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Series: War and Peace in the Nuclear Age
Program: Missile Experimental
Episode: 111
Date: 1987-12-15
Duration: 00:03:55
Subject: Nuclear weapons; Atomic weapons; Soviet Union; Nuclear strategy; Arms control; Arms negotiations; Strategic Defense Initiative; Military spending; Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, 1991
People: Aspin, Les ; Reagan, Ronald
Copyright Holder: WGBH
Clip Description
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Les Aspin was elected to Congress in 1971, serving continuously until 1993. He then served as President Bill Clinton's secretary of defense from 1993 to 1994. In this video segment, Aspin reflects on the validity of the "window of vulnerability" claimed by Ronald Reagan's administration, comments on the formation of the Scowcroft Commission to resolve the protracted debate about the MX missile, and weighs in on the advantage of having the MX as a bargaining chip with the Soviet Union.
In the interview he conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: "Missile Experimental," Aspin tracks the decade-long debate over the function, funding, basing, and quantity of the new, super-accurate missile. The absence of progress on arms control, coupled with some 34 basing modes proposed to house the MX missile, created public and congressional discontent and distrust. While Aspin supported producing 100 MX missiles, he was prepared to cap the number at 50 to halt the endless congressional floor fights. He explains the difficulty of reaching and sustaining a complex compromise given the turnover of elected and appointed personnel. Overall, he says, "to solve the vulnerability problem, you need a combination of cuts and deployments." For this reason, he supported the MX missile-which might be traded away for reductions in Soviet heavy missiles-and the design of the smaller, mobile Midgetman. Creating such survivable systems, he explains, is expensive. He expressed little patience with the proposal to close the Reagan administration's "window" by pursuing the exponentially more costly Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) instead of the Midgetman. The "SDI Mafia," Aspin concludes, "is just twisting the whole argument in order to justify building SDI to defend missiles. Make them mobile-it's a lot cheaper."
Program Description
The story of the Missile Experimental-the MX missile-was the story of a collision among politicians, engineers, the military, and the American public that began in 1975. The MX was to be a large, super-accurate weapon, weighing 200,000 pounds and standing seventy feet tall. Its story also raised a central question of the nuclear age: What are nuclear weapons for? And what was more important for effective deterrence: to threaten Soviet missiles, which could lead to a hair trigger on both sides, or to be able to strike back? Once it was decided that the MX must be survivable, how it should be based became the critical issue for Congress. Each scheme for deploying the missile seemed to create more problems than it solved. A bipartisan commission appointed by the Reagan administration recommended a three-pronged settlement: the silo-based MX; a new, truly mobile missile called the Midgetman; and arms-control talks.Thirty-two basing schemes later, and nearly a decade after the MX was conceived, its production was finally approved.
Written and produced by Graham Chedd. Produced by Carol Lynn Dornbrand. First broadcast April 3, 1989.
Series Description
War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, first broadcast in 1989, is a thirteen-part PBS series on the origins and evolution of nuclear competition between the United States and the former Soviet Union. The series examined the rivalry for power and how it shaped the diplomacy, negotiation, ethical debates, and doctrine of deterrence that ran through the forty-year history of the nuclear age. The programs' purpose was to reconstruct the dynamics that shaped the thinking of the time and the decisions made by the prevailing world leaders. The series relied heavily on contemporary interviews with key American, Soviet, Asian, and European participants who discussed the dilemmas confronted by world leaders, military strategists, scientists, and the public at large at the time. War and Peace in the Nuclear Age was produced for PBS by WGBH Boston and Central Television Independent Television, in association with NHK. Major funding was provided by the Annenberg/CPB Project. Senior producer-Elizabeth Deane. Executive producer-Zvi Dor-Ner.
Compromising for Security
The Scowcroft Compromise
Strategic Defense Initiative versus Midgetman Missiles
Arms Control and the MX
Interviewer
I just want to take you back for a minute to the fall of 1982 and ask you just to reflect on why you think the MX had become such a hot issue in Congress at that point.
Aspin
Well I think it got into trouble because it had, they kept moving the basing mode on the thing.
Interviewer
I'm sorry can you start, can you say the MX?
Aspin
Well I think the MX got into trouble because they kept moving the basing mode. They had, before they had finished, some 34 different basing modes for the missile. And I just think people began to question whether anybody knew what they were doing with the MX, and there is a, at the same time that was going on, was, there was a pretty strong movement generally that we weren't doing enough as a country in arms control. And the freeze movement was picking up steam. So a combination that we ought to be doing more on arms control and here is a weapons system that nobody seems to know exactly what to do with it, led, I think, to a situation in which there was a pretty good assault on funding for the MX in the Congress.
