WHEN YOU BECAME SECRETARY OF DEFENSE IN 1973, ONE OF THE THINGS YOU TALKED ABOUT A LOT WAS THE IMPACT OF THE SOVIETS HAVING ATTAINED STRATEGIC PARITY. CAN YOU TELL US WHAT THE IMPACT OF THAT PARITY WAS ON NUCLEAR DOCTRINE AND PARTICULARLY ON THE ROLE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN EUROPE, AND THE EUROPEAN THEATRE.

I, I think that that is quite simple. Throughout the fifties reflected in Dulles' massive retaliation and much of the sixties the United States superiority was such: that we could threaten the Soviets with retaliation in the event of an invasion of Western Europe and they could not really make a major counter threat. If they absolved a nuclear blow they would not have much, if anything, to strike back with. When the Soviets developed in the later sixties an impressive counter deterrent that meant that the west could no longer rely upon a simple doctrine of massive retaliation, which meant, amongst other things, going after Soviet cities. It meant that the Soviet Union, by holding our own cities hostage could preclude that kind of massive strike that was so easy to discussing the fifties and so effective in deterring any Soviet ambitions of a major nature.

DID THAT CAST DOUBT THEN ON THE US STRATEGIC GUARANTEE TO EUROPE?

Well there was of course doubt cast on the US strategic guarantee in Europe even from the early fifties there was a view that some day that the United States would be deterred from protecting Europe because of Soviet threats to its own cities. Uh, the classical form of that argument was put by Charles de Gaulle, will the United States trade New York for Paris, or New York for Hamburg? And indeed, that was an appropriate question. The thing for us to do was to... design a nuclear strategy that continued nuclear deterrence in a period in which the Soviets had indeed developed an impressive counter-deterrent.

THAT HAS COME TO BE CALLED THE SCHLESSINGER DOCTRINE. IT AIMED TO WIDEN THE RANGE OF NUCLEAR OPTIONS AVAILABLE. UNDER THAT STRATEGY, WHAT WAS THE FUNCTION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN THE EUROPEAN THEATER?

The weapons in the nur... European theater were essentially required as a symbol of the possibility of battlefield use of nuclear weapons. Uh, in that... the main thrust of the Schlesinger doctrine so-called was that the US strategic forces remained coupled to the security of Europe and therefore the positioning of additional nuclear weapons on the continent of Europe, whether they could strike the Soviet Union or not was superfluous, that one could rely upon US strategic forces.

WAS THE IDEA TO LIMIT A NUCLEAR EXCHANGE OR TO CONFINE IT TO A POLITICAL USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS?

Well there are two aspects to that. The first element was to maintain the credibility that the United States would initiate the use of nuclear weapons in the defense of Europe if the Soviets launched a major conventional attack that overwhelmed our defenses, maintaining that credibility was the key element. And therefore, one had to ensure that western cities were not automatically destroyed by Soviet calculations which would m... likely be the case if we went after Soviet cities, so that the strike, the initiation of nuclear weapons had to be discreet, and it had to be one that was believable to the Soviet Union in which event they would believe that the United States would introduce the use of nuclear weapons and they would be deterred and consequently war would be avoided. If one ever had a failure of deterrence and nuclear weapons had to be used, the purpose would be to use them in as limited a way so as to avoid destruction as much as could possibly be done. And if destruction became massive it would be the responsibility, the decision of the Soviet Union rather than the decision of the western allies.

CRITICS ASSUMED THAT THE SOVIETS WOULD EXERCISE A SELF DENYING ORDINANCE IF WE DID.

The critics did not... understand the full complexity. The — If the Soviets believed that if nuclear weapons were introduced, that there was no way of achieving restraint, if they believed indeed that the Americans were wild people and did not understand the realities, but they believed also that the Americans did believe their doctrine, then they would be effectively deterred. What is important is to achieve that set of reactions in the Soviet mind that results in deterrence. It does not have to pass... pass muster as it were with every kind of academic scenario that can be designed in a university.

IN 1974, UNDER THE INSTRUCTIONS OF CONGRESS, YOU CARRIED OUT WHAT ONE MIGHT CALL AN INVENTORY OF THE US-NATO STOCK PILE IN EUROPE. WHAT DID YOU FIND?

