What Happens if SALT Dies

Far from being hurt, Moscow is free to build new weapons

For a dozen years, the momentum of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the sheer importance of what was being negotiated helped SALT to survive the sometimes quixotic workings of American democracy and the sometimes brutal vicissitudes of Soviet behavior. President Carter's decision to request a postponement of the Senate debate on ratification of the SALT treaty could spell the end not just of SALT II but of the prospects for SALT III, the SALT process as a whole, and the array of lesser arms-control negotiations in which progress has often depended on the SALT bellwether. Among them: talks on banning underground nuclear testing, antisatellite, chemical and radiological weapons, and on the demilitarization of the Indian Ocean. TIME Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott analyzes the possible consequences:

There is a gut feeling in many Americans--and many Senators--that now is not a time for the U.S. to be making deals with the Soviets. Now is a tune not for disarmament, but for rearmament. There is in this feeling a new manifestation of an old fallacy, the fallacy that SALT does the U.S.S.R. more good than the U.S., and that scuttling SALT will therefore do the Soviets more harm. As Henry Kissinger often said, SALT is not a reward for Soviet good behavior; treaties between adversaries can be more useful than treaties between friends; especially in periods of heightened tension between adversaries, treaties can be vital in setting bounds for competition. Kissinger's rival and successor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, echoed that same point last week when he said the U.S. and the Soviet Union need SALT now more than ever.

The most important accomplishment of the SALT II treaty is that it would--if it were in force--assure a measure of predictability, and hence stability, in the relationship between the strategic arsenals of the two sides. The treaty establishes a. hierarchy of equal ceilings on Soviet and American launchers for intercontinental nuclear weapons. In that respect, it is an improvement on the 1972 SALT I freeze, which left the Soviets with a numerical advantage of about 40% in missile launchers. Yet even with that numerical advantage, the Soviets have already bumped their heads against the SALT I ceiling: they have been forced to dismantle several older Yankee class missile-firing submarines in order to deploy new Delta class boats and stay within the SALT I limits. SALT I formally expired in October 1977. The Carter Administration and the Kremlin agreed to extend it informally until SALT II was complete. But now, with SALT II in limbo, the Soviets may feel justified in ignoring the SALT I limits as they press ahead with the modernization of their submarine fleet.

The 1974 Vladivostok accord, which was negotiated by President Ford and Kissinger and is embodied in the final SALT II treaty, sets equal ceilings of 2,400 for total strategic nuclear launchers and 1,320 for launchers with multiple warheads (MIRVs). Those ceilings are too high for the liking of many arms-control enthusiasts and U.S. defense planners as well, for they permit the Soviets to continue their 17-year-old missile buildup, which in turn is forcing the U.S. into expensive countermeasures. But the Carter Administration succeeded in negotiating additional provisions that would apply the brakes to the Soviet juggernaut. The Administration has inserted into the Vladivostok framework a new ceiling for MiRVed ICBMS and a freeze on the MIRVing of various types of ICBMS. Before the treaty expires in 1985, the Soviets would be permitted to deploy a maximum of 820 MiRVed ICBMS. That is about 100 more than they have now and therefore hardly cause for euphoria. But while it is not disarmament, it is arms control, since in the absence of that ceiling the Soviets would probably deploy more than 900 MiRVed ICBMS, and in the absence of SALT altogether, they have the capability of going as high as 1,300. The MIRVing freeze would hold the Soviet ICBMS at the number of warheads already tested on each type of rocket. In the case of their biggest missile, the SS-18, that means ten MIR Vs. Without such a freeze, the SS-18 monster could carry as many as 25 independently targetable bombs.

The proliferation of land-based warheads aimed at the U.S. is the cutting edge of the "clear and present danger" of which Paul Nitze and other SALT critics warn. They fear that the increase in the accuracy, payload and number of Soviet MIRVed. ICBMs will soon threaten the U.S.'s own Minuteman ICBMS with a first strike. Such a capability could be an instrument of political blackmail such as in some future replay of the Cuban missile crisis, or perhaps over Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yet in SALT II, the Carter Administration would have blunted that threat somewhat by limiting the proliferation of warheads. It would be better, of course, if the treaty stopped the Soviet buildup rather than merely slowing it down. A rollback would be better still --and might be a major goal of SALT III if there ever is such a thing. But just as politics is the art of the possible, SALT is the art of the negotiable, and SALT n would mitigate the Soviet ICBM threat.

The Soviets' Strategic Rocket Forces have been converting single-warhead ICBM launchers into multiple-warhead ones so rapidly that the weapons will soon be approaching the SALT II ceiling of 820 MIRVed ICBMs. As early as this summer the Kremlin may face a decision whether to pull back or proceed in that conversion. Also, the Soviets might any day test an SS-18 heavy missile with 20 or more warheads. For them to do so would not only make a mockery out of the SALT II freeze on MIRVing, it would also jeopardize the U.S. mobile MX missile --which is supposed to replace the vulnerable stationary ICBMS--before it even gets off the drawing board. For the MX to be sure of surviving a Soviet first strike, there must be a strict limit on the number of warheads that the Soviets could throw at the MX. A year ago, the Soviets stayed out of the Vietnam-Chinese border war. One reason, say Soviet officials and American Kremlinologists alike, was that the Kremlin did not want to scuttle SALT during the final months of the negotiations. Since then, however, the U.S. has coupled SALT with its considerable increase in defense spending, its go-ahead for the MX, and the NATO decision to deploy a new generation of U.S. nuclear missiles in Western Europe. If the Kremlin now has truly decided SALT is not worth saving, the superpowers could be moving into a protracted period of unfettered military competition. -

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