SALT I negotiations process
The Back Channel
SALT I
Soviet Military and Political Strategies
Vulnerable Weapon Systems

SALT I negotiations process

Interviewer

Okay, 1969 Mel Laird appointed you to be a representative on the SALT delegations. The question is what was Laird's view of the arms control, of the proposal of arms control negotiations and how did it differ from the point of view of the arms control disarmament agency in the state department?

Nitze

I wasn't really appointed by Mel Laird. It's a more complicated story than that. I was asked, called up by Bill Rogers who was Secretary of the State. And I came in to see him and he asked me whether I would be uh, prepared to accept a position as Mel Laird's uh, representative on the arms control delegation to be headed by Gerard Smith. And I consulted with my wife and finally came to the conclusion, yes, I would be prepared to do that if they really wanted me. And so I saw Bill Rogers again and he asked me to go and see the president and Henry Kissinger. And he made an appointment for me to go over and see them so I went to see Kissinger and Mr. Nixon. And uh, Mr. Nixon had a very dim view of Gerard Smith and of uh, Bill Rogers. And said what he really wanted me to do was to be his eyes and ears on the delegation, to report directly to him. And I said, That's impossible. You know, a delegation doesn't work that way. If you're on a delegation, you can't have any different point of view than that of your boss. You've got to work with your boss and everything's got to be done as a team and what's more, Gerard Smith has to report to Bill Rogers and to nobody else. And he gets his orders from Bill Rogers and so it isn't going to work that way and I won't do it. And uh, we argued about this and finally it was agreed that in any case, they wanted me to do this. And then I asked whether or not really Mel Laird wanted me. And uh, I was assured that he did and I went to see Mel Laird and he said, yes, he did want me. Even though Mel Laird and I had been on opposite sides when I was a Democrat and testifying before his appropriations committee. But we got along well. So that it wasn't really a, a question of differences of point of view at that stage of the game. It was a question of trying to help develop the position which would be intelligent for the United States with respect to a negotiating position with the Soviet Union.

Interviewer

Why did President Nixon and Henry Kissinger have more trust in your perception and participation in the SALT talks than the rest of the delegation?

Nitze

I don't know. I'd known Mr. Nixon for a long period of time, since the time that he was a congressman. And uh, he'd -- I think he had some degree of confidence in me. I'd had differences of opinion with Henry Kissinger for many years but I think he was sure that I'd worked on the problem and worked seriously on it.

Interviewer

What was the special concern that you represented on the SALT delegation that represented the concern of the defense department and what its aims were in the SALT I -

Nitze

You see, I don't think that was the issue. It really wasn't a special concern on the part of the defense department. Although it is true that the secretary of defense is responsible for a different, different focus on world problems than is the secretary of state. The secretary of defense does have to look at the military and defense aspects of those problems that are both political and military, while the secretary of state has to put primary attention on the military. But they both look at the same problems and it isn't that diverse a point of view.

Interviewer

Well what was seen as the need in the defense department -- what was your motivation? What did you want to get out of the SALT talks? And were we in a strong position to achieve those goals?

Nitze

Well I can remember very well the discussions within the delegation. And it's ad... advisors prior to the time that we went to Helsinki, trying to figure out exactly what it was w-we sh-should try to accomplish. And what our initial statements to the Soviets should be. In fact I think I was the primary drafter of uh, first three or four statements to the Soviets when we got to Helsinki. But there wasn't really that much difference between the various participants at that stage of the game. Just to outline what the main points we had in mind were: The first point was that under any circumstances, arms control agreement or no arms control agreement, we proposed to maintain a thoroughly adequate deterrent to anybody who might wish to think of ta... attacking either the United States or its allies. And we were sure that the Soviets had a similar point of view about themselves and about their allies. The second point was that we thought it was possible to work out some of a, a regime of limitation upon strategic arms, which would make this basically uh, different this uh, not confrontational but opposed relationship. Make it much more workable and satisfactory for both sides if we tried to work at it. And the third point was that the depth of an agreement would depend upon the degree to which we were to give, were willing to give information to each other, not only about our forces, but about our intentions for the future. That if, -- we for instance certainly did not wish the Soviets to have any misconception as to what we had or what we, what the purpose of the weapons was that we had. And we hoped that that was reciprocated by the Soviets. They took quite a different view of it. Their view was that if anybody attacks the USSR or any of our allies, they will be utterly destroyed. Uh, they chose to look at from the standpoint of exchange of threats or threats from their side. Uh, they didn't understand what I was saying or what we were saying was in fact, in this essence the same as what our first point had been, that we didn't propose to let our own defenses deteriorate to a point where we didn't have a fully adequate deterrent.

Interviewer

Okay. When you were in Helsinki and Vienna and at the same time the U.S. Congress was debating whether or not they would be funding the president's ABM proposal, did that create some concern for you that you would lose some sort of power or leverage in the bargaining sessions?

