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1 Failure to ratify the treaty or insistence on amendments
2 requiring renegotiation would not cure the defects I have
discussed. It would, on the contrary, magnify all
4 difficulties.

5 The removal of American intermediate-range missiles from
Europe is now irreversible. The process of negotiation and
the fact of a completed agreement, coupled with the
associated briefings has destroyed the public support in
Europe for their deployment. were the Senate to reject the
treaty, European governments would undoubtedly be forced by
public opinion to insist on the removal of American
missiles. The withdrawal of American missiles would thus
become a unilateral act without any quid pro quo.

B, confidence in American leadership would be severely
undermined. Neutralist sentiment in Europe would gain
impetus. The pro-Atlantic element would be further
demoralized. The Soviet strategy of dividing the Atlantic
Alliance would be enhanced.

For all these reasons, the Senate should consent to
ratification.

At the same time, I hope that the Senate would exercise
its constitutional advisory role to the following effect:

Future steps towards arms control should be coupled with
measures to remove the Soviet conventional superiority
overhanging America's allies. It should be made clear that

ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
20 F ST., N.W., WASHINGTON, D.C. 20001 (202) 628-9300

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1 this cannot be accomplished by vague Soviet hints of
2 asymmetrical reductions. At a minimum, the United States
3 must obtain a complete Soviet scheme which lays out what it
4 understands by asymmetry.

5 B, verification procedures which may be adequate for the
6 INF agreement are almost surely insufficient for the next
7 stage. Verification procedures must deal with three issues:
8 one, the magnitude of a violation necessary to threaten the
9 strategic equilibrium; two, American capabilities, national
10 or as created by the agreement, to monitor potential
11 violations; three, potential countermeasures.

12 On-site inspection is not an end in itself. It must be
13 assessed in relation to the above criteria. It must also be
14 kept in mind that verification cannot make a bad agreement
15 good. It can only make a good agreement enforceable.

16 C, some relationship must be established between arms
17 control and Soviet political conduct. Clarity must be
18 obtained about parallel Soviet political conduct, especially
19 as to dispatch of arms and surrogates to regions far from
20 Soviet territory, such as Angola and Nicaragua.

21 D, the strengthening of Atlantic unity must be the
22 highest priority. It requires attention to four components:
23 a common strategy for the decade of the nineties and the next
24 century which includes a relationship between conventional
25 and nuclear weapons and between so-called tactical and

strategic forces; two, a common Atlantic diplomacy toward the
East, at least with respect to arms control; three, agreement
on burden-sharing; four, coordination of actions outside the
NATO area, or at a minimum, a mechanism to deal with
disagreements.

Mr. Chairman, the longer statement which I will send over
later today or first thing in the morning deals with these
issues in greater detail, and I am sorry for my
misunderstanding of what I was supposed to deal with here and
that it prevented me from completing it earlier.

Thank you very much for this opportunity.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Kissinger follows:]

[COMMITTEE INSERT]

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The Chairman: Thank you very much, indeed, for being with us.

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As I have said, we look forward to your fuller statement which will be made part of the record.

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I think your being with us is really part of the process of arriving at a sensible conclusion, and if you had not testified or expressed an opinion on it, I think we would all have been very disappointed.

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You said, I believe, in Newsweek once that the zero option proposal is an example of American leaders abandoning the European leaders who stake their political positions on American proposals for the nuclear defense of Europe.

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Would that be correct?

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Dr. Kissinger: That the zero option proposal -- would you repeat that sentence again?

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The Chairman: Certainly. I was just distracted by the lights.

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You said that the U.S. zero option proposal is an example of American leaders abandoning European leaders who stake their political positions --

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Dr. Kissinger: Correct. Yes, I have stated that.

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The Chairman: I wonder if you would enlarge on that.

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Dr. Kissinger: I have stated that.

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The Chairman: But since all the European leaders, or most of them, are supporting this treaty, I am wondering how

10

that jibes with your thought that they feel abandoned.

Dr. Kissinger: Well, I think that the evolution of the
deployment of American intermediate-range weapons in Europe
shows the degree to which domestic considerations have tended
to influence political thinking in the Atlantic Alliance and
have gradually created a situation where, in my view, many of
these leaders have maneuvered themselves into a position in
which they now feel they have no choice except to stand by
proposals they never thought would be accepted.

Originally the idea of placing intermediate-range weapons
in Europe was based on the desire to counteract a large
deployment of Soviet SS-20 missiles. That was probably a
conceptual mistake to begin with because the American
intermediate-range weapons were not, strictly speaking, an
answer to the SS-20s. They were never aimed at the SS-2s0.

The reason, if one had thought the thing through, as it
was not really probably done on both sides of the Atlantic,
one would have come to the conclusion that American
intermediate-range missiles in Europe were needed, if at all,
in order to compensate for the declining credibility of the
American general nuclear deterrent in an age of growing
Soviet nuclear forces and multiple warheads. And the
deployment of these intermediate-range missiles in Europe had
the operational consequence that the Soviet Union could not
attack Europe even with conventional forces without running

[LC]

11

the risk that these intermediate-range missiles would be used
because they probably could not imagine that we would permit
them to be overrun without using them. And they could not
attack those missiles without also attacking the American
strategic forces, because otherwise they might have suffered
an unacceptable level of damage just from European-based
weapons.

In other words, the nuclear defense of Europe and the
United States was coupled.

Many European leaders who may not have thought this thing
through in all that detail nevertheless favored the
deployment of American missiles because it gave them the
sense that in some way or other, even if they could not
specify it, it tied our defense, our nuclear defense options
to theirs.

In order to overcome the enormously violent
demonstrations which were unleashed by pacifist, neutralist
and pro-Soviet groups against these missiles, they felt the
obligation to imply that they were there for arms control
purposes and would be subject to negotiation. This was the
origin of the zero option which I have opposed ever since it
was put forward in 1981 for the reason that I -- not that it
would not work, but I was afraid that sooner or later it
might work.

Now, these European leaders have staked a great deal of

[L]

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1 domestic capital and most of them are those leaders who have
2 been associated with pro-American positions all along. They
3 now face a domestic situation in which the opponents of the
4 original deployment feel justified by the evolution of
5 events, and their own supporters are dubious.

6 Now, they do not want to be in a position of attacking
7 the United States and thereby undermining the credibility
8 even further, and if one adds to it, if one has to make a
9 distinction here between the Federal Republic and the
10 nuclear-armed states, specifically Great Britain and France,
11 my analysis of Great Britain and France is that they were so
12 shaken by the Reykjavik potential agreement that they would
13 rather see America remove its nuclear weapons than have us go
14 after their own, which they were afraid we might do at
15 Reykjavik.

16 And the Germans, it is the pro-Atlantic group that has
17 the most serious doubts and is also in the most difficult
18 position to make them explicit. Nobody can ask to have the
19 United States keep weapons in Europe that America has
20 declared dispensable. This is the problem. And at this
21 point it is also no longer possible, so I am not arguing for
22 reversing the decision.

23 The Chairman: Thank you.

24 Dr. Kissinger: Sorry to have given such an extended
25 answer.

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The Chairman: In that regard, and with regard to ratification of the INF treaty, which is what is before us, that rather narrow question, as I understand your testimony, you are not overly enthused about the treaty, but now that it has been signed, your view is it should be ratified, is that correct?

Dr. Kissinger: That is correct.

The Chairman: Right.

Now, do you believe it should be ratified without any Category 1, 2, or 3, any amendments, reservations, and retained in a pristine state, or do you think it should --

Dr. Kissinger: I think it should be ratified without any amendments that require renegotiation. I would welcome or I would at least examine on their merits an expression of the Senate's view with respect to subsequent steps that might be taken in negotiations to avoid a situation in which a fait accompli comes before the Senate in a way that produces the sort of discussion we are having today.

The Chairman: In other words, you would recommend its ratification without what we would call Category 3 amendments.

Dr. Kissinger: I hate to admit it, Mr. Chairman. I do not know these terms. Without --

The Chairman: In the SALT treaty that you negotiated, I think they used the words Categories 1, 2, and 3 for the old declarations, reservations and amendments. And so I guess

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what we are talking about here would be an amendment.

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Dr. Kissinger: I would not favor reservations that would require renegotiation. I would not object to the principle of the Senate expressing its views. Or course, I might disagree with the views the Senate expresses, but I would not object to the procedure.

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The Chairman: Thank you.

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Now, on another subject a little bit, last week a question arose during Dr. Rostow's testimony as to your views on the ABM treaty interpretation question. Ambassador Smith testified to our committee some months ago that the delegation was instructed to gain Soviet approval to the traditional narrow interpretation. Ambassador Smith indicated you assured him the delegation "carried out its orders," and that you said he could testify to that effect.

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Now, does that mean that you support the narrow or the broad interpretation?

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Dr. Kissinger: Frankly, I have attempted to avoid getting into this question because the only way I could answer it responsibly is to review the whole record.

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My recollection, unsupported by examining the record, was that we attempted to get the narrow interpretation and could not get Soviet acceptance, but let me state my view with respect to the contemporary, current situation.

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I favor an American SDI program. I believe this SDI

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program should be defined in a more precise manner than it
has been and related to an overall strategy, but I favor the
principle of an SDI program. I believe that that issue
cannot be settled by reinterpreting a treaty that was
negotiated 15 years ago.

I believe that the better course would be for the
administration to state what it intends to do, notify the
Soviets of what it intends to do, and see how they react to
it in terms of the treaty, and either adapt the treaty that
exists and see whether the Soviets would abrogate it.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

My time has expired.

The Ranking Minority Member, Senator Helms.

Senator Helms: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Well, it is good to see you again, Dr. Kissinger.

Dr. Kissinger: Nice to see you.

Senator Helms: I appreciate your making available in
advance a copy of your statement. I read it with great
interest. It sounded to me like you were saying for a fat
lady, this treaty does not sweat much.

[Laughter.]

Senator Helms: Let me go over a few points just to
emphasize the record.

You stated that you have grave reservations about the
proposed treaty.

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Dr. Kissinger: Correct.

Senator Helms: And those reservations that you have stated include, among others, the following: The agreement does not reduce in any significant degree the Soviet capacity to devastate Europe with nuclear weapons, is that right?

Senator Helms: And you say that the Soviet ICBMs and the SLBMs and airplanes can carry out the missions assigned to the SS-20s and the shorter-range weapons.

Dr. Kissinger: Correct.

Senator Helms: And you say that the warheads on the missiles will remain in being. That is to say, they will not be destroyed.

Dr. Kissinger: Correct.

Senator Helms: And I would point out parenthetically that for a great while during the euphoria about this treaty, the President and the Vice President and the Secretary of State all were saying that the warheads would be destroyed.

You said in your statement that the U.S. capacity to retaliate against Soviet aggression with nuclear weapons based in Europe is substantially reduced It not eliminated.

Dr. Kissinger: That is my view.

Senator Helms: Mine, too.

Dr. Kissinger: I mean, there are people who argue that there are dual-purpose weapons, but I have my doubts about

[L]

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that.

Senator Helms: So do I.

And you said that the fact that the U.S. strategic forces
are far away creates what you called a psychological and
political imbalance which is magnified by the Soviet presence
of superiority in conventional forces.

Dr. Kissinger: Correct. If NATO were one nation, then
the location of the strategic forces would be of purely
technical significance. And that is the situation in the
Soviet Union.

The place of origin of Soviet nuclear weapons aimed at
Europe is not a major matter. The place of origin of nuclear
weapons in the defense of Europe is a very important matter
because it affects, if these weapons are in a different
nation and out of any control of the countries concerned or
out of any situation in which they would become more or less
automatically operationally involved, it creates a
psychological imbalance.

Senator Helms: Now, you say that the INF agreement
removes from West Germany only those missiles which can
retaliate against the Soviet Union and leaves only those
short-range missiles which would explode on German territory
and kill the German population, right?

Dr. Kissinger: That is creating the problem with respect
to modernization in the Federal Republic, correct.

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Senator Helms: And you said in your statement that this
will have a permanent impact upon West German politics,
creating pressures for the total denuclearization of West
Germany.

Dr. Kissinger: Correct.

Senator Helms: And finally, according to my notes, you
say that this political situation would create a "strain
within the Alliance."

