Interview with Paul C. Warnke, 1986 [Part 1 of 4]
Summary
Paul Warnke was chief negotiator for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) II during the Jimmy Carter administration and director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1977 to 1979. In the interview Warnke conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, he explains the purpose and promise of arms control and shares his view that it’s a “step-by-step process,” like getting down from a tree one branch at a time to “end up on solid ground.” Warnke challenges his critics, many of whom argued that the United States must develop more weapons to close a “window of vulnerability.” In arms control negotiations, he feels that each side must possess the “strategic comfort” that its retaliatory capability is preserved, and at the same time must accept that neither country can gain and maintain strategic nuclear superiority. Warnke warns against an unconstrained arms race that could lead to a dangerous hair-trigger stance or a preemptive first strike. He reiterates the often harsh debate between the Carter administration and Congress over strategic policy, weapons development, linkage, and arms negotiations. Warnke himself faced some tough challenges. He defends his advocacy of “reciprocal restraint” and his support during the 1960s and 1970s of particular weapons systems, rejecting the stance that these were “decades of neglect.” Warnke recounts President Carter’s initial proposals to bypass SALT II in favor of deeper arms reductions, explains why the Soviet Union rejected the comprehensive package, and discusses the return to the Vladivostok agreement of 1974. He also contrasts the political climate, public mood, and presidential power that ensured the ratification of SALT I but disabled SALT II. During his career, Warnke remained a strong proponent of SALT II for the reductions it achieved and the framework it established for subsequent negotiations.
Topics
Nuclear arms control, Nuclear weapons
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Transcript
Paul Warnke's thoughts on negotiating with the Soviet Union and the arms race
Interviewer:
Mr. Warnke was chief SALT II negotiator and director of the arms control and disarmament agency from 1977 to 1979. What was your perception of the Soviet geopolitical intentions in 1977?
Warnke:
Well, I think it's quite clear that the Soviet Union would like to have more diplomatic, more political influence in the world than it presently had. It's been a superpower for some years, but only in the sense of military power. As far as political influence is concerned, as far as ability to, uh, present any sort of an appeal, in terms of its own system, it's been singularly unsuccessful. And I think that they resent that; I think that they were trying to gain more recognition, really. In terms of, uh, military conquest, I think the Soviet Union has everything it can handle at the present time.
Interviewer:
Some people talk about a Soviet "grand design for world domination." Do you agree with that?
Warnke:
Well, I think that they would like to be Number One... it's not an ambition that's unique to the Soviet Union. I think they recognize they can't do it by force and violence.
Interviewer:
There are two competing views of soviet intentions: the grand design for world domination, and Marshall Shulman's view that they're strategic opportunists.
Warnke:
Hell, I think Marshall is absolutely correct. I think that, uh, Marshall Shulman has been one of the more penetrating analysts of just what motivates the Soviet Union, but I think that those that see the Soviet Union as bent on world domination by, uh, by the military jackboot... really don't understand the apprehensions that the Soviet Union has. Now how could they maintain... that sort of an aggressive stance, and still re-, retain control over their existing empire? If you were the Soviet, uh, Union's leaders, would you feel that you could trust the Eastern European troops to be fighting on your side? What would happen in the case of a protracted conventional war? I think the Soviet Union is opportunistic, that they will take advantage of situations in which they feel that they can intervene, and gain an edge on the United States.
Interviewer:
Can we do business with the Soviet Union? Is it possible to negotiate with them?
Warnke:
It is possible to negotiate with the Soviet Union on issues in which there is a common interest. The reason we can do business with them on strategic nuclear arms, for example, is because we have a common interest in avoiding nuclear war. Now where you have that common interest it is possible to do business. If we could establish common interests in other regards, then further arrangements might be possible. In many instances, our interests conflict rather than coalesce, and under those circumstances, obviously, you can't do business.
Interviewer:
Do you think that members of the Committee on the Present Danger, or Senator Jackson or Richard Perle feel that we can negotiate with the Soviets?
Warnke:
Well, I think it's quite clear that people like the late Senator Jackson and his former aide, now Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, do not believe you can do business with the Soviet Union. They assume that the Soviet Union is bound on world conquest, and that accordingly any deal they make with the United States on strategic arms is bound to be one that advances that objective. I think they're absolutely wrong, but they are sincere.
Interviewer:
In 1966-'67, when you came into government, what was your view of the arms race?
Warnke:
Well, at that point, of course, the United States... had a very large nuclear advantage. My concern at that point -- I think the concern of most people that thought about those issues -- was that Soviet plans for strategic defense would make it impossible to bring about any sort of meaningful control over nuclear arms, and it was for that reason that we set out to try and persuade the Soviets not to go ahead with their strategic defense plans.
