The Role of Congress in the Strategic Posture of the United States, 1970: 1980 - Nuclear Weapons Doctrine, Arms Control, Nixon and Carter, SALT and ABM Agreements, Kissinger, Assured Destruction

Professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction, this unique study examines the role of Congress in the development of the material strategic posture of the United States from the 92nd through 97th Congresses, covering the period 1970-1980, corresponding roughly to the Nixon through Carter administrations.

The role of Congress in building the U.S. strategic posture is underappreciated, both by historians and policymakers. Congress is especially underestimated as regards intellectual contributions to nuclear strategy and doctrine that guided development of strategic forces and plans for their employment. Yet the congressional record is a rich resource, not least for being unclassified and providing meticulous detail on debates and the thinking of the Congress, the administration, and the armed services on the ideas and concerns that shaped the U.S. strategic posture. This resource is underutilized by historians.

This paper is a modest attempt to illuminate the record on the role of Congress in the making of the strategic posture. The paper pioneers the neglected examination of the role of Congress in the development of the U.S. strategic posture, does not pretend to be a comprehensive or definitive history, but is rather an exploratory expedition and only one possible interpretation of the underutilized data available to scholars in the congressional records. The paper is primarily an intellectual history on how the ideas and thinking prevalent in Congress affected plans and programs that became the material capabilities, and limitations, of the U.S. strategic posture. This brief history shall draw heavily from the congressional record, letting the actors speak for themselves as much as possible, to demonstrate the richness of this resource, and because it is the best way to tell the story.

The chief theme is that, during the 1970s, the policy beliefs of representatives and senators, based on their interpretations of the principles of arms control theory, dominated administration and service preferences in making the strategic posture. The subtitle of this paper"Sufficiency to PD-59"which is the conventional way historians of nuclear doctrine usually define this era, citing these presidential initiatives on nuclear strategy, becomes ironical when the role of Congress is understood. This paper shall demonstrate that congressional interpretations of arms control theory and support of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) agreements, and other arms control initiatives, were at least as important in shaping the U.S. strategic posture as National Security Decision Memorandum 16 (NSDM 16), National Security Decision Memorandum 242 (NSDM 242), Presidential Directive 59 (PD 59), and other presidential directives intended to guide development of the strategic posture. While technological and budgetary factors also were important determinants of the strategic posture, the focus here is on the influence of arms control theory.

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