HARPER'S MAGAZINE

TWO PARK AVENUE

NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10016

(212) 481-5220

HARPER'S

7 May 1985

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
1800 K. Street, NW Suite 400
Washington, D.C. 20006

MAY 13 1985

Dear Mr. Secretary,

As you may have heard from Kenneth Stein, director of the Carter Center, *Harper's Magazine* will publish excerpts from the Carter Consultation on International Security in its July issue. I am enclosing galleys of the edited version of the transcript, which includes several of your comments. I hoped you might review these galleys, making sure your remarks are accurately rendered.

You'll see our text is made up of excerpts drawn from each of the Consultation's four public sessions and arranged thematically into one discussion. (We have taken care to warn readers, in a note at the head of the piece, that the remarks were drawn from four separate discussions and were not made in the order shown.) Because of our space constraints, we have had to shorten the comments that appear a good deal; it is likely we will have to do further shortening before publishing the discussion. We have also edited the language in order to eliminate repetitions and to clarify unfamiliar terms.

I hope we have not gone wrong with any of these changes. If we have, or if you would like to clarify or otherwise alter any of your remarks, I'd be grateful if you or someone on your staff would telephone me here with changes late this week or early next. We must have any changes by Monday, May 13, at the latest. I apologize for the rush, but our deadline is pressing.

If I can help in any way, I can be reached at 212 481 5247. I appreciate very much your looking over these galleys.

With best wishes,

Enclosures

P.S. I enclose a recent issue to give a sense of our format.

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The following Forum is drawn from the Consultation on International Security and Arms Control, held at the Carter Center of Emory University. The remarks were made in the course of four public discussions; they are arranged thematically, and not necessarily in the order in which they were made. Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford served as moderators.

**JIMMY CARTER**
was president of the United States from 1977 to 1981.

**GERALD R. FORD**
served as president of the United States from 1974 to 1977 and as vice president of TK 1973 to TK 1974.

✓ **HENRY A. KISSINGER** See especially pp. 3-4
was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 and national security adviser from 1969 to 1974.

**ANATOLY DOBRYNIN**
is the Soviet ambassador to the United States, a position he has held since 1961.

**HELMUT SONNENFELDT**
was a member of the National Security Council from 1969 to 1974. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution.

**KENNETH ADELMAN**
is director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

**CYRUS VANCE**
was secretary of state from 1977 to 1980 and deputy secretary of defense from 1964 to 1967.

**WILLIAM HYLAND**
was a member of the National Security Council from 1969 to 1973. He is currently the editor of Foreign Affairs.

**ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI**
was national security adviser from 1977 to 1981. He is currently senior adviser at the Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies.

**BRENT SCOWCROFT**
was chairman of President Reagan's Commission on Strategic Forces from 1982 to 1984. A retired Air Force lieutenant general, he served as national security adviser from 1975 to 1977.

**JOHN LEHMAN**
is secretary of the Navy. He was deputy director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1975 to 1977.

**SAM NUNN**
is a Democratic senator from Georgia and the ranking minority member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

**HAROLD BROWN**
was secretary of defense from 1976 to 1980. He is currently chairman of the Foreign Policy Institute at the Johns Hopkins University.

**WILLIAM PERRY**
was undersecretary of defense for research and engineering from 1977 to 1981.

**EVGENY VELIKHOV**
is deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Physics and vice resident of the Soviet Academy of Sciences' General Assembly.

**ALBERT GORE JR.**
is a Democratic senator from Tennessee.

**TED STEVENS**
is a Republican senator from Alaska and cochairman of the Senate Observers Group at the Geneva arms control talks.

**JAMES SCHLESINGER**
served as secretary of defense from 1973 to 1975 and as secretary of energy from 1977 to 1979.

**DAVID JONES**
was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1978 to 1981 and Air Force chief of staff from 1974 to 1978.

**MCGEORGE BUNDY**
was national security adviser from 1961 to 1966. He is currently a professor of history at New York University.

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JIMMY CARTER: using the past fifteen years at least, arms control has been an integral part of the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was the policy of my administration—and those of Presidents Ford, Nixon, Johnson, and Kennedy before me—to attempt to conclude agreements that would have a stabilizing and beneficial effect on relations between the two countries. We hope to discuss here the role of arms control in the present relationship between the superpowers; the impact that new weapons systems—such as President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars—will have on the arms control process and the arms race; and, perhaps most important, the prospects for reaching a major arms control agreement in the near future. By drawing on the expertise of the many participants here, not only from the United States but from the Soviet Union and other countries as well, we hope to draft a set of recommendations that will promote arms control agreements.¹

*The final recommendations appear on page tk.*

GERALD R. FORD: Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing for ten years or so, the United States and the Soviet Union made vigorous attempts to negotiate agreements limiting the competition in nuclear weapons. This process produced the SALT I agreement and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, signed together in 1972; the interim agreements my administration concluded at Vladivostok in 1974; and President Carter's SALT II treaty of 1979—which, though never ratified by the Senate, is being observed by both nations.

It is true these negotiations did not achieve what many hoped they would—a dramatic reduction in nuclear weapons, or even an end to the arms race. What they did accomplish, however, was extremely important: they helped the superpowers manage the problem of nuclear confrontation and ensure a degree of stability in the strategic balance. I personally have known a number of presidents, and I have also known one Soviet leader; in my opinion, none of these men ever wanted a nuclear confrontation. And arms control was important in avoiding one.

