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Further, Benoit believes that counterforce could lead to irresistible pressure for the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to build more missile defense systems. Under SALT I, both nations are restricted to token defensive systems of two antiballistic missile sites each. Some critics warn that the Russians may look on counterforce not as a defensive measure but as an offensive one, enabling the U.S. to launch a limited first strike.
But Schlesinger argues convincingly that a first strike by either country is impossible until it finds a way to destroy the other's missile-firing submarines. Both fleets are expected to be virtually invulnerable for the foreseeable future, despite vast amounts of money being spent on research into antisubmarine warfare (a total of $2.5 billion a year by the U.S. Navy alone). Indeed, counterforce looks less like a fundamental change in American nuclear strategy than a forceful way of telling the Soviets that the U.S. is willing to continue the arms race if agreement on limiting nuclear weapons is not reached at SALT II. In the blunt words of a Schlesinger adviser on nuclear strategy, M.I.T. Professor William W. Kaufmann: "We will match them."
Vulnerable Forces. Nonetheless, Christoph Bertram, assistant director of the highly respected Institute for Strategic Studies in London, predicts that if the current Soviet technical development continues and no defense is found, "all U.S. land-based missile forces would be highly vulnerable by the end of the decade." One alternative would be to abandon land-based missile systems altogether—a step that has been suggested by both the Federation of American Scientists and analysts at the Brookings Institution. The idea is also supported by Fred C. Ikle, the chief of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Such a change would save billions of dollars and still leave the U.S. its missile-firing submarines and nuclear bombers. But Pentagon strategists point out that bombers can be shot down and that eventually submarines may also become vulnerable. They prefer to complicate the Russians' offensive problems by relying on the present triad nuclear force.
Pentagon planners' concerns about the changing nuclear balance of power are equaled by their worries about what is happening to the balance of nonnuclear military power. There too Russia has been dramatically expanding its forces and modernizing its equipment in recent years.
Until the mid-1950s, Russia maintained only a coastal-defense fleet. Since then, it has rapidly expanded its fleet, outbuilding the U.S. in naval vessels by a ratio of 8 to 1, and the Russian fleet of 221 major surface combat ships today sails all oceans of the world. For the most part, Russian vessels are younger than American ships (an average of about eight years v. about 18 years), and the Soviet guided-missile cruisers of the Kresta