Interviewer
Now what about the Reagan administration, was there a sense of fear about the way that they, their rhetoric at the time. Did this have something to do with it?
Aspin
Yeah, I think that the Reagan administration rhetoric did play into it. But mainly it was a problem that they had not, were not making any progress on arms control. I mean people know whether the arms controllers are meeting, whether there's any discussion on arms control, and it was clear that there was nothing going on.
Interviewer
You can just pick up the last phrase, you can say that there was no progress.
Aspin
I can't remember what I said.
Interviewer
You were just talking about that there was just a sense that there was no program...
Aspin
There was just a sense that there was no movement in arms control, that the negotiators were not meeting, that nothing was going on.
Interviewer
When did you and why did you begin to feel that the MX had to be deployed and the issue put behind?
Compromising for Security
Aspin
I believe that the Reagan Administration was right when they cam into office saying that there was a window of vulnerability, they overstated the case, but that the land-based missiles were vulnerable because they were in fixed positions. When the Soviet accuracy meant that those missiles were becoming vulnerable. And you've got vulnerable missiles at a time of a crisis, that is a very unstable, dangerous situation. Because then it's in somebody's interest to use those missiles first. So the whole situation was dangerous. It was not as bad as the Reagan administration painted it. It was in fact a window of vulnerability about land-based missiles. It was not a window of vulnerability of the whole force. We still had submarines, we still had bombers. But even a window of vulnerability of the land-based missiles would have been dangerous in a crisis. It seemed to me that that was important to do something about that problem.
Interviewer
Can you say a little bit about your role in the genesis of the Scowcroft commission and the work that you did with James Woolsey. I understand you met on Sunday afternoons and hammered out compromises.
Aspin
What all of us were interested in resolution, in a resolution to this problem, did was we recognized that there had to be some kind of a political compromise. And there was a lot of meetings that went on. The president in effect was forced to appoint the Scowcroft commission because his dense-pack proposal had just been voted down by Congress. So he instituted the Scowcroft commission, but somebody did the right thing which put into the charter of the commission that the solution that they came up with had to have some political stability to it. It had to be something that was politically acceptable, not just technically. It didn't have, it couldn't just solve the technical problem. You had to have some kind of a political solution to it. And so what you ended up with was a much more political oriented group of people out talking to congressmen, talking to people to find out what they might do in the way of a political settlement. And there was a lot of informal meetings and I got very heavily involved in all of those.
Interviewer
What did you do? How did you help to come up with a compromise?
Aspin
Basically what we did was get together and talk about what was politically feasible. And, and I was involved because I knew how Congress works and how it would, what it would work for, and what it wouldn't work for, and could, could give some advice along those lines. And the eventual solution that Scowcroft commission came up with was as much a political product as it was a technical product.
Interviewer
What was feasible at that time in Congress?
Aspin
Well I think the thing...feasible, and it is still, it's the feasible solution to the problem. Which is that you build a certain number of MX missiles, because you needed a bargaining chip with the Soviets. You needed to have a missile as powerful, as accurate, as lethal as their SS-18s. And the only thing we have that's close enough to that is the MX. So you had to have a certain number of those, but because we couldn't make that mobile, we had to stick it in the ground. But the SS-18s are in the ground in fixed silos in the ground too. So that puts us on a par there. But the second part of the Scowcroft commission was to go ahead and build the small missile, what came to be known as the Midgetman. And that's a single-warhead missile, a smaller missile, easier to make mobile. And you make that the mobile missile and move that around. And that, the advantage of that one, is that it is survivable. That's the one that gives you the survivability that you need. Because it's, the Soviets cannot attack that missile because it can be moved and at anyone point they don't know exactly where it is.
The Scowcroft Compromise
Interviewer
Having been worried about the window of vulnerability were you, did it make you a little nervous to have the MXs stuck, back in the silos.
Aspin
Yes. I mean I think that it would have been nicer to have, not to have MX in silos, but we'd been through 34 basing modes with MX. And the questions is, do you want to put MXs in silos or do away with MXs all together? I thought you ought to put MXs in silos and try and trade them. I mean my, my solution was that what you had to do was go ahead with, as Scowcroft recommended, put the MXs in the silos, and offer to see if you can't use that as a bargaining with the Soviets to get the Soviets to reduce their most accurate and destabilizing weapons, the SS-18. And, and I still think that that kind of a trade was or is possible in some kind of a context.
