committee (GAC) on Arms Control and Disarmament, who were lobbying Nixon to propose a zero-ABM agreement to the Soviets. 101. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, July 7, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. XI 7/1/70–7/19/70 [1 of 2], Box 878, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 102. “Verification Panel June 24, 1970,” folder Verification Panel Minutes Originals / 1969–3/8/72 [4 of 6], Box H-107, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. In his memoirs, Garthoff concluded that the United States was primarily responsible for the failure of the MIRV ban (Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 1129–1130), but the general Soviet disinterest in banning MIRVs seems to contradict this. 103. Telegram, Kennedy to Haig, June 29, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. X 6/13/70–6/30/70 [1 of 2], Box 878, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 104. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, June 24, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. X 6/13/70–6/30/70 [1 of 2], Box 878, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 105. National Security Decision Memorandum 69, July 9, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 93, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d93. 106. Memo, Lynn to Kissinger, July 14, 1970, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 7/15/70, Box H-005, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Rogers to Nixon, July 22, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. XII 7/20/70– Sept. 70 [1 of 1], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 107. National Security Decision Memorandum 73, July 22, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 97, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d97. 108. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, July 20, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 96, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d96. 109. Memo from Kissinger, September 18, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 104, fn2, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d104. 110. Memo, Smith to Nixon, August 19, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. XII 7/20/70–Sept. 70 [1 of 1], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 111. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, undated, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. XII 7/20/70–Sept. 70 [1 of 1], NSC Files, Nixon Library. 112. Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, September 11, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. XII 7/20/70–Sept. 70 [1 of 1], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 113. “Kermit Wayne Smith,” Prabook.com; Enthoven and Smith, How Much Is Enough? There were a number of individuals within the Nixon administration named “Smith,” several of whom were important in SALT policy. For

Y8013-Maurer.indb 233

2/25/22 3:00 PM

23 4

no t e s t o page s 107 –10 9

clarity, “Smith” always refers to Gerard Smith, while “Wayne Smith” refers to the NSC staffer. 114. Hunt, Melvin Laird and the Foundation of the Post-Vietnam Military, 103–115. 115. “Earle Gilmore Wheeler,” Joint Chiefs of Staff. 116. Kissinger, The White House Years, 34–36. 117. Letter, Moorer to Goodpaster, January 24, 1969, folder SALT January–May [1969] Vol. I [2 of 2], Box 873, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 118. “New Evidence Confirms Pentagon Stole and Leaked Top Secret Documents from Nixon White House,” nixontapes.org; Sparrow, The Strategist, 62–78. 119. Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, September 21, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 105, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d105; Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, October 24, 1970, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 10/27/70, Box H-006, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIII Oct 70–Dec 70 [1 of 3], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 120. Memo, Smith to Kissinger, October 29, 1970, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 12/8/70, Box H-006, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 121. Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, October 29, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. VI, May 70–30 July 71 [2 of 2], Box 842, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 122. Letter, Smith to Nixon, May 19, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. VI, May 70–30 July 71 [2 of 2], Box 842, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 123. Memo, Packard to Kissinger, July 20, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 82, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d82. 124. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, June 22, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. X 6/13/70–6/30/70 [1 of 2], Box 878, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 125. Letter, Smith to Kissinger, October 14, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIII Oct 70–Dec 70 [2 of 3], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 126. Minutes of a Verification Panel Meeting, October 27, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 110, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d110. 127. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, October 16, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 106, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d106. 128. Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, October 23, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIII Oct 70–Dec 70 [2 of 3], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 129. Smith, Doubletalk, 179. 130. National Security Decision Memorandum 90, November 2, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 113, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d113. 131. Memo for Members of the NSC, November 2, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki), Vol. XIII Oct 70–Dec 70 [1 of 3], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 234

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 10 9 –112

235

132. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, November 4, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIII Oct 70–Dec 70 [1 of 3], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 133. Smith, Doubletalk, 182–185, 187–188. 134. Memo, Packard to Nixon, December 2, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 115, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d115. 135. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, December 5, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 116, fn4, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d116. 136. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, December 4, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. VI, May 70–30 July 71 [2 of 2], Box 842, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 137. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, December 7, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIII Oct 70–Dec 70 [1 of 3], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 138. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, December 4, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. VI, May 70–30 July 71 [2 of 2], Box 842, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 139. Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, folder Verification Panel Meeting 12/8/70, Box H-006, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Smith, Doubletalk, 185–186. 140. Memcon, Verification Panel Meeting, December 8, 1970, folder SALT Backup 1970–71 [2 of 2], Box 886, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 141. Memo from Kissinger, December 12, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 120, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d120. 142. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, December 4, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. VI, May 70–30 July 71 [2 of 2], Box 842, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 143. Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, December 11, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 119, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d119. 144. Memo, Laird to Nixon, December 5, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIII Oct 70–Dec 70 [1 of 3], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 145. Telegram, US SALT Delegation to Secretary of State, December 14, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIII Oct 70–Dec 70 [1 of 3], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 146. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, December 15, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIII Oct 70–Dec 70 [1 of 3], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 147. Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, January 12, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIV 1 Jan 71–April 71 [2 of 3], Box 880, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 148. Telegram from the Embassy in the Soviet Union to the Department of State, January 18, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 98, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v13/d98. 149. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, March 29, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIV 1 Jan 71–April 71 [1 of 3], Box 880, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 150. Memo, Smith to Kissinger, February 2, 1971, folder ABM-System Vol. VI, May 70–30 July 71 [1 of 2], Box 842, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Sonnenfeldt

Y8013-Maurer.indb 235

2/25/22 3:00 PM

23 6

no t e s t o page s 112 –113

to Kissinger, January 30, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIV 1 Jan 71– April 71 [2 of 3], Box 880, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 151. Kissinger to Rogers et al., May 23, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. IX 5/10/70–6/12/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Houdek and Lord to Kissinger, July 4, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. XI 7/1/70–7/19/70 [1 of 2], Box 878, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 152. Letter, Smith to Mitchell, January 13, 1971, folder SALT Leaks [1 of 1], Box 886, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 133, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d133. 153. Conversation Between Nixon and Rogers, February 26, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 135, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d135. 154. Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, 139–142; Hersh, The Price of Power, 35–45, 112–117. 155. Smith, Doubletalk, 235–244; Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, June 3, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Vienna) Vol. IX 5/10/70–6/12/70 [1 of 2], Box 877, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 156. Letter, Smith to Kissinger, December 22, 1970, folder Verification Panel Meeting Safeguard 1/16/71, Box H-007, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 157. Paper Prepared in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, January 13, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 125, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d125; Memo, Haig to Kissinger, January 13, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting Safeguard 1/16/71, Box H-007, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 158. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, February 3, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 172, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969– 76v34/d172; National Security Decision Memorandum 97, February 8, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 173, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d173. 159. Memo, Laird to Nixon, January 27, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 128, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d128. 160. In fact, the Defense Department’s internal SALT process had concluded that even if the Soviets had accepted Option E, Minuteman would become unacceptably vulnerable once the Soviets MIRVed their missiles (Letter from Laird to Kissinger, October 27, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 111, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d111). 161. Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, October 21, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIII Oct 70–Dec 70 [2 of 3], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, January 12, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIV 1 Jan 71–April 71 [2 of 3], Box 880, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, February 24, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIV 1 Jan 71–April 71 [2 of 3], Box 880, NSC Files,

Y8013-Maurer.indb 236

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 113 –115

237

Nixon Library; Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, February 27, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 3/2/71, Box H-007, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 162. Memo, Laird to Nixon, January 27, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 128, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d128. 163. Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, February 24, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIV 1 Jan 71–April 71 [2 of 3], Box 880, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, February 27, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 3/2/71, Box H-007, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 164. Minutes of Verification Panel Meeting, January 16, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 167, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d167; Minutes of a National Security Council Meeting, January 27, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 129, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d129. 165. Memo, Smith to Kissinger, March 4, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting 3/2/71, Box H-007, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 166. “Report to the Verification Working Group on Net Assessment of NCA Defense Radar Limitations,” February 25, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIV 1 Jan 71–April 71 [1 of 3], Box 880, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 167. Memo, Kissinger to Mitchell et al., February 7, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIV 1 Jan 71–April 71 [2 of 3], Box 880, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, February 11, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIV 1 Jan 71–April 71 [2 of 3], Box 880, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 168. Memo, Davis to Kissinger, March 4, 1971, folder SALT Backup 1970–71 [2 of 2], Box 886, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 169. “HAK Talking Points Verification Panel Meeting,” March 5, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 3/5/71, Box H-007, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 170. Letter, Smith to Nixon, March 8, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIV 1 Jan 71–April 71 [1 of 3], Box 880, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 171. Minutes of a National Security Council Meeting, March 8, 1971, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 137, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d137. 172. National Security Decision Memorandum 102, March 11, 1971, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 138, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d138. 173. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, folder NSC Meeting SALT 3/8/71, Box H-031, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 174. “Report of the U.S. Delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in Vienna,” June 14, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XV 1 May 71–July 71 [1 of 3], Box 881, NSC Files, Nixon Library.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 237

2/25/22 3:00 PM

23 8

no t e s t o page s 115 –116

175. Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, March 17, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIV 1 Jan 71–April 71 [1 of 3], Box 880, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 176. Letter, Nixon to Rogers, March 18, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 142, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d142. 177. Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, May 6, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XV 1 May 71–July 71 [2 of 3], Box 881, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Kissinger to Rogers and Laird, May 8, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XV 1 May 71–July 71 [2 of 3], Box 881, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 178. Letter, Nixon to Rogers, March 18, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 142, fn3, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d142. 179. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, March 30, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 144, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d144. 180. Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, March 19, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIV 1 Jan 71–April 71 [1 of 3], Box 880, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 181. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, April 27, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 152, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d152. 182. “Report of the U.S. Delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in Vienna,” June 14, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XV 1 May 71–July 71 [1 of 3], Box 881, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 183. Memo, Farley to Kissinger, April 6, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIV 1 Jan 71–April 71 [1 of 3], Box 880, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 184. Letter, Ellsworth to Nixon, April 3, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 145, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d145; Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, April 5, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIV 1 Jan 71–April 71 [1 of 3], Box 880, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 185. Conversation, Nixon, Kissinger, and Haldeman, April 17, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 148, fn3, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d148; Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, April 15, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 4/16/71, Box H-007, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 186. Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, April 9, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, SALT I, Document 147, fn 2, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d147.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 238

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 118 –120

239

ch a pte r 6 . th e m a y 2 0 a gr e e m ent 1. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 1–3. 2. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 60–77. 3. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 45, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d45; Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 68–73. 4. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, June 23, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 83, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus 1969–76v32/d83; Backchannel Message, Kissinger to Smith, July 4, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 88, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d88. 5. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, July 9, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 93, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d93. 6. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 168–170; Tal, US Strategic Arms Policy in the Cold War, 43–44. 7. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 48–60. 8. Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, 216–218; Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 30–31, 126–127; Thomas, Being Nixon, 379–382. 9. Memcon, Nixon, Gromyko, et al., October 22, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 23, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v13/ d23; Memcon, Nixon, Gromyko, et al., October 22, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 24, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v13/d24. 10. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, October 27, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 32, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v13/d32. 11. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 126–131. 12. Sarotte, Dealing with the Devil, 65–86. 13. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 80–82. 14. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, 16 November 1970, Soviet-American Relations, 237–238. 15. Telegram, Smith to Kissinger, December 15, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIII Oct 70–Dec 70 [1 of 3], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Telegram, Smith to Kissinger, December 17, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIII Oct 70–Dec 70 [1 of 3], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 16. Telegram, Kissinger to Smith, December 15, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIII Oct 70–Dec 70 [1 of 3], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 17. Smith, Doubletalk, 243. 18. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, December 22, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 123, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d123. 19. Smith, Doubletalk, 62–63, 194–195, 231–235; Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 167–168, 178–179; Van Atta, With Honor, 197–198; Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, 312–314.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 239

2/25/22 3:00 PM

240

no t e s t o page s 120 –12 2

20. Kissinger, The White House Years, 822. 21. Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, December 11, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 119, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d119. 22. Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, December 11, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 119, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d119. 23. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, December 7, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIII Oct 70–Dec 70 [1 of 3], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, February 24, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIV 1 Jan 71–April 71 [2 of 3], Box 880, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, folder NSC Meeting SALT 3/8/71, Box H-031, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 24. Memo, Farley to Kissinger, April 6, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIV, 1 Jan 71–April 71 [1 of 3], Box 880, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 25. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, January 9, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 124, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d124. 26. Memo, Smith to Rogers, May 9, 1969, folder Review Group SALT (NSSM 28) [part 1] 6/12/69, Box H-037, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Letter, Smith to Nixon, May 19, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. VI, May 70–30 July 71 [2 of 2], Box 842, NSC Files, Nixon Library; “SALT Stand-Still Arrangement,” October 12, 1970, folder Misc. Verification Panel, H-006, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 27. Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, December 11, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 119, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d119. 28. “SALT III—The Soviet Viewpoint,” December 28, 1970, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIII Oct 70–Dec 70 [1 of 3], Box 879, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Paper Prepared in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, January 13, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 125, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d125. 29. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 77–84. 30. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, January 9, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 124, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d124. 31. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, February 10, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 132, fn2, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d132. 32. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, February 10, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 132, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d132. 33. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, February 22, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 134, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d134.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 240

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 123 –12 4

2 41

34. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 94–95; Reynolds, Summits, 235–237. 35. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, December 5, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 116, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d116; Telegram from Embassy in the Soviet Union to the Department of State, February 11, 1970, FRUS 1969–1976, Vol. XII, Document 133, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v12/d133. 36. Conversation Among Nixon, Kissinger, and Haldeman, March 11, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 139, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d139. 37. Minutes of a National Security Council Meeting, March 8, 1971, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 137, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d137. 38. National Security Decision Memorandum 102, March 11, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 138, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d138. 39. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, folder NSC Meeting SALT 3/8/71, Box H-031, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 40. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, March 12, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 140, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d140; Conversation, Nixon and Kissinger, 12 March 1971, The Nixon Tapes, 39–42. 41. Letter, Haig to Kissinger, March 12, 1971, folder Dobrynin Kissinger 1971 (Vol. 4) [Part 1], Box 490, NSC Files, Nixon Library. Even Wayne Smith, it seems, was excluded. 42. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, March 21, 1971, folder SALT—Exchange of Notes Dr. Kissinger, 1 July 1970–1 May 1972, Box 77, Kissinger Office Files, Nixon Library. 43. Letter, Nixon to Brezhnev, March 16, 1971, folder SALT [2 of 2], Box 78, NSC Files HAK Office Files, Nixon Library. 44. Smith and Garthoff later claimed that Kissinger simply forgot to include SLBM in his back-channel negotiation, an object lesson in the risks of excluding the experts from negotiations (Smith, Doubletalk, 179–181; Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 178–179). Kissinger attempted to refute these claims in his own memoirs (Kissinger, The White House Years, 820–822, 1129–1131). 45. Garthoff later denied that there was such a study (Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 187fn94), but the declassified record upholds Kissinger’s recollection. 46. Memo, Tucker to Packard et al., March 18, 1970, folder ABM-System Vol. IV 2–70–30 Apr 70 Memos and Misc. [1 of 3], Box 841, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Wayne Smith to Duckett et al., March 1, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 3/2/71, Box H-007, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Tucker to Wayne Smith, February 24, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 3/2/71, Box H-007, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 241

2/25/22 3:00 PM

242

no t e s t o page s 12 4 –126

47. Kissinger, The White House Years, 1129–1131. Laird and Moorer later decided to halt Polaris and accelerate ULMS; see: Memo, Odeen to Kissinger, December 16, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIV 1 Jan 71–April 71 [2 of 3], Box 880, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Odeen to Kissinger, January 17, 1972, folder DPRC—US Strategic Objectives and Force Posture 1/20/72, Box H-104, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Laird to Nixon, January 26, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 205, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d205. 48. One of the shortcomings of back-channel negotiations was that they were poorly documented. We have only Kissinger and Dobrynin’s accounts of what occurred, supplemented by memos and recordings of conversations from before and after their meetings (Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 7–8). Kissinger noted that the secrecy left him with little protection against “Monday-morning quarterbacking” (Kissinger, The White House Years, 149). 49. “Differences from previous,” folder Dobrynin Kissinger 1971 (Vol. 4) [Part 1], Box 490, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 50. Memcon, Dobrynin and Kissinger, 16 March 1971, Soviet-American Relations, 310–313. Kissinger’s account of the meeting did not include any mention of SLBM; see: Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, 16 March 1971, Soviet-American Relations, 310. 51. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, March 21, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 148, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v13/d148. 52. Hyland, Mortal Rivals, 48–49. 53. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, March 21, 1971, folder SALT—Exchange of Notes Dr. Kissinger, 1 July, 1970–1 May 1972, Box 77, Kissinger Office Files, Nixon Library. 54. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, March 21, 1971, folder SALT—Exchange of Notes Dr. Kissinger, 1 July 1970–1 May 1972, Box 77, Kissinger Office Files, Nixon Library; Letter, Nixon to Brezhnev, March 15, 1971, folder SALT [2 of 4], Box 78, HAK Office Files, Nixon Library. 55. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 93–94. 56. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 103–106. 57. Report of the CPSU Central Committee to the 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Excerpt),” in Brezhnev, Peace, Détente, Cooperation, 3–8; MccGwire, Perestroika and Soviet National Security, 83–87; Zubok, A Failed Empire, 201–217. 58. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, April 23, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 149, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d149. 59. Memo, Smith to Kissinger, March 30, 1971, FRUS 1969–76 XXXII, Document 144, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d144; Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, April 5, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XIV 1 Jan 71–April 71 [1 of 3], Box 880, NSC Files, Nixon Library.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 242

