GORBACHEV LEAVES REYKJAVIK AND AMONG THE THING HE SAYS AT THE END IS, “ONLY A MADMAN WOULD AGREE TO SDI?” AND THEN HE COMES TO WASHINGTON OF COURSE AND SIGNS AN AGREEMENT THAT DOES NOT LINK SDI TO THE AGREEMENT? WHAT HAPPENED? WHY DID HE CHANGE?

You have to ask him.

DO YOU HAVE ANY SPECULATION ON THAT?

He has come to recognize that President Reagan is insistent on learning how to defend ourselves against ballistic missiles, if we possibly can. And personally I think it would be mad not to try to do that, since there seemed to be real possibilities of doing it. Why not learn how to defend yourself against these things? They can wipe you out. So it makes all kinds of sense to do what the President wants to do.

I THINK YOU CATEGORIZED THE NEGOTIATIONS AT THE MINISTERIAL LEVEL BETWEEN THE SOVIET UNION AND THE UNITED STATES AS BEING VERY TOUGH AND DIFFICULT?

In this most recent ministerial, that’s right.

CAN YOU GIVE US SOME SENSE OF WHAT THAT MEANS? HOW ARE THEY TOUGH? IN WHAT WAY?

Well, it wasn’t that they were unpleasant or anything like that. We have a very good capacity to discuss things. It’s just that the issues we were dealing with were all issues of importance and they were difficult issues, inherently difficult issues. For instance, when you talk about verifying a strategic arms agreement where what you’re verifying is the existence of certain kinds of weapons up to a certain level as distinct from verifying zero, it’s inherently difficult. It is difficult in the sense that if you didn’t have to negotiate with anybody, but you just had to write down what you wanted, recognizing that everything that you wanted to do to inspect what they’re doing, they had to be willing to do here, you had to be willing to have them do here. So you just write your ticket. It’s not that easy to write the ticket. And then of course you have to negotiate it. So, when you get to issues like that, it’s tough going.

I THINK I HEAR YOU SAYING ALSO, AS PART OF THAT, THAT THERE IS A WILLINGNESS ON BOTH SIDES TO MOVE AND MAKE AGREEMENT. THERE’S A SENSE OF TRYING TO REACH AGREEMENT NOW.

We have demonstrated, both of us,that we’re willing to make an agreement of significance, and the intermediate range treaty is the best example of that right there. So we know that we are willing to come to closure. Everybody likes to talk about the importance of negotiations, and you ought to be doing it and working at it hard and so forth. Then when you come to actually closing and making a deal, everybody gets shaky about it. But that’s part of negotiation, too.

THIS WILLINGNESS TO MAKE A DEAL SEEMS TO BE IN MARKED CONTRAST TO THE EARLY YEARS OF THE ADMINISTRATION WHEN THEY WERE BEING CHARACTERIZED AS THE EVIL EMPIRE AND THE FURTHEST THING FROM OUR MIND SEEMED TO BE MAKING A DEAL. WHAT HAPPENED?

I think the President’s policy has been consistent throughout. And it has been, first of all, we have to be starkly realistic with ourselves and with everybody else about the nature of the Soviet system, the differences between their system and ours, and the military capacity that they have. Second, we have to be strong. If we’re not strong, we’re not going to get anywhere. So then, with respect to any particular area, we have to have some objectives and we have to be persistent in seeking them against a background of strength, and in that setting be wiling to negotiate. That’s always been the policy. Now in the case of the INF treaty, the basic positions were laid down in 1981. And they had a long history marked by a Soviet walkout in 1983 when we and our allies decided we would deploy the missiles on schedule. They objected to that. That was a strength. And only after they really saw that they couldn’t talk us out of it, con us out of it, rough us out of it, produce peace movements and freeze movements and so forth to put on political pressure, all that failed, that they then came around to negotiate. So it’s been a consistent policy. It’s just that it’s been bearing more fruit lately, and I have no doubt that the change in leadership in the Soviet Union, a new perspective somehow on the part of Mr. Gorbachev of course is part of that picture.

WOULD YOU ELABORATE A LITTLE ON THAT? BECAUSE IF WE HAVEN’T CHANGED, THEN THAT MEANS THEY’VE CHANGED. I DON’T KNOW IF YOU COULD CHARACTERIZE HOW OR SPECULATE WHY?

