Abstract
In December 1966, when President Johnson was beset by powerful political pressure to deploy an antiballistic missile (ABM) system, he convened a meeting of distinguished defense experts to advise him on the essential ques¬tions: Would the existing U.S. technology (NIKE-X) work, and should it be deployed?* Assured that both answers were “No,” the president wrote to Soviet Premier Aleksey N. Kosygin in January 1967 setting forth the imperative need to “curb the strategic arms race” lest both sides incur “colossal costs without substantially enhancing the security of our own peoples or contributing to the prospects for a stable peace in the world.” The president suggested that the two sides meet for bilateral arms limitation talks.1
In cases of defense ’tis best to weigh The enemy more mighty than he seems.
—William Shakespeare, Henry V(III, 4)
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© 1993 Glenn T. Seaborg
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Seaborg, G.T., Loeb, B.S. (1993). SALT. In: The Atomic Energy Commission under Nixon. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-04834-9_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-04834-9_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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