SO MR. HEALEY, BACK IN THE EARLY '50S, WHEN YOU WERE A YOUNG LABOUR MP SPECIALIZING IN DEFENSE, WHAT WERE THE EUROPEAN ATTITUDES IN GENERAL, AND BRITISH ATTITUDES IN PARTICULAR, TO THE PRESENCE OF UNITED STATES TROOPS IN EUROPE? WHAT WERE THEY SEEN AS BEING ESSENTIAL FOR?

I remember during the early years after the war, Montgomery, who was the first NATO commander, saying he only wanted two American soldiers, one for the Russians to kill when they crossed the frontier, and the other for him to kill if the Russians missed the first one. In other words the American troops were basically seen as guaranteeing American nuclear retaliation, if the Red Army moved west, and at that time, all the Red Army needed to reach the Rhine was boots. It was really only after '54 that NATO's conventional forces began to be seriously built UP. And now, of course, they're very formidable.

DO YOU THINK THAT AT THAT TIME THERE WERE REALLY 175 RUSSIAN DIVISIONS? WAS THE IMBALANCE OF CONVENTIONAL FORCES EXAGGERATED IN HINDSIGHT. DO YOU THINK?

It was exaggerated, without the slightest doubt, because the noun used for describing the size of the two conventional forces was "divisions," but of course, Russian divisions are very much smaller than the divisions in NATO and particularly, and very much less well equipped in those days than American divisions. There's still a great deal of argument about how you should compare the conventional strength of the two sides because, as you know, many of the Western weapons, like the aircraft, are capable of more sorties than the Soviet weapons; many of the Western pieces of equipment are much more effective, break down less often... but there's no question that in those early days -- NATO was set up, remember, in '49 -- there was very little attempt to match the Red Army. The Red Army was very large, and of course it was large partly to repress dissent in eastern Europe. It was used for that purpose in Hungary in 1956. In East Berlin, I think in '53, wasn't it? and then ten years later in Czechoslovakia in '68.

IT'S BEEN ARGUED BY SOME OF TEE RUSSIANS THAT WE'VE TALKED TO FOR THIS PROGRAM, THAT ACTUALLY THINGS WORKED THE OTHER WAY AROUND. THEY WERE THREATENED BY THE UNITED STATES ATOMIC ARSENAL, AND THEY FELT THAT THE ONLY DETERRENT THEY HAD FOR THAT, UNTIL THEY BUILT THEIR OWN ATOMIC REPLY, WAS THE ABILITY, VERY RAPIDLY, TO CONQUER WESTERN EUROPE, SO THAT THEY COULD THREATEN THE UNITED STATES.

I've never heard it from a Russian myself, and they didn't use it very much at the time. I think you've got to remember that the Soviet advance into Central Europe, on a line running from Stettin to Trieste, had been predicted by Karl Marx, in an article in the New York Tribune written in the late 1840s. In which he said that if Europe didn't stand up to the Russian menace, it would move forward to a line running from Stettin to Trieste and realize the dream of the Pan-Slavic philosophers throughout the ages. Whether the Russians ever seriously intended to move further west I don't know; the only thing is, of course, the temptation to take advantage of weakness was always there, and they did test Western resolve twice over Berlin. And they took more risk -- it's interesting -- in the first Berlin crisis, in the late '40s, than in the second one, in the late '50s.

CAN WE MOVE ON TO NUCLEAR STRATEGY AS IT EXISTED, OR DIDN'T EXIST, PERHAPS MORE ACCURATELY, IN BRITAIN IN THE '50s. YOU WERE OPPOSED TO THE 1957 WHITE PAPER, WHERE BRITAIN PERHAPS MOST OPENLY RELIED UPON PURE MASSIVE RETALIATION. WHY DID YOU OPPOSE IT AND WHAT WAS THE STATE OF SOPHISTICATION OF THE ARGUMENT AT THAT TIME?

It was very unsophisticated, really.

YOU'VE GOT TO START AGAIN...