Well I found, amongst other things, what, what one would expect to find, that many of those weapons which had originally been placed there for political purposes, or for military purses... purposes that had become passé were redundant, and that the stock pile was larger than was necessary for military purposes and... could be reduced. We hoped to reduce it by trading off these weapons against the withdrawal of Soviet tank armies. It also was clear that we were short on certain modern weapons. Uh, for example, that the supply of lands missiles should be beefed up. Uh. It was necessary to convey to the Soviet Union that we were indeed prepared in various ways to initiate a nuclear response, but that we were not going to tell them which one of the various ways that we would do so. And that stockpile of elderly weapons, some of them air defense weapons that would do more damage to Germany than, than to the... presumably invading Soviet air forces. Uh, ADMs, the Germans would not permit us deploy and so forth was an ill-conceived stock pile and that substantial reductions should occur but then m... very modest replacements should be made to modernize that stock pile.

THERE WERE IN FACT SOME SEVEN THOUSAND NUCLEAR WARHEADS IN EUROPE AT THE TIME—

That was a political figure. Uh, during the debates of the sixties when Secretary McNamara wanted to raise the conventional capabilities of the alliance, and it was perceived in Europe that he was attempting to substitute conventional deterrence for nuclear deterrence which was believed to work, his response was to increase that stock pile and say, "How can you suggest that I will depend only on conventional forces? I've increased the number of weapons to seven thousand?" which became a fixed number in the minds of many of the members of the alliance.

YOU ATTEMPTED TO MODERNIZE AND CLEAN UP THIS STOCK PILE. DID YOU FIND THAT DIFFICULT? WERE THERE PROBLEMS IN DOING THAT?

There were problems in doing that on the, on the reduction side. Uh, there was a reluctance on the part of senior figures in the administration. Uh. Secretary Kissinger and General Haig to see any withdrawal of weapons from Europe below that seven thousand figure. Uh, th... that was, it was stated that if we withdrew any weapons, that European confidence in the United States would crumble. That was one of the first of the hundreds of predictions that I've heard reflecting the disintegration and demise of the allies. All of these exaggerations. All of these have turned out to be exaggerations. It was also difficult at the time to get Congress to agree to a modest modernization of the stockpile. The budget was under pressure after the Vietnam War and the Congress were... many in the Congress were inclined to think that military force had gotten us into an inappropriate war and therefore military force was inherently bad. It was bad for good political purposes as it was supposedly bad for poor political purposes.

ONE OF THE MODERNIZATIONS WHICH DID TAKE PLACE AT THIS TIME WAS THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENHANCED RADIATION WEAPON. WHAT WAS THE THINKING BEHIND THAT WEAPON?

Well the enhanced radiation weapon, oddly enough, goes back to my days at RAND when it was invented more or less by one of my colleagues. Uh, when I was chairman of the atomic energy commission I put the funds in for development of that weapon and when I was secretary of defense I stated that it should be introduced into the inventory and that we would have full-scale development. Uh. Of course, when I became secretary of energy and was called upon to produce the weapon I was precluded by Senator by uh. President Carter at that time. The... What I did do as secretary of energy was to produce all of the components so that although we had not produced the weapon we had all the components and it could be... assembled almost instantaneously. The notion behind the weapon was quite clear, that this was a discreet weapon. This was an area in which the United States could use a nuclear weapon with a degree of precision and a minimum of damage in a way that the Soviets... could not match, and that the Soviets would perceive our ability to be discreet and our willingness, our perspective willingness if they invaded to employ such weapons and consequently it would continue to miss-sustain the wall of deterrence.

IS IT FAIR TO SAY THAT THERE WAS AT THIS TIME AMONG THE EUROPEANS A MUCH GREATER WILLINGNESS THAN THERE EXISTS TODAY, PARTICULARLY AMONG THE GERMANS, TO LEAVE NUCLEAR DECISIONS TO THE AMERICANS, TO TRUST THE AMERICANS.

Well I think that, that it was clearly the case at that time. The... I remember we had some interviews in depth by the RAND Corporation in Germany and the interviewer attempted to induce the Germans to give their own views on the appropriate size of our nuclear capabilities and the response was that the appropriate size of our nuclear capabilities was whatever Dr. Schlesinger thought they should be, that they could not be pressed into their corner. Now, there have been two trends. One is the gradual maturation of Germany the movement from as it were a ward of the United States which it had been for many years after the close of World War II to a country that has strong views on many issues of war and peace. And that is associated with another development which is certain shocks too the German psyche regarding the wisdom and the tenacity of American leaders. Uh, amongst those shocks was the neutron bomb and more recently Reykjavik so that there has been a decline of German confidence in the judgment of the American leaders and consequently an inevitably a decline in the willingness to trust the Americans.

