27

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

percentage we decide to cut them, on any foreseeable
projection the ratio of Soviet warheads to our land-based
missiles that is available will be greater <u>after</u> the 50
percent cut than before the 50 percent cut.

And so I ask the question, what exactly are we trying to
achieve? Are we simply trying to cut 50 percent or are we
trying to improve the situation?

And I would like to see an agreement where we can say the
situation has been improved: one, with respect to
war-fighting stability; second, with respect to the
population and with respect to anything. That is my
concern.

It is achievable. The question is what is it we should
try to achieve?

Senator Warner: Thank you, Dr. Kissinger. My time has
expired.

The Chairman: Thank you, Senator Warner.

I believe, Senator Shelby, you are next under the early
bird rule.

Senator Shelby: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Kissinger, Senator Nunn was talking about, as I
picked up, a lack of a coherent strategy or a grand
strategy. Maybe "grand strategy" was your word. Why have we
not linked our various negotiations on arms control --
conventional, short-range, strategic, and so forth -- in some

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

28

sense, if we have a grand strategy?

Dr. Kissinger: Partly because it is an intellectually
very difficult problem and partly because -- you take
conventional arms control. I have written some articles with
greater or lesser eloquence on that subject. But the fact of
the matter is I have not actually thought through what I mean
by "conventional arms control."

And I have started going around various research
institutions to see what work they have done, to get my own
thought processes started. And most of the work that has
been done on arms control is in the nuclear field. And then
there is the bureaucratic problem that it is so difficult to
evolutionize a position within our government that in fact it has
never happened.

But we have used up our fat with respect to this, and I
think in the future they ought to be linked together.

Senator Shelby: Dr. Kissinger, is conventional arms
control in any sense a numbers game? You know, you alluded
to the numbers game as far as reducing so many strategic
weapons or so many intermediate range weapons. But is
conventional weapons something else?

Dr. Kissinger: Well, conventional arms control has of
course a number of major problems. One is that no amount of
arms control can eliminate the fact that the Soviets have
interior lines of communication and therefore can reinforce

29

in Europe or almost anywhere along their frontiers faster
than the defenders can.

Secondly, verification with respect to conventional arms control is even more difficult, far more difficult, than it is with respect to nuclear arms control. In the 1920's, Germany was open for full inspection. Its army was limited to 100,000 men. It was not permitted to have heavy weapons. And yet, they managed to work around that agreement to a point where two years after they broke it and started rearmament they were already one of the most substantial armies in Europe, and four years afterwards they were the most substantial army in Europe.

Third, there are a number of really extraordinarily difficult problems to which I do not pretend to have the answer. For example, do we want the Soviets to withdraw whatever is being withdrawn to beyond the Urals, to the western military district, or do we want them to destroy it? And if we want them to destroy it, where? How do we know it is being destroyed.

Fourth, any disarmament -- any arms control that applies in the conventional field to Europeans, since they have no place to withdraw, given the short distances, they will have to demolish them. They will have to destroy the weapons that are being reduced.

So I have a whole set of intellectual problems, on which

I do not pretend I have the answers, but which need to be solved and need to be solved fairly urgently. Then I have seen a Rand Corporation study which some of you gentlemen may have seen, which argues that, unless the reductions in Europe are five to one they actually make the situation worse.

Now, to the public that does not sound like a super-plausible presentation. And then when you say five to one, five to one what?

I think the Rand people come to the conclusion that the only thing that we really can have a chance of verifying is tanks and heavy artillery, and that most of the other weapons would elude verification.

I have not done any independent study on this, so I am quoting it, not endorsing it.

31

Senator Shelby: Doctor, if you had had your 'druthers, and I know we have an accomplished fact, or what looks like it is beginning to be on INF, would you have started at another starting point rather than INF negotiations?

Dr. Kissinger: You never know what you would have done if you had been there. I opposed the zero option proposal from the minute it was put forward. I would have preferred to have any other number than zero, say, a 50 percent reduction symmetrically at first, and then have the remainder on the basis of a very significant conventional reduction of the Soviets.

We have absolutely no idea how the Soviets view conventional arms control. They talk about asymmetrical reductions, and that sounds impressive. When they were here I asked two members of their party what they meant by asymmetrical reductions, and they said to trade Soviet tanks for American strike aircraft.

Well, if we trade strike aircraft on top of the INF deployment, that in effect makes it impossible to mount any retaliation from Europe. So I would at least like to see what they have in mind before we get ourselves into a box from which the initiation of a nuclear defense becomes illogical.

Senator Shelby: You have to draw some goals there before you start into real negotiations, had you not?