Dr. Kissinger: It is a strange kind of strain because
nobody is prepared to make it explicit at this point.

Senator Helms: Correct. It certainly would create a
strain within the Alliance.

Is not West Germany, to be blunt about it, the key to
NATO's stability?

Dr. Kissinger: It has been so conceived in the whole
post-War period.

Senator Helms: And would not the denuclearization of
West Germany permanently cripple the effectiveness of NATO?

Dr. Kissinger: Well, the denuclearization of the Federal
Republic would almost inevitably lead to a kind of neutralism
which is the modern word for nationalism in Germany because
the denuclearization of Germany makes sense only if it is
coupled with a no-first-use doctrine, which then establishes
the principle that NATO would prefer to be defeated with
conventional weapons rather than use nuclear weapons, which

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would also create a situation in which the Federal Republic
would not permit the use, either the stationing or the use of
weapons on its territory, the risk of which it shifts to
other countries, and it would create a strain that may not be
visible at first but that in the long term would prove
disintegrating of the Atlantic Alliance.

I am not saying that this has all happened yet. I am
saying the trends are there.

Senator Helms: And I agree.

What you see here, Dr. Kissinger, is an example of the
importance of arms control negotiations, and I believe you
made all these points to the people in high places perhaps
prior to the signing of the treaty. I do not know about the
timing of your discussions with various people.

Now, these negotiations have brought us together.
Sometimes we agree and sometimes we do not. We always agree
to disagree agreeably.

Dr. Kissinger: Correct.

Senator Helms: And it is always a pleasure to see you.

We agree on the defects in the treaty, and furthermore,
as I read your statement and listened to you, I did not hear
you ascribe any merits to it, so we have a lot in common.

However, you go on to say, and you repeated it a time or
two in response to Chairman Pell's questions, that failure to
ratify the treaty would not cure its defects, and I think we

[L.C.]

20

1. can agree on that.

2. But let's turn it around. Would ratification of the

3. treaty cure the defects?

4. Dr. Kissinger: No, ratification of the treaty will not

5. cure its defects, but it will create a basis from which we

6. can then deal with the challenges that

7. the treaty has presented to the Atlantic Alliance and to

8. remedy some of the difficulties that it has caused.

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Senator Helms: Or to put it another way, now that we are
two or three months enclente, you cannot declare virginity
any more.

But I take it that the major reasons you oppose the
merits of the Treaty, but support ratification, is what you
said, that the removal of the Pershing II's is now
irreversible?

Dr. Kissinger: I believe we would find that if a
minority of the Senate, more than a third but less than a
majority, which would happen in the case of non-ratification,
refused to ratify the Treaty, that the European governments
would ask us to withdraw them anyway.

Senator Helms: Without any quid pro quo?

Dr. Kissinger: Without any quid pro quo.

Senator Helms: And I suppose you mean we would take our
missiles out because of political pressure in Western Europe,
but that the Soviets would keep their missiles?

Dr. Kissinger: Well, I do not think they need the
SS-20's any more.

Senator Helms: Well, they have got the SS-25's.

Dr. Kissinger: Well, the SS-25's they will keep in any
event.

Senator Helms: That is correct, because they are not
covered by the Treaty.

Dr. Kissinger: Therefore, their capability to threaten

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Europe -- this is why I said I think their capability to
threaten Europe is essentially unimpaired.

Senator Helms: I appreciate your candor. You have
always been that way.

Now, I know you are aware, Dr. Kissinger, of the many
reports in the media and before this Committee by previous
witnesses concerning the controversy within the intelligence
community about the number of SS-20's which the Soviets have
produced and deployed.

But specifically, are you aware that the majority of our
intelligence agencies believe the number of SS-20's produced
to be far in excess of the number declared in the memorandum
of understanding of last December? There is a reported wide
range of estimates, but a common agreement, except for the
State Department and the CIA, that the Soviets have at least,
at least, 300 more SS-20's than declared in the MOU. You are
aware of that, are you not?

Dr. Kissinger: I am aware that some elements of our
intelligence community hold this view, but I am not aware
that it is a majority. I simply know the views. I am not
aware that it is a majority.

Senator Helms: Well, I can assure you that it is a
majority.

Mr. Chairman, I see that my time is almost up, so I will
not begin another question on this round. Thank you very

[L.C.]

23

1 much.

2 The Chairman: Thank you very much, Senator Helms.

3 Senator Sarbanes.

4 Senator Sarbanes: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

5 Dr. Kissinger, I listened with interest to the misgivings
6 and concerns you expressed about the Treaty in response to
7 the line of questioning that was just pursued and in fact
8 that are set out in your statement.

9 But let me ask you this question, which you have
10 addressed to some extent. Suppose I took your misgivings at
11 full value and that led me to conclude that the Treaty should
12 not be ratified. What would be the consequences of not
13 ratifying the Treaty?

14 Dr. Kissinger: But I am not asking you to come to that
15 conclusion. In fact, I am recommending against it. I think
16 that non-ratification of the Treaty would not cure the doubt
17 that has developed in the minds of those in Europe who
18 originally supported the INF deployment. It would strengthen
19 the argument of neutralists and other opponents of American
20 policy.

21 It would further demoralize the political situation and
22 raise serious doubts about the American ability to conduct a
23 consistent foreign policy. And for that reason, while I wish
24 we had pursued another line, such as for example the "walk in
25 the woods" agreement that Mr. Nitze made, I now favor, for

24

1 the reasons I gave -- that is, I do not recommend that you
2 come to the conclusion which you indicated.

3 Senator Sarbanes: Were you supportive of the walk in the
4 woods approach at the time that it surfaced?

5 Dr. Kissinger: Well, it never came to a point in which I
6 was asked to be either supportive or unsupportive. My
7 general view would have been, if I had been asked, which I
8 was not, my general view would have been that I am against
9 reducing anything to zero in Europe, that I would have
10 favored a 50 percent reduction of Pershings and GLCM's.

11 The only criticism I would have had of the walk in the
12 woods had I been asked of it is the total elimination of the
13 Pershings. But I would have had no problem, I believe, with
14 the principle of it.

15 Senator Sarbanes: And you did not indicate a position at
16 the time?

17 Dr. Kissinger: I do not remember that I did, no.

18 Senator Sarbanes: Coming back to the previous question
19 on the consequences, you said that ratifying the Treaty could
20 prove disintegrative of the Atlantic alliance.

21 Dr. Kissinger: Correct.

22 Senator Sarbanes: What would be the impact of not
23 ratifying the Treaty on that very point?

24 Dr. Kissinger: What would be the impact of not ratifying
25 the Treaty?

[L]

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Senator Sarbanes: You earlier said that ratifying the Treaty could then prove disintegrating of the Atlantic alliance.

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Dr. Kissinger: No. If I said that, I misspoke. I said not ratifying the Treaty would be disintegrative of the Atlantic alliance.

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I think negotiating the Treaty has created certain strains in the alliance that are serious, even though they are not very explicit. I do not believe they can be cured by non-ratification.

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And I think non-ratification would be truly disintegrative of the Atlantic alliance today, not ratification. It is not the ratification.

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Senator Sarbanes: Is it likely in your view that failure to ratify the Treaty would result in a situation in which the INF weapons of the West would come out in any event and the Soviets would be able to retain theirs?

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Dr. Kissinger: Correct.

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Senator Sarbanes: So that you would end up in a situation where they had theirs, but we did not have ours; would that be the case?

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Dr. Kissinger: One of two things would happen: either that -- it would be entirely up to the Soviets. Either that would happen or the Soviets would make a big demonstrative gesture and remove their SS-20's without inspection and get

LC

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1 the credit for having made a sacrifice for peace while the
2 United States has gone the opposite way.

3 So whatever happened, it would not be favorable to us.

4 Senator Sarbanes: Well, either of those developments I
take it you would regard as more negative for western
6 interests than the problems you see connected with ratifying
7 the Treaty, is that correct?

8 Dr. Kissinger: Correct.

9 Senator Sarbanes: To what extent does your concern about
10 the Treaty relate to a broader concern about what the west's
11 overall strategic doctrine is, particularly in the wake of
12 Reykjavik?

13 Dr. Kissinger: My basic concern is related to the
14 overall strategic doctrine and to a certain inconsistency
15 between declaratory policy and action policy. And it is
16 accentuated by the events at and since Reykjavik.

17 Senator Sarbanes: What do you see the essence of that
18 problem as being?

19 Dr. Kissinger: Well, I think the essence of the NATO
20 problem has several components. One is that since the early
21 days of NATO there has been a very heavy reliance on nuclear
22 weapons.

23 In fact, it started with the doctrine of massive
24 retaliation, which exclusively relied on nuclear weapons.
25 Nevertheless, there was a demand for the stationing of

[LC]

27

substantial American forces on the continent, even though in
terms of the military doctrine that was being pursued they
were not particularly necessary.

The reason they were there was as a kind of tripwire, to
guarantee that the United States would have no choice except
to engage itself, since the European allies had enough
experience from their own practice of allies left in the
lurch that they did not want to put us into that position.
So therefore there has always been a gap between the
conventional deployment in Europe and the doctrine which was
underlying it.

Now, in the fifties, up to the middle sixties, this was
not a huge difficulty because the United States had a vast
nuclear, first an atomic monopoly, then a vast nuclear
superiority.

But as the Soviet capacity in nuclear weapons increased,
the credibility of American -- of the United States risking
general nuclear war in the defense of Europe was inevitably
going to decline, not because American leaders are
unreliable, but because nobody should choose suicide as the
only form of military strategy.

But NATO has never been prepared to bite that bullet.
And to me, the intermediate range missiles in Europe had the
principal consequence of establishing a link between the
ground defense of Europe and the nuclear defense of Europe.

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dispensable; from a psychological point of view, less so.

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Now, their removal requires that the NATO doctrine be
clarified and that we come to some understanding of what we
are trying to accomplish, because otherwise we will repeat
exactly the same argument with the short range nuclear
weapons that went on originally with the intermediate range
nuclear weapons.

And too much of the debate now is in terms of who wants
to shift what risks to what side of the Atlantic. This is
the fundamental problem.

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Senator Sarbanes: Well now, the President this morning
said that an attack on Munich would be an attack on Chicago.
Are you telling the Europeans they ought not to believe
that?

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Dr. Kissinger: I am telling the Europeans that I have
every confidence in Ronald Reagan meaning this seriously.
But the defense of Europe is a long term project, and it does
not follow that the defense of Munich must be pursued with a
strategy that guarantees a universal cataclysm.

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I welcome the statement. I think we should make clear
that the destiny of Europe and the destiny of America are
indissoluble. But that is the beginning of wisdom, not the
end of it.

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Senator Sarbanes: Well now, you have recommended in the past that, if the Europeans do not spend more on defense, that we should take our troops out or take a significant number of our troops out.

Dr. Kissinger: What I recommended was as follows. I said I would prefer a larger conventional defense of Europe, but if we are going to be suspended between forces that are too large for a tripwire and too small for a conventional defense, then we should do one of two things: We should either get the approval of the Europeans that part of the forces in Europe can be used for third area conflicts, in which we are not then trapped into keeping them in Europe, as we were forced to in the '73 crisis, where we had to fly all around Europe to resupply an ally, or else in which two of the five divisions be returned to America as strategic reserves.

But this was in the absence of the nuclear redeployment we are now undertaking under the INF agreement. I think under present circumstances, if we follow the INF redeployment with a redeployment of American conventional forces, the crisis of confidence in Europe would become unmanageable.

Senator Sarbanes: Would not the decoupling effect of taking that move with respect to troops in fact be greater than any decoupling effect you are concerned about with

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respect to the INF Treaty?

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Dr. Kissinger: If you took out all troops, this certainly would be true. But I am not here recommending that we take out any conventional forces. I think the decision we have taken with respect to nuclear forces makes it in my view politically impossible to withdraw any conventional forces.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Senator Sarbanes.

Senator Lugar.

Senator Lugar: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Kissinger, you have argued, and I think persuasively, that we ought to ratify the Treaty. But you have offered, as you say, a number of reservations. I wonder if the situation of the Treaty negotiation, which you have not been enthusiastic about, were not inevitable, given the whole course of events from the time of the 1979 NATO political decision, the two-track method.

