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All these strands were present in the formal negotiations for SALT H that got under way in 1973. The major division over the nature of the agreement to be sought was between the psychiatric and the theological approaches to foreign policy. The "psychiatrists" saw in SALT a major step toward relaxing of tension and a world from which the specter of nuclear war was being lifted. To the "theologians," anything the Kremlin was willing to sign could not be in our interests. They sought to defeat SALT because they objected not to its terms but to its principle.
In this debate I was in a lonely position. I was a hawk on defense and a dove on SALT, earning opponents on both sides. I was convinced we had to strengthen conventional forces. But I also saw an important role for SALT in our national security policy. I did not believe that arms control could by itself ease tensions. Indeed, if not linked to some restraint of the geopolitical competition, strategic arms control might become a safety valve for Soviet expansionism. Every tune there was a Soviet aggressive move, there would be appeals that the new tensions now made arms-control talks even more important. This is why I favored linkage.
But I parted company with some conservative critics in my conviction that nuclear weapons added a new dimension of horror to warfare and new responsibility for national leaders. Arms control could also free resources for building up our conventional and regional forces. Besides, we faced a problem in the strategic field: the increasing conversion of missiles to multiple warheads or MIRV (multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles). If the Soviets MIRVed all of their land-based missiles, our land-based missiles would be at risk by the early '80s. SALT II seemed to me an opportunity to postpone this danger.
But SALT II soon became a casualty of America's bitter domestic divisions—and of a Soviet decision that, for reasons still not entirely clear, the time was not right for an agreement.
Was it Watergate that caused Moscow to put East-West negotiations into low gear in the spring of 1974? Was it the general trend of our domestic debate? Or were both of these used as a cover for decisions that Moscow made for its own reasons? The fact is that during April 1974, Soviet conduct changed.
When I visited Moscow in March, Brezhnev seemed to accept the principle of "counterbalancing asymmetries": a Soviet edge in total delivery vehicles (reflecting the existing situation) counterbalanced by an American advantage in numbers of MIRVed missiles. He conceded us 1,100 MIRVed missiles over the extended term of the agreement, vs. 1,000 for the Soviets. We considered the 100-missile advantage inadequate because of the Soviet lead in other categories. I proposed a considerably wider gap in our favor. Brezhnev rejected it at first with the comment: "If I agree to this, this will be my last meeting with Dr. Kissinger because I will be destroyed." But if past practice and actual Soviet conduct were any guide, more realistic figures would soon emerge. It did not happen that way. Instead, negotiations stalemated.