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 126 –12 8

2 43

60. Telcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, March 26, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 143, fn3, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d143. 61. Note, Haig to Sonnenfeldt, April 24, 1971, folder Dobrynin Kissinger 1917— Vol. 5 [Part 1], Box 491, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 62. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, April 23, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 149, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d149. 63. Conversation Between Nixon and Kissinger, April 26, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 151, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d151; Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, April 27, 1971, folder SALT [3 of 4], Box 78, HAK Office Files, Nixon Library. 64. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 90. 65. Telegram, US SALT Delegation to Secretary of State, May 6, 1971, folder SALT [3 of 4], Box 78, HAK Office Files, Nixon Library; Memo, US SALT Delegation to Secretary of State, May 7, 1971, folder SALT [3 of 4], Box 78, HAK Office Files, Nixon Library. 66. Letter, Smith to Kissinger, May 13, 1971, folder SALT [3 of 4], Box 78, HAK Office Files, Nixon Library. 67. Memo, Cline to Rogers, May 10, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XV 1 May 71–July 71 [2 of 3], Box 881, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Sonnenfeldt and Wayne Smith to Kissinger, May 10, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XV 1 May 71–July 71 [2 of 3], Box 881, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 68. Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, May 10, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 5/15/71, Box H-008, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Telcon, Nixon and Kissinger, May 15, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 219, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v13/d219. 69. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 155, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d155; Telcon, Dobrynin and Kissinger, May 11, 1971, 9:10 a.m., folder SALT Jan 9–May 29, 1971 [2 of 2], Box 78, HAK Office Files, Nixon Library. 70. Memcon, Dobrynin and Kissinger, 11 May 1971, Soviet-American Relations, 349–351. 71. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 100. 72. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 87–88. 73. Telegram, US SALT Delegation to Secretary of State, May 6, 1971, folder SALT [3 of 4], Box 78, HAK Office Files, Nixon Library; Letter, Smith to Kissinger, May 13, 1971, folder SALT [3 of 4], Box 78, HAK Office Files, Nixon Library. 74. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 98–100. 75. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, May 13, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 214, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v13/ d214. 76. Nixon and Kissinger, May 13, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 215, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v13/d215.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 243

2/25/22 3:00 PM

244

no t e s t o page s 12 8 –129

77. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 155, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d155. 78. Telcon, Nixon and Kissinger, May 17, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 221, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v13/d221; Telcon, Kissinger and Haig, May 17, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 222, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v13/ d222. 79. Conversation Between Nixon and Kissinger, May 18, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 223, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v13/d223. Smith later criticized Nixon and Kissinger for their imprecision on the sequencing issue (Smith, Doubletalk, 231–233). Yet unlike the SLBM case, the declassified record reveals that Kissinger was very clear on sequencing, later Soviet claims to the contrary. The secrecy of the back channel did pressure Nixon to conclude the May 20 Agreement without a commitment from the Soviets regarding its meaning. But Nixon clearly thought that the risks of negotiating an ABM-only agreement in the front channel were higher, given the strong opposition by Laird. 80. Conversation Between Nixon and Kissinger, May 18, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 223, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v13/d223. 81. Memcon, Kissinger and Smith, May 19, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 157, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d157. 82. Conversation Among Nixon, Laird, and Kissinger, May 19, 1971, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 158, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d158. 83. Conversation Among Nixon, Kissinger, and SALT Delegates, May 19, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 159, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d159. 84. Smith, Doubletalk, 235. 85. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 160, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d160. 86. Memo, Scali to Nixon, May 25, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 233, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v13/d233; Conversation Among Nixon, Kissinger, and Haldeman, May 29, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 163, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d163. 87. To Nixon’s chagrin, the SALT breakthrough could not overshadow the continued bad news from Vietnam; see: Perlstein, Nixonland, 551–568. 88. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 234, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v13/d234. 89. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, May 28, 1971, FRUS, 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 162, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d162.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 244

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 129 –131

2 45

90. Conversation Among Nixon, Kissinger, and Haldeman, May 27, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 161, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d161. 91. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 234, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v13/d234. 92. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 232, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v13/d234. 93. Memo for the Record, March 17, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 240, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d240; National Security Decision Memorandum 158, March 23, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 243, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d243. 94. Conversation Between Nixon and Kissinger, May 29, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 249, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d249; Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 164, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d164. 95. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, June 8, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 252, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v13/d252. 96. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 135. 97. Minutes of Defense Program Review Committee Meeting, November 9, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 158, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d158. 98. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 157, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d157; Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 180, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v34/d180. 99. Memo, Baroody to Laird, February 17, 1971, folder TOP DOD Objectives for Calendar Years 1971 and 1972, Box A96, Laird Papers, Ford Library. Moorer and the other Joint Chiefs were less amenable to the idea of cutting conventional forces (Memo, Joint Chiefs to Laird, December 16, 1970, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 165, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v34/d165). 100. Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, July 22, 1971, folder DPRC Meeting DOD Strategy and Fiscal Guidance 8/5/71, Box H-104, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Conversation with Nixon, July 23, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 188, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d188. On the worsening macroeconomic situation, see: Sargent, A Superpower Transformed, 100–108. 101. Sorley, A Better War, 243–260. 102. Johnson, Congress and the Cold War, 181–186. 103. “Summary of Statement on the Proxmire Amendment,” June 9, 1971, folder Budget—Appropriations—Limitation of DOD Expenditures, 1971, Box A57, Laird Papers, Ford Library.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 245

2/25/22 3:00 PM

2 46

no t e s t o page s 131 –133

104. Memo for the File by Haig, August 11, 1971, FRUS 1969–1976, Vol. XXXIV, Document 191, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v34/d191; Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, undated, FRUS 1969–1976, Vol. XXXIV, Document 194, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d194. 105. Telcon, Kissinger and Packard, August 12, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 193, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v34/d193; Memcon, Nixon et al., FRUS 1969–1976, XXXIV, Document 195, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d195. 106. Conversation with Nixon, October 27, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 199, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/ d199; Conversation Among Nixon, Kissinger, and Laird, FRUS 1969–1976, Vol. XXXIV, Document 201, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d201. 107. Letter, Kissinger to Laird, December 22, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 203, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v34/d203. 108. Memo, Kissinger to Laird, February 9, 1971, folder ABM-System Vol. VI, May 70–30 July 71 [1 of 2], Box 842, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Letter, Laird to Hansen, March 31, 1971, folder ABM-General (5)—July 1970–July 1972, Box A50, Laird Papers, Ford Library. 109. Memo, Pursley to Haig, April 17, 1971, folder ABM-System Vol. VI, May 70– 30 July 71 [1 of 2], Box 842, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 110. Memo, Friedheim to Haig, May 7, 1971, folder ABM-System Vol. VI, May 70– 30 July 71 [1 of 2], Box 842, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 111. Memo, Friedheim to Haig, June 9, 1971, folder ABM-System Vol. VI May 70– 30 July 71 [1 of 2], Box 842, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 112. Memo, Baroody to Laird, July 22, 1971, folder Baroody, William J.—Recommendations to Laird on His Future as Secretary, 1971, Box A56, Laird Papers, Ford Library. 113. William Beecher, “U.S. Urges Soviet to Join in a Missiles Moratorium,” New York Times, July 23, 1971, 1, PHN. 114. Memo, Cooke to Haig, July 29, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helenski [sic]) Vol. 18 May–Aug. 1972 [2 of 3], Box 883, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 115. National Security Decision Memorandum 97, February 8, 1971, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 173, fn3, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocu ments/frus1969–76v34/d173; Memo, Lehman to Kissinger, October 13, 1971, folder ABM-System Vol. VII, Aug 71 –, Box 842, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 116. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, June 30, 1971, folder NSC Meeting SALT 6/30/71, Box H-031, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 117. Backchannel Message, Sonnenfeldt and Merritt to Kissinger, July 8, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 173, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d173; Memo, Wayne Smith and Son-

Y8013-Maurer.indb 246

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 133 –135

2 47

nenfeldt to Kissinger, August 4, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 8/9/71, Box H-009, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 118. Smith, Doubletalk, 310–318; Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, June 25, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XV 1 May 71–July 71 [1 of 3], Box 881, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 119. Memo, Wood to the Verification Panel Working Group, June 25, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 168, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d168. 120. Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, June 30, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 170, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d170. 121. Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, June 15, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 6/15/71, Box H-008, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; “Possibly Including SLBMs in the Freeze,” folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 6/15/71, Box H-008, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 122. National Security Decision Memorandum 117, July 2, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 171, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d171. 123. Smith, Doubletalk, 250–252. 124. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, June 21, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 167, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d167. 125. National Security Decision Memorandum 117, July 2, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 171, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d171. 126. Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, June 30, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 170, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d170. 127. Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, June 30, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 170, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d170; Memo, Laird to Kissinger, July 12, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 174, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d174. 128. Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, June 28, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 184, fn4, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d184. Smith and his allies continued to believe that zero-ABM would be easier to negotiate with the Soviets than a Safeguard-for-Moscow treaty that put the Soviets at a numerical disadvantage (Memo, Farley to Kissinger, August 10, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 8/9/71, Box H-009, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library). 129. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, July 13, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 177, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d177.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 247

2/25/22 3:00 PM

248

no t e s t o page s 135 –13 6

130. Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, June 28, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 184, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d184. 131. Savel’yev and Detinov, The Big Five, 22–23. 132. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 171–174. 133. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, July 29, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 303, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v13/d303. 134. Smith’s memoirs suggest that congressional pressure was paramount in Nixon’s ABM decisions (Smith, Doubletalk, 267), but Laird and the Defense Department played a predominant role in Nixon’s considerations. 135. Memo, Laird to Nixon, August 2, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 187, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d187. Furthermore, Laird’s terms for zero-ABM were considered too generous by Moorer, who opposed a zero-ABM agreement on any terms, insisting that ABM deployments were an area of American advantage that should be exploited no matter what the Soviets did (Memo, Moorer to Laird, August 6, 1971, folder SALT Talks [Helsinki] Vol. XVI Aug. 71 [1 of 1], Box 881, NSC Files, Nixon Library). 136. Even if the Safeguard bases under construction proved to be incapable of handling the Soviet threat, Laird maintained that the experience that the American military would gain in operating Safeguard would prove invaluable in deploying the next generation of missile defense capabilities (Conversation Among Nixon, Laird, and Joint Chiefs, August 10, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 190, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d190). 137. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 8/9/71, Box H-009, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Conversation, Nixon, Agnew, Laird, et al., 10 August 1971, The Nixon Tapes, 215–224. 138. Letter, Nixon to Smith, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 8/9/71, Box H-009, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 139. National Security Decision Memorandum 127, August 12, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 192, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d192. 140. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, August 7, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 189, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d189. 141. Memo, Laird to Kissinger, July 12, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 174, fn1, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d174; Memo, Laird to Kissinger, July 20, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 181, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d181. 142. Memo, Moorer to Kissinger, July 20, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 182, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d182.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 248

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 13 6 –137

2 49

143. Memo, Wayne Smith and Hyland to Kissinger, August 11, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 8/9/71, Box H-009, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; National Security Decision Memorandum 127, August 12, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 192, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d192. 144. On SDI, see: Wolfe, Competing with the Soviets, 130–132; Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue; and Slayton, Arguments That Count. On the role of the ABM Treaty in the SDI dispute, see: Sofaer, “The ABM Treaty and the Strategic Defense Initiative,” 1972–1985. 145. Telegram from SALT Delegation to the Department of State, July 26, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 183, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d183. 146. Telcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, July 30, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 305, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v13/d305. 147. Memo, Sonnenfeldt and Wayne Smith to Kissinger, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. 17 Sep–Dec 71 [2 of 2], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 148. Memo, Sonnenfeldt and Wayne Smith to Kissinger, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. 17 Sep–Dec 71 [2 of 2], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Tucker to Packard, September 13, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 195, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d195. 149. Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, September 10, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 9/15/71, Box H-009, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, September 17, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. 17 Sep–Dec [1 of 2] Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 150. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, September 20, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 199, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d199. 151. National Security Decision Memorandum 117, July 2, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 171, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d171. 152. Smith, Doubletalk, 266; Memo, Smith to Nixon, September 28, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. 17 Sep–Dec 71 [1 of 2], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 153. Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, June 30, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 170, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d170. 154. Memcon, Brown and Kissinger, August 30, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. 17 Sep–Dec 71 [2 of 2], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 155. Letter, Smith to Kissinger, August 11, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 191, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d191; Conversation Among Nixon, Kissinger, and Mitchell, September 18,

Y8013-Maurer.indb 249

2/25/22 3:00 PM

25 0

no t e s t o page s 137 –139

1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 198, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d198. 156. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, July 29, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 303, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v13/d303. 157. Memo, Sonnenfeldt and Wayne Smith to Kissinger, August 26, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XVI Aug. 71 [1 of 1], Box 881, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 158. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 323, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v13/d323. 159. Memcon, Brown and Kissinger, August 30, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. 17 Sep–Dec 71 [2 of 2], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, September 10, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 9/15/71, Box H-009, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 160. Memo, Smith to Nixon, September 28, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. 17 Sep–Dec 71 [1 of 2], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 161. Note from the Soviet Leadership, undated, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 193, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d193. 162. Note from Nixon to the Soviet Leadership, undated, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 194, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d194. 163. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, June 8, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 252, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v13/d252. 164. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 178, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d178; . 165. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, July 19, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 288, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v13/d288; Kissinger, The White House Years, 833–841; Dobrynin, In Confidence, 226–228. 166. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, July 16, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 179, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d179. 167. Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, June 30, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 170, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d170. 168. Memo, Hyland to Kissinger, August 13, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XVI Aug. 71 [1 of 1], Box 881, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 169. Smith was kept in the loop of this particular back-channel initiative (Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, July 16, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 179, fn3, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d179).

Y8013-Maurer.indb 250

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 139 –143

251

170. Memo, Kissinger to Irwin, August 4, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. XVI Aug. 71 [1 of 1], Box 881, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 171. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, September 15, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 197, fn3, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d197. 172. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 77–94; Klitzing, “To Grin and Bear It,” 104–106, 110. 173. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIII, Document 323, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v13/d323; Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 201, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d201. 174. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 203, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d203. 175. Notes of Cabinet Meeting, October 12, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIV, Document 3, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v14/d3. 176. Telcon, Kissinger and Smith, October 12, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 204, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d204. Smith’s exchange with Kissinger was particularly heated. Kissinger: “Oh Jesus Christ, relax. For Christ’s sake! Read what the President said.” Smith: “I am relaxed. I’m disgusted, but relaxed . . . it makes me look like a fool with Semenov going around saying that I don’t know about the discussions for a summit.” 177. Conversation Among Nixon, Kissinger, and Mitchell, September 18, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 198, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d198. cha pte r 7 . f i n a l c o m pr o m i s e s 1. Memo, Smith to Nixon, September 28, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. 17 Sep–Dec 71 [1 of 2], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 2. Memo, Smith to Nixon, September 28, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. 17 Sep–Dec 71 [1 of 2], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 3. Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, October 6, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 202, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d202. 4. Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, October 27, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 11/3/71, Box H-009, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Von Ins to the Verification Panel Working Group, October 16, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 11/3/71, Box H-009, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 5. Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, October 30, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 11/3/71, Box H-009, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Packard to Kissinger, November 6, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 11/3/71, Box H-009, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 251

2/25/22 3:00 PM

25 2

no t e s t o page s 143 –145

6. Memo, Kenny to the Verification Panel Working Group, October 27, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 11/3/71, Box H-009, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library; Letter, Smith to Kissinger, November 5, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. 17 Sep–Dec 71 [1 of 2], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 7. Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, October 30, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 11/3/71, Box H-009, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 8. Paper Prepared in the Department of Defense for the Verification Panel Working Group, undated, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 207, https:// history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d207. 9. Memo, Von Ins to the Verification Panel Working Group, October 16, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 11/3/71, Box H-009, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 10. Paper Prepared in the Department of Defense for the Verification Panel Working Group, undated, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 207, https:// history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d207. 11. Memo, Kenny to the Verification Panel Working Group, October 27, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 11/3/71, Box H-009, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 12. Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, October 6, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 202, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d202; Memo, Moorer to Laird, November 1, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. 17 Sep–Dec 71 [1 of 2], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 13. Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, October 6, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 202, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d202. 14. National Security Decision Memorandum 140, November 15, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 212, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d212. 15. Conversation Among Nixon, Laird, and Joint Chiefs, August 10, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 190, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d190; Conversation Among Nixon, Haig, Shultz, and Weinberger, October 19, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 206, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d206. 16. Memo, Wayne Smith to Kissinger, October 6, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 202, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d202. 17. Conversation, Nixon, Kissinger, and Haldeman, 9 March 1972, The Nixon Tapes, 412–413; Letter, Smith to Kissinger, November 5, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. 17 Sep –Dec 71 [1 of 2], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 18. Memo, Laird to Kissinger, October 29, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 208; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969