And the Soviets did not follow the first track, namely removing the SS-20's, and therefore the credibility of NATO relied upon the Pershing II's and cruise missiles going into Europe in 1983. And I think the strains that you suggest with regard to NATO were probably there prior to '83.

I suppose one could argue, as you have in other fora, that there have been strains really throughout.

Dr. Kissinger: Strains in the alliance are not new. They have existed for a long period, and partly because of

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1 the inconsistencies that I have mentioned in reply to Senator Sarbanes.

3 I believe in retrospect, although I did not, in fairness, think so inevitably in '79 -- I started thinking so starting about '81 -- I think the dual track decision was a mistake.
5 I think the intermediate range missiles should have been put
6 there on their merits and been coupled with both conventional
7 and nuclear disarmament or arms control in Europe.
8

9 But you are quite right, what happened was an inevitable
10 result of proposals, which in my view were probably made
11 largely for domestic considerations. It was easier to tell
12 one's public that one was prepared to withdraw all these
13 weapons, especially as one never believes the Soviets would
14 accept such a proposal.

15 Senator Lugar: I think that is an important statement.
16 I think we have tried to make the point that what is done is
done; we ought to ratify and use this as a basis for other
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19 But I simply raise the point to gain the answer you have
20 given: Even if in 1979 the two-track decision was a mistake,
it occurred.
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22 Dr. Kissinger: I think we are sliding dangerously into
23 the following situation. Originally, when NATO was
24 originally formed, weapons decisions were made on the basis
25 of security considerations. Then later on, arms control

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In the late seventies, it developed that the Soviets began to assert a right to comment and intervene in unilateral NATO weapons decisions. And even though the SS-20's had already been deployed without any question by the West, NATO felt obliged to adopt a double track decision, which meant that they would first negotiate with the Soviets, which delayed the deployment by four years to begin with.

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And it then created the premise that these two weapons were equivalent, which they are not, and led almost inevitably logically to the zero option. And we now see it is happening with respect to short-range weapons which nobody ever conceived were the subject of prior approval by the Warsaw Pact, whether we could modernize weapons that were already in Germany, that had been put into Germany without the slightest opposition by anybody.

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And gradually, the Soviets may be getting a veto over our deployments through these domestic processes in the West, not just in the United States.

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Senator Lugar: Well, even if one were to agree that the 1979 decision was a mistake, is it not also true that it would have been difficult to gain that degree of accord in

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1 NATO In 1979?

2 Dr. Kissinger: That is true, that is absolutely true.

3 Senator Lugar: Without the two-track.

4 Dr. Kissinger: I do not know what I would have done had I been in government at the time.

5 Senator Lugar: This was one of the strains of NATO at the time.

6 Dr. Kissinger: I am speaking as an outsider and as an analyst.

7 Senator Lugar: But in any event, that occurred. Then in '83 we faced very great problems, which you will recall. You were back and forth to Germany. Many of us were.

8 Dr. Kissinger: I think that the Administration and the German Chancellor showed tremendous courage and deserve a lot of credit for persevering in their course.

9 Senator Lugar: But as we learned firsthand again last week with the visit of Chancellor Kohl and the public toast that Secretary Shultz gave to him, he congratulated the Chancellor for remaining steadfast.

10 But there was the implication that we would engage once again in the INF Treaty proposition, that a part of the quid pro quo for this degree of stalwart support by Chancellor Kohl and others was that the Soviet Union and the United States, at least on our part, we would engage the Soviets in the INF Treaty, which we have done and have followed through

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to fulfillment.

I mention this because it seems to me that it is so
important to grasp the significance of your conclusion as to
what now as we review the difficulties.

Dr. Kissinger: I am very uneasy with what I see
happening. First of all, I think three years ago Chancellor
Kohl would have agreed to modernization of the Lances. It
would not have been any domestic issue at all. It would have
happened.

In fact, they agreed to it and many people were not even
aware that that decision had been taken. Now, I noticed in
some testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee,
one of the German witnesses who is pro the modernization
nevertheless felt that it had to be tied into an arms control
package that was geared to the removal of some of the nuclear
weapons, plus some other considerations.

And before we know it, we are going to have slid down the
road again where the principle of zero in the short range
field is accepted for some undefined quld pro quo, and then
we are well under way to the denuclearization of Germany,
which I think is a disaster for the West.

I would urge the greatest care at this time in going down
that road.

Senator Lugar: I would agree.

Let me just ask this question. With regard to our

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1. European allies, we have made speculative judgments about their politics, how they will react to this. What is your own judgment about the willingness of Europeans to defend themselves at this point?

5. Dr. Kissinger: I think one of the good results or potentially good results of Reykjavik and the INF agreement, neither of which I would have recommended if somebody would have asked me ahead of time, one of the good results is that the defense-oriented Europeans are now more willing to think, to consider a common European defense effort, and to push European unity into the field of defense.

12. I think the challenge to the United States is to be receptive to this effort. The United States has so far favored the economic unity, but has been less willing to support defense unity, out of fear that this might be disruptive of the Atlantic alliance.

17. In my view, European economic unity is likely to be inherently competitive with the United States. In defense, I cannot conceive of an eastern threat to Europe in which Europe would not be better off with American support than without American support. So it is likely to bring us together.

23. And I hope, and I have no reason to doubt that this is the view, I hope that the United States supports efforts to strengthen the U.S.-European union and efforts by France and

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Britain to coordinate their nuclear efforts. This would be
some way to restore balance to the Atlantic relationship.

Senator Lugar: Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Senator Cranston.

Senator Cranston: Thank you.

We welcome you once again, Dr. Kissinger, and we are
delighted to have you here.

Dr. Kissinger: Thank you.

Senator Cranston: You think that the INF Treaty would
make any significant difference in the long term, absent
interim restraint and limits ultimately on strategic
weapons? So would it be advisable for us to promote interim
restraint pending agreement on the START Treaty?

Dr. Kissinger: Interim restraint on American strategic
programs?

Senator Cranston: On American and Soviet both.

Dr. Kissinger: Strategic programs? I must say, Senator,
that I have not thought about this, and I do not know what
specific programs would be involved.

I personally favor single warhead mobile missiles, and I
would hate to see the United States give those up. They do
not add to the instability of the situation. In fact, they
would contribute to the stability of the situation. So I
would be reluctant to give up that option.

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Senator Cranston: In the early 1970's, when the two superpowers either had roughly the same strategic power or were moving toward parity, the United States was seeking reductions in its strategic arms without requiring that NATO redress the conventional disparities which existed then. You advanced that policy at that time, and that was supported by our NATO allies.

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Recently you wrote that: "In the future, reduction of

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strategic forces must be synchronized with a substantial reduction of conventional forces." So what I want to ask you is, what has happened to change your view? Has the conventional situation deteriorated so much from that point of view in the 1980's that a fundamental shift in U.S. and NATO arms policies is needed and linkage is now necessary?

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Dr. Kissinger: In the early seventies we were not actually negotiating any significant reductions. We were negotiating ceilings on forces. SALT I established the ceiling approximately where it was in the unilateral programs of the two sides, and there were no significant reductions envisaged at the time.

Moreover, in the early 1970s we had multiple warheads and they did not yet.

In the current situation, I believe we face the problem that it is becoming harder and harder to visualize what a security advisor or Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would tell a President the objective of a strategic nuclear war initiated from the United States would be in response to a conventional attack, and therefore, I believe that we are heading into a situation in which the overhang of the Soviet conventional forces on the territories adjoining them is becoming a more serious problem than it was in the early seventies.

In 1973, at the time of the Middle East war, there was an increase in the readiness of our nuclear forces. At that time we had, I forget, we still had a very vast superiority in warheads over the Soviet Union. In the early nineties this would not necessarily not only not be the case, but our land-based forces would probably be vulnerable to a Soviet nuclear attack and without a reciprocal ability to hold

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1 theirs hostage.

2 So I believe that we now need to address the conventional

3 imbalance in a way.

4 Now, in my statement to the committee, I said that at a
5 minimum before we proceed, we have to know what the Soviets
6 understand by the asymmetrical reductions they are
7 proposing. I am not saying the negotiation has to be
8 completed. I am saying we have to get a conceptual
9 understanding of what it is they understand by asymmetrical
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11 summit, I asked one or two of them, and they said we have to
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Well, this will continue the process in which our ability
to respond from Europe is being eliminated. And that would
worry me greatly. I would like to know what it is they have
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Senator Cranston: Well, interim restraint on strategic
weapons might help because without it the Soviets can build
many more SS-25s, they can retarget some of them or target
some of them on Europe, defeating the purpose of the INF
treaty, and that presumably would not be delightful from the
point of view of the NATO alliance.

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Senator Cranston: So some type of strategic ceilings
could contribute --

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Dr. Kissinger: I would have to know what it is that is supposed to be restrained before I could make a judgment on it.

Senator Cranston: Yes, of course you would.

One question, if we did seek to link conventional progress to fulfillment of a START treaty, that could cause a long delay in getting to it with START. Gorbachev, as you know, has made some interesting statements about a desire to redress the imbalance and to make asymmetrical adjustments in Europe in conventional forces.

Do you have any suggestions as to how, with some reasonable dispatch and swiftness, we can come to grips with that and explore and find out how serious those statements really are?

Dr. Kissinger: Well, of course, I have been working, i was working when I was an academician on arms control since its beginning. But I think you will agree, both students of arms control will agree that studies that have been made have concerned almost exclusively nuclear matters, and that the conventional issue has not been addressed with equal seriousness.

I have only, speaking for myself, I have only myself started thinking about it recently, and I received some briefings, for which I hold no brief, but which I found rather impressive, which suggested that the imbalance in

42

Europe is such that reductions of less than five to one in
our favor in the conventional forces would actually make the
situation worse. I have not made these studies myself, but
they were done by serious people.

Now, even if one negotiated specific reductions, one
would have a massive problem of verification, and one would
have to determine what is one talking about? Do these forces
have to be disbanded, do they have to be moved to another
part of Soviet and Western territory? Any force that is
demobilized, that is, reduced in Germany or in Europe would
probably have to be done away with. I mean, there is no
place you can put them in Germany or the low countries that
would provide an adequate buffer.

So these are very serious questions, and this is why in
my statement I said that if we could agree as to a concept
without yet having negotiated it that gives us an idea of
what such a balance would look like, one could proceed with
START, which is different from what I wrote in my article.

Senator Cranston: You are talking of concept and not a
concrete negotiated agreement.

Dr. Kissinger: Yes, but I would like -- but what can one
do? I would ask the Soviets to table a proposal of what they
mean by conventional arms control. Where are their units
going to be, who does away with what? And if we hear that we
have to take all our strike aircraft out of Europe in return

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1 for X number of tanks, then we have a problem that we are
dealing here with an attempt to neutralize Europe rather than
3 to establish a balance.

4 I would like to know how they conceive it. Then we can
5 have a debate.

6 We do not have to -- every detail -- I mean, to negotiate
7 the details will take a long time.

8 Senator Cranston: Thank you very much.

9 The Chairman: Thank you very much.

10 Senator Kassebaum.

11 Senator Kassebaum: Mr. Chairman, I came in late. Let me
yield to Senator Evans because he has been here. Senator
12
Boschwitz came in late, too.
13

[Laughter.]

15 Senator Kassebaum: But do not forget me. Come back.

16 The Chairman: Senator Evans.

17 Senator Evans: Are you speaking for Senator boschwitz?

18 Senator Kassebaum: Yes, I was. I was afraid he would
jump in.

20 Senator Evans: I thank you, Senator Kassebaum and Mr.
Chairman.

21 Senator Boschwitz: What about me?

22 Senator Evans: Yes, of course. I always defer to my
colleague.

25 You talk in your statement about some relationship must

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be established between arms control and Soviet political conduct. Clarity must be obtained about parallel Soviet political conduct, especially the dispatch of arms and surrogates to regions as far from Soviet territory such as Angola and Nicaragua. That is at the bottom of page 2.

Dr. Kissinger: Yes.

Senator Evans: Could you elaborate on what you mean by some relationship and be more specific as to what you think that relationship ought to be in terms of future steps in arms control, or any relationship that ought to be attached to the INF treaty itself.