Interviewer
Do you feel that, this was extraordinarily... After you came up with the terms of the deal, the compromise, there was an extraordinarily bitter debate in Congress. Why do you think it was just so...
Aspin
Well because the debate again focused on the MX, they did not focus on the overall compromise, but rather focused on the issue of the MX. And so that was, there were people who ginned up and were against the MX and still against the MX. And ultimately in Congress we compromised that out by, by agreeing on fifty MXs. There was those of us who wanted a hundred, there were those who wanted zero. We ended up after a couple of years of fighting the issue on the floor in close votes, we ended up deciding we'd quit all this fighting. Let's decide on fifty and we'll build fifty.
Interviewer
So that's why you supported the fifty. I was wondering why you supported the fifty cap when you had, I mean it seemed like each side of the deal had to live up to what they had agreed.
Aspin
Right. Fifty cap. We agreed.
Interviewer
And did you feel, why did you support that if you were giving your word to the other people that you were negotiating with to go for one hundred?
Aspin
Well I told, I was with the Scowcroft commission and I was in favor of a hundred, but if Congress would agree to fifty and we would stop the fight and the people who were against the missile would agree to fifty, then those of us who wanted a hundred agreed that we would go to fifty too.
Interviewer
Do you support the deployment of the next fifty in the rail garrison mode?
Aspin
Well I think the rail garrison issue is, is going to raise a problem of how many we are going to have. If they want, if the administration wants to take the original fifty and put them on rail garrison, I think that's do-able. If that's what they want to do. They come to us now and say, look, we now have a rail mobile system which we didn't have before. We now want to take that original fifty under the Scowcroft compromise that was going to be in the ground and put it on, on, on rail, I think most of us would say that's fine. If they come back and they say they want to take fifty and they want to put those in the ground, and want an extra fifty. I think they got troubles. They got real problems in Congress with that.
Interviewer
We talked with Cap Weinberger and he said that at the time of the deal he didn't think Midgetman was such a great idea. And he sort of thought maybe it would fall away because it would be too expensive. Did you feel like the administration had really committed itself to its side of the bargain, both the arms control and supporting Midgetman. Did they do that wholeheartedly?
Aspin
No. I think that... No. The problem always in these things is that you have an arrangement made between people. And then what happens on the administration side is that they change the personnel. Because during an 8-year period or whatever, secretaries of the Air Force come and go, people who are in the ... the director of research and development in the Pentagon, they come and go. assistant secretaries come and go, secretaries of defense come and go. So the problem is always holding any kind of a deal between Congress which is somewhat of a changing kaleidoscope, but the executive branch, which is a really changing kaleidoscope of people. So, each time anybody new came in they wanted to review the bidding on the issue. And so it was changed slightly. But I must say that I think the Air Force did go ahead and develop the Midgetman as honestly and as well as could be expected. And I think that the Midgetman has picked up some supporters in the Air Force and I think the program so far has done very, very well. The arms control I think they negotiated more sporadically than we had in mind when we wrote up the Scowcroft commission report. But on the other hand of course they could argue that Congress didn't give them a hundred MX, it only gave them fifty MX. So. I mean, in all of these things you kind of work towards the general overall goal and see if you can't get a solution to the problem. You got to keep in mind, what is the problem. The problem is the vulnerability of land-based missile force. If at the end of this process we have a START agreement with six thousand warheads on a side, and a mobile missile, preferably the Midgetman, a mobile missile, you will have solved the window of vulnerability problem. Even though that solution will not take place until years after Ronald Reagan first raised it, in spite of the fact that the Reagan administration has not pursued ending that thing with anywhere near the kind of consistency that you would have hoped, and in spite of the fact that we have had changing people, on personnel, on Congress, and on the other side. I mean, there is a solution to that problem in sight. And ultimately keep your mind on, that's what you're trying to do is solve that problem. The specifics of how you get there are adjustable.
Interviewer
Midgetman faces a lot of critics now, the Air Force thinks it's its second priority. Senators like Pete Wilson say it's way too expensive, it's a silly idea. You have democrats saying what kind of deal this is...We give you one missile and we're supposed to get another missile in return. What are the hopes for Midgetman.
Aspin
I think that, you don't, you probably...You really want me to answer that, because January 1989 it's going to be all out of date.
Interviewer
Well do you think that the Air Force...
