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The SALT agreements of 1972 might well have achieved the objective of strategic stability. But both domestic and technical factors caused the accords to become increasingly controversial. The Viet Nam War and Watergate disintegrated the political consensus behind our defense and arms control policy just when technology was undermining its strategic premises. In the climate of collapsing confidence, groups usually associated with humane views came to advocate that the only way to keep our Government from using nuclear weapons was to deprive it of all alternatives to a strategy geared solely to the destruction of the Soviet population; never mind that the targeting of civilians guaranteed mutual annihilation. The other end of the spectrum disdained the proposition that we lived in a new world. It insisted that arms control was a trap and a delusion.
As we consumed ourselves in disputes over negotiations and weapons systems, SALT I, at first widely acclaimed, was drawn into that vortex. SALT II never emerged from it. Advocates of arms control belittled the extent to which it was being overtaken by technology. Opponents focused on the numerical "advantage" that SALT I allegedly gave the Soviets, overlooking that the agreed totals reflected exactly the level of U.S. forces the Pentagon chose long before there was any thought of arms control and that we retained a large numerical edge in warheads and airplanes.
Almost totally obscured in this debate was the reality that multiple warheads were making the traditional SALT approach obsolete. In SALT I a rough balance in the two sides' delivery vehicles substantially reduced the possibility of surprise attack. But multiple warheads—far exceeding the number of launchers—were bound to restore the advantage of the attacker, who could hope to overwhelm the opponent's fixed missile sites even with equal numbers of missiles and warheads on both sides. The side striking first would have an advantage—thus reviving the destabilizing danger of surprise attack. From this point of view, a "freeze" would perpetuate an inherently precarious state of affairs.
Fairness compels me to point out that the decision to proceed with MIRVs was taken by President Johnson and was made irrevocable in the Nixon Administration. We proceeded because in the climate of the Viet Nam period we were reluctant to give up the one strategic offensive program that was funded with which to counter the rapid Soviet missile force buildup; because we doubted that the Soviets could achieve accuracies to threaten our missile force in the foreseeable future; and because the Soviets ignored our hints to open the subject of a MIRV ban in the SALT talks. Whatever our reasons, there can be no doubt that the age of MIRVS has doomed the SALT approach.