[Lc]

-2-

the Carter Administration has taken several steps to slow down our cruise missile programs, particularly the sea-based and ground-based cruise missile and accepted a ban on those latter systems in the SALT II Protocol.

Deferral of the decision to produce radiation weapons (the so-called neutron bomb) pending some undefined reciprocal act of arms control on the part of the Soviet Union seriously undermined our allied bargaining position in the ongoing reduction talks in Europe (The Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction -- MBFR). It not only deprived our NATO forces of a valuable deterrent against Warsaw Pact tank forces but stopped the most important modernization of NATO's nuclear weapons while leaving the Soviets totally unrestrained in their nuclear build-up directed against our allies (such as their deployment of the SS-20 missile and Backfire Bomber).

The U.S. has put itself at a disadvantage in competing with the Soviet naval build-up and in negotiating limitations on naval deployment -- as we are trying to do for the Indian Ocean. It is apparent from the Administration's severe cut back in naval shipbuilding programs that the Carter Administration envisions a reduced role for our navy, giving up maritime superiority vis-a-vis the Soviet navy and accepting instead a 400-ship defensive fleet. Despite the addition of the old McNamara proposal of new logistics ships there is no change in this policy in the 81 budget or the 81-85 FY-DP.

## Specific Comments on Defense Budget for FY 81 and FYDP

Indications are that the FY 81 budget may call for a real growth of 5.6% with an equivalent real growth over five years of 4.85%.

In spite of this forecast "real growth", it seems apparent that the budget will essentially carry out the "intent" of the President's 3% plan with few new initiatives.

[LC]

-3-

We had anticipated that an equivalent real growth rate of about 4% would be required to make good the Administration's "intent" but it now appears even more is required.

No significant new strategic initiatives appear to be programmed although Strategic Forces will likely experience a five-year real growth rate equivalent to 10-12% a year. (No acceleration of M-X, no new bomber development, no Trident II missile development, no interceptor aircraft to enhance air defense).

Defense "investments" (R,D,T&E and Procurement) will grow at about the same rate as the overall budget (4-5%) instead of the 12-15% called for in the 8/2/79 Nunn-Tower-Jackson letter to the President.

The Five Year Shipbuilding Program will likely call for 80 new ships but will be much less in number and type ships than required to maintain maritime superiority.

The shipbuilding program will apparently include 14-18 commercial-type cargo ships for transport/prepositioning of Marine equipment--a new initiative amounting to $1-3 billion over five years including cost of equipment.

No Indian Ocean naval presence will likely be provided for.

A new strategic airlift aircraft CX is being proposed but the effort will be in lieu of the tactical airlift aircraft (AMST) program.

For comparison, we had called for an additional $12 billion over five-years to begin to provide for increased airlift and sealift and Middle East/Indian Ocean presence.

In theater nuclear forces, the scheduled introduction of the extended range Pershing II missile will be accelerated while that of the medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) will be delayed.

-4-

In conventional forces there is an actual reduction from last year's woe-
fully inadequate tactical aircraft procurement, F-14s reduced by 36, F-16s by 240,
F-18s by 48, F-15s by __, EA6Bs by 24 and the A6E line shut down. The Blackhawk
helicopter program is cut by 247.

There is less than 4% growth in army modernization programs in the FYDP, or
more than $6 B shortfall in funding the fourteen systems ready for procurement
That underfunding forces stretchouts, slowdowns and cancellations of all programs
drives unit costs up enormously.

In summary the increases in the new Carter Defense Program go to a highly
questionable basing mode for MX, for deferred construction projects and for
two proposals resurrected from the McNamara era, a C5A-type aircraft and fast-
deployment logistics ships. There is no change in the Carter policies in down-
grading the Navy, and inadequate funding of strategic and general purpose force
modernization.

[il]

KEY FACTORS IN ASSESSING REAL GROWTH "PERCENTAGE"

o The August inflation estimates of OMB should be revised upward by 1-3%.

o The pay cap of 5.5% vice 7% for FY 81-85 reflected in these estimates is unrealistic.

o Fuel cost growth is not adequately accounted for in the inflation estimates (even for FY 80).

o Current revaluation may also be inadequately provided for.

o The Administration may again tie real growth to outlays instead of TOA (or BA).

o The "real growth" based on any inflation estimates will be elusive as economic conditions change.

[L.C.]

★A-5

# U.S. Confirms Soviets Are Building Nuclear-Powered Attack Carrier

New York Times News Service

Defense officials say they have confirmed that the Soviet Union is building its first nuclear-powered attack aircraft carrier, marking a major step forward in Moscow's plan to assemble a powerful deep-water navy.

Officials sad that the head of the Soviet navy, Adm. Sergei G. Gorshkov, recently acknowledged to American diplomats in Moscow that the ship was under construction. The existence of the ship had been rumored.

Naval experts said the ship would be similar in size to the U.S.S. Forres tal, which displaces 78,000 tons when fully loaded and carries 85 aircraft. The Soviet Union has two 43,000-ton carriers, and two more are being built.

Analysts here said they expected the Soviet Union to build four or five of the large aircraft carriers and to surround them with other warships to form battle groups, in the Ameri can manner, to project Soviet naval power anywhere in the world.

Defense officials also disclosed other recent developments that add to the Soviet Union's transformation of its navy from a coastal defense force to a worldwide ocean-going navy. The developments included:

* Simultaneous construction of four new classes of nuclear-powered cruisers;

* Sea trials of the Alpha submarine, which has a titanium hull that permits it to dive to more than 2,000 feet, or twice the depth achieved by an American submarine, and to steam at 42 knots, faster than any American vessel.

* Construction of a new class of large, heavily armed logistics craft that will enable Soviet warships to operate far from home without reliance on foreign bases.

* Heavy capital investment in the expansion and refurbishing of shipyards, which is the most indicative of Soviet intentions to expand its navy. Only about half of the current capacity of these shipyards is being used.

DEFENSE PREVIEW DRAWS HOUSE ARMED SERVICES CRITICISM, TOO

House Armed Services Committee criticism of Defense Secretary Harold Brown's FY 1981 defense budget and five-year plan preview (DAILY, Dec. 19) added a new wrinkle to complaints expressed a week earlier among Senate Armed Services Committee members.

Brown's presentation was challenged by the more hawkish members of the House committee, who questioned what they said is the Administration's recent conversion to higher defense spending.

Brown also ran up against Rep. Ronald V. Dellums (D-Cal.), one of the committee's few liberals. Dellums said the budget is "more political than based on new military realities" and too high a price to pay for Senate ratification of SALT II. By short-changing domestic programs in favor of defense, President Carter "has declared war on the cities and the poor," he said.

In comments more in tune with last week's Senate committee reaction, Rep. Samuel Stratton (D-N.Y.) told Brown that "it's always good to be able to welcome sinners back into the fold." He added, however, that he shares the skepticism of others because the House committee has sought consistently during the past year to add money to the defense budget while Brown and the Defense Department have resisted the effort.

Rep. Robin L. Beard (R-Tenn.) pursued the same line of questioning and noted that as recently as Sept. 14 the President wrote to Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) that the Administration could not support a defense budget calling for 5% increase above inflation. The FY '81 preview provides for 5.6%.

Brown in essence replied to both Stratton's and Beard's complaints by arguing that the Administration had to support a lower budget figure calling for 3% real growth as a tactic to get the budget resolution approved and that even then Congress cut the final appropriations bill more than $1 billion below the Administration figure. Brown said that the President, in his letter, said if more funding were needed he would support that request.

Obviously annoyed by the questioning of Administration motives, Brown remarked, "I think it's time for us to decide what to do and do it" and stop asking what is responsible for a shift in White House attitudes.

GEN. JONES OUTLINES WHAT SALT II PERMITS, PROHIBITS FOR SOVIETS

Gen. David Jones, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, submitted the following charts to the Senate Armed Services Committee during recent testimony on the SALT II treaty. He told Sens. Gary Hart (D-Colo.) and John Warner (R-Va.) that, "the 'X' has been placed in the center for those actions which are clearly permitted" by the agreement, and that "where listed actions are limited but not expressly prohibited..., the 'X' is placed nearer the dividing line between permitted and non-permitted." For example, he told Sen. Warner, in the category, "USSR Strategic Air Forces," the 'X' marking the item "improved Backfire" is in the "prohibits" column, but "very close to the line, because there are restrictions on their improvements to Backfire. It is a little ambiguous, and that is why I put it on the right-hand side and close to the line."

(Continued On Following Page)

December 20, 1979

Aerospace Daily

Page 254

SALT (Cont.)

(Similar charts covering the U.S. side of the agreement will be published in a future issue.)

USSR Freedom To Develop Strategic Strength Under SALT II

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th></th><th>SALT<br>Permits</th><th>SALT<br>Prohibits</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="5">U.S.S.R.<br>Strategic<br>Forces<br>At Sea</td><td>SS-N-17*, SS-N-18*, Typhoon*</td><td>X</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Typhoon Follow-On*</td><td>X</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>SS-N-17*, SS-N-18*, Typhoon Improvements*<br>SS-N-8*</td><td>X</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Delta I, Delta II, Delta III,<br>Typhoon Submarine</td><td>X</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Advanced Small Strategic Submarine</td><td>X</td><td></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2">Submarine Survivability--Quietness</td><td>X</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

* Subject to fractionation limit of 14 RVs.

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th></th><th>SALT<br>Permits</th><th>SALT<br>Prohibits</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="6">U.S.S.R.<br>Strategic<br>Air<br>Forces</td><td>Air-Launched Cruise Missile--Range*</td><td></td><td>X</td></tr><tr><td>Air Launched Cruise Missile--Penetration</td><td>X</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Advanced Strategic Air-Launched Missile*</td><td></td><td>X</td></tr><tr><td>BEAR to Cruise Missile Carrier**</td><td></td><td>X</td></tr><tr><td>Advanced Cruise Missile Carrier**</td><td></td><td>X</td></tr><tr><td>A B-1 Type Aircraft</td><td>X</td><td></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2">Advanced Penetrating Bomber</td><td>X</td><td></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2">Improved Backfire***</td><td></td><td>X</td></tr><tr><td colspan="2">Improvements: BEAR and BISON</td><td>X</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

* Subject to the counting of aircraft equipped to launch ALCMs with a range of more than 600km in the 2400 (later 2250) and 1320 numerical limits and to ban on multiple independently targetable warheads.

** Subject to counting of the launch aircraft as noted above and to limits on the maximum number of ALCMs for which current and future types of heavy bombers may be equipped.

(Continued On Following Page)

December 20, 1979

AerospaceDaily

Page 255

SALT (Cont.)

*** All improvements to Backfire are not banned, only those which increase radius of action such that it can strike targets in the U.S., including by inflight refueling.