Y8013-Maurer.indb 252

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 145 –146

25 3

–76v32/d208; Paper Prepared in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, undated, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 210, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d210. 19. Memorandum for the Record, November 12, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 211, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d211. 20. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, November 10, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. 17 Sep–Dec 71 [1 of 2], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 21. National Security Decision Memorandum 140, November 15, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 212, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d212. 22. Smith, Doubletalk, 331–340. 23. Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, November 19, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. 17 Sep–Dec 71 [1 of 2], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 24. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, November 29, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. 17 Sep–Dec 71 [1 of 2], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, 316–318. 25. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, December 8, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 215, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d215. 26. Memo, Smith to Nixon, February 16, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helinski [sic]) Vol. 17 Jan–Apr 1972 [1 of 3], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 27. Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, November 27, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. 17 Sep–Dec 71 [1 of 2], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Laird to Kissinger, December 14, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. 17 Sep–Dec 71 [1 of 2], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 28. Memo, Odeen and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, December 9, 1971, folder SALT Talks (Helsinki) Vol. 17 Sep–Dec 71 [1 of 2], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 29. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, December 8, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 215, fn4, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d215. 30. Wayne Smith would eventually become president of the Online Computer Library Center, and play an important role in growing it into the world’s largest library database; see: Smith, ed., OCLC. 31. Daalder and Destler, The National Security Council Project Oral History Roundtables. 32. Memo, Odeen and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, December 16, 1971, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 216, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d216. 33. Memo, Odeen and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, December 22, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting—SALT [MTG 00846] 12/23/71, Box H-010, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 253

2/25/22 3:00 PM

25 4

no t e s t o page s 147 –149

34. Conversation Between Nixon and Kissinger, January 3, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 219, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d219. 35. Memo, Odeen and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, December 16, 1971, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 216, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d216. 36. National Security Decision Memorandum 145, January 3, 1972, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 221, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d221. 37. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, January 6, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 223, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d223; Memo, Odeen and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, January 12, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 225, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d225. 38. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, November 18, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 213, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d213; Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, January 31, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 231, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d231. 39. Gandhi, “The Tilt: The U.S. and the South Asian Crisis of 1971.” 40. Raghavan, 1971, 240–260; Bass, The Blood Telegram; Hanhimäki, The Flawed Architect, 154–168, 174–184; Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 163–188. 41. Smith, Doubletalk, 341–342. 42. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, January 18, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 227, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d227. 43. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, January 6, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 223, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d223. 44. Memo, Odeen and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, January 6, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helinski) (sic) Vol. 17 Jan–Apr 1972 [2 of 3], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 45. Memo, Odeen and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, January 12, 1972, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 225, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d225; Memo, Odeen to Kissinger, January 26, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 229, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d229. 46. Nitze, Hiroshima to Glasnost, 317–318. 47. Memo, Odeen and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, February 4, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helinski [sic]) Vol. 17 Jan–Apr 1972 [2 of 3], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 48. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, January 18, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 227, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d227.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 254

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 149 –15 2

255

49. Conversation Among Nixon, Laird, and Joint Chiefs, August 10, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 190, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d190; Conversation Among Nixon, Haig, Shultz, and Weinberger, October 19, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 206, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d206. 50. Memo, Laird to Nixon, January 26, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 205, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/ d205. 51. Petrelli and Pulcini, “Nuclear Superiority in the Age of Parity,” 1199–1203. 52. Long and Green, “Stalking the Secure Second Strike,” 44–56. 53. Green and Long, “The Geopolitical Origins of US Hard-Target Kill Counterforce Capabilities and MIRVs,” 30–45. 54. Sagan and Suri, “The Madman Nuclear Alert,” 150–183. 55. Burr and Kimball, Nixon’s Nuclear Specter, 59–66. 56. National Security Study Memorandum 64, July 8, 1969, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 41, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d41; Study Prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, undated, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 129, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/d129. 57. Terriff, The Nixon Administration and the Making of U.S. Nuclear Strategy, 97–170. 58. Terriff, The Nixon Administration and the Making of U.S. Nuclear Strategy, 184–203; Green, The Revolution That Failed, 168–171. 59. Conversation with Nixon, October 27, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 199, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/ d199. 60. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, February 17, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 207, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d207. 61. Memo, Laird to Nixon, January 26, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 205, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/ d205. 62. “Statement of Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird Before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the FY1973 Defense Budget and FY1973–1977 Program,” February 15, 1972, folder Defense Report—FY1973—Publishing Report, Box A67, Laird Papers, Ford Library. 63. Memo, Kissinger to Laird, March 4, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 208, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v34/ d208. 64. Memo, Wayne Smith and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, October 27, 1971, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 11/3/71, Box H-009, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 65. Memo, Odeen and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, March 6, 1972, folder Verification Panel Meeting—SALT 3/8/71 [1 of 2], Box H-010, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 255

2/25/22 3:00 PM

256

no t e s t o page s 15 2 –15 3

66. Memo, Odeen and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, February 4, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helinski [sic]) Vol. 17 Jan–Apr 1972 [2 of 3], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 67. Telcon, Kissinger and Smith, March 9, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 236, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d236. 68. Memo, Odeen and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, March 6, 1972, folder Verification Panel Meeting—SALT 3/8/72 [1 of 2], Box H-010, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 69. Conversation Among Nixon, Smith, and Haig, March 21, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 242, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d242. 70. Memo, Odeen to Kissinger, March 9, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helinski [sic]) Vol. 17 Jan–Apr 1972 [1 of 3], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 71. Conversation Between Nixon and Kissinger, March 31, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 247, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d247. 72. Memorandum for the Record, March 21, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 241, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d241. 73. Conversation Among Nixon, Smith, and Haig, March 21, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 242, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d242. 74. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 232, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d232; Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, March 1, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 233, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d233. 75. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, 9 March 1972, Soviet-American Relations, 605–607. Dobrynin’s record does not mention SALT in his report on this particular meeting, focusing much more on U.S.-China relations (Memcon, Dobrynin and Kissinger, 9 March 1972, Soviet-American Relations, 607–611). 76. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, 17 March 1972, Soviet-American Relations, 615–617; Memcon, Dobrynin and Kissinger, 17 March 1972, Soviet-American Relations, 622–627. 77. Letter, Brezhnev to Nixon, March 27, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 245, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d245. 78. Memo, Sonnenfeldt and Odeen to Kissinger, March 25, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helinski [sic]) Vol. 17 Jan–Apr 1972 [1 of 3], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 79. National Security Decision Memorandum 158, March 23, 1972, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 243, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d243.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 256

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 15 3 –155

25 7

80. Memo, Tucker to Laird, March 27, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 244, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d244. 81. Memo, Odeen and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, March 8, 1972, folder Verification Panel Meeting SALT 3/10/72, Box H-011, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 82. National Security Decision Memorandum 158, March 23, 1972, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 243, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d243. 83. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, March 30, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 246, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d246; Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, April 4, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 251, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d251. 84. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, April 8, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 254, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d254. 85. Telcon, Kissinger and Smith, April 10, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 255, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d255; Telegram from the Department of State to the SALT Delegation, April 10, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 256, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d256. 86. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, April 11, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 257, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d257. 87. Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, April 18, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 258, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d258. 88. Conversation Between Nixon and Kissinger, April 19, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 260, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d260. 89. Paper Prepared by the National Security Council Staff, undated, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 278, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d278; Smith, Doubletalk, 395–398. 90. Telegram, US SALT Delegation to Secretary of State, April 14, 1972, folder SALT Briefing Book 4/15/72 Carter, Box H-011, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 91. Backchannel Message, Kissinger to Smith, May 14, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 274, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d274. 92. Telcon, Kissinger and Smith, April 10, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 255, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d255.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 257

2/25/22 3:00 PM

25 8

no t e s t o page s 155 –15 8

93. Telegram, US SALT Delegation to Secretary of State, April 14, 1972, folder SALT Briefing Book 4/15/72 Carter, Box H-011, NSC Institutional Files, Nixon Library. 94. Conversation Between Nixon and Kissinger, April 19, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 260, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d260. 95. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War, 201–205; Sorley, A Better War, 261–271. 96. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War, 231–234. 97. Memo, Laird to Nixon, March 8, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. VIII, Document 34, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v08/d34; Conversation, Nixon and Kissinger, April 3, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. VIII, Document 50, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v08/ d50. 98. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War, 246–255. 99. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 225–248. 100. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 253. 101. Memo, Nixon to Kissinger, April 20, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIV, Document 127, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v14/ d127. 102. Conversation Between Nixon and Kissinger, April 19, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 260, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d260. 103. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 253–254. 104. Memcon, Brezhnev, Kissinger, et al., April 21, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIV, Document 134, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v14/d134. 105. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 258–259. 106. Smith and Garthoff later claimed that the 62 boat/950 missile figure was first proposed by Kissinger in his back-channel negotiations with Dobrynin, and accused Kissinger of bungling the talks by negotiating against himself (Smith, Doubletalk, 372; Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 183–184, esp. fn85). But the 62/950 figure does not appear anywhere in the records of Kissinger and Dobrynin’s negotiations; instead, Dobrynin recorded Kissinger as having offered the Soviets at most fifty-five boats, and then only hypothetically (Memcon, Dobrynin and Kissinger, 17 March 1972, Soviet-American Relations, 621). The Soviets later interpreted Brezhnev’s proposal as allowing them to begin the freeze with 48 modern Y-class boats carrying 768 SLBMs, after which they would dismantle 182 older ICBMs to reach the 950-SLBM limit (Memo, Haig to Kissinger, May 20, 1972, folder President’s Moscow, Iran, Poland, Austria Trips May–June 1972 TOHAK [File No. 1] The Situation Room [Part 3], Box 479, NSC Files, Nixon Library). That the Soviets would begin the freeze with 48 boats was part of Kissinger and Dobrynin’s earlier discussions (Soviet-American Relations, 623), but was based on American overestimation of the number of Y-class boats that the Soviets had in service (Memo, Odeen

Y8013-Maurer.indb 258

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 15 8 –159

259

and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, April 7, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 253, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d253). Kissinger might have done more to clarify the meaning of Brezhnev’s proposal, but the similarity of the 62/950 figure to American intelligence estimates appears to be a coincidence. 107. Memcon, Brezhnev, Kissinger, et al., April 22, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 262, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d262. 108. Message, Kissinger to Haig, April 24, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIV, Document 165, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v14/ d165. 109. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 263–265. 110. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 264, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d264. 111. Message, Haig to Kissinger, April 23, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIV, Document 156, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v14/ d156; Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIV, Document 158, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v14/d158. 112. Message, Haig to Kissinger, April 24, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIV, Document 167, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v14/ d167; Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIV, Document 168, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v14/d168. 113. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 267, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d267; Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 268–276. 114. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, April 28, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helinski [sic]) Vol. 17 Jan–Apr 1972 [1 of 3], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 115. Smith and Garthoff accused Kissinger of manipulating intelligence estimates to make the Brezhnev proposal look more favorable. In October 1971, NIE 11-8-71 predicted that 950 SLBMs was the upper limit of Soviet deployments absent a SALT agreement, but by April 1972 Kissinger claimed that 950 was in the middle of projected Soviet deployments, with a high end closer to 1,170 SLBMs (Smith, Doubletalk, 373; Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 185–186). Nixon and Kissinger clearly used this higher estimate to argue that the 62/950 figure headed off 200 additional SBLMs that the Soviets might otherwise deploy (Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, May 1, 1972, folder SALT Talks [Helenski) (sic)] Vol. 18 May–Aug 1972 [2 of 3], Box 883, NSC Files, Nixon Library). Yet American intelligence estimates of Soviet Y-class deployments had been rising for years (NIE 11-8-68 “Soviet Strategic Attack Forces,” CIA Electronic Reading Room, accessed May 1, 2021, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000278487.pdf; NIE 11-8-70 “Soviet Forces for Intercontinental Attack,” CIA Electronic Reading Room, accessed May 1, 2021, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/ DOC_0000283817.pdf). The prediction that the Soviets might have built 70

Y8013-Maurer.indb 259

2/25/22 3:00 PM

26 0

no t e s t o page s 159 –162

or 80 boats was not as impossible as Kissinger’s critics have claimed, even if it was not likely (Memo, Odeen and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, July 11, 1972, folder SALT Talks [Helenski (sic)] Vol. 18 May–Aug. 1972 [1 of 3], Box 883, NSC Files, Nixon Library). 116. Smith, Doubletalk, 372–378. 117. Memo, Odeen to Kissinger, April 28, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helinski [sic]) Vol. 17 Jan–Apr 1972 [1 of 3], Box 882, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 118. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIV, Document 174, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v14/d174. 119. Conversation Among Nixon et al., May 1, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 270, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d270. 120. Memo, Lord to Kissinger, May 1, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. VIII, Document 106, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v08/ d106. 121. Letter, Brezhnev to Nixon, undated, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIV, Document 181, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v14/d181. 122. “Contingency Statement if Soviet Cancel or Postpone the Summit Meeting,” folder President’s Moscow Trip May [1972] [part 2], Box 475, NSC Files, Nixon Library. ch a pte r 8. m o s c o w a n d ba c k 1. National Security Decision Memorandum 164, May 1, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 271, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d271. 2. “SALT Briefing Points,” June 2, 1972, folder SALT Announcement State Department May 20, 1971 [2 of 3], Box 78, HAK Office Files, Nixon Library. 3. Memo, Laird to Kissinger, May 2, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helenski [sic]) Vol. 18 May–Aug 1972 [2 of 3], Box 883, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 4. “Unilateral Statements by Each Side,” folder President’s Moscow, Iran, Poland, Austria Trips May–June 1972 TOHAK (File No. 1) [Part 1], Box 479, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 5. Memo, Odeen and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, May 12, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helenski [sic]) Vol. 18 May–Aug 1972 [2 of 3], Box 883, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 6. Backchannel Message, Kissinger to Smith, May 14, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 274, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d274; Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, May 14, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 275, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d275. 7. Telegram, US Delegation to Secretary of State, May 17, 1972, folder SALT Briefing Book May 18, 1972 Dr. Kissinger [Part 1], Box 483, NSC Files, Nixon Library.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 260

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 162 –164

261

8. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, May 19, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 284, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d284. 9. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, May 19, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 285, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d285. 10. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, May 20, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 287, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d287. 11. Memo, Haig to Kissinger, May 20, 1972, folder President’s Moscow, Iran, Poland, Austria Trips May–June 1972 TOHAK (File No. 1) The Situation Room [Part 3], Box 479, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 12. Memo, Johnson to Rogers, May 23, 1972, folder President’s Moscow, Iran, Poland, Austria Trips May–June 1972 TOHAK (File No. 1) The Situation Room [Part 2], Box 479, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 13. Memo, Laird to Kissinger, May 2, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helenski [sic]) Vol. 18 May–Aug 1972 [2 of 3], Box 883, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Odeen to Kissinger, May 15, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helenski [sic]) Vol. 18 May–Aug. 1972 [2 of 3], Box 883, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 14. Smith, Doubletalk, 384–385. 15. Memo, Odeen and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, May 16, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helenski [sic]) Vol. 18 May–Aug. 1972 [2 of 3], Box 883, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 16. Memo, Odeen and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, May 19, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helenski [sic]) Vol. 18 May–Aug. 1972 [2 of 3], Box 883, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 17. National Security Decision Memorandum 167, May 17, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 279, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d279. 18. Telegram, US Delegation to SecState, May 22, 1972, folder President’s Moscow, Iran, Poland, Austria Trips May–June 1972 TOHAK (File No. 1) [Part 1], Box 479, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, 320–321. 19. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, May 19, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 283, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d283. 20. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, May 19, 1972, FRUS 1969–86, Vol. XXXII, Document 284, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d284. 21. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, May 19, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 283, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d283. 22. Telegram, Haig to Kissinger, May 20, 1972, folder President’s Moscow, Iran, Poland, Austria Trips May–June 1972 TOHAK (File No. 1) [Part 1], Box 479, NSC Files, Nixon Library.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 261

2/25/22 3:00 PM

262

no t e s t o page s 164 –166

23. Backchannel Message from Kissinger to Smith, May 21, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 288, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d288. 24. Telegram, US Delegation to SecState, May 22, 1972, folder President’s Moscow, Iran, Poland, Austria Trips May–June 1972 TOHAK (File No. 1) [Part 1], Box 479, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 25. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War, 248–250. 26. Conversation Between Nixon and Kissinger, May 5, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. VIII, Document 123, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v08/d123. 27. Memo, Lord to Kissinger, May 1, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. VIII, Document 106, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v08/d106. 28. Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 276–284. 29. Richard Nixon, “Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia,” May 8, 1972, TAPP, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the -nation-the-situation-southeast-asia. 30. William Beecher, “5 Haiphong Ships Sailed, U.S. Says,” New York Times, May 12, 1972, 1, PHN. 31. Kissinger, The White House Years, 1186–1201. 32. Letter, Brezhnev to Nixon, May 11, 1972, Soviet-American Relations, 809–810; Memcon, Nixon, Dobrynin, Kissinger, et al., 11 May 1972, 811–812. 33. Smith, Doubletalk, 382–383. 34. Hyland, Mortal Rivals, 50–51; Zubok, A Failed Empire, 217–222; Moss, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow, 293–295. 35. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War, 246–255. 36. Conversation Among Nixon, Rogers, Kissinger, et al., May 1, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 270, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d270. 37. Kissinger later admitted that leaving Smith in Helsinki was a major mistake (Kissinger, The White House Years, 1229–1230). 38. Memo, Odeen and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, May 16, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helenski [sic]) Vol. 18 May–Aug. 1972 [2 of 3], Box 883, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 39. Telegram, Haig to Kissinger, May 20, 1972, folder President’s Moscow, Iran, Poland, Austria Trips May–June 1972 TOHAK (File No. 1) [Part 1], Box 479, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 40. Paper Prepared by the National Security Council Staff, undated, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 278, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d278. 41. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, May 19, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 285, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d285. 42. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, May 22, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 290, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d290.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 262

