ABSTRACT
The pragmatists were innocent of the political need to manipulate a skittish public. The Soviet nuclear buildup of the 1970s, however, created a perception of superpower "parity". The goal of US strategic modernization programs in the late 1970s was to deny the Soviet Union the fruits of parity. From the Soviet point of view, an icbm advantage would suggest more than military confidence. The Soviets have long believed, and invested, in strategic defenses. But the United States essentially rejected limited, ground-based ballistic missile defenses at the end of the 1960s. The concept at the core of US strategic doctrine was simple: deterrence was the Soviet belief that nuclear forces based in the United States would be used against the Soviets at some point if they attacked US allies. Soviet strategic confidence would then become strategic leverage. Land-based icbm interceptors could attack the swarm of Soviet warheads only in their terminal flight stage.
