pcc: Kathy Bledsoon & al

cron
subject
names
HGR:WP:cpm

Santa Rosa, California 95404
3231 Jannen Lane
Mr. Dan Bowerman

for the Executive Branch
Director of Communications
Herbert G. Klein

Sincerely,

With all good wishes,

Please keep in touch.

Have a hard task to try to fill your time.

I look forward to meeting Art Aotikera and will wish him well. He

take it by storm.

undertake in the months ahead -- whatever it is, I'm positive you'll
make me proud. I can only wish you all the post in anywhie you
get it never occurred to me that you might retire, and it kind of caught
my attention.

Thanks for your letter of October 27.

Dear Dan:

November 10, 1975

KLEIN, Herbert G.

CENTRAL FILES

NOV 12 1975

RECEIVED

KISSINGER, HENRY A.

/MS9 -SENT/B*

FEB 15 1972

Dear Joan:

BRADEN

Just a short note to thank you for the party. I always enjoy the parties you give, but this one was especially good.

I appreciated your thoughtfulness in dreaming it up, and in giving me free reign over the invitation list, as I have all of your kindnesses. It is good to have such friends.

Mrs. Tom Braden
101 East Melrose Street
Chevy Chase, Maryland

RECEIVED
FEB 16 1972
CENTRAL FILES

2/10/72

February 14, 1972

Mr. Kissinger:

There is a short note in your Signature Folder
thanking Mrs. Braden for the party she gave for you.

Would you at this point prefer to have a small
arrangement of roses sent to her with a card:
"Happy Valentine's Day and thank you for a
wonderful party."

Will sign note in folder ____ Send flowers ✓

FEB 14 1972

CENTRAL FILES

MEMORANDUM

THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON

ACTION

January 22, 1970

MEMORANDUM FOR MR. KISSINGER

FROM: Helmut Sonnenfeldt
SUBJECT: Letter from Zbigniew Brzezinski

(Tab B)

He sent you a copy of his first column in *Newsweek*. I have prepared
a brief acknowledgement (Tab A).

RECOMMENDATION:

That you sign the reply at Tab A.

Att:

Tab A.

BY ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI

WITH A GRAIN OF SALT

The strategic arms limitation talks (SALT) in Helsinki will conclude their first exploratory phase this week. Though it would be stretching the point to suggest that Soviet officials will soon be testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee or that U.S. officials will soon be sitting in on Politburo meetings, in effect SALT does mean that a joint U.S.-Soviet commission has begun a comprehensive review of the security needs of the two countries. Through SALT, high-level political and security officials of the two countries are becoming more aware of their respective military needs and more sensitive to their respective security fears.

SALT AS EDUCATION

SALT represents in the first instance an important educational process. In this process, the initial lead will have to come more from the American side. Americans have developed over the years a comprehensive literature both on nuclear strategy and on disarmament. In contrast, Soviet strategic doctrine has not kept pace with arms development; Soviet writings and pronouncements on strategy still lack the sophistication and the nuance needed in thinking about our increasingly complex weaponry. Perhaps more thoughtful analyses have been developed in the inner sanctums of the Soviet Government but, to the extent that one can gauge from contacts with the Soviet elite, knowledge about weaponry and strategy appears to be confined to very narrow official circles. By compelling studies, rebuttals and discussions, SALT cannot help but promote broader access within the Soviet elite to issues hitherto monopolized and considered top secret by a very few key political and military officials. The new "joint American-Soviet commission," as well as the increasingly frequent informal contacts between American and Soviet scientists and intellectuals concerned with strategic problems, will help to provide the more moderate members of the Soviet Establishment with the needed arguments and information about the complexity of the nuclear relationship.