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 166 –16 8

263

43. Telegram, Haig to Kissinger, May 20, 1972, folder President’s Moscow, Iran, Poland, Austria Trips May–June 1972 TOHAK (File No. 1) [Part 1], Box 479, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 44. Telegram, US Delegation to SecState, May 22, 1972, folder President’s Moscow, Iran, Poland, Austria Trips May–June 1972 TOHAK (File No. 1) [Part 1], Box 479, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 45. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, May 19, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 283, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d283. 46. Backchannel Message, Smith to Kissinger, May 21, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 289, fn3, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d289. 47. Memo, Haig to Kissinger, May 20, 1972, folder President’s Moscow, Iran, Poland, Austria Trips May–June 1972 TOHAK (File No. 1) The Situation Room [Part 3], Box 479, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 48. Memo, Nixon to Haig, May 20, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 286, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d286. 49. Brennan, “When the SALT Hit the Fan,” 685–692. 50. Telegram, Haig to Kissinger, May 22, 1972, folder President’s Moscow, Iran, Poland, Austria Trips May–June 1972 TOHAK (File No. 1) [Part 1], Box 479, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 51. Weisman, Prince of Darkness, 25–44. 52. Telegram, Haig to Kissinger, May 22, 1972, folder President’s Moscow, Iran, Poland, Austria Trips May–June 1972 TOHAK (File No. 1) [Part 1], Box 479, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 53. Reynolds, Summits, 223–282. 54. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Editorial Note 292, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d292. Rogers was also in Moscow discussing trade and economic policy with the Soviets, but given his marginalization from arms control policy he would play no role in the SALT discussions, which were handled by Kissinger (Telegram, Rogers to State, May 24, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XIV, Document 268, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v14/d268). 55. Memcon, Nixon, Brezhnev, et al., May 23, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 296, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d296. 56. Memo, Haig to Kissinger, May 24, 1972, folder President’s Moscow, Iran, Poland, Austria Trips May–June 1972 TOHAK (File No. 1) The Situation Room [Part 2], Box 479, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 57. Memcon, Brezhnev, Nixon, et al., May 23, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 295, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d295. 58. Memcon, Nixon, Brezhnev, et al., May 23, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 296, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969

Y8013-Maurer.indb 263

2/25/22 3:00 PM

264

no t e s t o page s 169 –17 0

–76v32/d296; Backchannel Message, Kissinger to Smith, May 24, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 297, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d297. 59. Memcon, Gromyko, Kissinger, et al., May 25, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 303, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d303. True to form, Gromyko insisted that he was merely accepting a compromise position that Smith had already made in Helsinki. There is no record of such a proposal by the American delegation—Gromyko appears to have been trying to use the communications difficulties between Kissinger and the American delegates to score points in the negotiation. 60. Backchannel Message, Kissinger to Smith, May 25, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 304, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d304. 61. Garthoff later speculated that Nixon and Kissinger had misunderstood Brezhnev’s proposal on silo size (Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 194), but the negotiation record seems to support the contention that Brezhnev at least began by offering “No increase” in silo dimensions, even though this was totally at odds with the previous Soviet position (Memcon, Nixon, Brezhnev, et al., May 23, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 295, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d295). 62. Memcon, Nixon, Brezhnev, et al., May 23, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 296, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d296. Kissinger and Garthoff later contested whether the 10–15 percent figure had been presented to the Soviets prior to Moscow or not (Kissinger, The White House Years, 1219; Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 192–193, esp. fn102). Although the American delegation had suggested a 10 percent figure to the Soviets earlier in SALT VII, Moscow was the first time that the United States had offered the vaguer 10–15 percent increase figure. 63. Memo, Haig to Kissinger, May 23, 1972, folder President’s Moscow, Iran, Poland, Austria Trips May–June 1972 TOHAK (File No. 1) The Situation Room [Part 2], Box 479, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 64. Backchannel Message, Kissinger to Smith, May 24, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 297, fn3, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d297; Backchannel Message, Smith to Haig, May 24, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 298, fn2, https:// history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d298. 65. Smith, Doubletalk, 413–417. 66. Memcon, Gromyko, Kissinger, et al., May 25, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 303, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d303. 67. Backchannel Message, Kissinger to Smith, May 25, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 304, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d304.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 264

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 17 0 –17 1

265

68. Memcon, Gromyko, Kissinger, et al., May 25, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 308, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d308. 69. Memcon, Gromyko, Kissinger, et al., May 26, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 314, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d314. 70. Memcon, Nixon, Brezhnev, et al., May 23, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 295, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969 –76v32/d295; Memcon, Nixon, Brezhnev, et al., May 23, 1972, FRUS 1969– 76, Vol. XXXII, Document 296, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d296; Backchannel Message, Kissinger to Smith, May 24, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 297, https:// history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d297. 71. The committee’s full name was the Commission of the Central Committee for the Politburo for the Supervision of the Negotiations on Strategic Arms Limitations in Helsinki, or Komissiya Politbyuro TsK KPSS po nablyudeniyu za peregovorami, svyazannymi s ogranicheniyem strategicheskikh vooruzheniy v Helsinki. Chaired by Soviet defense secretary Dimitry Ustinov, the commission included Defense Minister Andrei Grechko, Foreign Minister Gromyko, KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov, and Academy of Sciences President Mstislav Keldysh (Savel’yev and Detinov, The Big Five, 16–30). 72. Kissinger also recalled Smirnov’s discomfort with Kissinger’s knowledge of Soviet weapons systems, so much so that several times during their first meeting Dobrynin had to calm Smirnov down (Kissinger, The White House Years, 1233–1234). The American record does not indicate any breaks where Dobrynin and Smirnov left the room, but does suggest the heated exchange between Kissinger and Smirnov in their repeated interruptions of each other (Memcon, Gromyko, Kissinger, et al., May 25, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 303, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d303). Kissinger’s interactions with Smirnov became less strained as their meetings continued (Memcon, Gromyko, Kissinger, et al., May 25, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 308, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d308). 73. Memcon, Gromyko, Kissinger, et al., May 25, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 303, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d303. 74. Telcon, Haig and Rush, May 25, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 306, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d306; Telcon, Haig and Moorer, May 25, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 307, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d307. 75. Backchannel Message, Smith to Haig, May 26, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 313, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d313; Smith, Doubletalk, 420–430. Kissinger later argued

Y8013-Maurer.indb 265

2/25/22 3:00 PM

266

no t e s t o page s 17 1 –174

that Smith’s opposition to the G-class compromise was driven by personal animosity (Kissinger, The White House Years, 1240), but Smith was not the only one opposed to the G-class deal—most of Nixon’s advisers were. 76. Kissinger, The White House Years, 1233. 77. Backchannel Message, Haig to Kissinger, May 25, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 310, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d310. 78. Memcon, Gromyko, Kissinger, et al., May 25, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 303, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d303. 79. Memcon, Gromyko, Kissinger, et al., May 25, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 308, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d308. 80. Podvig, ed., Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces, 290–294. 81. Memcon, Gromyko, Kissinger, et al., May 25, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 308, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d308. 82. Memcon, Gromyko, Kissinger, et al., May 26, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 314, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d314. 83. Kissinger, The White House Years, 1232–1233. 84. Memcon, Gromyko, Kissinger, May 26, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 314, esp. fn3, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d314. 85. Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, 321–323. 86. Backchannel Message, Kissinger to Smith, May 26, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 315, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d315. 87. Smith, Doubletalk, 434–435. 88. Smith, Doubletalk, 436–440. 89. Kissinger made this point in his memoirs (Kissinger, The White House Years, 1240–1245). Given the rapid record of negotiation, Kissinger’s explanation makes sense. 90. Interim Agreement Between the United States and the Soviet Union, May 26, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 317, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d317; Protocol to the Interim Agreement Between the United States and the Soviet Union, May 26, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 318, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d318. See also: Dupuy and Hammerman, A Documentary History of Arms Control and Disarmament, 603–615. 91. Letter, Nixon to Brezhnev, May 28, 1972, folder Mr. Kissinger’s Conversations in Moscow [1 of 4], Box 73, NSC Files, HAK Office Files, Nixon Library. 92. Memo, Odeen, Sonnenfeldt, and Lehman to Kissinger, May 17, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 280, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d280.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 266

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 174 –17 5

267

93. Hersh, The Price of Power, 503. 94. Telcon, Haig and McCloy, May 26, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 319, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d319. 95. Backchannel Message, Kissinger to Haig, May 27, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 320, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d320; Memo, Moorer to Haig, May 26, 1972, folder SALT Misc (Post Summit) (Sept. 69–June 72 [1 of 2], Box 887, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Haig to Kissinger, May 31, 1972, folder SALT Misc. (Post Summit) (Sept. 69–June 72) [2 of 2], Box 887, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 96. Telcon, Haig and McCloy, May 26, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 319, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d319. 97. Memo, Lehman to Haig, June 1, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helenski [sic] Vol. 18 May–Aug. 1972 [2 of 3], Box 883, NSC Files, Nixon Library). 98. Memo, Korologos to Nixon, July 3, 1972, folder ABM-System Vol. VII, Aug 71–, Box 842, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 99. Conversation Among Nixon, Rogers, and Kissinger, June 14, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 328, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d328; Conversation, Nixon, Stennis, Haldeman, et al., 13 June 1972, The Nixon Tapes, 584–589. Even the Safeguard base at Grand Forks was deactivated in 1976. Future American research evolved in different directions, leading to the Strategic Defense Initiative of the 1980s; see: Pike, Blair, and Schwartz, “Defending Against the Bomb,” 284–294. The Soviets retained their Galosh system surrounding Moscow, but made little effort to modernize it; see, Yost, Soviet Ballistic Missile Defense and the Western Alliance, 29–69. At least in theory, the Galosh system remains around Moscow today; see: Podvig, ed., Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces, 412–420. 100. Although Kissinger defended the general terms of the agreement to Haig as the best that the United States could have achieved, privately he admitted that there might be some loopholes regarding the specifics of the SLBM freeze. See: Telegram, Kissinger to Haig, May 30, 1972, folder SALT Misc. (Post Summit) (Sept. 69–June 72) [2 of 2], Box 887, NSC Files, Nixon Library; Memo, Haig to Kissinger, May 30, 1972, folder SALT Misc. (Post Summit) (Sept. 69–June 72) [2 of 2], Box 887, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 101. Telcon, Tucker and Kissinger, June 3, 1972, 9:20 a.m., folder SALT Materials [2 of 2], Box 79, NSC Files, Henry Kissinger Office Files, Country Files— Europe, USSR, Nixon Library. 102. Minutes of a Verification Panel Meeting, June 7, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 322, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d322. 103. Note from Nixon to the Soviet Leadership, June 15, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 330, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d330; Statement Agreed by the United States and the

Y8013-Maurer.indb 267

2/25/22 3:00 PM

26 8

no t e s t o page s 17 5 –17 7

Soviet Union, undated, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 335, https:// history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d335; Paper Agreed by the United States and the Soviet Union, July 24, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 336, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d336. 104. Telegram, US Delegation to SecState, May 22, 1972, folder President’s Moscow, Iran, Poland, Austria Trips May–June 1972 TOHAK (File No. 1) [Part 1], Box 479, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 105. Minutes of a Verification Panel Meeting, June 7, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 322, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d322; Paper Prepared by the Verification Panel Working Group, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 323, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d323. 106. Paper Prepared by the National Security Council Staff for the Soviet Government, undated, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 325, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d325. 107. Note from the Soviet Leadership to Nixon, undated, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 329, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d329. 108. Ambrose, The Control Agenda, 145–168. 109. Platt, “The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty,” 255–264. 110. John W. Finney, “Senate Approves Pact with Soviet on Missiles, 88–2,” New York Times, August 4, 1972, 1, PHN. 111. “Senate Approves Treaty with USSR Limiting ABM Systems,” CQ Almanac. 112. Garthoff later concluded that Nixon and Kissinger oversold the Interim Agreement to bolster their egos, creating inflated expectations that damaged arms control when the Soviets deployed their first generation of MIRVed ICBMs (Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 196–197). Selling the Interim Agreement as everything to everyone did have long-term consequences, but Garthoff underestimated the challenges Nixon faced in the summer of 1972. 113. “SALT Briefing Points,” June 2, 1972, folder SALT Announcement State Department May 20, 1971 [2 of 3], Box 78, HAK Office Files, Nixon Library; Conversation, Nixon, Kissinger, and Haldeman, 2 June 1972, The Nixon Tapes, 579–584. Nixon also warned congressional leaders to be wary of expert testimony, admitting his administration’s “schizophrenic attitude” toward arms control (Conversation Among Nixon and Members of the Republican Congressional Leadership, June 13, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 326, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d326). 114. Conversation, Nixon, Rogers, and Kissinger, 14 June 1972, The Nixon Tapes, 589–596. 115. U.S. Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Military Implications of the Treaty on the Limitations of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems and the Interim Agreement on Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, June 6, 20, 22, and 28

Y8013-Maurer.indb 268

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 17 7 –179

269

and July 18, 19, 21, 24, and 25, 1972, 92nd Congress (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1972), 291, PCP. 116. U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Strategic Arms Limitation Agreements, June 19–21, 26, 28, and 29 and July 20, 1972, 92nd Congress (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1972), 5, PCP. 117. U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Strategic Arms Limitation Agreements, 61, PCP. See also: U.S. Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Military Implications of the Treaty on the Limitations of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems and the Interim Agreement on Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, 140, PCP. 118. U.S. Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Military Implications of the Treaty on the Limitations of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems and the Interim Agreement on Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, 185–186, PCP. 119. Memo, Colson to Haig, June 20, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 331, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d331. 120. For Smith’s statement, see: U.S. Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Military Implications of the Treaty on the Limitations of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems and the Interim Agreement on Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, 292, PCP; for Laird, see: U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Strategic Arms Limitation Agreements, 62, PCP. 121. Conversation Among Nixon, Rogers, and Kissinger, June 14, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 328, https://history.state.gov/historical documents/frus1969–76v32/d328. 122. Letter, Nixon to Brezhnev, June 8, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 324, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d324. 123. Conversation Among Nixon, Stennis, Kissinger, and Korologos, June 13, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 327, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d327. 124. Jackson’s interrogation was extensive. See: U.S. Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Military Implications of the Treaty on the Limitations of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems and the Interim Agreement on Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, 29–33, 63–66, 161–168, 201–208, 235–238, 266–279, 296–315, 319–343, 349–354, 356–380, 382–422, 428–435, 446–463, 467–491, 502–516, 523–524, 532–537, 540–545, 547–549, 556–559, 562–567, PCP. 125. Memo, Odeen and Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, July 11, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helenski [sic]) Vol. 18 May–Aug. 1972 [1 of 3], Box 883, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 126. Memo, Colson to Haig, June 20, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 331, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d331. 127. Weisman, Prince of Darkness, 32–34.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 269

2/25/22 3:00 PM

27 0

no t e s t o page s 179 –183

128. “Memorandum of Explanation of Amendment to S.J. RES. 241,” August 3, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helenski [sic]) Vol. 18 May–Aug. 1972 [1 of 3], Box 883, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 129. Smith, Doubletalk, 442–443. 130. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, August 4, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 337, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d337. 131. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, August 24, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helenski [sic]) Vol. 18 May–Aug. 1972 [1 of 3], Box 883, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 132. Ambrose, The Control Agenda, 93–103. 133. On the Soviet struggle to understand the American division of powers, see: Schwartz, Soviet Perceptions of the United States, 33–60. 134. Memcon, Kissinger and Dobrynin, August 4, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 337, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v32/d337. 135. Memo, Korologos to Nixon, July 3, 1972, folder ABM-System Vol. VII, Aug 71-, Box 842, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 136. Memo, Miller to Kissinger, August 5, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 338, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/ d338. 137. Memo, Timmons to Nixon, September 25, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helenski [sic]) Ending Sept.–Oct. 1972 [1 of 1], Box 883, NSC Files, Nixon Library; FRUS XXXII, SALT I, Editorial Note 342. 138. Memo, Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, August 24, 1972, folder SALT Talks (Helenski [sic]) Vol. 18 May–Aug. 1972 [1 of 3], Box 883, NSC Files, Nixon Library. 139. Editorial Note, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXII, Document 342, https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32/d342. 140. Memo, Moorer to Laird, December 12, 1972, FRUS 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV, Document 229, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34/d229.

