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I suspect that some sort of romantic nationalism will develop where they will say, the two Germanies need not be unified, but can pursue parallel foreign policies. All of which will have the objective tendency of weakening Germany's ties to NATO.

The only hope that we have is that we have a bipartisan consistent policy here to which we will stick, and in which we will have to say that we cannot keep forces there without nuclear protection.

The trouble is that now any policy we adopt becomes very risky for a leader to identify himself with. I believe that if Germany starts pursuing a purely national course or largely course, NATO will change its character. And Europe will become an area of great political disquiet.

But I fear the tendencies are there. That was the reason why I was opposed to INF from the beginning. None of the systems analysis arguments carried much weight with me one way or the other.

Senator QUAYLE. The INF Treaty gives up the ground-based cruise missiles. What is your viewpoint on the potential military application of the conventional cruise missile?

Dr. KISSINGER. Well, I was a part of this panel on discriminate deterrence, which believed that the accurate cruise missiles, in whatever basing mode, are one of the methods of the countermeasures to Soviet conventional pressure on Europe. And so I would regret any limitation that made it more difficult to resort to that weapon.

Senator QUAYLE. Thank you.

Chairman NUNN. Thank you, Senator Quayle. Senator Stennis?

Senator STENNIS. Dr. Kissinger, it would not take a great deal for this group to again hear your comments, your wisdom, your understanding, your counsel and advice that I saw more of in other critical days and experiences of our government.

I want to publicly thank you for the fine contribution you made then and continue to make now. When I heard that you were in the hallway out here, I made plans to get to see you and to hear you.

And it was not just a personal matter, but it is an appreciation and realization of the very strong, fine, and effective counsel and advice that you have given to us. And you have proven to be so active and able and effective, and I would like to thank you again and commend you highly.

Dr. KISSINGER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I think back with great pride to the privilege I had of working with you in very critical periods, and the patriotism and wisdom that you always exhibited during very difficult times.

Senator STENNIS. Thank you.

Chairman NUNN. Thank you very much, Senator Stennis. Senator Wilson?

Senator WILSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Kissinger, it is always good to see you and to listen to you.

The Washington Post this morning carries a story that I suppose, if I were to capsule it, would say that you think that whatever faults may exist that more damage would result from a failure to ratify this Treaty than to not do so, because it would undermine the credibility of American foreign policy with our NATO allies.

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Dr. KISSINGER. Yes. I do not think that we can negotiate something over a period of years, submit it with great passion to the NATO council, use a lot of body language to convince the Germans to make decisions that would not have been their first choice, and then say that a third of the Senate plus one has refused to go along with it, and now we are going back to the status quo.

The end result would be that the Europeans would ask us to take our missiles out anyway. So we would get the worst of all worlds.

Senator WILSON. Let me ask you this then. I listened with great interest to my colleague from Michigan, Senator Levin, as he made an inquiry that I was going to make.

And let me make a different one now. Let me just ask you that if you were, were you a Member of the Senate, asked to vote on ratification of this treaty, that reservations, if any, would you propose in light of the misgivings that you have, but the decision that you have made that the best interests of the United States requires ratification?

Dr. KISSINGER. Well, I have not really studied the legal implications of reservations. Let me say what I would like to see happen, and whatever the Senate could contribute to it.

One, I have already indicated that linkage to conventional disammament in some manner that permits a reasonable debate of where we are going.

Second, I would ask the administration to put forward some strategic doctrine of where we will be from a security point of view after whatever agreement they are putting before us is made, and not on the basis of, look, they have gotten rid of half of their heavy missiles, because the targets of their heavy missiles have shrunk faster than their heavy missiles, under this projected agreement.

Third, some indication of where all of this process is going to go. These would be minimum conditions of the conceptual nature that I would put before them. Because, I must tell you, I am deeply worried about what is going to happen to 40 years of bipartisan effort in the NATO field.

And I am worried about this obsession with the personality of a single Soviet leader who has so many other pressures on him, and who could not have reached the top by being weak or soft.

Senator WILSON. You do not think he is the first Dale Carnegie graduate within the Kremlin?

Dr. KISSINGER. I would not want us to wind up like Yeltsin.

Senator WILSON. I think that says it. Let me just ask you this.

In light of what you have indicated and in light of the recent reports from Moscow that our negotiators and the Soviet negotiators have been instructed by Secretary Shultz and his counterpart, Mr. Shevardnadze, to return in a month with a draft agreement on the order, I gather, of the Vladivostok agreement, in light of that timetable and your expressed concern that whatever the legal forum, the substance of a reservation speak to the necessity for linkage between future arms reduction, specifically strategic arms reduction, and conventional reduction.

How is it possible for us to achieve that within the timeframe that seems to be unfolding? Now, it is true that signing the treaty is one thing and ratifying it is another. But let us assume that an effort would be made to ratify, and maybe not. Maybe all they are

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talking about it is a framework agreement, although I do not find great comfort in that.

Dr. KISSINGER. I would feel a lot happier if the process were more deliberate, because every agreement generates pressures in new directions.