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But to answer you, question, Mr. President, I strongly believe that easing the tension between the United States and the Soviet Union is crucial to world peace. But I do not believe that arms control negotiations by themselves can accomplish that. This is especially so now, since, quite frankly, both sides appear to be out of new ideas on arms control that might substantially increase international stability. It is true that we made significant progress in arms control during the 1970s, but throughout those years important political discussions were going on side by side with the military ones. Along with the agreements President Ford named, we should also remember the Berlin discussions in 1971 and the European Security Conference from 1973 to 1975, among others. The fate of the SALT II treaty showed only too well that when the political conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union becomes too intense and there is an explosion somewhere in the world—like Afghanistan—then the arms control process cannot be sustained.

So arms control, while extremely important, must be complemented by agreements on mutual restraint in international behavior—the agreement on principles and conduct, which was negotiated before the 1972 summit, is a good example. If the United States had not suffered a tragic loss of executive authority in the early 1970s, which, in creating the oddest coalition of liberals who disliked President Nixon and conservatives who disliked the Russians, destroyed the political basis for further negotiations, the superpowers would surely have completed agreements on mutual restraints—which might or might not have worked.

Such restraints must be part of any successful arms control agenda. That agenda should of course be accorded great importance; but it should not receive as much publicity as the current Geneva negotiations are receiving—such dramatic business is not conducive to reaching agreements. The Americans and the Russians must ask themselves, and each other, where they want the world to be ten years from now, and not simply repeat by rote all the hopeful slogans of the 1970s.

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**HELMUT SONNENFELDT:** You mentioned regional disputes, Mr. President. It should be pointed out that the major political crises of the past forty years—the crises that brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the verge of open hostilities—arose from conflicts in regions where the superpowers' interests and ambitions clashed, and where, in most instances, other countries were involved. Yet during the past five years, despite the very bad tone of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States and the deadlock in and even disruption of arms control negotiations, the number of real crises in the "Third World" has dramatically decreased. Compare the last five years with an five-year period since 1945, and the difference is striking. The Korean War, Cuba, the Congo, Angola, the Vietnam War, the three wars in the Middle East, Afghanistan—there has been nothing comparable. Whether we owe this relative calm to the far-sighted provisions of the agreement on principles and conduct to which Dr. Kissinger referred, I don't know. I doubt it. I tend to think that, for whatever reason, a certain caution has entered into the calculations of those who make decisions about these matters. I hope this attitude continues.

**FORD:** Hal, aren't you passing over the continuing problems in Central America and Cambodia? It seems to me these qualify as serious conflicts in which both superpowers have strong interests—and in which both, in one way or another, are participants.

**SONNENFELDT:** I was not ignoring them, Mr. President. There are continuing problems in the Middle East, Angola, Afghanistan, and other areas as well. We are not out of the woods yet. But in all these conflicts, the superpowers have managed to avoid alerting their forces and coming to a head-to-head confrontation.

**KENNETH ADELMAN:** The fact is, during the last five years there have been three major conflicts in the world: between Britain and Argentina over the Falklands, between Iran and Iraq, and between various forces in Lebanon. In contrast to most regional conflicts since the end of World War II, none of these have had any direct East-West rub to them. I think that is because, by and large, the United States and the Soviet Union have a better understanding of what constitutes acceptable behavior.

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CYRUS VANCE: Mr. President, President Ford, I realize sadly that it has become quite popular to disparage arms control as an outdated political instrument. I don't agree with this view, nor in my opinion do the majority of the American people. All of us share one fundamental goal— avoiding war, especially nuclear war. To achieve this goal, the superpowers must negotiate agreements that will slow the arms competition and move both nations toward a more stable and less threatening military posture. Without negotiations, the arms competition will continue to spiral upward. Contrary to the assertions of some critics of arms control, neither superpower will allow the other to outspend it and thus gain a significant military advantage; both sides will spend whatever is required to maintain a rough equivalence. Nor is either country able to maintain a decisive technological advantage; history shows that whenever one takes the lead in weapons technology, it is soon matched by the other.

The most effective way to moderate this competition is through fair and verifiable arms control agreements. Concluding such agreements requires infinite patience, perseverance, imagination, and, most important, a willingness to strike a fair bargain. I fully agree with Henry Kissinger that the dialogue between the two countries cannot be confined to arms control; it must be accompanied by wide-ranging political discussions at the highest level. But if arms control negotiations cannot be conducted in a vacuum, neither should they be held hostage to progress on other unrelated issues.

There is great concern today that the negotiations in Geneva may be headed for an early stalemate. The Russians appear unwilling to consider deep reductions in strategic offensive weapons so long as the possibility of new American defensive deployments—President Reagan's SDI proposal—is not definitely foreclosed. The Americans, meanwhile, want to negotiate precisely such deep reductions in offensive forces, while holding open the possibility of deploying strategic defenses after the SDI research program shows results. Is there a way to solve this connundrum so that the Geneva talks do not become bogged down before they've had a chance to really begin.

One of the panels here has recommended that the two nations examine what sort of far-reaching limits on offensive weapons would be sufficient to eliminate the incentive for either side to deploy extensive defenses. Two specific steps might be helpful. First, both countries should further clarify what research is permissible under the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Second, both sides should reaffirm their commitment to the ABM and Outer Space Treaties and to the principle that no steps contrary to the terms of those treaties may be taken without prior negotiations.

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WILLIAM HYLAND: Perhaps it's worth examining the recent history of the arms control process. We have lost five valuable years. When President Carter met with President Brezhnev in Vienne in 1979, he proposed that the two countries reduce their strategic forces by 5 percent each year for the next five years. Had Brezhnev accepted that, those forces would now be below the level President Reagan has proposed at Geneva, and substantially below what General Secretary Gorbachev has proposed.