Nitze

That had all preceded the first negotiations at Helsinki. In the Spring of '69 there had been an important debate in the Senate on the question of the authorization bill with respect to the ABM program. And during that period, I had ere-created together with Dean Acheson and Albert Wolstetter a little committee called the Committee for a Prudent Defense Policy. And we rather spearheaded the effort to support the idea of uh, the ratification of the government's proposal, the executive branch's proposal, that it be authorized to go forward with an ABM, a limited ABM system of our own. And one of the reasons that I advanced at that time for supporting this proposal was that I thought Mr. Nixon was quite right in saying that he wished to negotiate with the Soviets in the limitation of strategic arms including defenses, ABM defenses. And I did not see any way in which one could usefully negotiate with the Soviet Union unless the United States was prepared to have an ABM system of its own. If we were, if the S-senate determined that this was not to be, then there wasn't anything for the Soviets to negotiate about. They would have then -- be assured of a monopoly of defenses. So the only way we could have a negotiation was if the Senate were to authorize this program to go forward. And we won by only one vote. It was a very close thing.

Interviewer

There was a flap over the back-channel agreement that produced the compromise of May, 1971 and later on that resulted in the SLBMs -- the flap was over SLBMs being left out of that agreement with the Soviets. That was made with Dobrynin. And later on Henry Kissinger, close to the '72 summit was put in the position of sort of explaining to the Soviets that the 950 sub-launchers was not going to alter their plans. And also explaining to the NSC and people here that it was a significant achievement, that it was going to be slowing them from building further. What did you make of that?

Nitze

That doesn't correspond to my recollection at all. My recollection is that the -- I think Mr. Dobrynin proposed to Henry Kissinger that uh, we solve the, the uh, or that they solve the stalemate that had arisen in the negotiations in Vienna at that stage by concentrating upon the ABM Treaty and dropping any thought of a c... of a parallel agreement limiting offensive forces. And that uh, Henry wouldn't agree with that. And it insisted that their, that they, he was prepared to have the focus be upon the ABM part of it, but that there must concurrently be some kind of an agreement with respect to the offensive forces. And then Dobrynin asked, uh, Dobrynin asked him whether or not this should include both ICBMs and SLBMs and he finally, after consulting with Mr. Nixon, said that well, it was a matter of not that much importance to us. And the upshot was that the Soviets from that point on felt there was no necessity to include any restriction upon the SLBMs. The Joint Chiefs of Staff took a quite a different view and they were actually adamant that if there's to be a limitation on ICBMs, there must also be a limitation on SLBMs. So that that became a very difficult negotiating point for us, not only in Vienna and Helsinki, but subsequently when Mr. Nixon and Kissinger went to Moscow in the week before May 12th I guess it was.

Interviewer

Apparently along with the last minute negotiations that occurred on details of the agreement at the summit, we've heard that you wrote a somewhat facetious but somewhat serious piece called the last 20 minutes of the negotiation are the most important and that you're a little perhaps disturbed by some of the important details that were being worked out in the last minute without some of the experts there. Can you describe why you wrote that, what the setting was and how you were feeling?

Nitze

I wrote two pieces. One was an entertaining piece on all the details of what happened during the last week, not the last 20 minutes. And uh, you know, just the mechanical uh, problems that arose. Uh, another piece about the serious part of it, about the negotiating difficulties that we faced at that time. You're asking me, I guess, to comment on the second one --

Interviewer

I understood that you were a little bit annoyed and worried that in the last minute negotiations with the delegation in Helsinki, and Henry Kissinger trying to work out some of the technical last minute compromises on his own, that we would be giving more away to the Soviets under that point of pressure.

Nitze

I was not somewhat worried. I was furious.

Interviewer

can you actually describe that? Say I was furious and describe why and what should have happened?

Nitze

Well... there were uh... the phrase twenty min... the last twenty minutes comes from a remark which was made to me by Ambassador Semenov who was then head of the Soviet delegation. The year before I'd become concerned about the amount of time we were s-spending, that we weren't making the progress that I thought we should make in arriving to a useful conclusion on these issues. And uh, Ambassador Semenov uh, tried to comfort me. And he said, no, Mr. Nitze, you know, it isn't that bad. In a negotiation of, of this kind, you know, normally one makes about 30 percent of the progress in the first two months. And then normally it takes uh, another two, three years to make the next 30 percent of the progress. And the last third of the progress generally is, is made in the last 20 minutes when the important issues just have to be decided." So I'd borne in mind and Semenov was more or less correct because the important -- a-and we worked out all the lesser issues at our level in Geneva, I mean in, in, in uh, Vienna and in Helsinki. But s...

Interviewer

Can you start things over and say -- we worked out all the...

