JUN. 11. '87 14:38 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

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Remarks of Dr. Henry A. Kissinger

Session on Arms Control
1987 Bilderberg Conference
Villa d'Este, Lake Como, Italy

One very brief comment to Conrad Black: Some of us who have opposed the zero option have made our views known since 1981. Whether one does that publically or not is a question that, especially if one has been in office, one must decide-- especially when one is assured that [one's views] will not be implemented.

Now, I have expressed my views on the zero option on Friday, and I will not return to it. I would like to address the question of deterrence, and of the danger that we are sliding, with respect to SDI, into exactly the same position we slid into with respect to the zero option. I would like to point out that what I consider to be the extremely demagogic argument that we were safe before 1979 without INF, so why can't we be safe after 1987 without INF, totally misunderstands the situation before 1979. Let me illustrate it by personal experience.

When I became Security Advisor, I asked for our war plans to see what it might be that I might have to recommend to the President. I looked at them and I was absolutely appalled. I could not believe it. I called in Secretary MacNamara, and I said, "What are these guys holding out on me?" And MacNamara said, "They didn't hold out anything. They gave you everything

JUN. 17 '97 14:39 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

they had. But I never had any intention of carrying it out."
He has said this publically since. Well, I thought this was a
shocking situation, and we then worked to attempt to rectify
it.

By rectify it, I meant to have a military mission that, in
good conscience, one could recommend to a president, other than
the nihilistic objective of destroying mankind. And our
domestic debate has consistently frustrated this in all our
countries. Let me take the example of the MX. Our theory with
the MX, which was developed in the Nixon and Ford
Administrations, was as follows: There were 1500 Soviet
land-based missiles. We thought we needed two warheads for
each. We therefore recommended 250 MX's, which would give us
2500 warheads plus 1500 Minuteman 3's. Take a 20 percent factor
of unreliability, and you would have enough warheads for those
plus a few reserve warheads for radars, and so forth. In other
words, we wanted to have a plausible war-fighting scenario, so
if we said we were going to go to general war, we were not
simply saying we will kill 100 million people. The answer that
this would trigger the Soviets into an attack on us can be
answered by the fact that, so much of our retaliatory force is
at sea and in the air, that this is not a realistic Soviet
option.

Those 250 MX's were reduced by the next administration to
200, by the Reagan Administration, to 100, by the Congress to
48. I defy anybody to explain to me now what the composition of
our strategic forces is supposed to accomplish. I defy anybody

JUN. 17 '97 14:40 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

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here in this room, who speaks so blithely about deterrence
covering all conceivable targets from the United States, what
they would do if they had to walk into the Oval Office and say,
"Mr. President, you've got exactly 1700 accurate warheads, of
which maybe 20 percent are unreliable. What are you going to
hit?" That is the reality, that we have totally failed to mesh
our strategic planning with our deterrence policy. And I warn
against people saying you can cover every conceivable target. I
tried to warn against this in 1979. I fully agree with General
Rogers. If we had done what we wanted to do with the MX's, maybe
we wouldn't have needed the Pershings. But in the conditions
that existed, that was an essential element of deterrence.

Now, let me go to SDI. We are sliding right into the same
position with SDI. We are making a whole series of propositions
to ourselves in order to sell the project to our Congress, to
our publics, and we will find out sooner or later that this also
will not work. Take Soviet air defense. They have something
like 20,000 anti-aircraft missiles. Is it perfect? Certainly
it is not. Is it a huge obstacle to us? Certainly it is a huge
obstacle to us. Has anyone dared to suggest that maybe the best
way to start this process is for the Soviets to abolish their
air defense, give us a free run into their country--mutual
assured destruction is guaranteed. We have no air defense. We
can then cut missile forces. It's a very simple system, much
cheaper than anything that is now being talked about. Everybody
would say this is a preposterous proposition.

JUN. 17 '87 14:41 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

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Now, with respect to SDI, we are asked for perfection, survivability, cost effectiveness, and no testing, and a ten-year moratorium before anything is even started. No moratorium has ever been ended by the United States. We hear all these arguments that a moratorium is only the length of time that it would take us anyway. Let us not kid ourselves. If it takes that time, then let's take that time. I'm not urging that we rush it. SDI could perform the function of complicating Soviet cauculations, of discouraging third-country attacks, of making limited blackmail more difficult, and a number of other factors. It is an astonishing argument that a defense of the United States makes Europe less secure, because the conclusion of that would be that Europe was less secure when we had an atomic monopoly than it is now that we are totally vulnerable. I would like to point out that we are inflicting on ourselves, with respect to a whole realm of technology, a whole set of self-imposed limitations. The Europeans are driving us into making a distinction between research and deployment, which guarantees we will never get to the point of deployment. The Administration is arguing some some Talmudic point about the 1972 treaty. Nobody ever challenges Soviet developments. We have to justify our deployments.

I would suggest if we want to negotiate SDI, do it very simply. Say we are committed to deployment, and research is our own business. We are perfectly willing to negotiate the level of deployment of defenses in relation to the level of deployment of offenses. If you lower your offenses, we will

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lower our defenses, and we are willing to discuss those
principles now. All these complications are going to have us
sit here, five years from now, having given away SDI by our
internal debates, and we will say we have now offered so much
that we cannot now withdraw from our own proposals. We will not
be able to get around the problem that you cannot have a
strategy that you are totally unwilling to implement, that if
you implement it, it will destroy you, and rest the defense of
democratic publics on the mass extermination of civilian
populations; and then, not only deprive yourself of defense, but
also those things that had built-in a certain automaticity in
the response, (which was after all the advantage of the
Pershings, that the Soviets looking at [them] could not be sure
that the military commander might not be authorized to release
them before they were overrun). To give all of this up, and not
build a coherent strategy, to fail to understand that most or
many of the people who are supporting the zero option are also
supporting the no-first use of nuclear weapons, and at the same
time are also saying we can cover everything from the United
States is an intellectual incoherence which will ruin us.

I would urge you, since I'm willing to grant we've come too
far on the zero option, not to do the same thing with SDI, and
not to put ourselves into the position where the Soviets have
both an air defense and a missile defense, and the United States
and its allies insist that their protection is their own
vulnerability, which they will guarantee for all eternity, and
in that context, a 50 percent reduction is not meaningful by
itself.

JUN. 17 '87 14:43 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES. WASH. D.C.

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I would like to join what Lord Carrington said, what Christopher [Bertram] said--if we don't develop a strategic doctrine we can really believe in, if we keep operating by these platitudes about deterrence, we will go from dilemma to dilemma. And if we cannot get an improvement in the situation now, when the Soviets have a new leadership, we are in deep trouble. I would like to quote the President in his 1980 campaign, "If not now, when?"

Verification cannot make a bad agreement good. It can only make a good agreement viable. The Soviet offer of verification of an otherwise undesirable agreement is not a reason to enter into it.