Of course the situation has changed. That is, in 1981, we had an objective, namely get their missiles out, but we had no missiles put in of our own. We had a schedule. It said we were going to do it. And a lot of people doubted that we, the alliance, would have the willpower to do it, particularly with the assaults in our own political system on doing that. And the Soviets were obviously, in the first two years of the negotiation, mainly had as the objective preventing our deployments. Then it turned out that all of our democratic allies stood up to this decision, stood up magnificently. The cohesion of the alliance was apparent. And so, the situation was now different for them to contemplate. And so, they had more incentive to be willing to talk about taking their missiles out, since we had some in that they wanted to get out. So, there’s that. And just what impact Mr. Gorbachev has on their system, we can speculate about it. We don’t know. But it does seem that he sees that their economy and their society is going very poorly and he has proposed a rather massive restructuring of it, which he may or may not be able to pull off, but its clear that he’s trying.

I KNOW THE START TALKS AREN’T OVER YET, BUT HAS THERE BEEN SIMILAR MOVEMENT IN THE AREA OF START, STRATEGIC WEAPONS?

There’s been a tremendous amount of movement in the strategic arms talks, and actually it was the Reykjavik summit meeting that the most fundamental aspects of the INF agreement were worked out, and that the basic numbers in a strategic arms treaty were set out there on the table. And then we’ve made a lot of headway since then. But we still have some very important and difficult issues, and we’re struggling with them.

FINALLY, FROM MY STANDPOINT, COULD YOU GIVE ME A SENSE: HOW HAS AMERICA’S COMMITMENT TO SDI AFFECTED THE NEGOTIATING PROCESS?

Well, just from the standpoint of the negotiating process, it undoubtedly has got the Soviets’ attention, and they have played it way up for a while as a key thing. They seem to be playing it down somewhat now. But it’s an American initiative that has come to play a part. In a sense, SDI has already been deployed in that it is very much on their minds. And we have made some headway in working out a kind of predictability over the next few years that probably both sides would like to see.

MR. SECRETARY, I’M DOING A PROGRAM WHICH IS DEALING WITH INF ISSUES BETWEEN 1977 AND 1987, BETWEEN THE SCHMIDT SPEECH OF 1977, APPROXIMATELY, IN 1979 THROUGH TO THE WASHINGTON SUMMIT IN 1987. I’D LIKE TO BEGIN, IF I MAY, BY PICKING UP SOMETHING WHICH YOU SAID TO CHRIS, WHICH WAS THAT YOU SAID THAT THE REAL BREAKTHROUGHS ON INF WERE MADE AT REYKIAVIK. WERE YOU SURPRISED WHEN THE SOVIETS REVIVED THE 1981 ZERO OPTION AT REYKIAVIK?

Well, we had been pressing for that, and at Reykjavik, where they came to was first of all agreeing on our principle of globality. You couldn’t separate Asia and Europe. Then agreeing that third country systems would not be part of it, so that we got the French and British question out of the picture. Then we came down to a number that is low by comparison with the amount of deployments, 100. So, those were principal things that we made headway on, and on the subject of verification, basic matters of principle like onsite inspection and so forth were basically agreed to in a general way there. And of course that needed a lot of follow-up. Subsequently, we of course had to work on the short-range INF systems, and finally to get the 100 reduced to zero.

I’D LIKE NOW TO ASK YOU ABOUT THAT. YOU WENT TO MOSCOW IN APRIL 1987 AND YOU TALKED TO MR. GORBACHEV AND MR. SHEVARDNADZE AND OUT OF THAT CAME THE SO-CALLED DOUBLE ZERO ON SHORTER RANGE MISSILES. CAN YOU BRIEFLY DESRIBE HOW, IN THAT MEETING THE SECOND ZERO CAME TO BE ADDED?

Well, it sort of evolved. But in the discussion I had with Mr. Gorbachev, we had two principles that we argued about. One was that any restriction on short-range INF missiles had to be global in nature, in part because from our standpoint we were as interested in what went on in Asia as we were Europe, because we had friends and allies there. And second because these particular weapon systems are very mobile. You can put them in an airplane or you can put them on trucks and you can move them around. So that means that it only makes sense to talk about something on a global basis. We argued that back and forth. And he, in the end, agreed on that. At first they proposed that they keep so many in Asia. Then we insisted on the principle of equality, that we couldn’t wind up with a result in which they had some of these missiles and we had none. We had to have a parallel. Now, of course, we had none deployed at all. We had some in storage, but we didn’t have any deployed, and they had quite a lot deployed. And so, subsequently, since we argued for equality, and that would have meant, if there was some finite number, us deploying missiles, they said, “Well, that doesn’t make sense. Why don’t we just agree on zero,” and then there will be a small period of time in which they have some deployed and we don’t, but if it’s a small enough period, a year or 18 months, that perhaps isn’t so significant. So that was a way they proposed for dealing with that. And then we had, of course, a long period of discussion with our allies about what we wanted to do, and we decided that that outcome that we had worked out made sense.

