MR. ROSTOW, IN HIS CAMPAIGN AND EARLY ON IN 1977, JIMMY CARTER SEEMED TO BE SAYING THAT THE PROBLEM WAS WITH US. THE PROBLEM WAS A MILITARISTIC APPROACH TO FOREIGN AFFAIRS OR OUR CONFRONTATIONAL ATTITUDE TO THE SOVIETS. DID THE COMMITTEE ON THE PRESENT DANGER AGREE WITH THAT ASSESSMENT OR WAS THE PROBLEM MORE WITH THE SOVIETS?

No. The Committee... the Committee on the Present Danger took the view that President Carter's approach, especially as outlined in his early speeches and in his early actions, where he said we were excessively preoccupied with the Soviet Union and had to — and the foreign policy was a much bigger world than that we felt that the the... most important factor in world politics today was and had been for a considerable period of time, Soviet expansion. The process of Soviet expansion that began during the war and continued after the war at an accelerating pace. Now that expansion was fuel by the aggressive use of force in various forms... and was backed by an enormous and very rapidly growing military establishment... including a nuclear establishment that was gaining on our own at an alarming pace. So we were concerned to restore the damage to the bipartisan foreign policy we pursued since the time of Truman, and that damage had, of course, been occasioned by the Vietnam war, and the dreadful controversies that surrounded that tragedy... which split the parties and split especially my party, the Democratic Party.

HOW DID THE COMMITTEE VIEW SOVIET INTENTIONS? THERE SEEMED TO BE TWO CONFLICTING IDEAS. ONE IS THAT THEY WERE DRIVEN BY — TO EXPANSION BY A GRAND STRATEGY, AND THE OTHER MARSHALL SHULMAN, WHO WAS ADVISING VANCE, FELT THAT THEY WERE SIMPLY OPPORTUNISTIC. IF THERE WAS A POWER VACUUM, THEY'D FILL IT.

Well they're both. But of course the Soviets, -- The Soviet policy was driven both by opportunism and by strategy. The Soviets are very careful, thoughtful, intellectual people and very highly trained. And they've long since recovered from the weaknesses in the Russian military establishment described by Solzhenitsyn in his book, August 1914. And they know what they're after and they — what they're after is an accumulation of power... so great as to make any... resistance futile. And that means accumu... taking charge of the of central Europe which they did immediately after the war and which we have accepted more less — not quite but almost. And then seeking to gain control over western Europe on the one side, and over China, Japan on the other, so that they would confront us with an array of power which would be simply too great for our comfort.. far too great for us to handle. It... it deals with the most basic question of world politics always, which is the balance of power. No country can be free if it's pr... adversaries or potential adversaries become too strong.

DID YOU FEEL THE SOVIETS HAD A BLUEPRINT FOR WORLD DOMINATION?

Blueprint? Well they read all the relevant books, they had the strategic thought and they understood perfectly what everybody else understood... that no one should be allowed to con... to control um the entire land mass of Eurasia. We'd fought two wars to prevent — in this century, to prevent Germany from conquering Russia, and we'd helped in the formation of NATO to prevent Russia from conquering Germany and Western Europe. The reasoning behind this was expressed perfectly by Thomas Jefferson a long time ago when Napoleon went into Russia. He became very alarmed. And he said that it was very much against... our interest to have any one monarchy controlling all of Europe. And he said, "Why, under such circumstances, Britain would be but a breakfast for Napoleon." So this isn't a new idea. We didn't invent it. It's the oldest idea in the study of politics... domestic as well as foreign.

BUT, I'M TRYING TO GET A GRIP ON JUST WHAT ONE MEANS BY THE GRAND STRATEGY. IS IT BLUEPRINT FOR WORLD DOMINATION?

Well, you see it means much more than that. It means uh... a system of states in which the Soviet Union occupies a... predominant influence. But... it's not a... not a question of sending legions out to govern everybody, but it's a — there's always that implicit in the circumstance. But uh... it's a... it's an alternative world order idea, I think. A system of world order in which the Soviet Union is the center and in which um, no one has an... enough power to contest it — no coalition can oppose it. If you look at the statistics the demography and the population and the resources any any single power which controlled all of Russia and all of Western Europe would simply be too strong for our comfort. We could no -- we're in the position of that Great Britain was in for four centuries. That is, Great Britain was always weaker than it's main adversary or a combination of adversaries and had to form coalitions of like-minded states to oppose them. And that's what Great Britain was for four very successful centuries... the arbiter of the balance of power of Europe. And that's the position we're in today. We're not in a position to conquer all of Eurasia... or to come under the control of the Soviet Union. But we are in a position to form coalitions both in the Atlantic and the Pacific to maintain our independence. And that's what we've been doing...and trying to do throughout this century. We don't — we haven't understood it very well. That's not the way we're trained in college to think in those terms. But that's what we've been doing by instinct. Because everyone understands the necessity of preventing an adversary from becoming too strong. You never had to explain to an American why we teamed up with Stalin against Hitler. That was self-evident. And its obvious now... people expected there to be an outcry about our relationship with China. There wasn't at all every American understood it perfectly. We needed to have a good relation with China as a counter weight to Soviet power. So that's... those are the ideas the committee has been promoting. And attempting, as I say, to try to restore the bipartisan consensus in American thinking about foreign policy... that was destroyed or weakened anyway, by Vietnam.

I'D APPRECIATE IT IF YOU DIDN'T TALK ABOUT TODAY. PUT YOURSELF BACK IN 1976 OR '77. DID YOU SEE EVIDENCE DURING THOSE YEARS IN THE LATE SEVENTIES OF THE SOVIET EXPANSIONISM AT WORK?