The debate in Britain in the '50s was primitive, you could almost say kindergarten stuff. The general feeling which Duncan Sandys had, that if you got the atom bomb nothing is going to happen that damages you anywhere this wasn't a view held by the Americans even in those days, and, at the same time as Kissinger was writing his seminal work in New York called Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy a few of my friends and I were writing a small pamphlet for Chatham House on limiting nuclear war. And I'd written an article, actually, in Encounter magazine, called "The Bomb That Wouldn't Go Off," as far back as 1953. I think... it had been obvious from the moment that the Russians acquired nuclear weapons that the American readiness to respond to a conventional attack by dropping nuclear weapons on Moscow was limited, and when Chris Herter took over from Foster Dulles as American Secretary of State, he actually said, as Kissinger and McNamara have said since, but he said it as Secretary of State, in the United States administration, that he couldn't imagine any situation in which the United States would use nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union, unless its own survival were directly at stake. ... Now, if I could just remind you of an experience I had -- we had a debate on all these questions in the late '50s when Macmillan was Prime Minister, and I referred to the risk that if there was a nuclear war involving NATO, it would be limited to Europe, that the Russians and the Americans would try to keep their own territory as sanctuaries, and the House of Commons rolled with laughter at this ridiculous idea, and I remember Julian Amery saying, "Is this the, what we mean by the European arms pool?" Now, of course, everybody worries about this very much indeed, especially after Reykjavik.

SO IT DIDN'T REGISTER AS A DANGER AT ALL WITH THE TORY PARTY THAT TIME?

No, I think there were some people I mean, on the military side, Jack Slessor, who'd been an air marshal in the Second World War; Tony Buzzard, who'd been director of naval intelligence; a few military people, particularly Sir John Eldridge -- they're all pointing to the weakness of a policy of pure nuclear deterrence. But people didn't listen to them very much in Britain -- I belonged to that little group too; Helmut Schmidt did in Germany, and of course there was a growing number in America -- and when I got the money for the International Institute of Strategic Studies out of the Ford Foundation the day that the Russians sent the Sputnik up, when I happened to be at a meeting with some Americans, including one of the key figures in the Ford Foundation, and they were absolutely stupefied by what had happened, and I think serious thought and systematic thought about these terrifying problems didn't really begin very much in Europe in, until that date.

COULD WE MOVE ON TO THE EARLY '60s, WHEN YOU WERE STILL IN THE OPPOSITION, BUT THERE WERE TWO BIG DEBATES GOING ON, ONE A PUBLIC ONE INVOLVING THE CND BRITAIN -- THE CND, THE PEAK OF THE PEACE MOVEMENT, OF COURSE THAT'S VERY MUCH AN INTERNAL LABOUR PARTY DEBATE, IN WHICH YOU HAD YOUR OWN POSITION. BUT YOU OPPOSED, WHILE YOU WERE IN OPPOSITION, THE NASSAU AGREEMENT, AND THE DECISION FOR BRITAIN TO CONTINUE ITS OWN DETERRENT WITH AMERICAN SUBMARINES. WHY DID YOU OPPOSE IT, AND WHY DID YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND WHEN YOU GOT INTO OFFICE?

Well, the reason I opposed it was that we thought at that time it might be possible for the countries which hadn't got nuclear weapons that were capable of producing them, to form what we then called a "non-nuclear club," and restrict the possession of nuclear weapons, practically, to the United States and the Soviet Union. One of the weaknesses of that policy was that the moment de Gaulle took over in France the French were absolutely determined to base the whole of their defense policy on strategic nuclear retaliation against any direct threat to France, but of course, by the same token, they didn't believe that it was possible to have a meaningful alliance once nuclear weapons existed, and they left NATO, and they expelled American conventional as well as nuclear troops in NATO headquarters from France. The reason we changed our view, after we got in, I think was first of all, one of the submarines was practically complete; the other one was halfway through. It was a very cheap system, and we thought there was some advantage, and I used to argue this in Parliament at the time, in having one, more than one focus of decision in NATO, that if the decision were left exclusively to the United States, it might not be as credible as if one European country had weapons as well. But in those days, we were still... believing that it was possible to limit the use of nuclear weapons in war; this had always been an obsession of mine way back in the early '50s. And as you know, McNamara and I persuaded NATO to drop the policy -

I'D LIKE TO COME ON TO THAT A LITTLE LATER, IF I MAY... IF YOU CAN JUST GO OVER ONCE AGAIN, WITHOUT GOING INTO SUCH DETAIL ABOUT THE FRENCH, WHY YOU OPPOSED IT....

Well, I think... the other reason was that we believed that we could have a decisive influence on NATO policy, and through that, on American policy about the use of nuclear weapons, providing we were in the game ourselves, and I think it can be argued that when I was defense secretary, we did have that sort of influence. We did act, if you like, as a bridge between non-nuclear Europe in NATO and the American superpower.

BECAUSE THE FRENCH VERY MUCH FELT THAT THERE WAS AN ANGLO-SAXON CLUB THAT RAN NATO PRECISELY BECAUSE IT WAS A NUCLEAR CLUB. DO YOU THINK THAT THERE WAS SOME TRUTH IN THAT VIEW?

