The MX Decision
Westview Special Studies
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About the Book and Authors
Focusing especially on the history of the MX program, this book examines the process of U.S. weapons procurement decision making. The authors demonstrate that strategic and general political factors (as opposed to bureaucratic concerns) play a far more decisive role in the decision-making process than is indicated in previous studies of weapons procurement. They also point to the significant contributions of congressional and public debate in influencing U.S. policy concerning weapons procurement. The authors conclude that the pattern of decision making with regard to the MX reflects a change that began in the 1970s and thus will be significant in explaining procurement policy in the decade ahead.
Lauren H. Holland is assistant professor of political science at the University of Utah. Robert A. Hoover is associate professor and chair of the department of political science at Utah State University.
To My Parents, Marcie and Charles Holland, With Love and Gratitude
To My Family, Jeanne, J.J., and Suzanne Hoover, With Love and Appreciation
First published 1985 by Westview Press
Published 2019 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Holland, Lauren H.
The MX decision.
(Westview special studies in national security and defense policy)
1. MX (Weapons system) 2. United StatesArmed Forces
Procurement. I. Hoover, Robert A. II. Title.
UG1312.12H67 1985 3581740973 83-23468
ISBN 13: 978-0-367-29418-2 (hbk)
Contents
PART ONE
THE BUREAUCRATIC POLITICS PARADIGM FOR PROCUREMENT DECISION MAKING
PART TWO
ISSUES AND ACTORS
PART THREE
MX DECISION MAKING
In the nuclear age the idea of deterrence, which is as old as the use of physical force, embodies the conviction that the main purpose of military policy must be to avert war rather than win it. Consequently, a potential opponent must be persuaded that the anticipated benefits of initiating military action are incommensurate with its costs, and that it is likely that these costs will be inflicted. But one of the paradoxes of the nuclear age is that a viable deterrence posture requires that the opponent who is to be deterred must also be reassured. Once nuclear parity is reached, strategic doctrine as well as the nuclear force posture must express not only determination but also restraint. Both antagonists share an interest in stabilizing the existing balance of terror and in institutionalizing the inhibitions created by the prospects of mutual destruction: arms control becomes a way of expressing a military equilibrium and a shared will to avert nuclear annihilation. The need to deter the opponent with the prospect of unacceptable damage becomes meshed with the need to persuade the opponent of ones own restraint and sense of responsibility.
There are nuclear weapons and in my view the MX is one that are not suitable for the purpose of either deterrence or reassurance. The size, accuracy, and multi-warhead capability of the MX make it a supreme counterforce weapon, implying an American nuclear strategy that contemplates a first strike. As Henry Kissinger pointed out long ago, a counterforce strategy can suggest one of two situations: such superiority that we could win an all-out war even if we conceded the first strike, or a strategy in which we would win an all-out war but only if we struck first. The unsuitability of the MX as a deterrent force is further enhanced by the difficulty some would say impossibility of providing the MX with a sufficiently invulnerable basing mode. In short, the MX is likely to appear to the Soviet Union as both threatening and vulnerable a dangerous combination of attributes that violate the imperatives of both deterrence and reassurance. As a consequence, the Reagan administrations intention to deploy 100 MX missiles in the old Minuteman silos has not only beclouded U.S.-Soviet relations and the prospects for superpower arms control agreements but raised serious misgivings among American allies and among the American people.
Alliance management is burdened by the assertive implications of the MX program (accompanied by the strident Cold War rhetoric of the administration) because the nuclear protector of an alliance, such as the United States, must convey to its partners as well as to its opponents that its deterrence policy is both responsible and credible, both firm and circumspect, governed by loyalty to the alliance as well as by the caution imposed by nuclear parity. This is not an easy task. Once the Soviet Union reached parity with the United States, Washington became obliged to accept Moscow as an equal in military-strategic matters a necessity that was reflected in strategic doctrine as well as in the readiness to stabilize the nuclear balance through measures of arms control. Yet as long as Western Europe feels inferior in the area of conventional capabilities, the security of Western Europe can be convincingly assured only on the basis of an implied American nuclear superiority. A realistic American strategic relationship with the Soviet Union must rest on a balance of terror, whereas the guarantee of West European security rests, at bottom, on an implied imbalance of terror in favor of the United Statesespecially as long as the alliance contemplates the first use of nuclear weapons if deterrence should fail and the tide of conventional battle should turn against the West.
