Most important, the PTBT made possible the signing of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968, a treaty of profound significance for global security.2 For both Kennedy and Khrushchev, the specter of a massive proliferation of nuclear weapons was the main driving force behind the test ban treaty. Their hope was that a ban on nuclear tests would slow or stop the ability of other countries to become nuclear powers. Kennedy famously worried aloud that fifteen to twenty countries would become nuclear powers by the 1970s:
The reason why we keep moving and working on this question, taking up a good deal of energy and effort, is because personally I am haunted by the feeling that by 1970, unless we are successful [with implementing a test ban treaty], there may be 10 nuclear powers instead of 4, and by 1975, 15 or 20 … I see the possibility in the 1970s of the President of the United States having to face a world in which 15 or 20 or 25 nations may have these weapons. I regard that as the greatest possible danger and hazard.3
Cynics from the 1950s onward argued that a non-proliferation treaty would be a scrap of paper at best, and an opportunity for subterfuge at worst. Why would a mere paper promise to abjure nuclear weapons take precedence over what a government saw as its national interest? Yet in retrospect, the treaty has been relatively effective, far more so than the doubters imagined.
At the time of signing, there were five nuclear powers: the United States, Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, and China—the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. From then till now, dozens more have had the technological know-how to become nuclear powers. Yet since the signing of the NPT, not a single signatory has become a nuclear state, and only four non-signatories have joined the nuclear club: Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. One country, South Africa, embarked on a nuclear program but later renounced it, signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1991. Several others, including South Korea and Taiwan, were successfully pressured by the United States to drop nuclear programs.
By 1995, the NPT’s great value was evident, and the initial twenty-five-year period of the treaty was extended indefinitely. How exactly had it accomplished its ends? According to one leading observer, Thomas Graham, it was the new “international norm against nuclear-weapon proliferation established by the NPT”:
In 1960, after the first French nuclear-weapon test, there were banner newspaper headlines, “Vive La France.” Yet, by the time of the first Indian nuclear explosion in 1974, the test was done surreptitiously, India received worldwide condemnation and New Delhi hastened to explain that this had been a “peaceful” test. What had intervened was the NPT. It converted the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a state from an act of national pride in 1960 to an act contrary to international law in 1974.4
Nuclear proliferation remains a grave threat, of course. The Indian and Pakistani armies face off against each other in Kashmir, and the two countries have often bitter relations. North Korea continues to threaten South Korea, and the threats include unleashing its missiles. Israel lives defiantly among unfriendly neighbors and views its nuclear weapons as a critical deterrent. Iran is widely suspected by many of building a nuclear bomb and has been declared by the UN to be in violation of its NPT obligations regarding inspection of nuclear sites.
Moreover, the basic commitment of the nuclear powers to move toward a nuclear-free world has not been fulfilled. The nuclear powers retain vast arsenals, and though they are markedly reducing their stockpiles of weapons, they have not convinced the world that they are truly moving to a nuclear-free world. This lack of adequate follow-through by the major nuclear powers seriously undermines the norm of non-proliferation, and could eventually convince still more countries to become nuclear powers. Fortunately, some of America’s leading foreign policy voices have recently endorsed the realism and importance of a nuclear-free world in line with the original aspirations of the NPT.5
The Era of Détente
On a political level, the test ban treaty also marked a watershed. The U.S.-Soviet showdown in Europe was significantly calmed for the next twenty years, until tensions soared again in the early 1980s with President Ronald Reagan’s arms buildup and the U.S. deployment of new intermediate-range missiles in Europe.6 Most important and positive, Germany would never again play the same role as the flashpoint of superpower controversy.
Three major elements produced the thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations. First, the clear decision by Kennedy to keep nuclear weapons away from Germany resolved one of the greatest sources of Soviet fear and U.S.-Soviet controversy. Kennedy had faced down Adenauer, and Johnson finally pulled the plug once and for all in 1964 on the MLF proposal for nuclear sharing among NATO members. Second, the final break in Soviet-Chinese relations in the 1960s, which deteriorated to the point of armed conflict along the border in 1969, dramatically changed the geopolitical context of the Cold War. The U.S.-Soviet relationship became one side of a three-sided relationship that now included China as a nuclear power independent of, and indeed hostile to, the Soviet Union. And third, the Kennedy-Khrushchev achievement of the PTBT created a powerful worldwide demonstration that peaceful coexistence was possible and could contribute to fruitful diplomatic achievements with mutual gains.
Sadly, the easing of external tensions did not lead quickly to an easing of the repressive Soviet system, either internally or in Eastern Europe. Internally, the Soviet Union entered a long period of economic stagnation in the 1960s and then outright decline in the 1980s. The continuing arms race, which shifted resources from the civilian economy to the arms buildup, certainly poisoned morale inside the Soviet Union. And when the reduction of East-West tensions led Czechoslovakia to experiment with its Prague Spring in 1968, Soviet tanks crushed the attempted liberalization. Throughout Eastern Europe, any signs of liberalization were met by a harsh crackdown.