No, I think it's quite untrue -- I think if the French had chosen to stay in NATO they could have formed part of this group. And there was a time when de Gaulle himself talked in terms of France exercising that influence. The real trouble was that the French believed, and I think still do, that nuclear weapons make alliances unfeasible, because nobody's ever going to use nuclear weapons except in its own defense. They didn't believe in what the Americans call the concept of extended deterrence, and of course, many Americans don't really believe in it either. Henry Kissinger's told us he never believed in it, although he's also told us he'd pretend to believe in it again, if he were ever a minister in an American government again.

BRITAIN WAS TORN AT IN BOTH WAYS ON THAT ARGUMENT, WASN'T IT?

Well, it was a very good idea to try and have it both ways, in my opinion. If you know, as they say about riding two horses: if you can't ride two horses at the same time, you shouldn't be in the bloody circus.

LET ME GET BACK TO ROBERT MCNAMARA COMING IN 1961 AND '62, AND THE WHOLE DISCUSSION ABOUT TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS ESCALATION, ALL THOSE THINGS THAT HE BROUGHT IN WITH HIM. PERHAPS WE COULD START WITH TALKING ABOUT TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS. WHAT AWARENESS WAS THERE IN BRITAIN OR IN EUROPE, AMONGST POLITICAL-DEFENSE CIRCLES, OF THE NUMBERS, THE TYPES, THE TACTICS, EVERYTHING CONCERNING TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN EUROPE IN THE LATE '50s, EARLY '60s?

Well, in the middle '50s, when Kissinger wrote this book and I produced this Chatham House booklet we believed, Kissinger as well as the British people concerned, that it might be possible to fight a limited nuclear war, and the analogy would be rather like a war at sea. But when exercises were held in Germany -Carte Blanche was the most famous one, I think, in the late '50s -

THAT WAS IN '55, ACTUALLY.

50... in the middle '50s, yes and the assessment of the exercise leaked out -it wasn't published, of course, by NATO it turned out that about half the population of the United States had been destroyed, so, the idea that you could fight that sort of tactical nuclear war was clearly bunk. McNamara, right from the moment he took over, with some very able intellectuals, who previously worked, in many cases, at the RAND Corporation in California, really believed with Herter that strategic retaliation against a conventional attack in Europe wasn't on, and he made a famous speech at Ann Arbor and Chicago indicating that this was his view. Nobody in Europe really listened to him. But when I became Defense Secretary two years after him, in 1964 I was deeply interested in this; it had been a, an obsession of mine for ten years, so I talked to McNamara about the problem, we agreed to set up a nuclear planning group inside NATO to try to compel NATO defense ministers at least to consider the problem. And we set up a Euro group inside NATO, to give the European side of the alliance a little bit more weight, and the concept of flexible response was the first change in NATO's strategy, really, since 1949, when we tried to get away from the idea of automatic massive retaliation as Foster Dulles appeared to believe in, to a ladder of escalation, in which you wouldn't use nuclear weapons until your troops were being overrun; you would build up your conventional forces to be certain that you'd never need to use nuclear weapons except against a major, deliberate invasion, and then you would use them in discrete steps. And that policy, which was adopted in '66, largely as a result of pressure, or influence on McNamara and myself, is still there, although the world is totally changed since then. We all know now that the concept of limiting nuclear war is for the birds, that electromagnetic pulses from nuclear explosions will make the command and control of nuclear operations impossible, and in fact, McNamara and I discovered in the nuclear planning group that we couldn't actually get the European members of the alliance to agree about any use of nuclear weapons in practice, even on the use of atomic demolition munitions -- nuclear land mines, which in some parts of the NATO area, like the passes leading from the Soviet Union into Turkey, could be used with no collateral damage at all. And as I say, the extraordinary thing, to me, is that NATO's gone on with this policy, which is believed, I think, seen to be fatally flawed, simply because people will not get down to it and I think one problem which is worth stressing is that... nuclear strategy is tending to be the preserve of a defense intelligentsia. The original concepts were developed outside government, in think tanks in the United States, to a smaller extent in Europe, and very few defense ministers really interest themselves in the problem; they're mostly on their way up or their way down in their government; we've had nine defense ministers in 13 years in the conservative governments up to 1964 we've had, I think, five in the last seven years... in Britain under the conservatives. On the continental countries, usually defense ministers in those days tended to be chaps who'd been fighter pilots in the last world war and would protect the interest of the RAF or, if they'd been naval officers, the Navy; and, it's still the case, I'm afraid, that serious thinking... at the government level, about nuclear weapons, is very limited. I've noticed in discussions in Britain recently, for example,- that even as defense secretaries Mr. Heseltine and later Mr. Young... didn't seem to know the most basic facts about the British nuclear systems.