MR. SHULTZ, I THINK IT’S FAIR TO SAY THAT CERTAIN PEOPLE IN GERMANY HAVE HAD THEIR DOUBTS ABOUT THIS, AND ALSO LATER ABOUT GETTING THEM TO THE PERSHING 1-A. DID YOU HAVE TO TWIST THEIR ARMS, THE GERMANS?

No, we didn’t twist anybody’s arm. We, in fact, assured the Germans that if they wished to have some number of short-range systems deployed, we would support that, and we would support them on the Pershing 1-A, and we did, wholeheartedly. They thought carefully and agonized about it a lot, and, in the end, came to the decisions that are represented in the treaty.

YOU MUST, MR. SHULTZ, HAVE HAD AN...

I think it’s very important when you’re working with your allies not to be twisting their arms, but to be working with them and letting the situation be apparent to everybody, and of course discussing it in a collaborative way. But you certainly don’t want to try to push people around on something like this. It would be unwise.

LET ME MOVE ON NOW TO THE WASHINGTON SUMMIT. THERE HAVE BEEN A VERY LONG PERIOD OF NEGOTIATION ON VERIFICATION AND SOME SIGNFICANT CONCESSIONS, PARTICULARLY FROM THE SOVIETS. YOU MUST HAVE HAD AN EXTRAORDINARY SENSE OF TRIUMPH WATCHING PRESIDENT REAGAN AND SECRETARY GORBACHEV SIGNING THAT TREATY IN WASHINGTON, PARTICULARLY, AS YOU SAID, BECAUSE IT WAS THE CULMINATION OF A LONG PROCESS. CAN YOU DESCRIBE YOUR FEELINGS THAT DAY?

Well, it was actually, of course the ceremony was a major event, and those are always fun, but there’s more a sense of, there’s a day’s work to be done, because as soon as that ceremony was over we went right back into our hard negotiating meetings. And it was as though you took a deep breath from one negotiating session to the next, and the deep breath was the signing ceremony. So I didn’t really have that much time to reflect on it. I suppose I had more of a feeling of closure when we worked out the last details, which happened in Geneva, and then it was all just sort of following up from there.

LET ME ASK A FINAL QUESITON, MR. SHULTZ. THE INF TREATY HAS BEEN PUBLICLY WELCOMED IN EUROPE, BUT THERE HAVE BEEN SOME WORRIES ABOUT ITS IMPACT ON NATO STRATEGY, BECAUSE THESE TWO AREAS OF MISSILES ARE BEING REMOVED. CAN YOU PERHAPS GIVE US YOUR OPINION OF HOW THIS TREATY, THE EFFECT THE TREATY WILL HAVE ON NATO AND PERHAPS REASSURE SOME OF THE WORRIES WHICH HAVE BEEN EXPRSSED IN EUROPE?

The treaty has been welcomed in Europe wholeheartedly. All of our NATO allies support it. They support it without any ambiguity in their statements. And I think that if we were not to ratify that treaty, there would be an uproar in NATO. This is as much NATO’s treat as it is ours. The objectives that we have attained are the objectives we worked out collaboratively together. So, basically, this has been an experience that’s added to the cohesion and the strength and the sense of capability in NATO. Now, the missiles that we’re taking out have only been there for three or four years at most by the time they get taken out. So it isn’t as though we’re taking out something that’s been there forever, and we have to rearrange ourselves. It’s more that what’s happened, as compared with, say, 1980, ’82, and so forth, is that a lot of Soviet missiles that were there without any counter deployment on our part are coming out. So we’re better off. However, there remain important problems for NATO to face up to, and we’re working at that, and I think that basically this whole process has been one of strengthening the NATO alliance.

FINAL QUESTION, ABSOLUTELY FINAL QUESTION: WHAT DO YOU SEE AS THE GREAT LESSON OF THIS EXPERIENCE, LOOKING BACK OVER THE PERIOD YOU’VE BEEN INVOLVED, AND PERHAPS BACK TO WHEN MISSILES WERE FIRST DEPLOYED? WHAT DO YOU SEE AS THE GREAT LESSON OF THIS EXPERIENCE?

Well, the lesson is that you have to have a program of your own, you have to be willing to go ahead with it, and have the strength and cohesion and follow-through to do that. In this case, it meant being willing to deploy those missiles in 1983 and ‘4 and ‘5 and so forth. And then I think having goals that are sensible, that you work out, and being patient and persistent about it. Those are the things that – And having the willingness to take yes for an answer when it comes. And so, finally the Soviets said yes and we said fine.