The Soviet-American arms race was well under way by 1968 because the interests of the two superpowers were impossible to reconcile. The United States felt it necessary to have a multitude of arms at its disposal to halt communist expansion throughout the world, while the Soviet Union saw the U. S. move to contain Soviet expansion as a ploy to disguise its capitalist desire to dominate the world’s resources and then use the resources to destroy the international communist movement. Thus, the two nations prepared to deter a major attack or to win if war did erupt by building arsenals that by the conclusion of the cold war were large enough to completely destroy both nations if they successfully struck all of their targets.
The United States maintained the lead in the arms race with the Soviet Union well into the 1970s, excluding the areas of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and antiballistic missile systems (ABMs). The Soviet Union focused its entire economy on catching up with the United States, and by the mid-1970s a number of experts claimed that the Soviets had succeeded in at least matching the United States arsenal, although other experts disputed this. This in turn led to the United States increasing its weapon development and deployment programs in the early 1980s. As the number of nuclear weapons increased, many believed that the chance they would be used increased as well. U. S. defense policy makers nevertheless continued to argue for additional weapons. They stated that since the Soviets had at least parity, if not an advantage, a Soviet first strike could leave the United States with too few remaining weapons to react effectively. This would leave U. S. cities open to retaliation from the Soviets’ second and third strikes. Therefore, they argued the United States needed not only more nuclear weapons, but also more accurate targeting systems to ensure that U. S. retaliation would devastate the Soviet Union. U. S. defense planners hoped this ability to destroy vast areas of the Soviet Union with a second or third strike capability would deter the USSR from launching a nuclear attack in the first place.
There were many efforts undertaken in the 1970s and 1980s to control the nuclear arms race. The efforts met with only limited success, because neither side was willing to trust the other to adhere to the agreement. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I), signed in 1972, placed limits on strategic launch vehicles but not the missiles they launched. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which was also signed in 1972, limited the development and deployment of defensive systems. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which went into effect in 1970, attempted to curb the horizontal spread of nuclear weapons, but in reality it did little to truly stop a nation that was dedicated to developing a nuclear arsenal.
President Ronald W. Reagan’s defense advisers had a definite strategy for waging the cold war. It was outlined in a national security decision directive (NSDD-13), which was leaked to the public in 1982. It stated that the United States should have the capability to wage a protracted nuclear war, which would involve repeated, well-planned, limited nuclear strikes against targets in the Soviet Union. Further details called for the nuclear decapitation of Soviet military and political leadership, as well as destruction of Soviet lines of communication. To meet this objective, the Reagan administration planned to spend $180 billion in a five-year period. This money was to be spent in part on 100 MX intercontinental ballistic missiles, 100 B-1 bombers, 400 air-launched cruise missiles, 3,000 sea-launched cruise missiles, and 15 Trident submarines with 360 Trident I submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Development programs were also to begin on a Stealth bomber, the Trident II missile, space-based antisatellite weapons, and improvements in U. S. command, control, communications, and intelligence systems.
The Soviet Union responded with shock and anger to the plans of the Reagan administration. Many thought that the expense involved in maintaining pace with the United States would be too overwhelming for the Soviet economy. The Soviet Union launched several efforts to revive detente and negotiate arms control agreements that would curb the United States’s dramatic increase in its nuclear stockpile. During Reagan’s second term, serious work was started to slow or halt the arms race between the two superpowers.
The downward spiral in the arms race had already begun when President George H. W. Bush entered the White House in 1988. The Soviet Union appeared to be taking the lead in reduction of deployed nuclear weapons, but chaos soon erupted in Eastern Europe as the Soviet sphere crumbled. One of the largest arms control agreements of the decade, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), was stalemated on several occasions due to Soviet domestic unrest and the outbreak of the Persian Gulf crisis in August 1990. By the fall of 1991 the Soviet Union itself was crumbling into several independent nations, and its successor, Russia, had little money left to devote to arms to fight a strategic nuclear war with the United States. Thus, the end of the cold war marked the end of the dramatic superpower arms race that had lasted for over four decades.
See also defense policy; foreign policy; Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties; Strategic Defense Initiative.
Further reading: Ronald E. Powaski, Return to Armageddon: The United States and the Nuclear Arms Race, 1981-1999 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
—Leah Blakey
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