IS IT NOT FAIR TO SAY THAT THE BRITISH AND THE AMERICANS SLIGHTLY AGREED TO DIFFER ABOUT WHAT THE NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN EUROPE WERE ACTUALLY FOR AND HOW, SHOULD IT EVER BECOME NECESSARY TO USE, THEY WOULD BE USED?

I think that that is an appropriate characterization. There has, at least since the early 1960s, when Secretary McNamara came into the Pentagon, there has been a... difference between the United States and the UK on these matters. United States has tended to stress the development of conventional forces. The British were much more willing, indeed eager, to continue to rely upon a nuclear retaliation and they were not much interested in the fine analysis of what came after the initiation of nuclear use. They felt that nuclear retaliation would work and that in the ultimate case of the use of nuclear weapons we would muddle through. Before 1960, the British tended to adhere to the massive retaliation doctrines of the Eisenhower administration.

AT THE TIME YOU WERE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, THE ALLIANCE DID NOT HAVE ANY INTERMEDIATE RANGE MISSILES IN EUROPE. DID THIS HAPPEN IN THE DETERRENT SPECTRUM? DID THAT WORRY YOU? WERE YOU LOOKING TO INTRODUCE CRUISE OR WHATEVER?

No. No, I, I was not only unworried by that. Uh, in general I thought that was the appropriate posture. Offshore weapons, the weapons that we have assigned to first the Polaris, then the Poseidon submarines. Uh, in, in the submarines weapons based in the United States are less vulnerable. I was quite concerned about the vulnerability of h... basing retaliatory forces in Europe which would in the worst possible scenarios tend to encourage the S... the Soviets to take them out. Weapons based in the United States are most clearly under seize by being invulnerable provided no temptation for a preemptive strike by the Soviet Union. I was quite happy with those circumstances. I believe the reasons for deployment of intermediate range weapons in Europe were essentially political, reflected some distrust in the later seventies on the part of our European allies which we attempted to assuage by promising deployment and that the deployment of those weapons in Western Europe while political required some military rationale. And ultimately we, in the period of deployment in the early eighties, we invented this rationale about rungs in the nuclear ladder. Now, unfortunately that rationale is taken more seriously than it should have been and has interfered with the movement towards the INF agreement.

YOU WERE THE FIRST PERSON TO TELL THE WESTERN ALLIES ABOUT THE SS-20 MISSILE. WHAT, IN YOUR JUDGMENT, DID IT SIGNIFY? WHAT WERE THE SOVIETS UP TO?

The Soviets were up to, in military terms, developing a replacement for the SS-4s and -5s. We have spent particularly since 1980, a great deal of time brooding about the Soviet monopoly of intermediate-range nuclear weapons. The fact is, that the Soviets have had a monopoly of intermediate-range nuclear weapons since the 1950s and that we were unconcerned about it because we believed that the overall capabilities of US forces were sufficient to offset any localized monopoly. Ah, it was also plain that the Soviet's deployment went beyond the mere replacement of SS-4s and SS-5s that they were seeking to sustain and enhance a capability against Western Europe which was designed to hold Western Europe hostage and to diminish the ability of the United States to go after the Soviet Union for that reason. Ah, and it was a continuation, basically, of the time-honored Soviet strategy towards Western Europe.

FROM 1977 ON, YOU SERVED IN THE CARTER ADMINISTRATION, AND YOU OBSERVED SOME OF THE ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN JIMMY CARTER AND HELMUT SCHMIDT. FOR EXAMPLE, WHEN HELMUT SCHMIDT VISITED WASHINGTON IN 1977, THERE WAS A GREAT ENTOURAGE OF GERMANS OF ONE KIND AND ANOTHER. WHAT CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THAT? WHAT DID YOU MAKE OF THESE TWO, TOGETHER?

Well it became evident, as the relationship unfolded, but Carter had started with a vast admiration for Helmut Schmidt and when Schmidt arrived at the White House for the public ceremony, he went almost into raptures, that he had, as a lowly governor of Georgia been permitted to when he visited Germany, to be entertained by the Chancellor himself, and Carter had the highest regard for Schmidt, which Schmidt, if he had been more astute about Germany's interests, would have been willing to exploit. But he took, in part, a dislike to Carter and he did not take advantage of Carter's admiration, deference to his views. After Carter gave that little eulogy about his relationship with the Chancellor of Germany, when he was a lowly governor Schmidt came on and he said, "Well, now, Mr. President that's all very well and thank you. Now let's get down to business." And I can think of no poorer chemistry, inherently, than this very polite Georgian from a small town in the South, for whom polite interchanges are all, and this Hamburger, this north German business-like, brusque man, who regarded these kinds of politnesses as irrelevant, and the relationship which had, which started off reasonably well, particularly on the American side, deteriorated over the course of the four years of the Carter administration.