Why wouldn't Brezhnev accept President Carter's fairly simple idea? Frankly, the Russians prefer to keep what they have; most of the proposals they have made would preserve their forces roughly intact. That was the case in SALT I, and it was also true, as President Ford will remember, at Vladivostok.

The United States' approach, on the other hand, has been erratic. Every time a new administration assumes power the inevitable questions are raised: Shouldn't there be a whole new policy? Wasn't the past approach flawed? So American negotiating tactics tend to be confusing, and to fluctuate according to the requirements of domestic politics. Five years ago, for example, the MX was to be the backbone of our strategic forces; now it supposedly exists to be traded away at Geneva.

The last ten years have not been terribly productive. President Ford and President Brezhnev ten years ago set out the framework of the SALT II treaty; that treaty, which took five years to complete, was never ratified, and when it expires in December there will be no replacement.

Despite the idiosyncracies of both sides, the greater burden of blame for this failure must rest squarely on the Soviet Union. However much quarreling there was in the Senate, SALT II probably would have been ratified if the Soviet Union hadn't invaded Afghanistan. And of course it was the Russians who walked out of the START talks on strategic weapons in 1983, claiming that the theater missiles the Americans had begun to emplace in Europe were upsetting the strategic balance; because the Russians chose to link START with the negotiations on theater weapons, more than a year passed without any talks at all.

The present Geneva talks cannot simply pick up where we left off in 1979 or 1983. A radical new element has entered the game—the Strategic Defense Initiative. For ten years we have argued about how much to reduce offensive weapons. Suddenly, all of our proposals must be considered in relation to defensive systems. The offensive-defensive equation is now dominant, and neither side has a good idea how to deal with it. As Cy Vance said, that could lead to a dangerous stalemate.

Under these circumstances, I'm not sure the status quo—extending SALT II, delaying major decisions on SDI, and so forth—is good enough. We have very little to show for almost twenty years of arms control. If the American public begins to suspect these negotiations are merely a useful diversion that allows both sides to continue building up their arsenals, we could find ourselves in the midst of a major political quarrel. There are already strong elements in the United States that believe arms control is a failure and should be discarded.

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BRENT SCOWCROFT: Thank you, Mr. President. The panel was made up of American representatives with widely varying views and Soviet representatives. There was a consensus among the Americans about: how U.S. attitudes toward deterrence have evolved over the last forty years. After World War II, the United States turned to nuclear weapons as a substitute for conventional forces in defending Europe—this policy was called extended deterrence. After the Soviet Union developed nuclear weapons, U.S. policy moved toward what came to be called assured destruction. While U.S. leaders could not rationally use nuclear weapons against nations similarly armed, it was necessary that the United States maintain the ability to threaten massive destruction in order to deter attacks on this country and its allies.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, some critics began to question the validity of this version of deterrence; they raised doubts about the logic of a strategy that had no political or military rationale and that—they claimed—was based on revenge. Others suggested that for deterrence to be credible, the United States had to be able to respond to an attack in a more limited and flexible way; it was argued that such a flexible-response strategy would convince America's adversaries that we actually could and would carry out any threat to retaliation.

During the 1970s, official U.S. policy gradually began to reflect this view. The U.S. deterrent posture came to include not merely a threat to destroy a certain percentage of the Soviet population and Soviet industry; it now provided more limited options in responding to an attack, such as destroying only military targets. The key reasons for this shift were technological advances that made weapons much more accurate and reliable; the end of unquestioned U.S. nuclear superiority, which many believed would undermine the United States' ability to deter conventional attacks against its NATO allies, especially since NATO's conventional forces are inferior to those of the Warsaw Pact; the Russians' development of highly accurate land-based missiles, which seemed to put U.S. ICBMs at risk; and, finally, the growing perception in the United States that the Russians do not share American views on deterrence and war in the nuclear era—that, in effect, they believe nuclear weapons can be employed to achieve victory in wartime.

This shift in the U.S. approach to deterrence has continued into the 1980s. President Reagan has declared that the world would be safer if the United States moved from a policy of assured destruction, or mutual vulnerability, to one of assured survival. According to this policy, a nation's ability to defend itself against attack would remove any military incentive for its adversary to strike first. And that is the rationale—or one of them—for strategic defense, the feasibility of which remains an open question.

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DOBRYNIN: The Soviet Union believes the devel-
opment of these doctrines and weapons systems
was designed to ensure U.S. strategic superior-
ity, and to preserve the ability to launch a first
strike. That remains the driving force of U.S.
policy and the ultimate purpose of the Strategic
Defense Initiative. According to the propagan-
da, Star Wars will make it easier to reduce and
even eliminate nuclear weapons. But introduc-
ing space weapons will have one predictable re-
sult: it will intensify the arms race.

The so-called re-arming of America is noth-
ing but a bid for strategic superiority. The build-
up will not increase the security of the United
States or its NATO allies one iota. It will simply
force the Soviet Union to match the additional
deployments. We do not seek superiority over
the United States; we seek only to prevent it
from gaining superiority over us. This is in no
way a threat—it's a fact of modern life.

Today we hear the familiar warnings of the
"Soviet advantage," which are meant to justify
the U.S. buildup. Remember the "missile gap"
of the early 1960s? It didn't exist; it served only
to rally support for more weapons. Remember
the "window of vulnerability"? It too was non-
existent, as was shown by General Scowcroft's
commission. We should recall that before the
Vienna summit of 1979, the U.S. president,
the secretary of defense, and the chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all of whom are here
today, acknowledged there was rough parity be-
tween the two superpowers. Whom should we
believe?