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th></th><th>SALT Permits</th><th>SALT Prohibits</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="3">U.S.S.R.</td><td>A new Type Missile* plus SS-17*, SS-18*, SS-19 Modernization*</td><td></td><td>X</td></tr><tr><td>SS-17, SS-18, SS-19 Missile-- Improved Yield**</td><td></td><td>X</td></tr><tr><td>Increased Total ICBM Warheads***</td><td></td><td>X</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">Strategic Forces</td><td>SS-17, SS-18, SS-19--Replacements****</td><td></td><td>X</td></tr><tr><td>SS-11, SS-13</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">on Land</td><td>Survivable Basing--New Missile</td><td>X</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Survivable Basing--SS-17, SS-19</td><td>X</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Missile Penetration Aids</td><td>X</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

* Constrained by new types ICBM provisions; e.g., subject to 10 RV limit and SS-19 launch weight/throw-weight limits on new type and Fractionation Freeze on SS-17/18/19.

** Yield improvements constrained only by provision barring ICBM throw-weight increase over 5%.

*** Increase constrained by fractionation freeze on current types of ICBMs and 10 RV limit on the new type.

**** Only one "replacement" new type light ICBM permitted, unless replacement's parameters are within "new types" constraints.

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th></th><th>SALT Permits</th><th>SALT Prohibits</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>U.S.S.R.</td><td>Ground-Launched Cruise Missile*</td><td></td><td>X</td></tr><tr><td>Theater</td><td>SS-N-3, SS-N-12**</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Nuclear</td><td>Sea-Launched Cruise Missile*</td><td>X</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Forces</td><td>SS-20, SS-21, Mobile Medium-Range and Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile</td><td>X</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

* Deployment over 600 km range banned only until Protocol expiration.

** As long as range capability is less than 600km.

* * *

THIRD PRODUCTION TORNADO (BT 002), a dual control trainer, made a 63 minute first flight Dec. 14 at the British Aerospace flight test center, Warton, and will be delivered to the trinational Tornado training establishment at Cottesmore.

The recent preview of the Carter Administration's five-year plan for the
Defense budget proposed an average annual increase in budget authority of 4.85%.

Despite this policy reversal, the Carter Administration must stand indicted
for ignoring the momentum of the Soviet military buildup and the relative decline
of U.S. forces during its tenure. In October of 1978 and again in March of 1979,
Chairman Brock, speaking for the RNC, called attention to the real decline in
Defense Budget Authority during the Carter Administration, a yearly average decline
of 2% at a time when the Administration was pledged to a 3% annual increase. In
citing the specific areas of deterioration and the particular systems and policies
which needed adoption, Chairman Brock called for "a reasonable and progressive
Five-Year Defense Program" and urged the administration to "reverse this disastrous
course."

President Carter has recently claimed to have inherited this period of decline
from President Ford. This is false. The last Ford Administration budget request,
for fiscal 1978, would have resulted in a 6.3% real growth in defense investment;
that on top of the 5.8% real increase actually appropriated for FY 77. As a
result of policy-directed reductions by the Carter Administration and higher-than-
anticipated inflation, there is now a shortfall of more than $38.6 billion in
budget authority from the January 1977 Five Year Defense Plan.

The cancellation of the B-1 bomber and the deferral of full-scale production
of the MX-missile for three years irreversibly weakened our position in the SALT II
negotiations. The Vladivostok Accords, negotiated by President Ford, which laid
the guidelines for this round of SALT, presupposed both the highly advanced B-1
and earlier deployment of the MX. The elimination and delay of these two weapons
systems by the Carter Administration removes the foundation for America's security
that the Ford Administration had built in to the Vladivostok Accords. Moreover,

[LC]

-2-

[lc]

-3-

[L.C.]

-4-

In conventional forces there is an actual reduction from last year's woefully inadequate tactical aircraft procurement, F-14s reduced by 36, F-16s by 240, F-18s by 48, F-15s by ____, EA6Bs by 24 and the A6E line shut down. The Blackhawk helicopter program is cut by 247.

There is less than 4% growth in army modernization programs in the FYDP, or more than $6 B shortfall in funding the fourteen systems ready for procurement. That underfunding forces stretchouts, slowdowns and cancellations of all programs drives unit costs up enormously.

In summary the increases in the new Carter Defense Program go to a highly questionable basing mode for MX, for deferred construction projects and for two proposals resurrected from the McNamara era, a C5A-type aircraft and fast-deployment logistics ships. There is no change in the Carter policies in down-grading the Navy, and inadequate funding of strategic and general purpose force modernization.

[L.C.]

[Lc]

4★A-5

New York Times News Service

Naval experts said the ship would be similar in size to the U.S.S. Forres-tal, which displaces 78,000 tons when fully loaded and carries 85 aircraft. The Soviet Union has two 43,000-ton carriers, and two more are being built.

Analysts here said they expected the Soviet Union to build four or five of the large aircraft carriers and to surround them with other warships to form battle groups, in the Ameri-can manner, to project Soviet naval power anywhere in the world.

* Construction of a new class of large, heavily armed logistics craft that will enable Soviet warships to operate far from home without reliance on foreign bases,

June 11, 1979

MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD

SUBJECT: SPECULATIVE DEFENSE BUDGET RECOVERY PLAN

This memorandum presents a brief outline of a possible plan to "recover" from the four years of "underfunding" by the Carter Administration. The intent would be to return to a level of defense funding that would meet the threats as currently perceived.

* By the end of FY81, the Carter Administration will have spent roughly $52 billion less than that projected as the minimum necessary by the last Ford Administration. Moreover, the last Ford projection did not include funding for a navy larger than 500 ships, nor did it anticipate the rate of strategic force modernization now indicated. That projection is less than currently considered adequate for the long-range maintenance of reasonable force levels.

* A substantial portion of the unspent $52 billion cannot be recouped in later years. "Lost" O&M, R&D, and personnel costs cannot be fully compensated by greater subsequent spending. Roughly 60% of those unspent funds could be recovered, however, by greater investment spending during the next administration. Approximately 85% of Carter's cuts have been from the Procurement account; the remainder from RDT&E and MilCon. The cuts have been roughly 60/40 between General, Purpose and Strategic forces, with Navy absorbing 55% of the cuts, Air Force 30%, and Army 15%.

* A one-administration recovery plan would probably involve increasing defense spending within two years to some $25 billion more annually than Carter is currently planning; $14 billion to return to the Ford projection, and $11 billion more to compensate for Carter underspending.

The composition of the $25 billion for FY84 is shown on the table on the following page in increments above the current Carter five-year plan projection. The past Ford projection, the current Carter projection, and the speculative "recovery" projection for the defense budget are shown graphically on the last page.

96th Congress
1st Session

SENATE

Report
No. 96-

[lc]

MILITARY IMPLICATIONS OF THE PROPOSED SALT II TREATY
RELATING TO THE NATIONAL DEFENSE

_______ (Legislative day, ______), 1979--Ordered to be printed

Mr. ______ from the Committee on Armed Services,
submitted the following

REPORT
OF THE HEARINGS

on the military aspects and implications of the proposed SALT II treaty
(Executive Y, 96-1), based upon hearings held before the Committee in
accordance with its responsibilities under Rule XXV(c) of the Standing
Rules of the Senate, with additional views.

It is the sense of the Committee on Armed Services that:

(a) The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has sole jurisdiction to report--
the SALT II treaty to the Senate;

(b) The Committee on Armed Services has a responsibility and a duty under
Rule XXV to report on the common defense generally to the Senate;

(c) The SALT II Treaty is of the utmost importance to matters relating to
the common defense.

Therefore, be it resolved that in reporting its views to the Senate as a
Committee, the Committee on Armed Services intends and believes this action to be
in adherence to Senate rules relating to jurisdiction of any other committee.

[Lc]

-1-

HEARINGS

Hearings were held on July 23, July 24, July 25, July 26, July 30, July 31, August 1, August 2, October 9, October 10, October 11, October 16, October 17, October 18, October 23, and October 24, 1979.

Witnesses included Secretary of State Cyrus Vance; Secretary of Defense Harold Brown; General George Seignious, Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; General David C. Jones, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, Chief of Naval Operations; General Edward C. Meyer, Chief of Staff of the Army; General Lew Allen, Chief of Staff of the Air Force; General Robert H. Barrow, Commandant of the Marine Corps; Admiral Stansfield Turner, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Ambassador Ralph Earle II, Chairman of the U.S. SALT Delegation; Dr. William Perry, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering; General Richard H. Ellis, Commander in Chief of the Strategic Air Command and Director, Strategic Target Planning; William P. Clements, Jr., Governor of the State of Texas and former Deputy Secretary of Defense; William E. Colby, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; General Russell E. Dougherty, USAF (Ret.), former Commander in Chief of the Strategic Air Command; Admiral Noel Gayler, USN (Ret.), former Commander in Chief of U.S. Pacific Forces and former Director, National Security Agency; General Alexander M. Haig, Jr., USA (Ret.), former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe; Admiral James L. Holloway, III, USN (Ret.), former Chief of Naval Operations; Fred Ikle, former Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; Admiral Isaac Kidd, USN (Ret.), former Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet; Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, former Secretary of State; Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, USN (Ret.), former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Paul H. Nitze, former Department of Defense Representative to the SALT Negotiations; Dr. Richard H. Pipes, Professor at Harvard University; Lieutenant General Edward L. Rowny, USA (Ret.), former

[L]

-2-

Representative of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for SALT; Donald H. Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense; Dr. William Van Cleave, former member of the SALT Negotiating Team; and General Louis H. Wilson, USMC (Ret.), former Commandant of the Marine Corps. Testimony was received also from our colleague, Senator Jake Garn (R-Utah), a former member of this Committee.

[c]

-3-

COMMITTEE ANALYSIS

For the first time in the history of the nuclear age, and as a decade of arms control negotiations comes to an end, the United States now faces the near-certainty that a significant element of its strategic deterrent will be vulnerable to preemptive attack by the Soviet Union. As the Senate convenes its debate on the ratification of the SALT II treaty signed at Vienna on June 18, 1979 it is faced with incontrovertible evidence that the Soviet Union will have the capacity to destroy virtually the entire U.S. land-based missile force by directing against it a fraction of its own vastly more powerful force of offensive intercontinental ballistic missiles. The U.S. does not have, and will not acquire during the period of the treaty, a comparable capability. The President of the United States must therefore deal with the Soviet Union around the world with the knowledge that, in a crisis, the United States is at a strategic nuclear disadvantage that carries with it profound political implications.

While the United States still retains awesome strategic nuclear power, its bombing capability is based on an aging fleet of B-52 aircraft built, on average, some 25 years ago and unlikely to be effective in timely retaliation against hardened/defended military targets--even with the addition of cruise missiles. The U.S. fleet of strategic nuclear submarines, the least vulnerable component of our deterrent, carries missiles that lack the combination of accuracy and yield necessary to destroy hardened military targets. And at any given time, the large part of that fleet normally in port is vulnerable.

Thus, a decade after the U.S. negotiators departed for the first SALT discussions in Helsinki, we face a strategic balance more adverse than ever before -- a strategic balance that is increasingly uncertain and unstable

[Lc]

-4-

and which no longer offsets the undisputed Soviet advantages in the areas
of conventional and theater nuclear forces.