CAN I GO BACK TO THIS FLEXIBLE-RESPONSE DEBATE?

YOU WERE ESSENTIALLY TRYING TO HOLD THE MIDDLE BETWEEN THE GERMANS AND THE AMERICANS IN THIS ARGUMENT, FEROCIOUS ARGUMENT....

With the French right outside.

COULD YOU JUST SUMMARIZE FOR US THE GERMAN-AMERICAN POSITIONS ON THE ARGUMENT ABOUT FLEXIBLE RESPONSE?

On the whole, I think, the Americans have always wanted to limit their nuclear liability in Europe, and to try to find an alternative. Or, if there had to be nuclear weapons used in Europe, try to find a way of using them which didn't involve them being dropped on the United States. And that's just as true today as it was 20, 30 years ago. The Germans had taken exactly the opposite view. They don't want a limited nuclear war fought in Germany, even in East Germany, never mind West Germany. They don't want a conventional war fought again in Germany; they remember too keenly the disaster of the last conventional war, which was child's play compared with what a new conventional war would be. So they believe in nuclear deterrence, pure and simple. What they really believe is, as long as you've got plenty of American forces in Germany, the Russians won't dare to attack if there's any chance whatever of the Americans responding by dropping nuclear weapons on Moscow; that's basically it. And I always used to define the NATO dilemma in turns of what I call the Healey theorem: it... only takes a 5 percent credibility of American retaliation to deter an attack, but it takes a 95 percent credibility to reassure the allies; on the whole... the argument inside NATO has been directly to try to narrow the gap between the degree of credibility needed for deterrence, and that needed for reassurance. But the difficulty is that the Germans are not really interested, if they can avoid it, in no early use, no first use of nuclear weapons -- they would like to go back to massive retaliation. I'm talking, not about every single German, but the basic approach of most German governments. Helmut Schmidt, when he was defense secretary, was an exception.

WHAT WAS THE FRENCH PART IN THIS DEBATE DURING THE MID-'60s? HAVE YOU GOT ANY ANECDOTES?

Well, the French approach, in those days, was one of cynical indifference to an argument which they thought was about a problem which could never be solved, because they didn't believe that alliances could exist could coexist, with nuclear weapons. The shift in French policy came much later on, largely under Mitterrand, when he actually began to say, "Well, we're not going to have any cruise weapons; but we're very anxious everybody else in Europe should have them." But, in the days when I was defense secretary, the French affected a pretty fair indifference to all these arguments inside NATO.

CAN YOU REMEMBER ANY PARTICULAR ANECDOTES? I THINK THERE WAS ONE ABOUT SOMEBODY READING A NEWSPAPER DURING ONE OF THE MEETINGS.

Well, don't forget that the French actually left NATO, so they didn't participate in any of the discussions within the military organization of the alliance. I remember having, I liked to make jokes at these meetings, because I think that usually committee meetings are far too serious and solemn, and I once ribbed Kulke Milville (?), when France was still in NATO attending a NATO council meeting, about the inconsistencies in the French position, and he refused to shake hands with me, and I had a difficult period of about 90 seconds, in which I finally got him to smile again. I mean, the French were terribly solemn about their own position; they didn't like people joking about it at all, but they were extremely scathing and cynical about the position of everybody else.

NOW, THE FLEXIBLE RESPONSE WHICH MCNAMARA ACTUALLY PROPOSED IN 1962, WAS ESSENTIALLY, AS HE'S MADE CLEAR SINCE, GETTING CLOSE TO A NO-FIRST-USE POLICY. HE WANTED...MAJOR BARRIERS BETWEEN THE USE OF CONVENTIONAL AND TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS, AND MOFB FIREBREAKS BETWEEN TACTICAL AND STRATEGIC NUCLEAR WEAPONS. HE NOW SAYS THAT THE FLEXIBLE-RESPONSE DOCTRINE THAT WAS ADOPTED IN 1966, '67, 14-3, WAS A COMPLETE FUDGE, A VERY DILUTED VERSION OF HIS ORIGINAL THINKING. (QUOTES MCNAMARA) HAVE YOU GOT ANY COMMENT ON THAT?

Well, I think that Bob McNamara was never as good as a minister as he was as a, an intellectual. I mean, it was under him that the American nuclear arsenal in Europe reached its peak. He allowed the military-industrial to pour more and more battlefield nuclear weapons until... you know, they were stuffed to the gills with it. And there are only, I think, now a third as many as McNamara introduced into Europe. He, for God's sake, was the American Defense Secretary at the time. What I think is true is that he never really believed in nuclear deterrence, but... flexible response, as he finally agreed... was a compromise between the German position and his position in the United States, if you like, a fudge that, my experience, especially in nuclear questions, is that... many of these problems are intellectually insoluble. What you hope to do, as with many problems in life, is to survive the problems rather than solve them intellectually, and Bob always believed a little bit too much in tidy solutions. He also believed in numbers, which is a great mistake, because verbs and adjectives and nouns are much more important than numbers in the real world.