Well, of course. The Soviets the Soviet pressure... was on at all times. You see, the nuclear weapon... well, let me start over. I forgot to restate your question.

I WANTED TO GET INTO THE AFRICA, ETHIOPIA, ANGOLIA, THE SOUTH YEMEN. WHAT WAS GOING ON THERE?

Well, in the late seventies, the pressure of Soviet expansion in the late seventies was manifest in two ways, really. First increasingly daring and adventurous campaigns in Africa and Asia and the Middle East which were based on a perception of American weakness. They... they felt that Carter was very weak and that the United States would not respond, and therefore they took risks which they hadn't taken before. Most notably, of course, the use of Soviet troops in Afghanistan. And very large groups of Cuban troops and Soviet advisers in the African campaigns... they were conducting at the time. The other category of pressures that we faced was in the field of nuclear weapons and the nuclear arms negotiations. The Soviets at that time, and still take the view that if they can build a first strike nuclear capability especially based on their ground based ballistic missiles that that will be in itself a paralyzing political force which will... force a breakup of the American alliance systems and the withdrawal of the United States to neutrality and isolation. And the reason for that is that the threat of a nuclear first strike capability is nearly paralyzing No one wants to test out to discover in fact through an experiment whether all those calculations are correct. And therefore, you see throughout sot...in the seventies and you see it today tremendous, what Helmut Schmidt calls the subliminal influence... of the nuclear balance... on political attitudes. The impulse for isolationism in the United States was very strong in the seventies and it's gotten ever since. And it especially af --in the immediate aftermath of Vietnam, "Pull back. Get out of our lives." This is both in the Pacific and the Atlantic and "Hunker down in the United States." And "We have enough weapons to keep them off Long Island, or Puget Sound and that's all right. The rest of the world doesn't really matter." Well of course, the rest of the world does matter immensely. It's indispensable to achieving a balance of power. And the irony of it all is that you need exactly the same nuclear power to keep them off Long Island or the Puget Sound as you would to keep them out of Berlin or Tokyo. It doesn't make any difference because after all, the Soviet Union is not building these weapons to use them. They're just as much afraid of a nuclear war or a nuclear accidents as anybody else. They're building them as a political force... designed to coerce us. And there having that influence. And that became very, very clear during the SALT II negotiations, when Vance made his proposals for reductions in 1977. Gromyko turned them down in public with the utmost brutality and we immediately withdrew those proposals and substituted others, more to the Soviets liking.

IF THE SOVIETS ARE INHERENTLY EXPANSIONISTIC, WHAT FOLLOWS FROM THAT? DOES THAT MEAN THAT YOU CAN NEGOTIATE WITH THEM OR CAN YOU TRUST THEM? WHAT ARE THEIR GOALS IN ARMS TALKS?

In arms talks, there's only one issue. And it's been true from the beginning. What they're seeking in the arms talks, apart from stopping us from lines of development that they think are very promising... is to get us to acknowledge their right... to nuclear superiority. If you look at the situation — the nuclear situation, we'll say in 1962 when there was the Cuban missile crisis, we had enormous nuclear superiority in the capacity to retaliate anytime we wanted. And the result was that we could threaten them to invade Cuba with conventional forces. The Cuban missile crisis, which is very interesting and important episode in the history of the Cold War, was not a nuclear crisis. We were planning to use conventional forces in Cuba. Kennedy assembled them in Florida, a quarter of a million troops, without any particular attempts at secrecy, and the Soviets backed down because it was clear once they'd established that Kennedy was serious, that there was nothing they could do to prevent a landing at Cuba and that they couldn't use the nuclear weapons against us because we had so many more we could use against them in that event. So that's the key thing. You build an enormous nuclear — or they think you — they build an enormous nuclear superiority in order to prevent us from using conventional force in the defense of our interests... anywhere. And that's what they were trying to do through the nuclear arms talks... To get us to acknowledge their right to what they called equality and equal security. We were after equality -- deterrent equality, so that each side could retaliate against a nuclear attack or a... an attack on its vital interests. But nobody would have a first strike capacity. And they were trying to build a first strike capacity by saying, "Look, well you must accept the principle of equality and equal security, which means, we have a right to a nuclear force equal to the sum of the American, the British, the French, the Chinese, the Israeli and so on." Which is a recipe for -- not for security but for dominance.

WHAT SHOULD OUR GOALS IN BUILDING UP A STRATEGIC ARSENAL, GIVEN THE VIEW THAT YOU HAVE OF THE SOVIETS? DOES THAT MEAN THAT WE HAVE TO SEEK SUPERIORITY?

No. We have to seek always to maintain a retaliatory capacity, so that we can neutralize their nuclear weapons, and achieve a nuclear stalemate and be free to use conventional force if necessary to defend our interests. Uh...

