Les, you'll have to take up this argument with the 90-98% effective people, as well as the "Presidential integrity" people. It'd be nice if Clinton had the political capital to keep the ABM stuff limited to research, but he doesn't. On the START talks, I will just note in passing that the widespread modern usage of "spin" in the political context started after the Reykjavik summit, where Reagan almost cut a deal with Gorbachev on his own, somewhat deeper in the cut department than what eventually passed, but then the handlers had to blast the remnants apart.
Another note in passing, Soviet nuclear capabilities were always vastly overrated, along with the rest of their military prowess. They had nuclear subs that were in port 90+% of the time (vs. 50% for our very effective fleet) and an inconsequential intercontinental bomber fleet. And their land-based ICBMs were all liquid fueled, and thus subject to great reliability problems. Remember the Titan II's? We kept a few around, because they were big, but they had a bad habit of blowing up when somebody dropped a wrench in the silo or something. The whole Russian ICBM inventory was like that. I'd say it would be a safe bet not very many were kept fueled. The dreaded SS-20 or whatever the IRBM that caused consternation in Europe was actually a remnant of a failed Soviet attempt to duplicate the Minuteman solid-fueled ICBM, which was in place from the mid 60's in the U.S.
The idea that a first strike by the soviets could have taken out our land based missiles was always quite hypothetical, and there's no way the Soviets could defend against a devastating counterattack from the SLBMs. |