This state of affairs is, to a significant degree, the consequence
of a sustained Soviet military buildup accompanied by a decline, in real
terms, in the level of U.S. defense spending and an undue reliance on
negotiations with the Soviets as an alternative to our own efforts to assure
a military balance.

Current U.S. plans are not adequate to close the gap that has been
permitted to develop, either in the conventional, theater nuclear or strategic
nuclear area. The Committee believes that an essential precondition to
effective U.S. action to close the widening military gap is a full appreciation of the extent to which years of Soviet military expansion have
placed the United States at a disadvantage. Unwarranted notions about
Soviet cooperation, the unfounded assumption that SALT treaties reflect
Soviet restraint and forebearance, and overly optimistic hopes that the
Soviet threat to our security is being lessened are inconsistent with the
facts and undermine efforts to summon the resolve to arrest the decline in
our military posture.

In our judgment the SALT II treaty presently before the Senate fails to
meet the criteria laid down in 1972 when the Congress adopted an amendment
to the resolution authorizing the interim agreement that called for equality
in any future SALT treaty. That amendment, which was the subject of several
weeks of debate in the Senate, stated, in what became PL 92-448, that:

> "The Congress...urges and requests the President to seek a
> future treaty that, inter alia, would not limit the United
> States to levels of intercontinental strategic forces inferior
> to the limits provided for the Soviet Union." (PL 92-448)

-5-

[LC]

Debate on the interim agreement turned on adoption of this amendment, which was subsequently approved by the House and signed into law. A review of that debate establishes clearly that the Congress insisted on equal numbers of intercontinental strategic forces taking account of throw-weight. That has not been done in the present treaty, in which the levels are unequal in favor of the Soviet Union and the Soviet 1972 advantage in throw-weight has actually increased.

The treaty is unequal because it confers on the Soviet Union the right to deploy modern, large ballistic missiles with multiple warheads, a right denied to the United States.

It is unequal because it permits the continued deployment, outside the treaty ceiling, of a Soviet bomber (the Backfire) that has the capability to operate over intercontinental distances against targets in the United States.

It is unequal because it permits the Soviets to deploy more warheads on their strategic missiles than we are able to deploy on ours.

It is sometimes said in defense of these inequalities that the U.S. does not desire to do the things that the Soviets alone are permitted to do. But the Senate, in 1972, did not insist on equality only with respect to options that a particular administration might wish to pursue. It did insist on equality in the weapons limited by the treaty--ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers--for broader reasons: to avoid imposing a lasting handicap on the United States in future arms negotiations and to reject the political implications of codified inferiority. The treaty before us does not provide the equality that Public Law 92-448 envisioned.

[Lc]

-6-

In receiving over four volumes of testimony from 29 witnesses in and out of government, the Committee has sought to understand clearly and completely the rights and obligations that will be incurred by the parties under the treaty and its protocol and to assess the military impact of these rights and obligations. This first task, which is difficult at best, is complicated by the considerable ambiguity surrounding many of the treaty's terms and provisions. Moreover, the frequent resort by the United States negotiators to unilateral assertions as to the meaning of ill-defined terms and the refusal of the Administration to accept clarifying amendments has left the Committee unable to conclude precisely what the treaty means on a number of important points. The Committee has, therefore, identified a number of definitional issues and ambiguities to which the Senate should turn its attention before final action on the treaty.

The following brief analysis does not attempt to deal with every issue; rather it is centered on several issues important to an appreciation of the treaty as a whole: the balance in land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles; heavy bombers and the Backfire; theater forces in general, and the land and sea-based cruise missiles in particular; qualitative constraints on strategic forces; and verification.

-7-

[Lc]

LAND-BASED INTERCONTINENTAL BALLISTIC MISSILES

An underlying assumption behind the 1972 SALT I Interim Agreement was that it would arrest the growth of Soviet strategic offensive forces, especially land-based ICBMs, before they acquired the capability to destroy a major part of the U.S. strategic deterrent. A halt in the momentum of the Soviet strategic force buildup, coupled with essential U.S. force modernization, was thought by many to hold great promise for an equitable SALT II treaty that would achieve stability, enhance deterrence, and obviate still further expenditures on strategic weapons.

Unhappily, the momentum of the Soviet buildup was not even impeded, much less halted; and the U.S. failed to modernize its strategic forces on a scale or at a rate adequate to achieve the balance necessary for successful SALT II negotiations. While the Soviets developed and then began rapidly to deploy accurate, multiple warheads on an ICBM force with three times the throw-weight of our own, the U.S. slowed the development and deployment of the MX mobile ICBM. And while the U.S. was still relying on its comfortable advantage in missile accuracy, the Soviets developed and have begun to deploy a new generation of ICBMs with comparable accuracy. The cumulative result has led to a situation reflected in the most significant set of facts to emerge from the Committee hearings: (1) by the early 1980s the U.S. land-based missile force will be vulnerable to a Soviet attack that could destroy more than 90% of our ICBMs in their once secure hardened silos; (2) nothing the U.S. seriously proposed at SALT could have fully remedied this emerging threat (early in 1977, however, the Administration proposed -- and then abandoned -- an agreement intended at preserving the survivability of the ICBMs for both sides); (3) for the period of the treaty

[Lc]

-8-

the Soviets will build up to 820 MIRVed ICBMs with approximately 6,000 warheads, while we will have 550 with 1,650 much smaller warheads; and (4) the Soviets insisted on retaining the 308 "heavy" ICBMs they were permitted under the 1972 Interim Agreement, and they demanded, and got, the right to increase the number of warheads on those missiles 10 times (from 308 to 3,080); the U.S. is denied the right to deploy any modern heavy ICBMs; and this assymetry is uncompensated.

A number of Administration witnesses and other treaty proponents argued that the U.S. has no interest in, and no program for, the development or deployment of "heavy" ICBMs, and that even the "light" ICBMs now being deployed by the Soviets could, in the aggregate, destroy the U.S. land-based missile force. Some argued that the U.S. mobile MX missile, which will be available for deployment after the treaty expires (it will be fully deployed, if at all, sometime after 1989) will have an offensive capability comparable to the Soviet force projected to be operational some seven years earlier. The first of these arguments is unique in the annals of arms control, diplomacy: the Soviet advantage is so great that they can destroy our ICBM force with even their smaller missiles, so we should treat with indifference their additional advantage in large missiles. The argument also contradicts another argument made in favor of this treaty: that the MIRV limitation imposed on the Soviet heavy missiles (10 per launcher) is of great value. The second argument—that the M-X will be the equal of the SS-18—is simply false.

The Committee is deeply concerned at the development by the Soviet Union, wholly within the terms of the two SALT agreements, of the capacity to destroy our ICBMs. Such a development is inconsistent with, and calls into question, the stable equilibrium that the U.S. SALT negotiators intended to enhance.

-9-

[L.C.]

Soviet insistence on a treaty that will permit them to achieve the capacity to destroy the Minuteman force was evident in the positions they took during the negotiations -- positions to which the U.S. has now regrettably acceded. The Committee is also disturbed by the concerted rationalization of Administration spokesmen in minimizing the Soviet drive to acquire this destabilizing capability.

The Soviet Union must be made to understand that acquisition of a force able to destroy a significant element of our strategic deterrent casts serious doubt on the sincerity with which they profess an interest in arms control and "equal security". A lower limit on the number of MIRVed missiles, and cutting by one-half the limit on the number of heavy missiles permitted to be MIRVed--both of which were proposed by the U.S. in March, 1977--would have helped to alleviate U.S. concerns. Not only would it have reduced the number of warheads available to strike the U.S. deterrent, but it would have signaled Soviet willingness to agree to measures which would enhance, rather than undermine, deterrence.

As the treaty now stands, the provisions relating to ICBMs are profoundly unequal. The limit on the number of warheads permitted on each existing type of missile -- four, six or ten for the Soviets and three for the United States -- does nothing to redress the overriding inequality of ICBM throw-weight and ICBM warheads in favor of the Soviet Union.

Many Administration witnesses argued that the limit of 10 on the number of warheads permitted on the Soviet SS-18 missile will minimize the number of launch points necessary for the deployment, after the treaty expires, of the mobile MX missile should the U.S. decide then to go ahead with deployment. The Committee finds this unpersuasive despite the frequency with which it has been repeated. The fact that the SS-18 warhead limit will end with the expiration of the treaty robs it of any significance as an upper bound on the ultimate number of missile warheads the Soviets can deploy against the MX, which will become available only after the treaty has expired.

[Lc]

-10-

But the central point about the warhead limit is that it is too little, too late. Since the treaty levels will leave the Soviets with more than five ICBM warheads for each U.S. missile silo, it matters little that they could increase that number to seven or even ten without the treaty. The Soviets are unlikely to allocate their military resources to a wholesale increase in the number of ICBM warheads. It does them little good to add more warheads than the number needed to destroy our ICBMs (and other hardened targets) when they can devote those resources to qualitative improvements which are more dangerous to the U.S. and its allies -- and harder to detect. Administration witnesses have simply been too anxious to draw a favorable comparison between the unduly permissive treaty levels and still larger hypothetical deployments. The result has been some strikingly unrealistic predictions about Soviet behavior in the absence of a SALT II treaty.

The Committee believes that the Soviets can be expected to continue to build up their military power in ways that make military sense; and significant further proliferation of ICBM warheads beyond the far too generous treaty levels is not among them. It is for this reason that the Committee finds the simple extrapolation of past Soviet trends to be as unsatisfactory a basis for predicting future Soviet behavior as was an earlier mistaken official assumption that the Soviets would halt their military buildup when they achieved "parity" with the U.S. Administration conclusions as to what the Soviets could do are likely to prove far from what they would do in the absence of a treaty.

Ironically, the threat to the United States and its allies would be diminished if the Soviets were to go on building land-based ICBMs. By doing so they would have to divert resources from other weapons programs in areas such as

[1c]

-11-

antisubmarine warfare, cruise missile defenses, medium range weapons and
the like, where the balance of power is more responsive to additional
investment.

The failure to negotiate effective limits to the emergence of a destabilizing
Soviet ICBM force contrasts markedly with SALT constraints on U.S. efforts to
maintain "essential equivalence". In this context, the Committee questions the
wisdom of accepting SALT II restrictions which require the dismantling of
modern operational MIRVed ballistic missiles in order to modernize the bomber
leg of the Triad with more than 120 ALCM carriers, as planned. Furthermore,
the Committee is concerned that some treaty provisions could inhibit the
deployment of various survivable and cost effective basing modes for the MX
missile forcing the U.S. to squander scarce resources in a technically complex
effort to make MX deployment compatible with certain interpretations of the
Treaty. Already, the Soviet Union has invoked provisions now in the SALT II
Treaty to challenge the legitimacy of MX basing options. If the SALT process,
which has failed to bring about an agreement under which the existing U.S.
ICBM force remains survivable, should also result in the failure to deploy
a cost effective survivable land-based missile force, then the Committee
believes that irreparable harm will have been done to the national security
of the United States.