Dr. Kissinger: Now, let me make an observation that may be uncharacteristically humble, and you may not hear many of them in the course of the testimony.

When you are an outsider commenting on these things, you are not in a position to give detailed answers to all of these questions. I will give you an answer, but if you do not like my answer, that does not mean that if the President and the Secretary of State give an instruction to come up with an answer to this question, that 15,000 people in the State Department and 20,000 people in the Defense Department might not come up with a better answer than I can come up with by myself. I offer that as a theoretical possibility.

[Laughter.]

Senator Evans: That did not sound very humble.

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Dr. Kissinger: No.

[Laughter.]

Dr. Kissinger: The problem seems to me to be this.

Historically we face in the Soviet Union a country that has, both under tsars and commissars, has constantly expanded. It is impossible to find a 50 year period of history in which it has not expanded in some direction. And if you get a historical atlas and compare the Soviet empire or Russian empire at the end of -- starting with 1603 when the Romanovs came in, you can find this expansion.

So how to establish an equilibrium between a country that is eleven times out and its neighbors is an inherently difficult problem and is at the heart of security issues.

Now, I am not insisting that one begins with its neighbors, and I know that many people say, and correctly, that Russia and the Soviet Union have often been invaded; and therefore they have a peculiar sensitivity on the issue of security. But Angola and Nicaragua are about as far away from the Soviet Union as you can get in this world, and it is my understanding, I am told by governmental people whom you have a better opportunity to question than I, that a billion dollars worth of arms was sent to Angola last year, less Russian military personnel, and $600 million of arms were sent to Nicaragua.

I hold no brief for these figures, but they have been

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1 told to me by authoritative people whom I believe.

2 Now, this cannot be reconciled with any normal defensive
3 objective of the Soviet Union. And so it can only be
4 reconciled with an attempt to undermine any equilibrium or to
5 preserve any position that they have achieve once they have
6 achieved it by whatever method.

7 I consider the sending of Soviet arms to Nicaragua an
8 unfriendly act. It serves no conceivable Soviet security
9 interest other than weakening the American position in
10 Central America and in the Western Hemisphere. Angola is
11 more complex, but it is also far from any normal Soviet area
12 of strategic concern.

13 What I am looking for is something like the Chinese
14 approach to the Soviets. If I understand the Chinese
15 approach to the Soviets, they are saying we do not care what
16 suit you wear, Mr. Gorbachev, and glasnost is your problem,
17 not our problem. We have three problems with you: Soviet
18 troops in Afghanistan, Soviet troops along our border, and
19 Vietnamese troops with Soviet weapons in Cambodia. One of
20 these has to be solved before any progress can be made. All
21 of them have to be solved to have normal relations.

22 I would like a debate in our country of what our genuine
23 political and security concerns are and what it is we can
24 reasonably expect the Soviet Union to do. And if my answers
25 to those questions are not adequate, then let somebody else

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come up with it. But it cannot go on that everything on our
side of the line is subject to undermining and everything on
their side of the line is sacrosanct without sooner or later
leading to a confrontation which is in nobody's interest.

That is my concern.

Senator Evans: Would you, in terms of timing, in terms
of timing and type, would you have. this done now or in
conjunction with the INF treaty ratification or subsequent to
that, and in terms of type, would these negotiations be
better carried on, or the debate that you suggest be better
carried on in public, in private negotiations with the
Soviets, or part of each?

Dr. Kissinger: Well, I do not think it can be, it cannot
be linked to the INF agreement because of the reasons that I
have already given, although I would certainly personally
welcome a Senate, if the Senate saw fit to express its view
that the political issues need to be dealt with side by side
with the weapons issues, I believe that might be helpful as a
nonbinding expression of a Senate consensus or as a binding
of Senate consensus.

Now, should it be done privately or should it be done
publicly? I think it depends on both. Now, there is a
ritual in which so-called third area conflicts are on every
agenda of every Secretary of State and of every summit
meeting, but my impression is that they are almost never

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1 pursued with the intensity and precision that the arms
2 control negotiations are pursued, partly because they do not
3 lend themselves to as concrete formulations. But I think
4 they should be.

5 In dealing with the Soviets on the subject, I always
6 thought that, on the governmental level, a private
7 communication by the President and/or the Secretary of State
8 in which they express with some considerable precision their
9 conviction that this process of constant political offenses
10 must lead to a confrontation sooner or later and that we
11 could easily slide into a world crisis that way, would at
12 least test whether a serious dialogue on that subject is
13 possible rather than simply put it on an agenda and then see
14 what happens.

15 Senator Evans: I thank you.

16 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

17 The Chairman: Thank you very much.

18 Senator Dodd.

19 And I would add at the end of Senator Dodd's ten minutes
20 there will be a five minute recess.

21 Senator Dodd.

22 Senator Dodd: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and Dr.
23 Kissinger, we welcome you back to familiar settings here
24 before this committee once again.

25 Back in 1979, I believe December of 1979, November and

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December of 1979, an issue of I think the international
Institute for Strategic Studies, you wrote a piece called
NATO the Next Thirty Years, and in that piece, to paraphrase,
or that paper, you spoke of the future obviously of NATO.
You explained that NATO was facing a crisis because the
Soviet Union had reached parity in strategic arms and had a
decided advantage in theater nuclear forces, as were called
the INF, obviously, back then.

You said, and I quote from the piece here, you said, "It
is also necessary that either the Soviet nuclear threat in
theater nuclear forces against Europe be eliminated (which I
do not see is possible)" -- that was a parenthetical remark
-- "or an immediate effort be made to build up theater
nuclear forces."

Well, as you know, of course, we built up the INF forces
in the mid-seventies. Your statement indicated that absent
the Soviet SS-230s, we would not need Pershing IIs and GLCMs.

Dr. Kissinger: No, I did not say that because I never
heard of -- did I use those words?

Senator Dodd: No, no, I am sorry. I mean, that was an
indication that absent those, that we would not need -- I am
concluding that, and you can respond, but would not need the
Pershing II or GLCMs.

What I would like to know is what leads you to conclude
that eliminating our INF missiles would bring about

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Dr. Kissinger: well, this was not an article, this was a transcript of an extemporaneous speech I gave to a conference in Brussels, and I think you will agree that when you read that speech, that 99 percent of it deals with the declining credibility of strategic nuclear forces, and an appeal to Europeans to face the facts of the eighties and nineties. The 30 years was given by the editor of that journal. I made no such claim, I hope not, anyway, in the speech.

I have been asked that question before, so I have had a chance to look at my speech. I think the reference to the SS-20s and to what is now called INF was a parenthetical comment and was not even remotely central to my argument, which indicated that I had not thought through the problem.

I would say that starting in 1981, when I had thought more about the problem, I took the consistent position that the decoupling, that in the sixties and seventies we still had a considerable strategic superiority, at least until the middle seventies, and then we had a period of grace because thinking does not adjust to strategic and technological realities as rapidly as it should. So we still got credit for having a strategic superiority.

But starting in the eighties, it was obvious, at least to me, that the strategic nuclear threat based on weapons that were based in the United States or at sea would no longer be

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Senator Dodd: Well, I did not know what the background was, and I appreciate your explaining that.

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Dr. Kissinger: This was a speech made I think towards the middle of 1979 and then was --

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Senator Dodd: The Cross Fire show, and I have raised this with others to hear their responses, but I quote you from that -- it was a few weeks ago on a TV program here. You said "The presence of the Pershings and the cruise missiles in Europe established an organic relationship between the defense of Europe and the defense of the United States. That is, the Soviets cannot be sure if they attack

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Europe with conventional forces that we would permit our weapons to be overrun without using them.

"Now the defense depends on weapons that are not seen, that are far away, where we are negotiating a 50 percent cut in them."

One of our earlier witnesses here, Walter Slocombe, testifying before the committee, said the following. He said "The Idea that it makes a lot of difference for the Soviets where the warheads that strike them come from is typically a Western one," meaning, of course that it makes no difference for the Soviets whatsoever.

Mr. Slocombe, I might point out, was responding to a point by General Rogers, but it also clearly applies to your argument, and let me just add a point here. We have 300,000 U.S. personnel in Western Europe, dependents, obviously our NATO forces.

Why would not, the assumption being, of course, that an attack, the presence of those forces there is an attack against them would be an attack against us, why is that any less of a, if you will, of a coupling, in a sense, in fact, arguably even more of one since U.S. personnel would be directly involved as long as their presence remains there, why does that not keep that coupling together even in the absence now of the ground-launched cruise missiles and the Pershings?

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Dr. Kissinger: Well, Walter Slocombe is a man of extraordinary intelligence whom I have known since he was a student at Harvard and I was a young professor there, and for a brief period he either worked on my staff or as a consultant to my staff.

I think the difference here is between whether you look at this problem from the point of view of systems analysis or from the point of view of political decisionmaking. If you look at it from the point of view of systems analysis, you look at NATO as one strategic area, and within that context, it does not make any difference where the weapons are located, assuming that there is a uniform readiness to use them. If you look at it from the point of view of political decisionmaking, however, then you do not look at NATO as a single area, and you know that there is not a uniform readiness to use them.

The utility of the INF weapons stationed in Europe was as follows. Certainly one should not put the issue in terms of total credibility and total credibility. It will move through shades, many shades of grey before one gets into a black and white situation. One therefore talks about relative weights.

I think a situation will arise or has arisen or is about to arise -- this is again one of those grey areas -- in which honesty requires one to say that the decision, if anything,

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It is left to a formal political decision with a lot of time, it will not be easy to make an argument for the use of strategic nuclear weapons, especially when they have been designed, partly, frankly, under congressional pressures, in such a way that they are not useful for military targeting but largely for bringing about cataclysmic outcomes.

So that even the overrunning, certainly the overrunning of American forces would create a presumption that we will do something, but Secretary McNamara has said that he had made a private decision -- he said so publicly -- never to recommend to the President the use of strategic nuclear weapons, or for all I know, of any nuclear weapons. There have been many flat statements to that effect. Chancellor Schmidt has said publicly that he had made the private decision to surrender before anything like this happened.

Now, these are facts that one has to keep in mind. The presence of the intermediate-range weapons in Europe was a crude way by which a Soviet leader, looking at them, had to calculate that whatever foolishness the Americans might commit, they would not permit those weapons to be overrun without having authorized somebody to fire them. If they were fired, even if they attacked these weapons, then, and even if they got 95 percent of them, the remaining 5 percent would do huge damage in the Soviet Union, that they could not accept while leaving the United States undisturbed, and

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attacking the United States.

And that, I am assuming, they were no more ready to do
than we were the reverse, although I must say their weapons
are more designed for military operations than ours are, and
this is another factor that must influence our perception.

This is why I paid such particular attention to the INF
forces.

Senator Dodd: Just a quick response to this. But then
implicit in your response there is the notion that a
President, this President would be far more likely to use
Pershing IIs than strategic weapons.

Dr. Kissinger: No, implicit in this response is that the
Soviets looking at it would figure that he had delegated the
authority to use them to the NATO commander, even if this was
not necessarily the case, and that therefore add to the
deterrent effect.

Senator Dodd: Thank you. My time has expired.

We will now take a five minute recess.

[A brief recess was taken.]

[L.C.]

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The Chairman: The Committee will come to order. The
Chair recognizes the Senator from Kansas, Mrs. Kassebaum.

Senator Kassebaum: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr.
Kissinger, I would like to ask a couple of questions on
verification and compliance.

You were instrumental in negotiating SALT I and really
ever since then we have been concerned about verification.
We have argued the merits or demerits of the Standing
Consultative Commission. Under the INF Treaty there is a
call for the Special Verification Commission.

I found quite interesting what you said in your statement
regarding new verification procedures must deal with three
issues, and then you lay them out. I was wondering what, in
your view, you would recommend in handling the compliance
issues in the future.

Do you think that the verification, the new Verification
Commission, as it is structured, has some merit? Or do you
feel that basically we are going to have to have the ability
to know what we want to do with it once we feel there is
non-compliance?

Dr. Kissinger: Let me make a general observation. As
I have viewed these arms control negotiations, every
agreement is sold to the Senate and to the public with the
proposition that there will be very fierce compliance and
that the Administration will be extremely vigilant. And this

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57

1 is very sincere.