1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 270

co n c l us i o n Dallek, The Price of Power, 486–612; Bundy, A Tangled Web, 400–472. Ambrose, The Control Agenda, 55–78. Talbott, Endgame; Ambrose, The Control Agenda, 79–144. On the difficulties of carrying out Laird’s planned qualitative leap ahead in strategic weapons, see: Edwards, Superweapon; MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy; Spinardi, From Polaris to Trident. Cahn, Killing Détente, 20–30; Ambrose, The Control Agenda, 145–168. Keefer, Harold Brown. Ambrose, The Control Agenda, 169–214. Lettow, Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons; Adelman, Reagan at Reykjavik; Wilson, The Triumph of Improvisation, 63–142.

2/25/22 3:00 PM

no t e s t o page s 183 –18 7

27 1

9. Bohlen, Burns, Pifer, and Woodworth, Treaty on Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces. 10. Kartchner, Negotiating START; Woolf, Strategic Arms Control After START, 3–9. 11. Jones, Open Skies. 12. Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue; Hildreth and Woolf, Ballistic Missile Defense and Offensive Arms Reductions. 13. Tomes, “The Cold War Offset Strategy.” 14. Lieber and Press, “The End of MAD?,” 7–44. 15. Woolf, Strategic Arms Control After START, 9–11; Woolf, The New START Treaty, 1–38. 16. Lieber and Press, “The New Era of Counterforce,” 9–49. 17. “U.S. Withdraws from the ABM Treaty,” Arms Control Association. 18. Lindsay and O’Hanlon, Defending America. 19. Eland and Lee, “The Rogue State Doctrine and National Missile Defense.” 20. Pikayev, “ABM Treaty Revision”; Panda, “After US Missile Defense Salvo Test Against ICBM, China Warns of Proceeding ‘Carefully.’” 21. Smith, Doubletalk, 455. 22. Nixon, 1999, 79–81; Kissinger, Does America Need a Foreign Policy?, 63–70. 23. MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy; Easton and Frazier, GPS Declassified; Richelson, The Wizards of Langley, 41–88, 156–159, 166–172, 198–202. 24. Pearson, The World Wide Military Command and Control System. 25. Savel’yev and Detinov, The Big Five, 1–10; Hines, Mishulovich, and Shull, Soviet Intentions, 1965–1985, Vol. I; Interview with Gen.-Col. (Ret.) Adrian Danilevich, Soviet Intentions, 29–30, 33, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ ebb285/. 26. On the disarmament provisions of the Versailles Treaty, see: Towle, Enforced Disarmament; Alexander and Keiger, “Enforcing Arms Limits,” 181–193. On interwar naval arms limitation, see: Kaufman, Arms Control During the PreNuclear Era; Goldman, Sunken Treaties; Goldstein and Maurer, eds., The Washington Conference, 1921–22; Maurer and Bell, At the Crossroads Between Peace and War. On the Nonproliferation Treaty, see: Maddock, Nuclear Apartheid; Popp, Horovitz and Wenger, eds., Negotiating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. 27. Wohlstetter, “Is There a Strategic Arms Race?,” 3–20; Wallop and Codevilla, The Arms Control Delusion; Beichman, The Long Pretense. 28. The idea that competing states would “specialize” in their respective areas of relative advantage is a core tenet of the competitive strategy theory pioneered in the late Cold War. See: Mahnken, ed., Competitive Strategies for the 21st Century; Krepinevich and Watts, The Last Warrior. 29. The idea of how differing predictions and time horizons might influence great-power competition has recently received some attention; see: Edelstein, Over the Horizon. Uncertainty about the future, especially the possibilities of emerging technologies, also shapes nuclear competition; see: Lieber and

Y8013-Maurer.indb 271

2/25/22 3:00 PM

27 2

no t e s t o page s 18 8 –19 4

Press, The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution, 66–93; and Green, The Revolution That Failed, 91–97. 30. Pompeo, “U.S. Withdrawal from the INF Treaty on August 2, 2019”; “DoD Statement on Open Skies Treaty Withdrawal,” United States Department of Defense. 31. Vaddi and Acton, “A ReSTART for U.S.-Russian Nuclear Arms Control.” 32. For discussion of American unipolarity, see: Layne, “The Unipolar Illusion,” 5–51; Brooks and Wohlforth, World Out of Balance; and Monteiro, Theory of Unipolar Politics. 33. Allison, Destined for War; Colby and Mitchell, “The Age of Great-Power Competition”; Kroenig, The Return of Great Power Rivalry. 34. Ashley, Jr., “Russian and Chinese Nuclear Modernization Trends”; Gottemoeller, “Russia Is Updating Their Nuclear Weapons”; “Nuclear Weapon Modernization Continues but the Outlook for Arms Control Is Bleak,” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. 35. Lieber and Press, “The New Era of Counterforce,” 9–49. 36. Stone, “‘National Pride Is at Stake.’”; Reddie, “Hypersonic Missiles.” 37. Scharre, Army of None; Johnson, “Artificial Intelligence”; Mizokami, “A Little Known Hypersonic Weapon Gets an Unlikely Reveal on Twitter.” 38. Kallenborn, Are Drone Swarms Weapons of Mass Destruction? 39. Kreps and Schneider, “Escalation Firebreaks in Cyber, Conventional, and Nuclear Domains,” 1–11; Lindsay, “Cyber Operations and Nuclear Weapons”; Johnson and Krabill, “AI, Cyberspace, and Nuclear Weapons.” 40. Twomey, “Asia’s Complex Strategic Environment,” 51–78; Bracken, The Second Nuclear Age, 93–214; Mahnken et al., Understanding Strategic Interaction in the Second Nuclear Age. 41. Gerecht, “The Iran Deal Is Strategically and Morally Absurd”; Illing, “Why Trump Is Right to Pull Out of the Iran Nuclear Deal.” 42. Maurer, “America’s Strategic Interest in New START.” 43. Gordon, “U.S. Plans New Arms Talks Aimed at Limiting Russian, Chinese, and U.S. Nuclear Warheads.” 44. Gramer and Detsch, “Trump Fixates on China as Nuclear Pact Nears Expiration.” 45. Ashley, Jr., “Russian and Chinese Nuclear Modernization Trends”; Pifer, “Russia’s Shifting Views of Multilateral Nuclear Arms Control with China.” 46. Perkovich, “Global Implications of the U.S.-India Deal.” 47. Erickson, “Good Riddance to the INF Treaty.” 48. Maurer, “Restoring Nuclear Bipartisanship.”

Y8013-Maurer.indb 272

2/25/22 3:00 PM

b i b li o g r a phy

arch iva l s o ur c e s Central Intelligence Agency Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (NARA) Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum p u b lish e d pr i m a r y s o ur c e s Bennett, M. Todd, ed. Foreign Relations of the United States 1969–76, Vol. XXXIV: National Security Policy, 1969–1972. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 2011. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v34. Brezhnev, Leonid. Peace, Détente, Cooperation. New York: Consultants Bureau, 1981. Brinkley, Douglas, and Luke Nichter, eds. The Nixon Tapes, 1971–1972. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. Daalder, Ivo H., and I. M. Destler. The National Security Council Project Oral History Roundtables: The Nixon Administration National Security Council. College Park, MD: The Center for International and Security Studies, 1999. https:// www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/19981208.pdf. Dupuy, Trevor, and Gay Hammerman. A Documentary History of Arms Control and Disarmament. New York: R. R. Bowker Company, 1973. Gandhi, Sajit. The Tilt: The U.S. and the South Asian Crisis of 1971. National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 79 (2002). http://nsarchive.gwu .edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB79/. 27 3

Y8013-Maurer.indb 273

2/25/22 3:00 PM

274

b ib l io gr a ph y

Gerakas, Evans, David S. Patterson, and Carolyn B. Yee, eds. Foreign Relations of the United States 1964–68, Vol. XI: Arms Control and Disarmament. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1997. https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964–68v11. Geyer, David C. Foreign Relations of the United States 1969–76, Vol. XIII: Soviet Union, October 1970–October 1971. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 2011. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v13. Geyer, David C., Nina D. Howland, and Kent Sieg, eds. Foreign Relations of the United States 1969–76, Vol. XIV: Soviet Union, October 1971–May 1972. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 2006. https://history .state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v14. Goldman, David, and Erin Mahan, eds. Foreign Relations of the United States 1969–76, Vol. VIII: Vietnam, July 1970–January 1972. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 2010. https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v07. Hines, John, Ellis Mishulovich, and John Shull, eds. Soviet Intentions, 1965–1985, Vol. II: Soviet Post–Cold War Testimonial Evidence. McLean, VA: BDA Federal, 1995. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb285/. Humphrey, David C. Foreign Relations of the United States 1969–76, Vol. II: Organization and Management of U.S. Foreign Policy, 1969–1972. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 2006. https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v02. Keefer, Edward, David Geyer, and Douglas Savage, eds. Soviet-American Relations: The Détente Years, 1969–1972. Washington, DC: United States Department of State, 2007. Mahan, Erin, ed. Foreign Relations of the United States 1969–76, Vol. XII: Soviet Union, January 1969–October 1970. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 2006. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969–76v12. ———. Foreign Relations of the United States 1969–76, Vol. XXXII: SALT I, 1969–1972. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 2010. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v32. Nixon, Richard M. Richard Nixon: 1969: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1971. Peters, Gerhard, and John T. Woolley, eds. The American Presidency Project. Santa Barbara, CA: University of California, Santa Barbara, 1999–present. https:// www.presidency.ucsb.edu/. ProQuest Congressional Publications. https://about.proquest.com/en/products -services/congressional. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. https://about.proquest.com/en/products -services/pq-hist-news.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 274

2/25/22 3:00 PM

b ib l io gr a ph y

27 5

Sampson, Charles S., ed. Foreign Relations of the United States 1961–63, Vol. XIV: Berlin Crisis, 1961–1962. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1993. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961–63v14. Smith, Louis J., and David H. Herschler, eds. Foreign Relations of the United States 1969–76, Vol. I: Foundations of Foreign Policy, 1969–1972. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 2003. https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v01. WGBH Media Library and Archives. https://openvault.wgbh.org/collections/war _peace/interviews. b o o k s a n d a r ti c l e s Abella, Alex. Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire. New York: Mariner Books, 2009. Adelman, Ken. Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-Eight Hours That Ended the Cold War. New York: Broadside Books, 2014. Alexander, Martin S., and John F. V. Keiger. “Enforcing Arms Limits: Germany post 1919, Iraq post 1991.” Journal of Strategic Studies 29, 2 (2006). 181–193. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390600585407. Allegar, Miranda, and Natalie Schaller. “An Honest Broker: Remembering Brent Scowcroft.” Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. August 12, 2020. https://adst.org/2020/08/an-honest-broker-remembering-brent -scowcroft/. Allison, Graham. Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’ Trap? New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017. Amadae, S. M. Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Ambrose, Matthew. The Control Agenda: A History of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018. Ambrose, Stephen. “Between Two Poles: The Last Two Decades of the Cold War.” Diplomatic History 11, 4 (2007). 371–379. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467–7709 .1987.tb00025.x. ———. Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989. Ashley, Robert P., Jr. “Russian and Chinese Nuclear Modernization Trends: Remarks at the Hudson Institute.” The Defense Intelligence Agency. May 29, 2019. https://www.dia.mil/News/Speeches-and-Testimonies/Article-View/ Article/1859890/russian-and-chinese-nuclear-modernization-trends/. Axelrod, Robert, and Robert Keohane. “Achieving Cooperation Under Anarchy: Strategies and Institutions.” World Politics 38, 1 (1985): 226–254. https://doi .org/10.2307/2010357. Bass, Gary. The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2013. Battilega, John. “Soviet Views of Nuclear Warfare: The Post–Cold War Interviews.” In Getting MAD: Nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction, Its Origins and

Y8013-Maurer.indb 275

2/25/22 3:00 PM

27 6

b ib l io gr a ph y

Practice, ed. Henry Sokolski. Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2004. 151–174. Beichman, Arnold. The Long Pretense: Soviet Treaty Diplomacy from Lenin to Gorbachev. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1991. Bessner, Daniel, and Fredrik Logevall. “Recentering the United States in the Historiography of American Foreign Relations.” Texas National Security Review 3, 2 (2020). https://tnsr.org/2020/04/recentering-the-united-states-in-the -historiography-of-american-foreign-relations/. Bethe, Hans A., and Richard L. Garwin. “Anti-Ballistic-Missile Systems.” Scientific American 218, 3 (1968): 21–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/0039633680844 0897. “Beyond Offset.” War on the Rocks. 2014. https://warontherocks.com/beyond -offset/#_. Blacker, Coit D. Reluctant Warriors: The United States, the Soviet Union, and Arms Control. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1987. Bohlen, Avis, William Burns, Steven Pifer, and John Woodworth. Treaty on Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces: History and Lessons Learned. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2016. Bowker, Mike, and Phil Williams. Superpower Détente: A Reappraisal. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications, 1988. Bracken, Paul. The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2013. Brands, Hal. “Progress Unseen: U.S. Arms Control Policy and the Origins of Détente, 1963–1968.” Diplomatic History 30, 2 (2006): 253–285. https://www .jstor.org/stable/24915093. Brennan, Donald. “When the SALT Hit the Fan.” National Review, June 23, 1972: 685–692. Brennan, Donald, and Morton Halperin. “Policy Considerations of a Nuclear Test Ban.” In Arms Control, Disarmament and National Security, ed. Donald Brennan. New York: George Braziller, 1961. 234–268. Bronfenbrenner, Urie. “The Mirror Image in Soviet-American Relations: A Social Psychologist’s Report.” Journal of Social Issues, 17, 3 (1961): 45–56. Brooks, Linton F. “The End of Arms Control?” Daedalus 149, 2 (2020): 84–100. https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_01791. Brooks, Stephen G., and William C. Wohlforth. World Out of Balance: International Relations and the Challenge of American Primacy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. Bundy, McGeorge. Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years. New York: Random House, 1988. Bundy, William. A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998. Burr, William. “The Nixon Administration, the ‘Horror Strategy,’ and the Search for Limited Nuclear Options, 1969–1972.” Journal of Cold War Studies 7, 3 (2005): 34–78. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26925819.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 276

2/25/22 3:00 PM

b ib l io gr a ph y

27 7

Burr, William, and Jeffrey P. Kimball. Nixon’s Nuclear Specter: The Secret Alert of 1969, Madman Diplomacy, and the Vietnam War. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2015. Burr, William, and David Alan Rosenberg. “Nuclear Competition in an Era of Stalemate.” In The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Vol. II: Crisis and Détente, ed. Melvyn Leffler and Odd Arne Westad. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 88–111. Cahn, Anne Hessing. Killing Détente: The Right Attacks the CIA. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. Caldwell, Dan. “The Legitimation of the Nixon-Kissinger Grand Design and Grand Strategy.” Diplomatic History 33, 4 (2009): 633–652. https://doi.org/10 .1111/j.1467–7709.2009.00801.x. Cameron, James. The Double Game: The Demise of America’s First Missile Defense System and the Rise of Strategic Arms Limitation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Chayes, Abram, and Jerome B. Wiesner, eds. ABM: An Evaluation of the Decision to Deploy an Antiballistic Missile System. New York: Harper & Row, 1969. Coe, Andrew J., and Jane Vaynman. “Why Is Arms Control So Rare?” American Political Science Review 114, 2 (2020): 342–355. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S000305541900073X. Colby, Elbridge A., and A. Wess Mitchell. “The Age of Great-Power Competition: How the Trump Administration Refashioned American Strategy.” Foreign Affairs January/February 2020. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ 2019–12–10/age-great-power-competition. Craig, Campbell, and Fredrik Logevall. America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2012. Dallek, Robert. Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Debs, Alexandre, and Nuno P. Monteiro. Nuclear Politics: The Strategic Causes of Proliferation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Dobrynin, Anatoly. In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to Six Cold War Presidents. New York: Crown, 1995. “DoD Statement on Open Skies Treaty Withdrawal.” United States Department of Defense. May 21, 2020. https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/ Release/Article/2195239/dod-statement-on-open-skies-treaty-withdrawal/. Drea, Edward. McNamara, Clifford, and the Burdens of Vietnam, 1965–1969. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 2011. https://history .defense.gov/Portals/70/Documents/secretaryofdefense/OSDSeries_Vol6 .pdf ?ver=2014–05–28–134006–577. Drogan, Mara. “The Nuclear Imperative: Atoms for Peace and the Development of U.S. Policy on Exporting Nuclear Power, 1953–1955.” Diplomatic History 40, 5 (2016): 948–974. https://doi.org/10.1093/dh/dhv049. “Earle Gilmore Wheeler.” Joint Chiefs of Staff. 2016. https://www.jcs.mil/About/ The-Joint-Staff/Chairman/General-Earle-Gilmore-Wheeler/.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 277

