Stroom voor strategische studies in
Londen: „In ons hart weten we alle-
maal dat een Amerikaanse president
zou kunnen besluiten het gebruik van
atoomwapens ten behoeve van Eu-
ropa niet toe te staan. Maar we voelen
er niets voor eraan te denken dat
Amerikaanse troepen niet zouden
vechten als de Sovjetunie (hier) zou
aanvallen. Het mag afhankelijk en
verkeerd lijken, maar dreigingen in de
richting van een vermindering van de
verplichting zouden worden gezien als
een vooruitlopen op een fundamen-
tele herziening van de houding van de
VS ten opzichte van de Europese vei-
ligheid. Want dat is onze nachtmer-
rie.”

Vervolgens zei hij ook, dat het Bond-
genootschap zou opbreken; als Rea-
gans SDI-droom — een complete be-
scherming tegen raketten van de be-
volkingen van zowel de VS als de SU
— werkelijkheid zou-worden. Want
dan zou de laatste verleid kunnen
worden tot een Europees conventio-
neel avontuur, waartegen geen nu-
cleaire afschrikking mogelijk zou
zijn.

Laten we afsluiten met een zonnige
noord- in zoverheid die bij een onder-
werp als dit mogelijk is — geleverd
door de Franse generaal George
Charles Fricaud-Chagnaud, onder
andere voorzitter van de „Founda-
tion pour les Etudes de Défense Na-
tionale”. Zijns inzien kan „afschrí-
king tot een minimum worden be-
perkt: het is iets dat kan worden a-
getroffen in de geest van de tegen-
stander. De Sovjetunie hoeft niet
van overtuigd te zijn, dat iemand op
de atoomknop drukt (mocht zij aan-
vallen). Zij hoeft alleen maar onzeker
te zijn over de vraag of we zullen vu-
ren.”

Daarom kan Europa, met zijn Britse
en Franse atoommachten, van zijn
verscheidenheid een voordeel maken:
„Ik zou Europa graag willen zien als
cool knol, een ingewikkelde
knoop waardoor wat nucleaire dra-
den lopen, zodat de vijand nooit weet
waar zijn klauwen aan kunnen ko-
men; zodat hij nooit weet wanneer hij
wordt opgeblazen.”

Zbigniew Brzezinski...geld voor defensie is niet onbeperkt...

“Totale bescherming lijkt
me utopisch”

Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski ziet er bui-
tengemene Amerikaanse uit — is
het vanwege zijn strakke, „crew
cut”-achtige coiffure? — maar werd
in 1928 in Warschau geboren en pas
dertig jaar later tot Amerikaan gena-
turaliseerd. Hij is vooral bekend ge-
worden als veiligheidsadviseur van
president Carter. Dat was in de tijd
dat Europa bij mond van Helmut
Schmidt vroeg om zoiets als kruisra-
ketten.

Brzezinski: „De plaatsing van INF
was geen gunst van de VS aan Eu-
ropa, noch werd zij aan Europa opge-
drongen. Ik was uiterst sceptisch over
dat verzoek; volgens mij hoefden we
er niet aan te voldoen. Maar uiteinde-
lijk was ik verantwoordelijk voor de
afgesproken 572 raketten.”

Over de internationale invloed van
het Nederlandse besluit in dezen doet
hij sceptisch: „Men dient invloed niet
te verwarren met hinderlijkheid
(„nuisance”). Er bestaat nog zoiets
over verantwoordelijkheid. Als je Sov-
jets van hun plaatsing in Europa wil
afhouden, dan dien je aan eenmaal
genomen besluiten vast te houden.
Als je hun mogelijkheid biedt hun
cake te houden èn op te eten, dan zul-
len ze de zeker benutten.”

Indien je de zaten rommelige politieke
gang van zaken in zowel de VS als
de Europees-Amerikaanse verhouding is
nu SDI.

Daarover had Brzezinski op de confe-
rentie van de Atlantische Commissie
het meest te vertellen, in de vorm van
een eigen variant op Reagans visio-
naire aankondigingen, die hij „SDI in
de breedste zin” noemt. Te dien aan-
zien noemt hij zich een „agnosticus”:
„Ik ben er niet van overtuigd dat dit
technisch mogelijk zou zijn en ik heb
mijn twijfels aangaande de kosten.
De vraag is of een totale bescherming
dan de bevolking niet te ambitieus is,
ja misschien zelfs utopisch.”