Nitze

We worked out all the lesser issues at Vienna or Helsinki because the delegations moved from -- we spent some time in Vienna and then we'd go to Helsinki for some time. Then we'd go back to Vienna. But we worked out d-during the negotiations at that level, we worked out most of the reasonably easy issues to solve. And the ones that were really very difficult go put off. Got put off. And they were all accumulated for the last period. Now some of those most important ones we did in the last few days work out at our level in Helsinki 'cause the last negotiation between the delegations was at Helsinki. In fact we worked out some of them after Mr. Nixon had arrived at Moscow for the final five days of negotiation uh, there. Uh, but af... but some of them were dealt with directly by Mr. Nixon and Kissinger. Now they sent us a telegram telling us what they'd worked out. And Gerard and I and the rest of us, uh, felt that the agreement that they'd worked out was improper and not good for the United States. And so we sent back a message saying we recommended against signing of the uh, interim agreement on offensive forces. We thought it was unfair, so that we were not happy with that. But then, subsequently there was an all night session, well, not an all night session, but a session from I think eight o'clock to, in the evening to eleven o'clock at night in which Kissinger and a man by the name of Smirnov, whom none of us had -- well, I guess I was the only one who'd ever heard of him before -- uh, appeared to negotiate on the Soviet side. And the upshot of that was that they, Henry and he finally worked out the final details. Now I was, I was not happy with those final details although they were an improvement upon what had earlier been suggested. So that the final agreement in my view, that the ABM Treaty, even though it had difficulties and it was not a perfect agreement by any means. But I felt that was net --

Interviewer

Start that over. I thought the ABM Treaty...

Nitze

I thought the ABM Treaty was not a perfect agreement. One of the principle points in the ABM Treaty was that there be a precise definition of what was testing at an ABM mode, because everything else depended upon that concept. That's the only way in which one could know whether a radar was an ABM radar, was whether it was tested in an ABM mode. And then an ABM interceptor -- it was an ABM interceptor because it was tested in that mode. But we had g... we had presented a unilateral statement as to what we considered to be testing in an ABM mode, but the Soviets wouldn't agree to that.

Interviewer

Can I just interrupt you here? What I want to get back to is a more concise statement about what made you angry about the last --

Nitze

This is exactly what made me angry.

Interviewer

But instead of the details maybe talk more in the terms of the generalities, that important details were being worked out without the expertise of the delegation there.

Nitze

But that isn't what made me angry. It was the substance that made me angry. I have trouble.

Interviewer

If you could make a concise statement about it starting with what made you angry and why you wrote the piece that you did at the summit.

Nitze

Well, what I was angry about was that there, in the last two or three days, when Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were in Moscow and we were in Helsinki the communications between Helsinki and Moscow were difficult. We presented our de... and we spent messages back giving our views on these issues. But the final upshot was an agreement which, certainly I felt, represented a misunderstanding on Henry's part as to what he was really agreeing to and it was not correct and that it was disadvantageous to the United States as far as the interim agreement on offensive forces were concerned.

The Back Channel

Nitze

It's not unusual to use a back channel in, in a, in, in, in an important negotiation, particularly at the final stages of such a negotiation. The two sides got locked in to some very important positions on both sides. How does one explore some way of resolving those important issues? The usual way in which that is done that some, somebody on one side together with somebody on the other side gets together and tries to informally, without rep... giving away his side's position negotiate with the other fellow who's not giving away his side's position, and see whether they can't get to some compromise which then both sides can agree upon. So that this is not an unusual way of doing it. It is, however, important that the person who does that really understand the problem. I think the difficulty involved here was that on our side Henry was not quite adequately versed in all the details while Mr. Smirnov, who was the person on the other side who worked out these details, was in charge of the entire nuclear weapons production program for the USSR, and knew every detail to h-his fingertips. And so that the agreement that finally resulted was in some respects uh, different than what I think Henry understood it to be. Subsequently it was corrected, but I think at some cost to ourselves by a subsequent corrective agreement.

Interviewer

I just want to jump ahead to 1974. At this point you remain on the delegation, you're beginning the negotiations on SALT II and the United States is a little bit in crisis because of Watergate. And you had specific concerns that led to your resigning from the delegation. And I'd like you to tell us why. What those concerns were.

Nitze

I'd spent a good deal of time worrying about what the objectives of an arms control agreement between the U.S. and the USSR should be. And this is a very complex problem, that it is not right that there's just one single objectives, objective -- there're a whole series of objectives and there're whole series of restraints and difficulties involved in actually getting to an agreement. And I'd spelled all that out in a piece of paper. And that paper had cleared with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with Laird, with people in ACDA, with others in the government. But I was unable to get that piece of paper approved by h-highest authority in the government. And I continued to argue these points and the points that flowed there from to the best of my ability. And when it became evident that uh, n... that highest authority was not going to pay any attention to this, then it seemed to me I had exhausted everything I could do within the government and that I'd had the feeling that Mr. Nixon wanted to maintain negotiations with the Soviet Union and get to some kind of agreements. Primarily because of the fact that his relationship with the Russians was his best defense against impeachment. And I thought that this was going to lead to a, an improvident agreement on the part of the United States. And I'd done everything I could to prevent that. And I felt I'd better get out. So I resigned.