DO YOU THINK THAT SENATOR JACKSON WAS INTERESTED IN SUPERIORITY OR JUST-

No, no. I know I know his views very, very well. I... was close to him for a long time... and he was in entire agreement with this approach to our own — building our own nuclear arsenal and negotiating with the Soviet Union. You see, United States, after the Cuban Missile Crisis, was very much moved to come forward with arms control negotiations... because we were so impressed with the risks of nuclear uncertainty — nuclear anxiety during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And the... in any event the United States has always been interested in arms control agreements. We started in 1783 in the... negotiations with the British for a peace treaty. We proposed the demilitarization of the Great Lakes and of the border with Canada. So that this is part in... part in parcel of our culture... an interest — as... like the Constitution... an interest in convenience, an interest in treaties, and the role of law in the social process. So there's nothing new about that. But it... after the Cuban Missile Crisis, we began to press arms control approaches, hoping to stabilize the tensions between us and the Soviet Union. But of course, we wanted to neutralize the nuclear weapons, and minimize the risk of nuclear war. And the Soviets, it became clear very soon, wanted treaties that would allow them to build up their nuclear arsenal and especially their ground based ballistic missiles, which is exactly what they did. And of course one of the great mistakes that was made by the Nixon administration in the SALT I negotiations was to allow a loophole which permitted the Soviet Union to transform their holdings in ICBMs — the intercontinental ballistic missiles, from a position of near equality with the United States in 1972 to the present posture or the posture in the... in the '70s when Carter was President... of being more than three to one, perhaps four to one ahead of us in the number of warheads on those weapons. Which has transformed the whole political situation.

YOU SAY THAT THE COMMITTEE BELIEVE IN NEGOTIATIONS. WERE YOU HAPPY WITH THE END PRODUCT OF THE SALT II NEGOTIATIONS?

The Committee on the Present Danger opposed the end product of the negotiations for SALT II. And testified in favor of sending the draft treaty back for amendment on four or five key points. I've forgotten what they all were. One of them was that we include what were then called the gray area weapons, the intermediate range weapons which are now called the INF weapons, because they reinforced the threat. They were designed to separate Europe and Japan from the United States... and China and other countries within range by dramatizing a threat from these intermediate range weapons at a time when the American nuclear response was coming under greater and greater question, because of the change in the nuclear balance between the Soviet Union and the United States in the intercontinental weapons. It was a kind of a whipsaw thing. And it created great alarm, both in Europe and in Japan and in other countries as well, and so the first thing the committee recommended was that the SALT II Treaty be sent back from the Senate to the President with a request that this problem be taken care of. And of course, that's happened now... with the INF element in the nuclear arms negotiations. The other was, that we said the draft treaty, which the President had sent over and signed in Vienna, was based on the wrong principle of accounting. That is, it counted launchers rather than warheads and their destructive capacity. Well that was a practical way of dealing with nuclear — counting nuclear weapons in 1972 and because we were so far ahead by any standard. But in 1979, it didn't make sense because the Soviets were very close to us in overall nuclear strength and ahead of us in some categories of nuclear strength. And ah, a launcher isn't a weapon. Nobody's ever been killed by a launcher. The launcher can send off ten or three or four or whatever it may be warheads. And some warheads were worse than others, so that we said that the treaty was built on the wrong principles and will only permit the Soviet Union to increase its rapidly growing force of ICBMs. And there were several other objections. I've forgotten now what they were. But we prepared a very careful — we prepared a long series of analytic statements criticizing the draft as the negotiations developed. We remained in touch with the government and with the key people in congress and so there our views where... were available to the government at all times. And then when the treaty was sent over, we testified... before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Arms Services Committee, both I think... on the substance of it. So that -- no, we took a critical position and recommended that the treaty not be ratified.

SENATOR JACKSON, ON A FEW DAYS BEFORE PRESIDENT CARTER WENT TO VIENNA, SPOKE TO THE COALITION FOR DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY AND CALLED IT APPEASEMENT... RESURRECTED THE IMAGE OF NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN IN 1938. DOES THAT -- WAS HE BEING TOO HARSH?

No it wasn't too harsh at all. It was an acceptance of Soviet nuclear superiority which would in the not very long run have condemned us to a position of neutrality. It would've broken up our alliance system and reduced us to neutrality a... in the United States which would have meant impotence in a world of much larger powers.

IN 1977, YOU WERE CONCERNED ABOUT THE WINDOW OF VULNERABILITY, THAT THE SOVIET BUILDUP MIGHT GIVE THEM FIRST STRIKE CAPABILITY. OTHERS SAY, "HEY, LISTEN—THAT'S WHY YOU HAVE A TRIAD. WHAT'S WRONG WITH STANDING ON THE OTHER TWO LEGS OF THE TRIAD?" WON'T THEY BE A DETERRENT?

The window of... vulnerability argument deals with, of course, the Soviet lead in ground based ballistic missiles which are the most accurate, the most destructive, ah... of nuclear weapons — the swiftest, and the ones for which there is as yet no real defense. Of course one must and should rely on the other two legs of the triad for what they can do. In the '70s, the submarines were decidedly less—submarine based weapons were decidedly less accurate than the... than the ground based weapons. That may change in the near future, and various people think it will change, but at that time it had not changed and the submarine based were a good retaliatory weapon but not at all accurate enough to be a first strike weapon. And the bombers, of course, were very doubtful. They were perhaps retaliatory weapons, but the Soviets had a very strong air defense system which we did not have. And it was highly questionable then how effective they could be under circumstances of war. So that while it was -- still plenty of uncertainty, about the possibility of retaliation in the event of a nuclear Soviet first strike attack that uncertainty was diminishing very rapidly and that was what was meant by the window of vulnerability. And it is that -- a fact. That's what the Scowcroft commission concluded and it is a... central problem for all our nuclear planning. So that especially when you look at — it becomes very obvious, I think, if you look at the nuclear problem. Not as a problem of actual warfare, but as a problem of political warfare. That is the translation" of these forces into a political perceptions and then political decisions. And that, I think, is the key to understanding the nature of the role of nuclear weapons. I'm not saying that a nuclear war is impossible. Obviously a nuclear war is possible. Human beings handle these weapons, and human beings can become very excited and very alarmed. But I think the risk of nuclear war between the major industrial powers at least is... has been greatly reduced over time. But not the political influence of nuclear weapons.