I have great difficulty visualizing how verification procedures for five or six different categories of strategic weapons can be worked out, that are being reduced by 50 percent to as yet unknown numbers.

When we had such enormous difficulty working out verification procedures for one category of weapon that was being reduced to zero, and in which the danger of violation is much less, but that may simply be, that may simply be a lack of imagination.

But what worries me is the next step. Just as the double zero inevitably produced the triple zero pressures, if you add the non-circumvention clauses to the agreement that inevitably will be added, what will happen as a next step is pressures at both ends.

In Europe, in Germany they will say, if you can reduce the risk to yourself in the long-range field, why can we not reduce the risk to ourselves in the short-range field? The Soviets will begin working on the French and British nuclear forces in the next phase of these negotiations, and have already said that no further reductions are possible unless the British and French are included.

So we will work ourselves into a situation of potential conflict with all of our partners, if we are not capable of elaborating limits to where this process will go, and strategies of how the resulting forces would be used.

And I believe that this must be included in the START discussions, and not just military statements that it is not altering an existing situation.

Senator WILSON. In a climate of triple zero pressure, how optimistic are you that force modernizations of a kind that would be required to offset the conventional superiority of the Warsaw Pact will take place based upon the history of modernization after arms control agreements?

Dr. KISSINGER. I am very uneasy that in order to sell force modernization, we apparently have to hook to it very substantial unilateral reductions of our nuclear stockpile, according to some of the proposals that have been made before this committee.

And I just hope we do not slide with respect to the short-range weapons into the INF dilemma, that in order to get a modernization we make a proposal that then comes back and leads to the complete denuclearization.

How optimistic am I? Well, we have used up our fat in NATO, and we either are going to face reality or we are going to have to pay a price. And we are coming close to that point. We are approaching that point.

Chairman NUNN. Senator Wilson, I believe your time has expired. We have all gone around the room. Are there any other questions for Dr. Kissinger?

Senator SHELBY. Mr. Chairman, I have one brief question.

Senator WILSON. Thank you, Dr. Kissinger.

Chairman NUNN. Senator Shelby?

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Senator SHELBY. Dr. Kissinger, you mentioned the forces that have been unleashed. Have we brought that about?

Dr. KISSINGER. No, I think in fairness the Europeans have been avoiding difficult choices for a long time.

The German domestic situation is complicated by this century's tragedies in Germany, by the loss of two wars, and by the basic insecurities of a people in a divided country that we did not create.

We have perhaps not been very sensitive to the peculiar situation in Germany. Everything Senator Cohen said is absolutely correct, but was not unforeseeable. That is, that does not make it right.

We were perhaps insensitive and thought systems analysis had the same significance in central Europe as it does at think tanks.

Senator SHELBY. Would it be part of the message that we are bringing, which is different messages, that the Germans could not figure out what we really wanted or what was our policy?

Dr. KISSINGER. You know, I do not think because we emerged into international politics really only after World War II, the Germans we met were people like Adanauer, who we thought were normal leaders, and we did not understand that the Adanauer tradition was a very new departure for Germany, and took a very major effort to keep together. And so we did not perhaps understand how fragile it was.

But then you cannot expect every American leader to have studied the history of every country we are dealing with.

Senator SHELBY. But it would be nice, would it not?

Dr. KISSINGER. Well, in this case, it was a pity. But the history of Germany has been so different from the history of the United States that it is understandable that our people did not always understand what they were really talking about.

When Senator Cohen talks about the Foreign Minister, Gensche, one has to really see that in a context which is quite different in Germany than it is here. It is a small party maneuvering between the other two parties.

And so one has to understand the domestic politic context in which he makes his proposals.

Senator SHELBY. Dr. Kissinger, thank you for appearing here with us. I have certainly gotten a lot out of it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman NUNN. Dr. Kissinger, as usual, you have done a splendid job, and you have given us a great deal to think about, and a lot of cautionary signals you put up, and also some, I think, constructive suggestions.

And so we are very grateful to you. We are going to continue to have hearings, we have got to look at some of the negotiating record and we have got to have closed hearings on some of the details.

We will be in this process for some matter of weeks, if not months. Not in the committee, but on the floor. We will be having amendments. And we would like to reserve the right to call you from time to time and impose on you for your views.

Dr. KISSINGER. Whenever I can, I would be happy to do it.

Chairman NUNN. We are very grateful. Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 4:17 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

TO RECEIVE TESTIMONY ON STRATEGY AND
CAPABILITIES FOR NATO DEFENSE, INCLUDING
THE IMPLICATIONS FOR THE ALLIANCE OF THE
INTERMEDIATE-RANGE NUCLEAR FORCES (INF) TREATY

Wednesday, February 24, 1988

United States Senate
Committee on Armed Services
Washington, D.C.

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:07 p.m., in
Room SR-222, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. Sam G. Nunn
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.

Present: Senators Nunn [presiding], Stennis, Levin,
Glenn, Shelby, Warner, Cohen, Quayle, Wilson, Symms, and
McCain.

Also Present: Armed Services Committee Staff Members:
Arnold L. Punaro, Staff Director; Carl M. Smith, Staff
Director for the Minority; Jeffrey H. Smith, General Counsel;
Patrick A. Tucker, Minority Counsel; and Kathryn E.
Bognovitz, Special Assistant.