2 Then opponents of the agreement often use verification as
3 an issue, first to question it, when it is up for
4 ratification, and afterwards to try to find violations. Now,
5 some of these violations are genuine violations and some of
6 them are technical violations.

7 And so very soon a defensive cast of mind develops in the
8 Administration in office when it is confirmed with technical
9 violations that it is being harassed. Then the whole debate
10 goes off the deep end. Because there are some violations
11 that are not threatening to the agreement, and not intended
to be.

12
13 I remember one apparent violation that occurred when I
14 was in government where the Soviets were building in every
15 missile field one additional silo. And that amounted to
16 about 60 silos.

17 Now, that looked like a violation. On the other hand,
18 they were saying this was a command and control silo. And I
19 would have to go on television and say it is a command and
20 control silo.

21 Then somebody would say, would it not be nice to have a
22 Secretary of State who does not defend the Soviets? My view
23 was that if the Soviets wanted to violate the agreement, they
24 would not build one silo in each field. And what would they
25 do with 60 additional silos?

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So our debate ought to be more bipartisan on this issue, and ought to have clearer criteria of what we are talking about.

Now, It seems to me we ought to make a study in each agreement that is made and it ought to be part of the ratification procedure in which one understands what magnitude of violation is needed to affect the strategic balance.

Now, in the INF agreement, it is rather difficult to do that, because I do not believe the Soviets have a huge incentive to cheat on the SS-20s, since they can achieve their objectives in so many other ways.

But let us talk about START. What magnitude of violation is needed? What inspection mechanism, what do our intelligence agencies believe, our existing intelligence mechanisms? Can they catch that violation? And third, what do we do if we catch a violation?

Theoretically, we take it to the Standing Consultative Commission, or whatever it is called. But the fact is, nothing ever happens really there. So it depends what the Soviets think you can do unilaterally.

With respect to the INF, while I do not think that the Soviets have a high incentive to violate, I also do not think we have any means of retaliating, because if they deployed SS-20s again after some time, no European country would

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1. permit us to put Pershings and GLCMs back into Europe. So
2. that we have practically no equivalent countermeasures left.
3. These are things to analyze.

4. Now, with respect to this new procedure, we have to take
5. care that particular slogans do not become a substitute for
6. concrete action. We have talked ourselves into the
7. importance of on-site inspection. And we think this is a
8. great success that we have achieved, some on-site
9. Inspection.

10. I must tell you, I am not so sure this is necessarily the
case. On-site inspection should be judged like any other
11. method, on what it actually adds to our national means. Now,
12. you take the INF Inspection. As I understand it, we can only
13. look at those areas they have designated as base areas. We
14. cannot look at the others.

15. Now, If you have a very large house and it is suspected
16. of being a weapons depo, and somebody says you can look at
17. those three rooms but you cannot look at the other 25 rooms,
18. have you made progress towards on-site inspection if you
19. cannot even challenge the original data they give you and go
20. into areas which they have not designated as base areas?

21. Secondly, is the question of bureaucratic management. It
22. is my understanding that we need about 600 to 700 people to
23. operate this system. Now, they have to report to somebody.
24. And this somebody has to report to somebody.

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And how are you going to get it to the attention of the
top people who have to make the assessment? And how can you
keep it from the endless controversies that arise between
those who want to maintain the agreement and therefore lean
over backward in one direction, and those who want to scrap
the agreement and may lean over too far in the other
direction?

I do not want to be misunderstood. I am not against
on-site inspection. Out we ought to analyze on-site
inspection the same way, there is nothing sacrosanct about
it.

I would analyze it in the same way I analyze national
inspection. Does it meet the three criteria that have been,
that are put forward here? Or any other criteria that we
might set up?

And are we running the risk now that we may get 50
percent START agreement? Now, with INF, all we need to do is
to find out that there is no weapon, but how do you count 50
percent? It is a much more stringent system.

Now, do we need 5,000? And how do we build them into our
decision-making system? I think this requires some careful
thought, and I would be interested to get an intelligence
analysis of the degree to which they think, by what
percentage do they think the system of INF adds to our
national capacities.

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I do not know what the answer is, whether they think it
is significant or not.

Senator Kassebaum: Adds to our national capacities for
what?

Dr. Kissinger: For finding SS-20s, our overhead
reconnaissance, or whatever other means we have.

Senator Kassebaum: I would only say that I think there
are about 300 inspectors. I do not think it makes a whole
lot of difference.

Let me ask you, when you say we are limited, and that
indeed is true, would we be comfortable having that many more
of our bases open to inspection?

Dr. Kissinger: Absolutely not. I am not attacking
on-site inspection. I am just saying what we ought to keep
in mind is that verification cannot make a bad agreement
good. As I said, it can only make a good agreement
enforceable.

Senator Kassebaum: Nearly everybody has felt that
actually the type of verification procedures that were worked
out for INF really could not be transferred to START.

Dr. Kissinger: That is right. But I do not know what
the alternatives are.

Senator Kassebaum: And no one else seems to either, at
this point.

I have a question on conventional, but I am afraid to

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[L]

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start it at this point. So I will just yield back my time.

2

The Chairman: Thank you, Senator Kassebaum. Senator
Kerry?

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Senator Kerry: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary,
I join my colleagues in welcoming you, and we are grateful
for your testimony.

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I would like to explore, if I can first, a question
raised by Senator Cranston, or raised in your answer to
Senator Cranston. I think you said to him that the
conventional force balance in Europe is substantially worse
now than it was in 1973.

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Dr. Kissinger: No. I would argue that the impact of the
conventional force balance is more serious than it was in
1973.

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Senator Kerry: Now, when you say the impact you mean the
impact --

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Dr. Kissinger: That is in 1973 we could probably
tolerate a greater degree of inequality in conventional
forces because we still had a much larger number of warheads
than they did. And their strategic buildup was not nearly as
complete as now.

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At that time, they still had dug many holes that they had
not filled yet.

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Senator Kerry: Well, given even that there has been a
significant increase, I mean they have modernized and we

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1 certainly understand the degree to which they have
2 modernized.

3 But likewise, we have had the introduction of the F-16,
4 the introduction of the F-15, we have had the introduction of
5 the multiple-launch rocket systems, we have had the best
6 sensor system in the world with the AWACS, plus in 1973, as I
7 know you recall, we had significant troop problems by virtue
8 of the concentration on Vietnam. There were drug problems,
9 race relation problems, equipment shortages, and so forth.

10 Those, all of those issues having changed and our own
11 generals, admirals, et cetera, arguing that there is now a
12 neutrality, I wonder where you feel that there is not that
13 neutrality? Where specifically is this imbalance?

14 Dr. Kissinger: well, I believe there are a number of
15 factors to be considered.

16 One, the Soviet Union has a geographic advantage, which
17 is not due to anybody's fault. It is inherent in geography.
18 They have the interior lines of communication, and therefore
19 they can shift their forces between their various fronts much
20 more easily than we can.

21 Secondly, it is, at least every military person that I
22 have talked to, plus the studies that I have seen, for
23 example, at the Rand Corporation, in which the war games,
24 various outcomes indicate that on any hypothesis the Soviets
25 would make very significant territorial gains, even in a

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purely conventional combat, even assuming generalship is
equally good on both sides.

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Third, there is the problem that history has shown that
conventional deterrence is a very chancy enterprise. For
hundreds of years there have been wars in Europe between
countries that were thought to be evenly matched, which
nevertheless did not keep either side from starting a war.

In fact, Germany achieved big victories in World War I
and defeated France in World War II, even though the total
number of its forces was less than that of its opponents.
And the reason for it was that they concentrated their forces
at the strategic points.

So for all of these reasons, I agree with the view of
almost every military commander that I know, as well as the
studies of the Rand Corporation, that the Soviets have a
significant conventional edge in Europe, even granting that
we have done a good job since building and strengthening it.
And I do not want to use 1973 as a baseline.

My argument about 1973 was in relation to our nuclear
alert, and to the reason why the threat of general nuclear
war was more credible in 1973 than it will be in 1993.

Senator Kerry: But what you are saying essentially
relies on conventional as the critical ingredient in an
equation of deterrence or stability.

Dr. Kissinger: We have to strengthen conventional

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capabilities. I would not like to make these sharp divisions
between conventional and nuclear.

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I think we have to develop some concept of war-fighting
for nuclear weapons, if we are going to rely on nuclear
deterrence. Otherwise, we may produce a cataclysm of some
effect.

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Senator Kerry: Let me step beyond that for a moment and
ask you this. You referred to the ability to retarget and to
shift other weapons in a number of your answers today.

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Dr. Kissinger: I did not use those words, but you are
correct. That is what I implied.

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Senator Kerry: That is the essence of what I heard you
saying.

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Dr. Kissinger: You are correct.

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Senator Kerry: Is it therefore in your view desirable
for the United States to try now with the Soviet Union and
rapidly possibly to negotiate interim restraints on
additional launchers or targeting in order to deal with that
question?

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Dr. Kissinger: I have been asked that question before.
And I gave perhaps not too clear a reply. It is an idea that
I have not heard. I heard it with respect to SDI. And I
favor SDI. Or I favor some version of SDI.

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With respect to strategic weapons, It is my impression
that the Soviets have developed a family of new weapons,

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LC

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1 SS-25s, SS-24s, while the ones which we really need are
2 either mobile Minuteman or mobile MXs or Midgetman do not
3 exist yet.

4 So I would be extremely reluctant, in fact I would oppose
5 any attempt to restrain mobility of our side.

6 Senator Kerry: Well, I am not suggesting restraining
7 mobility. But I am asking whether --

8 Dr. Kissinger: Interim restraints on numbers?

9 Senator Kerry: Numbers.

10 Dr. Kissinger: I frankly have not thought about that.
11 On offensive weapons, so far as I know, we are not planning
12 to increase our numbers.

13 Senator Kerry: Well, in the absence of that, if the
14 Soviet Union can retarget, let us say, using SS-25s or
15 others, as they could anyway, I mean they could do it before,
16 they could do it now.

17 Dr. Kissinger: That is right, that is not new.

18 Senator Kerry: But in the absence of that, which would
19 be the center of a START agreement, does this Treaty down the
20 road have any meaning, if you do not get those restraints or
21 get a START agreement?

22 Dr. Kissinger: Well, I will tell you candidly, as one of
23 the people who was active in seminars that developed arms
24 control, I really think that all of arms control theory
25 should be rethought.

[L.C.]

67

It has developed a sort of mechanical quality where all reductions are considered of equal quality. I have attempted, for example, to put the numbers of the 50 percent reduction into outcomes. I mean, what forces would then exist?

I think all of you who have done it or who can get it done will find that the number of warheads aimed at our missiles will increase rather than decrease, and therefore I ask myself, what are we trying to accomplish?

Is this simply a theological exercise in which we prove to ourselves that we can do it? Our aircraft are reduced, our submarines are reduced, but the anti-aircraft defenses and the anti-submarine defenses are not reduced. But the anti-missile defenses, we are told, have to be reduced.

Now, can somebody take a step back and analyze where we are trying to go and what we are trying to achieve before we start rushing into numbers exercises?

Senator Kerry: Specifically, with respect to that, and Incidentally I agree with you completely about the current START Instructions, which will result in almost a 10 to one ratio of their missiles against our land-based missiles, which I think takes us back in time. I am not sure if you agree with that.

Dr. Kissinger: My calculations show about five to one. But it does not make any difference. It makes it worse. It

66

makes the vulnerability of, I agree with it, in the current
START negotiations Increase the vulnerability of our
land-based missiles.

And therefore it is not self-evident to me what has been
accomplished, and secondly, if at the same time we say we are
going to rely on those missiles to defend Europe, we are
creating a big gap in credibility.

Senator Kerry: Mr. Secretary, my yellow light is on. I
do want to follow up on that. So I would like to maybe wait
for a second round.

Dr. Kissinger: Well, I am sorry. I am giving such long
answers.

Senator Kerry: No, you are not. It is very helpful for
the record. I would just like to come back to it. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Thank you. Senator Boschwitz?

Senator Boschwitz: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome,
Mr. Secretary.

I would like you to go off on a different course for just
a moment. You said that the Russians, sending in 1987 $600
million worth of arms, which is a figure that you said was
given to you --

Dr. Kissinger: It was given to me by authoritative
sources.