-12-

[LC]

THEATER FORCES/GLCM/SLCM

The Protocol to the treaty prohibits the deployment of ground or
sea-launched cruise missiles with a range greater than 600 kilometers.
Even conventionally armed cruise missiles fall under this
prohibition. This limitation, not part of the Vladivostok understanding,
has been agreed to at Soviet insistence.

It is generally recognized that, although it has not yet deployed any
modern cruise missiles, the United States currently maintains a significant
<u>technological</u> lead over the Soviets in the areas critical to the development
of sophisticated, highly accurate and highly mobile cruise missiles. High
on the list of Soviet objectives has been the curtailment of U.S. freedom
to exploit this technological advantage, which could help redress the
theater balance in Europe. The Soviets, by contrast, have long stressed
the development of <u>ballistic</u> missiles of intermediate range, like the new
SS-20 now being deployed. Neither the treaty nor the Protocol imposes any
limit on such ballistic missiles. The SS-20, capable of independently targeting
three nuclear warheads, has approximately six times the range limit imposed
upon ground and sea-launched cruise missiles (which are not permitted
to be MIRVed).

There is no escaping the fact that the Protocol entails severe restrictions
on the deployment of a highly promising theater system of great interest to
the U.S. and its allies. Based at sea or on land such theater cruise missiles
could reduce the dangerous vulnerability of NATO's theater nuclear forces and
free up valuable aircraft for the crucial conventional missions in which NATO
is so deficient. Moreover, for high-value, fixed military targets <u>conventionally</u>

-13-

[Lc]

armed cruise missiles would also be of great future significance for NATO. It is unfortunate, as Administration witnesses have often testified, that the schedule of work on the cruise missile programs affected by the Protocol is such that they cannot be ready for deployment before the expiration of the Protocol on December 31, 1981. In part, this is the case because of deliberate decisions to slow those programs, particularly the land attack version of the sea-launched cruise missile. There is evidence that some of these decisions were influenced by SALT considerations. The formula is simple: slow the program so that it cannot be ready before 1982; agree to prohibit deployment until that time; and then argue that the prohibition is meaningless because the program will not be ready during the period it is in effect.

The Committee, like many of the witnesses who came before it, is concerned at the precedential nature of the Protocol restrictions. The matter is not a legal one; it is political. It is difficult to believe that the United States and its NATO allies will be able to scrap the Protocol limitations at the end of 1981. At a minimum, we have agreed in the Joint Statement of Principles to negotiate further on the issues entailed in the Protocol; and the Soviets are certain to link favorable resolution of those issues to SALT III. Indeed, they have already begun to insist that the Protocol restrictions must not be permitted to lapse. 1/ Thus, the United States may well have to choose between severe restrictions on ground- and sea-launched cruise missiles and a SALT III treaty.

1/ "These figures would also like to remove from the limitations sea-launched and surface-launched cruise missiles. This is in fact a blatant attempt to insure right now that after the three-year term of the Protocol ends there is freedom of action to develop such missiles and increase their agreed range about 600 Km, and ultimately to retain the possibility of deploying them outside the United States--that is, as close as possible to the USSR's borders. Comment, as they say, is superfluous. It is surely

(cont.)

[LC]

-14-

It has been suggested that the Senate ought to insist that the Protocol can only be renewed subject to ratification by the Senate. But this proposal provides no solution. First, the prospect is not that the Executive Branch will ignore the Constitutional authority of the Senate to advise and consent to treaties. Rather, the negotiating situation following the ratification of SALT II will be such as to leave the country--President and Senate alike--with little leverage with which to resist Soviet demands that the deployment ban continue on theater cruise missiles. The linkage the Administration has asserted between ratification of the SALT II treaty and a decision by America's NATO allies to proceed with a much-needed modernization of theater nuclear forces suggests how delicate the political situation is and will continue to be. The Soviets have a demonstrated capacity, as the neutron warhead affair revealed, to bring to bear on the NATO alliance pressure sufficient to influence allied deployment decisions. The Senate should understand that we will face an even greater campaign of organized Soviet intimidation with respect to the theater cruise missile restrictions when the Protocol is being renegotiated.

(cont.) quite obvious that this is yet another attempt to emasculate the limitations already agreed on and to wreck the agreement as a whole.

"It is necessary to lay particular stress on the dangerous nature of attempts to leave loopholes so that cruise missiles can be deployed on the territory of other countries--the United States' NATO allies first and foremost. This question is part of the overall problem of insuring that the agreement worked out completely excludes the possibility of strategic arms being handed over to third countries, or of the agreement's being circumvented through the agency of third countries.

"The sides must adopt unequivocal commitments on this score. If this does not happen, the viability of the agreement will likewise be reduced to nothing. It must be clear to those who are now trying to "retouch" the solution to the question of cruise missiles by these means what a heavy responsibility they are assuming both with respect to the agreement and from the viewpoint of the interests of the United States itself since the Soviet Union will naturally not remain passive if anyone tries by this means to upset the established balance of strength to the detriment of its security." (Pravda, Feb 11, 1978, p. 4)

[Lc]

-16-

Committee finds this latter judgment doubtful. If the Protocol restrictions are as insignificant as the Administration says -- if they do not in fact constitute a precedent from which we will be unable to extricate ourselves -- then they can hardly be said to be of overriding importance to the Soviets.

[Lc]

-17-

## QUALITATIVE CONSTRAINTS

After considerable discussion during the Committee hearings we have concluded that the limitation on each side to one new type of ICBM will prove ineffective in preventing the Soviets from continuing the development of the several new ICBMs that constitute their fifth generation of such weapons. It thus fails to do what we intended, and what Administration spokesmen even now suggest it will do.

The principal effect of the "new types" limitation in Article IV is to prevent the U.S. from initiating more than one new type of ICBM while creating unwarranted expectations that the Soviets will be equally constrained. The Committee believes it likely that the Soviets will develop several new ICBMs under the guise of modernization of existing types of ICBM. This will inevitably weaken public confidence in the treaty and the process of arms control generally. U.S. agreement to a series of compromises, in which the distinction between "new" and simply "modernized" became hopelessly blurred, followed by still further compromises regarding the encryption of telemetry, has made the "new types" limitation meaningless -- and unverifiable.

The Committee feels bound to express its concern that the intelligence community may come under pressure to minimize the technological improvements incorporated in the new ICBMs the Soviets are likely to develop under the treaty as attempts are made to obscure the ineffectiveness of the treaty. Already some Administration spokesmen find themselves in the curious position of asserting that likely Soviet improvements in the accuracy, reliability, and range of hundreds of missiles are unimportant while simultaneously maintaining that the dismantling of a few antiquated launchers is highly significant.

-18-

[LC]

There is more involved here than mere semantics, although the essential defect in the "new types" provisions has to do with the definition of the term. The fact is that the original purpose of the limitation on the development of new types of ICBM was to preclude the Soviets from developing a generation of ICBMs that would have the accuracy and reliability necessary for an attack on our land-based missiles. Even after the Soviets demonstrated that they had acquired that capability, we continued to press for restrictions that no longer had any hope of achieving their objective. In the course of the negotiation that ensued, the Soviets successfully resisted restrictions that would indeed have forced them to abandon all but one of the new ICBMs then (and still) under development. It is unfortunate that Administration spokesmen continue to describe as an accomplished fact a set of constraints that they were unable successfully to negotiate.

[c]

-19-

BACKFIRE

Even the most modest intelligence estimates of the Soviet supersonic Backfire bomber attribute to it the capability to strike targets in the United States without refueling on missions similar to those planned for the U.S. B-52 strategic bombers (i.e., third country recovery missions). The failure to include the Backfire under the ceiling on strategic forces will enable the Soviets to continue deployment at the present rate--with the result that as the treaty draws to an end in 1985, it is estimated that the 375 to 400 Backfire bombers the Soviets will deploy will greatly exceed the number of operational U.S. B-52s.

Throughout the negotiations following Vladivostok, where the issue was left unresolved, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have insisted that the Backfire be counted under the treaty. Evidence available to the Committee suggests that the decision not to count Backfire was taken early in the current Administration in the belief that U.S. insistence on counting Backfire would impede movement toward a treaty and would lead eventually to an inevitable, and embarrassing, U.S. acquiescence.

Having decided not to insist on the inclusion of Backfire in the total ceiling (either wholly or, as was sometimes considered, in part) the Administration sought assurances about the use of the Backfire in an intercontinental role. Ultimately, an assurance was elicited at the Vienna Summit. However, this assurance has caused problems more serious than the one it was intended to solve.

The "assurance" takes the form of an unsigned statement handed to President Carter by President Brezhnev at the Vienna Summit. It promises not to give to the Backfire capabilities the U.S. knows the Backfire already has. It is, therefore, in our judgment, false. Worse, it is deceptive toward the American public. Moreover, it

-20-

[LC]

suggests that an improved or successor version of the Backfire could remain outside the treaty constraints if it lacked a "radius of action" sufficient for attacks on the United States. When President Carter attempted to obtain agreement with a U.S. interpretation to the effect that any significant increase in the range/payload of the Backfire would be inconsistent with the Brezhnev assurance, he was rebuffed--the Soviets thus paving the way for significant improvements to the Backfire. This is of particular interest in light of a new generation of fuel-efficient supersonic jet engines recently announced by the Soviet Union.

At various stages of the negotiations, the United States sought a number of "collateral constraints" on the manner in which the Soviets would be permitted to operate the Backfire fleet, all aimed at inhibiting its use as a strategic bomber. Among the constraints it was hoped to achieve were limitations on basing, refueling, training, and the like. At one point, the Administration took the position that the assurances finally agreed upon were inadequate and would have to be substantially enlarged. At another point, the Administration expected that the Backfire assurances would be incorporated in an exchange of letters signed by the heads of state and accorded a status comparable to the treaty as a whole. In all of this, Soviet intransigence was rewarded by American acquiescence.

The Soviets did agree to limit the rate of production of the Backfire to the rate in effect during the period of negotiation. While sometimes represented as a significant concession, it now appears that the number of Backfires permitted in 1985 will be about what our mid-1970s intelligence estimates projected. In short, the treaty permits the Soviet program to continue much as it was estimated to continue in the absence of an agreement.

-21-

[Lc]

He thus find ourselves with an assurance that does not assure but, rather, deepens the concern of the Committee that the Soviets intend fully to exploit their right to deploy nearly 400 Backfires, many of them likely to be significantly improved versions, between now and the treaty expiration. Such a fleet, integrated into the substantial Soviet missile forces and virtually unchallenged by U.S. air defenses, will have formidable strategic capabilities against the United States and its allies. It could, for example, target four million pounds of payload against U.S. territory, a full one-third addition to the already massive payload the Soviets can deliver against the U.S. It would require the U.S. to spend upwards of $10 billion for improved air defense over the life of the treaty to counter the growing threat of the Backfire bomber.