PERCEPTION OF POWER MATTER?

Perceptions of power matter immensely. Yes. It's always been true. The Chinese of course had the classical warfare in which the two generals would sit on a hill having — drinking tea. The troops would be deployed and maneuvered below them and one would then turn to the other and said, "Well, you've won." Well, it was a very civilized way to conduct warfare.

DO YOU THINK THE SOVIETS WERE IN ETHIOPIA BECAUSE THEY FELT WE WERE GETTING STRONGER IN TERMS OF NUCLEAR ARSENAL, THAT WE GET ETHIOPIA — AS IF IT'S A TWENTIETH CENTURY EQUIVALENT OF NINETEENTH CENTURY WARFARE, THAT YOU DON'T HAVE TO FIGHT?

Well it was nineteenth century warfare you fought.

BUT TODAY YOU DON'T HAVE TO FIGHT - YOU KNOW, "I'M BIGGER THAN YOU WITH MY NUKES, SO, I WANT ETHIOPIA, YOU DON'T CHALLENGE ME."

Well, that of course is the effect of the nuclear balance on warfare was most dramatically illustrated not by Ethiopia so much where there was a lot of fighting but by the Cuban Missile Crisis... where there was no fighting at all. You can say in retrospect that Kennedy settled for too little in the nuclear missile crisis, but that's the only example we have of the visible impact of perceptions of nuclear strength on political decisions. The Soviets retreated. The Soviets moved forward in the '70s in the Third World on a very large scale culminating, of course, with the use of their own troops in Afghanistan which was a remarkable development in the Cold War. Not only because their nuclear strength was improving, but because they perceived weakness in the American government, especially in the aftermath of Vietnam.

WHY DO YOU THINK THEY WENT INTO AFGHANISTAN? SOME PEOPLE SAY THAT THEY FELT THAT SALT WOULD NOT BE RATIFIED AND SO THEY WENT AHEAD AND TOOK AN ACTION THAT WOULD KILL THE POSSIBILITY OF IT BEING RATIFIED BUT THEY DIDN'T CARE. WHY DID THEY DO IT?

Afghanistan did not kill the possibility of SALT being ratified. SALT was dead before Afghanistan. Both the Democratic and the Republican leaders knew that and the count was clear-cut and there were consultations that made it very obvious. We tried to convey that message, we on the Committee on the Present Danger, to the government and the answer that Cy Vance gave me was, "Well, reasonable men can differ about nose counting in the Senate." And of course that's perfectly true. But we were very confident of our nose count and it was correct. No. Afghanistan...has been part of Soviet strategic planning for more than a century, and... in the conflict between Russia and the British Empire in the 19th century, there were several wars over Afghanistan... because Afghanistan is route of access to the... to the southern — both to southern part of Iran and of course, to what is now Pakistan. And the Soviet interest in the in the sub-continent of Asia is just as intense and just as real as its interest in Japan or in Western Europe. And for the same reasons because they understand the geography of power. And in terms of the geography of power, the sub-continent is enormously important and was becoming more and more important in the '70s and is more and more important today because the rapid industrial development of India and of Pakistan both, but especially of India, and its enormous mass, the population, and the geography of it. So that an American student of strategy years ago said that the West should never allow the Russians south of the line between Kabul and Tehran. It's most interesting in perception in view of current events. And and of course the Soviets push south. It's not a sentimental interest in warm water ports. It's a fact of life about the geography of power. And this — there's nothing new about that interest. And they were taking advantage of the weakness of the Carter government to make a swift, bold move into Afghanistan. They had built their road on which they're depending... in Afghanistan as part of an aid program for Afghanistan and we helped build that road. And Senator Jackson came out of a trip to Russia in... I don't when... the late '60s, I suppose... came out from Russia through Afghanistan and when he got out he met the press and he said..."They're going to attack Afghanistan. That road is a military road."

IT WAS BUILT FOR TANKS.

It was built for tanks. So this was not a matter they decided on the spur of the moment. This was long standing plans going way back into the nineteen century. Part of their conflict with Great Britain about imperial power, and they took advantage of the occasion...

WHAT IF SALT HAD BEEN RATIFIED? DO YOU THINK THEY WOULD HAVE DONE IT?

Certainly they would have done it?... Yes. The Soviet Union would have moved in Afghanistan whether SALT were ratified or not. SALT I was ratified. And that led to the worst decade of the Cold War so far as Soviet expansion was concerned. The the Soviets moved in the Middle East and in the 1973 war, backing the Arab attack on Israel which was an attack on NATO, not an attack on Israel alone. And of course, they moved ahead in Indochina... inflicting humiliating defeat on us. Without an regard to SALT I. And there were many other episodes of course in that period. In the Middle East, in Africa, in and in Southern Asia. So that no, the ratification of SALT I had no affect on their expansionist policy, nor would the ratification of SALT II have any effect.

SOME OF THE COMMITTEE'S WRITINGS SUGGEST THAT THE VIOLENCE IN IRAN HAD BEEN INSPIRED BY THE SOVIETS FROM THE BEGINNING.

Which violence is this?

IN IRAN. ALL THE ANTI-AMERICAN HOSTILITY AND THE UPROOTING. DO YOU SEE THIS AS AN INDIGENOUS IRANIAN PROBLEM OR SOMETHING THAT THE SOVIETS STIRRED UP?