2/25/22 3:00 PM

27 8

b ib l io gr a ph y

Easton, Richard, and Eric Frazier. GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones. Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2013. Edelstein, David. Over the Horizon: Time, Uncertainty, and the Rise of Great Powers. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017. Edwards, John. Superweapon: The Making of MX. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1982. Eland, Ivan, and Daniel Lee. The Rogue State Doctrine and National Missile Defense. Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2001. https://object.cato.org/pubs/fpbriefs/ fpb65.pdf. Enthoven, Alain, and K. Wayne Smith. How Much Is Enough?: Shaping the Defense Program, 1961–1969. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1971. https://www.rand.org/ content/dam/rand/pubs/commercial_books/2010/RAND_CB403.pdf. Erickson, Andrew S. “Good Riddance to the INF Treaty: Washington Shouldn’t Tie Its Own Hands in Asia.” Foreign Affairs August 29, 2019. https://www .foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2019–08–29/good-riddance-inf-treaty. Evangelista, Matthew. Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. Farrell, John. Richard Nixon: The Life. New York: Doubleday, 2017. Fearon, James. “Bargaining, Enforcement, and International Cooperation.” International Organization 52, 2 (1998): 269–305. https://doi.org/10.1162/ 002081898753162820. Ferguson, Niall. Kissinger, Vol. I: 1923–1968: The Idealist. New York: Penguin Press, 2015. Ferguson, Niall, et al., eds. The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2011. Fitzgerald, Frances. Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War. New York: Touchstone, 2000. Freedman, Lawrence, and Jeffrey Michaels. The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. 4th ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Friedberg, Aaron. In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America’s Anti-Statism and Its Cold War Grand Strategy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Froman, Michael. The Development of the Idea of Détente. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991. Gaddis, John Lewis. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American Security Policy During the Cold War. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Gallagher, Nancy. The Politics of Verification. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Gans, John. White House Warriors: How the National Security Council Transformed the American Way of War. New York: Liveright, 2019. Garthoff, Raymond L. “BMD in East-West Relations.” In Ballistic Missile Defense, ed. Ashton Carter and David Schwartz. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1984. 286–317.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 278

2/25/22 3:00 PM

b ib l io gr a ph y

279

———. Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1994. ———. The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1994. ———. A Journey through the Cold War: A Memoir of Containment and Coexistence. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2001. Gavin, Francis J. Gold, Dollars, and Power: The Politics of International Monetary Relations, 1958–1971. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. ———. Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012. ———. “Strategies of Inhibition: U.S. Grand Strategy, the Nuclear Revolution, and Nonproliferation.” International Security 40, 1 (2015): 9–46. http://dx.doi .org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00205. Gerecht, Reuel Marc. “The Iran Deal Is Strategically and Morally Absurd.” Atlantic, May 4, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/ 05/iran-nuclear-deal-flawed/559595/. Goldman, Emily. Sunken Treaties: Naval Arms Control Between the Wars. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. Goldstein, Erik, and John H. Maurer, eds. The Washington Conference, 1921–22: Naval Rivalry, East Asian Stability and the Road to Pearl Harbor. New York: Routledge, 2006. Gordon, Michael R. “U.S. Plans New Arms Talks Aimed at Limiting Russian, Chinese, and U.S. Nuclear Warheads.” Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2020. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-russia-plan-talks-aimed-at-limiting-russian -chinese-and-u-s-nuclear-warheads-11590087614. Gottemoeller, Rose. “Russia Is Updating Their Nuclear Weapons: What Does That Mean for the Rest of Us?” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 29, 2020. https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/01/29/ russia-is-updating-their-nuclear-weapons-what-does-that-mean-for-rest-of-us -pub-80895. Gramer, Robbie, and Jack Detsch. “Trump Fixates on China as Nuclear Pact Nears Expiration.” Foreign Policy, April 29, 2020. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/ 04/29/trump-china-new-start-nuclear-arms-pact-expiration/. Gray, Colin. House of Cards: Why Arms Control Must Fail. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992. Green, Brendan Rittenhouse. The Revolution That Failed: Nuclear Competition, Arms Control, and the Cold War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Green, Brendan Rittenhouse, and Austin Long. “The Geopolitical Origins of US Hard-Target-Kill Counterforce Capabilities and MIRV.” In The Lure and Pitfalls of MIRVs: From the First to the Second Nuclear Age, ed. Michael Krepon, Travis Wheeler and Shane Mason. Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2016. 19–54.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 279

2/25/22 3:00 PM

280

b ib l io gr a ph y

———. “The MAD Who Wasn’t There: Soviet Reactions to the Late Cold War Nuclear Balance.” Security Studies 26, 4 (2017): 606–641. https://doi.org/10 .1080/09636412.2017.1331639. Greene, Benjamin. Eisenhower, Science Advice, and the Nuclear Test Ban Debate, 1945–1963. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. Greenwood, Ted. Making the MIRV: A Study in Defense Decision Making. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988. Grieco, Joseph. “Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism.” International Organization 42, 3 (1988): 485–507. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818300027715. Gromyko, Andrei. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, 1990. Grynaviski, Eric. Constructive Illusions: Misperceiving the Origins of International Cooperation. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014. Guthrie, Benjamin J. Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election of November 5, 1968. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1969. Hadley, Stephen J. “The Role and Importance of the National Security Advisor.” Scowcroft Paper No. 1. College Station, TX: Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs, 2016. https://defense360.csis.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/ 08/Scowcroft-Paper-1_Hadley_The-Roll-and-Importance-of-the-NSA.pdf. Haig, Alexander, Jr. Inner Circles: How America Changed the World: A Memoir. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 1992. Haldeman, H. R. The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994. Hanhimäki, Jussi. “‘Dr. Kissinger’ or Mr. Henry?: Kissingerology, Thirty Years and Counting.” Diplomatic History 27, 5 (2003): 637–676. https://doi.org/10 .1111/1467–7709.00376. ———. The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. ———. The Rise and Fall of Détente: American Foreign Policy and the Transformation of the Cold War. Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2013. Heilbrunn, Jacob. They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons. New York: Doubleday, 2008. Helms, Richard, and William Hood. A Look Over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency. Rev. ed. New York: Presidio Press, 2004. Herken, Gregg. Counsels of War. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1985. ———. The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War, 1945–1950. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1980. Hersh, Seymour M. The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House. New York: Summit Books, 1983. Hewlett, Richard G., and Jack M. Holl. Atoms for Peace and War, 1953–1961: Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 280

2/25/22 3:00 PM

b ib l io gr a ph y

2 81

Hicks, Kathleen, Andrew Hunter, et al. Assessing the Third Offset Strategy. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, 2017. https:// www.csis.org/analysis/assessing-third-offset-strategy. Higuchi, Toshihiro. Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020. Hildreth, Steven, and Amy Woolf. Ballistic Missile Defense and Offensive Arms Reductions: A Review of the Historical Record. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2010. Hines, John, Ellis Mishulovich, and John Shull. Soviet Intentions, 1965–1985, Vol. I: An Analytical Comparison of U.S.-Soviet Assessments During the Cold War. McLean, VA: BDA Federal, 1995. Hoff-Wilson, Joan. “‘Nixingerism,’ NATO, and Détente.” Diplomatic History 13, 4 (2007): 501–525. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467–7709.1989.tb00069.x. Holloway, David. “Racing Toward Armageddon?: Soviet Views of Strategic Nuclear War, 1955–1972.” In The Age of Hiroshima, ed. Michael D. Gordin and G. John Ikenberry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020. 71–88. ———. The Soviet Union and the Arms Race. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983. Holst, Johan J., and William Schneider, Jr., eds. Why ABM?: Policy Issues in the Missile Defense Controversy. New York: Pergamon, 1969. Hughes, Thomas. Forword to Verification and Compliance: A Problem-Solving Approach, ed. Michael Krepon and Mary Umberger. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing, 1988. vii–x. Hunt, Richard. Melvin Laird and the Foundation of the Post-Vietnam Military, 1969–1973. Washington, DC: United States Government Publishing Office, 2015. https://history.defense.gov/Portals/70/Documents/secretaryofdefense/ OSDSeries_Vol7.pdf. Hyland, William. Mortal Rivals: Superpower Relations from Nixon to Reagan. New York: Random House, 1987. Illing, Sean. “Why Trump Is Right to Pull Out of the Iran Nuclear Deal.” Vox, May 8, 2018. https://www.vox.com/world/2018/5/8/17326650/iran-nuclear -deal-withdraw-trump-speech-goldberg-interview. Jervis, Robert. “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma.” World Politics 30, 2 (1978): 167–214. https://doi.org/10.2307/2009958. ———. The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospect of Armageddon. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990. Johnson, James, and Eleanor Krabill. “AI, Cyberspace, and Nuclear Weapons.” War on the Rocks, January 31, 2020. https://warontherocks.com/2020/01/ai -cyberspace-and-nuclear-weapons/. Johnson, James S. “Artificial Intelligence: A Threat to Strategic Stability.” Strategic Studies Quarterly 14, 1 (2020): 16–39. Johnson, Robert. Congress and the Cold War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 281

2/25/22 3:00 PM

282

b ib l io gr a ph y

Johnstone, Andrew. “Before the Water’s Edge: Domestic Politics and U.S. Foreign Relations.” Passport: The Newsletter of SHAFR 45, 3 (2015): 25–29. Jones, Peter. Open Skies: Transparency, Confidence-Building, and the End of the Cold War. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014. Kallenborn, Zachary. Are Drone Swarms Weapons of Mass Destruction? The Counterproliferation Papers Future Warfare Series No. 60. Maxwell AFB, AL: U.S. Air Force Center for Strategic Deterrence Studies, 2020. Kaplan, Edward. To Kill Nations: American Strategy in the Air-Atomic Age and the Rise of Mutually Assured Destruction. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015. Kaplan, Fred. Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2008. ———. The Wizards of Armageddon. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983. Kaplan, Lawrence S., Ronald D. Landa, and Edward J. Drea. The McNamara Ascendancy, 1961–1965. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 2006. Kartchner, Kerry M. Negotiating START: Strategic Arms Reduction Talks and the Quest for Strategic Stability. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1991. Katz, Amron. Verification and SALT: The State of the Art and the Art of the State. Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation, 1979. Kaufman, Robert Gordon. Arms Control During the Pre-Nuclear Era: The United States and Naval Arms Limitation Between the Two World Wars. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. Kearn, David, Jr. “The Baruch Plan and the Quest for Atomic Disarmament.” Diplomacy and Statecraft 21, 1 (2010): 41–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 09592290903577742. Keefer, Edward. Harold Brown: Offsetting the Soviet Military Challenge, 1977–1981. Washington, DC: United States Government Publishing Office, 2017. https:// history.defense.gov/Portals/70/Documents/secretaryofdefense/OSDSeries _Vol9.pdf ?ver=2017–06–13–152737–467. “Kermit Wayne Smith.” Prabook. https://prabook.com/web/kermit_wayne .smith/1659524. Accessed April 30, 2021. Kintner, William R., ed. Safeguard: Why the ABM Makes Sense. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1969. Kissinger, Henry. Does America Need a Foreign Policy?: Toward a Diplomacy for the Twenty-first Century. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. ———. “Limited War: Conventional or Nuclear?: A Reappraisal.” Daedalus 89, 4 (1960): 800–817. http://hdl.handle.net/10079/digcoll/564345. ———. Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. New York: Harper, 1957. ———. The White House Years. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1979. Klitzing, Holger. “To Grin and Bear It: The Nixon Administration and Ostpolitik.” In Ostpolitik, 1969–1974: European and Global Responses, ed. Carole Fink and Bernd Schaefer. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 80–110.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 282

2/25/22 3:00 PM

b ib l io gr a ph y

2 83

Knopf, Jeffrey. Domestic Society and International Cooperation: The Impact of Protest on US Arms Control Policy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Knox, MacGregor, and Williamson Murray, eds. The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Korb, Lawrence J. “Why It Could (but Shouldn’t) Be the End of the arms Control era.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, October 23, 2018. https://thebulletin .org/2018/10/why-it-could-but-shouldnt-be-the-end-of-the-arms-control-era/. Krepinevich, Andrew, and Barry Watts. The Last Warrior: Andrew Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense Strategy. New York: Basic Books, 2015. Krepon, Michael. Better Safe Than Sorry: The Ironies of Living with the Bomb. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Krepon, Michael, Travis Wheeler, and Shane Mason, eds. The Lure and Pitfalls of MIRVs: From the First to the Second Nuclear Age. Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2016. https://www.stimson.org/wp-content/files/file-attachments/ Lure_and_Pitfalls_of_MIRVs.pdf. Kreps, Sarah E., Elizabeth N. Saunders, and Kenneth A. Schultz. “The Ratification Premium: Hawks, Doves, and Arms Control.” World Politics 70, 4 (2018): 479–514. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887118000102. Kreps, Sarah, and Jacquelyn Schneider. “Escalation Firebreaks in Cyber, Conventional, and Nuclear Domains: Moving Beyond Effects-based Logics.” Journal of Cybersecurity 5, 1 (2019): 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1093/cybsec/tyz007. Kroenig, Matthew. The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy: Why Strategic Superiority Matters. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. ———. The Return of Great Power Rivalry: Democracy Versus Autocracy from the Ancient World to the U.S. and China. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Kuznick, Peter J., and James Gilbert, eds. Rethinking Cold War Culture. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2010. Lambeth, Benjamin S. “Deterrence in the MIRV Era.” World Politics 4, 2 (1982): 221–242. https://doi.org/10.2307/2009737. Layne, Christopher. “The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise.” International Security 17, 4 (1993): 5–51. https://doi.org/10.2307/2539020. Lebovic, James. Flawed Logics: Strategic Nuclear Arms Control from Truman to Obama. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. Leffler, Melvin. A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992. Lettow, Paul. Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. New York: Random House, 2006. Lieber, Keir A., and Daryl G. Press. “The End of MAD?: The Nuclear Dimension of U.S. Primacy.” International Security 30, 4 (2006): 7–44. https://doi.org/10 .1162/isec.2006.30.4.7. ———. The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution: Power Politics in the Atomic Age. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00273. ———. “The New Era of Counterforce: Technological Change and the Future of Nuclear Deterrence.” International Security 41, 4 (2017): 9–49.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 283

2/25/22 3:00 PM

284

b ib l io gr a ph y

Lindsay, James. Congress and Nuclear Weapons. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Lindsay, James, and Michael O’Hanlon. Defending America: A Plan for a Limited National Missile Defense. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2001. Lindsay, John R. “Cyber Operations and Nuclear Weapons.” NAPSNET Special Reports. June 20, 2019. https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special -reports/cyber-operations-and-nuclear-weapons/. Lipson, Charles. “International Cooperation in Economic and Security Affairs.” World Politics 37, 1 (1984): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.2307/2010304. Long, Austin, and Brendan Rittenhouse Green. “Stalking the Secure Second Strike: Intelligence, Counterforce, and Nuclear Strategy.” Journal of Strategic Studies 38, 1 (2015): 38–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2014.958150. Lutsch, Andreas. “In Favor of ‘Effective’ and ‘Non-discriminatory’ Nondissemination Policy: The FRG and the NPT Negotiation Process (1962– 1966).” In Negotiating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: Origins of the Nuclear Order, ed. Roland Popp, Liviu Horovitz, and Andreas Wenger. New York: Routledge, 2017. 36–57. Lytle, Mark. America’s Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. MacKenzie, Donald. Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993. Maddock, Shane. Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Present. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Mahnken, Thomas G., et al. Understanding Strategic Interaction in the Second Nuclear Age. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, 2019. Mahnken, Thomas G., ed. Competitive Strategies for the 21st Century: Theory, History, and Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012. Martinage, Robert. Toward a New Offset Strategy: Exploiting U.S. Long-Term Advantages to Restore U.S. Global Power Projection Capability. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, 2014. https://csbaonline .org/uploads/documents/Offset-Strategy-Web.pdf. Mattis, Jim. “Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America: Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge.” United States Department of Defense. https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/ Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf. Accessed April 28, 2021. Maurer, John D. “America’s Strategic Interest in New START.” AEIdeas, November 5, 2019. https://www.aei.org/foreign-and-defense-policy/americas -strategic-interest-in-new-start/. ———. “Divided Counsels: Competing Approaches to SALT, 1969–1970.” Diplomatic History 43, 2 (2019): 353–377. https://doi.org/10.1093/dh/dhy069. ———. “The Purposes of Arms Control.” Texas National Security Review 2, 1 (2018): 9–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/870.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 284

2/25/22 3:00 PM

b ib l io gr a ph y

285

———. “Restoring Nuclear Bipartisanship: Force Modernization and Arms Control.” War on the Rocks, April 14, 2021. https://warontherocks.com/2021/04/ restoring-nuclear-bipartisanship-force-modernization-and-arms-control/. Maurer, John H., and Christopher M. Bell, eds. At the Crossroads Between Peace and War: The London Naval Conference of 1930. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2014. MccGwire, Michael. Military Objectives in Soviet Foreign Policy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1987. ———. Perestroika and Soviet National Security. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1991. McNeill, John, and Corinna Unger, eds. Environmental Histories of the Cold War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Medhurst, Martin J. “Atoms for Peace and Nuclear Hegemony: The Rhetorical Structure of a Cold War Campaign.” Armed Forces & Society 23, 4 (1997): 571–593. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0095327X9702300403. Miller, Steven. “Politics Over Promise: Domestic Impediments to Arms Control.” International Security 8, 4 (1984): 67–90. https://doi.org/10.2307/2538563. Mizokami, Kyle. “A Little Known Hypersonic Weapon Gets an Unlikely Reveal on Twitter.” Popular Mechanics, June 9, 2020. https://www.popularmechanics .com/military/weapons/a32802762/vintage-racer-hypersonic-weapon/. Monteiro, Nuno P. Theory of Unipolar Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Morgan, Michael Cotey. The Final Act: The Helsinki Accords and the Transformation of the Cold War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018. Morris, Roger. Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. Moss, Richard A. Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow: Confidential Diplomacy and Détente. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2017. Moyn, Samuel. The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Nation, R. Craig. Black Earth, Red Star: A History of Soviet Security Policy, 1917– 1991. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992. Nelson, Keith. The Making of Détente: Soviet-American Relations in the Shadow of Vietnam. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. “New Evidence Confirms Pentagon Stole and Leaked Top Secret Documents from Nixon White House.” nixontapes.org. http://nixontapes.org/welander.html. Accessed April 30, 2021. Newhouse, John. Cold Dawn: The Story of SALT. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973. Nguyen, Lien-Hang T. Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. Nitze, Paul. From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the Center of Decision: A Memoir. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989. Nixon, Richard. 1999: Victory Without War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 285