Op basis van overwegingen die te ver
voeren hier uiteen te zetten, pleit hij
uiteindelijk voor iets dat hij „weder-
zijds verzekerde veiligheid” noemt.
Die komt ten eerste neer op het plaat-
sen van bestuurlabile stations in de
ruimte, waarmee minimaal 30 pro-
cent van de vijandelijk raketten in de
erste fase van lanceren zou kunnen
worden afgeschoten en, ten weede,
op het plaatsen van verdedigende pro-
jectiën rond je strategisch doelen,
ook goed voor dichtig recht van de
laatste fase. Dat is een beduidend be-
schadiger aanpak dan de totale
„astrodome” van Reagan, die alle
vier de aanvalsfasis wil bestrijken.

INEFFECTIEF

„Deze niet-nucleaire combinatie”, zo
zegt Brzezinski, „zou een poging tot
een allesvernieuigende eerste aanval
ineffectief maken.” Daarnaast werkt
zij de bewapeningswedloop niet in de
hand, omdat volgens hem een toene-
mende Amerikaanse defensiecapaci-

te gepaard zou moeten gaan met een
dermende offensieve „first strike ca-
pability”.

Mocht daarnaast de Sovjetunie ook
begiz zijn met het opvoeren van haar
defensieve vermogen — wat volgens
de meeste Amerikanen zo is — dan
hoef je daarvoor niet brevès te zijn.
(Er zijn trouwens voldoende mensen
die menen dat de Brzezinski-variant
eigenlijk datgene is wat Reagan heeft
bedoeld, waaruit blijkt dat het hele
onderwerp op zijn zachtst gezegd iet-
wat verwarrend is.)

Een belangrijk voordeel van zijn con-
structie acht Brzezinski dat zij een
tastbaar onderdeel zou kunnen zijn
dan de onderhandelingen in Genève.
„Het beschermen van de bevolking
op zeer lange termijn zou daarvan
géen concreet element kunnen zijn.”
Een defensiesysteem dat binneq de
twintig jaar te plaatsen zou zijn is dat
wel. Want het is réeel te zeggen dat je
met zo’n systeem meer dan 50 procent
dat aanverlengde macht kunt ver-
nietigen; het niet plaatsen ervan zóu
die kunnen ruilen tegen een niet plaat-
sen van de SS-24/25 en een reductie
de SS-18/19.”

EW: Wat is de status van dit voorstel
in Washington?

„Het is iets waarvoor ik al een klein
jaar aan het pleiten ben en het begint
aan belangstelling te winnen. Tijdens
zijn laatste reis aan Europa maakt
president Reagan voor het eerst ge-
wag van de eventuele rol van de SS-
24/25 en van het feit dat de ‘first

den ondersteuning — en aan Midden Am-
rika.”

— Hoe dient Europa dan zijn toene-
mende afhankelijkheid rol te zuen?

„Ik denk dat een ondergeschiktheid
van Europa aan een van de twee niet-
Europeese machten, en de bestaande
deling van Europa, niet tot het einde
der tijden hoeft te bestaan. Dat bete-
kent dus niet dat een enigszins domi-
nante positie van de VS of de hoeven te
worden vervangen door een dergé-
lijke positie van de Sovjetunie. Een
arrangement daar tussenin is een Eu-
ropa dat iets meer separaat zijn eigen
wege zal gaan, in een minder nauwe
verhouding tot de VS en zeker tot de
Sovjetunie.”

„De behoefte qua beleid te differen-
tiëren is inherent aan een wereld
waarin de economieën in toeneemende
mate onderling afhankelijk zijn. Er
dient nu eenmaat sprake tot zijn van
periodieke behoeften tot aanpassing
en die staan los van welke politieke
verhouding tussen Europa en Ame-
rika dan ook.”

— De nieuwe rol van Europa wordt dan zeker ook bepaald door de veronderstelde verschuiving van de Amerikaanse politiek-economische belangstelling van Oostkust naar Westkust, naar de landen rond de Stille Oceaan.

„Dat verschuivende zwaartepunt in de VS van de Atlanticische Oceaan naar de Pacific is een argument te meer voor de propositie dat Europa zichzelf meer zou moeten zien als een op zich levensvatbare eenheid, als een groter en meer Europees Europa. De geopolitieke verschuiving in de aan- dacht van de VS zou moeten leiden tot een betere politieke en militaire coördinatie in West-Europa. Dit pro- cees van losmaking tot een nieuwe verhouding met Oost-Europa kunnen scheppen, waardoor een gro- gere Europees entiteit kan ontstaan. Een Europa dat verdeeld blijft, zou ondergeschikt blijken aan een van de twee grote machten.”

LC

E.24.1

In arms control, the doctrine of mutual assured destruction has achieved a nearly equal standard of being sacrosanct and has led to the ironical situation in which governments that seek to reduce the vulnerability of their populations are accused of destabilizing the situation or conversely in which we are being asked for all eternity to base defence on the capacity of leaving one's own population totally vulnerable to enemy attack, which is at any rate a novel approach to the question of defence.