Senator Boschwitz: You said it was given to Nicaragua,

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and that was an unfriendly act. You also said that it served
no national defense purpose and so forth.

And you also spoke about Angola and the $1 billion that
went down that way. I wonder if you would assess for me how
serious and how realistic you feel Mr. Gorbachev has been
about withdrawing from Afghanistan? Certainly the
considerations are much different there.

Dr. Kissinger: It is a good question. I find it hard to
answer because my instinct would be that it would be totally
unprecedented for them to withdraw from a country.

And therefore, while I have serious doubts about the
agreement we are discussing here, I would consider a Soviet
withdrawal from Afghanistan, under conditions that do not
create another prelude to their ultimate domination, I would
consider it a significant event.

They certainly talk as if they are going to withdraw.
Which also is a tribute to our determination in supplying the
freedom fighters there. We will know in a few weeks how
serious he is. It has gone further than I thought it would.

Senator Boschwitz: I agree. You know, it seems strange
that a country that would expend those kind of funds so far
away from home would suddenly be really serious about
withdrawing from a country --

Dr. Kissinger: Well, it could be that the adjoining
Moslem areas of the Soviet Union become too restive under the

70

1 impact of it.

2 It could be that the casualties are too heavy. It could
3 be a regrouping. It could be that they may even believe that
4 they could hold on to a dominant position there. but it is
5 an unusual step.

6 Senator Boschwitz: In talking about the Pershings and
7 GLCMs and the fact that the Russians would have to calculate
8 that the Americans would do something rather than allowing
9 those weapons to be overrun, that that was a serious
deterrent that you could not equivalently get from something
10 that is based in North Dakota or Montana.

11 I wonder how you would characterize the other weapons
12 that we have? Submarine weapons, what would their
13 calculations have to be? Or the F-111s in Great Britain.
14 Would the same type, they are not the cataclysmic type of
15 weapons.
16

17 Dr. Kissinger: Well, first of all, the submarines cannot
18 be seen. I think they would calculate that the likelihood of
19 using submarines is the same as the likelihood of using
20 Minuteman or MXs, that it would require a Presidential
decision in which he would take a reasonable amount, any
21 prudent President would take a reasonable amount of time.
22

23 The "advantage," in quotation marks, of the land-based
24 missiles in Europe was that the rate at which they would have
to be fired was dependent on the speed of their own

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operations. So that the danger of their being overrun would determine the probability of their being fired.

This is not true of submarines. It is also not really true of the F-111s in Britain, which for these purposes are also outside the combat theater. Moreover, these F-111s in Britain are based on one base. And it is easier to get rid of one base than of dispersed mobile missiles.

But certainly I do not say they are of no deterrent value.

Senator Boschwitz: But the fact that they are easier to get rid of because they are on one base must also serve as a deterrent?

Dr. Kissinger: That is true. I think the F-111s constitute some deterrent advantage. But they were always there.

I mean, we cannot have it both ways. we cannot say those weapons were of no significance, and secondly they are a major contribution to arms control, that their removal is a major contribution to arms control.

Senator Boschwitz: But the fact that a different type of decision-making process is necessary to use them makes a different type of deterrence, I think would be your argument.

Dr. Kissinger: Correct.

Senator Boschwitz: Dr. Edward Teller was here yesterday,

[LC]

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and unfortunately not all of my colleagues were here to hear
him.

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But he, in a way, conditioned his advice to us, in voting
yes on the Treaty, he kind of conditioned that on the further
development of SDI and also added that fewer weapons made the
SDI in effect more effective, more valuable, and that he
therefore spurred us on with respect to combining the
research and development necessary for the SDI.

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I wonder if you would comment? You commented to some
degree.

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Dr. Kissinger: well, I would not make the SDI
conditional on this agreement. On the other hand, I would
not abandon SDI as part of the START agreement. Nor would I
de facto abandon SDI.

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I think a combination of deployment restrictions and
testing restrictions will, in fact, not restrictions but
prohibitions, will in fact lead to a de facto abandonment of
SDI.

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Now, I think we need a definition of what it is we want
to accomplish with SDI. I think the concept that we can get
a perfect population defense against an all-out Soviet attack
is so far in the future, if it is attainable at all, that it
leads to a needless debate as to feasibility.

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Senator Boschwitz: Dr. Teller, I might say, agreed with
that. He said that there is no perfect offense or perfect

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1 defense.

2 Dr. Kissinger: But there are many intermediate
objectives.

3
4 For example, I was briefed by one group that was opposed
to SDI that was trying to tell me, and again I hold no brief
5 for their numbers, I am giving you what I was briefed. They
6 were trying to tell me that if the existing Soviet arsenal
7 were aimed even at the now foreseeable SDI, the SDI would be
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I then said, let me understand what you mean by overwhelmed. I said, what happens if they launch 1,000 warheads? Oh, we would get 99.9 percent or maybe all of them.

This went on until we got to about 4,000 warheads. The defense was degraded in that analysis only from about 6,000 warheads on. Now, if one could get the Soviets into a position where the only nuclear war they can fight is one in which they have to launch 5,000 to 6,000 warheads, that is a different decision from one in which they can blackmail us with one or two or five. This is what we need to analyze.

Incidentally, the Soviet Chief of Staff said that at the level of 6,000 warheads, an SDI defense could be quite effective, which tends to support that. And that is why he does not want to go down to 6,000 with SDI.

Now, it seems to me that we can probably all agree that if we could achieve a defense for our strategic forces this would add to stability. Now, the question is, what degree of defense should one get for the civilian population?

I find it very difficult to imagine that a democracy, that a democratic leader can tell his public that their total vulnerability and the capacity of an adversary to exterminate them is the permanent assurance of their security without demoralizing them.

Now, against what level of attack? I would think at

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least against third country attacks and against sort of blackmailling attacks. I am willing to grant that an absolutely all-out attack, but if you can force an opponent into a position where all he can do is this all-out kind of suicidal attack, I think this is something one at least ought to study.

When our election is over, perhaps we can have a serious bipartisan effort to look at various levels of strategic defense. Because giving it up seems to be a fateful and very irreversible decision.

Senator Boschwitz: I quite agree, Dr. Kissinger. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Thank you, Senator Boschwitz. I think everybody has had a chance to question except for Senator Murkowski. Senator Murkowski?

Senator Murkowski: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, I too welcome you before the Committee.

In view of the many, many years that you have been dealing with the Soviet Union, and the very prominent position that you held as one who has negotiated on behalf of the national security interests of our country, I wonder if you would share your evaluation of how you see the Soviets looking at the issue before us, the ratification of the INF Treaty, from the standpoint of their own interest, their own security.

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Do they see this as a sign of America's strength or weakness? Is it more a complexion of perhaps the new General Secretary's efforts to portray himself as a leader of the world who objective it is to ease tensions?

I wonder if you could share from your experience what you assume they, the Soviets, feel about our position and the likelihood of where the United States will be in relation to the Soviet Union, recognizing we all like to have a superior position in nuclear or non-nuclear capability for our national security interests. Could you just generally --

Dr. Kissinger: well, as I have said perhaps too often, I wish this particular Treaty had never been made. And I do this because I think it gives more benefits to the Soviets in the long term than to us. So obviously they want it ratified.

But to deal with the immediate question, I would suppose that if this Treaty now failed of ratification, it would be a setback to Gorbachev. And one would then have to calculate how they assess this, because they might think we will be forced to withdraw our weapons anyway. And they can then play the game of either keeping theirs there or pulling theirs out as a unilateral act.

The more fundamental question or issue that is raised by your question is, what do we have to do, I mean is Gorbachev really interested in an improvement in relations? And what

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does he understand by improvement of relations?

Now, I think certainly the Soviet Union needs a respite.
And it is surely in their interest to have a period in which
they can reduce some military expenditures. But it is also
the case that it seems to me very dangerous to gear American
foreign policy to the personality of a single Soviet leader.

No Soviet leader has ever done anything other than
renounce the policies of his predecessor. So, even if you
assume the best intentions in Gorbachev, which I do not, but
even if you did, you would still have to ask yourself what
are his successors going to do and what is the objective
situation that they and the successors to our President will
inherit?

Secondly, there is no doubt that Gorbachev is undertaking
a huge program of economic and some limited political
reform. He does that because he recognizes that if the
present trends continue the Soviet Union will be the most
developed of the underdeveloped countries, and will have the
greatest difficulty of maintaining its position as a
superpower. He is not doing it in order to get along better
with us.

Then, for that reason, he wants a respite. Now,
Americans, because we have never been exposed to
irreconcilable hostility, because we have never known
irrevocable disaster, have a tendency to believe that peace

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is the normal condition and is perfectly self-evident, and
that everybody around the world comes to the same conclusion
as a Midwestern American would about the nature of peace.

And ever since World War II, we have been waiting for a
Soviet leader who would be peaceful. And if you read the
literature, every time a new Soviet leader appeared, we would
pronounce that he would be more interested in the domestic
evolution.

But as I have stated previously, the Soviet leaders are
the heirs of a country that has had expansionism, maybe based
on Insecurity, almost as an organic part of their system. It
is not a polite thing to say. But nobody has ever wanted to
be like the Russian political system.

The Russians have never been able to impress people with
the majesty of their conduct or the excellence of their
institutions the way, say, the Chinese could in their area.
So they have usually never felt secure, unless they had
troops on both sides of their borders, which is uncomfortable
for their neighbors.

Now, I find it difficult to imagine that Gorbachev will
volunteer concessions that the military and the KGB object to
at a time when he already has to ask so much of the Communist
Party and the planning mechanism in adjusting their
preconceptions. So a lot depends on what we ask of him.

Therefore, it is necessary that the United States do

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some concept of what we mean by balance of power or peaceful conduct or whatever you want to call it.

The idea that here is a wonderful fellow who, if we only keep him happy, will automatically move the Soviet Union toward peace, or if we do a lot of arms control with him, that I think is potentially dangerous.

Senator Murkowski: My second question, Dr. Kissinger, is in regard to the verification issue. And I believe you responded to Senator Kassebaum on a portion of that question.

But as a Member of the Intelligence Committee as well, who is holding oversight hearings on this subject, we are left with the dilemma of making a determination of the adequacy of our verification on the SS-20 to determine whether or not the Soviets may be, indeed, cheating.

And the question realistically of how much money should we throw at the verification to have some degree of satisfaction that the verification is adequate, as opposed to inadequate.

However, the other alternatives of exposure, such as the submarine threat, the threat from the SS-25, all these are given self-evident realities, but yet we have a responsibility to address the adequacy of our verification effort.

And I have some discomfort with presentations made for

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the Intelligence Committee with regard to, how much do you spend to get this percentage of verification? And what is relevant to the overall threat?

And I wonder if you could give us some guidance or comfort in that regard to what is really an enigma in the sense of evaluating it.

Dr. Kissinger: Well, I have heard, I guess, many of the presentations that you have, being on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. And I have heard the same spread of opinion that I am sure you have heard.

On the one hand, I do not see any huge incentive that they have to cheat. On the other, they may do it just to keep in practice for other agreements.

[Laughter]

Dr. Kissinger: I do not see what they gain. But it is anomalous that there should be this big spread.

Senator Murkowski: Really, we are going to build buildings, spend money, hire people, to observe to our satisfaction that they are not cheating.

But if they were not cheating or something else, the exposure of a nuclear threat from other type missiles is evident.

Dr. Kissinger: Yes, that is the reason why, their incentive to do it other than to see how one can get around that system, does not seem to me self-evident.

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But there is, when you start with a disputed database, it
is very difficult. I suppose the argument would be made that
even if they are hiding some, if they cannot exercise them in
the field and if they cannot give training with them, their
capacity will soon be degraded.

Senator Murkowski: That is true. But what difference
does it make if you have an equal threat from other
missiles?

Dr. Kissinger: Well, no. In terms of does their removal
remove any significant threat, I have said in my statement
that I do not believe it does.

Senator Murkowski: No, it does not. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman. And thank you, Dr. Kissinger.

The Chairman: Thank you. Everyone has now had a first
round of questioning. We will go on to the second round.
And because his governor is with him, the ranking Member
would like to start out with his 10 minutes right now, and
then I will follow him.

