Word: mx
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...loggerheads, the Administration was unable to close ranks behind the double build-down, or any other coherent new initiative in START. In late September the Scowcroft commission and the Congressmen set about to impose their de-MIRVing and build-down goals on the Administration, and they used the MX as leverage. If the Administration wanted to maintain the support for the MX, they said, the big missile would have to fit into a long-term plan in which it would eventually give way to the single-warhead
...brief plug for START in a speech. But the Administration was still a long way from having a proposal to go with the word. Not until early 1982, when the White House became concerned about the growing nuclear arms freeze movement and congressional opposition to the MX-a longstanding program to develop a new, large, ten-warhead ICBM-did the Administration buckle down to serious, high-level consideration of its options for START. By then, Allen had been replaced as National Security Adviser by Deputy Secretary of State William Clark, and Clark had brought with him from the State Department...
...classified as "light" ICBMs and have three warheads each, while the backbone of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces is made up of 308 "heavy" SS-18s, each able to carry ten warheads, and around 500 "medium" SS-17s and SS-19s, with four and six warheads respectively. The American MX, which is still under development as well as under heated debate, is about the size of the SS-19, but would have as many warheads as the SS-18. However, even if the controversial MX is eventually deployed, there will be many fewer MXs than Soviet monster missiles...
Seeing that he was outnumbered, Burt looked for a way to give the State Department option what he called "a little sex appeal." He suggested proposing to the Soviets a straight swap: the U.S. would cancel its program to develop the MX if the Soviets would dismantle all 308 of their SS-18 heavies...
Burt got the idea from two veterans of SALT, Lieut. General Brent Scowcroft (ret.), who was advising the Administration on what to do about the MX, and William Hyland, then a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and now the editor of Foreign Affairs. Scowcroft and Hyland had been aides to Kissinger and later ran the NSC staff during the Ford Administration...