Interview with Caspar Weinberger, December 1987 [Part 2 of 2]
Summary
Caspar Weinberger served as U.S. president Ronald Reagan’s secretary of defense from 1981 to 1987. In the interview he conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: “Reagan’s Shield,” Weinberger explains how deployment of the MX missile stopped the Soviet Union from believing it could successfully launch a first strike, which he feels is “the essence of deterrence.” A better alternative to “mutual assured destruction,” he argues, is the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Reagan administration’s hotly contested proposal to design space-based weapons that could shoot down attacking missiles. Weinberger recalls coming into office only to discover that all three legs of the strategic triad—land, sea, and air systems—were obsolete. He argued for a dramatic increase in the U.S. nuclear-weapons arsenal, “almost as if we had started from scratch,” and during his tenure he presided over $2 trillion in military spending. Weinberger strongly advocated for the MX missile to replace the Minuteman missile, which had been the backbone of the U.S. land-based deterrent since the 1960s. Although the idea that existing Minutemen silos were vulnerable to a Soviet attack was a cornerstone of his and President Reagan’s strategic policies, Weinberger explains that the decision to house the MX in those silos was a temporary measure to meet a “critical deficiency.” Immediate MX deployment, Weinberger believed, would provide some insurance against the Soviet Union delivering a first strike with impunity. Meanwhile, the Reagan administration could persuade Congress to adopt a more survivable basing mode, such as the rail-based system. Reacting to the recommendations of the Scowcroft Commission, Weinberger was satisfied that it endorsed the president’s modernization plan to close the “window of vulnerability,” but he objected to the Midgetman mobile missile, proposed to placate MX opponents. He describes the compromise as an expensive missile that was only partially designed, added little deterrent value, and was popular principally because “it was a missile we didn’t have.”
Topics
Nuclear arms control, Nuclear weapons
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Transcript
The Window of Vulnerability
Interviewer:
A lot of people said well wait a minute Secretary Weinberger, when you first came into office you said putting the MX in silos was out of the question. You said that to Congress in your testimony because we needed to have a survivable missile. Why was it okay suddenly two years later to put them...
Weinberger:
It was always considered a temporary move to try to get the deterrent capability we needed. It was always recognized that silo basing is not as survivable as we would like it. But it was recognized that the MX should be in the silos rather than the Minuteman because of its increased accuracy and yield. But it always was a temporary mode until we could persuade the Congress that something like rail garrison or something else was a better way to go. But meanwhile we didn't want to wait any longer. We had waited all those years while this sterile debate had been going on and while the Soviets had been getting in four new systems. That was why.
Interviewer:
We interviewed Congressman Norm Dicks who apparently was important in getting this compromise accepted in Congress. And he felt that he had won a big achievement in pressuring the administration into arms control talks and that this was the deal. You give us, we'll give you some MXs and you have to make some arms control agreements.
Weinberger:
No, again he doesn't know the president very well. The president has wanted arms reduction agreements, not arms control agreements. Arms control agreements are like SALT. The Soviets added four thousand warheads during the entire time the SALT agreements were in effect and they did it within those agreements. They didn't break the agreements to do it. But that's not arms control. That's not arms reduction. That's what the president wanted. The president has always wanted this and it didn't take any congressman to force him to do it. He's, he wanted it very much. He was however determined to get a good arms reduction agreement and not to sign something so we could tell some Congressman we had signed a piece of paper and everything was alright. That's what happened in the SALT agreement. That's what happened in the ABM agreement. And they are not good agreements. And they did not accomplish what people hoped they would. But the president wanted one that would accomplish something. And the INF agreement is a perfect example. We waited and talked about that, the president proposed that in 1981. It was signed in 1987. And it was signed after finally the Soviets realized that we had the military strength and the resolve as a nation to replace and to deploy stronger, more modern missiles, the Pershing II and the ground-launched cruise missiles. The agreement then was signed that eliminates all of them. And that is a major achievement. And that is what we hope, that we can get something like that with a longer range intercontinent... intercontinental missile. But you never would have gotten the INF agreement if we hadn't deployed Pershing. And I don't think you ever get enoug... a START agreement, an agreement reducing the strategic missiles, if we hadn't deployed the MX, finally after all those years. Although we only have half enough.
Interviewer:
So that's not true that they were responsible for bringing the administration to the bargaining table.
Weinberger:
No, the, the administration was at the bargaining table from the beginning. It was the Soviets who were hard to bring there and they only came when they realized they had some incentive to reduce. And that incentive was growing American strength.
Interviewer:
So what was your reaction to the Scowcroft report, obviously you weren't happy with some of the recommendations?
Weinberger:
Well it was, I wasn't happy with some of the recommendations. I was happy with the fact that they endorsed completely the entire modernization plan of the president. And said that it should proceed and said that we should put the MX in existing silos. That it was vitally necessary to do this and do it as quickly as possible. That's the part I liked. But then they said, the political realities are that in order to do this you have to satisfy the small missile people. So after you do all of these things with the, that the president recommended, then in order to get some votes, you've got to give the small missile people what they wanted. And I thought that was pretty silly.
