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Russia and the U.S. are both capable of throwing up a variety of diversionary objects. Metallic balloons, dummy warheads, masses of tiny metal strips called chaff, can all be employed to confuse the defenders and force them to waste precious ABMs. The presumption has been all along that the Chinese, who do not yet have an ICBM force in being, could not produce so sophisticated a first-generation missile. Still, Peking will certainly develop its missiles with a broad general knowledge of U.S. defense concepts. "Their deployment," Bethe said recently, "will probably be determined by our ABM system. How long our ABM could keep ahead of them is open to question. It may be a few years—or months." Other specialists point out that if the Chinese really wanted to risk obliteration, ABM would not be an insuperable barrier. They could smuggle in the parts of nuclear bombs and use saboteurs rather than missiles. Either the Chinese or the Russians could attempt germ warfare if they feared nuclear defeat. Short-range attacks from submarines sneaking close to the coasts is also a possibility—and one that ABM might not be able to cope with.
Army planners took the probability of Chinese technological improvement into consideration. Sentinel's original configuration put Spartan and MSR sites close to population centers with the idea of thickening the defenses later by adding Sprints, which must be near the points they defend. To move the installations away from densely populated areas would reduce the popular and political opposition to Sentinel, but would also deprive the major cities of the second line of defense that Sprint represents.
One of the most alarming arguments raised by ABM opponents is the prospect that Spartans and Sprints could accidentally explode while still in the ground, devastating a huge surrounding area. This point is not raised only by nervous housewives or fanatic nucleo-phobes. Dr. David Inglis, senior physicist at the Argonne National Laboratory, concluded in a Saturday Review article that the danger deserves serious consideration. Bethe, on the other hand, says that he is untroubled by the safety aspects of Sentinel. In fact, there has been no unintentional nuclear explosion in the U.S. since the birth of the atomic age. Even when nuclear bombers crashed, their weapons failed to detonate. Says one Pentagon official: "The only way to cause a nuclear explosion in an ABM silo would be to have a specialist climb in, rewire the warhead, getting around all those safety devices, and then bring in additional power. There are so many safety devices on it that we only hope it will go off once it is launched."
Another set of arguments goes beyond technology into strategy and diplomacy. Throughout the postwar period, the U.S. has based its main defense on "assured destruction"—the ability to inflict catastrophic damage on any opponent (until now, the Soviet Union) even if the adversary delivered the first nuclear blow. This second-strike capability has induced the U.S. to maintain an immense nuclear arsenal, far larger and more diverse than that of the Russians.
Why, then, is it necessary to set up a shield against the Chinese with their meager resources? And if it is essential, why consider bargaining