So the result has been that defence is based less and less on strategic doctrines than on what parliaments are prepared to appropriate. I must say --just to show you that there is no complete unanimity in America-- that I find the recent decision of our Administration to accept 50 MX's totally incomprehensible. I can understand no MX's and I can understand a number of MX's that is geared to a strategic concept. I do not understand why one had to make an agreement, when one already had 40, to accept 50 and therefore become a partner in what I consider an essentially senseless exercise.

I mention that only as an example of the degree to which the need to achieve domestic compromises tends to dominate what might be a more conceptual approach to question of defence. In the field of arms control we are caught in a position that the dogmatists of the left are opposed to any weapon the human mind can conceive. I just think it is statistically improbable that over thirty years we should not have been able to invent one weapon that made some sense. The dogmatists of the right are often opposed to any agreement with the Soviet Union and the pragmatists are increasingly in danger of being driven by what the Soviet Union has said they will accept. I will get back to that.

Let me make a few quick observations about defence because I want to spend the major part of my observations on the détente part of the Harmel declaration.

With respect to defence: I have said it repeatedly and I will say it again to the anguish of traditionalists, the notion of deterrence in its crude form presupposed American strategic superiority. It presupposed an American capacity for a plausible first strike. To the degree that that capacity was diminished and to the degree that the diminution was accelerated by the pressures of our intellectual community, the classic notion of deterrence had to lose credibility. Not because I say so or anybodyelse says so, not because of any bad intentions of any American leader but in the nature of the subject. The credibility will never go to zero and one

the

E.24.2

should not put that in such crude form, but it will become less.

The second problem is that the substitution of extended deterrence, a slow motion nuclear war with discriminating targetting, is also being inhibited by two factors: the enormous increase in Sovjet nuclear forces capable for this kind of action and the systematic reduction or a slowing down of Western forces capable of conducting this sort of war. To the extent that our weapons are designed to inflict primarily civilian or industrial damage, to that precise extent, also extended deterrence will become more difficult. I repeat I am not saying it will be zero, I am saying it will be more difficult. Therefore, conventional forces have to be strengthened and yet we are in a period where our Congress has put a ceiling on defence expenditures for budgetary reasons and European parliaments have their own budgetary constraints.

I have always favoured a larger degree of European autonomy with respect to defence. Not in order to diminish American commitment to the defence of Europe --America's commitment to the defence of Europe is not only enshrined in legal documents but above all in the national interest of the United States-- but in order for Europe to be able to play a more responsible role in its own defence.

And finally, after initial doubts, I have come to the conviction that neither the problem of defence nor the problem of arms control can be settled or can be approached without a significant component of strategic defence. Now it is true, we have put forward so many different versions of the Strategic Defense Initiative that even well disposed people may be confused about what it is we are talking about. Is it the defence of missile sites, the defence against a rogue third country, the defence of European installations, a partial defence of our population or a total defence of our population? I will not attempt to settle that issue now, here. I want to make one fundamental point. I see no intellectual solution to any of the problems that I have discussed that do not include some element of strategic defence. I believe that those who think that we should throw strategic defence in as a bargaining chip or confine it only to research will prevent either a meaningful defence policy or a meaningful arms control policy. I will return to that after I have discussed the political situation.

In terms of East-West relations I believe there have been three major opportunities in which one could have said that there were incentives for the Sovjet Union to reconsider their basic approach to international affairs.

F.11.1

The first was in the 1950s, after the death of Stalin. The second was
in the 1970s, after our opening to China. The third is in the 1980s, at this
moment.

In the 1950s, whatever opportunity existed -- which we will never
know whether it was real or not -- was lost because the leaders of that
period substituted psychological relaxation for substantive geopolitical
negotiations. They were so relieved by a change of tone of the Soviet Union,
that whatever confusion may have existed there, whatever readiness may have
been there to look at things, was never tested, because the Soviets learned
that we would settle for a summit-meeting, and three years later we had a
Berlin-crisis and another period of tension.

In the 1960s, I believe the Soviets were temporarily outstripped by our
opening to China. We then faced the complexity at home of Watergate and a
strange coalition of Liberals who believed that, if Nixon was for
relaxation of tensions, maybe tensions couldn't be all bad, and
Conservatives who were against any agreement and therefore chose the moment
of the maximum weakness of executive authority in the United States to pass
a series of extraordinarily provocative and inhibiting congressional matters.