Senator Helms: Mr. Chairman, as always, you are very
thoughtful, and I appreciate it.

Dr. Kissinger, what I am about to say is in no way an
attempt to sermonize you or anybody else. But I am obliged
to note that we have had a plethora of witnesses coming
before this Committee who have said, in effect, what you have
said, that this is not a good Treaty. But that we ought to

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ratify it. Otherwise there would be dire consequences in NATO, and so forth.

I run headlong into what my father said to me two dozen times, if he said it once, and that was the right way to do a wrong thing. Furthermore, the Constitution does not require us or confer upon us the responsibility of anything but looking at the Treaty.

For example, the Secretary of State came before this Committee and he said, in answer to a question by a Senator, "It would be a terribly severe blow to NATO and the members of the Alliance should this Treaty fall in ratification. They have made this clear in statements through the heads of most of the governments of the NATO countries."

"They have made it clear to us in private conversations, as well as in their public statements. Someone earlier today here at this table, one of the Senators made reference to Helmut Schmidt and what he had said about the effect of the failure to ratify and the dire consequences that would have in his Judgment for the map of Europe."

Now, the Senator who asked that question was Senator Zorinsky. The year was not 1968. It was 1979. The Secretary of State was not Shultz, it was Vance. And the treaty was not the INF, it was SALT II, which was never ratified.

Now, I do not want to embarrass you, but incidentally,

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Secretary of Defense Brown said the same thing. Here is what my good friend, Secretary of State Kissinger, no, no, it says Secretary Kissinger, you said, "Yes, I think NATO would survive the non-ratification of SALT II because our allies in NATO are tied to us by their self-interest."

"On the other hand, I agree with the Secretary of State, for whom I have a high regard, that non-ratification would have an unfortunate impact in many European countries and would raise serious questions about the stability of our governmental process. But so would a perceived military imbalance. That is our problem."

I commend you on that statement, because you gave in that answer both sides. Now, you did say in your testimony and in response to questioning that the Europeans would require the dismantling of the Pershing IIs, even in the absence of a Treaty.

And I believe you said that, in reference to the demonstrations and all of the hoo-nah that goes on, which of course is orchestrated in large measure around the world by the Soviet Union.

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Now, let me just say, let us suppose just a minute, suppose the United States made it clear that any decision by any European country to remove the Pershing IIs would carry with it the U.S. response of saying, look, we will have to withdraw our troops from your country.

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As a matter of fact, it seems dangerous to me to have our troops committed in countries that do not have adequate deterrence.

As a matter of fact, I asked General Rogers and Richard Perle this in a very pointed way last week. I said, should U.S. troops remain in Europe, or those parts of it, where the third zero, that is total denuclearization is achieved, either by future treaty or policy, or this one? And if not, should the Senate consider addressing the issue by amendment, reservation, and so forth?

Well, they were very, very strong in their response. They said, absolutely not. We ought not to leave our people over there in such a situation. Now, obviously, I would like to ask you if there is much difference between SALT II and the INF, much difference between 1979 and 1988?

Because the message is the same, the song and dance is the same. Witness after witness coming here in advocacy of this Treaty have said, oh, it will destroy NATO. well, that is what they said in 1979. The treaty, SALT II, was not ratified. And I do not think NATO collapsed.

Maybe we ought to give our friends, the leaders of the European countries, an alternative. Do they want us to help them or not? And I recognize it is in our interest as well as theirs to preserve NATO.

But I just do not think that NATO is going to collapse if

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this Treaty is not ratified. Or if it is not amended or
modified to make sense, because it is now full of holes as a
piece of swiss cheese.

Dr. Kissinger: I think there is a difference between
SALT II and the INF Treaty. I was much less strong, in fact
I did not use, you quoted me correctly. I stated both sides
of the Issue then.

Senator Helms: Yes, you did. And I commend you for it.

Dr. Kissinger: Now, there is this difference. SALT II concerned only weapons that were under United States' control and stationed either in the United States or at sea.

Therefore, the deployment of these weapons had not carried any political cost or risk for these European leaders.

So whether we reduced them or not might have had a
symbolic significance, and their interest in it was because
of the idea that had developed that this was needed to ease
tensions. But otherwise, it did not have the same
implications.

The INF agreement, on the other hand, involved
significant decisions that were taken in the face of massive
domestic opposition. That domestic opposition had been
overcome.

And then in a period in which there was no particular
pressure for the removal of those weapons within these
countries, the United States developed a theory where they

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became dispensable. First at Reykjavik and later in the
implementing negotiations.

Now, we have the situation where people like Kohl and
Woerner, to take the Federal Republic, who paid a heavy
price, not only had to give up those weapons but also
weapons, namely the Pershing Is that had always been in the
Federal, have been in the Federal Republic. Until recently
they had been there uncontested for 15 years. And they had
agreed to both of these decisions.

Now, if we suddenly reverse ourselves once again and say
the first position was the right one, I think we are putting
them into a nearly impossible situation.

Senator Helms: well, forgive me, though. There is one
element in the equation that you have not referred to, and
that is the people of Germany and the people of France.

They would have to know that they would have to do
without the support of the United States.

Dr. Kissinger: I would say this, Senator Helms. If the
German government had asked us to remove these weapons
without provocation, then your response would be absolutely
the one we should take.

When, however, they first put these weapons in, then
reluctantly with great American persuasion, let us take them
out and added their own weapons to it. And then less than
half of the Senate but more than a third votes against

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ratification, they are left in a very difficult position.

I do not think we would be morally justified to say, now,
if you do not accept the latest version of American
Constitutional procedure, we are going to take our ground
forces out too.

I think this would create an impossible situation. If,
unprovoked, they were to ask us this, then I think your
response would be absolutely correct.

Senator Helms: well, I think the mothers and fathers of
this country would welcome an indication from all of us that
we are not going to leave our troops over there in an
untenable position where they can get shot and killed. That
is the point I am making.

Dr. Kissinger: I would welcome an expression of the
Senate that the denuclearization of the Federal Republic
would carry those consequences. The third zero option, I
think that would be a very appropriate thing to do.

Senator Helms: I would just say in conclusion that I am
struck by the identical nature of the exhortations that we
have got to ratify this Treaty when we heard the same thing
in 1979 and NATO did not collapse.

Now, here we are hearing the same thing in 1988. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: I will waive my time, and we will go to
Senator Sarbanes.

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Senator Sarbanes: Dr. Kissinger, just picking up on the
point that you and Senator Helms have been discussing, it
seems to me in predicting the consequences of
non-ratification of SALT II, one ought to note that the
reason that the United States put forward as to why it was
not taken up in the Senate to even be considered for
ratification was because of the Soviet aggression in
Afghanistan.

Now, it is interesting. There are some of us who assert,
well, it would never have been ratified anyhow. They are the
same ones who want to take a very hard line on this
position.

But it seems to me in the circumstance, what the U.S. was
able to say to the Europeans and to the rest of the world was
that we were prepared to go forward and consider this matter,
and then the Soviets undertook this brutal aggression in
Afghanistan, and that took this matter off the calendar.

And it seems to me, in terms of anticipating extended
consequences beforehand from not ratification, that totally
transformed the situation.

Dr. Kissinger: Quite correct.

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Senator Sarbanes: And in this instance, if a similar
thing were to occur, we would have an entirely changed
situation to deal with.

In fact, from your testimony, I would gather, given the

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emphasis you placed upon resolving political disputes and
addressing regional problems, the point you make that it is
the political differences that are at the basis of the
conflict and not the arms themselves, they reflect the
underlying differences, a response of that sort you think is
appropriate. Do you not?

Dr. Kissinger: If there were a major political
challenge, a response not to ratify the Treaty, would be
highly appropriate.

Senator Sarbanes: Comparable to what happened in
Afghanistan at the time of SALT II?

Dr. Kissinger: Yes. I would think it would be very
appropriate.

Senator Sarbanes: So it seems to me there is a great
difference between these two situations.

Dr. Kissinger: I agree.

Senator Sarbanes: And in looking back at the SALT II
experience, what we have to recognize is that the reason
given for not ratifying it, for not considering it, and
presenting that to our European allies, was Soviet aggression
in Afghanistan.

Dr. Kissinger: Correct.

Senator Sarbanes: Earlier you made a sort of flat
statement that concerned me a little bit in terms of leaving
it on the record.

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You said in terms of complying with the agreement, that the Soviets might put their SS-20s back in, but that the West would not allow us, that we could not expect the West to allow us, Western Europe to allow us to put the Pershings and the GLCMs back in.

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I do not quite understand that, or how you can so flatly assert that. It seems to me, if the Soviets were to clearly violate this Treaty, and reintroduce their SS-20s, contrary to the prohibitions herein, it would constitute a very powerful basis off of which, if you chose to move in that direction, to argue that something comparable to the Pershings or the GLCMs, an updated version, whatever it may be at that time, ought to be reintroduced in Western Europe.

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Dr. Kissinger: well, of course, here we are in a totally speculative area.

Senator Sarbanes: Yes, it is hypothetical.

Dr. Kissinger: In my judgment, it is unlikely that the Soviets will violate this agreement in a flagrant manner. So that it will always be highly ambiguous whether they are violating it.

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But I also believe that the political preconditions for reintroducing these weapons are non-existent on the Western side. But this is a question of judgment, and it depends on how threatened the Europeans feel, how insistent we would be to reintroduce the weapons, and what the Soviets might

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1. threaten to do if they were reintroduced.

2. Senator Sarbanes: Would you not think our argument for reintroducing them would, in some senses, be stronger than the argument for putting them in was in the first place, given that the Soviet action was clearly contrary to an agreement?

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Dr. Kissinger: I believe, and here we are in the area of pure conjecture, that this agreement and this sequence of events that has led to it, has brought about a sea change in the German domestic political situation, and that therefore we will see over a period of five years some very significant evolutions in German domestic politics, and it is in terms of that, I think there will be a greater emphasis on national concerns, greater emphasis on dealing with the East on a national basis, and in the context of this, I think it will be very difficult to reintroduce them in the Federal Republic. And absent that, it will be very difficult to reintroduce them anywhere else except perhaps Great Britain.

But I could be wrong. We are in the area of total conjecture and analysis of political trends.

Senator Sarbanes: Let me ask you this question.

Do you worry that agreements, arms agreements in particular, with the Soviets contribute to some illusory notion of detente which impedes the West from taking realistic policies in other areas of the relationship?

Dr. Kissinger: No, I worry that arms agreements become a substitute for political thinking. If arms agreements were linked to a process of political accommodation, or related or part of a process, unlinked, of political accommodation, I would have no problem with them.

Secondly, I believe, as I have said, that much of arms

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control theory that is now being applied is dated and that we
need a new approach, we need some new concepts. It does not
mean I have them, but we are recycling the theories of the
late fifties and early sixties in totally changed
circumstances. But I am not opposed to the concept of these
negotiations.

Senator Sarbanes: Well, I am not suggesting you are, but
I am struck by the assertions we get from some that really do
not relate to the terms of the treaty.

We had a little bit the same presentation in SALT II. It
was their view that the treaty would create a psychological
attitude about detente which would then lead the West not to
do other things that were not precluded by the treaty, but
that they would simply adopt a different, a sort of a notion
about detente and its meaning which would prevent them from
taking other steps which were called for under the
circumstances.

Dr. Kissinger: Certainly there is such a school of
thought. There are two schools of thought, two contradictory
schools of thought. There are some people who believe that
any arms agreement is desirable because it creates a good
atmosphere, and there are other people who are against any
agreement because they think it will create illusions, and I
believe that an agreement must justify itself on its merits
and not on its symbolism one way or the other.

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Senator Sarbanes: Do you think the arms agreements you reached in the seventies raised this problem of creating some illusory notion of detente?

Dr. Kissinger: well, of course, it was a totally different period. We had the Vietnam protests in this country. We had Watergate, although not when we reached the first arms agreement. We thought it was important to demonstrate to the American public that its administration was capable of reaching agreements that eased tensions.

Now, there was, of course, considerable opposition on exactly the ground that you gave, that it created an illusory impression of detente, but the idea that Richard Nixon would be excessively trusting of anybody, especially Russians, seems to me unrealistic.

