Date

Oct 7, 1970

Description

The apparent growing vulnerability to a surprise attack of U.S. land-based ICBMs worried the hawkish Cold War veteran Paul H. Nitze, the author of NSC-68 and a former Deputy Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Navy and a member of the U.S. SALT delegation. During a conversation with a like-minded State Department official Seymour Weiss, Nitze worried that even with a SALT agreement, Moscow might be in a position to install multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) on the SS-9 ICBMs, thus giving Moscow a "first strike capability against US land-based missiles." Nitze saw several alternatives to address this vulnerability: 1) developing a first strike capability, 2) a launch-on-warning doctrine, or 3) abandoning land-based missiles and "move entirely to sea" by relying on submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

Nitze argued that launch-on-warning was "always contrary to US strategic policy" and would be "inexcusably dangerous" during a "time of intense crisis." Nevertheless, he acknowledged that Washington could "be forced" into a launch-on-warning posture if Minuteman vulnerability "seems at least theoretically possible."

Source

RG 59, Policy Planning Council Miscellaneous Records, 1959-72, box 299, SALT 1970 October 1-13; also published in DNSA, Nuclear History II, 1969-1976.

Document published in following posting(s):

The “Launch on Warning” Nuclear Strategy and Its Insider Critics

Jun 11, 2019

Memorandum from Seymour Weiss, State Department Policy Planning Council, to Undersecretary of State John Irwin and Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs U. A. Johnson, "Luncheon Conversation October 2 with Paul Nitze on SALT," 7 October 1970, Top Secret/Nodis/Sensitive