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Reagan made the bargaining-chip argument because he is concerned about securing congressional approval for the system. He hopes to patch together an uneasy alliance in support of the program made up of hawks who want the MX for its own sake and doves who want it so the U.S. can give it away. That ploy may well backfire. By implying that the U.S. might be able to live without the MX in certain circumstances after all, Reagan has produced a self-contradiction that weakens the case for the missile as indispensable, a fact congressional skeptics have quickly pointed...
Observing this current episode as it unfolds, the Soviets must be asking themselves why they need worry about giving up anything in Geneva when the U.S. legislative branch may kill the MX before both sides in the negotiations stop stonewalling and start genuine trading. But even if Congress does approve the MX, and thus makes it a possible bargaining chip, the missile is still a flawed idea...
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...