President Carter at Vienna indicated that the U.S. reserves the right to deploy an aircraft comparable to the Backfire which, like the Backfire, would not count against the aggregate. However, no Administration witness was able to define this "Backfire equivalent" or to provide assurances that, if a "Backfire equivalent" were to be integrated into the U.S. operational plans for central strategic war, it would not be regarded as a heavy bomber within the meaning of the treaty. If a "Backfire equivalent" were to possess the range/payload capability that we believe the Backfire has, the Soviets would surely regard it as a heavy bomber accountable under the treaty. The problem stems from the failure of the treaty to contain a definition of one of its central terms--"heavy bomber".

In light of the foregoing, the proposal that the Senate act to incorporate the Soviet assurances on Backfire in the treaty or otherwise elevate its status would seem ill-advised, likely to make matters worse rather than better. For one thing, it would signify Senate acceptance of claims about the capabilities of the Backfire that we know to be false. For another, it would imply that the defect in the Soviet assurances is one of form when, in fact, it is profoundly one of substance. If taken seriously, it would mislead the American people into believing that the problem had been solved.

-22-

[LC]

AIR-LAUNCHED CRUISE MISSILES

Given the capability of the Backfire, the decision not to seek its inclusion in the treaty ought to have been coupled with a Soviet concession of comparable importance. The Committee has been unable to establish that such a Soviet compromise was even sought. Rather, the move to exempt the Backfire from the treaty was followed by an Administration decision to scrap the B-1 in favor of a fleet of cruise missile carriers that are counted, not only against the overall ceiling, but against the treaty limit of 1320 MIRVed systems as well. Since the U.S. has been driven to the development and planned deployment of cruise missiles on strategic aircraft as a response to extensive Soviet air defense deployments (which are not subject to limitation) the inclusion of our cruise missile carriers in the MIRV ceiling is wholly unjustified. If as is planned we wish to deploy more than 120 cruise missile carriers under SALT II we will need to dismantle numerous operational MIRVed ICBMs or SLBMs. Future augmentation of the Soviet air defense system and/or attack capability could necessitate the deployment by the U.S. of additional cruise missile carriers. In that case, their inclusion in the MIRV limits would force us to forego deployment of more invulnerable SLBMs or dismantle more MIRVed ICBMs, thus widening still further the already considerable Soviet ICBM advantage

Given the importance the Administration has attached to the cruise missile as an alternative to the B-1, the Committee is concerned at the encroachment of treaty constraints on our flexibility in designing and implementing an optimized cruise missile program: specifically, (1) restrictions on conventionally armed cruise missiles; (2) a prohibition on the deployment of air-launched cruise missiles from non-heavy bombers; (3) restrictions on the average number of cruise missiles that may be deployed on a single carrier; (4) an apparently pre-arranged undertaking (executed

[L]

-23-

at the summit) not to exploit the fleet average permitted by the treaty; and (5) restrictions on the conversion of aircraft for the purpose of carrying cruise missiles. Each of these constraints is prejudicial to the U.S. They seriously complicate the development of a cruise missile based counter to the Soviet air defense system.

There is, with respect to the constraints on air-launched cruise missiles, a theme that we find repeated throughout the treaty: if there is no immediate program that would be inhibited by any given Soviet-proposed limitation then the limitation is acceptable to the U.S. This remarkably short-sighted view assumes that enough is now known about which future options will enhance our security so that it is wise to agree to constraints based largely on current programs. In this connection, the Committee has noted the increasing interest in the protection of our land-based force by a system of hard-point ABM defense -- an option foreclosed, perhaps prematurely, in the 1972 treaty banning anti-ballistic missile systems.

-24-

[L]

## VERIFICATION

It is beyond the capacity of our national technical means of verification to establish sufficiently the facts about Soviet compliance with a number of important terms of the SALT II treaty. The treaty, therefore, cannot be said to be "verifiable" or even "adequately verifiable". However confident we might be that the Soviets would not cheat or that the consequences of their cheating would be minimal or that they could not cheat to a degree that would alter the strategic balance, the fact remains that there are a number of provisions of the treaty, the compliance with which we cannot even expect adequately to monitor, much less verify.

Among the provisions of the treaty the compliance with which we cannot have confidence of monitoring are the following:

(1) changes in the range/payload of the Backfire (or successor aircraft);

(2) the range of cruise missiles;

(3) the number of warheads actually loaded on deployed ICBMs, especially heavy ICBMs;

(4) the conversion of medium-range ballistic missile launchers, which are not counted under the treaty, into launchers of long-range ICBMs, which are to be counted;

(5) the deployment levels of mobile ICBMs; and

(6) the testing of "new types" of ICBMs.

Administration spokesmen do not seriously challenge the judgment that we cannot have confidence of monitoring these provisions. Yet they insist that the treaty can be "adequately" verified. How can we reconcile these seemingly inconsistent positions?

When Administration officials claim that the treaty is "adequately" verifiable, they mean to assert the following: that the Soviets could not violate the treaty to an extent that would enable them to alter the strategic

-25-

[L.C]

balance without the United States taking compensatory action that would be timely and adequate. This assertion, which lies at the heart of the claim to verifiability, is impossible to evaluate since there is no agreed standard by which to measure the stability of or alterations to the strategic balance or the potential for U.S. compensating action at various times and under various circumstances. Indeed, Administration testimony has often suggested that even very wide differences in the relative capabilities of the U.S. and Soviet strategic forces would not alter and are consistent with a stable strategic balance.

Verifying compliance with the terms of the SALT II treaty requires (1) that we have accurate, reliable, and intelligible information about what the Soviets are doing, and (2) that the terms of the treaty are sufficiently clear, precise, and bilaterally agreed so that we can act with conviction in the event of non-compliance. Neither requirement has been met in the current treaty; there is much we cannot know because there is much that we cannot monitor, formidable as our capabilities to collect information may be. And many provisions of the treaty are imprecise, unclear, and disputed by the parties --with the result that our own judgments about compliance will inevitably be unclear, imprecise, and disputed.

At times, the Administration sought to argue that, whatever the verification shortcomings of the treaty, the Soviets would be restrained under the treaty from certain sorts of concealment and that we would, therefore, be in a better position to acquire intelligence on their weapons activities with the treaty than without it.

Curiously, however, the record of Soviet concealment with respect to strategic weapons appears to be closely associated with the SALT I treaty. Prior to the SALT I negotiations, there were few instances of Soviet efforts at such concealment. The evidence strongly suggests that Soviet concealment efforts since 1972 have been aimed, not simply at denying us military secrets

-26-

[LC]

per se, but at obscuring activities that raise issues of compliance with the SALT I (or possible SALT II) agreements. After all, the measurement of certain Soviet activities might well be irrelevant to our estimating their military capabilities but of great importance for judging compliance with the treaty. It is ironic that the treaty itself might provide the Soviets with an incentive to conceal, and thus obscure, activities that border on the edge of non-compliance with the treaty.

In a number of important respects, the Soviets have succeeded in negotiating loopholes in the verification provisions of the treaty with the result that they will be able to conceal their activities from us even in cases where their doing so would prevent us from monitoring their compliance with the terms of the treaty. There is, for example, no clear agreement as to what test data must be accessible to the other side. Moreover, the encryption of some test data transmitted by telemetry is permitted, with no clear understanding as to what encryption is banned. This unfortunate provision invites the Soviets to deny us vital test data.

There is no clear understanding in the treaty as to what constitutes "deliberate" concealment as distinguished from "non-deliberate" concealment.

There is no clear understanding as to what constitutes "national technical means of verification operating in accordance with recognized principles of international law". In some of these cases, we tried and failed to elicit Soviet agreement--an ominous sign for Soviet behavior in the future.

-27-

[Lc]

What is disturbing about the verification aspect of the treaty is the extent to which we have compromised the principle that "an unverifiable treaty is worse than none"--a principle that has, in the past, governed our national approach to arms control treaties. The Committee is concerned at the growing tendency to enter into unverifiable provisions in the present as well as other proposed treaties.

[Lc]

-28-

SUMMARY OF MAJOR FINDINGS

With respect to military aspects and implications of the proposed SALT II treaty on strategic offensive arms, the Armed Services Committee makes the following findings:

1. The treaty is unequal in favor of the Soviet Union and, thus, is inconsistent with Public Law 92-448.

2. Because of the massive Soviet military build-up during a period of moderate U.S. defense efforts, the Soviet Union may obtain general military superiority in the early or mid-1980s. Many opponents and proponents of the SALT II treaty, including members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have testified that the United States will lose "essential equivalence" in strategic nuclear forces in the early 1980s.

3. The SALT II treaty constraints on the growing Soviet threat are not militarily significant. The Soviet Union will greatly increase the capability of its forces and the number of nuclear warheads it has deployed during the treaty period. Within the treaty, the Soviet Union could deploy about as many warheads as is believed they would reasonably wish to do if there were no treaty.

4. All of the rocket boosters thus far identified with the so-called fifth generation of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles can be built within the limits of the treaty.

5. The so-called fractionation limit on the number of warheads on individual ICBMs will have an insignificant impact on Soviet programs during the treaty period and could be militarily significant only under special circumstances and only after 1985 when the constraints will no longer exist.

-29-

[ic]

6. The Backfire bomber has intercontinental range capability even without refueling and a refueling capacity which makes the total projected Backfire force a potent strategic nuclear threat. The Administration has accepted vague, ambiguous and unverifiable Soviet assurances on the future capability of the Backfire, and is doing so in the face of Soviet statements about Backfire's present capabilities that are inconsistent with our intelligence estimates.

7. Protocol restrictions on cruise missiles, if extended, would ban major U.S. responses to the increased Soviet theater nuclear threat. The powerful precedential effect of the SALT II Protocol has been illustrated during the SALT II debate by the manner in which theater nuclear force modernization has been linked to SALT II ratification.

8. Protocol restrictions on ground-launched cruise missile deployment involve, for the first time, a formal concession to the Soviet Union --uncompensated by any corresponding restriction of Soviet theater systems--on the so-called forward-based systems. This has given the Soviet Union substantial bargaining leverage and has led to an increase in tension within the NATO alliance. Historically, the United States has refused to negotiate restrictions on such theater nuclear weapons designed to defend NATO unless Soviet weapons, such as the SS-20, which threaten NATO were also included.

9. Under the SALT II treaty provisions, the United States will be forced to dismantle approximately sixty modern operational MIRVed launchers, either

[Lc]

-30-

Minuteman III ICBMs with three warheads each or Poseidon submarine-launched ballistic missiles with up to fourteen warheads each. If even one Poseidon submarine is dismantled to meet SALT II constraints, the U.S. will probably dismantle a greater total warhead capacity than will the Soviet Union to meet SALT II limits.

10. Many provisions of the treaty, such as the cruise missile ranges and bomber capabilities, cannot be verified, and overall verifiability of the treaty is based, not on a strict standard of compliance, but on a subjective standard of risk. Rejection of U.S. intelligence estimates in favor of unsubstantiated Soviet assurances concerning the Backfire bomber and several older Soviet cruise missiles may place the United States at a disadvantage in dealing with future compliance questions. Numerous ambiguities and possible loopholes in the treaty are too serious to be left for Standing Consultative Commission consideration after ratification.