TO WHAT DO YOU ATTRIBUTE THIS REALLY RATHER ASTONISHING GROWTH IN TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN EUROPE, AND TO WHAT EXTENT DO YOU THINK THAT IT WAS, IN A MEANINGFUL WAY, CONTROLLED...?

Well, it wasn't controlled -

COULD YOU START WITH A SENTENCE ON THAT?

It was... yes. I think that the United States arms factories were producing these tactical nuclear weapons, the rate of production rose year by year; and surprisingly, although McNamara in most of the field was extremely good at controlling American defense spending and trying to relate defense production to meaningful strategic objectives. In this area of tactical nuclear weapons, he never attempted' to exercise control at all. You mustn't forget, either, that during the whole of this critical period in NATO, the United States was obsessed with the problem of Vietnam. The, McNamara used to fly to meetings with the NATO council direct from Saigon, in this sealed bomber, which Al Haig refused to fly to the Falklands, saying, you know, "It has no windows," and we used to have breakfast together, and then he'd start applying himself to the problems of NATO; but, you can't read Kissinger's memoirs, for example, which are the most comprehensive about this period, although he was here under, he was there a few years later after McNamara had gone, without realizing the extent to which the whole of the American political machine in the foreign and defense fields was dominated by this tragic blunder of their entanglement in Vietnam. To which incidentally nuclear weapons turned out to be totally irrelevant. I think I'm right in saying the Americans lost about as many people in Vietnam as they have in Europe, but they never seriously contemplated using nuclear weapons there.

BUT TO COME BACK TO THIS GROWTH OF TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS, WHAT WERE THE MAIN DYNAMICS?

Well, there was no control, is the central point; there was no strategy for using these weapons, and when I became defense secretary in Britain, this is '64, we still had an absolutely unbelievable situation, in which the ... defense ministers would agree on (?) force goals, the number of troops and so on which each country should provide, at a meeting every December, knowing that their chancellors of the exchequer and prime ministers would cut these force goals heavily; but the NATO commanders planned their operations on the assumption the force goals would be met, knowing that they wouldn't be. And the first big job I had coming to this Augean stables of NATO was to say... from now on, we're going to base our plans on what we've got, and not what, not what you'd like us to have. But that didn't start until 1966, and as I say, I think in the field of nuclear weapons, the factories were pouring these things out, the ships were bringing them over, or the aircraft were putting them in Europe, and of course a large part of American manpower in Europe was tied up in protecting these. Even today, when the number of tactical, battlefield nuclear weapons has been greatly reduced since McNamara's days I see a NATO general quoted in The Economist the other day as saying that they could produce a division of extra troops for NATO, the Americans, if they didn't tie all these people down protecting their nuclear stockpiles in Germany.

WE'VE TALKED TO VARIOUS MILITARY PEOPLE IN THE BRITISH ARMED FORCES. THERE'S A STRONG TENDENCY IN THE BRITISH FORCES, AS OPPOSED TO THE AMERICANS, TO SAY, "OH, WELL, WE NEVER REALLY THOUGHT ABOUT THE STRATEGIES -- THE CHAPS UP IN THE MINISTRY OF DEFENSE DID THAT, AND WE GOT OUR ORDERS, AND THAT'S ALL THERE WAS TO IT." DO YOU THINK THAT'S THE CASE, OR WAS NOBODY THINKING ABOUT IT?

Oh, no, the Minister of Defense did have target plans for the B Bombers and you know, for example, where we had the bomber base in Cyprus in those days, they had target plans there, which had to fit in with the single integrated operational plan which was at Omaha. And I remember when I was taken to Omaha and shown this on a big screen by McNamara I said, "Now can I see your own national targeting plans?" Dead silence.

DO YOU THINK IT WAS DIFFERENT?

Oh, yes, of course. But, as I say, the terrible thing about the baroque arsenal of nuclear weapons is that... they tended to be, the strategy and policy for employing them tended to be hired (?) off to a little Mafia of middle-ranking officials and staff officers, who had really no contact with the world in which the decisions, in reality, would have to be taken. I think I was the first defense secretary in my time who actually took part, as defense secretary, in the annual exercise which involved nuclear release. And I can tell you it taught you a great deal about the reality of things, especially if you'd been a soldier yourself, as I had.