An expansion in the range of domestic Soviet discussion is particularly desirable because heretofore the Soviet military has tended to dominate the public airing of strategic issues. In recent months, some Soviet generals have even revived the old Communist doctrine that a new war would spell the end of capitalism alone, that it is-in Lenin's words-"a continuation of politics by other means," and that it will be won by the side that combines men "strong

in spirit" with the use of modern weaponry in "all its potential": that is, by a superior ideology with the most destructive weaponry. In effect, some Soviet generals seem to be arguing that superiority is now within the Soviet reach.

There is thus both an overlap and a paradox in the current domestic American and Soviet debates about arms limitations. Americans, for many years strategically superior, are beginning to wonder whether superiority is now meaningless and whether there might not be merit in settling for parity. The Russians, for many years strategically inferior, are now approaching equality, and some of them are wondering whether the momentum could not and should not carry them to a position of actual superiority over the United States. The need for both sides to talk to each other has never been greater.

One of the most controversial subjects prior to the talks was the question of political conditions for arms limitations. Should political strings be attached? Should there be progress in Vietnam or the Middle East before moving ahead? This issue has agitated Americans publicly, but the Soviets have debated it too.

Wisely, both sides have decided to proceed with the talks without overt linkage to political issues. The problem of weaponry is intricate enough by itself. Yet it would be a mistake to assume that SALT can succeed in isolation from the political context. Its progress will require not only mutual education, but also gradual growth in mutual confidence and understanding. Without the latter, not only will fears and suspicions linger, but an artificially contrived strategic arrangement could become an umbrella for even greater tensions and instability.

PERILS OF A STANDOFF

To illustrate the point: suppose SALT results in tacit or formal limitations on strategic power, but without any understanding concerning conventional forces or the export of arms to other nations, and without any political progress with regard to such places as the Middle East or Berlin. Might there not be the danger that funds saved by agreed limitations on strategic weaponry could be redirected toward acquiring greater flexibility in the conventional field? Indeed, would not a strategic standoff create a setting in which conventional superiority in some particular place could become decisive?

It is one thing to base deterrence on absolute credibility when one side was clearly superior; strategic superiority pro-

tected even places where the potential enemy was conventionally superior. In the setting of parity, some strategic ambiguity might be a more effective sort of restraint unless parity involves also widening political accommodation. The simple fact is that we have never operated before in a setting of nuclear parity. We just do not know whether parity will prompt greater restraint or tempt greater risk-taking.

It would make for an ominous "war game" to replay the Berlin crisis of 1958-1963 (right through the Cuban missile crisis) in a setting of strategic parity or, also in that setting, to simulate a Middle East crisis involving Soviet conventional forces. If I were a Berliner or an Israeli, I would not derive too much comfort from such an exercise. The Soviet Union faces a similar problem with China. Once the Chinese nuclear arsenal reaches a level high enough to assure mutual Chinese-Soviet annihilation, China could become free to wage an exhaustive conventional war against Russia. Such a war could develop by the late '70s.

ALLIES' ATTITUDES

There is also the question of allies. NATO recently re-emphasized its reliance on nuclear weapons in the West's defensive strategy. This move has been conditioned largely by the West Europeans' unwillingness to assume a greater burden of conventional defense. But such strategy makes little sense if our hope is-as it should be-that SALT results in reciprocal limitations on strategic power. Indeed, the danger here is that as allies begin to doubt the protective value of the relevant superpower's nuclear umbrella, they may seek their own nuclear weapons. China has already done so. It would be a tragic paradox if one of the effects of SALT was nuclear proliferation.

To say all this is not to argue against SALT or to suggest that political conditions should be attached. It is to suggest, however, that the real value of SALT is not to be measured only by the tangible strategic agreements that it yields, but also by the mutual education that it promotes; the true success of that mutual education will be tested by the extent to which it stimulates broader political accommodation. That accommodation must be sought patiently on a wide front, through a variety of efforts designed to limit arms exports to Third World countries, to clarify the respective needs of the major powers for conventional forces, and to explore the possibility for some agreements in Europe and the Middle East.

52

Newsweek, December 29, 1969