WHY WAS IT THAT SCHMIDT DIDN'T HAVE A VERY HIGH OPINION OF CARTER?

Well, I think that it is not unfair to say that Chancellor Schmidt is, was not one automatically to be smitten with high regard for his fellow man, and particularly, the intellect of his fellow man, and that Carter's style was the wrong style for him, and he felt that Carter had totally mishandled the neutron bomb issue. Ah, indeed, Carter had mishandled that, but also Chancellor Schmidt had mishandled the neutron bomb issue. When Carter insisted that Germany announce its willingness to accept deployment of the neutron bomb Schmidt should have said, now, Jimmy, he said, from time to time we are going help each—have to help each other out as international leaders. It costs nothing for you, as President of the United States, to make a production decision. For me, in Germany, to have made, to have announced a deployment decision will lead to vast controversy, which I cannot afford, and to deep divisions within my own party, the SPD. And therefore, on this occasion, you're going to have to help me out politically, and on some other occasion, I can take the heat for you, as incidentally, he did, later on with regard to oil de-regulation. I can take the heat for you, so that on those things in which you're vulnerable before the American public, I can serve. He failed, I think, to see the political opportunities.

SCHMIDT DID.

Schmidt.

LET'S MOVE ON A LITTLE BIT, TO THE REYKJAVIK SUMMIT—I'LL MOVE ON A LOT—1986. NOW, YOU'VE EXPRESSED, QUITE STRONGLY, YOUR RESERVATIONS ABOUT THE WAY THE AMERICANS HANDLED THEMSELVES AT REYKJAVIK. WHY DO YOU FEEL SO STRONGLY ABOUT IT?

Well, the Alliance has depended, for many years, on nuclear retaliation. The--indeed, the con—the desire to rely ultimately on nuclear retaliation has been stronger in Europe, including the United Kingdom, than it has been in the United States. The Americans have been more inclined to believe that the west should be able to provide the conventional forces to preclude an overwhelming conventional attack by the Warsaw Pact, but the Alliance strategy has been nuclear deterrence. And all of a sudden, the American leaders are talking about 'a world free of nuclear weapons', the abolition of, by our proposal, of all ballistic missiles, and an agreement, however tentative, to Mr. Gorbachev's proposals, that we will get rid of all nuclear weapons. This, without prior consultation with the allies, who assumed that American leaders understood the basis of western defense, it was a shattering blow, regrettably, to the confidence of our allies in American leadership and therefore, in the cohesion of the Alliance.

THERE'S ONE THING I WANT TO GET BACK TO, WHICH I SHOULD HAVE ASKED YOU BEFORE. THE 1979 DEPLOYMENT DECISION WAS TAKEN BY THE CARTER ADMINISTRATION WITHIN A CERTAIN CONTEXT ABOUT SALT II.

Mn-hmn.

THEN, WITH AFGHANISTAN, EVERYTHING CHANGED, THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION CAME IN. IT WAS IRONIC, WAS IT NOT, THAT—

Well, it was, indeed, ironic. The as a result of the neutron bomb decision and the perception, particularly on the part of Chancellor Schmidt that the American president could not be relied upon, this image of of a weakling in the White House, which was widespread in Europe, the administration responded to that by the decision to deploy weapons in Europe, and that was intended to reassure the Europeans. But the irony is that the decision that was taken to reassure the Europeans about what they perceived to be the weaknesses of the White House, the deployment came under President Reagan, who was widely believed in Europe to be a nuclear cowboy. And so, what was intended to be reassuring turned out to be the opposite of reassuring. Ah, the weapons were being deployed more for political than for military purposes and because of the oddities of timing they did not ultimately prus—achieve the purpose that was designed in 1979.

LET'S MOVE ON TO THE PRESENT NOW. IN 1977, HELMUT SCHMIDT QUESTIONED THE AMERICAN NUCLEAR GUARANTEE TO EUROPE. IN '79, IN A SPEECH IN BRUSSELS, KISSINGER UPSET A FEW PEOPLE BY CASTING DOUBT ON IT. HOW CREDIBLE IS IT TODAY?