11. The Soviet Union has invoked provisions now in the SALT II Treaty to challenge the legitimacy of MX basing options. Even if the Protocol ban on mobile missiles is not continued, some interpretations of various SALT II provisions could result in adoption by the United States of less than the most survivable or most cost-effective basing mode for MX, or even termination of the MX program.

12. In the absence of substantial real growth in U.S. non-manpower defense investment, the military balance will shift even further against the United States at all levels.

-31-

[lc]

## CONCLUSIONS

After extensive examination of the military implications of the treaty, the Committee concludes that the SALT II treaty, as it now stands, is not in the national security interests of the United States of America. The Committee reaches this conclusion in view of the inadequacies in the foregoing analysis.

We believe that major changes to the treaty are essential if the treaty is to serve our national security and be in the best interests of the common defense policy. Moreover, we believe that a number of ambiguities must be clarified before the rights and obligations of the parties can be fully understood and agreed.

Among the changes which should be considered in strengthening our national security interests are:

1. Remedying such inequalities as the Soviet advantage in ICBM throwweight, the permitted Soviet possession of modern, large ballistic missiles, the exclusion of the Backfire bomber, the inclusion of Western theater nuclear forces, and decisively addressing the unwarranted precedents which have been set by the Protocol.

2. Closing loopholes in connection with the limitation on the testing and deployment of new types of ICBMs.

3. Obtaining agreement to such measures as may be necessary to assure our ability to monitor Soviet compliance.

-32-

[c]

4. Clarifying by agreement ambiguities as to the rights and obligations of the parties. Examples of such ambiguities are the following:

(a) Permitted Backfire improvements;

(b) Encryption of telemetry;

(c) Constraints on "modifications" to existing ICBM types;

(d) Verification terms and procedures;

(e) Permitted basing modes for mobile ICBMs; and

(f) Sharing of technology/weapons with allies.

96th Congress
1st Session

SENATE

Report
No. 96-

[lc]

_______ (Legislative day, _________), 1979--Ordered to be printed

Mr. ______, from the Committee on Armed Services,
submitted the following

REPORT
OF THE HEARINGS

(a) The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has sole jurisdiction to report the SALT II treaty to the Senate;

[L]

-1-

HEARINGS

[L]

-2-

[10]

-3-

COMMITTEE ANALYSIS

[1c]

-4-

Current U.S. plans are not adequate to close the gap that has been
permitted to develop, either in the conventional, theater nuclear or strategic
nuclear area. The Committee believes that an essential precondition to
effective U.S. action to close the widening military gap is a full appre-
ciation of the extent to which years of Soviet military expansion have
placed the United States at a disadvantage. Unwarranted notions about
Soviet cooperation, the unfounded assumption that SALT treaties reflect
Soviet restraint and forebearance, and overly optimistic hopes that the
Soviet threat to our security is being lessened are inconsistent with the
facts and undermine efforts to summon the resolve to arrest the decline in
our military posture.

"The Congress...urges and requests the President to seek a
future treaty that, *inter alia*, would not limit the United
States to levels of intercontinental strategic forces inferior
to the limits provided for the Soviet Union." (PL 92-448)

-5-

[LC]

It is sometimes said in defense of these inequalities that the U.S. does not desire to do the things that the Soviets alone are permitted to do. But the Senate, in 1972, did not insist on equality only with respect to options that a particular administration might wish to pursue. It did insist on equality in the weapons limited by the treaty--ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers -- for broader reasons: to avoid imposing a lasting handicap on the United States in future arms negotiations and to reject the political implications of codified inferiority. The treaty before us does not provide the equality that Public Law 92-448 envisioned.

[c]

-6-

[c]

-7-

# LAND-BASED INTERCONTINENTAL BALLISTIC MISSILES

[Lc]

-8-

[L.C.]

-9-

[lc]

-10-

[L]

-11-

-12-

[L]

THEATER FORCES/GLCM/SLCM

[c]

-13-

(cont.)

[L]

-14-

[Lc]

-16-

[L.C.]

-17-

## QUALITATIVE CONSTRAINTS

[Lc]

-18-

[L]

-19-

BACKFIRE

-21-

[LC]

We thus find ourselves with an assurance that does not assure but, rather, deepens the concern of the Committee that the Soviets intend fully to exploit their right to deploy nearly 400 Backfires, many of them likely to be significantly improved versions, between now and the treaty expiration. Such a fleet, integrated into the substantial Soviet missile forces and virtually unchallenged by U.S. air defenses, will have formidable strategic capabilities against the United States and its allies. It could, for example, target four million pounds of payload against U.S. territory, a full one-third addition to the already massive payload the Soviets can deliver against the U.S. It would require the U.S. to spend upwards of $10 billion for improved air defense over the life of the treaty to counter the growing threat of the Backfire bomber.

-20-

[L]

-22-

[LC]

AIR-LAUNCHED CRUISE MISSILES

[Lc]

-23-

There is, with respect to the constraints on air-launched cruise
missiles, a theme that we find repeated throughout the treaty: if
there is no immediate program that would be inhibited by any given Soviet-
proposed limitation then the limitation is acceptable to the U.S. This
remarkably short-sighted view assumes that enough is now known about which
future options will enhance our security so that it is wise to agree to
constraints based largely on current programs. In this connection, the
Committee has noted the increasing interest in the protection of our land-
based force by a system of hard-point ABM defense -- an option foreclosed,
perhaps prematurely, in the 1972 treaty banning anti-ballistic missile
systems.

-24-

[Lc]

## VERIFICATION

-25-

[L]

balance without the United States taking compensatory action that would be
timely and adequate. This assertion, which lies at the heart of the claim
to verifiability, is impossible to evaluate since there is no agreed standard
by which to measure the stability of or alterations to the strategic balance or
the potential for U.S. compensating action at various times and under various circum-
stances. Indeed, Administration testimony has often suggested that even very wide
differences in the relative capabilities of the U.S. and Soviet strategic
forces would not alter and are consistent with a stable strategic balance.

At times, the Administration sought to argue that, whatever the verifica-
tion shortcomings of the treaty, the Soviets would be restrained under the treaty
from certain sorts of concealment and that we would, therefore, be in a better
position to acquire intelligence on their weapons activities with the treaty than
without it.

-26-

[Lc]

[Lc]

-27-

[Lc]

-28-

SUMMARY OF MAJOR FINDINGS

-29-

[lc]

[LC]

-30-

-31-

[L]

CONCLUSIONS

1. Remedy ing such inequalities as the Soviet advantage in ICBM throwweight, the permitted Soviet possession of modern, large ballistic missiles, the exclusion of the Backfire bomber, the inclusion of Western theater nuclear forces, and decisively addressing the unwarranted precedents which have been set by the Protocol.

-32-

[Lc]

(b) Encryption of telemetry;

WL-01

MR. KISSINGER AND HIS CRITICS

Success and failure in politics are seldom absolute categories; compared with his predecessors and successors Mr. Kissinger has quitted himself well and there is already talk about nostalgia for the Kissinger era. In some respects he was lucky for he had the support of a president who, whatever his other failings, had a flair for foreign policy and also greater experience and competence than most other presidents in recent decades. Kissinger's great incubus was, of course, the Vietnam inheritance; he surely must have known in 1968 that the war could not be won. But the fighting continued for another five years and the question inevitably arises whether the game was worth the candle, or, in other words, whether the price that had to be paid for a negotiated settlement was not excessive. Would the disaster, in South East Asia and at home, have been that much greater following a unilateral American retreat in 1970?

*White House Years* is a long book, but not too long considering that it covers four years of world history. It is also a very interesting book, certainly as long as the author happens to be interested in the subject on which he writes, which, by necessity, cannot always be the case. It is difficult to think of a book on foreign politics of similar importance published during the last twenty years. Kissinger's critics have found, of course, much to get indignant, each according to his predilections - Cambodia, the excessive pre-

WL-02

occupation with diplomatic technique or the oversell of
detente. Kissinger did, of course, commit mistakes, some
of them major, but almost alone among policymakers in
recent years he had an overall concept. Furthermore, he
succeeded repeatedly to make defeats appear almost as
victories, no mean feat given the general mood and the
confusion of the country. The odds against succeeding
were overwhelming and this is true even now. Whatever
successes America may reap in the years to come in the
foreign political field (and there is doubt whether there
will be many) will be the result of the mistakes of her
rivals, or the conflicts between them. They will not be
the fruits of American long term political strategy. Some
presidents and secretaries of state may fail more than
others, but such are the obstacles and handicaps at home
that the freedom of action of even the most gifted foreign
policy maker will be narrowly circumscribed.

Fifty years ago the State Department was very
small, America had no enemies and few rivals, the secretary
could travel abroad if he was enterprising but there
was no need to do so; the same was true, of course, with
regard to other countries: Palmerston, for instance, never
travelled when he was in office. There were, in any case,
only about five or six countries that mattered. The traffic
of notes was limited, there was no intelligence service,
for according to Mr. Stimson famous _obiter dictum_ gentlemen
did not read other gentlemen's letters. Today there are

WL-03

some 150 sovereign states, America faces a great deal of ill will, problems have multiplied in every direction. Among those conducting foreign policy there are few gentlemen left and these are swamped by memoranda, notes, position papers etc., to such an extent that, for all one knows, they no longer read their own letters. To cope with the many problems the number of those employed in the foreign service at home and abroad has also increased by leaps and bounds. This quantum jump may be a blessing for university graduates looking for work; whether it contributes to a more effective foreign policy is less certain.

No secretary of state can possibly have any longer even a nodding acquaintance with all the problems facing him. Kissinger has been accused by his critics for being not interested in economics. This may well be true, there is very little on economics in the present book. Since economics are of great importance in world affairs this is of course a great drawback. But if a secretary of state is well versed in the problems of foreign trade and the balance of payment, it is unlikely that he is equally interested and knowledgeable in Europe, and Latin America, Africa and Russia and China, technology and military strategy. And if he knows about all this, chances are that he probably has some other serious drawback of character of judgement.

To cope with the unending problems and the unwieldy apparatus there are now two secretaries of state (de facto, if not de jure) and it would be a gross understatement to say that the division of labor between them is ill defined.

WL-04

[Lc]

They are responsible to the President whose experience
in foreign affairs is limited; scanning the list of Candi-
dates for 1980 one is bound to reach the conclusion that
this state of affairs is unlikely to change in the fore-
seeable future. If the U.S. government would call in a
management expert to advise it on the most rational con-
duct of its affairs at the very top, quite irrespective
of constitution and similar impediments, he would very
likely recommend a division of the burden between three
or four secretaries of state. And since there has to be
someone on top to decide on priorities, the expert would
probably suggest that there should be a second President
preoccupied solely with foreign affairs. For no one in
his right mind is likely to argue in this day and age that
no one person, however gifted and hard working, can possibly
cope any longer with both the domestic and foreign chal-
lenges facing the nation.