THERE'S AN AMERICAN GENTLEMAN WE'RE TALKING TO WHO'S SAID THAT THERE WAS A TREMENDOUS DICHOTOMY IN THE AMERICAN ARMY ABOUT TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS, WHICH IS THAT IN TERMS OF THEIR POLITICS, THE INTER-SERVICE RIVALRY BACK IN THE PENTAGON, THEY NEEDED NUCLEAR WEAPONS OR THEY WEREN'T IN THE GAME, AND THE ONLY PLACE TO DEPLOY ARMY NUCLEAR WEAPONS WAS EUROPE. BUT HOST OF THE GENERALS IN EUROPE DIDN'T WAIT TO USE THEM BECAUSE THEY REALIZED -- DOES THAT...?

You, you cannot find a general responsible for troops planning to fight a battle with nuclear weapons, and the center of opposition to nuclear strategy in the services has always been in the Army. General Maxwell Taylor, who is head of the American army, wrote a book severely critical of nuclear strategy, called The Uncertain Trumpet, 30 or 40 years ago. And the opposition in this country has come from the Army, Mike Carver for example, a field marshal with a very distinguished war record says he doesn't think nuclear weapons have any role except to deter the use of nuclear weapons by the other side. But of course the Air Force loved nuclear weapons, because they tend to be mainly responsible for dropping them. What's tragic, I think, in the United States, is that they haven't begun to integrate with the armed services. You know, during the landings in Grenada the head of a ranger battalion, who wanted to call up naval support, found his communications weren't compatible with naval communications, so had to go to a call box off the beach and ring up the naval headquarters in Carolina to order the bombardment. And this sort of thing goes on all the time. The only reason the F-111s were used to bomb Tripoli is that the American Air Force wanted a part of the act, same as the British Air Force sent the V bombers at colossal expense down to bomb the airfield in the Falklands, and not one of their bombs actually hit the runway.

WHEN YOU WERE IN OPPOSITION IN THE EARLY '60s, THE UNITED STATES WAS VERY CONCERNED THAT FRANCE WAS NOT GOING TO BE STOPPED IN GETTING ITS BOMB, AND THE GERMAN RESPONSE, ESPECIALLY WHILE STRAUSS WAS STILL AROUND, WAS GOING TO BE, "WELL, IN THAT CASE, WE WANT ONE TOO." WAS THAT SOMETHING THAT WORRIED THE LABOUR PARTY?

It did worry us, but I think the worry was greatly exaggerated, because the one certain thing, particularly since Brandt introduced the Ostpolitik, is that no German government of any party even wants anything to do with the decision to use nuclear weapons, and this is a... absolutely constant thing.

WAS THAT SO CLEAR IN 1959, 1960 WHEN FRANZ JOSEPH STRAUSS WAS DEFENSE MINISTER... WHEN DE GAULLE... WAS SAYING, "WITHOUT OUR OWN DETERRENT, WE CAN'T RELY ON THE AMERICAN ONE"?

It, it wasn't, it wasn't so clear then, but we believed that this was a problem, the problem of nuclear sharing, which was one of those you have to survive, as we have survived it, rather than try to solve, and the Americans thought up this weird idea of the multilateral force at sea, which would have nuclear weapons totally under American control, but an Italian cook and you know, a British driver, and that sort of thing, and... we called it "artificial dissemination," and my first job as defense secretary was to go to Washington with Harold Wilson, and sink the multilateral force. It was called "George Bull's last stand," and nobody now thinks it would have been a good thing to go ahead with, and I think many of the things we want to scupper now, in the Labour Party, when we've succeeded, nobody will want to restore.

WHAT WAS THE BRITISH ATTITUDE TOWARD MULTILATERAL FORCE?

We thought it was crazy. We thought it was a phony answer to a non-problem, and we were right.

WHY DO YOU THINK THE GERMANS WERE A LITTLE BIT ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT IT?

I don't think they were enthusiastic about it; in fact, they didn't weep any tears when it was torpedoed. Similarly, the French tried to control German rearmament within a European defense community, which was really (?) a multilateral army, and that was defeated in the French Parliament -- the Germans didn't really weep tears over that. And the imagination boggles at the thought of trying to command and control and equip such an army now. But I think a lot of, as I say, "phony solutions" were found for false problems in those days. But the world has moved on; there have been enormous changes in political perceptions in Europe as well as in weaponry. And of course in both sides of Europe.

YOU WERE SEEN, ESPECIALLY BY THE CND ACTIVISTS IN AND OUTSIDE OF THE LABOUR PARTY, AS HAVING IN A SENSE BETRAYED THEM BY CONTINUING TO ADOPT THE BRITISH DETERRENT...?