American politicians seem unable to under-
stand that they cannot use force against the So-
viet Union without inviting a catastrophe.
Lately a very misguided and dangerous trend
has emerged: the search for ways to make nucle-
ar war "winnable." We see this in both the doc-
trines and the weapons. Counterforce, surgical
strikes, limited war—all of these strategies are
attempts to introduce rules that will make nu-
clear conflicts more thinkable. Trident II mis-
siles, Stealth bombers, long-range cruise mis-
siles, and Pershing IIs are the toys of this deadly
game. The Soviet Union has similar toys. This
trend is an example of the sort of thinking that
is imposed by the balance of terror. On the one
hand, war has become meaningless, unthink-
able. On the other, both nations have to pre-
pare for war all and constantly emphasize their
readiness to engage in it. Such logic inevitably
leads to brinksmanship.

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During the 1960s and 1970s the Soviet Union not only deployed a great many weapons; it enjoyed the very real benefits of those deployments. The United States, hoping that the arms control p. less would eventually stop what was generally assumed to be an action-reaction cycle, allowed destabilizing disparities to develop between the forces of the two countries. As a result, it became impossible to achieve meaningful arms control. For the Russians were well aware of the growing perception that they were gaining strategic superiority—and that perception allowed them many opportunities for relatively risk-free intervention throughout the world.

I think this cycle has been broken. The rearming of America, which the Carter Administration began and the Reagan Administration has vigorously pursued, has helped make it possible for the two countries to again pursue true reductions. Strategic programs now under way—the MX, the B-1 bomber, the Trident II missile, and others—are essential to concluding meaningful arms control agreements.

Why will we achieve reductions? First, it's enormously difficult for both nations to pay for these huge numbers of strategic weapons. Important military tasks are being ignored because of the burden of expenditures for nuclear weapons. Of course, during the 1970s, the Soviet Union had a high marginal return on its investment; it derived clear benefits from maintaining its edge. Today, as it loses that edge, the marginal return is disappearing. Both countries now have a clear interest in reducing the expense of maintaining these weapons.

Second, this Administration has a realistic approach to verification. Obviously, the greater the reductions and the lower the total number of systems, the more important verification becomes. I believe we have exhausted the possibilities of non-intrusive verification. To really make progress in arms control, we must move to intrusive, on-site inspection. Popular wisdom to the contrary, I think the Russians might be willing to carry verification along this path.

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[L]

Finally, it is very much in our mutual interest to deploy strategic defenses, and I think the Soviet Union will come to see why. I reject the suggestion that the Russians will respond to SDI by building more and better offensive weapons. They won't do that because it doesn't make common sense, and whatever one might say about Soviet strategic policy during the last thirty years, it has made a great deal of common sense. Shifting our expenditures from deterrence to defenses can only be stabilizing in the long run. And SDI need not be 100 percent effective to play a stabilizing role. Every little bit of protection diminishes the temptation for one side to strike first in a crisis. I believe that SDI is going to lead us toward a more stable future. For the last thirty years, our deterrence strategy has rested on a balance of terror; maintaining deterrence by protecting our populations, rather than by threatening to avenge them, is far more morally satisfying.

Some have argued that the United States should declare a policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons in Europe, a policy that would obviously oblige NATO to match the Warsaw Pact in conventional forces. This just doesn't make sense for a coalition of democracies. The Soviet Union currently has 199 active divisions; the United States hopes to reach eighteen by the end of the decade. Adopting a strategy of fighting a war of attrition against a totalitarian regime with so large a land force is not rational. Theater nuclear weapons are a necessary part of the balance of imbalances in Europe; attempting to convince the Europeans that the Battles of the Somme was a more acceptable form of warfare than nuclear deterrence will not make those weapons go away.

DAVID JONES: Things are a little more complicated than that. When my friend John Lehman talks about the eighteen divisions on our side he isn't including a lot of our reserve divisions here in the States, many of which are better than any of the Soviet 199. He also isn't taking into account all of our NATO forces, and he makes no allowance for the fact that the Russians have deployed a quarter of their divisions against China. In any case, the purpose of improving our conventional forces in Europe is not to prepare the alliance to fight a war of attrition; it is to raise the nuclear threshold. So the calculation becomes a little more complicated than matching the Russians division for division.

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CARTER: Still, that is the clearest presentation I have ever heard of the Reagan Administration's policy toward nuclear arms agreements, and the radical departure it represents from the policies of the past decade or more.

FORD: You said, John, that the development of many of these new weapons systems was begun under this Administration or the one preceding it. Either you're misinformed or you didn't tell the truth. As you well know, because you were in the Defense Department at the time, research and development on the MX was begun in 1975, under my administration. And development of the air-launched, sea-launched and ground-launched cruise missiles was begun under President Nixon and in my administration as well. I hope you were just inadvertently inaccurate.

SAM NUNN: President Ford has raised a larger question. If there is to be a truly bipartisan approach to arms control and national security—and I believe this is essential to concluding an agreement at Geneva—Administration officials must stop rewriting the history of U.S. weapons procurement and arms control to suit their own purposes. Last year, for example, Secretary Weinberger told the Armed Services Committee: "We should have modernized and strengthened the triad all through the preceding years, but we did not start on it until 1981." Secretary Weinberger's statement was truly bipartisan in that it recognized no progress in any administration, Democratic or Republican, for twelve years or more. He managed to ignore the cruise missile, the advanced tactical bomber, the Trident submarine, and the MX, all of which were begun under Nixon, Ford, or Carter.