Senator Sarbanes: Well, I do not quarrel with that point, although it seems to me to look at it from the point of view of trust really misses the mark. I have never understood why these agreements have to presuppose anything about trust. In fact, they are based actually on the concept of not trusting, that they have to be verified, and that you are not about to make some up front judgment on which you will then rely.

Dr. Kissinger: You know, Senator, obviously one always thinks that what one was involved in had merit or one would not have done it in the first place. But I had to speak at

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some conference about the Nixon presidency, and I had read so much about the illusions of détente that I had begun to believe it myself. So I started reading what we all said in that period, and I think if you review what we said, those were really pretty, I think they were pretty sober statements.

But at any rate, leaving aside the merit of the policies in which I was engaged, in this period we have, any administration of whatever party has an obligation to demonstrate to its public that it is sincerely concerned with easing tensions. It has an equal obligation to demonstrate to its public that the easing of tensions must be related to concrete conditions that in fact improve the situation and are not simply an aspect of a psychiatric treatment of Soviet leaders.

And how to walk this path is the real task of statesmanship, whatever previous or current administrations are doing.

Senator Sarbanes: Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Senator Kassebaum.

Senator Kassebaum: Dr. Kissinger, you mentioned at the end of your statement that the strengthening of the Atlantic unity must be of highest priority, and that you felt that common diplomacy towards arms control was the most important component of this policy, and I certainly agree very much

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with that.

You also in answer to some other questions earlier said
that it was important for us to understand how the Soviets
conceived the whole strategy of arms control, I suppose, or
particularly in the light of conventional force reduction.

But I would like to ask you if you could elaborate on
what you believe the goal should be for conventional arms
control policy, and if you believe that the Alliance, the
Western Alliance itself has an approach to an arms control,
conventional arms control initiative?

Dr. Kissinger: Insofar as my own thinking is concerned,
I have just begun thinking about it really in a serious way,
and I have gone out to the Rand Corporation, and I have gone
to various places where studies have been made to see what
studies exist so that I can begin engaging my own thinking
and reaching my own conclusions on the subject, and
therefore, I am not really in a great position to make a very
clear statement or make any clear proposals.

Now, with respect, however, to our European Allies, I
have a very uneasy feeling with that third zero option. On
the one hand, you have Europeans who are really looking for
an excuse to get rid of the short-range weapons, or at least
reduce them, and we only have 80, so we are not talking about
a very large number.

Now, in order to stop this, people say, well, it has got

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1 to be part of conventional arms reduction and part of an
2 overall scheme. The next thing you know, Gorbachev will make
3 some symbolic move, like taking out the two divisions from
4 Czechoslovakia that were never there to begin with, and then
5 people will say, okay, now, you have got your proposal. So
6 we are no longer justifying modernization in terms of
7 security; we are justifying it in terms of its contribution
8 to arms control.

9 There was one witness before the Armed Services Committee
10 who wants to take out 4,000 tactical nuclear weapons in order
to modernize the 80 Lances, and then make these 80 Lances
11 dependent on some conventional arms reduction. well, if we
12 do that, we are well on the way to the denuclearization of
13 Germany with all the consequences that this implies.
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15 Now, I am not saying that every one of those 4,000
tactical nuclear weapons is sacrosanct, and if the NATO
16 commander told me that he can do with 500 -- in our period we
17 took out 2,000 as a unilateral American decision because we
18 could not see any conceivable use for them. So I am not
19 saying that they cannot be modified, but we have to be
20 careful that in the name of arms control, we do not gradually
21 approach zero in all nuclear categories without knowing that
22 the conventional adjustments that are being made are of any
23 real significance.
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25 The only systematic study I have seen is one of the Rand

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Corporation, and I know they have unclassified versions and probably also have, obviously, classified versions, and they have come to the conclusion that the ratio has to be five to one.

When you have said that, and then you start probing, okay, five to one, five to one what? And where does it go? Well, I think they have come to the conclusion that it has to be tanks and artillery, that almost nothing else is verifiable.

Then should it go beyond the Urals, should it go into the Western Military District, and where do our units go, and what happens to the European units which are not then totally demobilized? These are questions that have not been thought through yet.

Senator Kassebaum: And you are saying that before we really start down this path --

Dr. Kissinger: Absolutely.

Senator Kassebaum: -- we should have a careful strategy in mind on both sides, I suppose, or understanding at least what the Soviets want.

Dr. Kissinger: Well, what worries me is that we are talking, we have talked ourselves into a national psyche that any removal of any nuclear weapons contributes to the security of the world, and so once you start down that road, any reduction of any nuclear weapon is desirable, 50 percent

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cut, INF, and one no longer analyzes what the situation will be afterwards and whether that in fact has improved our security.

Yes, the answer is we should know exactly what we have in mind by a fair conventional balance. And obviously that has to take into account the Soviet point of view.

Senator Kassebaum: I have always believed in many ways that was the essence of arms control anyway, that having some degree of understanding where we were, each side --

Dr. Kissinger: I must tell you, as somebody who has been involved in negotiations, once you get into a negotiation, you sometimes force what you started out doing, and they begin to drive themselves, and you get negotiable proposals, and you suddenly get stampeded.

Senator Kassebaum: Just one other thing.

You were in the government in 1973 when we started on the MBFR which focused on force reductions. Now, as you say, there tends to be a belief that we should move towards tank and other types of the conventional forces.

Dr. Kissinger: well, first of all, it was not a very high priority in negotiation and did not absorb an excessive amount of our brain power, I hate to tell you.

Senator Kassebaum: And it has gone on ever since then, I guess.

Dr. Kissinger: And it was stuck on abstruse issues on

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1 how you count, what the level was, but at that time we were
talking of manpower, and I am sure in retrospect that that
2 was the wrong approach because there is no way you can check
3 on manpower except in very gross categories.
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5 Senator Kassebaum: Thank you, Dr. Kissinger.

6 The Chairman: Dr. Kissinger, I apologize. There is a
roll call vote going on, so I am going to go over now. I
7 think Senator Boschwitz wants to ask some questions, and then
8 will you recess --
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10 Senator Boschwitz: I am going to go, as well.

11 Dr. Kissinger: Do you want me to wait?

12 The Chairman: Would you, please?

13 Senator Dodd and Senator Kerry have gone over and will be
right back. They do have some questions.

15 I apologize to you, but we have no choice. We will
recess until Senator Dodd and Senator Kerry return.

17 [A brief recess was taken.]

18 Senator Dodd [presiding]: The committee will reconvene.

19 I would like to tell you, Dr. Kissinger, we are in the
process now of beginning a filibuster of some kind, so we are
20 apt to have votes happen with some frequency here. Senator
21 Pell will be back momentarily, and he has allowed his junior
22 Subcommittee Chairman to chair the Foreign Relations
23 Committee here momentarily.
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25 I will try and complete in my one round. If not, I will

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1. try to be brief in the second round so we can move along. I
2. know Senator Kerry has some questions as well.

3. Let me, if I can, since you have stated and restated your
4. position today that you believe this to be a flawed agreement
5. but that the consequences of its rejection would be far more
6. serious than if we were defeat the ratification and not
7. provide the necessary votes.

8. Having said that, I have two questions come to mind that
9. I think are fair although that obviously raise some potential
10. hypothetical questions. One is, the obvious question that
11. comes to mind is what would you have done differently six
12. months or twelve months earlier in this area, and if you
13. could take us back a bit and suggest -- and I know it is
14. always easy to be the Monday morning quarterback, and I am
15. not asking you to be highly critical of people who have held
16. similar positions that you have, but just to try and give us
17. some sense of where you think we probably should have gone so
18. that we would have avoided some of these flaws. That is
19. question number one.

20. Question number two, if it is flawed, is it flawed to
21. such an extent that we are left in a weaker position, we and
22. our allies, both politically and militarily, and if flawed
23. can interpret a weaker position for the Alliance, what does
24. that portend in terms of future arms control since it has
25. been historic, it seems to me, that this country

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understandably has negotiated and always wanted to negotiate
from strength. And in fact, when we have had a sense of
military insecurity, we have been far less inclined to enter
into arms control agreements. We have only done so when we
have at least had the sense of being secure, the confidence
of being secure, that we were willing to move into that arena.

And as a consequence of this flaw that you have
identified, has it put us in a position where it jeopardizes
future arms control agreements, including the START talks?

Dr. Kissinger: Well, with respect to the first question,
let me -- you may or may not know that in my memoirs, at a
time when George Shultz was at Bechtel, so I had no
conceivable ulterior motive, I wrote that if I could appoint
one man to any position in this country, it would be George
Shultz, and he is a man for whom I have had and still have
the highest regard, and anything I say should be taken in
that context, that this is something on which serious people
can disagree, can have honorable differences of opinion.

My assessment is different from his. So it should be in
that context.

Senator Dodd: I understand that.

Dr. Kissinger: Now, where I think we got off the track
as an administration is that it started with a very
absolutist rhetoric vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, and then
under the impact of a variety of causes has changed to a

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1 rhetoric that is sometimes indistinguishable from what the
2 various committees for nuclear disarmament around the world
3 are advocating, so that the antinuclear rhetoric of the
4 administration, the attempt to prove that they were really
5 peacefully inclined has led to an extreme oscillation of
6 position.

7 I think it got off the track at Reykjavik when we
8 negotiated from a Soviet paper without adequate preparation.

9 What would I have done? You never can tell what you
10 would have done if you had had responsibility. I would like
11 to think that I would have proposed something along the lines
12 of the Walk in the Woods formula with a difference from the
13 Walk in the Woods that, as I understood it, that formula
14 required the elimination of all Pershings. I might, I
15 probably would have proposed cutting them in half, cutting
16 everything in half, the Soviet deployment, the American
17 deployment, and make the next 50 percent dependent upon a
18 substantial reduction of conventional disarmament, a
19 substantial achievement of conventional disarmament.

20 I think it would have been a better course. I do not
21 believe that the very quality on which the administration
22 most prides itself, that they are the first to have reduced
23 two categories to zero, I think this is an undesirable
24 objective because it implies that zero in all categories is
25 attainable, and it is not attainable.

[L]

104

1

Senator Dodd: The second question is --

2

Dr. Kissinger: Oh, the second question is it so seriously flawed that we are now weaker?

3

4

Senator Dodd: Weaker politically and militarily, and what does that mean in terms of future arms control agreements?

5

6

7

Dr. Kissinger: For me, it has been a painful process to attack people who have been friends and with whom I have been closely associated. I do this because I want there to be a record that some people in this country pointed out the dangers at a moment when there is really a large consensus that this ought to be done.

8

9

10

11

12

13

I believe that militarily we are somewhat weaker; that politically we have paid a big price in elaborating a differential between the non-nuclear and the nuclear members of NATO, and between the United States and Europe, a flaw that determined diplomacy can hopefully repair, but it will require a lot of effort to get us back to where we were, and it is a fact that we have to face.

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

Senator Dodd: You said something earlier that I agree with, nor do I, and you quickly said in the next round of questions you did not have any quick answers or any answers necessarily, but that we should rethink how we approach arms control, and that we are using formulas and approaches that we have been using for the last 20 or 30 years.

21

22

23

24

25

[L.C.]

105

Dr. Kissinger: Well, I would like to refer to the colloquy with Senator Kerry. You take the 50 percent reduction, and there is no argument against proceeding with it, but I asked myself, we are putting this tremendous effort, years of negotiation, and at the end of which, if a man from Mars came and said now, tell me in what way is the situation better now, what would you really say other than that you have made an agreement?

It is not better in the relationship of the two forces to each other. It makes it probably even harder to threaten general nuclear war as a retaliation to an attack on NATO, and since we are the ones that are more dependent on nuclear weapons than the other, that is an unequal distribution, and you come to agreement after agreement. The best that is being said for the INF agreement is that the existing weapons in Europe can do everything INF was going to do.

I do not happen to agree with that, I think it leaves us somewhat worse off. But if it were true, then what have you achieved? Why is making an agreement that is defended as irrelevant symbolically so important?

Now, I have not come up with a better idea, but I think all the people that worked with such dedication 30 years ago to come up with important theories, that equivalence ought to do it now again. But what it is, I do not know.

Senator Dodd: Well, I think it is an excellent question,