Yes, I think in those days the CND was essentially a movement of moral protest against the obscenity of nuclear weapons as such. And, they never liked people like me, although they tried to get me to found it, you know -I was involved in the talks which led to the foundation of the CND -- because I regarded nuclear weapons as being a problem inside the world which you had to think hard about. The argument in those days was like, a little bit like the argument these days about AIDS. There are lots of people who say that, you know, it's absolutely immoral to discuss the situation in which AIDS is contracted. In those days we didn't know about AIDS. I used to compare the problem of venereal disease, which is an unpleasant problem, but somebody's got to think about it. And of course the poor old defense secretary's the chap who's got to try to think realistically.

VERY NICE...

And I still try.

FINE. GREAT.

WHAT WAS THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT'S ATTITUDE WHEN MR. NIXON WON THE ELECTION IN AMERICA AND MR. KISSINGER STARTED TALKING DÉTENTE?

Well, I only talk about the British government because we were in power the first two years of Nixon. We were absolutely delighted I mean some of us had known Kissinger well for a long time -- I had myself since the middle '50s -- and, we thought, "At last America's going to take a rational approach to these problems of defense and foreign policy." And... we very strongly supported the movement towards détente and particularly admired the way in which Kissinger would dodge all the official channels to try to break deadlocks, something which he doesn't like anybody else doing, if you read his comments on Reykjavik. But those early days, I think, we were immensely impressed by... there was one area which I was consulted on, though not by Kissinger, by Elliot Richardson, who was then assistant secretary of state. He came to me to talk about MIRVs, which didn't then exist, but the Americans were developing them, hoping to deploy them. And we both agreed, we should make a terrific effort to put that cat back in the bag, and have a battle on MIRVs in SALT I. But Kissinger strongly supported MIRVs, because he thought the Americans would have an impregnable lead there. He's totally reversed his position since then, because... they now see the Russian MIRVs as a main threat to American forces.

BUT WHAT WAS AN ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE DOING TALKING TO A BRITISH DEFENSE SECRETARY ABOUT THAT?

Well, it was a friendly talk -- I mean, one great thing with the United States is they're not stuffy about protocol. And so you know, if I go over now, I can talk to most of the people I want to meet almost as if I were a minister now. And they will tell me what's going on, and I think this is very sensible. I think in our country, we're far too stuffy about Chinese walls between departments, and so on.

BUT WHY WAS IT SOMETHING THAT YOU WOULD HAVE HAD AS A BRITISH MINISTER ANY PARTICULAR INFLUENCE? TO WHAT EXTENT DID THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT FEEL, ONCE THE SALT NEGOTIATIONS GOT UNDER WAY, THAT IT WAS SUFFICIENTLY CONSULTED? DID IT FEEL IT WAS, OR IT WASN'T?

I think the, in these early stages, I think we were quite well consulted, and Richardson came over for consultation. I think... the great disappointment with Kissinger is that, in his writing as an academic he'd appeared more sensitive to Europe's concerns than any other American writer, but he liked to gather all power to himself. And he was not good really, consulting the Europeans on these issues; the "year of Europe," which he inaugurated as secretary of state was a laughable fiasco. But of course, he didn't consult his own colleagues very much if he could help it. I mean the reason that we got the SALT I, and the ABM treaty was that he was prepared to go behind the back of his colleagues, and sort things out with Dobrynin, who is now in charge of Soviet policy in the Kremlin, and this back channel, as it was called, was extremely valuable, but of course you do need extremely able people doing that, and in Dobrynin and Kissinger, the superpowers had very able people, who were determined to try to make progress.

BUT IT DID INVOLVE A LACK... IF THE AMERICAN OFFICIAL CHANNELS AND NEGOTIATORS DIDN'T KNOW WHAT WAS GOING ON, THEN CERTAINLY THE EUROPEAN ALLIES DIDN'T A LOT OF THE TIME.

No, I don't think they did; but then again, you see, I don't think many governments were sufficiently clued in to the issues to worry very much; they sort of left it all to the Americans, as they left nuclear strategy to the Americans. The, the big changes came, I think, with the run-up to SALT III. I think that, uh. . . Europe didn't regard itself as directly involved, so long as systems based in Europe were not involved. And the so called "gray area," what the Russians call "forward-based systems," the American aircraft and based in Europe or the seas 'round it, and the missiles too -- they really only began to come into consideration at the end of SALT II, and we spent a great deal of time in very close consultation with the Americans on these issues in the end of the Callaghan government.

BUT -- GOING BACK TO SALT I -- THE SOVIETS DID IN FACT WANT TO INCLUDE FBS. WHAT WAS THE EUROPEAN REACTION TO THAT AT THE TIME?