SALT I

Interviewer

So your feeling was that because of the domestic pressure at home that Nixon would be willing to give too much away to the Soviets just to be able to have a major foreign policy victory?

Nitze

I think. In fact, I think he did a few months later when he met in Moscow and entered into the Moscow Agreement which gave up on the idea of having an agreement with respect to limiting offensive forces of indefinite duration. And settled on the idea that we, the two sides would agree on merely an agreement that would cover ten years from that date and that's after all what SALT II did. It oc... it was scheduled to expire in 1985 and that period of time to my view was not adequately long, cause it takes you at least ten years to develop and deploy a new weapons system and restrictions which last for only ten years would really have no useful effect that I could see.

Interviewer

What, in a nutshell would you say was the major effect of Watergate on the SALT negotiations.

Nitze

Well it... It... Are you referring to the fact that Mr. Nixon was under the threat of impeachment or are you referring to...?

Interviewer

Yeah. The clouds gathering over him. I don't if the Soviets across the table--

Nitze

I've just said what I think was the major thing.

Interviewer

Okay. Just take you back to one other concern. I know that in developing proposals for SALT I, you were very concerned about the larger Soviet missiles and that that concern was rooted in the fact that several years down the road, those missiles could carry larger payload of warheads, and that would make our land-based missiles -- put them in extremely vulnerable position. And you advocated deep cuts in the larger missiles. I was wondering if you could address that and also, what I don't understand about it myself is why you were opposed trying to pursue some sort of limitations on MIRVs to solve that land-based vulnerability problem.

Nitze

That's two entirely different questions. We better separate those two questions. Um, first of all you've asked me why was I opposed to the deployment of large, fixed ICBM missiles which could be MIRVed. I had a very strong feeling about that, because it was clear that the threat to the survivability of our ICBMs depended upon whether or not the Russians could develop warheads which were sufficient size and weight so that their yield was large, and also develop sufficient accuracy so that when those weapons hit, they would destroy the silos in which our missiles were deployed. This would be a very destabilizing threat to the survivability of what I considered to be an essential leg of our deterrent on which our security depended. Therefore it seemed to me to be much better if one could get an agreement which would limit the weight and the size of the missiles on each s... on each side. I felt strongly that this was the way in which to reduce the instability, the danger to both sides which would occur if we both had these big missiles which could threaten the silos of the other side.

Interviewer

Okay.

Nitze

And I think everybody agrees with that. This was not a unique view to me. It's a perfectly obvious consideration which everybody has agreed with. The difficulty has been could you get the Soviets to agree to that. And we all tried, including Henry Kissinger.

Interviewer

Okay. Just a concise answer to how did you feel after the treaties were concluded? Did you support their ratification in the senate and support the jackson amendment?

Nitze

I th... f... I felt that net, the virtues or the, the advantages of the ABM Treaty were such as to outweigh the defects in the interim agreement which in any case was supposed to last only a few years. It expired by its terms in five years. And it was agreed by both sides that it was to be replaced by a permanent of indefin... a, a, treaty of indefinite duration to be promptly negotiated between the sides. So that if that really had no long term merit, no long term commitment on either side, then one could forget about its, or take lightly, more lightly, its defects. While the ABM treaty was a treaty of indefinite duration and if it had merit and could be further improved in the future which it was, then that was something that merited being for. You couldn't get one without the other so I did testify on behalf of the package.

Soviet Military and Political Strategies

Interviewer

In '78. Talking about Soviet intentions. You said that your intentions were to achieve hegemony over Europe and the best way was to outflank Europe through the Middle East, and the best way to achieve hegemony in the Middle East was to outflank the Middle East through Africa. I'd like somehow to get that idea out, because I think it's a good one. But in 1976 when Carter was elected when you first started putting out your papers, or early '77... my question is, what was your perception in terms of Soviets intentions, of what the soviets and their Cuban proxies were doing in Angola? What did that tell you? Did that worry you? What did it tell you about Soviet intention?

Nitze

Well it seemed to me to confirm what I thought for a long period of time. And that was that the Soviet Union was interested, in fact what, it... Their doctrine their calls for a continuous expansion of what they call the socialist world, but they really mean the communist world, and which they call the camp of peace and freedom. And they've, well they are dedicated to expanding that as much as they possibly can. And certainly Mr. Khrushchev made that evident when he discussed publicly his view of peaceful co-existence. That peaceful co-existence was a way of maintaining a situation in which the Soviet Union could vigorously support wars of liberation... which is the same thing as saying, trying to expand the camp of peace and freedom.