Both. The Soviets — there is of course an enormous revulsion throughout the Muslim world against Western civilization, against the treatment of women, against pornographic movies, against... um, co-education in the schools, against all sorts of symbolic and actual changes... in the in the traditional culture. And that's felt everywhere and was felt very strongly in Iran. Primarily because the government of the Shah was pressing so hard for modernization and westernization... of the country. It was a culture shock. And it did have deep roots. And it's everywhere. But the Soviet Union certainly did its best to stir it up. As has been the case all over the place and to take advantage of it and exploit it.

WAS WARNKE A GOOD CHOICE AS AN ARMS NEGOTIATOR?

Well, I opposed his confirmation. I... know him and I like him and we work together in the...in the Johnson administration, but no, I didn't think he was a good choice at all.

WHY?

Because he changed his mind, the position he'd taken in a long series of articles for purposes of the job.

HE CHANGED HIS VIEW OF THE GOALS OF—

That's right.

FROM WHAT TO WHAT?

Well, from a much uh. . .

HE SOFTENED UP TO PLEASE CARTER?

I sup... I suppose you could say that Paul Warnke softened up to please Carter, but he — the views expressed in many of his earlier articles were simply thrown away... in order to carry out the policy of the Carter administration. And I thought that was a very bad sign. He announced that in his in... before his confirmation hearings so that the battle over his confirmation became a... pretty dramatic test.

WHAT WAS THE CHIEF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HOW PAUL WARNKE AND HOW THE COMMITTEE ON THE PRESENT DANGER WOULD APPROACH THE NEGOTIATIONS?

I think Paul Warnke saw arms control treaties as an end in themselves. And we saw them only as a means to an end. I think Paul Warnke was not allowed in this...Cy Vance said it over and over again, and I think President Carter really believed it — that there was some positive fallout from reaching an arms control agreement with the Soviet Union in the general realm on peaceful behavior. International behavior. And that it would modify or soften their expansionist policies. There was no excuse in my judgment for saying — for r...having such an opinion... in the '70s against the background of the experience we'd gone through after the signing negotiation and signing of SALT I. The two SALT I agreements were duly signed in 1972 and President Nixon proclaimed that détente reigned in the world and that we'd substituted... cooperation for confrontation and then we endured the worst decade of the Cold War — in the Middle East, in the Far East and in Africa, and other places as well. So that um, the notion that signing an arms control agreement with the Soviet Union would lead to a mellowing of Soviet international behavior really was untenable. It could not be made against the background of experience. But the Carter administration still clung to that view and articulated it very clearly. After all, the President said that arms control was the centerpiece of our relationship with the Soviet Union and the centerpiece of American Foreign Policy. Well that was a... an abandonment of the real issue which was Soviet expansion and its effect on the balance of power.

WHAT'S MORE IMPORTANT? THWARTING SOVIET EXPANSION OR AN ARMS AGREEMENT? AND SHOULD THEY BE DEALT WITH SEPARATELY OR SHOULD THEY BE LINKED?

Well, the problem of making an arms control agreement cannot be considered except in the context of Soviet expansion. They're linked, in fact, and they have to be linked therefore, in our thinking about them. The there was no way to escape the connection, because after all, nuclear weapons, both for us and for the Soviet Union, have to do with possible use in warfare or possible use in political campaigns backed by the threat of force. And the Soviet Union is interested in the nuclear weapon as the ultimate sanction behind its program of expansion... based on the use of force. And we're interested in the nuclear weapon as the ultimate guarantee of our possibility of defending our national interests defined as the — our interest in the independence of Europe, Japan and other great centers of power or strategically important...places and countries around the world. Now there's no way to escape that linkage. And many people said, "Oh. Talk about linkage... is to put an impossible obstacle in the path of peace, as if an arms control agreement were the equivalent of peace." Which, as we learned in the 1970s is not the case. But, nonetheless, that was made. And I would never say that we should approach the problem of making or not making an arms control agreement as if it were a favor we're doing to anyone. Even though the arms control agreement is in our national security interest, or it's not. If it is in our national security interest, we should make it. That is to say, if it would reduce the risk of nuclear war, if it would produce more stability and more predictability in international relations and minimize the effect of uncertainty about the nuclear weapon and the nuclear dimension of international conflict. Those are all very worthwhile objectives. And I was in favor indeed of the Beirut plan which President Truman offered in 1946 in which the Soviet Union turned down. I regard that Soviet rejection as one of the tragic turning points in the history of the Cold War. Because the Baruch plan would have put all of nuclear technology under the control of an international agency. And the Soviets rejected it and substituted — put forward an offer which they've repeated recently to abolish all nuclear weapons on the basis of national decisions and national -- without national safeguards and so on. So that um, no. I think a nuclear arms control treaty is either worthwhile or not worthwhile from the point of view the American national interest. And we should only make it if it is and we should give up the notion that making arms control agreements will somehow lead to a mellowing of Soviet foreign policy and in the end towards Soviet cooperation with the other major powers in the interest of maintaining the peace. It's too late for — to entertain any such illusions.

WERE YOU AGAINST THE SALT II TREATY BECAUSE IT LEFT THE SOVIETS SUPERIOR IN—

Yes. It left the Soviets superior and would have prevented us from catching up. It would have prevented us from trying to restore the balance through its restrictions, And that was true then and we made that objection in a... in a reasoned way both in our published statements and in our testimony before the Senate.