The third period is, or may be, now, when there is a new Soviet leader
and a majority of the Polit Bureau that is relatively new. It seems to me,
there are several factors that might -- and I'm not saying: will -- cause
the Soviets in certain circumstances to reconsider their policies. One
is the need to change their political system over some period of time, at
least to the extent that they cannot continue to have a leadership-group
that can only be replaced due to its own mortality. Secondly, there is
the need to recast an economy that cannot function on the basis of
central planning. Thirdly, a technological future in which -- even if
they should acquire some of our technology -- they are confronted with the
question how to make technology, especially in the information field,
available to their public, will present huge difficulties. Fourthly, in an
international environment where, if Europe remains united -- which is
a big gift -- and China and Japan continue to be strengthened, their long
term geopolitical future is complex. At the same time, we must recognize
that there are major factors that prevent this reconsideration. One is
the very system, that for an academic might seem to make it
necessary: namely, if they want to redo part of their economy, they may not
want to add international changes to their domestic adjustments. Therefore
the enormous temptation must be, to buy a period of respite by eventually

F.11.2

psychological means, as in the 1950s. Secondly, despite the enthusiastic things said about Mr Gorbachev in much of the Western press, I do not believe it is probable that the Soviet system elects somebody as its General Secretary whom they consider as unorthodox, or that a protégé of Suslov or Andropov was picked for being a closet dove. But I'm open-minded on that. I just say, there is no proof whatsoever. Finally there is the tendency in the West to give the Soviets for nothing what they should be negotiating for. In fact one could argue that the obsession of the West with arms control is one of the elements that makes it very difficult to have a complex negotiation. One, because that is the subject political leaders understand least -- or let's put it in a more kind way: it is the subject in which they are most dependent on their technical experts -- and where the exercise of throwing numbers around has a tendency of giving enormous control to the staffs. Two, it creates a great temptation for the Soviet Union to pursue what I would call "the Andropov-strategy", to pick some weapon-system in the West, to present it as an obstacle to a theoretical progress and thereby to divide the United States and Europe. This was done with the INF 24 years ago. We're in danger of seeing it repeated with SDI today. Indeed, if one looks at Soviet negotiating-tactics with arms control, one can see three phases which we have not been able as yet to break. In the 1960s and early 1970s they asked for parity, because they were numerically behind us. That seemed very sensible. In the middle and late 1970s they asked for equal security, which meant that they were numerically ahead in certain categories and they were asking us for equal cuts in those categories, though we would reach zero, while they would have something left, at any rate, where their advantage would be frozen. Now they are asking for a unilateral gesture, like giving up INF or SDI, which in addition to whatever its military significance, establishes the psychological point that they have a veto over Western deployments or certain kinds of Western deployments. Therefore I believe we face the following dilemma.

Many of the tensions in the world are only marginally related to weapons. Many are caused by political actions of the Soviet Union or by political conflicts of the Super Powers. It is almost prohibited to discuss these, because in every Administration since the late 1960s 'linkage' has become a dirty word. One shows one's progressive attitude by attacking the idea that military and political factors are related. Uncomfortably they are related by reality, not by decisions of policymakers. Whether they are

F 20.1

It seems to me that we are stuck in the categories that were established when weapons had single warheads, were highly inaccurate and were not so very numerous. When there are ten to fifteen thousand strategic warheads on each side and when they exist in the form of multiple warheads, so that there are more warheads than launchers at any point, it is difficult to conceive reductions that make any significant difference to the deterrence problem with which I began.

That does not mean that I would oppose an agreement in which reductions were negotiated. I would warn, however, not to congratulate ourselves that we had achieved something fundamental. Therefore I have great difficulty with the notion that seems to be common more and more widespread, that if at a certain point we were offered a reduction of let us say 30% of launchers or maybe even of warheads if we gave up SDI, and if we then rejected that offer, we would then do irreparable damage to the Western Alliance. And, conversely, I think that it would do nobody a great favour, if we accepted this offer simply to please the domestic politics of our allies. I do not see the advantage. I do not see any significant change in the situation that would be brought about by such an agreement other than the psychological one, which is not totally insignificant, of proving that we can make an agreement after a hiatus of many years.

So, if this were a seminar of academics, trying to determine what kind of arms control agreement would make a difference, an arms control agreement that we could justify intellectually, not politically, what would we recommend? If we are not worried about people who run around with placards, but if we are worried about the analysis of the problem, what would we recommend? I would say that our recommendation should aim at the truth, namely that defence and offence are closely related. There is no magic about defence any more than there is a magic about offence. But there surely also is no magic about the absence of defence. One could propose that multiple warheads should be abolished by both sides, that the numbers of launchers should be sharply reduced and that a defence should be permitted that is in relation to the numbers of launchers, to prevent, at a minimum, surprise attack and attack by rogue third countries. Though I would be perhaps slightly more hospitable to some rudimentary population defence than Zbig, I do not think that this, at this point, is the key-issue. If we were to propose this, I think that we would have an intellectually respectable position.