By the same token, the Administration should recognize that the United States must continue to rely for its defense on nuclear deterrence—the ability of its military forces to survive a nuclear attack and to retaliate. This will be true, no matter what happens in SDI research, "for at least the lifetime of our children, and perhaps our grandchildren," in Jim Schlesinger's words. When Administration officials criticize the United States' present deterrent strategy as "flawed," "simplistic," "disproven," "discredited," and "immoral," they make it more difficult to maintain political support for deterrence; the fact that the policy has been the target of attacks from the left in recent years just heightens the problem.

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HAROLD BROWN: I agree that slogans are often po-
litically effective for a time; but that is not usu-
ally the case in the long run. Deterrence by
threat of retaliation remains the U.S. and
NATO strategy, not out of choice but because
it's a fact of life. That fact of life deters nuclear
attack; perhaps it deters a conventional attack
as well, because of both superpowers' concern
that a conventional Soviet attack on Europe
might escalate into a nuclear exchange. That is
why the alliance has rejected all proposals to
adopt a no-first-use policy, that is, to explicitly
forego the option of responding with nuclear
weapons to a Soviet invasion.

What are the goals of nuclear planning and
nuclear arms control? Reducing the chance of a
nuclear war and limiting the damage caused by
such a war should it occur. Unfortunately,
these goals sometimes conflict. It seems to me
that reducing the chance of nuclear war is the
more important goal. Nuclear war would be so
destructive that military policies designed to
moderate its effects—countervailing strategy,
graduated response, and so on—while neces-
sary and laudable, are not reliable enough to
form the basis of our strategy. By the same to-
ken, if we focus too much on the goal of abol-
ishing nuclear weapons, laudable as that goal is,
we may find that we have taken our eye off the
ball: the need to avoid nuclear war by managing
both deterrence and the political competition
with the Soviet Union. If we fail to reach either
goal, the world will become much more
dangerous.

I want to point out that arms control negotia-
tions also have a sacramental purpose. For the
benefit of our Soviet colleagues, a sacrament is
an outward sign of inward grace; by engaging in
arms control negotiations Western leaders show
that they worry about nuclear war and are trying
to do something about it. This is an important
function of these talks. And while I believe that
failure in arms control negotiations hurts more
than success helps, I oppose those who argue
that it's therefore better not to attempt arms
control at all, or that attempts should be de-
layed until the United States is negotiating
from a predominant position. After all, if you
don't negotiate, the failure to limit arms is
automatic.

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LCI

As to the Strategic Defense Initiative—how would it affect stability? There are two ways to look at it. Suppose it provided perfect or near perfect defense. In that case, one could argue that SDI would be stabilizing, assuming both sides had it—and I assume that if one side had it, both sides would, not as a result of a charitable gift but as a result of competition. On the other hand, a perfect defense might encourage non-nuclear war. If there had been no threat of nuclear retaliation during the past thirty years, the chances are much greater that the superpowers would have fought a non-nuclear war.

If the defense was ... perfect—if it could not defend populations—it might still be destabilizing; that would depend on whether one side was able to preempt the defense of the other. And of course, phasing in the defenses could be destabilizing; the timing would be very delicate.

As you can see I have serious reservations, to put it mildly, about the Strategic Defense Initiative. But strategic defense in various forms—robust air defense, conventional ballistic-missile defense involving radar and ground-based interceptors, and so on—is a fact of life. So is research on space-based ballistic missile defense. We ought to ask ourselves and our allies what criteria should be used in deciding whether to deploy such a system, and we should explore with the Soviet Union what the guidelines should be for research and development under the ABM treaty.

**CARTER:** Bill Perry, perhaps you could comment on the feasibility of SDI, which keeps coming up.

**WILLIAM PERRY:** Mr. President, I believe the debate over the Strategic Defense Initiative has been characterized by confusion. This has arisen from a number of factors, not the least of which is what Dr. Kissinger has described as the manifold definitions of SDI. Its proponents have confused the issue by pretending that if any strategic defense is feasible, then assured survivability—protecting the population from attack—is feasible. This is not at all the case. The opponents of SDI, on the other hand, have questioned the President's sincerity, claiming that he really wants strategic superiority. They argue that it is somehow morally wrong to conduct battles in space. And they condemn the objective of strategic defense because of the difficulty and cost involved. I don't doubt that the President is sincere; I am skeptical of people who talk about the sanctity of the heavens—if a battle must be fought, I would rather it be fought in space than on Earth. And if assured survivability were indeed feasible, I would not be discouraged by either the expense or the difficulty of achieving it.

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CARTER: I wonder if Commissioner Velikhov, who is a designated representative of General Secretary Gorbachev and a prominent physicist, would like to comment?

EVGENY VEHOKHOV: Thank you, President Carter. I appreciate Secretary Lehman's comment about our common sense—but I don't think our sense is common. There is no question that the most effective, simplest, and cheapest way to combat strategic defenses is by means of countermeasures, active and passive. The obvious responses to the research the Reagan Administration proposes would be to build however many weapons are needed to pose an effective retaliatory threat. Another logical response would be an intensified effort to develop effective anti-satellite weapons.

Today we Russians are receiving very misleading signals from the American side. According to some reports, the American goal is to be able to test a defensive system in five years, and to be able to deploy it a short time later. It is true that research does not violate the ABM treaty; nonetheless, it poses a very serious threat to the Soviet Union. After all, Hitler didn't break any treaties by concentrating his army near our border in June 1941; but he broke them all in one night by invading our country. Obviously, we can't wait five years to start taking countermeasures if you proceed with SDI.

Thus SDI poses a big obstacle to achieving real reductions in weapons. And once we transform space into a battlefield, it will be very difficult to go back. Remember, it is now the consensus on both sides that MIRVing our missiles was a big mistake, but it is not so easy to de-MIRV.