Well... the Europeans were not keen, including the British government, although in the small group of ministers who considered these questions when they became actual, you know, in '78 and '79, until the election, we did come to the conclusion that forward-based systems should be included, and that we should put our own Polaris force into the arms negotiations. But the election came before this had really come to the boil, and of course, the invasion of Afghanistan really scuppered movement.

RIGHT. BUT MY UNDERSTANDING IS THAT IN FACT THIS ISSUE WAS DISCUSSED AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SALT I NEGOTIATIONS AS WELL. ON THAT OCCASION THE RUSSIANS EVENTUALLY AGREED NOT TO INCLUDE FBS. DO YOU REMEMBER THAT?

I don't, to be honest, remember that very well. But, I think what must be said is, there's always been, because of geography, a contradiction between Soviet and American interest. I mean, the Americans can... have always said, "He call strategic systems, that can be launched from the Soviet Union to hit us." The Russians say, "It doesn't matter whether they, 'where they're launched from. If they can hit us, they're strategic." And the difference between the tactical and the strategic weapon is whether it hits somebody else, or hits you, like the difference between a recession and a slump, is when I'm out of work, a slump, and, I think, the, this was a fudge, the whole way through until SALT III... become inescapable then, and then of course, the thing got muddled up with intermediate nuclear forces. But there's still a basic problem between Russia and the United States, and America's allies, as to whether we tend to regard any Soviet weapon that can hit us in Western Europe as strategic, and the Germans are very conscious of that, even at very short-range missiles, you know, like the SS-22s and -23s. Whereas the Russians say, "No, they're only strategic if they can hit the United States." On the other hand, they say anything based in Western Europe that can hit the Soviet Union is strategic even if it's not you know, launched from American soil. And, of course, there was never a very careful agreement about sea-based weapons, particularly submarines were carefully dealt with, the question of American bombers on American aircraft carriers, was never properly dealt with -- for some reason, they were regarded as forward-based.

WHAT WAS THE EUROPEAN RESPONSE TO KISSINGER'S -- THE BRITISH RESPONSE, ANYWAY -- TO KISSINGER'S DECLARATION OF "THE YEAR OF EUROPE" IN 1973?

I think by that time... was a pretty hoarse laugh, really, because in his later years, Kissinger had become... less and less ready, really, to argue things through with the Europeans; one or two people he got on well with, he got on well with Schmidt, in Germany, because Schmidt had been in this little group of people, both sides of the Atlantic, who'd been interested in strategic problems, for, since the mid-'50s. But I don't have the impression that he was terribly anxious to consult the others, and of course... the serious consultation on how you handle problems in the Third World, the Americans have always been very reluctant, uh; they tend to see the world, Kissinger particularly, as a Manichaean struggle between two superpowers in which local factors play no important role. The European countries, which have always had imperial responsibilities, know that you know, you can't understand what happens in Indochina, where the problems have existed for centuries, as simply a reflection of the struggle between Washington and Moscow. And I think the other great mistake that Kissinger made was thinking that any defeat for the United States by the Soviet Union, anywhere in the world, would lead to a chain reaction of collapse of confidence. He used to talk about the dominoes falling if America didn't get out of Vietnam with honor; well, America got out of Vietnam with dishonor, humiliated and defeated. But the only domino that's fallen in Southeast Asia since is a Communist domino, in Kampuchea. Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia going on much as they did before.

ONE LAST THOUGHT, THEN... WHAT WAS YOUR FEELING AS YOU CAME BACK INTO OFFICE IN 1974, WITH NIXON GONE?

No, Johnson. '70 -- oh, '74....

YES, AND YOU CAME BACK IN AS CHANCELLOR.

I was on with Bill Simon, who was Nixon -- no, Nixon was still there.

RIGHT.

Watergate happened after.

OKAY. BUT SALT I HAD BEEN SIGNED, I THINK.

Oh, SALT, yes... SALT I... had been signed.

WOULD YOU HAVE EXPECTED, AT THAT TIME, THAT NOW WE CAN REALLY GO AHEAD AND LOOK FORWARD TO SERIOUS REDUCTIONS IN THE SUPERPOWER ARSENALS? WAS THAT THE KIND OF EXPECTATION?

I think I would have sought that; I would have wanted it, as Chancellor; but, I had one or two little local difficulties as Chancellor of the Exchequer to deal with; I'd inherited a situation with racing inflation... a widening valance of faman's (?) gap; a collapse of growth -- we'd had no growth in the previous three quarters. So I'm afraid I had to buckle down and sort that out before I could take an interest in these other questions.