Interviewer

But did you see the situation in Angola as being, or what Marshall Shulman would call that strategic opportunists. Scoop Jackson'd say they'd beat on a door and if they can go in, they go in, but that's different from a grand design. Where was the Angola thing going to lead?

Nitze

Except that I'm saying that the grand design was exactly spelled out by Mr. Khrushchev in his definition of peaceful co-existence. Soviets always use words which mean almost the reverse of what they mean to us. So peaceful co-existence does not in any way mean peaceful. In fact, he spelled it out as being the doctrine under which they proposed to support and actively support what they call wars of national liberation, which are in fact wars conducted by a small conspiracy of men dedicated to communism who attempt to take over by forceful means. You know, perfectly normal countries.

Interviewer

what do you think was going on 1978 in the Horn of Africa, when they were in Ethiopia?

Nitze

There they were torn between -- Let me begin again because... With respect to the situation in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, in both countries the Soviet Union had been working hard to create an infrastructure of those who shared their point of view and were prepared to take over the countries. They had made much more ca ... progress in the, in the Horn of Africa than they had in Ethiopia. They then had -- they decided however, that Ethiopia was a much more important country than was Somalia in the Horn of Africa. Therefore they switched their effort and they decided to back Ethiopia against Somalia and that's what happened at that time.

Interviewer

What was the ultimate goal? Were they interested in Ethiopia for the sake of Ethiopia?

Nitze

The ultimate goal of the whole policy of peaceful co-existence was to make progress on the basic goal laid down by Lenin of a world largely composed of socialist, communist states, in which the Soviet Union would be the prime mover, that th -- they couldn't really make progress. They'd been rather checkmated. And Europe, by our efforts in the buildup of NATO, therefore the thing to do was to make progress in the Third World. And in that world, the, the right doctrine as from their standpoint was the doctrine of peaceful co-existence, and the support of what they called wars of national liberation, which as I say were, small groups dedicated to communism prepared by fair means and foul to take over those countries. And that they were doing this in Africa and they were doing it in Angola. They were doing it in Ethiopia and had been doing it in Somalia. And what was really the idea of the entire policy was that if they could make progress through a wide duct through Africa and connect that with control over Yemen and then various countries in the Middle East, if they could really then get control over Southeast... Southwest Asia and Africa, and the belt down through the equatorial part of that, there they would have the United States isolated at least to a, a bar to one flank of the European segment and the Eurasian land mass.

Interviewer

Do you see a correlation between these geopolitical moves in the seventies and the Soviet commitment to developing of larger and larger nuclear force?

Nitze

I do indeed.

Interviewer

What is it?

Nitze

Well I thought... I think they saw the larger nuclear force as being a method of guaranteeing them that they would not be subject to the threat of U.S. intervention backed by the threat of the U.S. escalating any military confrontation, which might result there from. After all, they'd lived through the war resulting from their fomenting of the attack by North Korea into South Korea and they'd had, had -- were having a lot of experience with uh, uh, or had had a lot of experience with the war that they f-fomented in Southeast Asia by the attack of North Vietnam into South Vietnam, and its repercussions. And they understood that there was some point in which the United States might have not only back local resistance to these aggressive acts but might in fact at some time, if it were in a superior nuclear position, escalate to nuclear responses. And they wanted to be sure that that would be an impossibility by building up their nuclear forces.

Interviewer

So they built up their nuclear forces in the seventies. did you feel that this made our U.S. land ICBM force vulnerable? Why was it vulnerable?

Nitze

It was vulnerable because it b... It wasn't then that vulnerable but you could see that it was becoming more vulnerable. What they were doing was increasing, first of all, the number of their ICBMs. Secondly, they were increasing the size of those ICBMs. Even in 1971, '72 they were deploying the SS-9s which were more than double the size of our I-largest missiles. Uh, so that they had what we, one calls throw weight, the capability to throw large weights of material into intercontinental or-orbit. And they were then working hard on accuracy. And as they progressed toward getting then our silos would be vulnerable. And they are today and you could s... foresee it happening and you could see it then. And it did happen.

Interviewer

We talked to Paul Warnke and he said that the Soviets would have to spend two warheads for every ICBM. That's two thousand warheads. And you assume 50 percent inaccuracy or malfunction. That's three thousand warheads and it would still leave 70 percent of our deterrent force --

Nitze

He's talking nonsense. It just -- those figures are just not correct.

Interviewer

Why is it nonsense?

Nitze

Because the reliability of Soviet systems is greater than that.

Interviewer

What if they got the whole --

Nitze

And we don't -- whether it requires two warheads or not depends upon the level of damage that you wish to achieve.

Interviewer

But what about the other two legs of the triad?

