POLITICAL AND PERCEPTUAL ASPECTS OF SALT II VERIFICATION

Verification establishes the psychological and political practicability of arms control by assuring parties to an agreement that security will not be diminished by their own faithful compliance. Even when upgraded monitoring capabilities are unnecessary for strategic security, they still might be required to mitigate actors' uncertainties. Verification in this sense can be a placebo as well as a genuine security precaution. Actors defined and assessed SALT II verification within stipulatory, strategic, historical, international and domestic political contexts. Many saw insufficient merit in the agreement to justify taking the perceived verification risks. Disagreements over the U.S.-Soviet strategic relationship prevented a consensus on cheating's likely significance. Intense U.S.-Soviet ideological conflict in which core values were perceived to be at stake prompted some actors to resist the idea of shared interests in SALT because of its apparent inconsistency with their negative images of the Soviet Union. Cognitive consistency theories, which address the way information incongruent with existing beliefs is assimilated, are useful in explaining verification decisions under these circumstances. They suggest cases of "Inherent Bad Faith" decisionmaking in which evidence of compliance is interpreted as skillful cheating. Exacerbated tensions caused by the Soviet Union's other political and military behavior further obscured underlying mutual interest in SALT, reinforced traditional views that unrestrained competition would provide more security, and made some key actors hyper-vigilant against noncompliance. The Carter administration was thought to be over-committed to SALT and therefore its objectivity in verifying compliance was challenged. Perceptions of objectivity and good judgment were partly contingent on SALT II's place in its hierarchy of foreign policy objectives. An equally strong but less visible commitment would have made verification a less prominent issue. Verification also afforded the domestic political opposition an effective medium for criticizing an incumbent administration, impugning its credibility and competence, and defeating SALT II without challenging arms control's underlying principles. This suggests that, because other parties cannot be trusted, the judgments of those responsible for verification have to be.