Soon after in 1963 the Nike-X replaced the Nike-Zeus with a better radar, and a better short-rang interceptor called "Sprint". The long-range Nike-Zeus became known as the "Spartan". In 1966 the Russians began to build a massive ring of ABMs around their capitol city Moscow. After failed attempts at reaching an ABM agreement with Premier Leonid Brezhnev, President Lyndon Johnson responded by approving a "Sentinel" system to protect the U.S.. In 1969 President Richard Nixon came into office and combined the "Spartan" and "Sprint" programs into a larger "Safeguard" system designed to protect U.S. ICBM sites, Strategic Air Command bomber bases, and the capital. After all this, however, only one "Safeguard site was built, and the day it was opened its funding was cut by a Democratic congress.(Omicinski) Soon after each country began developing these missiles and missile systems, they came to realize that creating them "would be destabilizing and pointless", and in 1972 both countries agreed to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) saying that they would not defend their countries against each other’s ICBMs. One cynic described the 1972 ABM Treaty as "merely confirming the mutual failure of the U.S. and the USSR to Mott 4develop effective ABM systems".(Grant) Never the less, the two countries based this treaty on the idea of deterrence; "that maintaining the ability to launch a nuclear counter-attack that would inflict massive destruction on the other side was necessary to ensure that the other country would not attack first".(Gronlund) Geostrategist Max Lehner deemed this time as the "age of overkill", and coined the acronym MAD, short for mutual assured destruction.(Grant) A missile defense for either country could weaken or even void the retaliatory capabilities of the other country, which would make a nuclear attack for either country practically a free shot.(Gronlund) The idea of deterrence lasted until the...