BUT WASN'T THE MX A WAY TO DO TWO THINGS? ONE, TO GET RID OF THE WINDOW OF VULNERABILITY BY A LESS VULNERABLE BASING MODE AND TWO, TO HAVE AN ACCURATE COUNTERFORCE WEAPON?

Oh, I thought the MX was indispensable. Indeed. The MX, however, brought out one of the great weaknesses of the approach of the SALT II Treaty. Which was to count launchers and to put --try to put warhead limits on the launchers, I was very much and I think all of us in the committee were very much in favor of smaller weapons and mobile weapons. In other words, if you limited throw weight, you gave inducement to build small weapons and many of them. And if you limited the number of launchers, you gave the engineers inducements to build huge weapons with lots of warheads on them. And I ... I think really the only way out of the nuclear problem in the end is to have small mobile weapons. You — which you can't trace very well and you can't verify very well but each side would know the other side had a lot of them. And it would have a paralyzing effect. At least, that seems possible to me and more attractive by a long shot than building the colossal weapons. Because the smaller ones would basically be retaliatory weapons.

SO THE MX IS A FIRST STRIKE WEAPON. ISN'T THAT A DESTABILIZING WEAPON? WHY WERE YOU IN FAVOR OF IT?

Well, the distinction in my experience and my study between first strike and non-first strike weapons is entirely a question of number in relation to the other side's arsenal. That is, if you have one side has one weapon and the other side has none, then that one weapon is a first strike weapon whether it's a bomb like the bombs we dropped in Japan or a missile. The of course the MX is a... is a formidable ah...and would be an accurate weapon and a very destructive weapon like some of the Soviet heavy missiles, But it's only a first strike weapon if you build it in sufficient numbers — to do -- to make a first strike weapon. And that depends also on whether it can be defended. Whether it's in it's vulnerable to attack as compared we'll say to a submarine based weapon. So that I was in favor of MX and the committee was in favor of MX and strongly in favor of Midgetman — even more strongly in favor of Midgetman than of MX, because we needed it to restore the balance between the Soviet nuclear arsenal and our own and to minimize the chance that they would be perceived as having and would have indeed, a preemptive nuclear — a first strike capability, which could be a... an enormously destructive political force.

DO YOU THINK WE NEED MORE FIGHTING STRATEGY? WERE YOU PLEASED WHEN PRESIDENT CARTER SIGNED PD-59?

I've forgotten whether I was pleased or not. What is PD-59?

WELL IT'S SORT OF A CONTINUATION OF THE SCHLESINGER DOCTRINE, COUNTERFORCE CAPABILITY, CAPABILITY FOR SURVIVABILITY OF COMMAND AND CONTROL AND YOU KNOW, YOU CAN CALL IT A WAR FIGHTING STRATEGY AS OPPOSED TO JUST A DETERRENT. IF THE DETERRENCE FAILS, IT ASSUMES YOU CAN FIGHT A COUNTERFORCE WAR.

Well, you can't have — the distinction between war fighting and deterrence doesn't exist to my mind. I don't think a military force would deter unless it were perceived as a force capable of fighting if it had to fight. Military ban doesn't defer...uh, deter unless it's backed by fighting units that would come into play if anybody fooled with the band after all. No. I did welcome PD-59 and I... and I thought all that was indispensable and anything to get away from the mad doctrine, as rapidly as our — the accuracy of our weapons permitted us to have a counterforce capability. And to mount a counterforce strategy. That's what's deterrent. Deterrence as I say, is the... is the fear of somebody else's capacity to inflict pain.

THERE WAS A BATTLE BETWEEN VANCE AND BRZEZINSKI ON WHETHER TO TILT TOWARDS CHINA, WHETHER TO EMPHASIZE THE SECURITY ASPECTS OF THE NEW RELATIONSHIP. CARTER SEEMED TO BE INFLUENCED BY BRZEZINSKI IN THIS, AND TO TILT A LITTLE BIT TOWARDS CHINA IN TERMS OF DUAL USE TECHNOLOGY AND SO ON. ARMS SALES BY THE ALLIES. DID YOU APPROVE OF THAT?

Yes. I did. It was the whole point of — the whole point of our relationship with China as it started in the time of Nixon was that that relationship would be a counterweight to Soviet expansionist pressure. After all, the communica... the Shanghai communiqué of 1972 was a most interesting document. It recited in one part Chinese views of various problems, in another part it recited American views on various problems and there was only one joint section. And that joint section said that both China and the United States were opposed to any hegemonial power in Asia. And later the Japanese signed onto to that proposition, despite vehement Soviet objections. So that's what the new relationship was all about and the notion that it could develop and fulfill itself without a security dimension I think is as... self-deceptive. After all, the key decision that Nixon made, and one of the most important in modern history, is his nuclear gam... nuclear threat to the Soviet Union to protect China.

DID YOU REGARD BRZEZINSKI AS AN ALLY?

Well certainly as a friend. I didn't we didn't... didn't we talked frequently and always very comfortably and it was not a question of being allied or not. He was representing the President of course and we... rep... were presenting the views that we'd worked out in our criticisms — analyses of Carter's policies. And those conversations were perfectly civil and frequent and thoughtful and comfortable but we didn't regard him as an ally. No. He wasn't. He was... he wasn't an ally of ours. He was just a, a person who's views we respected who happened to be in the government at that time.

BUT WOULD YOU HAVE FELT COMFORTABLE WITH HIM AS A MEMBER OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE PRESENT DANGER BEFORE HE WAS IN OFFICE?