SCOWCROFT: It's important to emphasize that the Soviet position on strategic defense is a political position, not a military one. As Bill Perry noted, the Russians have already spent $100 billion on a massive air-defense system, and they have probably outspent the United States on ABM research since the ABM treaty was signed. Moscow is now protected by an ABM system, which has recently been modernized. The Russians take defense very, very seriously. If we can get beyond the rhetoric, we may find some way to modify the ABM treaty that would enhance the stability of the strategic relationship—and strengthen security on both sides.

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ALBERT GORE JR.: Stability seems to have become the principal strategic goal of both the United States and the Soviet Union; but perhaps not enough effort has gone into thinking through the precise meaning of that word in terms of hard policy.

What does the Strategic Defense Initiative imply for stability? It's important to realize that the political support for strategic defense derives mainly from the belief that a leakproof population defense is possible. But it is not possible, and we should say so forthrightly. We must distinguish between realism and idealism. Deterrence is going to remain our mainstay as a policy throughout this century and well into the next. I believe there are some who know a leak-proof population defense is a fantasy, and yet have been reluctant to say so, and those who are in a position to tell the President should do so, if he doesn't know it already.

I have a feeling this "perfect defense" fantasy is a stalking horse for the real SDI—which is simply ballistic missile defense. The real SDI is feasible, but it is not wise. There are two kinds of stability: crisis stability and arms-race stability. Although it is theoretically possible to attain a kind of crisis stability on both sides, to do so would destabilize the arms race. That is why the principles of the ABM treaty must be renewed. That's also why the controversy over the Krasnoyarsk radar is such a political obstacle.

TED STEVENS: Mr. President, the Senate leadership, bearing in mind that three recent arms control treaties remain unratified, has appointed the Senate Observers Group to monitor the discussions in Geneva. One of the purposes of the group is to learn in advance about stumbling blocks that might hinder Senate approval. The most significant one is the Krasnoyarsk phased-array radar, because it could serve as an important part of a ballistic missile defense system, which seems to us a clear violation of the ABM treaty. I don't think our Soviet friends realize how important this issue is in the Senate. The Russians have not offered any plausible explanation for this radar. Its location, and its ability to complement other antiballistic missile technologies we know the Russians are working on, leads many senators to be increasingly suspicious.

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NUNN: Mr. President, I agree that the Soviet Union must understand how seriously members of Congress, and also those in the executive branch, view these alleged violations. I cannot overemphasize how important this is, not only to the Congress but also to the American public. Addressing this issue is a prerequisite for any kind of agreement in Geneva.

GORE: Whether or not that radar is militarily significant, when the argument in the United States shifts to ballistic missile defense and whether to scrap the ABM treaty, those who support SDI will be strengthened enormously if they are able to argue that the Soviet Union does not feel strongly enough about the treaty's principles to refrain from violating them.

DOBRYNIN: The senators are careful enough, diplomatic enough. They say "alleged violations," "it seems to us," and so on. But that is just the point. When I go to the State Department to ask about specific violations, they always say, "Look, Mr. Ambassador, we don't have exactly proof, but we strongly suspect this is the case." It doesn't help the negotiations to politicize these suspicions. In 1972 the two nations established a Standing Consultative Commission to handle complaints like this. And there are always complaints, from your side and our side. The complaints are probably divided about fifty-fifty. But this Administration has a different approach. In the past few years you complain almost every day; I can hardly find time to read all the reports. If you have a complaint, bring it to the commission and we'll discuss it.

Now, when this Krasnoyarsk radar which you are so worried about is finished—it's still under construction—it will be used to track our sputniks. That's all. Maybe we'll invite some of you skeptics to come and see how it works. It will be easy for you to determine from the lengths of the waves what the real purpose of this particular radar is.

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You know, in our opinion you violate treaties as well. SALT II says both sides are obligated not to alter the rough strategic parity that existed at the time of the negotiations. Now you're installing Pershing IIs and cruise missiles in Europe; to us these are strategic weapons—they can hit Moscow and Leningrad. To us these missiles are a violation of SALT II. Recently you tested an anti-missile missile, a modified Minuteman that intercepted an oncoming missile over the Pacific. That's a violation of the ABM treaty. You now have some mobile radars that can be used as part of an ABM defense. These too, could be considered violations.

So there are charges and countercharges. Let's present these charges to the very knowledgeable people on the commission so they can try to resolve them in a peaceful, mutually satisfactory way.

As for Geneva, as everyone says, the key issue is the interrelationship between offensive and defensive weapons. But so far, the Americans have refused to say anything specific about defenses. The U.S. negotiators say they will discuss it when the research period is over. How long will that be? Five, maybe ten years? So we wait; but for what? Until a new administration comes, and that administration negotiates? Unfortunately, history shows that one president can sign an agreement and the next might consider it a big "window of vulnerability." So sometimes we Russians don't understand what's going on.

Of course we won't reduce our offensive weapons while nothing is done about SDI. Our position on that is clear. Mr. Shultz and Mr. Gromyko agreed on this last January in Geneva. I was there; so was Mr. Adelman. They established three panels to discuss strategic, European, and space weapons; the panels are to try to come to agreements more or less simultaneously. That doesn't mean all three agreements must be simultaneous. If we make progress on offensive weapons or on European missiles, it is possible we could come to a more limited agreement earlier. But we are not prepared to cut our offensive missiles drastically when we have no idea what you are going to do with SDI. The joint statement from the January meeting said specifically that the talks are aimed at "preventing an arms race in space and terminating it on earth, and to start to drastically reduce our nuclear arms, strategic as well as European." (Note TK) This is not just our position; it's your position as well.