Research Assistant: Colleen M. Getz.

Professional Staff Members: Gerald K. Bankus, Robert G.
Bell, Robert F. Bott, Brian D. Dalley, Richard D. Finn, Jr.,
Judith A. Freedman, John J. Hamre, George K. Johnson, Jr.,

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

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Ronald P. Kelly, James R. Locher III, David S. Lyles, Michael J. McCord, T. Kirk McConnell, and Norman G. Mosher.

Staff Assistants: Barbara B. Brown, Barbara Gallo, Lori M. Jackson, Mary J. Kampo, Pamela G. Powell, and Mickle Jan Wise.

Committee Members' Assistants Present: Jeffrey B. Subko, Assistant to Senator Exon; Gregory J. Weaver, Assistant to Senator Levin; William J. Lynn, Assistant to Senator Kennedy; Donald A. Mitchell, Assistant to Senator Glenn; Terry Lynch, Assistant to Senator Shelby; William J. Wight, Assistant to Senator Warner; James M. Bodner, Assistant to Senator Cohen; Mark J. Albrecht, Assistant to Senator Wilson; Lorne Craner, Assistant to Senator McCain; and Anthony H. Cordesman, Assistant to Senator McCain.

The Chairman: This afternoon our Committee conducts our twenty-first hearing on NATO defense and the INF Treaty. After our recent focus on the specifics of the Treaty, the Committee will renew this afternoon our attention on the broader issues of strategy and capabilities for NATO defense, especially in the post-INF environment.

We are extremely fortunate to have Dr. Henry Kissinger as our witness. He needs no introduction to this Committee or to any other Committee of the Congress. Dr. Kissinger has written extensively on the issues that are the focus of this Committee's inquiry.

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We are delighted he has taken time from his busy schedule to share his expertise and experience. This Committee also appreciates the special effort Dr. Kissinger made to submit his prepared statement early yesterday afternoon. Copies were immediately made available to the Committee membership. We have had an opportunity to read and study the statement in advance, at least some of us have.

Dr. Kissinger, we were in session until about 3:30 or 4:00 o'clock this morning. We had half of our membership on the Democratic side that were going through procedural motions and the Republican side were trying to avoid arrest by the sergeant at arms.

We had a very different kind of evening, and only history can judge which side was using its time to the greatest advantage.

Senator Cohen.

Senator Cohen: I was just going to point out that Secretary Kissinger has experienced gestapo-like tactics in the past. We experienced them last evening at the hands of the sergeant at arms.

The Chairman: To the best of my knowledge, no Republican Senators were apprehended, let alone arrested.

Senator Warner: Senator Packwood was.

The Chairman: So there was some success.

[Laughter.]

The Chairman: We are delighted to have you here today, and we would welcome any kind of summary you would like to make of your statement or whatever time you would like to take. We are indebted to you for coming and taking your time to address these crucial issues, and we look forward to your statement, plus questions and answers afterward.

Senator Warner.

Senator Warner: Thank you.

I have had an opportunity just a few moments ago to visit with our distinguished visitor, who I have known and worked with for many years. And we welcome you.

The Chairman: Dr. Kissinger.

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STATEMENT OF DR. HENRY A. KISSINGER, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE AND ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS

Dr. Kissinger: Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the Committee:

I appreciate this opportunity to appear here. I have admired the work of this Committee greatly.

I will not read my entire statement or even any parts of it, but with your permission let me summarize its key points. I began with a discussion of the problems that strategic doctrine has faced within the NATO alliance since its beginning.

When NATO was formed, it relied in effect on the doctrine of massive retaliation, that is to say that any Soviet attack on Europe would be met with an overwhelming nuclear response. And in terms of the technology of that period, that made sense because we had first an atomic monopoly and then a huge nuclear superiority.

In a somewhat anomalous way, we nevertheless also sent substantial conventional forces to Europe, even though in terms of the strategic doctrine that would not have been necessary. The reason for the deployment of conventional forces in Europe was political, rather than military, in the fifties.

That is to say our European allies had had enough

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experience in their own history of the precariousness of alliances to want a more tangible guarantee than the assurance of the American leadership that we would in fact come to their assistance, and therefore they wanted a tripwire or enough of a force to guarantee that Americans would be involved in combat and therefore make it more likely that nuclear weapons would in fact be used.

And that was also, at least inarticulately, the reason for their own conventional buildup.

Now, ever since then NATO has been best by this ambivalence, to have a military establishment on the continent large enough to raise the risks for the Soviets, but not so large as to give the United States an ultimate alternative to nuclear retaliation.

That state of affairs became more and more precarious as the Soviet nuclear stockpile developed and as our American weapons decisions with respect to our strategic forces moved more and more away from discriminating targeting and a counterforce strategy.

In these circumstances, NATO has had an inconsistency that it has not ever resolved. There has been a conventional buildup, but it is arguable that it has not been as fast as the Soviet conventional buildup. And the link of the conventional defense of NATO to the nuclear defense of NATO has been a subject of argument, or at any rate has been in