Such or similar reforms, however, logical and
necessary, are of course quite illusory for many years to
come; in the long run they may well be inevitable if this
country will still retain any foreign policy at all. In
the meantime the present unsatisfactory state
of affairs will continue with one secretary of state in
charge of an unwieldy apparatus incapable to take any
longer major initiatives, and a national security advisor
heading his ninety nine aides, a body which should be able
to 'function at least in an emergency.

WL-05

[lc]

Kissinger's book again and again stresses that the conduct of foreign policy is impossible without, on one hand, some continuity and a minimum of secrecy on the other. Such wisdom was not unknown in the 18th and 19th century and, of course, much earlier; in our time all this has changed, at least in the United States, there is no continuity and virtually no secrecy and the results have not failed to come. Kissinger was in office for eight years, a very long time by modern standards even though he was secretary of state for only half this period. Gromyko, on the other hand, has now been foreign minister for almost twenty three years which compares favorably with Talleyrand, Palmerston and even Bismark*. He has seen Dulles, Rusk, Rogers, Kissinger come and go and he will no doubt outlast Mr. Vance. Mr. Dobrynin has been in Washington longer than most Senators and Congressmen, his envoys have made themselves at home in Congress, the State Department, newspaper offices and research institutes in Washington. There was a time when ambassadors used to stay ten or even twenty years in a foreign capitals, and for good reason. At the end of his stay in Moscow, Mr. Watson will just know his way along Gorky Street and, with luck, to make out the headlines in *Pravda*. True, there are also professionals in the American embassy in Moscow but since the Soviet capital is not as wide open a city as

* Bismark was prime minister and foreign minister of Prussia before he became foreign minister of a united Germany. But then Gromyko was first deputy foreign minister for many years before he became foreign minister.

WL-06

Washington, they will not be permitted to lobby in the Central Committee, *Izvestia*, or the KGB. Poor America - it is hardly a fair contest...

Much, perhaps most, of Kissinger's time in Washington was spent in various inter-office rivalries and keeping his designs secret; while some of this was perhaps unnecessary or at least exaggerated, the reasons are all too obvious: it is easy to ridicule Kissinger's little strategems to get away from the media - the upset stomach in Islamabad, his appearance as Pompidou's girl friend at the Frankfurt airport. But on the other hand, every major country needs to keep some secrets and the U.S. attempts to have none, while admirable in intent, it has been disastrous in its consequences. Leaks have occasionally a positive function: they act as a corrective to mistakes about to be committed. But they also act as a brake for all positive action, and this at a time when the main danger facing American foreign policy is overall paralysis, barely veiled by surface diplomatic action, usually unconcerted and ineffective, and resounding declarations which fewer and fewer people take seriously.

The press figures very prominently in Kissinger's book - both in view of the leaks, which is understandable, and the weight given to editorial opinion, which is not. The press in this context usually means editorials in the *New York Times* and the *Washington Post*, only rarely the *Wall Street Journal*, the *Chicago Tribune* or the *Los Angeles Times*. These editorials seldom present the most knowledgeable and judicious views available in town. But such is the power of anonymity

WL-07

[LC]

that Mr. Kissinger finds it necessary to draw our attention
time and again to what two or three of these papers have to
say and not in view of the logic of the arguments, the pun-
gency of the views or the brilliance of the style. If these
editorials would have been sigend Miller or Smith not much
attention would have been paid to them in the first place.
But the idea that this is the collective wisdom of a great
newspaper - an assumption wrong in almost every respect -
conveys a prestige which would not otherwise exist. But,
like every foreign policy maker, Mr. Kissinger needs the
media and so he pays inordinate attention to them.

The same is true with regard to the sensitivity
displayed vis-a-vis the views of his former friends in the
official and inofficial foreign policy establishment. He
was obviously much pained (as he writes) by the stress with
old friends and former associates, with whom he had served
on various panels and study groups - the academic foreign
policy and arms control study groups concentrated in a hand-
ful of universities and a few research centers. It is true
that on certain questions there was indeed room for legitimate
dissent. But on others there was no need for mental anguish.
Mr. Kissinger writes:

Where I parted company with my friends and
former colleagues was in my analysis of Soviet
motivations. I did not accept the proposition
that unilateral restraint in weapons procure-
ment on our part would invoke a comparable
response from the Kremlin. As believers in

WL-08

the predominance of "objective factors" the
Soviet leaders were likely to interpret such
steps less as gestures of conciliation than
as weakness, caused by domestic or economic
pressures. The Soviet Union after the Cuban
missile crisis was going all out in its weapon
procurement in every major category of arms.
American abdication would tempt Soviet ten-
dencies towards filling every vacuum ... It
was true that notions of military superiority
had a different significance in the nuclear
age; it did not follow that we could risk
standing still while our adversaries built
feverishly. Over the decades a growing im-
balance against us was bound to deprive our
pledges to defend our allies of any credibility...
All this is perfectly obvious; was it really necessary to
spell it out? Mr. Kissinger would hardly have felt a moral
obligation to enter a debate with his former friends and
colleagues on the proposition that winter in America is,
generally speaking, cooler than summer, that rivers usually
flow downstream, that night follows day and vice versa. But
when it came to defend the proposition that power still
counted in relations between nations he almost felt guilty.

It is easy to feel impatient with the passages in
this book in which Mr. Kissinger restates the obvious at con-
siderable length and with heavy emphasis. But is it fair?

WL-09

[L.C.]

Until quite recently, confusion was reigning supreme in Washington and the foreign policy establishment outside the capitol, and if the Ayatollah and his followers have infused some element of reality in the debate, there still is a long way to go. The purveyors of the views against which Kissinger had to struggle are still around. They may be bankrupt, but they will not voluntarily leave the scene.

It is a strange phenomenon that in our time, perhaps more than in any other, politicians and those advising them on foreign affairs have been able to be consistently wrong without damage to their career and reputation. A surgeon who kills too many of his patients, an architect whose houses or bridges collapse, even a horse with a bad track record will not find many backers. But this seemingly does not apply to those diplomats, columnists, political scientists who only yesterday argued that the rulers of Vietnam and Cambodia were pacifist and humanitarians who took to the sword (figuratively speaking) only because they had to resist foreign aggression; who maintained that it was altogether unthinkable that Russia (let alone Cuba) would ever interfere in Africa and that there was no harm if they tried to do so; who advised the public radically to cut back America's conventional forces; who announced that Eurocommunism was the wave of the future and Khomeini both a saint and a liberal; who predicted that Afghanistan (or Cambodia or Eritrea) would be Russia's Vietnam; who reassured us that the rise in oil prices (and the financial and social consequences) over the last six years were not a matter of great consequence - those

[L]

WL-10

who urged on us these and similar propositions have no
more a track record that Peter Shlemihl has a shadow.
Somewhere on the way it has been lost. There may be
bankrupcy in private life, there seems to be none in
politics. Those in government will be promoted for their
prescience, those in media will be as widely reprinted
as before, and the reputation of the academic experts
have also not suffered any lasting damage. Congressional
committees will invite them as witnesses at their hearings;
one view after all is as good as another and who is to
judge who is right or wrong? Leading newspapers will liber-
ally provide platforms for the Institute of Policy Studies'
and some far out sectarian; on the lessons of 1929 comment
will run the whole gamut of the ideological spectrum from
Signor Enrico Berlinguer to Mr. Michael Harrington. "Meet
the Press" competes with "Issues and Answers" providing a
platform for the political philosophy of Mr. Ghotbzadeh.

On almost any other topic proponents of arrant
nonsense would find it difficult to get a permanent platform,
but foreign policy is seemingly different - everyone has to
get a hearing. Truth according to this reasoning lies some-
where in the middle - between the sane man or woman and the
lunatic, between the knowledgeable and the ignoramus. In
London a corner of Hyde Park has been set aside for political
and religious sectarians, cranks and eccentrics to preach
undisturbed, their respective gospels to small or large crowds
of the curious. In the United States the media presumably in
the name of democratic principles have taken over this function

WL-11

of Hyde Park Corner. The spectacle has lasted for years
and it has all the ingredients of high comedy. But it is
a comedy painful to watch for the issue at stake is the
survival of this country.

White House Years attracted a great deal of
criticism, most of it predictable. The book was bound to
provoke those refighting the battles against the Vietnam war
unwilling to accept that it is over, and that a great deal
of water has flown down the Mekong river since. For them
the Vietnam era continues, and, indeed, should never end.
Everything else follows from this belief: Kissinger prolonged
the war, he lied, much more than Kennedy and Johnson, he is
responsible for all the death and devastation. History has
stood still, if there have been unpleasant developments in
Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos this must be America's fault.
Other problems in world affairs hardly exist, and in any case
can be solved by applying the lessons of Vietnam: Not to
interfere in other countries affairs except through extending
economic help and supporting the legitimate national aspira-
tions of radical third world countries. One school of psycho-
analysis has the term parataxic distortion for this kind of
condition; the shock of a certain experience was so great that
all subsequent experiences are interpreted in the same light:
The cat which got burned by sitting on a hot stove, will no
longer sit on any stove, in extreme cases the poor animal may
never sit down at all.

But there have been defections from this camp,
albeit reluctant and half hearted defections. The reviews

[LC]

WL-12

of "White House Years" in the _New York Times_ and the _New York Review of Books_ are interesting examples: Neither author feels comfortable with Kissinger's frequent use of the concept "geopolitical approach" and it is difficult not to sympathize with them on this count. Kissinger's use of the term is idiosyncratic, and even after repeated study does not become any clearer. He certainly does not apply the term in the German, Haushoferian sense, which puts much stress on certain geographical factors in political analysis. Did he perhaps mean that world problems ought to be considered not in isolation but on a global context, that the problems are usually interconnected. This is quite true but hardly deserves to be called a strategy. Mrs. Tuchmann on the other hand is certainly wrong in asserting that "geopolitics" is just another word for "cold war." This for two reasons: It is commonly agreed that ideology is the most important single factor involved in the "cold war" and this, of course, is the very antithesis of "geopolitics" which belittles doctrine. Furthermore, such an interpretation ignores Mr. Kissinger's role not only as architect of detente but also his speeches about structures and generations of peace; has the oversell of detente been forgotten so quickly? In a sense Mrs. Tuchman is, of course, right in calling Kissinger a cold warrior and so is Prof. Stanley Hoffmann who names him the "complete Cold Warrior", for he believes in a balance of power and not in surrender. But then Mrs. Tuchman also says that "the contest with Communism is indeed serious", and she believes with Stanley Hoffmann that "the problem is not whether (in italics)

WL-13

Soviet designs should be thwarted, the debate is over how to do it." Mrs. Tuchman and Prof. Hoffmann, in other words, are also cold warriors, more sophisticated (Mrs. Tuchman's term) than the clumsy Kissinger, more dangerous ones from the Soviet point of view because (allegedly) more effective. Seen in this light the only American politician in recent memory who can rightly claim that he is not a cold warrior, is Andrew Young, and purists may not even agree with this proposition.

