With a stridency reminiscent of the Cold War, outgoing Russian president Vladimir Putin charged last month that with US plans for a limited defence against ballistic missiles, "a new arms race has been unleashed in the world". He vowed to field new weapons, which have been under development for years, "in response". The same day, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he anticipated "hundreds of thousands of missile interceptors all over the world ... in the foreseeable future."
Both claims are wrong. Despite a near universal belief to the contrary, the "action-reaction-upward-spiralling strategic weapons race" of the Cold War never really happened. And Lavrov's hundreds of thousands of missile interceptors won't happen either.
The idea that the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in an arms race that led to reciprocal increases in nuclear weapons, steadily rising strategic budgets and an escalating danger of nuclear war was widely accepted during the Cold War. But as is often the case with conventional wisdom, little serious research was done to establish whether it was true.
The most important exception was the work of the late Albert Wohlstetter, America's pre-eminent strategic thinker, who approached the subject with his customary rigour. In a 1976 article - "Racing Forward? Or Ambling Back?" - Wohlstetter demonstrated that US and Soviet strategic weapons programmes were largely independent of each other and that the number, explosive power and cost of American nuclear weapons had peaked 15 years earlier (under defence secretary Robert McNamara) and had been declining ever since, even as Soviet programmes had expanded significantly.
Using the same data that had been available to the many academics and politicians who unquestioningly accepted the existence of a deadly arms race, Wohlstetter argued that it would be foolish in principle for us to respond in kind to every Soviet development - and that in practice we had not done so. He argued for building only the strategic forces we needed, reducing their number and explosive power, and making them as precise as possible. He believed that nuclear weapons had only a limited, defensive role to play in a carefully designed strategic posture.
Unnerved
With his rhetoric, Putin hopes to excite the opponents of a limited US missile defence system and those politicians here and abroad who will be unnerved by Russian threats of a new "arms race".
They - and he - should relax. For one thing, the greatly diminished American nuclear force still has many more weapons than it needs. Far from responding in a way that lends credence to Putin's false claim, we should be looking for ways to reduce our nuclear forces still further. We should greet Russian threats to race with amusement and a big yawn.
As for Lavrov's "hundreds of thousands" of missile interceptors, dividing by a thousand would be a reassuring start. US plans call for a modest number of interceptors, dozens at first, a hundred or so later, maybe 200 or 300 after that. The programme is limited because the threat is measured in tens of missiles, not hundreds and certainly not thousands.
Without any missile defence - our current situation - we are vulnerable to any country or movement that manages to obtain even a single missile capable of reaching the United States. In a future that may well include several new nuclear-armed states or perilous changes to existing ones, containing the spread of nuclear weapons will be as difficult as it is urgent. Possession of even a limited defence should be a powerful discouragement to would-be proliferators - and if they persist, well, I'd rather see a missile shot down than feel it land.
Richard N. Perle, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, had responsibility for the Strategic Defence Initiative as assistant secretary of defence in the Reagan administration.
