Former President Richard Nixon, Who Initiated Detente With the Soviet Union, Approves of President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, and Feels It Ought to Protect “our counter-force missile silos which presently are vulnerable to a first strike”

“Too much of the debate has focused only on the possibilities of developing a one hundred percent leak-proof population defense which even the strongest proponents agree could not be developed until next century.”

President Nixon made his mark in the area of foreign policy. Although he had made his own career as a militant opponent of Communism, Nixon saw opportunities to reduce the temperature of the Cold War by improving relations with the Soviet Union.

One of these was the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks negotiations, which were a series of meetings beginning in Helsinki that lasted from November 17, 1969 until May 1972. After a long deadlock, the first results of SALT I came in May 1971, when an agreement was reached over anti-ballistic missiles systems. Further discussion brought the negotiations to an end in Moscow on May 26, 1972, when Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev signed both the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Interim Agreement Between The United States of America and The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on Certain Measures With Respect to the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms.  These served to slow the growth in nuclear weapons and halt extensive proliferation.

A premise of the Cold War, mutually assured destruction, meant simply that neither the US nor the USSR would attack the other because it would ensure that both would be obliterated.  You could get the first shot in, but unless you wiped out the entire capacity of the other side in one blow, you would ensure your own demise.  In 1969, Nixon announced an anti-ballistic missile defense system, called Safeguard, which aimed to protect the deterrent nuclear force of the United States, its missile fields, to maintain that deterrent capacity.  This happened at the same time as the country was publicly debating the possibility of protecting entire US cities in a shield, the technology of which did not exist.  Safeguard never fully operated at its intended capacity and in fact was shut down soon after it launched.

Ronald Reagan was not an active proponent of mutually assured destruction (MAD).  In 1983, he proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to use ground-based and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons. The initiative focused on strategic defense rather than the prior strategic offense doctrine of MAD.  It was dubbed “Star Wars” by critics.  The goal was to neutralize the Soviets’ nuclear capacity, regardless of the success of ongoing negotiations. The Soviets strongly opposed the Strategic Defense Initiative, as they could not afford to match the U.S. in this area, and they felt that if successful the concept of mutually assured destruction would be lost and the U.S. would be in a dominant position.

In November of 1985, Gorbachev and Reagan were to meet in Geneva for a major summit. Both the Soviet Union and the United States were seeking to cut the number of nuclear weapons, with the Soviets seeking to halve the number of nuclear-equipped bombers and missiles, and the U.S. desiring to ensure that neither side gained a first-strike advantage, and to protect rights to the Strategic Defense Initiative. These ideas of arms limitations and strategic defense were the cornerstones to the Cold War negotiations between the two global powers in a bi-polar world.

One of those who joined the debate was U.S. Grant Sharp, a 4-star admiral who was Commander in Chief of the US Pacific Fleet and of US Pacific Command, including during the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.  He wrote a piece in the San Diego papers, which advocated the protection of US-based counter-force assets, which touched on a subject central to Nixon’s presidency and close to his heart, missiles that would serve as a first-strike deterrent.

Typed letter signed, August 29, 1986, New York City, to Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp. “Through our mutual friend, Bill Stover, I have just learned of Mrs. Sharp’s passing and I want to take this opportunity to express my deepest sympathy.  You can take comfort in the fact that she was by your side for over fifty-six years as you traveled all over the world during your career of outstanding service in the United States Navy. Mrs. Nixon joins me in extending our best wishes to you and your family.   Sincerely, Richard Nixon.

“P.S. I also want to you that I thought your column on SDI which appeared in the San Diego Union was right on target.  Too much of the debate has focused only on the possibilities of developing a one hundred percent leak-proof population defense which even the strongest proponents agree could not be developed until next century.  On the other hand, a defense of our counter-force missile silos which presently are vulnerable to a first strike from Soviet Union’s SS-18s could be deployed in the near future.  Unless the Soviet Union agrees to offensive cuts which would remove its first-strike capability, we have no choice but to go forward with an SDI program which would deny them that capacity.”