Interviewer:
This was SALT I?
Warnke:
This was prior to SALT I, yes.
Interviewer:
But in the mid-'70's -- when was Apes on a Treadmill... written?
Warnke:
I think I wrote that about 1975...
Interviewer:
Let's talk about that of the arms race? What were your views?
Warnke:
Well, I think it was clear by the mid-1970's that the United States could not maintain any sort of meaningful nuclear superiority, and that anything that we were going to do would be matched by the Soviets. As you recall, we pioneered in the field; we had the first fission bomb, then we had the first nuclear hydrogen fusion bomb. The Soviet Union matched both. We went ahead with ICBM's. As a matter of fact, at one point we thought that there was a missile gap, in favor of the Soviet Union. It turned out that they were way behind us. And therefore in the early 1960's, when we built up more and more ICBM's, and began to develop the submarine-launched ballistic missiles, the Soviet Union matched us then. And it seemed to me by the mid-1970's that we were embarked on a course which I called "apes on a treadmill," that we were leading, but both of us were just sort of staying in place. And that something had to be done to break what Robert McNamara once referred to as the "mad momentum" of the arms race. And I suggested in my article Apes on a Treadmill that perhaps some reciprocal restraints might begin to work, if the arms control process of trying to reach formal agreements was falling behind the pace of arms developments. Uh, I was roundly criticized for that in my confirmation hearings in 1977. I still think it's a good idea.
Interviewer:
Better to err on the side of restraint, or acquiring more just as an insurance policy?
Warnke:
The problem, of course, is more doesn't give you any sort of insurance. As a matter of fact, more can be less security. The real difficulty is that if you have an unconstrained arms race, at some point you may reach a stage at which each side has to figure on perhaps striking first, that a preemptive strike may appear to be the least bad option. That you will feel that both sides have the ability to threaten the retaliatory capability of the other side. Now that's the way a nuclear war would start. Because of panic. Because of the fear that you could not wait, because the other side might otherwise get you and you would not be able to retaliate. Now the objective of arms control is to preserve a nuclear retaliatory capability on both sides so that neither side at a time of crisis panics into starting the nuclear exchange.
Interviewer:
What did you feel were the main goals of an arms agreement? Is it an agreement for its own sake?
Warnke:
No, that's a totally ignorant statement. The objective of an, of an arms-control agreement, the only objective, is to lessen the risk of nuclear war. And the objective that Secretary Vance had, that I had, was to create a structure that would lessen the risk of a nuclear war. We did so very successfully. What we managed to do is to set the sorts of qualitative constraints that lessen the, what's referred to as the "counterforce" capability of each side; that is, the ability of each side to threaten the retaliatory forces of the other side. The objective of arms control is to create a situation of strategic comfort, where each side recognizes that it is safe, that there is no way in which the other side can figure that it can gain any advantage by striking first. If an agreement does that, it's worth getting. If it doesn't do that, I can't imagine that Secretary Vance or I, or anybody else that thinks about these problems seriously, rather than polemically, would sign that agreement.
Interviewer:
How did you feel that the arms talks related to the overall U.S. strategic relationship?
Approaching Arms Control
Warnke:
Well, the purpose of arms control, as I've said, is to lessen the risk of nuclear war. And therefore it's an essential part of an overall defense policy. You have to look at arms control in terms of defense policy. Unless it improves the security of the United States, it's not worth pursuing, and that's been the fundamental argument about arms control. There are those that feel it is better to go it alone, to be able to take unilateral action without any sort of restrictions. That has been the view, in the past, of Senator Jackson. I think it's the view today of Secretary of Defense Weinberger, and Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle. They don't want any constraints on American freedom of action. Now the other side of the argument is that there's only one way to reduce the Soviet nuclear threat, and that's by negotiated agreement. That nothing else that we can do, either in the way of strategic offense or strategic defense, is gonna take one warhead out of that Soviet arsenal. Instead what it's going to do is compel the Soviet Union to build up more and more warheads, and therefore increase the threat to the United States.
Interviewer:
You've said that if we can't agree not to blow each other up, then it's not likely we're going to agree on much else.
Warnke:
Well, I think that in, uh, many respects, that strategic arms control is the bellwether of U.S.-Soviet relations. If we can't agree not to blow one another up, and probably obliterate the rest of the world with us, then how can we agree on anything else? I've often felt, for example, that if we could make a major breakthrough in controlling strategic nuclear arms, we could then devote much more high-level attention to the talks on conventional forces, the mutual balanced force reduction talks that have been going on now for decades in Vienna, and I think that if we could in fact actually bring about significant qualitative constraints, and quantitative reductions in strategic nuclear arms, that we could then accomplish a great deal more, in terms of the overall relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Interviewer:
The SALT II talks were the beginning of a long process.