2/25/22 3:00 PM

286

b ib l io gr a ph y

———. In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory, Defeat, and Renewal. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990. ———. RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990. Norris, Robert S., Steven M. Kosiak, and Stephen I. Schwartz. “Deploying the Bomb.” In Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons since 1940, ed. Stephen I. Schwartz. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998. 105–196. “Nuclear Weapon Modernization Continues but the Outlook for Arms Control Is Bleak: New SIPRI Yearbook Out Now.” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, June 15, 2020. https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/ 2020/nuclear-weapon-modernization-continues-outlook-arms-control-bleak -new-sipri-yearbook-out-now. Packard, David. The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company, ed. David Kirby and Karen Lewis. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. Painter, David S. “Oil and Geopolitics: The Oil Crises of the 1970s and the Cold War.” Historical Social Research 39, 4 (2014): 186–208. Panda, Ankit. “After US Missile Defense Salvo Test Against ICBM, China Warns of Proceeding ‘Carefully.’” The Diplomat, April 1, 2019. https://thediplomat .com/2019/04/after-us-missile-defense-salvo-test-against-icbm-china-warns -of-proceeding-carefully/. Parrott, Bruce. The Soviet Union and Ballistic Missile Defense. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987. Pearson, David E. The World Wide Military Command and Control System: Evolution and Effectiveness. Montgomery, AL: Air University Press, 2000. Perkovich, George. “Global Implications of the U.S.-India Deal.” Daedalus 139, 1 (2010): 20–31. https://doi.org/10.1162/daed.2010.139.1.20. Perlstein, Rick. Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. New York: Scribner, 2008. Petrelli, Niccolo, and Giordana Pulcini. “Nuclear Superiority in the Age of Parity: US Planning, Intelligence Analysis, Weapons Innovation and the Search for a Qualitative Edge, 1969–1976.” International History Review 40, 5 (2018): 1191–1209. https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2017.1420675. Pfaltzgraff, Robert, Jr. “The Rationale for Superpower Arms Control.” In SALT: Implications for Arms Control in the 1970s, ed. William Kintner and Robert Pfaltzgraff, Jr. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973. 3–20. Pifer, Steven. “Russia’s Shifting Views of Multilateral Nuclear Arms Control with China.” Brookings Institute, February 19, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/ blog/order-from-chaos/2020/02/19/russias-shifting-views-of-multilateral -nuclear-arms-control-with-china/. Pikayev, Alexander. “ABM Treaty Revision: A Challenge to Russian Security.” Disarmament Diplomacy 44 (2000). http://www.acronym.org.uk/old/archive/ 44abm.htm. Pike, John, Bruce Blair, and Stephen Schwartz. “Defending Against the Bomb.” In Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons since

Y8013-Maurer.indb 286

2/25/22 3:00 PM

b ib l io gr a ph y

287

1940, ed. Stephen Schwartz. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998. 269–326. Platt, Alan. “The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.” In The Politics of Arms Control Treaty Ratification, ed. Michael Krepon and Dan Caldwell. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991. 229–277. Podvig, Pavel. “The Window of Vulnerability That Wasn’t: Soviet Military Buildup in the 1970s—A Research Note.” International Security 33, 1 (2008): 118–138. https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.2008.33.1.118. Podvig, Pavel, ed. Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. Pompeo, Michael R. “U.S. Withdrawal from the INF Treaty on August 2, 2019.” United States Department of State, August 2, 2019. https://www.state.gov/u -s-withdrawal-from-the-inf-treaty-on-august-2–2019/. Popp, Roland, Liviu Horovitz, and Andreas Wenger, eds. Negotiating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: Origins of the Nuclear Order. New York: Routledge, 2017. Potter, William C. “Coping with MIRV in a MAD World.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 2, 4 (1978): 599–626. https://www.jstor.org/stable/173693. Powell, Robert. “Absolute and Relative Gains in International Relations Theory.” American Political Science Review 85, 4 (1991): 1303–1320. https://doi.org/10 .2307/1963947. Putnam, Robert D. “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games.” International Organization 42, 3 (1988): 427–460. https://doi.org/10 .1017/S0020818300027697. Radchenko, Sergey. “The Soviet Union and the Cold War Arms Race.” In Arms Races in International Politics: From the Nineteenth Century to the Twenty-first Century, ed. Thomas Mahnken, Joseph Maiolo, and David Stevenson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 158–175. Raghavan, Srinath. 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. Reddie, Andrew W. “Hypersonic Missiles: Why the New ‘Arms Race’ Is Going Nowhere Fast.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 13, 2020. https:// thebulletin.org/2020/01/hypersonic-missiles-new-arms-race-going-nowhere -fast/. Reynolds, David. Summits: Six Meetings That Shaped the Twentieth Century. New York: Basic Books, 2007. Rhodes, Richard. Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race. New York: Vintage, 2008. Richelson, Jeffrey T. “Technical Collection and Arms Control.” In Verification and Arms Control, ed. William Potter. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1985. 198–205. ———. The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002. Ritter, Scott. Dangerous Ground: America’s Failed Arms Control Policy, from FDR to Obama. New York: Nation Books, 2010.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 287

2/25/22 3:00 PM

288

b ib l io gr a ph y

Robin, Ron. The Cold War They Made: The Strategic Legacy of Roberta and Albert Wohlstetter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. ———. The Making of the Cold War Enemy: Culture and Politics in the MilitaryIntellectual Complex. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Rosenberg, David Alan. “The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945–1960.” International Security 7, 4 (1983): 3–71. https://www .jstor.org/stable/2626731?seq=1. Ross, Steven. American War Plans, 1945–1950. New York: Frank Cass, 1996. Rothkopf, David. Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power. New York: PublicAffairs, 2005. Rowell, William. Arms Control Verification: A Guide to Policy Issues for the 1980s. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing, 1986. Rumer, Eugene. “A Farewell to Arms . . . Control.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 17, 2018. https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/04/ 17/farewell-to-arms-.-.-.-control-pub-76088. Sagan, Scott D., and Jeremi Suri. “The Madman Nuclear Alert: Secrecy, Signaling, and Safety in October 1969.” International Security 27, 4 (2003): 150–183. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4137607?seq=1. Sargent, Daniel. A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Sarotte, M. E. Dealing with the Devil: East Germany, Détente, and Ostpolitik, 1969– 1973. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Savel’yev, Aleksandr’, and Nikolay Detinov. The Big Five: Arms Control DecisionMaking in the Soviet Union. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 1995. Scanlon, Sandra. The Pro-War Movement: Domestic Support for the Vietnam War and the Making of Modern American Conservatism. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013. Scharre, Paul. Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018. Schelling, Thomas. The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960. Schelling, Thomas, and Morton Halperin. Strategy and Arms Control. New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1961. Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. The Imperial Presidency. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1973. Schors, Arvid. “Trust and Mistrust and the American Struggle for Verification of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, 1969–1979.” In Trust, but Verify: The Politics of Uncertainty and the Transformation of the Cold War Order, 1969–1991, ed. Martin Klimke, Reinhild Kreis, and Christian Ostermann. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2016. 85–101. Schrafstetter, Susanna, and Stephen Twigge. Avoiding Armageddon: Europe, the United States, and the Struggle for Nuclear Non-Proliferation, 1945–1970. New York: Praeger, 2004.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 288

2/25/22 3:00 PM

b ib l io gr a ph y

289

Schulzinger, Robert. “Détente in the Nixon and Ford Years.” In The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Vol. II: Crisis and Détente, ed. Melvyn Leffler and Odd Arne Westad. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 373–394. https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521837200.019. Schwartz, Morton. Soviet Perceptions of the United States. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980. Seaborg, Glenn. Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Test Ban. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981. Sebenius, James, R. Nicholas Burns, and Robert Mnookin. Kissinger the Negotiator: Lessons from Dealmaking at the Highest Level. New York: HarperCollins, 2018. “Senate Approves Treaty with USSR Limiting ABM Systems.” CQ Almanac 1972, 28th ed. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1973. http://library .cqpress.com/cqalmanac/cqal72–1251364. Shaw, Tony, and Denise J. Youngblood. Cinematic Cold War: The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2010. Sherwin, Martin. A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies. 3rd ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003. Sims, Jennifer. Icarus Restrained: An Intellectual History of Nuclear Arms Control, 1945–1960. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990. Skinner, Bruce, et al. The Strategy of Campaigning: Lessons from Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2008. Slayton, Rebecca. Arguments That Count: Physics, Computing, and Missile Defense, 1949–2012. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013. Smith, Gerard. Disarming Diplomat: The Memoirs of Ambassador Gerard C. Smith, Arms Control Negotiator. Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1996. ———. Doubletalk: The Story of the First Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985. Smith, K. Wayne, ed. OCLC: 1967–1997: Thirty Years of Furthering Access to the World’s Information, Volume 1. Philadelphia, PA: Haworth Press, 1998. Snidal, Duncan. “Relative Gains and the Pattern of International Cooperation.” American Political Science Review 85, 3 (1991): 701–726. https://doi.org/10 .2307/2938747. Snyder, Sarah. Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Sofaer, Abraham. “The ABM Treaty and the Strategic Defense Initiative.” Harvard Law Review 99, 8 (1986): 1972–1985. https://doi.org/10.2307/1341216. Sorley Lewis. A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999. Sparrow, Bartholomew. The Strategist: Brent Scowcroft and the Call of National Security. New York: PublicAffairs, 2015. Spinardi, Graham. From Polaris to Trident: The Development of US Fleet Ballistic Missile Technology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 289

2/25/22 3:00 PM

29 0

b ib l io gr a ph y

Stevens, Sayre. “The Soviet BMD Program.” In Ballistic Missile Defenses, ed. Ashton Carter and David Schwartz. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1984. 182–220. Stone, Richard. “‘National Pride Is at Stake’: Russia, China, United States Race to Build Hypersonic Weapons.” Science, January 8, 2020. https://www .sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/national-pride-stake-russia-china-united -states-race-build-hypersonic-weapons. Suri, Jeremi. Henry Kissinger and the American Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. ———. Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Tal, David. “‘Absolutes’ and ‘Stages’ in the Making and Application of Nixon’s SALT Policy.” Diplomatic History 37, 5 (2013): 1090–1116. https://doi.org/10 .1093/dh/dht064. ———. The American Nuclear Disarmament Dilemma, 1945–1963. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008. ———. Strategic Arms Limitation Policy in the Cold War: Negotiation and Confrontation Over SALT, 1969–1979. New York: Routledge, 2017. Talbott, Strobe. Endgame: The Inside Story of SALT II. New York: HarperCollins, 1979. ———. The Master of the Game: Paul Nitze and the Nuclear Peace. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1988. Terriff, Terry. The Nixon Administration and the Making of U.S. Nuclear Strategy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995. Thielman, Greg. “Are We Approaching the End of the Arms Control Era?” Arms Control Now, April 1, 2019. https://www.armscontrol.org/blog/2019–04–01/ we-approaching-end-arms-control-era. Thomas, Evan. Being Nixon: A Man Divided. New York: Random House, 2016. Tomes, Robert. “The Cold War Offset Strategy: Assault Breaker and the Beginning of the RSA Revolution.” War on the Rocks, November 20, 2014. https:// warontherocks.com/2014/11/the-cold-war-offset-strategy-assault-breaker-and -the-beginning-of-the-rsta-revolution/. ———. US Defense Strategy from Vietnam to Operation Iraqi Freedom: Military Innovation and the New American Way of War, 1973–2003. New York: Routledge, 2007. Towle, Philip. Enforced Disarmament: From the Napoleonic Campaigns to the Gulf War. New York: Clarendon Press, 1997. Trachtenberg, Marc. A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. Twomey, Christopher P. “Asia’s Complex Strategic Environment: Nuclear Multipolarity and Other Dangers.” Asia Policy 11 (2011): 51–78. https://www.jstor .org/stable/24905026. “U.S. Withdraws from the ABM Treaty: President Bush’s Remarks and U.S. Diplomatic Notes.” Arms Control Association, December 13, 2001. https://www .armscontrol.org/act/2002_01–02/docjanfeb02.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 290

2/25/22 3:00 PM

b ib l io gr a ph y

291

Vaddi, Pranay, and James M. Acton. “A ReSTART for U.S.-Russian Nuclear Arms Control: Enhancing Security through Cooperation.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 2, 2020. https://carnegieendowment.org/ 2020/10/02/restart-for-u.s.-russian-nuclear-arms-control-enhancing-security -through-cooperation-pub-82705. Van Atta, Dale. With Honor: Melvin Laird in War, Peace, and Politics. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008. Vowinckel, Annette, Marcus M. Payk, and Thomas Lindenberger, eds. Cold War Cultures: Perspectives on Eastern and Western European Societies. New York: Berghahn Books, 2014. Wallop, Malcolm, and Angelo Codevilla. The Arms Control Delusion. San Francisco, CA: Institute for Contemporary Studies Press, 1987. Warnke, Paul C. “Apes on a Treadmill.” Foreign Policy 18 (1975): 12–29. Weber, Steve. Cooperation and Discord in U.S.-Soviet Arms Control. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. Weisman, Alan. Prince of Darkness: Richard Perle, the Kingdom, the Power, and the End of Empire in America. New York: Union Square Press, 2007. Wilson, James Graham. The Triumph of Improvisation: Gorbachev’s Adaptability, Reagan’s Engagement, and the End of the Cold War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014. Wittner, Lawrence. Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Wohlstetter, Albert. “Is There a Strategic Arms Race?” Foreign Policy 15 (1974): 3–20. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1147927. Woods, Randall Bennett. Fulbright: A Biography. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Woolf, Amy F. The New START Treaty: Central Limits and Key Provisions. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2017. ———. Strategic Arms Control After START: Issues and Options. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2010. Woolfe, Audra J. Competing with the Soviets: Science, Technology and the State in Cold War America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. York, Herbert. “ABM, MIRV, and the Arms Race.” Science 169, 3942 (1970): 257–260. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.169.3942.257. ———. Race to Oblivion: A Participant’s View of the Arms Race. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970. Yoshida, Shingo. “In the Shadow of China’s Bomb: Nuclear Consultation, Commitment Reconfirmation, and Missile Defense in the US-Japan Alliance, 1962–1968.” In Joining the Non-Proliferation Treaty: Deterrence, NonProliferation and the American Alliance, ed. John Baylis and Yoko Iwama. New York: Routledge, 2019. 172–195. Yost, David. Soviet Ballistic Missile Defense and the Western Alliance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 291

2/25/22 3:00 PM

29 2

b ib l io gr a ph y

Zaloga, Steven. The Kremlin’s Nuclear Sword: The Rise and Fall of Russia’s Strategic Nuclear Forces, 1945–2000. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2002. Zelizer, Julian. Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security—From World War II to the War on Terrorism. New York: Basic Books, 2012. Zellen, Barry. State of Doom: Bernard Brodie, the Bomb and the Birth of the Bipolar World. New York: Bloomsburg Academic, 2011. Zubok, Vladislav. A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Y8013-Maurer.indb 292

2/25/22 3:00 PM

ind e x

ABM. See anti-ballistic missile (ABM) ABM-for-Freeze proposal, 121, 122, 127 ABM for SLBM proposal, 143 ABM freeze proposal, 113 ABM Treaty. See Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems (ABM Treaty) Accidental and Hotline Agreements, 139 accidental use/provocative attack, 76, 101–102, 109, 111, 116 accuracy revolution, 9, 188 Agnew, Vice Pres. Spiro, 59 Air-Land Battle, 183 Allison, Gen. Royal, 69, 76, 102, 103, 104 Alsop, Stewart, 78 anti-ballistic missile (ABM), 35–37, 90–91, 184–185; exotic defense technology, 136; low level, 82, 86; National Command Authority, 82, 98; Sentinel, 20, 37; silo point defense, 80; Strategic Defense Initiative, 136, 183; technical feasibility of, 35–36; testing, 47; verification, 46–47; zero-ABM proposal, 134–136. See also Safeguard arms control: early history of, 15–33; future concerns, 188–189, 191–193;

Johnson administration efforts, 15, 19–23; purposes of, 2–4, 10, 20, 34. See also competitive arms control; cooperative arms control assured destruction, 18 back-channel negotiations, 6–7, 13, 152–153; concealment of, 5, 6, 117, 124, 126– 127, 153, 157–158; letter (Apr. 23, 1971), 126; letter (Feb. 22, 1971), 122–123; letter (Mar. 12, 1971), 123–124; letter (May 4, 1971), 127; letter (May 12, 1971), 128; May 20, 1971 agreement, 128–129, 141, 144; SALT discussed at, 78, 101, 106, 117–118, 119–126, 258n106; topics discussed, 78, 118–119 Backstopping Committee, 72, 74, 96, 100, 110 Berlin, 119; Four-Power Agreement, 121, 125–126, 139 Biden, Pres. Joe, 188 Brennan, Donald, 167 Brezhnev, Leonid, 123, 126, 164, 168, 169, 172, 175; execution of SALT treaties, 173; SALT II Treaty, 182; Vladivostock accord, 181