The names of both Mrs. Tuchman and Stanley Hoffmann have been mentioned in the past as foreign policy advisers; the author of the *Proud Tower*, was I believe, Eugen MacCarthy's candidate for secretary of state. How would they have faced the problems confronting America? Their prescriptions are almost identical. Mrs. Tuchman believes that the contest with Communism should be conducted "in local terms." This is sensible, but unstartling advice, few sane people would apply the experience of Patagonia to Finland. What else? "If we had paid more attention to the history of Vietnamese nationalism or to the internal stresses in Iran, we could not (one hopes) have invested our policy and support in regimes lacking a valid mandate from their own people." How does one obtain a valid mandate? Mrs. Tuchman, a student of the twentieth century history knows, of course, that Hitler and Mussolini has such a mandate from their people - so had, of course, Emperor Wilhelm II in 1914 when he got his war credits. The rulers of the "third world" regimes have with very rare exceptions not been elected; "valid mandate" in

WL-14

these circumstances simply means to be in effective control
of a country. It follows, in practical terms that the United
States should support the more repressive regimes, fascist or
communist, or those who present a mixture, because these
rulers are more effectively in control having ruthlessly
stamped out all opposition than the old fashioned, semi-
authoritarian regimes. This is indeed a possible line of
action though its moral superiority is not readily obvious
and there is nothing specifically liberal about it.

Professor Hoffmann reaches the same conclusion
following a more circuitous route. He first upbraids Kissinger
for sharing Carl Schmitt's (whose name he misspells) belief
in the fundamental importance of the distinction between
friend and foe. But this kind of faith is more characteristic
for the rulers of totalitarian regimes and how does one be-
have dealing with such antagonists? By ingnorin
by declaring that there are a great many other conflicts in
addition? Alas, we do not get an answer. Kissinger's design,
Hoffmann says is not compatible with the U.S. system of
government because it requires an extraordinary capacity for
acting swiftly and flexibly all over the globe, and secondly
because this strategy requires domestic politics to allow
America's leaders to pursue their delicate game abroad
without constraints and pressures. This is, of course, much
exaggerated: The problem is surely not that U.S. policy is
unable to act swiftly and flexibly "all over the globe."
But unless it is capable to react sometimes somewhere swiftly
and flexibly we are in for great trouble. Equally, it is

[L.C.]

WL-15

not necessary for the conduct of an effective foreign policy
to have "no domestic constraints and pressures." But if
these constraints and pressures become too great, they
cause paralysis. Thus, as Prof. Hoffmann sees it, Kissinger's
approach cannot work, at least not in the long run. But
then Kissinger's basic design is wrong anyway: It rests on
a false view of the world, or to be precise on an unreal
world, in which the struggle between Washington and Moscow
"absorbs every other conflict or issue;" obsessed with
Moscow, dismissing local circumstances (shades of Mrs.
Tuchman!), the Soviets are made responsible for whatever
happens. In Kissinger's world view every test, everywhere,
has to be met. But this is no more than a caricature: Dr.
Kissinger can hardly be accused of having tried to meet
every test. Nor has he (or anyone else) come on record as,
to provide but one example, blaming the Soviet Union for
the oil policy of the OPEC states. But on the other hand
it is perfectly true that one cannot escape from every con-
frontation either. Where would Prof. Hoffmann and Mrs.
Tuchman draw the line? Clearly not in Asia, Africa or the
Middle East. Certainly not in the Caribbean, for this would
bring the U.S. into confrontation with Cuba which they
would surely regard as most undesirable. Not in Canada,
because this would also be a case of "local circumstances."

How should one have faced the Iranian crisis according to
the theory of the "local circumstances"? Easy, says Prof.
Hoffmann and there is no reason why Mrs. Tuchman should
dissent from him: "Isolate the Ayatollah". Nothing, of

WL-16

course, would be less difficult, what with the nations of
the world queuing up, volunteering for this task with the
Soviet Union in the front rank.

Another attack on Kissinger has not been mentioned
so far, by Mr. George Bundy in *Foreign Affairs*. It deals
with one paragraph in *White House Years* concerning the private
assurances given to President Thieu to secure his acceptance
of Washington's agreement with Hanoi. In his review, Bundy
tries to show that Kissinger's explanations were far from
straightforward which seems correct. What does it prove?
I find it difficult to believe that Mr. Bundy is as innocent
as he pretends to be of the use of diplomatic and deliverately
imprecise language in politics, or indeed that he never used
it himself. It also emerges that, like Mr. Ball and other
members of the old foreign policy establishment, he clearly
does not like Mr. Kissinger and there is, for all one knows,
no reason why he should.

Mr. Kissinger's biographer will have the unenviable
task to find out whether he was bound to make so many enemies
among these people, he will have to sort out the personal
motives from the substantive differences in the attacks against
him. At present this need not unduly concern us.

* * *

WL-17

[lc]

Mrs. Tuchman concludes her review of *White House Years* with her credo on the conduct of foreign affairs:

> ...that a foreign policy that alienates one's countrymen and causes dislike and distrust of government is not worth what it might gain against the adversary; that a nation's strength lies ultimately in its self-esteem and confidence is what is right; and that whatever damages these damages the nation.

She had, of course, Vietnam in mind, but the publication of her review coincided with the Iranian crisis and thus the ringing words about self-esteem and confidence in what is right were bound to be read in a different context.

The Iranian crisis did not come as a surprise to those who had watched, with sadness and concern, the steep decline in recent years of American influence all over the world. There had been many warning signs before, such as most recently the speeches and resolutions at the Havanna conference. America in the post war period has been admired and feared, loved and hated, suspected and sometimes emulated. But it has never before been considered a laughing stock and an irrelevance in world affairs. The long term implications of the confrontation with the Ayatollah and his minions should not be exaggerated. Such noise and fury in the political quicksands of the Middle East may disappear as quickly as it emerged, Iranian aggression will be directed against other targets or against each other. There may be political realignments difficult to visualize at present.

WL-18

The real importance of the Teheran crisis was that it high-
lighted the present status of America in world affairs.

For this one may have reason in the long run to be
grateful to the Ayatollah; he did away in a flash with many
cherished delusions, which otherwise might have persisted
for a long time - that America's political and military
strength was second to none; as the Ayatollah said in one
of his speeches: Carter is beating an empty drum. The advo-
cates of the military-power-does-not-count school went on
claiming that the Teheran events were striking confirmation
of their thesis: For if a crowd of students could defy America
with all its nuclear might, there clearly was a lesson to be
learned. The lesson would have been more obvious if similar
mishaps would have happened to, say East Germany or Cuba -
not to mention the Soviet Union. But it has not: The Aya-
tollah and his henchmen may be crazy but they have no suicidal
impulses, they knew whom they might attack with impunity.
Seen in this light East Germany and Cuba are great powers
and the United States is not: Their embassies will not be
taken over, they can push through anti-Western resolutions
at the United Nations or various Third World gatherings,
they may dispatch troops to any part of Africa or the Middle
East they can provide political asylum - the U.S. cannot.

It is time, of course, that in the storms of the
1980s the nuclear arsenal will count for relatively little.
What is needed above all is a quick response capability to
hold at least its own facing its adversaries. This does not
mean primarily military response - though without such a

[Lc]

WL-19

capability other activities will hardly be convincing.

It does mean the ability to conduct, whenever necessary, political warfare such as all other nations with interests outside their borders do - an effective radio propaganda for instance, instead of the present devisory efforts, and also the capacity to engage in court action without keeping informed seven Congressional committees, 150 members of Congress and their staffs, such suggestions would have been rejected even six months ago as totally unacceptable, now they will certainly be given a hearing, for the conviction has gained ground that the U.S. is not surrounded only by friends and well-wishers. Whether the Iran shock will be sufficient for a full realization of these home truths, is not certain - there will be more of the same medicine.

All this will be painful to accept, but unless it is accepted, the decline of the U.S. will turn into a collapse. Again, advice will be offered to the effect that one should not be guided by anger and that exercises in *machismo* are both uncalled for and would endanger world peace. This is true as far as it goes but it ignores the central issue, namely that the assertion of American power is needed not to give vent to frustration and aggression not even to restore American prestige but precisely to remove the danger of war. For it is perfectly obvious that if the present trend continues, America will be faced sooner or later with threats or demands which even a Kennedy, even a McGovern, would not be able to accept. The risks of provoking America will appear small, the world will have become

WL-20

[LC]

accustomed to the picture of the bumbling, stupid and harm-
less giant which anyone can challenge and defy until one
day, the provocations may become intolerable and there
will be wholly blamed: How could anyone have known that
the policy of abdication would not be pursued consistently
to the very end?

One has to be grateful to the Ayatollah: for
a long time America has been playing according to one set
of rules whereas its adversaries have played according to
others, involving much fewer inhibitions and restrictions
and playing therefore much more successfully. True, this
was done with at least a minimum of decorum - embassies
were not seized or sacked, flags were not burned, and it
could therefore be maintained that there was nothing
basically wrong with America's standing in the world. But
Khomeini's students only practised in a blatant (but rela-
tively harmless) way what others had been doing more cau-
tiously and insidiously (and therefore more dangerously).
Khomeini compelled Americans to rethink the rules of the
game: How are they to survive in a world incapable to react
to political warfare, unable to defend these vital interests?

True, even before Teheran there was a marked change
in the general mood and the events in Iran only hastened
this. Any American president will have to follow a markedly
tougher line in the future, not in order to play up to
chauvinist galleries but simply because the international
climate is growing far more inclement, because America will
be under pressure from many quarters, because to be pushed
around incessantly is not in the American grain. True, Mr.

[Lc]

WL-21

Kissinger again got into trouble for having said that much (in a speech in Austin, Texas) at least as far as Mr. Tom Wicker and some like minded columnists and editorialists are concerned. Such talk, they said was inflammatory and irresponsible.

Their anger is understandable, they have to dis-
credit Kissinger in order to justify their record during
the last ten years, it has to be shown that it is not Carter's
and Khomeini's fault but Kissinger's. They face an uphill
struggle: How ever much the next president may be convinced
that power, except in economic and moral terms, is unimpor-
tant in the contemporary world, he will have to accept the
fact that detente between West and East, between North and
South, cannot possibly replace the balance of power. Khomeini
may be an irrelevance sub specie aeternatis but there are
others around, more powerful and dangerous who wish (to use
the Ayatollah's inelegant phrase) to rub America's snout in
the dust. Thus any president, whatever his personal incli-
nations, will have to accept that America faces a struggle
for survival which cannot be won only by food to Cambodia,
by zero economic growth, by wringing our hands, praying and
proclaiming that we are everyone's friends. Kissinger did
not really need Carl Schmidt to understand that America has
not only friends in this world, but this has been anathema to
his critics and the fact that they have been proved wrong has
made them all the more angry. They should have been happy
about the post-Kissinger era, but, alas, their dreams seem
not to have come true.