Warnke:
Yes, I think that that again is one of the difficulties, is that people seem to think that an arms-control agreement has to be the ultimate arms-control agreement, that it should settle all of the problems. You can't do it. Arms control is a step-by-step process. I've sometimes analogized it to trying to get down from the top of a tall tree. If you go down a branch at a time, you're gonna end up on solid ground. If you try and do it in a single step, you're gonna make one hell of a mess.
Interviewer:
Some of the literature of the Committee on the Present Danger says that it believes in a
credible and verifiable arms agreement.Presumably you'd agree with the same thing. What does that mean to you when they say that? What's the difference?
Warnke:
I think the difference in approach between the Committee on the Present Danger and, and me is that the Committee on the Present Danger has never seen an arms-control agreement that it liked. That it seems to feel that somehow an arms-control agreement is going to be an either or proposition. That one side or the other is going to win. Now the fact of the matter is that any arms-control agreement has to be a draw. It has to have something for both sides. Because unless it's good for both sides it's good for nothing at all. Because neither side would continue to abide by an arms-control agreement that gave the other side any sort of an advantage. So you have to go into an arms control negotiation figuring that both sides have got to benefit from this arms-control agreement. And since we're talking about eliminating the risk of nuclear war, both sides can gain their objective.
Interviewer:
What was the
window of vulnerabilityconcern in the mid-'70's?
Warnke:
The concern about the window of vulnerability, it seemed to me, was an illusory fear that really, uh, was inconsistent with the entire logic of the nuclear-deterrent triad. It was recognized as early as the 1950's that at some point the accuracy of nuclear weapons would be such that it had nothing but fixed base, intercontinental ballistic missiles, that both sides would have vulnerable forces. Now that's why we developed the Polaris submarine. That's why we continued to maintain a strategic bomber force, so the called, so-called window of vulnerability, as far as I was concerned, was a cross-hatch painted on a brick wall. It wasn't there. Because the Soviet Union, if it tried to destroy our land-based force, would have had to hit one thousand hardened silos. Now, it's usually figured that it takes two hits, one airburst, one land burst, to destroy one hardened silo, so there you're dealing with two thousand Soviet warheads. They've never fired these warheads. Any kind of conservative planner
would have to figure on at least a 50 percent error, so that you'd have to fire three thousand warheads to have a realistic chance of destroying one thousand American ICBM's, and that's something like 30 percent of our retaliatory force. So the Soviet Union would use up a very substantial proportion of its total strategic warheads to try and destroy 30 percent of our retaliatory force. No rational human being would try and conduct that sort of preemptive attack, so the window of vulnerability was a question of our really scaring ourselves with an illusory sort of threat.
Developing Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles
Interviewer:
But they were developing warheads with an accuracy, so that they theoretically might at some point be able to endanger our ICBMs. You didn't quarrel with that.
Warnke:
Oh no, no, as I say, there is always going to be a theoretical vulnerability to any fixed-base, land-based intercontinental ballistic missile force. And that is why, as I say, we developed the submarine-launched ballistic missiles. It's why we've developed -- and I've consistently supported -- the long-range air launch cruise missile, that makes it possible for our strategic bomber force to penetrate any sort of Soviet air defense. What we want is an assured retaliatory capability; we have it, we had it in the 1970's.
Interviewer:
To the extent that one leg of the triad may have been in jeopardy, is it important to, what's wrong with trying to strengthen it so that all three legs are useful?
Warnke:
I think that anything that could be done to render any part of the deterrent triad less vulnerable is worth doing. The difficulty, of course, is trying to find out some way to assure the theoretical invulnerability of fixed targets. Now, one way that we've thought of is to make them unfixed. Uh, one of the schemes, for example, with regard to the MX intercontinental ballistic missile, was the so-called "protected shelter" system, whereby we'd move 200 MX's at random around a couple of thousand launching sites. The difficulty, of course, is that the immense expense, uh, the environmental consequences, led even the Mormon church to conclude that the MX was a poor idea. Now the Soviet Union is trying to ensure the invulnerability of its own intercontinental ballistic missile force, by going to mobile ICBM's. For them that probably is a good option. For us it would be less so; we have less room for, uh, a mobile missile
to roam, in the United States than they have in the Soviet Union. And in the Soviet Union they don't have to file environmental-impact statements.
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