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The Decision to Deploy the ABM: Bureaucratic and Domestic Politics in the Johnson Administration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Morton H. Halperin
Morton H. Halperin
Affiliation:
Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution
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Extract

Why did the Johnson Administration decide in the late 1960's to deploy a ballistic missile defense system in the United States? In attempting to answer this question we need to seek an understanding of several distinct decisions and actions. The most puzzling event occurred in San Francisco on September 18, 1967, when Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara delivered an address to the editors and publishers of United Press International. McNamara devoted the first fourteen pages of his talk to a general discussion of the strategic arms race, emphasizing the limited utility of nuclear weapons and the fact that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union had gained any increased security from the arms race. With this as background, he turned to a specific discussion of the ABM issue

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , October 1972 , pp. 62 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1972

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References

1 The framework of analysis used here is drawn from the author's ongoing study of Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy.

2 McNamara, Robert S., “The Dynamics of Nuclear Strategy,” Department of State Bulletin, October 9, 1967, 443–51.Google Scholar

3 Ibid.

4 Johnson, Lyndon Baines, “Annual Budget Message to the Congress, Fiscal Year 1968, January 24, 1967,” Public Papers of the President of the United States, 1967: Book I (Washington 1968), 48.Google Scholar “In 1968, we will: continue intensive development of Nike-X but take no action now to deploy an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defense; initiate discussions with the Soviet Union on the limitation of ABM deployments; in the event these discussions prove unsuccessful, we will reconsider our deployment decisions. To provide for actions that may be required at that time, approximately $375 million has been included in the 1968 budget for the production of Nike-X for such purposes as defense of our offensive weapons systems.”

5 The discussion of the interests of the participants is based in part on knowledge gained by the author as a participant in the process, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (ISA). Some of the observations are based on guesses about positions taken. Many of die same insights can be derived from a reading of congressional testimony, speeches, etc. See also Edward Randolph Jayne II, “The ABM Debate: Strategic Defense and National Security,” MIT Center for International Studies, Center Paper C/69–12, 669–712. This study, based largely on interviews, confirms many of the stands described here. To be fair to the reader (and to add to his confusion), it should be noted that the present aumor was one of those interviewed by Jayne.

6 On Service interests, see Halperin, Morton H., “Why Bureaucrats Play Games,” Foreign Policy, No. 2 (Spring 1971), 70–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 On the Army's interest in ABM in particular, see York, Herbert, Race to Oblivion (New York 1970), 214.Google Scholar

8 Industrial groups and contractors shared these concerns, as did research organizations such as the Stanford Research Institute, which worked on the ABM for the Army. However, the influence of these groups was limited to supplying arguments for ABM supporters in the administration and helping to arouse congressional concern. AT&T, the prime contractor, is much less dependent on defense contracts than the prime contractors of most large systems; nevertheless, AT&T was eager for the contract because it used its involvement in air defense and missile defense to help prevent an anti-trust suit to split Bell Labs, the research group, and Western Electric, the manufacturing unit, from the Bell system.

9 The Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the State Department, and the President's Science Advisory Committee shared many of these concerns. None of these organizations played a major role in the decisions. Cf. the comment of Herbert Scoville, who at the time was an Assistant Director of ACDA: “ACDA was at no time a participant in any of the senior-level discussions leading up to it [McNamara's speech].” Herbert Scoville, Jr., “The Politics of the ABM Debate: The View from the A.C. & D.A.”; paper prepared for the APSA Annual Meeting, September 1970, 4. The rules of the game, as explained below, limited the involvement of these organizations as well as that of the Budget Bureau. Secretary of State Rusk's role involved direct and private communication with the President.

10 See Debates, Senate, Congressional Record, CXIV, Part 22Google Scholar, 529169–90, 90th Cong., 2nd sess.; testimony of General Earle Wheeler, Chairman, Chiefs, Joint of Staff, Hearings Before the Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services, 90th Cong., 2nd sess., April 23, 1968.Google Scholar

11 McNamara, Robert S., Testimony Before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, U.S. House of Representatives, 87th Cong., 1st sess., April 6, 1961, 17.Google Scholar For a summary of McNamara's arguments against deployment as presented to various congressional committees from 1961–1967, see Adams, Benson D., “McNamara's ABM Policy, 1961–67,” Orbis, XII (Spring 1968), 200–225.Google Scholar

12 McNamara, Robert S., Statement of the Secretary of Defense Before a Joint Session of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Subcommittee on the Department of Defense Appropriations on the Fiscal Years 1965–69 Defense Program and the 1965 Defense Budget (multilith), 42.Google Scholar

13 McNamara, Robert S., Statement of the Secretary of Defense Before a Joint Session of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Subcommittee on the Department of Defense Appropriations on the Fiscal Years 1968–72 Defense Program and the 1968 Defense Budget (multilith), 39, 40.Google Scholar

14 The documentation for this section is drawn from Jayne (fn. 5).

15 Ibid., 309.

16 See, for example, Baltimore Sun, November 21, 1966 and December 3, 1966; Washington Post, November 24, 1966.

17 Jayne, (fn. 5), 346.Google Scholar

18 These meetings are described by Jayne (fn. 5).

19 New York Times, November 13, 1966.

20 The scientists present were Science Advisers James R. Killian, Jr., George B. Kistiakowsky, Jerome B. Wiesner, and Donald F. Hornig; and Directors of Defense Research Herbert York, Harold Brown, and John S. Foster, Jr. The meeting is described in York (fn. 7), 194–95.

21 On the tendency to make the minimum decision necessary, see Schilling, Warner, “The H-Bomb Decision,” Political Science Quarterly, LXXVI (March 1961), 24–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Jayne, (fn. 5), 366–69.Google Scholar

23 Ibid., 372.

24 Ibid., 373.

25 McNamara, Robert S., Statement of the Secretary of Defense Before a Joint Session of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Subcommittee on the Department of Defense Appropriations on the Fiscal Years 1966–70 Defense Program and the 1966 Defense Budget (multilith), 49.Google Scholar

26 Robert S. McNamara, Statement of the Secretary of Defense Before a Joint Session of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Subcommittee on the Department of Defense Appropriations on the Fiscal Years 1967–71 Defense Program and the 1967 Defense Budget (multilith), 70.

27 In his San Francisco speech McNamara stated, with regard to Minuteman defense, that “the Chinese-oriented ABM deployment would enable us to add—as a concurrent benefit—a further defense of our Minuteman sites against Soviet attack, which means that at modest cost we would in fact be adding even greater effectiveness to our offensive missile force and avoiding a much more costly expansion of that force.” A short time later, in an article in Life (September 29, 1967, pp. 28 A–C), elaborating on the speech, he stated unequivocally that the Minuteman defense would be deployed. However, following a trip to Europe for a meeting of the NATO Nuclear Planning Group, McNamara declared that no decision had been made as to whether the option to defend Minuteman sites would be exercised.