The American guarantee is quite credible. Ah, the problem that we have is that most people do not understand the nature of the guarantee. Ah, if the Americans are prepared to, or prepared to be prepared, to use nuclear weapons, to introduce them in a contest in the event of an overwhelming Warsaw Pact drive against Western Europe, that will be sufficient. Ah, it is the Europeans, the Cartesian logicians amongst the French Gaullists, but other Europeans as well, demand a hundred percent guarantee of an American response, in order to provide for their psychological comfort, They do not seem to understand that in Moscow, if it is perceived that there's only a ten percent, or a fifteen percent chance of American response, that prudent Russian leaders are not going to move. Indeed, I think that the likelihood of an American response is much, much higher than ten or fifteen percent, err, it is not, certainly, a hundred percent. It depends upon the President. But the Soviet Union is not going to test that. That could mean the end of the Soviet Union for relatively little po—political gain. The American nuclear guarantee is there. Now, Dr. Kissinger, I think unwisely, challenged that guarantee. He tend—he tended to bring about that distrust of the United Stat which, under most circumstances he protests. Uh, Schmidt's position was somewhat different; he felt that because of the equality of the strategic forces on both sides, that there was no counter to the deployment of the SS-20 and he was looking for additional military posture. He was not inherently questioning the validity of the American guarantee.

LET'S TALK FOR A SECOND ABOUT THIS CURRENT INF DEAL. DO YOU THINK THAT WE SHOULD KEEP BATTLEFIELD NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN EUROPE?

Absolutely. Absolutely. That is—

CAN YOU TELL US WHY?

Absolutely, because it these--it has been the strategy of the Western Alliance to rely upon nuclear retaliation as part of the deterrent against the Soviet Union. There are adequate substitutes, I think more than adequate substitutes, for longer-range weapons deployed in Europe, those that will reach the Soviet Union. Ah, we can use submarine weapons, we can use B-52 bombers. There is no substitute for a battlefield weapon, except for a weapon deployed near the battlefield.

LET ME JUST GO BACK, ON THAT THEME, TO SOMETHING WE TALKED A LITTLE BIT ABOUT BEFORE. YOU WERE INVOLVED IN DEVELOPING WEAPONS SUCH AS THE IN-HOUSE RADIATION WEAPON, WHICH WERE ATTEMPTS TO PROVIDE MORE PRECISE WEAPONRY. NOW, THIS WAS REPRESENTED BY SOME PEOPLE IN EUROPE AS AN ATTEMPT TO MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR THE UNITED STATES TO FIGHT A LIMITED AND CONTAINED NUCLEAR WAR IN EUROPE THAT WOULDN'T INVOLVE THE UNITED STATES.

Well, I think that that was a period in which the thrust of the doctrine that I had developed was to re-link America's strategic forces to the security of Western Europe after the Soviets had developed a counter-deterrent. So the main thrust of my work was to sustain the involvement of America's strategic forces in the deterrent. But one had to have a variety of responses, all of which would add to Soviet concern and would thus enhance deterrence. Ah, the possibility of a very limited use of, of nuclear weapons, let's say, fifteen kilometers on either side of the forward line of, forward edge of the battle area, the, was something that the Soviets could perceive as a possibility, and once again, add to deterrence, so, the goal was to enhance deterrence overall that required an expansion of the possible responses by the United States. It did not mean the choosing of anyone. And I think that, by and large, at least while I was Secretary, that the Europeans felt that the United States was fully committed to the security of Western Europe. After all, that has been the principal, and appropriately the principal US objective since the close of World War II: to prevent the domination of Western Europe by the Soviet Union.

ARE THERE OTHER POINTS YOU'D LIKE TO MAKE ABOUT THE CURRENT SITUATION AND POSSIBLE FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS?