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CARTER: I think it's noteworthy that the senators here have made similar comments about the Krasnoyarsk radar. And I understood Ambassador Dobrynin to suggest that rather than risk a breakdown in the negotiations, the Soviet Union might offer an on-site inspection. That seems very significant. Perhaps Kenneth Adelman would like to comment on these points.

KENNETH ADELMAN: Mr. President, President Ford, I thought in the spirit of true bipartisan-ship I would first review a few of the points on which the Administration and its critics gener-ally agree, and then set out very frankly some of the points on which we disagree.

We all agree that deep reductions in nuclear weapons should be the foremost goal of arms control. Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter made dedicated efforts to convince the Russians to reduce their strategic forces, but they were thwarted by the Soviet Union's determined use of arms control to legitimize a nuclear buildup. I think a strong case can be made that deep re-ductions make sense, with or without any stra tegic defense program.

Everyone agrees that to be serious about arms control is to be serious about compliance—other-wise, it's not arms control at all but unilateral disarmament. Ambassador Dobrynin was incor-rect; the American reports during the last two years have not been about "alleged" violations. They have described in detail the Soviet Un-ion's serious and definite violations of the ABM treaty, the limited test ban treaty, and political commitments made under the Threshold Test Ban Treaty. As for Krasnoyark, when the Unit-ed States first detected that radar in the summer of 1983, we immediately approached Ambassa-dor Dobrynin and requested a special session of the Standing Consultative Committee. The Russians refused. Only then did we raise the is-sue through diplomatic channels. Ambassador Dobrynin did indeed seem to offer the chance of an on-site inspection; that certainly holds some promise. We'll see.

When I testified before the Armed Services Committee earlier this year, none of the sena-tors doubted the Russians were violating trea-ties. The question is, what do we do about it? And what do those violations say about the arms control process? The Krasnoyark radar, for example, must have been planned in 1970, at the very time when expectations were highest for détente and arms control. So the issue is not just the radar, but the Soviet Union's serious-ness about arms control.

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The administration and its critics obviously disagree over SDI. Why does the President believe it is worth a substantial research program? First, there is the danger of an accidental or unauthorized ballistic missile launch. At present, the President could respond to such a launch only by doing nothing or by retaliating in kind. Second, the idea of deterrence has always included both a component of protection and a component of punitive action; SDI promises to move us toward a deterrent posture that would emphasize protection. Today, the President must keep the peace by threatening mutual annihilation. That is an awesome responsibility, especially in view of recent research on "nuclear winter." Finally, as others have mentioned, SDI research is a prudent hedge against a Soviet program that has been going on for a good many .years.

Contrary to what Ambassador Dobrynin said, the United States is discussing SDI at Geneva; we have a team there doing nothing but discussing it. And I should point out that in January the United States and the Soviet Union agreed that a ban on defense research could not be verified.

I should emphasize that we in the Administration are very hopeful. We have a President who has just received a strong mandate from the people; the Russians have a new leader who may have a long tenure ahead of him. Both say they want radical reductions in nuclear weapons. Conditions may be far more favorable for achieving such reductions than they have been in the past.

JAMES SCHLESINGER: We have heard much discussion today of strategic defense, and properly so. As has been observed, negotiations cannot proceed unless the interrelationship between offense and defense is grappled with. I myself am skeptical about the Strategic Defense Initiative—its pace, its military utility, and its cost. Yet our Russian friends should remember that they have already spent immense sums on strategic defense; that, since research cannot be precisely monitored, the United States must pursue its own research to be aware of Soviet progress, and as a hedge against a Soviet "breakout"; and that the United States has been forced to consider strategic defense primarily because the Soviet Union has pursued an enormous buildup of counterforce weapons, in violation of the spirit of the SALT and ABM agreements of 1972.

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All this has been duly noted. I turn now to
the broader sweep. If the Russians are in fact
now eager to negotiate a general agreement,
this is but another illustration of the fascinating
lack of simultaneity that has characterized
postwar U.S.-Soviet relations. In 1945 the
United States was not only prepared to discuss
disarmament; it was prepared to disarm without
discussion. It disbanded its forces, abandoned
the draft, brought the boys home. Perhaps the
monumental achievement of Joseph Stalin was
to coax the United States out of its semi-isola-
tionist state through a series of incidents in the
late 1940s that I hardly need recount. When
Americans were most inclined to accept the
principal of peaceful coexistence, the Russians
overplayed their hand. This pattern has
persisted.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the massive So-
viet conventional forces facing Western Europe
were rationalized by many as a necessary means
to neutralize the American advantage in strate-
gic nuclear weapons. That advantage has disap-
peared; the Soviet armies have not. Indeed,
they have been strengthened.

After 1972 the American attitude was one of
peaceful coexistence, reflected in the emphasis
on détente. An immense buildup of Soviet
large land-based missiles ensued, a buildup
which was clearly inconsistent with the spirit of
the 1972 agreements and undermined one of
the premises on which the ABM treaty rests.

Today, the Soviet Union demands that we
proceed with a broader agreement, claiming—
and there is some logical justification for it—
that the deployment of strategic defenses would
create a structural imbalance. If the Soviet
Union feels strongly about this, it might offer to
do something about one or both of the two im-
balances that were created by prior Soviet poli-
cy; the massive conventional forces still
threatening Western Europe and the monu-
mental counterforce arsenal deployed against
the United States since the 1972 agreements. Is
the Soviet Union prepared to reduce its own of-
fensive forces drastically? If so, I believe a way
can be found to deal with what Moscow regards
as the threat of strategic defense.