The high point of U.S.-Soviet détente came in the early 1970s. President Richard Nixon and Chairman Leonid Brezhnev negotiated agreements on strategic arms control as well as the basic principles to govern bilateral relations. Simultaneously, Nixon began the process of normalizing relations with China with his remarkable visit to Beijing in 1972. The United States recognized the People’s Republic of China in 1979, which in turn was followed by a surge of bilateral economic relations.
The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I) from 1969 to 1972 culminated in three main agreements signed by Nixon and Brezhnev. The first, the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, put a limit on the deployment of ABM systems. The second, the Interim Agreement on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, froze the number of strategic ballistic missiles for a five-year period. The third, the Basic Principles of Relations Between the United States and the USSR, established key principles to govern bilateral relations.7
The SALT I talks were immediately followed by the SALT II talks, which extended from 1972 to 1979.8 SALT II aimed to limit the number of nuclear delivery systems (missiles and bombers), the construction of new missile launchers, and the deployment of new types of strategic offensive weapons systems. In short, it attempted a more general limit on the still-burgeoning quantity and quality of strategic nuclear weapons. Yet although the SALT I treaty was overwhelmingly ratified by the U.S. Senate, SALT II was never approved; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan six months after it was signed led President Jimmy Carter to withdraw the treaty from Senate consideration. More generally, the gains of détente had already been deeply undermined even before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Why? Most important was the drift of political power on both sides back toward the hardliners, showing again how the dynamics of confrontation can easily get out of the control of leaders on both sides, as hardliners on each side gradually get the upper hand, playing on and stoking the fears of the public. American hardliners claimed that the continuing Soviet nuclear buildup after 1963 was proof of Soviet intentions of a first-strike capacity and global domination. They blasted Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter for endangering U.S. security by making deals with the enemy. Hardli
ners on the Soviet side claimed the same about the United States. Each side viewed the other side’s actions as aggressive rather than defensive.
Ronald Reagan came to office in 1981 vowing to avenge supposed U.S. losses in the Cold War and to restore U.S. power and influence. He quickly ushered in major increases in U.S. military outlays, stepped up CIA operations on many fronts, created a new missile defense initiative and a proposal to upgrade intermediate nuclear forces in Europe, and engaged in aggressive rhetoric against the “evil” Soviet empire. The period from 1981 to 1985 marked a clear intensification of the Cold War.
Reagan’s plans to build new missile defenses (the Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars” as it came to be called), and to deploy upgraded intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe, in response to preceding Soviet deployments of its SS-20 missiles, were particular causes of tension. For two or three years, with Europe bitterly divided over whether the United States should in fact deploy new intermediate-range missiles, and as Reagan kept up a blistering rhetorical attack on the Soviet Union, many Soviet officials surmised that the United States was moving toward war. The mood briefly seemed to approach the worst days of confrontation during the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Many on the Soviet side were strongly convinced that Reagan was preparing for nuclear first strike. The Doomsday Clock had it right when it put the minute hand at just three minutes to midnight in 1984. As the clock keepers noted at the time:
U.S.-Soviet relations reach their iciest point in decades. Dialogue between the two superpowers virtually stops. “Every channel of communications has been constricted or shut down; every form of contact has been attenuated or cut off. And arms control negotiations have been reduced to a species of propaganda,” a concerned Bulletin informs readers. The United States seems to flout the few arms control agreements in place by seeking an expansive, space-based anti-ballistic missile capability, raising worries that a new arms race will begin.9
The Nuclear Arms Race
Kennedy’s goals 5 and 6, which called for the actual dismantling of nuclear weapons systems, did not come to fruition during the Cold War, though there has been notable progress since 1991. Some argue that the test ban treaty might even have accelerated the nuclear arms buildup in the first years after signing. Before 1963, atmospheric testing was contentious and politically difficult. Once the tests went underground, the public ignored them. The nuclear weapons industries in the United States and the Soviet Union might have thereby gained rather than lost room to maneuver. The arms control agreements reached in the 1970s and 1980s had some restraining effects on the size and type of the nuclear arsenals, notably on anti-ballistic missile systems, but the number of warheads on the U.S. side remained extraordinarily high, around 25,000–30,000 until the mid-1980s. The Soviet Union even surpassed the United States, its stockpile rising from 4,000 warheads in 1963 to 45,000 in 1986.11 This dramatic Soviet buildup from 1963 to 1986 is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. U.S. and Soviet Nuclear Warheads, 1946–2012.10
Notes: For the years 1946–2009, total nuclear warheads. For 2010–2012, total warheads minus those awaiting dismantlement. Note that all data are estimates, including uncertainties about the numbers of warheads awaiting dismantlement.
On the U.S. side, Kennedy promised the Joint Chiefs of Staff an immediate step-up in underground testing as part of the “safeguard” provisions. As soon as the treaty was initialed, the United States commenced Operation Niblick, a series of forty-one underground tests at a Nevada testing site. From then until 1992, when the program was finally shut down, the United States conducted a total of 684 underground tests. These tests were used to design and promote new weapons systems and for the continued (and expensive) upgrading of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.12 While the total number of U.S. nuclear weapons declined slightly from around 28,000 in 1963 to around 21,000 in 1990, the delivery capability of the U.S. arsenal soared with new deployments of increasingly sophisticated land-based and submarine-based ballistic missiles.