Well, I think that there has been a good deal of concern about the INF agreement in Western Europe. Ah, a surprising degree of concern, in a way, because the agreement is a response to earlier European demands, first by Schmidt that we do something about the SS-20, then the European agreement on the dual-track approach in 1979. The European demands in '81 that Mr. Reagan pressed forward with arms control. The Americans, in a sense, have delivered to the, in response to specific European requests, and yet you have this over-stated reaction. Why? I think, because of the intervention of Reykjavik. If there had not been the shaking of US, of European confidence in the wisdom and understanding of US leaders, then INF would have been taken more on the pragmatic aspects of it, which includes a substantial reduction of Soviet capabilities for a relatively limited reduction of Western capabilities, and there would have been a little grousing and an article in a strategic journal or two, but there would not have been this feeling of abandonment. Western Europe, regrettably oscillates between a view that the United States is going to dominate Western Europe, or abandon Western Europe. We're into the abandonment phase, right now. The notion of abandonment is, I think preposterous, but it reflects that shaking of confidence at Reykjavik. Why? This has been furthered, I think, by a failure of the administration appropriately to respond to the situation. Mr. Reagan goes on talking about a world free of nuclear weapons, which intensifies the psychological problems in Western Europe. He does not say the administration therefore, does not say that when Mr. Gorbachev talks about the de-nuclearization of Europe, that that is not going to take place. And when the French talk about it, it is not going to take place. Nuclear weapons will remain in Western Europe to contribute to the overall deterrent and the protection of Western Europe, and that nuclear deterrence will never cease so long as the Soviets represent a threat against Western Europe. We should be pointing to the specifics of the agreement and the general support that the United States continues to give to the security of Western Europe. Our failure to do so has created a kind of vacuum, in which these, in which these nightmare scenarios are developed in Western Europe, and as you know, in particular, in West Germany, a nation that was divided by World War II and has never had its confidence and ahhh, feeling of independence totally restored. These scenarios become the nightmares that they should not be allowed to be.

YOU'VE TALKED WITH SOME SCORN OF THE OTHER STRAND IN THE 1979 DECISION, WHICH IS THE "SEAMLESS ROBE" STRAND. NONETHELESS, THERE ARE THOSE IN BRITAIN, AND THOSE SUCH AS GENERAL ROGERS, WHO SAY THAT THERE WAS AN IMPORTANT STRATEGIC INGREDIENT IN THE 1979 DECISION AND THAT'S BEEN REMOVED.

Well, I think that there was not an important military element. It was, at best, political-military, this was designed for, as psychological balm, at best, for the Europeans. Remember that the, when the US Pershing IIs deploy in Germany, they're followed around by a large number of demonstrators, which is a less than ideal situation with regard to military weapons. Ah, it's better to have weapons deployed underseas, where the demonstrators find it much harder to follow. Ah, the SAC, General Rogers and General Haig, talk about these weapons as playing a military role, but that's a military role from the perspective of their individual commands. Those weapons are under the control of Allied Command Europe, under General Rogers, under General Haig. Commanders are reluctant not to have capabilities under their own command controlled. They hate to depend upon an Air Force general, back in Omaha, Nebraska, or even worse, a Navy admiral, stationed in Norfolk. But in the eyes of the Soviet Union, the weapons that the United States control continue to be the appropriate deterrent. If the Soviet Union is not deterred by the 11,000 strategic weapons that the United States can throw against...

If the Soviet Union is not deterred by the 11,000 strategic warheads that we have in our arsenal, it is not going to be deterred by those 11,000 plus, an additional three hundred that we have deployed in Western Europe. The notion of the seamless web, or the rung in the ladder is more poetic than anything else; it was designed as a rationale to permit deployment, but it should not be taken that seriously, and if it is taken seriously, err, in a way that reduces the cohesion and strength of the Western Alliance, then it is not useful, but pernicious.

EARLIER THIS YEAR, ONE FORMER GERMAN SPOKESMAN COINED THE PHRASE, "THE SHORTER THE RANGE, THE DEADER THE GERMAN." THIS WAS AT THE HEIGHT OF THE GERMANS FEELING BEING BETRAYED BY THEIR ALLIES. HOW DO YOU RESPOND TO THAT?

Well, I think that short-range weapons have their uses, just as long-range weapons have. I think that the Germans are unduly preoccupied with what they see to be the singularity of Germany. Actually, the singularity of Germany, so-called, is being reduced, Why? As the Soviets have red—reduced, as the Soviets reduce their inventory of intermediate-range nuclear weapons, that means that they can use the SS-18s, the SS-19s, or the -24s to attack Germany? France? The UK? The United States? Canada? Indeed, the reduction of intermediate-range forces generalizes the strategic inventory of the Soviet Union. The proportion of weapons that can strike exclusively at Germany is being reduced, not increased. The proportion of weapons that can strike all of the Allies is increasing, and consequently, this represents the kind of introspection, introspective brooding that we, and the other Allies, ought to help cure, on the part of our German associates.