Fundamental issues behind the CPD’s assessment concerned the “partial Soviet first strike capability that would degrade the credibility of America’s alliance commitment.
Kissinger proved himself to be a skeptic of increasing the nuclear superiority of the United States, knowing the technological advancement over the Soviets. (What in the name of God is the point of XXX) but took the CPD’s assessment of the nuclear blackmail
“Kissinger gave a speech in Brussels in September 1979. The speech focused on the implications of the end of American nuclear strategic superiority and on the approaching vulnerability of American land based missiles. That, vulnerability, coupled with other adverse trends in the military balance, makes, in Kissinger’s view,…show more content… We must face the fact that it is absurd to base the strategy of the West on the credibility of the threat of mutual suicide.”
The only practical basis for a long term deal, argued Kissinger, was to balance some of these asymmetrical advantages. The United States should go in which the goal of reducing the threat that Russian heavy missiles, once “MIRVed” would pose to America’s own land-based force. It should be willing, under the circumstances, to accept higher Soviet aggregates in exchange for specific limitations on the number of ICBMs they could equip with multiple warheads.”
