Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

ons aimed at satellites. 17 Clearly, despite his reformist
rhetoric, on strategic nuclear matters Gorbachev
continued to abide by the concept of MAD and the
traditional Soviet position on the offensive-defensive
linkage.
Gorbachev’s proposals were specifically aimed
against the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) announced
by the Ronald Reagan administration in January
1984. Together with American counterproposals,
they were discussed at the Geneva, Switzerland (November
1985) and Reykjavik, Iceland (October 1986)
bilateral summits. In negotiations, while Gorbachev
agreed in principle with Reagan’s proposal to reduce
by half the numbers of strategic offensive weapons,
he also emphasized that this would not be possible if
the United States went ahead with creating a strategic
defense shield. He argued that in this case, the Soviet
Union would have to concentrate on developing
its strategic strike capacity in order to neutralize the
“space shield.” 18
In effect, Gorbachev was the first to offer the antiballistic
missile defense (BMD) rationalization that
is currently used by leaders of the RF. For example,
he doubted the American suggestion to share ABM
technology with the Soviet Union once it was ready
for use. He told the Americans that “the creation of
a shield . . . would allow a first strike without retaliation.”
He also said that the Soviet Union had already
developed a response to SDI that would be “effective,
far less expensive and ready for use in less time.” 19 In
still another effort to reconfirm the rigid linkage of
strategic offensive and defense weapons, Gorbachev
declared that the SDI stood in the way of a 50 percent
cut in strategic arms and insisted that the U.S. administration
should do something about it if the administration
wanted to reduce the nuclear stockpiles. 20
107