29 3

Y8013-Maurer.indb 293

2/25/22 3:00 PM

29 4

ind e x

Brooke, Sen. Edward, 38, 42 Brown, Dr. Harold, 108, 133, 182; at SALT I, 69, 76; at SALT II, 99 budget, defense, 59, 80–81, 130–131, 151 Bush, Pres. George H. W., 7 Camp David, 157, 158 Carter, Pres. Jimmy, 182 China, People’s Republic of: arms control talks with, 191–192; Nixon visit to, 138–139, 156; nuclear tests by, 19 Church, Sen. Frank, 93 Citizens’ Committee to Safeguard America, 92 Clifford, Clark, 21, 22 Cold War, 7–8, 11 Colorado Springs Directive, 59 Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense Policy, 58 competitive arms control, 2–4; in history, 4–9, 181–186; need for, 190–193; in practice, 11–12, 188–194; proponents of, 2–3, 16; in theory, 9–11, 186–188 Cooper, Sen. John Sherman, 93 cooperative arms control, 3, 4, 5, 9–10, 16, 186 Czechoslovakia invasion, 22 de Gaulle, Pres. Charles, 18 Desert Storm, 184 détente, 5, 7–8 deterrence, 25, 36; extended, 16, 17. See also Offset Strategy; Realistic Deterrence Dobrynin, Anatoly, 23, 70, 71, 96, 134, 175, 179. See also back-channel negotiations Doty, Paul, 78 drones, 185 Eisenhower, Pres. Dwight, 17 Evaluation Report, 66, 79, 84; Option I, 55; Option II, 55, 72–73, 74, 78; Option III, 55; Option III-A, 63–64, 79; Option IV, 55; Option V, 55, 70;

Y8013-Maurer.indb 294

Option V-A, 64; Option VI, 63, 79; Option VII, 63, 70, 79, 81 extended deterrence, 16, 17 Farley, Philip, 68–69, 110 FBS. See forward-based systems (FBS) flexible response, 18 Follow-on Forces Attack (FOFA), 183 Ford, Pres. Gerald, 181–182 forward-based systems (FBS), 75, 89, 97, 99, 109, 110, 117, 132 Foster, Richard, 167 Foster, William, 21 Four-Power Agreement, 121, 125–126, 139 Fulbright, Sen. William J., 37, 38, 93 Garthoff, Raymond, 68, 84, 120, 172; memoir, 4–5, 230n68 Garwin, Richard, 78 general purpose forces, 18 Germany, West. See West German Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) Gromyko, Andrei, 70, 119, 139, 168, 169, 171, 172, 264n59 Haig, Brig. Gen. Alexander, Jr., 91, 124, 167 Haldeman, Robert, 45 Halperin, Morton, 21–22, 27, 40, 56, 62 Helms, Richard, 43, 44 honest broker, 7 ICBMs. See intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) INF. See Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty inspections, 87 interceptors, 35, 65–66. See also antiballistic missile (ABM) intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), 18, 82, 83, 166, 169–170, 173 Interdepartmental Safeguard Steering Group, 91 Interim Agreement on Certain Measures with Respect to the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (Interim

2/25/22 3:00 PM

ind e x

Agreement), 1, 147, 169–170; authorization of, 180; Congressional approval of, 174–180; execution of, 173; Jackson Amendment, 178–179; opposition to, 178–179 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, 11, 183, 188 Iran: arms negotiations with, 11, 191 Iran Nuclear Deal (2015), 190–191, 193 Jackson, Sen. Henry “Scoop,” 38, 39, 58, 92, 94, 112, 167, 168, 178, 182 Johnson, Pres. Lyndon, 13, 15, 17, 18–20, 22 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), 190–191, 193 Kahn, Herman, 167 Kennedy, Pres. John, 17, 18 Kintner, William, 167 Kishilov, Nikolai, 172 Kissinger, Henry, 25–28, 40, 49–50, 84–85, 168, 170–172, 186; as competitive arms controller, 3, 30; control of SALT process, 51, 54, 60–66, 72; memoir, 5, 82; Nixon reliance on, 25, 45, 54, 59, 62, 142; North Vietnamese negotiations, 164–165; nuclear strategy views of, 25, 26, 30; Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, 25; trip to Moscow, 156–158. See also backchannel negotiations Kosygin, Alexei, 19–20, 22, 111, 123 Laird, Melvin, 29–31, 34, 51, 85, 120, 131–132, 135, 141, 152, 158–159, 161–162, 175, 185; on ABM-for-freeze deal, 129; as competitive arms controller, 4, 16, 30; meeting with Smith (June 1970), 102; MIRVs, views on, 3, 42–43, 66, 83; missile defense, views on, 37, 38–40, 57, 58–59, 80, 81–82, 91, 92, 94–95, 112–113; promotion of treaty and agreement, 177; tactics of, 54, 94–95, 132; verification, views on, 46–47, 49, 60, 61

Y8013-Maurer.indb 295

29 5

land-mobile missiles, 82, 133, 166, 168 limited strategic nuclear options, 150 linkage, 15, 28, 70; with Berlin, 119, 121, 126 Lynn, Lawrence, 61, 83, 84, 104, 106 Madman Theory, 150 MARCs. See Modern ABM Radar Complexes (MARCs) May 20 Agreement, 13, 117–140, 141, 144 McNamara, Robert, 18–19, 20 Minuteman missiles, 2, 238n160; defending, 91, 131; MIRVing, 149–150 MIRV Panel, 54–55, 60. See also multiple independently-targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs) MIRVs. See multiple independentlytargeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs) missile defense systems, 19. See also antiballistic missile (ABM) missiles. See weapons missile submarines (SSBNs), 18 Modern ABM Radar Complexes (MARCs), 133, 143, 146, 154, 155, 163 Moorer, Adm. Thomas, 107, 136, 143 MRV. See multiple reentry vehicle (MRV) multiple independently-targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs), 2–3, 40–44, 66; ban on, 74, 82–83, 86, 87, 97–98, 99, 105; inspections, 87; opposition to, 41–44; verification, 46, 47, 55. See also testing multiple reentry vehicle (MRV), 43–44, 55 Muskie, Sen. Edmund, 111 mutual assured destruction, 16, 36, 45 National Command Authority (NCA) option, 82, 98 National Security Council (NSC), 27, 29; Defense Program Review Committee (DPRC), 59; divisions within, 34–50; MIRV Panel, 54–55, 60. See also Verification Panel National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM), 27; NSDM 49, 84–88; NSDM 69, 105

2/25/22 3:00 PM

29 6

ind e x

National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM), 27, 44. See also NSSM 3; NSSM 28; NSSM 62 New START. See Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START) New Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (New Start). See Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START) Nitze, Paul, 102, 120, 152, 175; memoir, 5; at SALT I, 69–70, 76; at SALT VI, 149, 155, 163 Nixon, Pres. Richard, 180, 186; ABM system championed by, 36–37; announcement of SALT I agreements, 1, 2; China visit, 138–139, 156; as competitive arms controller, 3, 4, 5–6, 30; election to presidency, 23–24; execution of SALT treaties, 173; linkage, 15; lobbying for treaties, 176, 177–178; memoir, 5; at Moscow summit, 168, 169, 171, 173; nuclear strategy views of, 24–25, 26, 31; personality of, 45, 120; SALT II instructions, 86; Watergate, 181 Nonproliferation Treaty (1968), 20, 187 North Korea: arms negotiations with, 11 NSC. See National Security Council (NSC) NSDM. See National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM) NSDM 49 Report, 84–88; Option A, 84, 86; Option B, 84–85, 86. See also Option C; Option D NSSM. See National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) NSSM 3, 28, 29, 30, 31, 45 NSSM 28, 31, 33, 44–50, 52, 56; options presented by, 48–49; Steering Committee, 40, 41, 46, 48, 52, 53, 55 NSSM 62, 50, 52–57; options, 52–53, 55; Study, 61 nuclear revolution, 11 nuclear sufficiency, 45

Y8013-Maurer.indb 296

Obama, Pres. Barak, 193 Odeen, Philip, 146, 149, 152 Offset Strategy, 3, 30, 182, 183 OLPARs. See Other Large Phased Array Radars (OLPARs) one-way freedom to mix, 82 Open Skies Treaty (1992), 11, 183, 188 Option A, 84, 86 Option B, 84–85, 86 Option C, 85, 86–87, 88, 95–97, 98, 102, 230n68 Option D, 85, 86, 88, 95–97, 98–99, 102, 230n68 Option E, 90, 102–106, 107–108, 109, 111, 113–114, 118, 236n160 Option I, 55 Option II, 55, 72–73, 74, 78 Option III, 55 Option III-A, 63–64, 79 Option IV, 55 Option V, 55, 70 Option V-A, 64 Option VI, 63, 79 Option VII, 63, 70, 79, 81 Other Large Phased Array Radars (OLPARs), 133, 143, 154, 155, 163–164 Packard, David, 39, 59, 63, 103, 104, 174; MIRVs, views on, 2–3, 43; missile defense, views on, 39–40, 58, 80–81; verification, views on, 46–47, 49 Parsons, James, 95 Partial Test Ban Treaty (1963), 17 Perle, Richard, 168 Podgorny, Nikolai, 180 Polaris submarines, 124 President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), 38 Prouty, Sen. Winston, 58 provocative attack. See accidental use/ provocative attack radars, 35, 65–66, 99; restraints on, 47, 82, 108, 114, 133, 138, 143, 146, 154–155, 163. See also Modern ABM Radar

2/25/22 3:00 PM

ind e x

Complexes (MARCs); Other Large Phased Array Radars (OLPARs) Rathjens, George, 78 Reagan, Pres. Ronald, 182–183 Realistic Deterrence, 3, 30, 130, 151, 153, 182, 185 reassurance, 16–17, 18, 75 Rogers, William, 33, 110, 139, 143; as cooperative arms controller, 4, 16; missile defense, views on, 38, 90–91; promotion of treaty and agreement, 177; verification, views on, 47, 48 Rostow, Walt, 23 Ruina, Jack, 78 Rush, Kenneth, 125–126, 174 Rusk, Dean, 20, 21, 22 Russell, Sen. Richard, 59 Safeguard, 34, 37–40, 42, 47, 66, 74, 131–132; Battle of the Charts, 58; deactivation of, 267n99; divided administration support for, 38–39, 40, 80, 90–91, 92–93, 112–114; opposition to, 36, 37–38, 92–93; Phase I, 57–60, 80; Phase II, 80, 81, 90–95; Senate debate about, 57–59 Safeguard-for-Moscow ABM proposal, 114, 115, 133, 136 SALT. See Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) SALT I agreements, 1–2. See also Interim Agreement on Certain Measures with Respect to the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (Interim Agreement); Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems (ABM Treaty) SALT I talks: location of, 68; negotiations, 73–77; preparations for, 56, 68–73; Soviet delegation, 73; Soviet negotiating positions, 74–75, 76, 77; U.S. delegation, 68–70; U.S. negotiating positions, 68 SALT II talks, 89–90, 95–102; location of, 78; preparation for, 77–88; Soviet

Y8013-Maurer.indb 297

297

Basic Provisions, 97–98; Soviet negotiating positions, 97–99, 101; U.S. delegation, 95; U.S. negotiating positions, 95–97 SALT II Treaty, 176, 182 SALT III talks, 106–111; U.S. delegation, 106–107 SALT IV talks, 111–116, 129 SALT V talks, 132–138, 142, 147 SALT VI talks, 142–149 SALT VII talks, 152–155, 161–164, 165 Schelling, Thomas, 9, 25, 186 Schlesinger, James, 150 Scowcroft, Brent, 7 secrecy. See back-channel negotiations Semenov, Vladimir, 126–127, 172; at SALT I, 73, 75, 76; at SALT II, 88, 97, 98, 101, 111; at SALT III, 109; at SALT IV, 129; at SALT V, 134, 135, 136, 137; at SALT VI, 142, 145–146; at SALT VII, 154, 161, 162, 164 Sentinel, 20, 37 SLBMs. See submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) Smirnov, Leonid, 170–171, 172, 265n72 Smith, Gerard, 31–33, 34, 51, 56, 62, 63–64, 120, 136, 141–142, 172–173, 179; ABM-for-freeze deal, views on, 128– 129; chair of American delegation to SALT, 68–69, 100; chair of NSSM 28 Steering Committee, 31, 40, 48, 53, 54; as cooperative arms controller, 4, 16; debriefing after SALT I, 79; meeting with Laird (June 1970), 102; memoir, 4–5; missile defense, views on, 38, 90–91, 93–94, 108; promotion of treaty and agreement, 177; at SALT I, 73–77; at SALT II, 88, 95–97, 101–102, 103; at SALT III, 109, 110–111; at SALT IV, 115–116, 129; at SALT V, 134, 135, 137, 147; at SALT VI, 145, 148; at SALT VII, 153, 154, 155, 161, 162; Stop Where We Are, 49–50, 54, 60; testing, views on, 85; verification, views on, 47, 48, 60–61 Smith, Sen. Margaret Chase, 38, 59

2/25/22 3:00 PM

29 8

ind e x

Sonnenfeldt, Helmut, 40, 41, 49, 56, 61, 100, 124, 152 Soviet Union: arms buildup, 17, 18, 19, 30–31; Basic Provisions, 97–98; control over Hanoi, 156, 157, 164, 165; Czechoslovakia, invasion of, 22; Defense Council, 71, 77, 97, 100; disagreements within, 70–71; early interest in talks, 19, 20, 28, 33, 70; Galosh system, 267n99; Moscow summit, 119, 130, 139, 156, 165, 168–173; Party Congress, 110, 119, 123; Politboro, 98 START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks), 182 START I Treaty, 183 Stennis, Sen. John C., 37, 38, 57, 132 Stop Where We Are (SWWA), 49–50, 54, 60 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), 1; delay of, 28, 32–33; Johnson administration, 15, 19–20; locations of, 71–72; purposes of, 20. See also SALT I talks; SALT II talks; SALT III talks; SALT IV talks; SALT V talks; SALT VI talks; SALT VII talks Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), 182 Strategic Defense Initiative, 136, 183 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) (2002), 184 Strategy of Realistic Deterrence. See Realistic Deterrence submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), 18, 82; freeze on, 124–125, 136, 142, 144–145, 146, 151, 152, 158, 162–163, 166–167, 170–171, 258n106 surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), 66, 83 SWWA. See Stop Where We Are (SWWA) Symington, Sen. Stuart, 58, 93 Teller, Edward, 167 testing: anti-missile, 47; by China, 19; MIRV, 41–44, 47, 99; moratorium on, 42, 53–54, 55, 65, 73, 75–76; Partial Test Ban Treaty (1963), 17

Y8013-Maurer.indb 298

Thompson, Llewellyn, 19, 69, 95 Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START), 11, 184, 188, 191 Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems (ABM Treaty), 1, 134, 147, 169, 183; Congressional approval of, 174–180; execution of, 173; ratification of, 180; U.S. withdrawal from, 184–185; withdrawal clause, 147, 154, 161–162, 184 Trident. See Undersea Long-Range Missile System (ULMS) Truman, Pres. Harry, 15, 17 Trump, Pres. Donald, 191, 193 Undersea Long-Range Missile System (ULMS), 124, 145, 151, 164 U.S.S.R. See Soviet Union verification, 21, 83; level of confidence in, 46; technical arguments, 46–48, 66 Verification Panel, 51–52, 60–62, 84, 88, 101, 102, 103, 114, 146, 149; collateral constraints, 64–65; options presented by, 61–62, 63–64; primacy of, 72; primary constraints, 64–65; Smith debriefing after SALT I, 79; Verification Report, 62; Working Group, 61, 63, 64, 66, 84, 114. See also Evaluation Report; Y-Papers Versailles Treaty (1919), 187 Vienna Option, 103–104, 105 Vietnam, War in, 18, 24, 27, 93, 96, 130–131, 148, 159, 164–165; Soviet influence upon, 156, 157 Vladivostok accord (1974), 181–182 Washington Naval Treaty (1922), 187 Wayne Smith, Kermit, 106–107, 114, 146 weapons: interim freeze on, 108–109, 110–111, 144; land-mobile missiles, 82, 133, 166, 168; MRVs, 43–44, 55; quality of, 3–4, 29–30, 42, 99,

2/25/22 3:00 PM

ind e x

149–151; quantity of, 3, 86, 100; surface-to-air missiles, 66, 83. See also intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs); Minuteman missiles; multiple independently-targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs); submarinelaunched ballistic missiles (SLBMs); Undersea Long-Range Missile System (ULMS) West German Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), 20, 119. See also Berlin

Y8013-Maurer.indb 299

29 9

Wheeler, Gen. Earl, 56, 84, 107; as competitive arms controller, 16; missile defense, views on, 91; testing, views on, 41, 65; verification, views on, 46, 49, 66 Wohlstetter, Albert, 58, 167 Y-Papers, 79; Y-1 Paper, 81–82; Y-13 Paper, 224n111 zero-ABM proposal, 134–136

2/25/22 3:00 PM