Nitze

The other two legs of the triad are in a different position. Clearly th-the submarine leg of the triad is the prime thing that we are, have been and continue to rely upon because of its relative invulnerability. The bomber force's vulnerability is in part dependent upon the fact that it co-exists with the ICBMs. An attack on the bomber force would alert the ICBMs or would give the president the option of firing the ICBM. An attack on the, on the ICBMs would give the bomber force the time to get up in the air and be invulnerable. Therefore it is the combination of having an ICBM force and a bomber force which really protects you in those two legs. Now the question of the survivability SLBMs in part depends upon there being other, the other two forces being there. If the Soviets could concentrate solely upon the ICBMs, I think we'd be in great danger.

Interviewer

Was your concern simply what might happen in an exchange or was it the perception of superiority even if there were no exchange?

Nitze

It was both. And the two were intermitly... intimately related. One's perception of what might happen politically ex... and exchange depends in part about what one thinks and what one thinks the Soviets would think about the relationship in the event there were an exchange. Therefore the two are not separable.

Interviewer

Are you saying superiority pays political dividends?

Nitze

I'm saying exactly that.

Interviewer

Well --

Nitze

Now let me be more explicit about it. It isn't a direct relationship, one with the other, because the side that is facing a superior e-enemy knows that it must exhibit more courage. Otherwise it is in dreadful shape. And therefore one doesn't see the direct relationship in actions between superiority and inf- feriority. But there nevertheless is a very clear relationship between the two and at some time, one gets a breaking point. Where clearly of uh, very inferior country would certainly not even consider uh, escalating with respect to a superior country. Now there're measures, there're questions of degree involved. And these are hard to have judgments on and they're hard to make. I mean, one should avoid making absolute statements on these things. I'm trying to say precisely what the factors involved are.

Interviewer

What do you believe the Soviet goal was in negotiations in general, or SALT II in particular? Were they seeking superiority?

Nitze

I think they certainly --

Interviewer

Can you say the Soviets?

Nitze

I'm talking about the -- well... The Soviets in SALT II were certainly trying to avoid restrictions which would inhibit them from obtaining a militarily superior strategic nuclear force.

Interviewer

Was that the same as our goal?

Nitze

We certainly also did not want to see the Soviets attain a superior nuclear f... uh, nuclear force. Our goal was to assure, if we could, that neither side would be able to have a useful superior force. Although, clearly, we had a greater concern about the Soviet side of it than about our own. We'd lived through a period where we clearly had a superior force and we'd used it with res... We'd exercised great restraint during that period.

Interviewer

But if --

Nitze

And we could not be that confident of what the Soviets might do if they had a superior military force.

Interviewer

But if superiority is -- if we once enjoyed it and it's good and it pays political dividends, why wasn't it our goal?

Nitze

Because it didn't seem to be feasible with the realities of what we could do, what the congressional support we could get, the impact upon our economy. We did not think it was, you know, consistent with the American attitude to in peace time fully mobilize. Y-y-your degree of mobilization. It would be necessary against the determinant opposition of the Soviet Union to maintain a clearly superior nuclear force, would have required, you know, not a, a defense budget of six be... six percent of our GNP but of, you know, of what the Soviet's is. You know, eighteen percent. That kind of thing.

Interviewer

Did the Committee on the Present Danger -- was superiority part of your agenda?

Nitze

No, because we did not think it was possible, but we thought we should do everything that was necessary to prevent the Soviets from achieving superiority. It's easier to prevent the other fellow from having a useful superiority than it is to maintain one oneself. We thought one could do the second task.

Interviewer

You opposed Paul Warnke's nomination. Why did you do that?

Nitze

Because it was perfectly clear that having been a most useful person, he had been in the Pentagon and had been a tower of strength in the Pentagon. But afterwards, when he got out, he suddenly flipped to a point where he truly believed in unilateral disarmament which I thought was extremely dangerous.

Interviewer

He says that that's the way people characterize his use but that he was talking about reciprocal restraint.

Nitze

He wasn't really. I can quote you -- I can find statement after statement from in which in fact said the reverse.

Interviewer

You're familiar with his thesis of apes on a treadmill?

Nitze

I am indeed.

Interviewer

What is it and what was wrong with it?

Nitze

He was suggesting we get off first and then the Soviets clearly would get off. There isn't any indication of that at all. It was Harold Brown I think who correctly stated it when he said that, when we arm the Soviets arm. When we don't arm, the Soviets arm.

Interviewer

But he says that what he meant in apes on a treadmill was that if we got off, if we might encourage them to get off, if they didn't get off, we could get back on. That he was asking for reciprocal restraint, not unilateral disarmament.

Nitze

I can understand, but once you get off, once you engage in unilateral disarmament then it is very hard and dangerous to attempt to ca-catch up act.

Interviewer

Warnke says he foresaw a series of agreements, SALT II, III, IV and so on. And it's like climbing down a tree. You can't get rid of all the heavy ICBMs at once. Climbing down a tree branch by branch, or step by step. What's wrong with that approach?

