Word: warheaded
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...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 Robert McFarlane to help run the NSC staff...
...various agencies had agreed upon a general goal for START, but were divided over the means of achieving it. The goal was to force the Soviet Union to give up many if not most of its iCBMs, particularly its large, multiple-warhead ones. As a land power, the U.S.S.R. has traditionally considered heavy artillery "the god of war"-and ICBMs are the artillery of the nuclear...
Liberal and conservative experts alike criticized the high ratio of warheads to launchers that the proposal would produce. Each side would end up with an ICBM force made up largely of stationary multiple-warhead missiles such as the MX and SS-18. While in their silos, they would be sitting ducks, vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike; once in the air, they might be first-strike weapons. Therefore the incentive of each side to shoot first in a crisis would be increased, and the stability of the nuclear balance would be upset...
...accepting it." He and other hard-liners like Rostow agreed with Democratic crit ics of the Administration such as Congressmen Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee and Les Aspin of Wisconsin that arms control should encourage "de-MlRVing," the evolution from a reliance on Hydraheaded missiles to small, mobile, single-warhead ICBMS. A de-MiRved deterrent would theoretically neither
...tempt nor threaten a pre-emptive attack. Thus, while START was in tended to enhance the case for the MX by increasing the ratio of warheads to launchers and by putting a premium on large MlRVed missiles, it inadvertently increased opposition to the big missile in Congress and instead spurred development of the "Midgetman": an entirely new ICBM, a small, single-warhead alternative to the large MlRVed...