Aspin
You can't look ahead, you can oly look back. You're doing this in January of '89 and anything I, I would be reluctant to say anything that's likely to show up in January of '89. It's going to look like I'm an idiot.
Interviewer
So you're not willing to predict what Congress will...
Aspin
I'll tell you what's going to happen in the next 3 months not over the next twelve.
Interviewer
What will happen in the next 3 months?
Aspin
Answering that question in December of 1987, I think that Congress will fund Midgetman in the 1988 budget. Beyond that I can't predict.
Interviewer
Do you think that is it too expensive a program for America?
Aspin
No. I mean, it's, it is an expensive program per warhead, but it is survivable warheads. Survivable warheads are expensive warheads. If you want warheads to survive, you put them on survivable systems. The MX warheads are cheap because there are a lot of them and on a fixed silo it's vulnerable. But they are very cheap. If you want to make warheads survivable, you put them on Trident submarines and put them out to sea. The Midgetman warheads are cheaper than warheads on Trident submarines. But the point always is, is that if you want a survivable system it's going to be expensive. Which means, but you need some survivable systems. I mean, if you're going to protect the, against the threat of nuclear war, you need some systems that are survivable.
Interviewer
Are you happy, are you pleased with the result of the Scowcroft commission compromise? Did you achieve your goals?
Aspin
I think it's worked out in part, I mean, it depends on how it plays out from here. You can't answer that thing until we come really to the final chapter and we're not at the final chapter yet.
Interviewer
You faced a lot of criticism for your [words] at the time. It was a very bitter debate. People said we're giving them a hundred or fifty missiles and all we're getting is some empty promises of arms control and a promise to look into this other system. What were you feeling?
Aspin
I thought we were doing, it was a very good deal that we did agree to build some MXs, that they would build the Midgetman. And that we would move towards an arms control agreement. And as I say, we don't know here in December of 1987 how it's going to play out. But it's not, it would not surprise me to see that we get a very good arms control agreement. That we will get some MXs and we get a Midgetman.
Interviewer
So the arms control you were hoping we would move toward was not this INF agreement?
Aspin
No. No. The arms control agreement that would be relevant to this has nothing to do with INF. This is nothing to do with INF. It has to do with strategic systems so the arms control agreement that you're talking about would be a START agreement.
Interviewer
Can you just start saying the arms control agreement that is relevant to this is...
Aspin
The arms control agreement that is relevant to this is the START agreement. The INF agreement is, is not relevant to this discussion.
Interviewer
Sorry, I'm going to ask you to do it one more time. Instead of calling it the START agreement call it the...
Aspin
The, the arms control agreement that is relevant to this discussion and is important here is the, the strategic arms agreement, the intercontinental missiles. Not this INF agreement. The INF agreement is an agreement that, that applies to the European systems and that's not what we were talking about when we talked about the Scowcroft Commission.
Interviewer
So what you would like to see is deep cuts to solve the vulnerability problem?
Aspin
To solve the vulnerability problem you need a combination of cuts and deployments. To solve anything, vulnerability problem, you need some kind of arms control, plus deployment. You got to build some systems and limit other systems. The START agreement, the strategic agreement that the administration was pursuing is a reduction in warheads which is one part of the thing. The other part of it is, you got to build a mobile system. If you don't have a mobile system, the reduction in numbers isn't going to do it all by itself.
Interviewer
Do you feel that the Reagan administration was sincere at the time in its end of the deal? That they were really sincerely goign to push, despite that...
Aspin
I don't know, I think that, that you always say that how it comes out, it comes out. You can't, I mean, you can't judge peoples' sincerity by what they say. You can only judge it by what happens. And certain people in the administration were not in favor of carrying out the Scowcroft recommendations. But others were. And in the end I say that the proof is in what happens. If we get a, an agreement that limits warheads, we build a mobile system. We will have solved the problem. And roughly along the lines of Scowcroft recommendations.
Interviewer
Is it somewhat unfortunate that in setting up the two missile systems that in some sense they have been competing for the same funds in this era of budget deficits and so forth.
Aspin
Sure, but that, that's not unusual. And indeed it's probably healthy to compete them a certain part and then pick one or the other. I don't think you want to pick one or the other before you get the arms control agreement because that may influence which one of the two systems you pick. You may not want to pick them until you see how they, how they're coming, because if one of them suddenly runs into technical problems, that may influence which one you pick. But there's nothing wrong with, in this system, of in fact we ought to do it more often. Is funding competing systems and then picking one after both of them have moved along a little. We would have saved a lot of money in this whole defense budget if we did that a little more often.