Oh surely. We invited him to be. But he was already ah... involved with the Carter administration. You see. We didn't --we tried to -- began to form the committee in '76, planned it in '75 and '76 and we didn't announce its existence until after the election of '76. Because we didn't want to get involved in the election. We thought if we'd make an — made an earlier announcement, that people would have considered a... asked themselves whether we were for one candidate or the other.

DID YOU INVITE BRZEZINSKI TO JOIN THE COMMITTEE?

Yes. The Committee on the Present Danger invited Brzezinski to join, but he -- by the time we issued those invitations he was already so deeply involved with Governor Carter as a candidate that he felt that it would be inappropriate to do so.

MARCH '77. SCOOP JACKSON WAS AFRAID OF THE HEAVIES. YOU WERE AFRAID OF THE SOVIET HEAVY MISSILES. CARTER DIDN'T LIKE ANY NUCLEAR WEAPONS. ONE TENDS TO THINK OF THE COMMITTEE AND CARTER AS ADVERSARIES OR SCOOP AND CARTER AS ADVERSARIES, BUT WASN'T CARTER CARRYING YOUR INTEREST? WASN'T THERE A MOMENT IN MARCH OF '77 WHEN THERE WAS A CONFLUENCE OF INTEREST IN THE PROPOSAL THAT SECRETARY VANCE CARRIED TO MOSCOW?

Certainly Secretary Vance's proposal in um, March of '77 seemed to us very helpful. As I recall it, we had some difficulties with some aspects of it, but it was a very, we thought, a very promising beginning for the negotiations and it would have made an immense difference if the Soviets had ac... accepted it or been willing to negotiate on that basis...to the Soviet advantage in ground based ballistic missiles. But of course, Gromyko turned it down with a great deal of heat... in ah, public in Moscow and the Carter administration immediately retreated. Because the Carter administration I'm afraid felt it was more important to make an agreement with the Soviet Union on this subject than um, to go along without one.

WAS IT A PROCEDURAL THING? THEY DIDN'T LET THE SOVIETS KNOW IN ADVANCE. THE SOVIETS SORT OF NEED TIME TO PREPARE.

No. The Soviet Union — the whole notion that the Soviet Union are a group of very sensitive babies and we have to coddle along and treat with great care, procedurally, is absurd. The Soviet Union is led by men — I suppose we have to say men and not men and not men and women, because they're no --there haven't been any women in positions of importance for a long time — the Soviet Union is a government led by men of great ability and experience and training... officials who stay in place for a long time and they're experts in the field and they're not affected by the tone in which they're treated or procedural slights and all that sort of thing. When... when Soviet officials get angry in public or in private it's entirely calculated. They don't get angry in the ordinary sense. Because they're...they're functioning under much stricter rules of discipline. And dealing with them is very bracing and very interesting and they're — as I say absolutely first class at their work. But the notion that they'd be that the policy toward the heavy missiles, the SS — the SS-18s and -19s would have been affected by any procedural lapses in the handling is absurd. It represents a failure to respect really, the Soviet government and its policies.

SOME PEOPLE SAY —

Condescending, I think is the right word.

WHY DID THEY REJECT IT THEN? WHY DID THEY REJECT THE PROPOSAL, THE SOVIETS? WHY DID THE SOVIETS —

The Soviets rejected the proposal because they opposed to any in their advantage in these heavy weapons. That's — that was their primary aim in all these negotiations and in building up their nuclear arsenal and it still is. As far as I can see. We'll have to see what the latest round of proposals means. But that's been their objective. They spent an enormous amount of money, trying to achieve it. They transformed the nuclear balance between 1972 and the present and they were not going to give it up. The Soviets say they believe that the correlation of forces, as they call it, will determine the future of world politics and I rather suspect they believe it. They've sacrificed the standard of living of their people for three generations to that idea.

IT SEEMS TO ME THAT THE POLICIES THAT CARTER HAD ADVOCATED BY THE TIME HE LEFT OFFICE WERE NOT MUCH DIFFERENT FROM WHAT RONALD REAGAN WOULD HAVE DONE. DO YOU FEEL, DO YOU TAKE SOME RESPONSIBILITY FOR THIS SWITCH? ARE YOU STILL PRETTY CLOSE TO YOUR VIEWS?

Certainly President Carter's view of the Soviet Union and his the actualities of his policy changed radically during his period in office. The... the — he signed PD-59, he struggled for an increase in the defense budget and he undertook confrontational approaches to the Soviet Union, or what were considered confrontational approaches, although I thought some of them were rather absurd and self-defeating. Like not going to the Olympics. Um. That didn't affect policy very much. Um. Yes. He was certainly moving in response to his experience and moving quite sharply. But I always had the impression with him — perhaps it was the shadow of his previous being that he was reluctant a reluctant convert and not a very zealous promoter of action.

THERE ARE PEOPLE THAT SAY THE RUSSIANS ARE JUST LIKE US AND THEY, YOU KNOW —

They are like us but they happen to be at war, that's all. They think — the government is at least.

YOU'VE BEEN ACCUSED IN HELPING IN THE DETERIORATION OF US-SOVIET RELATIONS BECAUSE OF ALL THE HARSH RHETORIC ABOUT THE SOVIET UNION. IS THAT A FAIR, ACCURATE –

The uh... You say I've been accused of contributing to the deterioration of Soviet-American relations...I beg your pardon.

