Word: mx
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Nonetheless there are ominous trends. While the U.S. is prone to lengthy, agonizing national debate over the acquisition of even one new strategic weapon, such as the MX, the Soviets are cranking out new, more powerful models-or "generations"-of missiles and honing their accuracy all the time. So there is certainly a need for the U.S. to modernize its deterrent. But it can do that without Dense Pack, leaving the job of attacking silos to the Trident II and the most accurate, multiple-warhead version of the Minuteman. Perhaps at some point in the future, a portion of those...
...With the MX on the back burner, the U.S. should concentrate in the near term on building up its conventional forces and its more purely retaliatory weapons systems like cruise missiles, which are too slow to threaten a sneak attack. Reagan himself, in presenting his START proposal, has argued that ICBM warheads, because they can be hurled at their targets so quickly, are potential first-strike weapons and therefore destabilizing, while slower-flying cruise missiles and bombers enhance stability. Some of the money allocated for Dense Pack would be better spent on what Reagan calls "slow-flyers" in the next...
...however, the American deterrent is reconstituted with the MX in Dense Pack as its centerpiece, the U.S. will have done more than close the counterforce gap. It will have opened a window of vulnerability on the Soviet ICBMs more serious, and harder for the Soviets to close, than the one that Reagan believes now faces the U.S. That would augur badly for strategic stability. It would mean that the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces would be more likely to go to a "launch on warning" alert. The more vulnerable its ICBMs, the more tempted the Kremlin would be to fire them...
...leader to react decisively yet wisely in a matter of minutes. That is why the superpowers have preferred to stick with a concept of stability posited on "mutual survivability," whereby each side could absorb a nuclear attack and then retaliate with devastating force. Dense Pack deployment of the MX would be a step toward a condition of "mutual vulnerability," in which each side would have an extra incentive to shoot first rather than retaliate, and that would be the most dangerous of all possible worlds...
...current MX plan also represents a potentially devastating setback to arms control. Reacting to Reagan's speech, the Soviets objected that Dense Pack would violate SALT prohibitions on building new launchers. They have a strong case. The American rebuttal that Dense Pack silos are shelters rather than launchers is pure casuistry. But that is not the biggest problem. Because hundreds of the new ICBMS would substantially increase the vulnerability of the Soviet Union's fixed-site ICBMS, the Kremlin might be induced to deploy a new generation of mobile ICBMS. Land-mobile missiles are a nightmare for both...