Strategic Defense Initiative versus Midgetman Missiles
Interviewer
Casper Weinberger, Pete Wilson and others have suggested that maybe the strategic defense initiative would be better to pursue than Midgetman. If we have limited funds to solve this.
Aspin
I mean that, that is about the craziest idea I've ever heard. The problem, if the problem is funds, and the problem is the survivability of land-based missile forces. It is many, many times cheaper to make the missile forces mobile than it is to build a defense for them. If you're restricted by funds, SDI is not something you want to be thinking about. I mean the funds for SDI are so many, many, many times more expensive than the funds for Midgetman. And, and so if you're saying that the problem is the vulnerability of land-based missiles, we can do either one of two things: We either can make those land-based missiles mobile, so that you can't hit them, or we will defend them so that you can't hit them, by a factor of several. It's cheaper to make them mobile.
Interviewer
Do you want to just say that again, by a factor...
Aspin
I think that really is about the craziest notion I have ever heard. To say that... You got two problems. You got a problem that the land-based missiles are vulnerable. And then you say we've got a funding problem on top of that. So how do you, what do you do about the vulnerability of land-based missiles with a funding problem? Well you can do two things. One, you can make them mobile so that they can't be hit because the Soviets can't find them. Or number two you build an SDI and you defend them. If you got a funding problem, you make them mobile. SDI is many, many, many times more expensive than a mobile Midgetman system. It's just a, it's a crazy idea that, that has crept into the debate. But it is true. I mean, I think that part of our problem here is that people do not want to have anything that competes with an SDI program. There is a big constituency out there for SDI. And if they see that mobile is a cheaper way to solve the land-based missile vulnerability problem, then that's one less argument for an SDI. They still have other arguments for SDI but it's one less thing that you can argue. And so it's one of the reasons why, why Midgetman is, is I think in some trouble politically, because a lot of people are coming at it for a lot of different reasons. But the...the...the SDI mafia that wants, that wants SDI at all costs, is just twisting the whole argument in order to justify building SDI to defend missiles. Make them mobile, it's a lot cheaper.
Interviewer
What is the strongest argument for deploying the MX?
Aspin
Basically the argument for trying to build the MX was ...
Interviewer
Do you want to start over?
Aspin
The argument for building the MX was to deploy it as a bargaining chip with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had the SS-18, highly accurate, ten warhead missile. We had been trying for many years, in SALT I, in Vladivostok, in SALT II, to get the Soviets to agree to reduce the number of their SS-18 missiles. No success. I think it's kind of an axiom that unless you have something that the Soviets want, you're not going to get a deal on, with the Soviets. And I think that that's borne out in a couple of cases, most recently with the INF agreement. The INF agreement, we had to deploy the Pershings and the ground-launched cruise missiles before we got the Soviets serious about removing the SS-20s. And then eventually you got the SS-20s out, zero-zero. But there was no way we would have been discussing that if the people and the demonstrators on the left had succeeded in those years in stopping the deployment of the Pershings and the ground-launched cruise missiles. So I think when you're dealing with these Soviets on these systems, you've got to have some things that, that get their attention, that they are willing to bargain about. And I think the MX is clearly one of those systems that can be used in that way.
Interviewer
Was the Reagan administration willing to bargain away our MX missiles?
Aspin
Well I think they are willing to use it as part of a, a bargaining chip to get...
Interviewer
Can you start with the Reagan administration...
Aspin
The Reagan ddministration did... Well see part of our problem is by this time, when this thing airs, we will know whether there was a START agreement or not. I can't answer that question.
Interviewer
At that time when you made the deal they were making statements, they were making some contradictory statements. Did you have the sense that they would be willing to bargain them away?
Aspin
You never know from the public statements. If you're going to bargain something away, you don't announce it. I mean, if I wanted to bargain, even if I believed that SDI was a bargaining chip, I wouldn't go out and announce that publicly. The Russians would say, "Oh good, then we don't have to pay so much for it." Of course, when you are going into negotiations, you don't say what is a bargaining chip. The proof is, was, a deal ultimately made.
Interviewer
Are you satisfied with the work the Air Force is doing in support of the Midgetman? Do you think that the HML, the hard mobile launcher is necessary? Or is it sort of, a too expensive burden around the concepts neck?
Aspin
No no. I think that the Soviet, the ... the Air Force has done what they said they were going to do.
Interviewer
Sorry, can you start over?
Aspin
I think the Air Force has done what they wanted, what they were supposed to do in developing the Midgetman.