NOT YOU PERSONALLY, BUT --

The Committee on the Present Danger was formed in the late '70s... in the aftermath of Vietnam to try to overcome the weakening of the bipartisan consensus about foreign policy that had lasted between the time of Truman and the Vietnam War. Our first effort was within the... Democratic Party. The coalition for a democratic majority. Many of the people who are... most active in the Committee on the Present Danger were active in the foreign policy committee of the coalition for a democratic majority. We found that we weren't getting anywhere and that we wanted to have a bipartisan approach -- that it was that while the problem within the democratic party was very severe after Vietnam, the urn, the only approach that would work we thought or had a chance of working was a bipartisan approach. And so we formed the committee as a bipartisan committee designed to restore un... the momentum of American foreign policy that had been lost because of the Vietnam experience and the Korean experience before that. More and more people were flirting with the notion that the security of the United States could be assured by isolationist policies and it... policies of neutrality rather than by the policies of coalition building that had begun with Truman had been carried out through the Eisenhower period. Now the central feature, which made such policies necessary, the central fact which made such policies necessary, was in our view, the Soviet policy of expansion. And so, it was extremely important, indispensable that we explain to the American people uh...as clearly as we could the um, nature of those policies. Now of course, there's a very strong desire within the American body politic to say, "Oh, the Russians are all right. They're just like us. They love their children and their grandchildren," and all of which is perfectly true. And we were allies together in the war against Hitler and we ought to be able to get along with them if we'd only understand them and be more sympathetic and treat them kindly and reassure them uh. All they want is a place in the sun. And I think Secretary McNamara once said that. That their only interest is recognition as a great power and legitimacy and status and so on. Well I don't think anybody can take such positions anymore with any respect for the experience we've gone through. Now, people have accused us of course, of being responsible for the deterioration of... Soviet-American relations in the late '70s. I don't think they've ever deteriorated. I think they're exactly the same as they were in 1947. The Soviets are pushing outward. The... the Americans reluctantly --the Americans and many other countries reluctantly and half-heartedly often have been trying to restrain that outward push and bring it within tolerable limits. When you say that this is what the Russians are doing, people say you're accusing them, or engaging in harsh rhetoric or... doing other things that might cause them to be offended. Well the Soviets are not in the least offended by harsh rhetoric. They use harsh rhetoric about us...all the time. I'm very much against using harsh rhetoric of our own because we have to conduct foreign policy and the... ways that are compatible with our own nature. But I think it's indispensable, if you're in the government or if you're an intellectual addressing the public, to call things by their right names and to not to say that the Soviets are suffering from inferiority complexes. They're not. Or that they weren't sufficiently cuddled by their mothers. They were. The...the Soviets — that isn't what the Soviets are suffering from. And the troubles between us are not caused by misunderstandings. No two governments have ever understood each other better, which is not to say, we understand each other very well. No... no one understands a foreign culture deeply, really. Uh, but we're in constant communication and its perfectly easy communication. Soviet-American diplomacy is not a horrifying experience. Quite the contrary. I suppose a few people of um, eaten more and drunk more in the course of trying to serve the nation than I have with Russians and it's a bracing and stimulating experience. But it's... it's not a question — the problems between us are not problems of misunderstanding. And they're not problems of procedure. They arise from the fact that the Soviet Union is expanding in order to acquire power which is in itself inherently disturbing and threatening to us. And that's a policy that they pursue, and it isn't affected by rhetoric. It's affected by opportunity and by strength. They tried in Cuba in 1962 and it didn't work. Well they're still at it... in Cuba from Cuba and in the whole of South America.

PEOPLE SAY THERE'S EVIDENCE OF EXPANSION IN THIS PERIOD, BUT, YOU KNOW, SO THEY GOT ETHIOPIA, THEY LOST EGYPT. I MEAN, IT ISN'T...

That's right. Well the basic change —uh, the basic setback for them was in China. And Egypt as well. Th... the... this isn't a monolithic. This isn't a straight line process. The important thing to remember about the Soviet Union is that they take — in Russia before the Soviet Union -- always took very long views. A French foreign minister once told me Russian policy — if they run into an obstacle, they try to go around it. If they can't go around it, they go somewhere else. But the important thing is to take — keep on going like a glacier. We used to think that if they were stopped in one or two places, they would get the message and they would turn. Of course, all our policy, until now, is based on George Kennan's famous article in 1947. And George Kennan, who was a great expert on the Soviet Union and on Russia promised us that if there were containment of Soviet expansion for ten or fifteen years, Soviet policy would mellow under the benign influence of Russian high culture, and they would become cooperative members of the family of nations. But it hasn't happened that way. But we still are waiting for that mellowing to take place. It's like "Waiting for Godot" in Samuel Beckett's famous play, uh. Each time there's a new leader, we say, "Oh, this may be the man who's going to lead us out of the wilderness and we can go hand in hand into the sunset. He likes bourbon, his wife dresses well he likes jazz. He's a modern man. He's much younger." But it doesn't happen that way. Alas.

SOUTH YEMEN. I MEAN REALLY. THEY GET SOUTH YEMEN, WHO CARES?

Well, a lot of people care. South... Saudi Arabia cares. We didn't do very much about South Yemen, although I think, as I recall that President Carter got excited about South Yemen. South Yemen is part of the approaches to the straits there and the entrance into the Persian Gulf. So therefore, it's important to the oil traffic. Therefore it's important to the control of Iran. The world is round and it's very hard to imagine any part of the world which can be excluded in advance as outside the parameters of our possible interests in the context of Soviet programs of expansion, Afghanistan and the Yemen are about as remote as you can you can imagine... as places. Very picturesque, no doubt and very wonderful for tourism, but Afghanistan has always been of great strategic importance to the control of both of the Middle East and of the sub-continent of Asia. And it will remain so. There's no way of changing those facts of geography.