Word: mx
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Reagan has called the recommendation a "desirable evolution to ward small, single warhead ICBMs" it may have been MX that ensured the White House would take Midgetman and the other points seriously. But the giant ICBM will dominate the years between now and any deployment of a smaller weapon probably in the mid 1990s...
...technology for a new smaller missile wouldn't be that much different from the 20 year old Minuteman, and there is no "emergency" to require anything further. If the President really wants "attainment of stability at the lowest possible level of forces," then his only reasons for supporting MX are automatic. The reflexes of "bigger is better and "what the Russians have, we must have" have won another victory in Washington. Congress needs to rise above this glacial inertia while there is still time, move quickly past MX, and go with the weapons systems that ensure peace bombers, submarines...
Reagan's START concessions revive the MX missile...
When Congress last year killed the dense pack basing plan for the MX, the 96-ton ten-warhead missile seemed permanently grounded. Then the blue-ribbon Scowcroft Commission recommended last month that the U.S. develop a smaller, possibly mobile, single-warhead Midgetman missile. In the meantime, the commission suggested, the U.S. should demonstrate its political will by placing 100 MX missiles in existing Minuteman silos, even though these sites might be vulnerable to attack. Key members of Congress wanted the Midgetman, as well as a more flexible approach to arms control. President Reagan wanted the MX and was willing...
...revival of the MX was shrewdly engineered by the President. Reagan lobbied hard in public, declaring on a political foray into Ohio that "if Congress rejects these [Scowcroft] proposals, it will have dealt a blow to our national security that no foreign power would ever have been able to accomplish." Then he met privately with legislators who remained skeptical about the MX. He also sent accommodating notes to lawmakers who had asked for changes in the Administration's negotiating position in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks with the Soviet Union, which are scheduled to resume in Geneva on June...