Nitze

I don't think there's anything wrong with that approach, but I do think that it does not follow that because you can get one agreement that you can get a better agreement later. And we've had the ABM Treaty for a long period of time. It's very difficult to get a better treaty in the f... in that field.

Interviewer

Step by step... you broadcast about it, can we even walk the plank, step by step...

Nitze

You can walk the plank. You can walk step by step, yes. The step by step is something, you know, it's a good objective providing you do it. But whether you can do it or not -there's no evidence that you can do it.

Interviewer

Warnke told us that the Committee on the Present Danger had never seen an arms agreement that it liked, said you were like Groucho Marx. He wouldn't want to join any club that would let him in.

Nitze

I think that's in, completely unfair comment. I believe that there's no one who had as much to do with the ABM Treaty than I did. I think the um, I'm sure that the, the nonproliferation treaty would not have been ratified except for my support. I don't believe anybody had any more to do to working out the limited test ban treaty than I did. I think he's just talking bolderdash.

Interviewer

You did say in your testimony in 1979 that --

Vulnerable Weapon Systems

Interviewer

Well of these treaties that you saw and participated in and liked suggests that you feel it is possible to do business with the Soviets. You did say in '79 in some hearing that quote; I came to the conclusion in 1974 that it was no longer possible to see any way to get an equal treaty and that we would have to do ourselves those things which would maintain for us an adequate deterrent. That suggests that during the latter part of the seventies you didn't feel we could negotiate with the Soviets.

Nitze

I didn't think that at that time we could get an equal treaty. And we haven't been able to. We tried.

Interviewer

Have you looked at the future? Do you think it's possible -- is something that's agreeable to you going to be agreeable to the Soviets?

Nitze

I, my view is to try. I believe it is possible. I think we've made a lot of progress. I think we're much further along toward a START agreement for instance than we've been at any time in time in the past.

Interviewer

Let's go back to Vance --

Nitze

And I think I've had something to do with that.

Interviewer

Let's go back to Vance's mission to Moscow in March of '77. Remember, they wanted the proposal to cut the heavy comprehensive missiles from 308 to 150. Did you agree with that goal?

Nitze

I agree with that goal, but the other part of it was that we agreed that we would make no improvements in our strategic forces beyond those that we then had. Wouldn't add to them or improve them. That would have guaranteed the Soviet Union in perpetuity complete freedom of concern about any danger to them from an attack against their forces by us, because our forces had very little, in fact zero, what is called counterforce capability against Soviet silos. Now the, this would not have guaranteed a reciprocal for us. We would have been under increasing danger I thought while they would have been under none. I've talked to some of my Soviet friends since that time and they say they deeply regret that they didn't accept Mr. Vance's proposal.

Interviewer

When they didn't give up on the heavy missiles and we had to, is that when your committee really went into deep cuts in the Soviet opposition?

Nitze

No. I don't remember a connection between the two.

Interviewer

Wasn't your main concern about the treaty that was negotiated that our ICBMs were still vulnerable?

Nitze

Yeah, but there were many things that I thought were of dubious validity and did not correspond with what the executive branch was saying about the SALT II Treaty. And it was those things that I talked about.

Interviewer

Take the MX. Didn't the MX -- allayed your concerns about the vulnerability of our land-based fixed missiles.

Nitze

We didn't have an MX deployed.

Interviewer

The president said he was going to do one.

Nitze

But say -- words saying that you're going to deploy something are quite different than actually being able to deploy it.

Interviewer

Had the MX been deployed and been consistent with the treaty, would that have allayed your fears?

Nitze

It would have allayed part of my fears. I would have thought it much better if we'd been able to get rid of both the MX and the Soviet missiles of that, of the size of the MX which in, the s... in, the terminology of the ABM Treaty is a small missile. The A... The MX is not a heavy missile in the terms of the treaty. But I, if we'd gotten rid of the 1... the missiles of the size of the MX and those larger therefore that would have been much better than having to deploy the MX in large numbers ourselves.

Interviewer

But we couldn't. And I know at the time you were concerned that the treaty didn't allow the mx basing mode that the administration was considering.

Nitze

I thought we should have the right. I thought this was a very unfair and unequal provision. By and large it seems to be right that the Soviets and we should have the same rights under a treaty. There is no reason why the Soviet Union should have preference in the treaty with respect to the rights that it has than we. So I objected it, that even though it was not our intention and the Chiefs did not want to deploy a missile as heavy as their large missiles. Still, I thought it was not wise to give them the rights while we did not have the rights.