On the Soviet side, the nuclear arms buildup after 1963 was dramatic and unrelenting until Gorbachev’s accession to power. The Soviet political and military leadership felt deeply aggrieved by the success of the United States in forcing a reversal of the missile deployment in Cuba. Their conclusion was that the U.S. advantage in nuclear warheads and delivery systems had been crucial to America’s success in the crisis itself. Many Soviet leaders pledged that the Soviet Union would never again face that kind of humiliating retreat as the result of its nuclear inferiority. Between 1963 and 1986, the Soviet Union closed the numerical gap in warheads (as of 1978), and then soared beyond the U.S. numbers, with the total number of Soviet ICBMs rising by a factor of around 14, warheads by a factor of around 10, and total megatons by a factor of around 6.13
This mutual arms buildup was avoidable, but very strong political leadership would have been required on both sides to face down the vested interests of each country’s military-industrial complex. Robert Jervis’s “security dilemma” was clearly and repeatedly at play. Though each side characterized its own buildup as defensive—intended only to keep up with the other side—the other side invariably interpreted each new arms deployment as an attempt at nuclear dominance, perhaps even at a nuclear first strike. Again and again, each side used “worst-case” analyses to justify the next upward ratchet of the arms race.
In the end, the arms race up till 1991 deeply undermined the long-term interests of both sides. The military outlays were enormous, and came at the neglect of domestic needs. The Soviet Union erred catastrophically by crushing its domestic economy in order to make room for its massive nuclear buildup. Over two decades, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, the Soviet military-industrial complex in effect suffocated the civilian economy, drained civilian morale and economic incentives, and thereby contributed to the economic implosion that destroyed the Soviet Union itself.
Realists on both sides tried to break the arms race, but hardliners and the military-industrial complexes on each side easily outmaneuvered them. National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, for example, tried to slow the arms buildup in the mid-1970s through arms control agreements. In a 1974 press conference in Moscow he stated in exasperation:
One of the questions which we have to ask ourselves as a country is what in the name of God is strategic superiority? What is the significance of it, politically, militarily, operationally, at these levels of numbers? What do you do with it?14
Some claim that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the ultimate vindication of the U.S. armaments buildup during the Cold War. Did not the United States, after all, end up bankrupting the Soviet state? This may be the case, but there is also good reason to believe that the Soviet Union might have reformed itself in a peaceful yet far less tumultuous manner, as have China and almost all other state-run economies. Or the Soviet Union might have collapsed under the weight of economic failure even without the nuclear arms race. A less tumultuous collapse would have come at much lower cost to the people of the Soviet Union, clearly, but also at lower cost and risk for the rest of the world as well. Moreover, the dramatic collapse of the Soviet state and economy in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the resulting chaos, lawlessness, and corruption, have surely detracted from the human and security gains the world might otherwise have enjoyed from the demise of the Soviet system.
Much better news on arms control came at the very end of the Cold War, when the United States and Soviet Union, in its final days, began a process to reduce sharply the number of nuclear warheads and delivery systems. START I, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed in 1991, limited the total warheads on each side to around 6,000, with a ceiling of around 1,600 missiles and bombers.15 In 1993, START II limited the deployment of MIRVs (multiple independently targeted warheads on a single missile).16 The most significant step has come recently, with the New START treaty (2010), which caps the number of warheads at around 1,550 (with technicalities a
ffecting the count) and strategic delivery systems at 700.17 The sharp decline in the number of warheads from the mid-1980s to 2012 can be seen in Figure 2.
These notable accomplishments are in line, finally, with Kennedy’s aspirations of a half century earlier. The numbers are coming down to around a twentieth or less of their peak numbers at the height of the Cold War arsenals. The declining numbers have given some realistic hope that progress can be made toward full nuclear disarmament, a goal that, as I mentioned earlier, is now articulated by some of America’s most experienced foreign policy figures.* Of course the prospects for a nuclear-free world are made far more complicated by the continuing threats of proliferation to new countries such as Iran and North Korea, and even to rogue groups. Nuclear arms control, alas, can no longer be achieved by just a handful of countries.
Proxy Wars
An even more deadly disappointment was the lack of positive spillover from relaxed U.S.-Soviet tensions into the peaceful resolution of regional conflicts. If anything, the United States and Soviet Union continued to spur and participate directly in proxy wars around the world as part of their ongoing Cold War confrontation and rivalry. The United States started this post-PTBT pattern with Johnson’s dramatic escalation of the Vietnam War in 1964–1965. The result was a devastating ten-year ordeal in which the United States committed more than 500,000 troops, killed more than one million and perhaps up to two million Vietnamese civilians, lost more than 50,000 U.S. soldiers in combat, and bled itself militarily, financially, socially, and emotionally for decades thereafter.18
To Move the World Page 14