Interviewer:
And so what, and then the other thing that came from the other sideof the question is, people said you guys campaigned on this window of vulnerability and now you're putting them in the same silos that were vulnerable 5 years ago. How can you explain that?
Weinberger:
Well first of all you had a far better missile. You had a more accurate missile. You had a missile that the Soviets knew could destroy their, their hardened targets. And that was a far more effective missile. You had ten warheads against three and one for some of the MXs, some of the Minuteman. And it was an enormously increased capability. We also were working at the same time on methods of deploying it in ways that would make it more survivable. But meanwhile, we had it in the ground ready and the Soviets knew it. And that was the critical factor. No one ever felt that putting it in the, in the old silos was a permanent or a final solution. But it was vitally necessary to do it to close that very window of vulnerability that people were talking about. There was that window, it was open, and it was open in the sense that we had a, about a twenty, twenty five year old set of missiles that didn't have the strength or the capability to destroy the Soviet hardened targets. And in all of this business we have always to figure, in the equations of deterrence required, that we figure how many Soviet targets you have to cover. We know how many that they have to cover over here and it has to cancel each other out. That's why this whole idea that the only way you can keep the peace is by this mutual suicide pact, this mutually assured destruction, this idea that you're perfectly safe so long as you have no defenses whatever. That's why the president never could adopt that theory, that's why he turned to strategic defense. Turned to it early, and that's why it's so vital that we proceed with
strategic defense.
Interviewer:
So the window of vulnerability, when you use that term it's not to describe that the missiles are vulnerable in silos, it's to describe an imbalance.
Weinberger:
It's an imbalance both in their capability and in their numbers. Yes. And the MX was essential to, to correct that imbalance, to help close that window. Missiles in silos are vulnerable. And everybody knows that. But the fact that they are there carries with it this mutually assured destruction idea. Which is the only concept at that time that we had for keeping the peace. And preventing a nuclear war. Now we have the strategic defense initiative, and that's a far better way to go as the president has always said.
Interviewer:
I'm sorry I'm going to ask you to repeat the first part of that because I interrupted you. The point you were making that the window of vulnerability is not just invulnerability in silos but the balance of...
Weinberger:
Yeah. The window of vulnerability isn't just the fact that the missiles are vulnerable in their silos. Missiles, Soviets and ours, are all vulnerable in their silos. Although the Soviet silos are much more hardened and much more difficult to destroy. And take a missile like the MX, so that the window of vulnerability was that the capabilities of the two forces, measured together, showed a dangerous imbalance in the Soviet favor. Not just in numbers but in capabilities, of individual... Or, people in the arms-control business tend to talk only about numbers of warheads. And that isn't any kind of a measure. You have to know the capability of those warheads. Will they destroy the targets that they have to destroy if you're going to keep your equations of deterrence, your balance. And ours would not and theirs would. And so that was the window of vulnerability. That's what the MX corrected. And it was vital to get it in even though we knew the missile silos were not a permanent solution. And we have now half the missiles we'd like to have half on the rails.
From Mutual Assured Destruction to Star Wars
Interviewer:
Given the fact that the use of these missiles, of these missiles in the counter-force mode was largely theoretical, they're designed to present war. What did they collect in terms of, what was the political effect?
Weinberger:
Well they prevented. What they prevented was they prevented the Soviets from feeling that they could make a first strike to which there would be no effective response. And that therefore there was nothing to stop them from making a first strike. And when they feel that way, to turn deterrences fail. But when they know that there is a capability of response with an enormously effective, high yield, very accurate missile with ten warheads that can destroy the Soviet targets that they need to protect. Then you have deterrence. But a better way to get deterrence is to be able to destroy their missiles in the air before they get near the targets.
Interviewer:
My last question is if I was a Soviet planner at this point, or a strategic analyst should I, would I be worried about the Americans having these very potent missiles sitting there in silos that they would have to use or lose.
Weinberger:
Well I think, I think you ought to be worried but I think you ought to recognize that what has, has been achieved by the Americans having these missiles is that the Soviet missiles no longer could be sure, they could no longer be certain that they could have a successful first strike. And that's the essence of deterrence. If they aren't sure. If they think there is a retaliatory capability, that would inflict a cost on them that's beyond anything they're willing to accept, and they're willing to accept quite a lot. Then you have deterrence. And that's the way you keep the peace. Until you get strategic defense.
Interviewer:
If we don't have the capability of having first strike ourselves how can we effectively deter the Soviets?
Weinberger:
Well because they know we have a responsive capability, that's the important thing. We don't have a first-strike desire. We have no first-strike agenda. But we know that they have in their literature and in their doctrine and in their planning, and we have to make sure that they never feel they can exercise it or execute it successfully. That's the critical factor of deterrence. And when they begin to think they can, as they work toward the end of the '70s, because we were not modernizing, we were having this sterile debate, we were leaving everything the way it was 20 years ago. And they had modernized four times over. Then you have to worry very much. If you had the responsibility as I had in 1981.
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