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**GORE:** If the Russians do offer deep cuts in their offensive forces in return for our delaying the operation of deploying strategic defenses, the United States will find itself facing a moment of truth. How to give up SDI? And how to verify a pledge to do so? I think the criteria outlined by Paul Nitze—that any strategic defense system must itself be survivable, stabilizing, and cost-effective at the margin—might offer a graceful way to solve the first problem. And, as Cyrus Vance implied, amending the ABM treaty to distinguish between research and development, on the one hand, and deployment, on the other, might provide a way to reach a comprehensive agreement. Here are three specific and verifiable provisions. One, no experiments with hypervelocity rail guns in space. Two, no experiments with high-energy and directed-energy systems in space. Three, no experiments with large-array mirrors operating in space with energy sources on the ground. I believe this cap on SDI research could be coupled with cuts in Soviet offensive missiles and bombers. Such a comprehensive tradeoff now seems to be the most positive outcome possible at Geneva.

**DAVID JONES:** As a military officer, I find there's a great tendency in all of these discussions to be too technical and too simple at the same time. Five years ago, everyone was talking about the "window of vulnerability" that was about to be opened. A period was supposedly beginning during which American strategic forces would be vulnerable to attack by those of the Soviet Union.

Today the general perception is that somehow this "window" has been closed, even though, as President Ford said, our current strategic forces are pretty much a result of planning and research that began many years ago. But there remain great asymmetries in the strategic balance; these asymmetries will probably always be there, simply because the two nations have very different force requirements. The United States is largely a maritime power, the Soviet Union a continental power. The Russians have advantages in certain areas; we've got advantage in other areas. It's pretty hard to say whether they're ahead or we're ahead.

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What exactly does "being ahead" mean? I don't know any American officer, or any Soviet officer, who really believes either superpower can achieve a true first-strike capability, that one side could ever so disarm the other as to leave it without the ability to retali ate. After all, only 5 percent of the 10,000 or so strategic weapons on either side would kill roughly 100 million Americans, if aimed at our cities, and close to that number of Russians, if aimed at theirs. The ability to kill 100 million people certainly seems a strong deterrent. On the other hand, the fact that the United States can kill almost 100 million Russians with a small fraction of its forces does not mean the rest of its forces are unnecessary. An overall balance is important; it is not good strategy to retain only the option to retaliat against Soviet cities. At present, American strategic forces are directed primarily against Soviet military targets, and only secondarily against what are referred to as urban industrial areas. But what is most impor tant is this: in my experience, American military officers and Soviet military officers strongly agree that neither side can win a nuclear war in any meaningful sense.

Frankly, people at both ends of the political spectrum expect too much from arms control. They tend to think the negotiations will somehow make all our problems go away. But in my judgment, the arms control process itself is almost as important as any agreement. For even if both sides scrapped 5,000 nuclear weapons tomorrow, the world would be no safer if tensions between the two countries remained the same. What these negotiations do is establish some degree of mutual confidence. And, after all, mutual suspicion and fear are the driving forces in superpower relations. About fifteen years ago the United States wanted to put multiple warheads on intercontinental missiles, and the Soviet Union was against it. Now the United States wants to "de-MIRV," to shift to a single-warhead Midgetman missile; and the Russians, having MIRVed their missiles after we did, oppose such a move. The United States advocated ballistic missile defense first, and for eight years the two countries competed on that, until the ABM treaty was signed. The United States now wants to modify that treaty to permit its new defensive program, and the Russians are vigorously opposed.

There must be some way to break through these tremendous suspicions and fears. One way to begin would be to establish a regular dialogue between American and Soviet military leaders. When SALT I was signed in 1979 I accompanied President Carter to Vienna and met with Marshal Ustinov. It sounds incredible, but that was the first time the senior military officers of the two countries conferred since General Marshall met with Marshal Zhukof after World War II. In that one meeting we were able to clear up many misrepresentations and suspicions. I think a regular dialogue would go a long way toward reducing the fear that drives both nations. It also might help in more practical ways, such as the development of an inspection system that would go beyond satellite surveillance.

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MCGEORGE BUNDY: I agree with Jim Schlesinger there now exist the makings of a "grand bar-gain" between the superpowers. But I arrive at that conclusion by a different route. The cen-tral problem is indeed fear: fear has driven both nations to adopt nuclear war-fighting doctrines, and those doctrines in turn drive weapons pro-curement. War-fighting doctrines are not as new as some people claim they are, although in the last ten years several administrations have moved to an explicit policy of seeking to "pre-vail" in a nuclear war. This gives me some personal regret, because it was the Kennedy Administration that removed the word "pre-vail" from the doctrines of the United States government. We did so in the sound belief, so well expressed by President Reagan, that a nu-clear war cannot be won and must never be fought. But military planners necessarily pro-ceed on the traditional assumption that their mission in case of war is to achieve victory. They must measure their requirements accord-ing to what they believe the other side can do, even though, as General Jones wisely observed, senior military commanders are among the most prudent of men when it comes to risking nucle-ar war. So over the years both nations have pro-ceeded—the Soviet Union steadily, the United States more by fits and starts—to build up and modernize their forces; the situation is now be-coming much graver because of the President's Strategic Defense Initiative.

President Ford remarked earlier that he had known many presidents and one Soviet leader, and that none of these men had been unaware of his supreme responsibility—seeing to it that no act of his would bring his nation closer to the catastrophe of nuclear war. That deep under-standing has been demonstrated at many mo-ments, one of which—the Cuban missile crisis—I witnessed at close hand. It is not mere-ly a moral or personal conviction, but a pruden-tial one. As President Eisenhower said, there is nothing in the world the communists want bad-ly enough to risk losing the Kremlin. Presidents feel the same way about the White House.