Interviewer

You said at the time that you felt that the treaty did not allow the basing mode for the MX that the administration was considering. Carter and Vance both told me in the last few weeks that they never had any doubt then or now that it --

Nitze

I have complete, I had complete doubt then and I have complete doubt now that what was contemplated by the basing mode they were talking about was in fact in comformity with the language of the treaty. The treaty quite clearly says that it is not permitted to have, to move silos or to add additional silos or to replace, to yes, move to different location silos, or to have additional ones. Their basing mode did in fact contemplate what I would think would be replacing launchers. And they didn't -- the treaty doesn't talk about silos. It talks about launchers. But still, I'm absolutely persuaded that he is wrong about that and the executive branch was wrong about it.

Interviewer

You were concerned more in your testimony than the specifics of the treaty. Were you trying to alert America? What was your major concern?

Nitze

No, I was particularly concerned about the specifics of the treaty and that the Senate before it voted for ratification should understand exactly what the treaty provided and they should understand what the probable and even possible consequences of that, of those provisions should be. That's what I was concerned about. That's what I testified to.

Interviewer

But you always stopped short of saying that you recommended that the senate not ratify the treaty.

Nitze

I'm not sure that I always did but I certainly tried to ref-refrain from s-stating that. When Senator Mathias asked me whether I was recommending to him that he ratify or not ratify I said that, That is your business. That is the Senate's business to decide upon whether a treaty should r-ratify. My business is to try to answer your questions to make it as clear as I can what the treaty's terms are. What it provides and what it doesn't provide and what the probable consequences are of those provisions in the treaty.

Interviewer

Cy Vance said that your testimony was very damaging to the ratification process.

Nitze

It was indeed. And the reason it was damaging was because the executive branch was not correctly describing what the provisions were and what the consequences might be.

Interviewer

I don't quite understand this. You thought that the consequences of the treaty would be that the Soviets would gain relative to us over the course of the treaty?

Nitze

I did indeed. And they have.

Interviewer

How did the treaty allow for them to get stronger when there were equal ceilings?

Nitze

But there weren't equal rights. There were equal ceilings in numbers, but the treaty did not limit the, the throw weight, did not limit accuracy. The result has been that they've been, since the treaty, since the date when the treaty would have taken effect, there's been an enormous increase in what is called the throw weight of the Soviet missile force. But in particular of its counterforce potential. In fact I think its counterforce potential, in other words, its ability to take out U.S. hardened silos, has gone up by a factor of ten. So if anybody thought that treaty was really somehow rather limiting the threat to the United States, it just wasn't. And it didn't. And it hasn't.

Interviewer

And all this has been done under the framework of the treaty.

Nitze

Exactly.

Interviewer

Were you disappointed when Carter withdrew the treaty or did you care?

Nitze

Well I thought he did the correct thing although I thought the treaty had no chance of going through in any case.

Interviewer

I find it ironical that you and, I think, about fifty members of the Committee of the Present Danger, including the president, when you all got into the administration, we just didn't hear so much about the vulnerability of our ICBMs, we didn't adapt a mobile basing.

Nitze

Well we have heard a great deal about this vulnerability of our ICBMs. The question at issue has been, What do you do about it that you can do within the provisions that the Congress will approve? It's a tough problem. A great deal of work has gone into it.

Interviewer

So your interest in this has not slackened since you've...

Nitze

It hasn't slackened one bit.

Interviewer

Did you, in Warnke's nomination confirmation hearing, did you call his views asinine?

Nitze

I believe I did. I thought they were. And I still think they were.

Interviewer

He says that he was -- he lists a bunch of weapons systems that he was in favor of including the cruise missiles and so on.

Nitze

I don't deny that. I'm not saying he was against every weapons system. I'm just saying that the net of what he was proposing was in fact what he said in that Apes on a Treadmill thing, and that is, We ought to get off the treadmill. We oughtn't to compete with the Soviet Union and then hopefully the Soviets would respond. I said, We'd done that and it doesn't work.

Interviewer

How did we do that?

Nitze

Well for a long period of time we did not add to our nuclear forces. Good gosh, you look at the comparison between what we did in the long period from, I guess from '69 to '78 or even to today. How many new ICBMs have we deployed? None.

Interviewer

But he said we were the first to develop the weapons system and then they would mimic us.

Nitze

That isn't, that isn't a true statement. We gave them the thermonuclear weapon. I believe it is correct to say that the first nuclear weapon deployed or even tested was tested by them. It isn't true. And the cruise missiles, my goodness, they were working on, you know, highly accurate cruise missiles for a much longer period than we, continued in, even after we abandoned our cruise missile work for a long period of time. So it just isn't so what he says.

Interviewer

That's fine. Thank you very much.

Nitze

You did induce me to what I don't like to do. Into an ad hominem argument. What I p... thought we were going to talk about was, you know, what happened and so forth and so... And you certainly brought it up to date and brought it into an on... ad hominem argument which I really kind of resent to be perfectly frank with you.

Interviewer

Well is there something that we should talk about that we haven't? Because I don't like to get into ad hominems...