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On the other hand, I do not understand why, I believe that, I am totally unopposed to offensive systems. They must in the long term have a demoralizing effect on a democracy, and one must be able to define a strategic objective for defense similar to a strategic objective for offense and then relate the two to each other in the negotiations.

The Chairman: Thank you, Senator Cohen. Senator Levin, I believe you are next.

Senator Levin: Let me add my welcome, Dr. Kissinger, to you. I would like to ask you about your position on linkage between conventional arms control and START.

You have written, and I believe you reiterated it today, that we should not take a step towards START unless it is linked with measures that reduce Soviet preponderance in conventional weapons.

Now, if I thought, frankly, that linking it, linking those two would produce a better conventional arms control agreement, I would favor linkage also. Because I think of the two, a START agreement and a conventional agreement, that a good conventional agreement is more important.

I happen to favor a good START agreement, but I would put a conventional agreement, if it is a good one, on a higher plateau. And so I would favor linkage if I felt the linkage would lead us to a better START agreement.

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We recently visited Europe also and talked to a lot of people there, and we heard Prime Minister Thatcher on this subject. She and the people that we talked to in Europe, I would say almost unanimously, not quite, feel that if we linked a START agreement to conventional arms, that we would give the Soviets leverage of the conventional arms control agreement.

There would be a popular START agreement being held up, while a conventional agreement was being negotiated. And that would give them great public political leverage over those conventional arms control agreements.

In addition to that, we have been the ones who have struggled to delink. We have been the ones who have tried to delink, for instance, SDI from the other talks. And so we, in a way, would be playing into the Soviet hands when they seek to link if we did some linkage of our own.

And finally, we do not have a conventional arms control position, as you have so eloquently pointed out here today. And so linkage could create problems for a number of reasons.

But in any event, I am wondering if you would put yourself kind of in our framework. Would you favor some kind of a resolution during the INF ratification debate which stated that the President or the Administration should not bring us a START agreement for ratification until it has

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negotiated a conventional arms control agreement?

Dr. Kissinger: In my statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I modified my linkage proposal to the extent that I said that before we go ahead with the START agreement we should know at least the parameters within which the conventional reductions are to be negotiated.

In other words, I would like to know what the Soviets understand by asymmetrical reduction. I admit the 50 percent reduction is highly popular. The INF reduction is highly popular.

At some point the leadership of this country and of the democracies has an obligation to tell its people what the realities are. And if we cannot explain in what way a 50 percent reduction improves the situation, then it is a false popularity for which we will pay further down the road.

Now, as all of you know anyway, all Europeans profess to rely on the American nuclear guarantee. If the Soviets managed to conduct arms control negotiations in such a way that once nuclear weapons become systematically delegitimized, so that in the preamble of every agreement there is a statement that nuclear war can never be fought, and which is the case, I think, in the INF agreements, or must never be fought or something like that.

And if secondly the resulting balance from these agreements makes it less and less plausible that the United

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States can use its nuclear weapons because it has no rational targets for them, then the conventional balance becomes more crucial and more worrisome. We will be magnified if we have not even a clue to what the Soviets mean by asymmetrical reductions. I admit that we will not be able to negotiate it for many years. But we can ask for at least that much, to have a frame of reference within which the negotiation will then take place.

Senator Levin: Putting yourself now again in our framework, are you saying then that you would recommend that we adopt a resolution as part of the INF ratification debate, which says something like, hold off bringing us a START agreement until you can present to us the parameters as identified by the Soviets of a conventional arms proposal?

Dr. Kissinger: I would favor an expression by the Senate that says we are very worried about the conventional imbalance.

We are also worried about the kind of strategy that will result after all these agreements are made. And we would like you to come to us when you present START with ~~the~~ the parameters of the next negotiation, and secondly, some explanation of the strategic doctrine underlying this agreement, so that we can explain to the public or debate before our committees whether this in fact increases the security of the Western world.

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And this should be, in fact if the Soviets are interested
in stability, that should be in their interests too.

Senator Levin: Would the agreement on a mandate for
those talks satisfy your parameters?

Dr. Kissinger: The existing mandate?

Senator Levin: Would the agreement, if we finally agree
upon a mandate for the conventional arms control
negotiations, would that mandate agreement satisfy?

Dr. Kissinger: If it was sufficiently specific, it would
meet that requirement. But I have to tell you I am not wild
about this particular agreement.

Not because I do not think it does a comparable damage as
the INF agreement, but it is another step down a road in
which numbers become a substitute for thought.

Senator Levin: My time is up. Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Senator Levin. Senator
Quayle?

Senator Quayle: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And
congratulations for another excellent statement. We all
appreciate you and your thoughts.

Let me just follow along the lines of Senator Levin's
question and ask you this. We have got INF behind us. We
negotiate START 50 percent reduction. We have got a ban for
chemical and biological weapons on the table. As you say, we
have got this fixation with numbers.